The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Before coming to the topic of today's talk, I would like to say a few words about the great and grievous loss on the physical plane we have suffered in recent days. You will undoubtedly know what I mean: the day before yesterday, Herr von Moltke's soul passed through the gate of death.¹

What this man was to his country, the outstanding part he played in the great and fateful events of our time, the significant, deep impulses growing out of human connections that formed the basis of his actions and his work—to appreciate and pay tribute to all this will be the task of others, primarily of future historians. In our age it is impossible to give an entirely comprehensive picture of everything that concerns our time. As I said, we will not speak of what others and history will have to say, but I am absolutely convinced that future historians will have very much to say about von Moltke. However, I would like to say something that is now in my soul, even if I have to express it at first symbolically; what I mean will be understood only gradually. This man and his soul stand before my soul as a symbol of the present and the immediate future, a symbol born out of the evolution of our time, in the true sense of the word a symbol of what should come to pass and must come to pass.

As we have repeatedly emphasized, we are not trying to integrate spiritual science into contemporary culture out of somebody's arbitrary impulses, but because it is needed in these times. There will not be a lasting future if the substance of this spiritual science does not flow into human development. This is the point, my dear friends, where you can see the greatness and significance we find when we think of Herr von Moltke's soul. He participated most actively in the busy life of our era, the life that developed out of the past and led to the greatest crisis humanity ever had to go through in its history. He was one of the leaders of the army and was right in the middle of the events that inaugurated our fateful present and future. Here was a soul, a personality, who did all this and, at the same time, also was one of us, seeking knowledge and truth with the most holy, fervent thirst for knowledge that ever inspired a soul in our day and age.

That is what we should think of. For the soul of this personality, who has just died, is more than anything else an outstanding historical symbol. It is profoundly symbolic that he was one of the leading figures of the outer life, which he served, and yet found the bridge to the life of the spirit we seek in spiritual science. We can only wish with all our soul that more and more people in similar positions do as he has done. This is not just a personal wish, but one born out of the need of our times. You should feel how significant an example this personality can be. It does not matter how little other people speak about the spiritual side of his life; in fact, it is best for it not to be talked about. But what von Moltke did is a reality and the effects are what is important, not whether it is discussed. Herr von Moltke's life can lead us to realize that he interpreted the meaning of the signs of the times correctly. May many follow this soul who are still distant from our spiritual science.

It is true, and we should not forget it, that this soul has given as much to what flows and pulsates through our spiritual science as we have been able to give him. Now souls are entering the spiritual world bearing within them what they have received from spiritual science. What spiritual science strives for has united with the soul of a person, who has died after a very active life. This then works as a deeply significant, powerful force in the realm we want to explore with the help of our spiritual science. And the souls now present here who understand me will never forget what I have just said about how significant it is that souls now take what has flowed for many years through our spiritual science into the spiritual world, where it will become strength and power.

I am not telling you this to assuage in a trivial way the pain we feel about our loss on the physical plane. Pain and sorrow are justified in a case like Herr von Moltke's death. But only when pain and sorrow are permeated by a sound understanding of what underlies them can they become great and momentous active forces. Take, therefore, what I have said as the expression of sorrow over the loss the German people and all humanity have experienced on the physical plane.

Let us stand up, my dear friends, and recite this verse:

Spirit of your soul, ever working Guardian!
May your wings carry
Our souls' imploring love
To the son in the spheres entrusted to your care!
United with your power,
May our prayer be a shining help
To the soul it lovingly seeks.

My dear friends, as I have often said, the occult substance that flows through our whole evolution has found its outer expression or manifestation in all kinds of more or less occult and symbolic brotherhoods and societies. In my recent talks I have characterized them in more detail as really quite superficial. We are now living in an age when the occult knowledge from the spiritual world must be given to people in a new way, as we have been trying to do for many years now, because the previous ways are obsolete. Granted, they will continue to exist for a time, but they are quite obsolete, and it is important that we understand this in the right way.

As you know, I like to call our spiritual science anthroposophy, and a few years ago when I gave lectures here, I called them lectures on anthroposophy. Last time, I referred to these lectures on anthroposophy, particularly to my emphasis on the fact that human beings actually have twelve senses. I explained that, as far as our senses are concerned, what is spread out over our nerve substance is organized according to the number twelve because the human being is in this most profound sense a microcosm and mirrors the macrocosm.

In the macrocosm the sun moves through twelve signs of the zodiac in the course of a year, and the human I lives here on the physical plane in the twelve senses. Things are certainly rather different out there in the macrocosm, especially in regard to their sequence in time. The sun moves from Aries through Taurus, and so on, and back again through Pisces to Aries as it makes its yearly course through the twelve signs of the zodiac. Everything we have in us, even everything we experience in our soul, is related to the outer world through our twelve senses. These are the senses of touch, life, movement, balance, smell, taste, sight, warmth, hearing, speech, thinking, and the sense of the I.

Our inner life moves through this circle of the twelve senses just as the sun moves through the circle of the twelve signs of the zodiac. But we can take this external analogy even further. In the course of a year, the sun has to move through all the signs of the zodiac from Aries to Libra; it moves through the upper signs during the day and through the lower ones at night. The sun's passage through these lower signs is hidden from outer light. It is the same with the life of our soul and the twelve senses. Half of the twelve are day senses, just as half of the signs of the zodiac are day signs; the others are night senses.

You see, our sense of touch pushes us into the night life of our soul, so to speak, for with the sense of touch, one of our coarser senses, we bump into the world around us. The sense of touch is barely connected with the day life of our soul, that is, with the really conscious life of the soul. You can see for yourself that this is true when you consider how easily we can store the impressions of our other senses in our memory and how difficult it is to remember the impressions of the sense of touch. Just try it and you'll see how difficult it is to remember, for example, the feel of a piece of fabric you touched a few years ago. Indeed you'll find you have little need or desire to remember it. The impression sinks down in the same way as the light fades into twilight when the sun descends into the sign of Libra at night, into the region of the night signs. And thus other senses are also completely hidden from our waking, conscious soul life.

As for the sense of life, conventional psychological studies hardly mention it at all. They usually list only five senses, the day senses or senses of waking consciousness. But that need not concern us further. The sense of life enables us to feel our life in us, but only when that life has been disturbed, when it is sick, when something causes us pain or hurts us. Then the sense of life tells us we are hurting here or there. When we are healthy, we are not aware of the life in us; it sinks into the depths, just as there is no light when the sun is in the sign of Scorpio or in any other night sign.

The same applies to the sense of movement. It allows us to perceive what is happening in us when we have set some part of our body in motion. Conventional science is only now beginning to pay attention to this sense of movement. It is only just beginning to find out that the way joints impact on one another—for example, when I bend my finger, this joint impacts on that one—tells us about the movements our body is carrying out. We walk, but we walk unconsciously. The sense underlying our ability to walk, namely, the perception of our mobility, is cast into the night of consciousness.

Let us now look at the sense of balance. We acquire this sense only gradually in life; we just don't think about it because it also remains in the night of consciousness. Infants have not yet acquired this sense, and therefore they can only crawl. It was only in the last decade that science discovered the organ for the sense of balance. I have mentioned the three canals in our ears before; they are shaped like semicircles and are vertical to each other in the three dimensions of space. If these canals are damaged, we get dizzy; we lose our balance. We have the outer ears for our sense of hearing, the eyes for the sense of sight, and for the sense of balance we have these three semicircular canals.

Their connection with the ears and the sense of hearing is a vestige of the kinship between sound and balance. The canals, located in the cavity in the petrosal bone, consist of three semicircles of tiny, very minute, bones. If they are the least bit injured, we can no longer keep our balance. We acquire our receptivity for the sense of balance in early childhood, but it remains submerged in the night of consciousness; we are not conscious of this sense.

Then comes the dawn and casts its rays into consciousness. But just think how little the other hidden senses, those of smell and taste, actually have to do with our inner life in a higher sense. We have to delve deeply into the life of our body to be able to get a sense for smell. The sense of taste already brings us a growing half-light; day begins to dawn in our consciousness. But you can still make the same experiment I mentioned before concerning the sense of touch, and you will find it very difficult to remember the perceptions of the senses of smell and of taste. Only when we enter more deeply into our unconscious with our soul does the latter consciously perceive the sense of smell. As you may know, certain composers were especially inspired when surrounded by a pleasant fragrance they had smelled previously while creating music. It is not the fragrance that rises up out of memory, but the soul processes connected with the sense of smell emerge into consciousness.

The sense of taste, however, is for most people almost in the light of consciousness, though not quite; it is still partly in the night of consciousness for most of us. After all, very few people will be satisfied with the soul impression of taste alone. Otherwise we should be just as pleased with remembering something that tasted good as we are when we eat it again. As you know, this is not the case. People want to eat again what tasted good to them and are not satisfied with just remembering it.

The sense of sight, on the other hand, is the sense where the sun of consciousness rises, and we reach full waking consciousness. The sun rises higher and higher. It rises to the sense of warmth, to the sense of hearing, and from there to the sense of speech and then reaches its zenith. The zenith of our inner life lies between the senses of hearing and speech. Then we have the sense of thinking, and the I sense, which is not the sense for perceiving our own I but that of others. After all, it is an organ of perception, a sense. Our awareness of our own I is something quite different, as I explained in my early lectures on anthroposophy. What is important here is not so much knowing about our own I, but meeting other people who reveal their I to us. Perception of the other person's I, not of our own, that is the function of the I sense.

Our soul has the same relationship to these twelve senses as the sun does to the twelve signs of the zodiac. You can see from this that the human being is in the truest sense of the word a microcosm. Modern science is completely ignorant of these things; while it does acknowledge the sense of hearing, it denies the existence of the sense of speech although we could never understand the higher meaning of spoken words with the sense of hearing alone. To understand, we need the sense of speech, the sense for the meaning of what is expressed in the words. This sense of speech must not be confused with the sense of thinking, which in turn is not identical with the ego sense.

I would like to give you an example of how people can go wrong in our time in this matter of the senses. Eduard von Hartmann, who was a most sincere seeker, begins his book Basic Psychology with the following words as though he were stating a self-evident truth: “Psychological phenomena are the point of departure for psychology; indeed, for each person the starting point has to be his or her own phenomena, for these alone are given to each of us directly. After all, nobody can look into another's consciousness.”² The opening sentence of a psychology book by one of the foremost philosophers of our time starts by denying the existence of the senses of speech, thinking, and the I. He knows nothing about them. Imagine, here we have a case where absurdity and utter nonsense must be called science just so these senses can be denied.

If we do not let this science confuse us, we can easily see its mistakes. For this psychology claims we do not see into the soul of another person but can only guess at it by interpreting what that person says. In other words, we are supposed to interpret the state of another's soul based on his or her utterances. When someone speaks kindly to you, you are supposed to interpret it! Can this be true? No, indeed it is not true!

The kind words spoken to us have a direct effect on us, just as color affects our eyes directly. The love living in the other's soul is borne into your soul on the wings of the words. This is direct perception; there can be no question here of interpretation. Through nonsense such as Hartmann's, science confines us within the limits of our own personality to keep us from realizing that living with the other people around us means living with their souls. We live with the souls of others just as we live with colors and sounds. Anyone who does not realize this knows absolutely nothing of our inner life. It is very important to understand these things. Elaborate theories are propagated nowadays, claiming that all impressions we have of other people are only symbolic and inferred from their utterances. But there is no truth in this.

Now picture the rising sun, the emergence of the light, the setting sun. This is the macrocosmic picture of our microcosmic inner life. Though it does not move in a circle, our inner life nevertheless proceeds through the twelve signs of the zodiac of the soul, that is, through the twelve senses. Every time we perceive the I of someone else, we are on the day side of our soul-sun. When we turn inward into ourselves and perceive our inner balance and our movements, we are on the night side of our inner life.

Now you will not think it so improbable when I tell you that in the time between death and rebirth the senses that have sunk deeply into our soul's night side will be of special importance for us because they will then be spiritualized. At the same time, the senses that have risen to the day side of our inner life will sink down deeper after death. Just as the sun rises, so does our soul rise, figuratively speaking, between the sense of taste and the sense of sight, and in death it sets again. When we encounter another soul between death and a new birth, we find it inwardly united with us. We perceive that soul not by looking at it from the outside and receiving the impression of its I from the outside; we perceive it by uniting with it. You can read about this in the lecture cycles, where I have described it, and also in An Outline Of Occult Science.³

In the life between death and rebirth, the sense of touch becomes completely spiritual. What is now subconscious and belongs to the night side of our inner life, namely, the senses of balance and movement, will then become spiritualized and play the most important part in our life after death.

It is indeed true that we move through life as the sun moves through the twelve signs of the zodiac. When we begin our life here, our consciousness for the senses rises, so to speak, at one pillar of the world and sets again at the other. We pass these pillars when we move in the starry heavens, as it were, from the night side to the day side. Occult and symbolic societies have always tried to indicate this by calling the pillar of birth, which we pass on the way into the life of the day side, Jakim.⁴

Our outer world during the life between death and rebirth consists of the perceptions of the sense of touch spread out over the whole universe, where we do not touch but are touched. We feel that we are touched by spiritual beings everywhere, while in physical life it is we who touch others. Between death and rebirth we live within movement and feel it the same way a blood cell or a muscle in us would feel its own movement. We perceive ourselves moving in the macrocosm, and we feel balance and feel ourselves part of the life of the whole. Here on earth our life is enclosed in our skin, but there we feel ourselves part of the life of the universe, of the cosmic life, and we feel that we give ourselves our own balance in every position. Here, gravity and the constitution of our body give us balance, and usually we are not aware of this. During life between death and a new birth, however, we feel balance all the time. We have a direct experience of the other side of our inner life.

We enter earthly life through Jakim, assured that what is there outside in the macrocosm now lives in us, that we are a microcosm, for the word Jakim means, “The divine poured out over the world is in you.”

The other pillar, Boaz, is the entrance into the spiritual world through death. What is contained in the word Boaz is roughly this, “What I have hitherto sought within myself, namely strength, I shall find poured out over the whole world; in it I shall live.” But we can only understand such things when we penetrate them by means of spiritual knowledge. In the symbolic brotherhoods, the pillars are referred to symbolically. In our fifth post-Atlantean epoch they will be mentioned more often to keep humanity from losing them altogether and to help later generations to understand what has been preserved in these words.

You see, everything in the world around us is a reflection of what lives in the macrocosm. As our inner life is a microcosm in the sense I have indicated, so humanity's inner life is built up out of the macrocosm. In our time, it is very important that we have the image of the two pillars I mentioned handed down to us through history. These pillars each represent life one-sidedly; for life is only to be found in the balance between the two. Jakim is not life for it is the transition from the spiritual to the body; nor is Boaz life for that is the transition from body to spirit. Balance is what is essential.

And that is what people find so difficult to understand. They always seek one side only, extremes rather than equilibrium. Therefore two pillars are erected for our times also, and we must pass between them if we understand our times rightly. We must not imagine either the one pillar or the other to be a basic force for humanity, but we must go through between the two. Indeed, we have to grasp what is there in reality and not go through life brooding without really thinking, as modern materialism does. If you seek the Jakim pillar today, you will find it. The Jakim pillar exists; you will find it in a very important man, who is no longer alive, but the pillar still exists—it exists in Tolstoyism.

Remember that Tolstoy basically wanted to turn all people away from the outer life and lead them to the inner.⁵ As I said when I spoke about Tolstoy in the early days of our movement, he wanted to focus our attention exclusively on what goes on in our inner life. He did not see the spirit working in the outer world—a one-sided view characteristic of him, as I said in that early lecture. One of our friends showed Tolstoy a transcript of that lecture. He understood the first two-thirds of it, but not the last third because reincarnation and karma were mentioned there, which he did not understand. He represented a one-sided view, the absolute suppression of outer life. It is painful to see him show this one-sidedness. Just think of the tremendous contrast between Tolstoy's views, which predominate among a considerable number of Russia's intellectuals, and what is coming from there these days. It is one of the most awful contrasts you can imagine. So much for one-sidedness.

The other pillar, the Boaz pillar, also finds historical expression in our age. It too represents one-sidedness. We find it in the exclusive search for the spiritual in the outer world. Some years ago, this phenomenon appeared in America with the emergence of the polar opposite to Tolstoy, namely, Keely.⁶ Keely harbored the ideal of building a motor that would not run on steam or electricity, but on the waves we create when we make sounds, when we speak. Just imagine that! A motor that runs on the waves we set in motion when we speak, or indeed with our inner life in general! Of course, this was only an ideal, and we can thank God it was just an ideal at that time, for what would this war be like if Keely's ideal had been realized? If it is ever realized, then we will see what the harmony of vibrations in external motor power really means. This, then, is the other one-sidedness, the Boaz pillar. It is between these two pillars we must pass through.

There is much, indeed very much, contained in symbols that have been preserved. Our age is called upon to understand these things, to penetrate them. Someday people will perceive the contrast between all true spirituality and what will come from the West if the Keely motor ever becomes a reality. It will be quite a different contrast from the one between Tolstoy's views and what is approaching from the East. Well, we cannot say more about this.

We need to gradually deepen our understanding of the mysteries of human evolution and to realize that what will some day become reality in various stages has been expressed symbolically or otherwise in human wisdom throughout millennia. Today we are only at the stage of mere groping toward this reality. In one of our recent talks I told you that Hermann Bahr, a man I often met with in my youth, is seeking now—at the age of fifty-three and after having written much—to understand Goethe. Groping his way through Goethe's works, he admits that he is only just beginning to really understand Goethe. At the same time, he admits that he is beginning to realize that there is such a thing as spiritual science in addition to the physical sciences. I have explained that Franz, the protagonist of Bahr's recently published novel Himmelfahrt (“Ascension”), represents the author's own path of development, his path through the physical sciences.⁷

Bahr studied with the botanist Wiessner in Vienna, then with Ostwald in the chemical laboratory in Leipzig, then with Schmoller at the seminar for political economy in Berlin, and then he studied psychology and psychiatry with Richet in France. Of course, he also went to Freud in Vienna—as a man following up on all the various scientific sensations of the day would naturally have to do—and then he went to the theosophists in London, and so forth. Remember, I read you the passage in question, “And so he scoured the sciences, first botany with Wiessner, then chemistry with Ostwald, then Schmoller's seminar, Richet's clinic, Freud in Vienna, then directly to the theoso- phists. And so in art he went to the painters, the etchers, and so on.”⁸

But what faith does this Franz attain, who is really one of the urgently seeking people of the present age? Interestingly enough, he wanders and gropes, and then something dawns on him that is described as follows:

He was no longer in a state of spiritual innocence. But wasn't there perhaps a kind of second innocence, an innocence regained? Was there not a piety of the intellect, humbled by the recognition of its own limits, wasn't there a faith for those who know, a hope born out of despair? Weren't there throughout history wise men, living in solitude and seclusion from the world, yet connected with each other through secret signs, and working wonderfully and quietly with an almost magical power in a region beyond nationalities and creeds, in the infinite, in the sphere of a purer humanity, a humanity nearer to God? Were there not even today, scattered all over the world and hidden in secret, knights of the Holy Grail? Were there not disciples of a white lodge, a lodge invisible and perhaps not to be entered but merely felt, yet working and predominating everywhere and determining human destiny? Hasn't there always been an anonymous community of holy men on earth, who do not know each other nor anything of each other and yet are working together and on one another through the very power of their prayers? Such thoughts had already much occupied him in his theosophical days, but he had obviously gotten to know only false theosophists; maybe genuine, true theosophists did not allow themselves to be known ...

These thoughts occur to Franz after he has hurried through the world and has been everywhere, as I have told you, and has at last returned to his home, presumably Salzburg. That's where these thoughts occur to him, in his Salzburg home. I would like to mention in all modesty that he did not come to us; and we can get an idea of why Franz did not come to us. In his quest for people who are striving for the spirit, Franz remembers an Englishman he had once met in Rome and whom he describes as follows:

He was a clever man in his mature years, of good family, a rich, independent bachelor, and a proper Englishman—sober, practical, unsentimental, lacking any musical or artistic sense; in short, a robust, cheerful, sensuous person. He loved fishing, rowing, sailing, eating and drinking heartily, he was a playboy disturbed in his complacency only by one single passion, the curiosity to see everything, to get to know everything, to have been everywhere—with no other ambition than to be able to say with satisfaction, regardless of what place was being talked about, that he knew this or that hotel, where Cook's had found accommodations for him, had seen the sights, and associated with notable people of rank and fame. To be able to travel more comfortably and to have access everywhere, he had been advised to become a freemason. He praised the usefulness of this association until he thought he had discovered a similar but better organized and more powerful association of a higher kind, which he now wanted to join by all means, just as he would have made travel arrangements with another better firm than Cook s if one could have been found.

He was not to be dissuaded from his conviction that the world was governed by a small group of secret leaders, that so-called history was made by these men who were as unknown to their closest servants as those in turn were to theirs. He claimed to have followed the traces of this secret world government, of this real freemasonry of which the other was merely a most foolish copy, made by inadequate means. He thought he had found its center in Rome among the Monsignors, most of whom, of course, only played a minor role as unsuspecting pawns, whose jostling provided the cover for the four or five true leaders of the world. And, looking back, Franz still had to laugh at the funny desperation of this Englishman, who had the misfortune never to meet the real leaders but always only their pawns. However, this did not deter the man in his attempts but only served to increase his respect for this very well-guarded and impenetrable association, which he was willing to bet he would be allowed to enter some day—even if he had to stay in Rome until the end of his life and become a monk or even if he had to be circumcised.

For since he was tracking everywhere the invisible threads of a power covering the whole world like a spider web, he was not averse to hold Jews in very high esteem. And occasionally he expressed his serious suspicion that in the ultimate, innermost circle of this concealed worldwide web, Rabbis and Monsignors might be sitting together in utmost harmony, which would have been alright with him as long as they would allow him to take part in their magic.

There you have a caricature of what I have told you, namely, that there is, as it were, a kingdom within a kingdom, a small circle whose power radiates into others. But the Englishman, and Franz with him, imagined this circle to be a community of Rabbis and Monsignors; as a matter of fact, they are precisely the ones who are not in it. But you see that Franz just gropes his way here. And why? Well, he remembers once again the eccentric whims of the Englishman:

It was only much later that it occurred to him to wonder whether perhaps someone who had not been born with such capacities could acquire them, whether one could train oneself to such powers, whether they could be learned. But the theosophical exercises soon disappointed him.

Those he had given up! You see, there is such a groping and fumbling in our time. People like Bahr reach their old age before they understand anything spiritual, and then they have such grotesque ideas as we see here. This Franz is then invited to the house of a canon. This Salzburg canon is a very mysterious personality, and of great importance in Salzburg—the town Salzburg is not named, but we can nevertheless recognize it. He is of even greater importance than the cardinal, for the whole city no longer talks about the cardinal but about the canon although there are a dozen canons there. And so Franz gets the idea that maybe this very man is one of the white lodge. You know how easy it is to get such ideas.

Well, Franz is invited to lunch at the canon's house. There are many guests, and the canon is really a very tolerant man; imagine, he is a Catholic canon, and yet he has invited a Jewish banker together with a Jesuit, Franz, and others, including a Franciscan monk. It is a very cheerful luncheon party. The Jesuit and the Jewish banker are soon talking—nota bene, the banker is one to whom practically everybody is indebted but who is really most unselfish in what he does and as a rule does not ask for repayment of what he apparently lends but instead only wants the pleasure of being invited to the house of a gentleman such as the canon once a year. The eager conversation between the Jesuit and this Jewish banker is altogether too much for Franz. He leaves them and goes into the library to escape their scandalous jokes, and the canon follows him.

The library, though not big, was very select. On theology there were only the most essential works, the Bollandist writings and a good deal of Franciscan literature, Meister Eckhart, writings on the spiritual exercises, Catherine of Genoa, the mysticism of Gorres and Mohler's symbolism. On philosophy there were more books: all of Kant's works, including the collected volumes of the Kant Society, also Deussen's Upanishads and his history of philosophy, Vaihinger's philosophy of the As if, and very many books on epistemology. Then the Greek and Latin classics, Shakespeare, Calderon, Cervantes, Dante, Macchiavelli, and Balzac in the original, but of German literature only the works of Novalis and Goethe, the latter in various editions and his scientific writings in the Weimar edition. Franz took down a volume of these and found a number of marginal notes made by the canon, who at this moment left the young monk and the Jesuit and joined Franz, saying, “Yes, no one knows the scientific writings of Goethe.”

Now what the canon finds in Goethe's scientific writings is characteristic, on the one hand, of what is actually contained there and can be understood by the canon and, on the other hand, of what the canon can understand by virtue of being a Catholic canon.

“Yes, no one knows the scientific writings of Goethe. It is a pity! In these writings, the old heathen that Goethe is supposed to have been suddenly appears in a different light, and only after reading them does one understand the end of Faust.”

There the canon is right. We cannot understand the end of Faust if we don't know Goethe's scientific views.

“I have never been able to believe that Goethe pretended there [in Faust] to be a Catholic just for artistic effect. [You see, the canon in him cannot be denied, but never mind.] After all, my respect for the poet, for all poets, is too great to believe that at the moment he utters his last words, he is putting on a mask.”

That is what most people believe, that Goethe really was only pretending when he wrote the magnificent, grandiose final scene of Faust. “But the scientific writings reveal on every page how much of a Catholic Goethe was.” Yes, well, the canon calls everything he can understand, everything he likes, Catholic. We don't need to feel embarrassed about that.

“... how much of a Catholic Goethe was, perhaps unknowingly and in any case without the courage of his convictions. These writings read as though the writer, on the whole nothing crucial, necessary, and essential is lacking, not even the dash of superstition, magic, or whatever you want to call it, that makes confirmed Protestants so suspicious of our sacred doctrine. Often I could hardly believe my own eyes. But once you are on the trail of the hidden Catholic in Goethe, you soon see him everywhere. His trust in the Holy Spirit (of course, Goethe prefers to call him ‘Genius’), his deep feeling for the sacraments, which he thought were too few, his sense for penitence, his gift for reverence, and even more so the fact that in totally un-Protestant fashion he is not content with faith but always insists on the acknowledgment of God in the living deed, the pious work this rare and most difficult realization that human beings cannot be approached by God if they do not first approach God themselves, the realization of this awesome human freedom to choose either to accept or reject the grace offered, this freedom through which alone God's grace will be deserved by those who decide to accept it—all this, even in his exaggerations and distortions, is still Catholic to the core.”

For us, it would be particularly interesting to know what the canon calls “exaggerations.” Well, in any case, he calls them Catholic and goes on to say:

“Therefore, as you see, I have often written in the margin the passages from the Council of Trent where the same content is expressed, sometimes even in almost the same words.”

Imagine, a Catholic canon writing the resolutions of the Council of Trent next to the words of Goethe!⁹ In this juxtaposition you have what permeates all humanity and what we may call the core of spiritual life common to all people. This should not be taken as just so much empty rhetoric; instead it must he understood as it was meant. The canon continues:

“And when Zacharias Werner tells us that a sentence in Goethe's Elective Affinities has made him a Catholic, I believe him implicitly. Of course, this is not to deny [here the canon comes through again] there is also a heathen, a Protestant, and even an almost Jewish Goethe; I don't want to claim him as an ideal Catholic.”

What the canon adds to this we can be pleased to hear; well, I don't want to press my opinion on you; at least I am pleased to hear the following:

“If Goethe had indeed been Catholic, which on the whole he was more likely to have been than the shallow and complacent run-of-the-mill monist the neo-German senior professors parade under his name ...”

Of course, the canon here refers to Richard M. Meyer, Albert Bielschowsky, Engel—neo-German senior professors who have written neo-German works on Goethe.¹⁰

You see, we are already doing what our times secretly and darkly long for, something that is indeed inevitable—this is a very serious matter.

Now please remember some of the first lectures I gave to our groups in these fateful times, where I spoke of a shattering occult experience, namely the perception that the soul of Franz Ferdinand, who was assassinated in Sarajevo, plays a special part in the spiritual world.¹¹ As most of you will remember, I told you his soul has attained cosmic significance, as it were. And now Bahr's novel has been published and people have been buying it for weeks. In it the Archduke Franz Ferdinand is described by a man who had hired himself out, under the guise of a simpleton, as a farmhand by a Salzburg landowner who is the brother of the protagonist Franz. Now this man disguised as a simpleton is so stubborn he has to be whipped to work. At the time of the assassination in Sarajevo, this poor fool behaves in such a way that he gets another thrashing; and imagine, when he reads the news of Franz Ferdinand's assassination in an announcement posted on the church door, this fellow says: “He had to end like this; it could not have been otherwise!”

Well, people can't help assuming he was part of the conspiracy even though the murder took place in Sarajevo while the simpleton was in Salzburg. However, such discrepancies don't trouble the people who investigate the matter: Obviously this fellow is one of the Sarajevo conspirators. And since they find books written in Spanish among his possessions, he is evidently a Spanish anarchist. Well, these Spanish books are seized and taken to the district judge, or whatever he is. He, of course, cannot read a word of Spanish but wants to get the case off his docket as quickly as possible after the poor simpleton has been arrested and brought before him. The district judge wants to push this case off on the superior court in Vienna; the people there are to figure out what to do with this Spanish anarchist. After all, the district judge does not want to make a fool of himself; he is an enthusiastic mountain climber and this is perhaps the last fine day of the season, so he wants to get things settled quickly and get going! He understands nothing of the matter. Nevertheless, he is certain of one thing: he is dealing with a Spanish anarchist.

Then he remembers that Franz had been in Spain (I told you Bahr himself was there too) and could read Spanish. Franz is to read the book and summarize it for the judge. And so Franz takes the manuscript—and what does he discover? The deepest mysticism. Absolutely nothing to do with anarchism—only profound mysticism! There is actually a great deal that is wonderful and beautiful in the manuscript. Well, according to Franz this simpleton wrote it himself because his very mysticism led him to want to die to the world. Naturally, I do not want to defend this way of proceeding. The simpleton then turns out to be in reality a Spanish infante, a crown prince, and his description fits that of the Archduke Johann who had left the imperial house of Austria to see the world. Franz could not discern the simpleton's Austrian character, but his true identity shines through the disguise, and Franz hits on the idea to say the fellow is a Spanish infante. You can imagine what this means in poor old Salzburg! The people believed they had caught an anarchist and put him into chains—now he turns out to be a Spanish infante! But this man, who knew the heir to the throne, Archduke Ferdinand, what does he say about the latter now after he himself has been unmasked as an infante and a mystic?

The enchanted but now disenchanted prince, still in his old clothes and otherwise still the same old fellow, yet different since Franz knew the old clothes were a disguise, said with a smile, “Forgive me this deception, which, for my feeling, wasn't really one. I have long since stopped being the infante Don Tadeo. If circumstances force me now to play his role again, the part has become much more difficult for me. To myself I was really the old simpleton, and if I ever lied at all, I lied to myself, not to you. I could not know I would inconvenience you, and I am sorry enough for that. Naturally it was all the silliest misunderstanding.”

“I have known the successor to the throne well, without having actually met him; he was very dear to me, and we have been in touch albeit not in the ‘local’ way. [He means here in a way not on the physical plane.] He had long overstepped the limits of his earthly work and had already one foot in the realm of purely spiritual activity. He had to go over completely, I knew. In order to fulfill his work he could no longer stay here. It is only from there that his deed will be done. I only wonder why destiny hesitated so long with him. And that Sunday, as I came out of the church where in my prayers I had been assured again, when I saw the anxious crowd, I knew right away he had at last been freed. What is to happen through him, he can carry out only from the other side. Here he could only promise it; his life was only a preliminary announcement of what is to come. Only now can the deed come about. I have never been able to think of him as a constitutional monarch, with parliamentarianism and all that other humbug. He was a man of too much stature for that. But now he has seized the reins of action all at once. Only now in his death will this man live, really live. This is what I felt when I heard the news, and this is what I meant by the words I said at the time.”

“It had to end like this,” that's what he said at the time of the assassination. I have to admit that I was strangely and deeply moved when I read these words a few days ago in Bahr's Himmelfahrt. Just compare what we find in this novel with what has been said here out of the reality of the spiritual world! Try to understand from this how deeply spiritual science is rooted in reality. Try to see that those who are seeking for knowledge, albeit at first only in a groping, tentative way, are really on the same path, that they want to follow this path and that they also arrive at what we are developing here, even down to the details. After all, it is hardly likely that what I said back then could have been divulged to Hermann Bahr by one of our members. But even if that had been the case, he did at any rate not reject it, but accepted it.

We do not want to put into practice what is really only some hobby or other. We want to put into practice what is a necessity of our age and a very clear and urgent one at that. And now certain really slanderous things are making themselves felt, and we see that people nowadays are inclined to turn their sympathy to those who spread slander. It is much rarer these days for people to show sympathy for the side that is justified. Instead, precisely where injustice occurs we find people think those who have been wronged must appease and cajole the party who committed the injustice. We find this again and again. Even in our Society we find it again and again. My dear friends, today I do not feel in the mood to go into these things, and in any case that is not the point of my talk. I never mention such things except when it is necessary. But let me conclude by mentioning one more point.

