The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Das Wesen Der Anthroposophie. (The Nature of Anthroposophy. Lecture given at Elberfeld, Germany, January 24, 1922)

Goethe's observation of human beings and of humanity led him to the following short but comprehensive and significant conclusion that “the most valuable thing about history is the enthusiasm it stimulates.”

We may well be surprised at such a view of historical knowledge, for Goethe was, after all, a person who had deep insight into human life, and yet what he seems to be saying is that it is not the knowledge we acquire about the course of human history that is important, but rather the feelings and enthusiasm that history stimulates. However, the more we feel impelled to go into what is called historical knowledge, the more Goethe's judgment seems to be confirmed. We only need remember that when the catastrophic events began in which the whole of humanity is now embroiled, a number of people—and there were quite a few of them—believed from their reading of history and especially their picture of economic and other material causes in world history, that the war could last four or six months at the most. We have to admit that this conclusion was really not at all stupid. Nor, judging by the historical standards that humanity is accustomed to apply to its own historical evolution, was it in any way shortsighted. And yet, despite this—was this conclusion really founded on what was actually happening?

Let us take as another example what happened to a not insignificant person. It is true that it took place a long time ago, but it can still be mentioned. It concerns a professor of history at a university. This person gave a brilliant inaugural lecture in which he said that a study of the historical evolution of humanity suggested that the European countries would in future form a more or less united family in which there could be all sorts of differences but in which it would become impossible for the various peoples, the members of this great family, to cut each other to pieces. This judgment, the reality of which can hardly be doubted, was made on the basis of historical observation by Friedrich Schiller when he took up his professorship at the University of Jena in 1789. One has the impression that Schiller believed he could arrive at conclusions in his study of history that in a sense rise to a kind of prophecy. Immediately after Schiller had come to this conclusion there followed the events of the French Revolution and all that it brought with it. And if we take everything that has happened up to the present day we find that what even this gifted man had learned from his study of history has been completely disproved by the facts in the most terrible way. We could add hundreds and hundreds of similar examples.

This makes it imperative to take a closer look at what we normally call history and to see how far it really enables us to form judgments about what is going on around us. In such times as ours this is particularly important. History should teach us to recognize what each day brings—and today each day brings a very great deal. Catastrophic events breaking over the whole earth demand judgment from us. We must know what to think of the American West and how it can evolve in the future, and of the Asiatic East. How can we do this if history is regarded in the way we have just touched upon?

Let us take one or two examples by way of introduction to see how a view of history is attained from all the various things that happen in human life. I would like to characterize different aspects of this, starting from the various assumptions that lie close at hand.

At the beginning of our present century, when the events we are now witnessing were being prepared, it happened by what we normally call chance that two men made an historical, all embracing judgment about their country. It is most interesting to study the particular way in which these two looked at history. Although they lived not so far from each other, their two nations are quite different in character. The one is the German historian, Karl Lamprecht, who in 1904 at the invitation of Columbia University in America gave his American listeners his comprehensive judgment about the history of the German nation. The other is Wilson, who at about the same time gave a lecture in which he presented his comprehensive judgment about the American nation. It is interesting to compare these two, and it would be even more valuable to take a third, but the time is too short.—For instance, I can only recommend you to compare what I am saying today with a wonderful statement of Rabindranath Tagore about the spirit of Jesus. If the time allowed us to compare all three we would have a wonderful picture of literary, historical study.

I shall begin with the rather odd views that Karl Lamprecht, the German historian, came to about his own German nation. He has got beyond the merely factual kind of historical observation pursued by Ranke and others, for he sets out to study the inner course of human evolution. He seeks the motivating forces and directs his view to the example of his own nation. I can only give a brief picture of the views that Karl Lamprecht came to, and which he then presented in these lectures at Columbia University. He said that German history can be divided into clearly differentiated epochs according to the inner character of human deeds, of the constitution of the human soul, of the way in which human beings work.

We can go back to a period which came to an end in about the third century A.D. and we find that everything that happened in the German nation at that time arose out of a kind of activity of the imagination which felt itself stimulated to think in symbols and images. Even revered figures and personalities are often presented to the people in images and revered in images. Then there comes a time which is sharply differentiated from this. Whereas in the earlier period it is clear that the imaginative conception of life, which, according to Lamprecht's view, lies at the root of history, leads to the fact that social conditions are organized in a military structure, we see that from the 4th or 5th century to the 11th century it is superseded by a quite different way of thinking and quite different inner motives. In place of the merely comradely sort of life we find a kind of life that is more like a society. And in place of a living in images that always sees images for the things that happen, we have now, thinks Lamprecht, the concept of type. The single, eminent personality is regarded as a type of the times and revered, portrayed and characterized as such from all sides, even in the primitive art that has come down to us.

Then follows a relatively short period, from the 12th to the middle of the 15th century. Lamprecht characterizes this as arising out of all the impulses that were at work when power based on land and obedience evolved out of the old estates and the conditions on them, or being concerned with the way in which the constitution of the soul came to expression in art, with the way men were respected, with the way they acted, and finally with the way knighthood and town life evolved. Lamprecht characterizes it as the time of the conventional conception of life, for at that time life was based on conventions, agreements and a generally fixed way of doing things. For Lamprecht there is then an important break in the historical evolution of the German people which happens at around the middle of the 15th century. He believes that the individual personality that begins to break through for the first time, for the conventional relationships between human beings which are governed by considerations going beyond the merely individual, are no longer uppermost. The individual then enters decisively into historical evolution. Lamprecht shows quite justifiably how something very important begins at this time. Until then, human beings had lived an existence primarily based on deeds, on actions, founded on impulses of the will which arose out of the deepest recesses of the soul, whereas from the middle of the 15th century onward it is the intellect, the understanding, that belongs to the individual personality, that becomes the decisive factor. This lasts until the middle of the 18th century.

What then follows we should call a higher stage of individualism. Lamprecht differentiates it from the earlier period by saying that the age of subjectivism then begins in which a higher kind of understanding becomes particularly significant for human evolution. Lamprecht describes various aspects of this evolution from this viewpoint quite well. He shows, for instance, how the more rudimentary impulses of earlier centuries which prevailed in the relations of the various peoples to each other, turn into a kind of diplomacy based solely on the understanding and intellect. He gives many such examples from many aspects of life. We are still in this age of subjectivism.

From this brief description I have given you can see how an historian tries to explain what happens in history in terms of the nature and evolution of the human being himself. As we shall see in a moment, what Lamprecht put forward is intimately connected with the German way of looking at things. We can see that it is an attempt to use every possible means that are available for reaching a reality which has soul-spirit factors, for penetrating into the real nature of history. But if we then investigate how Lamprecht applies the ideas outlined in his lectures to his detailed description of history, we cannot help feeling bitter disappointment. This is because Lamprecht's views of history never convince us that the efforts he makes in observing certain inner powers of the human soul lead to any sort of convincing result. It is a struggle for a new view of history, but nowhere would we stop and say: Now we can, for instance, really see the inner reasons why the German people have evolved to what they are today. And this question constantly comes to mind when we study Lamprecht's view of history.

Let me compare it with Wilson's view of his own American people. It is something very remarkable, and in order not to be misunderstood I would point out that I am anything but an admirer of Woodrow Wilson. The actual fact of the matter will become clear in further lectures. For the moment I would only mention that my attitude toward Wilson has not arisen during the last six years, for already before the war I expressed my rejection of his approach in a lecture cycle given in Helsingfors in 1913 at a time when many in this country rejected the views expressed in his book, “Only Literature,” which was translated into German, and in his dissertations on freedom—as there were also many in Germany who were deceived and thought he was a great man for reasons which I will not go into now. It is neither chauvinism, that has grown to such proportions today, nor anything other than an entirely objective study of Wilson's approach that leads me to say what I have to say about him.

I have been particularly interested by this parallel phenomenon of Wilson speaking in his lectures about the American people. It is particularly important from one viewpoint because Wilson, when it comes to discovering the virtual factor in viewing a limited phenomenon of historical evolution and in what is needed in order to have some understanding of it, really hits the nail on the head. In this lecture Wilson says that those who live in the east, the New Englanders, do not look at the American people in the right way. And he also describes the quite wrong attitude taken by those living in the south. For he derives the nature of the American and his historical evolution from the events that took place in the 19th century in the center between the west and the east of the North American states when all sorts of people mixed with each other.—Out of their way of life there then arose what Wilson calls the American nation.

It is interesting to see how he succeeds in showing that American history really only begins when those who lived in the east looked toward the west and began to colonize it. Dutch, German, English, French and so on, all came together and formed something that did not come into being through the work of politicians but through those who tilled the land and tended the forests. And then he describes how the three most important political questions of America find their solution under the influence of these conditions. I cannot go into details but would like all the same to state what I think is the important point: the most important questions were those of the attitude of the state toward property, of tariffs and of slavery. All these arose under the influence of these conditions. As far as these conditions are concerned his view of history hits the nail on the head. And there are also further lectures in addition to this one where he speaks about history in general, where he gives his opinion as to how history ought to be studied. And something quite remarkable can happen to anyone viewing things as a whole.

I must say that I find Woodrow Wilson as a thinker and scientist an extraordinarily unsympathetic personality. On the other hand, in another person who has perhaps been too little recognized. I find an extraordinarily sympathetic personality, and this is Hermann Grimm, who applied his historical approach primarily to art, in which, however, his historical ideas are to be found. I have it from him personally because he himself described it to me on many occasions. It lived in him in a wonderfully comprehensive way. On one hand I read in “Only Literature” some of the things that Wilson laid down. On the other, I read what Hermann Grimm said about how history should be studied and how he looked at the evolution of humanity in the light of history. And one comes to the remarkable conclusion that in reading Wilson and Grimm a sentence of Grimm could often be transposed word for word into Wilson's work, and vice-versa. Sometimes there are quite short paragraphs that, from a superficial viewpoint could belong quite well to either of them. Only try to acquire the necessary knowledge, which is quite easy to do in this subject, and you will see the truth of what I say.

How are we to understand this? There is, after all, an enormous difference between these two people and the way they look at history.—There is nothing better than such an example for showing what has to be learned at the present time: that the literal content of a matter is not the whole matter! This is something our age has got to learn, but finds so difficult to learn. For however much our age imagines it lives in reality, it really loves the abstract and theoretical. When they find a few sentences the same with two different authors people are inclined to say that it is the same! The content, the purely literal content, is sometimes quite remote from the actual reality, and however odd this may sound it is proved by this example. For what are we dealing with here? Only the science of spirit can enlighten us, and only the science of spirit can detect the difference between the American historical approach of Woodrow Wilson and that of Karl Lamprecht. The abstract minds of the present time are completely taken in by what Woodrow Wilson says. Now it is not so, but before the war they were taken in. For they do not see the real point. Wilson says many excellent things. But compare them with what Hermann Grimm says, with what Karl Lamprecht says, who perhaps even make great mistakes. What Grimm and Lamprecht say, even when it sounds the same as what Wilson says, is achieved in wrestling with the matter in their souls; it always has the mark of having been permeated by the personality.

For one who is able to see through such things, Wilson's words betray the fact that the personality is possessed by its views. Of course one would have to see the details of the content of his words in the spirit in which it lives in him. Nevertheless, we can see that these things rise up from the unconscious depths of the soul and are not worked over personally by the soul, but simply push through from below. This personality is possessed by what lives below the consciousness.

I certainly do not pass this judgment lightly for I am quite aware that it has far reaching consequences. But I am also aware that it has been arrived at objectively. This is the great difference—on the one hand a personal struggle with truth, on the other a statement of something by which one is merely possessed, where one is more or less an outward medium for something rather indefinite. In this respect Wilson provides a brilliant characterization of his people, one that could hardly be bettered. I must say that some of the statements he makes about the Americans hit home. He says that it is because the American nation has come into being on the basis of work on the land and in the forests that the people have evolved what characterizes them today—the mobility of the eyes, the tendency suddenly to take up bold and adventurous ideas and the tendency to think up plans that can be realized anywhere without much feeling for one's home.

Mobility of the eyes, tendency toward bold, adventurous ideas—these are characteristic of a situation where there is no direct personal struggle, no conscious struggle with the things that are going on, but of a situation where something unconscious plays a part, where the human being is really only more or less a mediator for what is at work. Wilson could offer no greater proof of what he described as American than the history he himself wrote.

I only wanted to show by way of introduction how our view of history is dependent upon the sort of people we are, and how even today historical observation is still largely dependent upon this. I wanted to show how a study of the writing of history itself should enlighten us as to the real nature of the situation.

Now, for example, what is Karl Lamprecht's intention, for he is certainly not possessed by his ideas but, struggles personally for his ideas of history? He wants to introduce a science of soul into history. He wants to understand the historical evolution of humanity on the basis of soul impulses. He is seeking a science of soul applicable to his own times. What does he find? He looks for it in the so called psychologists, in those who investigate the soul. In these psychologists he honestly tried to find something their souls experience within themselves, something that he could then apply to his historical studies. But precisely this made him unsure, and resulted in the fact that there is nothing in his way of looking at history that can offer any convincing satisfaction. Why is this? Because what nowadays is officially pursued as psychology hardly penetrates into the true self, into the real inner soul being of man.

Now the inner soul life of man comes to expression in a quite different way when one is confronted by another person and has to act with him in this situation. And it is on this basis that the historical evolution of humanity proceeds. What proceeds there cannot be viewed in the way that historical research of the present time views it. What has modern historical research grown accustomed to? What has Karl Lamprecht found in the psychologists that can help historical research? He found what has evolved on the pattern of scientific method. And in the 19th century historical research was drawn more and more into a sphere where history is regarded in the same way as nature. The same method of acquiring knowledge, the same kind of knowledge, the same kind of judgment that are used to observe and understand the phenomena of nature were applied to the historical evolution of humanity. Karl Lamprecht sees something significant in applying to his method of looking at history what had led to sure results in natural science.

In this respect too, one can say out of an historical instinct, Hermann Grimm made an excellent observation when he gave his opinion of the famous historian Gibbon. Gibbon, who wrote a history of the decline of the Roman Empire, is an historian who really carries out in exemplary fashion the kind of method suited to studying nature, only he has applied it to history. What really happened here? Hermann Grimm observed quite correctly. Gibbon was a very shrewd, scientific observer of history, but he described all the forces, which he did excellently for the first Christian centuries, all the forces which tend toward decay, which led to the fall of the Roman Empire, which brought to an end the evolution which had been in progress for a long time. Grimm rightly reproaches Gibbon with the fact that something quite different was also happening in the centuries when the Roman Empire was declining, something positive, for the forces connected to the birth of Christianity were entering into historical evolution. These are the forces of progressive evolution, the forces which existed positively alongside the negative forces of decay. They are simply missing from Gibbon's history.

Herman Grimm came to this important observation out of his historical instinct. He did not know the basis for it, for it is only with the science of spirit that we can get to the bottom of such things—the science of spirit whose method works with forces that otherwise slumber in the soul and which will be developed thus enabling the human being really to see into the spiritual. This science of spirit discovers that we cannot grasp the progressive forces of historical evolution bearing the future if we use only the form of knowledge that happens to be excellent for natural science.

What happens when we apply to historical evolution the method that is right for natural science? We find the forces of decay. We find the part of life that becomes dead in historical evolution, in the social life of humanity. If we apply only what our understanding, our ordinary consciousness can grasp, then we find ourselves restricted to studying the impulses of decay. The impulses of growth, of forward evolution, that carry historical evolution in a positive sense, elude this kind of observation. They also elude this kind of observation when we are confronted by real life and wish to take hold of it.

It is shocking that one must say such things, but the present time must learn to grasp things as they really are. Taking care to observe what happens and not to sleepwalk through reality, we should try to get together a parliament or something similar where only people intellectually educated according to the scientific pattern have to vote on what should happen both in social life and in life as a whole; we should create a parliament of people who have fashioned their intellect according to scientific method and let no one else in except those who are fully educated in these things, and you can be quite sure that these people will come to decisions which will very quickly lead the community into decline in every possible sphere. For their way of thinking can be applied only to the forces of decline and decay. It can observe only the declining forces in human evolution. The forces of growth are such that they cannot be comprehended by the powers of our ordinary consciousness. And here I must come back to something that I indicated here several months ago in a lecture about how the unconscious comes to be revealed.

Looked at superficially, this human soul life, in fact human life as a whole, proceeds in alternating states of waking and sleeping. Because we are naturally all very industrious, we are awake two thirds of our lives and are asleep one third. These conditions alternate. But this is not absolutely correct, for what we call sleeping and dreaming also extends to a large extent into our waking life. Our waking life is completely awake only in part. Beneath the surface of our waking life is something that sleeps, even when we are awake. A very significant man, Friedrich Theodor Vischer, had a kind of instinctive feeling for this when he pointed out how closely our feeling life and our passions are related to our dream life. Those who are really able to investigate and observe such things discover that what we experience as our feelings are conscious in us in a quite different way from our perceptions and mental images. For, in fact, we are only really awake in the latter. Our feelings shine through out of the unconscious spheres of the soul just as dreams do. We are not more strongly conscious of our feelings than we are of our dreams; we do not know them as they really are, but only observe their reflection in the sphere of consciousness. We raise our feelings into the waking condition by having them before our minds. We dream the whole day by allowing our souls to be permeated by feelings, and we are asleep inasmuch as we have will impulses and go through the world with such impulses, the motive you know as coming from your will impulses. You know what it is that as perception stimulates the will. How what you want comes about, how your mental images lead to movement in your limbs and hands,—all this proceeds in a sleeping state. We sleep and dream beneath the surface of our normal consciousness.

Having learned to look at the human being in this way, if we then learn to see history as it really is, we become aware of all those actions and impulses at work in the historical evolution of humanity, which are not forces of decay. They come to be recognized as something which the whole of humanity in living together dreams and sleeps. However odd and paradoxical it may sound this will become a most important truth once more, without which there can be no satisfaction in historical research—that the forces carrying humanity forward in its historical evolution do not belong to the normal forces, we use in natural science, for these impulses in history in no way proceed from our ordinary waking consciousness, but proceed from our dreaming and sleeping. This is not a comparison or picture but something real in the deepest sense.

This is why in earlier times, when people were still connected with the life of the spirit in their soul life, even if only unconsciously, they sought their information about social life and historical evolution from a different source than what we call history today. They sought their knowledge in myths, sagas, pictures. And they knew more about the impulses to be found in their own people than can be discovered today purely by means of the understanding that is confined to our ordinary consciousness, and that has provided such magnificent results in science. That is where it belongs.

Now Karl Lamprecht quite rightly observed that a new age began in the middle of the 15th century. But he was not able to make use of this fact. He said that the individual human being then began to be significant, to become intellectual. History really only begins in this age. At first it is studied according to the pattern of science. Of course, we cannot return to the old ways, but the impulses which lie at the root of historical evolution are subconscious.

When a person is possessed by something in the subconscious working in his soul, then something bursts through from the subconscious, as with Wilson, resulting in a brilliant and appropriate observation. But this makes it all the more difficult for someone who is called to be an individuality, an individual soul, to struggle for the truth. It is therefore necessary, especially in this intellectual age, in order to understand social, historical and moral life that something else emerge that can see into the part of the human being that cannot be grasped by our ordinary consciousness, that can see into the part where our ordinary consciousness no longer operates, where we dream and sleep away our normal life.

I have previously described this as imaginative knowledge, inspired knowledge and intuitive knowledge.—This is what looks into the spiritual world, and what can look below the threshold of our consciousness, where the real, true spirit works. The real nature of history, that humanity normally only dreams and sleeps through, can only be called forth if history is studied with the help of imagination and inspiration. In other words, because the real course of history is something that proceeds in the subconscious and does not reveal itself to our ordinary consciousness, it is imperative to apply what I have called the spiritual scientific method,—imagination, inspiration and intuition—to history, to the social, moral and legal life of humanity if we wish to come to know them as they are fundamentally. These facets of reality which first appear before the soul in pictures, in imaginations, must be called forth from the depths of historical evolution. These imaginations must then inspire. Then we shall come upon what is really at work in historical evolution. Attempts in the past such as those of Karl Lamprecht can occasionally come about through instinct, but it can only become truly spiritually enlightened knowledge when history is deepened by the science of spirit.

Now I do not wish to omit contrasting what today is called history with a few historical findings of the science of spirit. I would like to take as my starting point the fact that Karl Lamprecht instinctively divined something I have already mentioned—that a new age arose out of the old around the middle of the 15th century.

If we look with the eye of the seer—if we look with our perceptive consciousness into history, we do in fact find that there is an important turning point that begins roughly about the beginning of the 15th century. Everything that Karl Lamprecht says about subjectivism and the type is of lesser importance than this. Something begins at the turn of the 15th century that is not sufficiently recognized, that brings about a significant and tremendous change in the whole of human life, and which comes to expression most typically in the life of Central Europe. If we go back to the time before this age we find that the configuration, the structure of the human being and his actions are characterized by the fact that his understanding still operates in an instinctive way. In the science of spirit we therefore distinguish the more instinctive rational soul, where cleverness itself is still instinctive. This is superseded around the middle of the 15th century, and not according to the comfortable notion that nature makes no leaps, but is superseded by decided a leap, by a quite different configuration of the human soul. What in the science of spirit we call the consciousness soul which grasps everything through the consciousness, now becomes typical for humanity. And we can grasp what has happened since that time when we recognize that a whole age can be understood only by taking into consideration how this instinctive understanding, this rational soul, began to operate in more or less the same way in the 7th or 8th century B.C., how this understanding molded Greek history, Roman history, Roman law, Roman politics. Thus everything can be grasped only in the light of this instinctive kind of understanding. And we can comprehend what begins to happen around the middle of the 15th century, what is suddenly different in what takes place, only if we know that at that time the consciousness soul began to work.

The consciousness soul has a quite different relationship to reality, for it does not work instinctively from within, but makes the human being think and consider, drawing conclusions and proceeding purely intellectually. It is in this age that we live today. And what we have to study, and what can be observed in every detail, is what this consciousness soul brings to the very foundations of the soul. For the soul life comes to expression quite differently in such people as the Italian or Spanish who still have much that belongs to an older heritage, from such people as the British who have been particularly attracted to the material aspects of life by their geographical situation in evolving the consciousness soul. It is different again in Eastern Europe where there is no natural tendency for the consciousness soul to evolve, where today the evolution of the consciousness soul is slept through. And it is only in the age that will follow this present age of the consciousness soul that those who today are the Russian people will be ready to evolve their particular kind of soul which at the moment cannot be observed at all with the ordinary senses in the people who live in the east of Europe. Today it is imperative to acquire a deeper understanding for what is happening all over the earth. And also a deeper understanding is needed for what is taking place in the individual human being, inasmuch as he belongs to the great dream of history that can be understood only when we can call forth something from the dreaming human soul that cannot be approached with our normal observation: that from the 7th, 8th century until the 14th, 15th century instinctive willing and understanding evolved, and that a great change then comes about, under whose influence we now stand. This is one example.

I will cite another example. At a place such as this, where I have spoken for so many years, I will not shrink from describing the findings of the science of spirit quite concretely for the simple reason that we would not make any progress with the science of spirit if we did not gradually proceed to a description of concrete events.

Normally history draws only upon ordinary observation and ordinary documents for its study of earlier epochs. As I have said previously, the spiritual scientific method is based upon a particular development of powers slumbering in the human soul. It was explained how the soul is led to perceive spheres of life that never manifest themselves in the soul in normal life. Then was shown how the soul can free itself from the body, how it can then pursue knowledge independently of the body. Then the soul begins to utilize forces which, it is true, are present in normal life, but which remain in a slumbering state in the subconscious, the unconscious. Man's real life cannot be grasped by our ordinary powers of knowledge.

Let us take an ordinary phenomenon, but one which leads us deeply into the mysteries of human life, even of ordinary, everyday life. Let us take the fact that we can learn something by heart. In this way we can study how the human memory behaves. Now people usually believe that we master a mental image of what we take in, that we then have it in our consciousness and after a time it rises up again out of consciousness. This superstition is taught by countless psychologists. This is supposed to be science, this superstition that the ideas that we take in wander down into some indefinite sphere, wander about in the unconscious part of the soul, and that when need them they rise up again and appear as memory images. Such a view can only come about because no one has learned how to observe the real life of the soul. In fact, what happens is quite different. At the time we take in a mental image there is in our consciousness only the fact of this taking in. Parallel with this activity is another of quite a different nature that remains unconscious, that slips into the human organization and is responsible for something happening that is quite different from the formation of the mental image. This activity that takes place parallel with the formation of the image is unconscious. The memory is developed unconsciously. Now we have taken in new images. The parallel activity has functioned.

You can get a rough idea of what it is like—the time is too short to provide further proof—by remembering what it is like yourselves. Think of all the various other things you have had to do when learning a poem by heart or when trying to remember things for exams when you really have to cram,—think of all the things you have to do apart from taking in the image in order that the thing sticks! With our consciousness we try to support what happens unconsciously. There is really a parallel activity, and when people strike their foreheads when cramming themselves with what they have to remember, it is all a support for this unconscious activity. The mental image that we take in does not remain; it is temporary. What exists down below and is shaped and prepared there is something that we can perceive inwardly just as we can perceive things outwardly—the mental image is formed anew, it is something different from the original one.

Every time we use our memory the mental image has to be formed anew according to the inner copy. This is the true state of affairs. But the activity on which the memory rests, remains unconscious. Supposing it is drawn up into the consciousness so that we work in it and do consciously what otherwise takes place subconsciously in the parallel activity of forming images,—what have we then? It is the same power that is used when we apply imaginative knowledge. It forms the organism. We penetrate below the thresh-hold of consciousness, we penetrate to a sphere that we constantly exercise in life, but which remains unconscious. And we can always penetrate even deeper. The money then expands. We then acquire the possibility—and here I have to make a rather big leap because I have still to describe further findings—of following historical evolution from a purely spiritual viewpoint and of acquiring insight into the meaning and into the forces existing over the whole earth that carry the evolution of humanity. A number of laws are then revealed that go far beyond that ordinary observation can provide, but which for the first time raise what the human being sleeps and dreams through in his normal historical evolution, into consciousness.

The science of spirit, working with imagination, inspiration and intuition, can reach further back through the expansion of our memory into the memory of humanity so that we are really able to perceive what humanity has experienced. This can come about through the continuation of our own memory. It is true that it is much more difficult to do this than any other kind of scientific work—because we are ourselves deeply involved in it. Then we are able to reach back into earlier epochs of human evolution than the one I have just mentioned, which began in the 7th, 8th century B.C. and continued until the 15th century. We reach back into earlier times than this, into the time which followed what geology calls the ice age and by many geologists is called the flood. We must think of this as having taken place earlier than is normally believed—we go back thousands of years. What we come to then is not an ape-like humanity—this is a scientific superstition—but to a humanity whose soul constitution is quite different to today's. Allow me for once to risk describing in public a finding of the science of spirit. One must approach the science of the spirit without bias if one is not to regard its findings as merely fantastic. We reach back into an ancient epoch of earth evolution, about which we may say the following:

If we look at a human being and observe how he evolves, we see that what has to do with his bodily development takes place in the first years of childhood and in the later years of childhood up to puberty. And if we look still further we note that what develops in our souls goes hand in hand with our bodily development, right into the twenties. But then it stops. Our soul development no longer participates in this bodily development as it does with a child at the change of teeth, in growing and at puberty. The body and the soul then go their own separate ways. This is typical of our development from between the 25th and 30th years until old age—our souls no longer participate in what is developing in the body.

This was quite different in the first age that I will now describe, and which reaches back thousands of years. At that time the soul remained connected with the development taking place in the body until old age. The soul participated in this development right into the fifties and in the decline of the body in a way that today only happens in our childhood years. Because of this, the human being was able to experience something that he can no longer experience. As a matter of course we no longer experience in our souls the decline of our bodily organism. We are already withdrawn from our bodies. What happens in the soul comes to expression in our cultural life, where the soul is no longer dependent upon the bodily organism. At that time in Asia and India the soul-spirit life remained dependent on the life of the physical body until the fifties. This was quite a different kind of experience.

Then came the next epoch of historical evolution, when the dependence did not last so long, for at that time the soul's participation in the life of the body lasted until the forties. Then there was a further epoch when this participation lasted until the middle of the thirties. Here something quite special happened, which was still experienced by the old Egyptians and Chaldeans. And this was, that because the human being begins to decline in the life of the body after the age of 35, they were still able to experience this decline in their souls. Then this age came to an end, which was followed by the age I have already mentioned: the age of Greece and Rome, the effects of which lasted into the 15th century. In their soul life at that time people still remained more or less participants in the life of the body at least into their thirties. No one believes this today because no one really studies with inner personal interest what has come into being through the evolution of humanity. Since the 14th, 15th centuries the age has begun when the human being participates with his bodily life in the spirit-soul life until the end of the twenties. We no longer experience what the decline of human life is. In Greek and Latin times the beginning of the thirties was experienced within the instinctive understanding. At the present time this participation of the bodily life is concluded at the end of the twenties.

You can see that this is a remarkable law of history! As far as soul experience is concerned the age is progressively reduced, its final experience of the body is connected with an ever younger age. This is one of the most comprehensive and important laws of human evolution. Whereas the individual human being always grows older, humanity—if you now carry what I have just said to its logical conclusion—in its experience of the body, becomes younger. This means that it does not experience growing old as a reflex feeling in the soul; it only experiences its effect. But what the soul actually experienced in earlier times was quite different. It had something which enabled a person to look directly into the spiritual world by means of his instinctive knowledge. This must now be achieved again by humanity, only consciously. We have to learn to look into a sphere that cannot be perceived because today humanity can only experience what the body produces up to the age of 27.

I realize it is probably a bit much to speak about this growing younger of humanity, about the non-participation of the soul-spirit in the life of the body. But it does form the beginning of a true knowledge of history. For this true knowledge of history will be concerned with what is otherwise slept through, and we shall be able to understand properly what happens in history when we are able to appreciate such great, all-embracing laws.

I may be permitted to mention a personal experience. Those who have often heard me speak know that I mention personal experiences only if there is a particular reason to do so. It was because I directed my spiritual investigation to such matters that I came to know about what I have just told you—the growing younger of humanity and the influence on humanity due to the fact that the soul-spirit nature only experiences the life of the body in our younger years. That is how I found out about it. And I am quite convinced that anyone else applying the method of the science of spirit will find a law of history, though not of the kind that I characterized at the beginning of the lecture. And so I asked: How old was humanity then in the Greek age in its participation in the life of the body? At that time it continued until the beginning of the thirties. This was a tremendous change. For it is at this age that the human being enters upon a declining development. And in earlier times when he noticed this decline of the body he was granted a special form of spirituality. We study this spirituality when we study ancient wisdom and learning.

I have said that thinking is connected with a declining development. When the soul shared to a very large extent in the declining development of the body, it evolved a particular wisdom. This wisdom became lost in the age which began in the 7th century B.C. and ended in the 15th century. This age—inasmuch as we are interested in it and are still in it—represents the middle of evolution. If a new impulse had not arisen at that time there would have been the threat of a total break in our spiritual connection to the universe. The impulse came. When studying this growing younger of humanity I certainly did not think about such an impulse. That came later, and it belongs to one of the most shattering findings of the science of spirit.

I could see that the general course of human evolution had brought humanity to a crisis where its connection with the spiritual was threatened. What happened in this crisis?—I first came upon it after having found out about its origin. This is important, and I must single it out as a personal experience. I was shown the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha that occurred just in this age: the new impulse that gave humanity a fresh impetus. The Mystery of Golgotha thus finds its place in the historical evolution of humanity in a wonderful way.

Only for special reasons would I ever break what is expressed in the law that one should not use the name of God in vain. The science of spirit certainly leads to the great religious impulses, but I regard it as a duty to allow religious impulses to be cultivated by those who are called to do so. However, I know that what is achieved by the science of spirit also deepens the religious impulses of the human soul. It is precisely the thoughts presented by the science of spirit that can provide a really Christian view of life. But you cannot get people to accept this. They would only reproach us if they found that we have constantly to speak about the great religious content of evolution in a way that does not please them. They also reproach us if we do not do this because we leave it to them, knowing full well that by occupying ourselves with the science of spirit the religious life will certainly be deepened. For they say that the science of spirit, of course, does not talk about Christianity. These are the misunderstandings which are readily thrust into the battle against the science of spirit. We are reproached for whatever we say. If we do not speak about something because we feel that others are called to do this, we are then misunderstood and told that the science of spirit has no Christianity, or whatever it may be.

As I have said, the fact that this event concerning the whole cosmic connections of the universe happens at one particular moment in the evolution of humanity, belongs to the most shattering things that we can experience, especially since in my case—if you will allow me this personal remark—it was an experience quite unsought for.

I only wanted to indicate to you the beginning of a view of world evolution as seen by the science of spirit.

The forces that seek to penetrate more deeply into history have been divined instinctively, especially in our central European evolution. We only have to ask: How does the individual soul participate in this historical evolution? I have mentioned previously how in looking at thinking on the one hand and at the will on the other, we bring to expression in the overdevelopment of the sexual organism something that leads our spiritual-scientific observation to the eternal in the soul, to that which exists in the spiritual world before birth or conception, and which enters through the gate of death. This also leads to something else. The part of us that unites with our physical organism and that comes down from the spiritual world when we are conceived, when we are born, is intimately related—I have already said this today—to the part of us that operates throughout the whole course of our lives and makes us into complete and living human beings, intimately related to what works out of our souls as memory. If we now grasp not only the fact that the thinking can be conceived as inspiration, but also grasp the element that unites with our bodily organism, that flows out of inspiration and accompanies our memory and our growth, then we find that we not only emerge from a spirit-soul existence before beginning this bodily life, and which is united to what we evolve in life, but that within the part of us that goes through death is contained the desire to enter a human life again after the soul has been through a purely spiritual life, and that within this part of us is to be found not only what inspires us, but forms us, which not only comes from a spirit-soul existence before birth, but comes from previous incarnations upon earth.

Imagination, inspiration and intuition provide us with a true idea of previous lives on earth and a justified prospect of future lives on earth. I can only touch upon this for there is insufficient time for a more detailed description. But when we look at individual human life as it proceeds through repeated existences upon earth, we find something in historical evolution that can be grasped concretely. The human being naturally takes part in the various epochs I have described. He lives through the various cultures of the earth and he bears himself as soul from one epoch to the next, taking with him what he has evolved.

In the present epoch, when the consciousness soul is evolved, the human being unconsciously brings with him what he possesses from the previous epoch in which he once lived, and in which the instinctive soul worked instinctively in the understanding, and he now works upon this. Now we can fully grasp what this dream of history consists of, how human souls that live in each epoch work together and return again and again. This idea arose instinctively in the cultural life of Central Europe. But it has never been developed. The science of spirit is called upon to do this.

The pedants or “very clever people”—and I mention this in inverted commas—say: Of course, Lessing managed some wonderful things, but then he grew old and wrote his Education of the Human Race. If one has the necessary mean attitude, it is easy to be so very clever, much easier than being able to penetrate the mysteries of human life as did Lessing. Lessing achieved something immense. He indicated, if only in somewhat amateur fashion, how inner forces guide the evolution of man and of humanity. He says: There was once a time when human beings were educated in a quite particular way. Then there was a time when people were educated differently. Now is the time when self-education begins.—He had a feeling for the successive epochs, just as Karl Lamprecht had. Lessing had a feeling for even more in that he pointed out that the forces of one epoch are taken over into the following epochs by the human souls constantly reincarnating.

Of course it is easy to object to this by saying that human souls do not remember their previous lives. This is the same as saying that a four year old child cannot do arithmetic, therefore the human being cannot do arithmetic. Memory of earlier lives has first to be gained through the kind of knowledge I have referred to previously. Without this knowledge it is not possible to penetrate the sphere that is dreamed as history. This is something that humanity must grasp, for it is intimately connected with the present evolution of humanity.

Tremendous questions are presented to our souls today. One question is: What is the constitution of the human soul like in the east, in our center and in the west? We possess a science of history which, as we saw at the beginning, has gone quite astray. We need a science of history that can penetrate to those deeper forces of the human soul which bring what otherwise only dreams and sleeps, into our consciousness. When imagination and inspiration reach down into our experience of history that otherwise sleeps, we shall realize what it is that works between man and man in our social existence. Then quite different social laws will come into being from the ones of the past few centuries. What then emerges will be quite equal to the demands of life, the demands of reality. People experience history today in an odd way, and in conclusion I would like to give a few examples of this.

A certain J. H. Lambert was born in a South German city in the 18th century. In the 19th century, roughly in the middle of the forties, a monument was erected to him in that city. On the monument is a celestial globe as a sign that this man penetrated the laws of the heavens, as these things were done in the 18th century. Not much is known about this. He penetrated further than is possible with the Kant-Laplace theory. In the 1840's his native city erected a monument to him. A hundred years earlier his father, after several people had pointed out to him that his fourteen year old son was very talented and should be supported, applied for support. The worthy city gave 40 franks, but on condition that the son take himself off and did not return. A hundred years later—such is the course of history—a monument was erected.

Such things happen again and again. You may remember at the beginning of the war, particularly here in this city, I often had occasion to refer to a most significant thinker who once lived here, Karl Christian Planck. I referred to him at that time and had also spoken of him much earlier in my books. Now we see that people begin to take note of him, but not in the way that I meant. If Planck were alive today in conditions that are quite changed, he would express what he said, even in the 1880's, quite differently. Humanity can make use only of what is ardently experienced of reality, and not of what comes from looking back. Because people believe we need a new impetus, they think that a highly gifted and thoughtful person would say the same things today as he said in the 1880's. We honor the memory of such people if we continue to work in their spirit, and if we ask: How would they speak today if they were to speak out of the great spirit out of which they spoke then?

Today the times demand that we grasp what underlies the evolution of humanity, particularly concerning history. Then we shall not hear judgments like those I quoted at the beginning of the lecture. Nor will vague prophecies be uttered. But history will be described in such a way that we confront reality with feeling, which otherwise is only dissipated in dreams; that we confront reality with deeper forces, that we are equal to the demands made upon us. And the demands of the present time are tremendous.

We must know what is stirring in humanity from east to west, what is coming out in the events of today. We must be equal to this reality that is hammering so dreadfully upon our doors. We must take up the laws of history that are not contained in the laws today, laws that penetrate deeper than the purely intellectual, than the kind of understanding that has produced such great results in science, but which cannot grasp the social, political, historical and moral life of man. Goethe felt this. He not only expressed his impressions of the historical knowledge of his time, but he also expressed something that should come to be. What made an impression upon him was the best thing about history is not its abstract laws but the impulses that penetrate into our feelings and our enthusiasm.

By means of imagination, inspiration and intuition it will be possible to unveil what men sleep through. This will sink down into our feelings and enthusiasm. When reality draws toward us and we can approach reality, inwardly permeated by these impulses, we shall not utter prophetic or vaguely mystical statements, but in future our study of history will result in the fashioning of spiritual laws, not such as it has already, but laws which penetrate the human soul to the point of arousing enthusiasm which is equal to and can tackle the situation as it really is.

Not only is what Goethe said at that time true—what can be said today is also true. For today the following holds good: History must generate enthusiasm for the true, real and complete understanding of reality, for it is the best that can be offered to the life of the soul.

The most valuable aspect of history in the future will be the enthusiasm that it generates in the human soul.

For many years now, almost every winter I have had the privilege of speaking here about one or other topic from the field of spiritual science, as it is meant in tonight's reflections. And just on the occasion of my last lectures, which I was allowed to give here, I allowed myself to make the remark that when one speaks of spiritual science today in our present time in the sense in which it is meant here, one then by no means talking about anything in our time that is well known or even popular in wider circles; on the contrary, with this spiritual science one has to talk about something that is widely unrecognized and, above all, misunderstood. Indeed, this spiritual science has to fight against misunderstanding upon misunderstanding. One person may be informed about this spiritual science from second or third or sometimes even seventh or eighth hand reports and come to the conclusion that it is something like a new sect entering the world or some new attempt to found a religious community or something similar. The other comes to the opinion that this spiritual science has fantasy and 'dreaming' at its sources. Above all, it contradicts in the most eminent sense what today, as a worldview, wants to establish itself, as they say, as genuine, true science.

Perhaps I may, just on the occasion of this lecture, conclude with a few words about the misunderstandings that are currently close to us here, and may I first devote the greater part of the lecture to our topic and to that from whose field I have already been able to bring some details here for discussion, today in general, in order to then consider some special questions in the lecture on January 27 of next year.

Above all, it may be said that spiritual science wants to place itself in the spiritual life of the present, precisely as this spiritual life of the present has developed from the scientific way of thinking that has taken hold of the spiritual life of humanity for three to four centuries. And it may be said that the most serious misunderstanding is the assumption that this spiritual research can somehow come into conflict with the legitimate claims of true scientific research. From its point of view, this spiritual science will admire and fully recognize this science, and must do so if it wants to stand on the ground of true and genuine observation of humanity and the times. It will admire and recognize the great scientific achievements of our age where it is justified, will acknowledge what science has done for the transformation of our entire cultural life, will acknowledge how it is a scientific way of thinking, what is at work at every turn today and lives in our cultural assets and, in particular, what has virtually transformed all external areas of the rest of life in the course of the nineteenth century.

To what extent this spiritual science is fully included in the natural scientific series of development on the one hand, but on the other hand must go beyond its final conclusions, precisely because it draws the last and most genuine conclusions about what today is often called natural science thinking, I would like to explain this first by means of a kind of comparison, by which we simply want to communicate, but by which we do not want to prove anything special about what spiritual science has to say.

I do not want to talk about what science has achieved in terms of commercial and industrial aspects of contemporary cultural life; I want to talk about what scientific thinking has achieved. Apart from the fact that it has influenced the various cultural fields, it has contributed to a certain education of all human thinking, it has transformed the nature of the habits of thought, of the life of imagination and the cognitive needs of the human soul to a much greater extent than is usually realized. For this transformation has not only taken hold of those who have been drawn to science directly through their profession, their inclination or their interest, but of all souls; people simply think differently today than they did five or six centuries ago. We are accustomed to holding very different ideas about what we might call the reign of a sense of existence than we had in earlier centuries.

This is not something that has been arbitrarily brought about; rather, it is based on that inner necessity that had to take place in the history of mankind, just as human life must be different for an old man of sixty than for a man of thirty. These things correspond to historical laws of life, and anyone who wants to deny them must deny the inner truth of things. Those people who today are not yet seized by this change in thinking will be seized by it in the future, in difficult times, in the very near future. Thus, if we may say so, centuries of scientific education have transformed the innermost part of human thought and feeling. We may say so.

How does that which wants to shape cultural development as spiritual science relate to this transformation of human thinking over the last four centuries? I would like to illustrate this to you through a comparison. Let us look at the farmer who harvests the fruits when they are ripe. The greater part of the harvest is used as human food. But a part must be used, if life is to continue, to be sown as seed again, so that a harvest can ripen again next year.

We can compare this process in the life of nature with what has been achieved in recent centuries through scientific knowledge. The greater part of this must be used to allow human cultural life to flow broadly; it is incorporated into the important industrial achievements, into commercial life, into external social coexistence, into the individual sciences; and the individual branches of this culture flourish because the scientific way of thinking flows into them all. This part of human thought can be compared to the part of the seed that is used for human food.

But a part – and certainly not the least valuable part – of thoughts that have entered the human soul only in the last century, a part of these inner acquisitions, of what we have learned about the secrets of the existence of the world precisely through the natural sciences, can be used like the seed that goes into the field to produce new fruit. This is the part we use for what is referred to as meditation, concentration of thought. We can process this part of scientific thoughts and ideas inwardly with the soul, allowing them to take effect in our soul, to germinate there, so to speak. Under the influence of these thoughts, to which we devote ourselves in meditation, which we practise in the very innermost, most intimate soul work, we can allow precisely these scientific ideas to work on our soul in such a way that they work, weave, and bring forth sensations and feelings within it, that they practise this soul life so inwardly that this soul life not only expresses the word 'development', which is so popular today, but also comes into development itself. It is precisely the scientific way of thinking, when meditatively processed, that transforms our soul, makes our soul into something else. And it will soon become clear how, from this point of view, spiritual science is the correct continuation of the scientific way of thinking. But with regard to this spiritual science, when such considerations are employed, as is the case today, only suggestions can be given, only communications about the method of research, through which the spiritual researcher himself can devote himself to contemplation, the means by which everyone can be convinced.

Therefore, I would first like to draw attention to some of the results of spiritual science and then show how the spiritual researcher arrives at these results. These results are so at odds with what people today believe and suppose to be truth that they seem quite paradoxical, like something fantastic, like a flight of fancy for some. The spiritual researcher in particular knows how alien these results must be to many a soul of the present time, and he is least surprised when someone who wanted to be his friend walks away from him with the impression that he was talking to a fanatic. The spiritual researcher is fully aware of every reaction, even hostile confrontation, because he knows where such antagonism can come from.

Above all, spiritual research is a unique discipline in that it seeks to connect the human soul with its spiritual source in a way that is based on scientific thinking. It shows that what man carries in his soul as the deepest, innermost part is spiritual , a spiritual core; and that this spiritual core is connected with an all-embracing spiritual life of the world that lies beyond the life of the senses, and that it cannot be perceived or recognized by the ordinary human senses or by the intellect that binds itself to these human senses. But in this method of research, a tremendous difference between spiritual science and all other sciences immediately comes to light. Every other science works with the same means of thinking and looking at things, which are otherwise peculiar to man in everyday life. Just as man is, just as he develops in the normal way from childhood to later age, as he develops a certain capacity for knowledge, so he also approaches the scientific research objects of the present. And everything that such a normal person has to say forms the content of the sciences in the various fields of life.

It is quite different in spiritual research. It takes development seriously. It is based on the fact that with the powers of knowledge, with the soul faculties, which are initially inherent in people in their everyday lives, these boundaries cannot be crossed, which separate the sensual from the supersensible, the material from the spiritual; but it is based on the fact that a person's powers of knowledge, a person's soul powers, can be developed. It is serious about the word “development”. And today we will be speaking about intimate inner processes and activities of the soul, through which the soul elevates itself beyond itself, comes to develop powers of knowledge that are not those of ordinary life, but that, within this soul, which can be addressed in the soul as the true, immortal, spiritual core of the human being.

In a sense, spiritual research is not as comfortable as other forms of research; it cannot accept people as they are, but must make uncomfortable demands of them. If you want to become a spiritual researcher, you have to transform your soul so that it is guided beyond the ordinary level through its own activity and conducts research with powers that are not present in everyday life. This is the language of spiritual research. Only these powers lead to the regions of the spiritual world and to its beings.

But then, when the soul is led out so that it grasps its own essential core as a soul, then it first comes to a truth that, in the truest sense of the word, represents the continuation of the findings of natural science, but which is still everywhere looked upon as fantasy wherever it has not been studied in detail. One comes to the truth about repeated lives, the truth that can be expressed in a nutshell by saying: What we experience and work for in this life between birth and death, we do not experience and work for only once. As we see our life, when we look back into childhood as far as we can, and as we hope for our life in relation to the rest of the life before death, we do not live only once. We go through the gate of death and live in a purely spiritual world, which can only be seen with the spirit, a life between death and new birth, and then enter with the fruits of this life, also with those that we gather between death and new birth, into a new life on earth, to which we can look in the future just as we can look back into the past on the already expired earth lives of the individual human. So we always look forward to life on earth - between birth and death - and to life that passes between death and new birth in a purely spiritual world. The way we present this truth in today's spiritual life, it seems quite naturally fantastic to the vast majority of people. But all new truths in the world have seemed as fantastic as they have appeared. It will always be the fate of new truths that at first they seem like fantasies, then they become something that can no longer be seen as different; they then become a matter of course. Then, when man beholds himself as in an extended memory, then he can also explore the connections of this spiritual-soul core, which goes from life to life, with the spiritual worlds, through which the divine-spiritual, which interweaves and lives through this life, also passes. But from that which the spiritual researcher has so fully brought to life within himself, it springs forth for man that which he needs more and more for the cultural development of our earth, especially in the present and in the future.

