The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The situation of someone who wants to say something about the nature of the soul on a spiritual scientific basis, insofar as it can be described as immortal, is perhaps characterized for a very long time by the fact that I am talking about the publication of a book as an introduction. This book is entitled “Athanasia or the Reasons for the Immortality of the Soul”.

I would like to make it clear, so as not to be misunderstood, that today's spiritual research cannot consider this book as written in the spirit of this spiritual research. Spiritual research in the modern sense did not yet exist at that time, as I was able to sufficiently demonstrate in many lectures that I have given here. However, I would like to say that, in view of the fate that has befallen all those long-standing disputes that push towards what today wants to develop into spiritual science, I believe that what happened with the publication of this book is not without significance. So in 1827 a book entitled 'Athanasia or the Reasons for the Immortality of the Soul' was published. The person who published this book wrote a remarkable introduction to it, a remarkable preface, as they say. He writes that he was with a dying person and found the manuscript of this book at his bedside, that he then took over this manuscript with the consent of the dying man, that it could no longer be said to him exactly how the dying man came by this book, which apparently had a great, profound significance for his soul in the last days of his life. Then the person who publishes the book waited because the content seemed so significant to him, seemed to contain such important information about the soul's life after the detachment of the physical body that he could not imagine that this book would not be destined to make its content accessible to wider circles. But since he had waited long enough and had not seen the content published anywhere, he decided to publish the book himself.

What can legitimate research into the origin of this book tell us? There is the strange fact that the person who published this book, with this preface in which he recounts the book's remarkable fate, wrote this book himself, from beginning to end and published it without his name; that he only found it necessary, if one may say so – it is meant in the very best sense of the word – to invent a fairy tale about the book, as it has just been mentioned. It becomes somewhat more understandable why the writer of this book resorted to this fairy tale when one knows that he was a well-known personality in the broadest philosophical circles of his time, a philosopher who dealt with the most profound questions of philosophical thought : the Prague philosopher Bernard Bolzano, who had a large number of students, students who worked for many decades at Austrian universities, who always confessed what a profound influence they had drawn from Bolzano's teachings. So, a famous, influential philosopher, Bernard Bolzano, publishes a book in which he discusses the reasons for the immortality of the human soul, and in this book he has to present himself to the public in the manner described. Why did he do this? Well, the reasons are very obvious. In this book it is not merely stated, as it is so often the case in philosophical writings, that the human soul is immortal for these or those reasons that are derived from human logic. Rather, this book speaks of how man finds within himself a being that can perfect itself between birth and death, perfecting itself in terms of its thinking, perfecting itself in terms of its feeling , perfects itself in relation to its volitions; how this being, when it is rightly grasped by man, shows, however, that it not only bears within itself the powers that lead to its perfection up to death, but that it bears within itself powers that further perfect this soul-being, further develop it, that can be further filled with content even after the human being has passed through the gate of death. This book then explains how one must imagine, when one grasps the human soul, that the human soul must live in a certain environment when it has passed through the gate of death. It also indicates how this human soul, after its death, associates with other spiritual entities, which cannot be perceived as long as the human being dwells in the body. It is hinted at what relationship the human soul, after passing through the gate of death, can have with the relatives and friends left behind, with the souls attached to it in love. As already mentioned, all these details of the soul that has passed through the gate of death are not spoken of from the standpoint of today's spiritual science, but with fine, delicate reasons that a philosopher has developed who not only philosophizes with abstract concepts, but who is involved with his whole soul, with his whole human being, when he develops thoughts, especially the thoughts about that weaving and being in the human being himself, which we call the soul. But Bolzano knew only too well that as long as one remains a logician and discusses how one concept is linked to another, what logical reasons there are for the truth or probability of a judgment, as long as one discusses how attention in the human soul, possibly even the reasons for memory and for the will; in short, as long as one expresses everything that the soul performs while it dwells in the body, one can have the reputation of a scientific philosopher. But if one speaks about the human soul as Bolzano did in his Athanasia, then one's reputation as a philosopher is ruined. Then one is an unscientific person. Then you are a person who talks nonsense and can no longer be taken seriously by those who understand how to think scientifically. Even those who have not learned to think scientifically but swear by the authority of those whom they have heard of or of whom it has been publicly stated that they can think scientifically believe that they can thoroughly dispute the scientific value of such a personality. If Bolzano wanted to save his reputation as a philosopher, he had to resort to the maneuver described above, and then leave it to later researchers to recognize that the book was written by him. And no Bolzano expert today doubts, for the very best reasons that can be proven scientifically and historically, that the book in question is by Bolzano himself. This shows something that was true then and is true today: if you want to openly and frankly advocate something that does not belong to the physical-sensory world or cannot be said about the physical-sensory world, you have to expose yourself to being seen as a completely unscientific person. And as a rule, the 'fact' does not apply either, that one could recognize from the way such things are spoken about, that the person speaking is not an unscientific person.

And yet, just as spiritual science has to speak about the question of immortality today, so this speaking, as I have often emphasized here, is in the fullest sense a continuation of that human spiritual work which, especially in the field of natural science, has led to such great results of human life and striving, which are fully recognized by spiritual science.

Therefore, today I would like to begin by hinting at some of the things that can show how the study of immortality is approached from the point of view of spiritual research, so that everything that can be called spiritual research in this sense today is in fact the direct, immediate continuation of what scientific thinking has contributed to a world view in the course of the nineteenth century and up to the present.

In my book “The Riddles of Philosophy” you will find a chapter entitled “The World as Illusion”. This chapter is not intended to show that the world as it presents itself to the outer senses and to human thinking, which is connected to the brain, should be seen as an illusion, but it does show how many thinkers of the nineteenth century have come to the conclusion that everything perceived by the senses, and also what thinking has to say about the perceptions of the senses, does not flow into the human soul from the outside, but is, as it were, first constructed within the human soul. As far as it can be done in a popular way, I would like to touch on these thoughts in my introduction, even though they may be far removed from many of the esteemed listeners.

We see with our eyes, we hear with our ears, we perceive the world with our sense organs in general. Now, someone who is grounded in the latest natural science and physiological research says that what the senses perceive actually arises only through an interaction of the senses with something completely unknown in the external world. The researcher says: When the eye perceives a color, when the eye receives some impression of light, one must consider that what acts on the eye from the outside remains completely unknown to perception. With his soul, the human being experiences only the effect that the external world has on his soul. That is why, when we go through the world in our ordinary lives, we see things in color, as an expression of their light effects. But if, for example, we strike the eye, we may also have an impression of light in the eye, even if it is vague. Or if we can somehow otherwise evoke that which can occur internally in the eye, say, somehow with an electrical device, then we also get a light impression. That is to say, the eye responds to everything that acts on it from the outside with a light impression. So whatever happens out there, if it somehow acts on the eye, a light impression arises in the eye. The eye creates the impression of light from the effect of a completely unknown external world. It is the same with the ear. It is the same with the other senses. Therefore, for example, the philosopher Lotze, an outstanding philosopher of the nineteenth century, is in complete agreement with Schopenhauer when he says: Everything that we perceive as the effect of light, as color, has actually only come into being in our eye through the effect of an unknown world. What we hear as sounds is created by the effect of an unknown world in the ear. If there were no people with eyes and ears, the world would be dark and silent, and one could never say that something similar to what eyes see and ears hear prevails in this dark and silent, unknown world.

In other words: In the nineteenth century, under the influence of Kant's philosophy, it was concluded that in order for man to gain knowledge and perceptions of this environment, he must engage in an inner activity, and that only through this inner activity does that which he calls his environment come into being in his mind. In reality, one can say that for these people, who are genuine thinkers grounded in natural science, the world is like an illusion. For if out there, where we see pillars and all kinds of pictures on the walls, there is something completely unknown that affects the eye and from which the eye creates colors and shapes, then one can only say that what appears to us as our environment is an image created out of man's own being. And what is behind it can only be constructed by hypothesis, as modern physics does, which assumes all kinds of vibrations in the ether and the like behind our perceptions. So that man, as he goes through the world, in interaction with an unknown external world, simply by the nature of his being, builds up what he calls his world.

Taken as it has just been explained, there is absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing to be said against this line of thought. This train of thought is completely in line with everything that scientific research has delivered in the nineteenth century. One can say: Such a statement as that made by Hermann Helmholtz, the famous physiologist and physicist, is perfectly understandable: by perceiving an external world, man does not perceive what is, what is really happening, but only perceives signs. Not even images, says Helmholtz, are perceived of what really is, but only signs. For what our eyes and ears create of the external world are only signs for the external world. As I said, there is nothing to be said against the seriousness and logic of this line of thought. Taken directly, as they present themselves, that is so.

You have to go much, much deeper into the nature of man if you want to know what is actually behind this train of thought. I have tried to show the philosophical world what is behind this train of thought and how it offers the possibility of finding one's way with it in relation to the human concept of reality. I have attempted to show the way to do this in a lecture I gave at the last philosophers' congress. But these arguments today only lead to general misunderstandings, if not to something much worse. The one who has the task of finding his way in the train of thought just outlined must indeed advance to spiritual science. And then it certainly becomes apparent that one can truly say: The human soul creates by perceiving through the senses that which it must initially call its world. It creates this. It really does create it. But why does it create it, despite the fact that creation prevails in the real? Well, it creates it for the reason that the human soul, that which is the human soul, is not connected to the human being in such a way that one can say: There is the human body, and in this human body the immortal soul dwells within, just as any person dwells in his dwelling and influences the outside world in some way from his dwelling or looks at the outside world through windows. The connection of the human soul with the human body must be imagined quite differently. It must be imagined in such a way that the body itself, as it were, holds the soul in itself through a process of knowledge. In the sense that colors and light, like sounds, are outside of us, in the same sense the human soul itself is outside of the body, and in that the reality carries colors and sounds in through the senses, in the same sense the contents of the soul live, as it were, on the wings of sensory perception. The soul must not be imagined as just a finer physical being that dwells in the coarser outer body, but as a being that is so connected to the body that the body exercises the same activity that we otherwise exercise in cognition when holding on to the soul. Only when we understand how, in a certain sense, that which we call our ego, the bearer of our self-awareness, is outside the body in the same way as sound or color, only then do we understand the relationship between the human soul and the human body. By pronouncing “I”, the human being, as a bodily human being, perceives this “I” from the same side of reality from which it perceives colors and sounds. And the nature of the body consists in being able to perceive precisely this I, that is, the soul's own nature. In order to fully experience the reality of what has just been said, it is necessary for the human being to carry out the exercises that have often been discussed here, that is, to perform inner acts with his soul.

Today, too, I will not repeat what I have said so often, since everyone can read it in my books “How to Know Higher Worlds,” “Occult Science,” or in the brief sketch at the end of “Theosophy.” Today, too, I shall not describe these inner soul-searchings in detail, but rather I should like to give again certain points of view which can show what man arrives at when he, in the sense often described here and in the books concerned, undertakes inner work with his soul , so that what otherwise takes place in the soul as thinking, feeling and willing develops further through inner impulses given by the soul in the meditative life; that it becomes something other than what is in the ordinary life of the body.

When a person undertakes the mental processes – this too has already been discussed in the last lectures – that lead thinking beyond the kind of thought life that one has to have in ordinary life and also in ordinary science, then one comes to think, that is, to perform the inner activity of thinking, but no longer to have a specific thought. Meditation consists in the fact that, while one otherwise thinks, as it were, under the influence of the external world and reflects on things, one evokes thinking as an inner arbitrary activity of the soul, that one does not direct one's attention to what is being thought, but to the activity of thinking, to that fine activity of the will that is exercised in thinking. I have already described this in the last lecture. In a sense, one thinks with a thought-content that one has moved into one's consciousness, into one's soul, through one's own will. One thinks so intensely, so strongly, so powerfully inwardly that one really achieves what one does not want to achieve at first, but what is achieved under the influence of such inner thought-work: thoughts fall away and one lives only in the inner weaving and working of an - well, let the expression be used - an ethereal world. The word “ethereal” is used here in a different way than modern physics uses the term. One lives in a weaving, in a pulsating, and one knows, if one has pursued this experience long enough: What one has discovered in one's thinking, what one has detached from one's thinking, just as the chemist separates hydrogen from water so that he can show the properties of hydrogen that cannot be shown while the hydrogen is still in the water, - one knows, when one has detached the activity of thinking from thinking, that one is now really in an experience outside the body. By continuing such inner soul work, one must then become clearer and clearer about what the experience actually is that one has evoked in this way in the soul. When we perceive colors and sounds in our ordinary life — as I said, this can already be considered a result of natural science — then we know through natural science: an unconscious activity is carried out in our human being; because the fact that the world of color and sound is evoked through the eye and the ear is an unconscious activity. An unconscious activity is carried out through which something that is outside speaks into the soul and reveals itself to the soul. What one experiences in the inner grasping of thinking when one does the corresponding soul exercises is not experienced in the same way as if it were rising up from our muscles, from our blood, but it is experienced as if it were coming in from the whole surrounding cosmic space , as if it were a spirit-being entering us and having a certain attraction to our body, so that it recognizes our body as the vehicle through which it wants to reveal itself to the sensory world. By meditating as described, one steps into the external world itself. One immerses oneself in this external world, from which colors and sounds come to us. That is to say, one frees one's experience from the body. This freedom of experience from the body must be inwardly experienced, must be lived. Through soul exercises, the human being must come to know that he is living and pulsating in an element that is not bound to his body as an instrument. But will, inner arbitrariness, is now present in everything, which thus leads the human being to freedom from the body – inner activity, but inner activity on a higher level. Let us just consider for a moment what it would mean for the human being: suppose – assuming the truth of what I have presented to you as a result of more recent physiology, of more recent natural science – the human being were aware: there must be something unknown, a silent, dark world. I stand in it, I open my eyes. Through my eyes I create color, through my ears I create sound. I place the sounds and the colors into the world. What would a person have to say? He would say: Well, then the whole world is a dream, of course it is a dream. Then nothing of what I see and hear is real. Only because this inner activity, which is there, remains unconscious, because one does not know that one does it — evoke colors through the eye, evoke sounds through the ear — only because of that, one is at all undisturbed in one's outer experience. For if human beings were always aware that they do what recent natural science ascribes to them, then they would certainly speak about the whole world of the senses in exactly the same way as they now speak about what way, and what human thinking, trained in this way, experiences through a world that is just as real as the sense world, but which must be voluntarily placed before ourselves through the effort of free will born of thinking. One might say that it is good for most people that they are blessed with not knowing how they create colors and sounds for themselves, otherwise they would already be able to speak about this colored and sounding world exactly as they speak about the world that the spiritual researcher presents to them. For that is indeed the characteristic of the world that the spiritual researcher presents to the soul: that one now exercises the activity, which one otherwise performs unconsciously for the sensual world, consciously, fully consciously, on this higher level of the act of will, which is detached from thinking. Otherwise, however, there is no difference at all in relation to the sense world. But people are not strong enough to hold to that, to have confidence in that which they must first call into existence inwardly. One would like to say that it is good that a kind God has withheld from people the knowledge that they create the light of the sun for themselves, otherwise they would deny it, as they deny the essence of the spiritual world. People depend on the outside world, on the authority of the outside world, to dictate what is, what is inherent in being. If they are to do something to allow this being to come to the fore, then they are not strong enough, not trusting enough in this inner activity of theirs to allow what they now have to co-create themselves to be recognized as a reality, as a truth.

When, through the indicated exercises of thinking, one has truly grasped the will in thinking, that reality which does not express itself in thoughts of a sense world, then at first – and this too has often been hinted at from a different point of view – — one does not have a spiritual reality before one, but one has only an experience that consists of a weaving and being and becoming; one has, so to speak, an expanded self before one, a self that now knows itself connected to the whole world, from which sounds and colors otherwise reveal themselves to it. But one weaves and lives in this becoming. One only knows that the way one lives in this becoming is reality, spiritual reality, spiritual reality free from the body.

One cannot be careful enough in describing such things, because it can, of course, be objected lightly by someone who believes they are allowed to think they are very scientific: So the spiritual researcher claims that he is immersed in the world through the result of this one exercise; he must actually know everything when he lives in that weaving element. Now, what works from within instead of approaching the person from the outside does not have to reveal all the secrets it contains. One can say that it can be compared to the fact that a person also eats and drinks and yet truly does not know the processes that take place in his body. One gets to know another world in its nature and essence, but naturally one does not get to know all the secrets of that world, which in turn must first be explored in detail, a research that requires exactly the same care and seriousness as the exploration of the physical-sensual world, yes, more. But this experience of living in a weaving world can be compared to when a physical person in the body has acquired the ability to grasp all kinds of things, but cannot grasp anything when he reaches out. In that case, one would know that one has organs to grasp, to make grasping movements, but one does not grasp anything. One would be in this situation if one only had the practice results that have just been described. One would live and weave inwardly in the spiritual element, but one would feel as if one were stretching out the spiritual organs in all directions, and it would be certain: you have grasped yourself in the spirit — but one would still perceive nothing of a spiritual environment. It would only be a general living and weaving and becoming of one's own self in the spirit. A tremendous loneliness, even a sense of apprehension, could seize a person if he only came to these conclusions. Therefore, the exercises that the soul performs when they are taken from true spiritual research are designed not only to develop the life of the mind, leading to such experiences as have been described, but also to develop the life of the will. And this training of the life of the will is something that arises in the most natural way from the ordinary life of the will in man. You can find more details in the books mentioned. But I will again characterize the effect, the results of the exercises of the will, which are already interwoven into meditation in proper meditation, from a certain point of view. Exercises of the will lead a person to the point where he can observe his own volition. Ordinary self-observation, even that which is called self-observation in trivial mysticism, does not yet lead to the point where one really observes the content of one's own volition as one otherwise observes external natural phenomena. It certainly does not lead to the point where one could, as it were, become one's own spectator. But the real exercises that spiritual research can indicate allow the human being to see what otherwise takes place as will in his life and flows into actions or even just lives in desires as otherwise things and processes around us can be observed; that man can truly put himself outside of himself, that he observes himself by wanting this or that, by setting goals in life. One only acquires this ability – and this, of course, cannot fill the whole life, but only claim very short, snatched moments of meditation on life – by so directing one's volition – and every true meditator already directs the volition by doing the right meditations – by so directing one's volition that one does not merely will as one wills in ordinary life. In ordinary life some desire arises. It is prompted by some inner bodily disposition, or it is prompted by an external impression, or the will performs this or that action, and thereby something is brought about in the external world. This volition that lives there can indeed be observed, but observation is made easier if one tries to will that – and as I said, it is willed in meditation – which advances the soul itself; if one makes oneself, so to speak, the object of one's volition, if one want something so that, through what one does in the soul, one gradually becomes a different person; that the soul is organized more finely, that the soul becomes more receptive when one carries out acts of will in such a way that one develops, that one consciously advances in life. Anyone who does meditation exercises knows how, after years of doing meditation exercises, the whole way he thinks about the world becomes different from what it used to be. He knows how he connects passion with desires, and these in turn with thoughts, and so on. He knows that he has become a different being, albeit in a more subtle way, and that this must be perceived. Otherwise, the I is always the center of will. The rays of will emanate from the I, as it were, and pour into the feelings and into the actions. In this kind of willing, the person effectively places himself outside of his ego and advances the ego itself through willing. Therefore, true meditation is particularly suitable for becoming the spectator of one's own willing, for knowing how to place oneself outside of one's own will and, just as one learns to observe natural processes, to observe one's own willing with composure. Otherwise, one is completely absorbed in one's desires, with all one's passions, all one's wishes, all one's emotions. One overcomes this for certain moments in life, and one learns to become a spectator of one's desires.

Let us just consider: when we want something else, we are present in what we want, we are so immersed in it that we instinctively defend it, at least inwardly, as our own. In any case, we do not look at wanting in the same way as we look at, say, the formation of a rainbow. But this is the path that the soul can follow: to observe the activity of the will, as one observes the formation of a rainbow or the rising of the sun; to become so objective, so calm. At first, one strives out of oneself in thought – for at first it is a mental striving out of oneself – in order to become a spectator.

But then one makes a discovery that one must take into account if one wants to become immersed in the reality of these things. One makes the remarkable discovery that although one must strive for what one strives for, one achieves something completely different. And with that I characterize an essential aspect of the spiritual research path in general. On the path of spiritual research, one must, if I may say so, set out on the path. One sets out on the path with the first exercises that I have described by meditating, by putting thoughts into the soul. But if one were to believe that holding on to these thoughts, drilling oneself into these thoughts, is also the goal, then that would be wrong. For the goal consists precisely in overcoming what one has initially undertaken: that thoughts cease to be thoughts in the strict sense, that the activity of thinking, free of the thought, now takes hold of us in becoming and weaving. That is the characteristic of the spiritual research path: that something must be undertaken and something else comes out. And precisely because something is undertaken, something else comes out.

And so it is with this second one I have to describe. You make an effort in the way described—but as I said, you can find details in the books mentioned—you make an effort to become your own spectator, that is, to step out of yourself in your imagination and watch your own volition as you would watch external natural phenomena. But the result of these exercises is different from what it would be if you were to follow a straight line. One might think that one would now become such a being by making a being out of oneself that looks at its currents of will. This is not the case. Rather, the result is that the more one goes out of oneself in this way, the more that which goes out disappears within oneself. In the development of thinking, one becomes more and more inwardly absorbed. The self expands, becomes more intense, more powerful. In the process I have just described, one does not enter into oneself, but one's own self is, in a sense, laid aside. Instead, however, a will remains in the spiritual field of vision, an act of the will. And as it were, out of the plane of these acts of the will, rising up from below, through the acts of the will, there rises a real being, which is a higher human being in the human being. That which one has always carried within oneself through one's whole life, but has not carried in consciousness, that rises through the will, that breaks through it. Just as the depths of the sea would appear if they were to break over the surface, so now a being appears, a conscious being, a being of higher consciousness, which is an objective spectator of all our acts of will, a real being that always lives in us and that breaks through the will in this way. And this being, which one discovers in the currents of will, this being connects with what one has made out of thinking. These two beings, which one has found in oneself, unite with each other. And through this one is now not only in a working and weaving, but in a real spiritual world with real spiritual entities and facts. In it now stands one's own being, which is also born out of the will - but in the company of other spiritual beings - and which goes through birth and death. The human being who, through birth or conception, has connected himself with what materially descends from father and mother, the human being who sustains himself when he steps through the portal of death, is discovered in such a way that what lives and works in us is brought to life in himself from two sides.

In the thinking that one gradually develops, the main thing is that in this thinking we really develop something different from what lives in our ordinary soul, and that is precisely what is difficult. Man is so attached to the habits that he has acquired in his soul through his dealings with the sensual world. Therefore, all these qualities that he acquires through this spiritual path, as it has been described, actually initially unsettle him. A sense of apprehension, loneliness, and restlessness can come over him. If everything is done correctly, as indicated by true spiritual science, this does not happen. I spoke about this a few weeks ago in the lecture I mentioned, 'A Healthy Soul Life and Spirit Research'. But everyone knows that when you enter into the spiritual world in the way I have described, a certain restlessness can arise, a certain inner anxiety, and even distinct feelings of fear towards the spiritual world that want to overwhelm you. And to avoid this, there are already enough clues in true meditation. But if someone expects that what his soul then does in these newly evoked abilities is directly similar to what the soul does in relation to the external physical world, which it must have around it all day, then he is subject to the most severe deceptions and also disappointments. Then he becomes restless because he says to himself: “I am living in something indefinite and unfamiliar. I have always thought in a different way. My thinking was so secure in the other way; it clung to a certain being that was given to me. Now my thinking is supposed to live in a becoming and not, so to speak, forget itself.

But in the true spiritual path this is avoided by the fact that this true spiritual path brings with it — it brings it with it quite naturally when it is followed in the right way — that what we can call interest, inner soul interest, manifests itself for the human being in a completely different way than the soul interest usually manifests itself in the physical world. It is really true: one acquires a new interest, a quite new kind of interest, when one leads a meditative life. It must be emphasized again and again: one does not want success for the inner life alone. Those spiritual exercises are of no value from the start and must be decidedly rejected, which make man unfit for the outer life. A person who practises true spiritual exercises remains as firmly rooted in the outer life as he was before. No, he will become even more firmly rooted in this outer life. If he has to pursue a particular occupation wherever fate has placed him, he will fulfil this occupation no worse than before if he has true spiritual science. And one can be sure – forgive the trivial expression – that the person who gets all kinds of raisins into his head by going through spiritual exercises, and then thinks he is too good for what he was before, is most certainly on the wrong track. But through that in the soul which is the actual spiritual research activity, one acquires new interests, which take the soul in a different direction, in addition to the old interests, which become even more intense for the outer world.