In my recently published booklet, I have pointed out that what we are seeking in our spiritual science has been uniform and consistent since the beginning of our work.¹² I have also explained that it is indeed slander to talk of any kind of changing sides, of any contradictions to what we did in the early days of our movement. On page 49 you will find the following:

In a lecture I gave in 1902 to the Giordano Bruno Society, I referred to these statements by I. H. Fichte [which seemed to me the expression of a modern intellectual movement and not merely the opinion of an individual]; “that was when we made a beginning with what reveals itself now as the anthroposophical way of thinking ...”¹³

I was referring there to a lecture held in Berlin before the German Section of the Theosophical Society was founded. Continuing along the lines of Goethe, I wanted to create in that lecture the starting point for this new movement not on the basis of Blavatsky and Besant, but based on modern spiritual life, which is independent of those two.¹⁴ Yet there are people today who dare to say the name “anthroposophy” was only invented when, as they say, we wanted to break away from the Theosophical Society. As I explained in my book:

This shows what we had in mind was an expansion of the modern striving for a world view to an actual observation of spiritual reality. Our aim was not to take any old views from the publications then (and even still today) called “theosophical,” but to continue the striving that began with modern philosophy but then got stuck in the abstract and therefore did not gain access to the real spiritual world.

Circumstances sometimes bring about favorable situations in karma. Thus, what I wrote a few weeks ago so you can now read it no longer needs rely only on the memory of the few individuals who heard my talk to the Giordano Bruno Society back in 1902, that is, before the German Section was founded. Today I can present documentary evidence. Well, life's funny like that; due to the kindness of one of our members, Fraulein Hübbe-Schleiden, I have recently received the letters I wrote to Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden back then, just before and on the occasion of the founding of the German Section. Now, after his death, those letters were returned to me.

The German Section of the Theosophical Society was not founded until October 1902. This particular letter is dated September 16, 1902. There are a few words in this letter I would like to read to you. Forgive me, but I must begin somewhere. There was a lot of talk at that time about connecting with the theosophist Franz Hartmann, who was just then holding a kind of congress.¹⁵ I have no intention of saying anything against Franz Hartmann today, but I have to read what I wrote in those days:

Friedenau-Berlin, September 16, 1902. Let Hartmann continue to tell his rubbish to his people; in the meantime I want to take our theosophy where I will find people of sound judgment. Once we have a connection to the students [so far we have had only mediocre success with this], we will have gained much. I want to build anew, not patch up old ruins. [That is how the theosophical movement appeared to me then.] This coming winter I hope to teach a course on elementary theosophy in the Theosophical Library. [I did indeed hold this course, and one of the lectures was given during the actual founding of the German Section. The course title is mentioned here, too.] In addition, I plan to teach elsewhere an ongoing course entitled “Anthroposophy or the Connection between Morality, Religion, and Science.” I also hope to be able to present a lecture to the Bruno Society on Bruno's monism and anthroposophy. At this point, these are only plans. In my opinion, that is how we must proceed.

That was written on September 16, 1902. Here is the document, my dear friends, that can prove to you these things are not simply claims made after the fact, but they have really happened in this way. It is favorable karma that we are able to show who is right at this moment when so much slander is spread, and will increasingly be spread, about our cause.

• 1. Helmuth Johannes Ludwig von Moltke, 1848–1916, German soldier Chief of general staff (from 1906) and director of German strategy at beginning of World War I (1914). Lost the first battle of the Marne (Sept. 1914) and was relieved of his command (Nov. 1914).
• 2. Eduard von Hartmann, 1842–1906, German philosopher. Grundriss der Psychologie (“Basic Psychology”), Bad Sachsa, 1908.
• 3. Rudolf Steiner, An Outline of Occult Science, 3rd ed., repr., (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1989).
• 4. Jakim and Boaz are the words inscribed on the two columns at the front of Solomon's Temple. See the Old Testament, I Kings, Chapter 7, II Chronicles, Chapter 3. See also Rudolf Sterner, Bilder Okkulter Siegel und Säulen (“Pictures of Occult Seals and Pillars”), vol. 284/285 in the Collected Works (Dornach, Switzerland. Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1977).
• 5. Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Count, 1828–1910. Russian novelist and moral philosopher.
• 6. John Ernst Worrell Keely, 1827–1898. Claimed invention of a perpetual-motion system (1873). After his death, his apparatus was proven a fraud.
• 7. Hermann Bahr, Himmelfahrt (“Ascension”), Berlin, 1916.
• 8. Hermann Bahr, Himmelfahrt and see Lecture One, notes 13-17.
• 9. Council of Trent, council of the Roman Catholic Church, 15451563.
• 10. Richard M. Meyer, 1860–1914, German philologist.
• 11. Franz Ferdinand, 1863–1914, Archduke of Austria. Nephew of Emperor Franz Joseph and heir to crown. Was assassinated with his wife on June 28, 1914, by a Serbian nationalist at Sarajevo, Bosnia. This assassination led to World War I.
• 12. Rudolf Steiner, Die Aufgabe der Geisteswissenschaft und deien Bau in Dornach (“The Mission of Spiritual Science and its Building in Dornach”), Berlin, 1916.
• 13. Immanuel Hermann von Fichte, 1796–1879, son of Johann Gottlieb. Philosopher, exponent of an ethical or speculative theism.
• 14. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, 1831–1891, American theosophist. Organized Theosophical Society in 1875 with Henry Steel Olcott.
  
  Annie Besant, 1847–1933, English theosophist and Indian political leader.
• 15. Franz Hartmann, 1838–1912, doctor and theosophist. Founded his own movement within theosophy.

I have spoken to you from various points of view of the impulses at work in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. You suspect—for I could only draw your attention to a few of these impulses—that there are many others which one can attempt to lay hold of in order to comprehend the course of evolution in our epoch. In my next lectures I propose to speak of the impulses which have been active in the civilized world since the fifteenth century, especially the religious impulses. I will attempt therefore in the three following lectures to give you a kind of history of religions.

Today I should like to discuss briefly something which some of you perhaps might find superfluous, but which I am anxious to discuss because it could also be important in one way or another for those who are personally involved in the impulses of the present epoch. I should like to take as my starting point the fact that at a certain moment, I felt that it was necessary to lay hold of the impulses of the present time in the ideal which I put forward in my book The Philosophy of Freedom.

The book appeared, as you know, a quarter of a century ago and has just been reprinted. I wrote The Philosophy of Freedom—fully conscious of the exigencies of the time—in the early nineties of the last century. Those who have read the preface which I wrote in 1894 will feel that I was animated by the desire to reflect the needs of the time. In the revised edition of 1918 I placed the original preface of 1894 at the end of the book as a second appendix. Inevitably when a book is re-edited after a quarter of a century circumstances have changed; but for certain reasons I did not wish to suppress anything that could be found in the first edition.

As a kind of motto to The Philosophy of Freedom I wrote in the original preface: ‘Truth alone can give us assurance in developing our individual powers. Whoever is tormented by doubts finds his powers emasculated. In a world that is an enigma to him he can find no goal for his creative energies.’ ‘This book does not claim to point the only possible way to truth, it seeks to describe the path taken by one who sets store upon the truth.’

I had been only a short time in Weimar when I began to write The Philosophy of Freedom. For some years I had carried the main outlines in my head. In all I spent seven years in Weimar. The complete plan of my book can be found in the last chapter of my doctoral dissertation, Truth and Science. But in the text which I presented for my doctorate I omitted of course this last chapter.

The fundamental idea of The Philosophy of Freedom had taken shape when I was studying Goethe's Weltanschauung which had occupied my attention for many years. As a result of my Goethe studies and my publications on the subject of Goethe's Weltanschauung I was invited to come to Weimar and collaborate in editing the Weimar edition of Goethe's works, the Grand Duchess Sophie edition as it was called. The Goethe archives founded by the Grand Duchess began publication at the end of the eighties.

You will forgive me if I mention a few personal details, for, as I have said, I should like to describe my personal involvement in the impulses of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. In the nineties of the last century in Weimar one could observe the interweaving of two streams—the healthy traditions of a mature, impressive and rich culture associated with what I should like to call Goetheanism, and the traditional Goetheanism in Weimar which at that time was coloured by the heritage of Liszt. And also making its influence felt—since Weimar through its academy of art has always been an art centre—was what might well have provided important impulses of a far-reaching nature if it had not been submerged by something else. For the old, what belongs to the past, can only continue to develop fruitfully if it is permeated and fertilized by the new. Alongside the Goetheanism—which survived in a somewhat petrified form in the Goethe archives, (but that was of no consequence, it could be rejuvenated, and personally I always saw it as a living force)—a modern spirit invaded the sphere of art. The painters living in Weimar were all influenced by modern trends. In those with whom I was closely associated one could observe the profound influence of the new artistic impulse represented by Count Leopold von Kalkreuth,¹ who at that time, for all too brief a period, had been a powerful seminal force in the artistic life of Weimar. In the Weimar theatre also a sound and excellent tradition still survived, though marred occasionally by philistinism. Weimer was a centre, a focal point where many and various cultural streams could meet.

In addition, there was the activity of the Goethe archives which were later enlarged and became the Goethe-Schiller archives. In spite of the dry philological approach which lies at the root of the work of archives, and reflects the spirit of the time and especially of the outlook of Scherer,² an active interest on the more positive impulses of the modern epoch was apparent, because the Goethe archives became the magnet for international scholars of repute. They came from Russia, Norway, Holland, Italy, England, France and America and though many did not escape the philistinism of the age it was possible nonetheless to detect amongst this gathering of international scholars in Weimar, especially in the nineties, signs of more positive forces. I still vividly recall the eccentric behaviour of an American professor^T1 who was engaged on a detailed study of Faust. I still see him sitting crosslegged on the floor because he found it convenient to sit next to the bookshelf where he could immediately put his hand on the reference books he needed without having to return continually to his chair. I remember also the gruff Treitschke³ whom I once met at lunch and who wanted to know where I came from. (Since he was deaf one had to write everything down on slips of paper.) When I replied that I came from Austria he promptly retorted, characterizing the Austrians in his inimitable fashion: well, the Austrians are either extremely clever people or scoundrels! And so one could take one's choice; one could opt for the one or the other. I could quote you countless examples of the influence of the international element upon the activities in Weimar.

One also learned much from the fact that people also came to Weimar in order to see what had survived of the Goethe era. Other visitors came to Weimar who excited a lively interest for the way in which they approached Goetheanism, etcetera. I need only mention Richard Strauss⁴ who first made his name in Weimar and whose compositions deteriorated rather than improved with time. But at that time he belonged to those elements who provided a delightful introduction to the modern trends in music. In his youth Richard Strauss was a man of many interests and I still recall with affection his frequent visits to the archives and the occasion when he unearthed one of the striking aphorisms to be found in Goethe's conversations with his contemporaries. The conversations have been edited by Waldemar Freiherr von Biedermann⁵ and contain veritable pearls of wisdom. I mention these details in order to depict the milieu of Weimar at that time in so far as I was associated with it.

A distinguished figure, a living embodiment of the best traditions of the classical age of Weimar, quite apart from his princely origin, was a frequent visitor to the archives. It was the Grand Duke Karl Alexander whose essentially human qualities inspired affection and respect. He was the survivor of a living tradition for he was born in 1818 and had therefore spent the fourteen years of his childhood and youth in Weimar as a contemporary of Goethe. He was a personality of extraordinary charm. And in addition to the Duke one had also the greatest admiration for the Grand Duchess Sophie of the house of Orange who made herself responsible for the posthumous works of Goethe and attended to all the details necessary for their preservation. That in later years a former finance minister was appointed head of the Goethe Society certainly did not meet with approval in Weimar. And I believe that a considerable number of those who were by no means philistine and who were associated in the days of Karl Alexander with what is called Goetheanism would have been delighted to learn, in jest of course, that perhaps after all there was something symptomatic in the Christian name of the former finance minister who became president of the Goethe Society. He rejoiced in the Christian name of Kreuzwendedich.⁶

I wrote The Philosophy of Freedom when I was deeply involved in this milieu and I feel certain that it expressed a necessary impulse of our time. I say this, not out of presumption, but in order to characterize what I wanted to achieve and still wish to achieve with the publication of this book. I wrote The Philosophy of Freedom in order to give mankind a clear picture of the idea of freedom, of the impulse of freedom which must be the fundamental impulse of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch (and which must be developed out of the other fragmentary impulses of various kinds.) To this end it was necessary first of all to establish the impulse of freedom on a firm scientific basis. Therefore the first section of the book was entitled ‘Knowledge of Freedom.’ Many, of course, have found this section somewhat repugnant and unpalatable, for they had to accept the idea that the impulse of freedom was firmly rooted in strictly scientific considerations based upon freedom of thought, and not in the tendency to scientific monism which is prevalent today. This section, ‘Knowledge of Freedom,’ has perhaps a polemical character which is explained by the intellectual climate at that time. I had to deal with the philosophy of the nineteenth century and its Weltanschauung. I wanted to demonstrate that the concept of freedom is a universal concept, that only he can understand and truly feel what freedom is who perceives that the human soul is the scene not only of terrestrial forces, but that the whole cosmic process streams through the soul of man and can be apprehended in the soul of man. Only when man opens himself to this cosmic process, when he consciously experiences it in his inner life, when he recognizes that his inner life is of a cosmic nature will it be possible to arrive at a philosophy of freedom. He who follows the trend of modern scientific teaching and allows his thinking to be determined solely by sense perception cannot arrive at a philosophy of freedom. The tragedy of our time is that students in our universities are taught to harness their thinking only to the sensible world. In consequence we are involuntarily caught up in an age that is more or less helpless in face of ethical, social and political questions. For a thinking that is tied to the apron strings of sense perception alone will never be able to achieve inner freedom so that it can rise to the level of intuitions, to which it must rise if it is to play an active part in human affairs. The impulse of freedom has therefore been positively stifled by a thinking that is conditioned in this way.

The first thing that my contemporaries found unpalatable in my book The Philosophy of Freedom was this: they would have to be prepared first of all to fight their way through to a knowledge of freedom by self-disciplined thinking.

The second, longer section of the book deals with the reality of freedom. I was concerned to show how freedom must find expression in external life, how it can become a real driving force of human action and social life. I wanted to show how man can arrive at the stage where he feels that he really acts as a free being. And it seems to me that what I wrote twenty years ago could well be understood by mankind today in view of present circumstances.

What I had advocated first of all was an ethical individualism. I had to show that man can never become a free being unless his actions have their source in those ideas which are rooted in the intuitions of the single individual. This ethical individualism only recognized as the final goal of man's moral development what is called the free spirit which struggles free of the constraint of natural laws and the constraint of all conventional moral norms, which is confident that in an age when evil tendencies are increasing, man can, if he rises to intuitions, transmute these evil tendencies into that which, for the Consciousness Soul, is destined to become the principle of the good, that which is befitting the dignity of man. I wrote therefore at that time:

Only the laws obtained in this way are related to human action as the laws of nature are related to a particular phenomenon. These laws however are in no way identical with the impulses which govern our actions. If we wish to understand how a man's action arises from his moral will, we must first study the relation of this will to the action.

I envisaged the idea of a free community life such as I described to you recently from a different angle—a free community life in which not only the individual claims freedom for himself, but in which, through the reciprocal relationship of men in their social life, freedom as impulse of this life can be realized. And so I unhesitatingly wrote at that time:

To live in love of our action and to let live in the full understanding of the other's will is the fundamental maxim of free men. They know no other obligation than that with which their will intuitively puts itself in harmony; how they will direct their will in a particular case will be determined by their capacity for ideas.

With this ethical individualism the whole Kantian school, of course, was ranged against me, for the preface to my essay Truth and Science opens with the words: ‘We must go beyond Kant.’ I wanted at that time to draw the attention of my contemporaries to Goetheanism—the Goetheanism of the late nineteenth century however—through the medium of the so-called intellectuals, those who regarded themselves as the intellectual elite. I met with little success. And this is shown by the article^T2 which I recently wrote in the Reich and especially by my relations to Eduard von Hartmann.⁷ You can imagine the alarm of contemporaries who were gravitating towards total philistinism, when they read this sentence:^T3 When Kant apostrophizes duty:

‘Duty! thou sublime and mighty name, thou that dost embrace within thyself nothing pleasing, nothing ingratiating, but dost demand submission, thou that dost establish a law ... before which all inclinations are silent even though they secretly work against it,’ then, out of the consciousness of the free spirit, man replies: ‘Freedom! thou kindly and humane name, thou that dost embrace all that is morally pleasing, all that my human dignity most cherishes and that makest me the servant of nobody, that settest up no new law, but dost await what my moral love itself will recognize as law, because, in face of every law imposed upon it, it feels itself unfree ...’

Thus the underlying purpose of The Philosophy of Freedom was to seek freedom in the empirical, in lived experience, a freedom which at the same time should be established on a firm scientific foundation. Freedom is the only word which has a ring of immediate truth today. If freedom were understood in the sense I implied at that time, then everything that is said today about the world order would strike a totally different note. We speak today of all sorts of things—of peace founded on justice, of peace imposed by force and so on. But these are simply slogans because neither justice nor force bear any relationship to their original meaning. Today our idea of justice is completely confused. Freedom alone, if our contemporaries had accepted it, could have awakened in them fundamental impulses and brought them to an understanding of reality. If, instead of such slogans as peace founded on justice, or peace imposed by force, people would only speak of peace based on freedom, then this word would echo round the world and in this epoch of the Consciousness Soul might kindle in the hearts of men a sense of security. Of course in a certain sense this second, longer section had a polemical intention, for it was necessary to parry (in advance) the attacks which in the name of philistinism, cheap slogans and blind submission to authority could be launched against this conception of the free spirit.

Now although there were isolated individuals who sensed which way the wind was blowing in The Philosophy of Freedom, it was extremely difficult—in fact it was impossible—to find my contemporaries in any way receptive to its message. It is true—amongst isolated voices—that a critic of the time wrote in the Frankfurter Zeitung: ‘clear and true, that is the motto that could be written on the first page of this book,’ but my contemporaries had little understanding of this clarity and truth.

Now this book appeared at a time when the Nietzsche wave was sweeping over the civilized world—and though this had no influence on the contents, it was certainly not without effect upon the hope I cherished that the book might nonetheless be understood by a few contemporaries. I am referring to the first Nietzsche wave when people realized that Nietzsche's often unbalanced mind was the vehicle of mighty and important impulses of the age. And before Nietzsche's image had been distorted by people such as Count Kessler⁸ and Nietzsche's sister, in conjunction with such men as the Berliner, Karl Breysig and the garrulous Horneffer,^8a there was every hope that, after the ground had been prepared by Nietzsche, these ideas of freedom might find a certain public. This hope was dashed when, through the people mentioned above, Nietzsche became the victim of modern decadence, of literary pretentiousness and snobism—(I do not know what term to choose in order to make myself understood).

After having written The Philosophy of Freedom I had first of all to observe how things developed—I am not referring to the ideas contained in the book (for I knew that at first few copies had been sold), but to the impulses which had been the source of the ideas in The Philosophy of Freedom. I had the opportunity of studying this for a number of years from the vantage point of Weimar.

However, shortly after its publication, The Philosophy of Freedom found an audience, an audience whom many would now regard as lukewarm. It found limited support in the circles associated with the names of the American, Benjamin Tucker, and the Scottish-German or German-Scott, John Henry Mackay.⁹ In a world of increasing philistinism this was hardly a recommendation because these people were among the most radical champions of a social order based on freedom of the Spirit and also because when patronized to some extent by these people, as happened for a time in the case of The Philosophy of Freedom, one at least earned the right to have not only The Philosophy of Freedom, but also some of my later publications banned by the Russian censor! The Magazin für Literatur which I edited in later years found its way into Russia, but, for this reason, most of its columns were blacked out. But the movement with which the Magazin was concerned and which was associated with the names of Benjamin Tucker and J. H. Mackay failed to make any impression amid the increasing philistinism of the age. In reality that period was not particularly propitious for an understanding of The Philosophy of Freedom, and for the time being I could safely let the matter drop. It seems to me that the time has now come when The Philosophy of Freedom must be republished, when, from widely different quarters voices will be heard which raise questions along the lines of The Philosophy of Freedom.

You may say, of course, that it would have been possible nonetheless to republish The Philosophy of Freedom during the intervening years. No doubt many impressions could have been sold over the years. But what really matters is not that my most important books should sell in large numbers, but that they are understood, and that the spiritual impulse underlying them finds an echo in men's hearts.

In 1897 I left the Weimar milieu where I had been to some extent a spectator of the evolution of the time and moved to Berlin. After Neumann-Hofer had disposed of the Magazin I acquired it in order to have a platform for ideas which I considered to be timely, in the true sense of the word, ideas which I could advocate publicly. Shortly alter taking over the Magazin, however, my correspondence with J. H. Mackay was published and the professoriate who were the chief subscribers to the Magazin were far from pleased. I was criticized on all sides. ‘What on earth is Steiner doing with our periodical,’ they said, ‘what is he up to?’ The whole professoriate of Berlin University who had subscribed to the Magazin at that time, in so far as they were interested in philology or literature—the Magazin had been founded in 1832, the year of Goethe's death and amongst other things this was one of the reasons why the University professors had subscribed to the review—this professoriate gradually cancelled their subscriptions. I must admit that with the publication of the Magazin I had the happy knack of offending the readers—the readers and not the Zeitgeist.

In this context I should like to recall a small incident. Amongst the representatives of contemporary intellectual life who actively supported my work on behalf of Goetheanism was a university professor. I will mention only one fact ... those who know me will not accuse me of boasting when I say that this professor once said to me in the Russischer Hof in Weimar: ‘Alas, in comparison with what you have written on Goethe, all our trivial comments on Goethe pale into insignificance.’ I am relating a fact, and I do not see why under present circumstances these things should be passed over in silence. For after all the second half of the Goethean maxim remains true (the first half is not Goethean): vain self praise stinks, but people rarely take the trouble to find out how unjust criticism on the part of others smells.¹⁰

Now this professor was also a subscriber to the Magazin. You will remember the international storm raised by the Dreyfus affair at that time. Not only had I published in the Magazin^T4 information on the Dreyfus¹¹ case that I alone was in a position to give, but I had vigorously defended^T5 the famous article, J'accuse, which Zola had written in defence of Dreyfus. Thereupon I received from the professor who had sung my praises in divers letters (and even had these effusions printed) a postcard saying: ‘I hereby cancel my subscription to the Magazin once and for all since I cannot tolerate in my library a periodical that defends Emile Zola, a traitor to his country in Jewish pay.’ That is only one little incident: I could mention hundreds of a similar kind. As editor of the Magazin für Literatur I was brought in contact with the dark corridors of the time and also with the modern trends in art and literature.^T6 Were I to speak of this you would have a picture of many characteristic features of the time.

Somewhat naively perhaps I had come to Berlin in order to observe how ideas for the future might be received by a limited few thanks to the platform provided by the Magazin—at least as long as the material resources available to the periodical sufficed, and as long as the reputation which it formerly enjoyed persisted, a reputation which, I must confess, I undermined completely. But I was able in all innocence to observe how these ideas spread amongst that section of the population which based its Weltanschauung upon the writings of that pot-house philistine Wilhelm Bölsche¹² and similar popular idols. And I was able to make extremely interesting studier which, from many and various points of view, threw light upon what is, and what is not, the true task of our epoch.

Through my friendship with Otto Erich Hartleben¹³ I met at that time many of the rising generation of young writers who are now for the most part outmoded. Whether or not I fitted into this literary group is not for me to decide. One of the members of this group had recently written an article in the Vossische Zeitung which he tried to show in his pedantic way that I did not fit into this community and he looked upon me as an unpaid peripatetic theologian amongst a group of people who were anything but unpaid peripatetic theologians, but who were at least youthful idealists.

Perhaps the following episode will also interest you because it shows how I became for a time a devoted friend of Otto Erich Hartleben. It was during the time when I was still in Weimar. He always visited Weimar to attend the meetings of the Goethe Society; but he regularly missed them because it was his normal habit to get up at 2 in the afternoon and the meetings began at 10 a.m. When the meetings were over I used to call on him and usually found him in bed. Occasionally we would while away an evening together. His peculiar devotion to me lasted until the sensational Nietzsche affair in which I was involved severed our friendship. We were sitting together one evening and I recall how he warmed to me when, in the middle of the conversation, I made the epigrammatic remark: ‘Schopenhauer is simply a narrow-minded genius.’ Hartleben was delighted; and he was delighted with many other things I said the same evening so that Max Martersteig (who became famous in later years) jumped up at my remarks and said: ‘Don't provoke me, don't provoke me.’

It was on one of the evenings which I spent in those days in the company of the promising Otto Erich Hartleben and the promising Max Martersteig and others that the first Serenissimus anecdote was born. It became the source of all later Serenissimus anecdotes. I should not like to leave this unmentioned; it certainly belongs to the milieu of The Philosophy of Freedom, for the spirit of The Philosophy of Freedom pervaded the circle I frequented and I still recall today the stimulus which Max Halbe¹⁴ received from it (at least that is what he claimed). All these people had already read the book and many of the ideas of The Philosophy of Freedom have nonetheless found their way into the world of literature. The original Serenissimus anecdote from which all other Serenissimus anecdotes are derived did not by any means spring from a desire to ridicule a particular personality, but from that frame of mind that must also be associated with the impulse of The Philosophy of Freedom, namely, a certain humouristic attitude to life or—as I often say—an unsentimental view of life which is especially necessary when one looks at life from a deeply spiritual standpoint. This original anecdote is as follows:

His Serene Highness is visiting the state penitentiary and asks for a prisoner to be brought before him. The prisoner is brought in. His Highness then asks him a series of questions: ‘How long have you been detained here?’ ‘Twenty years’—‘Twenty years! That's a good stretch. Tell me, my good fellow, what possessed you to take up your residence here?’ ‘I murdered my mother.’ ‘I see, you murdered your mother; strange, very strange! Now teil me, my good fellow, how long do you propose to stay here?’ ‘As long as I live; I have been given a life sentence.’ ‘Strange! That's a good stretch. Well, I won't take up your valuable time with further questions.’ He turns to the prison Governor—‘See that the last ten years of the prisoner's life sentence are remitted.’

That was the original anecdote. It did not spring from any malicious intention, but from a humorous acceptance of that which, if necessary, also has its ethical value. I am convinced that if the personality at whom this anecdote—perhaps mistakenly—was often directed had himself read this anecdote he would have laughed heartily.

I was able therefore to observe how in the Berlin circle I have mentioned attempts were made to introduce something of the new outlook. But ultimately a touch of the Bölsche crept into everything. I am referring of course not only to the fat Bölsche domiciled in Friedrichshagen, but to the whole Bölsche outlook which plays a major part in the philistinism of our time. Indeed the vulgarity of Bölsche's descriptions is eminently suited to the outlook of our time. When one reads Bölsche's articles one is compelled to handle ordure or the like. And the same applies to his style. One need only pick up this or that article and we are invited to interest ourselves not only in the sexual life of the jelly fish, but in much else besides. This ‘Bölsche-ism’ has become a real tit-bit for the rising philistines in our midst today.

What I wrote one day in the Magazin was hardly the right way to launch it. Max Halbe's drama, Der Eroberer, had just been performed. It certainly is a play with the best of intentions, but for that reason fell flat in Berlin. I wrote a criticism which reduced Halbe to sheer despair, for I took all the Berlin newspapers to task and told the Berlin critics one and all what I thought of them. That was hardly the way to launch the Magazin. But this was a valuable experience for me. Compared with the Weimer days one learned to look at many things from a different angle. But at the back of my mind there always lurked this question: how could the epoch be persuaded to accept the ideas of The Philosophy of Freedom? If you are prepared to take the trouble, you will find that everything I wrote for the Magazin is imbued with the spirit of The Philosophy of Freedom. However, the Magazin was not written for modern bourgeois philistines. But, of course, through these different influences I was gradually forced out.

At that very moment the opportunity of another platform presented itself—that of the socialist working class. In view of the momentous questions which were stirring the consciousness of the world at the turn of the century, questions with which I was closely associated through J. H. Mackay and Tucker who had come to Berlin from America and with whom I spent many an interesting evening, I was glad of this opportunity of another platform. For many years I was responsible for the curriculum in various fields at the Berlin school for workers' education. In addition I gave lectures in all kinds of associations of the socialist workers. I had been invited not only to give these lectures, but also to conduct a course on how to debate. Not only were they interested in understanding clearly what I have discussed with you here in these lectures, but they were anxious to be able to speak in public as well, to be able to advocate what they deemed to be right and just. Exhaustive discussions were held on all sorts of topics and in widely different groups. And this again gave me an insight into the evolution of modern times from a different point of view. Now it is interesting to note that in these socialist circles one thing that is of capital importance for our epoch and for the understanding of this epoch was tabu. I could speak on any subject—for when one speaks factually one can speak today (leaving aside the proletarian prejudices) on any and every subject—save that of freedom. To speak of freedom seemed extremely dangerous. I had only a single follower who always supported me whenever I delivered my libertarian tirades, as the others were pleased to call them. It was the Pole, Siegfried Nacht. I do not know what has become of him—he always supported me in my defence of freedom against the totalitarian programme of socialism.

When we look at the present epoch and the new trends, we perceive that what is lacking is precisely what The Philosophy of Freedom seeks to achieve. On a basis of freedom of thought The Philosophy of Freedom establishes a science of freedom which is fully in accord with natural science, yet reaches beyond it. This section of the book makes it possible for really independent thinkers to be able to develop within the present social order. For if freedom without the solid foundation of a science of freedom were regarded as real freedom, then, in an age when evil is gaining ground (as I indicated yesterday), freedom would of necessity lead not to liberty, but to licence. What is necessary for the present epoch when freedom must become a reality can only be found in the firm inner discipline of a thinking freed from the tyranny of the senses, in genuine scientific thinking.

But socialism, the rising party of radicalism, which will assert itself even against the nationalists of all shades who are totally devoid of any understanding of their epoch, lacks any possibility of arriving at a science of freedom. For if there is one truth which is important for our epoch, it is this: socialism has freed itself from the prejudices of the old nobility, the old bourgeoisie and the old military caste. On the other hand it has succumbed all the more to a blind faith in the infallibility of scientific materialism, in positivism as it is taught today. This positivism (as I could show) is simply the continuation of the decree of the eighth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 869. Like an infallible and invisible pope this positivism holds in its iron grip the parties of the extreme left, including Bolshevism, and prevents them from attaining to freedom.

And that is the reason why, however much it seeks to assert itself, this socialism which is not rooted in the evolution of mankind, cannot do other than convulse the world for a long time, but can never conquer it. That is why it is not responsible for errors it has already committed and why others must bear the responsibility—those who have allowed it, or wished to allow it, to become not a problem of pressure, as I have shown,^T7 but a problem of suction.

It is this inability to escape from the tentacles of positivism, of scientific materialism, which is the characteristic feature of the modern labour movement from the standpoint of those whose criterion is the evolution of mankind and not either the antiquated ideas of the bourgeoisie or what are often called new social ideas of Wilsonism, etcetera.

Now I have often mentioned that there would be no difficulty in introducing spiritual ideas to the working class. But the leaders of the working class movement refuse to consider anything that is not rooted in Marxism. And so I was gradually pushed aside. I had attempted to introduce spiritual ideas and was to a certain extent successful, but I was gradually driven out.^T8 One day I was defending spiritual values in a meeting attended by hundreds of my students and only four members who had been sent by the party executive to oppose me were present; nonetheless they made it impossible for me to continue. I still vividly recall my words: ‘If people wish socialism to play a part in future evolution, then liberty of teaching and liberty of thought must be permitted.’ Thereupon one of the stooges sent by the party leadership declared: ‘In our party and its schools there can be no question of freedom, but only of reasonable constraint.’ These things I may add are profoundly symptomatic of the forces at work today.

One must judge the epoch by its most significant symptoms. One must not imagine that the modern proletariat is not thirsting for spiritual nourishment! It has an insatiable craving for it. But the nourishment which it is offered is, in part, that in which it firmly believes, namely positivism, scientific materialism, or in part an indigestible pabulum that offers stones instead of bread.

The Philosophy of Freedom was bound to meet with opposition here, too, because its fundamental impulse, the impulse of freedom has no place in this most modern movement, (i.e. socialism).

Before this period had come to an end I was invited to give a lecture before the Berlin Theosophical Society. A series of lectures followed during the winter and this led to my association with the Theosophical movement. I have spoken of this in the preface to my book, Die Mystik im Aufgange des neuzeitlichen Geisteslebens und ihr Verhältnis zur modernen Weltanschauung.^T9 I must emphasize once again for this relationship with Theosophy has often been misunderstood—that at no time did I seek contact with the Theosophical Society; presumptuous as it may seem, it was the Theosophical Society which sought to make contact with me. When my book Mysticism and Modern Thought appeared not only were many chapters translated for the Theosophical Society, but Bertram Keightley and George Mead, who occupied prominent positions in the Society at the time, said to me: ‘This book contains, correctly formulated, everything we have to elaborate.’ At that time I had not read any of the publications of the Theosophical Society. I then read them, more or less as an ‘official’ only, although the prospect filled me with dismay.