Thus I have presented some of the truths of this spiritual research. It now remains for me to show how the spiritual researcher arrives at these truths, that is, how the spiritual world is investigated and researched. One must not believe that this spiritual world can be investigated with the senses that we can apply to the sensory world. It is a spiritual world precisely because it cannot be perceived by the senses. It is necessary for the study of this spiritual world that man himself should make himself the instrument of investigation. All other sciences have their external instruments. Spiritual research has as its only instrument the human organism itself, which is, however, the most wonderful instrument we can find on earth. But this organism must undergo a certain transformation if it is to acquire, to use a phrase from Goethe, “spiritual eyes and ears” in order to see what is always around us in spiritual form, but which cannot be seen unless a spiritual eye and spiritual ear are developed in the human soul, which would otherwise remain dormant.

How does one develop the spiritual organs through which the spiritual world becomes visible, audible and perceptible to man? Not tumultuous external processes, not experiments that can be carried out in the same way externally as in laboratories or clinics, bring about this change, but inner soul processes that the spiritual researcher can carry out with himself if he wants to gain insight into the spiritual world. What I have to say in this description may appear to many people to be extremely mundane. But it must be said: however mundane these things appear, in their execution they are among the most difficult that a person can undertake on this earth, including all his other activities. But we are not speaking of special wonders, of some things that in their simplest form not every person would know, when one has to speak of what the spiritual researcher must develop in his soul if he wants to come to the real exploration of the supersensible. The soul forces that the spiritual researcher has to develop are always there in the soul, but only in their beginnings, as they are needed for everyday life. The spiritual researcher has only to develop these qualities to an unlimited degree. Here I must call attention to something that is not only present everywhere in everyday life, but is also necessary in the most eminent sense. It is what is called attention: the attention of the soul to these or those things, the turning of interest to these or those things, as we have them in ordinary life.

We need to pay attention to two things. Many people need to reflect – but usually they think about these things when things are no longer going well – they need to reflect on why their memory is getting worse in life. Why does memory get worse at all? If you delve deeper into the question of memory, you come to the conclusion that it is actually a question of attention. What we grasp intensely with our attention remains in our memory.

You could say something quite mundane as an introductory remark when you want to point out the importance of attention. Many a person is quite annoyed in the morning when they cannot find this or that thing that they put here or there in the evening. They have completely forgotten it. For example, they cannot find their cufflink. Why does this happen? Well, they have forgotten where they put it. He can remedy that. A sure way to help himself is to resolve not just to lay it down thoughtlessly, but to think: I am putting the button in this place, I am laying it down with will. If you also pay attention to the act from your inner arbitrariness, you will not forget it, you will surely remember the place where you put the button. This can be extended to all other memories. If only people realized that they also take into their memory everything they take into their arbitrary attention, then they would combine the attention problem with the memory problem, and a training of the memory can be summarized in a training of attention.

And there is another point to which attention must be drawn, which seems even more important. It is necessary for a healthy mental life that we are able to recognize the experiences we have had back to the point of our childhood as ours in memory. If we are incapable of this, if, let us say, at the age of thirty a person's soul life is such that he cannot recognize certain experiences that he had at the age of five as his own, then a perforation of the ability to remember occurs that is somewhat unhealthy. Only then are we healthy when we can follow our entire present self as a continuous thread. This depends on our being able to experience the events that happen to us in such a way that they line up on a thread of memory through which, as it were, our ego runs. And a person - this happens in certain mental illnesses - can, as it were, come to have a double ego in that he can have the opinion that someone else has experienced what he has actually experienced. Such things happen. Then his healthy soul life is destroyed, torn apart. Much could be achieved for the education of people in whom one can recognize in many cases that such a perforation of the ego is taking place, much could be achieved for education if one were clear about the fact that the ability to remember is intimately connected with the way we pay attention to and are interested in the things of the world. Nothing but attention — that is what belongs to the imaginative soul forces.

It is this attention that must be developed to infinity by the spiritual researcher in what is called concentration of thought. To do this, however, an ordinary, everyday soul force must be driven with tremendous inner energy and resignation to an extent that it is otherwise never driven in external life. The human being must bring himself to explore the state of mind in which he is when he is attentive; he must become aware of it when he is attentive in ordinary life. His attention is aroused by external impressions, by sensational things that have a strong effect on him. But the spiritual researcher must transform his attention so that he does not allow himself to be forced by anything external, but is able, through inner arbitrariness alone, to unfold the activity of the soul that would otherwise only be unfolded in attention.

The safest way to achieve this goal is one that is highly inconvenient for many people. In order to achieve something very safely, you have to force yourself to turn your attention to something that is as uninteresting as possible in ordinary life; something you would like to run away from, that is completely uninteresting. If you can bring yourself to treat that from which you otherwise run away with your soul in such a way that you place it at the center of your spiritual life, that you concentrate all the powers of your soul on this one thing, but in relation to the rest of your soul, through inner arbitrariness, through training of the soul, you come to be as in sleep, so that no eye, no ear perceives anything externally, that all the worries of life fall silent: Anyone who has silenced their entire being in this way, as is otherwise only achieved in sleep, but then does not fall asleep but focuses on something that they have deliberately placed at the center of their mental life and now turn their soul's attention to in an unlimited way, will awaken forces in their soul that would otherwise remain dormant in their soul.

This brings about what could be called – I do not particularly value the expression – a spiritual chemistry. Because when you develop your imagination and thinking, you are doing something in your own soul life that can be compared and only compared with the separation of hydrogen from water in the chemical laboratory. When we have water in front of us, it is liquid. If we separate the hydrogen from it, we have a gas that has very different properties than water. No one can see the properties of hydrogen and oxygen in the water. And no one can recognize the spiritual destiny in the person who stands before us every day. To do this, the spiritual and mental must be separated from the physical and bodily. This does not happen through external processes, but through the increase of that which may appear so ordinary to man, into the immeasurable. So that one can indeed say: “Although it is light, the light is heavy.”

There are many details that need to be observed. Here, only the principle can be stated. If the soul then increases its attention, as required, it is able, through the concentration of forces that are otherwise unconscious, to tear everything of the soul and spirit away from the physical, just as hydrogen is torn away from oxygen in the laboratory.

If you continue such inner exercises of the soul life, then the day will come when you can connect a meaning to the words that are otherwise just a phrase: Now I know that I can think even when I am not thinking with the brain; now I know that I can think and visualize even when I am not using my body; now I know what it means to leave the body and to feel and experience the soul and spiritual realm. And when someone leaves the physical body with the soul and spirit, he has completely different qualities and experiences in his inner life than a person has within his body. Just as someone says that hydrogen can be extracted from water, then hydrogen has the properties of a gas that burns, so from the point of view of an everyday materialist, one can laugh at what the spiritual researcher experiences when he reaches the point of lifting his spiritual soul out of his physical body through long, energetic exercises. It sounds like empty phrases when he talks about it. And yet I would like to describe the progress, at least in detail.

What the spiritual researcher experiences when he continues the exercises is indeed so completely paradoxical that from a certain moment on he feels: Yes, your thinking used to be such that you had to use your brain to think – but now you feel that you are actually thinking outside of your brain. He feels as if he can move like a sun in the spiritual with his present thinking, emancipated from the brain. He experiences himself in such a way that he now even knows: the way he thinks otherwise now runs almost automatically, it is bound to the brain. From a certain moment on, one acquires a very definite knowledge about it: When you are in your present state, you have to slip back into your brain if you want to use your brain again. You perceive your brain as something external to you, like you would perceive an external object, a table, a chair, next to you.

Then comes that significant experience, which makes such a significant, such a shattering impact on the spiritual life of the spiritual researcher. It must be repeated several times in life, but when it occurs for the first time in life, it is the most harrowing event that cannot be compared to anything else in life. It can occur, for example, as the following: one wakes up in the middle of sleep as if to a dream, but it is not a dream, but a spiritual reality that outshines all the rest of the reality of the day. The experience can also occur in the middle of the outer life of the day, but it does not disturb it, because true and correct preparation will never make a person fantasize. In the life of the day as well as in the life of the night, the moment may arise, which I would characterize in the following way. But it can also occur in hundreds of other ways; I will give only a typical example. Something of what is attempted to be described with words will present itself to every person who becomes a spiritual researcher. He will communicate what happens in such a way that he says: It is like a room in which he finds himself. Lightning strikes the room; he follows the lightning as if speaking to himself inwardly, he feels the elements striking his body in a flash, as if his body were being destroyed. From that moment on, he knows that he is united with the spirit without the body, he knows that man carries a spiritual and soul element within him; this is the direct experience of every person who can have the experience if he wants to. Only from that moment on do you know what the human essence is in the truest sense of the word; what lies beyond birth and death.

This experience can only be made in a spiritual way, not through external experiments. Those who demand that the spiritual be established through external experiments should also demand that some experience they had fifty years ago be extracted with some kind of powder so that it can be prepared and made visible externally. Spiritual facts are not established externally. That which spiritual researchers of all times have called “approaching the gate of death”, that is, experiencing death in the image, that is, what a person experiences in real death when his eternal core detaches itself from the physical body, is experienced in the image in the serious experience, which so absorbs the soul of the person who has already had it once, imprinting on the soul that seriousness that can be expressed and felt with the words: You were connected to the deepest core of your being, to that which, as the eternal, spiritually permeates, lives through and interweaves the world. However, this seriousness is to be lived through painfully and not without making the greatest efforts to which man is unaccustomed. Not without surrendering what is otherwise considered pleasure and joy; what one otherwise likes in life, not without giving up what one otherwise strives for in life for certain moments, one attains this purest experience, which has been spoken of and points to light in the spiritual world. Then one attains something further when one adds the following to what has just been said: One must also give up everything that one perceives as desirable in everyday life, and one must give it up in such a way that one completely renounces everything that one otherwise desires, everything that one otherwise likes, that one gives up everything that gives one pleasure, and one must not give it up in such a way that one has only a very specific self-awareness in the devotion, but in such a way that one really renounces during this devotion all such activity that we otherwise call our complete devotion to the world, which one otherwise does not really know, that one gives up no compulsion and nothing that otherwise calls us to devotion in life. This must be added, and the spiritual world, into which we have entered, senses this with what we call the spiritual state.

One should not imagine this perception in the spiritual world as being the same as the perception in the external world. The external world is presented to us in such a way that we can say: there is an object out there that I see with my eye or perceive with my other sensory organs. One can only experience spiritual states if, after devotion, one becomes one with the states. We do not experience these states from outside ourselves, but in such a way that they enter into us. We have to immerse ourselves, become one with the spiritual states that come to meet us. Therefore, when a person increases his inner thinking through attention, and when we make this thinking an organ of perception for spiritual states through devotion, then we perceive these spiritual states.

What one experiences inwardly can be called spiritual mimicry. Just as in ordinary life one unconsciously expresses one's spiritual states in facial expressions, so too, through the processes described, one becomes one with the spiritual world because one feels at one with it. As the soul experiences, it is driven to a facial expression, it becomes very active, very active, as it lives into the conditions. By experiencing the spiritual world, it undergoes something similar inwardly in a spiritual-soul way, as it is the facial expression of our face. A reliving is the perception of the spiritual world, an invisible, supersensible reliving. This reliving is attained, as it were, through this spiritual chemistry, through this detachment of the life of ideas from the instrument of the brain.

Likewise, one can detach the faculty of speech from the tool that otherwise serves language. When we speak, a certain part of the brain is externally active, which we have to use as a tool of our body, the one that specifically leads to the larynx. The one who studies the secrets of human speech knows that, even when one is thinking, finer movements take place internally than the coarser external speech movements. Now, as a spiritual researcher, one must be able to grasp the inner activity of the soul, which one otherwise expresses in speech. The mental researcher must detach it from the sound and the word; he must keep it as an inner activity, not allowing it to become a word, not shaping it into words, and he must keep it so inwardly that not even the parts of the brain that are otherwise active when speaking are used. He detaches the power of speech from speaking. He learns to keep something inwardly in his soul that otherwise vibrates inwardly when speaking. Then he does not speak, but what otherwise floods and pulses through the soul in the word is a strong power, a power through which he not only performs inner facial expressions, but also what can be called inner gestures, inner gesticulation, signs. Then not only intermediate states of the spiritual world, intermediate processes of perception, come to light, but the spiritual world itself is revealed, revealed in us, when we can imitate it in inner gestures. And only through the power of language will it be possible to imitate the processes of the spiritual world.

You can put yourself in the shoes of the beings and actions of real spirits around us. Only by living in their gestures and becoming one with them can you perceive the spiritual beings; this is how you gain knowledge of the spiritual world, but you also gain knowledge of your own sojourn in the spiritual world. When the ability to speak has been chemically detached from speaking, so to speak, the moment has arrived when memory can be extended beyond the previous life on earth, when it is realized that these are not theories; when it is known that our life did not begin yesterday, but that it is the continuation of many previous lives. From the moment we can imitate the spiritual world through the power of speech in an inner gesture, we know that our present life on earth is part of a whole chain of lives. In an inner gesture, we come to the spiritual essence that represents the eternal.

Something else has to be separated from our activity. But this is more difficult to understand. I would like to express what I mean in the simplest way. When we remember our childhood, we have to say: In our childhood we were all four-footed creatures. We walked on all fours. We straightened up through our own inner activity, which was certainly practiced, but which left no memory of its inwardness to the human being. And just imagine what the human being, as a cultural being on earth, is because he looks up into the heavenly sphere with his face! That has changed his entire direction in space. The human being has only made himself into the being that he is. To experience again in later life that inner urge that inspired us when we made ourselves into an upright being and thereby formed ourselves into a human being, that is what we should activate in our soul.

This leads us to a third power of the soul, which we separate from our bodily life. We have already used this power in the past of our present life. We no longer need it in later life, because then we can straighten ourselves up. But now we bring out the strength with which we straightened ourselves up; we apply it, we become aware of it. At that time it worked without us having caught up with it in our soul; we were content with becoming upright beings from crawling beings through the inner application of this strength. The spiritual researcher learns to recognize a wonderful soul power in this power. Through this power he is able not only to experience the spiritual through the state of thought and the gestures of spiritual beings through the detached power of speech, as in the state of thinking, but he is able to experience the spiritual beings themselves, to become one with them, as it were, to become one with the spiritual worlds, to work and weave in them. With them one learns to recognize that the human being has come to earth as a spiritual being, and by bringing these forces with him, he has become what he is as an earthly being. He has become a human being by bringing the body from a horizontal to a vertical position. Only man uses this power in the universe to change from a quadruped to a biped. If you discover this power inwardly in the soul, then you enter into the inner being of other spiritual beings that permeate and live through the world. These are beings that have different tasks to perform because they have a different purpose in the world than humans do. One gains insight into earthly conditions by concentrating one's attention, recognizing spiritual beings with their co-experiences, by unfolding in the spiritual world precisely that which gives the human being his spiritual physiognomy as a human being. Through inner physiognomy, one becomes one with the spiritual beings. Inner gestures and movements lead to the perception of processes in the spiritual world; but spiritually motivated physiognomy, as it gives the upright physiognomy to a person, leads to the knowledge of that which people can only experience and experience in the spiritual world, in association with other spiritual beings.

The paths that lead the spiritual researcher into the spiritual worlds are briefly indicated. These ways cannot be particularly popular. Today they are such that one must say that they go against one of the characteristics of the human soul: its love of comfort. This love of comfort goes so far today that the human soul only acknowledges the existence of something when it can simply passively devote itself to it. If one demands of this soul that it should first be active itself, that it should itself experience that which previously meant nothing to it, and through which it should then recognize the object in its own experience, then this goes against the complacency of today's soul, which wants to be passive, which does not want to conquer truths for itself, but wants to be given them.

Therefore, spiritual research is so aligned with the goals of the present that these goals of the present do not want to know about spiritual science, because, especially in the most spiritual sense, these goals are directed towards passivity. Spiritual science demands the development of soul powers that are based on activity and that, in their further pursuit, lead into the higher, supersensible worlds; because the spiritual can only be experienced through inner activity.

But today's man often imagines the spiritual to be mere fantasy. He imagines it to be like an external object that commands him: “I am here, you have to recognize me.” In this way, he is very far from the right understanding. The following was explained quite philosophically in a newspaper: When you immerse yourself in Kant or any other philosopher, all the concepts are so intangible that you have to think about them for a long time before you can understand them. Can our time provide a remedy for this? And precisely because of the spirit of our time, he [the author] finds that they can be made tangible. Everything should be made tangible, including the spirit. Yes, even that which every human being can know is not visible, human thinking, the thought should become visible. And how should that happen? Well, Spinoza, for example, who is said to be difficult for people to understand, who want to make everything vivid, should be approached in such a way that the cinematograph is used. Why not? You could do the following, says the person concerned. This has not been suggested as a fairy tale, but as a serious proposition based on the aims of our time. It shows how Spinoza arrives at seemingly difficult thoughts. Through the idea of the expansion of thought, it shows how the whole of ethics, up to God, are juxtaposed, culminating in the higher ideas. Cinematography could be used to illustrate Spinoza's entire ethics from individual forces. That is one of the aims of our time. And the editor of this journal, who is taking up the treatise, makes the following comment: “So we could finally hope that the ancient masters of humanity can be brought closer to people in a way that corresponds to the present day through what most people today obviously see only as a game, namely the art of film.

In this way, however, spiritual science cannot keep pace with the goals of our time. These goals of our time are geared towards passivity, and even if we were to talk for hours about the goals of our time, this passivity of the spirit is the necessary correlate in relation to what could be said about these goals in intimate terms. This much can be said.

If you look closely, you will see that the spiritual life of humanity is no different from the rest of nature. What is gained on the one hand must be taken away on the other. One has to admire the boldness of the inventions of the mind that are used in technology. Man will even conquer the unruly air; but all this is achieved with the most profound spiritual passivity.

But precisely for this reason our time is also so ripe for developing the spirit itself in its activity. Indeed, more than that, our time has the necessity of making the spirit inwardly active. The innermost moral, intellectual and emotional powers are brought forth through the habits of thinking and feeling that are gained through spiritual science. On the one hand, as a result of the education that humanity has already acquired under the influence of what is truly admirable in itself, spiritual science is seen as something paradoxical, something fantastic, perhaps even something quite different; but as a result, this opposition locks itself onto the other side. Opposition is necessary. Just as when you press an elastic ball for a long time, it finally develops that strength, which is perceived as an elastic counterforce against the pressure, so the soul must come to strong and ever stronger passivity precisely through the admirable achievements of thought, so that it longs for inner activity. Unconsciously, it already longs for this activity today. And all activity can become a power through which the soul is liberated and redeemed when spiritual research is allowed to work in the fabric of contemporary spiritual culture.

With just these few remarks, I wanted to show today how spiritual science wants to engage with the whole spiritual fabric of the present.

Looking back at what has just been discussed, it will be fully understood that spiritual science faces opposition from all sides. One of these oppositions comes from those who believe that religions or something else is endangered by spiritual science. They will not appear incomprehensible to the observer of history. For the time of Copernicus, the fact that the earth orbits the sun was just as fantastic as the fact of repeated earth lives is for our contemporaries. At that time, people believed that religion was endangered by Copernican astronomy; just as people today believe that religion is endangered again by the teaching of spiritual science about repeated earth lives.

We can be more reassured about such beliefs if we consider that when an outstanding scholar-philosopher, who was also, admittedly, active in the [cosmological] field, came to the realization that truth is invincible, he was talking about Galileo. He said that today the Church has learned to see in Galileo, in Copernicus, no longer those whom she once saw in them; but today she has learned to point out that through discoveries in the field of science, the glory of divine revelations is revealed to mankind all the more brightly. Science in the true sense of the word is to the praise of religious life, not to critically do something detrimental to true, religiously understood life.

That it is not so widely understood, that was made clear to a large number of our friends who want to start building a relatively small structure in the near future that will provide a home for spiritual science and a variety of studies. Many of these voices were instructive, which certainly sometimes spoke from a point of view that is so thoroughly imbued with what fantastic stuff, what a reverie this spiritual science actually is. Yes, it was interesting from a cultural-historical point of view when the remarks that had been made about the building in the most diverse places were also presented to me. It was interesting to look at things from this point of view as well. Indeed, one could admit that the humanities or their adherents have a little imagination, but they don't have as much as those who have occasionally written these articles.

At most, they can measure up to the article that I also received, about a spiritual researcher who is quite close to me and which states what he expresses in terms of fantasies. You can't get enough of his fantasies, and then you move on to the second section, where you are then really told, probably from the elbow, the very worst fantasies about birth, kinship, descent. Truly, even if he had some imagination, if he were inclined to fantasize par excellence [...], he would never dream up so much fantasy, especially not a fantasy about external descent, about kinship and so on.

The strangest things can be read. For example, it is said that a Buddhist temple is to be built on the site. Just as modern chemistry is far removed from what was once practiced as chemistry in distant Asia centuries or millennia ago, so too is modern spiritual science far removed from what Buddhism is. It takes more than a little imagination to talk about Buddhism. Today I have tried to explain, albeit insufficiently, what the adherents of spiritual science actually want. Perhaps some of the ideas will be able to be gained from it after all. But that will have little to do with what these spiritual researchers are supposed to be, according to the newspaper reports. One remark, which has appeared in at least thirty newspapers, has particularly caught my attention. We learn of a remarkable ability of the spiritual researchers: they can make it rain. It was emphasized everywhere that the foundation stone was laid in the pouring rain. What kind of people must the spiritual researchers be that they can order rain so that they can lay the foundation stone protected by the rain? If that were the case, they would certainly be very dangerous. But if you get to know those who make the Dornach building their own, you will recognize that they like sunshine just as much as you do; that they did not order the rain at all and did not shy away from the day. It would even have been daytime when the foundation stone was laid if some of the members who would have liked to have been there had not come on a later train. That is a more trivial explanation, which cannot be made much of, but it looks a little better if one says: These people must have certain reasons for working at night and in the rain. That was not said, but it was still in the subconscious and can be interpreted from the words. But reality is not that interesting. As for the rest, the future will show how little foundation there is for the fantastic ideas that have been spread in the outside world about this place, which is said to be a place of activity in the sense indicated in this lecture. This lecture was not given to talk about this place, but because it is being given, I may refer to it with these few words, because, so to speak, spiritual science has made an unwanted sensation in this area.

If you want to say what this building is for, yes, isn't it true that stations are built so that people can travel by train? They are built so that the machines, the trains, can drive in and out. For this, the stations must be usable. We must see as the characteristic quality of this building nothing other than that which is useful for the purposes of spiritual science, which is capable of stirring the soul when the word of spiritual science is spoken, as is necessary to bring the soul into contact with the spiritual world. To evoke the mood of the soul that is necessary in our time, to prepare the soul to receive the spiritual world, it is necessary to speak not only through the word, but also through that which is around us. What otherwise can only be expressed in words should be poured into the architecture. In the form of symbols that are truly artistic, a building should be created in the interior design that can serve the cultivation of spiritual culture in a spiritual way, just as a train station serves its material purposes in the right way. Even if the comparison is a trivial one, it is still apt.

It will be more and more recognized that what spiritual science can achieve from the human soul is connected with all the goals of the present. By appealing to the active element in the soul, to that which can only be awakened through activity in the soul, spiritual science speaks at the same time to the most important activities of the soul through the results of its research. More and more, those souls who can be active in the truest sense will desire spiritual science in the spirit. Spiritual science will appeal to soul powers that can only be taken into account from the present time onwards, but which also have to intervene in all the aims of human culture; above all in artistic life, so that just as in ancient times spiritual science developed on the one hand and art on the other from the common source of spiritual life, so here too artistic activity will go hand in hand with the current of spiritual science. And a weak beginning for this is to be given in the architecture of the site that will be built in Dornach. The architecture should speak to those who, in the longings of the soul, feel drawn to it, through the form of the same spiritual secrets, of which otherwise only in words can be actually stammered. Spiritual science has a hope. How many opponents it can grow up with in the present, that it corresponds to a necessity of the heart and the human soul, that will be seen from what it has inserted into culture. Just as scientific and religious prejudices were unable to stop Copernicanism, so the truths of spiritual science will not be hindered by the prejudices of these opposing sides. That which lies in the organism of human becoming and happening will happen with the same inevitability with which a young person matures and ripens according to an inner law. Just as this natural property is inherent in humanity, so too will this spiritual science mature. And just as natural science intervenes in and transforms the outer material life, so too will spiritual science intervene in the social, moral and spiritual conditions of the soul life. Just as we travel differently today – by rail – than we did two centuries ago, so too do longings live differently in the soul today than they did two centuries ago.

These longings must be satisfied; we can also see this from the following remarkable matter, which may be recalled again, even if something external is compared with something internal: When the first railways were to be built in Germany, the Medical College was consulted. The college replied that no railways should be built, otherwise people would suffer severely from nervous disorders when traveling on them. And if some people still want to travel, then the railways should at least be fenced in with boards so that the other people do not become dizzy. That was the judgment in 1837. The railways run all the same. That is how it is in life. And spiritual science will run through spiritual life, just as the obstacles of antagonism will want to assert themselves. Spiritual science will show precisely in those in whose hearts it is to take root how unfounded all the prejudices against it are. Science will see how in spiritual science it finds its best ally, how science, limiting itself to external matters, cannot achieve what spiritual science must give it. It will recognize that spiritual science contradicts natural science just as little as there is a contradiction for healthy thinking in the following. We can have three people standing in front of us, one and two others in front of him. The question arises: Why does the one live? Well, because he has a lung inside and breathes air in and out. Nothing to be said against that. But the other says: I know he also lives for another reason. I found him hanged eight days ago; because I cut him down, he is alive today. Everyone is right. The natural scientist is fully justified in saying that when certain qualities appear in life, we have inherited them from our parents, our ancestors and so on. He has the merit of pointing to what is given in the line of inheritance. The spiritual scientist says: what develops in the wonderful mystery of growth, that is brought by the person from previous earthly lives. There is no contradiction in this; both are true.

And with the religious concerns it will be as with the concerns about Copernicanism. The one who stands on the ground of revelation nevertheless feels united with all those minds that have grasped the truth from their point of view; what spiritual research is supposed to be, that it will become, and when spiritual research is an achievement of our time, then the people blessed by this cultural progress will have counted these spiritual goals of spiritual research as their own; as spiritual beings, they will have felt united with spiritual research, they will have grasped its point of view in relation to the spiritual world.

As with all other honest minds connected with human progress, spiritual research also feels at one with Goethe, and with his words I would like to summarize today's reflection from this point of view. To all those who are prejudiced against spiritual research, I would say this: if people believe that religion or something else is endangered by spiritual science, then the spiritual researcher, whose soul has been touched by spiritual science, knows that he is walking through the world and knows that Goethe's words are true, and that they that the one who truly allows himself to be penetrated by science and art, enters in such a way that his soul is truly religiously moved; and that only the one who lacks the gift for science and artistry in the right sense will not be religiously moved in the true sense of the word. Therefore, allow me to characterize the position of spiritual science in relation to the goals of all times and also of our time with Goethe's words, by saying with Goethe:

He who possesses science and art
also has religion;
he who does not possess those two
shall have religion.

Yesterday we tried to get to know more precisely the world that surrounds us in such a way that we share it with those who have passed through the gate of death and that we also share it with those spiritual and soul beings that we count among the beings of the higher hierarchies. In this way, we have devoted ourselves to a contemplation that is suitable for opening up to us a part of that reality that plays a part in human life, without man, with his sensory perception and also with his mind tied to sensory perception, being able to know anything about it in his ordinary waking consciousness. Since this world is a reality, a reality that plays a part in the shaping of human life, it is understandable that in the time in which we live, in which man is called more and more, take the general destiny of human development into his own hands, as we have often said, that in such a time a knowledge of these supersensible things also sinks into the human soul. Yesterday we ended our meditation, which, as a meditation on the life of the so-called dead, must be deeply penetrating for each individual human soul, with the suggestion that this is particularly necessary in our time. On the other hand, however, there must also be an urgent need to reflect more closely on such things, such as those we touched on in our meditation yesterday. For in our time even half-awake people, dreaming people, should suspect that extraordinarily important decisions are being formed.

In the course of our discussions, I have repeatedly given hints here and there about what can be said from the sources of spiritual research about the character of modern times, the character of our time itself and the near future. Such things could only be given to present-day humanity, and more or less to anthroposophically minded humanity, in a very cautious way. Just see how much of this can be found in the lectures given in Kristiania many years before these catastrophic events, for the understanding of precisely these difficult, catastrophic times. And perhaps it may also be recalled that at a time when it would have been necessary to point out, in one way or another, the seriousness of the impulses at hand, in the lecture cycle that was held in Vienna in the early spring of 1914 – that is, before the outbreak of our present world catastrophe -–, the way in which social life, the way in which human coexistence in our time is spoken of, I chose a sharp, a strong expression: I spoke at the time in these lectures, which were essentially also about the life of man between death and a new birth, of the fact that something is happening in the moral and social life of the present that can be described as a social carcinoma, as a terrible social cancer. Perhaps one or the other at that time found this to be a strong expression. But perhaps one or the other has since been able to convince himself that the facts speak for it, that such a strong expression was allowed to be chosen at the time.

However, what I already hinted at yesterday is correct and should give us much food for thought: despite all this, despite the fact that it can easily be surmised what serious impulses lie in the lap of our time, humanity today is little inclined to really grasp the seriousness of the phenomena. Today, humanity is far too comfortable for that, far too happy to indulge in those comfortable concepts that can be found in the scientific world view today, because these concepts can be gained from the handrails of external experience, because they do not require much inner effort of the mind and yet they flatter people's vanity so much. But what is necessary is that humanity should wake up, really wake up, to much of what the times demand of us today. This awakening will only be possible if certain underlying facts are no longer regarded as fantasies or dreams but as realities that play a part in our times. And so I have often hinted during our discussions that a significant change has occurred to humanity, particularly in the last third of the 19th century. I have also hinted at these things here in Stuttgart. Today, we want to once again call them to mind from a certain point of view.

I have indicated the fall of 1879 as the turning point in the development of humanity in modern times. If we want to understand this development of humanity in modern times more precisely, we must say that what happened in the last third of the 19th century is only the effect of something that happened in the spiritual world before. It began in the spiritual world in the 1840s. And the time from the forties to the end of the seventies of the 19th century is an important and essential, a significant time. What happened then did not happen on the physical plane; but in the year 1879 the repercussions descended on to the physical plane, and since that time these repercussions have been taking place on the physical plane. They are a kind of reflection of what happened before in the spiritual world. If one is to describe what underlies this, one can say that in a particular field in a particular sphere it is the manifestation of what otherwise happens more often in the development of humanity, and what has always been described by those who were still able to observe such things as a struggle between Michael and the dragon. In the most diverse fields, such struggles of normally progressing spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies against spirits of hindrance and obstruction have taken place. For the cultural development of humanity, such a struggle has taken place in spiritual realms, and in those spiritual realms that are directly adjacent to the earth, in the decades from the 1840s to the end of the 1870s. At that time, in 1879, this battle ended with a victory, if one may say so, of the good powers against certain spirits of obstruction, which at that time - one can put it that way - were thrown down from the spiritual worlds into earthly conditions, so that since then they have been working and weaving in earthly conditions. Within that which is developing in the spiritual evolution of humanity, there are spirits of hindrance that were only overthrown at the end of the 1970s and hurled down into the lower world for the upper world, and now rule in people.

If we look at these spirits of hindrance, these spirits of an Ahrimanic nature, with which the spirits that we can call Michaelic spirits have fought a fierce battle, we have to say that these Ahrimanic spirits had a good significance in past periods of human development, they had their tasks in past periods of spiritual development. These tasks were carried out in such a way that they were guided by good higher spirits. We must not imagine the so-called evil spirits in such a way that we think we just have to flee from them in order to get rid of them if possible. That is namely the best way to attach them to oneself if one wants to get rid of them in an egoistic way; rather, one has to imagine that these so-called evil spirits are also in the service of the wise world order. If they are only placed in their right position, they will perform services that are necessary for the wise world order. And so we can say that for centuries, even for millennia, these ahrimanic spirits have performed the task of dividing human beings into those community contexts that have to do with blood ties. People are connected in their earthly associations in such a way that the bonds of blood also trigger and bring about certain bonds of love. People organize themselves into family, tribal, ethnic and racial contexts. All these things are subject to certain laws of the times. These are directed by beings from the higher worlds. That which humanity has specialized, that which humanity has structured in such a way that this structure is based on blood, was guided by these Ahrimanic spirits, but under the guidance of good spirits.

But now a different era was to begin. As long as human beings were guided by blood, so to speak, they could not take their destiny into their own hands in the way that has been suggested several times. For this it was necessary that the service of these Ahrimanic spirits, as it was, be eliminated from the spiritual world. These spirits initially wanted to continue their activity of dividing people according to blood from the spiritual world; but humanity was to be driven to a more general conception of its entire spirit. What is often said in our field, that humanity is to be understood as a whole on earth, is truly not a cliché, but a modern necessity. And this is based on the fact that a strong, intense struggle has taken place between the Michaelic spirits and the spirits of Ahrimanic nature, which in the past differentiated people according to blood.

This battle has ended with the Ahrimanic entities being pushed down and now prevailing among people. They will cause confusion among people, because that is their intention after this defeat: to cause confusion with everything that can be drawn from all kinds of concepts and ideas related to blood ties and blood relationships. It is particularly important to realize that since the last third of the nineteenth century, these impulses have been active in everything that human beings can achieve here on the physical plane through their thoughts and feelings, and that reality cannot be understood without taking these impulses into account. The way in which certain international relationships and the like are discussed today has been confused by these Ahrimanic spirits, who have been defeated by the spirit of Michael.

I have often mentioned that we can say that we have been in the so-called Michaelic Age since the end of the 1970s. Michael can be seen as the Zeitgeist, which has replaced Gabriel as the Zeitgeist. This means a great deal: Michael as the spirit of the age! The spirits of the age that were present in earlier centuries worked differently than this spirit of the age. The other spirits of the age that influenced the development of humanity in earlier centuries did so more or less in the subconscious. The task of the Michaelic Zeitgeist, which has been working in human affairs since the last third of the nineteenth century, is this: to release more and more in human consciousness itself that which is to take place in the evolution of the earth. This Michaelic Zeitgeist has actually descended and is working on the physical plane of the earth.

There is something connected with all this for our time that is extremely easy to misunderstand. Ours is a very, very ambivalent time. If you describe it so superficially, you could easily call our time merely materialistic. But that is not all; the matter is much more complicated. On the whole, one can say that these more recent times are, in their fundamental character, extraordinarily spiritual, extraordinarily spiritual indeed. And there have never been more spiritual concepts and ideas than those that have been brought to the surface by modern science in the development of humanity. But these concepts, if I may express myself in this way, are abstract. In themselves, in their substance, they are thoroughly spiritual; but they are not suited, as they appear, if they are not properly treated, to express spiritual realities. These concepts of natural science, which are being instilled into all education today, are a very double-edged sword, if I may use this paradoxical simile. They can be used as they are applied by academic science today. In that case they are spiritual, but only in so far as they are applied to the external material world; their spirituality is denied. But these scientific concepts can also be applied in such a way that they serve as material for meditation, that one meditates on them. Then they will most surely lead into the spiritual world. If those who today have a scientific world-picture would not be too lazy to apply their concepts in meditation, then these people with a scientific world-picture would very soon enter into spiritual science. It is not the content of the scientific concepts that is at fault, but the way they are treated. The concepts are subtle and intimate, but people apply them in a materialistic sense. It is not so easy to make this clear in all its details, but we must communicate with each other; therefore we must let many such truths approach us only by reflection, as it were.

Thus people live in concepts, in ideas that are thin, that are, I might say, pure distilled spirit, so that one needs only to apply a strong force to arrive at spiritual science; and these concepts are the ones that are to enter the human development precisely through the Michaelic Age. But they are also the ones who are most confused by the indicated, one can already say, from heaven to earth pushed, in heaven overcome ahrimanic spirits of obstacles. They arise in so many areas where man today believes he is thinking and reasoning quite correctly, but where he is exposed to the confusion of these spirits to a high degree.

It is precisely when considering such a matter that it becomes clear how development actually takes place, let us first stay with humanity. We must bring before our soul a significant law of development, which we have also to consider from other points of view. It is, of course, an extremely superficial way of looking at things to think that events in historical life simply arise from one another in such a way that what happens in 1918 is a consequence of 1917, 1916 and so on. That is a superficial way of looking at it. Things happen quite differently; they happen in such a way that what has happened in the spiritual realm continues to have an effect in the following periods, but in a certain way. You can take any year, let us say for example 1879. Then something happens in 1880 that is determined by the fact that what happened in 1878 is repeated retrogressively. In 1881, in a certain respect, what happened in 1877 is repeated retrogressively, and so on. One can start from any point in the development of humanity, as contradictory as this may seem; one will always find that earlier annual cycles show up in later ones as important impulses. One can therefore expect that, especially in an important period of time, this law will also intervene in the development of humanity with particular clarity and importance.

I have often hinted at this, and have often spoken before these catastrophic events of the important period of 1879, and that it is only the effect of what has been taking place in the spiritual world since the forties. If we now apply this law, which I have just mentioned, we can say the following: 1879 is an important period of time; certain spirits were pushed down who had previously worked in the spiritual world as spirits of hindrance, and from then on worked here on the physical plane among people in a hindering and confusing way. What happened in 1879 is, so to speak, the conclusion of an earlier event that began between 1841 and 1844 and has been taking effect over the decades. If we now take the year 1841, we have the period of struggle in the spiritual world from 1841 to 1879. Those entities, which are under the rule of the spirit, who is called Michael – one could also describe him with another name – they prepared themselves in 1841 to take up the strong, intensive fight in the spiritual world, which then found its conclusion for the spiritual world in 1879. It lasted for thirty-eight years. Now I said: That which happens retrogressively has a retroactive effect in the following period. — Now continue calculating from 1879 for another thirty-eight years: 1917. Just as in 1880 what happened in 1878 repeats itself, and in 1881 what happened in 1877, so in a certain way what took place in the spiritual world in 1841 is repeated in the physical world in 1917 as one of the most important struggles. It is indeed the case that the year 1879 marks a turning point, which shows very energetic impulses forward and backward in the observation. And in a certain way, on the physical plane of 1917, 1918, those things are now repeating themselves that had to take place in the spiritual world in the forties, and which can be described as a struggle of normal, forward-driving spirits against certain spirits of obstruction. This is not a calculation that I have only just made today; rather, many of you know that these events have always been referred to, and that from the point of view of these events, the year 1917 must be seen as an important starting point for subsequent events.

Of course, things must not be viewed in such a way that one says: Well, we have experienced the year 1917. Certainly, one has experienced it; but what the events actually were that took place in that year, only a few people have experienced, since few people are inclined to evaluate them in their waking consciousness. That is what it is all about.

Now, through all these things I wanted to point out that we are indeed living in an important moment in the evolution of humanity, and that it is necessary to take some things more seriously at this point in time than they are taken by the present humanity in its masses. I have already pointed out how particularly necessary it is not to ignore the normal spiritual impulses in our time. As this newer time has developed, what has actually become predominant in it? What has really gained influence in this newer time? What is radiated, I might say, into the whole of general education? Basically, only that which has grown on the coarsest field of the scientific world view. But this coarsest field of the scientific world view has only the power to grasp the dead, the inanimate, never the living, which would be so infinitely necessary in this scientific age. Even today, people still do not want to see the connection between such things and general world events. They do not want to see that the more humanity endeavors to develop only concepts that relate to the dead, they are also destroying social and community life from within. It is necessary to bring scientific concepts into flux and to enliven them in such a way that they can actually be applied to human coexistence, that they are, so to speak, suitable for explaining human coexistence.

The course of development has been this way in these newer, in these most recent times: in what has been accepted as actual science, only those concepts have been formed with which one can comprehend external, dead nature. These concepts were quite unsuitable for grasping human life. But they wanted to use them to grasp human life. And so the official scientists applied these concepts to history, to social science, to social policy, and so on. But these concepts are not useful there, and so there is no useful concept for social life at all. As a result, the social life of the earth has become too much for people to handle, has become what it has become over the past four years. People will have to learn to condense their concepts and also to vitalize them.

What the natural scientists themselves develop is certainly ingenious, useful, and conscientiously methodical, but only for the external world. Today, everyone works in their own field and does not extend the concepts that are developed in any field to the totality of the human world view. Take just one example, and you will immediately understand what I actually mean. The ordinary school physicist who today looks at the magnet needle pointing with one end to the north and with the other to the south, explains to his boys that this constant pointing of the magnet needle to the north and to the south comes from the earth's magnetism, that the earth is also a great magnet; and it would be ridiculous if this school physicist were to seek in the magnet needle itself the forces that cause the needle to point in these directions. He tries to explain it in terms of the properties of the earth; he seeks the cause outside in the cosmos. In this purely dead area, the scientific concepts are still of some use, and one or other of them may still be discovered. Therefore, it does not occur to anyone to say of the magnetic needle that it has the inherent power to always point in one direction. One assumes directional forces from the magnetic north and south poles of the earth. The biologist no longer does this. It does not occur to him to develop a similar concept. The biologist sees the chicken in which the egg is formed. It does not occur to him to ask the same question as the physicist asks about the magnetic needle. The biologist simply says: When the egg is formed in the hen, the cause of the egg formation lies in the hen. If he were to proceed as the physicist does with the magnet needle, he would say: Although the hen is the place where the egg is formed, the cosmic forces are involved in the same way as the cosmos is involved in the magnet needle when the egg is formed. I must go beyond the narrow confines of nature and take what is outside to help. In the chicken there is the place where the egg develops, but the forces come from the cosmos, just as they give direction to the magnet needle from the cosmos.

It is urgently necessary to develop such a concept and to implement it methodically. But in the eyes of the official science of biology it is foolish, fantastic, it is ridiculous, because it has completely lost its way into a blind alley of the dead. This official science cannot even apply the comprehensive concepts to such things, much less can it say anything about how people could live together politically or socially in the right way. How can one hope that something so necessary for humanity could come out of this mere natural scientific world view, namely a revival, a refreshing of these concepts? Especially in the important area of human life, this cannot be. Let us make this clear by looking at a concept that we want to grasp spiritually.

Even the mere observation of the human skeleton shows something extraordinarily important, something, I would say, magnificent. When you look at the human skeleton, you see the head, which is actually only placed on the rest of the trunk skeleton; it is a world of its own. The other part of the skeleton is formed quite differently. If we apply Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, we do indeed get the transformation of the trunk into the main skeleton, but the main skeleton is formed spherically, the head is a reflection of the whole sphere of the world. The other is formed more like a moon. This is something extraordinarily significant and indicates to us that if we want to gain fruitful insights into the human being from his form alone, we must look at something that is already indicated in the form. Our natural science is indeed magnificent, but it is illiterate when it comes to knowledge of the world. It proceeds as someone who does not read the pages of a book but writes on them: A is like this, B is like that — that is, not reading but merely describing the letters. But one must proceed to reading, one must understand, describe the forms of nature not merely as science does, but interpret them in their relationships, in their transitions. Then one comes from reading the forms of nature and natural phenomena to unraveling the meaning of the world. Of course, people who hear something like this today and who, with their thick heads, are completely stuck in illiteracy, find such a thing, when it is said, quite dreadful. Good examples could be given of how something is found to be dreadful that is so far-fetched from the human skeleton, but which can be extended to the whole human organism. Man is a dual nature, and this dual nature is already expressed in the fundamental contrast between the head and the rest of the organism.

If one now, through spiritual science, engages with these two aspects of the dual nature – one could specify further aspects, but that is not the point today – then one can already read something tremendously significant from the mere shape of the human being, if one really engages with it. From a spiritual scientific point of view, it can be seen that this human head undergoes a development from birth through physical life on earth, which now differs from the development of the rest of the organism just as the head already differs in form from the rest of the organism. It is very interesting to observe that this head develops three to four times faster than the rest of the organism. If you look at the rest of the organism, you can call it by a common name, in that it is mainly organized by the heart, so that you then get an opposite between the head organism and the heart organism. This heart organism really develops three to four times slower than the head organism. If we were only heads, we would be old people by the age of twenty-seven or twenty-eight, getting ready to die because the head develops so quickly. The rest of the organism develops four times more slowly, and so we live well into our seventies and eighties. But that does not change the fact that we actually have a head development and a heart development, that we carry these two natures within us. Our head development is also usually fully completed by the age of twenty-eight; the head no longer develops. What then develops is the rest of the organism. It also sends the developmental rays into the head of its own accord. If you are able to observe the shape, the characteristic development of the shape, you could come across confirmation even from external things, even if you cannot come across the thing itself. However, you have to have spiritual knowledge to come across this. But look, who has not looked at a small child and said to themselves when they see it again later: This child only later became so similar to so and so. — This is connected with the fact that the forces of heredity are actually in the rest of the organism. The head is formed entirely out of the cosmos; and only when the forces of heredity work out of the rest of the organism, which happens more slowly, does the physiognomy of the head also resemble the rest of the organism. This is just one example of how external facts can confirm what spiritual science finds. It is important to note that the head develops much faster than the rest of the organism.

You see, knowing this was not so important in the early days when people were more unfree, more directed. In those days, the good spiritual powers took care of things. They effectively established harmony between the pace of head development and the pace of the rest of development. Now the time is coming when people themselves must ensure that such things are harmonized. Therefore, people must be able to understand such things correctly, must be able to deal with them, and they sin against development if they cannot do so. And we have an important area of human life where these things are terribly sinned against. This sin is sporadically expressed today because we have been in it since the last third of the 19th century. It will be expressed in a terrible way if people cannot understand the spiritual impulses. Today they initially express themselves in the following way: No consideration is given to the fact that if a person is to develop normally, something must be given to him that takes into account the fact that his brain development is three to four times faster than that of the rest of the organism. And one area in which this is particularly damaging is that of education and teaching, for the following reasons: Under the influence of the scientific world view, concepts have been developed that have gradually become mere concepts for the development of the head, that do not contribute to the rest of the development, concepts that are acquired at the same pace as the head develops, that cannot be absorbed at the same pace as the rest of the organism develops.

This means an extraordinary amount. Time has gradually developed louder ideas that occupy the head, leaving the heart cool and empty. They come sporadically today, as I said, but the things will increasingly take hold. You can do the test if you can observe life. Because of the dichotomy of the way the head and heart develop, the human being depends on not just developing intellectually in his youth. In youth, the head is the main focus because the other aspects develop more slowly. If we wanted to educate people for the rest of their lives as well as for the head, we would have to keep them in school their whole lives. We can only address the head in school education. But today the head is treated in such a way that it cannot give anything back to the rest of the organism in spiritual and soul terms. The rest of the organism does, of course, give its inherited impulses to the head throughout life, otherwise we would die at twenty-seven, because the head is predisposed to do so. But in return, the head should also give what is cultivated in it. You can see for yourself that today's education does not do this. To prove it, ask yourself: Is it not true that people who receive a school education today only remember what they feel in later life? — Most of the time they do not even do that, but are happy to be able to quickly forget everything. This only means that the rest of the organism observes the formation of the head. If the rest of the organism received from the head the life essence it needs, then one would not only remember in terms of memory, but one would look back on what one's teacher gave one, as on a paradise, to which one thinks back with heartfelt contentment and attachment every hour in later life, into which one plunges again and again and in which one has a source of rejuvenation. It would be a source of rejuvenation if it included education of the heart, not just of the head. Then, throughout his or her life, a person would have something from childhood teaching, from school, for the rest of the organism, which develops four times more slowly, and this would also have an effect on the organism. Today it is only just beginning, and it will get worse and worse. People will become prematurely aged because they will only remember what they have absorbed into their heads, and what has meaning only up to the age of twenty-seven. After that, it remains as useless, remembered memory; and the person ages. He ages inwardly, spiritually, early on, because the formation of the head is not suited to overflow into the four times slower development of the heart.