I will give an example of what it is like for someone who is a philosopher. Perhaps it is useful to give this example for the very reason that most philosophers believe from the outset – well, that they can judge everything from spiritual science much better than the spiritual researcher himself. But those who are not philosophers themselves become restless when faced with the many philosophies that exist. Isn't it true that one should just take a look at all the “ians” (Kantian, Hegelian, Schopenhauerian, Hartmannian) just once, all of them, and then one will see, even if one adds others to that, that one should not allow oneself to be unsettled: Well, everyone thought differently, but I want something certain in my thinking! This tendency will then take on a different expression in the philosopher. The philosopher who wants to be a “ianer” himself now develops a certain train of thought; he then swears by it, and the others are of course all fools, whom he can refute, or at least people who are going astray. But the person who has developed his thinking in the way described, who has included the process of thinking in thinking, reads Hartmann with the same interest as Schopenhauer, as Hegel, as Schelling, as Heraclitus. He does not even get around to refuting one and becoming a follower of the other, because he takes a certain interest in the movement of thinking, in being inside thinking itself, because he takes a certain joy, a certain pleasure simply in the act of thinking and because he knows that this thinking does not lead to reality in such a way as is usually believed — that thoughts can simply be reflections of reality — but that one only comes into a life and weaving in the work of thinking. Yes, when one can do this, then one can take the standpoint: Certainly, the one philosopher has viewed the world from one point of view, the other from another! And the philosophical world view that one then gets cannot be seen any differently than a tree that has been photographed from different sides, where one also does not say: I declare the one photograph to be wrong, that is not at all true with the other, that is a completely different tree! Because it is only a different tree because it has been photographed from a different side. If you look at the activity of photographing, and not at the abstract reproduction, then you will see for yourself what is right. And so it is with thinking. You become interested in the mobility of thinking, and you know that you live in spiritual reality when you live and move in thinking itself. And there is something else that is introduced into your development through the exercises of the will, and this goes much deeper. It can disturb many people, and would even appear very disturbing if you were not sufficiently prepared, as is the case in every true schooling of the spirit. I would like to say again: for ordinary life, people are familiar with the fact that what lies within their will actually only appears to them in such a way that when they have done something they call good, they rub their hands together; then they are very satisfied with themselves. If they have done something they call bad in some way, they reproach themselves. But it remains with these inner soul processes. Man oscillates back and forth between rubbing his hands together out of satisfaction with what he has done and blaming himself. But when the volition is trained in such a way that the inner spectator emerges, then a greater seriousness permeates the matter. Then it is no longer just reproaches or inner satisfaction that arise, but you get to know a very real being in what permeates the will as a spectator and shoots up through its surface. You get to know: That which otherwise appears to you as reproach and as inner satisfaction is a real power. This real power is there in the world, it will continue to have an effect. In the further course one learns to recognize how this power develops into a further destiny and influences the next life on earth as a fact, after one has passed through the life between birth and death. What one experiences there as will, would follow the one who is not well prepared like a shadow, like something one always drags along, like one's shadow, like a real being. Everything depends on whether one also learns to understand the full significance of these things; that one learns, for example, to recognize: what follows one around as a shadow need not lead one to hypochondria, but one must look at it calmly. For it is not at all what has significance for the present life, but what passes through the gate of death with us, what is among the forces that will help determine the configuration, the nature, of our next life.

In short, the interests associated with these developed inner soul activities are different from the interests of the outer life, but they do not detract from these interests of the outer life at all. They merely put everything in its proper place, so to speak. When someone comes to an awareness of what goes through birth and death, what is immortal about the soul, as I have described it, then he will not become less interested in the external physical facts that directly surround him, but rather he will come to the conclusion that there is a spiritual world. In this spiritual world there are just as many concrete spiritual processes and entities as there are in the physical world, and he can see them. But that which exists as a physical world can only be seen in the physical world. What surrounds us as a physical world naturally ceases to exist after death. Only because we carry an immortal being within us, which is a reality in itself and belongs to a reality that goes beyond the physical, do we carry something through the gate of death, enter into a spiritual world, into a world that we live through between death and a new birth, and then enter into yet another earthly life.

Especially when one knows, not in the abstract but in a living sense – and it is only through spiritual research that one really gets to know this – that one can only get to know this sensual world in its full inner essence through one's senses and through the mind that is connected to the brain – then, under this life-filled self-development — not through some theory, but through what life absorbs, under the influence of the exercises that awaken our lively interest in everything that is obvious; the interest for the smallest details in the world is increased. Only one particular interest, and this we must take with us, grows ever smaller and smaller: the interest in that which is already able to appear in the sense world as so-called 'spiritual' and to reveal spiritual reality in and out of the phenomenon itself. It is known that spiritual things can be grasped when the organs, the spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, are developed first, to use Goethe's expression. It is known that one must rise to the spiritual world, and it is known that in the world of the senses, this world of the senses must be grasped out of itself, that it stands as that which must be grasped through the world of the senses. Therefore one loses interest in all those events that seek the spiritual out of the world of the senses itself. And while interest in everything that takes place in the spiritual world increases, especially in true spiritual research, interest in the sense in which it exists for many in the spiritual world is purely sensational and all kinds of superstitions and belief in miracles disappears completely. Interest, let us say, in spiritualistic events, in mediumistic performances, completely fades away. The spiritual researcher is not interested because he knows that only something abnormal can come to light in these things, which is indeed based in the sense world, but which cannot lead beyond the sense world into the true spiritual world. Of course, he can take an interest in it, as one takes an interest in some theatrical performance, in some experiment that otherwise appears in the world. Nothing should be said against such events, provided, of course, that they are not frauds, in that they allow a variety of otherwise inexpressible natural connections to be expressed. But they are natural phenomena, and we know that we do not live in these things in any other way than we live and move with our ordinary senses, however abnormal it may seem. For everything that belongs to this area, which I have just touched upon, interest wanes, as I said. It becomes a mere witnessing — well, of all sorts of events. And it is the duty of every true spiritual researcher not to allow superstition to grow in him, but to uproot superstition completely.

It would be very easy to believe – and because it is possible, it must be emphasized – that a person who experiences spiritually what I have indicated, and who basically experiences nothing less than what he can call his immortal soul, and that he is actually experiencing life after death; that he is already experiencing what will be experienced after death. In this abstract form it is not the case, and one must think very carefully about these things if one wants to get an idea of them. What the soul experiences after death, or let us say, from death until birth, is experienced in much the same way as a plant would consciously experience everything that is in its germ, which represents all the forces for the new plant. One experiences everything that must necessarily be gone through in the spiritual world after death in order to prepare one's entire life with the new body and the new experiences as a new destiny in the coming earthly existence. It is the germinal being in us that is suited to experience in the spiritual world between death and new birth that which then prepares a new life on earth, so that we then have the body that we need to have the abilities that we have previously prepared within us, so that we put ourselves in the position in which we need to be when our destiny is to be fulfilled according to our previous life on earth. That this potential lies within us, we experience that. But to have this experience before us, to have the spiritual world before our own soul, for that it is necessary, of course, to go through the experiences ourselves between death and a new birth, which one can at most look at and develop in knowledge, but in a living knowledge that is an inner reality, while the knowledge of the external world, of the physical external world, is only mental images.

You see, I would of course need a great deal of time to discuss in more detail what I have only touched upon. This will be possible in the coming lectures. But, as you can see, there is a certain path that can be described as the path of spiritual research, which leads to the development of a life that is inwardly different from the life of the soul in the external, sensual reality. And in this experience, the soul takes hold of itself in such a way that it lives and breathes in the inner power that passes through the gate of death.

Fichte only sensed the truth when he said: Immortality is not only there when we have passed through the gate of death, but it is there when we are still living in the body. For the being that passes through death can be attained by human knowledge while it is still alive in the body. How is it attained? In a remarkable way, we have to form ideas ourselves from spiritual science as to how it is attained.

You may well ask how can a person achieve all that has been described as a result of soul exercises? How can soul exercises lead to something like this? You see, people very often complain – especially when they have a keen cognitive drive – that you can't really see through reality, that there are limits to knowledge. How often have I pointed out in these lectures the famous Ignorabimus of Da Bois-Reymond, where it is said that man can indeed come to an observation of the processes of the world and their limits, but cannot penetrate into the interior of matter; that he cannot, as it were, submerge himself in the interior of matter with his thinking. It is said of all knowledge that all these powers of knowledge are actually insufficient to fully penetrate nature.

When one begins to strengthen the soul inwardly as it has been described, one notices something very definite. One notices how tremendously good it is that there are such limits to external knowledge. For if the powers that one has for external knowledge were to make one see through all nature through themselves, these powers would prevent one from attaining spiritual knowledge. Only because one cannot use everything that is in the soul for external knowledge is something left that can be developed in the way I have explained it. Only because the full, immortal soul does not enter into bodily life, but still retains something, whereby not everything is transparent in the outer bodily life, are inner forces preserved, which can then be developed in the way described. By connecting ourselves with the physical material given by our ancestors through birth or, let us say, through conception, we retain so much of the immortal soul that, on the one hand, we are prevented from seeing through the full nature in the bodily life, and have to make hypotheses and all sorts of things about what lives in nature. But as a result we have in the background of our being forces that we can develop within us and that allow us to enter into a spiritual world in a spiritual way. The immortal soul lives in man. In order for it to live, some things must be taken away from man in a sensual way. This, in turn, is such an important connection that one must look at it.

There is therefore a spiritual research that introduces us directly to the immortal being of man. This spiritual research is different from the external research. In the external research, one can remain as one is. That is exactly what suits people. The same abilities that they have acquired once, they retain when they go into the laboratory, when they do experiments, and can learn something about the external nature. And then these people also demand that the spirit should be explored in the same way, by retaining the same abilities. One cannot approach the spirit without first making oneself spiritual, that is, seeking out that which is in every human soul but which must first be raised to consciousness in the manner described. But there is much, much that, I might say, still thwarts people's paths to spiritual science in the present time. That is why the chapter 'immortality question and spiritual research' is still so little recognized today, one that people are so reluctant to get involved in.

You can already see from what I have said that it is necessary for man to learn to think and live in a subtle inner way. That is to say, when he becomes a spiritual researcher, he must not become a lesser thinker than those who believe, let us say, that they have mastered thinking, who claim that they stand on the firm ground of external natural science, which is not to be challenged in the slightest. They do not love that in the present. In the present, one loves to develop, I might say, that very tangible thinking that does not even broach the subject of the finer things that live and move in the world.

I do not like to do this: to make personal references. Those of you who have been to these lectures often will know that I actually avoid going into all the opposition from the outside world and all the misunderstandings regarding what I am presenting here as spiritual science. I would prefer to ignore it and not talk about it at all. But when things keep coming up that do have an effect and are believed, they do harm to the cause. Personally I would prefer not to talk about these things at all, but harm is done to the cause because printed paper still has tremendous authority today, because it still has a tremendous effect. And so, for the sake of the cause, one must sometimes, when occasion is offered by some topic, go into what stands in opposition to spiritual science. If coarse thinking is opposed to it, which, because it cannot engage in the finer weaving in the life of thought, can see nothing but fantasy, nothing but a form of madness in what spiritual science indicates as the right path for spiritual research. Let me give you an example. And, as I said, please excuse me if it is a personal example, but I only mention it in so far as it is opposed to spiritual science, which is expressed in it as a typical phenomenon.

I gave a lecture in a certain city about the relationships that prevail in the nature of the individual European peoples, relationships that, as many listeners know, I had already presented long before this war gave rise to talk about them; insights that were found quite independently of this war, but which, as they are presented, should actually be obvious. For when it is said in the course of the lectures, which are now often combined with the lectures on spiritual science, that the peoples of the West, the peoples of the European center, the peoples of the East differ in this or that, one should believe that no reasonable person could actually be led to say anything other than: Well, yes, he may be mistaken about individual characteristics, but there really are differences. There really are different character traits, different ones in the Germans, different ones in the Russians. To deny this can only arise from the crudest thinking. And yet, as I said, I also gave a lecture on this in a certain city. In a daily paper of the town in question, this was discussed and said in the most derogatory way, that these differences were constructed only out of the war, as it were. But one could ignore that, following the example I gave recently, for what is being achieved in this area. But now think, that was not enough for one man, but the man even turned to a magazine, and in a magazine what appeared in the newspaper at the time was printed, and the following nice comment was attached to it: “The accusation of the speaker” - that is, the critic of the Tagblatt of the city in question - “of having reconstructed opposing cultures from the current constellation of powers, rightly applies to Steiner. With the best will in the world, I am unable to perceive, as Steiner does, a difference in essence between Central European and Western and Eastern European culture. In my opinion, European culture is completely the same in essence.” And so it continues. This appeared in a Central European journal. You can see from it what a crude thinking is confronted with spiritual science as such. For what I have read to you here is further developed in a detailed article that extends over several issues. The thought — well, I need only hint at it, then you will see how crude such a person's thinking is: “Intellectual life, too, has developed in this direction and is absorbed in this pursuit. The wild greed of the European cultured man for the possession of earthly goods would degenerate into a predatory struggle of all against all, were individuals not forced into iron state forms.” So this crude thinking does not even notice how these ‘iron state forms’ are initially more involved in what is happening in this war. It is thinking like this that one has to deal with. Such thinking is in contrast to what must be demanded in the light of an understanding of such a question, and so also of the question of the immortality of the soul. And such a thing does not appear in a materialistic magazine, but in a magazine - it even bears the heading “42nd year” - that calls itself “Psychical Studies”. That I am not speaking out of personal resentment, I can prove to you from the magazine itself. You know, or at least many people know, that I have dealt with the main ideas which this gentleman here attacks in such a way in a small pamphlet. This pamphlet is called “Thoughts During the Time of War”. In this pamphlet, though perhaps in a popular way, are exactly the same thoughts, written at least from the same spirit, from the same attitude. In the same issue as the article from which I have just read the characteristic passages, there is a review of this work, “Thoughts During the Time of War”. In this review, the work is highly praised and it is shown how meritorious it is to express such thoughts. It goes without saying that I am just as indifferent to being praised as I am to being criticized. But I must characterize what already lives in the formation of the times, so that it is not believed again and again when diatribes appear here and there, simply through the suggestive power of what is daubed with printing ink on dirty paper, since that always forms a kind of obstacle for those who might otherwise find their way to spiritual research. One must point out the grotesque nature of the experience that can be had in our time in such a way. And it is only for this reason that spiritual science must be kept free, so to speak, in the context in which it is found, in the light in which it must appear as true, genuine, honest spiritual science. In order to keep it free in this light, I must also touch on other matters.

I have already pointed out in the lecture before last, where I spoke about misunderstandings regarding spiritual science, also in the lecture “Healthy Soul Life and Spiritual Research”, that spiritual research is not only opposed by what comes from the more or less materialistically minded side. On this side it is extremely difficult to achieve something for the reason that the things that are put forward from this side are so terribly plausible. When I have to characterize something, such as this magazine, I do it reluctantly. When I seriously oppose something, I turn to those whom I actually hold in high esteem. So I also hold in high esteem the actual father, I might say, of modern materialism, Lamettrie. He is an astute man, and his reasons are plausible. But one can acknowledge the plausibility of these reasons, one can assert them and one should still, when the spiritual research path is asserted alongside them, acknowledge the significance and essence of this spiritual research path alongside the validity of what comes from the materialistic side. Lamettrie is, as I said, an astute man, and in his book 'Man a Machine' he has put together everything that can prove how man is dependent on his physicality. Now it might seem as if spiritual science would have every reason to contradict such things. No, it agrees with everything, as I even proved in my last lecture, in a more forceful sense than materialism itself. For it is indeed easy to understand and irrefutable when Lamettrie points out how man's mental state depends on what he is. Of course it is very easy to prove, because it is so terribly obvious that man depends on whether he likes something or whether something agrees with him. Think of the mood of the soul that results from it. Lamettrie describes all this, and in doing so, he basically anticipated everything that can be said about this matter. Isn't it extremely interesting – especially in this day and age – to read what Lamettrie said in his book 'Man a Machine', because if you read it somewhere else, it would not make a good impression. But here in Central Europe, this passage can perhaps be read with greater composure than in Western Europe. Lamettrie wants to prove what man actually is - really prove how man, in terms of his mental state, indeed in terms of his character, in terms of what lives in him in terms of soul, depends on what he eats, what his food is. And there Lamettrie says – but as I said, it was more than a century ago since it was said – in his book 'Man a Machine', Lamettrie says: 'Raw meat makes animals wild; humans would become wild from the same food. How true this is,” says Lamettrie, the Frenchman, ”can be seen from the fact that the English nation, who eat meat less cooked than we do, eat it entirely raw and bloody, and show a wildness that is partly brought about by these foods, but partly also by other causes, which only education can suppress. This savagery engenders in the soul arrogance, hatred, contempt for other nations, unruliness and other feelings that corrupt the character, just as coarse food produces a heavy and clumsy mind, whose main characteristics are laziness and dullness.” It is perhaps not uninteresting, especially in Central Europe, to hear the judgment of a Frenchman, even if it is more than a hundred years old, about the English, so that one can see how circumstances change and how people have not always felt and thought in the same way from one place to another and from there to there. This same Lamettrie also says other things that are quite natural, for example, he says - and he believes that this is enough to refute everything that can be said from the spirit about the spirit - he says, for example: “A small fiber would have made two fools out of Erasmus and Fontenelle.” One can, of course, admit this and still stand on the ground of spiritual science, as it has been characterized today. For there is much more that can be admitted and that will not shake spiritual research. Let us assume, for example, that if only a small fiber were different in the case of Erasmus, then, from the point of view of pure materialism, this would mean that his life would perhaps have become that of a drip instead of that of a genius. But now, if it had happened that the mother, before he was born, had been murdered by a bandit and Erasmus had been killed before he was born, what would have become of Erasmus' soul? Only a true spiritual researcher is able to see through such things. For it seems even more compelling that man is dependent on matter; for it would only have been necessary for him to have died as a small boy, then he would not have been there.

That spiritual research has anything to deny that comes from this side should not be believed by those who, with their blunt considerations, want to stand in the way of spiritual research. But even today, on this ground, one still sees much that is unclear and imprecise. The characterized coarse thinking is primarily to blame for this; but there is more to it than that: spiritual science has to suffer not only from those who oppose it, but it also has to suffer from those who often want to be seen as adherents of a certain spiritual-scientific direction and who, in turn, are connected with all kinds of strange social elements of the present day. And as a result, spiritual science is lumped together with all kinds of stuff by those who do not know how to distinguish — I have already pointed this out, but I have to go into it in more detail today with reference to something else. Spiritual science does not build — as you can see from a characteristic of my lectures, which is often criticized, namely that they are too difficult — spiritual science does not build on the gullible crowd, does not build on those who, in a comfortable frame of mind, want to gain some kind of conviction, does not build on those people who, as if in a 'dream, go through life and believe everything that is conveyed to them through their certainly subjective power of persuasion. Spiritual science does not build on that which lives in the world of superstition, and because certain things are rightly discussed in public on the materialistic side as nonsense, a sharp line must also be drawn in spiritual science itself between honest, true spiritual research, which follows only the truth, and that which so often likes to its coattails and what comes from a side where one counts on the superstition of mankind, which is present as well as insisting on one's own judgment; where one pretends to people all sorts of things, because even today one finds enough people who believe everything possible, if it is only proclaimed to them from an alleged spiritual world - unknown whence. What can be confused with spiritual science from this side – as I said, it must be pointed out in order to shake it off – true science, and that is spiritual science, has little to do with it.

I will only point out a few things, because these things are now being discussed publicly on the materialistic side and, certainly under the influence of the serious and serious events of the times, there will be more and more discussion. I want to show how wrong those are who associate spiritual science with some form of ordinary or higher superstition, that higher superstition that pursues all kinds of goals in the world and actually only works in such a way that it first puts people into the world who are said to have higher abilities, a clairvoyant gift. True clairvoyance consists in what has often been described and is again described today. But what people call clairvoyance today is actually subconscious, but is often also just a fraud. But we are not reckoning with what is in the subconscious, but with the effect. Therefore, one must reckon with what the fraudulent clairvoyance is able to do with superstition. And there it is possible that all kinds of dishonest endeavors and currents arise, where one wants to achieve something completely different from what lies in the realm of truth. What people need to know, what is achieved by this, is that first of all — allow me to use a harsh expression — people are made stupid, befogged, by showing them all kinds of occultism, which has an effect on their superstition, and then, with the people made stupid, all kinds of things are carried out that do not belong in the realm of sincerity and honesty. Spiritual science has the same duty and necessity to point out these excesses of modern life as materialism does. And if it proves materialism right in its field in such cases, as I have shown with Lamettrie, then it may also prove it right when it turns against all excesses of an apparent spiritual experience, which is nothing more than life in blind superstition.

In 1912, an almanac was published, a yearbook, edited by a personality who is revered in a city in the West as a higher clairvoyant by many who are clouded in the way just described. This yearbook appeared in 1912 for 1913, in advance. In it, the following note appears about Austria: “The one who is destined to govern in Austria will not govern. A young man who has not yet been appointed to the government will govern.”

And with even greater clarity, the almanac for 1914, which was published in 1913, returns to this matter. There may be gullible people who believe nothing more and nothing less than that a great prophecy has been fulfilled, and it is impossible to make clear to them in their blind faith that dishonest currents living in the European world have been at work here, using superstition and all kinds of dark occultism to bring something into the world. How this is connected with all kinds of underground currents can be seen by considering that a Parisian newspaper, “Paris at Noon,” long, long before the current turmoil and at about the same time as the appearance of the aforementioned note in the aforementioned almanac of an alleged clairvoyant in – a Parisian newspaper that makes no claim to be occult in any way, but can be compared to other newspapers that appear at noon – that this newspaper also expressed its wish long months before that the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand would be murdered. One can see certain underground connections. And this same paper wrote at the time of the three-year anniversary of his term of office: “Among the very first to be murdered if mobilization occurs will be Jaurès.

The same personality who publishes this almanac travelled to Rome in the first days of August 1914 to influence certain people who are open to such influence, in a direction that I will not say is linked to the main causes of Italy's position, but which had already taken effect in this matter.

I only discuss these things because they are discussed by others, from a materialistic point of view. But they must be discussed so that it can be seen that true spiritual science has nothing to do with such things, with superstition in general that relies on the credulity of the masses, and with what is done under the guise of superstition, both in large and small matters. Spiritual science will only appear as a real science that can be placed alongside other sciences when it is kept free from everything that can still be easily confused with it today and that is often confused with it, not only under the influence of limited judgment, which simply cannot distinguish, but also out of ill will. And in the literature that is thrown at spiritual science, a lot of work is done precisely with the fact that what one has to lie about when one wants to characterize spiritual science is so lied about that spiritual science is thereby put on the same ground as those things that spiritual science must of course fight as fiercely as they are fought by materialistic science.

But just as we recognize such things, spiritual science will emerge ever more clearly in its purity in what it can be for the human soul. Does not the latest book by Ernst Haeckel, that is, by a serious researcher, “Thoughts on Eternity”, shows how utterly at a loss mere natural science is in the face of such great events that have such a profound impact on the development of humanity, since it knows of nothing better to say than this:

Not that such a time would provide the reasons for spiritual science, but one must recognize what spiritual science can become for human life in the spiritual realm: that which sustains the human being, which holds the human being, because it makes him acquainted with that with which no natural science makes him acquainted. Natural science can only make man acquainted with that through which his body is connected with the sensual universe. Spiritual science makes man familiar with this through the fact that it shows him, by means of research, that he has an immortal soul, so that one can know: This soul of man is connected with eternal becoming. Man is anchored in eternity through his soul and spirit, as he is anchored in temporality through his body.

If one asks whether man needs something like this, it must be said that there can be no proof for it, any more than there can be for the fact that he needs to eat and drink. But just as man experiences through hunger and thirst that he must eat and drink, so he experiences over and over again in his soul that he must know. And the more one demands knowledge and not mere belief, one will recognize that he must know about the immortality of his soul. One can deny that man demands this knowledge, but the denial is only a theoretical one. The time will come more and more – and we are already at its beginning – when, just as hunger asserts itself in the healthy human body, the thirst for knowledge of the spiritual world, for knowledge of the immortal character of the soul itself, will assert itself in the human being who lives beyond himself into the time that begins with the present. And it will be an unquenched thirst if there is no spiritual science. This will show in the effects. Theoretically it will be possible to deny it – but it will show in the effects. It will show in the fact that people will find themselves desolate in their souls, will not know what to do with their lives, that they will perform their external tasks but will not know what the meaning of life is, and that they will thirst for this unraveling of the meaning of life. Little by little it will extend to the intellect; little by little it will show how man's thinking becomes coarser and coarser. We have already found enough coarseness in one example today. In short, the development of man would experience a descent if it could not be fertilized by spiritual science.

May the times we are living through today, which call upon man to be earnest in so many fields, also be a sign that the time is beginning when people must have knowledge of immortality and that spiritual research is the way to achieve it. The spiritual researcher himself knows that he is in harmony with all those who, even if they have not yet done spiritual research, have nevertheless been living and breathing in the spiritual world through the very nature of their soul activity. The spiritual researcher knows himself to be in harmony with those who simply knew what it means to live in the spiritual world. When Goethe was asked why he wanted to recognize the plant through ideas, since ideas are something abstract, he said: “Then my ideas, which I believe I experience within myself, are direct reality, because I do see my ideas within reality.” Therefore it was Goethe who, even when he had not yet spiritual science, knew what to say in a poetic but accurate way about the character of the spiritual world, where he was spiritually and soulfully transported by the poetic genius.

Today we have to say: the person who, through the development of his thinking, lives into the spiritual world, lives and moves in the emerging soul entities. And when man is freed from the body, he is also a spiritual-soul entity that lives in the becoming. That which has become, that which is solid, exists only in the outer sensual world in which man lives as long as he is in the body and then only when he perceives through the body. As soon as man ascends to the spiritual being, he is seized by the becoming. Goethe knows this. He also knows that just as man, through his own feeling, lives into his inner well-being, he can also live into a feeling that may well be called love. That is the surprising thing and always will be when one comes to spiritual people, that they even know how to say the right thing with the right word from their life in the spiritual world. That is why Goethe also says: one lives in the becoming. And when one develops oneself into this becoming, then the thoughts live in this becoming itself. Not the ordinary thoughts — these must first be overcome, they can only be incorporated into the world of becoming as something lasting, something enduring. Only when that which can be grasped in the process of becoming is held fast in thought, can the thought become fixed and we can carry it with our immortal soul through the portal of death. That is why, towards the end of his prologue in Heaven, written at the height of his life, Goethe speaks the beautiful words with which I want to conclude these reflections today, because in them, in a time that lies before the development of spiritual research as we understand it today , a poet speaks of the spiritual world out of poetic genius in a way that one must speak of it out of realization, by first pointing, or having the Lord point, to that which man needs as long as he lives in the sensual body. So that he does not degenerate into comfort and convenience, the Lord points out to Mephisto those who are spirit beings. And when free of the body, the human being is such a spiritual being. Goethe points out the peculiarity of the spiritual world with words that are sure to hit the mark. For you will recognize in these words what I myself had to recognize in them. After I had developed everything that I have presented today, I was surprised by the wonderful correspondence of these Goethean words, which I had not recognized before, the wonderful correspondence of these few Goethean words with the fundamental character the world to which the immortal human soul belongs: “But you, the true sons of the gods” - spiritual beings are meant, just as man is a spiritual being as an immortal soul -,

“But you, the true sons of the gods,
Rejoice in the living, rich beauty!
Embrace with love's sweet barriers what is becoming, what lives and works eternally,
And what floats in a wavering appearance,
Secure with lasting thoughts.”