But it was important to grasp the tendency of evolution, the impulse weaving and working in the life of the time. I had been invited to join the society; I could therefore join with good reason in accordance with my karma because I could perhaps find in the Theosophical Society a platform for what I had to say. I had of course to suffer much harassment. I should like to give an example which is symptomatic. One day when I attended a congress of the Theosophical Society for the first time I tried to put forward in a brief speech a certain point of view. It was at the time when the ‘entente cordiale’ had just been concluded and when everyone was deeply impressed by this event. I tried to show that in the movement which the Theosophical Society represents it is not a question of diffusing theosophical teachings from any random centre, but that the latest trends, the world over, should have a common meeting place, a kind of focal point. And I ended with these words: If we build upon the spirit, if we are really aiming to create a spiritual community in a concrete and positive fashion, so that the spirit which is manifested here and there is drawn towards a common centre, towards the Theosophical Society, then we shall build a different ‘entente cordiale.’

It was my first speech before the Theosophical Society of London and I spoke intentionally of this entente cordiale. Mrs. Besant declared—it was her custom to add a few pompous remarks to everything that was said—that the ‘German speaker’ had spoken very beautifully. But I did not have the meeting on my side; and my words were drowned in the flood of verbiage that followed—whereas the sympathies of the audience and what they wanted was more on the side of the Buddhist dandy, Jinaradjadasa. At the time this too seemed to me symptomatic. After I had spoken of something of historical significance, of the other entente cordiale, I sat down and the Buddhist pandit, Jinaradjadasa, came tripping down from his seat higher up in the auditorium—and I say tripping advisedly in order to describe his movements accurately—tapping with his walking stick on the floor. His speech met with the approval of the audience, but at the time all that I remembered was a torrent of words.

I have emphasized from the very beginning—you need only read the preface to my book Theosophy—that the future development of theosophy will follow the lines of thought already initiated by The Philosophy of Freedom. Perhaps I have made it difficult for many of you to find an unbroken line of continuity between the impulses behind The Philosophy of Freedom and what I wrote in later years. People found the greatest difficulty in accepting as true and reliable what I attempted to say and what I attempted to have published. I had to suffer considerable provocation. In this society which I had not sought to join, but which had invited me to become a member, I was not judged by what I had to offer, but by slogans and cliches. And this went on for some time until, at least amongst a small circle, I was no longer judged by slogans alone. Fundamentally, what I said or had published was relatively unimportant. It is true that people read it, but to read something does not mean that one has assimilated it. My books went through several editions, were reprinted again and again. But people judged them not by what I said or what they contained, but in terms of what they themselves understood, in the one case the mystical element, in another case the theosophical element, in a third case this, in a fourth case that, and out of this weiter of conflicting opinions emerged what passed for criticism. Under the circumstances it was neither an ideal, nor an encouraging moment to have The Philosophy of Freedom reprinted. Although this book presents, of course in an incomplete, imperfect and infelicitous fashion, a small contribution to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, nonetheless it seeks to express the fundamental, significant and really powerful impulses of this epoch.

Now that The Philosophy of Freedom has been republished alter a quarter of a century I should like to emphasize that it is the fruit of a close and active participation in the life of the time, of an insight into our epoch, of the endeavour to detect, to apprehend what impulses are essential for our epoch. And now twenty-five years later, when the present catastrophe has overwhelmed mankind, I realize—you may perhaps attribute it to naivety—that this book is in the true sense of the word, timely; timely in the unexpected sense, that the contemporary world rejects the book in toto and often wants to know nothing of its contents.

If there had been any understanding of the purpose of this book—to lay the foundations of ethical individualism and of a social and political life—if people had really understood its purpose, then they would know that there exist today ways and means of directing human evolution into fertile channels—different from other paths—whilst the worst possible path that one could follow would be to inveigh against the revolutionary parties, to grumble perpetually and retail anecdotes about Bolshevism! It would be tragic if the bourgeoisie could not overcome their immediate concern for what the Bolsheviks have done here and there, for the way in which they behave towards certain people; for, in reality, that is beside the point. The real issue is to ascertain whether the demands formulated by the Bolsheviks are in any way justified. And if one can find a conception of the world and of life that dares to say that, if you follow the path indicated here, you will attain what you seek to achieve by your imperfect means, and much else besides(and I am convinced that, if one is imbued with The Philosophy of Freedom, one dares to say that)—then light would dawn. And to this end the experience of a Weltanschauung founded on freedom is imperative. It is necessary to be able to grasp the fundamental idea of ethical individualism, to know that it is founded on the realization that man today is confronted with spiritual intuitions of cosmic events, that when he makes his own not the abstract ideas of Hegel, but the freedom of thought which I tried to express in popular form in my book The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception, he is actually in touch with cosmic impulses pulsating through the inner being of man.

Only through spiritual experiences is it possible to grasp the idea of freedom and to begin to regenerate those impulses which at the present time end in every case in a blind alley. The day when we realize that it is a waste of words to discuss such empty concepts as law, violence, etcetera, that the idea of freedom can only lead to reality when apprehended through spiritual experiences, that day will herald a new dawn for mankind. To this end people must overcome their deep-seated apathy; they must abandon the practice, common amongst scientists today, of descanting on all kinds of social questions, on the various quack remedies for social and political amelioration. What they seek to achieve in this domain they must learn to establish on a firm, solid foundation of spiritual science. The idea of freedom must be anchored in a science of freedom.

It was evident to me that the proletariat is more receptive to a spiritual outlook than the bourgeoisie which is steeped in Bölsche-ism. One day for example aller Rosa Luxemburg¹⁵ had spoken in Spandau on ‘science and the workers’ before an audience of workers accompanied by their wives and children—the hall was full of screaming children, babes in arms and even dogs—I addressed the meeting. At first I intended to say only a few words, but finally my speech lasted one and a quarter hours. Taking up the thread of her theme I pointed out that a real basis already existed, namely, to apprehend science spiritually, i.e. to seek for new forms of life from out of the spirit. When I touched upon such questions I always found a measure of support. But hitherto everything has failed owing to the indolence of the learned professions, the scientists, doctors, lawyers, philosophers, teachers, etcetera on whom the workers ultimately depend for their knowledge. We met with all sorts of people Hertzka¹⁶ and his Treiland, Michael Flürscheim and many others who cherished ambitious social ideals. They all failed, as they were bound to fail, because their ideas lacked a spiritual basis, a basis of free, independent scientific thinking. Their ideas were the product of a thinking corrupted by its attachment to the sensible world such as one finds in modern positivism. The day that sees an end to the denial of the spirit, a denial that is characteristic of modern positivism, the day when we recognize that we must build upon a thinking freed from the tyranny of the senses, upon spiritual investigation, including all that is called science in the ethical, social and political domain, that day will mark the dawn of a new humanity. The day that no longer regards the ideas I have attempted to express here today, albeit so imperfectly, as the voice of one crying in the wilderness, but as ideas that will find their way to the hearts and souls of mankind today, that day will herald a new dawn! People listen to all sorts of things, even to Woodrow Wilson; they do more than listen to him. But that which is born of the spirit of human evolution finds little response in the hearts and souls of men. But a way must be found to evoke this response. Mankind must realize how the world would be transformed if the meaning of freedom were understood, freedom not in the sense of licence, but freedom born of a free spirit and a firmly disciplined mind. If people understood what freedom and its establishment would signify for the world, then the light which many seek today would lighten the prevailing darkness of our time.

This is what I wanted to say to you with reference to historical ideas. My time is up; there are many other things I wished to say, but they can wait for another occasion. I ask your indulgence for having included in my lecture many personal experiences of a symptomatic nature that I have undergone in my present incarnation. I wanted to show you that I have always endeavoured to treat objectively the things which concern me personally, to consider them as symptoms which reveal what the age and the spirit of the age demand of us.

• 1. Count Leopald von Kalkreuth (1855–1928). Landscape and portrait painter. Professor at the Weimar Art School, 1885–90.
• 2. W. Scherer (1841–86). Pioneer of philological approach to the study of literature. Professor of German languages, Berlin.
• T1. Thomas Calvin, Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Columbia.
• 3. H. von Treitsche (1834–96). Historiographer of the Prussian state. A Patriot and nationalist. Published the Preussische Jahrbücher (1866–89).
• 4. R. Strauss (1864–1949). Director State Opera, Vienna, 1918. Famous for Choral works, Lieder, chamber music, ballet and opera.
• 5. Waldemar von Biedermann (1817–1903). Goethe scholar. Edited a collection of Goethe's Gespräche (1889–96) 10 vols.
• 6. Kreuzwendedich Frieherr von Rheinbaben (1855–1921). 1901–9, Prussian Finance Minister; 1913–21, President of the Goethe Society.
• T2. Luziferisches und Ahrimanisches in ihrem Verhältnis zum Menschen.
• 7. Eduard von Hartmann (1842–1906). Philosophie des Unbewussten, 1869. See Rudolf Steiner's Riddles of Philosophy, Part II and his Briefe, Vol II, 1953.
• T3. p. 143 of the 1964 edition of The Philosophy of Freedom.
• 8. Harry Graf Kessler (1868–1937); K. Breysig (1855–1940), historian.
• 8a. E. Horneffer (b. 1871). A disciple of Nietzsche, professor in Giessen. Emphasized pedagogic value of Graeco-Roman culture.
• 9. Benjamin Tucker published in America a periodical: Liberty, the Pioneer Organ of Anarchism. J. H. Mackay (1864–1933). Belonged to the literary Bohemia of Berlin. Popularized ‘individual anarchism’, cf. his novel Die Anarchisten, 1891. The hero is the mouthpiece of the author. An aggressive socialist. Dealt with in detail in R. Steiner's Gesammelte Aufästze zur Kulturgeschichte (1887–1901).
• 10. About the expression: ‘vain self-praise stinks’ Goethe commented: ‘That may be; but the public has no nose for the smell of others' unjust criticism.’
• T4. p. 143 of the 1964 edition of The Philosophy of Freedom.
• 11. Dreyfus (1859–1935). Jewish officer falsely accused of treason and transported to Devil's Island. Rehabilitated 1906.
• T5. 19th February, 1898, Emil Zola und die Jugend (see Bibl. Nr. 31 for this and other articles).
• T6. See Die Veröffentlichungen aus dem literarischen Frühwerk R. Steiners Heft V, VIII, IX.
• 12. W. Bölsche (1862–1939). Disciple of Zola; tried to link poetry and science. Scientific popularisor. Best known for Das Liebesleben in der Natur, 3 vols.
• 13. O. E. Hartleben (1864–1905). Dramatist, novelist and lyric poet. Attacked moral conventions and believed in the free personality.
• 14. M. Halbe (1865–1944). Dramatist and novelist. Nostalgia for lost youth, attachment to homeland, W. Prussia. (See R. Steiner's Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Dramaturgie, 1889–1900).
• T7. See Lecture IV.
• T8. See Chapter XXVIII, The Course of My Life, Anthroposophic Press, New York, 1951.
• T9. Mysticism and Modern Thought, Anthroposophical Publishing Co., London and Anthroposophie Press, New York, 1928 and as Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age, Rudolf Steiner Publications, New Jersey, 1960.
• 15. Rosa Luxemburg (1870–1919). Radical Socialist, worked for overthrow of existing regime. Opposed to war 1914. Author of ‘Spartakus’ letters 1916. Drafted programme of newly formed Communist party 1918. With K. Liebknecht fomented Spartakus rebellion, January, 1919. Finally shot by counter revolutionaries.
• 16. Theodor Herzka (1845–1924). National economist. Wished to establish settlement co-operatives in various countries, e.g. Africa, and to redistribute land in order to break the monopoly of landed proprietors.

On this occasion I should like to be allowed to include certain personal references among matters of objective history, because what must be added to the subject dealt with in the lecture yesterday is necessary for our study today and after careful consideration I believe it is right to include more details.

I want, first of all, to speak of a particular experience connected with our Movement. You know that outwardly we began by linking ourselves—but outwardly only—with the Theosophical Society and that we founded the so-called German Section of that Society in the autumn of 1902, in Berlin. In the course of the year 1904 we were visited in various towns of Germany by prominent members of the Theosophical Society, and the episode from which I want to start occurred during one of these visits. The first edition of my book Theosophy had just been published—in the spring of 1904—and the periodical Lucifer-Gnosis was appearing. In that periodical I had published articles dealing with the problem of Atlantis and the character of the Atlantean epoch. These articles were afterwards published as a separate volume entitled Unsere atlantischen Vorfahren (Our Atlantean Forefathers).¹ The articles contained a number of communications about the Atlantean world and the earlier, so-called Lemurian epoch. Several articles of this kind had therefore already appeared, and just at the time when the members of the Theosophical Society were visiting us a number of the periodical containing important communications was ready, and had been sent to subscribers. A member highly respected in the Theosophical Society had read these articles dealing with Atlantis, and asked me a question. And it is this question which I want to mention as a noteworthy experience in connection with what was said in the lecture yesterday.

This member of the Theosophical Society, who at the time of its founding by Blavatsky had taken part in most vital proceedings, a member, therefore, who had shared to the full in the activities of the Society, put the question: “By what means was this information about the world of Atlantis obtained?”—The question was very significant because until then this member was acquainted only with the methods by which such information was obtained in the Theosophical Society, namely, by means of a certain kind of mediumistic investigation. Information already published in the Theosophical Society at that time was based upon investigations connected in a certain respect with mediumship. That is to say, someone was put into a kind of mediumistic state—it could not be called a trance but was a mediumistic state—and conditions were established which made it possible for the person, although not in the state of ordinary consciousness, to communicate certain information; about matters beyond the reach of ordinary consciousness. That is how the communications had been made at that time and the member of the Theosophical Society in question who thought that information about prehistoric events could be gained only in this way, enquired what personality we had among us whom we could use as a medium for such investigations.

As I had naturally refused to adopt this method of research and had insisted from the outset upon strictly individual investigation, and as what I had discovered at that time was the result entirely of my own, personal research, the questioner did not understand me at all, did not understand that it was quite a different matter from anything that had been done hitherto in the Theosophical Society. The path I had appointed for myself, however, was this: To reject all earlier ways of investigation and—admittedly by means of super-sensible perception—to investigate by making use only of what can be revealed to the one who is himself the investigator.

In accordance with the position I have to take in the spiritual Movement, no other course is possible for me than to carry into strict effect those methods of investigation which are suitable for the modern world and for modern humanity. There is a very significant difference, you see, between the methods of investigation practised in Spiritual Science and those that were practised in the Theosophical Society. All communications received by that Society from the spiritual world—including for example, those given in Scott-Elliot's book on Atlantis—came entirely in the way described, because that alone was considered authoritative and objective. In this connection, the introduction of our spiritual-scientific direction of work was, from the very beginning something entirely new in the Theosophical Society. It took thorough account of modern scientific methods which needed to be elaborated and developed to make ascent to the spiritual realms possible.

This discussion was significant. It took place in the year 1904, and showed how great the difference was between what is pursued in Spiritual Science and what was being pursued by the rest of the Theosophical Society; it showed that what we have in Spiritual Science was unknown in the Theosophical Society at that time and that the Theosophical Society was continuing the methods which had been adopted as a compromise between the exotericists and the esotericists. Such was the inevitable result of the developments I described in the lecture yesterday. I said that seership gradually died away and that there remained only a few isolated seers in whom mediumistic states could be induced and from whom some information might be obtained. In this way, “Occult Orders”, as they were called, came into being, Orders in which there were, it is true, many who had been initiated, but no seers. Among the prevailing materialism these Orders were faced with the necessity of having to cultivate and elaborate methods which had long been in vogue, and instruments for research had to be sought among persons in whom mediumistic faculties—that is to say, atavistic clairvoyance—could still be developed and produce some result. In these circles there were far-reaching teachings and, in addition, symbols. Those, however, who wished to engage in actual research were obliged to rely on the help of persons possessed of atavistic clairvoyance. These methods were then continued in a certain way in the Theosophical Society, and the compromise of which I spoke yesterday really amounted to nothing else than that in the Lodges and Orders experiments were made whereby spiritual influences might be projected into the world. The desire was to demonstrate that influences from the spiritual world are exercised upon man.

Procedures adopted in esoteric schools had therefore been brought into action. This attempt was a fiasco, for whereas it had been expected that through the mediums genuine spiritual laws prevailing in the surrounding world would be brought to light, the only result was that nearly all the mediums fell into the error of supposing that everything emanated from the dead, and they embellished it into communications alleged to have been made to them by the dead. This led to a very definite consequence.—If the older members among you will think back to the earliest period of the Theosophical Society and study the literature produced under its aegis, you will find that the astral world—that is to say, the life immediately after death—was described in books by Mrs. Besant which merely reproduced what is contained in Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine or was to be read in books by Leadbeater. This was also the origin of everything that was given out concerning man's life between death and a new birth.

If you compare what is said in my book Theosophy about the Soul-world and the Spirit-world—to begin with, people were always trying to refute it but I think that today a sufficient number are able to think objectively on the subject—you will find very considerable differences, precisely because in regard to these domains too the methods of investigation were different. For all the methods of research employed in the Theosophical Society, even including those used for investigating the life of the dead, originated from the procedures of which I have spoken.

So you see, what the Theosophical Society had to offer the world to begin with was in a certain respect a continuation of the attempt made by the occultists previously. In what other respect this was not the case we shall hear in a moment. Taken as a whole, however, it was a continuation of the attempt which, since the middle of the nineteenth century, had been the outcome of the compromise made between the exotericists and the esotericists, except that later on things were made rather more esoteric by the Theosophical Society. Whereas the previous attempt had been to present the mediums to the world, the members of the Theosophical Society preferred to work in their inner circle only and to give out merely the results. That was an important difference, for there people were going back to a method of investigation established as a universal custom by the various Orders before the middle of the nineteenth century. I bring this forward because I must sharply emphasise the fact that with the advent of our Spiritual Science an entirely new method, one which takes full account of the work and attitude of modern science, was introduced into the occult Movement.

Now as I told you, the compromise reached between the exotericists and the esotericists to convince the materialistic world through mediums of all types that a spiritual world exists, had been a fiasco, a fiasco inasmuch as the mediums always spoke of a world which under the existing conditions simply could not be accessible to them, namely, the world of the dead. The mediums spoke of inspirations alleged to have been received from a world in which the dead are living. The situation was that the attempt made by the exotericists and the esotericists had not achieved the result they had really desired.

How had such a state of affairs come about? What was the outcome of the remarkable attempt that had been made as a result of the compromise? The outcome was that initiates of a certain kind had wrested the power from the hands of those who had made the compromise. The initiates of the extreme left-wing had taken possession of the proceedings which had been countenanced in the way described. They acquired great influence, because what was obtained through the mediums did not spring from the realm of the dead at all, but from the realm of the living—from initiates who had put themselves either in distant or close rapport with the mediums. Because everything was brought about through these initiates and through the mediums, it was coloured by the theories of those who wished to get the mediums under their control. The desire of those among the exotericists and esotericists who had made the compromise was to bring home to men that there is indeed a spiritual world. That is what they wanted to impress. But when those who thought themselves capable of holding the guiding reins let them slip, the occultists of the extreme left-wing took possession of them and endeavoured by means of the mediums—if I may use this tautology—to communicate their theories and their views to the world.

For those who had made the compromise for the good of humanity, the position was disastrous, because they felt more and more strongly that false teachings about the super-sensible were being brought into the world.—Such was the position in the development of occultism in the forties, fifties and even in the sixties of the nineteenth century.

As long as deliberation still continued in the circles of honest occultists, the situation was sinister. For the further the occultists inclined to the left, the less were they concerned to promote that which alone is justifiable, namely, the universal-human. In occultism a man belongs to the “left” when he tries to achieve some ultimate goal with the help of what he knows in the way of occult teaching. A man belongs to the “right” in occultism when he desires that goal purely for its own sake. The middle party were in favour of making exoteric the esoteric knowledge needed in our time to promote the interests of humanity universal. But those who belong to the extreme “left” are those who combine special aims of their own with what they promulgate as occult teaching. A man is on the “left” to the extent to which he pursues special aims, leads people to the spiritual world, gives them all kinds of demonstrations of it, and instils into them in an illicit way, promptings that simply help to bring these special aims to fulfilment. The leading circle of modern initiates was faced with this situation. It was realised that the control had fallen into the hands of people who were pursuing their own special aims.—Such was the state of affairs confronting the esotericists and the exotericists who had made the compromise referred to.

Then it was “heard”—the expression may not be quite exact but absolutely exact words cannot be found because one is dependent on external language and intercourse among occultists is different from anything that external language is capable of describing—it was “heard” that an event of importance for the further continuation of spiritual development on the Earth must be at hand. I can describe this event only in the following way.—In the research carried on by the individual Orders, they had preferred for a long time to make less use of female mediums. In the strict Orders, where it was desired to take the right standpoint, no female mediums were ever used for obtaining revelations from the spiritual worlds.

Now the female organism is adapted by nature to preserve atavistic clairvoyance longer than the male organism. Whereas male mediums were becoming almost unknown, female mediums were still to be found and a great number were used while the compromise still held. But now there came into the occultists' field of observation a personality who possessed mediumistic faculties in the very highest degree. This was Madame H. P. Blavatsky, a personality very specially adapted through certain subconscious parts of her organism to draw a great deal, a very great deal, from the spiritual world. And now think of what possibilities this opened up for the world! At one of the most crucial points in the development of occultism, a personality appeared who through the peculiar nature of her organism was able to draw many, many things from the spiritual world by means of her subconscious faculties.

An occultist who at that time was alert to the signs of the times could not but say to himself: Now, at the right moment, a personality has appeared who through her peculiar organic constitution can produce the very strongest evidence of ancient, traditional teaching existing among us in the form of symbols only. It was emphatically the case that here was a personality who simply because of her organic make-up afforded the possibility of again demonstrating many things which for a long time had been known only through tradition. This was the fact confronting the occultists just after the fiasco which had led to a veritable impasse. Let us be quite clear on the point: Blavatsky was regarded as a personality from whom, as out of an electrically-charged Leyden jar, the electric sparks—occult truths—could be produced.

It would lead too far if I were to tell you of all the intermediate links, but certain matters of importance must be mentioned. A really crucial moment had arrived which I can indicate in the following way; although expressed somewhat symbolically, it is in strict accordance with the facts.—The occultists of the right-wing, who in conjunction with the middle party had agreed to the compromise, could say to themselves: It may well be that something very significant can be forthcoming from this personality. But those belonging to the left-wing could also say with assurance: It is possible to achieve something extremely effective in the world with the help of this personality!—And now a veritable battle was waged around her, on the one side with the honest purpose of having much of what the initiates knew, substantiated; on the other side, for the sake of far-reaching, special aims.

I have often referred to the early periods in the life of H. P. Blavatsky, and have shown that, to begin with, attempts were made to get a great deal of knowledge from her. But in a comparatively short time the situation rapidly changed, owing to the fact that she soon came into the sphere of those who belonged, as it were, to the left. And although H. P. Blavatsky was very well aware of what she herself was able to see—for she was especially significant in that she was not simply a passive medium, but had a colossal memory for everything that revealed itself to her from the higher worlds—nevertheless she was inevitably under the influence of certain personalities when she wanted to evoke manifestations from the spiritual world. And so she always made reference to what ought really to have been left aside—she always referred to the “Mahatmas”. They may be there in the background but this is not a factor when it is a question of furthering the interests of humanity.

And so it was not long before H. P. Blavatsky was having to face a decision. A hint came to her from a quarter belonging to the side of the left that she was a personality of key importance. She knew very well what it was that she saw, but she was not aware of how significant she was as a personality. This was first disclosed to her by the left-wing. But she was fundamentally honest by nature and after this hint had been given her from a quarter of which, at the beginning, she could hardly have approved, because of her fundamental honesty, she tried on her side to reach a kind of compromise with an occult Brotherhood in Europe. Something very fine might have resulted from this, because through her great gift of mediumship she would have been able to furnish confirmations of really phenomenal importance in connection with what was known to the initiates from theories and symbolism. But she was not only thoroughly honest, she was also what is called in German a “Frechdachs”—a “cheeky creature”. And that she certainly was! She had in her nature a certain trait that is particularly common in those inclined to mediumship, namely, a lack of consistency in external behaviour. Thus there were moments when she could be very audacious and in one of these fits of audacity she imposed on the occult Brotherhood which had decided to make the experiment with her, terms which could not be fulfilled. But as she knew that a great deal could be achieved through her instrumentality, she decided to take up the matter with other Brotherhoods. And so she approached an American Brotherhood. This American Brotherhood was one where the majority had always wavered between the right and the left, but at all events had the prospect of discovering things of tremendous significance concerning the spiritual worlds.

Now this was the period when intense interest was being taken in H. P. Blavatsky by other Brothers of the left. Already at that time these left-wing Brothers had their own special interests. At the moment I do not propose to speak about these interests. If it were necessary, I could do so at some future time. For the present it is enough to say that they were Brothers who had their special interests, above all, interests of a strongly political character; they envisaged the possibility of achieving something of a political nature in America by means of persons who had first been put through an occult preparation. The consequence was that at a moment when H. P. Blavatsky had already acquired an untold amount of occult knowledge through having worked with the American Lodge, she had to be expelled from it, because it was discovered that there was something political in the background. So things couldn't continue.

The situation was now extremely difficult, tremendously difficult. For what had been undertaken in order to call the world's attention to the existence of a spiritual world, had in a certain respect to be withdrawn by the serious occultists because it had been a fiasco. It was necessary to show that no reliance could be placed on what was being presented by Spiritualism, in spite of the fact that it had many adherents. It was only materialistic, it was sheer dilettantism. The only scholarly persons who concerned themselves with it were those who wanted to get information in an external, materialistic way about a spiritual world. In addition, H. P. Blavatsky had made it clear to the American Lodge on her departure that she had no intention whatever of withholding from the world what she knew. And she knew a great deal, for she was able to remember afterwards what had been conveyed through her. She had any amount of audacity!

Good advice is costly, as the saying goes. What was to be done? And now something happened to which I have referred on various occasions, for parts of what I am saying today in this connection I have said in other places. Something that is called in occultism “Occult imprisonment” was brought about.² H. P. Blavatsky was put into occult imprisonment. Through acts of a kind that can be performed only by certain Brothers—and are performed, moreover, only by Brotherhoods who allow themselves to engage in illicit arts—through certain acts and machinations they succeeded in compelling H. P. Blavatsky to live for a time in a world in which all her occult knowledge was driven inwards. Think of it in this way.—The occult knowledge was in her aura; as the result of certain processes that were set in operation, it came about that for a long time everything in this aura was thrown back into her soul. That is to say, all the occult knowledge she possessed was to be imprisoned; she was to be isolated as far as the outer world and her occultism were concerned.

This happened at the time when H. P. Blavatsky might have become really dangerous through the spreading of teachings which are among the most interesting of all within the horizon of the Occult Movement. Certain Indian occultists now came to know of the affair, occultists who on their part tended strongly towards the left, and whose prime interest it was to turn the occultism which could be given to the world through H. P. Blavatsky in a direction where it could influence the world in line with their special aims. Through the efforts of these Indian occultists who were versed in the appropriate practices, she was released from this imprisonment within her aura; she was free once again and could now use her spiritual faculties in the right way.

From this you can get an idea of what had taken place in this soul, and of what combination of factors all that came into the world through H. P. Blavatsky, was composed. But because certain Indian occultists had gained the merit of freeing her from her imprisonment, they had her in their power in a certain respect. And there was simply no possibility of preventing them from using her to send out into the world that part of occultism which suited their purposes. And so something very remarkable was “arranged”—if I may use a clumsy word. What was arranged can be expressed approximately as follows.—The Indian occultists wanted to assert their own special aims in opposition to those of the others, and for this purpose they made use of H. P. Blavatsky. She was given instructions to place herself under a certain influence, for in her case the mediumistic state had always to be induced from outside—and this also made it possible to bring all kinds of things into the world through her.

About this time she came to be associated with a person who from the beginning had really no directly theosophical interests but a splendid talent for organisation, namely, Colonel Olcott. I cannot say for certain, but I surmise that there had already been some kind of association at the time when Blavatsky belonged to the American Lodge. Then, under the mask, as it were, of an earlier individuality, there appeared in the field of Blavatsky's spiritual vision a personality who was essentially the vehicle of what it was desired from India to launch into the world. Some of you may know that in his book People from the Other World, Colonel Olcott has written a great deal about this individuality who now appeared in H. P. B.'s field of vision under the mask of an earlier individuality designated as Mahatma Kut-Humi. You know, perhaps, that Colonel Olcott has written a very great deal about this Mahatma Kut-Humi, among other things that in the year 1874 this Mahatma Kut-Humi had declared what individuality was living in him. He had indicated that this individuality was John King by name, a powerful sea-pirate of the seventeenth century. This is to be read in Olcott's book People from the Other World.

In the Mahatma Kut-Humi, therefore, we have to do with the spirit of a bold sea-pirate of the seventeenth century who then, in the nineteenth century, was involved in significant manifestations made with the help of H. P. Blavatsky and others too. He brought tea-cups from some distance away, he let all kinds of records be produced from the coffin of H. P. B.'s father,³ and so forth. From Colonel Olcott's account, therefore, it must be assumed that these were deeds of the bold pirate of the seventeenth century.

Now Colonel Olcott speaks in a remarkable way about this John King. He says that perhaps here one had to do, not with the spirit of this pirate but possibly with the creation of an Order which, while depending for its results upon unseen agents, has its existence among physical men. According to this account, Kut-Humi might have been a member of an Order which engaged in practices such as I have described and the results of which were to be communicated to the world through H. P. Blavatsky but bound up with all kinds of special interests. These were that a specifically Indian teaching should be spread in the world.

This was approximately the situation in the seventies of the nineteenth century. We therefore have evidence of very significant happenings which must be seen in a single framework when we are considering the whole course of events in the Occult Movement. It was this same John King who, by means of “precipitation”, produced Sinnett's books, the first one, Letters about the Occult World and, especially, Esoteric Buddhism.

This book Esoteric Buddhism came into my hands very shortly after publication—a few weeks in fact—and I could see from it that efforts were being made, especially from a certain quarter, to give an entirely materialistic form to the spiritual teachings. If you were to study Esoteric Buddhism with the insight you have acquired in the course of time, you would be astonished at the materialistic forms in which facts are there presented. It is materialism in its very worst forms. The spiritual world is presented in an entirely materialistic way. No one who gets hold of this book can shake himself free from materialism. The subject-matter is very subtle but in Sinnett's book one cannot get away from materialism, however lofty the heights to which it purports to carry one. And so those who were now H. P. B.'s spiritual “bread-givers”—forgive the materialistic analogy—not only had special aims connected with Indian interests, but they also made trenchant concessions to the materialistic spirit of the age. And the influence which Sinnett's book had upon very large numbers of people shows how correctly they had speculated.⁴ I have met scientists who were delighted with this book because everything fitted in with their stock-intrade and yet they were able to conceive of the existence of a spiritual world. The book satisfied all the demands of materialism and yet made it possible to meet the need for a spiritual world and to acknowledge its existence.

Now you know that in the further development of these happenings, H. P. Blavatsky wrote The Secret Doctrine in the eighties of the nineteenth century, and in 1891 she died. The Secret Doctrine is written in the same style as Esoteric Buddhism, except that it puts right certain gross errors which any occultist could at once have corrected. I have often spoken about the peculiar features of Blavatsky's book and need not go into the matter again now. Then, on the basis of what had come about in this way, the Theosophical Society was founded and, fundamentally speaking, retained its Indian trend. Although no longer with the intensity that had prevailed under the influence of John King, the Indian trend persisted. What I have now described to you was, as it were, a new path which made great concessions to the materialism of the age, but was nevertheless intended to show humanity that a spiritual world as well as the outer, material world must be taken into account.

Many details would have to be added to what I have now said, but time is too short. I will go on at once to show you how our spiritual-scientific Movement took its place in the Movement which was already in existence.

You know that we founded the German Section of the Theosophical Society in October, 1902. In the winters of both 1900 and 1901 I had already given lectures in Berlin which may be called “theosophical” lectures, for they were held in the circle and at the invitation of the Berlin Theosophists. The first lectures were those which ultimately became the book entitled, Die Mystik im Aufgange des neuzeitlichen Geisteslebens (translated into English with the title, Mysticism and Modern Thought). These lectures were given to a circle of Members of the Theosophical Society, of which I myself was not then a member. It must be borne in mind at the outset that one had to do with teaching that was already widespread and had led numbers of people to turn their minds to the spiritual world. Thus all over the world there were people who to a certain extent were prepared and who wanted to know something about the spiritual world. Of the things I have told you today they knew nothing, had not the slightest inkling of them. But they had a genuine longing for the spiritual world, and for that reason had attached themselves to the Movement in which this longing could be satisfied. And so in this Movement there were to be found persons whose hearts were longing for knowledge of the spiritual world.