These things must be taken into account. But if they are to be taken into account, then our school education must become a totally different one, then it must have living concepts instead of the dead concepts that prevail everywhere today. When it comes to a Kant-Laplacean theory, people will always remember it in such a way that they grow old. What is real: the spiritual and soul starting point of our universe, from which the physical has only developed, will, if it is properly incorporated into the teaching material, be a lifelong source of rejuvenation. And it is possible to shape the subject matter, not just by using a methodical approach, but by completely reworking it in the anthroposophical sense, so that throughout one's entire life, there is something that one can recall not just in thought, but that is a lifelong source of continuous rejuvenation. We must consciously work to ensure that people are not old when they are barely fifty years old, but that they can still draw inwardly, spiritually, from what they have taken in during their youth; that they can have a source of refreshment, a refreshing drink from what they have taken in as a child. But then it must be given in such a way that it is not only suitable for the development of the head, but that it is suitable for the development of the whole human organism, which proceeds three to four times more slowly than the development of the head.

To understand such things means to bring to life what are dead concepts for the natural scientist and therefore also for our general education. Do not underestimate the great social significance of what is said here. You might think that this is only important where science in the narrower sense is effective. That is not true. Science has an effect on all of today's education, on the whole breadth of today's human development. These scientific concepts extend even into the Sunday newspapers; and even those who only absorb everything that constitutes their faith today, the real and true faith, from their Sunday newspaper, which they pretend to have towards their church or their office, are infected by science, which can only deliver dead matter, even if this dead matter may be considered in the most spiritual way. These things must be clearly seen through.

So you see: Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is truly not just something that can satisfy subjective curiosity, but something that has to deeply affect our entire development in time. And again, this intervention in our development in time depends, for our consciousness, which can be trained in anthroposophy, on the recognition of what took place in human development from 1841 to 1879 and to 1917, both supersensibly and sensibly, above and on the physical plane. These things cannot be taken seriously enough. For much, very much, has not been taken seriously in recent times. And the recovery of humanity will have to consist in people again being willing to accept perceptions, ideas, feelings about world development. Just reflect on these things!

If you look back over the past few decades, what has the world's ruling class, with the exception of a few individuals, actually done in terms of world views, major world views? At most, it has allowed natural scientific concepts to be popularized in some way, and has used these natural scientific concepts, which it has allowed to be popularized, to demonstrate all kinds of illustrative things using the means of modern times. If you could somehow announce that something from the natural sciences would be demonstrated with slides, you would attract a great deal of attention and popularity. What has the leading social class actually done with questions of world view in modern times? People were very interested if someone could tell what they experienced as a North Pole traveler or as a Brazilian explorer. It is not to be criticized that one is interested in this. When someone talks about the fact that he has somehow been able to unravel the secrets of the egg germ of the May beetle, one has felt the necessity of listening to such lectures as a well-educated bourgeois of modern times, even if one has dozed off after five minutes, unless a slide has awakened one. But where is the real will to elevate the human idea to a worldview? Where it was present, and it is very characteristic, and everyone is actually forced to reflect on it today, where have there been the most lively worldview debates, the most lively interests in worldview questions for decades? There, where the Social Democrats had their meetings. There, worldviews were formed. This is only unknown in other social classes because they guard against really getting to know human life as much as possible.

But what kind of worldview do the Social Democrats teach? One that only works with the same concepts that are enshrined in the machines; a worldview that only develops views of the world in the mechanical sense: historical materialism, materialist conception of history, materialist conception of human coexistence. You can read about these concepts in every socialist magazine. Most people don't do that, but it would be quite useful to get informed. Those people who have been pushed into the machines, who have nothing to do from morning till night but work, and who, when they come away from the machines in the evening, have to deal with a social institution that is actually a copy of the machine, they have a world view that sees the world as if it were a machine. They have developed a world view that takes no account of individuality and organizes everything around the balancing concept of the dead. There is a very good saying: Death makes everything equal; but one could also say: A worldview that only deals with the mechanical, the dead, also makes everything equal, extinguishes all individual existence, all life. — So all individual existence, all life would be extinguished by the worldview that takes its ideal from the machine. As long as the matter was not serious, one allowed these things to befall one while dreaming, while sleeping, and one behaved in such a way that one rejected all questions of world view and gradually lost touch with all the impulses that can permeate human community life, human educational life in an understanding way. And basically, in more recent times, work has only been done in matters of world view where mechanical concepts were used. Even science, after all, only produced mechanical concepts. If you take Theodor Ziehen's book, which is a model for modern science, and read the final chapters, you will see that he is also one of those who say that natural science cannot come up with concepts that ethics, morality and aesthetics provide; but afterwards concepts are developed which state that everything that is not natural science is only dreamed up. Between the lines, everything that is not natural science is defamed. At the end, Theodor Ziehen says graciously: Concepts such as freedom, ethics, morality and so on must come from other fields; only the concept of responsibility should actually be rejected by real science. Man cannot be responsible any more than a flower can be blamed for its ugliness. — From a scientific point of view, this is absolutely correct if you are one-sidedly grounded in natural science, if you apply mere concepts of the dead. But then you are applying concepts that do not even come to the living, and certainly not to the I.

It is interesting to see how Theodor Ziehen talks about the I. In these lectures, which were written down and then printed so that they capture the tone of the lecture, he says about the I: “Gentlemen, it is a complicated concept, the I; when you think about what you actually think when you hear the little word ‘I’, what do you come up with?

you come? First of all, you think of your corporeality. Then you think of your family relationships. Then you think of your property relationships. Then you think of your name and title - he leaves out the medals - then... well, you think of nothing but such things. And what some psychologists have developed, he says, is just a fiction. Yes, the natural scientist, when speaking about the ego, can also come to nothing but what no human being actually thinks about when they seriously consider the matter, when they consider the ego. But the matter is serious, in that the concepts that have been developed out of the dead must also lead to the killing, the destruction, and the devastation of life. A theory that has been made out of the dead machine as a social world-view theory has a destructive rather than a constructive effect when it is introduced into life. Humanity has not decided to grasp this; therefore, it must experience it in the most extreme way. For what has happened? In the area where sources of tremendous future impulses will once arise, in the East, the theory of the dead, the continuation of the mechanistic world view in social views, in Leninism and Trotskyism, is having a destructive effect.

Consider the matter only very seriously. He who recognizes only the dead, and in man also recognizes only the dead, may he be as great a scholar as Theodor Ziehen, when he speaks about the ego, about responsibility, as Theodor Ziehen does, then his true social interpreter is not he himself — who does not dare to do so — but Lenin and Trotsky are the ones who draw the right conclusion for human society. What Lenin and Trotsky carry out are the consequences of that which is already cultivated by the purely scientific world view. But because this scientific world view makes compromises with that which is not the consequence of this world view, only because of this does it, precisely because it does not draw the conclusion, become not Leninism and Trotskyism.

It is also important, however, that things be taken in the sense of reality. What is not true has an objective effect. Thoughts are realities, not mere concepts. You cannot just say: Even if no one knows about a lie, it still works as a power. That is true, but something else is also true: If a lie exists that is not recognized as a lie, that does not change its effect; it works in the real world as a lie. And no matter how well it is meant, it still works as a lie.

There are already works today - I may have mentioned them here already - which treat the question of Christ Jesus from the standpoint of the correct present-day natural science. Very interesting books, because they proceed uncompromisingly. Above all, a Danish book. There are also others who really express what the present-day psychologist, the present-day psychiatrist, who thinks scientifically, must think about Christ Jesus. What does Christ Jesus become? He becomes an epileptic, a pathological person, a person with a morbid disposition. And the Gospels are interpreted in such a way that one sees in every chapter: they are case histories. Of course, all this is nonsense; but to say that it is nonsense, today only the one has the right to do so who sees through the matter spiritually. The one who accepts today's scientific psychology and psychiatry, from his point of view, this Christ teaching is the right one, because it draws the right conclusion there. And a person who speaks as a modern psychiatrist is still a better person, a truer, a more honest person than the one who accepts today's psychiatry and yet thinks differently about Christ, in the sense of those pastors or priests who also accept science in its entirety and yet make compromises.

A lie has an effect, however piously it is dressed up, for it is a real power. Above all, what is needed today is not to cover up life with compromises, but to face squarely what needs to be faced from certain presuppositions. If today's psychiatrist does not want to see Christ as an epileptic, as a lunatic, which according to today's psychiatry he would be, then he must give up psychiatry as it is developed today; then he must place himself on the ground of spiritual science. If people today were able to place themselves squarely on the foundations of that which can be known, then we would, with what can be known, have the right impulses for what must continue to work.

Recently, a note was slipped into my hand about a book that I was already familiar with, which had, in any case, caused the horror of the lady – because it was probably a lady. The note tells me what Alexander Moszkowski has written. I don't have the book here, but you can see from the slip what the book is about: “Anyone who has ever sat on the benches of a grammar school will find the hours unforgettable when, in Plato, he ‘enjoyed’ the conversations between Socrates and his friends, unforgettable because of the incredible boredom that emanates from these conversations. And one might remember that one actually found the conversations of Socrates heartily stupid; but of course one did not dare to express this view, because after all the man in question was Socrates, the “Greek philosopher”. The book “Sokrates der Idiot” (Socrates the Idiot) by Alexander Moszkowski (Verlag Dr. Eysler & Co. Berlin) does away with this unjustified overestimation of the good Athenian. In this small, entertainingly written work, the polymath Moszkowski undertakes nothing less than to strip Socrates of his philosophical dignity almost completely. The title “Socrates – the Idiot” is meant literally. One would not be mistaken in assuming that the book will still be the subject of scholarly debate.

Of course, today's compromisers will say: Well, we have learned enough that Socrates is a great man, and not an idiot; now Moszkowski comes along and says such a thing! But today it is necessary to have a completely different idea about such a thing. Those who know Moszkowski are aware that he stands on the ground of the scientific world view in the fullest sense of the word, right up to the quantum theory, and that he is therefore on the outermost wing of today's scientific world view. And it must be said that this Moszkowski is a much more honest man than the others, who also believe that they stand on the standpoint of the natural-scientific world-view and yet do not think that they should regard Socrates as a fool who has nothing to say on the concepts important for the world-view; who nevertheless make compromises, depict Socrates as a great man.

The fact is that today things cannot be put right for the simple reason that people do not have the sense of truth to face up to the consequences uncompromisingly in every respect. And anyone who wants to accept Socrates today must not accept the conditions that Moszkowski sets.

But that is difficult today, has been difficult for three to four centuries. Therefore, the matter was left alone until it had developed into what it has become in the last three to four years. Things must be approached at their soul-spiritual core, where their truly deeper impulses lie. It must be faced, which is particularly necessary today, to face the fact that truth and the sense of truth must enter into the souls of human beings! Then the things that are brought into the light of this sense of truth, that are illuminated by the light of this sense of truth, will be able to show their true face. Then one will be compelled to come to spiritual science simply because one sees the true face of things. For the present speaks a lot and speaks urgently, and things can be learned, such as how educational issues and questions of teaching must be studied by spiritual science today. Just as the question of the different pace of head and heart education is important for teaching and education, so there are many questions that are fundamental, important and significant for social life, for historical life, for legal life. We just have to get out of what we have dug ourselves into, out of the terrible belief in authority regarding what the scientific world view alone provides. This is necessary for our time. What the scientific world view calls 'real' provides concepts that can never reach into the realm of human coexistence. Humanity lives under this error today. If you look at things more deeply, you can see this.

That is what I wanted to say to you today. Now, let each one of you draw the conclusion from this that it is important to open our eyes and to illuminate things with the light that we can find from the light of spiritual science itself.

Yesterday I spoke about how our development appears to the Oriental. In many respects, the Oriental sees precisely what is compromising and inconsistent with his naive, intuitive spiritual faculty. And right now there are critical views among outstanding Orientals that are significant and interesting to follow. More and more views are emerging in the Asian East that the Orient must take the further development of humanity into its own hands. These views could be undone if there were more sense for what is proclaimed here as spiritual science! But then this sense must also be a living one; one must not only want to have something interesting in spiritual science, from which one prepares an inner soul voluptuousness, but one must want to have something that permeates one's whole life. And one must be able to see that it is only through the insights of spiritual science that social, moral and legal concepts can truly be grasped. What humanity has conceived under the influence of the scientific world view over the decades has not grown with the spirit that reigns in reality. No, it is at best comparable to those views that today educate people who want to spiritually kill the whole world because they only take their concepts from the world of the dead. Future times, when people will think more objectively about these things again, when the passions that so often guide and direct judgments today will have died down, future times – I am fully convinced that it can be so — will say: One of the most important characteristics of the period around 1917 was that the Weltanschhauung, which is only intended for the head and actually drives people into old age, has become a school-like Weltanschhauung. In the future, perhaps in a distant future, it will be called Wilsonism, in reference to the great schoolmaster from whom a large part of humanity wants to have a socio-political worldview impressed upon them. It is no mere accident that mere school-knowledge, which has nothing to do with the spiritual, has now become one of the most important political factors in the form of Wilsonism. This is an important and tremendously significant symptom of our time. It is just not possible to talk about these things today in a really thorough and comprehensive way that takes everything into account. But from my present allusions you will have gathered how important it actually is to try to understand these things thoroughly, how infinitely important it is to face up to these things not only out of affect, out of emotion, but out of knowledge.

I may have mentioned it here before, but I mention it again because it is important: now it is not difficult to speak out against Wilson within Central Europe; but I can point out how, in a cycle that was held long before these events, when the whole world, including Central Europe, still admired Wilson, I characterized him exactly the same way as I do now. The point is that one approaches the impulses that dominate the present time, which also dominate the present time as errors, from much deeper sources. In our anthroposophical field, our friends had the opportunity to see how, long before there was any external compulsion to see things in the right light, the right thing was pointed out again and again. May these things be better understood in the future than we have decided to understand them in the past! And I would especially urge you to bear this in mind: much of what is coming to light in the field of our anthroposophical science is infinitely better understood than we have so far chosen to understand it. It can penetrate even deeper into the hearts and souls of human beings and be awakened to a more intense life than has happened so far. May it happen! For what happens through it will already be connected with much that can truly be done, not to bring about disaster, but for the good of the future development of humanity, that can be done to make good much that has been neglected and that might perhaps be neglected further if one only listens to that which can be gained outside of spiritual science. Among our friends, too, many have a double bookkeeping of their lives. They have one in anthroposophical studies and books, for the private nourishment of their hearts and souls. The other bookkeeping is for their life outside, where they rely solely on the authority of the natural sciences. Often one does not realize that this is the case; but it is good to be a little conscientious in consulting with one's soul about these things, so that there may be harmony between these two accounts.

Man's life can only be administered in one sense. The spirit must also penetrate the scientific world view. And religious life must also be imbued with the light that can be gained from spiritual science. Take such things as were said and meant here today, and which seemingly lead the considerations of time up to supersensible heights, as they can be grasped in your presentations. Then you will see that anthroposophical education is not only education of the head, that it can also educate the heart for humanity. It is already education of the heart. It already serves all humanity, not just the humanity that might actually die at twenty-seven. It already serves to make people courageous and capable throughout their entire life. Education that fails to take into account the different pace of the development of head and heart will make him old, nervous, disharmonious and torn. Look at life, you will find this confirmed, because life can be a great teacher with regard to the confirmation of what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science brings down from the spiritual heights. Take everything that has been said, especially when it is spoken from such points of view as today, as spoken to your hearts, my dear friends, for the education of our hearts by the spirit of the world; and hold together that which should be the bond that links us together as members of our movement. Let us work together and plan to continue working, each in our own place and to the best of our ability.

First of all, I would like to remind you of something we discussed yesterday, so that we can then proceed to further considerations. Yesterday, I essentially explained that one cannot gain insight into the relationship between the ideal or spiritual and the material in the world, or into the purely causal natural order, without taking into account the nature of human sleep.

We started from St. Augustine's thought that he wanted to experience true certainty about the world in his inner experience. I said that we can no longer base ourselves on this thought for the simple reason that we have to know today that every human sleep refutes this thought. For we could never somehow hold on to the idea that what a person experiences within himself is preserved post mortem, after death, and that what a person experiences within himself is truly eternal, if we had to look at it from the point of view of the time from falling asleep to waking up, as ordinary consciousness today looks at it. The ordinary consciousness of today sees how, during sleep, what is experienced within the human being dawns. But now we said that as soon as a person completes the first step of looking into the spiritual world, he realizes that from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, what we call the human being's ego and its astral body – that is to say, the human being's actual spirit-soul nature – is so connected from within with the nature of the angels, archangels and archai, as the human being is otherwise connected here during waking life with the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. Only because man's consciousness is dulled during sleep by the powers opposed to the world is he not aware that during sleep he is connected to the hierarchy of angels, archangels and archai, that they imbue his ego and his astral body with their own being, that they hold and carry his astral body and his ego. And we have explained how three things arise from this connection between human beings and spiritual beings: Firstly, that we have the feeling of personality more or less clearly even in our ordinary consciousness. We know ourselves as an ego. We would never know ourselves as an ego with only what is available to us during waking hours. The feeling of free personality that continues during the day, while we are awake, is a kind of after-effect of what we experience during sleep. This comes from the fact that from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, we are connected with the angelic being from the spiritual world to which we belong. But the archangelic being, or actually a series of archangelic beings, is also connected with our spiritual soul being. And this is the reason why, when we are awake, we know ourselves as members of the whole of humanity, that we recognize ourselves as human beings on earth.

Every human being actually has an awareness of their free personality, even if it is not entirely clear. The awareness that one is a human being in general is already more shadowy in the background. Yes, certain philosophers, like Fewerbach or even Auguste Comte, have argued that it is a significant discovery for a person to come to feel that they are a human being in general, a member of the whole of humanity. And yesterday we heard Auguste Comte speak of the Great Being; by this he means nothing other than the human being. But Comte speaks from the standpoint of ordinary materialistic science; he does not know what underlies spiritually this consciousness that one is human, which lies in the background of our soul life. One would have no inkling of being a human being if that which is separated from our physical and etheric bodies during sleep were not imbued with the nature of the archangels.

And again, we are imbued with the nature of the archai from the hierarchy of the so-called Zeitgeist (the spirit of the age). But what comes from this remains a rather dark, shadowy consciousness. Indeed, today's humanity does not have it at all if it does not feel part of history, of historical life. The oriental world view has not penetrated to this consciousness of living as an earthly human being at all. This has been the particular task of Western culture: to feel like a historical being, as a being – let us say for ourselves – who belongs to the 19th, 20th century. But the present materialistic consciousness of humanity knows little more than the date and some other external historical data – we will hear shortly how little these actually have any significance for real life. For only spiritual science leads us to recognize how the human soul changes from millennium to millennium, how human beings become different, and how we now look back to ancient times and know that the people of the third post-Atlantic period, the Egyptian-Chaldean peoples, had a very different soul and human condition than we do today. This sense of being at home in the whole development of humanity is an echo of our connection with the archetype, with the arche, during the time from falling asleep to waking up. So that we should know that we are connected with this third spiritual hierarchy from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up. Now, how does our life differ from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, that is, every day, from the life between death and a new birth? Every evening when we fall asleep, we lay aside, I would say provisionally, our physical and etheric bodies. These remain with us. There we are connected with these entities of the third hierarchy; when we wake up, we return to our physical and etheric bodies. It is different when we can no longer return, when we have died. Then our physical and etheric bodies are apparently handed over to the driving forces of that which is becoming earthly. We know that this is only apparent, as we have recently discussed; but for our experience, our physical and etheric bodies are handed over to the spaces of earth and heaven. During this time between death and a new birth, we not only come into contact with the beings of the third hierarchy, as we do in sleep, but we also come into equally intimate contact with the beings of the second hierarchy, with the exusiai, that is, the Spirits of Form, with the Dynameis, the Spirits of Movement, with the Spirits of Wisdom, Kyriotetes, and also with the beings of the first hierarchy, with the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones. Just as we, here in our human existence, focus on the world and, in the surrounding world, everything that is contained in the realms of nature appears to us, so we become aware, now not externally but internally, of the intervention of the higher hierarchies between death and a new birth. From a certain point of view, this is essentially the difference between sleep and death in a human being: that during sleep we are actually only indirectly connected with the beings of the third hierarchy, but after death we are connected with the beings of all three hierarchies, up to the highest spiritual beings.

Now, if you hold on to this, you will be able to see how man is placed in the whole universe, how man, as a microcosm, is connected to the whole universe, to the macrocosm. Let us visualize what I have said schematically. Let us say, then, that after death our spirit is inwardly connected with the beings of the third hierarchy, with the beings of the second hierarchy, with the beings of the first hierarchy, just as it is outwardly connected here with the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms, from which it is built. But there is another connection. When you get to know all the things that the beings of the third hierarchy initially work on – they also have other tasks, but we are only ever talking about things in parts, aren't we? The beings of the third hierarchy are individual beings that work individually and also through their work together through their effects, which bring forth something, create something. If you visualize what these entities of the third hierarchy work, it is first of all everything, I say, that happens in the historical life of humanity (see drawing on page 57). You can also grasp the thought in this way: No one knows anything of the reality of the historical life of humanity without having an inkling that what actually constitutes history is not made by human beings, but by the beings of the third hierarchy. The beings of the third hierarchy – angels, archangels, archai – actually make history, and man participates in the work of this third hierarchy by having his consciousness as a personality, his consciousness as a human being, as a historical being on earth, in the characterized way. So that man stands in the world is because these entities make up historical life, and man, in turn, has what he is inwardly and through which he is inwardly connected to historical life from these entities. The external historical life, which is recorded in popular history, which is essentially a fable convenante, is only a reflection of the inner historical life that is created in his development by the beings of the third hierarchy.

Now we may ask: What is the similar task of the beings of the second and first hierarchy, that is, the Exusiai, Dynameis, Kyriotetes, the form spirits, the movement spirits, the wisdom spirits? Yes, they have a much more comprehensive task. We will initially disregard their relationship to humans. You can best imagine this task in front of the soul when you focus on your etheric body. Right, when you start from your self and go inward, you come to your astral body. Through your astral body, you are connected to the historical life of humanity. In turn, the beings of the third hierarchy, who make up the historical life of people, have an effect on the historical life of humanity. But if you go further, if you go down to the etheric body, this etheric body is a very complicated entity. In today's consciousness, man is not aware of much of the complexity that underlies this human etheric body. But you do get a certain idea of what has to work in this ether body when you study “Occult Science in Outline”; there you are shown, in the succession of Saturn, Sun and Moon time, that is, the successive embodiments of our Earth, how this ether body develops from the entire cosmos, and how the beings of the higher hierarchies participate. If we express this in a vivid formula, we can say from a certain point of view: Everything in the becoming of the world that is now more comprehensive, with which our etheric body is just as connected as our astral body is with the historical life of humanity, is created and formed by the beings of the second hierarchy, by the Exusiai, Dynameis, Kyriotetes. So, to illustrate this, I will say: The beings of the second hierarchy create everything that has an effect on the human etheric body.

But this in turn gives rise to something else. When you wake up in the morning and immerse yourself in your etheric body, you actually plunge into the creature of the beings of the second hierarchy. And you also submerge into your physical body. Of this physical body, which is why the being of mystery calls it the temple of man, what the external anatomy and physiology reveal is really only the very, very outermost shell. One can only grasp this tremendous, wondrous structure of the human physical body if one knows that it is the creature of the interaction of the beings of the first hierarchy. When you descend into your physical body upon waking in the morning, you actually descend into the work of the highest hierarchies. So think about how things are distributed in life: here between birth and death, when we are awake, we first descend into our astral body, in which the historical life of humanity is effective. But we also dive into our etheric body, the creature of the second hierarchy, in which much of the cosmos is effective, the etheric life of the cosmos. And we dive into our physical body, which is the creation of the beings of the first hierarchy. And when we live between death and a new birth, we do not live with the creature, but with the creators themselves.

Now you have one of the considerable differences in the life between birth and death and the life between death and a new birth. Here you descend by immersing yourself in your physicality, in all that is a creature of the higher hierarchies. When you die, you descend into the hierarchies themselves. You go from the creature to the creators. That is how things are connected.

And now, looking at what we have just discussed, let us ask: What exactly is our Earth? What geology and other sciences usually explore of our Earth is, after all, only the outer shell. What exactly is our Earth? As you know, we have our physical body in common with the entire mineral kingdom. Because we share our physical body with the entire mineral kingdom, we stand in it in a part of the earth when we are awake. We share our etheric body with the entire plant kingdom, standing in a second link of our earth. We share our astral body with the animal kingdom. We have the I for ourselves. There we stand in the three kingdoms of the earth, and our whole earth actually consists of the three kingdoms. This is the ground, so to speak, on which we stand, not physically, but with our human nature. But this cannot be seen, it remains supersensible. By standing on this ground, its lowest link is the mineral kingdom.

Now you remember from the “Geheimwissenschaft” that the mineral kingdom was not present during the earlier embodiments of our earth; the moon did not yet have a mineral kingdom, nor did the old sun, nor did Saturn. You only need to read about it in the “Geheimwissenschaft”. It was only on the earth, during the fourth embodiment of our earth, that the mineral kingdom came into being. I ask you to take careful note of this. It is a difficult matter, but it is an extraordinarily important one. In a sense, three formations had to precede it before the mineral earth could develop. We call these three formations the three elemental realms; the mineral realm is the fourth. We could also speak in these terms about the earlier embodiments: During the Saturn embodiment of our Earth: first elementary realm; during the Sun embodiment of our Earth: second elementary realm - the beings that were in the mineral realm at that time were earlier in the elementary realm -; during the Moon time - not the present time, the old Moon time -: third elementary realm. As we progress to Earth, the mineral realm arises as the fourth realm. Man carries this within himself.

To stand in the mineral kingdom is to stand in the fourth formation. We carry this mineral kingdom within us; only through this are we actually visible beings. But this mineral kingdom is also the only closed one in us. Only when the earth will have reached its end, when it will have entered into a different embodiment, will man be just as closed in the plant kingdom as he is today in the mineral kingdom. Then he would stand in the fifth formation. So the Earth will come to an end state and will arise anew: Jupiter time; man will then have his relationship to the plant kingdom as he has his relationship to the mineral kingdom today. He will stand in the fifth formation. To stand in the plant kingdom means to stand in the fifth formation.

There will come a new incarnation of our Earth, we call it the Venus incarnation, the Venusian age. Man will then stand for himself in the animal kingdom, not be an animal, but stand in the animal kingdom; as you know, this is different from being an animal. But to stand in the animal kingdom means to stand in the sixth formation. And then comes the conclusion, I would say, the seventh of all becoming. We call it the volcanic embodiment of the earth. Man has then reached the highest level of his education, only then has he become fully human. To stand in the human kingdom means to be in the seventh education, to stand in the seventh education. And in seven educations the life of man is complete.

Let us take a look at the human being today. He stands, as we do, in the mineral kingdom; he does not yet stand in the plant kingdom. When man stands in the plant kingdom, his whole life will be different. He will not feel as a personality, but as he feels today as a personality, he will feel as a human being, he will feel as a member of the whole of humanity. He will, for example, when he once stands in the plant kingdom, find it unbearable that he has a certain degree of happiness when someone next to him is surrounded by misfortune. Today, the human being feels as if he is closed off from other people by a partition. It must be so, otherwise man would never be able to develop his personality. But in the future kingdom of Jupiter, where man will be in the fifth education, it will be different; then it will be an absolutely unbearable thought that one can be happy and the other unhappy next to him, because people do not feel like an organism, as one says in abstracto. Now they do not feel as an organism: but that is an untruth, a deception, a maja. But the time will come when man will stand in the plant kingdom, where he will not find individual happiness tolerable when there is unhappiness next to him.

This thought underlies those spiritualists of whom I spoke to you yesterday. I told you: in the future, the English spiritualists will have to fight a great battle against the entire English popular culture. The flower of this popular culture is utilitarianism; and what this utilitarianism has driven out in Bentbam is essentially the principle that was called the maximation of happiness. This utilitarianism will increasingly fill their thinking. Therefore, only the opposition of the spiritually minded will enable this thinking to become spiritualized. That is the perspective for the future: the spiritually minded will have to overcome popular culture, to overcome it to the point of annihilation. That is why I was able to quote to you that Bentham, who, starting from popular culture, came to the principle that the good on earth consists in the happiness of the greatest number of people, has his most fierce opponents in the spiritually minded people of his own country, who tell him: That is a purely devilish definition, because this definition can only be made if you consider nothing but the mere present. If you think a little about the future of development, you know that the thought is quite unbearable: the happiness of the greatest number, because the opposite would be the unhappiness of the least number, and that would have to be evil. But evil and bliss have nothing to do with each other; for in the future, when man feels that he is in the plant kingdom, he feels that he is a member of the whole of humanity, and this opposite will be an impossibility. Just as today an important organic limb cannot simply be cut out of a human being without the whole human organism perishing, so in the future, when the earth is in the plant kingdom, not one particular group of people will be able to suffer without the whole suffering. That is a certain state of development that is coming. And because Bentham's definition of happiness has no future, only the present, it must be fought against, especially by those who aspire to spirituality.

Yes, why should it be a contradiction when it is said that good is defined by Bentham as the happiness of the greatest number, and evil is defined as the happiness of the least number? It is not an abstract contradiction for the rational mind, but the spiritualist does not think abstractly; the spiritualist thinks concretely. He does not think: What is the opposite of the other? but he thinks of the real that develops and that mostly does not agree with the mere thoughts of people.

And in an even higher degree the individual human being will participate in the whole when he is in the sixth education. And then especially when he is a full human being, a completely spiritualized human being, in the seventh education.

Yes, but we have seen from this that, as we now stand on the firm ground of the earth, we as human beings, insofar as we are creatures, actually only come to the fourth education. We have the mineral kingdom, that is finished. The other kingdoms, as they exist today, will partly perish, and man will develop them in a different way: the plant kingdom, as I have described it. We will not describe the animal and human kingdoms today, but next time.

Thus, today, when man regards himself as a creature standing among other creatures, he stands in the fourth formation. But he extends into the other formations, for we have seen that even in sleep man is under the influence of the third hierarchy. This hierarchy is further than he is, and is already in the fifth formation today, and the other beings are further still. So he extends into the higher levels of formation. I ask you to have the patience to really think through these subtle thoughts, because you now have to make the distinction between thinking of yourself as a creature and thinking of yourself as an independent spiritual being, which you are, for example, in sleep or between death and a new birth. Insofar as you think of yourself here in your physical, in your etheric body, astral body and I, insofar as you think of yourself as a creature on earth, you are in the fourth formation; but you reach into the fifth, sixth and seventh formations. By not living only in your body, but also outside of your body, in sleep or in death, you reach into the other hierarchies, and these other hierarchies are further. We can therefore say: If we regard the earth, with everything on and in it, as a created being, then it has reached the fourth level as a created being, and we have also reached the fourth level with it. But we rise up into the other spheres, into the other elements of formation, because we feel that we are independent personalities, that we feel that we are human, that we feel that we are members of the evolution of the earth, that we know that our etheric body is a creature of the second hierarchy, our physical body is a creature of the first hierarchy.

But the seventh education is not the end. Evolution continues, and by projecting into the higher forms of education, we also project into an eighth form of education, the famous eighth sphere. We can safely say: in a sense, by reaching up to highly developed levels of higher entities, we reach into the eighth sphere of education by standing in the pool of God or the spirit realm – as you like. But we reach into this eighth sphere of education with the finest components of our spiritual being. This reaching into the eighth education is a great secret, but we can still get an idea of a, I would say, very slight, not very intensive reaching into the eighth education, if we imagine the following.

We know that at the center of the earth stands the Mystery of Golgotha. If we look back at this Mystery of Golgotha, as it took place from the year 1 to 33 of our era, in the 747th year since the founding of Rome, it is in the first third of the fourth post-Atlantic period. We speak of the cultural development of humanity into which the Mystery of Golgotha fell, as of the fourth post-Atlantic cultural level. We know that the third post-Atlantean cultural stage was preceded by the Greco-Latin cultural epoch. We are now in the fifth, because the fourth, into which the Mystery of Golgotha fell, ended in the 15th century AD. So we are in the first third of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period. Now, the human being develops through the cultural periods, but when we describe these cultural periods, we are actually describing something that the human being does not fully experience. You were all embodied in the old Egyptian-Chaldean period, which is the third post-Atlantic period, then again in the Greek-Latin cultural period and in the present one; but you only ever experience the successive time – if things go well, don't they, even if someone lives to be eighty – just eighty years, and in between lies the much longer time that passes between death and a new birth. So of what we describe by describing the successive developmental periods of the earth, the human being only experiences a part.

You could, of course, say: Well, man only experiences a part here in the physical body; but he truly does not live in vain in the physical body: he experiences the world from the point of view of the physical body because he could not experience what he experiences from the physical body between death and a new birth. Whether what a person experiences in the pure spiritual realm between death and a new birth is valued more highly or less highly is not what we wish to discuss today. But it is different from what a person experiences here through his body, and it is very important to take this into account. And it is truly not in vain that man is placed in the world through his body; for he could not experience through his body in the world, always in episodes of the development of humanity as a whole, if he did not have the development of the body. It is a thoroughly false idea to have an ascetic attitude towards the development of the physical body on earth, regarding it merely as the enemy of the higher human being. In truth it is not that, but that which gives man something that he could not attain in any other way. And the man is very much mistaken who despises the life in the body, who regards the body as something low, for it means just a highest, an most important, a most meaningful in the whole life of man. And spiritual science can least of all follow that mysticism or that wrong direction of Christianity – not the right direction, but the wrong one – which despises what it calls the earthly world. Between death and a new birth, the human being experiences the world from a different perspective; he experiences it as he can experience it: now it is not the creatures that affect him through the physical body and etheric body, but the creators themselves. There he experiences something different.

This is why we have the task during our earthly career not only to get to know the world of the senses, but also the supersensible. For the historical life of humanity, which is a result of the third hierarchy, we cannot get to know from the perspective of earthly life. And for our time – I ask you to pay attention to the fact that I say: for our time, because it was not so in the pre-Christian era – for our time it is essential that the human being becomes aware: he must, while he lives here on earth between birth and death, also get to know, if he wants to get to know himself as a historical being, what angels, archangels and archai work as historical life. If we only get to know the world in the way that today's scientists want to know it, if we only get to know the world as history describes it, as if history were made by human beings alone and not by the beings of the third hierarchy, then we only get to know the outermost layers of historical development. Only he gets to know history who is aware that he must, so to speak, contemplate here in the physical body what the beings on earth do between death and a new birth in a completely different way - if I may use the expression, which is only used comparatively - which he gets to know personally, individually, in their heavenly deeds. He must get to know it in its effects on earth in historical life.

'But it was not always like that; that is how it is in the time in which we now live. Above all, it was not like that in the third post-Atlantean period, before the year 747, in the Egyptian-Chaldean period. We know that the whole spiritual life, the whole state of mind of people was different then. Then the supermundane life radiated into the ordinary human life, then man knew, even if he interpreted it differently than we now interpret it in the mythologies: the entities of the third hierarchy worked into his ego and his astral body. He meant the beings of the third hierarchy, called them Osiris or Zeus or Apollo or Minerva or whatever, but he knew: these beings, which he only invented and interpreted in this way – but the invention and interpretation related to these beings – they have an effect. Even if he had not wanted to see them, he would have seen them inwardly, for in those ancient times there was not the same delusion of consciousness as there is today; but there was only the delusion of life, which, as one says, anthropomorphized these figures. But one knew about these figures.

This is also one of the points through which the whole life of people has changed. Today, people in their ordinary consciousness do not know what is playing into their lives. Man was born as a soul being in this third post-Atlantean time, was born again in the fourth post-Atlantean time, and was born again in our time. He does not see what the beings of the third hierarchy bring about as historical life, but he should get to know it, he should really get to know it! Not in its true form, but in mythological form, did the old man get to know it.

Now put yourself in the shoes of such a human soul – there are more incarnations, as you know, but let us consider three consecutive ones: one Egyptian, one Greek, one from the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period – let us put ourselves in the shoes of such a human soul. During the third, during the Egyptian-Chaldean cultural period, it experiences what it could experience through the fact that the entities of the third hierarchy played into life. This had gradually dawned. Some had still experienced it in the fourth, in the Greco-Latin period; many people had still experienced it in an orderly way until the year 333 after the Mystery of Golgotha, then it gradually disappeared; then people had to more and more confine themselves to what is present in the external sense world, if they did not develop inwardly in such a way that they could get to know the spiritual world again in a different way and thus ascend to the entities of the third hierarchy.

And now, when we look at such a soul that is returning, it comes with all that it has absorbed in the third post-Atlantean period, in the Egyptian-Chaldean cultural period. It comes with all that, but let us assume that such a soul refuse to look at the deeds of the third hierarchy in the historical life of humanity in the present incarnation and say to herself: What do I care what the angels, archangels and archai have done; for me, history is what human beings have ever done here on earth. Such a soul does not take into account that in everything that human beings have done on earth, the deeds of the third hierarchy are involved. Let us now assume for the sake of clarity – for some souls it also applies to the fourth, the Greco-Latin period, up to the year 333 – but let us assume for the sake of clarity that such a soul comes over from the Egyptian-Chaldean, from the third post-Atlantean period , from the third post-Atlantean period, it would not need to make any effort to know about the deeds of the third hierarchy, because that came into human life by itself; that is what this soul still carries within it. So we say that this soul was able to process back then, and that is what it carries within it. One could not have said to an ancient Egyptian – he had no real concept of historical life, but he did look to historical life – but one could not have said to him about this historical life: people make history. He would only have laughed, because he saw that the entities of the third hierarchy made history, even if he also presented them in a sensuous way in his own way.

All this is within the present-day human being, but unconsciously, of course; it has descended into the subconscious. Now they believe that history is something that people on earth have made. This gives rise to a strange state of mind, which I ask you to consider very carefully. If we were to look at such a soul in the present, we would say that this soul refuses to place itself in the historical life of humanity in reality; it says: I want to know nothing of the deeds of the archai, the archangels, the angels; I only want to know from external testimonies what people have done since those ancient times. But in this way such a soul cannot develop further; in reality such a soul remains at the point of view at which it stood in the old Egyptian times; it only has the maturity of a soul of the old Egyptian times, it does not allow itself to grasp reality. The angels, archangels and archai have developed further, they have done what could be experienced by humanity since then. Such a soul says: What the hierarchies have already done up there in the spiritual world, I will not get involved in that; I will only get involved in my own abilities. But the abilities are none other than those which she already had during the ancient Egyptian times.

Numerous such souls live in the present, and think of the peculiar situation of such a soul! Until the year 333, a soul could not yet come into this situation, because the spiritual world still extended into it by itself; but now, since that time, souls can be in a strange position: they cannot resist reality, in reality they are naturally in it, in what the angels, archangels and archai do, but they deny this with their consciousness, they only take up in their consciousness that which has been brought about here on earth by people themselves.

This is a case where people as creatures are in the fourth formation, because the fourth stage of formation is everything that happens in a creaturely way. So what men on Earth have done since Egyptian times belongs to the fourth education, but man himself rises above that, and due to the fact that since the year 333 he cannot consciously reach into it at all with his whole being, into what he actually reaches, due to that he even stands with his nature above the seventh level of education, he stands in the eighth level of education. So that today there is the possibility that souls are in fact in the eighth stage of education, but do not recognize it because they do not recognize the activity of the historical life of men through the angels, archangels and archai, but only recognize the fourth stage, so that the eighth sphere remains unconscious in them. This is an extraordinarily important fact.

If a world view arises from this state of mind, what then arises? Man ignores his own reality, he does not admit that he extends into a high spiritual realm, although he really does extend into it, but he only admits that he is in the human realm. This state of mind has only clearly come to light in what I have called the industrial age in recent days. Only the fact that people are immersed in the whole of industrial life has led them to completely ignore the fact that man reaches up into the spiritual world within a world view and only to take into account the external deeds of men. That is something significant. One cannot understand the present if one does not know that there are numerous people today who, with their world view, reach into the eighth sphere, and ignore this fact, that is to say, they bring all the damage to earth that reaching into a sphere of the world brings when one denies its existence. For by denying that he is projecting into the eighth sphere, into the eighth stage of education, he shuts himself out from the good beings of that stage of education and delivers himself into the hands of the Ahrimanic spirit of that stage of education. His thinking becomes, instead of divine or spiritual, Ahrimanic.

When speaking in spiritual scientific terms, one must point to the facts of this world in their truth. And the truth is, for example, that something like the materialistic historical view of Karl Marx, who lived from 1818 to 1883, that Karl Marx's world view is a purely Ahrimanic one. Its secret is based on the fact that only what is materially occurring on earth is recognized, that the way in which the human being's spirituality reaches up into the supersensible worlds is ignored, and that as a result of this ignorance, the human being falls prey to the Ahrimanic powers. For as soon as man excludes his consciousness from the worlds into which he reaches up, he falls prey to the ahrimanic or luciferic, in this case the ahrimanic, powers.

Now, we are faced with the fact that numerous people today advocate a purely Ahrimanic world view, fight for this purely Ahrimanic world view, and thereby also conjure up over the earth all that must come when the Ahrimanic order spreads over the earth instead of the divine order. Bentham's philosophy, of which I spoke to you yesterday, is in the first place an external theoretical expression of this Ahrimanic view of life. Marxism is such an expression, which is also already creative, which is formative, which has an enormous influence. And the indolence of bourgeois life knows nothing about it and has not cared for decades what elements of such world views have developed in the sphere of social life. Marxism is an extreme expression of this. It will continue to have an effect. What at first was only meant to be knowledge will become an event, will actually become reality. Only insight into these things, which in turn forms the will, can help in these matters.

Such truths are drastic, such truths are truly not suitable for mere Sunday sensationalism; such truths are that which is most intimately connected with the whole cultural life of the present day. And much will depend on people's willingness to recognize that which lives in their thoughts in connection with the whole order of the world. For in our time we have entered the cycle of time in which we cannot advance without falling into terrible catastrophes if we do not understand how what takes place in the human being relates to the evolution of the whole cosmos.

Such truths, when they are discovered in the search for truth – you can take my word for it – are initially disturbing. If you have a feeling for the impact of the great truths in the world, you also know the feeling of being disturbed by these great truths. It is not easy to live in the life of truth. Only the superficial might think that it is not disturbing to have to say to oneself: people, a great number of whom believed – and that is also true! – that they honestly strove for the truth, are permeated by the spirit of Ahriman! It strikes at the heart, my dear friends! Therefore, when such truths arise, one tries to come to terms with them. These truths are not there to be let in at one ear and out at the other. Nor are they there to be found in one's lonely meditation and accepted as sensations. These truths are not there for that. One must come to terms with them. One must be able to find how what one knows as world evolution, what is all around one, also agrees with what people judge, that something like that is there.

Anyone who, like me, has seen how many people there are today - now people can see for themselves through external facts - who live by Marxism or Marxism-like views, is faced with the necessity of taking a closer look at these things. One often says to oneself: Perhaps you are an illusionist after all! Of course one need not immediately doubt the whole spiritual world, but with regard to such concrete truths one often says to oneself: Perhaps you are succumbing to illusions after all! — The deep sense of responsibility towards the truth must arise precisely in the face of spiritual truths. Then one seeks to dig deeper and deeper. But there is indeed not a little, but a great deal, a great deal, which provides terrible confirmation of what I have just explained to you as the ahrimanic character of, for example, Marxism or similar world views.

When I spoke here some time ago, I made a certain demand of you. I spoke about the fact that the time as we experience it is actually an illusion, that time is in reality something quite different from how man experiences it, because man does not take time perspectively, I said at the time. Man experiences space perspectively; he sees the more distant trees smaller than the nearby trees. In reality, time is also to be seen perspectively. Events that lie far apart in time are to be seen differently than those that lie close together in time. But this is only the basis for time really being what the researchers of all times have regarded it as: time is the most important medium of human deception. We imagine, for example, that the beings of the higher hierarchies also flow through time as our own soul life flows through time: there is no truth in this. In reality, the essence of the higher hierarchies lies in elapsed times, but they work across from the elapsed times, as one can work across in space from a distant place, for example, through light signals or something similar, to beings in a nearby place in space. Time is not what people see it as, nor is time what philosophers like Kant see it as, but time in its reality is something completely different. And what man sees as reality is also a maja, a great deception. Above all, what we believe to be past remains, because we live in time as a deception. But it remains there; time really becomes something like space. And one looks at past events in the same way that one looks at distant objects in space, if one truly sees. Time is an illusion.

And further, spiritual science knows that the sources of other great illusions in human worldviews arise from the fact that man succumbs to deception with regard to time. If there were many physicists among you, I could express myself here in purely physical terms. I could show you with the help of physical formulas that just as the physicist introduces time - t, as he merely calls it - into the physical formulas, this time is only a number, and thus something quite unknown, not a reality but pure appearance. The only thing that is real is the speed, but the physicist regards this as a consequence of time. Since you are not physicists and probably will not get involved in understanding the matter, I will not go into it further either.

Time is an illusion, that is a profound truth, because time as an illusion underlies many other illusions of life. For example, if you apply time incorrectly in the course of history, you see everything in the wrong light. People in the first three Christian centuries thought that certain things that had happened were over and done with. In reality, they should have thought: the archangel or being from the hierarchy of archai who guided the events of that time is still there; it continues to have an effect in a different way. The past is only an illusion. It is very important for people to realize that time has a perspective character for spiritual reality, that they must be just as mistaken about events in the course of time – while they do not believe this – as they are about events in space if they do not allow for perspective. Consider how great the deception would be if you did not allow for perspective, if you regarded what is far away in space as having the same effect as what is close by. You are looking at a distant mountain. Your health depends to a great extent on the air around you; the air on the distant mountain does not, because if you want it to be beneficial to your health, you have to go there. As soon as we are dealing with reality in life, reality is essentially connected with perspective. But it is the same with regard to time. We live in the present when we do not believe that the more distant events of the past can be weighed as much as the near events. If we look at the Egyptian-Chaldean period in the third post-Atlantic period and only consider what the documents provide and register them as Torengeschichte registers, the fable convenue, which today calls itself history, then we make the perspective mistake. For what people did outwardly during the Egyptian period has no significance at all for today's life, but what the angels and archangels and archai did has significance; but this only emerges in the perspective formed by observation. Therefore, it is a principle, and not only today, when we all have to rediscover these things on the basis of anthroposophy, but in all times it was a principle for all spiritual researchers, that time as such is an illusion, and never was time counted in such a way by a real knower of reality that it was thought to be a truth, that it itself would have been thought of as a true reality.

Now the strange thing came to light, this Karl Marx of whom I have spoken to you, to whom millions swear today, albeit more or less in shades, more or less in formulas - but that's not what . Those who know these things know that thousands of people swear by him, or if they do not swear consciously outwardly, they do so subconsciously. This Karl Marx tried to answer the question: what are the true goods of humanity? What is it really that is achieved in humanity? — He answers the question in an extraordinarily original way, for it has never been answered before; human goods have always been considered in some other way than Karl Marx considers them. What human goods are was considered, let us say, for example, in terms of whether it had to be brought from afar, whether a lot of understanding was needed to find it, or the like. I once tried to make this clear to you by saying: Human labor must also be considered qualitatively; one must generally get involved in the concrete. We consider the elaborate Gotthard Tunnel. No one today who builds something like the Gotthard Tunnel is unfamiliar with differential and integral calculus, and differential and integral calculus is a Leibniz or, if it is better liked in England, a Newtonian - the two were arguing about the honor - invention. So one can say that Newton or Leibniz helped to create the Gotthard Tunnel. Yes, without them it would certainly not have been built! Now, the work of Newton or Leibniz must be evaluated in a completely different way than the work of someone who lays one stone on top of another in the Gotthard Tunnel. This is one way of evaluating human goods, human labor. The theory of the value of human labor, of human life, has taken various forms. Labor, goods of life, have been evaluated from the most diverse points of view, but never as Marx evaluated them. Karl Marx takes up a single element in his theory of value. For him, everything that has value in human life is only valuable because it is condensed time, namely condensed working time. Whether something can be produced in three hours, six hours, or twelve hours is the measure of its economic and global economic value. A large part of Marx's theory, which is so common today that it is possible to see it when someone from the so-called higher classes talks about work from his point of view, is based on this. A real socialist, a worker, stands up and says: “Please look it up in Karl Marx – of course he doesn't have the book with him – please, page 374, you will find this or that there.