Attention is drawn to that which lives in the pure spirit as its very own, but which is recognized in the human soul as its immortal part. In these words, which are directly a characteristic of that which can be grasped in the human soul, even when it is still living in the body, as the immortal, and of which one can know that it passes through the gate of death, when it enters the realm of the developing and takes with it to the pure realm of the spirit that which it has experienced here in a fluctuating appearance, in order to transform it into thoughts that can then become permanent and be taken through the gate of death. And what lives in fluctuating appearance affirms the soul, which passes through the gate of death, as an immortal, as an eternal being, in lasting thoughts, which henceforth make up its life in the same way that the body makes up the soul's life in the physical world.

Dear attendees! As a continuation of the spiritual-scientific considerations that were presented here the day before yesterday, today I would like to give a continuation of what was suggested, a continuation that is intended to apply the gained perspectives to the significant question of human destiny.

In the lecture the day before yesterday, dear attendees, it was pointed out that spiritual science is entirely based on the inner work of the human soul, and I would like to briefly reiterate a few thoughts from the day before yesterday's lecture. The point of spiritual research is never, as in the other sciences that extend to the outer life and to the outer world of facts, to cultivate outwardly perceptible activities for the senses, never to carry out the outer world in any way at all, but the path into the spiritual world is an intimate path of the human soul. And one link in this path of the human soul, by which this soul prepares itself to enter the spiritual world, as was already indicated the day before yesterday, is a special way of treating what we call human imagination, human thinking.

I said: By allowing us to look into his inner spiritual laboratory, as it were, the spiritual researcher must point out that the human soul's imagining and thinking must be treated in a completely different way than they are treated in everyday life or in external science. In external science, we consider the thought, the idea, the concept that we have acquired on the basis of sensory observation or on the basis of experiment or in some other way; we consider the concept as that which we have acquired, as that which reflects the external world to us. And in that it depicts, be it processes in the external world, be it laws, natural laws or the like in the external world, we are satisfied when we have, so to speak, arrived at the thought, when we have arrived at the idea of what is going on outside, or how the external processes are connected in a lawful way.

But this is where spiritual scientific research begins, where the work of the mind, the life of the mind in everyday life or in external science ends. The point of spiritual scientific research is not to have a thought, not a thought as a reflection of the external world, but to live with the thought, with the idea in the inner soul. So that, as I have already mentioned, in this inner exercise, in this inner work of the spiritual world, it does not matter at all whether we are in the thought, in the idea, through which we practice the soul, through which we advance the soul, as it were, in higher self-education, whether we depict something external in the thought, in the imagination, whether in the ordinary sense of external science or of external life these thoughts are images of something in the external world; they can be symbols, as I mentioned. What matters is that we sink a thought into the soul, that we become completely one with that thought, that we divert all attention from what otherwise occupies us in the world, and, as it were, fix all the powers of the soul within us on this one thought.

And now we must immediately recognize, by doing this, that we are carrying out a completely different task than the tasks of ordinary science. In the tasks of ordinary, external science, we can stop when we have the thought, we can be satisfied when we have the thought. And we are convinced in ordinary science when the thought logically satisfies us, when the thought corresponds to our sense of truth; then we can stop our research work for the time being. This is not the case with the way one does spiritual research. It is never the case that you stop when you have the thought, which you place at the center of your consciousness through arbitrariness, through an inner will initiative; you basically have nothing when you have placed the thought at the center of your consciousness and directed the attention of all the powers concentrated in the soul to it. Just as one has very little when one has sunk the seed of a plant into the earth, so one has very little when one has fixed the thought in the soul. One must wait until the forces from the air, the forces from the earth, the forces from the sun and so on interact to develop the plant germ into a plant - one must wait and see what is not done by us, what is done by the cosmos, what is done by the outer world.

In exactly the same way, we as spiritual researchers must treat a thought. We must, as it were, sink it into the soil of the entire soul life and then wait and see what it becomes in it. We cannot help ourselves other than by repeating the same process of looking at a thought every day. It does not take long, minutes are enough every day, but it must be repeated every day; and it takes a long, long time. And all we can do is wait and see what becomes of this thought by devoting all the powers of the soul to it and looking at nothing else, feeling nothing else, sensing nothing else but this thought. The important thing in spiritual research is to watch something growing within ourselves. While in other research it is important to carry out a certain task and to explore the lawful connection through thought, that is, while it is about doing something that has, I would say, a beginning and an end through our own will, in spiritual research we have to watch what becomes of the growing, sprouting thought in us.

And then the time comes – earlier for some, later for others, depending on how their destiny is laid out – then the time comes when forces hidden in the soul become active and more and more active, and by applying that inner energy, which we otherwise cannot summon up in our everyday life and in ordinary science, we really bring about what can be said to truly tear our soul-spiritual out of the physical-bodily, and it leaves the physical-bodily. By expressing this thought and calling attention to the fact that it is a spiritual-scientific method, one immediately touches something in this spiritual-scientific method that completely contradicts the thinking habits of the present time. . By expressing this thought and calling attention to what spiritual-scientific method is, one immediately touches something in this spiritual-scientific method that completely contradicts the thinking habits of the present time. These thought habits of the present time cannot imagine that it is really possible for a person to find such inner strength in his soul, that his spiritual and mental self is so torn from the physical and bodily as the hydrogen is torn from the water by the procedures used by the chemist. But everything depends on whether the human being, by continuing to do what has just been described at its most elementary level, really comes to perceive another person living within him, another person who underlies our existence and who does not need to use the external senses to have a world around him, who does not need to use the mind, which is connected to the brain or the nervous system, to have an external world around him.

The world view, esteemed attendees, which corresponds to today's thinking and which often emphasizes that it stands on the solid ground of the so admirable natural science, this world view often speaks of the limits of human knowledge, it speaks of it in such a way that it says : Yes, there may be a spiritual world, a supersensible world that underlies the sensual facts and everything that can be known through the intellect, which is connected to the brain, but humans are not designed to penetrate this world. And we know that there have been philosophies over and over again in the course of human development, philosophies that have endeavored to determine the limits of human knowledge.

Basically, these limits of knowledge are only the limits of those insights that are bound to the physical and bodily. And why this is so can also be seen by the spiritual researcher if he really applies the methods described in a few strokes to his soul life. For a very peculiar phenomenon occurs when one endeavors, through ever more energetic and energetic concentration of the soul power in the indicated sense, to become, as it were, completely one with that which one has placed at the center of one's perception, one's thinking, one's entire consciousness. After a time, one notices how something really does grow inwardly, something really does contract inwardly, namely our soul-spiritual nature, which is dependent on the body. But after some time one notices that one is heading straight for the opposite extreme. Not only do all kinds of other thoughts keep coming into one's attentive consciousness and confusing one on the path one is seeking with one's soul life, but this is something that can be overcome relatively quickly. However, what the spiritual researcher encounters when he tries to develop his soul is that, while he first experiences an increase of the forces that otherwise underlie thinking - [at a certain point there occurs what could be called “a darkening, a weakening” of this inner soul force], and that which the soul experiences there is, basically, quite harrowing. For one experiences nothing less than a feeling of approaching powerlessness, a powerlessness that says to oneself: Alas, these soul powers are not sufficient to penetrate the whole extent of the spiritual world! It comes over the consciousness like a terribly paralyzing sleep. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what those philosophers do not allow themselves to approach when they speak of the limits of knowledge, but what the soul, I would say unconsciously feels when it philosophizes.

For not only that lives in the depths of the soul, of which the soul is aware in ordinary life, but down there in the depths of the soul, in the hidden depths of the soul, there lives so much that is not in everyday consciousness. And the fact that we know nothing about it does not mean that what is down there in consciousness is not effective. There, in the unconscious, is something that the spiritual researcher experiences at the moment when he has this feeling of powerlessness, of which I have just spoken. The spiritual researcher notices: there is an unconscious fear in the soul, a fear of losing the ability to perceive and understand the world. And there is no other way to overcome this fear, as soon as it becomes conscious, than to intensify the already described efforts of concentrating the soul life more and more. Then, I would say, into the empty space of consciousness, in which the power that otherwise underlies thinking and feeling had already been paralyzed, there enters that which can enter through the increased strength and inner energy of the soul life.

It was a hidden fear, one that had not come to consciousness, when Kant spoke of the limits of human knowledge. He felt that knowledge in which the body helps us cannot go beyond the realm of sensory life and the laws of sensory life. He did not want to make use of the spiritual scientific method. He called it, although he sensed that there was something like a development of the soul towards independence from the physical body, he called it: “an adventure of reason”. And Goethe gave the great, one may say the powerful answer, that one must dare to pass this adventure of reason.

Powerlessness is what one really has at the bottom of one's soul, what is always at the bottom of one's soul. And one would like to say, honored attendees, that this powerlessness at the bottom of the human soul is fully justified. For if this powerlessness were not there, then the urge of man would be invincible to use the soul-spiritual powers forever for that which leads beyond the sensory world. But the fact that we feel, perceive and recognize the world of the senses is based on the fact that we, I would say, become accustomed to our physical body, to the physical-bodily, and that we regard it as a necessity to live in relation to the world in this physical-bodily. Just as one carries out a chemical experiment in such a way that it leads to the abnormality of external nature and thereby unravels nature, so one must develop something abnormal in the soul, something abnormal for everyday life, in order to truly look into the spiritual world, I would say through inner chemistry.

And by living in the spiritual world, one certainly gets a different idea of this newly acquired knowledge than one had of all knowledge before. Yes, knowledge is something that so many people associate with the idea that one actually recognizes best when one limits oneself to the intellect and the outer senses, which basically leave us sober and cold, and which occupy only a part of our life. The moment the spiritual researcher truly enters the spiritual world in the manner described, the moment he has torn his soul and spirit away from the physical body, he is surrounded by a spiritual world just as he is surrounded by a sense world within the body. In the same moment in which the spiritual researcher truly enters this world of the spiritual, in that same moment he feels as though he has awakened in this spiritual realm. But at the same time he feels that he can no longer be with the world with only a part of his soul life, as in outer knowledge, but that he must immerse his entire being in what presents itself to him as the spiritual world.

Just as abstract, I would even say sober and dry, as the world is that only animates and occupies part of our soul as the world of ordinary knowledge, the connection with the spiritual world is just as intensely effective in our soul. One can say: in the ordinary sense of the word, intellectual knowledge of the external world cannot hurt or cause us pain. In the moment when we enter the spiritual world in the way described, we must immerse ourselves with our whole soul in the beings that belong to the world into which we are entering. Everything we recognize there makes the deepest, most intense impression on our sense of pleasure or pain, on our sense of sublimity or on our sense of oppression. Our whole being is immersed. With our whole being, we have to live with the world in which we live, whether it be full of sorrow or joy. And again, it is fear, but a secretly felt fear that does not come to consciousness, which prevents the ordinary consciousness from immersing itself in this world. Truly, one does not become poorer in world content when one approaches this spiritual world. On the contrary, honored attendees, one becomes richer in world content, because one realizes what this fear of a subconscious powerlessness is actually based on. It is based on the fact that the world is much richer, infinitely richer in its glory, in its greatness, in its inner lawfulness, than what we are only able to think when we make use of the powers that are bound to our body.

And the riches of the world are what immediately arise before the soul in an overwhelming and numbing manner when it confronts the spiritual world through inner strength. But the soul, which is bound to the physical with its consciousness, feels, despite knowing nothing about it, it feels powerless, and it wants to avoid this powerlessness out of fear, the powerlessness that exists in the face of the spiritual world. Therefore, we see how, on the one hand, people shrink back and delude themselves about the limits of knowledge, so that they say that knowledge cannot penetrate into the spiritual world at all, or, on the other hand, when they have a deep yearning for the spiritual world, they satisfy it in a completely different way than the one described. The way described is that of genuine, true spiritual research. But the way described presupposes that one is serious about freeing oneself from the physical body. This can only be achieved through increased inner soul activity, this can only be achieved through the application of an energy that is never necessary for us as inner energy in everyday life or in everyday science.

But people want to apply the very thing they are accustomed to in everyday life when they approach the higher worlds. Human consciousness, after all, feels precisely the powerlessness described, and, I might say, in a way that is quite understandable, this consciousness feels this powerlessness described precisely when it wants to confront the more intense, the richer, the more exalted world of the spirit. Therefore, man would prefer to eliminate what dwells in his body rather than exerting himself to a greater extent in order to recognize the spiritual world. The feeling of hidden powerlessness makes him come to the conclusion that precisely because he is powerless in the face of spiritual life, he must eliminate the means by which he recognizes in ordinary life; instead of developing it, he wants to eliminate it. Then he does not approach to recognize the spiritual world, to develop his inner being, but then he approaches and seeks either through some external events or by using, as one says, a medium in whom precisely the spiritual, instead of being developed, is asleep, he tries to gain knowledge of the spiritual world through the automatism of the bodily life of the medium, without his inner involvement. There is only the fearful shrinking from reliving the experience of unconsciousness. For this feeling of unconsciousness must be experienced; only by overcoming it, by consciously experiencing it, does man advance in knowledge. But in the secret feeling of this feeling of unconsciousness, it is precisely that which man wants to shut out, that which leads him to spiritual knowledge. That is why so many seek through mediums or spiritists to communicate with them from the spiritual world. It is easy to see that this search through mediums or spiritists is the extreme, the ultimate expression of the feeling of powerlessness in the face of the spiritual world.

But our time, honored attendees, needs strength, needs power, because as the outer life becomes more and more complicated and complicated by the wonderfully developing natural science, especially in its social ramifications, man, in wanting to penetrate the spiritual world, must develop ever stronger and stronger powers. That which appeals to weakness, to the exclusion of the spiritual and soul, can never have a future; it can lull and lull man to sleep in the face of what is to be brought out of the hidden depths of the soul.

Now one can imagine how much what has been said is rejected as – let me say it again – a mental laboratory process of the thought habits of our present time, how much it is rejected, one can imagine when one sees that just the opposite extreme of what has been described has become the ideal for a large part of the educated people of today. For where is the spiritual researcher led when he enters the spiritual world by the method just described? He is led to say to himself: Not only does the world of sense live in your surroundings, but a spiritual world also lives in your surroundings! And he recognizes: This spiritual world contains the causes, the foundations for the existence of the world of sense. But the ideal of very many who truly believe that, as trained and educated people, they stand on the firm ground of natural science, with which, as I mentioned the day before yesterday, spiritual science is in fact completely in harmony. But most of those people, whose nature has been indicated, who believe that they see the ideal in eliminating everything that is found in the characterized way, believe that the ideal of knowing nature is to see only mechanically interacting causes and facts everywhere, to eliminate everything spiritual from external natural processes. That is the ideal of very many who have the thinking habits of the present day.

And it is basically considered a remnant of old superstition to see anything in nature or behind nature that is spiritual; [rather, one wants to] explain as much of nature as possible only by facts that are built according to the pattern of what can be observed by the senses. In this way one wants to comprehend external physics, biology, physiology and even the processes of the soul. I hinted at this the day before yesterday.

The ideal of a knowledge that excludes everything that the spiritual researcher comes to when he applies spiritual scientific methods is the ideal of the most educated people, many of the most educated people of today. So one might say: mechanical natural order is what is taken as the basis of nature. And the counterpart to this, dear ladies and gentlemen, is the observation of human life. Once we have become accustomed to seeing nothing but mechanical order in nature, we then become accustomed to rejecting precisely what the spiritual researcher must come to. And a sum of coincidences is basically what people see in what befalls them in their lives between birth and death, in the physical life of the body.

So how does a person relate to what happens in this life between birth and death? When something happens to him that he regards as a stroke of fate, for better or for worse, his initial response to this stroke of fate is what can be called the sympathy and antipathy of the mind. Just as a person searches for causes and effects in nature outside, he basically leaves what plays a role in his destiny as a mere series, as a mere sequence of coincidences.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, since we can say that the spiritual-soul content awakened in the spiritual researcher actually slumbers in the human being in ordinary life, it must be said that even in the fully waking life, when a person is engaged in action, when a person acts in such a way that he uses his outer body and the outer sense world to carry out actions, something in the person also sleeps. And what sleeps there prevents him from seeing a connection in the process that is unfolding, in the coincidences of life. Basically, what happens to man in the context of life is the same as what happens to many people in the course of history and still does today in the face of natural facts. A person who does not study natural science sees the sun rise and set; he observes the individual positions of the sun; for him, external facts exist that occur over time and in space. Then he, with his thinking, with his science, with his methods, approaches what are otherwise external facts, and he brings coherence into this world of external facts by replacing mere staring at the facts with the coherence that is expressed in the laws of nature. Man does not bring such a connection into what he calls external life coincidences, initially, because the forces within him that mean the same for this area as the forces of cognition mean for the facts of external nature, remain dormant for ordinary life. We must apply our knowledge to the facts of external nature in order to see laws in external nature. According to ordinary habits of thinking, man is not inclined to apply to that which takes place as his fate between birth and death such inner processes as he applies to the facts of external nature. And I will now indicate the path that arises for spiritual research in order to bring a similar law into the sequence of events of fate, as external thinking brings it into the sequence of natural facts.

What we call fate, I would like to say, let us look at it only - not to say anything special about it now, but only to illustrate what I want to say later - let us look at what we call fate, first of all for the life between birth and death, for the outer life that always surrounds us, in which we are always wrapped up and which our fate imposes on us.

We can say that when we look at ourselves in any particular phase of our lives: What are we actually in this phase of our lives? Yes, we say: we are a self, we are an I; we have a certain inner soul life. But certain things in this inner soul life that lie on the surface, we learn to understand and look at quite differently when we look back at earlier phases of our lives. If, for example, after we have turned fifty or forty-five or forty years old, we allow ourselves to look back – say, to the time we went through between the tenth and the eighteenth or twentieth year – when we look back at the so-called coincidences of fate that occurred in our lives at that time, yes, when we fully realize what lies in these coincidences of fate, then we will very soon be able to say the following to ourselves: You can do something now. You are able to think in this or that way, to act in this or that way. Basically, you are nothing other than this ability, this ability to understand, this ability to act. That you understand something more or less spiritually, that you act in one way or another, that is basically what you are. Why is it you? Just think how you would be different, how you would really be a completely different inner self if the events had not occurred that you can look back on between the tenth and twentieth year. They forged you into what you became; what you became there is concentrated in your self. These events now act out of you in many ways. They have concentrated you in essence; they have formed your self. And when we study our self at a particular moment in our life, we find it, I might say, put together like the sum of an addition from the addends. One can now survey one's life in this way. It is not a matter of finding all kinds of interesting things in one's life. What in ordinary life we call self-observation does not actually lead the soul very far beyond itself. But there is a special way of developing one's soul life when one really comes to look at the experiences of fate one has with sympathy or antipathy, but when one looks at them in such a way that they are the basis for what one actually is.

It is not this insight that is important in spiritual research, but the feeling that You have found yourself as a result, as a product of your destiny! This feeling can be increasingly awakened in oneself. And now two things can come together: what one has previously awakened as a spiritual researcher through the concentration of thought, of feeling, as it has been described, what one has experienced as the emergence of the spiritual-soul from the physical-bodily, and the development of this feeling. They can meet in the soul, these feelings, just as in ordinary life between birth and death one is actually the result of fate.

And when one meditates in this way, when one develops this coloring, this nuance of feeling in the soul, when one concentrates more and more on how, as it were, the inner self of the human being flows out completely and into the current of our destiny, when one makes these ideas completely alive within oneself, when one comes to literally see: Yes, what you are in your inner being, as your self, you see flowing into your destiny. When this becomes very much alive, when it is repeated again and again, so that it becomes a habitual inner experience, then we indeed experience a transformation, a transformation of our soul life. We experience such a transformation, such a transformation of our soul life, that only now is it experienced as a fulfilled, complete whole, which can be called the spiritual-soul that is free from the body.

And this soul-life, this spiritual-soul life, which is free from the body, shows itself to us, honored attendees, when we continue the spiritual scientific methods, as they have been described, and shows itself to us as that which underlies our life between birth and death. It does not reveal itself by logical deduction, but by developing such an inner life as has been described, the soul, as it were, opens a spiritual eye, to use this expression of Goethe's; as if the eye had not yet developed and only developed in the course of life and then our vision opened, it is like this when we work on our inner being, that a new person arises in our inner being, a person who now stands before us in such a way that he is now not just the result of fate, as it has been stated in a trivial way for the time between birth and death, but that he really grows together with his fate.

And now something new arises; so if one has developed the soul, something arises again that can be called: the perception of a secret fear otherwise hidden in the soul. So when you let the soul, as it were by seeing it in the river of fate, snatch itself from the body, then, then you discover - not what you are as a bodily human being - but then you discover within the spiritual world, which you have already conquered in the way described, you now discover yourself. Now you discover what you never knew about yourself before, now you discover the true human being. Now you discover the human being that underlies the ordinary human being who lives between birth and death – or, for that matter, between conception and death. Now we discover the human being who descends from a spiritual world as the true cause of physical human existence, who has an attraction to what can be given to him through the ancestral line, through parents and pre-parents, who brings down the forces from the spiritual world that only form themselves through what can be given to him materially through parents and pre-parents. And now, honored attendees, a fact to which, I would say, the great modern thinker Lessing pointed with deep inner truth, now a truth becomes the realization that what is at work in our body is the result of previous lives on earth. And that what works hidden in our body, without us being able to sense it in our ordinary life, that this is like a germ that after death first enters a spiritual world and, after it has developed in this spiritual world in such a way as the plant germ must develop, it pulls itself together again, so to speak, for a new life on earth. The realization that the whole of human life proceeds in such a way that there are repeated earthly lives for man, this realization must be acquired by the soul's distinguishing itself from the physical body.

In the ordinary experience, honored attendees, one basically has only a single reference to what lives in us as a human core, which goes from life to life and always stays in a spiritual world between death and a new birth. In spiritual knowledge, one lives in this core of life, in this essence of the human being. In ordinary life, we only have a certain point of reference for this when a person falls asleep at night. Spiritual scientific observation shows that falling asleep is conditioned by the fact that what is the core of a person's soul and spirit really lifts itself out of the physical body. But because the powers are not developed, as has been mentioned today, this spiritual-soul core of being remains unconscious from falling asleep until waking up. But very often, as everyone knows, something emerges from this unconsciousness of ordinary sleep life: the chaotic, but often also very interesting, structures of the dream.

What presents itself to a person in a dream is very often observed incorrectly. Among the many dream images – I cannot, of course, go into great detail about what a dream presents, although it would be very interesting to see what one can experience there – the most interesting dreams are probably those in which someone in later life, for the dream life, the dream consciousness, sees some scene in which people appear with whom he may not have had any contact for a long time, many of whom may have died, people with whom he now enters into relationships in his dream consciousness. Whole stories can unfold. If you look at such a dream in the sense of an ordinary memory activity, you are very much mistaken. It would take too long to explain this sentence in more detail, although it can be explained in more detail.

If you want to properly assess the events of a dream that take place in the unconscious mind, you don't have to look at the content at all. These images, everything that takes place, is basically only as significant for the essence of the dream as it would be if one were to say: 'There is a sheet of paper, on it I find a vertical line, a line that goes askew from right to left, one that goes askew from left to right, and so on. In this way he would describe all the letters that are on the paper. But it is not the person who describes the letters on the sheet of paper who is relating to the paper in the right way. Rather, the only person who relates to it in the right way is the person who, having learned to read, deciphers the meaning of what the letters, combined into words, express, without even bringing into his consciousness what the letters look like. What the dream presents is, in relation to what it is in essence, really nothing but letters, which, however, are not as exact as the letters of our ordinary writing, but change with each dream. And it is a deeper realization that can look at the dream and decipher it, just as we remain unconscious of the unconscious when we read the forms of the individual letters and words; that is what is actually contained in the processes of the dream, it is more the character of the human soul core that conjures up these images.

For example, we dream that a person who has long since died tells us this or that, that he does this or that with us. We do not dream it because this image of the dream wants to tell us something special, but we dream it because our soul essence has an inner quality, an inner power, which can best be visualized in this way, can best be visualized by putting itself into a relationship, symbolically into a relationship with a person, with this person whom one has encountered in life. That which is not expressed in the dream at all, which is at the bottom of the soul as the inner strength of the soul, as the character of the soul, that is the essential thing. And if one engages in the scientific recognition of the dream experience, precisely through the method of spiritual research that has been mentioned, by perfecting it in this way, if one engages not in interpretation but in the scientific recognition of the dream experience, then one also finds in the dream experiences that something that is in a person is shaped by special circumstances - which could also be described, but which the short time available today does not allow - into such images. And spiritual research shows us that what a person has acquired in the time between death and a new birth has matured in him a life core, a life germ.

We act and think in the life between birth and death, but what we think and how we act always expresses only a part of what we are, namely the part that lives through the fact that we are in a body. Just as the essence of the other person, who has been described and discovered through spiritual science, is hidden in the everyday life of the person, so this core of being is hidden in the human being. Only through those special occasions in our particular life, in our dream life for example, does the human soul core, which is free of the body when we fall asleep or awaken and is not yet completely at one with the bodily life, reveal itself. how it is mirrored in the bodily life, with which it is still imperfectly united, and what has passed through the human being in every action, but has been stored away, what has remained, what we have not fully lived out, what we have incorporated into our inner self. In dreams, that which passes through the gate of death reveals itself, that which passes through a spiritual world to reappear in a new life on earth. However, one can only recognize it through the dream if spiritual research has preceded all of this, honored attendees!