You know that in a grotesque and ludicrous way I was taxed with having made a sudden turn-about from an entirely different world-view which had been presented in my book Welt- and Lebensanschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert.⁵ The first part had appeared in February 1900, and the second part in the following October. I was taxed with having suddenly changed sides and having gone over to Theosophy. Now I have often told you that not only had Sinnett's book, for example, come into my hands immediately after its publication, but that I had also had close associations with the young Theosophical Society in Vienna. It is right that you should understand what the circumstances were at the time, and I want also to give you a very brief; objective view of the antecedents of the German Section. There were people in the Theosophical Society who longed to know of the spiritual world, and I had given lectures in their circle. These were the lectures on Mysticism and the Mystics which I gave in a small room in the house of Count Brockdorff. At that time I was not myself a member. The preface to the printed volume containing these lectures is dated September 1901. In the summer of 1901 I had collected the lectures given the previous winter, into the book published in September 1901 under the title Die Mystik im Aufgange des neuzeitlichin Geistlebens.⁶

I will read the first lines of the preface to this book:

“What is stated in this work formed the content of lectures given by me last winter in the Theosophical Library in Berlin. I was invited by Count and Countess Brockdorff to speak on mysticism to an audience seriously interested in the subject. Ten years earlier I should not have ventured to comply with such a request. Not that the world of ideas which I am now bringing to expression was not already within me. This world of ideas is presented in my The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, published by Emil Felber, Berlin, 1894.—But to express this world of ideas as I am doing today and so to make it the basis of study as in this present book, requires something quite different from a mere firm conviction of its intellectual truth. It requires intimate communion with this world of ideas such as can be achieved only after many years. Only now, after this intimate communion has been vouchsafed to me, do I venture to speak in the way that will be apparent in this book.”

Now you can conceive why I had allowed the contents of lectures given in very different circles to find a place in an occult movement. In the first edition of the book Welt-and Lebensanschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, the following is contained in the chapter about Schelling I quote from the first edition, which was dedicated to Ernst Haeckel and was published in February, 1900. I will read a few passages from the book of which people have said that it sprang from a world-view quite different from that presented in the book on Mysticism.—

“Now there are two possible ways of describing a being which is at the same time Spirit and Nature. The one is: I exhibit the laws of nature which are active in Reality. Or, I show how the spirit acts in order to come to these natural laws. One and the same thing guides me in both cases. The one shows me conformity to law as it is active in nature; the other shows me what the spirit does in order to represent to itself this same conformity to law. In the one case I pursue natural science, in the other spiritual science. How these two are connected, Schelling describes in an interesting way. He says: ‘The necessary tendency of all natural science is to ascend from nature to intelligence. This and nothing else underlies the endeavour to bring theory into natural phenomena. The highest perfection of natural science would be the complete spiritualisation of all natural laws into laws of observation and thought. Phenomena (the material) must completely vanish, and laws alone (the formal )remain. Hence it happens that the more conformity to law is brought into nature herself the more the veils vanish, phenomena themselves become more spiritual and finally disappear altogether. Optical phenomena are nothing more than a geometry whose lines are drawn by light, and the light itself is already an ambiguous materiality. In the phenomena of magnetism all traces of matter are lost, and in those of gravity, which even the natural scientist is only able to accept as a direct spiritual operation—an effect at a distance—nothing remains but its laws, whose transactions are in the vastness of the mechanism of the celestial movements. The perfect theory of nature would be that by virtue of which nature as a whole is resolved into an intelligence. The lifeless and unconscious products of nature are only nature's abortive attempts to reflect herself; so-called lifeless nature is, however, an unripe intelligence, hence in its phenomena the intelligent character still peeps through, but without consciousness. Nature only reaches her highest aim—to become herself wholly object—in her highest and final reflection, which is none other than Man, or more generally, what we call Reason, through which nature first completely returns into herself, and by which it becomes manifest that she, nature, is originally identical with what is known in us as intelligence and consciousness.’ ”

And referring further to Schelling, I say a little later:

“To Schelling, with his progressive thought, the study of the world was the study of God, or Theosophy. He already stood completely on this ground when, in 1809, he brought out his Philosophic Enquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom and allied Matters. All questions concerning conceptions of the world now come to him in a new light. If all things are divine, how comes it that there is evil in the world, since God can only be perfect Goodness? If the soul of man is in God, how comes it that she follows her own self-seeking interests? And if it is God who acts in me, how can I, who therefore in no wise act as an independent being, yet be called free?”

This view of the world is not put aside.—And I say further:

“With such views, Schelling proved himself to be the boldest, most courageous of those philosophers who allowed themselves to be stimulated by Kant into adopting an idealistic view of the world. Under the influence of this stimulus, man has relinquished philosophising about things lying beyond what the human senses alone and the thought concerning such observations, utter. Men try to rest content with what lies within the field of observation and thought. But whereas Kant drew from this the inevitable conclusion that man can know nothing of things ‘beyond’, his successors declared: As observation and thought indicate nothing divine in that ‘beyond’, they are themselves the divine. Among those who declared this, Schelling was the most forceful. Fichte gathered everything into selfhood; Schelling extended selfhood over everything. He did not, like Fichte, wish to show that selfhood is everything, but, on the contrary, that everything is selfhood. And Schelling had the courage to declare not only the ego's content of ideas to be divine, but the whole human spirit-personality. He not only made the human Reason divine, but the content of human life a divine, personal entity. One calls an explanation of the world Anthropomorphism which, starting from man, imagines that underlying the whole course of the world there is a being who guides that course as man guides his own actions. Those, too, who postulate a general cosmic Intelligence as the basis of events, they too explain the world in the anthropomorphic sense. For this cosmic Intelligence is none other than the human Reason which has been made general and universal. When Goethe says: ‘Man never realises how anthropomorphic he is’, his mind is engrossed with the thought that concealed anthropomorphisms are contained in the simplest utterances we make about nature. When we say, ‘a body rolls further because another has struck it’, we form such an idea from out of our ego. We strike a body and it rolls on. If we see that a ball moves towards another and this other rolls on further, we think of the striking of the second by the first as analogous to the striking effect which we ourselves exercise. Ernst Haeckel spoke the anthropomorphic dogma: ‘divine world-creation and divine world-government resemble the mechanical productions of an ingenious technician or engineer and the State-administration of a wise ruler. The Lord God as Creator, Sustainer and Ruler of the Cosmos is here conceived as thoroughly human in his thinking and acting.’ Schelling had the courage to lead anthropomorphism to its ultimate consequences. He declared man and his whole life-content to be divine; and as not only the rational belongs to this life-content, but also the irrational, he was able also to explain the existence of irrationality in the world. To this end he had to extend the rational views of the reasoning mind by adding another, whose origin does not lie in thinking. This—in his opinion—higher view, he calls ‘Positive Philosophy’. ‘This’, he says, ‘is the really free philosophy; anyone who does not desire it may leave it alone; I leave everyone free; I say only that if anyone desires, for instance, to ascertain the actual course of things, to have a free world-creation and so forth, he can succeed only along the path of a philosophy such as this. If rationalistic philosophy satisfies him and he desires nothing further, let him content himself with that, but he must give up trying to find in rationalistic philosophy what unfortunately it cannot have within it, namely, the real God and the reality underlying the course of things, and a free relationship of God to the world.’ Negative philosophy will ‘remain pre-eminently the philosophy for the schools, Positive philosophy, the philosophy for life. Only through both together will there come the consecration that man may expect from philosophy. It is well known that the Eleusinian Initiates distinguished the Lesser and the Greater Mysteries; the Lesser were a preparation for the Greater. ... Positive philosophy is the necessary consequence of Negative philosophy when this is rightly understood. It may therefore be said: In Negative philosophy the Lesser Mysteries are celebrated, in Positive philosophy the Greater.’

This chapter of my book closed with the passage:

“If the inner life is declared to be divine, it seems inconsistent to confine ourselves to one part of it. Schelling did not fall into this inconsistency. When he said that to explain nature is to create nature, he indicated the direction of his own view of life. If the reflective study of nature is a repetition of her creation, the basic character of his creation must correspond to that of human action; it must be an act of free spiritual activity, not one like a geometrical necessity. But we cannot recognise a free creation through laws of Reason; it must reveal itself through different means.”

I was writing a history of world-views held in the nineteenth century. I could not go any further than this, for what prevailed at the time in advancing evolution were purely dilettante attempts which had no influence upon the progress of philosophical research. Such matters could not form part of this book. But Theosophy, in so far as it is carried into earnest thinking—that you find in the chapter on Schelling.

The second part of the book, which deals, firstly, with Hegel, is dated October, two. It was then that I had just begun to give the lectures referred to, and in September, 1901, the book on Mysticism had already been published. Truly it is not for the sake of emphasising personal matters but in order to help you to make an unprejudiced judgment that I should like to refer you to a criticism of the book Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert which appeared on 15th December, 1901 in the journal of the German Freethinkers' Alliance, The Free-Thinker. Here, after an introduction and a remark to the effect that there had been no readable presentation of the development of thought in the nineteenth century, it continues:

“Especially in the domain of philosophy in which disputes can be carried on in appropriate words, many sins are committed in popular writings. The ‘Watchers of Zion’ and organisations of every kind, with their learned cliques to which unfortunately so many university tutors belong, are much to blame.”

Quotation of the folllowing extract is made only in order to point out the good-will with which the book was received at the time:

“So much the more must we welcome the fact that Dr. Rudolf Steiner, an author well known as a modern thinker and protagonist, has undertaken the task of giving the German public an objective presentation of the spiritual conflicts waged in Germany in the nineteenth century concerning views and conceptions of the world.”

Then, after an extract from the book, a remarkable statement follows and I must read it to you in full. The writer of this review regrets the absence of something in the book, and expresses this in the following words:

“Although the spiritualism of Du Prel and the anchoretic original Christianity of Tolstoi are useless for cultural activity based on the thought of evolution, yet symptomatically they have a value not to be overlooked. The same may be said of Neo-Buddhism (Theosophy), which has developed a terminology of its own, a sort of mystic jargon. A psychology of the modern belief in spirits by a man of the mental calibre of Steiner would be decidedly welcome. The language of his book is easy to comprehend. None of the yard-long passages of the academic philosopher disturbs the enjoyment of the reader.”

This was written in November 1901, shortly after I had begun to give the theosophical lectures in Berlin. It can truly be said that there was then a demand, a public demand, that I should speak about the aim and purpose of Theosophy. It was not a matter of arbitrary choice but, as the saying goes, a clear call of karma.

In the winter of 1900-1901, I gave the lectures on Mysticism, and in that of 1901-1902 those dealing with the Greek and Egyptian Mysteries in rather greater detail. These lectures were subsequently printed in the book Christianity as Mystical Fact⁷ (published in the summer of 1902).

The greater part of Mysticism and Modern Thought was at once translated into English, still before I was a member of the Theosophical Society. I could tell you a great deal of importance, but time does not permit of it now; it may be told another time. One thing, however, I must add.

You see clearly that nowhere in the course of things was there any kind of sudden jump; one thing led to the other quite naturally. At the beginning of the course of lectures on the Greek and Egyptian Mysteries—again held in Count Brockdorff's library—and indeed also at the time of the second series I had some opportunity of hearing about matters which were not so very serious at that time, but which eventually led to things which have been spoken of here as “mystical eccentricities”.

So in the year 1901-1902, I spoke on the Greek and Egyptian Mysteries and these lectures were attended by the present Frau Dr. Steiner. She had also heard the lecture I had given in the Theosophical Society during the winter of 1900 on Gustav Theodor Fechner. It was a special lecture, not forming part of the other series. Frau Dr. Steiner had therefore already been present at some of the lectures I gave during that time. It would be interesting to relate a few details here—but these may be omitted; they merely add a little colour to the incident. If necessary, they can be told on another occasion.

After having been away for a time, Frau Dr. Steiner returned to Berlin from Russia in the autumn, and with an acquaintance of Countess Brockdorff was present at the second course of lectures given in the winter of 1901–1902. After one of the lectures on the Greek Mysteries, this acquaintance came to me and said—well, something of the kind just alluded to! This lady subsequently became a more and more fanatical adherent of the Theosophical Society and was later given a high position in the Order founded to wait for the Second Coming of Christ. At the time of which I am speaking, she came to me after the lecture on the Greek Mysteries and, adopting the air of a really profound initiate of the Theosophical Society about to give evidence of her initiation, said: “You have spoken of Mysteries; but they are still in existence. There are still secret societies. Are you aware of that?”

After a subsequent lecture on the same subject, she came to me again and said: “One sees that you still remember quite well what you were taught when you were in the Greek Mysteries!” That is something which, carried a little farther, borders on the chapter deserving the title of “mystical eccentricities”.

In the autumn of 1901, this lady organised a tea-party. Frau Dr. Steiner always speaks of it as the “chrysanthemum tea” because there were so many of these flowers in the room. The invitation came from this acquaintance of Countess Brockdorff and I often thought that she wanted—well, I don't quite know what it was! The day chosen for the founding of the Theosophical Society was one of special importance for this lady. She may have wanted to enlist me as a co-worker on her own lines, for she put out feelers and was often very persistent—but nothing of any account came of it. I should like, however, just to relate a conversation that took place in the autumn of 1901 between the present Frau Dr. Steiner and myself on the occasion of that “chrysanthemum tea”, when she asked whether it was not urgently necessary to call to life a spiritual-scientific Movement in Europe. In the course of the conversation I said in unambiguous terms: “Certainly it is necessary to call such a Movement to life. But I will ally myself only with a Movement that is connected exclusively with Western occultism and cultivates its development.” And I also said that such a Movement must link on to Plato, to Goethe, and so forth. I indicated the whole programme which was then actually carried out.

In this programme there was no place for unhealthy activities, but naturally a few people with such tendencies came; they were people who were influenced by the Movement of which I have spoken. But from the conversation quoted at the beginning of this lecture, which I had with a member of the English Theosophical Society, you will see that a complete rejection of everything in the nature of mediumship and atavism was implicit in this programme.

The path we have been following for long years was adopted with full consciousness. Although elements of mediumistic and atavistic clairvoyance have not been absent, there has been no deviation from this path, and it has led to our present position.

I had, of course, to rely on finding within the Theosophical Movement people who desired and were able to recognise thoroughly healthy methods of work. The invariable procedure of those who did not desire a Movement in which a healthy and strict sense of scientific responsibility prevails, has been to misrepresent the aim we have been pursuing, in order to suit their own ends. The very history of our Movement affords abundant evidence that there has been no drawing back from penetrating into the highest spiritual worlds, to the extent to which they can now, by grace, be revealed to mankind; but that on the other hand, whatever cannot be attained along a healthy path, through the right methods for entering the spiritual worlds, has been strictly rejected. Those who recognise this and who follow the history of the Movement do not need to take it as a mere assurance, for it is evident from the whole nature of the work that has been going on for years. We have been able to go very, very much further in genuine investigation of the spiritual world than has ever been possible to the Theosophical Society. But we take the sure, not the unsure, paths. This may be said candidly and freely.

I have always refused to have anything to do with forms of antiquated occultism, with any Brotherhoods or Communities of that kind in the domain of esotericism. And it was only under the guarantee of complete independence that I worked for a time in a certain connection with the Theosophical Society and its esoteric procedures, but never in the direction towards which it was heading. Already by the year 1907 everything really esoteric had completely vanished from the Theosophical Society, and later happenings are sufficiently well known to you. It has also happened that Occult Brotherhoods made proposals to me of one kind or another. A certain highly-respected Occult Brotherhood suggested to me that I should participate in the spreading of a kind of occultism calling itself ‘Rosicrucian’, but I left the proposal unanswered, although it came from a much-respected Occult Movement. I say this in order to show that we ourselves are following an independent path, suited to the needs of the present age, and that unhealthy elements are inevitably regarded by us as being undesirable in the extreme.

• 1. Dr. Steiner's articles in Lucifer-Gnosis are collected in the book entitled Aus der Akasha-Kronik. The book was published in English translation by Rudolf Steiner Publications Inc., New York, 1959, with the title Cosmic Memory.
• 2. See inter alia: Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy and Philosophy, lecture 7 and lecture 10; Earthly and Cosmic Man, lecture 1; Earthly and Cosmic Man, lecture 1; The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, lecture 4; Things of the present and past in the Spirit of Man, lecture 5. (The last two lecture-courses are not yet printed but are available in translation as typescripts.) See also Notes at end of Lecture Five.
• 3. Note by translator. Presumably by means of the process known in spiritualism as “precipitation”.
• 4. See notes at the end of Lecture Five.
• 5. The content of this book is included in Die Rätsel der Philosophie.
• 6. Translated with the title, Mysticism and Modern Thought. (Anthroposophical Publishing Co., London and Anthroposophic Press, New York, 1925.)
• 7. Second English edition (revised) 1972. (Rudolf Steiner Press, London)

Yesterday we tried to place ourselves in the position of the developing process of conceptualization and idealization, of the development of concepts about the world and of ideas, and we saw that a certain development can be observed here as well: that, so to speak, from a kind of clairvoyant experience of the concepts, what the Platonic ideas were arises, and that gradually developed that abstract way of thinking which still extends into our own day; but that time is pressing, so that, as it were in a conscious way, living life in concepts is to be achieved again, in order to enter into living spirituality in general, so that what was left behind as dream-like clairvoyance in concepts may be achieved again in a conscious way.

Now we have to look more closely at how, in a very different way, all the highest matters of world existence can be grasped in a time when there was still something of the resonance of the old, clairvoyantly grasped concepts, and how quite differently the highest matters of humanity had to be grasped when conceptual thinking had already become intellectual-rational and abstract. For the questions we spoke of again yesterday, which arose so significantly in medieval scholasticism, these questions could actually only develop naturally in an age in which one was uncertain about the relationship between the world of concepts and the true world of reality. In a time that had preceded Greek philosophy, something like what we have considered the doctrine of universals in re, post rem, ante rem could not have been conceived at all, because the vividly possessed concept leads into reality. One knows that one stands in reality with it, and then one cannot raise the questions that were discussed yesterday. They do not arise at all as riddle questions.

Now, in the early days of Christian development, there was still something of an echo of the old clairvoyant conceptual world, and one can say: when the Mystery of Golgotha went through the development of European and Near Eastern humanity , there were still many people who were really able to absorb the things that relate to the Mystery of Golgotha in echoes of clairvoyantly grasped concepts, which can actually only be understood spiritually. Only in this way can we understand that much of what was developed in the first centuries of Christianity to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha must have been incomprehensible in later times. When the older Christian teachers still used the echoes of the old clairvoyant concepts to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha, then, of course, these clairvoyant concepts remained incomprehensible to the later centuries in their actual essence. Basically, what is called gnosis is usually nothing more than the echo of old clairvoyant concepts. They tried to understand the Mystery of Golgotha with old clairvoyant concepts, and clairvoyant concepts were no longer understood later, only abstract concepts. Therefore, what Gnosis actually wanted was misunderstood. However, it would be very one-sided to simply say: There was a Gnosis that still had old clairvoyant concepts that went back to the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha, and then came the unwise people who were unable to understand the Gnostics. It would be very one-sided to think in such a way. To work in a certain perfect sense with clairvoyant concepts belongs to a much older time than the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha occurred, to a much older time. And these clairvoyantly grasped concepts were already infected with Lucifer, that is to say, the old clairvoyant-conceptual grasping was already permeated with Lucifer, and this Luciferic permeation of the old clairvoyant conceptual system is Gnosticism. Therefore, a kind of reaction against Gnosticism had to arise, because Gnosticism was the dying old clairvoyant conceptual world, the old clairvoyant conceptual world already infected by Lucifer. This must also be borne in mind.

Now I will start with a man who, in the first centuries of Christianity, tried to stem the currents that came from Gnosticism, which had become Luciferian, and wanted to understand the Mystery of Golgotha from this point of view. That is Tertullian. He came from North Africa, was well-versed in the wisdom of the pagans. Towards the end of the second century, after the Mystery of Golgotha, he converted to Christianity and became one of the most learned theologians of his time. It is particularly interesting to take a closer look at him, because, on the one hand, he still had some inner understanding of the old clairvoyant conceptual world from his study of ancient pagan wisdom, and, on the other hand, because, as his conversion story shows, he had the full Christian impulse within him and wanted to unite both in such a way that Christianity could fully exist. To do this, he had to suppress what he perceived as the Gnosticism with a touch of Luciferism in Basilides, Marcion and others. And now certain questions arose for him. These questions arose for Tertullian for a very specific reason. You see, when we begin with spiritual science today, we very often speak of the structure of human nature, of the way in which man first has his dense physical body, which the eyes can see and the hands can grasp; then how there is an etheric body, how there is an astral body, a sentient soul and so on. That is to say, we seek above all to recognize the constitution of human nature. But if you follow the historical development of spiritual life in the centuries since the Mystery of Golgotha, you will find nowhere that the human constitution has been observed in such a way as we do today. This was lost and had already been lost when the Mystery of Golgotha occurred. Those who were touched by the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha no longer knew anything about this structure of the human being. But this presented a very definite difficulty for them. In order to recognize this difficulty, my dear friends, try to connect with your own heart, with your own soul, in order to ask yourself a question. You know that we have tried in many different ways to make clear to you the way in which the Christ, through Jesus, has intervened in the evolution of the earth. But try to understand how the Christ has penetrated the members in Jesus, if you knew nothing of the whole constitution, of the essence of man! Only this made it possible to understand how the Christ, as a kind of cosmic ego, permeates the bodies, so that you first knew something about these bodies. For those who in the future will seek an understanding of the Christ, knowledge of the structure of the human being must be the essential preparation.

In ancient times, when there were still dream-like, clairvoyant concepts, something was known about the structure of the human being; and something had been handed down to the Gnostics, even if it was distorted. Therefore, these Gnostics had tried to penetrate the coming of the Christ into Jesus of Nazareth with the last remnants of the concepts of the human constitution. But the others, to whom Christianity was now to come, and who were taught by their church teachers, knew nothing of this structure of the human being, nor did their church teachers. And so the big, extensive question arose: What is the actual situation regarding the interaction of the Christ nature and the Jesus nature? How is it possible that this Christ, as a divine being, takes hold in Jesus, as a human being? And it is this question that occupies people like Tertullian. Because they lack the prerequisite for understanding the matter, the problem arises for them again posthumously, as it were — but in the case of Christ Jesus it makes them wonder: how are the spiritual, physical and soul actually connected? They did not know how they are connected in people in general, but they had to find out something about how they were connected in the case of Christ Jesus. Because the Gnosticism of that time had a Luciferian bent, it naturally did not arrive at the right answer either. If you recall certain lectures that I have given here recently, you will find that I said that people, on the one hand, come to materialism and, on the other hand, to a one-sided spiritualism. One-sided materialism is Ahrimanic, one-sided spiritualism has a Luciferic touch. The materialists do not come to the spirit, and the Luciferic spiritists do not come to matter.

This was the case with the Gnostics: they did not come to physical existence, to material existence. And if you now look at a person like Marcion, you see: for him there is a clear, a more or less clear concept of Christ, but he is absolutely unable to grasp how this Christ was contained in Jesus. Therefore, the whole process became etherealized for him. He managed to grasp the Christ as a spirit, as an ethereal being that seemingly took on a body. But he could not grasp the correct way in which the Christ was in Jesus. Marcion came to say, in the end, that Christ did indeed descend to earth, but that everything that Jesus experienced was only seemingly experienced; the physical events are only seemingly experienced; the Christ did not actually participate, but was only there like an ethereal entity, which, however, remained quite separate. That is why Tertullian had to turn against Marcion and against the others who thought similarly, Basilides for example. And for him the great riddle arose: How was the divine nature of Christ connected with the human nature of Jesus? What exactly was the God-man? What was the Son of God? What was the Son of Man? — Above all, he sought to clarify these concepts. And so he first formed a concept that was very important and is still important today, which one must understand if one wants to see how manifold the possibilities of error are for man.

Tertullian developed a certain way of thinking. He had to break out of the old, clairvoyant way of thinking and come to a clear understanding of concepts and their relationship to realities, including higher, spiritual realities. I would like to insert an episode here that will help you to see not what Tertullian became aware of, but what dominated his thinking. I will insert a purely intellectual episode, but I ask you to take it very much to heart. I do the following. I write the number 1 and then its double 2, 2 - 4, 3 - 6, etc. And now imagine: I do not stop at all, I keep writing, that is, I write to infinity. How many such numbers would I have written then? Infinitely many, aren't they! But how many have I written here? Have I written a number on the right for every number on the left? Without a doubt, I have written exactly as many numbers on the right as I have written on the left, and if I continue into infinity, there would always be a number on the right for every number on the left. But now imagine: every number on the right is also on the left. But that means nothing other than: I have as many numbers on the right as I have on the left, but at the same time I have only half as many numbers on the right as on the left. Because it is quite obvious that there must always be one in between two numbers that are double, I must have only half as many numbers on the right as on the left. One is always left out, that is obvious, so I can only have half as many on the right as on the left. That is obvious. But consider that one is always missing, that 1, 3, 5, 7 and so on are missing, so half the numbers are missing on the right! So I only have half as many on the right as on the left. Nevertheless, I have exactly the same number of numbers as on the left. That is to say: as soon as I enter infinity, half is equal to the whole. That is quite clear: as soon as I enter infinity, half is equal to the whole – you cannot escape it. As soon as you enter infinity with your concepts from the finite, something like that comes out by itself, that half is equal to the whole. You can write all the numbers on the left and all the square numbers on the right: 1 - 1, 2 - 4, 3 - 9, 4 - 16, 5 - 25. Certainly there is a square number for every number, but as true as many numbers are missing here, it can only be a part. Think about it: after all, it is always only the square numbers.

You can visualize the same thing in another way: I draw two parallel lines here – I have shown this before. How large is the space between these two parallel lines? Infinitely, of course! In mathematics, as you know, this is indicated by this sign: 00. But if I now draw a perpendicular to it, and a parallel at exactly the same distance, then the current space is exactly twice as large as the previous one, but still infinite. That is, the new infinity is twice the previous infinity. You can see this very clearly here: you can see here, by the simplest means of thought, that thinking is only valid in the finite. It is unfounded and without result as soon as it goes beyond the finite. It cannot begin with the laws that it has within itself when it goes out of the finite into the infinite. But you must think of this infinity not only in terms of the very large or the very small, but also within the world of qualities.

This is a triangle, this is a square, this is a pentagon (see drawing), I could make a hexagon, heptagon, octagon and so on, and if I keep going, it will become more and more similar to a circle. If I then draw a circle, how many corners does it have? It has an infinite number of corners. But if I draw a circle that is twice as large, it also has an infinite number of corners, but twice as many corners! So even in the finite, the concepts of infinity are everywhere, so that our thinking can fail everywhere, even where it can encounter the finite, because of infinity, because of the intense infinity. This means that thinking must always realize that it is at a loss and without support when it wants to go out of the finite sphere, which is given to it first, into the infinite.

We must draw a practical conclusion from this. We must really draw the practical conclusion that we must not simply think in this way, that we can go terribly wrong if we think in this way. And among the many negative achievements that can be attributed to Kant, the positive one is that he once gave people a good rap on the knuckles with regard to this nonsense: thinking in this way, going at everything. If you think about it, you can prove that space must have a boundary somewhere, that the world is finite; but equally that it is infinite, because thought becomes unfounded as soon as you go beyond a certain sphere. And so Kant put together the so-called antinomies: how one can prove one thing just as well as the opposite, because thinking is unstable, has only a relative value. One can think quite correctly with regard to one point; but if one is not able to extend it to the other, which is perhaps next to it, one goes wrong if one simply thinks or even just observes at random. In this area, one can really see how little people are aware that one cannot just lash out, neither with thinking nor with observing and with some taking in of what is out there.

Apparently, I am now linking something very metaphysical and epistemological with something very mundane. But it is exactly the same puzzle; it's just a shame that we don't have the time to discuss epistemologically how it is the same puzzle. Mr. Bauer drew my attention to something very beautiful in this direction a few days ago. You know that Pastor R., in his lecture in which he killed off our spiritual science, pointed out that if someone were to go up to our building after it, they would be reminded of old Matthias Claudius by all the incomprehensible people depicted there. And Pastor R. wanted to say that the good old Claudius would have to stand there and say: “Up there, these anthroposophists rule and want to recognize that which can never be recognized!” It is simply not recognizable to people. — And then he quoted Matthias Claudius:

We proud men of the earth
Are vain and poor sinners
And know not much at all;
We spin airy-fairy
And seek many arts
And get further from the goal.

So there we are, because old Matthias Claudius tells us that all people are poor sinners and should not turn their gaze to the incomprehensible and inscrutable. Well, and then good old Matthias Claudius also says, in a nutshell, that Pastor R. is such an intelligent person that he knows that people are poor sinners and know nothing of that which cannot be seen with the outer eye. Mr. Bauer, who was not content with simply listening to these words from Pastor R., opened Matthias Claudius and read the “Evening Song” by Matthias Claudius, which goes like this:

The moon has risen
The golden stars are shining
Bright and clear in the sky;
The forest stands black and silent,
And from the meadows rises
A wonderful white mist.

How still the world is, And in the dawn's embrace, So cozy and so mild! As a quiet chamber,Where you the day's misery Sleepily and forgetfully shall.

Do you see the moon standing there? —
It is only half visible,
And yet it is round and beautiful!
Some things are probably like that,
Which we confidently laugh at,
Because our eyes do not see them.

We proud human children
are vain poor sinners
And know not much at all;
We spin airy-fairy
and seek many arts
And get further from the goal.

And so, poor sinner, Pastor R. is the one who is getting further and further away from the goal! He has simply forgotten that the fourth verse is connected to the third!

As you can see, it is important to try to be comprehensive in your thinking. Of course, if the fourth verse refers to Pastor R. – if Pastor R. identifies with all humble human beings – then the exact opposite can be concluded than if the third verse is added. This latter, trivial example is not completely unrelated to the more metaphysical-theoretical example I have given. It is necessary for people to realize that if they look at something and then think about what they have seen, they may come to the exact opposite of what is really true. And that is what particularly comes to the fore when the transition is to be made from the finite to the infinite or from the material to the spiritual or the like.

Now, someone like Marcion, from his Lucifer-infected gnosis, said: A god cannot undergo the process of becoming human and so forth that takes place here on earth, because a god must be subject to different laws that belong to the spiritual world. He did not find the connection between the spiritual and the material, the sensual. Now there was a debate about this, which no longer existed – Marcion is only externally, physically, recognizable from his opponents, for example from Tertullian – that the whole external physical story of Jesus of Nazareth would not be appropriate for the divine world order; how God could be on earth, that could only be appearance, that could all be without meaning. The Christ would have to be understood purely spiritually. Tertullian said: “You are right, Marcion” — this is now in Tertullian's writings — “you are right when you make your concepts as you make them; these are quite understandable, transparent concepts, but then you must also apply them only to the finite, to the things that happen in nature; you must not apply them to the divine. For the divine, one must have other concepts. And what is the rule, the law, for the workings of the divine, may appear absurd to the finite mind.

Tertullian was thus confronted, not consciously, I will not say, but intuitively and unconsciously, with the great riddle of how far thinking, which is adapted to nature, to natural phenomena, applies. And he countered Marcion: If one applies only that thinking which appears plausible to man, then one can assert what Marcion says. But with the Mystery of Golgotha, something has entered into world evolution to which this thinking is not applicable, for which one needs other concepts. — Hence he formed the word: These higher concepts, which refer to the divine, compel us to believe what is absurd for the finite. In order not to do injustice to Tertullian, one must not just quote the sentence: “I believe what is absurd, what cannot be proved” – but one must quote this sentence in the context in which it appears and which I wanted to make somewhat understandable. That was the main problem that now occupied Tertullian: How is the divine nature of Christ connected with the human nature of Jesus? And here he was clear about one thing: human concepts are not suitable for grasping what happened with the mystery of Golgotha. Human concepts always lead to the inability to connect the spiritual that one has grasped from the Christ with what one must grasp as earthly history in relation to Jesus. But, as I said, Tertullian lacked the possibility of grasping the problem from the constitution of man, as we are trying to understand it again today. As a result, he initially only managed, for the first time, to find, I would say, the surrogate for the concept that we develop when we want to clarify something in a particular place in our spiritual scientific knowledge.

Do you remember a place in our spiritual knowledge that you can find, for example, in my 'Theosophy'? There you will see: first there is the physical body, etheric body, astral body, then: sentient soul, mind or feeling soul, consciousness soul, and finally the individual connections with the spirit self. There are various discussions about how the spirit self works its way into the consciousness soul. But this is exactly the point to consider if you want to look into the abiding of Christ in the man Jesus, if you want to understand this. It is a prerequisite to know how the spirit self enters the consciousness soul in general humanity; it is a prerequisite to understand how the nature of Christ, as a special cosmic spirit self, entered the consciousness soul nature of Jesus of Nazareth. Tertullian only found a substitute for this, and what he formulated as a concept can be understood as saying today: According to Tertullian, there is no mixing between the Christ, corresponding to the spirit self, and the Jesus, corresponding to the consciousness soul and all the lower aspects of being that belong to it. And humanity will only get to know such a connection when the spirit self is properly present. Now we live in the age of the consciousness soul. Each person will have a much looser connection when the spirit self is regularly developed in the sixth post-Atlantic period. Then people will also better understand how differently, for example, the Christ nature was bound to the Jesus nature than, let us say, the consciousness soul was bound to the mind soul. The consciousness soul is, of course, always mixed with the mind soul. But the spirit soul is connected to the consciousness soul, not mixed with it. And this is the concept that Tertullian really developed. He says: Christ is not mixed with Jesus, but connected. The one God-man, Christ Jesus, presented Himself to him in order to illustrate to him once again in the age in which this old conceptual clairvoyance was no longer present how the divine and the physical soul were connected in human nature. The Christ appears before Tertullian as the representative of all humanity. Through the Christ, he studied the constitution of man in order to understand Christ Jesus. The Christ became the center of his entire thinking, which could no longer be applied to the one human nature. And because Tertullian had realized that Christ is not mixed with Jesus, but connected - he could not say as we would say: like the spirit self with the consciousness soul - but he said: not mixed, but connected - through this it emerged for him, that he said: everything that Christ has connected with, also comes from the spirit of the world; that is the father principle in the world. For Tertullian, the Father principle became that which, so to speak, belonged to the earthly manifestation of Jesus. There lies the father principle, the creative principle in nature, that which brings forth everything in nature. The Christ principle united with this, the son principle. Thus it became for Tertullian, and through the father and the son, through the purification of the external, the natural, through the Christ, the spirit arises again, which he calls the Holy Spirit.