One must really know life in order to be able to judge life, otherwise one will be amazed everywhere that this or that happens here or there. What happens happens out of the impulses of the human soul. But if one cares as little as people on earth have cared in recent decades about what has actually been going on at the bottom of the human soul, then one should not be at all surprised when the whole thing finally collapses catastrophically. But I have explained this for a special reason. It is the first time that the original has occurred, that what is only the source of deception has been made the standard of all economic values: time in the form of working hours.

So take this from a higher perspective. People who understand reality have always known that time is an illusion. Now someone comes along and says: But what has value in the world has only as much value as condensed working time is contained in it. Does that not mean in other words that your reality is an illusion and only that which is condensed time has real value? The deception is made into reality right down to the form of time by those who want to be completely materialistic, who want to stand only on the ground of reality, and reality is overlooked.

This is just one example. I could show you numerous things that comfort when one is dismayed by truths that, if one has a heart for the life of humanity, thunder into the mind. But when one then studies the matter in detail, when one looks at the hand of someone like Karl Marx, whose spirit is known to be Ahrimanic, and asks him: How do you proceed in detail? — then it is indeed the case that one comes across the Ahrimanic, and one feels: You may admit such truths to yourself. — I just wanted to give you one example here. It is not easy to have to say: Everything that protrudes into the world anachronistically today does so because people have left the spiritual world, which thus becomes their eighth sphere, and they only perceive the world in material terms. If you take this, then you will feel with all its weight what it means when I repeatedly emphasize: Today it does not matter at all whether a person says something beautiful, something that can be admitted, but what really matters is what comes from what one says or does. I must tell again and again how I have been repeatedly tested – you know I am not saying this out of some silly vanity – to draw attention to the fact that it does not matter what one thinks, but that one sees what effect one's thoughts have. You can have a thought that is absolutely wonderful. But if you have no idea how this thought will work in reality, it can have the opposite effect. I have been trying to make such things clear in various examples for years. For example, at the beginning of the 20th century, I once gave a lecture in which I said – I will now summarize much of what was discussed at the time in a few words, because I just want to illustrate –: Today there are more people who are programmatic pacifists, talking very nicely about the leadership of humanity from their pacifist point of view. Pacifism has never actually assumed such proportions as in this time – so I spoke at the beginning of the century. And that is, I said, a clear sign that we are facing the greatest war of humanity. For people in the past did not think about human interrelations in such an unrealistic way as they have done within these circles, they only went so far as the content of their thoughts, and had so little awareness of the real effectiveness of what lives in the soul that one can only recognize it through the whole world perspective. This is only done in the age in which all the things we have been talking about have been spreading.

How is it that something that is no more than a train of thought, and a very unreal one at that, can set the tone for many people, a thought that can never have anything to do with what is happening? This is Woodrow Wilson's train of thought, Wilsonian train of thought, which is nothing more than Egyptian-Chaldean train of thought, which does not care that there is a spiritual reality in history, but only adds abstract thoughts to each other. It comes from all these peculiarities of our age. A future historiography will have to baptize everything that our time has produced in terms of unreal thoughts that bring about the opposite, in the name of Woodrow Wilson.

That is what is decisive in our world view, what must be decisive, and what must be considered not from today to tomorrow, but from the point of view of the whole of cosmology, from the point of view of being placed in it. He who answers such questions from the point of view that arises out of a complete world-view judges such people as Woodrow Wilson is, not from sympathies or antipathies, but judges as one judges objectively about something. But that is the anachronism, that very many people today cannot get involved in it, because it is uncomfortable to look things in the face. You cannot look things in the face if you do not research them in depth. This must be said of such souls, who today have no connection to historical life: they are souls who ignore what real history has been through the third hierarchy and therefore do not deal with the real impulses when they speak, but basically only with empty words.

This is a fundamental requirement of our time: that we come to terms with it and realize that, even if we have the most beautiful concepts that the human mind can grasp, the most beautiful concepts that are quite sufficient to explore the nature that is spread around us, we will never understand anything about history. For history does not unfold as natural life unfolds; history unfolds as the deeds of spiritual entities. This is what must be added to the other world views. From theocracy, as I described to you yesterday, people emerged by still remembering the old theocratic order during the time of theocracy; then the metaphysical time came, which essentially developed the civil service throughout the world; then the purely materialistic time came, the time of industrialists. This would lead completely into the unreal in relation to the spiritual, if it were not for the counterweight of working one's way back into the real, into the actual, which, however, can only be observed if one can ascend to that which is veiled for man in ordinary life in the present time cycle. We must learn again to speak of supersensible things if we want to speak of history. In the nineteenth century people often spoke of historical ideas. Everyone knows that you can't chop down a tree with ideas, but the followers of Ranke and similar historians believe that the historical life of humanity is brought about by ideas. We must realize that this time, the mere metaphysical time, must also be overcome, otherwise that world view, which is purely limited to the sensual, will become overgrown. Mankind must work towards the spiritual. It can only do so if it first works its way through the field of history, from the apparent succession of events in time to the real event, which, I might say, is so tangible behind the external sensory reality, especially in the case of history. Then, however, one will no longer create social or similar programs based on ideas that relate only to the external life, but one will proclaim one's social programs again based on the revelations of the spiritual world. But the programs that people create today are very, very different from these revelations from the spiritual world.

We will discuss this next time. I will continue these reflections next Friday; they cannot be concluded so quickly.

The considerations we are currently undertaking concern matters that are treated as mysteries by many people who know something about them in one form or another. And for certain reasons, knowledge of these things is kept away from the world from many sides, because it is believed that the things in question are parts of a comprehensive knowledge of supersensible matters that should not yet be communicated to mankind. I do not consider this view to be correct with regard to certain things that are being discussed here. On the contrary, it seems to me necessary for humanity to make the courageous decision to enter into a real consideration of the supersensible worlds. And one cannot do that otherwise than by directly grasping what is specifically considered in relation to the question in question.

Today, I would like to deal with a preliminary question first. Yesterday we spoke about the stages a person goes through between death and a new birth. A very common objection to discussing these things, not on the part of the initiated, but on the part of the uninitiated, is that one simply says: Yes, why is it necessary to know something about these things? One could indeed wait until one passes through the gate of death, and then one will see what it is actually like in the spiritual world. It is something that is said very often. Now, the thing is that we can never answer such questions from a so-called absolute point of view when we talk about reality, but that we, from a spiritual-scientific point of view, must always answer them from the point of view of the time in which we live. We live in the fifth post-Atlantic period, which began in the 15th century of our calendar. It concluded the fourth post-Atlantic period, which, as we know, began in the 8th century BC and came to an end in the 15th century AD. There are seven such cultural periods. From this, however, it can be seen that we have passed the midpoint of the cultural development of the earth, which was in the fourth post-Atlantic period, and that we are simply entering – we are, after all, also in the fifth great earth period – the time when the earth is in a descending development.

The considerations we have been making in these days can already draw your attention to the fact that it is important to look at the descending development, at that which is, so to speak, not in evolution but in devolution, which is in retrogression. Our whole evolution on earth is in retrogression. Certain abilities and powers that were present in the previous period of ascending development cease to exist, and others have to take the place of these ceasing powers and abilities. This is particularly the case with certain inner psychic abilities of the human being. It can be said that until the fourth post-Atlantic period, until around the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, people still had the ability to have a certain connection with the supersensible world. We know that these abilities have disappeared in the most diverse ways. They no longer exist as elementary abilities; they have, so to speak, dwindled away. Not only has the life of man on earth changed between birth and death with regard to such abilities, but actually, and even more radically, has the life of man changed between death and a new birth. And it must be said that for this period of time, from death to a new birth, in the present cycle of mankind, which thus already belongs to the descending ones, it is so that men, when they go through the gate of death , they must have certain memories of what they have acquired here in the physical body if they want to find the right attitude and the right relationship to the events to which they are exposed between death and a new birth. It is one of the necessary prerequisites for a right life after death that people here before death acquire more and more certain ideas about life after death, because only when they remember these ideas, which they have acquired here, can they orient themselves in the time between death and a new birth. It is factually incorrect to claim that one can wait until death to have such ideas about the life between death and a new birth. If people continued to live in these prejudices, if they persistently refused to want to gain insights here already about life between death and a new birth, then this life, this life free of the body, would become a dark one for them, one in which they would be disoriented; they would not be able to penetrate their spiritual surroundings in the right way through everything that I described to you yesterday. Until almost the Mystery of Golgotha, it was the case that people brought abilities into their physical life here that originated in the spiritual world. That is why they had atavistic clairvoyance. This atavistic clairvoyance came from the fact that certain spiritual abilities extended from the pre-birth state into this life. That stopped. People no longer have abilities here in physical life that extend from the prenatal life. You know that. But the other thing must be done instead: people must acquire more and more ideas here on earth about the post-mortem life, the life after death, so that they can remember after death, so that they can carry something through the gates of death.

That is what I want to comment on in particular regarding this preliminary question. So the comfortable notion that one can wait until death to form such ideas does not apply if one considers in concrete terms at what point in time of the development of the earth we actually are. And this must always be borne in mind. For views that are absolutely valid, that apply at all times, do not exist; there are only views that can guide people for a certain period of time. This is what one must acquire in such an eminent sense through spiritual science.

And now I would like to discuss a few things that can bring our considerations to a preliminary conclusion. We started from the assumption that the present human being feels a gulf between what he calls ideals, be they moral or other ideals, which he also calls ideas, and what he feels to be his views on the purely natural order of the world. The concepts and views that man forms about the natural order of the world do not enable him to assume that what he carries in his heart as ideals has real power and can actually be realized like a natural force.

The essential thing to consider in this question is now the following: We now know how it is with the structure of the human being here on the physical earth. We also know how it is with the structure of the human being in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. Some time ago I raised a question which actually already comes before the human soul as a concrete question when the human being looks at life, but which is precisely a question to which one cannot say anything when one is faced with the gap just characterized between idealism and realism between idealism and realism, that is the question: How is it that in our world order some people die very young, as children or young people or in middle age, while others only die when they have grown old? What is the connection with the order of the world? Neither idealism on the one hand nor realism on the other, which cannot regard ideals as real powers, can shed any light on such questions, which are, however, questions of life. These questions can only be approached if one has something very definite in mind. And that is to realize that the present human being, as he will one day stand before us as an earthly human being, can cope relatively easily with space, but he does not cope in the same way with time. In this respect, the sum of all existing philosophical views does not really offer any significant insight, and the question of the nature of time has so far only been treated in the narrowest human circles. It is not that easy to speak about time and its essence in a way that is accessible to the general public, but perhaps I can succeed in giving you an idea of what I mean by bringing time into discussion in analogy to space. I will have to tax your patience a little, because the brief consideration I want to give to this subject seems to have a somewhat abstract character.

If you simply overlook a piece of the room, you know that what you overlook reveals itself to you in a perspective character. You have to take into account the perspective of the room when you overlook a piece of it. If you now bring the piece of room that you overlook and to which you instinctively ascribe a perspective character onto a surface, then you take the perspective into account. If you look down an avenue, you see the distant trees of the avenue as smaller and closer together. You can express this in perspective, and you can, in a sense, express in perspective on a surface what you see in space.

Now it is clear that what you see in space is juxtaposed in a flat surface. In space, it is not juxtaposed; there are two trees in front (see drawing on p. 164), and two trees are far away. But by bringing the visible space into the flat surface, you place what is behind one another next to one another. You have the instinctive ability to transpose what you have painted or drawn on a surface into three dimensions. That you have this ability is due to the fact that man, as he is now as an earthly man, has become relatively detached from space as such.

Man has not detached himself from time in the same way. And that is something tremendously important and significant, but something that unfortunately is hardly noticed, hardly noticed by science. Man believes that when he develops in time, he has time. But in reality he does not have real time. He does not have real time at all, but what you experience as time is actually, in relation to real time, something that can be called an image. Just as this image (see drawing) in the plane relates to space, so what the ordinary person calls time relates to real time. The ordinary person does not experience real time, but rather experiences an image of time. And that is very difficult to imagine.

For example, it is extremely difficult for you to imagine that something that is effective today does not need to be present at the present moment in time, but is real at a much earlier point in time and is not real at the present moment in time. You can, so to speak, project that which is present in a very early period of time into your own time.

What I have just said has a very significant consequence. It has the consequence that everything we call nature has a completely different character than everything we have to regard as a certain part of the human being itself. For example, Ahriman also works in nature outside, or rather the Ahrimanic powers work; but the Ahrimanic powers never work in nature outside at the present time. If you look at nature as a whole, Ahriman is at work in nature, but he is working from a distant time. Ahriman works from the past. And whether you look at the mineral, the vegetable or the animal kingdom, you must never say that there is something in what is currently unfolding before your eyes in which Ahriman is active. And yet Ahriman is active in it; but from the past. If I were to describe the matter, I would have to say: Here is the line of development from the past into the future, and here you survey nature.

Yes, now you have to imagine looking into it. What you see before you in the present contains no ahrimanic powers, but Ahriman works through nature from the past, from a particular past.

And to you, Ahriman appears in nature, when you become aware of him there, in perspective. If you were to say: Ahriman is at work in the present — then you would be making the same mistake in relation to nature as if you were to say: When I survey a room, the distant trees stand beside the near trees (see drawing on page 164) because they can be placed in perspective within the space.

A fundamental requirement for a real view into the spiritual world is this: that one learns to see in perspective in time, that one learns to place every being at its correct point in time.

If I said yesterday that after death the I is, as it were, transferred from a fluid state into a kind of solid state, that is not all there is to it. Suppose you lived here on earth with your I from 1850 to 1920, and in 1920 you became aware of your I. I mean: you will become aware of it earlier, but now you look back, with the spirit self through the hierarchies you look back at your ego; there you see your ego always as it was from 1850 to 1920. The ego stays there, stays put. This means that your experiences do not go with you soon after your death, but you look back on them. You now look back from a temporally distant perspective and you see into the length of time, just as you see into the length of space here in the physical world. I can also express it this way: when you die, say, in 1920, you live with all that I described to you yesterday as the members of your being, but then you look back on the stretch of time in which you lived here on earth with your ego. And that stretch of time remains there, and you always see it as you continue to live in perspective, at the point in time where it was. And so you have to imagine that Ahriman is active outside in nature, but from an earlier point in time.

This is very important. It is something that is given very little consideration. If one wants to understand the world, if one wants to speak spiritually of time, then one must absolutely imagine time in a spatial way and must consider this connection of the spiritual substance with time. This is very important.

Now, what I said to you about the Ahrimanic powers, that they work from the past, is true for nature. But with human beings it is different. For the human being, while he lives here between birth and death, it is different precisely because everything that comes to an end in time becomes maya, deception, for him. While he lives here, the human being lives within the course of time itself, and by living through a certain number of years, he lives through the course of time. As time passes, he himself passes with time. That is not the case with space. When you walk down an avenue, the trees remain behind and you move forward, and you do not take the trees, which are left behind, and your impressions with you in such a way that you would have the impression that the tree image is moving with you when you take a step. You do that with the image of time. Here in the physical body you actually do this – because you yourself continue to develop in time – by allowing yourself to be deceived about time in relation to its perspective. You do not notice the perspective of time. And in particular, the subconscious mind does not notice it. The subconscious mind does not notice this living with time at all, and gives itself over to a complete deception with regard to the perspective of time. But this has a very definite consequence. It has the consequence that Ahrimanic powers can now work as present powers in what happens in man. Ahrimanic powers work in the life of the human soul as present powers. So that man stands in relation to nature in this way: when he looks out into nature, there is nothing Ahrimanic in the present. The Ahrimanic works in him as a presence, precisely as Maja, as deception. But the human being is given over to this deception about the things that I have explained to you, so that through the human being the Ahrimanic powers gain the possibility of creeping into the present, of walking into the present. We can say that the Ahrimanic forces – and the same applies to the Luciferic forces, albeit from a somewhat different point of view, which we will discuss in a moment – work in nature in such a way that they actually have nothing to do with the present, but extend their effects from prehistoric times. These Ahrimanic forces are currently at work in the human being.

What are the consequences? The consequence is that, in his deepest soul, man cannot feel related to nature in relation to the point just discussed. He looks at his being, or rather feels himself in his being, senses the nature-based being. Because ahrimanic powers are countervailing powers in him, and ahrimanic powers are past powers in nature, everything that is natural appears to him differently from that which develops within himself. Man does not unravel the difference he perceives between himself and nature in the right way. If he unraveled it in the right way, it would be as I have just explained. He would say: Outside in nature, Ahriman works from the past; in me, Ahriman works as a present power. But because of this, even if he does not know the difference, he behaves in the sense of this difference and perceives nature as spiritless. He does perceive that in the present the Ahrimanic powers are not directly active in nature, but he perceives nature as spiritless because he does not say to himself: Ahriman works from the past – instead, he only looks at present-day nature. Ahriman does not work in it.

But Ahriman, however strange it may sound, is the power that the general creation of the world uses to bring forth nature. When one speaks of the spirit of nature, when one speaks of the pure spirit of nature, one should actually speak of the ahrimanic spirit. There it is fully justified, the ahrimanic spirit. The beings of the normal hierarchies make use of the ahrimanic spirit to bring forth what extends around us as nature. The fact that we do not perceive nature in a spiritualized way is precisely because in the present life of nature the spirit is not contained, but works from the past. And that is the secret, I would say, of the world-creative powers, that they make use of a spirit that they have left at an earlier stage to work at a later stage, but let it work from the past.

When we speak of nature, we should not speak of matter, nor of forces; we should speak of ahrimanic entities. But then we would have to place these ahrimanic entities in the past. The result is a strange one: suppose some natural philosopher ponders, ponders what is behind the phenomena of nature. Well, he comes up with all sorts of theories and hypotheses about atomic connections and the like. But that is not the case. Behind what is spread out around us in a way that appeals to the senses, there is not actually what the natural philosophers usually assume, but behind all of this there is the sum of the Ahrimanic powers, but not as a presence. So if the natural philosopher is compelled to assume, let us say, that there are some atomic structures behind the chemical elements, then that is wrong; behind the chemical elements there are Ahrimanic powers. But if you could detach what you see from the chemical elements and look beyond, you would see nothing behind them in the present: it would be hollow where you look for atoms, and what is at work there comes from the past and works in this hollow space. That is how it is in reality. Hence the many unsuccessful theories about what the “thing in itself” is; for this “thing in itself” is not there at all in the present. Rather, where the “thing in itself” is sought, there is nothing; but the effect is there from the past. So that one could say that if Kart had sought his “thing in itself,” he would have had to say: Where I want to approach the 'thing in itself', there I cannot approach. — That is what he said. But he did not realize that in the beginning he would have found nothing there at all, and that if he had gone behind the veil of things, he would have had to go far back; then he would have found Ahrimanic powers.

In man himself it is different. It is precisely because man is vividly placed in time that it has been possible for the Ahrimanic powers to enter our world through the gateway of humanity and to work within man as such. And the consequence of the Ahrimanic powers working in man is that man detaches what he sees in the present from the spiritual, that man detaches his present existence from the spiritual. This is the consequence of our carrying the Ahrimanic powers within the Maja in us. So that one can say: Just as we view the world materially, detached from the spirit, as a mere natural order that believes it has reached its peak in the law of the conservation of energy and matter — which is an illusion — what we see as a natural order is merely brought about by the fact that we carry the Ahrimanic powers within us, and that they are not present as powers in nature outside us. Therefore, what we think about nature, in that we think of it merely materially, does not correspond to nature, but only to present nature. But this present nature is precisely an abstraction, because the past Ahriman always works in it.

Now, not only the Ahrimanic but also the Luciferic is at work in people. This Luciferic, however, has, so to speak, a different tendency in the universe than the Ahrimanic. Let us visualize the tendency of the Ahrimanic as we have now expressed it. The tendency of the Ahrimanic in us is to present the world in materialistic terms. That we conceive the world materialistically, that we think of a mere natural order, is the consequence of the fact that we carry Ahrimanic in us. That we carry ideals within us, which detach themselves from the general nature, according to which we want to orient ourselves in our mutual behavior, but which must appear to us only like dreams within the present world view, which are dreamed out when, according to the natural order, the earth has arrived at its final state , that is the consequence of the fact that the luciferic powers, which, like the ahrimanic ones, live in us, are constantly striving to tear the part of us that is accessible to them completely out of the natural order and to spiritualize it completely. The main tendency of the luciferic powers, insofar as they live in us, is to make us as spiritual as possible, to tear us away from all material life if possible. That is why they present us with ideals that are not natural powers, but that are powerless in the present natural order. And if, in the course of the future period of the earth, man were to fall entirely prey to the influence of Lucifer, so that he would believe that ideals are just imagined things towards which the mind can be directed, then this man would follow the luciferic powers. The material earth, to which we belong, would decay, scatter in the universe, would not fulfill its purpose, and the luciferic powers would lead man into another spiritual world to which he does not belong. To do this, they need the trick of making us believe in ideals that are actually mere dreams. Just as Ahriman, on the one hand, presents us with a world that is a mere natural order, so Lucifer, on the other hand, presents us with a world that consists purely of imagined ideals.

This is something very significant. And at present, I would say, a balance is only being struck in those areas that still lie in the human unconscious. But people must become more and more aware of this, otherwise they will not get out of this dilemma, they will not be able to build a bridge between idealism and realism, but this bridge is necessary.

What currently still creates a kind of balance is the following. When very young people die, for example children, these children – and the same applies to young people – have just looked into the world; they have not fully lived out their existence here on the physical plane. With a life unlived on the physical plane, they pass over into the other world, which is lived between death and a new birth, as I described yesterday. Because they have only lived part of their earthly life, they bring something of earthly life with them into the spiritual world that cannot be brought across when one has grown old. You arrive differently in the spiritual world if you have grown old than if you die young. If you die young, you have lived your life in such a way that you still have a lot of strength in you from your prenatal life. As a child and as a young person, you have lived your physical life in such a way that you still have a lot of the strength in you that you had in the spiritual world before you were born. In this way, a close connection has been created between the spiritual part that one has brought with one and the physical part that one has experienced here. And through this close connection, one can take something that one acquires on earth with one into the spiritual world. Children or people who have died young take something from earthly life with them into the spiritual world that cannot be taken at all if one dies as an older person. That which is taken along is then over there in the spiritual world, and what is carried over by children and young people gives the spiritual world a certain heaviness that it would not otherwise have, the spiritual world in which people then live together, gives a certain heaviness to the spiritual world and prevents the luciferic powers from completely separating the spiritual world from the physical one.

So you see, we are looking at an enormous secret! When children and young people die, they take something with them from here, which the luciferic powers use to prevent us from completely detaching ourselves from earthly life. It is extremely important to realize this.

If you get older here on earth, you cannot thwart the luciferic powers in the way described, because after a certain age you no longer have that intimate connection between what you brought with you at birth and physical life on earth. When one has grown old, this inner connection is dissolved and just the opposite occurs. From a certain age onwards we instill our own nature in a certain way into the spiritual substance within the physical earth. We make the physical earth more spiritual than it would otherwise be. So from a certain age onwards we spiritualize the physical earth in a certain way, which cannot be perceived by the outer senses. We carry spiritual into the physical earth, as we carry physical up into the spiritual world when we die young; we squeeze out, so to speak, spiritual when we grow old, I cannot say it any other way. Growing old consists in the spiritual sense from a certain aspect of squeezing out spiritual here on earth. This in turn prevents the reckoning of Ahriman. As a result, Ahriman cannot, in the long run, have such an intense effect on people that the opinion that ideals do have a certain meaning could completely die out. But in today's time frame, we are already very, very close to people falling into the most terrible errors precisely with regard to what has been said. Even well-meaning people easily fall into such errors with regard to what has been said. And these errors will become ever greater and greater and, with increasing earth development, can become enormous.

To give you an example: a very ingenious philosopher, Robert Zimmermann, wrote an “Anthroposophy” in 1882. I have already mentioned this in a context. This “Anthroposophy” is not what we now call Anthroposophy, it is more or less a concept jungle. But that is because Robert Zimmermann was not able to see into the spiritual world, he was only a Herbartian philosopher. Now he has written this “Anthroposophy”. But it is precisely in this “Anthroposophy” that Robert Zimmermann deals with the question that I have placed at the top of our considerations these days from his point of view. On the one hand, he sees ideas: logical ideas, aesthetic ideas, ethical ideas; on the other hand, he sees the order of nature. And he cannot somehow find a bridge between the logical, the aesthetic, the ethical ideas and the order of nature, but he does stop at it: on the one hand, there is the order of nature, and on the other hand, there are the ideas. And the conclusion he comes to is extremely interesting, because it is actually typical of a person in the present day. He comes to the conclusion that it is forbidden to man once and for all to populate nature with ideas and to ascribe to ideas the power of nature. The two worlds can actually only be connected in the mind of man. So he says. And so he means at one point, where he summarizes almost everything he says and thinks: “The realization of ideas is neither a fact of the past nor a fact of the present, but a task whose fulfillment lies in the future and in the hands of man. The dream of a “golden age”, of which a sober rationalist like Kant as of that of “eternal peace, as an extreme positivist like Comte as the ‘état positif’, raved about, will be fulfilled when the entire world of ideas has become real and the entire reality is permeated by the ideas, that is to say, when that which Schiller called “the secret of the master's art,” the “consumption” of matter by form, becomes manifest, or, as Schleiermacher put it, “when ethics become physics and physics become ethics.”

Yes, but that can never be! It can only be that people realize ideas in their social order. But when the earth has reached its end, the whole dream of ideas will have been dreamt. Nothing else is possible according to such a philosophy. Therefore such a philosophy always remains abstract and must finally confess: “A philosophy which, like the one above, neither takes the theocentric point of view, inaccessible to human knowledge, as in theosophy, and regards the ‘dream of reason’ as a reality that has long since been created, nor, like anthropology, takes the anthropocentric but uncritical standpoint of common experience, in order to view from there a reality filled with ideas as a 'dream of reason', which thus simultaneously wants to be anthropocentric, that is, starting from human experience, and yet philosophical, that is, going beyond it, at the hand of logical thinking, is Arihroposophie.” “Anthroposophy” is therefore here the admission that one can never cross this chasm between unreal ideas and idea-less reality.

But in man himself there is a natural being, which thus belongs to the natural order, connected with a spiritual being that can absorb the spiritual. This is not denied by an anthroposophist like Robert Zimmermann. But man cannot be regarded by contemporary science either in such a way that the riddle would be solved through man, through this microcosm.

Let us now look back at something we have already mentioned during this stay. We have said that we actually have to divide the human being into three parts, not as conveniently as the skeleton, of course, as I have already explained. But I have also spoken about this in the final notes to my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' (Mysteries of the Soul). We can divide the human being into three parts: the head, the trunk and the extremities, with everything that belongs to the extremities belonging to the extremities, including everything sexual. If we divide the human being in this way and now apply what we already know: that the formation of the head, the shape of the head points to forces of the previous incarnation, the limb man points to the future incarnation and actually only the trunk belongs to the present. So, after what I have explained today, you will no longer find it very incomprehensible when I tell you: insofar as the human being carries his head, this head points back to the earlier incarnation, into the past. The forces of the past, Ahrimanic forces, are at work in the head, and what applies to Ahrimanic forces in general applies to the human head in particular. Everything that is actually formed in the human head does not actually belong to the present, but the forces of the previous incarnation have an effect on the head; and the creative powers make use of the ahrimanic powers to shape our head, to give our head its actual form. If the creative powers did not make use of the ahrimanic spirits to shape our heads, then we would all – forgive me, but it is so – wear a much softer head, but we would all have an animal head: one who is bullish in character would have a bull's head, another who is lamb-like in character would have a lamb's head, and so on. It is due to the influence of the Ahrimanic powers, which the creative forces use to shape us, that this animal head, which we would otherwise wear, does not really sit on us, as the Egyptians drew it on some of their figures; that we do not go around like these Egyptian figures, who have good reasons for this, because in the Egyptian mysteries, too, though from an atavistic point of view, things were taught that can be taught again now. We also do not go around like that, as in the Rosicrucian pictures, where every woman is painted with a lion's head and every man with an ox's head. That is the Rosicrucian painting of man. The Rosicrucians chose a more average animal and therefore gave the women the head of the animal that most resembles them, the lion, and the man the head of the animal that most resembles him, the ox, the bull. That is why in Rosicrucian figures you see man and woman placed side by side: the woman with the most beautiful lion's head, the man with a bull's head. But this is absolutely correct. That metamorphosis – to use a Goethean term – can take place, that our head, which tends towards the animalistic in its form, can be shaped so that it is a human head, comes from the influence of the Ahrimanic powers. If the deities did not make use of Ahriman to shape our bony heads, then we would walk around with animal heads.

But the divine powers also make use of the luciferic spirits. If they did not make use of these luciferic spirits, our limbless man would not be able to transform from the present to the next incarnation. The luciferic beings are necessary for this. And it is to the luciferic entities that we again owe the fact that, by dying, the form that the man of the extremities still has now is gradually transformed into the broader form that he is to have in the next incarnation. Then, in the middle of the path between death and a new birth, Ahriman must intervene to take on the other task: to reshape the head in the appropriate way. Just as we would go around with animal heads if we did not owe it to Ahriman that we get a human head, so our nature of the extremities would not metamorphose into the human until the next incarnation, but would pass over into the demonic. We lose our head, as we now have it, under all circumstances through death, not only as matter that unites with the earth, but also as form; in the next incarnation we carry over what will become the head from the extremity of man. But this would become a demonic being if we did not have the luciferic powers, who are connected with us, to thank for the fact that the transformation can take place from a demon, which is merely a spiritual soul, into the human form of the next incarnation.

Thus, Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers must participate in our becoming human, and the human cannot be understood without calling upon the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic for help. Humanity cannot be spared the task of truly understanding the activity of Ahriman and Lucifer in the future. The Bible quite rightly says that the Deity of whom it speaks at the beginning breathed the living spirit into man. But the living spirit works in the trunk of the human being. Insofar as we are dealing with the normally functioning divine entities, we are dealing only with the trunk of the human being. Insofar as we are dealing with the head man, we are dealing with an opponent of the powers of Yahweh, and thus also with an opponent of the Christ. And insofar as we are dealing with the man of the extremities, we are dealing with the Luciferic opponent.

Therefore, one will only understand the human being if one presents him under these three aspects. In our central group for our building, we therefore have this trinity: the representative of humanity, who is trained in such a way that the forces of breathing, of the trunk, of heart activity and so on are primarily active in him – this is the middle figure; then the figure in which everything main, head-related is active: Ahriman; and the figure in which everything extremity-related is active: Lucifer.

We must dissect the human being in this way if we want to understand the human being, because in the human being, the human being as such is united with Ahriman and Lucifer. At the same time, this is an indication that everything that is more or less connected with human thinking, which, after all, is bound to the head in relation to

its physical connection to the head — human thinking flows on the basis of perceptions as something external and obvious — that all this has an Ahrimanic character. Through the senses of the head we perceive nature primarily, and we build up an image of nature with the ahrimanic character just described, because we ourselves carry the ahrimanic in the formation, in the shaping of our head.

Ideals, on the other hand, have a great deal to do with love, with everything that belongs to the man of the extremities, inwardly, psychologically. I shall come back to this in the near future. That is why the Luciferic power has special access to ideals. Ahriman takes hold of us through our head, Lucifer through our extremities. Through our head Ahriman tempts us to conceive of nature without spirit; through our extremity man Lucifer tempts us to conceive of ideals without the power of nature.

But it is the task of the present human being, by surveying such things, to arrive at a correct overview. For you see, there is a certain boundary within us, precisely in our chest-humanity, in our trunk-humanity, whereby the forces of the head, which are Ahrimanic forces, are separated from the luciferic forces that belong to the extremity-humanity. If we were able to see ourselves completely by looking mystically into ourselves, then we would indeed comprehend the natural order through the head, but we would also see into ourselves through the natural order. And if the luciferic powers were to decide in us, then the luciferic powers would also enlighten us about the ahrimanic powers, and in this way we would come to a connection between the natural order and the spiritual order. But for a certain reason we cannot do this, and that is because we have a memory. What we absorb from nature in the way of ideas and concepts, of impressions, we store in our memory. And if here (see diagram on page 179) we have only schematically drawn the head human being, the trunk and torso human being, and the extremities human being, then in the trunk human being there is the septum, which leads to that which we take in through the head, in the natural order, coming back to us as memory material. As a result, we do not see down to the Luciferic, and thus we do not notice the Ahrimanic, as we do not see what is behind a mirror, but rather what is reflected. Here the natural order is reflected in what at the same time separates our Ahrimanic from our Luciferic, and what is the basis for the forming memory, for the forming power of recollection. If we could not remember the things we have experienced, if this partition were not there, if, looking into ourselves, we could see through ourselves, we would look down into ourselves as far as the Luciferic. Then we would also perceive the Ahrimanic.

But now consider: what appears to us in this mirror is what we live through in the course of our lives, what we look back on after death, what becomes a solid ego from a fluid ego. This is what we look back on. That is what we live with. And Ahriman and Lucifer work with us, working with us in such a way that Ahriman brings us to wearing a human head, and Lucifer brings us to not becoming a demon, but to having the possibility of coming to a next incarnation.

I have perhaps tried your patience a little with things that are perhaps a little more difficult to understand, but I wanted to at least evoke a feeling for what actually creates the gap between idealism and realism. It arises from the fact that the Luciferic in us arouses idealism, which is powerless in nature, that the Ahrimanic in us evokes the mere natural order, which appears spiritless to us. Thus idealists, abstract idealists, are actually under the influence of Lucifer, while materialists are under the influence of Ahriman. It is necessary to engage with these things, not just to engage in so-called theosophy in a schematic way, but to engage with these more precise things. For it is necessary that man should become conscious of the fact that he must do something to remain united with the spirit for the rest of his development on earth. It is an uncomfortable truth, one might say, even a hated truth, truly a hated truth, for it contradicts so much that is pleasant to man, that is pleasant to him out of laziness. Nothing is more difficult for people today than when they are told: If you want to maintain your connection with the spirit in the future, you have to do something about it. Most people would like the Mystery of Golgotha to have dissolved into the ground, so that they have nothing to do with their own affairs, so that they can be redeemed from their sins through Christ and go to heaven without having to do anything. And that is why most theologians get so angry about anthroposophy, because the anthroposophical side can never admit that man has nothing to do to maintain his connection with the spirit, that this can also happen in the future of the development of the earth without any action on his part. The connection between the physical and the spiritual, between what the members of man are between birth and death, and what the members of man are between death and new birth, this connection is called into question by the future development of the earth, and it will only not come into disorder if men will really occupy themselves with the spiritual towards the future. Spiritual scientific evidence for this already exists today. This spiritual scientific evidence is highly, highly inconvenient truth, but it sheds light on important and significant matters.

I would like to say that the connection between the soul-spiritual and the physical-etheric in the human being of the counterweight has already become very loose, and it is necessary for the human being to be more and more alert to himself, so that nothing happens in the connection between his physical-etheric and soul-spiritual that could, so to speak, suck him dry, that could suck him dry soul-spiritually. For when such prejudices become more and more active, when one does not need to know anything about what happens after death in life, or when the gulf between so-called idealism and pure natural order becomes ever greater, then people are in danger of losing their soul more and more. Today, I might say, this loss is still held in check by the fact that when young people die, a certain heaviness is given to the spiritual world and Lucifer is thwarted, and when old people die, so much spirituality is poured into the physical world that Ahriman is thwarted. But one must not forget that as a result of people turning away from the spiritual realm, the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers become more and more powerful, and that little by little, as the devolution of the earth goes on and on, this dam could no longer be fully effective.

That is what I would like to see emerging from our deliberations as a kind of bottom line, a feeling – and feelings are always the most important thing that can arise from spiritual scientific life – of the necessity of dealing with the spiritual from the present earth cycle onwards. I have emphasized this from the most diverse points of view, that it is necessary from the present point of view that people occupy themselves with the spiritual. And there will be no other way of dealing with spiritual matters in the future than by acquiring understanding and not resisting the process of really absorbing even the more difficult considerations such as we have been discussing in recent days and particularly today. People must come to understand the perspectivity of time. When this understanding of the perspectivity of time comes among people, then they will no longer say: Here is idealism, but it is only a mere dream that has no force of nature, and on the other side lies the natural order. Instead, people will come to recognize that what lives in us as ideals is the germ for the future, and that what is the natural order is the fruit of the past.

This sentence is a golden rule: every ideal is the germ of a future natural event; every natural event is the fruit of a past spiritual event. Only by this rule can one find the bridge between idealism and realism. But for this one thing is necessary: any ideal could never become the germ of a future natural event if this future natural event were prevented by the present natural event. We can put any hypothesis before our eyes. Let us assume the possibility that applies today, that through the so-called law of entropy, the evolution of the earth will one day pass into a kind of general warming, and that all other natural forces will cease, then within this final state, of course, all ideals would have died out. This final state follows quite well if one assumes that, according to pure causality, the present physical states will simply continue. If one thinks as present-day physics does, that such a final state will one day exist according to the law of conservation of energy and matter, then there is no room in this final state for an ideal to arise in it as a future natural event, because the future will simply be the consequence of the present natural event. But that is not how it is, that is not how it presents itself to the present study of nature, but it presents itself differently. All the substances and forces that exist today will no longer be there in the future. The law of conservation of matter and energy does not exist. Where we look for substance, we find nothing but the influence of something Ahrimanic that has passed away. And what surrounds us in the world of the senses will no longer be there in the future. And then, when nothing of what is physical now remains, when all this has been completely dissolved, the time will have come when the present ideals will join the natural process of what is now perishing.

This is how it is in the great universe. And for the individual human being, it is the case that he will be incarnated again in the next world incarnation when everything that he has grown into with the present incarnation has been partially overcome, when, that is, an environment can be created for him that is different from the present environment, when everything that is keeping him here on earth can be removed from the present environment. If all this has changed so that he can experience new things, then he will be incarnated again. The present ideals that can form in man will be nature, when all that is now nature will no longer be there, but something new will have emerged. But the new that arises is nothing other than the spiritual that has become nature.

Behind appearances and ideals we must seek that which forms the bridge over the abyss. But one must discover it. Today one can only discover it if one is not afraid to develop the concepts so powerfully that they themselves can penetrate reality. Therefore, the present time really has the necessity to engage very much in everything that can be experienced spiritually. But — let me add this as a postscript — it will be necessary for people to be able to develop ever greater and greater impartiality towards spiritual considerations. The day before yesterday, I ended by pointing out, as it might seem unnecessary to do for some people, but I do not like to do it, it is never unnecessary, a number of things that stand in the way of fruitful spiritual scientific work, including on the part of the Anthroposophical Society. Above all, what is needed here is real impartiality. Time and again, we see that the dissolving power that actually brought about materialism and destroyed the old spirituality is penetrating into human thinking, especially into the spiritual, into the willed spiritual. I have pointed out how materialistic some theosophical views are. Of course, it is not easy to find the right words when discussing spiritual-scientific matters, because our language today is no longer suitable for the spiritual, because we first have to search again for such a connection between language and the subject that is suitable for the spiritual. But it is necessary that the spiritual-scientific movement is not always corrupted by what is most harmful. One must characterize impartially what takes place in the spirit. Again and again I experience that I am asked: There is someone, there is someone who has spiritual experiences. — The meaning of the questions, which are often asked in this way, is that the actual question is: Is it now possible to surrender to what this or that person sees with blind faith in the truth? And if the answer is in the affirmative, then blind devotion arises; if it is in the negative, then the person in question is immediately denounced as a heretic and it is said: Well, that is atavistic clairvoyance, you don't give anything to that. — Yes, this either-or must be taken quite differently in this field. We must really face up to the statements about the spiritual with all our healthy reason. But if we want to become dogmatists, we cannot become spiritual scientists. If we want to either idolize or condemn, we cannot become spiritual scientists. There will also be infinitely valuable contributions to the characterization of the spiritual world from sides that one does not necessarily want to swear by.

On the other hand, there are times when people swear by some esoteric personality. Then it can be shown that this seer personality has at some point – well, maybe even once – retouched a little, or retouched a lot; then that personality is finished. Before, the same people swore by them, and now they have been undone.

Yes, you don't get ahead within humanity in this way. You don't get ahead within humanity with the either/or of deification or demonization, but only by facing things with your common sense. For example, it may also be the case that someone, of whom one even knows: Well, he does not disdain to tell a tall tale now and then – something quite true, important, essential comes out of the spiritual world.

We would not have the either/or that I am talking about if we wanted to introduce dogmatics, but if we wanted to place ourselves with common sense, precisely within this anthroposophical movement. That is one thing. The other is this: it is extremely difficult, because of the way things are often handled within our circle, to place the Anthroposophical Society in the cultural movement of the present day. This requires discernment on the part of those who are already members of this society. Once you are a member, you have a certain obligation to exercise this discernment. For we will go completely wrong with this Anthroposophical Society if we do not seek to connect with the general spiritual culture of the present, if we repeatedly and repeatedly fall back into the error of being sectarian. That will be the death of our movement if we become sectarian. Just consider that things like the ones we have discussed these days will not seem particularly strange to someone who is currently involved in science and cultural life, if he or she only acquires the necessary lack of prejudice. But in order to achieve something in this way, it is necessary to have the will to distinguish. With us it can easily happen that a question is asked in a stereotyped way when it is a matter of: should someone listen to anthroposophical lectures or should he be given a cycle? So the question is asked in a stereotyped way, without taking into account the level of education, the whole world position of the person concerned. But the stereotyped way is what is absolutely harmful to us. It is the schematic that makes it possible for a person like the one in Holland, around whom a whole bunch of nonsense has crystallized, to swim into the Anthroposophical Society and find protectors there, while people who are capable of judgment are often repelled by it.

To mention a specific example: some time ago, Mr. von Bernus appeared within the Anthroposophical Society with the clear aim — which one may find a little better, a little worse, as common sense may speak — of building a bridge between the general cultural life, the literary and scientific life of the present, and our anthroposophical life. Now, Mr. von Bernus, in his own way, has poetically reworked and brought out into the world a number of things, some of which are in my books and some of which are in cycles. He showed me himself: he has received a pile of letters, letters of criticism, because a truly contemporary attempt has been made here! One would not be surprised if someone who perhaps has a lot at stake could be repelled by such behavior as was perpetrated against him by the Anthroposophical Society in the past. Nevertheless, the journal he founded will be of tremendous service to the Anthroposophical Movement. He had, after all, managed to get the Anthroposophical Society represented in Munich in his art gallery. But everywhere one could see certain resistances to something that was as justified as possible! And if one looks at Bernus' experiences, they give a good picture of how the Anthroposophical Society should learn to be a real society.

In so far as the Dornach structure came into being, it is a society. But much else, in particular, is left undone, clearly showing that the Anthroposophical Society does not see itself as a society at all, but as a sum of individual sectarian little circles. But we must get beyond this stage of sectarianism. And we will not get beyond it unless some thought is given to the matter.

It is so difficult, and it is true that one does not like to say such things, but after all, many things are necessarily said to me because I am personally so closely involved with this anthroposophical movement. If the Anthroposophical Society should gradually develop more and more into a society with an expressed tendency to keep me completely quiet — which is what it is actually developing into and what it has always had as a tendency — then it is not a matter of personal vanity when I emphasize this. It makes me very uncomfortable that I have to emphasize it, but in the Anthroposophical Society there is a tendency to keep quiet about me, and there the personal is linked to the factual. Because of this – because everything that a society otherwise does is not being done – only the venomous words that the apostate members have created bubble to the surface.

Yes, these are things that I sometimes have to point out and that must not remain unspoken. I have raised them in the places where I have been able to speak recently, because I really believe that in these catastrophic times it is very important that anthroposophy is represented in the world in the right way. But it is so difficult to get people to reflect more deeply on how one should actually proceed in the anthroposophical field in order to make this Anthroposophical Society a real society. — Individuals have indeed made a start, but as a rule everything gets stuck in the starting blocks. Now, I think that perhaps, by drawing attention to the matter a second time, it will be given a little thought. I am not saying this for personal reasons, but because of certain necessities of the time, as you will indeed gather from what I have just said, from which you will be able to discern many seeds that can serve to help you understand our catastrophic times.

[Blackboard writing] September 2, 1918

Every ideal is a germ for a future natural event.

Every natural event is the fruit of past spiritual events.

In our discussion of the Wrangell brochure, we have reached the chapter beginning on page 37, entitled “Materialism”. I will read this chapter first:

Materialism

As stated earlier, the materialistic view recognizes only that knowledge which can be gained through sense perceptions and logical conclusions based on them, and denies the reality of occult perceptions. The sense perceptions of most people do not provide direct evidence of the reality of spiritual forces and phenomena that are not bound to material bodies. From this the materialist concludes that the assumption of such forces and beings independent of matter is not justified, and declares the conclusions to be drawn from it to be worthless. According to him, world events are the necessary consequence of the forces and conditions present in matter from the very beginning, which only allow development, and according to the law of the dispersion of energy, must ultimately lead to a state of equilibrium, and consequently to eternal death. The intellectual task of man is to investigate the laws according to which the process of this world development takes place, in order to endure the least possible suffering and waste of energy by adapting to these laws.

If one fundamentally rejects the occult evidence for the existence of spiritual entities, then logically nothing can be said against the materialistic view.

We see here, in a few concise sentences, the essence of the materialistic train of thought. But in order to arrive at a clear understanding of the full significance of the materialistic world view in our time, we actually have to take various things into account.

It must be clear that those who have become honest materialists in our time have a hard time coming to a spiritualistic worldview. And when speaking of “honest” opponents of spiritualism, it is actually the theoretical materialists who should be considered first and foremost, because those people who from the outset, I would say “professionally”, believe they have to represent this or that world view, do not always need to be described as “honest” representatives of a world view. But Ludwig Büchner, for example, was an honest representative of materialism in the second half of the 19th century, more honest than many who, from what they consider a religious point of view, feel they have to make themselves opponents of a spiritual world view in the sense of spiritual science.

Now, I said that it is difficult for materialists to arrive at a spiritual conception of the world. For materialism, as it presents itself to us today in those who say: Yes, man has his senses and perceives the world through his senses, he observes the processes that the senses can follow and cannot, on the basis of what the senses present to him to the assumption of a spiritual being that is independent of the sense world – this materialism has emerged with a certain inevitability from the development of modern humanity, because it is based on something that had to emerge in the development of modern humanity.

Anyone who takes the trouble to study the older spiritual life of humanity will find that it reached an end with the 14th, 15th, 16th centuries among the actual civilized peoples. Today, one need only really deal with what the present can give to the consciousness of man and then pick up a book that, in terms of its conception, is still fully immersed in the way the world was viewed scientifically in the 13th, 14th, 15th century , 14th, 15th century, and one will find that the present man, if he takes things seriously and worthily, no longer has and can have a proper understanding of what is really said in the older literature up to the marked turning point.

Of course it does happen, but only with those who are dilettantes, or even those who have not yet become dilettantes, that they repeatedly dig out all kinds of tomes from this older literature that deal with natural science and then come to all kinds of conclusions about what is said in them in a profound way. But anyone who values true relationships with what they acquire will have to find that the modern human being cannot really have true relationships with this older way of looking at nature. It is different with the philosophical view. But today's man cannot really do anything with the view of nature of the older time, because all the concepts that he can form about nature are only a few centuries old, and with these one must approach nature today. Our physical concepts basically all go back to the Galilean world view and nothing earlier. One must already unfold a broad historical-scientific study when engaging with earlier scientific works, because the exact exploration of the material world, the external sense world, in whose current we find ourselves today, has actually only begun in the last few centuries.