Thus we see how, in the course of spiritual research, man not only has to experience the unconsciousness of which we have spoken, and how, in overcoming this unconsciousness, he has to find his way into the spiritual world, but we also see how man has to discover his true self first.

Now, before this discovery, man has a secret fear. For the process is the process of losing ourselves in the body as human beings, while discovering ourselves as true human beings who go from life to life. As a spiritual researcher, the human being must first get used to looking at himself outside of himself in the world; he must first get used to discovering himself in his fateful work, and by mustering the courage to overcome the fear and shyness one has of oneself, one discovers oneself in one's true self. And now you discover that this true self is the forge of that which otherwise appears to us as the result of the coincidences of life. You now discover yourself in your destiny. And a completely new feeling, a completely new experience, interweaves and surges through the soul.

We are confronted by a heavy blow of fate, a blow of fate that we otherwise only face when it causes us bitterness and suffering, when it shakes our mind and we feel unhappy under its influence. If, as a spiritual researcher, you have discovered your higher self in the way described, you say to yourself: You have gone through many earthly lives with this higher self of yours. You have lived, thought and acted in these earthly lives in such a way that you have brought with you a certain quality in your soul from previous lives. This quality of the soul adheres to you just as the magnetic force is in the magnet. This quality, this power, exerts a secret attraction on the event that has entered your life as a misfortune, just as a magnet attracts iron filings. You have sought out this misfortune for yourself!

Do we not see in life what can be, once we have gained this point of view, honored attendees? We go through life. Much, much passes our eyes, ears, minds, feelings and wills. We meet many people. Among many and many people there is one whom we, as it were, feel attracted to by mysterious forces of our being, with whom we enter into a life partnership in friendship or otherwise. Why did we do that? Because the forces that we brought with us from previous lives were seated within us, and because these forces were attracted to what lives in this person's soul, just as a magnet is attracted to iron filings. This force passed by the other person. But through this we shape for ourselves everything that we now experience together with this person as fate.

In the same way, however, we also shape our destiny by descending from the spiritual world in which we live between death and new birth to the new birth. In our physical existence on earth, there are those forces that our ancestors can give us through inheritance. We are drawn to those forces that we need according to the qualities of our soul, and we connect with them. We notice the secret bond that exists between us – long before birth, before conception – and that which can be given to us by the hereditary powers of our ancestors. Indeed, more exact spiritual research even shows us, honored attendees, that this bond has been forming long before there can be any talk of our birth or our conception.

Once logic takes the place of what is currently believed to be logic, but is in fact pure illogic, a completely different way of thinking will take hold. Today, many people say: You can see that a person who displays certain qualities in life must have inherited these qualities from his or her parents or ancestors. Spiritual science wants to come and show that the human being, as a core, so to speak, envelops the inherited qualities he has chosen for himself. According to today's thinking, we should be glad that external science has brought it to recognize how the qualities of ancestors revive in descendants, as ordinary physiology can explain.

And particularly the core of this logic is what people want to play out when they say: you can see that in genius. If you observe genius, you can see that the qualities that are concentrated in genius can be found in the parents, grandparents and so on and so forth. Genius usually occurs at the end of a developmental series. Nice logic, that! Because it is quite similar to when someone finds it particularly helpful to explain that they are wet when they have fallen into water and are being pulled out. Of course, if you are at the end of a line of inheritance, you must bear the qualities that surrounded you in the body through that line of inheritance, just as water surrounds you when you fall into a stream. But there would be real logic in the matter if one could show that what lived in the ancestors as qualities of genius would live in the descendants. Not by looking up from the genius to the ancestors, but by descending from the genius to the descendants, that would be real logic. You don't even realize how you are contradicting all logic when you proceed in this way, when you judge as it happens. Because you will stay pretty, that you always look for the qualities of genius in the descendants. One need only point out great geniuses and then show how it sometimes looks, especially with their descendants! Here one will soon find that what a person has worked for himself, what he is inside, that this is what provides the attractive force for events, for all the processes of outer life that converge in his destiny.

Thus we will be able to say: From birth to death, we bring order into the succession of our other coincidences of fate when we recognize ourselves, when we overcome our fear of ourselves and recognize ourselves in our true humanity. Because then we also recognize that we have brought misfortune upon ourselves because we want to steel ourselves against this misfortune, because we lacked a strength and the lack of this strength evoked an attribute in us that forms an attraction for precisely this misfortune.

In addition to such a worldview, which thus discovers the actual human being in destiny, comes the realization that the only reason the human being does not want to discover himself in his destiny is because he is afraid of arriving at this view. This is difficult, honored attendees, but once the truths of spiritual research have been discovered, then one does not need to be a spiritual researcher – although, as I explained the day before yesterday, to a certain extent everyone today can become a spiritual researcher by observing the rules written in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. To a certain extent, I said – but one does not need to be. Once the truths of spiritual research have been expressed, they can be understood and recognized by the sense of truth that exists in everyone, provided it is unbiased.

Just as one does not need to be a chemist to benefit from everything a chemist produces – here one does not need to understand it, only to benefit from it – so one does not need to be a spiritual scientist to find truth, because, to use a trivial word, to find truth is the benefit of spiritual scientific discoveries. Just as one can apply chemical products in life, so can one apply that which spiritual research brings, because it is there and one only needs to approach it without the prejudices that come from ordinary habits of thought, which have been sufficiently described, if one only does not approach it, it will have an effect on the natural person.

The spiritual researcher relies on nothing else, on no authority, he relies on nothing else but the fact that he discovers and explores nothing but what lives in every soul. Through his knowledge, nothing is added to reality; what he discovers lives in every soul. Therefore, it only needs to be expressed, therefore what lives in the depths of every human soul must profess what the spiritual researcher has to say.

Even if this is not yet the case today, yes, if it must seem understandable, as I said the day before yesterday, that today much more opposition, disregard, scorn and ridicule is being expressed towards what the spiritual researcher has to say, it is still true that the development in the next future will proceed in such a way that people will just be willing to acknowledge that human life in truth continues through many earthly lives, that fate becomes understandable to us when we see the higher human being prevailing even in the indicated way, in this fate. Thus men will be willing to recognize this, as they have been willing to recognize that which, as it was said at the time, “contradicts the healthy five senses,” namely, that it is not the earth that stands still and the sun that moves around and the stars that move around, but that it is the other way around, that the earth moves around the sun.

Those who come today and say, “What the spiritual researcher has to say contradicts the healthy five senses!” are on the same ground as those people who came at the time of Copernicus and said, “Well, that the sun should stand still, that contradicts the healthy five senses!” No healthy, thinking person can acknowledge that. As in those days – I have already said this here in earlier years – as in those days, when Copernicus's new teaching was accepted, Giordano Bruno came and said: Our five senses have taught us that up there is the blue firmament and under this firmament the stars revolve. But the truth is that there is no blue firmament up there, but that only the limitations of human perception set the firmament - the firmament feigns to you - while the universe goes out into infinity and embedded in the universe are the innumerable stars. Just as Giordano Bruno had to reveal the spatial firmament as a mere appearance, which is evoked by the limitations of human perception, so spiritual science must, I would say, reveal the temporal firmament of the human soul life, which is limited by birth or, let us say, conception and death. Just as there is no firmament above, there are no limits where birth or conception and death are concerned. Only human observation and human thinking in ordinary life are limited there; and this one life is embedded in the whole stream of time.

Today, esteemed attendees, we stand at precisely the same turning point in spiritual knowledge as the world stood in relation to natural knowledge when Giordano Bruno had to step forward and emphasize the deception of the outer space firmament, just as we today must emphasize the deception of the time firmament, of birth and death. But when people will understand, even without becoming spiritual researchers - because just as there are individual chemists, individual astronomers, there will always be individual spiritual researchers in the future - when people have put aside all prejudices against spiritual research, just as they have put aside all prejudices against the scientific world view, then, just as the scientific world view has flowed into the activities of our outer life, how it has, I might say, built up everything around us in our outer life in the modern world, so too will spiritual science, in relation to the life of the soul, into which we live as human beings by living towards the future, that is, into what the spiritual-scientific ideas are.

And above all, it should be noted that these spiritual scientific ideas are incorporated into our feelings and perceptions. And how different these feelings and perceptions become when they are permeated, imbued and suffused with spiritual scientific ideas, for example when we ask ourselves the question of fate. We will find fate intimately linked to what the higher part of ourselves, the actual spiritual soul that goes from birth to birth, accomplishes. Just as we see the laws of nature in the external nature as the connection of the external natural facts, so we will see our higher self, ruling in our destiny.

Of course, the question can always be raised, I just want to say that as an interjection, dear ladies and gentlemen, whether this will always continue in this way for all eternity with earthly life. Well, only as long as the earth is under the same conditions as it is now, will earthly life continue in this way. Spiritual science leads us straight back – you can read more about this in my 'Occult Science' – to very different conditions on Earth. There, the human being has also developed out of very different conditions into a life that leads him through repeated lives on Earth. And when the Earth has taken on completely different forms, there will also be completely different conditions on Earth, as physics already teaches us, then the human being will also take on completely different forms. This life on earth is an intermediate state, from one birth to the next. But as we now live this life on earth, spiritual science is what brings coherence to all our coincidences of fate, what allows us to grow together with our destiny. And it is certainly the case in our time, and I do not want it to be felt as out of place, when it is said that the difficult time that we are going through in these days, weeks and months must particularly direct our souls to such an understanding of human destiny. We see – as I mentioned the day before yesterday – how, in countless sufferings, but also in countless acts of courageous bravery, in admirable acts of sacrifice, what must be lived out in the course of history is being lived out precisely through today's events.

And how can a person who finds himself in these events feel a sense of belonging to these events, how can he feel a sense of belonging to these fateful events of our time, if he can feel how the secret bond of attraction, which has been said to emanate from his being and to prepare his destiny, has placed him precisely in this fateful time? How does one feel, growing together with such a difficult time, when one feels the growing together between the human being in the higher sense and destiny in the sense of spiritual science? And how does that trust grow, which we must have in events, when one sees the connection between the human being and his destiny? On the one hand, we see how we, with our higher self, have chosen this time as our appropriate lifetime, as the lifetime that most closely corresponds to the qualities that we have hidden in our core being, and how we have placed ourselves in this time. In this way we also gain confidence: we will have the strength to truly fulfill the demands that this time must place on us. Not through mere admonitions, not through mere coaxing, not in some sentimental way do we want to be prompted by spiritual science to have confidence, but by saying to ourselves: one thing always demands another. The qualities in our soul that have brought us into this time are connected with others that will also enable us to lead what our time lets us experience to such ends as were presented in the lecture the day before yesterday as arising from the demands of our time.

We do not rely on admonitions, not on sentimental coaxing, but on the knowledge that we can have of the forces that are there to overcome, after the forces were there that led us into the time. For man gains, when he really immerses himself in spiritual science with his soul, honored attendees, that he gains a full awareness of it: Yes, down there in your depths, there are soul forces that you know nothing about, but that can come up from these depths! Above all, man gains trust in himself, trust in the forces that are in him, in the depths of his soul. This is what lies in spiritual science itself as a strengthening soul force. And if we again take up the thread of what I allowed myself to take up the day before yesterday, of Central European culture, how it is, one might say, enclosed by its enemies as if in a great fortress, we can say: this trust is strengthened in us in yet another way.

The day before yesterday, I pointed out how this Central European culture is truly called upon to develop a very special spiritual life, and how this spiritual life can be characterized by saying that the members of other nationalities are born into their nationality; as they are born, so to speak, people stand within their nation, and when you see [how other nations emphasize the national principle], you always find it traced back to the fact that the person was born into that nation. That is precisely what is peculiar about the Central European people, that they are becoming. To use Goethe's words: “Whosoever strives, we can redeem him” — that is the motto of the Central European. To discover what one is, that is the essential thing. To discover during one's lifetime what one is as a Central European cultural being, that is the peculiarity of the Central European, the seeking, the striving.

And so we find, when we look, I would say, properly at the folk spirits of the Central European people, we find, as germinally predisposed, everywhere, the very thing that spiritual science wants to express as its innermost lifeblood, which it hopes will increasingly incorporate itself into culture. And there we see that the germs appear everywhere in the Central European cultural soul, just as it is true that the germs, if cultivated in the right way, must develop into flowers and fruits, so it is true that we may trust that will bear blossoms and fruits and that it will not be possible to prevent this Central European spiritual life from bearing these blossoms and fruits, no matter how many enemies arise against it in the east and west and north and south. For the forces lie within it, the forces do not lie in anything that comes from outside this Central European spiritual life.

So we see, to pick just a few examples, how there are people within Central European intellectual life who are completely immersed in it with all its soul forces and who, I would like to suggest, are pointing to what spiritual science in its full light wants to present to humanity. In this connection I would like to draw attention to a spirit who, especially under the present conditions, has had even less influence on Central European intellectual life, but who is truly completely immersed in it and is characteristic of this Central European intellectual life in the deepest sense: one could call him 'Goethe's deputy'. I am talking about Herman Grimm, the great art historian of the second half of the nineteenth century. I do not want to go into the peculiarities of Herman Grimm's art research, which is so misunderstood by many, today. But I would like to point out that Herman Grimm wrote wonderful novellas and also an extraordinarily significant novel, “Unüberwindliche Mächte” (Insurmountable Forces) is the title.

I would like to draw attention to something in this work of art – which has not been recognized, which is contained in this work of art and which we recognize as characteristic of Central European intellectual life – in just a few strokes. I would like to highlight a few characteristic features. Herman Grimm attempts to depict the fate of people, but everywhere he feels the need to work as an artist towards what spiritual science should bring to the living scientific life of humanity, namely: to link human fate not only to what can be presented externally as events that can be pursued by the mind, but to what stands behind these events.

He has written a novella, 'The Songstress', a very remarkable novella. I mention this novella not because I want to prove something about spiritual science through a work of art, but for the opposite reason, because I want to show how someone who has immersed themselves in spiritual science can find that here an artist describes something in such a way that the spiritual researcher feels: he does not describe certain spiritual processes in a dilettantish way, but he describes spiritual processes in such a way that they correspond to what the spiritual researcher must gradually discover. In this singer, we find a portrayal of how a somewhat flirtatious but nevertheless spiritually advanced lady exerts a great attraction on a person who has to face her in life. But the lady attracts him, the one who loves her so much, and repels him again. And now the novella is constructed in such a way that the one who writes it, who gives the story of himself, is not the lover, but someone else who takes part in telling it in the first person. He says that he has become acquainted with the lady's lover, that he has seen how the lover is drawn to and then repelled by the lady, and how the lover finally comes to be completely ostracized by the lady, and how he comes to lose all comfort and all hope and all security in life. Now we see how the other man, who is his friend, later meets him on a journey, after he has already lost all confidence in life, how he takes him to his house, how he finds out about him, how he is so saddened to death that he really no longer wants to live. So this friend brings the singer herself; she is to come to the house so that the two can meet again. Meanwhile, however, the lover has arranged it so that when the two, the friend and the singer, arrive at the friend's home, the shot is fired and the lover ends his life by suicide upon their arrival. And now we see, as described in a wonderful way by Herman Grimm, how this lady is in the friend's house in the next few nights and how she experiences - after the lover has killed himself - how she experiences, in spirit form, what has passed through the gateway of death from her lover. And Herman Grimm lets us sense that what has gone out through death is actually the determining factor of fate. It is so much a part of this that precisely through the effect that emanates from the appearance of the dead person, I would say the ghostly apparition, the lady herself wastes away and finally dies.

Again, just as with the dream, I do not want to place too much emphasis on the content that is presented, but rather on the fact that here we have an artist who does not stop at the mere one-sided reality of the external sensory world and in the mere summary of the external coincidences of fate, as one says, but who tries to see the chains of human destiny in their connection with what passes through the gateway of death and also to represent it artistically.

Herman Grimm does this not only once, as he shows with his great novel “Unüberwindliche Mächte”. He shows this by letting the novel's heroine, young Emmy, experience how the one who has become the most precious thing in the world to her is murdered. He does not end up by suicide, he is murdered. She is already ill, the heroine, but with the death of her lover she now wastes away. And now Herman Grimm vividly describes how very peculiar death is, how what has passed through the gate of death plays a role in the case of the person who has been shot – he has been shot, has not ended his life by suicide – how this is still connected with the soul of the living, how it affects the living, how it forms a mysterious bond and actually causes the infirmity in this being, Emmy. And now Herman Grimm describes even that which only the spiritual researcher can understand in its full significance: he describes how the spirit form, which passes through death into the spiritual world, really rises. Herman Grimm wonderfully describes how, still in the physical body, I would say imitating head and hands and the whole figure, the spirit rises and passes into the spiritual world, in order to unite as a spirit, as the spirit of Emmy, with the spirit of her beloved friend. Here, too, Herman Grimm shows that he seeks the forces that actually play out human destiny in the spiritual world. Thus we see in this artist how the germ of spiritual-scientific deepening is present in Central European intellectual culture.

Sometimes this germ in the Central European spiritual culture comes to the fore in a very peculiar way. Just to mention one example out of the hundreds and hundreds that could be mentioned, I would like to highlight that of a German schoolmaster who once wrote a treatise on the immortality of the soul. He wanted to publish the second edition of this treatise. A friend of his published it in the posthumous writings. Strangely enough, this friend of the school director, Johann Heinrich Deinhardt, makes a very interesting interpretation in a note. He says that the school director wrote to him before his death saying that if he himself were to publish a second edition of this essay, he would have to describe what he had come up with, namely that in the life between birth and death, a spirit soul being is built up through what the person has worked for, and this passes through the gateway of death into the spiritual world.

When one sees how the way in which Central European intellectual life forms thoughts and feelings, how it tends, how it points everywhere to what spiritual science wants, how the germ points to the blossoms and the fruits, all this points to spiritual science.

And again I would like to say: This too becomes clear to us, especially when we look at the Austrian part of Central European intellectual life and cite some examples, and this too becomes clear to us, as was touched on the day before yesterday, that at the bottom of the soul there is pain and suffering and struggle and that only by conquering pain and suffering and struggle and, as we have seen today, by overcoming fear and powerlessness, is it possible for the human being to develop his life's treasure. This, too, presents itself to us in the outer life, in the whole way of striving, and this now especially, I would like to say, in the Austrian part of Central European intellectual life.

There is a spirit, a wonderfully attractive Austrian spirit, Bartholomäus Carneri. When Darwinism entered modern intellectual life, other spirits developed it in such a way that they drew the logical consequences and formed a one-sided world view, the one-sided world view of materialism. Bartholomäus Carneri wrote books such as the wonderful 'Morality and Darwinism'. Even if one does not agree with the content - because, of course, Carneri only came to a beginning and did not know spiritual science - if one goes into such a book as he wrote in the last period of his life, the book 'Modern Man', then one sees how this man, who was so rooted in Austrian Central European intellectual life, could not help but grasp Darwinism not only intellectually, but also in terms of what man carries in his mind as a moral force. And so Bartholomäus Carneri drew emotional and moral consequences from Darwinism and founded an idealism in a wonderful way based on Darwinism. One may consider this to be wrong, but this peculiar idealism of Bartholomäus Carneri is characteristic of Central European intellectual life.

And we can look at another mind that is truly characteristic, I would say, precisely for a certain state of development of Central European intellectual life, at the Austrian poet Robert Hamerling, who at the same time, as his book “The Atomism of the Will, shows that he was also a great philosopher who, in his last years, prophetically presented the mechanization of human life in his “FHomunkulus” and pointed out the necessity to overcome this mechanization of life.

However, esteemed attendees, we have not yet found the inner strength to fully feel everything that had a vital, spiritual effect in spirits such as the aforementioned Herman Grimm, Bartholomäus Carneri, and Robert Hamerling. Those who often dominate literature today have had completely different things to do. But our great fateful time will show where the great nerves of Central European cultural life lie.

There have been people who could not sufficiently delve into the greatness that lies in the characterization, but who have instead admired the greatness of a spirit that is supposed to be particularly outstanding, that has been particularly admired in recent years, and that was met with astonishment when he, as a Frenchman, spoke out so hatefully against Central European intellectual culture. I am referring to Romain Rolland, the author of the novel 'Jean-Christophe'. It is fair to say, esteemed attendees, that just as Robert Hamerling and Herman Grimm had a deep sense of reality, in that they knew that they had to seek reality in its fullness even where the senses no longer reach, as true as it is in Romain Rolland, in his “Jean-Christophe”, one might almost say hatred of reality, a tendency to grotesquely distort reality because it only wants to be looked at externally. And the much-admired novel, which in the eyes of many is supposed to be one of the greatest, “Jean-Christophe”, is, in the eyes of anyone who can feel this, who can feel the roundness and essence of a being, this novel is, in its creation of the hero, Jean-Christophe, a chaotic mishmash, mixed together from the characteristics of Beethoven, Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler.

Just as the elements of these four greats could never be combined in a person by nature, so too can this chaos never come together in a healthy artistic nature. Those who knew what Romain Rolland and his real art were like were really not surprised that this Romain Rolland so grotesquely misjudged Central European intellectual life after the war broke out. If only we could really get to the bottom of things, then many things would be understandable, especially in the present.

However, all this cannot make us despondent. It was said the day before yesterday and was also referred to again in today's lecture: that which is built on the surface of human life over an underground, over the struggle and war of opposing powers, contains fear and powerlessness, but something is built over it that must nevertheless be the courage to face life and the development of life; and so it is in the outer world as well. And it is perhaps no coincidence that the peculiarity that strikes us with such wonderful sympathy in Bartholomäus Carneri's philosophical writings has arisen in a life that has been physically and bodily heavily burdened in a paralyzed body; in a body that was paralyzed for a long time, Carneri has struggled to the insights of his noble idealism. There we see how treasures of the mind are wrested from the body. And Robert Hamerling, he lay for decades prostrate with a serious illness. Born of suffering is that which elevates people after it has been born! That which arises from suffering can be precisely that which permeates life with the highest delight and the highest joy.

When one peers into the secrets of life and discovers such peculiarities – the latter is only, I might say, particularly emphasized because it does not appear to be a coincidence – when one discovers such peculiarities, then one will find all the more in this Central European intellectual life the character that it yearns everywhere for such a deepening of the spirit as the future must demand of people. Everywhere minds are at work to find that which Goethe did not write into his “Faust” in his youth, but only later, after Goethe himself had matured, incorporated into his Faust.

Sublime Spirit, thou gavest me, [gavest me] everything,
Why I asked. Thou didst not in vain
Turn thy face to me in the fire.
Gavest me the glorious nature of a kingdom,
The power to feel and enjoy it. Not
Coldly marveling visitors you only allow,
allow me to look into her deep chest,
as into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the line of the living
past me, and teach me my brothers
in the silent bush, in air and water.
And when the storm roars and creaks in the forest,
The giant spruce topples, crushing neighboring branches and trunks, and the hill thunders hollowly as it falls. Then you lead me to the safe cave,then you show me myself, and my own heart is opened to its deep, secret wonders.

There we see, I would say, the whole gamut of human experience; already we see, in a foreboding way, the whole gamut of human experience, as it is to be opened up by what spiritual science is to explore for the human being of the future. But precisely because this Central European spiritual life has the character of striving, the character of becoming, it will strive more and more to see the related everywhere, to see a related everywhere, to also live in a related in outer nature. The spirit within man will find the spirit outside, truly recognize the brothers in the forest and meadow and in all that is alive. That is to say, the human self will expand and merge with and become immersed in the whole universe. And man will be led to the secure cave, and the mysterious wonders of the spirit's becoming and essence will open up – when he overcomes his fear through spiritual science, to find his true self in the great stream of destiny.

Oh, the forces that are set against this Central European spiritual life feeling like a single, great spiritual organism are also part of this Central European spiritual life. If I may again draw attention to something personal, not to bring up something personal, but only to clarify something, I would like to say: It is difficult for the people of Central Europe to really achieve what they have been predestined to achieve, to achieve, to grow together into a whole, because they have to achieve it through life – not through what they themselves do not strive for, through physical birth, but through the life they choose for themselves in their destiny. That is why it made a significant impression on me – and I am allowed to mention this personal thing, because I really spent half of my life in my Austrian homeland, and the other half of my life in the German Reich, and therefore, putting both on the same scale, I was really able to compare them well. I am allowed to mention such things because I have not only But I can say this because I have not only acquired intellectual but also sensitive judgment in the course of my life. It made a harrowing impression on me when I was sitting in a hotel in Weimar with Herman Grimm and the conversation, which at the time Herman Grimm directed to various really urgent and interesting things, then also came to the Austrian poet Grillparzer, this quintessentially Austrian poet. Herman Grimm said to me at the time: “Grillparzer, I can't understand him; I've been told that Grillparzer is also supposed to be a great German poet. I once passed through Munich, stayed there for a few days, and had some volumes of Grillparzer's dramas sent to me from the library. I tried – says Herman Grimm – to see if I could feel what people say, that Grillparzer is also a great poet. But it seemed to me as if Grillparzer were not a German poet at all, but as if what is in his dramas were translations from a completely foreign language. Thus spoke the honored guest, whom I myself had to describe today as a characteristic spirit, as one of the deepest and most meaningful spirits of Central European intellectual life. Therefore, he may be cited for the fact of how strong the sense of individuality is in the individual members of this Central European cultural humanity.

Even if these people of Central European civilization did not belong to different nationalities, even if they all belonged to one nation, like Grillparzer and Herman Grimm, they are so individually constituted that they can only find each other after great difficulties. This is connected with the opposing forces that are present. But the greater these opposing forces are, the greater must be the forces that are applied to shape the whole into a unified, organic whole. Then it will be in that, as in a cultural current bed, that deepening for the spiritual life can and must be found that can only be truly found within Central Europe, because this Central European spiritual life tends towards the spiritual deepening that I have taken the liberty of indicating today with a few very inadequate, but still a few strokes as the goals of spiritual science. This Central European spiritual life cannot rest until it has developed the blossoms and fruits of what lies within it as a germ.