Thus, in the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, that which stands as the Christ Jesus, as Jesus emerging from the Father-Principle, as everything in the world emerges from the Father-Principle. Thus, this Christ Jesus, by virtue of the fact that he carried the Christ within him, was the Son emerging from the Father-Principle, who had simply come later, the Bringer of the Spirit — the Spirit, which then in turn comes from him. Thus Tertullian sought to find the way out from the individual human being to the cosmos: to the principles of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Jesus, Father
Christ, Son
Holy Spirit

Now the great difficulty arose for him in making it understandable how three could be one and one three. In ancient times, when there were still clairvoyant concepts, it was not particularly difficult to imagine this. But for the time when everything falls apart through concepts and nothing can be properly connected anymore, the difficulty arose. Tertullian used a nice comparison to make it clear how one can be three and three one. He said: Take the source. From the source comes the brook, from the brook comes the river. If we ask about the river, we say: It comes from the spring through the brook; from the spring through the brook. Or take, he said, for comparison the roots, the shoots, the fruit: the fruit comes from the root through the shoot. — Tertullian needed a third comparison, saying: The little flame of light comes from the sun, carried through the cosmos. Thus, he said, one must imagine that the Spirit comes from the Father through the Son. And just as this trinity – source, brook, river – does not contradict the unity that the river is in reality, so the fact that the Spirit comes from the Father through the Son does not contradict the unified development of Father, Son and Spirit.

So he tried to make clear to himself how the three can be one: like roots, shoots and fruit, like source, stream and river. And he also tried to arrive at a certain formula. By thinking in terms of the father principle – that is, in terms of that which is always the source from which the spirit principle comes through the son principle: the natural, the externally created, the externally revealed; in terms of the son principle, that which permeates the penetrates the externally revealed; and with the spirit principle, that which is brought about for earthly development by both together, he formed a doctrine for himself, but which was basically only a single symptomatic expression of what was developing in general in these first centuries of Christianity among people who, on the one hand, still had something of Gnosticism in them, and at the same time were suffering all the pains and afflictions because Gnosticism was bound to be lost. These people were now trying to come to terms with what Christ Jesus was, and what He had to be in order to fulfill the goal of the Mystery of Golgotha. Tertullian is only one particularly ingenious representative of those who, in the early days of Christianity, tried to penetrate spiritually to what had happened.

Then, out of Christianity, there emerged what you know as the Credo, as the Apostolicum, which was established in the third and fourth centuries and was then also established by the councils. If you study this, as it was in those days, then you will find out: it is basically a defense against Gnosticism, a rejection of Gnosticism, because one sensed the Luciferic factor in Gnosticism. Gnosis tends towards Lucifer, that is, towards a one-sided spiritual conception. It cannot, therefore, come to the Father Principle at all, cannot properly appreciate it. It regards the material world with contempt, as something it cannot use. It must be stated: I believe in God the Father, the Almighty Father – the first part of the Creed. This first part of the Creed is formulated against the contempt for the material, so that even the external, that which is seen with the eyes, is also understood as a divine, and precisely a divine, that emerges from the Father principle.

The second thing was to declare, in opposition to Gnosticism, that there was not only an ethereal Christ in the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, but that this Christ was really connected, not mixed, with the man Jesus of Nazareth. It had therefore to be established on the one hand that the Christ was connected with the spiritual, and on the other hand that the Christ was connected with Jesus of Nazareth, the natural evolution on earth, and that when suffering, dying, rising and all that death, resurrection and all that has yet to take place in imitation of the Mystery of Golgotha, is not something in which the Christ does not participate, but that He really suffers in the flesh. The Gnostics had to deny that the Christ suffered in the body because He was not connected to the body; for the Gnostics, at least for certain Gnostics, it was only an apparent suffering. In contrast to this, it should be stated that the Christ was really connected to the body in such a way that He suffered in the body. So all the events that had taken place on the external physical plane were to be connected with the Christ. Therefore: I believe in Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, born of the Holy Ghost and Mary the Virgin, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, died, rose again on the third day, and ascended into heaven – that is, became spiritual again – and is seated at the right hand of the Father, judging the living and the dead.

One can now say: The Gnostics came closest to the spirit, which is to be regarded as a mere spiritual. But it is spiritual in so far as it now represents a spiritual essence, but must gradually be realized in human coexistence in the social structure that is emerging during the Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan period, where the Holy Spirit is embodied, not now in an individual human being, but in all humanity, in the configuration of society. But it is only at the beginning. However, the Gnostics were the ones who could best understand that something that is only spiritual does not intervene in the material. Therefore, the God of the Gnostics was basically the closest thing to the Holy Spirit. But this Christianity, which wanted to be transferred to earth, which did not want the spirit to be lost to Lucifer, to be seen only as something spiritual in it, this Christianity now also had to define faith in the spirit as something that was connected to the material: I believe in the Holy Spirit, in the Holy Church. — That is now in the Apostolicum, that is, the church as a great physical body of the Holy Spirit. This Christianity was not allowed to regard life in the spirit as something merely inward either, but had to have realized the spirit outwardly through the remission of sins, in that the Church itself took over the ministry of the remission of sins and, in addition, the doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh: “I believe in the Holy Ghost, in the Holy Church, in the remission of sins, in the resurrection of the flesh.

So the Credo is in about the 4th century. So there were nothing but barricades against Gnosticism, and the way these three parts of the Apostolicum are formulated is closely related, as is something like this: the river has arisen from the source through the stream, or: the fruit has arisen from the root through the sprout. During that time there was an enormous striving to grasp how the spirit is connected to the material that spreads throughout the world, how one can think the spiritual together with the material, how one can think the Trinity together with that which spreads outwardly in the material. That is what is sought; it is sought intensively. But when one considers all that lives in the Apostolicum, which today has become completely incomprehensible, one must say: the echo of the old clairvoyant concepts still lives in it, only to die away, and therefore the not the old living forms that it could have gained if one had been able to understand the Trinity and the Apostolicum with earlier clairvoyant concepts, but it is a beginning to grasp the material and the spiritual at the same time.

Today there are very many people who say: Why concern oneself with this old dogmatics? There people have only ruminated with all sorts of crazy ideas, but no one can make sense of it, it is all vain dreaming. If we look more closely, however, we find that behind this vain dreaming there is a tremendous struggle to grasp what had just become relevant for the world through the Mystery of Golgotha on the one hand, and through the loss of the old clairvoyant knowledge, the gradual fading away of the old clairvoyant knowledge, on the other.

Now the development continues, and something similar is happening as has already happened in older times, when out of the one root of the mysteries, where art and religion and science were still one, the three have developed out of each other. Now again that which is in that common root, which one tried to grasp through the Apostolicum, strives apart into the trinity. I will now attempt to describe this further development in such a way as can be presented today without causing too much offence. For if I were to communicate what needs to be said without further ado, many a head would be turned by it.

What started out as a unity developed within Western culture in three separate currents. That is to say, one current was particularly suited to grasp the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, one current more the Son, the Christ, and one current more the Father. And the curious thing is that more and more in separate courses of development the Holy Spirit current, the Christ current, and the Father current are emerging, but one-sidedly. For naturally, it can only be penetrated in its entirety when all three are present. If one develops what is to be understood as a trinity so one-sidedly, then difficulties of development arise; then some things are left out, and others degenerate. Now the following developed: The common development gradually separated in such a way that one developmental stream clearly continued, which was directed primarily towards the Holy Spirit – not as the first in time; the first in time is, of course, the coming together – and this is the one that is still essentially embodied today in the Russian Orthodox Church. However strange it may seem, the essential feature of the Russian Orthodox Church is that it primarily honors only the Holy Spirit. And you will recognize from the way, for example, Solowjew speaks about Christ, that he is primarily well-versed in grasping Christianity from the side of the Holy Spirit. It does not depend on whether he consciously speaks about Christ or not, but on which spirit rules in him, which meaning he connects with the things. What matters is the inner aspect, especially the way in which he inseparably regards the external social order of the church in relation to what is taught and is cult. This is entirely out of the nature of the Holy Spirit. The early Church, however, wanted to avoid this mere knowledge of the Holy Spirit by setting up the Trinity in the Creed and adding the Christ and the Father to the Holy Spirit. But these three must – which is also Solowjew's ideal – come together again in a kind of synthesis.

The second current was the one that was more oriented towards cultivating the Christ; it may have taught all kinds of things about the Holy Spirit, but essentially it cultivates the Christ. It is the church that spread from Rome in the Occident and had the tendency to cultivate the Christ. Think of it: in all areas where this church was active, it basically wanted to cultivate the Christ; wherever you look, there is the Christ. Wherever you look, this church is significant in the one-sided cultivation of the middle article of faith in the Creed. Only in recent times has this church tried to penetrate the Father principle as well. But because they do not know the actual inner connection, they cannot establish the right relationship between Christ and the Father. And this incorrect recognition of the relationship between Christ and the Father is what causes all the discussions in modern Protestantism. It pushes from Christ towards the Father. This can be observed again in our time. The sad events of the present have also brought about the fact that individual souls, rather numerous souls, have been imbued with religious consciousness by these events; this can be proven. But Christ reigns very little in this manifestation of the new religious consciousness; much more the father principle, the general principle of God, by which is meant the father principle. Anyone who is able to observe correctly in the world can see this everywhere. I would like to describe just one small symptom to you. During our last stay in Berlin, a dear member died and was cremated in Berlin. I set the condition – due to the prevailing circumstances it was necessary – that a minister speak. He was a very dear man and very much in agreement with me speaking afterwards. But lo and behold, he now gave a truly soul-stirring speech, and one had the feeling, as he spoke of God the Father, that he spoke deeply inwardly from the soul. And the whole time I listened to him and realized: This is actually a confirmation of what spiritual science in general must show: The Christ has been cultivated, now people have gone astray; when one speaks of religious life, one only comes to the father principle. — Many letters that come from the field, whose writers have deepened religiously, speak little of Christ, everywhere of the principle that must be seen as the father principle. — Anyone who studies this can see this. And then, at the end, because Christmas was just around the corner, the pastor mentioned Christ. This was so far-fetched because, as a Christian, he now thought it might be advisable to speak of Christ. You couldn't find any appeal or meaning in it. — And such phenomena are now increasing every moment.

There is also a third current that cultivates the Father principle one-sidedly. And now you can imagine: the two fundamental pillars that were erected against the one-sided cultivation of the Father principle by the Apostolicum, the Christ and the Holy Spirit, must be left out if only the Father principle is cultivated one-sidedly. On the other hand, the father principle was introduced into the Apostolicum to indicate that the material world is also a divine one. The one-sided father principle is cultivated in the school of thought that ties in with Darwin, Haeckel and so on. That is the one-sided development of the father principle. And no matter how much Haeckel may have resisted it, he was born out of religion. He was born out of religion through the one-sided development of the Father principle, just as other religious currents were born through the one-sided development of the Holy Spirit or the Christ principle.

And basically, it seems rather superficial when people say that the first councils only dealt with dogmatic concepts. These dogmatic terms are not just dogmatic terms, but they are the outward symbol for deep contradictions that live in European humanity, for those contradictions that live in those who are predisposed as Holy Spirit people, predisposed as Christ people, predisposed as Father people. This differentiation is also deeply rooted in the nature of the European world. And to the extent that in the first centuries of the Christian proclamation, people looked at the whole of Europe, they established a creed that encompasses the Trinity. Of course, each one-sidedness can bring the other side with it, but it does not have to. But humanity must pass through many trials, must pass through many one-sidedness in order to find its way out of one-sidedness to totality, to wholeness. And then one must also have the good will to study things in their deeper content, in their deeper essence.

If we study the three layers, the three currents of European intellectual life, which can be characterized as I have just done, in their deeper essence, then we will see that the differentiation has gone deep into the very fiber of people's souls, and we will learn to understand much that, if we do not understand, can only stand before us like a painful enigma. One would like to say: just as unity was presented in the Trinity before Tertullian, so three main European human needs lived in the way the One expressed itself symptomatically in Three, insofar as they were guided by religious life, and something like the formation of the schism between the Western Roman and the Eastern Roman Church, the Roman and the Greek, the Orthodox Church, is only the outer expression of the necessity that lies in the impulse that must branch out in different directions.

In this sense, spiritual science will make many things in human life understandable. In this way, by trying to shine ever deeper light into human interrelationships, into the interrelationships within the whole development of humanity, it is of course quite misunderstood today. For more and more clearly, the time is emerging in the outer world that wants nothing to do with spiritual science, a time in which a deeper understanding of history is no longer sought; in which everyone pursues only what they want to believe to be true according to their subjective beliefs, their personal sympathies or antipathies. Of course, spiritual science is needed precisely in such a time, because the pendulum of development must swing in the other direction. But it is equally obvious that spiritual science will be misunderstood in such a time. And we really must be clear about how much of our time lives in such a way that man does not seek objectivity, the overview, but judges rashly out of his inclinations. It is really the case that, on the one hand, there is a profound necessity to say an extraordinary amount from the spiritual world, but that it is extraordinarily difficult to make oneself understood in our immediate present. Never as strongly as in our immediate present did people live, so to speak, in the general aura, of which they are not even aware. I am deeply convinced, if I may say so, that much in our time must remain unsaid. Many will find it self-evident that they are now suited to hear, perhaps in a smaller circle, what otherwise cannot be said. But this opinion is quite erroneous. Many people may indeed long to hear now something that can perhaps only be said to humanity in years to come. But we must realize that we are living in a time when the judgment is not made only when a word with its meaning approaches our soul, but when the judgment has already been made before the word approaches our soul. In our time, the way in which the word is received is already largely determined by the time the word reaches the ear, and has not yet been received by the soul. There is no longer time to ask about the meaning, so stirred up are people's passions and emotions by the oppressive events we have been plunged into, and many a word could only be tolerated by being spoken in our presence.

We can do nothing else in our presence than to make this clear to ourselves again and again, that it is essential that a number of people are found who stand firmly on the ground of what we have already attained; who stand firmly and faithfully on this ground and can cherish the hope that this firm and loyal standing on the ground of spiritual science can become important and essential for the development of humanity in a certain period of time. The time will surely come when — since many passions have already been stirred up — something like a great question will permeate the atmosphere in which our spiritual-scientific movement lives. This question will not be clearly heard, but perhaps the effects will be clear. Nor will the answers be given clearly in words, but in relation to external events they will perhaps be very clear. Something will be whispered through the spiritual-scientific current without being expressed in words, such as: Should I go with them or should I not go with them? And the answer will also speak of what has driven people out of sensationalism, out of sympathy with the general feelings that arise from spiritual science. It will arise from many secondary feelings, which will push towards an answer that will not be clearly formulated, that will not simply express itself by saying: I liked spiritual science, now other feelings have mixed in, now I no longer like it. Instead, people will appear in masks and seek all kinds of reasons, which they may discuss from many sides. The essential thing will be that one used to like spiritual science, but no longer likes it, which has a lot to do with enthusiasm, sensation, all kinds of sensual lustful feelings and so on. In a sense, precisely out of the emotions of the present, something will arise more and more, such as: I go with - and: I do not go with. - Alone in the inner being, our spiritual science is invincible, completely invincible. And what we have to look for is that at least some are found in whose hearts it is firmly anchored, but anchored not out of sympathy and preference, out of favor and sensation, out of vanity and enthusiasm, but because the soul is connected with it as with its truth, and because the soul does not shy away from difficulties in entering the core of truth in the world. Much will fall away completely; but perhaps what remains afterwards will be all the more significant and certain. This must be borne in mind when it is necessary to emphasize again and again that, until more peaceful times come to our civilized countries, we must renounce much that might be very useful precisely for understanding our present time, but which, because of the nature of our time, really cannot be brought before humanity at this time.

I would like to say these words to explain why some things have only been hinted at, especially in the last lectures. But I would like to add one more thing. Precisely when it is true – and it is true – that we live in a time when the word has already led to judgment before it has even reached the soul, then many can learn a great deal from the events of the present with the tools of what spiritual science already gives them. Much can be learned from what is happening around us, if we look at it more deeply, if we see how today outer humanity has almost completely lost the ability to judge according to any kind of objectivity, how judgments flow only from the emotions, permeating everything in the cultural world. And if you look for the reason why this is so, if you see this reason buzzing in the human aura of the present and then know how the word is already a judgment before it enters the soul, then you can also learn a lot from the events of the present with the instrument of spiritual science. And we should learn if we are to be able to become a tool in reality - as a society for this spiritual science. The example that was given today, how a person who wants to meet our society quotes a fourth verse and omits the third, yes, my dear friends, when you look for the reasons for the opposition that arises against us: they can be found everywhere. They must be sought everywhere in superficiality, in the most enormous superficiality. Everywhere, so to speak, a fourth verse has been seen and a third verse overlooked, figuratively speaking. Only many of us still do not believe that. Many of us still believe that they are doing well when they go to this or that person and tell him: I have become so spiritual through our spiritual science that I even read to my husband fighting out there in the field, and I know that it helps him. – Then, of course, people come and use that against us. Or when people are told what we had to hear, what was passed on as the 'Nathanael story' and so on. That such things should happen at all, that these things should really be passed on from our midst, seems at first to be done with the best of intentions, but with a good will that is connected with a certain naivety, but a naivety that is boundlessly arrogant because it does not recognize and does not want to recognize, but takes himself as a person so seriously that he considers it the most necessary thing in the world to want to convert this or that person – whom, if he were not so naive, he would know cannot be converted. This is so infinitely important that one can understand how, at times, naivety can feel endowed with boundless arrogance and a sense of mission. And as a rule, no one resents the naive person more than the naive person himself, who believes he is doing the very best when, out of a certain enthusiasm, he does the absurd.

And it is indeed necessary, if you take the matter, that we at least gain from spiritual science the ability to think modestly. If thinking can really go so wrong, as I have tried to make clear today, why should we always, when we have drilled this or that into our brains, why should we believe that it is an incontrovertible truth? And why should we then immediately trumpet it out into the world as if we were on a mission? Why shouldn't we decide to learn something real first and to get a certain inner impulse of aliveness from spiritual science, rather than just the one we get when we sip at it? Therefore, the seriousness, the deep seriousness that must permeate us cannot be emphasized enough, and it must always tell us: And no matter how much you believe in your judgment in any given direction, you have to test it, because it could be wrong. If we take all this into account, along with many other things (not everything can be said after all), then, little by little, we will truly be a number of people in whose inner lives what is so impersonal lives, just as the most important impulses must be impersonal in the present, if they are to prevail against the purely personal impulses that permeate and have permeated the world today.

I wanted to speak to you about your souls, since we will not meet for a few weeks now. I wanted to give you a broader perspective in the last hours before these weeks when we cannot speak to each other, by unrolling a page in the original development of Christianity and in its divergence into different currents. I am convinced that no matter how much you study the development of Christianity in past centuries, what has been said today will provide you with a thread that will clarify an infinite number of things for you in outward appearances. And in the outward appearances, if you really look at them seriously, you will find confirmation everywhere of what I could only hint at today. It would be good if we could use something like meditation material that could present us with problems and puzzles for our souls, the solution of which we could each try according to our ability. Of course, some will only be able to do this with fleeting thoughts, for a few minutes, while others will be more inclined to familiarize themselves with something that can provide enlightenment about what has been hinted at. But everyone can be stimulated if they try to develop, as I would say, the surging thoughts that go back through the centuries and yet are essentially involved in what is happening in the present, so that there is a need to understand it. I know that in reality no one understands our painful present without becoming familiar with all the contradictions that have arisen in a completely natural way in the course of European development. But when one compares what is being judged today about the world situation with what is objectively correct and can only be recognized if one knows all the forces that have intervened in the development, and which only the study of history can reveal, including in a spiritual sense, when one compares today's judgments with what leads to real judgment, then one is deeply, deeply pained. Not only do we feel pain, my dear friends, at what is happening today, but also at the difficulties that arise in order to get beyond what is happening today. And we must get out of it! And the better you will realize that a deep spiritual-scientific understanding of the developmental forces of humanity is necessary in all areas, without letting our personal emotions interfere, the more such an understanding of the developmental impulses through spiritual science is striven for, the more you recognize how important it is to recognize these impulses through spiritual science and to awaken them in your soul, the better you will be among those souls who can stand firm on the ground on which one must stand today if what is actually necessary according to the inner demands of human development is to be achieved.

I would like to speak to you about your feelings and emotions, so that spiritual science may enter into them and become firmly anchored in them, and so that there may be people, as there should be and as there must be, if we want to make progress in the evolution of humanity. In all modesty we must think this, but in this modesty we must do it, because it is not suitable to educate us to megalomania, but only to create in us the need to apply as much strength and as much intensity as possible to penetrating what wants to realize itself spiritually in the developmental history of humanity.

Shortly after 1:15, Dr. Steiner begins his announced lecture on contemporary pseudoscience.

My dear friends!

Yesterday I spoke to you about how phenomena such as the book “Sexual Problems in the Light of Natural Science and the Science of the Spirit” by Ernst Boldt and also his recent brochure – this one in particular – “Theosophy or Anti-Theosophy?” can be traced back to a certain school of thought in the present day, and how actually the younger people who want to enter, so to speak, the field of “free writers” are more pitiful seduced people of certain currents of our present intellectual life than people to whom one can ascribe in the fullest sense of the word what they do and write. It does not matter that Mr. Boldt himself may not want to know that he is a student of the “pseudo-science” to be characterized. He has unfortunately become one without his knowledge. Before I move on to a proof of what I have just said, I would like to cite once again a particularly worrying example of what such a training can achieve.

As you know, in the brochure “Theosophy or Antisophy?” the accusation is made against myself - let us say - that I “take on masks”, that I do not tell the 75 percent within our society that have now been sufficiently identified what I myself recognize as the truth, but rather what I believe is suitable for their particular inferiority. You may know from the brochure “Theosophy or Antisophy?” that with regard to this point, special reference is made to my writing “Friedrich Nietzsche - A Fighter Against His Time”, and that the brochure particularly points out that in that writing I represent the Nietzschean point of view with regard to the truth. I must read a few sentences on page 16 of the brochure “Theosophy or Anti-Theosophy?” so that you can get to know the full severity of the accusation expressed on page 16 of the brochure, insofar as it is based on something I am said to have said in my writing “Friedrich Nietzsche - A Fighter Against His Time”:

No matter how correct a thought or judgment may be, if they do not further a matter in a given situation, they are worthless and false at that point; and if certain logical fictions and false judgments can lead to a desired result under certain circumstances, then they are valuable and true at that point. Dr. Steiner himself, in his discussion of this topic, characterized the unconditional striving for truth and truthfulness, as Fichte advocated it, as “superficial,” while Nietzsche's view was “drawn deep from the essence of human nature.

My dear friends, you should consider the full weight of the audacity of such an assertion as has been made here. On pages 9-10 of my essay “Friedrich Nietzsche... and so on,” I have in fact uttered the following words in response to the question of the value of truth, quoting Nietzsche first:

Is it any wonder that we finally become suspicious, lose our patience, turn around impatiently? That we, in turn, learn how to ask questions from this sphinx? Who is it, actually, who is asking us questions here? What in us actually wants “the truth”? Indeed, we stopped long before asking about the cause of this will – until, finally, we came to a complete stop in front of an even more fundamental question. We asked about the value of this will. Suppose we want truth: why not untruth?

This is a thought...

so I now say further,

... of almost unsurpassable audacity. If we compare this with what another bold “thinker and friend of riddles,” Johann Gottlieb Fichte, says about the pursuit of truth, we can see how deeply Nietzsche draws his ideas from the essence of human nature. “I am called upon,” says Fichte, “to bear witness to the truth; my life and my fate are of no importance; the effects of my life are of infinite importance. I am a priest of truth; I am in its pay; I have bound myself to do and dare and suffer everything for it.” (Fichte, lectures ‘On the destiny of the scholar,’ fourth lecture.) These words express the relationship in which the noblest minds of Western modern culture place themselves in relation to truth. Nietzsche's saying quoted above makes them appear superficial. One can object to them: Is it not possible that untruthfulness has more valuable effects on life than truthfulness? Is it impossible that truth can harm life? Did Fichte ask himself these questions? Did others who bore “truth's witness” do so?

When such a sentence is written, it has been wrested from the bleeding heart in order to gain and present an insight. First of all, a relationship is presented – and presented in such a way that something is singled out from the whole of our Western culture that belongs to the very depths of what can be said; and only in comparison with an even deeper psychological search and an even deeper rumination on the values of truth in the human soul does this appear even less profound than the “deeper” one, that is, it appears as the “relatively superficial”. Now, the starting point is taken from what is rooted in the soul as the impulse that makes Fichte seek truth, and it is pointed out - this is implied in the sentence - that in the sense of Nietzsche - who, after all, also lived a century later than Fichte - Fichte's question could and should be asked even more urgently than Fichte did.

However, people do not come close to asking a question of this kind – this must be said! – people who then boast about it by saying:

Those with an eye for nuance and a sense of character will have to admit that this serious accusation does not apply to me in any way.

Anyone with a “finger for nuances” would never dare to quote a passage such as the one on page 10 of my Nietzsche essay in the outrageous way it is done here in the brochure. Such a quotation comes from the school from which these people learn what they are able to learn, not from what should be done within the anthroposophical stream.

Following on from this, let me now ask another question. Is there not a question underlying all these accusations that have been made: Why doesn't Dr. Steiner address certain issues in front of that 75 percent? I have once again tried to find an answer to this question, at least in the sense of the questioner. I leaf through the book “Sexual Problems in the Light of Natural Science and Spiritual Science”. There is a good deal in it about the misunderstood Haeckel and some of it is taken directly from my writings and lectures. Reference is also made to my lectures “Man and Woman” and “Man, Woman and Child in the Light of Spiritual Science”. What is in Boldt's book, insofar as it is based on occult principles, is admittedly borrowed from what I said about the 75 percent of girls' boarding schools, nunneries and the Salvation Army. Mr. Boldt finds what I say about these people good enough to use for the teaching he is counting on. He carries the wisdom of the nunnery to those who, let us say, are unprejudiced. Thus assertions are made. What people do directly contradicts what they say, so to speak, immediately. For how else would Mr. Boldt have taken what he wrote “from the occult point of view” if not from the messages that were given to the 75 percent girls' boarding school, nunnery and Salvation Army? Such logic is the fruit borne by the school from which such writings come. But let us not be surprised that it bears such fruit. If someone talks about “sexual problems” today, it is because he has been influenced by “authorities” in this field, and Mr. Boldt has also been influenced, even if he does not know it or admit it. And who would not know that a much-cited authority in this field is Professor Auguste Forel! I would just like to share with you some characteristics of some contemporary scientific work from Forel's lecture on “Sexual Ethics”, namely from the first half, where ethics in general is discussed. Page 3:

1. Ethics.

Ethics is the science of morals. What, then, is morality? It can be said that morality consists of two things:

1. A feeling: conscience, sense of duty or ethical feeling (altruistic feeling), which tells us: “This you should do and that you should leave.” This feeling is instinctive and consists of a mixture of pleasure and displeasure. Those who develop it feel pleasure when they follow “the voice of conscience” and displeasure when they do not follow it.

Anyone who writes something like this has never taken the trouble to read even a single serious psychological book in our time, even superficially. A person who is an authority in our time speaks in sentences like these:

This feeling...

morality

... is instinctual and consists of a mixture of pleasure and displeasure.

I do not want to say what kind of pain one gets when, somewhat familiar with these things, one has to accept a sentence that confuses “feeling” with “instinct” and then talks about a “mixture of pleasure and displeasure.” The worst kind of amateurism betrays itself at the beginning of the book of a great authority! Then page 4:

But reason and science rebel against the categorical imperative, the longer, the more. Kant, great though he was, was not infallible. The imperative of conscience is not categorical in and of itself, nor is it categorical in any other way than that of the sexual drive, fear, motherly love or other feelings and drives. First of all, daily observation teaches us that there are people who are innately without conscience, who lack the voice of duty.

Let anyone who is considered an “authority” in this field dare – I will ignore all the rest, purely formally and logically – to write the sentence: “The imperative of conscience” – by which he means the Kantian imperative – “is in and of itself no more categorical and no less categorical than that of the sexual urge”! I want to ignore all moral aspects and point out only the perverse logic and phenomenal ignorance in all philosophical matters of a contemporary authority. I want to point out something else and read the sentence again:

Firstly, daily observation teaches us that there are people who are innately unscrupulous and who lack the voice of duty.

I turn to page 7, where the question is examined as to what the “voice of conscience”, the sense of duty, actually consists of:

The sense of duty is, as an inclination, innate, that is, hereditary.

There is only one page in between; on page 4, “authority” denies that it is “innate” because “innate people can be without conscience,” and on page 7 it says:

The sense of duty is, as an inclination, innate, i.e. hereditary. It can be developed or, conversely, dulled by education; but it cannot be acquired, and only brain diseases can destroy it where it is clearly present. That which is acquired or acquired...

There is no way to escape this tangle of crazy contradictions!

...is least the conscience; rather, it is its objects, just like those of the sense of shame.

It goes on to say:

Where does conscience come from, the sense of duty?

On page 8, we read further:

When I feel sympathy or love for a person, an animal, an object, I suffer myself and feel displeasure as soon as the object of my sympathy suffers or is endangered.

You may think: Well, that just slips out of the pen like that! No, it just slips out of the pen like that if you have confused thinking!

Hence the words compassion and sympathy (pain with). I therefore seek to help the object of my sympathy, to save it.

This “object of sympathy” continues to play a role; it is not just a typo here. At best, the word “object” can be used if “people” or “animals” have not been used beforehand. But if you have used “people” and “animals” beforehand and then say “object,” it shows that you have not the slightest sense of clarity of presentation. But the gentleman has something else: strange terms for many things, from which we can learn something in the present. Page 9:

But the necessity for a common defense against enemies led many animals to develop feelings of sympathy and duty towards entire groups, resulting in the emergence of loose societies here and there (swallows, buffalo, monkeys). Finally, certain animal species have developed feelings of sympathy and duty to such an extent that they have led to the realization of anarchist socialism, as is the case with wasps, bees, termites and ants.

I believe that even the less educated will almost turn around when they hear the words “anarchistic socialism”; because it is synonymous with “iron wood” or “wooden iron”. And that Professor Forel has not misspelled it again, but just does not know how to correctly formulate the terms in today's world, is shown by the further remarks, which I will not go into further. Then he continues on page 10:

Thus, humans have instinctively developed feelings of sympathy and duty that were coupled with intensely selfish predatory instincts. The enormous complication of the great human brain has now made things extremely complex. Thus, crime and heroism could develop side by side. We see infanticide, patricide and matricide, robbery, theft, slavery, war and, not to be forgotten, the most abject subjugation of women as objects of purchase and sale or as beasts of burden, the fruits of the egoism of a highly developed, cleverly thinking brain organization.

These are the words you would use in a lecture aimed at an audience you want to speak to in a popular way! You tell them that all these things – these strange, confused phenomena, mixed with all kinds of predatory instincts – stem from a particular complication of the brain organization. Materialism is blackened by this way of thinking, which is devoid of all logic! Continue on pages 11 [and 12]:

It is now as clear as day from this brief sketch, the main features of which we owe to the theory of descent and natural science, that morality can only be relative. It was always relative to the family, to the clan, to the fatherland; it must become relative to humanity. Man's phylogenetic sense of duty (i.e., the instinctive sense of duty inherited from our animal and human ancestors) unfortunately varies greatly from individual to individual.

So now we have inherited a sense of duty from our “animal and human ancestors”! It goes on like this. But this gentleman also quotes out of context. Page 13:

But now another difficulty arises, namely the frequent lack of harmony between the ethical motives of an act and its ideal value. “(I am) part of that force which always wills evil and always creates good.”

These are the words of Mephisto in “Faust”; therefore, he puts “I am” in brackets and then says immediately afterwards:

We often say instead of always,

so he brings a quote so that he has to change it immediately afterwards – and on the same line, because otherwise it wouldn't fit! On page 14, something strange happens that the gentleman and his students don't notice:

Altruism and egoism are only in relative contrast. In ants and bees, they are wonderfully harmoniously adapted to each other instinctively, without ever coming into conflict with each other. This can and should be striven for in humans, however great the difficulties are that his nature poses to this task. For this, a harmonious interaction of hereditary feelings of duty with reason and knowledge is essential.