Do you remember that we were just talking about measuring in reference to Wrangell's booklet? Weighing is also part of measuring, as we have seen. However, the introduction of weighing as an instrument into the methods of the natural sciences has only been common practice since Lzvozszer, so it is not yet 150 years old, and all the basic ideas of today's chemistry, for example, are based on this weighing.

On the other hand, if we want to form ideas today about the workings of electrical forces, for example, or even just thermal forces, then they must be based on the research from the last half of the 19th century. People today can no longer cope with the older ideas. The same could be said with regard to biological science. However, anyone who needs to know the development of science would also need to get to know the older literature; but we, who want to take spiritual science seriously, must get rid of what we so often encounter in so-called theosophists. I have often spoken of the fact that I got to know a theosophical community in Vienna in the 1880s, for example. There it was almost a kind of custom to pick out all kinds of old tomes and to read in them things that one really did not understand very well, because basically it takes a lot to read a scientific work, for example, from the 14th century. But people formed judgments. These judgments were always pretty much the same. Namely, when someone pretended to have read such a book – although they had only flicked through it – they said “abysmally deep”. These were the judgments that were made. At the end of the 1980s, I heard the word “abysmally deep” – relatively naturally – more often than any other. Of course, I also heard the word “shallows” often.

What must be borne in mind is the great importance of the views, concepts and ideas that have been gained under the influence of the views of recent centuries. When we consider the explanations of the basic concepts of mechanics, the wealth of physical, chemical and biological concepts, and also some of the things that have been brought together to see how the soul expresses itself in the external physical body, we have the result of the last few centuries, and especially of the second half of the last century, an enormously expanded research result before us. And this research result must necessarily be gained, not only because all external, technical, economic, material life is based on it, which humanity had to achieve at some point, but because a large part of our world view is also based on it. And one is actually - even if it does no harm in a certain limited field, but it is true - one is actually in such a field of world view as that of today's science a hay rabbit if one knows nothing of today's physics, biology and so on, as they have developed.

Of course, it must be emphasized again and again that the research results of spiritual science are obtained on the basis of those perceptual abilities that have often been mentioned. They cannot be obtained in the same way, although with the same certainty, as the scientific-materialistic results. And of course - if one surrenders to what was indicated yesterday - this spiritual science is a reality. But for our time today, for our present, much more is needed than just somehow having a spiritual relationship to the spiritual-scientific results, which can be fully grasped by common sense. It is much more necessary than somehow catching scraps of the spiritual world to familiarize oneself with the materialistic world view, at least with a section of it, in order to be able to really represent to the outside world today what spiritual science wants. For one cannot go before the world and truly represent spiritual science if one has no idea of the way in which the scientist researches today, how he must think and how he must handle research alongside clarification. And if one repeatedly refuses to pick up a book on natural science in order to familiarize oneself with modern natural science, then one will never be able to avoid committing gaffes when representing the spiritual-scientific worldview in the face of what is the dregs of the external worldview. Today it is also much less important to listen to the traditional religious systems than to the honestly gained venerable results of materialistic research. One must only be able to relate to these materialistic research results in the right way.

Let us take, just to show what is at stake at the present moment, any field; let us take the field of human anatomy and physiology. If you take any common book today – and I have always recommended such books over the course of the many cycles – you will get a picture of how today's physiologist builds his ideas about the structure of the human body, based on the bone system, the cartilage, tendon, muscle system, the nervous, blood, sensory, main system, and so on. And a picture will emerge of how people today, living in materialistic thought, imagine the interaction, say, of the heart and lungs, and again of the heart with the other vascular systems of the body. And then an answer can present itself to the question: How does a person who has acquired his concepts from materialistic research actually relate to these things? What ideas does he actually have in him? And here one must say: Significant ideas have indeed been gained; ideas that had to be gained in such a way that one really had to turn away from everything spiritual, from carrying spiritual thoughts into research. One had to enter into the material realm as it presents itself to the five senses, as they say in popular terms, and into the context that arises from the five senses. One had to see through the world in this way, and much remains to be done in this area, in all possible fields of scientific research.

But now suppose you have acquired a picture of the structure of the human body such as the anatomist and physiologist have today. Then you will find that the anatomist and physiologist say: Well, the human being is made up of various organs and organ systems, and these work together in a certain way.

You see, when an anatomist or a physiologist speaks today and summarizes his ideas into an overall picture of the human being, then, within this picture, the same thing remains based on sensory observation. From this, very specific ideas arise that can be taken up. But one must relate to them in the right way. Perhaps I can make this clear by means of a comparison. For example, someone might say: I want to get to know Raphael, how do I do that? - I would tell him: If you want to get to know Raphael, then try to immerse yourself in Raphael's paintings; study the Marriage of Joseph and Mary, one of the paintings in Milan, and then the various paintings up to the Sistine Madonna and the Ascension, and get an concept of how Raphael tried to distribute the figures in space, how he tried to distribute light and shadow, to enliven one place in the picture at the expense of the other, to emphasize one and withdraw the other, and so on, then you will know something about Raphael. Then you will have the preparation to get to know Raphael even better, then you will gradually get a picture of the configuration of Raphael's soul, of what he wanted, from which sources of his mind his creations emerged. One could imagine that someone comes and says: Oh, looking at the pictures does not suit me, I am a clairvoyant and look directly into Raphael's soul, see how Raphael created and then talk about Raphael. I can imagine someone coming and saying: I don't need to see anything of Raphael at all, but delve directly into the soul of Raphael. Of course, in Raphael research this would be considered nonsense, but in the field of spiritual science it is practiced a great deal, despite the many admonitions over the years in which we have been doing spiritual science. One could see how few felt compelled to use the literature mentioned in the course of the lecture cycles and to use it in such a way as to obtain images from what materialistic research has produced.

But just as one would err if one were to stop at the image and not want to progress to the soul that is expressed through the image, so the materialist stops. What one could say to the materialist is, for example, this: Yes, you are looking at an image, but you do not notice that you should consider what you are looking at as the outer revelation of a spiritual inner reality. But it is true that materialistic research has brought together an enormous amount of material. If one regards this as the external manifestation of a spiritual reality, then one is on the right path. The materialist only makes the mistake of having the material and not wanting to accept that it is the expression of a spiritual reality. But on the other hand, one must always be in the wrong when one asserts something spiritual and a materialist says things about which one has no idea. Of course one can have an overview of the rich field of research and still have no idea about a great deal; but one must have some idea about the way in which things are acquired. And if our School of Spiritual Science is to serve as a place where a number of people who have studied one field or another interpret the materialistic basic premises that one must have according to the present-day development, then our School of Spiritual Science will achieve a great deal.

We could do it today, saying that what is set out in our cycles of material could suffice; we could conclude with it and use the next time to show our friends the material basis of the conditions that must be there. One will then see, when one looks at today's physics, chemistry and biology in the appropriate way, that what is in our cycles will arise. Then one would have taken the right approach to materialism.

My dear friends, you are quite mistaken when you say that materialism is wrong. What nonsense! To say that materialism is wrong is just as if you wanted to say: the Sistine Madonna is blue here and red there, that's wrong, that's just matter. Materialism is right in its own field; and if you take what it has contributed to human knowledge, it is something tremendous. We do not need to fight materialism, but only to show by its development how materialism, if it understands itself, leads beyond itself, just as I have shown how anatomy and physiology lead beyond themselves and necessarily into the spiritual realm.

One can only ask: Why are there so many people who, instead of accepting materialism as a mere research method, stop at it as a world view? - The right thing would be to say that today it would indeed be something completely complicated and foolish to practice alchemy instead of chemistry; today one must practice chemistry and not alchemy as in the 12th century. That goes without saying. But it is necessary to rise up out of today's research into the spiritual life. If our friends would only take the trouble to study the little book Haeckel and His Opponents, they would find that all the thoughts on which it is based are governed by the biogenetic law. It is significant that we have not yet managed to get a second edition of this little book 'Haeckel and his Opponents'. And yet it is extremely important to be informed, if not about the latest research results - one does not necessarily need to know these in detail - then at least about the way the researcher proceeds and how he or she goes about their research. This is of the utmost importance.

If someone says: I don't need to study the book, why should I, the spiritual world is clear to me from the outset; I don't need to climb the whole ladder – if someone says that, then today he is an egoist who only considers himself and does not pay attention to what the times demand of us. But we must pay attention to this if we want to serve the spirit of the time. It is extremely important that we keep this in mind. Of course, one has the right to say, why do I need a scientific basis, the spiritual world is clear to me. That may be true. But if you want to learn something in the field of the spiritual world – you can of course do it in such a way that you interpret what is there – but if you want to learn something, you have to familiarize yourself with what is available in materialistic science.

On the other hand, one must ask: How is it that there are many anatomists, physiologists, physicists, chemists and so on today as natural scientists, and even those who call themselves experimental psychologists, that they do not want to hold materialism as a research method, but as a worldview? Here one must honestly have the courage to answer: To conduct research in a materialistic way, all that is required is to stare at the world with the five senses and to use external methods. One need only surrender to the world passively, then one stands firm. Plucking any old plant, counting the stamens, taking the microscope, staining a cross-section in order to study the structure, and so on – I could, of course, list many more things – that is what people do. You just have to stand there, be passive and let nature take effect on you. You let yourself be led by nature.

In the very first writings I published, I called this the dogmatism of experience. People hold on to the dogmatism of experience. You can read about it in my book “Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung” (Basic Principles of an Epistemology of the Goethean World View). I also later called it “fact fanaticism”. But to enter the spiritual world, one must work inwardly, and for that one needs inner activity. And that is where people run out of strength. One can see in our time that this strength has been exhausted. If you make comparisons in the field of anatomy, for example, you will find that one can almost point the finger to the point where the strength has been exhausted.

Take the anatomist Ayrt/, who was replaced on his chair by the anatomist Langer. Compare the writings of the two scientifically, and you will see how, in the succession of the two scholars, one is absolutely clear that there is something spiritual behind the external, and the other no longer cares. Why is that? Because, however meritorious materialism is as a research method and however much it has achieved, without which people could not live today, people were too lazy to bring what they had grasped into active life. Laziness, real indolence of mind, has made people persist in materialism. Because materialism became so dominant and presented itself as reality, people did not rise to the spiritual. It is laziness and inertia, and one must have the courage to recognize this reason.

Immerse yourself in the fields of scientific research and you will see that this scientific research is magnificent and admirable. Delve into everything that is fabricated by the monists and other associations as “world views” and you will see that they are based on laziness and inertia, on an ossification of thought. This is what we must clearly face, that we must distinguish - if we stand on the ground of true spiritual science - between the entirely justified materialistic research methods and research results and the so-called materialistic world view.

Most of the time, those who do materialistic research cannot even think, because it is easier to do materialistic research than to think spiritually. I will give you an example to illustrate that materialists simply stumble when they want to move from materialistic research methods to a worldview. So let us assume that I have tried to gain an atomistic world view. I will therefore say: bodies consist of atoms. These must be thought of in motion, so that when you have a material object in front of you, it consists of atoms. There are spaces between the atoms. The atoms are in motion, and according to the materialistic world view, heat is generated by this motion. If one were to say that heat is based on the movement of atoms, then one would be right, then one would only be stating a fact. However, one comes to the realization that it is impossible to speak of atoms as something that actually exists. Atoms are imagined – and they have to be imagined if they are to make sense – but what is perceived should first be brought about by the atoms. So you can't see an atom. You see that the so-called atomistic world view is composed of nothing visible, of nothing that can be perceived by the senses.

Now, however, you can reflect and say: the world consists of atoms and these are in motion. One wants to investigate the kind of movement that underlies heat, light, magnetism, electricity, and so on, and one comes to assume that certain atomic movements are the cause of sensory perception. So one comes to atoms. One divides what is given, and if one divides again and again, one must finally come to the indivisible, and that is the atom. Divisible atoms are meaningless. The last parts, that is, the atoms, must be indivisible. Now, however, people also want to explain movement from the atoms – I can only hint at this, but you can follow it up in the philosophical-scientific literature of recent times – they also want to explain movement from the nature of the atoms. But if you think about how one atom must push the other for motion to arise, which we see in heat, electricity and so on, then you cannot think of atoms as rigid; you have to think of them as elastic. It is necessary to think of them elastically, because rigid atoms would not give the movement that must come out during a collision if heat, electricity or magnetism is to come out.

So these atoms must be elastic. But what does that mean? It means that the atom can be compressed and then springs back to its former state. It must therefore be compressible and spring back again, otherwise one cannot even think of the pushing of the atoms. Now we have gained two things: first, the atom must be indivisible; second, it must be elastic. These two facts confront modern thinking, which pays homage to atomism. The atom must be conceived as indivisible, otherwise it is no longer an atom, and it must be conceived as elastic, because it would be a senseless idea to trace the movement of the atom back to rigid atoms. English thinkers in particular have emphasized these two sentences very sharply: firstly, the atom is indivisible, and secondly, the atom must be conceived as elastic. If I allow a body to be elastic, it is inconceivable that the parts push together and then spring back into the original position to create the elastic body. This is inconceivable without it being divisible and movable. But the atom must be indivisible on the one hand, and on the other hand it must be divisible, because otherwise it cannot be elastic. But what does that mean?

It means that if we want to imagine atoms, we come up with two contradictory basic assumptions. There is no way around this. There is an enormous amount of interesting literature about thinking the world picture together out of non-rigid atoms. But then the atom is no longer an atom, because it has to be thought of as divisible. That is to say, one comes to the conclusion that the idea of the atom is impossible as long as one assumes that the atom is material. In the moment when you do not think of the atom materially, when you think that the atom is not something material but something else, one can think of the atom as indivisible, just as the human ego is also thought of as indivisible. Suppose the atom is force, then you can also think of it as being put together. If you do not think in materialistic terms, you do not need to think that there are spaces in between. The two things are therefore perfectly compatible if we do not think of atoms materially. If we carefully consider what optics, the science of electricity, and so on, offers us, and draw the final consequences as to how the atom must be, then we come to the conclusion that the atom cannot be material. You are bound to touch on spiritual matters. But this step has to be taken. It makes no difference whether the atom is elastic or rigid; we are not concerned with such details. Materialism should not be fought, but understood. The great amount of work and good results should not be despised by spiritual science.

Let us now turn to the next chapter of the Wrangell treatise:

Doubts about the materialistic world view

But many people harbor doubts: could it really be that the whole world is not based on any rational, moral thought, and that the concepts of what is expedient and moral arise only in the human breast, but have no validity outside of it?

We feel within us the striving for good, and the concept of good is inseparable from the concept of freedom, because where absolute necessity reigns, there is no evil and no good. A stone must fall in a certain direction with a certain speed, and it would be senseless to call this fall evil or good.

Should that which we feel in our innermost being to be the true measure of life be only deception and delusion, and is this idea of good, that is, of morality chosen in freedom, not to be found in the whole of the world, of which man is only a tiny fraction? Should the small part, man, endowed with lofty feelings and thoughts, stand in this respect higher than the whole, which proceeds unconsciously, without purpose, like a dead wheelwork, to end in eternal death? Most people's minds resist such a solution and seek another.

It is all right to say that the intellect objects to this, but it is much more important in our time to say that thinking objects to it. If one wishes to stand only on the ground of materialism, then one must go to the atom and grasp it as matter. But one can also call it force, and then one arrives at the fact that where one finds matter, there is the cosmic world of thought. There then the moral world order has its full place in it.

Now, some have found it more convenient to say: Yes, if you rethink the world like that, scruples and doubts arise for sense knowledge everywhere and it is not right to accept this sense knowledge as the only valid knowledge; but man is so constituted that he cannot penetrate deeper. This results in the following situation: there stands the man, who is perhaps a very good researcher in the field of the external sense world and who, as a materialistic researcher, can produce something lasting, beautiful and magnificent, but he is not inclined to go further. And so he says: there must be all sorts of things behind matter; but we are not able to penetrate there with the human capacity for knowledge. He calls himself an agnostic. He does not realize that this talk, that man does not have the ability and so on, is inspired by Ahriman and he does not listen to what good spirits tell him; he does not listen to that. In truth, he is just a slacker. Slacker is what you call it when you say it honestly, agnosticism is what you call it in science.

The next chapter in Wrangell's book is now entitled:

Agnosticism

The answer to the question of the origin and purpose of the universe and the destiny of man, which presents the least difficulties to the mind, but leaves the demands of the heart completely unsatisfied, is the point of view of the agnostic (” “not-knowing"), when he says: these questions transcend the limits of human knowledge, and therefore, by their very nature, must remain unanswered, and it is more reasonable to devote one's time and energy to tasks where there is a prospect of overcoming them.

— One cannot object to saying, I will devote myself to a task that I can accomplish. That is within a person's freedom. But it is not within a person's freedom to say: What I do not know, no one else may know. All philosophizing about what man cannot know is actually, at bottom, a scientific infamy, and, furthermore, it is a scientific megalomania without parallel, because man sets himself up as the arbiter of what may and may not be researched, because he presents what he himself wants to accept as decisive for all other people. What impotence lies in the sentence: “There are limits to knowledge”! What arrogance and conceit lies in it, but should also be made clear. This should not be whispered in the ears, but blared. —

Without denying the existence of spiritual beings, the agnostic maintains that this area is not accessible to everyone, while everything based on sensory experience is within the realm of knowledge of the normal person, and he should be content with that. Those people in whom the intellect, trained to be critical, predominates, can remain at this point of view without being paralyzed in their actions; but for most people, this answer is no answer. If one takes the standpoint of a person without personal occult experiences and without knowledge of other people's reports of such perceptions that appear credible to him, then, logically speaking, he is free to speak out in favor of or against the existence of spiritual worlds. —

But one is not entitled to deny the scientific nature of the opposing view.

The degree of credibility of the reports of others cannot be measured with objective, i.e. universally valid rigor, and the judgment about it is inevitably influenced by subjective motives in each individual case.

- Yes, you can show that.

If the facts can be verified by any normal person, then in most cases there is no need to go to the trouble of verifying them personally, because the current organization of scientific research ensures that an erroneous observation or report is soon discovered, and this compels every observer and reporter, if only for the sake of his reputation, to be as careful and truthful as possible, and in any case an observation error does not remain undetected for long.

— Basically, that doesn't say much more than if someone were to say the following: With the way scientific work is organized today, if you go to Basel and buy a chemistry book, you can believe what's in it, because it contains chemical results, and it wouldn't occur to a chemist to lie. — But that would only legitimize the belief in authority. And if people would only admit this to themselves, they would realize how much they accept on trust today. I have often emphasized that spiritual science, although in its infancy, can be tested. Spiritual science is still young; when it is older, the spiritual scientist will be in the same position as the chemist is today: it will then be clear that one does not lie in spiritual science.

Occult perception, however, is different, and this essential difference has long led the men of exact science, who are accustomed to controllable facts, to treat occult communications not only critically, i.e. with scrutiny, but skeptically, i.e. with outright rejection.

- The real reason is that they are too lazy.

Now, however, this no longer seems possible, because the evidence for the immaterial existence of spiritual beings is so compelling that men of undoubted scientific training consider this question to be proven. It is enough to mention names such as Zöllner, Wallace, du Prel, Crookes, Butlerow, Rochas, Oliver Lodge, Flammarion, Morselli, Schiaparelli, Ochorowicz, James, among others.

— There Mr. von Wrangell relies on those who tie in with atavistic abilities, while we assume that every person can acquire the abilities that make it possible to test the spiritual as one tests the scientific.

These men not only find no contradiction between occult facts and established results of exact sensory research, but their habit of unprejudiced criticism leads them to reject the skepticism of the materialist and to devote themselves to the study of occult phenomena.

— But they do not do it in the right way. They drag everything down to the same field of experimentation as chemistry, even that which can only be attained through the free activity of thought. Instead of constructing inwardly, they go around, as it were, with a yardstick, measuring. —

These authorities may err in their judgment, but their point of view can serve as proof that we are justified in assuming the existence of spiritual entities without exposing ourselves to the accusation of scientific ignorance. Assuming that one has no occult abilities oneself, one is dependent on the reports of others and must examine them for their credibility.

— It would be better to try to engage with what is said in “How to Know Higher Worlds”. It is much easier than many assume. Most people just don't recognize it, but all sorts of complications are recognized. It would actually be relatively easy to experience at least enough of the spiritual world in a few years to recognize it in general. But people say: That is nothing; because they strive for what I have called gut-level clairvoyance. And if it does not come to gut-level clairvoyance, then none of it means anything to them.

The sources of error in occult perceptions lie both in the subject and in the object. Even a superficial knowledge of the perceptual material accumulated by spiritists and other occultists shows us that here, admittedly, the sources of error flow abundantly...

— They really do not. It is no different than saying: nature never lies! But it lies all the time. Take a glass of water and stick a stick in it, it will appear broken to you; but it is not. Take the path of the sun in the sky, compare the size in the morning and the size at noon: nature lies to you all day long. The spiritual world lies just as much and just as little. It is extraordinarily interesting, for example, to visualize the processes in the etheric body of a person when they have an intestinal disorder, or to observe what the etheric body does when the digestive processes take place. It is just as interesting as when one usually studies anatomy or physiology, even more interesting. But it is unjustified to regard what is nothing more than a process in the etheric body during digestion as a magnificent process of the cosmic world. The spiritual world itself does not lie; it must only be interpreted in the right way. There is no need to disdain what happens in our etheric body during digestion. It should not be misunderstood. The senses, too, do not deceive in reality. When you reach into the water, you find with the sense of touch... [gap in the transcription]. In the course of time, natural science has acquired good rules through study, while it is believed in the humanities that the less study one has undergone, the more suitable one is for it.

Thus: “Even a superficial acquaintance with the material of perception accumulated by spiritualists and other occultists shows us that here, admittedly, the sources of error flow abundantly... .”

because they not only lie, as in the material world, in the subject, but also in the object, in that numerous malicious entities are supposed to make it their business to mislead the person doing the research. If one could rightly say of ordinary sensory perceptions: nature never lies, only man sometimes misunderstands them - it is, according to the secret researchers, different in the spiritual world. Therefore, if the reality of spiritual phenomena that are independent of matter is admitted, it is a great and difficult task to separate the wheat from the chaff there. This is the task of spiritual science, which, if one wants to pursue it seriously, requires a person's full time and energy, as is the case with every other branch of knowledge, albeit perhaps to a lesser extent. For the majority of people, however, such study is neither possible nor necessary. Just as one can be a Christian and find consolation and uplift in the teachings of Jesus, and see in his person the realization of the moral ideal, without being a theologian, so one can recognize in the basic teachings of Theosophy an interpretation of the actual meaning and purpose of one's own life without being familiar with the comprehensive structure of esoteric science.

— This is a claim that cannot be readily accepted, for even if people are not chemists or biologists, they can still live today. But man must gradually come to know that which belongs to the world to which the human soul itself belongs. It is a kind of unjustified denial when people say that to be a Theosophist one needs no more familiarity with esoteric science than one needs to be a theologian to be a Christian.

The world view that best furthers a person's actions and feelings is the one that most satisfies both his intellect and his feelings.

The next chapter is entitled:

The Soul's Survival After Death

If we assume that the spiritual principle in man, that which is designated by the word soul, is an entity that continues to exist after the death of the body, then various ideas about its further fate are possible. Of these, we will only consider the Christian view and the doctrine of re-embodiment here, as they are currently in the foreground for us. The teachings of Christ have been a source of comfort and moral strength for millions, and will probably continue to be so in the future. However, it cannot be denied that for the scientifically educated European, the difficulties of an intellectual nature have increased and do not allow the conflict between faith and knowledge based on Christian teachings to be resolved. The existing contradiction demands a sacrifice, either of the intellect or of the mind. In addition to these intellectual difficulties, many people have serious moral reservations about the usual Christian view. All Christian denominations teach that after death, the soul of man endures a fate that is eternal in duration: eternal bliss or eternal damnation. Every person feels that this belief contradicts the demand for justice. The basis of all morality is justice.

- If only one knew a little more! Of course Wrangell is right when he says that one cannot speak of eternal bliss and eternal damnation in this way, since these contradict justice. For “eternal” is an absurdity if one believes that it is something infinite. “Eternal” is only an age, a world age, and actually one should not speak of “eternal” in the Christian sense either, but only of an age, and that roughly corresponds to the time between death and a new birth.

Deep within every human breast lies the unshakable desire for each person to receive what is deserved. The concept of merit may change, as may the value placed on what is experienced and felt. But there can be no doubt that people would be happier, better, more satisfied if they were convinced that the way the world works meets the demand for justice in every detail. In what we experience in the course of our physical life, we do not see justice prevailing in ourselves and others, regardless of whether we consider mental, spiritual or physical suffering and joy as a measure of the value of what we experience. According to the teachings of the Christian churches, this apparent injustice of earthly life is to be compensated for in the hereafter; but it is basically infinitely intensified by the eternal consequences of temporal transgressions or merits.

— It is self-evident that Wrangell only speaks of what the Christian churches say, which arose after Justinian had closed the Greek schools of philosophy. But he overlooks the fact that we have the task of making the blocked wisdom accessible to humanity again. One must look for the right reasons. One could also show that those who teach Christianity today do not teach true Christianity, but rather a form of it that has been adapted.

The next chapter is called:

Reincarnation and Karma

The doctrine of reincarnation and karma, on the other hand, offers us the possibility of resolving the visible injustice of a life's destiny by the fact that it was self-imposed in previous lives, and that there is the possibility of improving it for subsequent reincarnations.

Such a belief, when it has become an inner certainty, gives one the strength to bear one's fate, even the hardest, without inner revolt, and spurs one on to improve it for the future by following the voice we call “conscience”.

The sense of responsibility in our consciousness is strengthened, and the danger that humanity, in a frenzy and selfishness, seeks to exploit the short span of temporal life, would be eliminated. The doctrine of rebirth and karma makes man free, because it puts him on his own.

Of course, the great mystery of the “what for” of it all remains unsolved, but the purpose and task of the individual life are clear and certain.

The next chapter is the conclusion of Lessing's “Education of the Human Race”:

Lessing's view of the doctrine of reincarnation.

“Is this hypothesis (of reincarnation) so ridiculous because it is the oldest? Because the human mind, before it was dispersed and weakened by sophistry and school, immediately fell for it? Why should I not come back as often as I am able to gain new knowledge, new skills? Do I get so much out of it at once that it is not worth the effort to come back?”

According to the doctrine of reincarnation, it is our fate to live on this earth until we have reached our destiny: knowledge of God, which is knowledge of self. Death is not annihilation; our sense of self, our true nature, merely enters into another body. Even the suicide does not escape; he only cuts the thread of life, which, according to inexorable laws, must be reattached.

- So Lessing. These were strong words. But they were also the words of a man who had the education of his time within him and who was necessarily led to this doctrine of reincarnation by what this and Christianity could give him. At this point, one sees the eminent education, one sees the historical critic. But now people say, of course Lessing is a great man; he wrote Nathan and so on, that's good, but when he grew old he devoted himself to such fantastic dreams as the doctrine of reincarnation; you can't go along with that. Well, in that respect the court master has become much cleverer than Lessing was in his old age. Many a person believes that he is much cleverer than Lessing, who is otherwise even recognized as a great man. One should at least recognize the ridiculousness of such an acknowledgment; recognize that one must strive toward what Lessing had finally worked his way to. They should realize how ridiculous it is if they do not want to go along with this, the ripest fruit of Lessing's thinking, not to mention what has followed in the newer intellectual life. These people speak without going into the actual core, which was already at the basis of the new intellectual life, but which for many who interpret it is a closed book. Now Wrangell continues:

That Goethe also believed in reincarnation is known to us from Eckermann and Boisserau's notes. Kant says in his “Lectures on Psychology”: “The beginning of life is birth; but this is not the beginning of the life of the soul, but of the human being. Birth, life and death are therefore only states of the soul... Consequently, the substance remains, even though the body perishes, and so the substance must also have existed when the body came into being.

Now follows the last chapter:

A brief summary of the train of thought

Let us try to briefly summarize the train of thought set out above.

The concept of the law-governed, the necessary chain of cause and effect in events, is not an original insight. On the contrary, direct consciousness gives us the idea of conditional freedom.

The concept of lawfulness, on which all science is based, probably first came to man from observation of the temporally regular course of celestial phenomena. Then this concept was applied with ever-increasing success to the phenomena of the inanimate (physics, chemistry), then to the animate, and finally also to the spiritual. The concept of lawfulness can only be tested and irrevocably proven on the basis of phenomena that can be quantitatively determined, that can be measured. The extension of the idea of the necessity of the material to the spiritual is an assumption that, according to analogy with what happens in the material, can indeed be given a certain probability, but which cannot be proven because the touchstone of measurability is lacking here. Numerous facts, examined by discerning men of science, do not allow any truth-seeking person to deny the existence of spiritual beings without providing proof, which is why he rejects the facts in question and their probative value.

The basic tenets of Theosophy – reincarnation and karma – do not contradict any scientific fact, satisfy the intellect and, better than other teachings, meet the basic requirement of all morality – the demand for justice.

Belief in these basic assumptions must strengthen people to endure unwanted life destinies and promote the striving for good in them.

And so, my dear friends, this brochure stands before us as a document of our time, as the expression of a person who, after thoroughly studying scientific methods, stands firmly within them and wants to bear witness to the fact that one can be a good, fully conscious scientist and precisely because of this, not in spite of it, must arrive at a world view that honors the spirit.

You will have gathered from the last chapters of Mr. von Wrangell's brochure that he has not yet delved very deeply into spiritual science, that he has not approached the difference between what spiritual science wants and amateurish theosophy. And so it is all the more important to see how someone who is scientifically trained longs for what can only be truly given through spiritual science, so that one can say: through such a brochure one has come to know how an unprejudiced scientist can relate to a spiritual-acknowledging view.

We can pull other strings and we will do so occasionally. We will delve further into the matter in order not only to cultivate spiritual science in an egoistic way, but to really see it as a cultural ferment and to work through it on the developmental path of humanity. It is extremely important that we get into the habit of really going along with everything.

Sometimes, our ranks offer a particular experience. Please don't be offended when I talk about this experience, but it really can be had. You see, there are certain members in our ranks who say, “Public lectures aren't important to us,” and they say it in a way that shows they're not really involved. They say that the public lectures are not the most important thing; the branch lectures, yes, those are for us, but we have progressed beyond what the public lectures provide. And yet it is precisely the case that the public lectures are designed for those who have a connection to the outside world. And much more reference is made to contemporary science in the public lectures than in the private lectures, which show how often delicate consideration has to be given to the fact that one does not love to base strictly scientific questions. And this delicate consideration is often interpreted to mean that one says: the public lectures are not so important.

The truth of the matter is somewhat different. There is only one kind of selfishness at the root of these matters. I do not want to break a lance for the public lectures, I just want to challenge the unfounded opinions of many people. It may be easier to miss this or that intermediate link in the branch lectures here or there; but the public lectures must be shaped link by link. This is not popular with many people whose work is not part of the overall cultural process of our time. But it is precisely this process of engaging with the cultural process of the time, this not shutting ourselves off, that is important.

Of course, it is easier to talk about angels, Lucifer and Ahriman than about electrons, ions and so on. But it is true that we must also bring ourselves to the realization that we must pull the strings towards the present culture. But I ask you not to take the matter one-sidedly again, as if I wanted to urge you to buy the entire scientific collection of Göschen tomorrow and sit down to gradually concoct everything, as the students would say. I do not mean that at all. I only mean that where one wants to speak authoritatively about the position of spiritual science in our culture, one must also have an awareness of it and should not fall into the trap of saying: this outer science is a pipe dream. As an individual, one can say that one has no time to deal with it; but the whole institution, the whole enterprise, should be given a certain direction through what I have said. And it should not be surprising that the School of Spiritual Science aims to pursue individual branches of science in such a way that they will gradually lead to spiritual science. We still need the materialistic culture out there. And those anthroposophists are wrong who say: What do I care about materialistic culture, it is none of my business, it is for coarse materialists; I cultivate what one experiences when one dreams, when one is not quite right while being fully conscious; the rest is none of my business, I have the teachings of reincarnation and karma and so on. On the other hand, there is the world out there that says: We have real science, serious and dignified methods, and now the anthroposophists are coming along with their spiritual science; they are the purest fools.

This antagonism cannot remain unresolved, and we cannot expect mediation from the outside. It must come from within. We must understand and not lie back on the sickbed and say: if we first have to climb up into the spiritual world through science, that is far too arduous for us.

I wanted to speak about the significance of materialistic culture and draw your attention to it, because I have often emphasized that materialism comes from Ahriman, but Ahriman must be known, just as Lucifer must be known and reckoned with. And the Trinity, which we were able to see in the model yesterday, is the one with which humanity will have to become familiar.

I would like to repeat once more: try not to annoy the outside world by talking about a new religion. If we were to talk about the group as a “Christ statue,” it would be a big mistake. It is enough to say: there stands the representative of humanity. Everyone can see what is meant there. It is important that we always find the right words, that is, that we consider how we want to place ourselves in the whole cultural world and come to describe the matter with the right words. That is what must be said again and again. We do not want to speak to others: We have only just presented the real Christ. - We may know that and keep it to ourselves. For us it is important to understand the full blessing of materialistic culture, otherwise we make the same mistake as those who do not examine.

Let us ask ourselves whether we are not doing the same with others. We do not need to withhold the true judgment, but we must understand what is going on outside. Then we will also be able to counter what is going on outside in the right words. But, my dear friends, we will have a lot to do in this direction, because the laziness I have spoken of today is very, very widespread and we must find the courage to tell people: You are too lazy to engage in the activity of thinking.

If we understand what is going on outside, then we can also use strong words and take up an energetic fight. But we must familiarize ourselves with it and pull the strings of the outer culture. That is why I wanted to give an example of the very commendable Wrangell brochure, which shows how someone is strong as a scientist, but has not sufficiently studied the spiritual scientific world view, but through the whole direction of his soul tends towards spiritual science.

We have often shown the drawing of threads, mostly in relation to specific personalities, and I advise you, where there are branches, to do the same in collaboration. Of course, this cannot be the work of just one person; it would never be finished. Rather, there must be someone who takes on a brochure about Eucken's world view for my sake, and someone else takes a brochure that deals with the blood, muscle and nervous system and so on, and works through it with the others. This can be branch work. It can be arranged so that on one branch evening, work is done purely in terms of spiritual science, and then the next evening, a subject like this is covered. When one person has done it on one day, another can do it the next time. Everyone can take up something that is somehow close to them. And why should someone who has no scientific education not be able to take up this or that? There are questions of life that can also be linked to such things. It is much more useful to use the time for such studies than to extract all kinds of occult intricacies and material from dreams and tell people about them. This is not meant to be one-sided either. It is not meant to say that one can never speak of occult experiences; but it is a matter of drawing the right line of connection. It is not a matter of despising the science of the senses, but of mastering it. The science of the senses is not to be trampled or destroyed, but mastered.

A kind of nightmare-like oppression can weigh on the soul of anyone observing the current cultural life of humanity, a kind of contraction of the tortured heart, when one realizes that there are still relatively few people who want to see with an unbiased eye how we are on a slippery slope with regard to the most important branches of our cultural life. This downward slide has become sufficiently apparent through the events of recent years, through everything that has befallen people. But we still often find today that people are of the opinion that, unless drastic action is taken, things must remain at least as chaotic as they have become, and that we can continue to work from what is already there; the rest will take care of itself. Over the years, I have repeatedly had to speak out against these feelings of temporariness and point out the necessity of relearning and rethinking in order to find the inclination to think about a real renewal of our public affairs and public life from the deepest foundations of our intellectual and cultural life. And even though there are already a small number of people today who have become aware of this, and all signs indicate that without such decisive action the downward spiral will have to be continued and continued, even these few people will find little understanding for what is necessary for a new metamorphosis of the human spirit to emerge from the ice, in order to lead to a recovery, to a healing of many an ill, who are living out their lives on the slippery slope of our cultural life.

Three phenomena stand out, from which the most important for understanding our time and what is necessary in it can be seen. The first I would call the main defect of our time. For decades, the lectures on spiritual science have endeavored to point out this main defect and also to point out the many things that must follow from this main defect of insufficient knowledge and insight into spiritual life itself for the development of humanity in the present and the near future. The second thing that speaks loudly and clearly from the facts of the present, I would call the main demand. And this main demand has been sounding in many hearts for more than a century, since Schiller, in his “Don Carlos”, had the words spoken: “Give freedom of thought!” Those who look more deeply into the social and spiritual life of our time will be able to see how, behind many of today's consciously formulated social demands, the demand for free activity of the innermost human being, of human thought, is actually hidden. Many people sigh under the compulsion of their thought life, which comes either from old existing institutions or from the new economic conditions. They find themselves either officially existing beliefs or the constraints of economic life in their free development of thought inhibited. What actually lives in the soul, remains largely unconscious, but what rises to consciousness, comes in the fact that one can not be satisfied with anything, there is something that does not let people openly and freely confess before himself: I may lead a dignified human existence. And so the most diverse programs arise, which contain very beautiful things, but do not reach down to the bottom of the soul to see what is actually living there. If one searches for what is living there: it is the longing for the freest activity of the innermost human being, for what could be summarized with the expression of the time's demand for freedom of thought. And one need only utter the words “social forces” – and it can be felt how this indicates that modern intellectual, modern legal and political, and modern economic conditions have brought us to an age in which the productive forces of life operate in a complicated way, and how we are not able are unable, from what we have intellectually mastered, from what we want to process programmatically, to organize these social forces, in which human beings are interwoven, in such a way that within this organization the individual human being, who has come to the awareness of his humanity, can satisfactorily answer the question: Do I lead a dignified existence?

I may assume that the majority of the listeners gathered here today have been able to gather from the lectures and the writings, which further elaborate on the content of these lectures and which I have published, over the course of many years, what the inner meaning and spirit of the spiritual science referred to here is. This spiritual science believes that it must, out of a sense of the necessity of the times, place itself in the present-day cultural life. Today, since I can refer to the numerous lectures already given here, I will only need to touch on some fundamental points. Above all, however, I would like to touch on one introductory point again, which has already been discussed in the most diverse forms.

When spiritual science is mentioned, the outside world often associates it with all kinds of complicated mysticism, complicated theosophy, and so on. Although spiritual science does what it can to educate people about its true meaning, it is still spoken of in such a way in the broadest circles that it represents the exact opposite of what this spiritual science actually wants to be. First and foremost, the representatives of this spiritual science feel that for three to four centuries a way of thinking has emerged within humanity that dominates our entire lives and that has found its most significant expression in the way of thinking of modern natural science. Please do not misunderstand me on this point. I do not want to awaken the belief that I assume that only those people who have undergone some kind of scientific education are imbued with that school of thought. It is not like that. People from the widest circles, right down to those with a very primitive culture and education, who today want to be enlightened about the nature of man, about the nature of social life, and about the nature of the universe, think in such a way, they present in such a direction as it has been expressed mainly by natural science. And it is no wonder that this is so, because our whole life, which surrounds us and in which we are interwoven throughout the day, is basically a result of this scientific way of thinking.

Those who have heard me speak often know that I do not underestimate this scientific way of thinking, and that I recognize its great triumphs. But it has achieved these triumphs precisely because it has been able to take hold of part of our practical life in such a magnificent way, because over the last three to four centuries it has become magnificently one-sided. Everything that people think in this direction is based on an understanding of inanimate nature, of the physical and chemical, which then passes into technology, into everything that underlies our life institutions, and which, for example, is also incorporated into our healing methods, that is, into those insights that are intended to help human life from a certain point of view. But anyone who recognizes, without prejudice, the tremendous progress that has been made in the biological, physical and chemical aspects of the natural sciences, and who is able to appreciate the significance of what conscientious methodology has achieved in this respect, is precisely the person who, at the same time, is also able to fully grasp the limitations of this natural scientific way of thinking. I have explained this countless times here, and I would now like to summarize it in the words: Those who penetrate more deeply into what we today call genuine natural science will find that this natural science provides excellent insights into inanimate nature and into that in the living that, I might say, consists of inclusions in this inanimate nature. But there is one thing that we must stop at when we survey the scope of knowledge of the natural scientific way of thinking: We must stop before the actual essence of man. There is no way, if one does not want to indulge in self-deception, to believe that these views, which have led us so deeply into the inanimate, which have “brought us so gloriously far” in our technical achievements, that these views can provide any insight into the essence of man. This knowledge of the human being – that can be known by the one who does not cling to that fable convenue, which is not history but is called history – this knowledge of the human being was something instinctive for man up to three to four centuries ago. A certain knowledge of the human being lived out of an original, elementary instinct of humanity. However, just as the individual human being undergoes a development, so does all of humanity. And no matter how much we are deceived into claiming the opposite, humanity has now reached a point in its development where it can no longer judge the human essence from mere instinct. It is necessary for man to penetrate consciously into the essence of man himself, just as he must consciously penetrate into the phenomena of the outer life of nature, as Copernicus and Galileo did. When we come to the decisive point, where science and research must stop short before the insight into the human being, there is nothing left but to turn to what I have often mentioned: the intellectual modesty that is necessary for the human being, which can only provide the basis for the pursuit of true human development.

Those who cannot develop this intellectual modesty out of a genuine desire for knowledge will not be able to arrive at a true understanding of the human being. You have to be able to say to yourself: I see a five-year-old child, and I give him a volume of Goethe's lyrical poems. He looks at it and may well tear the book apart. He is going through the same process that an adult who has undergone development also goes through, so that he can really find what is meant to speak to him from this volume of poems. But just as one must admit that the child must first develop in order to relate to what is happening to him in the right way, so today one must also say: just as the human being is placed in existence by nature, he stands before human life itself like a five-year-old child before a volume of Goethe's poetry, if he does not have the will to guide his development beyond what is usually considered the only possible method today. One must take one's development into one's own hands. But then it becomes apparent that there are hidden forces in the human being that can be awakened and that give an equally rigorous scientific insight as only a natural science can give, but which go beyond the knowledge of the external world, the world of the senses, and lead into the supersensible, and only then lead to a true understanding of the human being. We must be able to admit: we cannot approach the human being with the ordinary powers that are sufficient for the knowledge of nature. We can only do so if we bring out the powers of knowledge that otherwise lie dormant in us, as the powers of understanding do in a five-year-old child, from the depths of the human soul.

And so the spiritual science referred to here represents the view that it is possible, from the standpoint that is sufficient to recognize external inanimate nature, to lead people to points of view of knowledge from which one can penetrate into the human being. This spiritual science does not want to be an idle brooding in inner mysticism; this spiritual science also does not want to handle any outer machinations to advance to the spirit, but wants to be something that builds so strictly on that for which the human being is really capable of developing, as, for example, the mathematician builds on the development of those abilities that are also brought forth entirely from within the human being. This spiritual science does not want to be as strictly logical as any other branch of science, but it does want to apply this logic only to what arises as a spiritual vision when what lies dormant within the human being is truly awakened in a natural way. In my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” I have pointed out that it is entirely through inward, soul-spiritual methods that this development of inner, spiritual-soul forces is brought about in man, and how, through this, , to use Goethe's words, a spiritual eye, a soul ear, a spirit ear, so that he can see and hear the spiritual and soul realm, for which we basically only have words today. It is pointed out that it is important to cultivate a certain strengthening of our thinking life. I have emphasized the necessity of a certain self-discipline, of taking our development into our own hands, for otherwise we simply abandon ourselves to life, so that the spiritual eye and the spiritual ear are closed.

Most people today are still quite hostile to anything that comes from this side. And yet, one need only point out how, in our time, when social demands are springing up everywhere, the most anti-social instincts prevail. Where do these come from? They come from the fact that people actually pass each other by without understanding and that they do not comprehend one another. And why do they not understand one another? Because their knowledge, what they call knowledge, does not engage the whole person, because it remains in the head, because it is limited to the mere intellect. The peculiar thing about the spiritual science meant here is that the knowledge it provides through the developed forces engages the whole person, that it not only speaks to the intellect, not only to the intellect, but that they imbue feeling and will, that they infuse understanding of human nature, understanding of all that lives and moves beside and beyond us, that they pulsate with ethics, with morals, with a social attitude that simultaneously impacts directly on practical life.

This spiritual science does not know the unfortunate division that is discussed on every street corner today, the division into mental and manual labor. After all, what is our manual labor? It is nothing more than the use of the bodily tools at our disposal in the service of our will. But when we are clear about the fact - and I have often spoken of it - that this will, as a spiritual force, pulses through everything we do as a whole human being, and in turn radiates back to the intellect in our head, - when we really have the whole human being in mind, only then will we understand the innermost impulse of this spiritual science.

Please excuse me for mentioning something personal on this occasion. But in this case, the personal will serve to clarify the matter. The spiritual science that is being discussed here is to be served on the Dornach hill in northwestern Switzerland, a piece of Jura, the Goetheanum built there, which is intended as a university for spiritual science. When the time came to found this School of Spiritual Science and to dedicate the outer structure to it, it was not a matter of going to someone who, based on old architectural or artistic ideas, would have built a structure into which one would then have moved in order to pursue this spiritual science. No, it had to be something else. From the very beginning, this spiritual science was conceived in such a fruitful way that it can intervene in the whole of external cultural life, that it can truly infuse anew that which has become old in our art, in our architecture, in our life, in our work. So one could not simply give someone the commission: Build me a building in the Greek, Romanesque, Gothic or some other architectural style. Rather, out of this spiritual science itself, just as out of the other thoughts of life, just as out of the other impulses of life, so too did the architectural thoughts arise, which suggested: this is how this building must be in every line, in every single form. And so the building was undertaken that in every single form, even the smallest, it will indeed be the external crystallization of what underlies this spiritual science as a way of thinking, as an attitude.

And so perhaps I may say the following about myself: It was in the fall of 1913 and in the winter of 1914 that I myself worked out the model of this building, the whole building in miniature. Now that I have worked out the model, I ask about which even the architectural drawings are made: Was what I worked out in manual labor, was it manual labor or mental work? It was something where both came together and worked as one. I know this because I just did the thing. Then again, there is hardly anything about this building where I, like every single worker, did not lend a hand here and there. And for anyone who might be interested, I would like to say: we are working as the central figure of this building, a nine-and-a-half-meter-high wooden group, which is supposed to represent the human enigma of our time, but in an artistic way. The task was to create a sculpted woodwork. Although the work is artistic, it is, if I may use the expression, a wood-chopping, and I could show the calluses on my fingers, which provide evidence that here mental work in direct manual labor from morning to evening itself is executed.

Recently, we had to decide on a certain financial matter; we needed to make the chairs. We got the cost estimate. The price was outrageous. So we made the model of a chair ourselves in our artistic studio, working together with a worker who is indeed extraordinarily skilled. When the model was finished – the chair will cost only two-fifths of what it would have cost according to the other proposal – again, one could not tell where the intellectual work ended and the manual labor began.

One may even say: in the way we work together in social life with our co-workers, who are made up of friends of our movement on the one hand and workers on the other, there is actually only one obstacle without which it would become apparent that mental work and manual work flow together everywhere. For example, we have a lady who is a certified medical assistant and who sharpens knives for our sculptors from morning till evening. And we can ask: What prevents what the wit, who are called spiritual workers, do, from simply flowing into what the workers do, to the complete satisfaction of both sides, to the most completely satisfying social collaboration? Yes, I do understand everything that has come about as social phenomena. Nevertheless, I must say that if I am to speak of the only obstacle that makes it impossible to hand over both manual labor and mental work to the manual laborer, it is the fact that the workers are organized and view everything that comes from the intellectual workers with mistrust, even though they are actually doing the same thing.