And anyone who has learned to rely on the driving and sustaining power of inner spiritual forces knows from this inner knowledge that this Central European spiritual life, however besieged and threatened it may be and however fought and waged against it may be by its enemies, will not disappear from history until it has incorporated everything that it has to give to world culture.

And this, esteemed attendees, is still a great and mighty undertaking, for we recognize this spiritual life of Central Europe not yet as blossoms and fruits, but as a germ that must develop. And it is on the driving force of the germ that those who today seek courage and strength for our fateful days from spiritual knowledge itself build. This Central European spiritual life will not let go of what is inherent in it through minds like Goethe and all the others. Goethe has spoken a great and powerful word with regard to the unified recognition of the world as spirit and as outer physicality for those who shrink back in fear of self-knowledge and in the powerlessness to recognize the world. For them, Goethe has also spoken the right words, always finding the right words from his, I would say instinctive, spirit of knowledge, by saying, picking up on a word spoken by another, one of the fainthearted: “No created spirit penetrates into the innermost part of nature!”

No, says Goethe, what is in man is capable, if only it is properly developed, of penetrating into the innermost part of nature and into the inner nerve of the world. Therefore, Goethe says in his powerful language, rejecting Haller's “No created spirit penetrates into the innermost part of nature”:

I have been hearing this repeated for almost sixty years.
And I curse it, but furtively.

Haller continues:

Happy the man to whom she
Only shows the outer shell.

- namely, nature - and Goethe then says:

Nature has neither core
nor shell,
All at once it is everything.
You alone are tested most of all,
Whether you yourself are core or shell.

Central European intellectual life, however, has the task of developing the kernel into the shell in its soul everywhere. And so today, in a few words, let me summarize in a way that is in keeping with my feelings what I wanted to illustrate in today's and also in yesterday's lecture, to the effect that man is truly created not only to interior of nature, to penetrate the spirituality that permeates nature, but is also created to recognize itself in the flow of its destiny, to be reconciled with this destiny and to understand why it has grown together with the destiny of its time.

Goethe points to the same sentiment with meaningful, though simple words. He points out that what man seeks in spiritual development is indeed a mystery, but a mystery that can be fathomed. Goethe knew that the world is overwhelming, which can already justify the powerlessness of knowledge, but he also knew that this powerlessness can be overcome, that man can penetrate the veil of nature. That is why we want to conclude this reflection with Goethe's words, because they truly and sensitively summarize what is the attitude of spiritual science, what spiritual science wants to illustrate:

When observing nature, you must
always consider everything as one;
nothing is inside, nothing is outside.

Goethe says that what is hidden deep within us we find on the outside, and what we recognize as external, including the outer courses of fate - as spiritual science says - we recognize as the fates of the higher human being.

For what is within is without.
So seize without delay
Sacred public secret.

That, most honored attendees, is Goethe's attitude, that, in full development, will be the attitude of spiritual science and will be able to underlie that soul mood, that soul strengthening, which can arise from spiritual science, in difficult times, but also in such fateful times as we are experiencing today, as we are experiencing them again in our present.

Dear Attendees!

Once again, as in my previous attendances during this fateful time, it seems appropriate to me to begin with a consideration that is related to the development of German intellectual life, and then tomorrow to come to a subject that more strictly belongs to spiritual science.

And if today's reflection is to be linked to the development of German thought, then I would like to emphasize, first and foremost, that this reflection should not fall into the trap of establishing an external connection between all kinds of intellectual changes and the fateful historical facts of our time, a trap into which so many reflections today fall. At a time when the fate of nations is decided by the force of arms, the word cannot possibly intervene, meaningfully intervene, for example, in that which is to be decided by the force of arms. But this is the age in which self-reflection - including national self-reflection - seems to be entirely appropriate.

Now, when it is said, from the point of view of science, including spiritual science, that certain developmental forces of such a spiritual science are rooted in popular forces, as is to happen today, one will immediately encounter, dear attendees, all kinds of objections, objections that are extremely reasonable because they are so self-evident, from a certain point of view, that they seem extraordinarily plausible precisely because of their self-evidence to those who do not want to rise to certain higher points of view. In such a consideration, one will repeatedly encounter the objection that science as such, and everything that somehow wants to claim that it is so, is said to be “international,” and that one is not entitled to claim any rootedness in popular culture.

This objection can be appropriately countered only by means of a comparison. “International”, dear attendees, is also the moon, for example. It is the same for everyone; but what different things the various peoples have to say about the moon! Of course someone may object: Yes, that is in the realm of poetry. Yes, of course; but anyone who delves a little deeper into the spiritual life of humanity will notice that – even if the observations and insights relating to the external, actual things are all the same in the science of the moon – that which comes from the innermost drives of the human soul, on the basis of what man can recognize, that this is different for each individual people, and that each people penetrates more or less deeply into the secrets of existence, depending on their different dispositions and drives. And the overall progress of humanity does not depend on what is the same everywhere, but on what is incorporated from the driving forces of the overall development of humanity, which are peculiar to the innermost individual nature of each people.

From this point of view, it should be pointed out today how German nationality is intimately connected with the endeavour not only to found an external science of the senses, but also to penetrate deeply into the spiritual secrets of existence – how the very search for a way to arrive at the spiritual secrets of existence is peculiar to much of what can be called German nationality.

And there is another reason, esteemed attendees, for such a consideration here, because it is my conviction – not arising from a narrow-minded, parochial sentiment, but from what I believe is the appropriate consideration of the German essence that what has been advocated here for years as spiritual science is strongly rooted in the general spiritual life of the German people, that all the seeds of a genuine spiritual science are present in the spiritual development of the German people.

Dear attendees, I will take as my starting point three personalities about whom I had the honor of speaking here in this city a few months ago, when I tried to sketch out the world view of German idealism. Even at the risk of repeating certain details, I will take as my starting point the three great figures who appear within the development of thought and spirit of the German people and who create a world view that provides the foundation, the background, one might say, for what was then artistically and poetically achieved by Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Lessing and so on within German intellectual life, as a flowering of the newer intellectual life in general, which can only be compared with the tremendous flowering of human intellectual life in ancient Greece: Fichte, Schelling and Hegel were the starting point once again.

Fichte stands before us – and I already remarked this in the lecture a few months ago – as he has something like the feeling that he has given his people everything that he has to give as the best, in terms of a world view and insights into the nature of his people, and that he has gained this through a dialogue with the German national spirit itself. Carried inwardly by the consciousness that the most German essence speaks out of his soul, Johann Gottlieb Fichte is.

It is also he who, not only in one of the most difficult times of German intellectual development, found tones that were highly suited to inspiring the entire nation to rise up from oppression, but he was also [the one] who, in the way he wants to receive a world view for his knowledge, so clearly shows that he seeks this world view from the qualities of the human soul, from the powers of the human soul, which are essentially German qualities of spiritual life, German powers. He emphasized that. And that is certainly the truth with regard to Johann Gottlieb Fichte.

And what is it that is so distinctly German about Johann Gottlieb Fichte's endeavors? It consists in the fact that, out of his Germanness, as he himself calls it, Johann Gottlieb Fichte was led to seek in a living way to deepen and at the same time strengthen his own soul-being, his own ego, and was convinced from the living inner that what permeates the world as divine-spiritual, illuminates and warms, can flow into this I, if it experiences itself in the right way, if it becomes fully aware of itself. So that, in Fichte's view, what speaks outside in all natural phenomena, what speaks in the course of history, but also what speaks behind natural phenomena and behind history as spiritual forces, flows into human will.

The human will that asserts itself in the self is only the innermost, secret expression of the soul for that which permeates and warms all beings in the world, from the most materialistic to the most spiritual. This intimate interconnection of the experiences of the soul with the great mystery of the universe, as far as man can fathom it, that is the very German in Johann Gottlieb Fichte's striving.

And if you observe Fichte as he presents himself, you can see how this is to be judged, how it is not something invented, something acquired, but how it arises from the most secret depths of his soul as his natural disposition. To substantiate this, a few details from Johann Gottlieb Fichte's life will be given. As I said, even at the risk of repeating details that I have already taken the liberty of mentioning.

For example, we see this Johann Gottlieb as a small, seven-year-old boy in front of his father's house, who was a poor master weaver. We see Johann Gottlieb Fichte, seven years old, standing in front of the small stream that flows past his father's house; and he has thrown a book into this stream. His father comes along and is amazed at what has happened. What had happened? Well, Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a six- to seven-year-old boy and a diligent student. That which is called a sense of duty lived in his soul with the greatest strength; and because he was so diligent, his father gave him a book for the last Christmas: “Gehörnte Siegfried” (Siegfried Horned). The seven-year-old boy, who could already read fluently, was so extremely interested in the book of the “Horned Siegfried” and he was always absorbed in the great figure of the horned Siegfried; so that one could have noticed that he had become a little less diligent at school, and it was held against him. Now, within the life of the will, even in the seven-year-old boy, the soul's duty stirred: he no longer wanted to read on, nor be tempted to read on in the book of horned Siegfried. And to be quite sure, he throws the book into the stream, crying! Such was the nature of the one who, according to his own consciousness, was to create the German worldview for his time!

And again, let us look at nine-year-old Johann Gottlieb Fichte. One Sunday morning, the estate neighbor had come to hear the sermon. But he had arrived too late, and so was unable to hear the sermon. Some of the squire's acquaintances had hit on the expedient of sending for little Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who was so good at listening to sermons that he could repeat them word for word. So they fetched nine-year-old Johann Gottlieb Fichte. After he had appeared awkwardly at first in his blue peasant's coat, he then stood and repeated the sermon, but now not in a way that was only an external adherence to the words, but with the most inner participation, not only in terms of memory, but with the most inner participation, so that one saw: everything that had been spoken lived a very own life in his soul.

These are the small traits that show how intimately entwined Johann Gottlieb Fichte's soul was with what he called duty on the one hand, and on the other hand with what was in him the urge to elevate his own human ego so powerfully that what willfully permeates and warms the world as primal laws could live and reveal itself in him. And how he later aimed to work when he was appointed professor in Jena is told to us by people who heard him speak and who assure us that when he spoke, his words were serious and strict, but at the same time forceful, as if interwoven with the language that spoke the secrets of the world from the nature of things themselves. His language was like the rolling of thunder, and the words discharged themselves – so someone who heard him speak and was friends with him tells us – the words discharged themselves like lightning. His imagination was not lavish – we are told – but it was majestic and grand. And so we are told that he lived in the realm of supersensible ideas, not like one who merely dwells within it, but like one who essentially mastered this realm of ideas.

And it was also peculiar, for example, how he perceived his teaching profession: there was not much of what one is accustomed to from a speaker or teacher. He was in constant inner work. His preparation for any lecture or speech consisted not so much in working out the content as in trying to place himself, with his soul, in that spiritual inwardness that he wanted to infuse not only through the content of the words, but through the way in which he , he strove to work in such a way that it was not so much the content of his words that mattered as the fact that the souls of his listeners were moved by the whole way in which the spiritual was expressed in the flow of his speech. Thus, again, someone who knew him well could say: He strove not only to educate good people, but great souls.

We should like to draw attention to a little-known trait that must be mentioned again and again if we want to bring to life the direct and lively way in which Fichte related to his audience. For example, the deep thinker Steffens told us that in Jena Fichte said to his listeners: “Think the wall!” – The people found that easy, of course: they thought the wall. After he had let them think the wall for a while, he said: So, and now think the one who has just thought the wall! – Some were amazed!

This was an indication of one's own soul, in which that which flows through and warms the world at its deepest core should be ignited. However much he may have amazed people with this, at the same time it is also a testimony to how Fichte actually did not just want to convey spiritual ideas to his listeners with clever words. He wanted to work through words, not just in words. That is why it could happen that this man also sought to actively grasp the historical aspect of the creative national spirit. And in that he wanted to connect vividly, as with the workings of the world in general, he also wanted to connect vividly with that which is part of this world-working and lives close to him as a member of his nationality; he wanted to connect with the essence of the German national spirit. And no one can understand the meaning and the significance of the wonderful words which Johann Gottlieb Fichte addressed to the German people in his 'Discourses to the German Nation' during such a difficult period in the history of the German nation. No one can understand this unless he sees the connection between the way in which Fichte wanted to grasp the world-will in himself in his own ego, and then to carry the power that arose in his soul into action, into events, into the social and other forms of human coexistence, and into the conception of life.

There he stands before us – albeit in our way – this Johann Gottlieb Fichte! And – as I said – it is not out of narrow-minded patriotism, but rather out of actual observation that these things are to be said, which must now be discussed. We need not fall into the error that the enemies of the German spirit are now falling into, who not only accuse this German spirit, but even slander it in the truest sense of the word; we can take an objective point of view within the considerations of the German spirit and will be able, precisely through this objective point of view, to recognize in the right way what the essence of German nationality is.

Fichte wanted to grasp the will of the world in itself. And this will of the world was for him the bearer of what he called the duty of the world, which in turn separates into individual human duties. Thus, that which lives outside becomes for him a living being everywhere. But this also puts him in opposition to everything, as he himself emphasized in his “Discourses to the German Nation.” You can read about this in my essay in my little booklet “Thoughts During the Time of War,” which is now out of print , but will soon be reissued, [how] he, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, seeks the living everywhere and is aware that he is thus in opposition to much of what he calls a dead science. And this dead science, Fichte also finds it among the Western European peoples, among the French and the British. Only, as I said, for the sake of actual characterization, not to impose anything on any people, may that be said; but it must be recognized in which relation the German spirit stands to the other national spirits in this fateful time!

In my earlier essay on the world picture of German Idealism, I pointed out that Descartes, Cartesius, is a typical example of the development of the French world-view at the beginning of the seventeenth century. I pointed out how he characteristically expresses that which lives in his worldview from his nationality, in that not only the mineral and plant world, but even the animal world is nothing more to him than a sum of living — not souled, but only moving — machines! That is the peculiarity of this Western mind, that it can only grasp a dead science at bottom.

In this respect, Fichte, with his living approach in all his works, stands in essential contrast to the path of knowledge and the striving of the West, [where] animals are like machines. This has continued. And not long before Johann Gottlieb Fichte worked in Germany to show life in all the facts and beings of the world from the living grasp of the secrets of the world, a descendant, I might say, of that Descartes - Cartesius - worked in France: de La Mettrie.

And while Cartesius at least conceded to man a special soul from inner experience, from inner experience, de La Mettrie, in an exaggeration of this western dead science, expressed himself in his book “Man a Machine” that even that which stands before us as a human being is itself part of the world in the same way as a mere machine; that we can understand the whole person by regarding him as the result of purely material processes and forces. According to de La Mettrie, everything about a person, including all soul qualities and activities, should be understood in such a way that the person is only recognized as a machine.

Of course, to a certain extent, man is a machine. This is not the essence of spiritual science, that it contradicts what such assertions have right about it; but that it can show other ways - we will talk about this tomorrow - that it can show other [supplementary] ways to this, that it knows other ways that also lead beyond the justified claims of materialism. De La Mettrie is basically, from the French folklore, one of the most significant minds of this view that the whole world of man is only a kind of mechanism. And it is interesting to consider the contrast between the Frenchman de La Mettrie and the German Johann Gottlieb Fichte. For de La Mettrie, everything about man is mechanism; for Fichte, everything is spirit. He received into his soul what he calls the will of the world, and for him, the external material world is only an internalized field for the performance of duties arising from the spirit. Hence that beautiful, that wonderful striving of Fichte to derive everything that appears to man in the world of the senses from the spirit; whereas, in de La Mettrie, everything is imbued with the goal of regarding the external physical as an immediately decisive impulse for the spiritual as well.

De La Mettrie is sometimes quite witty in such matters, for he is just as deeply immersed in his mechanistic worldview as Johann Gottlieb Fichte is in his spiritual worldview. For example, when de La Mettrie says in his book The Machine Stops Here: Can't you see how the body shapes the soul? Take a famous poet, for example, whose soul can be seen to consist of one half rascal and the other half Promethean fire. de La Mettrie was a little clever in not saying which poet he meant, but Voltaire flew into a rage at this remark. When he was told this, de La Mettrie said: Well, okay, I withdraw the one half of the claim – he meant half of Prometheus! – but I maintain the “filou.” He just expressed it in his own way; there's no need to press it. But if you take the individual statements, that man is a machine – and in this he is tireless in showing how the machine-like, the heating-up [gap in the transcript] in man, as it were, how that characterizes the whole man, causes satisfaction – that is where he sometimes becomes quite remarkable. And I don't know, and I don't know with what feelings a passage from 'Man a Machine' will be read in France today! I certainly don't want to quote it as something that a German, for example, needs to share; but I would like to quote it because it is quite characteristic and because – you will see in a moment why I would like to quote it – one could perhaps ask precisely from the point of view of spiritual science: how such a soul – he did deny that this was possible – but how such a soul, more than a hundred years after its death, looks down on the praise that has been exchanged between France and England, when he, de La Mettrie, the Frenchman, in his book “Man a Machine” proves how people's characters are dependent on the way the materialistic affects them, when he says the following:

Dear Attendees!

As at my previous visits here in Munich, I would like to take the liberty of speaking on one of the two lecture days about a subject that does not strictly belong to the field of spiritual science, but rather touches on general German intellectual life. In these fateful times, this can be considered particularly appropriate.

And the day after tomorrow – on Sunday – I will return to a consideration from the narrower field of spiritual science, as I have been allowed to present it here for years, myself.

But it is not only because of my feelings in the face of the momentous and far-reaching events of our time that I would like to talk about today's topic, but because I may assume, not out of purely national feelings , but because I believe that I can assume, based on the facts, that the spiritual-scientific worldview represented here is intimately connected to very specific currents and aspirations of German intellectual life.

Not, dear ladies and gentlemen, to stoop to the level of Germany's opponents – the opponents of German national identity – who not only accuse but also defame what German intellectual life has produced, not to stoop to that level – I believe that is not necessary within German intellectual , but because I would like to make this observation, because our time requires a kind of self-reflection on the actual essence of the developing German national spirit, also with regard to the attainment of a spiritual world view, because self-reflection on this matter of German spiritual life must arise like a kind of basic need of the soul currently within this spiritual life.

When one engages in such reflection, one's spiritual gaze naturally falls first on the three great figures that I spoke of during my last visit here. And I would like to begin by saying a few words about these three great German thinkers and philosophers, about whom I was already able to speak here last time, even at the risk of having to say some things again that have already been said before, at the risk of having to say some things again that have already been said before, at the risk of having to say some things again that have already been said before.

First of all, our spiritual gaze must fall on that personality who had grown entirely out of German intellectual life and who, even in one of the most difficult times in German life, found tones that were suited to carry the whole nation along in a world-historically necessary enthusiasm: our spiritual gaze must fall on Johann Gottlieb Fichte.

Fichte – I believe one must say of him: on closer, more thorough examination of his work, it becomes apparent how deeply true it is that he expressed what he felt to be his own sentiments in the most diverse forms. The best that he has to say in his world view was born in his soul from an intimate conversation that he repeatedly had with the German national spirit itself.

I do not want to present this as an external judgment, but rather as something that Fichte himself felt in his deepest innermost being. And what exactly is this innermost path of Fichte's striving? I think it can be described as a well-founded conviction: to so power the innermost part of the human soul, the center of the human spirit-soul-being, to so inwardly enliven it that in this heightened experience of the innermost soul life, that which interweaves and lives through the world as divine-spiritual resonates, that one enters into the innermost being of this conviction by , so that what one can go through inwardly in one's own soul - not in everyday life, but in moments of celebration in life - grows together with the spiritual-divine currents themselves, but now not only in our inner being, but also in the whole of nature and in all spiritual, outer spiritual life, which pulsates through the whole world.

Now, in Fichte it is as if something is revealed from a particular side of the soul that has taken root in him, from a soul power that was particularly strongly developed in him, from that soul power that can perhaps be described as follows: Of the three powers of the human soul – thinking, feeling and willing – he felt the willing above all. And he himself felt the I in such a way that the most essential thing in the experience of the I is that the human being can indeed come to say to himself: the I actually consists in the fact that one can will, and always will anew; and that one's eternity is guaranteed by feeling within oneself the authorization to will it again and again; and that into this volition there penetrates what one feels in the very deepest sense as a commitment to life and the world; that in this commitment to life and the world one can at the same time feel something that strikes from the divine-spiritual expanses into one's own being. So that one can say: the highest that one can experience is the duty that reveals itself to one's own soul in the whole of the world, that strikes into one's own being and gives one the certainty that, because one has interwoven into what goes through the world as a duty-bearing will, as an eternally duty-bearing will, one oneself stands in this world as an eternal being.

From such an experience, from the experience of such a relationship to the world, Fichte's entire - one cannot even say “worldview”, but entire - way of thinking and feeling and speaking about the world emerged.

But it did not follow from his nature that one could speak of a theory, of a theoretical side, about the world. It followed from his nature - and he always felt that to be the German thing about his way of thinking about the world - it followed from his nature that what was like a general sense of the world, a general view of the world, was the most direct, personal power of his nature. And so it was the most immediate force of his being that it basically emerged when Fichte was very young, a boy.

And so allow me to describe a few traits that characterize this personal relationship to the world: There we see Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the son of poor people, at the age of seven – he was already a schoolboy – there we see him one day standing by the stream that flowed past his father's small weaver's cottage, and he has thrown a book into the stream. He stands there crying; his father comes to him.

What had actually happened? As I said, Johann Gottlieb Fichte was already a schoolboy at the age of seven; and since he had often been praised for his good learning, it was now clear to see how, since his father had given him the book that he had now thrown into the stream, he was no longer as attentive and diligent at school as he had been before; this had often been criticized of him. This book was a description of the deeds of “Horned Siegfried.” And when young Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who could already read, got hold of this book, he became absorbed in these great exploits; his attention to school subjects waned, and he was reprimanded for it.

But then the deepest trait of his character immediately showed itself in his soul.

However your inclination may speak, however your enthusiasm may be kindled by the figure of “Horned Siegfried” – he thought to himself – that must not be; duty is the highest. Because he does not want to diminish duty in any way, he throws the book into the water – as a seven-year-old boy! Thus, what later became the keynote of his relationship to the wider world was already alive in the boy: this permeation of the human soul with the will borne by duty, which he later felt to be the fundamental force of the whole universe.

And two years later, the nine-year-old boy Fichte, we see him in the following example: the neighbor of the estate – who later became Fichte's benefactor – had set out to hear the sermon in Fichte's hometown on a Sunday; but this neighbor from the neighborhood had arrived too late. The sermon was already over. The neighboring landowner was a little sad; he would have liked to hear the sermon. And while they were talking, they came up with the idea that there was a boy who knew how to listen to sermons in such a way, even though he was only nine years old, that he was able to repeat them quite faithfully. They fetched young Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who appeared in his blue peasant's smock, at first rather awkwardly, then warming up, repeating the whole sermon, not repeating it in such a way that he rattled it off without inner participation, but in such a way that one saw – and this had the effect, as I said, so deeply significant that the estate neighbor later became the benefactor of Johann Gottlieb Fichte – so that one saw: this entire boy's soul was interwoven with every word, and with what lived in each word, and could give the whole sermon anew, as one's own spiritual property!

Interweaving this, the environment, the why, the observation with the innermost of one's own experience in the soul, that is the characteristic that Johann Gottlieb Fichte always felt was the basic feature of the formation of a specifically German world view. This was very much alive in him, that only by strengthening this inner self, by experiencing what sits in the deepest soul, can one also experience what lives and weaves through the world as divine-spiritual.

Something like this lived, for example, in a basic trait that the profound Steffens tells us about, which he himself experienced in Jena when Fichte was already a “professor”. There Johann Gottlieb Fichte stood before his audience and said: First of all, gentlemen of the audience, think of the wall! He did not just want to speak to the audience in such a way that he communicated a content to them, but he wanted to create a living bond between his soul and the soul of the audience. They were to participate in a spiritual process that he allowed to take place directly: Think of the wall! Well, the people could do that. After he had let them think of the wall for a while, he said: So, now think of the one who thought the wall! That was more perplexing; they were no longer fully engaged in the activity he was asking of them. But he immediately pointed to this inwardly grasping and seizing of that which works and lives in the world.

Therefore, the whole way in which Johann Gottlieb Fichte presented was very special. People who heard him say how his speech flowed like rolling thunder, and how the individual words discharged like lightning strikes. Yes, we are told how he seemed like a person who not only inhabits the transcendental realm of ideas, but directly rules in it. And this is a word coined by his loyal listeners.

And indeed, they too have retained such a saying. If you have an ear for tracing history in its more intimate currents, you can follow what became of Johann Gottlieb Fichte's students and how they retained such a saying. People who understood him said: He does not just want to educate good souls, he wants to educate great souls!

This should give a rough idea of the depth of Fichte's work; for when he stood before his audience, he was not really concerned with saying this or that, he was not just concerned that his listeners should take up this or that of his words; he did not prepare himself at all for the individual wording, but he tried to live that which he wanted to bring home to his listeners - to live in it with a living, inner part of the soul. Then he would go before his audience. And, as already mentioned, it was not important to him that they should take up these or those words, but what he experienced in saying them was most important to him: to express the Will of the World, so that the Will of the World would live on in his words. That this should surge and surge to the souls of his listeners, that was what he wanted, this will that felt so alive in him in what underlies the world according to his view.

That is why he was able to find those stirring words to characterize German national character, which he found in his “Discourses to the German Nation.” No one understands their deeper meaning, which is Fichte's soul, and is unable to respond to the deep needs from which they arose. We may say: That which the German spirit had to say to the world was realized through Fichte's personality in terms of the will.

If we consider the second figure — the figure of someone who follows on from Fichte, Schelling — we see a completely different side of the German nature. When Fichte speaks, it is as if the element of will itself were rolling through his words. Schelling did not appear to his listeners that way. Even as a very young professor in Jena, still a youth among youths, Schelling spoke enchantingly, in a way that perhaps no one before or since has achieved through a directly academic speech.