But this “reason and knowledge” would not exist at all if the strange theories developed here were sound. But they are introduced; just as materialistic ideas are previously introduced into the text, “reason and knowledge” are now introduced. - The following is the author's view of the “nature of morality”, page 14:

I must briefly mention two more points: firstly, morality and social or racial hygiene coincide, ...

Social and racial hygiene and morality are therefore the same: they coincide! This is how he comes to characterize the “essence of morality.” Yes - but they only coincide

... as soon as one understands by hygiene that of the brain, i.e., of the organ of the soul, and subordinates individual hygiene to social hygiene.

Anyone who can still think anything of value in the face of such a sentence is actually hard to find! But these things characterize the thinking of the “authorities” – and are never cited as proof of the scientific conscience that reigns over certain schools of thought in our time. Do not think that this is an isolated example; these things are widespread; and they are significant for a reason that I will explain.

Why are they significant? Well, they stem from an “authority” in the field to which we are referred, from a generally recognized authority, from a man who is much talked about at home and abroad. He is an authority in this field, and he knows everything that can be learned in this field in terms of craftsmanship and natural science. And that is the significant thing, that is what is so bad in our present time: one can actually be an authority in any specialized field today without even knowing the very most elementary basic elements of logic and the very most elementary basic elements of scientific methodology at all; one can pass on to humanity today the most important things that are being researched in such a way that they are blackened into the worst form of nonsense! One often stands before these things with deep sadness. There is an excellent mathematician of the present day, a famous mathematician, to whom the rank of one of the first among mathematicians is not to be denied, Leo Königsberger. Recently I read from him – I am almost ashamed to say it – an “academic treatise” about what mathematics actually is as a science. He refers to Kant, and what he says about the methodological foundations of the mathematical sciences and their relationship to other sciences is the most immature, childish stuff.

That is to say, today, when it comes to accepting things that are there to educate the public about the progress of our intellectual life, you can accept the most childish stuff from the authorities, because people no longer feel obliged, when they step out of their area of expertise, to even know a little about what they want to talk about. Yes, if only they would not talk about it – but, excuse me, that is not an option, because otherwise the gentlemen would have to remain silent about so many things that we would hear little from them!

And now I ask another question. Those who, without knowing anything about the facts of natural science themselves, speak or write about sexual matters or similar topics among younger people today are fed from sources like the ones I have characterized. Let us not be surprised if their heads are in a mess; because with such logic, their heads must be in a mess, as we are dealing with one. And the poor, pitiful victims are innocent, their entire mental life is destroyed by what I have just characterized, which does not stand alone but pours out into literature in a broad stream, which is precisely what our audience feeds on today.

My dear friends, we are dealing today – and as anthroposophists we have to deal with it! – in many fields of today's production, not with 'scientificness', but with 'pseudoscientificness', not to use another word. An example of such pseudoscience is given to you; I could give many.

A certain Dr. Freud in Vienna has founded all kinds of “scientific” things. Among them there is also a “dream science,” the famous Freudian “dream science,” to which much reference is made today. I will pick out just one example from the beautiful “scientific” world that prevails.

From his point of view, Freud finds that every dream is based on a wish; and he finds the theory, which is more convenient than factual, that when a person cannot satisfy a wish in life, and he might be disturbed in his sleep, he then dreams in his sleep that his wish has been fulfilled. So anyone who hopes for something and does not have it dreams - and then sleeps well because they have fulfilled their wish in their dream. Yes, but it is not the case with all dreams that they can be traced back to a hope, to a wish; the facts cannot be treated so simply. In the field of this “science”, a distinction is made between “latent” and “manifest” dream wishes. For example, the following example is constructed. - I take things that have actually been given.

I dream of a person whose name is, say, “R”; but he doesn't look like “R” at all, but like “B” - and “B” is crazy. Now it is difficult to construct the pipe dream here. But Dr. Freud is never at a loss for an explanation. He says: Yes, but the R I dream about secretly wishes he were crazy! If I dreamt about him as he really is, I couldn't dream that he's crazy, because he isn't. So I dream about the other guy, B, who is crazy, because I wish that R would go crazy like B.

Here the latent is separated from the manifest. What is introduced is, to use a nice technical term from Freud, “dream censorship”, and I could cite a nice smorgasbord of such examples from Freudian dream censorship.

Yes, such “scientific rigour” has led to the well-known Freudian “psychoanalysis”, to the fact that the followers of this psychoanalysis attribute various phenomena that occur in the human soul to so-called “islands” or island provinces in subconscious life. So, for example, if there is hysteria or something of the sort, then the person coming to the doctor is examined by being interrogated; but one must interrogate him until one comes upon something sexual. Because these islands are always unfulfilled sexual desires. They go down into the subconscious and stay there until the doctor brings them back up; and until the doctor brings them back up, they are the causes of all kinds of mental disorders, and you cure them by bringing the suppressed sexualisms back up.

I do not want to bring out these suppressed sexualisms present in the subconscious and apply them to the founder of the theory himself; because something strange could come of it if one were to apply this theory to the one who has formulated it, and trace it back to something suppressed inside, to such island provinces that could have accumulated in childhood.

But with these “wishful dreams”, with the “latent” and “manifest” states and with “dream censorship”, we now come to other things, for example to the answer to the question: “Why do so many people dream of the death of close relatives?” - And it is said that now, because as a child one thought, even if one did not love these relatives: “If only he would die soon!” This has gone into the subconscious and comes up again as a latent wish and then comes out later. But it is not limited to childhood; because it also happens in other relationships that people wish each other dead – for example, the younger son, who is not the heir in his family, has the wish that his older brother, who is the heir, may die. He does not admit this to himself when he is conscious, but the dream brings it out. In particular, there are many such island provinces in the human soul in the sense that early-arising sexualism, which the theory of these people, stirs in the first tender childhood, is expressed in such a way that girls love their father and are jealous of their mother, and vice versa, that boys love their mother and are jealous of their father, and that children then wish the individual dead. But this is something that happens quite commonly; for it is to this “commonplace” that the Oedipus tragedy, for example, can be traced. And these people ask: Where does the harrowing nature of this Oedipus tragedy come from? Answer: Because a picture was once used to describe the fact that a son often loves his mother and seeks to kill his father. That is supposed to be the harrowing nature of the Oedipus tragedy. Dr. Unger was hinting at such things when he pointed out the peculiar way fairy tales and myths are interpreted by this school. I could cite several more, even worse examples, but I think this example is enough.

Is this “science”? This is pseudoscience! Inferior science! But it has a large audience today. But it is a source of confusing and misleading immature minds. Let's not be surprised if these immature minds then go around with confused thoughts.

I have allowed myself to cite a particular example of how sexuality creeps into pseudo-science. Of course, an infinite number of other examples could be cited to show how this pseudo-sexual science creeps into public discourse.

My friends! I once said two things to Mr. Boldt because I felt obliged to say them when he wanted to write not a slim volume like “Sexual Problems,” but four or five volumes. I said to him – it was before the little book was written: “Mr. Boldt, don't write that now! When you are ten, twelve, fifteen years older, you will regret ruining your life by writing such stuff in your youth.” On page 12 of the brochure it says:

That is why Dr. Steiner has consistently refrained from speaking since the summer of 1911. I must of course remain silent here about his private comments to me; I can only reveal that they were neither warm nor cold.

I said a second thing to Mr. Boldt on another occasion. I said to him: “You see, Mr. Boldt, to deal with this subject in particular is a dangerous matter, and really only someone who is really at home in the field of research that delves deeper into the secrets of existence, and who speaks about these things from this point of view, can do it; because then one speaks quite differently about these things. And it is the most dangerous subject one can touch upon, for the reason that when the thoughts are directed to this sphere they will always become darkened in a certain respect."

I am touching here on something that would have to be treated at length if it were to become quite clear, but which is a real result of spiritual science. We may dwell on many things about which we seek to gain clear thoughts: The moment thoughts turn to the sexual sphere, however pure the act, it is all too easy to lose control of one's thoughts. That is why those who knew more about the occult side of life veiled this area in symbolism – and in many symbols. And it seems to have been left to the crude materialism of our time to destroy the sacred symbols with clumsy hands, so as not to point out that there are sacred, high realms, and that the lowest of these realms, which is to be sought for us humans - the most particular case - is the realm of the sexual. It seems as if today's crude materialism, with its clumsy, foolish hands, was destined to start from this area and declare the high, sacred areas to be reinterpreted in terms of the sexual area, as you have just seen with Boldt. Things are bad in this area, but we should not be surprised if immature minds are confused by the way things are treated in a literature that is increasingly flooding over us – I have to keep saying it over and over again.

It would be good to call upon history for help here too, and I would like to refer to a book, although I would like to make it clear that I do not agree with some of the nonsense in it. This is a reference to the “Memories and Discussions” that Moritz Benedikt wrote in his book “From My Life”, which was first published in Vienna in 1906. Moritz Benedikt is a gentleman who has grown old and has experienced a lot in terms of the development of scientific life in recent decades; from this point of view, it is extremely interesting to read the book. I would like to quote a passage where Moritz Benedikt talks about his visit to Florence. This visit took place in the 70s of the nineteenth century, which is worth noting. He writes

In Florence, I naturally made personal acquaintances this time, and the most valuable, with whom I maintained contact during visits to Florence and elsewhere, were Mantegazza and Moritz Schiff. Mantegazza was and is a very imposing figure; he instinctively recalled imposing Italian model baritones for the role of Don Juan. He is a master of the art of living. Florence owes its magnificent anthropological and ethnographic museum to this brilliant anthropologist. Mantegazza, who is a witty scientific psychologist, also wrote novels, and the hero of one of them is tuberculosis. His book “Gli amori dei uomini” has become the most popular, having been translated into all languages. No publisher wanted to be named, and the motto “Honny soit qui mal y pense” was emblazoned on the title page.

At that time, no publisher wanted to be named; today it is different!

I reproached him once and told him that I was one of those Honny etc. Mantegazza's book is the most original, ingenious and learned among its peers. But this topic should not be treated in a popular way. Mantegazza apologized to me with the fact that his salary was 5,000 lire without any other academic income. He therefore had to publish a lot, and in such a way that it would bring him a considerable income.

Here you have one of the causes of the sources that confuse our immature minds.

The French forensic psychologists have often and insistently dealt with this topic in the past without causing a scandal, and the same applies to a book by Tarnowsky in St. Petersburg; these authors wrote only for specialist circles.

The literature on sexual perversions grew later, and only British scholars refused to compete, making no secret of their indignation against such authors. When the well-known book by Krafft-Ebing appeared, Hack-Tuke told me that the committee of the British Medico-Psychological Association wanted to propose that the Vienna colleague be deprived of his honorary membership.

In the 1870s, the committee of the British Medico-Psychological Association wanted to propose withdrawing Krafft-Ebing's honorary membership because of his book.

I talked them out of it. I said that Krafft-Ebing had certainly written the book in good faith; he could not have known how far its content would penetrate into young people and even into girls' schools, and I could spare the man the shame. Of course, when the effect became clear, he should not have allowed further editions to be published. Today, the pupils of “higher girls' schools” are more enlightened about these topics of sexual perversity than we were as young doctors, and often I feel like introducing corporal punishment for those “emancipated” teachers who promote such enlightenment.

This was written in 1906 by the truly important criminal anthropologist Moritz Benedikt: that young doctors were recently less enlightened in certain matters than female students at secondary schools for girls are now! Apart from everything else, it seems that it might be better if those who profess such things turn to secondary schools for girls, since they do not want to be a convent, a Salvation Army or a girls' boarding school . No, you see, not even the comparison with the “girls' boarding school” applies, because these are indeed something like higher girls' schools; because according to Moritz Benedikt, you could find things there. So it would be very difficult to get out of the contradictions, which you have to get into if you are put in the position of having to talk about these things.

It would be taking this topic far too far if I wanted to expand it even further in the way I would like to. I just wanted to show you, so to speak, that in such a case we are dealing with people whose minds have been made confused, and we should not be surprised. For there is a broad trend of pseudoscience, and a broad trend, made by scientific authorities – who they really are. For Mantegazza is also a scientific authority, and it is fair to say that Florence owes its Anthropological Institute to him. But that is precisely the sad thing, that today's world has brought it about that all such institutes are in the hands of people who can handle so little true scientific methodology. And we ask ourselves: Should we allow this practice to enter our circles? Or is it not precisely our task to seriously oppose such practice? I think that in relation to this question, no one could actually be in doubt! Anyone who looks through what exists as “sexual literature” today will unfortunately only find this problem discussed in the most pseudo-scientific sense. I often had to drive in the car these days; but I could see from the car “lectures on sexual problems” etc. advertised on the notice boards. Just look at a single notice board: That is the topic of sexuality today, which is popular, which is popular. You can't say that by discussing this topic you are doing something unpopular; oh no, you can rather make yourself “unpopular” if you avoid the topic.

What have I actually wanted to say with all such things? I wanted to say first of all that we have a great need in these matters to see everything in the clear light – to see in the clear light that people like Mr. Ernst Boldt and like Casimir Zawadzki, who was mentioned to them the day before yesterday, including – I don't want to exclude him either – Hans Freimark, are basically poor fellows, pity the poor fellows who also want to write something; and because they have learned too little, they choose what is easiest to write about today – firstly because it is popular and people don't pay attention to the mistakes, and secondly because it is a field in which you can fool people about anything. Just read the second part of our friend Levy's book, the part that refers to Freimark's sexual literature. Basically, one can have nothing but pity for all these people; they can only evoke the feeling: How sad it is what can happen to immature souls today! And if it were not absolutely necessary to point out clearly everywhere where the fruits of what I have characterized emerge – because otherwise the nonsense takes hold – one would remain silent for the sake of these poor seduced people , for the sake of these poor people who also want to write something because they have not learned a trade in life either, one would remain silent for the sake of these poor people - and silently pass over such stuff.

We cannot do that. It is our duty to spread light and truth about things. It is our duty to emphasize that we will never allow ourselves to be forced to talk about this or that - we will not allow ourselves to be forced by anything other than our conviction, which is based on the truth. And how much and in what way I will ever speak about these things, I will make dependent only on my conviction - not on what authorities or immature minds find contemporary.

I understand the compassion and the feeling that one can have for such people. Therefore, I am not surprised that I received the following letter this morning; because I already said yesterday: I consider a person like Mr. Boldt to be honest – like Sophie in The Purple, the one hero of whom she says: “At least he is honest; he” – I will not repeat the word – “characterizes himself clearly enough.” I do not think Mr. Boldt is dishonest; I even subjectively grant him every good will. But where will we end up if we do not shine the light of truth on these things? Do we think we would silently accept a statement in a brochure that “Dr. Steiner has to don all kinds of masks and hides the truth”? What a treasure trove of information for anyone who wants to write new brochures about us! Should we then encourage this? Oh, I believe there are truly souls who would have preferred it if all these things had not been spoken about; and we could have experienced it that there would be all kinds of articles and brochures out there again, and even more so with the expression: “You see, this is said by a man who, even as one of the most loyal followers of Dr. Steiner, publicly professes it! What more could you want?"

I, my dear friends, want more! I want what I always want: not to be revered on the basis of authority, but to be understood! And if I am characterized as Mr. Boldt characterized me in his pamphlet “Theosophy or Anti-Theosophy?”, then, if one continues to speak of worship, one must have the most blind worship of authority and the most blind submission to authority. I thank you very much for such a belief in authority; I do not want it! Because I do not want any belief in authority! Again an example of how people who act in this way in the name of non-authoritarian belief are in harmony with themselves. So I understand a letter like the one I received this morning, instructing me to read the following to the General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society:

My dear fellow thinkers!

Since it is unfortunately not possible for me to attend the General Assembly, I would like to take the liberty of responding in writing to the brochure by Ernst Boldt, which has been discussed several times here in the last lodge evenings. I cannot fully share the position taken towards the author of this pamphlet, although I too am of the opinion that the way in which Boldt presents his case is boorish with regard to the leading ladies, and therefore naturally has to be offensive. Unfortunately, he has only robbed himself of the success of his pamphlet, which contains many good things.

But even if, as I said, the form is nothing short of commendable, it does not seem to me to be sufficient reason to expel Mr. Boldt from our society, as requested; and I think that Theosophists in particular should be able to give credit to a youthful fire spirit and hothead. In any case, they are not the most dangerous opponents (insofar as one can speak of opposition at all here) who openly and honestly express their opinions, and if one wanted to exclude such people immediately, the necessary consequence of this would be to foster dishonesty on the one hand and a lack of critical thinking on the other. And surely we cannot want that!? If Dr. Steiner himself repeatedly calls on his followers to be unsparing in their criticism, then he found this fully compatible with the principle of having trust in his teaching and leadership, and I therefore cannot find the accusation that the booklet contains an insult to Dr. Steiner justified. On the contrary! Even the most cursory glance at it must make everyone realize what a high opinion the author has of Dr. Steiner despite his criticism. I feel obliged to say that I know Mr. Boldt to be one of the most enthusiastic and loyal supporters of the Theosophical movement, and that he always speaks with the greatest reverence and warmth for Dr. Steiner in regard to all the enemies of our great cause. In the good faith that this expression of opinion will not be held against me, I am

Theosophical greetings
Your humble
Ferdinand Freiherr von Paungarten
Munich, January 18, 1914.

As I said, I can understand such a mood - for the reason that people are not inclined everywhere to look into what is important. We must have the deepest, most earnest compassion for all the poor people who are seduced by what I have characterized; and finally: we should always dive down into the depths of existence. Here I would like to ask a question that may perhaps touch on the grotesque: is it really so very important whether people are ultimately outside or inside the Anthroposophical Society? Is it really so essential that we always reflect on the negative sides of these things? Perhaps we would achieve something if we took a more positive view of things!

My dear friends, the mistakes that are made are usually in completely different areas than where you look for them. But let us gradually learn to look for the mistakes in the right area. That is why we have to consciously make mistakes in our task. People may come into our circles for two reasons. One reason will be that these people are able representatives of our cause, and that they in turn want to stand up for this cause before the world. That is all well and good; we need not say any more about this reason. But on the other hand, there is another reason: people come to us who, above all, want to get from us what one can get in a spiritual movement today. We must give it to them; we must give it to them under all conditions, because we are obliged to do so. And even if some of them cause us trouble afterwards, we must give it to them; we cannot simply exclude everyone. Nevertheless, we never make the main mistakes when we exclude people, but we do make them – and we have to make them – when we admit people by accepting this or that person. Once people are inside, it doesn't matter much whether we let them in or put them out. That is not the point. What is important is that we present our case in a positive way. It is important that when someone on the outside, of the kind who fabricates their brochures against me, writes: “He is a hypocrite who only says what the 75 percent of members want to hear,” that the members point out the factual reasons why such a book has not been recommended in our Anthroposophical Society. Our members should point out that we know what we are doing and that we also know how to behave in the right way towards “fashionable science” because we know that it is a pseudo-science, an inferior science, that we do not want to propagate. Let us separate the matter from the personalities altogether! Let us try to do this. If we act in this way in public, when the public approaches us, as has been attempted, and if we derive all the writing from the whole structure of an inferior pseudo-science, if we give these things the necessary dismissal because of their unscientific nature - out of a higher scientific nature - when they knock at our doors, then we have fulfilled our duty, our impersonal positive duty. Let us change the negative approach in this case to a positive one.

Vollrath's case was completely different from Boldt's. And I would regret it if this difference had not been discovered. An honest, stubborn man with a bit of megalomania, seduced by what I have tried to characterize, comes to us in Mr. Boldt - seduced by what we must fight against in the most severe way. Not only today - we must always stand up with our whole personality when it comes to taking action against these things. But we need to know how we stand as an Anthroposophical Society! To do this, we need to know a number of things. For example, we need to know: How does the Society relate to the fact that the two Munich ladies who form the board of the first Munich branch initially did not display the announcement of Boldv's book and did not promote the book? That is how the matter began. We know from the letters that our esteemed and dear director Sellin was taken ill for speaking his mind to the young man. That is the matter. And we heard yesterday from director Sellin that he has also told the young man his opinion about the book before. Yesterday we heard from this place that Mr. Boldt's “Philosophical Theosophical Publishing House” was asked to take this book on commission. Miss Mücke rejected this with indignation. I also believe that Miss Mücke objected to the fact that someone was asking her to take this book on commission.

I will pick out these four examples; but there is one thing we need to know about these four things if we want to achieve something positive in this area. We can ignore Mr. Boldt, as we have ignored him so far. But we do need to know whether what is happening is happening in the interests of our members. We need to know where the dividing line lies between the 75 percent and the 25 percent who are clenching their fists in their pockets. Clarity and truth must prevail!

It is not without reason that I have asked not to be something like I was before, when I was limited as “General Secretary” of the section in terms of submitting proposals and the like because I was General Secretary. You have indeed elected me as the chairman of this meeting; but this only applies to this meeting; it is a purely administrative office that has nothing to do with the Society as such. In relation to the Society, I am a private individual, and I am therefore allowed to make proposals now.

I would now like to make a proposal that puts us on positive ground with regard to this point, which we have talked about so much. I cannot go into all the details of the many excellent things that people have said here; I have only set four “examples”. And I believe we must now ask ourselves the question: How should the two Munich ladies have acted when in 1911 the pretender approached them to propagate the cause and to lay out the announcement? — They should have acted as they did! And our conversation will surely have shown that they acted correctly. But one must know how society thinks about it.

Our friend, Director Sellin, did the right thing when he went to the man and made him aware of his immaturity. I am convinced that Mr. Sellin has the deepest compassion for the deeply honest Mr. Boldt.

And Miss Mücke certainly has nothing against Mr. Boldt's personality; she is probably indifferent to it. She has expressed her indignant rejection of the brochure for factual reasons.

But all these are manifestations of the will of individuals. It is important that we clarify our position on such matters, that we put the positive above all else in relation to this matter. Therefore, I would like to ask you to consider the following proposal:

The General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society, which has been meeting in Berlin since January 18, 1914, declares to the Executive Council of the Working Group I in Munich that it is in full agreement with the latter's attitude towards the 1911 essay “Sexual Problems in the Light of Natural Science and Spiritual Science” by Ernst Boldt 1911 – that after the negotiations that have been conducted on widespread pseudo-science of the present day, it has come to the conclusion that it is in the interest of truly spiritual cultural interest to protect such a position of the two board members by the fullest confidence of the General Assembly. This trust and the recognition for the rejection at the time is expressed to the board of the Working Group I in Munich, as is the same to Director Sellin for his fatherly advice, which he gave to those who were going astray scientifically in the past and are doing so again - The assembly expresses its agreement with the rejection of the brochure “Theosophy or Antisophy?” by Miss Mücke, the director of the “Philosophical Theosophical Publishing House”.

My dear friends, those of you who will adopt this resolution will have expressed in a positive way how you feel about these matters – and need do no more than continue what has been done so far in relation to this matter.

The “resolution” will be read again in the above version.

Dr. Steiner: If we adopt this resolution, then we will know how the matter is viewed, and we will also have addressed the right people. Because it will gradually become more and more necessary that those who have to act in our society can also know whether or not they have the confidence of the members; otherwise it will always be repeated that one - well, that one “elects” the people again, but everywhere this or that is “rumored” here and there. It does no harm if we occasionally express to those who have offices to administer that we agree with them. It does no harm if we occasionally openly confess it to the world. I would not want to fail to explicitly express to Mr. Boldt that I am personally extremely sorry that the whole thing happened to him, and that I can put myself in the shoes of someone who has read too much confusing stuff and then comes to such arguments as the good man has done.

Since no one wishes to speak about this resolution, we will vote on it: It is adopted without any opposing votes.

Dr. Steiner: And this time it is necessary that I also ask those who voted neither for nor against, who thus sat with clenched fists in their pockets both times, who thus belong to the 25 percent of Mr. Boldt's group, to raise their hands.

No one raises their hand.

Dr. Steiner: I must therefore note that no one from the 25 percent has appeared here. Of course, what we have decided here regarding the Boldt proposal in no way prejudices the decision of the Munich Working Group I. The group is autonomous and can do as it wishes. We have only decided for the “Anthroposophical Society”.

Ms. Stinde: The Munich group has not yet made any decision. It is true that a motion for expulsion was tabled, but I suggested waiting until after the General Assembly and then putting the motion forward again because many members had not even read the brochure. I asked that the brochure be made available so that everyone could inform themselves and take a stand when we returned. Mr. Boldt has not yet been expelled, and it is up to the Munich group to decide whether or not they want to expel him. I said at the time that we would quietly accept the insults that Mr. Boldt had poured out on the board in his brochure, that he could write many more such writings, and that the members probably think the same way and therefore would not expel him yet. The reason why expulsion was requested was the gross insults against Dr. Steiner, and on this point we do not yet know what will happen. - I would also like to thank you for the trust that has been expressed to us. But I have to say: even if you had not approved us - we could not have acted differently than we did.

Mrs. Peelen: In his last document, Mr. Boldt pointed out that the Koblenz Lodge had recommended its members to buy his book. This is only half the truth; and because it could be construed as an indictment of the Munich ladies' actions, I feel compelled to say a few words on the matter.

Mr. Boldt's father had been a member of the Koblenz lodge for years. He honored us, my husband and me, with his trust and told us a lot about his—we may say—unfortunate son, who also caused him serious concern in terms of his health. So we had to bear with him and also learned from him that his son was working on a larger work. He also read us letters from him in which the son wrote in detail about his work and also mentioned what we had just heard: that Dr. Steiner himself had told him to wait another ten years before publishing, because he was still too young. In short, we followed the creation of the book with our father and shared in his suffering. Now the book was published. Naturally, our father brought it to us beaming with joy, so to speak, and immediately gave it to the lodge as a gift. We had not read the book, knew nothing of its content, nor did we know that Mr. Boldt – as he used the expression – had been “boycotted”, so to speak. But when our father put the book on the table, I felt it necessary to say a few words about it. Mr. Boldt probably took this the wrong way and repeated it as a half-truth, as if we had recommended his book to the members. But none of our members have read the book; it is still untouched in the library to this day.

Director Sellin: I would like to take the liberty of following up on Ms Stinde's comments: I did not simply make a general request for expulsion, but rather I gave Mr. Boldt the opportunity to withdraw his insults. Exclusion was made dependent on this. In the preface to his brochure, Mr. Boldt then said that if this writing did not receive the proper recognition, he would incorporate it into a larger work. That is a threat. Therefore, a somewhat forceful approach had to be taken. This took the form of him having to take back what he had said. Dr. Steiner is quite right when he says that I personally have nothing against Mr. Boldt. Mr. Boldt is ill and suffers from lung disease; I have the warmest sympathy for him. And when he suffered so severely this summer, I often went to him and helped him with my modest healing powers. He also said that I had brought him some relief. And during the conversation in question, I did not speak in a frivolous manner, but I calmly told him what he had done wrong. I also said to him, because he constantly quotes Nietzsche: “Leave us alone with your quotations. It sounds as if Nietzsche were the supreme theosophist for us, to whom we have to look up!” I told him many bitter things, for example: “If I had received such a manuscript earlier in my position as editor, it would have gone straight into the wastepaper basket!” But I told him this in a very calm manner. Now that he has heard this judgment, he may now reflect. He will gradually realize that he will not find any support in our society with his fantasies about sexual problems.

Dr. Steiner: It is clear that in this case we really have to stand on the ground that is appropriate for a spiritual scientific movement. I did not say in vain that Mr. Boldt is no different today than he has always been since he has been with us, that he will not be a different person when he is inside or outside - just as Zawadzki was exactly the same when he was still in the Society; he was no different than he is now that he is outside. Of course, he writes differently now than he would write if he were in society; but that doesn't matter, he is not a different person. But we should pay a little attention to the nature of the human soul; that is what matters. And if you consider that over the years a great deal has been done to help Mr. Boldt, to give him advice in a wide variety of directions, so that if the young man waited ten years and learned in those ten years what he had not yet learned while writing his book, then he could really believe that he would achieve something. I really believed at the time that after ten years he would regret – I did not say that lightly – having written such a thing, because he would have learned something.

When you consider this, why should we today have to exclude from society someone who behaves in this way? This case is quite different from those in which we have resorted to something else in the past. So I believe that we should refrain from excluding Mr. Boldt. And if in the future he attaches importance to participating with the girls' boarding schools, Salvation Army and convents in what he calls “the fruits of spiritual science,” I believe that we will enable him to do so with the same love as we have done so far. But if he comes at us again with his writing in the future, we will be able to draw some conclusions from these negotiations after what we have experienced.

Mr. Bauer reads the following resolution:

The Second General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society rejects with indignation the way in which Mr. Boldt has spoken about Dr. Steiner in his brochure “Theosophy or Anti-Theosophy?” as a serious insult to both Dr. Steiner and the Society.

Mr. Bauer: If trust has already been expressed to those who have worked positively, then something positive should also be expressed on our part – which could perhaps be poured into other forms – about how we stand in relation to Dr. Steiner regarding the insults heaped upon him in this brochure through the quotations and the whole way of presenting them. So the intention of this resolution was to achieve a kind of rallying cry, to show how we stand before and after - and even more so after - with complete trust and loyalty to the teacher of our movement.

Dr. Steiner: I think we need to have variety in our negotiations, and I do not think it is appropriate to take up all the time with one part. Therefore, we now want to insert something else and postpone the business negotiations until tomorrow morning.

The conclusion of the protocol will follow in the next issue of the messages.

In coming together in our group meetings we can speak more precisely about things than is possible in public lectures and written works. Today I would like to present supplementary considerations to add to what is to be found in the books and cycles of lectures.

You can imagine, my dear friends, that life between death and a new birth is as rich and varied as life here between birth and death, and that whenever one describes what happens after death one can obviously only deal with certain aspects. Today I will not touch so much on what is already known, but draw attention to what can shed further light upon it.

If one is able to look into the spiritual worlds where man dwells between death and a new birth, then particularly in our time the necessity of what is intended with our spiritual scientific work is confirmed, that is, the need to give something to the hearts and souls of men by way of spiritual science.

Let us take our starting point from a particular instance. A man died. He loved his wife deeply and was much attached to his family. Spiritual observation showed that he suffered deeply from the fact that when he looked down on the earth he was unable to find the souls of his wife and children. Now in the manner of which the seer can enter into communication with a person after death, the man informed the seer that with his thoughts and with all his feelings he was able to relive the time when he was united with his beloved on the earth. But he added, “When I lived on earth my wife was like sunshine to me. Now I must forego this. I am able to direct my thoughts back to what I have experienced but I cannot find my wife.”

Why is this? For this is not the case with all who pass through the gate of death. If we were to go back several thousand of years, we would find that the souls of men were able to look down from the spiritual world and participate in the affairs of those who remained behind on the earth. Why was this the case for all souls in ancient times before the Mystery of Golgotha? In ancient times, as you know, men so lived on the earth that they still possessed an original clairvoyance. They not only saw the sense world by means of the eyes. They also gazed into the spiritual origins, into the archetypal beings behind the sense world. The capacity to live with the spiritual world during physical existence brought with it the ability of the soul to perceive what it had left behind on the earth after death. Today souls no longer have the faculty of living directly with the spiritual world because the evolution of humanity has consisted in man's descent into physical existence out of the spiritual world. This has resulted in the faculty of judgment and so forth, but it has robbed man of the faculty to live with the spiritual world.

During a period immediately following the Mystery of Golgotha when souls were deeply moved by the Christ impulse, at last a part of mankind was able to regain this faculty to some extent. Now, however, we again live in an age when souls who go through the gate of death and have not concerned themselves with the realities of the spirit lose the connection. Mankind needs a spiritual revelation and we can have a justified conviction that it should permeate human souls. Today the old religious confession does not suffice. Souls who seek to gaze down spiritually from the other world to ours need what they can receive by means of a spiritual scientific understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. It is therefore our endeavor that spirit light may develop in their souls.

The man of whom we have spoken had not concerned himself in any way with thoughts or feelings about the spiritual world. He went through the gate of death but no thoughts of the spiritual world had occupied his mind. He therefore was able to say, “I know by means of my memory that my wife is down there. I know she is there, but I cannot see her, cannot find her.”

Under what conditions would he have been able to find her? At the present time only such souls can be perceived in whom spiritual faculties dwell. Such souls can be seen from the other world, souls in whom thoughts live with understanding for the spirit. As the dead one gazes down, a person who has remained behind on the earth only becomes visible for him when spiritual thoughts live within the soul of that person. The dead person sees these thoughts. Otherwise the person remains invisible and the dead one suffers from the anguish of knowing that the person is there but he is unable to find him. As soon as one succeeds in conveying to such a soul thoughts concerning the spiritual world, however, the soul of the one who remains behind on earth begins to light up, to exist for the dead.

Do not object by saying that it is an injustice that people who have no spiritual thoughts here on earth, and perhaps it is not even their fault, should remain invisible to the dead. If the world were arranged otherwise, man would never seek to strive for perfection. Man has to learn by what he foregoes. Such a soul, as a result of the pain and loneliness it suffers during life between death and rebirth, is given the impulse to receive spiritual thoughts. From this aspect we see that spiritual science is like a language by means of which the living and the dead may understand one another, and can be present for and perceptible to each other.