Why is it that today there is such a deep abyss between what lies in our art, in our science, in short, in our spiritual life and also in the spiritual direction of our social life, and in the external work that the proletarian movement in particular is dealing with today? This gulf has come about because what concerns the whole human being has fled from our way of thinking. A recovery for this lies only in spiritual science, not in a one-sided, complicated mysticism or theosophy, which idle people may pursue in their little rooms, without any momentum. The healing power of this spiritual science lies in the fact that it engages the whole human being. And I have said this now in order to make the following comment: I know that the insights that I am presenting to the world today with full responsibility would not have come to me if I had only worked with my head, if I had not had to devote my whole life to something that is usually called manual labor; because this also has a certain effect on a person. What is only the so-called brainwork, what only engages the intellect, does not reach to the spirit. And something that will seem highly paradoxical to many people today, I would like to mention here. Today, out there in practical life, we say: manual labor, practice; inside, from the intellect: intellectual work! Oh no, it is not at all as these words would lead us to believe. We have the separation between outer life practice and the so-called spiritual life because the spirit has fled from both, because today we are caught in the mechanical treadmill of technology, because the worker stands at the machine and merely performs mechanical tasks according to the instructions of the intellect, and because, on the other hand, those who are educated for an intellectual life are not sufficiently involved in real practical work. Our practical life is spiritless, and so is our intellectualized spiritual life. Only when the full activity of the human being in the world flows back into our heads, into our thinking, which can only arise from the harmonious activity of the whole human being, only when we do not only think with our heads, but think as one thinks when one has once formed something with one's hand and felt how it radiates back into the head, only then will the thought be so fully saturated with reality that there is spirit in it. That which is merely thought out is just as spiritless as that which is spiritlessly worked on a machine.

The spiritual science referred to here should not practise mysticism that is alien to life. It should arise from full engagement with life and should be much more saturated with reality than what is usually meant by intellectual life today. Or is what is meant today as spiritual life saturated with reality? Do we not see how powerless science is to really grasp the spirit? People who are generally immersed in our modern culture believe that they are doing unprejudiced natural science. But how did this unprejudiced natural science actually come about? Through the fact that for many centuries everything that people longed to know about soul and spirit, about that which extends beyond birth and death, was dependent on what the confessions monopolized, due to social circumstances. When the spirit of modern science arose, what did social life actually look like? Everything that people were allowed to know about soul and spirit was monopolized in the dogmas of the confessional societies. One was not allowed to think about soul and spirit, one was only allowed to think about the external world of the senses. And in this, people who have pursued natural science have found themselves. They got into the habit of thinking and researching only about the external world of the senses because research into spirit and soul had been forbidden for centuries. They translated this into certain ideas, they only pursued external sensory science. Then, through a grandiose self-deception, this has become the belief that exact science can only decide something about the external world of the senses, and that research into soul and spirit lies beyond the boundaries of knowledge. But this is also rooted in the soul life of modern man and permeates all life. One can gain fruitful thoughts about nature with such a view. But as soon as one wants to penetrate into social life, this way of thinking is not enough. There it is necessary, for the foundation of a real people's science, a real social science, that we imbue ourselves with a view of the whole human being. And that is lacking because the influences I have characterized prevented it.

So it has come about that people have said: Spirit and soul is something that has been established by dogmas for centuries. It cannot be researched. It is something that only through human will moves like smoke and fog over real life, and there, as the real thing, one forms nothing other than the economic forces themselves. Unbelief arose: the spiritual reigns in what the external economic forces are. And out of unbelief arose what has fatally taken hold in the hearts and minds of men. The belief arose that spiritual life could develop out of economic forces by itself, if only these were organized in a certain way. There is no realization that everything that has arisen economically is originally the result of intellectual life, but that our intellectual life has become unworldly, that there is an abyss between it and the outer life, and that for a recovery of our life we need a real spiritual science that penetrates into the essence of man, that penetrates man just as outer natural science penetrates the machine, but that must be built on the developed powers of human nature. In short, it is extraordinarily difficult to realize that spiritual science must become the basis for the understanding and mastering of social life. That is what the representative of spiritual science believes he recognizes: that the human intellect does not have enough impact, not even where it pulsates in today's social life, to immerse itself in real life, and that the latter must increasingly end in chaos if the impulses that reach into feeling and will, that can place human being next to human being in such a way that social forces can be organized, are not enlivened. No matter what natural scientific methods you take from the exact natural science that has reached its zenith in our time, you cannot establish a social science with them. The ideas that one gains without spiritual science behave in relation to social science in the same way as a color that one wants to paint on an oily surface. Just as the oily surface rejects the color, so life rejects what merely rules among us as intellectual science.

Thus external life cries out for the kind of depth that spiritual science provides. Spiritual science will have to provide the foundations for what people unconsciously express in their social demands today, what they cannot formulate clearly because the power of thought is not available. It is therefore necessary to understand this spiritual science not as something that one could devote a few thoughts to on the side, but as something that is among the most necessary conditions for the recovery of our lives. I know full well — for I truly do not believe I am an impractical person — that people say: We have our professions, we cannot devote ourselves to this spiritual science, which is quite extensive after all. Should not a little more thought also enter into the hearts and souls of people: Doesn't the present downward path on which we are walking show us — however much we are still in our profession — that we are only helping to shape the path into chaos? And shouldn't we consider it necessary to devote every hour that we can spare to such views, which now really and radically raise the question of recovery?

And what is meant here as spiritual science is intimately connected with that call in our time, which, as I have explained, is far older than a century, with that call, which I would like to describe as the call for freedom of thought. But this call is actually the call for social freedom. It is remarkable that when one tries to see through to what is rising to the surface in the waves of the so-called social demands in our present time, one repeatedly encounters the necessity to recognize how it actually relates to human freedom, to that impulse that expresses itself in one form or another as the impulse of human freedom. That this is an important point was recognized even by the man whom I consider the most unfortunate among the so-called outstanding people of our time who have gained influence over the shaping of conditions – even Woodrow Wilson recognized this. Since I never spoke differently about Woodrow Wilson even in neutral foreign countries during the war, while he was so adored by all sides, I may also speak about Woodrow Wilson today as I always have. There are numerous passages in his writings in which he points out that a recovery of the situation - he is primarily familiar with the American situation - can only come about if people's striving for freedom is truly taken into account.

But what is human freedom for Woodrow Wilson?

This brings us to a very, very interesting chapter in contemporary human thought - for Woodrow Wilson is, after all, a kind of representative thinker - where you will find the following view in his writing about freedom: You can form the concept of freedom by looking at a machine and how a gear wheel is attached. If it is attached in such a way that the mechanical device can move without hindrance, then one says that the gear wheel runs freely. When he looks at a ship, he says that the ship must be constructed in such a way that the machinery engages with the swell, so that it is not hindered, so that it moves with the swell, so to speak, is adapted to it, runs freely in the swell. Woodrow Wilson compares what the impulse of human freedom should really be to what a cogwheel in a machine or a ship in the waves of the sea is. He says: A person is free when he functions more or less like a wheel in a machine, when he functions freely in his external circumstances, so that he moves within them, so that he engages with his powers in what is going on around him, so that he is not hindered.

Now, I think it is very interesting that this peculiar view of human freedom can arise from the present-day scientific way of thinking and attitude. For is it not the opposite of freedom when one is so adapted to circumstances that one can only move in their sense? Does not freedom demand that one be able to stand up to external circumstances if necessary? Would not what lives as freedom have to be compared to what could, if necessary, behave in such a way that the ship turns against the waves and stops?

Where does this strange view come from, from which a healthy, statesmanlike insight can never arise, but at most the 14 abstract points of Wilson's pronouncements, which unfortunately were also admired here to some extent at a certain time? Hence it is that in our time it is not realized how one must go back to the human idea itself, to that idea which is conceived as an idea and which, if one really speaks of freedom, can provide the only real free impulse for human life. This is what I tried to present more than thirty years ago in my Philosophy of Freedom, a new edition of which has recently been published with corresponding additions. There, however, I tried to understand this impulse for freedom in a different way than it is currently being done. I tried to show how the question about human freedom has been wrongly formulated. The question is: Is man free or is he not free? Is man a free being who can make decisions out of his soul with real responsibility, or is he harnessed into a natural or spiritual necessity like a natural being? This question has been asked for thousands of years, and it is still being asked. This question alone is the great error.

One cannot ask the question in this way. Rather, the question of freedom is a question of human development, of a human development such that in the course of his youth or perhaps his later life, man develops powers within himself that he does not simply have by nature. One cannot ask: Is man free? By nature he is not, but he can make himself more and more free by awakening forces that lie dormant in him and that nature does not awaken. Man can become more and more free. One cannot ask: Is man free or unfree, but only: Is there a way for man to achieve freedom? And this way exists. As I said, thirty years ago I tried to show that when man develops an inner life within himself, so that he grasps the moral impulses for his actions in pure thoughts, he can really base his actions on thought impulses, not just instinctive emotions – thoughts that merge into external reality as the lover into the beloved. Then man approaches his freedom. Freedom is just as much a child of the thought, which is grasped in spiritual clairvoyance - not under an external compulsion - as it is a child of

of true devoted love, love for the object of our activity. What German spiritual life strove for in Schiller, when he confronted Kant and sensed something of such a concept of freedom, befits us to further develop in the present. But then it became clear to me that one can only speak of that which underlies moral actions – even if it remains unconscious in people, it is still there – and that one must call it intuition. And so in my “Philosophy of Freedom” I spoke of a moral intuition.

But this also provided the starting point for everything I later attempted to achieve in the field of spiritual science. Do not think that I now have an immodest opinion of these things. I know very well that this 'Philosophy of Freedom', which I conceived more than thirty years ago as a young man, has, to a certain extent, all the teething troubles of the intellectual life that emerged during the 19th century. But I also know that out of this intellectual life has sprung what is a leading up of the intellectual life into the truly spiritual. So that I can say to myself: When man rises to the moral impulses in moral intuition and represents a truly free being, then he is already, if I may use the frowned-upon word, “clairvoyant” with regard to his moral intuitions. In that which lies beyond all sensuality lie the impulses of all morality. Fundamentally, the truly moral commandments are the results of human clairvoyance. Therefore, there was a straight path from that “philosophy of freedom” to what I mean today by spiritual science. Freedom arises in man only when man develops. But he can develop further so that what is already the basis of freedom also drives him to become independent of all sensuality and to rise freely into the realms of the spirit.

Thus, freedom is connected with the development of human thinking. Freedom is basically always freedom of thought, and especially when we look at such representative people as Woodrow Wilson, we have to say: because such people have never grasped what the thought of something truly spiritual is, how it must be rooted in the spiritual if it is not to be abstract, that is why they can invent such paradoxical definitions as Woodrow Wilson has invented for freedom. From such things we see the inadequacy of the present spiritual life, the main defect of which is that it does not recognize the spiritual nature of man. We see what the main demand is: freedom of thought, and what the main need is: the mastering of social forces, if this life is to develop into the basis for these three great demands in the present for the near future. Thus, what is a truly original impulse in man does not depend on what can be achieved in man through scientific thinking, but on what can only be achieved through spiritual contemplation.

So much has been argued about freedom because people want to decide on it without entering the ground on which the knowledge of the immortality of the human soul arises. And no one who does not approach the question of the realization of human immortality, of the eternal in man, in an unbiased way is able to understand the essence of human freedom. If one does not seek the essence of this freedom in the flashing forth of the thought that is not merely given by nature, then one does not find this essence of freedom. But only when it has been found does it permeate and pulsate through the human being in such a way that he can become a truly social being, for it carries him alongside other human beings into the social order in such a way that social forces can be released from within. And we need this sense of social forces.

I mentioned earlier that in Dornach, where we are building, we are able to place people who have even reached certain heights in spiritual training and who do the most ordinary, dirty work, which in fact is in no way inferior to that of those who are usually called manual laborers. In social terms, however, the construction of Dornach is based on foundations that are not necessarily the same as those of an enterprise geared towards material gain. But if you take on board what I have set out in my “Key Points of the Social Question” and in the lectures on threefolding, you will find that it is possible to create similar foundations for the whole of life as those that have been created in Dornach for the building that is to represent our spiritual scientific movement. It is a pity that many people in other countries cannot visit this building today, because unfortunately we have come to a point where crossing national borders has become almost impossible.

But why is it possible, after all, to release social energies in such a way that the ideal of the proletarian movement is fulfilled, albeit differently than one dreams? Because everything that is done there is based on the conception of life, on this whole-hearted attack on life, which results from the impulses of spiritual science, because every single thing is done on the basis of spiritual science. What is done on a small scale on the basis of spiritual science can also be done on a large scale in social life on the basis of a spiritual-scientific understanding of life. Every factory, every bank, every external undertaking can be organized in a way that only someone who is able to think about practical life with a science that descends so deeply into the human being that it grasps not abstract thoughts and natural laws but living facts can organize. These living facts can be found if one only descends deeply enough into the human being through the indicated methods. It is not an abstract mysticism that is sought, but the facts of life through which the human being stands in reality. And by recognizing the human being, one finds at the same time through this spiritual science that which can bring the social forces into the corresponding organization, so that the people living in this organization can answer the question satisfactorily: Is human life worthy of a human being?

So the three things are connected: social forces, freedom of thought and spiritual science. Spiritual science is truly the opposite of what it is often portrayed as. A life of leisure, people think, the dream of idle people. No, spiritual science wants to be a way of life, precisely the way of life that our time lacks most. It wants to immerse itself in life, to master life in science and practice, because it wants to immerse itself in the reality of the human being, not just in the humanly conceived life. There are well-meaning people today who say: the mere mind, the mere intellect, which has developed over the past centuries and into our time, is no longer good for the recovery of our lives. But when asked what is useful, they give general answers: a re-fertilization of the soul through the 'spirit'. When it comes to true spiritual science, they reject it because they are still afraid of it, or use the strangest excuses. So you will always find people saying: Not everyone can become a spiritual researcher. Certainly, not everyone can do it, I have emphasized this again and again here. For although one can take those first steps into the spiritual worlds, into the supersensible existence, as I have described them in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in the second part of my “Secret Science” , anyone can do them at any time, but the advance to those questions that deal with the beings of the supersensible worlds in a deeper sense is indeed tied to a variety of experiences that not everyone is ready for today. Those who want to look into the spiritual world, who want to become spiritual researchers in the truest sense, must undergo many struggles. You need only consider that at the moment when you really enter into a realization that does not make use of the senses, at the moment when you enter into a body-free cognition and the familiar outer world is no longer there, - that you are then in a world that presents all sorts of unfamiliar things: All the things that usually support you, the secure external experience, the ordinary intellect, have to give way to other, inner powers of judgment. You are like over an abyss and have to hold on by the center of gravity of your own being. Many people have an unconscious or subconscious fear of this, which they then express in logic when it comes to spiritual science. You may hear the most beautiful arguments; but in truth it is only the fear of the unknown.

But then you must also bear in mind that you, as you are as a human being, are not adapted to the spiritual world, that you are only adapted to the outer world of the senses. You enter into a completely different world for which you have not developed any habits of life. When one penetrates deeper, this causes those terribly painful experiences that must be overcome in real spiritual knowledge. Then, when they are overcome, insights follow from the innermost part of our being that provide information about what is eternal in human nature, what the spiritual is that underlies the world. Not all people can go through this path to such an extent. But I also had to assert time and again that it is not necessary to go through this path, but that all that is needed is common sense. For this common sense, if it is not misled by the prejudices of external views, can distinguish whether the one who presents himself as a spiritual researcher and speaks of initially unknown worlds speaks logically or like a spiritualist or otherwise. Logic is at hand, and one can judge whether the person in question is speaking logically and in such a way that the way he speaks indicates that the experiences he is talking about are being undergone in full mental health.

If one repeatedly objects: Yes, everyone can convince themselves of what external science says, that is correct. One need only discuss laboratory methods to be able to do so. But one can also say: Everyone can convince himself that what is described in my books “How to Know Higher Worlds” and “Theosophy” is correct; one can deduce the inner value of the knowledge from the nature of the spiritual researcher. Then these insights are as valuable for life as they are in the soul of the spiritual researcher himself. The researcher is checked in external science by the external facts; the insights are checked by the way of speaking, the way they are clothed, the way the spiritual researcher has to say. He can be checked by common sense.

Consider what social forces will be unleashed when more and more people emerge as witnesses for the spiritual forces that can only be found in the supersensible, and which other people who cannot be spiritual researchers themselves – not everyone can be a chemist or a physicist – accept out of their common sense and trust, which is based on common sense. What kind of social life arises from this evaluation of the human being is precisely one of the most important points for awakening social forces of trust. They are undermined in our time, when everyone, without taking their development into their own hands, wants to judge everything as soon as they come of age. And that this spiritual science can really provide practical impulses in social life, we have tried to do so here with the establishment of the Waldorf school, which we owe to our dear Mr. Molt, in which the school system is to be built on true knowledge. We want to solve a social question in the right way; because we want a human being to grow in every child, who receives that guiding force for later life, so that social forces are developed in a fruitful way from the human being, not from a dull, inadequate knowledge, as it often dominates social thinking in our time. We really want to develop social thinking that is built on human trust, on the secure foundations of the human soul. And by seeing the developing human being in every child who attends this school, by trying to develop him or her through insights that can enliven the pedagogical foundations, we see something that is necessary, as in everything we try to bring out of this spiritual science.

Of course, I can only describe this spiritual science as a necessary requirement for present and future development from a few points of view. Thus it happens that antagonisms arise from such one-sided allusions because one does not see the whole picture. But now, at the end, I would like to come back to the beginning and point out how heavy the heart can become when one sees how few people there are who appreciate the downward slide; how one does not look for the foundations for a new structure of our spiritual, moral and other cultural life.

This can be seen from many things. Let me give you a few examples in conclusion. Even people who are thought to be firmly established in the external life, what view have they come to based on the facts? The words written by the Austrian statesman Czernin in his latest book deserve to be heeded:

"The war continues, albeit in a different form. I believe that future generations will not call the great drama that has dominated the world for five years the World War at all, but the World Revolution, and will know that this World Revolution only began with the World War. Neither the Peace of Versailles nor St-Germain will create a lasting work. In this peace lies the disintegrating seed of death. The struggles that are shaking Europe are not yet diminishing. Like a violent earthquake, the subterranean rumblings continue. Soon the earth will open here and there, hurling fire against the sky. Again and again, events of elemental force will sweep devastatingly across the lands until everything that reminds us of the madness of this war is swept away. Slowly, with unspeakable sacrifice, a new world will be born. Future generations will look back on our time as if it were a long, evil dream. But day always follows the darkest night. Generations have sunk into the grave, murdered, starved, succumbed to disease. Millions have died in the pursuit of annihilation and destruction, hatred and murder in their hearts. But other generations will arise, and with them a new spirit. They will build up what war and revolution have destroyed. Every winter is followed by spring. That, too, is an eternal law in the cycle of life, that resurrection follows death. Blessed are those who will be called upon to help build the new world as soldiers of labor.

Now, here too there is talk of the new spirit; I know that if one were to speak to this Czernin about the new spirit, he would shrink back, would consider it a fantasy. In abstracto people speak of the new spirit, they know that it must come. But they run for dear life when faced with the concrete spirit. But it is a serious matter to look at the concrete path of this new spirit. There are many today, for example, who attack spiritual science from the standpoint of their supposed Christianity, who do not want to recognize how this spiritual science provides the most vital foundations for a revival of Christianity; how Christianity will live into the future precisely because spiritual science will again teach the living Christ and the event of Golgotha as a historical fact from spiritual scientific research. A large number of theologians have come to the point of no longer teaching this Christ as the actual meaning of the earth, but rather to make him the “simple man of Nazareth”. Spiritual Christianity will be re-established through spiritual science. But those who are afraid today, precisely because of the Christian foundations, should be told: Christianity is built on such firm foundations that there is no need to fear it in the face of spiritual science, any more than there is need to fear the discovery of the air pump and other things — and thus also not the teaching of repeated earthly lives or the doctrine of fate, as spiritual science presents them. Christianity is so strong that it can absorb everything that comes from spiritual science. But whether all of today's 'bearers of the Christian faiths are so strong is another question, but also a serious one.

We have to think in global terms, that's what this so-called world war has drummed into us. Many people think similarly about our Europe and its culture as a Japanese diplomat, whose words I would like to share with you. This Japanese diplomat, who is an educated man, said:

One may think of this content as one wants: This is how one thinks in the world, and we have every reason to look at these thoughts as at facts. It is truly most unfortunate when, on the part of those who ought to be familiar with the conditions of spiritual life – allow me to characterize them – the objections that have been so often and repeatedly described keep coming up, for example, the objection: You can't check what the spiritual researcher says. For example, a booklet was recently published by a gentleman who lives not far from here: 'Rudolf Steiner as Philosopher and Theosophist'. I would just like to point out one aspect of the spirit and logic that prevails there. There is a nice sentence: 'I may have to become a historian, physicist or chemist in order to be able to check things independently. But I cannot verify the theosophical truths unless I am clairvoyant'. That is, he says, historians, physicists and chemists claim all sorts of things; if you want to check these, you just have to become a historian, physicist or chemist. I say: if you want to check spiritual-scientific things, you have to become a spiritual scientist. What does the gentleman say? “I just might have to become a historian, physicist or chemist in order to be able to check things independently. But I cannot verify the theosophical truths unless I am a seer.” Of course! I cannot verify the results of chemical research either unless I become a chemist. But one can become a chemist. But one does not want to become a spiritual scientist. So one says something very strange: I must be able to test, but to be able to test without somehow getting involved in the methods of testing. The question for this gentleman, as he himself says, as you will soon hear, is not whether one can decide when one has appropriated the reasons for the decision, but: “The question is whether they have been or can be verified by me, and that, apart from the formal logical criticism, I must deny.” Well, I readily admit that he must deny it. But just as I admit that one must become a chemist in order to be able to verify the results of chemical research, so everyone must set out on the path of spiritual research in order to verify spiritual scientific truths. But that man rejects that. His whole writing is actually characterized by this logic. And much of the distorting influence brought to bear on spiritual science is based on this logic. There really are better things to do than to concern oneself with such objections.

But it would be particularly fitting for this German nation, this sorely tried German nation, to think about how it should relate to the very foundations of intellectual life. I can point to a few sentences that P. Terman Grimm, the brilliant art historian, wrote in 1858 in his essay on Schiller and Goethe. He wrote more than 60 years ago: “The true history of Germany is the history of the intellectual movements in the nation. Only where enthusiasm for a great idea has stirred the nation and set the frozen forces in motion, are deeds done that are great and luminous.” Should we not be able to take such words to heart today? Or the words that Herman Grimm - certainly no revolutionary - wrote in 1858: ”The names of German emperors and kings are... not milestones for the progress of the people.” He meant that the milestones for the progress of the people are the deeds in the field of thought, of thought that goes into the spiritual.

Never has the German been more in need of adhering to this than in this time of hardship and trial. And that is why we can ask our contemporaries today to look to their great ancestors so that we can become their worthy descendants. Should the beliefs of the German people's ancestors, which they expressed in their spiritual life, not apply to the present day? Should we not continue to develop this spiritual striving instead of stopping at mere words and quoting them? Those who merely quote Goethe today do not understand him; only those who develop him further understand him. Those who merely quote Johann Gottlieb Fichte are doing something nonsensical if they do not develop him further in the spiritual life. You have heard how the world speaks about European intellectual life. In the world, one must learn to recognize that the German, in turn, has the will to look at the actual milestones of the progress of his people. In this world our ancestors, the great pillars of German intellectual life, were often called dreamers. They were misunderstood, just as today what speaks of the spirit is described as fantasy or something else. But there were still people who knew how what was striven for in the spirit was based in reality. And at an important moment, Johann Gottlieb Fichte said to the people: What the others say, that ideas cannot directly intervene in practical life, we idealists know that as well, perhaps better than the others; but that life must be oriented towards them, we know that in advance. - He pointed to the practice of life and said: Those who do not understand this belong to those who are not included in the plan of the world. So may these people be granted sunshine and rain in due course and a good digestion and, if possible, some good thoughts.

It depends on the spirit in which one looks up to the spiritual life of the great bearers of the German spirit. Reality, not abstract judgment, will decide this. If the descendants of these German ancestors have a sense of the true practice of the spirit, then the people who preceded us in this practice of the spirit will not have been dreamers. But if we fail to penetrate into the realities of the practice of the spirit, then they will not become dreamers through themselves, but through us or through our descendants, who want to know nothing of the true German spirit. Let the German people beware lest they make their great ancestors, of whom the world has so often said that they were dreamers, into dreamers through our fault, through our lack of appreciation for the spirit that has been invoked and conjured up in German intellectual life! May he gain followers! This is the last word I wish to speak to you in the context of my current disputes.

In the lectures I have given here this winter, I have tried to give some indications of the essential character of the development of the Germans and its relation to the development of other nations of Europe. Today I would like to take the liberty of giving some aphorisms about the psychological and spiritual development of the Germanic-German character, all with a view to our fateful and difficult times. Tomorrow I will then try to show what the insights of spiritual science can be for people in happy, but also in serious, painful and also sorrowful hours of life, especially with regard to our time.

The considerations that are to be given here will start from the point of view of spiritual science – a point of view that has been mentioned here several times, and which is still not very well recognized or even approved in public. But those who are close to this spiritual science feel from their insights how it can not only enrich and uplift life, but how it can provide enlightenment about intimate, important connections in life - and not only in the life of the individual person, but also in the life of nations, in human relationships, in human coexistence.

However, right at the starting point of a consideration of the life of nations, reference must be made to insights of spiritual science that have been mentioned here several times in past lecture cycles, but which must be drawn upon for an understanding of today's consideration. Attention must be drawn to spiritual-scientific findings that are among the least recognized and approved: to findings that tell us that at the starting point of every people's development, the soul life takes a very special form, that the origins of people on earth showed a very different soul life than our present. In our time, with its materialistically colored world view, this cannot yet be recognized. One imagines that the starting points of human beings on earth lie in very primitive soul states, in soul states that one currently, one might say, endeavors to think of as animal-like as possible. Spiritual science shows us something essentially different. It shows us that at the starting point of human development on earth — and reaching even into the starting points of the development of each nation — there is a clairvoyant behavior of the souls. This means that at the beginning of this human development and also of the development of nations, human souls not only live in states through which they see external material reality with their senses and form ideas, concepts and images from it with their minds , but that the souls are capable of living in other states, in states of consciousness that are not those of our ordinary daily life, but which are also not those of our chaotic dream life and even less those of unconscious sleep. In the beginning of the development of nations, people lived in states of consciousness in which the souls were able to develop imaginative clairvoyance, that is, to come into contact with the spiritual reality around us, with that reality which no eye can see, which no ear can hear, which cannot be grasped with the mind that is bound to the senses and to the brain, and whose perceptions do not penetrate from the outside into our soul like the sensory impressions, but arise in images in the soul, but in images that are not dream images, but that reflect realities of the spiritual world, those realities that lie behind the sensory world in terms of cause and effect. Thus, in the original human being, there are states of consciousness in which he knows himself to be connected with a spiritual world, in which this spiritual world arises in him in images.

However, in these earlier primitive human states, this clairvoyant insight into the spiritual worlds can only be achieved by the fact that what we call human “self-awareness” is still underdeveloped, the awareness of life in the personality. The times of ancient clairvoyance correspond to a state of soul in which the soul could not yet say “I” to itself with full understanding, as it can now, in which the soul did not yet feel itself as an individuality, as a personality, but as a part of a great spiritual world organism, like a member of the cosmos as a whole. Thus, in those ancient times, personality consciousness was clouded, dim. But in certain periods a tableau of pictures spread out before the soul, which were shades of the spiritual world thrown into the soul. And if we look at the starting points of the individual national developments, we can only understand these national developments if we are able to go back to the point in the development of a nation when the human souls within that nation still have at least some of this clairvoyant knowledge; when we go back to times when there was imaginative knowledge of the spiritual world. We get to know the individual nations, we get to know the souls of the nations, the spirits of the nations, when we consider the different ways in which nations develop from these original clairvoyant states to those that then signify higher, more advanced levels of culture. For this development from the state of primitive clairvoyance to the higher stages of culture, which are attained when man is fully conscious of his personality, this development is different for each individual people, and the nature of the people depends on how the people develop from the primitive stage of culture indicated above to a higher one.

The ancient Greeks are a characteristic example of this, and most Oriental peoples are similar to them, as are, to some extent, the peoples of the ancient Italian peninsula. Such a people as the Greeks can only be fully understood if it is clear that this people passes from the original pictorial impressions of a spiritual world to the formation of the world view given to us in their mythology, in their religious ideas. This is still little recognized today, but the beginnings are already given in external science, which lead to the view as it has just been indicated here. In his beautiful book, “The Riddle of the Sphinx”, Ludwig Laistner attempts to show how all ancient myths, all ancient conceptions of the gods, especially those of the Greeks, are, as it were, already transformations of earlier clairvoyant conceptions that have passed into fantasy. And when we look at the ancient Greek world of gods, we can understand it only if we grasp it as transformed images of the supersensible world, gained in the state of ancient clairvoyance. But this people, the Greeks, experienced the transformation of the perceptions of ancient clairvoyance into the mythical world view and even the transformation of the mythical world view into the philosophical world view in such a way that they went through this transformation as a people in a youthful manner, so to speak. In ancient Greece, the transition from the old clairvoyant through the mythical to the philosophical world view was experienced at a youthful stage of national development. At the same time, the human consciousness, which presents man as a personality, as an individuality, develops in the people of such a nation. Everything that is the emotional, the personal, the hearty element of man develops. This develops alongside in the ordinary state of consciousness, and the human being is then only able to apply the emotional, the hearty element to the everyday circumstances of life. By living in the ordinary state of consciousness in the everyday circumstances of life, he can turn to spiritual matters — in a different state of mind. Thus two worlds enter his consciousness: one in which he lives with his feelings in everyday circumstances, and one that lifts him up with his spirit into the spiritual world; and he then confronts himself as an individuality with his emotional feelings, which he has inherited from what has passed from his clairvoyance into mythical and philosophical ideas. What constitutes the philosophical conceptions then appears to him as something given to him as a revelation, to which he looks up, but with which he is not so connected that every fiber of his soul and will is also directly connected with this world view in the creation of the world view.

This is how it is with the soul development of a people like the Greeks, a people who, as it were in their youth, went through what can be called the transition of clairvoyant knowledge into a worldview, through which one recognizes the soul's belonging to those powers that are exalted above life and death.

The development was quite different for those peoples, the Germanic peoples, who stormed from the east and north to the borders of the Greek and Roman empires around the beginning of our era. Of course, we also find clairvoyant knowledge at the starting point of their development among these peoples; there were also times when the soul was inclined towards the spiritual world through the images of clairvoyant imaginations. But the soul lost these clairvoyant imaginations, as it loses them with all peoples, so also with the Germanic peoples; because all of humanity must go through a state of development that is only intended for the physical world, that can only be intended for the reception of ideas about the physical world. At a certain point in time — and this coincides fairly exactly with the onslaught on the Roman Empire — the individual Germanic peoples not only lost the ability to see into the spiritual world in the original dream-like clairvoyance, but they also gradually lost their understanding of what the soul can get from such knowledge from the old clairvoyance during the migration of the peoples, during their onslaught against the Roman Empire. And it can be said that this is connected with the fact that these peoples all went through the state of their clairvoyant knowledge during their youth, but that they could not make a transition from their original clairvoyant knowledge to their later worldviews in their later years, so to speak, in their vigorous manhood. Thus, in these peoples, the development of the world view passes directly from the childlike state to the — I would say — “more mature” state of the people. In the childlike state, when consciousness is dulled, what was clairvoyant knowledge is present; there is also the dulled full receptivity of the peoples for the myths that have developed from ancient clairvoyance. These myths have been preserved at most as traditions for external understanding. Instead, a consciousness of personality has developed in these peoples, a firm foundation on the individuality of life. They have solidified what the qualities of the mind are, what the immediate character traits are, and through which traits of mind and character the human being stands in everyday life. And because the old clairvoyant ideas do not extend into this ordinary, everyday life, the mind, the impulses of will, and even the impulses of character must develop the longing to find the strength within themselves to feel, to experience, to learn the connection with the spiritual world. Out of the, as it were, dull forces of the mind, the longing for the divine spiritual worlds develops in these peoples. And unlike the Greeks, they cannot look back to anything that shines in their souls as the product of the development of ancient clairvoyant ideas; but they develop a deep soul, a soul that is indeed deep for grasping the ordinary circumstances of everyday life, but which at the same time feels the deepest longing for the spiritual foundations of life. In the mature manhood of these Germanic peoples, at the time we have indicated, their minds strive for a religious deepening of their world view, but no longer the old ideas of earlier clairvoyance resound in their minds.

Thus, while the Germanic peoples . stormed the peoples of the south, in the early days of the Germanic world, independently of the ideas of the world view, the personal character traits, the strong, courageous qualities of the will, of the mind, developed. We find a reflection of this state of mind above all in that wonderful poem, which stands worthily alongside the greatest poems of all times, alongside the Homeric epics, alongside the Kalewala of the Finns: the “Nibelungenlied”. As the Song of the Nibelungs has come down to us, it shows us people who no longer have a clear view of what holds them together with the old clairvoyant ideas. Instead, we see in them a deep insight into the struggles and overcoming that the soul undergoes in order to find its way in life. But if we look closely at the way the Nibelungenlied is presented, we become aware of how remnants of the old clairvoyant imagination still extend into the lives of these people, but how these remnants are shaped in such a way that they are, as it were, tailored to serve the everyday life of people and, further, the historical life of people. We become aware of this, for example, when we hear how the woman who is to become the wife of Siegfried of the Horn foresaw the entire misfortune that was to befall the man who was to become her husband by seeing in a dream a white falcon on which two eagles swoop down and kill it with their claws. And then again, when Siegfried has become her husband and Hagen is about to murder Siegfried, she sees two mighty mountains collapse over her husband Siegfried. — What remains of the old clairvoyant visions is no longer sufficient to lead man beyond the ordinary powers of imagination; but it is so integrated into his life that man can learn from it what is in store for him, on a large or small scale. These ancient images also make themselves felt in another way, for example, when we take what connects to the older traditions via the Nibelungenlied: when we see how Siegfried kills the dragon, bathes in the dragon's blood and thereby acquires a callosity that makes him invulnerable — except for the spot between his shoulders where a linden leaf has fallen, and which is then the spot where Hagen later murders him. Thus we have the penetration of the old connection with the spiritual world into the life of the Germanic peoples; but this penetration serves the way in which man places himself in the life of the physical world.

Thus we see how these Germanic peoples are initially called upon, I would say, to develop the qualities of the mind and character, and also the qualities of a strong individuality, while making sacrifices in the process, under the self-experienced connection with the spiritual world, as well as to develop those qualities that bind soul to soul, soul to soul, in the physical life. The impulses of gratitude, loyalty and everything that radiates from the mind of man, we see so excellently described for the soul of the ancient Germanic people in the Song of the Nibelungs, that those who helped to write the Song of the Nibelungs were involved in the composition of the Nibelungenlied had a dark awareness of how man is taken out of his connections with the spiritual world and, with all the qualities of his soul, is firmly placed in the physical world.

In this way we have outlined a fundamental characteristic of the Germanic soul, a soul that everywhere shows a peculiar kind of personal depth, a characterological depth, and at the same time that deep, deep longing for the spiritual worlds, which wants satisfaction, but initially feels this satisfaction like a tragically sorrowful yearning and hope, because the old ideas born of clairvoyance have lost their strong power over the human mind.

Now it is highly remarkable in what way the peoples of the south – and in what other way the Germanic peoples of the north – to the gift of the world: Christianity, by virtue of this state of mind, had to behave. Let us be clear that the peoples of the South, with their worldviews born out of the old clairvoyant ideas, had to receive this Christianity. They had to compare it in what it revealed to them with what they knew, or at least what they could have the definite conviction that one had once known through direct experience. A longing such as is taken for granted today, and as it developed among the Germanic peoples: a longing for the spiritual worlds, a — I would say — tragic longing to penetrate the veil that separates man from the spiritual worlds. Such a longing could not, in fact, arise among those peoples who had direct knowledge that a spiritual world existed, because they were in contact with these worlds in special states of consciousness. What a longing for a worldview makes possible, how it moves the soul inwardly, and how it can affect the whole person, can be seen particularly in the peoples of the North. Therefore, the peoples of the South could only receive the incoming Christianity by comparing it to the character that their old ideas, born of the earlier Hellsehen, had; that they regarded it as something given to man from outside, to which the human mind surrenders. Everywhere we see a twofold world coming to life among these peoples as well: a world to which the mind is devoted for the everyday relationship, for the historical relationship – and the world of the earlier given ideas, born out of the old clairvoyance, which is now illuminated and illuminated by the revelations of Christianity.

But Christianity had a different, quite different effect on the souls of the Germanic peoples, on those souls in whose innermost depths there lived a longing, a tragic longing for the spiritual worlds. To these souls now came what Christianity is able to give to souls; all that was of infinite warmth, all that moved the heart and mind, all that could flow into the souls from Christianity, came to them. And when one looked at the suffering of the Redeemer, when one looked at the Mystery of Golgotha, it was felt that it was intimately related to what the deepest impulses were in the foundations of the soul, with which man lives in the everyday. And so these souls felt as if what was revealed to them from the outer world was something that was born out of the soul itself, something that the soul had only not known, but which it had experienced in its depths long, long before. The Germanic peoples took up Christianity as an inner element, as an intimate matter of the soul itself, not as an external revelation. And the great difference that resulted for an emotional, for a sentimental understanding of the world can be particularly appreciated by looking at the relationship of man to nature and to the environment, by looking at the southern peoples who received Christianity, and then at the Germanic peoples. This Christianity directed souls – all souls – towards the eternal, towards that which has descended from the sphere of the cosmic and entered into the development of human history. It was something different from what was revealed in nature, in the outer life, and could be felt and experienced. Therefore, a peculiar view of nature developed among the southern peoples, something that has often been mentioned, a certain contempt for nature; a view of nature arose as if it were of less value for life, a descent from the divine-spiritual worlds. And a belief developed as if one must now turn away from life, become estranged from nature and life around. To put it radically, one could say: a kind of contempt for natural existence and human life in the physical world developed.

How different the attitude of the Germanic peoples towards nature was! Something lived in them that must have come from the characterized development of their souls. When the connection with the old clairvoyant ideas had dawned, they were dependent on living together with nature and with people. Thus they developed the character traits, the emotional traits, that could ignite in nature and human life in the most intense way. They looked into nature, they saw and felt everything that one can feel in joy at nature, and also how one can grieve over nature – over nature, how one sees it develop gloriously every spring, or when one sees the bright dawn, and how one sees it sink again when we see the sun sinking into the evening glow, or when autumn and winter set in. But they also felt a special connection between human life and their state of mind. This human life presented itself to them in such a way that what held this human life together with the forces that pulsate and wave out of the spiritual worlds through this human life was no longer alive for them, as it were. A certain tragic, one might say, “mournful mood” developed in these peoples from this view of nature and human life; and we see this mood of mourning, this lamentation poured out over the view of the gods of the old Germanic souls. The poet of the Nibelungenlied himself says that he wants to show his listeners how sorrow follows joy. After all, the Nibelungenlied ends in sorrow, in destruction, in hardship and murder and death! The poet of this song wanted to show how sorrow comes from joy. And if we survey the Germanic pantheon, we see how the ancient Germans looked upon their gods as those who would one day experience the 'twilight of the gods', who would one day no longer experience their rule as usual, but would lie in battle with one another, so that each would kill the other. The ancient Germans looked upon the world of the gods as the basis of nature and human life with a mood of sorrow and tragedy. This is a different mood from what, to put it radically, one might call disparaging and contemptuous of nature. It is a life intimately connected with nature, a life together with nature, but a life that mourns over existence, that reveals itself through the fate of nature and man, that loves the fate of nature and man, but believes that through this love it must experience impulses of suffering and lamentation.

That is the great, enormous difference in the conception of nature in the south and the north. And so we can empathize with the Germanic state of mind, and can initially look to those who, among the Germanic peoples, were, so to speak, the outposts of the European mission of the Germanic peoples, that is, to those Germanic tribes that first, in greater or lesser numbers, came into contact with the peoples of the south: the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, the Vandals, the Lombards. We look at them; and however barbaric the external appearance of these peoples may appear to us, if we only want to see, we see at the bottom of their minds, at the bottom of their conception of nature and life, the character traits that have just been characterized. And with these character traits, with this view of nature and life, they moved into the peoples of southern Europe and into what became of these peoples of the south and West. And we know that these peoples, who have just been named, merged with the peoples of the South and West. The Romanesque culture emerged.

But if we take a closer look at this Romance culture, what do we find in it? We find in it that which still lived on dimly from the old world-view born out of clairvoyance, and we find this permeated and interwoven and pulsating with what the individual Germanic tribes, who have disappeared in the world have disappeared except in name, have incorporated; and everything that developed in the west and south of Europe as Romance culture has at its core the Germanic soul, even if it was then drowned out by the continuation of ancient Roman culture. And only then can the Romanic element be understood when one knows that it draws its life from the perished Germanic soul world. One understands the creative spirits of Italian culture, one understands the wonderful Italian music, even spirits like Augustine and John Scotus Erigena, as well as the great artists of the great Italian Renaissance and the Quattrocento, one understands even Dante can only be understood if one realizes that the substantiality of the soul of these ancient Germanic peoples has been absorbed into what was then drowned out in the outer works by the continuous flow of ancient Roman culture. — Thus we have the first outposts of the Germanic soul world in these peoples, who, as it were, sacrificed themselves in the progress of external history. And it is only from the blending of the old Roman soul-life with the soul-life of the Germanic peoples that the cultures of the South and the West essentially arose and were then able to develop further. What was absorbed into these cultures can be called precisely the “Germanic soul-life,” which developed as indicated.

Now this Germanic soul-life was particularly opposed to Christian Revelation in such a way that it received it as a finished product, something that had been shaped into fixed forms in comparison with the traditional world views of antiquity. From this developed a juxtaposition, a duality of that which is spiritual, religious revelation, and that which is ideological; and as a different, as it were, second inner world, the emotional and the soul-like, which had come over from Germanic paganism, developed. Either this latter took up the Christian revelations like an exterior, or it developed later within the Romance-Germanic element from the soul-like – which still stood in contrast with inwardness to what Christianity had to give – the critical. The purely rational arose, which then reached its particular peak in Voltaire.

One might say that it was predetermined in world history that a part of the Germanic soul had to be sacrificed for the south and west of Europe; it flowed into those peoples. But another part remained behind in the center of Europe, and this had the special task of allowing the soul-like aspect of these peoples to progress through the further development of the soul into the spiritual. For we have so far basically only described the Germanic soul-life. But while the others, the advance troops of Germanic culture, spread out as soul-substantiality to the south and west of Europe, we see a core of Germanic soul-life remaining in the center of Europe. And how does this core develop? It develops that which has emerged as character traits, as emotionality in the peoples of Germania, and which has been illuminated and warmed by Christianity, upwards into the spiritual; for the spiritual is the higher development of the soul. And as the soul develops into the spiritual, the spiritual, because Christianity is the ruling power, must develop in the periods up to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in such a way that a still more intimate relationship is formed with that which the soul itself experiences intimately and which is revealed in Christianity.

As early as the ninth century, we see the first glimmering of the spiritual from the Germanic soul in that wonderful poem that originated in the Saxon lands: in “Heliand”. In Heliand we see the life of Christ Jesus related; but we see it related as if Christ Jesus were one of the Teutonic kings who went forth conquering through the world, having assumed a wholly Teutonic nature; and those who follow him, his disciples, appear in this poem as Teutonic vassals. Christianity is completely absorbed into the Germanic folk element; resurrected, reborn is the Christian legend from the souls of the people of Central Europe in the Heliand. And we feel that at this particular point, something arises that was already evident in ancient paganism but then passed away: the Germanic soul of the people relies not on receiving Christianity from the outside, as did the Romance world, but on generating from within itself that which can be experienced in Christianity, in the Christian impulses. Therefore, in the Heliand, the story that took place in the life of Christ Jesus is told as if it had taken place in Central Europe, at the center of Germanic culture. The author recounts the story as if he wanted to describe events in his homeland, not only in form but also in the way the locations are described and so on.

Then we see how the upward progression of the soul into the spiritual continues to confront us in that wonderful flowering of German intellectual life that we refer to as medieval German mysticism, which begins with Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler, reaches a particular expression in Paracelsus, then progresses in Valentin Weigel and Jacob Böhme, and finally in the wonderful sayings of Angelus Silesius, who lived in Silesia in the seventeenth century, from 1624 to 1677. Here in this German mysticism we see, first with Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler and then with the others who became their disciples, how the soul-life passes directly over into the spiritual perception.

What is the relationship of these minds to what they call their “God”? Their relationship to what they call their God is that they want to overcome, to strip away from themselves everything that feels and wills and thinks in the individual personality, in the individual individuality, that they want to feel only as an instrument through which God Himself speaks and feels and thinks and wills. This feeling is expressed in every word, in every beautiful word: they want to become empty, that is, they want to cast off what one can call: 'I feel in this way through my personality, I think this and that through my personality, I want out of my impulses'. No! these spirits would not want that. What they call their God, what they also feel as the God who has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha, they want Him to fill their minds, all their inner powers completely, to spiritualize them completely, to fill the soul completely with Him, so that nothing of their own lives in them, but that they are completely filled by the Divine, and that the Divine wills in them, and they are only a vessel for this Divine. They want to place themselves in the spiritual order of the world so that they can say: When my hand moves, I know that it is the God in me who unfolds the power to move my hand; when I think – it is the God in me who thinks; when I feel and will – it is the God in me who feels and wills; I want to reject everything that is my own life in me, and I want to let only the God rule in me! And they expected everything from the grace that can radiate over them when they empty their soul and let themselves be radiated over by the grace of God that can flow into them. They expected the perfection of their souls from this.

What do we experience in these personalities? We experience that what appears to be a natural quality of the human soul, the old Germanic emotional life, the old Germanic emotional life, which was once filled with hope and longing for the spiritual world, permeates the Christian impulses with the same impulsiveness with which it once permeated the outer physical experience. What a person is in the outer physical world, that merges in these masters with the inner experience of God and the divine world order. It merges to such an extent that, for example, in a beautiful saying that I will read out, Master Eckhart was able to characterize this mood of the soul, where we see the soul-like merging into the spirit-grasping, with the words “If you love God, then you can do whatever you will, for then you will will only the Eternal and the One, and whatever you do, you do in God, and God does it in you.” This self-knowledge with God is what we encounter when the Germanic soul gives birth to the German spirit. And this inner experience of the spirit, this active presence of the spirit in the soul — oh, it shines out to us so wonderfully, in such a glorious — I say — in such a wonderfully glorious way from the beautiful poetic sayings of Angelus Silesius of the seventeenth century, in his “Cherubinischer Wandersmann”. We stand there as if at a high point of the development of the soul, steering towards the spirit. I cannot refrain from reading to you some of the sayings of this German mystic who lived in Silesia and was involved in the birth of the German spirit out of the Germanic soul:

That God is so blissful
and lives without desire,
He has received from me,
as I have from him.

How united a soul knows itself with its God, which can speak in such a way that it understands how to say: God is so blissful and without desire because he can experience bliss in me, because he receives it from me just as I do from him. Of course, in this, one must no longer think of the ego that is bound to the self-will of life, but of the ego that knows itself to be completely pulsed and warmed by what God wills - as I have just read from Meister Eckhart. Another saying

I myself am eternity,
when I leave time,
And in God and God
in me, combine.

What intimate interpenetration of the human ego with the divine is here generated by the feeling that the ego lives in the feeling that it itself grasps God in eternity! And

now the question: What is my God's form?
Go, look at yourself,
He who beholds himself in God, beholds truly God.

Unity of the human being with the divine. And so completely — I would say — intoxicated by the connection of the human soul with what lives in the mystery of Golgotha, with what lives in the impulses of Christianity, is the next saying:

The cross at Golgotha
cannot deliver you from evil
unless it is also erected within you.