Why does Schelling have this effect? With Fichte, we can say that what he said to the world lived in the will. With Schelling, everything lives from the mind, from that mind for which only the German language has a word, from that mind that wants to convince with love, even when it recognizes that it wants to submerge with love in the things to be achieved. Thus, for Schelling, what it means to be in nature flows together, and he wants to immerse himself in this with love so that all of nature becomes like the outer countenance of his hidden spiritual life, spirit in nature. He went so far that he could utter the one-sided saying, Schelling: “To know nature is to create nature.” Certainly a one-sided, in this one-sidedness quite untrue word; but it points us precisely to the essential thing with him, Schelling, to this creating and weaving of the spirit, which lives behind nature, and in which the human spirit wants to grasp itself in order to know itself as one with all natural and with all spiritual existence.

Because he worked in this way, he appeared to his listeners as a seer, so that while he spoke, Schelling was able to convey the spirituality of which he spoke and which surrounded him. While Fichte conveys the will, with Schelling it is as if he had spoken as a seer and directly said what he saw while saying it.

One learns such things most easily – I would say – from direct, traditional observation. Therefore, allow me to describe the impression that a truly deep mind, who was Schelling's friend and first listener – Schubert – had of him; because it is good to put oneself directly into what happened in a certain period of German intellectual development.

“What was it”

as Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert asks.

“that attracted young men like mature men from far and near to Schelling's lectures? Was it only the personality of the man or the peculiar charm of his oral presentation, in which this attractive power lay?”

It was not only that.

“There was in his lively words”

indeed

"an absorbing power, which no young soul, wherever it met with any receptivity, could resist. It might be difficult for a reader of our time

Schubert writes down in 1854 what he had experienced with Schelling in the 1890s

"who was not, like me, a young and enthusiastic listener, to make it understandable how it often felt to me when Schelling spoke to us, as if I were reading or hearing Dante, the seer of a world beyond that was only open to the consecrated eye. The powerful content of his words, as if measured with mathematical precision in lapidary style, seemed to me like a bound Prometheus, whose bonds to be loosened and from whose hand the unquenchable fire to be received, is the task of the understanding mind."

All of this must have been magical. I myself knew people who got to know Schelling when he was already an old man [...] because he expressed what he, as a shearer of the spiritual worlds, brought to his listeners in such a way that, as people who saw and knew him in those days say, he not only spoke to them, but his words, as he wanted to communicate them, flooded out of his eyes to them. That was still the case in old age; what must he have been like as a youth!” Schubert then says:

"But it was neither the personality nor the invigorating power of the oral communication alone that so soon after their public announcement by writing, evoked such interest and excitement for or against the direction of Schelling's philosophy, as no other literary phenomenon of a similar kind has been able to do for a long time before or since. ... In matters of sense-perceptible things or natural phenomena, one will immediately recognize whether a teacher or writer speaks from his own insight and experience"

from the spiritual world

“speaks or merely speaks of what he has heard from others, or even has thought up according to his own self-made ideas...”

Now, dear audience, it is probably fair to say today that it would be a childish view of the world to believe that by describing such spirits, one is demanding to speak to followers or opponents. In such matters, allegiance and antagonism are not important. One need not subscribe to a single word that Fichte or Schelling have written or spoken, nor need one be their opponent for not subscribing to a single word. The content is less important in this regard. The content of worldviews is in a state of dynamic development.

We will have much to discuss the day after tomorrow, especially about the living development of these worldviews and what the content has to do with it. It is not about defending this or that position that Fichte or Schelling took, but rather about looking at the lives of the personalities – at how they were situated within the whole of German intellectual life.

It is something tremendously significant when such minds try to recognize what nature is and what historical life is, so that they - as Fichte himself was well aware - grasp what is around them in a living way, submerging themselves in the things with their own knowledge. And that was what these minds strove for.

But because of this – and one really does not need to speak out of narrow-minded national sentiment, but one can speak entirely from the factual; as I said – we do not need to fall into the tone in which our enemies today fall! In this, as Fichte also emphasized, life in the German world view shows itself to be different from, say, the Western European, French or British world view.

Last time I pointed out what an enormous difference there is between this kind of Fichte and Schelling and - however much one may fight against them in terms of content - [what an enormous difference there is] between this kind of Fichte and Schelling, between penetrating into the foundations of things, where the whole outer world lives and gains life in knowledge itself, to what Fichte calls the dead world view, the world view of the inanimate among Western European minds [; where the world] of the inanimate begins, we say, within French folklore at the beginning of the seventeenth century with Descartes or Cartesius. But then it develops further, and we find it particularly pronounced, shortly before Fichte and Schelling, as has been described, appeared before their German nation, we find this world view of the dead, of the merely material and mechanical, over in France; we find it expressed, for example, in de La Mettrie.

This world view, as it can be found in de La Mettrie, for example – in this father of materialism, of modern materialism – is not to be fought against; it is only to be pointed out how precisely the French nation, in contrast to the German nation, is moving towards the dead and the mechanical. We see this already in Descartes, in Cartesius, in that for him not only minerals, plants, but also animals are merely moving machines. For de La Mettrie, the world finally becomes what he was able to put down in his book: “Man a Machine”.

Now, of course, dear audience, it is easy to find materialistic and spiritualistic elements in every culture and so on. But I am aware that I am not following this convenient mode of expression, but that I am highlighting precisely the characteristic that is related to the culture, and that for the German culture, Fichte and Schell ing in their striving - even if perhaps not in their thinking, as we shall see shortly - are as characteristic and as significant for German folklore as de La Mettrie - this could be proved in detail - for French folklore.

Everything is explained in such a way – and this is justified because it is self-evident – that one can see how man is dependent on what also works in him materially.

De La Mettrie comes to some strange assertions when he wants to prove how everything that exists depends on what is taken in through eating. Perhaps it is not entirely unnecessary to draw attention to a passage in de La Mettrie's book, “Man a Machine”, and to point out this passage in the Frenchman's book precisely in our present time. Of course, we do not need to endorse this passage in the way it is quoted here. We do not want to think such terrible things of a nation that is now at war with us, as the Frenchman de La Mettrie thought at the time. But it is perhaps interesting to quote what he says in order to prove how an entire nation, by eating in a certain way, acquires very specific mental and spiritual qualities, and thus wants to deduce the dependence of the soul and spirit of an entire nation on what is taken in materially through eating and drinking. So de La Mettrie says in the book 'Man a Machine':

"Raw flesh makes animals wild; men would become wild if they had the same food. How true this is can be seen from the fact that the English nation, which cooks meat less than we do and eats it quite raw and bloody, shows greater wildness, which is partly brought about by such food and partly, of course, by other causes, which only education can suppress. This wildness produces pride, hatred, contempt for other nations, stubbornness and other feelings in the soul that corrupt the character, just as coarse food produces a heavy and clumsy mind in a people whose main characteristics are laziness and dullness."

As I said, we do not need to subscribe to this harsh judgment of a Frenchman about the English; but it is perhaps interesting to recall it, especially in our time, when so much else is heard today, moving in other directions from this side, towards today's English allies.

The third person, who is very much honored by being present, and to whom attention must be drawn, because the third side of the German character speaks through him – and of the soul's character in general – is Hegel.

Of course, when people speak of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel today, the first thing that comes to mind is: Yes, but you really can't expect people to deal with Fichte, Schelling and Hegel! And most of them will indeed open a book and then close it again because they find it too difficult.

But, dear attendees, anyone who is familiar with the more intimate sides of intellectual life will not entirely disagree with me when I say that the time will come when these three minds will be so grasped in their striving that they can be vividly presented in modern times, so that what is essential – which, of course, had to first be expressed by them in a language that is difficult to understand – can be understood by everyone. And this treasure, which lies in these three minds, will once again bear fruit for every German child, if we are no longer too casual and too lazy to delve into the greatest treasures of the mind.

The third, as I said, is Hegel. If in Fichte it is the will that seeks that which weaves and breathes through the whole world; [if] in Schelling it was the mind, in that love is sought, which can recognize all exteriority in its liveliness – so in the present case it is the conviction that man, when he ascends to the thought that is not permeated by sensuality, when he ascends to the thought that is free of sensuality, and allows this sensuality-free thought to grow and live within him, that this thought, which the soul now experiences within itself, is a flowing in the soul, in which the divine-spiritual thoughts, from which the universe itself is created, work and weave. The soul is permeated by the Divine Being, and the soul thinks free of all sensuality.

The content may be wrong – and you can read more about this in my book “The Riddles of Philosophy” – but something significant underlies it, and this in turn resonates with the most intimate trait of German spiritual life: mysticism as a striving, but not mysticism, which attempts to solve the riddles of the world in the dark and confused, which wants to reject all ambiguity, as mysticism so often wants, namely amateurish mysticism, confused mysticism, which we will talk about the day after tomorrow. Hegel's striving is mystical, namely to unite the soul with the very weaving of the world. But the goal is to achieve this mystical experience not in a dark emotional chaos or in a dark inner visionary chaos; but in the full clarity of the world of ideas, in the clarity of the world of ideas of the spirit of all things.

And this mystical connection in clarity is one of the deepest traits of the German character. One almost recoils from finding such a connection to the German character as a German and from emphasizing its significance for the German character. Therefore, let me present to you another characteristic of the German character, esteemed attendees. In 1877, someone noted in his “Diary”:

"Perhaps only the Germanic mind has the need to think for itself, to search for the source of things. The Slavs and Romans are more strongly under the rule of convention, tradition, custom, prejudice, fashion; and when they break through them, it is as a result of revolt and rebellion, without therefore recognizing from within themselves the law immanent in things, their true standard, not the written, arbitrary one that has been read into them. The German wants to get back to nature; the Frenchman, the Spaniard, the Russian stop at convention."

So that I cannot be accused of characterizing from a one-sided national sentiment, I bring you this characterization, written from a soul torn by pain, and which – dear lady – was not written by a German, but by the French Swiss Amiel, in 1877! I think it behoves us to be more forgiving of the others, who perhaps have more justification from their feelings and from their observations to express themselves about the relationship of the German spirit to the other national spirits of Europe. And the same Amiel wrote in his “Diary” in Geneva in 1875:

“Thirst for truth is not a French passion. Appearance is more important than essence, the shell more than the kernel, form more than substance, gloss more than fertility, public opinion more than conscience.”

This is how the French Swiss write; as I said, as a German I would not say it directly.

“Appearance is more important than essence, the shell more than the kernel, form more than substance, the shiny more than the fertile, public opinion more than conscience.” This means that the Frenchman's center of gravity is not within himself, but in the others, in the great multitude. Individuals are zeros; the digit that forms them into a number comes from outside: That is the sovereign, the writer of the day, the most-read newspaper, in a word, the current master of fashion. All this can be deduced from an exaggerated sociability; it stifles in the soul the courage to resist, the ability to judge, personal conviction, the cult of the ideal."

Thus the Frenchman Amiel, a Frenchman who was familiar with German intellectual life, about what he had noticed. Amiel himself says, as early as 1862:

"I feel a common bond with a Goethe, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Leibniz, who are different enough among themselves, while the French philosophers, orators or mathematicians leave me cold despite their great qualities, because they do not carry the sum of general life within them, do not control the whole of reality, gag me or make me suspicious. What the French lack is direct knowledge of the living unity, a sense of the sacred, a feeling for the mysteries of being; what is theirs is the foundation of specialized sciences, the art of making a book, it is style, politeness, grace, a spirit of order, didactic art, discipline, elegance, truth in the details, staging, proselytizing zeal, strength in practical conclusions. But for the journey through Inferno and Paradise, other guides are needed; they are rooted to the earth, in the realm of the finite, changing, historical, and limited. Mechanism and dualism are the pinnacles of their intellectual flight. To break out of this circle, they must force themselves."

The same approach could be taken for other Western European cultures. But it is more important to take a look at these three minds that created a German worldview, which forms the backdrop to what German intellectual life produced in Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Herder and the others associated with them, as a flowering of intellectual human experience that can only be compared to the flowering that existed in ancient Greece. But when we consider Fichte, Schelling and Hegel in particular, when we look at them in this context, we have a special feeling; we can almost believe that something else is speaking, something higher that lives in all three of them than is expressed in each individual personality. One picture expresses more than one speaks when this feeling is expressed: the German national spirit speaks through these three personalities. And that is perhaps the solution to a riddle that must emerge when we consider the German intellectual life that follows on from these three personalities, albeit in a much more faded and forgotten form, which I will now try to sketch in a few characteristic strokes.

We are witnessing something very special. Within a more or less forgotten current of German intellectual life, which has been forgotten throughout the entire nineteenth century and into our own days – only this forgotten tone has been little studied so far – there are spirits who, in terms of their intellectual makeup, in terms of the extent of what they know and can do, in terms of the their genius, are far below the tone-setters Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, but who, curiously enough, when one looks at what must be striven for today through spiritual science, have created more of spiritual science or have created more that corresponds to it than the great inspirers: Fichte, Schelling, Hegel.

The lesser minds that come afterwards create more significant things than the great minds that preceded them. It is a striking phenomenon. It does not need to be a cause for great surprise, because it is self-evident that it is easier for those who follow; as lesser minds, they can achieve greater things than those who preceded them under certain circumstances. In the extreme, this can indeed express itself in the fact that every schoolboy can understand and grasp the Pythagorean theorem - and for its first formulation Pythagoras himself was necessary.

Thus the great men had to come; the clever ones are already there, pointing the way into the spiritual world. But that which has come out of the German folk spirit through them lives on now. Even if it is still emotionally restricted and spiritually surrounded – one can also speak of spiritual encirclement – it still forms the vanished, the faded tone in the world view that I would like to talk about now.

Here we find, dear ladies and gentlemen, the son of the great Fichte, Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Immanuel Hermann Fichte, who was influenced by his father's ideas. But we also find that he is able to penetrate deeper into the knowledge of the spirit than his father, despite being a much lesser spirit than his father. Immanuel Hermann Fichte already speaks of the fact that man, on the one hand, has this physical world. He, Hermann Immanuel Fichte, calls physical the substances and forces that the outer physical world also contains. Through this physical world, man is connected with the physical substances and forces of the earth world, he is connected with what appears to him as something past. But behind this physical body, for Immanuel Hermann Fichte lies what he calls the etheric body; and just as the physical body contains within itself the substances and forces, so the etheric body contains substances and forces of a supersensible nature, which link this inner man, this supersensible spiritual man, to the great world of the spirit and place him in it.

Thus, Immanuel Hermann Fichte sees behind the other person the etheric human being, who is a reality for him, not just an image. And everything that spiritual science has to say about the etheric body, about these supersensible powers of human nature, in the sense often hinted at here in these lectures, can be found very beautifully in Immanuel Hermann Fichte.

But, one might say: Even with regard to the path that has been characterized here more often, an infinite amount already lives in the germ of another, who is to succeed in the world view of the great period of German idealism: For example, we see Troxler. Who knows Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler today? Who reads Troxler? Who, even among those who write the history of philosophy, takes more of an interest in Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler than to scribble five or six lines that say nothing about Troxler! Who is Troxler?

Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler is indeed a mind that – even if he has not yet fully mastered the spiritual science, for which it is only now at the right time – but Troxler is a personality who is on the path to this spiritual scientific research. We see then how Troxler coins strange words that show that something lives in his soul of the living spirit of spiritual science itself. Troxler coins strange words such as “supersensory spirit” and “supersensory mind”.

“Supersensory spirit” is relatively easy to understand; now, “supersensory spirit” is precisely what Goethe calls “contemplative judgment”. For – Goethe, in his real world view, is on exactly the same ground – because “supersensible spirit” is precisely that power of the human soul which unfolds in such a way that, without the help of the body, without external senses and without the sense bound to the brain, the human being directly “looks” into the spiritual environment, just as the spirit itself does – “supersensible spirit”.

But “super-spiritual sense”? By speaking of the “super-spiritual sense”, Troxler shows that he really has an understanding of the essence of spiritual science. I have mentioned it often, as there are people, idealistic philosophers, who say: Yes, of course, that is quite clear: the physical world is not the only one; spirit is present behind the physical world. Spirit, spirit and always spirit — they say. And that's where that pantheism comes out, that worldview that, doesn't it, spreads such a general spirit sauce – it doesn't specialize in that, it's nothing; maybe today you would have to say “dipping sauce” instead of “sauce” – [that worldview that] thinks it has spread such a general dipping sauce over everything that appears before people as physical objects and physical facts, doesn't it.

But that was not the case with Troxler! Troxler would have said: Those who speak only in a pantheistic way of spirit, spirit and spirit again, they seem to me to be saying: Why should we speak of tulips or lilies, of snowdrops, for example? Nature, nature is everything! And why should we speak of individual experiments in the laboratory? Nature, nature is everything. Those who speak of naturalism in this way should just / gap in the transcript /

But what matters is not just to talk in generalities about the spiritual, but to be able to point out that we are surrounded by a spiritual world that consists of individual entities and individual facts just as much as the physical world does.

That is why Troxler, because he knows this, speaks of the “super-spiritual sense” - which is of course a figure of speech, but which testifies that one can really look into, is able to look into the spiritual world and observe it in its details - not just as a “general spirit dip”.

And in yet another way, Troxler – in his “Lectures on Philosophy” in 1835, he speaks very beautifully about all these things – in yet another way, Troxler speaks of a kind of spiritual-scientific path that he has already taken. He says: The most beautiful powers of the soul that rule man here, insofar as he lives in his physical body, that man can make his own, insofar as the soul expresses itself through the physical body, these powers are those of faith, love, hope. But now – Troxler says: faith, love, hope, as great and significant as they are for the life that the soul spends in the physical body, they are – this faith, this love, this hope – the outer shell for the soul's spiritual powers that lie behind them and that this soul will experience when it has discarded the body and passed through the gate of death.

While the soul lives in the body, it lives out – through the bodily organs, of course through the finer bodily organs – the power of faith. [But, says Troxler, this power can be experienced not only as the power of faith, but also – as Troxler believes – as spiritual hearing, as spirit-hearing, in such a way that the power of faith becomes the outer, physical shell for a spirit-hearing of the soul; this organ would allow itself to be experienced free of the body – a wonderful, great thought.]

And love, this bloom of outer physical life on earth, this highest development of outer physical life on earth, insofar as the soul lives in the physical body in earthly life: For Troxler, this love, this love-power, one could say, is the outer shell again for something that the soul has within, that envelops this physical body. And what Troxler now addresses as a spiritual sense, a spiritual feeling - as one today senses physical things with the physical - lies behind the power of love. When the soul is able to free itself from the body or passes through the gate of death, then its spiritual organs unfold. And as it hears through that which lies behind the power of faith, what resounds as facts in the spiritual world, so it is able to feel the spiritual facts and entities through its [“groping”] spiritual organs, which the soul extends out of itself. While when it lives in the physical body, the spiritual feeling powers, touching powers bring themselves as love to revelation.

And in a similar way, behind the power of hope, in the power of an expectant confidence in something, lies for Troxler, spiritually, what he calls “spiritual vision”.

Thus, Troxler knows that a soul dwells in the physical body of man, endowed with spirit-hearing, spirit-touching, spirit-seeing, and that this soul passes through the portal of death with these three powers, but that it is also able to experience, when it frees itself from its ties to the body, that which spiritually surrounds and envelops us.

And, for example, Troxler expresses how he thinks – and I would like to share this with you in his own words – and at the same time points out that he has certain comrades in relation to such a way of looking at the world. He points to these or those spirits. I would like to read one of these passages to you verbatim. He says:

"The philosophers of old distinguished a fine, noble soul from the coarser body (or in this they assumed a kind of shell for the spirit), a soul that had an image of the body, which they called a schema, and that was the inner, higher man for them. This view, even if it is only an explanation, was also held by most of the first great church fathers, such as Origen, Irenaeus, Lactantius, Tertullian, and Augustine. In more recent times, even Kant in Dreams of a Spirit-Seer seriously jokes about an entire, inward, spiritual man who wears all the limbs of the outward man on his spirit body. Lavater also writes and thinks in the same way; and even when Jean Paul humorously jokes about the Bonnese under-skirt and the Platner-esque soul-corset, which are said to be hidden in the coarser body rock and martyr's robe, we still hear him asking, “What is the use and origin of these extraordinary talents and desires within us, which, like swallowed diamonds, slowly cut our earthy shell? [Why was I stuck to this dirty lump of earth, a creature with useless wings of light, when I should rot back into the birth clod without ever wriggling free with ethereal wings? “The inner man,“ he says in another place, ‘this ’veiled God in nature,' is not himself of stone, like the latter.] In the stony limbs” — of man — “his living limbs grow and mature according to a way of life unknown to us. We could

”still cite a myriad similar ways of thinking and writing, which in the end are only different views and ideas in which [the one Evangelical-Apostolic idea is revealed,

"we could cite a myriad more similar ways of thinking and writing, which in the end are only different views and ideas in which [the one Evangelical-Apostolic idea is revealed that Paul expressed to the Corinthians , saying: “A body that the soul has quickened is laid down, and a body that the spirit has quickened rises, for there is a body that has been quickened by the soul, there is also a body that has been spiritualized. And in this is] the true, only teaching of the individuality and immortality of man.”

And now a remarkable – I would even say a decisive – thought arises for Troxler. He thinks something like the following. It is quite clear when you let his various writings sink in, especially his lectures on those subjects, which he had already written and delivered in 1835. The following thought is on Troxler's mind: There is an anthropology, a knowledge of man, he says. How does it arise – a knowledge of man? Man comes to know it by observing what can be observed of man with the senses and with the intellect, which is connected to the brain – that is how anthropology comes about. But this man who sees with the senses and observes through the intellect – in this man the higher man lives. And we have seen how clearly Troxler can express himself about this higher man. This higher human being, with his “supersensible sense” and with his “supersensible spirit”, can now also observe that which is supersensible and superspiritual in the other human being. In this way, just as anthropology arises in a lower realm, a higher science arises: the science of the spiritual human being - anthroposophy. And Troxler expresses himself about this in the following way:

"While it is highly gratifying that the latest philosophy, which [we have long since recognized as the one that founds all living religion and] must reveal itself in every anthroposophy, thus in poetry as well as in history, is now making headway, it cannot be be overlooked that this idea cannot be a fruit of speculation, and that the true personality or individuality of man must not be confused either with what it sets up as subjective spirit or finite ego, nor with what it confronts with as absolute spirit or absolute personality.

Troxler speaks of a foundation of an “anthroposophy” in contrast to “anthropology”!

And so one has the right to speak of the germs of that which must now be incorporated from the universe into the spiritual development of humanity as spiritual science. One has the right to speak of it in such a way that it is present as a germ in these personalities. These germs, however, ladies and gentlemen, are firmly anchored in German intellectual life, in keeping with its nature. I can only hint at how firmly these things are rooted in German intellectual life. And how German intellectual life, through its innermost development, cannot but produce them. Everywhere we look back, we find that this is firmly rooted in German intellectual life, and we can only hope that it can incorporate itself as a spiritual science into the future development of humanity.

Such a tone has been forgotten many times; it has faded away. But, dear ladies and gentlemen, it still exists! And it was able to live in the most diverse fields. Not only does it live, so to speak, in the spiritual heights, but wherever there was spiritual striving, there were also such endeavors as these. And the time will come when people will gain a new understanding of the deepest essence of German striving, and that this must be brought up again.

Much has covered up precisely this innermost part of the German being! This can be seen when one tries to seek out the German essence in very specific, particular, concrete areas. For thirty-three years, esteemed attendees, I have endeavored – forgive me for making this personal – for thirty-three years I have endeavored to show the significance of Goethe's Theory of Colors for a true knowledge of nature that penetrates to the essence of things, and the significance of Goethe's dispute with Newton, who is rooted in British nationalism!

But, as I said, it is not only external political life that has been encircled; the deeply, deeply influential, brutal foreign scientific attitude has come to such a pass that it is still a laughing-stock for the physicist to speak of the justification of Goethe's theory of colors! But the time will come when, in this field, there will be a deeper understanding and the chapter “Goethe vindicated against Newton” will be revived, precisely on the basis of the spirituality of the most Germanic nature; and it will be revived in a completely different way than one might have dared to dream of today.

One must then be able to bear the fact that one is regarded as a fool for representing in advance what must come, what must be recognized, when one is fully aware of it. But, as I said, this striving lives not only on the spiritual heights, but also in many ways in the German character. I could cite hundreds and hundreds of cases for this; one for many shall be cited, because we do not have time to cite many. One for many shall be cited: I would like to point to a small booklet published in 1856 by a simple pastor Rocholl in Sachsenberg in the Principality of Waldeck - a small booklet. It was published in 1856 and is called “Contributions to the History of a German Theosophy”. Today, one may find much of what is written in this little book fantastic; one may even be right in much of what is said when calling the little book fantastic. But this little book, published in 1856, shows Pastor Rocholl in an awakened, true spiritual striving that at least wants to penetrate world phenomena with a “supernatural sense,” with a “supernatural spirit.” And in wide-ranging spiritual views, an attempt is made to characterize how natural life and spiritual life, sensual life, are one, and how divine spiritual forces weave and work, and how man has the possibility to ascend to them.

The level of education and the depth of knowledge are the things that come to light in such phenomena, which, as I said, can easily be ridiculed. But we also encounter this in other areas and with other personalities. Here, I would like to draw your attention, most esteemed attendees, to a spirit who, unfortunately, is all too forgotten: Christian Karl Planck.

After the Swabian Vischer – the V-Vischer – referred to him in an essay, I tried again in more recent times, as early as the first edition of my “Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert” (World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century), to draw attention to this primordially German world-view personality, Christian Karl Planck. But what use is that today? People generally have other things to do than to look into the German character, or the most German character.