Spiritual science has yet another mission in connection with bridging the abyss between the living and the dead. When human souls go through the gate of death they enter a realm where the connection with life on earth is maintained by the recollection of what has happened there. I am not repeating what can be found in my written works. What I am now saying is intended as a supplement. For a long period after death man re-experiences what has happened on earth and has to rid himself of the longing for his physical body. During this time he learns to live as a soul-spirit being. Let us vividly imagine how this appears to super-sensible perception. To begin with, the soul has a connection with itself. One sees one's own inner life that has run its course in thoughts, in mental representations, etc. One recalls the relationships one has had with his fellow men.

If one seeks to look down upon it, the earth offers a special aspect. One has the urge to look down. The urge to remember the earth accompanies one throughout the whole of life between death and a new birth. As long as man is called to journey from life to life the consciousness remains that he is destined for the earth, that he must return again and again to the earth if he would develop himself rightly. We can see this with the dead because if he were to lose completely the thoughts that link him to the earth, he would also lose the thought of his own ego. Then he would no longer be aware that he is, and this would result in the most dreadful feeling of anguish. Man must not lose his connection with the earth. The earth must not escape his mental representation, so to speak. In general, too, the earth cannot completely disappear from him. It is only in our period of the materialistic deluge, during which the spiritual revelation has to come so that the link between the living and the dead may be maintained, that souls having no connection with people who have spiritual thoughts and feelings on earth find it difficult to look back.

It is important for the dead that those with whom they were connected on earth carry every evening thoughts of the spiritual world with them into sleep. The more thoughts about the spiritual world we carry with us into sleep, the greater the service we perform for those we have known on earth who have died before us. It is difficult to speak of these connections because our words are taken from the physical plane. In the spiritual world that we bring with us as spiritual thoughts in sleep is the substance by means of which, in a certain sense, the dead can live. One who died and has no one on earth who carries spiritual thoughts with him in sleep is famished and may be compared to one banished to a barren island on earth. The dead person who cannot find a soul in whom spiritual feelings dwell experiences himself as if in a desert void of everything that is needed to sustain life. In view of this, one cannot stress too much the earnestness with which thoughts of spiritual science should be taken in a period like our own, when world-conceptions that are alien to the spirit gain the upper hand more and more.

It was different in past times when an evening prayer was said before going to sleep and its after-effects accompanied one. Today it is more likely than not that a person falls asleep after a meal or some other form of enjoyment without a thought devoted to the super-sensible. In this way we rob the dead of their spiritual nourishment. Such insight should lead to the practice, proven to be effective by many of our friends, that I would like to term, the reading to the dead. To read to the dead is of untold significance.

Let us assume that two people lived side by side here on earth. The one finds his way to spiritual science out of a deep, heartfelt impulse, the other is increasingly repelled by it. In such a case little is achieved in attempting to bring the person to a spiritual concept of the world during life. In fact, one's endeavors in this direction may indeed cause the other to hate it all the more. Now when such a person dies we have the possibility of helping him all the more.

What lives in our soul is exceedingly complex and the area bounded by our consciousness is only a small part of the total content of our soul life. Man does not know much of what lives in his soul and often something is present that he takes for the opposite of what is actually there. Thus it can happen that a person comes to hate spiritual science. He becomes aware of this with his consciousness. In the depths of his soul, however, this can reveal itself as an all the more profound longing for spiritual science. When we have gone through the gate of death we experience the depths of our soul existence that come to the surface. When we meet the dead we have known on earth, they often show themselves to be different from what they were on earth. A person who has hated spiritual science with his normal consciousness but longed for it in the depths of his soul without being aware of it will often display this longing powerfully after death. We can help him by taking a book with a spiritual—scientific content, forming a vivid inner picture of the one who has died, and reading to him as we would to a living person, not with a loud voice, but softly. The dead can understand this. Naturally, those who have made a contact with spiritual science during their lifetime understand it all the more readily. We should not fail to read to the dead or converse with them in thought. I would like to draw attention to a practical matter, namely, that for a number of years after death, for a period of some three to five years, a person can understand the language he has spoken on earth. This gradually wanes, but he preserves an understanding of spiritual thoughts. Then we can also read to the dead in a language that he did not understand on earth but that we have ourselves mastered. In this way we can perform the greatest service to the dead.

It is particularly in such realms that one realized the full significance of spiritual science because it bridges the gulf between the living and the dead. We can imagine that if we succeed in spreading spiritual science on earth in ever wider circles, more and more souls will become conscious of a communion with the dead.

Thus for a period after death man is still directly connected with the earth. Then he has to grow into and become a citizen of the spiritual world. This requires preparation. He first must possess a sensitivity and understanding for the spiritual world. Spiritual investigation observes a considerable difference after death between souls who have cultivated moral feelings and inclinations on earth and those who have failed to do so. A person who has not developed moral feelings on earth becomes a hermit after death. He will be unable to find his way both to other human beings and to the higher hierarchies. Consciousness is not extinguished then, and what awaits man is a sense of utter loneliness. From a certain period called the Mercury period onward man gains the possibility of living together with other beings by virtue of his moral life. We may say therefore that the way a person lives on earth determines his existence in the Mercury sphere, determines whether he experiences a dreadful hermit-like existence or establishes contact with other human souls or the beings of the higher hierarchies.

This is followed by another period during which man must be differently prepared if he does not again condemn himself to loneliness. Loneliness comes to pass if he has not developed any religious feelings here on earth. This period is called the Venus period. There a person who has failed to develop religious feelings experiences himself as blind and dead in relation to everything that surrounds him.

In a subsequent period, so as not to remain insensitive toward the beings of the higher world, a preparation in the complete appreciation of all religions is necessary. That is the Sun period. We prepare for it here on earth by an understanding for all that is human, and for the different religious denominations. In former times in the Sun period it sufficed for one man to belong to the Brahma religion, for another to that of Lao-Tse, and so forth. Today, however, because times have changed men stand opposite one another through their religious creeds and therefore the Sun period cannot be rightly experienced. For this a spiritual sensitivity is needed.

In the Sun period, which man has to traverse between death and a new birth, it is as if one entered into a world where one found a particular place empty or filled, depending on one's preparation. We do not find the place empty if we understand the Mystery of Golgotha. The Christ impulse affords the possibility of understanding every human experience. Christianity is a general religion, valid for all people. Christianity is not limited to a particular folk, race or nationality, as is the case with Hinduism and other national religions. Had the people of middle Europe preserved their old folk religion, we would still today find a Wotan cult, a Thor cult, and so on. But the European people have accepted the Christian creed. One is not a Christian in the true sense because one adheres to one or the other Christian dogma, however, but because one knows that Christ died for the whole of humanity. Only gradually will people learn to live truly as Christians.

In our time most Europeans in India pay mere lip service to their own belief. The attitude that one should develop is that wherever we meet a human being in the face of the earth the Christ impulse can be found. The Hindu will not believe that his god dwells in every man. The Christian knows that Christ lives in every human being. Spiritual science will reveal that the true core of all religions is contained in a rightly understood Christianity, and that every religion, inasmuch as it becomes conscious of its essential kernel, leads to the Mystery of Golgotha.

In considering other initiates or religious founders it is evident that they seek to reveal certain things out of the higher worlds because they have gone through a process of initiation. We do not understand the Christ correctly if we do not clearly see that the Christ has not gone through one or the other form of initiation on earth. He was initiated by virtue of the fact that He was there and united everything within Himself.

When the seer looks at the life of the Buddha and then follows it through in the spiritual world, he realizes more clearly the true nature of the Buddha. This is not so with the life of Christ. The Christ life is such that one must first establish a connection with it on earth in order to understand it in the spiritual world. If one does not gain such a connection and one is nevertheless initiated, one can behold many things, but one cannot see the Christ if one has not first gained a connection from Him on earth.

That is why so few people understand the Mystery of Golgotha. The Christ is a Being who is of equal importance for the most primitive human being and for the highest initiate. The most primitive soul can find a relationship to Christ, and the initiate must also find it. One learns to know many things when one enters into the spiritual world. There is only one thing that does not exist there, one thing that cannot be learned there and that is death. Death exists only in the physical world. In the spiritual world there is transformation but not death. Therefore, all the spiritual beings who never descend to the earth and only dwell in spiritual realms do not go through death.

Christ has become the companion of man on earth and the event of Golgotha, if one understands it as the unique death of a god, is what prevents us from confronting emptiness in the Sun period. The other initiates are human beings who through a number of incarnations have developed themselves in a special way. Christ had never been on the earth before His advent but dwelt in realms where there is no death. He is the only one among the gods who has learned to know death. Therefore, in order to become acquainted with the Christ one has to understand His death, and because this is essential the Mystery of Golgotha can be understood only on earth where death exists. We do not experience the Christ in higher worlds if we have not gained a relationship to Him on earth. We find His place empty during the Sun period. If, however, we are able to take the Christ impulse with us, then the throne in the Sun is not empty. Then we find the Christ consciously.

During our present phase of human evolution it is important that we should find the Christ in the spiritual world at this stage and recognize Him. Why? In the Sun period we have gradually entered a realm in which we are dependent on spiritual light. Previously, before the Sun period, we still experienced the after-effects of the earth, the after-effects of what we have been personally, including our moral and religious feelings. Now we require more than these. Now we require the faculty to see what is in the spiritual world, but this cannot be prepared for on earth. We have to journey through realms of forces of which we cannot know anything here on earth.

As he enters into life through birth, man has not as yet got a developed brain. He first must form it in accordance with the achievements of previous earth lives. For if one needs a particular faculty it is not sufficient that one has acquired it. One also has to know how the requisite physical organ has to be formed.

There exists an important but dangerous leader. Here on earth he remains unconscious, but from the Sun period onward he is necessary. The leader is Lucifer. We would wander in darkness if Lucifer were not to approach us. However, we can only walk beside him if we are guided by the Christ. Together they lead man after the Sun period in subsequent forms of life, that is, through the Mars, Jupiter and Saturn periods. During the times following the Sun period, man is brought together with forces that he requires for his next incarnation. It is sheer nonsense to believe as materialistic science does that the physical body is inherited. Today science cannot see its error but spiritual truths will be acknowledged in the future and the fallacy, too, will be recognized. For nothing can be inherited apart from the basic structure of the brain and the spinal cord, that is, everything that is contained within and bounded by the hard skull cap and the vertebrae of the spinal column. Everything else is conditioned by forces from the macrocosmos. If man were only given what he inherits he would be a totally inhuman lump, so to speak. The inherited part has to be worked through by what man brings with him out of the spiritual world.

Why do I use the terms Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn for the periods after death? When man has gone through the gate of death he expands more and more. In fact, life after death is such that one knows oneself to be spread out over a vast space. This expansion goes so far that one finally occupies the space bounded by the orbit of the moon. Then one grows out to the orbit of Mercury in the occult sense, then out to the orbits of Venus, Sun and Mars. One grows out into the vast celestial spaces. But the spatial togetherness of the many human souls is not significant. When you permeate the whole of the Venus sphere this is also the case for the others, but it does not mean that because of this you are aware of them. Even if one knows that one is not alone, one can still feel lonely.

Finally one expands into the universe in a sphere circumscribed by the orbit of Saturn and beyond. As one grows in this way one gathers the forces needed to build up the next incarnation. Then one returns. One becomes ever smaller until one unites oneself again with the earth.

Between death and rebirth man expands into the whole cosmos and however strange it may appear, when we return to the earth we bring all the forces of the solar system with us into life and unite them with what is inherited out of the physical substances. By means of the cosmic forces we build up our physical body and our brain. Here between birth and death we dwell within the narrow confines of our physical body. After death we live, expanded, into the entire solar macrocosm.

The one person has a deep moral sense, the other less so. The one who on earth had a deep moral sense goes through the spiritual world in such a way that he can experience everything as a sociable being. The power for this flows from the starry realms. Another who is not thus prepared is unable to make any connections and because he did not bring any spiritualized forces with him, he also is unable to receive any moral predispositions. He will journey alone through the various spheres. Such spiritual knowledge throws significant light on everything that a man is and on his relationship to the world.

Kant uttered the saying, “There are two things that fill my mind with an ever new and increasing sense of wonder and devotion: The starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” He thereby expressed something significant. Spiritual science reveals that both are one and the same. What we experience between death and rebirth we bring with us as moral law. We carry the starry heavens through which we journey between death and a new birth into our earthy life where it must become moral law.

Thus spiritual science brings us insight into the magnitude of the human soul and the idea of human responsibility.

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.

Yesterday we discussed the nature of will in so far as will is embodied in the human organ. Today we will use this knowledge of man's relationship to will to fructify our consideration of the rest of the human being.

You will have noticed that in treating of the human being up to now I have chiefly drawn attention to the intellectual activity, the activity of cognition, on the one hand, and the activity of will on the other hand. I have shown you how the activity of cognition has a close connection with the nerve nature of the human being, and how the activity of will has a close connection with the activity of the blood. If you think this over you will also want to know what can be said with regard to the third soul power, that is, the activity of feeling. We have not yet given this much consideration, but today, by thinking more of the activity of feeling, we shall have the opportunity of entering more intensively into an understanding of the two other sides of human nature, namely cognition and will.

Now there is one thing that we must be clear about, and this I have already mentioned in various connections. We cannot put the soul powers pedantically side by side, separate from each other, thus: thinking, feeling, willing, because in the living soul, in its entirety, one activity is always merging into another.

Consider the will on the one hand. You will realise that you cannot bring your will to bear on anything that you do not represent to yourself as mental picture, that you do not permeate with the activity of cognition. Try in self-contemplation, even superficially, to concentrate on your willing, you will find that in every act of will the mental picture is present in some form. You could not be a human being at all if mental picturing were not involved in your acts of will. And your willing would proceed from a dull instinctive activity, if you did not permeate the action which springs forth from the will with the activity of thought, of mental picturing.

Just as thought is present in every act of will, so will is to be found in all thinking. Again, even a purely superficial contemplation of your own self will show you that in thinking you always let your will stream into the formation of your thoughts. In the forming of your own thoughts, in the uniting of one thought with another, or passing over to judgments and conclusions—in all this there streams a delicate current of will.

Thus actually we can only say that will activity is chiefly will activity and has an undercurrent of thought within it; and thought activity is chiefly thought activity and has an undercurrent of will. Thus, in considering the separate faculties of soul, it is impossible to place them side-by-side in a pedantic way, because one flows into the other.

Now this flowing into one another of the soul activities, which is recognisable in the soul, is also to be seen in the body, where the soul activity comes to expression. For instance, let us look at the human eye. If we look at it in its totality we shall see that the nerves are continued right into the eye itself; but so also are the blood vessels. The presence of the nerves enables the activity of thought and cognition to stream into the eye of the human being; and the presence of the blood vessels enables the will activity to stream in. So also in the body as a whole, right into the periphery of the sense activities, the elements of will on the one hand and thought or cognition on the other hand are bound up with each other. This applies to all the senses and moreover it applies to the limbs, which serve the will: the element of cognition enters into our willing and into our movements through the nerves, and the element of will enters in through the blood vessels.

But now we must also learn the special nature of the activities of cognition. We have already spoken of this, but we must be fully conscious of the whole complex belonging to this side of human activity, to thought and cognition. As we have already said, in cognition, in mental picturing lives antipathy. However strange it may seem, everything connected with mental picturing, with thought, is permeated with antipathy. You will probably say, “Yes, but when I look at something I am not exercising any antipathy in this looking.” But indeed you do exercise it. When you look at an object, you exercise antipathy. If nerve activity alone were present in your eye, everything you looked at would be an object of disgust to you, would be absolutely antipathetic to you. But the will, which is made up of sympathy, also pours its activity into the eye, that is, the blood in its physical form penetrates into the eye, and it is only by this means that the feeling of antipathy in sense-perception is overcome in your consciousness, and the objective, neutral act of sight is brought about by the balance between sympathy and antipathy. It is brought about by the fact that sympathy and antipathy balance one another, and by the fact also that we are quite unconscious of this interplay between sympathy and antipathy.

If you take Goethe's Theory of Colour, to which I have already referred in this connection, and study especially the physiological-didactic part of it, you will see that it is because Goethe goes more deeply into the activity of sight that there immediately enters into his consideration of the finer shades of colour the elements of sympathy and antipathy. As soon as you begin to enter into the activity of a sense organ you discover the elements of sympathy and antipathy which arise in that activity. Thus in the sense activity itself the antipathetic element comes from the actual cognitive part, from mental picturing, the nerve part—and the sympathetic element comes from the will part, from the blood.

As I have often pointed out in general anthroposophical lectures there is a very important difference between animals and man with regard to the constitution of the eye. It is a significant characteristic of the animal that it has much more blood activity in its eye than the human being. In certain animals you will even find organs which are given up to this blood activity, as for example the ensiform cartilage, or the “fan.” From this you can deduce that the animal sends much more blood activity into the eye than the human being, and this is also the case with the other senses. That is to say, in his senses the animal develops much more sympathy, instinctive sympathy with his environment than the human being does. The human being has in reality more antipathy to his environment than the animal only this antipathy does not come into consciousness in ordinary life. It only comes into consciousness when our perception of the external world is intensified to a degree of impression to which we react with disgust. This is only a heightened impression of all sense-perceptions; you react with disgust to the external impression. When you go to a place that has a bad smell and you feel disgust within the range of this smell, then this feeling of disgust is nothing more than an intensification of what takes place in every sense activity, only that the disgust which accompanies the feeling in the sense impression remains as a rule below the threshold of consciousness. But if we human beings had no more antipathy to our environment than the animal, we should not separate ourselves off so markedly from our environment as we actually do. The animal has much more sympathy with his environment, and has therefore grown together with it much more, and hence he is much more dependent on climate, seasons, etc., than the human being is. It is because man has much more antipathy to his environment than the animal has that he is a personality. We have our separate consciousness of personality because the antipathy which lies below the threshold of consciousness enables us to separate ourselves from our environment.

Now this brings us to something which plays an important part in our comprehension of man. We have seen how in the activity of thought there flow together thinking (nerve activity as expressed in terms of the body) and willing (blood activity as expressed in terms of the body). But in the same way there flow together in actions of will the real will activity and the activity of thought. When we will to do something, we always develop sympathy for what we wish to do. But it would get no further than an instinctive willing unless we could bring antipathy also into willing, and thus separate ourselves as personalities from the action which we intend to perform. But the sympathy for what we plan to do is predominant, and a balance is only effected by the fact that we bring in antipathy also. Hence it comes about that the sympathy as such lies below the threshold of consciousness, and part of it only enters consciously into that which is willed. In all the numerous actions that we perform not merely out of our reason but with real enthusiasm, and with love and devotion, sympathy predominates so strongly in the will that it penetrates into the consciousness above the threshold, and our willing itself appears charged with sympathy, whereas as a rule it merely unites us with our environment in an objective way. Just as it is only in exceptional circumstances that our antipathy to the environment may become conscious in cognition, so our sympathy with the environment (which is always present) may only become conscious in exceptional circumstances, namely, when we act with enthusiasm and loving devotion. Otherwise we should perform all our actions instinctively. We should never be able to relate ourselves properly to the objective demands of the world, for example in social life. We must permeate our will with thinking, so that this will may make us members of all humanity and partakers in the world's process itself.

Perhaps it will be clear to you what really happens if you think what chaos there would be in the human soul if we were perpetually conscious of all this that I have spoken of. For if this were the case man would be conscious of a considerable amount of antipathy accompanying all his actions. This would be terrible! Man would then pass through the world feeling himself continually in an atmosphere of antipathy. It is wisely ordered that this antipathy as a force is indeed essential to our actions, but that we should not be aware of it, that it should lie below the threshold of consciousness.

Now in this connection we touch upon a wonderful mystery of human nature, a mystery which can be felt by any person of perception, but which the teacher and educator must bring to full consciousness. In early childhood we act more or less out of pure sympathy, however strange this may seem; all a child does, all its romping and play, it does out of sympathy with the deed, with the romping. When sympathy is born in the world it is strong love, strong willing. But it cannot remain in this condition, it must be permeated with thought, by idea, it must be continuously illumined as it were by the conscious mental picture. This takes place in a comprehensive way if we bring ideals, moral ideals, into our mere instincts. And now you will understand better the true significance of antipathy in this connection. If the impulses that we notice in the little child were throughout our life to remain only sympathetic, as they are sympathetic in childhood, we should develop in an animal way under the influence of our instincts. These instincts must become antipathetic to us; we must pour antipathy into them. When we pour antipathy into them we do it by means of our moral ideals, to which the instincts are antipathetic, and which for our life between birth and death bring antipathy into the childlike sympathy of instincts. For this reason moral development is always somewhat ascetic. But this asceticism must be rightly understood. It always betokens an exercise in the combating of the animal element.

This can show us to what a great extent willing in man's practical activity is not merely willing but is also permeated with idea, with the activity of cognition, of mental picturing.

Now between cognition or thinking on the one hand and willing on the other hand we find the human activity of feeling. If you picture to yourselves what I have now put forward as willing and as thinking, you can say: From a certain central boundary there stream forth on the one hand all that is sympathy, willing, and on the other hand all that is antipathy, thinking. But the sympathy of willing also works back into thinking, and the antipathy of thinking works over into willing. Thus man is a unity because what is developed principally on the one side plays over into the other. Now between the two, between thinking and willing, there lies feeling, and this feeling is related to thinking on the one hand and to willing on the other hand. In the soul as a whole you cannot keep thought and will strictly apart, and still less can you keep the thought and will elements apart in feeling. In feeling, the will and thought elements are very strongly intermingled.

Here again you can convince yourselves of the truth of these remarks by even the most superficial self-examination. What I have already said will lead you to this conviction, for I told you that willing, which in ordinary life proceeds in an objective way, can be intensified to an activity done out of enthusiasm and love. Then you will clearly see willing as permeated with feeling—that willing which otherwise springs forth from the necessities of external life. When you do something which is filled with love or enthusiasm, that action flows out of a willing which you have allowed to become permeated by a subjective feeling. But if you examine the sense activities closely—with the help of Goethe's theory of colour—you will see how these are also permeated by feeling. And if the sense activity is enhanced to a condition of disgust, or on the other hand to the point of drinking in the pleasant scent of a flower, then you have the feeling activity flowing over directly into the activity of the senses.

But feeling also flows over into thought. There was once a philosophic dispute which—at all events externally—was of great significance—there have indeed been many such in the history of philosophy—between the psychologist Franz Brentano and the logician Sigwart, in Heidelberg. These two gentlemen were arguing about what it is that is present in man's power of judgment. Sigwart said: “When a man forms a judgment, and says, for example, ‘Man should be good’; then feeling always has a voice in a judgment of this kind; decision concerns feeling.” But Brentano said, “Judgment and feeling (which latter consists of emotions) are so different that the faculty of judgment could not be understood at all if one imagined that feeling played into it.” He meant that in this case something subjective would play into judgment, which ought to be purely objective.

Anyone who has a real understanding for these things will see from a dispute of this kind that neither the psychologists nor the logicians have discovered the real facts of the case, namely that the soul activities are always flowing into one another. Now consider what it is that should really be observed here. On the one hand we have judgment, which must of course form an opinion upon something quite objective. The fact that man should be good must not be dependent on our subjective feeling. The content of the judgment must be objective. But when we form a judgment something else comes into consideration which is of a different character. Those things which are objectively correct are not on that account consciously present in our souls. We must first receive them consciously into our soul. And we cannot consciously receive any judgment into our soul without the co-operation of feeling. Therefore, we must say that Brentano and Sigwart should have joined forces and said: True, the objective content of the judgment remains firmly fixed outside the realm of feeling, but in order that the subjective human soul may become convinced of the rightness of the judgment, feeling must develop.

From this you will see how difficult it is to get any kind of exact concepts in the inaccurate state of philosophic study which prevails to day. One must rise to a different level before one can reach such exact concepts, and there is no education in exact concepts to-day except by way of spiritual science. External science imagines that it has exact concepts, and rejects what anthroposophical spiritual science has to give, because it has no conception that the concepts arrived at by spiritual science are by comparison more exact and definite than those commonly in use to-day, since they are derived from reality and not from a mere playing with words.

When you thus trace the element of feeling on the one hand in cognition, in mental picturing, and on the other hand in willing, then you will say: feeling stands as a soul activity midway between cognition and willing, and radiates its nature out in both directions. Feeling is cognition which has not yet come fully into being, and it is also will which has not yet fully come into being; it is cognition in reserve, and will in reserve. Hence feeling also, is composed of sympathy and antipathy, which—as you have seen—are only present in a hidden form both in thinking and in willing. Both sympathy and antipathy are present in cognition and in will, in the working together of nerves and blood in the body, but they are present in a hidden form. In feeling they become manifest.

Now what do the manifestations of feeling in the body look like? You will find places all over the human body where the blood vessels touch the nerves in some way. Now wherever blood vessels and nerves make contact feeling arises. But in certain places, e.g., in the senses, the nerves and the blood are so refined that we no longer perceive the feeling. There is a fine undercurrent of feeling in all our seeing and hearing, but we do not notice it, and the more the sense organ is separated from the rest of the body, the less do we notice it. In looking, in the eye's activity, we hardly notice the feelings of sympathy and antipathy because the eye, embedded in its bony hollow, is almost completely separated from the rest of the organism. And the nerves which extend into the eye are of a very delicate nature and so are the blood vessels which enter into the eye. The sense of feeling in the eye is very strongly suppressed.

In the sense of hearing it is less suppressed. Hearing has much more of an organic connection with the activity of the whole organism than sight has. There are numerous organs within the ear which are quite different from those of the eye, and the ear is thus in many ways a true picture of what is at work in the whole organism. Therefore the sense activity which goes on in the ear is very closely accompanied by feeling. And here even people who are good judges of what they hear find it difficult to discriminate clearly—especially in the artistic sphere—between what is purely thought-element and what is really feeling. This fact explains a very interesting historical phenomenon of recent times, one which has even influenced actual artistic production.

You all know the figure of Beckmesser in Richard Wagner's “Meistersinger.” What is Beckmesser really supposed to represent? He is supposed to represent a musical connoisseur who quite forgets how the feeling element in the whole human being works into the thought element in the activity of hearing. Wagner, who represented his own conceptions in Walther, was, quite one-sidedly, permeated with the idea that it is chiefly the feeling element that should dwell in music. In the contrast between Walther and Beckmesser, arising out of a mistaken conception—I mean mistaken on both sides—we see the antithesis of the right conception, viz. that feeling and thinking work together in the hearing of music. And this came to be expressed in a historical phenomenon, because as soon as Wagnerian art appeared, or became at all well known, it found an opponent in the person of Eduard Hanslick of Vienna, who looked upon the whole appeal to feeling in Wagner's art as unmusical. There are few works on art which are so interesting from a psychological point of view as the work of Eduard Hanslick On Beauty in Music. The chief thought in this book is that whoever would derive everything in music from a feeling element is no true musician, and has no real understanding for music: for a true musician sees the real essence of what is musical only in the objective joining of one tone with another, and in Arabesque which builds itself up from tone to tone, abstaining from all feeling. In this book, On Beauty in Music Hanslick then works out with wonderful purity his claim that the highest type of music must consist solely in the tone-picture, the tone Arabesque. He pours unmitigated scorn upon the idea which is really the very essence of Wagnerism, namely that tunes should be created out of the element of feeling. The very fact that such a dispute as this between Hanslick and Wagner could arise in the sphere of music is a clear sign that recent psychological ideas about the activities of the soul have been completely confused, otherwise this one-sided idea of Hanslick's could never have arisen. But if we recognise the one-sidedness and then devote ourselves to the study of Hanslick's ideas which have a certain philosophical strength in them, we shall come to the conclusion that the little book On Beauty in Music is very brilliant.

From this you will see that, regarding the human being for the moment as feeling being, some senses bear more, some less of this whole human being into the periphery of the body, in consciousness.

Now in your task of gaining educational insight it behoves you to consider something which is bringing chaos into the scientific thinking of the present day. Had I not given you these talks as a preparation for the practical reforms you will have to undertake, then you would have had to plan your educational work for yourselves from the pedagogical theories of to-day, from the existing psychologies and systems of logic and from the educational practice of the present time. You would have had to carry into your schoolwork the customary thoughts of the present day. But these thoughts are in a very bad state even with regard to psychology. In every psychology you find a so-called theory of the senses. In investigating the basis of sense-activity the psychologist simply lumps together the activity of the eye, the ear, the nose, etc., all in one great abstraction as “sense-activity.” This is a very grave mistake, a serious error. For if you take only those senses which are known to the psychologist or physiologist of to-day and consider them in their bodily aspect alone, you will notice that the sense of the eye is quite different from the sense of the ear. Eye and ear are two quite different organisms—not to speak of the organisation of the sense of touch which has not been investigated at all as yet, not even in the gratifying manner in which eye and ear have been investigated. But let us keep to the consideration of the eye and ear. They perform two quite different activities so that to class seeing and hearing together as “general sense-activity” is merely “grey theory.” The right way to set to work here would be to speak from a concrete point of view only of the activity of the eye, the activity of the ear, the activity of the organ of smell, etc. Then we should find such a great difference between them that we should lose all desire to put forward a general physiology of the senses as the psychologies of to-day have done.

In studying the human soul we only gain true insight if we remain within the sphere which I have endeavoured to outline in my Truth and Science, and also in The Philosophy of Freedom. Here we can speak of the soul as a single entity without falling into abstractions. For here we stand upon a sure foundation; we proceed from the point of view that man lives his way into the world, and does not at first possess the whole of reality. You can study this in Truth and Science, and in The Philosophy of Freedom. To begin with man has not the whole reality; he has first to develop himself further, and in this further development what formerly was not yet reality becomes true reality for him through the interplay of thinking and perception. Man first has to win reality. In this connection Kantianism, which has eaten its way into everything, has wrought the most terrible havoc. What does Kantianism do? First of all it says dogmatically: we look out upon the world that is round about us, and within us there lives only the mirrored image of this world. And so it comes to all its other deductions. Kant himself is not clear as to what is in the environment which man perceives. For reality is not within the environment, nor is it in phenomena: only gradually, through our own winning of it, does reality come in sight, and the first sight of reality is the last thing we get. Strictly speaking, true reality would be what man sees in the moment when he can no longer express himself, the moment in which he passes through the gateway of death.

Many false elements have entered into our civilisation, and these work at their deepest in the sphere of education. Therefore we must strive to put true conceptions in the place of the false. Then, also, shall we be able to do what we have to do for our teaching in the right way.

The lecture yesterday brought our study of the evolution of our planet to the stage known as Old Moon. We heard that the first embodiment of our planet was that of Old Saturn, the second that of Old Sun and the third that of Old Moon. We came to the point in yesterday's lecture where it was made clear that if everything had progressed exactly as hitherto, man would not have been able to keep pace with the tempo of the cosmic evolution of other beings. Hence a kind of severance took place at a certain point during the Old Moon embodiment. The Sun, progressing as it was within the cosmic expanse, separated from the planetary body together with the finest substances and higher beings. The less progressed part of the planetary body, namely, Old Moon itself, still containing all that constitutes our present earth and present moon, remained as a kind of cloud-body. Certain conditions brought about a densification or hardening on Old Moon and the same happened to the beings inhabiting it.

When the Sun had separated, its forces worked upon Old Moon from outside. The subsequent human-animal-plant kingdom that came into existence on Old Moon now received the forces of the Sun from outside. After the separation, the three kingdoms on Old Moon came into existence. As yet there was no mineral kingdom but what took shape, after the hardening process, as the lowest kingdom was a kind of mineral-plant kingdom—mineral substance that was plantlike in character, or, if you prefer, plant substance that was mineral in character. This formed the ground of Old Moon; it was a kind of semi-solid, semi-fluid foundation. On the earth today we walk about on a mineral ground, on Old Moon it was semi-solid, semi-fluid ground, a kind of plant-mineral soil. Think of a mass of spongy, plantlike substance on which human beings walked. This was the character of the lowest kingdom on Old Moon, a kingdom that was at the same time half-living. The ground of our earth today has become comparatively static; volcanic activity is the only reminder of a certain inner life. On Old Moon there were no such conditions. We may perhaps speak later on about what an occultist has to say on the subject of earthquakes and volcanic activity. Just as organs in a plant grow and subsequently die, so did this half-living substance on Old Moon. The Old Moon was like a great organism, living and mobile, on which the beings living might have felt like parasites of today. These Old Moon plants were composed of mineral substance, had life in them and were mobile; they were plant-mineral in character. Nothing would have been found resembling our rocks of today; instead, there were horny or woody formations. In the environment of Old Moon, like a kind of atmosphere, were a few cloud-masses composed of a half-watery, half-living substance in which the beings of the next kingdom, half animal, half plant in character, were embedded. If you were to crush a tree, causing something akin to the feeling experienced by an animal, that would be remotely comparable with what was experienced by this animal-plant kingdom, which could not exist as such on the earth today.