That means that man must experience within himself everything that he can experience when he feels and relives everything that can arise before his spiritual eye in the process of sharing in and experiencing the sufferings and triumphs of the Redeemer. And this eternal consciousness comes to us most particularly in two sayings of Angelus Silesius, sayings of which one would like to say that it is one of the greatest good fortunes of life that these sayings were ever spoken in the German language. The first:

I neither die nor live:
God himself dies in me:
And what I should live, he also lives for and for.

Looking at death, beholding death – and knowing: “It is not I who die, but God dies in me” – that means nothing other than knowing that the human being passes through the gate of death alive. For if he knows that God lives in him, then he also knows that death is then overcome for knowledge; for to know that God dies in me is to know that I do not die; for God does not die. Thus once upon a time one of the German mystics knew how to put the greatest riddles of life into the most concise words. And just as profound is another saying of Angelus Silesius:

The love that proves
yours to God within you,
Is God's own power,
His fire and holy spirit.

It is not I who speaks – so says Angelus Silesius – it is not I who loves; God's language, God's love in me, that is what I can “become” for. That means that divine life descends into my soul and fills my soul when I try to become more and more empty, to be only a vessel for what can enter the soul as divine spiritual life.

And the forces that had thus entered into the development of the German spirit continued to work, and we see them emerging again where the German spirit has given its people the deepest impulses to date. In the period which we call the German classical period, we see the longing arising for the deepest experience of one's own human spirit, for the seeking out of everything that man can experience in spirit, and for the shaping of what the human spirit can experience into a world view. We see it dawning on minds like those of Lessing and Herder; we see it rising to great heights in Goethe and Schiller and in the German philosophers Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. And what do we see as the deepest strength of the German people, as it seeks to look at what has been handed down historically, but also at what can only be given through the outer physical contemplation of the world? She seeks the truth to which the human soul is predisposed, for which she searches in her depths; and she comes to it, out of the spirit, to recognize and give birth again in a new form everything that has been and continues to be through the whole of world history. And in this sense, Lessing provides an abstract of all human striving and research in the writing that also marks the conclusion of his life: “The Education of the Human Race”. In it he shows how divine spiritual forces run through historical development, how all history is an educational work on the part of divine spiritual powers, and how the Christian impulse presents itself as the greatest impulse in the progress of the development of the earth. But there is also something dawning in German spiritual life that can only gradually find its full expression in the future, that must first be grasped again in spiritual science in the present – the realization that how earlier historical epochs interact with later ones, how what man has conquered in earlier historical epochs can be carried over into later epochs. And Lessing, in explicitly saying that he is not afraid to recognize that a greater truth need not be considered inferior because it first appeared in the course of development and in times when humanity was not yet darkened by the prejudices of school, comes to the recognition that the human soul lives in repeated earthly lives, that the complete life of the human soul proceeds in such a way that it returns in ever new earthly lives, and that between two earthly lives an existence in a purely spiritual world passes, where the soul transforms the powers it has acquired in the last earthly life, in order to return and carry over into later epochs what it has acquired in earlier ones. In this way a continuous process of development is created, in which human beings themselves participate.

Then we see how, through Herder, the spirit that grasps itself, that seeks to flourish into such religious fervor in German mystics, how this spirit, illuminated and clarified, seeks to permeate all of nature and human life. A great and magnificent work is that which Herder created in his “Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Humanity”, where he describes how spirit lives in everything, spirit that he finds when he looks into the depths of his soul, but which at the same time guarantees man's eternal serenity, man's eternal “engagement” and eternal resting in eternal-divine existence.

And we then see how in Goethe — to mention the work again, which has also played a role in earlier lectures — how this work becomes a “person” by creating “Faust”: the striving to connect the soul life of the human being with what rests and creates and works in the spiritual worlds through one's own power. And in addition to this, Goethe contrasted Faust with all the obstacles that can prevent man from this striving in the figure of Mephistopheles. Ultimately, however, man must win freedom for himself, where the word can resound to him from the other world: “We can redeem anyone who strives.”

Furthermore, we see the great attempt of the German national philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who in Germany's most difficult times found those heartfelt tones that he expressed in his “Discourses to the German Nation”. We see Fichte standing before us with his ideas, which create an entire spiritual world out of the human ego, which, however, knows itself to be imbued from the outset with all divine and spiritual impulses. We see one of the boldest philosophical-spiritual attempts in Fichte's philosophy. It is a philosophy that is convinced from the outset that man not only has his five senses and his ordinary mind, but that he also has a higher sense, a sense through which a spiritual world is directly experienced, whereby man knows himself to be one with the divine-spiritual life, and in the external reality only creates material for himself in order to be able to work in it. One would like to say: what still confronts us in a vague soul-like striving in the works of Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and even Jacob Böhme and Angelus Silesius, becomes clear light in the philosophy of Fichte. It becomes clear light because here, although the soul element of the soul is the dominant one, it clarifies into ideas full of light that embrace and profess a spiritual world: The entire spiritual world lives in the self. Just as Angelus Silesius wanted to know himself in his I as one with his God, with the whole of divine activity and life, so for Fichte it was clear from the outset: when I really get to the place in my I where this I grasps itself in its deepest reason, then I am with God, then I create not just any old world view, but one that the God in me creates. And one of the boldest, most courageous thoughts is a Fichtean thought. Fichte does not express it as I am about to express it, but everything Fichte said can be summarized in the words: If the human ego, with its powers, with what it is, is to be dependent on anything, be it the external world, be it the brain, be it the body or whatever, then it is bound to something else; then it is not that which the divine-spiritual being can experience in itself. This ego must not be another being in itself, but must create itself again and again; and creating itself must be the most important activity of the ego. This is how Fichte feels. For Fichte, wanting to recognize the deepest essence of the ego means knowing in every moment that one is creating this ego. If it were to lose itself for a moment, it would have the strength to create itself again and again. Fichte conceives of this ego as creative. In this way, it is an immediate image, a real likeness of the spiritual divinity.

What Fichte wanted to find as the innermost core of the soul substance in the human being, the self united with its God, Hegel lays out in—albeit abstract—ideas, which in turn were supposed to span a world and at the same time represent the inner creative power of the world. Hegel reasoned: if the human spirit really comes to allow the pure, light-filled ideas to live in it, then it is not just the individual human spirit that is bound to the brain that then thinks; but then it is the higher power living in man, the divine power permeating the world; then God thinks in man. For Hegel it is only a matter of purifying and condensing his thinking to such an extent that he rises above everything that is bound to an outer world and arrives at the pure thought that God thinks in the soul. This striving is Hegel's philosophical striving.

In this way, the development of German thought had, for the time being, grasped the level of the “spirit” in the highest possible way. It is peculiar that here, at the highest tension of the development of thought, a point was reached that could not be held on to, from which one later fell back, so that in relation to everything that followed, what Hegel once said is truly valid: Only one person understood me, and even he misunderstood me. It was a height that few could reach and even fewer could hold on to.

What had been achieved with Hegel's philosophy – and what had not yet been achieved?

What had been achieved was that consciousness had been developed in the soul, that the Germanic development of the soul had progressed so far in German intellectual life that it had been recognized that man can only relive the spiritual world within himself if he seeks development, if he seeks to ascend into spiritual worlds from which nations once emerged when they still had ancient clairvoyance. But Hegel stopped at concept and idea. For he could not say to himself: Concepts and ideas are still bound to the human body; I must advance to what exists as experience outside the human body. How it is possible for the human soul to achieve such experiences outside of the body has been discussed here several times; it will be discussed further tomorrow, when it will be shown how such experiences and insights can help a person in the serious and happy hours of life. But in Hegel, consciousness has already been attained, as in the outer existence of man the spirit lives, even if he could only show it in the dry, sober ideas. And even if Hegel could only paint a picture of the world that is realized in dry, sober ideas, because it does not rise from inspiration to the grasp of real life in the spirit, the line is nevertheless given, the real direction for grasping the spirit in Hegelian philosophy within German intellectual life. And when we look at the impulses that are present in the Germanic soul, experiencing the spirit in this way, and when we are asked, “Is this the end of the way things have presented themselves?” then we can say: no! This is not an end; one might say that this is only a stage of the beginning. With Hegel's philosophy, something is achieved, of which one must say: if one can immerse oneself in it and make one's soul an inward tool of the ideas, then the soul develops further. So the German soul must have been entrusted with the world mission of rising from the abstract idea, from the comprehension of thoughts and ideas that pervade nature and human nature in nature, to the direct, living comprehension and experience in the spirit and in the spiritual world. We see the German spirit at one stage of its development, and we understand why it must be at such a stage of its development: because it has developed in such a way that, starting from the self-contained mind, it must first grasp within itself that which must unravel the riddles of the world. That is why this German spirit is so difficult to understand. It is curious, for example, to hear that the brilliant Pole Adam Mickiewicz gave a lecture in Paris in 1843 in which he said: “The German students had no idea about Hegel: does Hegel believe in an immortal human being? Does he believe in the true Christian God?” Mickiewicz said that Hegel's philosophy does not address these questions of life, so that one cannot even tell whether it wants to talk about these things at all. And he says: the Polish and French journalists understood Hegel much better than Hegel's students; for, he says, these Polish and French journalists knew that Hegel knew nothing of the immortal human being and the true Christian God. — How foolishly the otherwise bright Mickiewicz speaks about Hegel! Why could the French and Polish journalists so easily “understand” Hegel? Precisely because the journalists are navigating in shallow waters and do not realize that with Hegel one must descend deep, deep down, that the questions are posed there, that they must then be asked deeper and deeper, and that the mind, which is otherwise available, cannot reach the point of intuiting from the given concepts in Hegel the perspectives from which the great riddles of the immortal God must be solved. Mickiewicz meant nothing more than what has just been stated, than what can be characterized by a saying of the old satirist Lichtenberg, which I will quote, bringing it together with Mickiewicz's remarks: “When books and heads collide, and it sounds hollow, it is not necessarily the book's fault.”

That is the point: at the beginning of the nineteenth century, German intellectual life had learned to make a beginning in true intellectual science, a beginning in living spiritual knowledge, a beginning that carries within itself the power of progress, the power of completion. What follows from this consideration – and from this last consequence of the consideration for the essence of the German spirit? What follows for us from it – so that we can take it into our feelings, into the feelings that we can harbor in these fateful, difficult days, when so much precious blood and so much strength is being consumed for German spiritual life, for the German spirit in East and West? What follows from it?

We see the continuous development of the Germanic soul into the German spirit; we see the German spirit in an initial stage, we see the germs that are there and the promise that it must still ascend to heights that are already implicit in it and that must not be killed, but must develop because they belong to its essence. Individuals can die before they have lived their lives to the full. People can die in the early years of their existence because they return in other earthly lives, and because others can take their place in earthly cultural life. Unfinished human lives can take place in the outer physical existence. Unfinished national lives cannot! For if a nation, before it has fulfilled its mission, were to be wiped out or its existence curtailed, then another national individuality would not take its place. Nations must live out their lives! Nations must go through the cycle of their existence – not only childhood and manhood, but also their existence to the highest perfection. The German spirit, the German intellectual life is not at an end, not before a completion; but it is at a beginning. Much is still allotted to it. When the wishes of the enemies, who strive for the opposite, are raised from all sides against the possibilities of existence of the German people, of the Central European world, then this must be what gives the Central European world, what gives the German people the strength to resist, the strength to keep alive the germs that we find in its soul, especially when we consider this soul in all its living development. And the belief in the triumph of German life need not be a mere blind faith; it can arise out of a living realization of the German character, out of that living realization which comes to the view that German life must live on because the German soul must fulfill its mission in the evolution of the world, because nothing else exists that can lift the purely external materialistic world view to that most ideal spiritual height, the intention of which lies in the German soul. Truly, in this German spiritual life lies that which will one day lead the purely materialistic world view to the contemplation of the spiritual world. And that the best minds have sensed that there is a beginning and not an end to German intellectual life, we see in all great minds as they have expressed the impulses of this intellectual life. Herman Grimm, who is often mentioned in these lectures, once looked — this passage is in his Goethe lectures — at what the materialistic world view has made of the world in the present. He looks at the Kant-Laplace theory, which posits a great cosmic nebula as the starting point of our world development; this nebula condenses into a large ball of gas, which somehow begins to rotate, and in this way the other planets, our Earth also comes into being; over time, in some way that is not known, spirit and life develop on Earth, and later, according to this theory, when the Earth has died, all life and all spirit will fall back into the sun. For Herman Grimm, such a materialistic view of world development is incompatible with what can come from the sources of German intellectual life. That is why he is so drastic in his Goethe lectures about such a representation:

"No less fruitless a perspective for the future can be imagined than the one that is to be imposed on us today in the guise of being scientifically necessary. A carrion bone that a hungry dog would give a wide berth to would be a refreshingly appetizing prospect compared to this excrement of creation, as which our Earth will eventually fall back to the Sun. It is the our generation absorbs and believes such things, a sign of a sick imagination, which the scholars of future epochs will one day spend a lot of ingenuity explaining as a historical phenomenon of the times.

What hope can we derive from such a consideration of the German spirit, as it has been presented to us today? We have seen how the Germanic soul-life has developed out of the old Hellsehen; we have seen this soul-life develop further into the German spirit, the first glimmering of which is shown in German mysticism; we have seen this German spirit develop further into the appearance of appearance of Faust, to the spirit of Goethe, Schiller and the others, and today we can see how it will develop further in a permeation of the world, up to the sources of the spiritual, in which the human soul, if it grasps itself deeply enough, can truly participate. Looking at the German spirit in this way gives us confidence that German strength must be invincible; it gives us a confidence that is not based on mere blind faith, but that must be our consolation and our hope in these fateful and difficult days.

At the end of this reflection, let me summarize what follows as a consequence of it:

The German spirit has not yet completed
What it must accomplish in the world's evolution.
It lives in hope, in the future's cares;
It hopes for future deeds, full of life;
In the depths of its being, it feels mightily
Hidden things that must still mature and work.
How can a wish for his death arise in the power of the enemy,

The first two lectures on spiritual science that I was able to give here this winter were more about the way in which spiritual knowledge is acquired. They were about those forces in the human soul that generally still oppose this spiritual knowledge in our present time, are hostile to it, and the like.

This evening, I would like to take the liberty of saying a few words, even if they are naturally limited in a short lecture, about the relationship between spiritual science and various religious and social currents in our present-day culture. I may remark that, as is natural, I can only advocate spiritual scientific research, which was the subject of the first two lectures here, and that we should carefully avoid confusing this spiritual scientific research with all kinds of other currents that call themselves theosophical or similar and are active in the present day. Generally speaking, it is not pleasant to talk about such currents, but perhaps it is not necessary after these lectures. We live in a time in which the human soul, which is only a little aware of what is going on around it, must undoubtedly feel how it is increasingly being forced to step out of the instinctive life of the soul and to live more and more consciously and recognizably in that which one can call the demands of the world, namely the cultural world, on man and his soul development. We need not look back to the very early days of human cultural development to be convinced, very soon indeed, if we are unprejudiced, that in those earlier times man was able to live much more instinctively, much more, one might say, naturally, than in our own time. This is the basis for what we experience as the progressive aspect of our time. The human soul is increasingly compelled to think and imagine about what, if the expression may be used, was instilled into it by inner, soul-spiritual forces that remain more indeterminate, so that they could express themselves more instinctively.

In a genuine and true sense, spiritual science seeks to serve this human soul, which is striving for maturity and full consciousness. But since it must do so from a point of view that, at least initially, is seemingly in stark contrast to the traditional habits of thought and ways of thinking for many souls, it is, on the other hand, quite natural, as has already been emphasized, that the general consciousness revolts against what spiritual science wants to bring into the present, so that it really corresponds not only to what is present, so to speak, on the surface of the soul, but to what, in the deep longings of the soul, weaves and strives towards the human future.

For some, what spiritual science has to say must seem radically different in a much more profound sense than, for example, what was radically different in the dawn of the new spiritual life that the scientific way of thinking brought. To a much greater extent, man of today must feel that spiritual science has apparently — and this must always be emphasized — pulled the ground from under his feet, in contrast to the time when Copernicus, with his new physical worldview, shook what people had previously believed, namely that the earth, along with man, was stationary in space. That people had to accept the new truth, which was new for that time, they felt it somewhat as if the ground on which they stood quietly had been pulled out from under their feet. If one felt something physically at that time, one can certainly feel it today to an increased extent, if one wants to hold on to old habits of thinking, when spiritual research speaks of repeated earthly lives and says that the spiritual spheres can only be explored if one frees the soul from the experiences in the body. Spiritual science requires a soul observation that is free from all sense perception and free from the brain-bound thinking.

It is natural that in contrast to this, many a person feels insecure who has always sought the safe ground of human perception and observation, human philosophizing, in that the soul makes use of the senses and the intellect that is bound to the brain. For the latter, a feeling of insecurity arises, as if the ground were being pulled from under his feet, only to a much greater extent than was the case at that time in the dawn of the new spiritual life.

Anyone who is even slightly familiar with the meaning and spirit of spiritual science cannot but be repeatedly amazed at certain objections and attacks that come particularly from one side, namely from the religious denominations of the most diverse orientations. One must be all the more amazed at this, although it is understandable, since attacks also come from materialistic and other scientific sides. One must be all the more surprised by the attacks that come from religious denominations. In the face of these attacks, it must first be emphasized, albeit this has already been done, in a few words, what the actual stumbling block is for many souls when they encounter spiritual science.

Spiritual science wants to be a continuation of the scientific way of thinking in the most eminent sense, but since it deals with the spiritual realm, it must overcome this scientific way of thinking. It must, so to speak, develop in a different way what the scientific way of thinking has achieved in its field, because spiritual research deals with the realm of the spirit. Recent spiritual science shows that with the means available to man when he wants to explore the natural world and fathom the great truths of nature, he cannot enter the spiritual world with these powers and soul abilities. It is evident that no insight into the spiritual world is possible if man wishes to make use only of those soul faculties that can be developed when man, from waking to sleeping, is in the resulting state of consciousness, that man makes use of the senses of his body, of thinking, feeling and willing, for which he needs his nervous system and his brain.

That, in addition to the soul faculties that man must apply precisely in the realm of external sensual life and also in the realm of scientific research, that in addition to these faculties, other faculties slumber in the soul that can be developed if man does something to further them – this is what is objectionable for many minds of the present day. Many minds of the present time do not even consider the fact that in a certain respect a similar change takes place in miniature, in the primitive, in man in the course of his entirely natural life, as is required by spiritual research if it is to develop in accordance with it.

Every human being develops soul powers in the first years of their childhood that they could not get through life with if they remained throughout their whole life as they were in their first childhood years. The fact that we, as adults, find our way in life, that we can position ourselves in life in such a way that we develop an appropriate relationship with other people and with the world as a whole, depends on the abilities we have in early childhood being developed further, and on the abilities of childhood being raised to a higher level. Just as the forces slumbering in the human being in the first years of life are developed in such a way that the human being can orient themselves in their sensory world, so too, if the human being really wants to recognize, look at and perceive the spiritual world, a change must take place in them in later life. And through exercises, the principle of which has been explained in the last lectures and in my books Occult Science and The Threshold of the Spiritual World, and so on, through such exercises the human being is able to transform the abilities of the soul, which he naturally has without doing anything, into abilities through which he can see into the spiritual world. And this transformation is connected with the fact that man learns to really draw his soul out of the body.

In this way the human being comes to the clear concept of consciously distinguishing between two different states of life. The one state is that of ordinary waking. There one knows that one must make use of one's senses. And anyone who has even slightly penetrated the way of thinking in modern times knows that he must make use of his brain and nervous system-bound thought life in order to orient himself in the outside world. Consciousness is such that everything of the soul is directly connected with the body, that the body is contained within the soul and spirit. Through the effort of the powers of thinking, feeling and will, which the human being must develop in certain spiritual exercises, he is able to concentrate and strengthen his soul forces in such a way that the soul detaches itself from the body. He is able to truly experience that moment which is otherwise also experienced, but unconsciously: the moment of leaving the physical body. This moment is otherwise experienced - but unconsciously - when falling asleep. The person still perceives how the impressions and inner activity fade away. Slowly he then passes into unconsciousness. In a similar way, someone who has strengthened their thinking, feeling and willing by doing certain spiritual and soul exercises feels how they can make their soul so strong that it feels: I am still something even when I no longer move my hands, no longer use my eyes and ears, I am still something within myself.

These soul-spiritual exercises are based on the fact that the deeper forces are brought out, through which the soul is also something when it renounces the bodily impressions and the feeling of itself, by exerting the will in the limbs of the body. Through these exercises, the soul is able to leave the body. The body is then an external thing for the soul, like the other things outside our body. In the last lectures, I used the comparison of a spiritual chemistry: just as hydrogen is extracted chemically as water, so the soul experiences itself as a spiritual-soul being, and so it will withdraw from the body. Then it knows itself in a world of spiritual processes and entities, just as it knows itself in a world of sensory processes and entities as long as it uses the senses and the intellect, which is bound to the brain.

I have already pointed out that in the presence of some people it is still forgiven to refer to the spirit in a general way; but it is no longer forgiven when the spiritual world, in which the soul lives, is referred to in such a way that this world, like the sensory world, consists of individual, very concrete processes and entities. It is difficult to forgive when one does not dream oneself into a general, hazy, pantheistic spiritual world, but enters into a world of spiritual diversity. And yet this inner strengthening of the soul leads to it becoming free of the body, to the human being really entering into concrete spiritual worlds.

I do not wish to speak in abstractions, but rather to draw attention to what the spiritual researcher experiences in concrete terms. Through devotion to very specific thoughts that he thinks, he experiences the feelings and will impulses crowding together, and in so doing, he causes the soul to become free from the body. He experiences this, as it were, while awake, which is otherwise only experienced in a dormant and unconscious state. At first he feels how the outer sensory world, the world of colors, light and sounds, fades away as he falls asleep. Then he feels that his thoughts, of which he has rightly said, “I grasp these sensory impressions with them,” become as it were detached from him. And a new world opens up before him.

Man pours out his thoughts about the new world. And when the impressions of the sensory world disappear, then man knows: Yes, so far, where I have seen the carpet of the sensory world around me in my state of consciousness, as it were, something like a veil was woven for me. Now that this veil is gone, a new world is opening up for me. When you live consciously in the body-free soul, you not only experience the disappearance of the sensory world, but something like a veil also disappears, which is felt as if it has covered a world of the spiritual. You then experience a world of spiritual beings that emerge when the veil of the sensual tears.

When the veil disappears, one experiences beings that are one degree higher than the human soul in the order of the world. One then becomes familiar with a feeling that enriches the soul infinitely. One then feels: When you look around here in the world of the senses, you have the beings of the mineral, plant, animal and human kingdoms beneath you. The highest realm, which you have around you, is on the same level as you. You immerse yourself in a world that comes to you, and as a soul you know: what lies in your depths, what you are not aware of in your ordinary existence, what does not enter into your self-awareness, that is something through which you will be enriched. It is a world of spiritual beings that stand above you in the order of the world, that are not embodied in the body, but that are “ensouled” and within which you yourself are when you have become a body-free soul.

That is one thing. A second thing that comes to you when the veil of the sensual world is blown away is that you perceive what you otherwise call natural laws in a completely different way. The laws of nature, which one comprehends in the sense of being through thoughts, are no longer laws of nature when one perceives outside of the body; the thoughts are gone, they have united with spiritual beings that stand above man. What we experience in the laws of nature, which we previously perceived through thoughts, is now life itself. These are spiritual beings, which, when one has attained the relevant level of knowledge, stand before the soul of man as real as animals, plants and minerals otherwise stand before the senses of man. One familiarizes oneself with these entities, in relation to which one says to oneself: the laws of nature show us something like silhouettes, like abstractions of them. But what is present in the laws of nature when the veil is lifted are high spiritual entities. In spiritual science, these entities, which constitute the form of the laws of nature, are called the spirits of form because they instruct everything in the world to take on form through their spiritual power, out of the life of the world. Everything that exists in minerals, in animals and plants as form is the result of the activity of these entities.

When the physical body of a person is at rest, but in such a way that consciousness is maintained, when every will that only acts through limbs, that only acts through the body, when every such will is paralyzed, when it rests as it then does in sleep, when the person his physical body lies motionless in bed, when the will has been weakened by the application of soul power, but the person does not sink into unconsciousness but remains conscious, then he realizes: there is something within you that is the giver of your will, that radiates into your will. Your will is permeated and permeated by exalted spirits that permeate and interweave the world. One is tempted to call them spirits of the will. By paralyzing the will within himself, man discovers the spirits of the will.

In this way he lives into the spiritual world in the same way as when he opens his eyes at birth and becomes familiar with a world that he perceives through his senses. In this way he lives, when the ordinary conscious powers of the soul are rejected, into a spiritual world. This living into comes about through man's submerging with his own soul into the spirit, as modern natural science submerges into nature in its experiments. What has led to the great triumphs in natural science? It has separated observation from experiment. In the experiment, the natural event is detached from the immediate impression it makes on the senses. It is true that one must observe, but in the experiment one tries to penetrate into what lies behind the sense impressions in the physical. We dive down into nature, and every natural science experiment demands that what is to be seen be made independent of the subjective impressions of the senses.

Spiritual science goes to the other side. It makes the human being himself the subject of experimentation. It does not do it, as it is done in some spiritualistic circles, where experiments are done on people in the manner of observation. Spiritual science knows that man can only make himself a tool to find his way into the spiritual world. And so it shows how the physical and perceptible detaches itself from the soul-spiritual in man, and how he comes to be among spirits and souls under spirits and souls.

All this, which has now been discussed, is offensive to many minds of the present time. It is understandable that it must have this effect. Why is it so offensive? I cannot now go into what I have already mentioned in the last lectures. Only those who train themselves spiritually can perceive in the spiritual world, but in order to take in and understand what the spiritual researcher writes in books after he has researched it, one does not need to be a spiritual researcher. You have to be a painter to paint a picture, but not to understand it. It would be sad if only painters could understand paintings. In the same way, you don't have to be a spiritual researcher to understand what spiritual research has to say.

More and more, the world will realize that even if only a few people can be spiritual researchers – after all, my books explain how everyone can become a spiritual researcher to a certain extent – the world will be directly and convincingly affected by what these few have to say and by the way they express it. And the time will come when even non-spiritual researchers will crave descriptions of the spiritual world. Human souls are designed for truth, not error. To see in the spiritual world, one must consciously look into it, one must be a spiritual researcher. To comprehend, one need not look into it, one need only accept fully and without prejudice what the spiritual researcher has to say.

In this way, the human soul will be directly grasped by what the spiritual researcher has to say. In the depths of the human soul lies a hidden language. This language only needs to be developed. It slumbers in every human soul. It approaches the human soul directly and is awakened by the spiritual truths that the spiritual researcher brings from the spiritual world. The spiritual researcher is understood more and more through the intimate, profound language that the human soul has for the spirit.

Above all, in this way, the human being gets to know his own soul. He comes to know that it is possible to speak about immortality, about that which goes beyond the world of the senses, in a truly scientific way, when, through the development of his spiritual powers, he comes to find the soul core, which can detach itself from the physical and then lives on as a living being when the human being passes through the gate of death and hands over the physical to the elements.

To get to know the immortality of the soul consciously, one must follow the paths that lead to this human soul. In the ordinary person, the properties are as hidden as the properties of hydrogen in water. Therefore, he cannot approach the soul with any philosophy, not with mere concepts. He can certainly determine all kinds of things theoretically about what is called immortality, but it is only possible to speak knowledgeably about immortality when one really understands the nature of the soul. Then it will be shown that our whole life on earth between birth and death presents itself in such a way that we really develop something with what we carry in our soul, which the spiritual researcher only extracts from the body, but which always remains independent of the physical. as the natural scientist discovers the living germ in the plant as it grows from the root to the leaves and blossoms and fruits, which gradually develops and which, when the plant fades, offers the prospect of a new plant life.

In this way, the spiritual researcher senses the soul, and discovers in the human being that which grows inwardly, spiritually and soulfully in the whole of life between birth and death, and which then, as a living soul, passes through the portal of death and enters a spiritual world, undergoing the events that are spiritual and that in turn lead to repeated earthly lives. What passes through the human being in the form of a disembodied soul must go through repeated earthly lives. And what passes through death in this way is truly discovered by the spiritual researcher. But it is discovered by the fact that the ground is actually pulled from the knowledge on which one initially wants to rely. Just as Copernicus undermined the basis of the sensory evidence on which people believed they saw everything correctly, so spiritual science undermines the belief that the soul, if it only detaches itself, if it itself becomes a spiritual-soul being, can really see into the spiritual world.

This is the offensive thing about spiritual science, that it likewise repudiates all knowledge of which man is so proud and which has led to such great triumphs in external science, just as Copernicus repudiated the evidence of the senses. And this is why man recoils from this spiritual science, because it says: Not one power of knowledge, which is already there, but one that must be carefully prepared and acquired, is alone capable of looking into the spiritual world. Man recoils from this. For everything that demands of man to go further than he already is contradicts the view, often unconsciously slumbering deep in the soul, that man, as he is, is already very perfect, that he has no need at all to go beyond himself.

Spiritual science knows that it is necessary to go beyond the ordinary powers of perception, just as a child must go beyond its powers of perception if it is to orient itself in the world. Basically, we know that some children are uncomfortable when we want to lift them beyond their innate powers of perception. Children just don't have the stubbornness and resistance that people have at a later age. If you say to a person, “If you want to get close to the spirit, you have to believe in other forces than your ordinary power of perception,” then it contradicts human vanity, the belief in the perfection of the human being. But no matter how much one resists recognizing the truth of what has just been said, it is the vanity and discomfort of a new, unfamiliar way of thinking that prevents people from approaching spiritual-scientific interests.

And basically, this is what has always held back or tried to hold back all real progress in human cultural life; it is only more so in the case of spiritual science. Those who oppose spiritual research today, whether from a liberal or orthodox point of view, are truly the successors of the opponents of Copernicus, Galileo, Giordano Bruno. Just as the opponents at that time believed that everything that had previously been recognized as true by people was now being called into question and was in danger, so it is also believed today to an increased extent of spiritual science. And this, and nothing else, is actually the basis of the attacks that are made on spiritual science, particularly by religious communities. Here one must address the question: Why is it that religious communities stubbornly resist the progressive development of humanity? How could it be that in the time of Copernicus, Galileo and Giordano Bruno, certain people believed that religion was endangered by the advent of these scientific discoveries? How can it be that the successors of these people today believe that religion is endangered by spiritual science?

When one hears how the confessor of this or that religious community rebels, one might say with all the weapons at his disposal, against something like spiritual science, I am repeatedly reminded of a priest who was elected rector of a large university not so long ago. He gave his inaugural address about Galileo Galilei. He was a priest and at the same time a great scholar, an amiable scholar. He, the priest, said at the time, contrary to the views of his church community, with regard to new cultural achievements in the field of the mind: At the time when Copernicus and Galileo appeared, people who judged the matter from the perspective of their religious community in a shortsighted way believed that such discoveries would endanger the worship of God and religious sentiment. Today, we should have outgrown such beliefs. Today, it should be clear that every new insight into the great truths of existence can only serve to reveal the holiness and glory of the divine order of the world. These are the words of a man who, as a Catholic priest, understood the core of his religious community better than those who today want to be the successors of those who fought Galilei and Copernicus. That he said it in the spirit of his religious community was clear to anyone who sensed in him something that was not entirely genuine, as he held on to it throughout his life. And even in his dying hour, he held fast to what he had said. He spoke in his hour of death, saying that he wanted to die as a faithful son of his church. One must sympathize, without perhaps standing on the ground of this priest, with what true, inner connection with the core and soul of a religious community means, if one at the same time finds the possibility and ability to speak, as he does, about the progress of humanity.

Every religious community, more or less in the course of its existence, allies itself with certain views, with the insights of its time, because it has to work. Thus, as is quite natural, the Christian religion has associated itself with the ideas of the pre-Copernican world view. But the fact that it associated itself with them was an expression of its time. Those who said that religion would be endangered if something different were now known about the world view were short-sighted. Those who said: The God we carry in our hearts, the Christ with whom we feel, the religious feeling that runs through us, that will be effective, however the rest of the world view may be shaped. And it is still somewhat understandable when today's religious communities behave antagonistically towards materialistic world views that believe they are building on the basis of science, but which are usually far removed from true knowledge of nature.

But one cannot understand at all why individual representatives of these religious denominations are so terribly opposed to spiritual research, although deeply-disposed natural scientists – one need only think of Galilei, or, if one does not want to mention him, Copernicus, one could also mention a whole series of profound naturalists and scholars of the nineteenth century who really carried the call of natural science throughout the world - although more deeply inclined naturalists were basically always pious. It was said of Newton that he did not pronounce the name of God without baring his head. Those who today behave as materialists and say that the observation of nature forbids them to believe in the idea of God rely on him. Newton was so attached to it that he never bared his head wherever he was when he uttered the name of God, he, the alleged founder of the movement that today wants to be monists in the materialistic sense.

Nevertheless, one can understand how opponents can arise. From a superficial observation of nature, some may believe that science demands to deny immortality, to deny God - superficially considered, in that one has detached from sense perception that which is hidden in external nature. By refraining from this hidden knowledge and arming the senses to observe external nature, science has grown. It will always come from superficial observation of nature, from dilettantish knowledge of nature, if one believes oneself forced into atheism, into a lack of religion. This can only come from a misunderstanding of things. This can lead to those who feel religiously inclined rebelling against what arises from a non-religious observation of nature. However, spiritual science affects the mind differently than a worldview that claims to be based on pure natural science. People very quickly understand how this spiritual science works if they just open themselves up to it a little. Anyone who engages with spiritual science is presented with a set of concepts and ideas about the world and its processes to which the soul truly belongs. If you absorb these concepts and ideas, they are of a completely different strength than the ideas of external natural science. These ideas can, so to speak, solve many external puzzles, but they will no longer reach what sits in the depths of the soul. They will no longer stir the inner being into activity, they leave the depths of the soul barren. But spiritual science, with its concepts, reaches into the soul, into the mind, into the will and feeling of the soul, permeates and spiritualizes all impulses, even all affects and passions of the soul. It interweaves and lives through the whole soul. And the consequence of this living and interweaving of the soul through spiritual science is that the soul of the human being is given a religious bent. Spiritual science wants to be a real, genuine science, and has no desire to found a new religion or to compete with an old religion. It wants to be anything but a new religious sect. It wants to be a science for the soul, just as natural science was a science for the external world of nature from the moment its time had come. It wants to be scientific, but the way it approaches the soul means that the soul is tuned to religion from the outset. You can be a great natural scientist, you can get to know the full extent of natural laws, and you can be irreligious, an irreligious person. One does not become a spiritual researcher by having already prepared this or that religious sentiment, but by carrying the scientific mind and spirit upwards. But if one is attracted by spiritual science, one becomes interested in spiritual science, then one necessarily becomes a religiously minded person, a religiously minded soul.

If the religious communities of the present day were to sense correctly what is happening through spiritual science, they would not fight it so much. They would say: Thank God that a world view is emerging that gives souls a sense of religion. It will bring the soul what so many are being deprived of through misunderstood natural science. One can misunderstand natural science, but no-one will misunderstand spiritual science in an anti-religious sense. The souls of the various communities should rejoice that a spiritual power is emerging that will once again give a religious outlook to souls that have become irreligious as a result of so many things in the present day. And it is strange that this trend, which occurs in spiritual science and gives religious spirit to souls, is not felt. It is not felt because people are not at all inclined to learn from history. They have been able to fight and even burn the representatives of the scientific world view; it has prevailed. You may fight the proponents of the spiritual-scientific worldview; it will prevail. It is only surprising that the members of religious societies do not ask themselves: Must we go through the same thing with the spiritual-scientific achievements as our ancestors did with the natural-scientific ones? Could we not learn something from history after all? The fact that humanity has still not progressed far enough to learn from history, in turn, gives rise to the question: Why, for example, is there opposition to spiritual science?

It must be said that many people certainly have their conception of God, their religious feelings, but they have forgotten how to rejoice, to feel joy when a time shines forth anew that deepens these religious feelings. They are too lazy to go along with this new time because of it. Let us look at individual aspects. Spiritual science fully recognizes the Christ whom the true Christian worships. Spiritual science even deepens it, going along with the course of development of humanity, saying that all human development before the Mystery of Golgotha pointed to the event of Golgotha, that through this event a spirit that was previously extraterrestrial entered the earth to live and remain on earth with people, albeit invisibly.

Spiritual science shows that something tremendous happened at that event, to which the Bible so alludes, namely at the event at Golgotha. At that time, a spirit that had previously only worked into humanity from outside the earth entered into earthly activity through the human being as if through a gate. Spiritual science says: What was not previously in the spiritual atmosphere of the earth has been in the earthly atmosphere since that time. Christ has entered the earthly atmosphere. Spiritual science says: A cosmic being has become an earthly being. And in the man Jesus of Nazareth it lived in order to become a companion of men. Spiritual science says: The Christ, who from the birth of Jesus of Nazareth hovered around this Jesus from the outside, so to speak, entered into the depths of his soul at his baptism in the Jordan.

Now the opponents come and say: You teach a Christ idea that we cannot recognize when you claim that until the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, Jesus was merely preparing to receive the Christ, while the Bible prescribes that the Christ being was connected with the Jesus of Nazareth from the beginning. The Bible will also teach something different in this regard. It will prove the spiritual scientific interpretation right, because it can no longer do otherwise. Today, insightful translators translate a passage from the [Gospel of] Luke:

This is my beloved son, today I have begotten him.

that is, immersed in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. In the face of the all-encompassing grandeur of this Christ-idea, which can truly grasp the soul in its very depths, opponents may say that it is not Christian, that one should not present the Christ in this way, because you do not seek the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth before his baptism in the Jordan.

When you look at a child and say: From the moment the child learns to say “I”, that is, from the point in time up to which you remember later in life, from that moment on, something new has entered the child has entered into the child – will it be possible to come and say: You must not call the child, who is called Paul, Paul before the moment when the child learns to say 'I', because something significant happened at that moment? Does the fact that the significance of the baptism in the Jordan has been recognized in spiritual scientific terms, that something that previously surrounded Jesus of Nazareth has entered into his inner being and become one with this inner being, change anything about what is now Christian? No, that is the right thing, that all the conceptions of the soul, all the deep feelings, all the union with Christ Jesus, that only some Christian soul can feel, are preserved, and that something is added which, because times progress, makes the idea of Christ appear even greater, even more glorious. So when spiritual science has to say to those who approach it from a Christian point of view: what you demand to believe, spiritual science does not deny it, spiritual science admits that what you believe can be believed. Only something is added, which we believe must be added because the Christ has said:

I am with you until the end of the world.

He is alive among us, and He reveals Himself continually in the souls of people today. It is He who introduces us to spiritual science, and through Him we feel connected to spiritual science. The adherents of this spiritual teaching do not want to say: You should believe everything we ask you to believe; that is not the case. Spiritual science does not deny anything, it adds something. It does not demand that something be believed that it believes, but it does demand that what it does not believe but knows be not believed but known. It conveys that the idea of Christ grows and advances in the world. How does it do that?

Let us assume that it could have happened that, before Columbus discovered America, people would have come to him and said: There are supposed to be other areas of the earth? That cannot be possible, because the sun shines so warmly on our areas of the earth. If it had to shine on other areas, it would not have enough warmth left for our areas. But others would have said to Columbus: Of course, the sun shines on other parts of the earth as well as on ours. Those who are so weak in their conception of God that they believe this conception to be endangered when people discover a new area, a new physical fact, are the same as those who do not believe the sun is strong enough to shine on a newly discovered land. But anyone who wants to live with his Christ, who is sufficiently imbued with his religious feeling, knows that this concept of divinity, this connection with the Christ, this religious feeling will shine over all areas, physical and spiritual, that man will ever discover. Must we not conclude how weak-minded people's concept of God is, who believe that this concept of Christ is endangered because they cannot accept that in this newly discovered spiritual realm the sun of the spirit will shine as it shines in the old realm?

So it will be more and more recognized that opposition arises from religiosity that has become weak, from religiosity that has become fearful, as in the various religious denominations towards the discoveries in the field of spiritual life. We should recognize much more where we actually stand with our religious life. Do we not see that it is becoming more and more fragmented? Do we not see how all possible shades, all possible religious denominations, are spreading from the most orthodox right to the most radical left? Do we not see these representatives fighting each other more and more? If you look at these beliefs from a spiritual scientific point of view, you can ask: where do these antagonisms come from?

If you go into this hatred, many things turn out to be so weak. To mention just one example, which I have already pointed out, a few months ago a Free-Religious preacher said that children should not be taught religion because it is against nature. You just have to let children grow up on their own, so they do not come by themselves to religious ideas. It is therefore not natural for them to develop out of themselves. Therefore, they should not be taught artificially. This saying seems convincing to a great many souls through logic. But if one asks what this logic is based on, one must say that it is a weak, one-sided logic. Man is not so constituted that he can do everything new out of himself. The same logic also speaks quite precisely against a child learning to speak. Logic only needs to be sharpened a little, then we can see so clearly what is actually taking place at a deeper level. For it is not logic that is fighting against logic. What is fighting from the far right to the far left are passions, human temperaments - that is what human souls carry within them in the way of affects and passions before they are illuminated and fully enkindled by Christ. When the various groups in our present time confront each other in this way in the field of religious world view, they reveal how our fragmented time must long for what spiritual science can give it.

Spiritual science does not found a new religion. It says what it has to say about the world of the spirit, in the same way that natural science speaks about external nature. Spiritual science speaks about Christ in the way one must speak about him when one teaches the soul, which has become free, to look into spiritual realms and there find the effective Christ. Spiritual science will increasingly provide the disputing parties with the basis for their mutual understanding.

The disputing parties in religious communities today are like people who, at the time of Copernicus, argued about what he had to say about the solar system. The dispute will end as soon as there is a positive basis. The task and mission of spiritual science will be to create a positive foundation, to really say how things are in the spiritual world, about which one could only form a basis from the groping feeling of the soul's indeterminacy. And anyone who looks into the souls of human beings knows that it is a task longed for by them.

Thus spiritual science will not throw a new bone of contention into the souls of the present, but will bring about the peace that can truly live in souls by balancing them. In this way it will give shape to the striving of the human soul. These souls will thereby have a basis for combating, out of their own intuitive perception, that which, through the character of the individual, tends too much towards liberalism or orthodoxy, so that people would have to fight out of this temperament. Spiritual science will bring the positive, the truly spiritual, in contrast to what is only sensed.

And when we consider this, we will recognize how spiritual science truly relates to the various religious denominations. We might say that the individual religious parties are separated from one another by a stream that they cannot yet cross. Spiritual science is the bridge that leads across this stream. It has something to say to everyone, just as it has something to say to anyone who has looked beyond a certain radius. On the one hand, it speaks to those who have retained their faith, and on the other hand, it speaks to those whose religious feeling is seeking a new form. It shows that in the end it can unite everyone. This is how it will be with spiritual science: it has to find the positive.

And this positive aspect it has to contribute not only from the religious point of view, but also to the social currents. Oh, these social currents! When we look through these social currents with understanding, we see that people are basically quite helpless when we try to think more deeply, when we try to form ideas about a possible future for humanity in the social sphere and about the effect of these social currents.

One example among many can be cited in our present time, and in this way we can fathom from the most diverse intellectual and physical causes what the social organization has actually brought about. Sombart wrote a book some time ago to make it clear how this capitalist spirit that dominates the present has emerged. He is not a fanatical representative of the capitalist spirit. Sombart spent his whole life trying to understand what has brought man, as he now stands in economic life, into this economic life. He actually found, to a certain extent, beautiful explanations about capitalism, which has taken hold of the human soul. After the author has endeavored to gather together everything that can provide insight into what our organization has created, he concludes his book – tellingly, it is a thick book – as follows:

What will happen when the capitalist spirit has ceased to have its present resilience is not our concern here. Perhaps the giant

– by which he means the present economic order

– will then, when it has gone blind, be trained to pull a democratic cultural cart. Or perhaps it will be the twilight of the gods. [...]

Who knows?

This is how the attempt presents itself in today's current, the attempt to know how people could rise from the present economic order to a fully human existence. So strong is this “who knows” that it calls the spirit of this economic order a “blind giant”. And when we survey the various attempts to understand intellectually what is to become of our present economic system, which is not national in any way, which is taking hold of the whole earth beyond all countries, we see how, again from left and right, from radicalism and conservatism, the most diverse attempts are being made to move the whole.

Sombart's book contains certain references to what I have dared to say for many years in terms of spiritual science. He describes what has happened since ancient times to bring about the present order, how present-day humanity is determined in the field of economic life as by the command of its soul: “This you shall do, that you shall leave.” He describes how man is seized by an impersonal organism, how he is driven into the wheelwork. This observer of contemporary social life describes it vividly and with expertise. And if you look at this social life in detail, then we already have knowledge of this being seized by people who are right in the middle of this life.

Just read the autobiography of a great railroad king. You will always find the same tone, the same type of man who, for example, says:

My [...] intention was limited to acquiring enough through the construction of railways to buy a larger estate, then to retire from business and, when the opportunity arose, to accept a mandate for the House of Representatives and devote myself entirely to parliamentary work. That is what he wanted.

That's what his soul told him. He threw himself into this life. He realized: if I throw myself into this one endeavor, I'm bound to lose. Only by using these funds for a next venture, only by letting myself be dragged from one into the other, only in this way can it be done. - By plunging into a second, a third, a fourth venture and being driven from one into the other, he is driven ever more sharply into it.

Man cannot follow his own path. Anyone who looks at economic life knows that it always depends on how the affairs of the present are integrated into the objective order. Man is plunged into this objective order, seized by it, and his personal life is completely eliminated, so that Sombart can say: People have lost various things over time. If you look at today's entrepreneur, you have to say that he has given up the last thing that could still separate him from this objective economic machine. He has lost all subjective feeling and all his love for the work in the company itself. What used to be directed at completely different things has been poured into the company. Man no longer knows anything about himself, but has become homeless in his work. That is not a word of mine, but of Sombart.

This is the social current of the present: the soul is homeless in modern life, and is it only the case for those who work in leading entrepreneurial positions? No! This social spirit of the present has taken hold of everyone, so that not only the entrepreneur, but also those who work as simple laborers in the economic life do not feel connected to what they work. If, in the course of work, the question of wages or something else is a cause of disagreement, then it is not work that is at the center of interest, but the question that has been raised by our economic system. This interest is intertwined with work. This plays a role in contemporary social life. In this area, the present is certainly moving forward.

All that I have just said has not been said in order to criticize. The way things have become, they had to become – they have become necessary. But what is characteristic is what man has to say about this order. The individual human being cannot really live in a way that befits human dignity, but rather says: Today I will have to do this or that, tomorrow is none of my business; let the “blind giant” do later what cannot be known, that is none of our business. Sombart says even more. I mention him not precisely because he wrote this book, but because what he says is typical. Sombart says: This social order, this economic order has come to the point where we see it taking hold of people, making them spiritually homeless, throwing them into the wheels of industry, mercilessly throwing them in. And now a very characteristic word! He says: And what means do we actually have to counter this? Labor protection laws, homeland protection laws and the like. Means that make one shudder when they are set up. But – as he puts it – no Weimar-Königsberg doctrine of wisdom will ever change this course of the economic order. – Weimar-Königsberg [means]: a wisdom that could emanate from Goethe's or Kant's world view.

What is expressed in such knowledge? Something that should actually only surprise us when so few people today are moved by it, are disturbed by it. How do such people relate to the current social trends? It can be said that at this stage of development, individuality has become detached from people. Today, we can no longer say: the human being calculates in his business; he plunges in, it calculates, it counts, the capital flows from one place to another.

What does man say when he does not want to behave prudishly in the face of the 'fact' that it must go on and on like this? What does man say when he examines the efforts made so far to gain scientific insight into human life, to gain a worldview? Man says: No Weimar wisdom, no Königsberg wisdom will change anything. Why not? Because man shuts himself off from that wisdom that comes from spiritual science and which has quite different powers to gain access to human souls. For what is meant in Sombart's sense as Weimar, as Goethean wisdom, as Kantian wisdom, is void. But spiritual science has not only concepts, not only ideas; it is something that takes hold of the whole person and brings him back to himself.