I can only give a brief description here of what Planck's German nature was. And in his case it was certainly grasped out of his German nature, what he presented. We will see in a moment how conscious he was of the basis of his world view. I will illustrate this with an example.

When people today look at the earth as natural scientists, they see it, let us say, as a geologist would see it. The earth is seen as it is built up from mineral forces, as known from geology. For Planck, such a view of the earth would not have been considered without higher world-view questions. For him, it would have been like looking at a tree and only wanting to accept the wood and bark, but not the leaves, flowers and fruits! It is clear to him that the leaves, flowers and fruits are part of what makes up the essence of the tree, and that anyone who only looks at the wood, bark and roots is not looking at the full tree. To Karl Christian Planck, this seemed to be an earthly consideration that is only held in the sense of geology.

For Planck, the full earthly consideration is not only an ensouled, but also a spiritual-soul being. And man, as he walks on earth as a physical human being, belongs to the earth, to the essence of the earth, which one has to seek if one wants to learn to recognize the earth, just as one has to see the essence of the fruits and the flowers and leaves together with the essence of the tree if one wants to recognize the tree in its essence; a worldview - I would like to say - genuinely spiritual and genuinely interwoven with life.

Christian Karl Planck wrote many books in an effort to gain recognition; he did not succeed! For example, in 1864 he wrote a book, his “Fundamentals of a Science of Nature”. And from this book I will read a passage to prove how much this Christian Karl Planck belongs to that forgotten, faded tone of German intellectual life - the German intellectual development that was conscious for some of the personalities who worked for him, as the work is from the primal power of German nationality. There Planck says in 1864:

“The power of deeply rooted prejudices from the previous view of his”

the author's

"Schrift entgegensteht, dessen ist er sich vollkommen bewusst; allein wie schon die Arbeit selbst, trotz aller Ungunst der Umstände, die zufolge der ganzen Lage und Berufsstellung des Verfassers einem Werke dieser Art sich entgegenstellte, doch ihren Durchführung und ihren Weg in die Öffentlichkeit sich erkauft hat, so ist er auch gewiss, that what must now first fight for its recognition will one day appear as the simplest and most self-evident truth, and that in it not only his cause, but the truly German view of things, will triumph over all still unworthy external and un-German conception of nature and spirit.

People who have different ways of thinking first see it as pure folly – then it becomes a matter of course. This is how it was with the Copernican worldview; this is how it was with everything that belongs to the development of mankind's worldview. And Planck says words that prove how he consciously penetrated from the German spirit to his spirit-based worldview. And he continues:

"What our medieval poetry has already unconsciously and profoundly foreshadowed will finally be fulfilled in our nation in the maturity of the times. The impractical inwardness of the German spirit (as Wolfram describes it in his Parzival), which has been visited with harm and ridicule,

1864, written before Wagner's Parsifal!

“Finally, in the strength of her unceasing striving, she attains the highest; she looks into the last simple laws of things and of human existence itself; and what poetry has symbolized in a fantastically medieval way in the wonders of the Grail, the rule of which her hero attains, that, conversely, receives its purely natural fulfillment and reality in the lasting knowledge of nature and of the spirit itself.”

Karl Christian Planck wrote this in 1864; he died in 1880. In the last years of his life he had written his Testament of a German, in which he summarized all the individual lines of his world-view. In 1912 the second edition of this Testament appeared; it did not attract much attention and was not much studied. One had other works to deal with, which had appeared in the same publishing house at the time! For example, one had to deal with a world view that is truly not one that has somehow emerged from the German character or is even related to it! You can read more about this in my book, “Riddles of Philosophy.” However, the passage in question was not written under the influence of the war; it was written long before the war. In 1912, people were too busy dealing with Henri Bergson – yes, he is still called Bergson today, Henri Bergson he is still called – to deal with this Henri Bergson, who, as I mentioned last time, tells his Parisians all kinds of slanderous things in prominent places of his intellectual work! Next time he will also do it in Sweden.

When you look at this Bergson: Let us highlight just one aspect of his philosophy, one aspect that does resonate with something that is truly being recognized today: the aspect where he says – I could of course highlight many other things, among other things – the beautiful sentence that has been so admired throughout Europe: that one can only recognize the soul if one comprehends it in its duration and in particular if one understands the sentence in relation to the essence of the soul “Duration endures”. I have had to read an awful lot about this infinitely ingenious sentence by Henri Bergson: “Duration lasts”. I have never been able to find it any differently than when one says “The wood is wooding” or “The money is moneying”. But let's ignore that.

A fruitful world view would only be achieved if one did not start in an abstract way, as some do, who actually start with the most imperfect beings and go up to the most perfect, and believe that they have a perfect derivation, but if one starts from the most perfect, from man, and places man at the origin, and then considers the other kingdoms - animals, plants, minerals - and considers them in such a way that they have arisen like waste from the overall flow.

Certainly, a good thought. But it is presented in a slightly distorted way by Henri Bergson. And what is essential: long before Bergson expressed it - I point this out in the second volume of my “Riddles of Philosophy” - this thought was expressed - as early as 1882 - by the German thinker Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss, most recently in his book “Geist und Stoff” (Spirit and Matter), but also in earlier books! There we find this idea powerfully expressed from the very basis that I have just characterized as the very basis of the German essence.

One can now assume two things: Bergson, who expressed this idea later, may not have known Heinrich Preuss – which is just as unforgivable in a philosopher as if he had known him and failed to mention that he got this idea from this source – one could believe the latter, now that it has come out that entire pages of Bergson's books have been copied from Schelling or Schopenhauer! However, this is a basic feature of the times, isn't it, to confront German culture, which appears “mechanistic” to him, and which he says has come down from its great heights and only produces mechanistic things.

I said it before: He probably expected that when the French shoot with guns and cannons, the Germans will come and quote Novalis and Goethe! He could hardly have expected that, could he? But he speaks of a “mechanistic culture”. I would like to know: is copying entire pages from German philosophers and then slandering them the opposite of the “mechanical”?

But we do learn a great deal in this field, and we have to find our way through these things. But the only way to find one's way, dearest attendees, is to try, as a person living in Central Europe today, to delve into that which, from a certain point of view, is able to unfold this Central European and, above all, especially the German essence to unfold, the power that must be present today in the physical world in an external way, so that in our fateful time the German can defend itself against all attacking enemies. This same power lives, expressing itself in a different way, in the German spiritual being. The two are intimately connected. The two cannot be completely separated. In the distant future, when the fateful situation of the Central European German people in this fateful time is judged, history will have to be spoken of in this way.

One needs only to consider a few figures, but these figures, which will speak to the most distant times, must come to mind when the following questions are asked: What, then, is actually confronting what is to unfold in Central Europe with the spiritual content just characterized? Not counting smaller nations: 741 million people encircle 150 million people in Central Europe! And do these 741 million people, who are facing the 150 million people, have reason to envy the ground on which these 150 million people stand?

One need only remember that this humanity encircling Central Europe owns 69 million square kilometers of the earth – compared to 5 to 6 million square kilometers of the Central European population! 69 million square kilometers compared to 6 million square kilometers in Central Europe! 9.5 percent of the earth's population is pitted against 47 percent of the earth's population! So half the world is being called out against Central Europe. That will stand out in history in simple numbers!

And how does this surrounding population, which does not even rely on direct combat but on starvation, how does this surrounding population view this population, this Central European culture, of which one says – the least one can hear –: The spirit – this spirit that is all around – fights against the raw material in the middle!

And this view, we find it in a certain modification also when we look across to the East. And there we find, as it developed throughout the entire nineteenth century, one can say from the simple Russian people, who are predisposed to something completely different - you can read more about this in my little book “Thoughts During the Time of War”, which will soon be available again; at the moment it is out of print. There we find that a Russian intelligentsia is developing from the Russian people – but one could also follow the development in other areas – that grows up to hold very, very strange views. Much of what is in my little book Thoughts During the Time of War would have to be repeated – and much would have to be added to it – if one wanted to even begin to characterize the trend that is taking hold in Russian intellectual life, the intellectual life of the intelligentsia, which draws from the belief that Central Europe in particular, but also Western Europe, is basically an aged, decrepit culture, and that it must be replaced by the culture of the East, that this culture of the East is young and fresh and must be brought into Europe because everything within Europe has become decrepit.

For example, we find – just to mention a few things, although I could of course talk about this for hours – we find, for example, as early as 1827, Kirejewskij indicates a tone that is then found again and again. Only, various things have been done to prevent the good Germans in particular from noticing this tone; sometimes strange ways have been sought to prevent the Germans from noticing this tone. One of these ways is this: after the lecture that I have given in various places about Tolstoy, no one will attribute to me the claim that I do not value Tolstoy precisely as a spirit of the very first order; but precisely with spirits of the very first order, whom one does not need to fight as spirits, one can find the characteristic peculiarities that develop in them out of their nationality. Now, even in Tolstoy's works of fiction, one finds this tone, this sense of the staleness and decrepitude of Central and Western European intellectual life. But, you will say, people have read Tolstoy's works, they can't possibly have forgotten that they found this in them!

Something strange is going on here. Until Raphael Löwenfeld published his complete edition of Tolstoy's works at the end of the 1890s – which is the most accurate – all earlier translations had deleted the passages that were directed against Germanness! All the works that Löwenfeld translated before the complete edition was published – and who had the complete edition by Löwenfeld in their hands? – all of Tolstoy's works that had been translated by others before that, were presented to the German people in this way!

In 1829, Kirejewskij said:

“The fate of every European state depends on the union of all the others; the fate of Russia depends on Russia alone. But the fate of Russia is decided in its formation: this is the condition and source of all goods. As soon as all these goods will be ours, we will share them with the rest of Europe, and we will repay our debt to them a hundredfold.”

You see what the background here is – to make Russia Russian and then generously assign to the individual what one wants to assign to him. And seriously: this tone runs through the whole of Russian intellectual life. And in a strange way, it appears in various places in more recent times. For example, in [Michajlovskij] there is a Russian spirit that takes this - as he thinks - strangely decrepit, crippled, brutalized intellectual product of Central Europe, Goethe's “Faust”, and says: What then is this Goethe's “Faust” actually like as a personality? Well, just as in Central Europe one strives for metaphysics, so Faust strives metaphysically. —- He needs the expression, this Michajlovskij: a metaphysician is a person who has gone mad with fat! I don't know how many metaphysicians one has come to know with this characteristic! But he regards Goethe's Faust as such a metaphysician, who has become alien to all human life.

But let us go to the end of the nineteenth century; there we find a mind like that of Sergius Jushakow; he wrote a book in 1885 that reflects much of what is currently in this Russian intellectual life: he despises Western Europe as something decrepit! He says, Yushakov: “Let us look across to Asia, where we find the fruits of European culture, which must be eradicated through Russia and replaced by something else. Let us look across to Asia, where we find these Western and Central European fruits of culture. There we find these Asian peoples, and it reminds Yushakov of an Asian legend that truly expresses what lies in the development of Asian peoples. He says: “These Asian peoples have expressed their destiny themselves by speaking of Ormuzd and Ahriman. Then there are the Iranian peoples, to whom the Persians and Hindus also belong; they have had to fight against the Turanian peoples, who are under the leadership of Ahriman. And as the people of Ormuzd, the Iranians, to whom the Persians and Hindus belong, have what they have conquered materially and spiritually through their culture, they have conquered it through the kindness of the good spirit Ormuzd against the evil Ahriman.

But then, according to Jushakov, the evil Europeans came and did not help the Asians to continue their Ormuzd culture, but came to take away from them what they had received under Ormuzd and to deliver them to the bondage and dangers of the Ahriman culture. Russia must intervene against this unpeaceful, unloving Western European culture. Russia must turn, says Yushakov, towards Asia and join forces with the Asian peoples languishing under Ahriman, in order to save them from the parasitism of Western European culture.

Yushakov says that it will be two powers that will join forces, two powers that express the greatest, most significant, and strongest cultural forces of the future. It will be two powers that will look towards Asia from Russia – I am not saying it, Yushakov is saying it; so if it sounds strange, read Yushakov! There are two powers: the simple Russian peasantry will join forces with the greatest bearer, with the noblest bearer of spirituality, with the Cossacks! Peasants and Cossacks will rescue the Asian population and the ancient Asian culture from the clutches of the Western Europeans. One day the world will owe this to Russia and its mission, which is made up of the deeds of the peasants and the noble Cossacks.

The book that Sergius Jushakow wrote in 1885 is called: “The” - yes, it is called “The Anglo-Russian Conflict”. And he characterizes the Asian peoples from a Western European point of view in terms of what they have suffered. He says, for example: These Asian peoples are viewed by Western Europeans – he couldn't take the Germans, so he didn't take the Germans – these Asian peoples are viewed by Western Europeans, he says, as if they existed solely

“to clothe themselves in English fabrics, fight among themselves with English weapons, work with English tools, eat from English vessels and play with English tinsel.”

And then Jushakow continues, summarizing what appears to him to be a great, pan-Asian ideal, so in summary, he says:

“England exploits millions of Hindus, but its very existence depends on the obedience of the various peoples who inhabit the rich peninsula; I do not wish anything similar for my fatherland – I can only rejoice that it is sufficiently far removed from this state, which is as brilliant as it is sad.”

I do not wish anything similar for my homeland, says Yushakov, a leading Russian, in 1885 – about England! It is probably on this path that we should seek that strange world-historical consequence – the forging of the alliance between Russia and England! For at first little was noticed of the current, of the mission to Asia, which should have come about under the influence of the peasants and Cossacks. For the time being, we can only note that Russia has allied itself with England and France, the latter of which have thus betrayed European culture in reality! It has allied itself in order to uproot the decrepit, decrepit Europeanness root and branch, at least that is what they said.

Dear attendees, it is necessary to speak out, as I said, without falling into the tone that is being struck around us, and anyone who is even a little familiar with this tone knows that today's tone has not tone of the English, French, Russians, without falling into the tone that is being struck around us today, purely on the basis of the facts, can point out what is going on within German intellectual life for self-reflection. There it is, after all, [that what lived in minds like Troxler, Planck, Preuss and so on, and in the minds of others – what was a germ, will also come to fruition as a flower and as fruit]!

However, through this tone of German intellectual life, which still resonates today, a realization must come to those of you who are present: intellectual observers of the world are not the impractical people that they are often made out to be by the very clever people – and especially by the very practical people. Because that is, after all, the general tone, isn't it, that one thinks: Well, people like Planck, like Troxler or like Preuss and so on may have very nice thoughts - but they don't have a clue about practical life. That's where the practical people have to go, those practical people who, in their own opinion, have a practical insight into practical life. Because the others are those impractical idealists!

Well, but I could also give you hundreds and hundreds of examples in support of the refutation of this sentence. Karl Christian Planck, for example, who was one of the most German of Germans, died in bitterness in 1880. And the dullards will no doubt say: something like megalomania sometimes emerges from the last thing he wrote - after time itself had driven him to a certain nervousness because he could not convey to his contemporaries what was in his heart. The dullards will even say: he became megalomaniac. But he died in 1880, and in 1881 his “Testament of a German” was already in print. It contained words that I will read to you now. So they were already written in 1880. Planck – about whom certainly quite practical diplomats, politicians and people who know everything about practical life will judge disparagingly – Christian Karl Planck spoke of the present war, of this war in which we are now embroiled. He spoke the following words in 1880. They were written by this “impractical idealist,” who was, however, a very practical thinker and who should have been put in a practical position, because the power that lives in the spiritual life also knows how to judge practical life correctly. This “impractical” Planck, who in 1880 wrote about the present war, which he knew would come, the words:

"No political cleverness, no love of peace on the part of Germany can prevent this hostile clash within the current merely national order. For the nature of the circumstances is more powerful than all cleverness; and already now, despite the friendly attitude of Germany and Austria, the hostile mood of the Russian East is only emerging all the more clearly because one could not give it a free hand in everything, but had to set a certain goal. And if it comes to a fight one day, then, however much we have to fight it for the good of Europe, the latter will not stand by our side, but as in the East, we will also have to defend ourselves in the West and in the South at the same time; on all sides, national jealousy will rise up against the new empire in their midst."

I ask you, how many diplomats believed – you can point the finger at them – much later, yes, much later, that Italy might still be dissuaded from participating in the war. I will only point out the one point. But these are the “practical” people, they have eaten practice for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But the unpractical Christian Karl Planck, in 1880 he characterized what happened in 1914, 1915 and so on, so that what he said back then has appeared again exactly in the real, actual facts!

Oh, one should listen to what a spiritual man creating out of the real depths of the German essence would be able to create if this German essence were to once fully consciously stand on its own feet – symbolically speaking.

But for this to happen, the present moment in world history must provide the right conditions. For the German spirit will also one day solve the problem for the world of the fact that it must be realized from within the German spirit what it means that power – the power of the incompetent, which crushes so many legitimate aspirations – is actually the ruling power in so many parts of the world! It is precisely in this area that the German spirit must have a healing effect. Without in any way seeking to flatter national pride, this can be emphasized in the present fateful hour from the facts themselves.

Finally, let us point out to you, esteemed attendees, how those who were steeped in this German essence, who know how to grasp it with their whole soul, with their whole heart, how they always experienced what has now taken place. I may, since I have spent almost thirty years of my life in Austria and had to go through the last times just at the end of these thirty years within the struggles that Germanism had to wage there, [since I was] in the midst of these difficulties of the German essence, I would like to draw attention to how naturally it lived in a spirit like Robert Hamerling, one of the most German spirits in Austria, one of the best spirits in Central Europe in general, how he expressed what lived in him so beautifully: “Austria is my fatherland; Germany is my motherland!” These words express a vivid sense of the spiritual reality that has forged Germany and Austria into this Mitteleuropa out of necessity in these difficult times. But such minds as Robert Hamerling's not only grasped such a thing in its depth, in its full depth, but also experienced it, esteemed attendees. This is particularly evident when you look at Robert Hamerling – not, of course, in the poem that has been distributed and which so many people have fallen for, even quite clever people have fallen for it, it is, of course, a forgery, the prophetic poem that has now been widely published in the newspapers – I don't mean something like that, of course! Anyone who knows Robert Hamerling even a little recognizes it as a fake from the very first lines. But in Robert Hamerling's work, there are enough clues to see how this Mitteleuropa lived! In 1862, he wrote his “Germanenzug”. Let us highlight the “Germanenzug” from the many. In 1862, he wrote in his “Germanenzug” how the ancestors of the Germans moved among the Germanic peoples from Asia - this is described to us in a wonderful mood , as they camp there - it is evening - how they camp there still in Asia; it is a beautiful evening atmosphere: the setting sun, the rising moon, the Teutons are asleep as they move across. Only one is awake: the blond Teut. And above him appears the genius of the future Germans and speaks with him. And that which one must cite as a fundamental trait of the German striving for knowledge - the genius speaks with him, with the blond Teut of this German future - is expressed by Robert Hamerling through the genius of Germanness to the blond Teut. I would like to say: the beauty of what is a German trait is already evident in the “Philosophus Teutonicus”, in Jakob Böhme, where this Jakob Böhme regards all knowledge in such a way that this knowledge, insofar as it comes from the German mind as knowledge, is at the same time a kind of worship. Jakob Böhme says so beautifully:

"When you look at the depths

, he means the depths of the blue sky

“When you look at the depth of the sky, the stars and the earth, you see your God, and in the same you live and are you too. And the same God reigns through you and also reigns you.” “You are created from this God and live in the same. Also, all your knowledge stands in this God, and when you die, you will be buried in this God.”

This mood also lived in Robert Hamerling when he let the genius of the German spirit speak to the blond Teut:

"To whom will the word break out of the depths of the soul one day
Like your people, so rich, so delicate, so powerful?
Who breathes so solemnly into the strings of the searching thought to the stars
so boldly and strives and fights on all paths?
Whom leads so high, so deep his urge, his foreboding?
Who grasps so faithfully the near as the far?
Where does every earthly and heavenly zone
reflect itself as in your thinking, O Teuton?»

This mission of the German character - Robert Hamerling was already aware of it at the time he wrote his “Germanenzug” (The German Character).

To see clearly the full world-historical, the all-embracing world-historical significance of this German nature – one can indeed look across to Asia in a different way from that in which Yushakov did: there one sees these Asiatic peoples, how they once, in primeval times, aspired upwards to the spiritual worlds. They brought it from India; they did it by sinking and muffling everything that forms the basis of the human ego, the center of the human being, into a kind of dream life. And by muffling the ego, they created something within themselves that arose out of a dream life, which introduced them to the spiritual that permeates and lives through the whole world. This world cannot and must not arise again as it was, as a witness of what remained from ancient times over there in Asia; for after the greatest impulse that earth-dwelling humanity could experience, the Christ-impulse, had broken into the development of earth-dwelling humanity, something else must come than this former elevation to the spiritual world.

And this other - with the same inwardness, deep inwardness, with which the spirit was once to be experienced in the ancient Orient, with the same inwardness it is to be experienced again through this other; but this other is to develop in the exact opposite way: The ego is not to be paralyzed, it is to be strengthened, it is to be invigorated - precisely by rising up, by living to the full, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, want the other spirits, who are rooted in the depths of German intellectual life, to penetrate into the spiritual world: And so this German essence is to give the Orient what it once had in the form of profound inwardness in pre-Christian times; it is to give the German essence in a new way, as it must be given in the post-Christian era.

This was already clear to Robert Hamerling when he had the genius of the Germans speak to the blond Teut, the leader of the Germanic peoples, in his “Germanenzug”. Robert Hamerling draws attention to the fact that all cognition in the German is to be a kind of worship, that the German wants to know himself in such a way that he knows himself as born out of the divine-spiritual powers, living in the divine-spiritual powers, and being buried again with the divine-spiritual powers.

That is why Robert Hamerling lets the genius of Germanness speak these beautiful words to the blond Teut:

"But however proudly you may strive, high above other swarms, you will still keep a blazing, ancient, sacred fire: the dream-filled drunkenness of God, the blissful warmth of the heart of Calm existence
This holy ray, a temple fire, free of smoke, with pure flame, will glow in your chest and soul, remaining your pilot and your rudder! You strive only because you love: your most daring thought will be devotion that wants to sink into God."

So the one who, as a Central European German, feels at home in the intellectual life of Central Europe, which I have tried to characterize today, also in one of its faded tones, in one of its forgotten intellectual currents, but precisely in the intellectual current that shows which seeds, which roots of a striving for the real, for the real spirit, are anchored in German intellectual life.

The insight that this is so will always give the one who recognizes and feels German essence within himself the justified conviction: Whatever arises from the 68 million square kilometers around against what lives on the 6 million square kilometers, whatever has such roots, such germs, will bear its blossoms and its fruits against all enemies in the way and as they are predisposed in it! This hope, this confidence and also this love for the German essence is precisely what characterizes anyone who truly recognizes the German essence.

Let me summarize in four simple lines by Robert Hamerling, after I have tried to characterize such a Central European spirit to you. Let me summarize what can arise in the soul from an objective observation of the German character and immersion in this German character today, in the face of our difficult, fateful events.

I believe that these four simple lines, with which I would like to conclude today's reflection, these four simple lines by Robert Hamerling, which state that it is true, that not only out of national overheating, but out of objective knowledge, it may be said:

“And if ever the day
proves hostile to the German name,
from sea to sea
the German spirit will find its way.”

Die Raetsel des geschichtlichen Lebens der Menschheit nach Ergebnissen der Geisteswissenschaft. (The Historical Evolution of Humanity and the Science of Spirit. Lecture given at Stuttgart, Germany, April 25, 1918)

No person with real inner sensitivity would find it any longer necessary to have to speak about a mystery when dealing with human soul life, than he would have to speak about the presence of hunger when dealing with the life of the body.

In the way it functions the life process must be so regulated that it induces hunger. It is possible to disregard hunger by the use of certain drugs and to believe that we can get away from it for a time, but in the long run this cannot be done without injury to the body. Similarly, any attempt to conceal the fact that there is a mystery in human life is bound to lead to injury in the soul. Those who disregard the mystery of the human being, either because of their condition in life or a lack of interest, very easily fall prey to a kind of soul hunger and to what happens as a result of this—a sort of atrophy in the life of the soul, an uncertainty and powerlessness, an inability to find one's way in the world.

Although no really sensitive person would find it necessary to have to speak about a human mystery in general, he would probably find more reason to consider that the great questions of life take on a new character in each succeeding period of time. As our time is so short, it is not possible to do more than indicate this fact. We can see how the outer conditions of life change from epoch to epoch, how new needs, new questions arise about the way we live. This also happens within the soul, which in its search for a solution to the mystery of man, changes its own finer qualities from epoch to epoch in order to make it possible for man to find such a solution. In this age that has been with us for three or four centuries, and particularly in the 19th century and our own day, which has culminated in the controlling of the world by means of steam, electricity, modern economic and social conditions, in this age there are also questions about the world in which the human being is placed that are of a different kind from those of earlier times. The science of spirit or anthroposophy seeks to approach the solution of the mystery of man out of the needs of modern times.

It is a mistake to regard the science of spirit, or anthroposophy, as a renewal of the views of the old mystics. Those who level this sort of criticism, from whatever viewpoint it happens to come, usually construct their own picture of the science of spirit and then criticize this picture, which actually has very little to do with what the science of spirit really is. It is only a caricature of the science of spirit that is criticized.

It is of course not possible within the framework of an evening's lecture to mention everything that would be necessary even to provide an outline of the science of spirit. Only a few further points can be added to what I have been saying about this for many years now, even in this city. It is particularly important to remember that the science of spirit does not take its origin from religion or mystical movements—although we should not conclude that it is necessarily opposed to these, as we shall see later—but it arises out of the life of the modern scientific outlook, out of a scientific approach to the world, connected with what is happening in the evolution of present-day natural science.

I do not think that anyone who despises the modern scientific outlook can penetrate the mysteries of the world as is done in the science of spirit, even if it is not the results of science that matter so much as the method of approach in conscientiously applying one's thinking to the phenomena of the world. The science of spirit must be well versed in the ways natural science investigates and thinks, and in the way in which it disciplines the inner life of the soul in the art of acquiring knowledge. The science of spirit must absorb this and reckon with it, if it is to keep abreast of the times.