As has often been said, not only are there pupils in school who make no progress but in the whole process of evolution there are always beings who remain at a standstill and who, together with the forms that belong to them and express what they are, become retarded. Thus, on the earth itself there were still certain moon beings who were not sufficiently advanced to keep abreast of evolution on the earth. These beings were obliged to create in their outer expressions the condition that had been essential to their life on Old Moon. As you know, plants on Old Moon were not rooted in mineral soil as they are today but in the half-living ground of the planet. Mistletoe, for example, is a descendant, a straggler, of an Old Moon form; it is obliged to take root in plant-soil. In folk myths there are many indications of this, for example, in the legend of Baldur and Loki. The latter is a being belonging to Old Moon, whereas Baldur is a being inwardly connected with earth and sun evolution. To interpret a legend or myth it is necessary to know in which sphere of occult investigation the connections can be discovered. External science could be so enriched by the fruits of clairvoyance that it would recognize in a legend much more than folk fantasy. Spiritual science must teach one to investigate with the whole soul instead of with the intellect only.

There was still a third kingdom on Old Moon, between the animal and human kingdoms; it was the animal-human kingdom. The forms of those animal-men were quite different from what is pictured by materialistic science today. They were animal-men although certain important members of their constitution were not yet actually within them. While he is asleep today, man's physical and etheric bodies remain in the bed and his astral body is outside. Fundamentally speaking, during sleep he is therefore in the physical world with only the lesser half of his constitution. Man's physical and etheric bodies belong to an earlier, cosmic stage of consciousness. Clairvoyant vision reveals this condition to have been permanent on Old Moon. The astral body then was never entirely within the physical and etheric bodies but was nevertheless connected more fundamentally and definitely with the human being than is the case during sleep today. The head of the man of Old Moon was not self-enclosed as is the case today. A residue of what the organs in the head were at that time is the place at the top of a baby's head that stays soft and open for a long time. On Old Moon the head of the human being was still open. Were you to draw a line vertically downward from this soft area, you would meet the pineal gland. Today it is stunted and withered but it was an important organ during the Old Moon embodiment. It was a kind of sense organ that connected man's physical and etheric bodies with his astral body. Through this organ, which was a delicate, luminous body, man's astral body radiated into the other bodies. His consciousness was neither that of sleep nor of waking life. He did not perceive outer objects. His consciousness might be compared with that of the dream to-day. The pineal gland at that time was a kind of warmth organ, emitting powerful, luminous rays of warmth. When on Old Moon man was moving about, the function of this organ was to show him the direction he must take. Man's perception on Old Moon consisted in something like a dream picture rising up within him. There was as yet no seeing or perceiving objects but man felt an inner up-and-down surge of living pictures of which the dream pictures of today are only a feeble shadow. Everything a man set out to do on Old Moon, how he searched for his food and so forth, was always activated by these pictures that were connected with the outer world. He could allow himself to be directed and led by them. When he was looking for food he was guided by certain pictures that rose up before him, and he was warned of danger also by them. The astral body extended far beyond the physical and the etheric bodies; the form of the physical body alone could be called human.

On Old Moon man's inner warmth was not yet constant. Today, on the earth, this has been achieved. On Old Moon man absorbed warmth from the warmth around him and emitted it again, just as he inhales and exhales air today. The process became visible in his organ of warmth. It gleamed and was luminous when he was absorbing warmth and darkened when he was exhaling it. If you could have seen what was happening, the process would have suggested the image of a fire-breathing dragon. All these happenings have a deep significance. Figures such as the Archangel Michael with the fire-breathing dragon under his feet, or St. George. fighting with the dragon, are pictures reminiscent of those conditions. The fire breather of Old Moon, the ancient Dragon, is a figure that once actually existed. It portrays a stage that would have to be surmounted.

This is the explanation of such matters that is derived from occult knowledge. Later on, when spiritual science is more widely known, there will be a different view of truths that have been preserved in imagery and pictures of this kind. This animal-man form was quite different from that of man today because the astral body did not sink into the physical body as deeply as it did later on the earth. Man is the figure he is today because the astral body eventually sank right down into him. It could be said that what did not, during the Old Moon period of evolution, allow itself to descend into the depths of the physical world, now resolved to do so during the earth period. But if this process in the cosmos had taken place at an earlier time, man would have remained at a much lower evolutionary stage. During the period of earth evolution, he succeeded, with the help of the spirit, in acquiring for himself the noble, godlike form that is now his. If the possibility of developing this stature had already existed on Old Moon, the descent of the astral body would have taken place prematurely. The divine Guides have always chosen the right moment. The essential achievement of Old Moon evolution was that time was left for the evolution of the physical body, and on the earth man was to be permeated by the astral body after having evolved physically on Old Moon at a lower stage. Then again there took place a certain recession of the Moon into the Sun, which had previously separated; the Old Moon globe was again absorbed by the Sun and everything passed into a cosmic sleep, a pralaya. This began at the time when the Moon returned again into the Sun.

Hence the evolution of Old Moon proceeded by the following stages: firstly, a kind of preparation; secondly, separation into Sun and Moon; thirdly, formation of three kingdoms on Old Moon; fourthly, return into the Sun; fifthly, ebb; sixthly, the cosmic sleep.

The fourth metamorphosis of our earth, our own planet earth itself, then came forth from the cosmic sleep. This first configuration of the earth was, of course, quite different from its configuration today. When the earth emerged from the cosmic night, from the darkness of twilight, it was gigantic in size, for again sun and moon were contained within it; the separations took place later on. So enormous was the size of the earth that it reached as far as the Saturn of today. Differentiation in the solar system did not take place until a much later time. As far as is possible in terms of philosophical thinking, the Kant-Laplace theory is an entirely intelligible exposition of this first form of our earth. It speaks of a kind of archetypal nebula in which everything was dissolved and out of which the whole solar system came forth. Through the rotation of this nebula, rings took shape; they densified and then, still as the result of rotation, the planets were formed. In schools this process is often illustrated by means of an experiment. A globule of oil in liquid of equal density is made to rotate by a simple mechanical device. It can then be observed that this globule flattens, that drops separate from it and form themselves again into globules that circle round the central globule. In this way one can see in miniature a kind of planetary system coming into being through rotation. This has an immensely suggestive effect. Why should we not picture the process in this ways This experiment shows how a planetary system comes into existence through rotation; it is there before our very eyes.

But one thing is forgotten. One of us, or the teacher, actually causes the rotation! Nothing is really explained by this external illustration. No cosmic system comes into existence out of nothingness. It does not arise of itself from the nebula, but it comes into existence because many spiritual beings have been working on it and at a certain point in their evolution have drawn out the finest substances from the chaotic root substance and cast out the coarser substances, namely, the moon.

During the first period after pralaya, the earth, in which all the substances and beings were again united, recapitulated the Saturn condition. At the beginning of this phase of evolution the earth was not a globe of gas as has often been falsely assumed, but a globe of warmth. For it (the earth) was re-capitulating the condition of the Saturn embodiment and extended to the sphere of the present Saturn. At a certain stage the spiritual beings involved take their substances with them. Spirit is the foundation of everything, both when the Sun separates and during the evolution of Old Moon. No external factor was responsible here; it was an inner necessity for one section of the beings. The higher beings separate what they need from the chaotic substance. Everywhere it is the spirit that directs the external reality. When the earth first came into existence everything was contained in it; the spiritual beings indwelling it were at different stages of their evolution. We shall bear this in mind during the following studies.

Thus after pralaya the earth first of all recapitulated the Saturn condition; it was a condition of warmth. Then this gigantic globe of warmth condensed to the gaseous state and only when a definite point had been reached was it possible for the globe to form the fluid element and recapitulate the Old Moon condition. At this point on the earth there was a repetition of what had previously happened on Old Moon: the sun separated from the earth and earth-plus-moon became one independent body, containing the substances and beings of earth and moon, as they are still present today. Thus for a time earth and moon, and sun were one united whole. The earth-plus-moon was ejected because man could no longer keep pace with the tempo of the sun. Had the sun remained in the earth man would have been old practically at birth. The beings of the cosmos are at entirely different stages of evolution. It will only be possible to indicate the most important features of this evolution during the fourth period, that of the earth. Even the more mature beings belonged to grades at every possible level. There were some who could neither profit by the rapid tempo of the sun nor by the slow tempo of the earth. These beings departed already before the separation, when sun, earth and moon were still united. They created special arenas for their activity and these were the domains suitable for their rulership. It was thus that the outer planets, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars, were formed.

During the recapitulation of the Saturn embodiment, Uranus, Vulcan and Saturn separated from the earth. During the recapitulation of the sun embodiment, Jupiter and Mars separated. After the sun had left the earth, Mercury and Venus separated from it. After the separation of the sun, the earth cast out the moon. The dispersal of Old Moon was brought about by the forces of the progressed beings who drew out the solar body, while the normal and retarded beings produced the moon circling around it. In all the mysteries these happenings were called the strife in heaven. The detached planetoids are the ruins of that battlefield. It is here that the primal secret of the origin of evil must be sought.

The planetary spirits involved could not have waited until the sun separated from the earth because they would not have found the right soil for their activity; evolution at this time was turning into different channels. The planetary conditions of space and movement are all the expression and effect of the activity of their beings; these conditions indicate the evolutionary rank of the spiritual beings inhabiting the planets. Beings who had believed that they, too, could accompany the sun because this had formerly been possible but who could not now do so, separated from the sun, but only after it had itself separated from the earth. These beings separated from the sun after this event and are at a far higher stage of evolution than men. Venus and Mercury are the two bodies that, having separated from the sun after the latter's separation from the earth, formed the inner planets of our solar system.

After the severance from the sun a difficult, sombre period now began for the earth, in a certain respect its darkest, hardest era. While still united with the moon, the earth drew into itself all the forces that were retarding evolution. To obstruct life is characteristic of the forces principally active in the moon. During this period, these obstructive forces were working far too strongly in the earth. If the earth had remained connected with them, life would not have taken its course in the right tempo. Man would have hardened to the stage of mummification. The earth would have become a veritable cemetery, one vast graveyard containing statues of mummified human bodies. No procreation would have been possible. When the sun had left the earth, fearful desolation and hardening of all life took place. So already at that time there were periods when the human physical body was abandoned by its spiritual members, just as today the physical body is abandoned by its spiritual members at death.

In that past era, withdrawal and emergence of the being of spirit and soul from the physical already took place and a new search for the physical body began, as happens today when incarnations are to take place. But more and more frequently it happened that when the being of soul and spirit desired, while the moon was still united with the earth, to find a human body again, none was to be found, because bodies were no longer fit to receive the being of spirit and soul. Just imagine that great masses of human beings were to have died today and because of the character of the physical substance these bodies had become so decadent that the souls would have said: We cannot make use of these bodies, they are too decadent for us, they offer no possibility of further evolution. Suppose that because of an extensive spread of alcoholism, for example, successive generations had gradually become so degenerate that the bodies were simply useless for the descending souls. This is more or less a picture of the state of the earth at that time, before the exit of the moon. Everything that should have been habitable down below was often hardened, crusted, withered, mummified. There was actually a period when souls were seeking in vain for bodies for their own evolution on earth. The consequence was that certain beings simply could not at that time have returned to the physical plane as men. They could not have incarnated again on the earth. These beings then went to other cosmic bodies that had separated from the sun, namely, to Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and Mars. There was a time when the majority of these beings who should normally have incarnated on the earth according to their nature and their stage of evolution, placed themselves under the protection of the beings of Mars, Jupiter, Venus or Saturn, having ascended to and populated these cosmic bodies. Only the strongest souls found it possible to cope with the stubborn bodies and keep them flexible. Please understand me well. It was only the best soul material that then came again to the earth, because its power to master the stubborn bodies was the greatest. But under such conditions evolution could not have progressed.

The beings of the highest rank belonging to our solar system now adopted a new procedure. The most impermeable substances were extracted and separated from the earth; the severance of the moon was brought about. The result of this was that the forces that had remained behind were no longer frustrated in their evolution. But it was not until later that this moon became what it is today. The time had now come when the physical and etheric evolution of man could find the tempo befitting its stage. The forces both of the sun and the moon now worked upon the earth from outside, maintaining the balance. Gradually, while the moon was emerging, a kind of softening, an amelioration of the bodies of men, again took place. The period just described is called in occultism the Lemurian epoch, the epoch of the separation of the moon during the physical embodiment of the earth. The epoch when the sun left the earth is called the Hyperborean age, and the epoch when the sun, moon and earth were still united is called the Polarian age.

During the whole period when the sun was separated from the earth and the moon produced a hardening process on the earth to begin with and then left the earth during the whole of that period, sublime beings were influencing the differentiation. Their most important servants were the Spirits of Form, called the Exusiai in Christian esotericism, also Spirits of Revelation, Powers.

On Saturn it was the Thrones, the Spirits of Will who made the sacrifice of pouring out from their own substance the material for man's physical body. On Old Sun it was the Dominions or Spirits of Wisdom who provided the substance for the etheric body, and on Old Moon it was the Spirits of Movement or Mights who made possible the formation of the astral body. On the earth the Spirits of Form or Powers instill the ego, bringing it about that in this phase of evolution the ego enters gradually into what had come into existence, namely, man's physical body, etheric body and astral body. This is the work of the Spirits of Form. In order that an ego-man could come into existence at all as the expression of ego consciousness, and that this coordination of the physical, etheric and astral bodies could take place, everything that has now been described was essential. The separation of sun and moon from the earth was necessary; it was also necessary for man to undergo a process of hardening followed by a certain softening. This could take place because the wise beings who guided and directed these happenings undertook it all as probationary measures for the good of evolution. A great deal in the evolutionary process of the earth is still done today by the sublime beings concerned, as probationary measures.

What, then, is the anthroposophical movement? It came into the world because the lofty beings we call the Masters, who live in human physical bodies but have reached the far higher stage of evolution than the average man of today, poured out a certain amount of wisdom from the last third of the nineteenth century onwards. The living influx of this wisdom from higher realms into our culture is the actual basis of our anthroposophical movement. Do not imagine that there was no possibility of the attempted influx of wisdom falling upon deaf ears in humanity. Even if there had been deaf ears, the Masters would have said that an attempt must be made later on, when human beings would be ready to receive the wisdom. In occultism this is known as the test of maturity in men. The fact that wisdom pours into humanity from higher beings such as these is not in itself sufficient; what matters is how it is received; the success of the test depends upon that. Such tests have already been made several times but have not always succeeded. It was often within narrow limits that humanity proved to be ripe for the tests; receptive souls and hearts were not always to be found. When the ego of humanity was to be instilled, the test consisted in gradual attempts to permate what had formerly been astral body only, with the ego. Then it turned out that the astral body, permeated by the ego, was incapable of penetrating the physical body. Adjustment was therefore necessary and this was made possible by the separation of the moon. It was in the middle of the Lemurian epoch that the entry of the ego, the Christ principle, was first achieved.

But the following was connected with this. During and after the separation of the moon, the earth was depopulated. We have heard that the bodies had become so contaminated that they could no longer provide habitations for the souls. Cosmic happenings such as these have been preserved in legend and saga, but occult investigation reveals their true origin and teaches us that while the separation of the moon was taking place, when the earth was depopulated, many souls were searching for suitable embodiment in cosmic space; they departed from the earth and assumed bodies on other planets. But when the moon had finally left, it became apparent that the earth was capable again of providing suitable bodies. Now, the souls, who during the latest Lemurian epoch and thereafter in the Atlantean period had gone to the planets, presented them-selves again on the earth and incarnated in the bodies there. Groups of human beings now formed on the earth. Some provided bodies for souls coming from Jupiter incarnations, or from Mars, Venus or Saturn. These souls now found bodies that were appropriate for them. This grouping of souls gave rise to the birth of races. Hence there is a certain connection between the races and cosmic bodies and thus it was possible to speak of Saturn men, Jupiter men and so on. What can be called the concept of race had now, for the first time, its justification.

On Old Moon, and also on the earth while it was still united with the moon, there were human beings at different stages of evolution. This can be perceived right on into the Lemurian epoch, when owing to the exodus of the moon, differentiation took place in humanity. Thereafter the concept of race arose and from then on began to have a certain meaning, a certain significance. Race is something that comes into being and subsequently passes away again. The epoch of the formation of the races is that embraced by Lemuria and Atlantis. Today only stragglers of the races are present.

The hour is so late, that I shall make this lecture a short one, and leave over till tomorrow the main substance of what I have to say in these three lectures. To-morrow the Eurhythmies are put earlier, so that it will be possible to have a longer lecture.

I pointed out yesterday that in order to master the conditions of our present declining civilisation, one needs to differentiate,—so to differentiate between the various groups of peoples massed together over the face of the earth, that one's attention is actually directed to what is living and working in each of the separate groups, in particular among the Anglo-American peoples, among the peoples of what is properly Europe, and among the peoples of the East. And we have seen that the aptitude for founding a cosmogony suited to the new age is to be found pre-eminently among the Anglo- American peoples,—the faculty for developing the idea of freedom, amongst the peoples of Europe, whilst that for developing the impulse of altruism, the religious impulse with all that it connotes by way of human brotherhood, is to be found amongst the population of the East. There is no other way in which a new civilisation can be founded than by making it possible hereafter for man, all the world over, to work together in real co-operation. But, my dear friends, in order that this may be possible, in order that any such real co-operation may be possible, several things are necessary. It Is necessary to recognise, dispassionately and as a matter of fact, how much our present civilisation lacks, and how strong the forces of decline in this present civilisation are. When one considers the forces present in our civilisation, one cannot say: “It is altogether bad;” that is not the way to look at it; in the first place, it would be an unhistoric point of view; in the second place, it could lead to nothing positive. The impulses that reside in our civilisation were, in some age, and in some place, justified. But everything that in the historic course of mankind's evolution leads to ruin, leads to ruin for the very reason that something which has a rightful title in one age and one place has been passed on to another age and another place, and because men, from various Ahrimanic and Luciferic motives, cling to whatever they have grown accustomed to, and are not ready to join in with that actual forward movement which the whole cosmic order requires.

Our age prides itself on being a scientific one. And, at bottom, it is from this, its scientific character, that the great social errors and perversions of the age proceed. That is why it is so imperative that the light should shine in upon our whole life of thought and action, inasmuch as the activities of modern times are entirely dependent on the modern system of thought. We noticed yesterday, in the general survey into which we were led, how the collective civilisation of the earth was made up of a scientific civilisation, a political civilisation tending towards freedom, and of an altruistic economic civilisation that really is derived from the altruistic religious element.

People nowadays,—as I said before, yesterday,—when they consider the forces actually at work in our social structure, remain on the surface of things; they are not willing to penetrate deeper. The lectures in our class-rooms teach what professes to pass for economic wisdom, drawn from the natural science methods of the present day; but what lives in men, and what stirs the minds and the being of men,—that is regarded as a sort of unappetising stew. No attention is paid to what are really its true features.

Let us turn first to the civilisation of Europe. What is the pre-eminent trait of this European civilisation? If one follows up this trait of European civilisation, one finds that one has to go a long way back in order to understand it. One has to form a clear idea of how, out of the ancient primal impulses of the original Celtic population, which still really lies at the base of our European life and being, there gradually grew up, by admixture with the various later strata of peoples, our present European population, with all its religious, political, economic and scientific tendencies. In Europe, in contradistinction to America on the West and Asia on the East,—in Europe a certain intellectual strain was always predominant. Romanism—all that I Indicated yesterday as the specifically Roman element—could never have so got the upper hand, unless intellectualism had been a radical feature of European civilisation. Now there are two things peculiar to intellectualism. In the first place, it never can rouse Itself to make a clean sweep of the religious impulses within it. Religious impulses always acquire an abstract character under the influence of intellectualism. Nor can intellectualism ever really find the energy for grappling with questions of practical economics. The experiments now being carried out in Russia will hereafter show how incapable European intellectualism is of introducing order into the world of economics, of industry. What Leninism is shaping is nothing hut unadulterated intellectualism. It is all reasoned out; an order of society built up by thought alone. And they are attempting the experiment of propping up this brain spun communal system upon the actual conditions prevailing amongst men. Time will show—and very terribly—how impossible it is to prop up a piece of intellectual reasoning upon a human social edifice.

But these things are what people to-day refuse as yet to recognise in all their full force. There is unquestionably among the population of Europe this alarming trait, this sleepiness, this inability to throw the whole man into the stream so needed to permeate the social life of Europe. But the thing that above all others must be recognised is the source from which our European civilisation is fed,—whence this European civilisation is, at bottom, derived. Of itself, of its own proper nature, European civilisation has only produced a form of culture that is intellectual, a thought-culture. Prosaicness and aridity of thought dominate our science and our social institutions.

For many, many years, we have suffered from this intellectualism in the parliaments of Europe. If people could but feel how the parliaments of Europe have been pervaded by the intellectualist, utilitarian attitude, by this element that can never soar above the ground, that lacks the energy for any religious impulse, that lacks the energy for any sort of economic impulse! As for our religious life, just think how we came by it. The whole history of the introduction and spread of this religious life in Europe goes to show that Europe, within herself, had no religious impulses. Just think, how flat and dull the world was, how interminably flat and dull—prosaic to the excess at the time of the expansion of the Roman Empire. Yet that was only the beginning of it. Just conceive what Europe would have become if Roman civilisation in all its flat prosaicness had gone on without the impulse that came over from the Asiatic East, and which was religious, Christian,—what it would have been without the Christian impulse, which sprang from the p lap of the East, which could only spring from the lap of the East, never from that of Europe. The religious impulse was taken over as a wave of culture, of civilisation, from the East. The first and the only thing Europe did was to cram this religious impulse, that came over from the East, with the concepts of Roman law, thread this Eastern impulse through and through with bald, abstract, intellectualist, legal forms.

But this religious impulse from the East was, at bottom, alien to the life of Europe, and remained alien to it. It never completely amalgamated with the being of Europe. And Protestantism acted in a most remarkable way as what I might call a test-tube, in which they separated out. It is «just like watching two substances separating out from one another in a test-tube, to watch how European civilisation reacted with respect to its religious element. In the seventh, in the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth centuries a kind of experiment was being made to combine religious feeling and sentiment with scientific and economic thought into one homogeneous substance; and then, actually, just as two substances react in a test-tube and separate out, so these two separated out,—the cold intellectualist thought and the religious impulse fell apart and deposited Protestantism, Lutheranism. Science on the one side, one truth; on the other side the rival truth, Faith. And the two shall mix no further. If anyone tries to saturate the substance of Faith with the substance of Thought, or to warm the substance of Thought with the substance of Faith, the experiment is regarded as downright sacrilege. And then, as the climax of all that was cold and dreary, came the Konigsberg-Kant-school with its Critique of Pure Reason alongside its Critique of Applied Reason—Ethics alongside Science,—making a most terrible gulf between what in man's nature must be felt and lived as a single whole. These are the conditions under which European civilisation still exists. And these are the conditions under which European civilisation will be brought ever nearer and nearer to its downfall. It was as an alien element from the East that Europe adopted the religious impulse, and it has never combined organically with the rest of her spiritual and physical life. So much with regard to the spiritual life of Europe.

You see, my dear friends, the progress of modern civilisation has had Its praises sung long enough. They have gone on singing its praises until millions of human beings in this civilised world have been done to death, and three times as many maimed for life. It has been blessed in unctuous phrases from the pulpits of the churches, till untold blood has been shed. Every lecturer's desk has sounded the praises of this progress, until this progress has ended in its own annihilation. There can be no cure before we look these things straight in the face. And to-day, people of the Lenin type and others come and beat their brains over socialist systems and economic systems, and fancy that with these concepts which have long since proved inadequate to direct European civilisation, they can now, without any new concepts, without any revolution of thought, effect a reform in our economic system, in our system of society.

I think I have here, once before, spoken of the beautiful concepts that our learned professors arrive at when they are dealing with these subjects. But it is so beautiful that I must really come back to it once more. There is a well-known political economist called Brentano, Lujo Brentano. Not long ago an article appeared by him, entitled: “The Business Director (Der Unternehmer).” In it Brentano tries to construct the concept of the Business Director the Capitalist Director. He enumerates the various distinctive marks of the capitalist director. The third of these distinctive marks, as given by Lujo Brentano, is this: That he expends the means of production at his private venture, at his own risk, in the service of mankind. Mark of the capitalist director! Then that excellent Brentano goes on to examine the function of the Worker, of the ordinary Labourer, in social life; and now, see what he says: That the labour-power, the physical labour-power of the labourer is the labourer's means of production; he expends it at his own venture and risk in the service of the community. Therefore, the labourer is a Business Director (Untemahmer); there is absolutely no difference between a labourer and a business director; they are both one and the same thing! You see, what they nowadays call scientific thought has by now got into such a muddle that when people are constructing concepts, they are no longer able to distinguish between two opposite poles. It is not quite so obvious here, perhaps, as in another case of a Professor of Philosophy at Berne, one of whose specialities was that he wrote such an awful lot of books, and had to write them so awfully fast, that he had not time to consider exactly what it was he was writing. However, he lectured on philosophy at the Berne University. And in one of the books by this Professor of Philosophy at Berne, this statement occurs:—A civilisation can only he evolved in the temperate zone; for at the North Pole it cannot be evolved, there it would be frozen up; nor could it be evolved at the South Pole, for there the opposite would occur, it would be burnt up! That is actually the fact. A regular Professor of Philosophy did once write in a book that it is cold at the North Pole and hot at the South Pole, because he was writing so fast that he had no time to consider what he was writing.

Well, that excellent Brentano's blunders in political economy are not quite so readily perceived; but at bottom they proceed from just the same surface view of things, from which so much in Europe has proceeded. People take for granted what already exists, and starting from this, proceed to build up their whole system of concepts just on what exists already. That is what they learn from natural science, from the natural science methods. This is how the science institutes do it; and in our day,—the age when people set no store by authority and take nothing on faith, (of course not!)—that is what they obediently copy. For nowadays, if a man is an Authority, that is sufficient reason for what he says being true,—not a reason for turning to his truth because one sees it to be true, but because he is an Authority. And people regard economic facts, too, in this way. They regard economic facts as being all exactly on a par with one another. Whereas, as a matter of fact, they are made up of mixed elements, each of which requires individual consideration.

The current of religious impulse had come from the East into European civilisation; and for the economic structure of Europe something again different was needed. The approach of the Fifth post-Atlantean age was also the time for the irruption of those events which set their stamp upon the whole civilisation of the new age and gave to it its special physiognomy. The discovery of America, the finding of a sea-route round the Cape of Good Hope to India, to the East-Indies,—this set its stamp on the civilisation of the new age. It is impossible to study the whole economic evolution of Europe by Itself alone. It is absurd to believe that from the study of existing economic facts one can thereby arrive at the economic laws that sway the common life of Europe. In order to arrive at these laws, one must bear constantly in mind that Europe was able to shift any amount off on to America. The whole social structure of Europe has only grown up owing to the fact that there was an unfailing supply of virgin soil in America, and that everything flung off from Europe passed Westwards into this virgin soil. Just as she had drawn her religions impulse from the East, so she sent forth an economic impulse towards the West. And the whole system of industrial economy peculiar to Europe was conditioned by this Westward outflowing, just as her spiritual life was developed under the inflow of the religious impulse from the East. European life, the whole course of the rise of European civilisation, has gone on through the centuries until now, under the Influence of these two currents. Here, in the middle, was European civilisation; here from the East came the religious impulse pouring in; here, in a westward stream, the economic impulse, pouring out.—Inflow of the religious impulse from the East, outflow of the economic impulse towards the West. Now this, you see, towards the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries reached a sold, of crisis. There came a gradual stoppage. Things no longer went on the same as they had been going for four centuries. And to-day we are still lining in this stoppage and are affected by it. The religious impulse came in as an alien and brought forth our spiritual life. And our economic life came about under a process of being continually drawn off and weakened. If America had not been there, and if our industrial economy had been obliged to grow up solely according to its own principles,—had it not been able continually to fling off what it could not assimilate,—then it could never have developed at all in Europe. Now there is a stoppage; and accordingly, an outlet must be found within. It Is from within that the way must be found to lead off into the right channel what no longer can go on externally in space. It must be done by bringing about the threefold social order. What has been mixed together in inorganic confusion must be combined into an actual organism. There is not one reason, there is every conceivable reason for the adoption of the threefold social order,—scientific reasons, economic reasons, historic reasons. And only he can fully appreciate the claims of the threefold social order, who is in a position to survey all these various grounds on which it rests.

That is a thing that one would so like to tell the people of the present day; for people of the present day suffer under a poverty of concepts that has grown positively alarming. This poverty of concepts is really such that anyone who has got any feeling for ideas finds to-day that quite a small number of ideas dominate our spiritual life, and they meet him at every turn. If anyone is hunting for ideas, this is what he finds; he takes up a work on Physics; it contains a certain limited number of ideas. Next, he studies, say, a work on Geology; there he finds fresh facts, but precisely the same ideas. Then he studies a biological work; there he finds fresh facts, but the same ideas. He reads a book on Psychology, dealing with the life of the soul. There he finds more facts, which really only consist of words, for they only know the soul really as a collection of words. When they talk of the will, there is a word there; but of the actual will itself they know nothing. When they talk of Thought they know nothing of real thinking; for people still only think in words. Nor do they know anything of feeling. The whole field of Psychology is to-day just a game of words, in which words are shaken up together in every conceivable kind of way. Just as the bits in a kaleidoscope combine into all sorts of different patterns, so it is with our concepts. They are jumbled up together into various sciences; but the total number of ideas is quite a small one, and keeps meeting one again and again. These ideas are forcibly fitted on to the facts. And people have no desire to find the concepts that fit the facts, to examine into the ideas that fit the facts. People simply do not notice things.

In a certain town in Central Europe, not long ago, there was a conference of Radical Socialists. These Radical Socialists were engaged in planning out a form of society suitable for adoption in Europe. The form of society as there planned by them was almost identical with what you can read in a collection of articles that appeared in the “Basler Vorwärts” of this week,—a series of articles in the Basel “Vorwärts,” putting forward in outline a scheme of society almost identical with what was thought out some time back in a Mid-European town. And what is the special feature of this scheme of society as planned out there? People think it very clever, of course. They think that it cannot be improved on.

But it is what it is, solely for the reason that it was drawn up by men who, as a matter of fact, had never really had anything to do with industrial and economic life, who had never acquired any practical acquaintance with the real sources and mainsprings of industrial and economic life. It was a scheme invented by men who have taken an active part in the political life of recent years. Well, you know what taking an active part in the political life of recent years means,—one was either elector or elected; one was elected either -in the first ballot, or in the second ballot. Say that one did not succeed in getting elected in the first ballot. Well, one had raised those huge sums of money, of course, subscriptions had been collected, and the huge sum raised, in order that one might have enough voters to get elected. The money was all spent; one had vented a terrible lot of abuse on the rival candidate the fellow was a fool, a knave and a cheat, If nothing worse. And came the second ballot. So far, no one had got an absolute majority, and now it was a question of electing one of those who had had proportional majorities. Now there was a change in the proceedings. Now, one-third of the election money was returned by one's opponent,—the same who was a fool, knave, cheat, etc. One accepted the returned money, and all of a sudden one's speeches took a different tone; there is nothing for it, one said, but to elect the man (the man who before was a knave, fool, cheat, etc),—he will have to be elected. After all, one had got back a third of the election money, and, inspired by this return of a third of the election money, one was gradually converted into his active supporter. For, after all, one of the two must be elected; the other man had no chance; all that could be done was to save a third of the election expenses.

So they had taken an active part in political life. So, too, no doubt, they had had a voice in the political administrations, but they had no notion, not the remotest, vaguest notion, of industrial and economic life. They simply took the political ideas they had acquired,—ideas that had, of course, become much corrupted, but still they were political ideas of a sort,—and they tried now •; to fit them on to industrial and economic life. And accordingly, if these ideas were put into effect, one would get an industrial and economic life organised on purely political lines. Industrial economic organisation has already become confounded with political organisation,—so impossible has it become for people to keep apart things that have become so welded, so wedged together. But the time has come when it is urgently necessary to carry into many, many places an insight into what really exists. And that is a thing for which people to-day show no zeal.

There is nothing to be expected from the influence of a civilisation which never contemplates external reality,—which wants to bind external reality to a couple of hard and fast concepts; nor need one hope with this little set of concepts to draw near to that true reality which is the business of anthroposophical science to discover. For it is this true reality that the spiritual science of Anthroposophy has to seek and find. Therefore, the spiritual science of Anthroposophy must not be taken after the pattern of what people were often pleased to call “religious persuasions.”

That, you see was what one suffered from so terribly in the course of the old Theosophic movement. What more was the old Theosophic movement than just that people wanted a sort of select religion? It consisted in no new impulse proceeding from the civilisation of Europe itself. It consisted merely in emotions, which were to be had out of the old religious element just as well. Only people had grown tired of these old religious concepts and ideas and feelings, and so had taken up something else. But the same atmosphere pervaded it as pervaded the old persuasion. They wanted to feel good, with an evangelical sort of goodness if they had been evangelicals, or with a catholic kind of goodness if they had been Catholics; but they did not at bottom want the thing really needed, namely, an actual new religious impulse along with other impulses, because the life of the European peoples has grown up habituated to an alien religious impulse, that of Asia. That is the point. And until those things are organically interwoven that were inorganically intermixed,—till then, European civilisation will not rise again. It cannot be taken too seriously; it must pervade everything that is going to live in science, in economic, in religion, in political life.

We will speak more of this, then, tomorrow. To-morrow the eurhythmic performance takes place here at 5 o'clock. Then, after the necessary interval, that is, I take It, about half past seven tomorrow, there will be the lecture.