Spiritual science alone will have the strength and power to strengthen human souls within themselves, to take hold of them in such a way that these human souls can find themselves again, after they had to lose themselves in the spirit of the economic order of the new age. This spirit of the economic order was so strong that it could make man a stranger to himself. The spirit of spiritual science will be so strong that it will take hold of the soul, that it will offer the soul its spiritual and soul home in the hustle and bustle of the modern economic order. Man has been numbed by the economic order, so that he must speak of it as of the “blind giant” of which he does not know what it will bring. Spiritual science will open the power of the soul to see, which will grip people so that it becomes their home, so that they can become glowing and spiritualized through what they do on this earth.

Such a thing can still be little understood by people of the present time. And what is not understood is most often met with hostility. If you do not understand something, you are its opponent. That is the easiest thing. Learning to understand is more difficult. Laughing and not understanding is easier. And it is precisely in the realm of antagonism that some people have gathered in relation to the building we are trying to establish as a place for the humanities. This place is already proving to be something special in what is new in our spiritual life, in that people are trying to find names for it from all possible angles of the old. Maps have already been shown on which the building is called “Anthroposophical Temple under Construction”. It will not be a temple, but a name is needed. It will be no more a temple than anthroposophy wants to be a new religion or the founding of a sect. If one wants a name, one can say: it will be a “Free University for Spiritual Science”. But for the reasons that have been given, it will have nothing anti-religious about it; it will not be an opponent of religion, but this college will have religiously minded souls within its walls. For through what has been explained, souls are so attracted by spiritual science that they are religiously minded.

But without striving for religion, religion is particularly protected by spiritual science, and souls are again led to understand and recognize the greatness of their religion. And many a soul that may have been alienated from the religious mood by education, that is, by that which lives outside of religion, will be won again for a sure conception of God and Christ through what is taught in this religious college, is shown. We do not undertake to build a church or a temple; but what we build, what we want: just as there are laboratories and cabinets for the physical, so we will build a laboratory, a cabinet for research into spiritual life. What we want will be an image of this spiritual endeavor in its entire configuration and in its entire design. Those who have envisaged what has just been said about the relationship between spiritual science and the social currents of the present will understand that something like this must come into being.

When buildings are erected on a large scale in which such a spiritual foundation extends to the last detail, to the last edge, and when the souls, strengthened by spiritual science, do not face it as something they do not understand, then the human souls who have not found their heaven on the socially configured earth will combine love with their work. Then we will not ask: What will become of the “blind giant?” but rather: What will become of this human soul, attuned to religious spiritual science? And we know: Our conception of God, our religious feeling is so strong that this soul will carry it over into the future. We do not ask: Who knows what will happen then? We see the well-founded knowledge that our soul passes through death, that this soul founds a new life for itself on earth, that it will carry what it acquires through death into the spiritual world, so that it will work from the spiritual world again before the soul reappears on earth. We do not say: Who knows what the future will bring? We seek to acquire in the present that which offers a guarantee that the future of the human soul will be such that one cannot say, through the stupefaction of social life, that man has lost his home. Rather, one will then be able to say: No matter how much the capitalist system spreads, no matter how much it numbs people, the human soul will find itself and will know how firmly it is rooted in the soil of its original spiritual life. It will not live in a world led by a “blind giant”, but in a world in which it can see and in which its economic system can also see. This will give it well-founded hope for the future, because the soul itself provides the building blocks for the construction of this hope. This may be said to the social movement.

This spiritual science will show anyone who takes even a little time to familiarize themselves with it that it is in search of the path that the human soul traverses from the beginning to the end of life. Spiritual science speaks of the path along which man walks towards his future. Spiritual science speaks of truth, not only of a truth of external impressions that arise through sensory perception, but of that truth that is experienced inwardly by the soul in such a way that it feels itself to be a spiritual citizen of the soul in that world. In that world, Christ can be found directly. Many a spirit in the present seeks the present Christ, but it only comes to yearning, it only speaks of it.

It is Christ who harmonizes. He will find the new harmony with the religion of old Europe, he will give the souls to themselves. Anyone who reflects must find that there is a spiritual connection between all things. And that which is subject to an external power today must long for the direct living presence of Christ. Spiritual science points out that the living Christ will maintain the order of the world as long as earthly time lasts. Spiritual science points to the Christ that the soul needs if it wants to feel truly strengthened, and to whom it turns in times of need and danger. Spiritual science imparts this Christ. It grasps the world in truth by allowing the soul to experience the truth. In this way, truth itself comes to life, so that the dead abstract truth is so enlivened that the whole human being is grasped by it.

While today's economic system has killed the human being and thrown him out of his homeland, spiritual science returns him to his living homeland. It has the way, the way that the soul had previously lost and had to take a different one instead. The soul seeks truth and will grasp it directly, so that it does not feel separate from life but connected to it. The path, the truth and the life shine forth for spiritual research. And just as it earnestly seeks these three, so it is also aware that it will find them. And it also finds the one who said that he is what it seeks. No matter how the opponents of this spiritual research fight it, whatever arguments they put forward, spiritual research points to the truth and the life through what lives in its adherents, who can only come to this adherence through their own power of judgment, through what lives in them and what they strive for. And so, no matter what the opponents of religious denominations may say, those who honestly and sincerely seek the path to the spiritual realm, and who strive for it in the same way as the adherents of spiritual research, need have no fear. They will find, in the right sense, in the sense in which souls must reveal it today, the one who said:

I am the way, the truth and the life.

And no matter how powerful the voices may become that rise up against spiritual research, In the knowledge that it is always seeking the Way, the Truth and the Life and is thus directly aware of the connection with the One who was the Way, the Truth and the Life, in this knowledge it becomes bold and free, but also aware of its glory, in modesty and humility it can always answer anyone – even those who say that spiritual science is looking for a false Christ – We seek the One who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Whatever He says, we know that we may express ourselves freely and honestly to everyone: We follow Him in our own way, which we believe gives souls their new home on earth. We follow Him, He calls us, He will lead us.

I am in a somewhat difficult position for today's lecture, because the subject matter makes it necessary to sketch out results from a very broad field of spiritual science, and some people might wish to hear substantiating, probative details about one or another of the results to be presented today. Such details can be given in the next lectures; today it will be my task to sketch out the field in question. Furthermore, I will have to use expressions and ideas about soul and body whose actual foundation lies in the lectures I have already given here; for I will have to strictly limit myself to the subject, to the explanation of the connection between the human soul and the human body,

It is a subject about which one can say that two intellectual endeavors of modern times are in the greatest possible misunderstanding about it. And if we look into these misunderstandings, we shall find that on the one hand the thinkers and investigators who in modern times have attempted to work in the field of soul-phenomena know little what to do with the great and admirable results of natural science, especially with reference to the knowledge of the human body. They are, so to speak, unable to build the right bridge between what they have to consider to be observations of soul phenomena and physical phenomena. On the other hand, it must be said that the representatives of natural scientific research work are as a rule so unfamiliar with soul observations, so unfamiliar even with what is meant when soul observation is considered, that they are in turn unable to build a bridge from the truly momentous results of modern natural science to soul phenomena. And so we find that when psychologists and natural scientists talk about the human soul and the human body, they speak completely different languages and basically cannot understand each other at all. And it is precisely this fact that today misleads, or one might even say confuses, those who try to gain insight into the great riddles of the soul and their connection with the riddles of the world on the basis of the current thinking.

I would like to start by pointing out where the error actually lies in thinking. A peculiarity has developed - I do not want to criticize this, but only state it as a fact - with regard to the way people today relate to their concepts, to their ideas. In most cases, he does not consider that concepts and ideas, however well founded they may be, are only tools for judging reality as it presents itself to us individually in each particular case. Today, man believes that once he has acquired a concept, this concept can be applied directly in the world. The misunderstandings I have just described stem from this peculiarity of modern thinking, which is transplanted into all scientific endeavor. Today, people do not consider that a concept can be completely correct, but that, although it is correct, it can be applied in a completely wrong way. In order to characterize this methodically in advance, I will discuss it using perhaps grotesque examples that could already occur in life. Someone might have the perfectly justified conviction that sleep, healthy sleep, is a good remedy. This can be a perfectly correct concept, a correct idea. If it is not applied correctly in a particular case, something like this can happen: someone visits someone who is unwell, who is ill in one way or another. He applies his wisdom by saying: I know how healthy sleep feels. When he goes out, someone might say to him: Well, look at that, the old man sleeps all the time. Or it may happen that someone else has the view that for certain illnesses, walking and moving around is extremely healthy. He advises this to someone. He only has to object: “You forget that I am a postman.

I only want to hint at the fundamental principle: that one can have perfectly correct ideas, but that these ideas only become useful when they are applied in the right way in life.

And so, in the various sciences, one can also find concepts that are strictly provable and correct, so that refutations of them would encounter difficulties. But the question must always be raised: Are these concepts also applicable to life? Are they useful tools for understanding life? — The mental illness that I have thus hinted at and explained by grotesque examples is extremely widespread in our thinking today. Hence many people are so unaware of the limits of their concepts that they are obliged to expand their concepts through facts, whether physical or spiritual. And perhaps there is no other field in which the expansion of concepts and ideas is as necessary as in the field we wish to discuss today.

With regard to what has been achieved in this field from a scientific point of view, which is, after all, the most important one at present, one can only say again and again: it is admirable, it is quite magnificent. On the other hand, there is also significant work in the realm of the soul, but it does not provide any insight into the most important soul questions, and above all, it cannot broaden its concepts in such a way that the impact of modern science, which is nevertheless directed against everything spiritual in some way, could be withstood. I would like to refer to two recent literary works that contain the results of research in these fields; works that show us very clearly how an expansion of concepts must be sought through an expansion of research. First of all, there is an extraordinarily interesting Physiological Psychology by Theodor Ziehen. In this psychology, even if the still fluctuating research results are developed through hypotheses, it is shown in a magnificent way how, according to modern scientific observations, the brain and nerve mechanism has to be imagined in order to get an idea of how our ideas are linked together and how the nervous organism works while we form ideas. But it is precisely in this area that it becomes quite clear that the scientific method of observation directed towards the soul leads to concepts that are too narrowly defined and do not penetrate into life. Theodor Ziehen is able to show that for everything that takes place in the process of imagining, counter-images can be found within the nervous mechanism. And if one goes through the field of research on this question, one finds that Haeckel's school in particular has achieved something extraordinary in this area. One need only refer to the excellent work that Haeckel's student Max Verworn did in the Göttingen laboratory on the question of what happens in the human brain, in the human nervous system, when we link one idea with another, or, as they say in psychology, when one idea associates with another. Our thinking is basically based on this linking of ideas. How one has to think of this linking of ideas, how one has to think of the realization of memory ideas, how certain mechanisms are present that store ideas, one might say, so that they can be retrieved from memory later, all this is beautifully presented in a coherent way by Theodor Ziehen. If you take a look at what he has to say about the life of imagination and about what corresponds to it as a human nervous system, you can certainly go along with it. But then Ziehen comes to a strange further conclusion.

We know, of course, that the human soul life is not limited to imagination. Regardless of how one thinks about the relationship between the other soul activities and imagination, one cannot ignore the fact that at least three other soul activities or abilities must be distinguished in addition to imagination. We know that feeling exists alongside imagination, that feeling activity exists in its entire wide range, and that will activity also exists. Theodor Ziehen speaks as though feeling were actually nothing more than a property of perception; he does not speak of actual feeling, but of the emotional tone of sensations or perceptions. The perceptions are there. They are there, not only as we think them, but endowed with certain qualities that give them their emotional tone. So that one can say: For feeling, a researcher of this kind is dependent on saying: What is going on in the nervous system is not enough for feeling. Therefore, he actually leaves out feeling itself and regards it only as an appendage to perception. One could also say: By following the nervous system, he does not arrive at the nerve mechanism of the soul that appears as the emotional life. Therefore, he leaves out the emotional life as such. But he also does not come to anything in the nervous mechanism that makes it necessary to speak of a will. Therefore, Ziehen virtually denies the right to speak of a will in the natural sciences in relation to the knowledge of soul and body. What happens when a person wills something? Let us assume that he walks, that he is in motion. Then, says the scientist, the movement, the walking, arises out of his will. But as a rule, what is actually there? There is nothing there except, at first, the idea of the movement. I present, so to speak, what will be when I move through space; and then nothing happens but that I see or feel myself, that is, that I perceive my movement. The remembered idea of movement is followed by the perception of the movement; there is no willpower to be found anywhere. — The will is thus virtually removed by pulling. We see that in the pursuit of nervous mechanisms, we do not come to feeling or to willing; therefore, we must more or less disregard these areas of the soul, and for the will, we must disregard them entirely. And then one usually says good-naturedly: Well, yes, we leave that to the philosophers, but the natural scientist has no reason to speak of these things, unless one goes as far as Verworn with regard to soul functions, who says: The philosophers have attributed much to the human soul life that from a scientific point of view turns out to be unjustified.

An important modern psychologist, who I have often mentioned here, came to a conclusion similar to Ziehen's, who started out from natural-scientific data, and who is more important than is usually thought of him: Franz Brentano. Only Franz Brentano starts out from the soul. In his Psychology, he tried to explore the life of the soul. It is characteristic that only the first volume of this book was published and nothing more since the 1870s. Those who are familiar with the circumstances know that precisely because Brentano works with limited concepts, in the sense characterized above, he could not get beyond the beginning. But one thing is extremely significant in Brentano: in his attempt to go through the phenomena of the soul and bring them into certain groups, he distinguishes between 'imagining' and 'feeling'. But in going through the soul, I would say, from top to bottom, he does not come to volition. For him, volition is basically only a subspecies of feeling. So even a psychologist does not come to volition. Franz Brentano refers to such things as the fact that even language suggests, when it speaks of phenomena of the soul, that what is usually called “volition” is basically exhausted in feeling within the events of the soul, the facts of the soul. For it is certainly only a feeling that is expressed when I say: I have repugnance for something. And yet, when I say, “I have repugnance for something,” I use the word “will” in such a way that language instinctively expresses how the will actually belongs to the emotional sphere of the soul life. From this single example you can see how impossible it is for this psychologist of the soul to get out of a certain circle. For it is unquestionable that what Franz Brentano gives is careful soul research; but it is also unquestionable that the experience of the will, of the transition of the soul life into external action, and of the arising of the external action from the will, is an experience that cannot be denied away. So the psychologist does not find what unquestionably cannot be denied away.

It cannot be said that all researchers working in the field of the newer natural sciences who are concerned with the life of the soul in its connection with the life of the body are materialists through and through. For example, the materialist draws a pure hypothesis about matter. But he comes to a very remarkable conclusion, namely that, wherever we look, there is nothing around us but soul-life. Even if there is something material out there, this matter must first make an impression on us in its processes; so that when the material facts make an impression on our senses, what we experience in our sensory perception is already a spiritual phenomenon. Now we experience the world only through our senses; so basically everything is a spiritual phenomenon, everything is psychic. This is the view of researchers such as Ziehen. According to this, the whole of human experience would actually be a soul experience, and we would basically have no right to speak of anything other than hypothetically — except for ourselves, except for our soul experiences. We live and weave within the realm of the soul according to such views and cannot get out of it.

Eduard von Hartmann characterized this view in a drastic way at the end of his manual on psychology, and this characteristic, although grotesque, is quite interesting to consider. He says: Let us take the example, in the sense of this panpsychism – we are simply forming such words – of two people sitting at a table and drinking, let us say, coffee with sugar, stemming from better times. One person is a little further away from the sugar bowl than the other, and what happens outwardly, for the naive person, is that one person says to the other, “I request the sugar bowl.” The other person hands the sugar bowl to the requesting person. How, then, Eduard von Hartmann asks, must this process be imagined if panpsychism is correct? It must be imagined that something is happening in the human brain or nervous system that forms itself in consciousness in such a way that the idea arises: I want sugar. But what is actually out there, the person in question has no idea about that. Then another idea joins the first one; but this is also only a mental image, that something that looks like another person – because what is objectively there cannot be said – that something that looks like another person is handing him the sugar bowl. Physiology, says Hartmann, now says that, objectively, the following happens: in my nervous system, when I am the one person, some process is formed which is reflected in consciousness as the illusion “I ask for sugar”. Then this same process, which has nothing to do with the process of consciousness, sets the speech muscles in motion; something objective comes about again on the outside, which one does not know what it is, but which is mirrored again in consciousness, whereby one receives the impression of speaking the words “I am asking for sugar”. Then these movements, evoked in the air, go to another person, who is again assumed hypothetically, and create vibrations in their nervous system. The fact that the sensitive nerves vibrate in this nervous system sets the motor nerves in motion. And while this purely mechanical process is taking place, something like the following is reflected in the consciousness of the other person: “I am giving this person the sugar bowl,” and whatever else is connected with it, whatever can be perceived, the movement and so on.

This is the peculiar interpretation that what is really going on outside of us remains unknown to us, is only hypothetical, but it appears that it is a nervous process that vibrates through the air into the other person, where it jumps from the sensitive to the motor nerves and performs the external action. This is quite independent of what is going on in the two minds, it happens automatically. But as a result, one gradually comes to no longer be able to gain any insight into the connection between what is automatically happening outside and what we are actually experiencing. For what we experience, if one adopts the point of view of the all-pervading soul, has nothing to do with anything that is objectively outside. Strangely enough, the whole world is taken up in the soul, I would even say. And individual thinkers have already raised very weighty objections. If, for example, a merchant expects a telegram with a certain content, only a single word may be missing, and instead of joy, displeasure, sorrow or pain can be triggered in his soul. Can we say that what we experience in our soul only takes place within the soul, or must we not assume, on the basis of the immediate results, that something has actually taken place outside that is also experienced in the soul? And on the other hand, if you take the point of view of this automatism, you could say: Yes, Goethe wrote “Faust”, that is true; but that only proves that the whole of “Faust” lived in his soul in the imagination. But this soul has nothing to do with the mechanism that described this idea. One does not get out of the mechanism of the soul life to what is out there.

This is how the view gradually emerged that is now very widespread, that what is spiritual is, so to speak, only a kind of parallel process to what is outside in the world, that it only adds to what is outside in the world, and that one cannot possibly know what is really going on outside in the world. Basically, one can then come to what I came to, namely that in my book “The Riddle of Man” I call this point of view, which developed in the 19th century and has become more and more valid in certain circles, the point of view of illusionism. Now one will ask oneself the question: Is not this illusionism based on very good foundations? — It almost seems so. It really seems that there is nothing to be said against it, that there may be something out there that affects our eyes, and that only the soul transforms what is outside into light and color, so that one is really only dealing with the soul, that one never goes beyond the limits of the soul, that one is never justified in saying: this or that corresponds to what lives in the soul. Such things only appear to have no significance for the highest soul questions, for example for the question of immortality. They have a deep significance for it, and some hints about this too will be possible today. But I would like to start from this very basis.

The school of thought that I have characterized here does not consider, above all, that with regard to the life of the soul, it only deals with what happens when impressions are made on the human being from the outside through the world of the senses, and the human being comes to form ideas about these impressions through his nervous system. These views do not consider that what happens there is only applicable to man's intercourse with the outer sense world, but for this intercourse, even when one examines the matter in terms of spiritual research, it shows quite special results. It shows that the human senses are constructed in a very special way. But what I have to say here about this structure, in terms of the subtleties of this structure, is such that it is in many ways not yet accessible to the external science that is already in existence today. In the organs that we have for the senses, something is built into the human body that is excluded to a certain extent from the general inner life of this human body. The eye is a good symbolic example of this. It is built into the organism of our skull almost as a completely independent being, connected to the rest of the organism only through certain organs. The whole thing could be described in detail, but that is not necessary for our consideration today. However, a certain independence does exist. And in fact such independence is present in all sense organs. So that, which is never taken into account, something very special happens in sensory perception, in sensory sensation. The sensory world continues through our sense organs into our own organs. What happens out there through light and color, or rather, in light and color, continues through our eye into our organism in such a way that the life of our organism does not initially participate in it. Thus light and color enter our eye in such a way that they do not hinder the life of the organism, I might say, the penetration of what is happening outside. In this way, as in a number of gulfs, the flow of external events penetrates through our senses to a certain extent into our organism. Now, the soul is immediately involved in what enters, in that it itself first gives life to what enters from outside in an inanimate state. This is an extraordinarily important truth that has come to light through spiritual science. Through our sensory perception, we are constantly enlivening that which continues into our body from the flow of external events. The sensation of the senses is a real living permeation, indeed even a living of that which, as dead, continues into our organization. But in this way, in the sensation of the senses, we really have the objective world directly within us, and by processing it with our soul, we experience it. This is the real process, and it is extraordinarily important. For with regard to sense perception, it cannot be said that it is only an impression, that it is only an effect from outside; what happens externally really goes right into our inner being, physically, is absorbed into the soul and imbued with life. In the sense organs we have something in which the soul lives, without our own body basically living in them directly. One day, the ideas that I have developed will also be scientifically examined in more detail, when correct views are formed by comparing the fact that certain animal species have certain organs in their eyes that are no longer found in humans. The human eye is simpler than the eyes of lower animals, even of animals that are very close to it. If one day someone asks: why, for example, certain animals still have the so-called fan in the eye, a special organ made of blood vessels, or why others have the so-called xiphoid process, another organ made of blood vessels, then it will be realized that in the animal organism, as these organs project into the senses, the immediate bodily life still participates in what takes place in the senses as a continuation of the external world. Therefore, the animal's sensory perception is not at all such that one can say that the soul experiences the external world directly. For the soul in its instrument, the body, still permeates the sense organ; the bodily life permeates the sense organ. But precisely because the human senses are so constituted that they are animated by the soul, it is clear to anyone who truly grasps the sense perception in its essence that we have external reality in the sense perception. On the other hand, all Kantianism, Schopenhauerianism, all modern physiology cannot achieve this, because these sciences are not yet suited to allow their concepts to penetrate to a proper conception of sense perception. Only when what takes place in the sense organ is taken up into the deeper nervous system, the brain system, only then does it pass over into that realm where the life of the body penetrates directly and where, therefore, inner happenings take place. So that the human being has the sense realm externally, and within this sense realm, as it were, the zone opposite the external world, where this external world can approach him purely, insofar as it can act on the senses. For nothing else takes place. But then, when the sensation becomes an idea, we are within the deeper-lying nervous system; then a nervous-mechanical process corresponds to each process of imagination. Then, whenever we form an idea that is taken from the sensory view, something always takes place in the human nervous organism.

And here we must now say: there is much to admire in what has been achieved by natural science, especially through Verworn's discoveries, with regard to the processes that take place in the nervous system, in the brain, when this or that is imagined. Spiritual science will only have to be clear about the following: When we confront the external world through our senses, we are confronted with external, real facts. When we imagine, for example, from memory, when we reflect, where we do not connect with the external, but connect with what has been taken in from outside, something in our nervous system comes to life; and that which takes place there in our nervous system, what lives in its structures, its processes, that is really — the more one delves into this fact, the more one comes to a wonderful image of the soul, of the life of imagination itself. Anyone who opens themselves up just a little to what brain anatomy and neuroanatomy can already tell us today will find that the brain's structure and the way it moves are among the most wonderful things that can be revealed in the world. But then spiritual science must be clear about one thing: just as we face the outside world, looking outwards, so we face our own bodily world when we are absorbed in the play of thoughts taken from the outside world. It is just that we are not usually aware of this clearly. But when the spiritual researcher rises to what he calls imaginative images, he recognizes that, while I would say it remains dream-like, it is nevertheless the case that when left to itself, the human being's imagination perceives its inner play in the brain and nervous system in the same way as it otherwise perceives the external world. By strengthening the life of the soul through such meditation as I have described, one can recognize that one is confronted with this inner nervous world no differently than with the outer sensory world; only that in the case of the outer sensory world, the impression is strong, and one comes to the conclusion: the outer world makes an impression; while that which comes from within, from the life of the body, does not impose itself in the same way, although it is a wonderful interplay of material processes, so that one has the impression that the perceptions play by themselves.

What I have said applies to everything I have so far indicated about man's relationship with the external sense world. The soul, permeating the body, observes external reality; the soul, on the other hand, observes the play of its own nervous mechanism. Now, however, a certain view – and this is where the misunderstanding arises – has formed the idea from this fact that this is the relationship between man and the external world. When this view raises the question: how does the external world affect man? then it answers it as it must answer it according to the wonderful results of brain anatomy and brain physiology, then it answers it as we now had to characterize what happens when man either devotes himself to ideas with reference to the external world, or later allows such ideas to play out from memory. This view says that this is man's relationship to the world in general. But it must lead to the conclusion that all life of the soul actually runs parallel to the outer world. For the outer world can certainly be quite indifferent to whether we imagine it or not; it runs as it runs; our imagining is purely added. Even what is a principle of this view applies: everything we experience is of the soul. But in this soul life, the outer world lives in one instance, and the inner world in another. And this is precisely the result: one time it is how the processes are outside, the other time it is how the processes are in the nerve mechanism. Now this view assumes: therefore all other soul experiences must also be related to the outer world in a similar way, including feeling and will. And if such researchers as Theodor Ziehen are honest, they do not find such relationships. Therefore, as discussed above, they partially deny feeling and completely deny the will. They do not find feelings within the nervous mechanism, and they certainly do not find the will. Franz Brentano does not even find the will within the soul. Why is that?

Once the misunderstandings I have described today have been dispelled and spiritual science is consulted for help on these matters, spiritual science will provide clarification. For the fact, which I have only hinted at, is this: What we call the realm of feeling in the life of the soul has, to begin with, however strange it may sound, absolutely nothing to do with nervous life in its origin. I am well aware of how many assertions of present-day science I am contradicting. I am also well aware of all the well-founded objections that can be raised. However, as desirable as it would be to go into all the details, today I can only present results. Ziehen is quite right when he finds neither feeling nor willing in the nervous mechanism, when he finds only thinking, so that he says: feelings are only sounds, that is, qualities, emphases of the life of thinking; for only the life of thinking lives in the nerves. There is no will at all for the natural scientist, because the perception of the movement that follows is directly linked to the thinking of the movement. There is no will in between. There is nothing of human feeling in the nerve mechanism; this consequence is just not drawn, but it is there. So when human feeling expresses itself in the body, what is the connection? What is the relationship between feeling and the body, if the relationship between thinking and the body is as I have just described it in relation to the relationship between sensory perception and the nerve mechanism? Now, spiritual science shows that, just as imagining is connected with perceiving and the inner nervous mechanism (however strange that may still sound today, it will one day be the result of natural science, but it can already be described as a thoroughly established result of spiritual science), feeling is similarly connected with everything that belongs to the breathing of the human body and what is connected with this breathing. In its origin, feeling has nothing to do with the nervous mechanism, but with that which is connected with the breathing organism. But now, at least one objection, which is so obvious, should be raised here: Yes, but the nerves excite everything that is connected with breathing! I will come back to this objection again when it comes to will. The nerves do not excite anything related to breathing, but just as we perceive light and color through our optic nerves, so we perceive the breathing process itself only in a duller way through the nerves that go from the central organism to the respiratory organism. These nerves, which are usually referred to as motor nerves for breathing, are nothing more than sensitive nerves. They are there to perceive breathing itself, just like the brain nerves, only more dullly. The development of feeling, in all that is present from affect up to quiet feeling, is physically connected with everything that takes place in the human being as a breathing process, and with everything that belongs to it, that is its continuation in one direction or another in the human organism. Once we understand that we cannot say: certain currents emanate from some central organ, the brain, and excite the respiratory processes, but rather the reverse is the case. The respiratory processes are there, they are perceived by certain nerves; through this they enter into a relationship with them. But this relationship is not such that the origin of feelings is anchored in the nervous system. And here we come to an area that, despite the admirable natural science of the present, has not yet been worked on at all. The bodily expressions of emotional life will be illuminated in a wonderful way once the finer changes in breathing and especially the finer changes in the effect of the breathing process are studied as one or other feeling arises in us.

The breathing process is quite different from that which takes place in the human nervous mechanism. For the nervous mechanism, one can say, in a certain respect, that it is a faithful reproduction of the human soul life itself. And if I wanted to use an expression – such expressions have not yet been coined in language, so one can only use loan images – for the way in which the human nervous system is wonderfully depicted in the soul life, I would like to say: the soul life paints itself into the nervous life, the nervous life is truly a painting of the soul life. Everything we experience in our soul in relation to external perception is reflected in the nervous system. It is precisely this that must make it understandable that the nervous life, especially of the head, is already at birth a faithful imprint of the soul life that comes from the spiritual world and connects with the bodily life. What may be objected to this connection between the soul, which emerges from the spiritual world, and the brain, with the head as its organ, from the point of view of brain physiology, will one day be put forward as proof of it. Before birth or conception, the soul prepares that wonderful formation of the head out of spiritual foundations, which is present as the formation of the human soul life. The head, for example, only becomes four times heavier in the course of a human life than it is at birth, while the whole organism becomes 22 times heavier in the course of further growth. The head, however, already presents itself at birth as something fully developed, if the expression is allowed: perfect. Even before birth, it is basically an image of the soul experience, because the soul experience works on the head from the spiritual world long before physical facts play out in the known way, which then lead to the existence of the human being in the physical world. For the spiritual researcher, the wonderful structure of the human nervous system, which is a reflection of the human soul life, is at the same time the confirmation that the soul comes from the spiritual, and that the forces lie in the spiritual that make the brain a painting of the soul life.

If I am to use an expression for the connection between emotional life and respiratory life that would characterize it in a similar way to the expression “the nervous system – a picture, a painting of the soul, of the life of the imagination”, then I would call the respiratory system and everything that belongs to it an imprint of the soul-spiritual life, which I would compare to pictographic writing. The nervous system is a real picture, a real painting; the respiratory system is only a pictographic script. The nervous system is constructed in such a way that the soul only has to turn to itself to find out what it now wants to experience within itself from the painting. With the picture writing, you already have to interpret, you have to know something, the soul has to deal with the matter more. It is the same with regard to breathing. The breathing life is less a faithful expression - if I were to characterize it more precisely, I would have to refer to Goethe's theory of metamorphosis; there is not enough time today - it is rather an expression that I would compare to the relationship between the pictorial writing and the meaning of the pictorial writing. The life of the soul is therefore more inward in the life of feeling, less bound to external processes. Therefore, the connection with the coarser physiology also escapes. For the spiritual researcher, however, it is clear that just as the life of breathing is connected with the life of feeling, so too, because this life of breathing is a less precise expression of it, the life of feeling must be freer, more independent in itself.

Thus we understand the body more fully when we consider it as a form giver to the life of feeling, than when we can only regard it as a form giver to the life of imagination. But because the life of feeling is connected with the life of breathing, the spiritual lives more actively and inwardly in the life of feeling than in the mere life of thinking — in that life of thinking which does not rise to imagination but is only a revelation of outer, sense experience. The life of feeling does not become as clear and bright, just as the picture writing does not express its meaning as clearly as a picture expresses it (I must speak more comparatively). But precisely for that reason, what is expressed in the life of feeling is more clearly present in the spiritual than in the ordinary life of thinking. The life of breathing is less a tool than the life of the nerves.

And when we now come to the life of the will, the fact is that when one begins to speak about the fact as a spiritual researcher, one can be decried as a bad materialist. But when he speaks of the relationship between the human soul and the human body, the spiritual researcher must consider the whole soul in relation to the whole body, and not just, as is often the case today, in relation to the nervous system. The soul expresses itself in the whole body, in everything that takes place in the body. If one now wants to consider the life of the will, where must one begin? We must begin with the lowest, most profound volitional impulses, which still appear to be completely bound to the bodily life, absorbed in the bodily life. Where is such a volitional impulse? Well, such a volitional impulse simply manifests itself when, for example, we are hungry, when certain substances in our organism have been used up and need to be replaced. We are entering the sphere in which the processes of nutrition take place. We have descended from the processes in the nervous organism through the processes in the respiratory organism and arrive at the processes in the nutritional organism; and we find the most subordinate volitional impulses bound to the nutritional organism. Spiritual science now shows that when we speak of the relationships of the will to the organism, we must speak of the nutritional organism. A relationship similar to that between the processes of imagining and feeling and the nerve mechanism, and between breathing and the life of feeling, only even looser, exists between the nutrition organism and the life of will in the human soul. Admittedly, more far-reaching things are connected with this. And here we must be completely clear about something that today is basically only asserted by spiritual science. I have been advocating it in narrow circles for many years, which I am now also publicly explaining here as a result of spiritual science. Today's physiology believes that when a sensory impression occurs to us, it propagates to the sensitive nerve and - if it admits a soul, the physiology - is absorbed by the soul. But then, in addition to these sensitive nerves, there are also so-called motor nerves, movement nerves, for today's physiology. Such movement nerves — I know how heretical it is what I am saying now — do not exist for spiritual science. I have really been studying this for many years and I know, of course, that one can come up with all sorts of things that seem so well founded. Take a person suffering from tabes dorsalis or anyone whose spinal cord is squashed, in whom a certain organ makes the lower part of the organism appear dead, and so on. None of these things refute what I am saying. On the contrary, if you look at them in the right way, they actually prove what I am saying. There are no motor nerves. What today's physiology still regards as motor nerves, as nerves of movement, as will nerves, are actually sensitive nerves. If the spinal cord is crushed at one point, then what is happening in the leg, in the foot, is simply not perceived, and then the foot cannot be moved because it is not perceived; not because a motor nerve is cut, but because a sensitive nerve is cut, which simply cannot perceive what is happening in the leg. But I can only hint at this, because I must move on to the important results of this matter.

Those who develop habits with regard to mental and physical experience know that what we call an exercise, for example, playing the piano and the like, is something quite different from what is today called “grinding out the motor nerve pathway”; that is not what it is about. For in all the movements we perform out of our will, the only bodily process that comes into consideration is a metabolic process. In terms of its origin, that which comes out of the will impulse comes out of the metabolism. When I move an arm, it is not the nervous system that comes into consideration at first, but the will itself, which, as you have seen, physiologists deny; and the nerve has nothing to do with it, except that what takes place as a metabolic process as a result of the will impulse is perceived by the motor nerve, which is in reality a sensitive nerve. We are dealing with metabolic processes in our entire organism as the bodily agents of those processes that correspond to the will. Because all systems in the organism are interconnected, these metabolic processes are of course also in the brain and connected with brain processes. The will, however, has its bodily manifestations in metabolic processes; nerve processes as such are only really involved in this sense in that they mediate the perception of will processes. All this will be demonstrated by science in the future. But if we consider the human being, on the one hand, as a nervous being, on the other hand, as a breathing being and everything that goes with it, and, thirdly, as a metabolic being – if I may use the expression – then we have the whole human being. For all the organs of movement, everything that can move in the human body, is itself connected with metabolic processes in its movement. And the will has a direct effect on the metabolic processes. The nerve is only there to perceive them.

It is somewhat awkward when one has to contradict a view that seems so well-founded as that of the two nerves; but at least one is entitled to point out that so far, with regard to either reaction or anatomical structure, no one has found any significant difference between a sensitive and a motor nerve. They are the same in every respect. When we acquire practice in something, we acquire this practice by learning to control the metabolic processes through our will. This is what the child learns after it first fidgets in all directions and does not perform any regulated movement of the will: to control the metabolic processes as they take place in their finer structures. And when we play the piano, for example, or have similar abilities, we learn to move our fingers in a certain way, to control the corresponding finer metabolic processes with our will. But the sensitive nerves, which are otherwise known as motor nerves, become more and more aware of which is the right grip and the right movement, because these nerves are only there to feel what is happening in the metabolism. I would like to ask someone who is really able to observe in a mental and physical way whether, on closer self-examination, they do not feel in this direction, how they do not grind out motor nerve tracts, but how they learn to feel, perceive, and vaguely imagine the finer vibrations of their organism, which they produce through the will. It is really self-awareness that we practice there. We are dealing here with sensitive nerves throughout. Let anyone observe how speech develops out of babbling in a child. It is based entirely on the will learning to intervene in a speech organism. And what the nervous system learns is only the finer perception of what takes place as finer metabolic processes.

Thus, we are dealing with something that expresses itself physically in the metabolism. And the expression of the metabolism is movement, even down to the bones. This could be demonstrated very easily by referring to the actual scientific results of the present day. But this metabolism expresses even less than breathing what takes place in the soul and spirit. If I have compared the nervous organism with a picture and the respiratory organism with a pictographic script, I can compare the metabolic organism with a mere sign writing, as we have it today in contrast to the pictographic writing of the ancient Egyptians or the ancient Chaldeans. These are mere signs, and here the soul must become more inward. But through the soul becoming more inward in the will, the soul, which, I might say, is only loosely connected with the body in the metabolism, enters with the greater part of its being into the region of the spiritual. It lives in the spiritual. And just as the soul connects with the material through the senses, it connects with the spirit through the will. Here too, the special relationship between the soul and spirit can be seen, which spiritual science observes through the means I have mentioned in the last lecture. It emerges that the metabolic organism as it exists today – to characterize it more precisely, I would have to go into Goethe's theory of metamorphosis – is only a preliminary indication of what the complete picture is in the nervous, in the main organism. In its metabolic activity, the soul, as it were, readjusts itself through metabolism, preparing what it then carries through the gateway of death into the spiritual world for the further life in the spiritual realm after death. But naturally it also carries over all that by which it lives with the spiritual. It is indeed most alive inwardly, as I have characterized, precisely where it is only loosely connected with the material, so that for this region the material process acts only as a sign for the spiritual; thus it is precisely in the volition. It is for this reason that the volition must be especially developed if one is to arrive at spiritual vision. This volition must be developed to that which is called actual intuition — not in the trivial sense, but in the sense in which it was recently characterized. Feeling can be developed in such a way that it leads to inspiration; and if it is trained in spiritual research, imagining can lead to imagination. But through this the other enters into soul life objectively, in accordance with its true reality, the spiritual. For just as we must characterize the sense perception in such a way that, after the human sense organs have been created, the external world sends gulfs into us, so that we experience ourselves in them, so we experience the spirit in the will. There the spirit in us sends its essence into it. And no one will ever understand freedom who does not recognize this direct life of the spirit in the will.

On the other hand, you see how Franz Brentano, who only investigates the soul, is right: he does not get to the will because he only investigates the soul; he only gets as far as feeling. The modern psychologist does not concern himself with what the will sends down into the metabolism because he does not want to become a materialist; and the materialist does not concern himself with it because he believes that everything depends on the nervous system. But since the soul is so closely connected to the spirit by its very nature that the spirit can penetrate into the human being in its original form, and the spirit sends its gulfs into the human being, what we place in the world as the highest, as moral will, as spiritual will, is really the direct life of the spirit in the soul. And because we experience the spiritual in the soul directly, the soul, in the forms that I characterized in my Philosophy of Freedom as underlying free will, is really not alone in the spirit, but is, to a high degree, in a higher and, above all, different way, consciously present in the spirit. It is only a misunderstanding of this presence in the spirit if, like the physiologist with regard to the will in Theodor Ziehen, the psychologist also wants nothing to do with the finer impulses of the will, which are nevertheless a truly real experience. They cannot be found in the soul, but the soul experiences the spirit within itself, and by experiencing the spirit in the will, it lives in freedom.

In this way, the relationship between the human soul and the human body is conceived in such a way that the whole soul is in relationship with the whole body, not just the soul with the nervous organism. And with that, I have characterized the beginning of a scientific direction that will become fruitful precisely through the discoveries of natural science, when these are viewed in the right way. It will show that the body, too, when regarded as an expression of the soul in its entirety, is proof of the immortality of the soul, which I characterized from a completely different angle in the last lecture and will characterize further from a different point of view in the next lecture.

A certain scientific-philosophical direction of recent times, because it could not cope with the soul-bodily life for the reasons indicated, has resorted to the so-called unconscious. Its most important representative, besides Schopenhauer, is Eduard von Hartmann. Now, the assumption of the unconscious in our mental life is certainly something entirely justified. But the way Eduard von Hartmann speaks of the unconscious makes it impossible to understand reality with him in a satisfactory way. In the example I mentioned, he makes a curious distinction between the two people sitting opposite each other, one of whom wants the sugar bowl from the other, and how the conscious descends into the unconscious, and what happens in the unconscious comes up again into consciousness. But such a hypothesis does not come close to the insights that spiritual science gains. One can speak of the unconscious, but one must speak of it in two ways: one must speak of the subconscious and of the superconscious. In the sense perception, something that is unconscious in itself becomes conscious by being enlivened in the way characterized today. In this way, the subconscious rises up into consciousness. Likewise, when the nervous organism is observed internally in the interplay of perceptions: the unconscious rises up into consciousness. However, one should not speak of the absolutely unconscious, but rather that the subconscious can arise into consciousness. The subconscious is then also only temporal, only relatively subconscious; the subconscious can become conscious. Likewise, one can speak of the spirit as the superconscious, which enters into the ethical idea or into the spiritual-scientific idea, which enters into the spirit itself, into the realm of the human soul life. There the superconscious enters into consciousness.

You see how many concepts and ideas need to be corrected if we are to do justice to life. And only by correcting these concepts will we gain a clear view of the truth with regard to the human soul. However, I will have to save it for next time to explain the far-reaching significance of such a consideration of the relationship between soul and body. Today, I would just like to conclude by pointing out that the more recent development of education has led us away from the ideas that can provide clarity in this area. On the one hand, it has narrowed the entire relationship of the human being to the outside world to that which applies only in relation to the sensual outside world in its relationship to the human nervous system. But as a result, a body of ideas has emerged in this field that is more or less materialistically colored; and because no one has turned their gaze to other connections between the human spiritual-soul and the physical, this gaze has become narrowed. And this narrowness of perspective has even been transferred to all scientific endeavors in general. That is why it must grieve one's soul to read how, in a relatively good lecture given by Professor Dr. A. Tschirch on November 28, 1908, as a lecture at the University of Bern on “Natural Research and Medicine” when he took over his rectorate - those listeners who are here more often will know that I only criticize those whom I respect in some other respect, and that I only say something detrimental on my own initiative when it is in defense – a strange confession can be found that arises so clearly from the misunderstandings hinted at and from the powerlessness to understand the relationship between soul and body. Then Professor Tschirch says:

He means the inner core of the world. All the antipathy towards possible spiritual scientific research arises from this attitude. That is why he continues: ‘We really have more important things to do.’

Now, anyone who can even utter the sentence, “We really have more urgent matters to attend to,” when faced with the great, burning questions of the soul, would have to be asked about the seriousness of their scientific attitude if it could not be understood from the characterized direction that their thinking has taken; especially when one reads the sentences that follow:

"The ‘interior of nature’, by which Haller probably meant something similar to what Kant later called ‘the thing in itself’, is still so deeply hidden from us at present that thousands of years will pass before we - always assuming that a new ice age does not destroy all our culture - even come close to it.

These personalities are so concerned with the spiritual, which is the “inner being”, that they are able to say: We have no need to concern ourselves with it today, but we can easily wait thousands of years. When science answers the burning questions of the human soul, the time has come for the complement of this science, which is spiritual science. For the attitude that has been characterized has led to the fact that the soul element has been virtually abolished, one might say, to such an extent that the view has arisen that the soul element is at most a concomitant of the bodily element – which the famous Professor Jodl, for example, has held as his conviction almost to our days; but he is only one among many.

But where does this way of thinking lead? Well, it celebrated true orgies when Professor Dr. Jacques Loeb, another man whom I greatly respect for his positive research, gave a lecture on “Life” at the first monist congress in Hamburg on September 10, 1911. There we see how something that is based only on a misunderstanding already gives way to human sentiment, and in this human sentiment towards the study of the soul – forgive the expression – becomes brutality, in that what may only be based on that conviction, which springs from the research, is downright made into a question of power. So Professor Jacques Loeb begins that lecture by saying:

"The question I propose to discuss is whether, given our current state of knowledge, there is any prospect of life, that is, the sum of life phenomena, being fully explained in physical and chemical terms. If, after serious consideration, we can answer this question in the affirmative, then we must also build our social and ethical way of life on a purely scientific basis, and no metaphysician can claim the right to make prescriptions for us about how we should live that contradict the consequences of experimental biology.

Here we have the striving for the conquest of all knowledge by that science of which Goethe's Mephisto says: “She is making an ass for herself and doesn't know how!” This is how it is stated in the older version of Goethe's “Faust” for the words:

Who can hope to recognize and describe a living thing
when they first try to expel the spirit,
Then they have the parts in their hand,
Sadly, only the spiritual bond is missing!
Chemistry calls it encheiresin naturae,
Mocks itself and does not know how.

Today in “Faust” it says: “Mocks itself and does not know how” – young Goethe wrote: “Drills a donkey for itself and does not know how.”

This is the effect of what has been built up on the basis of these misunderstandings: to abolish all knowledge that is not a mere interpretation of physical and chemical processes. But no soul science will be equipped to withstand such an impact if it does not have within itself the possibility of really penetrating into the physical realm. I recognize all that has been achieved by brilliant men like Dilthey, Franz Brentano and others. I fully recognize it. I appreciate all these personalities; but the ideas that have been developed are too dull, too weak to penetrate on their own so that they can take on what the scientific results are. A bridge must be built between the spiritual and the physical. This bridge must be created in the human being by our coming to strong spiritual-scientific concepts that also carry us over into an understanding of physical life. For it is precisely in the understanding of physical life that the great questions, the questions of immortality, of death, of destiny, and so on, are understood. Otherwise, if humanity does not develop an appreciation of this spiritual science, an appreciation of the seriousness of such serious times, then we may find ourselves confronted with views that express themselves in something like the following: You can now get your hands on a book that came over from America and was translated into German, a book by an American scholar, Snyder. In it there is a cute sentence, but it expresses the sentiment of the whole book, which is titled “The World Picture of Modern Natural Science”. And the translator, Hans Kleinpeter, points out that this sentiment must gradually lead to true enlightenment in the present and in the future. Now, I would like to read you a central sentence from this book to conclude:

And yet this is supposed to be something essential, something enlightening! But it is an attitude that is already related to what I have been dealing with today. And it is deeply significant of the modern age that such things can find followers at all, that they are presented as something special.

I also appreciate philology, including those sciences that are underestimated by some today. Where there is real science, in any field, I appreciate it. But if someone were to come and tell me: Goethe wrote Faust; sitting next to him was his scribe Seydel, perhaps writing a letter to his lover; the difference between Faust and Seydel's letter may have been whatever, the ink is the same in both! Both assertions are on the same level, only one is considered a great advance in science, the other is taken for granted as what those revered listeners who laughed at it testified to.

In contrast to this, we must fall back and build on that attitude which is also a scientific one, but which, out of the whole full soul of man and a deep contemplation of the world, has first laid the elements for a science, including that which is present in Goethe's scientific contemplations. The first elements for the further development of spiritual science lie in Goethe; and the true, genuine attitude towards a truthful world view is so beautifully expressed in many of his words. I would like to conclude this reflection by bringing to mind his all-round consideration of the relationship between spirit and external material being, especially with regard to the human body. As Goethe contemplates Schiller's mortal remains and, in this “partial” form, empathizes with the noble soul, with the relationship of the whole spirit and the whole soul to the whole human body, he coins words in his beautiful poem, which he has entitled “On Contemplating Schiller's Skull” — words from which we see the attitude that an all-encompassing contemplation of spirit and nature requires:

What more can man gain in life
than that God-Nature reveal itself to him,
how it allows the solid to flow into the spirit,
how it firmly preserves what the spirit has created!

And we can apply these words to the human soul and body and say:

What greater gain can a person have in life
than to have God-Nature reveal herself,
how she lets the material melt away in the spirit,
and how the spirit experiences itself in the material!

by showing him how the body is an expression and image and sign of the soul, and how it is precisely through this that it is the physical proof and revelation of the immortal soul and the eternal spirit.