It is just in connection with such an approach that the question arises: How is it at all possible for modern science and the outlook which results from it, to arrive at a view of the mysteries of the human being that really satisfies us deep down? If we are really positive thinkers we cannot permit ourselves an answer derived from preconceived opinions, or from one form of belief or another, but only from the facts of present-day scientific development and its method of thought. And so you will allow me to start with the course of scientific thought and research in more recent times. This will be regarded very much from the viewpoint of an admirer of the enormous progress made by the scientific approach in the 19th century, a viewpoint which enables one to realize that the hopes placed in natural science, particularly in the 19th century, for a solution to the great mysteries of man were absolutely honest and genuine.

To take one aspect of this, let us look at the rise of the physical and chemical sciences, along with the hopes and aspirations which came with it. We see how people steeped in the scientific outlook began to believe (around the middle of the 19th century) that the inmost being of man can be explained in terms of the physical body just as the working of the forces and forms of nature can be explained in terms of the wonderfully advanced laws of physics and chemistry. The great progress made by physics and chemistry no doubt justified such hopes for a while, and this progress led to the formulation of particular ideas about the world of the smallest particles: atoms and molecules. Even if people think differently about such matters today, nevertheless what I have to say about the atom and the molecule holds good for the whole of the scientific development. The idea was to investigate them and to explain how the substances and physical forces worked in terms of the constitution of the material molecules and atoms, and of the forces and mutual relationships brought about by this constitution. It was thought that if it was possible to explain a process in terms of the smallest particles, it would not be long before the way would be found to understand even the most complicated process, which was seen as a natural process: the process of human thinking and feeling.

Now let us examine where this approach with its great hopes has led. Anyone having studied the achievements of physics and chemistry during the past decades can only be filled with admiration for what has been achieved. I cannot go into details, but I will mention the views of a representative scientist, who sought his views in physics and chemistry in investigating the nature of the smallest physical particle, the atom,—Adolf Roland, who specialized in spectral analysis. He formulated his views on the basis of everything that is possible to know about the smallest particles that can be imagined as effective in the material world.—And how remarkable his views are! And how justified they are must be recognized by anyone who has some understanding of the subject. Adolf Roland says: According to everything that can be known today, an atom of iron must be imagined as being more complicated than a Steinway piano.

Now this is a significant statement, coming from one so familiar with the methods of modern science. Years ago it was believed that one could investigate the tiniest lifeless beings, or at least produce provisional hypotheses about them, in order to find out something about the world that constitutes the immediate surroundings of our ordinary consciousness. And what, in fact, does one find out? The scientist has to admit that having penetrated this smallest of worlds, he finds nothing that is any more explicable than a Steinway piano. So it becomes quite clear that however far we are able to go by this process of division into the very smallest particles, the world becomes no more explicable than it already is to our ordinary, everyday consciousness.—This is one of the ways of approach, with its great hopes. We see as it were, these great hopes disappearing into the world of the smallest particles. And honest scientific progress will show more and more by penetrating into the smallest particles of space that we can add nothing toward answering the great human mystery to what can be known to our ordinary consciousness.

In another sphere there have been just as great hopes, and understandably so, in view of the condition of the times. Just think of the great hopes people had with the advent of the Darwinian theory, with its materialistic bias! People thought they could survey the whole range of living beings, of plants and animals, right up to man. It was thought possible to understand man through having seen how he arose out of the species below him. And in following the transformation of the different species, from the simplest living being right up to man, it was thought possible to find material which would help solve the mystery of man.

Once again, anyone initiated into the ways of modern research can only be filled with admiration for the wonderful work that has been done on this subject even to this day. It was thought that we would find the single egg cell, out of which man had evolved, in the appropriate simplest living being, and would then be able to explain the origin of man out of this egg cell, which would be similar to what would be discovered as the simplest animal form in the world. Once again the path was taken to the smallest, this time the smallest living beings. And what has been found there? It is interesting to hear what a conscientious and important scientist of the 80's, Naegeli, had to say. He expressed his view, which has become famous, in the following way: Exact research on the individual species of plants and animals shows that even the tiniest cells of each single species have the most varied differentiation. The egg cell of a hen is just as fully differentiated from that of a frog as a hen itself is different from a frog.—In descending to the simplest living cells, by means of which it was hoped to explain the complications facing our normal consciousness, we do not arrive at anything simpler—as for instance when we study the iron atom—and in the end have to admit that it is just as complicated as a Steinway piano. Thus we have to imagine that the difference between the individual egg cells is as great as is the difference between the various species we see in nature with our ordinary consciousness.

Naegeli therefore proves by means of his own scientific conscientiousness that the approach of Darwinism with its materialistic bias is of no value.

But now there is another interesting fact. We could, of course, think that Naegeli, the great botanist, was really a one-sided personality, and in any case what he said was spoken in the 80's and that science has progressed and that his views are out of date. But we can also study the very latest developments on this subject, which have been well summed up by a most significant person, one of the most eminent pupils of Ernst Haeckel:—Oskar Hertwig. In the last week or two there has been published his summing up of what he has to offer as a result of his research on—as he calls his book,—Das Werden der Organismen. Eine Widerlegung von Darwins Zufalls theorie.

Just imagine, we are confronted by the fact that one of the great pupils of Haeckel, the most radical exponent of materialistic Darwinism, has in the course of his life come to refute this materialistic Darwinism in the most thorough and complete way. I myself often heard from Haeckel's own lips that Oskar Hertwig was the one from whom he expected the most, and whom he expected to be his successor. And now we find today that it is Oskar Hertwig who refutes what he had absorbed as scientific Darwinism from his teacher, Haeckel! And he does it thoroughly, for his work—if I may use the expression—has a certain completeness.

This is what I wanted to say, to start with. I shall come back to the question later. I would only like to add that Oskar Hertwig makes use of everything that even the most recent research has brought to light in order to prove that what Naegeli said was absolutely true, so that one can say that the present-day position of biological research shows that a study of the smallest living entities does not tell us any more than does a study of the various species that we can perceive quite normally. For these smallest living entities, the cells, are, according to Naegeli and Hertwig, just as different as are the species themselves. A study of them only teaches us that nothing can be discovered in this way that cannot also be discovered by our normal perception in looking at the ordinary world.

Nor is it much different when—I can only mention this briefly—instead of looking at the very small, we look at the very large, the world of astronomy. For here too there has been the most wonderful progress in more recent times, for instance, in the study of the way the heavenly bodies move, which surprised everyone so much in 1859, and which has had such tremendous consequences in astronomy and especially in astrophysics.—And what has been the result? A thing one hears frequently from those who are at home in this subject is: Wherever we look in the world, whether we discover one or the other substance, this is not the main thing, for we find exactly the same substances with exactly the same forces in the universe, in the relatively large, as we find working here on the earth, so that when instead of looking into the very small, we examine the very large we only find what we know from our ordinary experience of space and time in everyday life. It is just in deepening what can be achieved by natural science and in particular in feeling deep admiration for what natural science has achieved that the way for a modern science of spirit or anthroposophy is prepared. But the latter is also well aware that however admirable these achievements of natural science are, however significant they may be for particular purposes, however necessary they may be for sound human progress, they can never penetrate the real mystery of man. This they themselves have proved until now.

The science of spirit or anthroposophy therefore takes its cue from natural science and tries to go quite a different way, and this way is not connected with trying to explain what we experience with our normal consciousness by means of a study of the very small or the very large, nor with methods using microscopes, telescopes or anything that can be attained by our senses or instruments which help them, nor by any scientific methods used in the sense world, nor by studying anything other than what we experience in our normal consciousness, but the science of spirit seeks to approach a solution to the mystery of man by a quite different kind of perception, as far as it is possible for human beings to do this.

In giving an outline of how one can imagine this other way of looking at the things that surround us, and at the events that happen around us in the world, I will make use of a comparison which will help to make the matter clearer.

In ordinary life we are familiar with two states of consciousness, the state of our normal consciousness which we have from the time we awaken in the morning to the time we go to sleep in the evening—this is our normal day consciousness. We are also familiar with the state of our so-called dream consciousness, in which pictures rise chaotically out of depths of the organism that are not accessible to human consciousness, and these pictures appear to be completely without any form of order. It is our experience that makes us aware of the difference between this chaotic dream consciousness and our orderly day consciousness which is encompassed by the real world.

The science of spirit or anthroposophy shows us that just as we awaken out of the chaotic dream consciousness into our ordinary day consciousness there is also a further awakening out of our day consciousness to—as I have called it in my book, Riddles of Man—a perceptive consciousness. The science of spirit does not deal with a reversion into a world of dreams, visions or hallucinations, but with something that can enter into human consciousness, into ordinary day consciousness in the same way that this day consciousness replaces our dream consciousness when we awaken. The science of spirit or anthroposophy is therefore concerned with a perceptive consciousness, with a real awakening out of our ordinary day consciousness, with a higher consciousness, if I may use such an expression. And its content is derived from the results of this perceptive, higher consciousness.—Just as the human being awakens from his dream world, where pictures move chaotically to and fro, into the world of the senses, so now as a scientist of spirit he awakens from the normal day consciousness into a perceptive consciousness, where he becomes a part of a real, spiritual world.

Now, first of all, I must give an idea of what this perceptive consciousness is. It is not acquired by means of any particular fantastic, arbitrary act or fantastic arbitrary decision, but it is acquired by a person working as a scientist of spirit, work which takes a long time, that is no less toilsome than work in the laboratory or observatory, which is pieced together out of the smallest fragments, perhaps even with only small results, but which are necessary for the progress of science as a whole. But everything that the scientist of spirit has to do is not done as in the laboratory or observatory with ordinary methods and appliances, but is done with the only apparatus that is of any use to the science of spirit, the human soul. It consists of inner processes of the human soul, which, as we shall now see, have nothing to do with vague or chaotic mysticism, but which demand systematic and methodical work on the human soul.

How does one acquire the wish to pursue such spiritual work, such an inner development, such a higher self training? It is possible to do it by taking our ordinary conscious life as a starting point, and gradually coming to a particular kind of conviction that becomes more compelling as one immerses one's mind in the modern scientific outlook. For several hundred years already there have been some personalities with this attitude of mind, and today this is increasingly the case. I cannot mention individual names now, but this inner experience, which gradually emerges under the influence of the scientific way of thinking as a distinct and necessary inner outlook and attitude, will affect increasingly wider circles of people and will become a common conviction with all the consequences that such a conviction is bound to entail.

There are two things that we are concerned with here. The first is that we have to acquire a certain view of the human ego, or what we call our self, by means of true and intimate observation, carried out willingly and with discipline. We address this self, we express it in one word, when after a certain point in our childhood development, we begin to use the word “I.” In our honest self-observation based on self-training we ask: What is this ego really like? Where is it to be found in us? Is it possible to find it or, if we are honest and conscientious, do we not have to admit as the great thinker Hume did, who did not arrive at his convictions arbitrarily, but by honest, self-observation, that however much I look into myself, I find feelings, ideas, joy and sorrow, I find what I have experienced in the world, but I do not find an ego anywhere? And how can I in any case—as he quite rightly says—find this ego? If it could be found so easily it would also have to be present when I sleep. But when I sleep, I know nothing about this ego. Can I assume that it is extinguished in the evening and revives again in the morning? Without actually being grasped by the mind, it must be present even when the mind is not working in sleep.

This is absolutely clear. And all those who are familiar with present-day literature on this subject will increasingly find this clear and obvious, that this will become more and more the case.

How are we to understand this? I would have to speak for hours if I were to go into details to prove what I am now saying.—I can only just mention the one fact that the ego of which we are speaking is present in the same way in our day consciousness as it is in the deepest, dreamless sleep. The ego always sleeps. It sleeps when we are asleep, and it sleeps when we are awake, and we know only about a sleeping ego when we are awake, about what lives, even as far as our waking consciousness is concerned, in a hardly conscious sphere of our soul life. Even when we are wide awake in our ordinary consciousness the ego is still only present as it is when we sleep. The reason we cannot imagine anything like an ego in us is because the rest of our soul life is present and, like the black spot in our eyes, cannot see.—The ego is made dark in our souls in a way, and can only be perceived as something we cannot imagine. The ego is always asleep and there is no difference between the way the ego should be imagined in sleep and when we are awake.

It is the same when we consider our minds; for if we train our self-observation properly we realize that our mental images have exactly the same existence in our waking day life as they do in the night in the chaotic mental images of our dreams. In our minds we dream, even when we are awake.

These truths that our ego sleeps and that we dream in our minds and imagination, even when we are awake—these truths, it is true, are washed away by our active life in the day. But for anyone able to observe the human soul they prove to be great and shattering truths which stand at the start of every spiritually scientific investigation.

And if we were then to ask, to ask one's self-observation: This is all very well, but how do we actually distinguish our ordinary waking life of the day from our dream life and our sleeping life? What happens at the moment when we wake up?—As I have said, I cannot go into details—you can find all the details necessary to understand more completely what I am now saying in outline in my book Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its Attainment.—The question arises: What actually happens when we wake up, if our ego really remains asleep and our ideas and images, even in waking life, are like dream pictures? What is the difference between the waking and the sleeping human being?

Trained self-observation provides the answer: It is solely the penetration of the will into the soul life which differentiates waking life from sleeping and dreaming. The fact that we are awake and do not dream is due solely to the will pouring into us. It is because of this that we do not have dream pictures rising up without any direction of will, that we unite ourselves to the outer world with our will and with our will become a part of the outer world. It is what awakens the dream pictures to the substance of real-ness that they are images of an outer world, that brings it about that after waking up we are able to incorporate ourselves into the world through our will.

However paradoxical this may sound to many people today, it will have to become a basic conviction of a future outlook and will indeed become so, because it is bound to follow from a science based on true self-observation.

It is the flashing of the will into our minds that gives us our real connection with the outer world, which we experience with our ordinary consciousness. It is this that provides us with real self-observation in our ordinary consciousness. But we cannot remain in this consciousness if we really wish to fathom the actual nature of the things that surround us and the connection of human beings with the world. There has to be a similar transformation in our soul life, in the ordinary soul life we have in the day, in relation to the transformation that happens in our sleeping and dreaming life when we wake up. And a transformation can come about by working arduously towards a change, firstly in the life of our minds, and secondly, in the life of our will.

And I would like to point out at the start that what we call the science of spirit or anthroposophy is not based on anything metaphysical, spiritualistic or anything vaguely mystical, but that it is a true continuation of the well-founded and human scientific way of thinking. And so we can, for instance, link on to the sound beginnings that are to be found in the Goethean outlook upon nature and the world.

Allow me this personal remark, because it has something to do with what I have to say. That I am linking on to this Goethean outlook upon nature and the world is due to the fact that my destiny led me to immerse myself in it and to take from it what leads, as we shall see, to real perception into the spiritual world that surrounds us, surrounds us in the same way that the sense world does. What is so noteworthy with Goethe—and which is still not appreciated today—is that for instance he is able to bring physical phenomena that normally are only considered quite apart from the soul being, right into the life of the human soul. It is really quite wonderful to see how Goethe treats the physical aspects in his Theory of Color, which is still looked down upon by most people today, how he starts with the physical and physiological aspects and leads from them to what he expresses so beautifully in the section, “The Physical and Moral Effect of Color.” Naturally, one compromises oneself in many respects if one speaks about Goethe's Theory of Color. It cannot be spoken about as a matter of course because in its present form physics does not allow for any possibilities of discussing a justification of Goethe's theory. But the time will come when Goethe's Theory of Color will be vindicated by a more advanced kind of physics.

I can refer to what I have said about the artistic side of this in my book Goethe's Conception of the World, and in my introduction to Goethe's scientific writings. (Published in English as Goethe the Scientist—Ed.) Today, however, I am not concerned with vindicating Goethe's Theory of Color, but only wish to deal with method, with how Goethe manages to evolve beyond purely physical considerations in the chapter “The Physical and Moral Effect of Colors.” Here he describes so beautifully what the human soul experiences when it perceives the color blue. Blue, says Goethe, pours into the soul the experience of coldness because it reminds us of shadow. Blue rooms bestow a feeling of sadness on all the objects in the rooms.—Or let us take what Goethe says about the experience of the color red. Red, says Goethe, produces an experience purely according to its own nature. It can produce the experience of seriousness and worthiness, or of devotion and grace—of seriousness and worthiness in its darker and thicker shades, of devotion and grace in its lighter and thinner shades.—So we see that Goethe does not only deal with the immediate physical nature of color, but he brings the soul into it, the experiences of sympathy and antipathy, as immediate experiences of the soul, as we have in life when we feel joy and sorrow. It may be that the intensity with which Goethe studied the colors is hardly noticeable, but nevertheless he goes through all the colors in a way that one can do if one allows one's soul life to pervade them,—that is, Goethe does not separate the physical from the soul experience. In doing this he laid the foundation for a kind of observation which even today is naturally only in its beginnings, but which will find a serious and worthy further development in the science of spirit. For the human being's relationship to color is exactly the same as exists with the rest of his senses. He is so fully taken up with the perception of something physical, with what works through his eyes and ears, that he does not perceive what radiates through and permeates the physical percept as an element of soul; he does not experience its full power and significance in his inner life. It is like not being able to see a weak light against a strong one. For it is above all the physical object that our eye normally perceives so strongly.

Now it is possible to take what is to be found in Goethe in its first beginnings—albeit instinctively with him because of his naturally sound outlook—a stage further. And it can also be looked at from another viewpoint. Goethe never deals with colors only as they exist in the world, but he also deals with the reaction they stimulate, their effect on the organism. How wonderful, even compared with the latest experiments in physics done by Hertwig, Hume and others, are the things that Goethe brought to light about the reaction of the eye, how the colors are not only perceived as long as one looks at them, but then they only gradually fade away. In all this there are in our ordinary perceptions weak beginnings which can be applied much more to the inner life of our mental images and can undergo further development. For in the conscientious and careful development of particular aspects of our cognitive and imaginative life there is to be found an aspect of science that belongs to the science of spirit or anthroposophy. Goethe's attitude to color has to be applied by those who wish to penetrate into the spiritual world by means of the science of spirit to the content of our minds, which for our normal consciousness is really only a world of dream pictures permeated by the will. The scientist of spirit also approaches the outer world in exactly the same way as our ordinary consciousness approaches the pictures in our minds, concepts and ideas. A sound thinking person does not become any different from anyone else. But if he is to receive a revelation of the spiritual world he has to effect a particular kind of perceptive consciousness. And he does this by inducing a certain metamorphosis in the life of his mind.

The details of what has to be done you can find in the book already mentioned. I only want to put before you now the main principles.

The scientist of spirit gradually manages to free his mental images from their normal task by a particular kind of methodical approach to the content of his mind. The normal function of our mental images is that they enable us to have pictures of the outer world. These pictures are the end result. But for the scientist of spirit they are a beginning, for whatever their significance, whatever kind of picture of the world they give, he immerses himself in its inner life, the inner effects of the picture, the image. And he does this in such a way that he does not look to its content, but to the forces that develop in it, and he does this when his consciousness has been completely brought to rest and becomes alive in the activity of his imagination and thinking.

Normally, a scientist starts with nature as it is in the world and ends up with his ideas. The scientist of spirit has to start with the inner activity of his ideas, with a kind of meditative activity, but which is not at all the same as the kind of meditation normally described and which is nothing more than brooding on something that is on one's mind—no, what we are concerned with here is that the soul is brought to rest, its activity is stilled, so that the life of the soul approaches certain ideas that can be grasped and surveyed like a calm sea. They should then become active in the life of the soul, active solely in the life of the mind. After a great amount of meditative work which is certainly not less than work done in the laboratory or observatory, we arrive at a stage where we perceive remarkable things happening, affecting the life of the soul in this inner life of the mind. One of the most important and significant faculties of the soul that we develop in our normal consciousness is our memory, our ability to remember. What is it that our memory, our ability to remember brings about? It enables us to call up at a later time mental images that we have formed at an earlier time. First of all, we have an experience and this is taken into the mind. The resulting image is like a shadow of the original experience. The experience disappears, but the fact of its existence continues.—We carry the image of the experience in us. Years later, or whenever it might be, we can recall it. What we recall out of the total organism of our spirit, soul and body as a memory image is a shadow-like copy of what was imprinted on the memory in the first place.

If we pursue the methods actively and energetically that are given and described in my books for the cultivation of the mind, we acquire a much stronger kind of activity in the soul working in the memory. However paradoxical it may appear, I have to describe it, because I do not want to speak about the generalities of the science of spirit, but to deal with the positive and concrete aspect of it, upon which it is based. The scientist of spirit experiences that a mental image is brought alive, and by bringing the peace of his consciousness constantly to bear upon this image he gets to the point where he knows: Now you have exercised the powers of your thinking to such an extent that you can continue no further.—Then something shattering happens. The moment arrives when we know that we cannot continue to use our thinking in the same controlled way, but have to let it go, just as we let an idea or image go that then sinks into forgetfulness and that later can be recalled out of this by our memory. But when an image that we have as a result of an energetic meditative life is let go, it enters into much greater depths of our life than an image that is taken into our memory. The scientist of spirit then experiences—this is only one example, other experiences have to be linked to this, but now I only wish to give a few examples—that he has strengthened an image by the powers of his thinking to such an extent that he can allow it to sink into his being so that it is no longer present. But then it appears later, according to the images we have—this has all to be regulated—these images remain present. We acquire views in the course of time in which these images have to remain present, deep down in the unconscious. Some images remain for a longer period in the subconscious, others a shorter period and we acquire the power to recall them again and again. We do not do this by exerting ourselves in trying to remember an image. Images are recalled by peaceful immersion in ourselves; It is not like the way our ordinary memory works, for here we are dependent upon a mood of expectancy that we bring about at the right moment. We become aware of this mood of expectancy by other things which cannot be described here. We have a mood or feeling of expectancy; we do not do anything to bring about an image or an experience. We simply have this peaceful expectancy, this purely selfless immersion in ourselves and only after hours, weeks or even only after years does there come back what we have perceived in the very depths of our being, as if in a kind of abyss. And then the opposite happens from what takes place in our normal consciousness.

With our normal consciousness the experience comes first in all its vividness and then the shadowlike image is produced. Here something quite different happens. We start with something which leads at the same time to self-discipline and self-education, and this is an image which we put before our souls and let it be present in the soul for weeks or months until the moment comes when it can be completely immersed. Then it emerges again—but how it emerges is the surprising thing, for it is not anything as shadowlike as the normal image.

This experience is brought about by working on the image in a certain way and we know full well, if we are familiar with things that lead to such results as these, that we are dealing here with something sound and not morbidly introspective. These are not the same forces that lead to hallucinations or visions, or that produce morbid or unsound states of any kind, but they are the forces that produce precisely the opposite and, in fact, have the effect of banishing everything in the nature of hallucinations and visions.—It is the opposite process. The soul, in undergoing this, is not as it is in everyday life with its normal, healthy understanding, but it has to be much healthier and sounder if the exercises which belong to this whole development and which have to be done regularly are to overcome everything that would lead one astray. What this leads up to is something we have not known before—something spiritual, something super-sensible, that we now perceive in ourselves. What is it that perceives? It is what Goethe called the eye or the ear of the spirit, of which he had an instinctive presentiment.

From the moment onward when we have had an experience such as I have just described, we know that we do not have only a physical body, but that we have a finer, more inward body that is in no way made up of physical substance. However paradoxical it may appear to many people today when in the science of spirit or anthroposophy we speak of a fine etheric body, a soul body, it is nevertheless a truth—but a truth that can really be investigated only in this way I have described. We now know that we have something in ourselves in which spiritual perception can arise, just as perception can arise in the physical organism in the physical eye. We know that the eye or the ear of the spirit, as Goethe called it, becomes something from which there springs something out of the etheric world, out of the super-sensible body. We cannot use this super-sensible body like a physical body, but we know that it exists and we know that there has to be a science of spirit for us to find it. It does not come into being by means of any arbitrary act of the will, but it comes into being with the help of the most recent philosophical thought.

Let me cite a few facts that are especially important in this connection for the formation of a judgment about anthroposophy. The philosophers of more recent times who inherited the work of their predecessors done around the turn of the 18th to the 19th century and in the first half of the 19th century, pointed out, albeit instinctively and not as a result of method, that man does not have only a physical body, which provides the basis for his being, but he also has what one can call an etheric, a soul body. Only the terminology for this fine body was different, a body which exists as a fact for the science of spirit.

This kind of assumption led Immanuel Hermann Fichte (1797-1879) to his conception of the process of death, which he expressed in the following way: “For we hardly have to ask how the human being acts in regard to himself” when “going through death ... With this concept of the continuing existence of the soul we are not therefore bypassing our experience and laying hold of an unknown sphere of merely illusory existence, but we find ourselves in the midst of a comprehensible reality accessible to our thinking.” And now Fichte says—and this is what is important—this consciousness points to something beyond itself. “... Anthroposophy produces results founded on the most varied evidence that according to the nature of his being as also in the real source of his consciousness man belongs to a super-sensible world. Our ordinary consciousness, however, which is based on our senses and on the picture of the world that arises through the use of sight, and which includes the whole life of the sense world, including the human sense world, all this is really only a place where the super-sensible life of the spirit is carried out in bringing the otherworldly spiritual content of ideas into the sense world by a conscious free act ... This fundamental conception of man's being raises `Anthropology' in its final result into `Anthroposophy'.”

Into an “anthroposophy!” He uses the expression, anthroposophy. We can see from this the longing for the science that today has to become a reality.

To cite another example—owing to lack of time I can only quote a few examples—I would like to bring in the important German thinker, Vital Troxler (1780-1866), who also did some important teaching in Switzerland. He speaks out of the same approach, but still instinctively, because the science of spirit or anthroposophy did not exist at that time: “Even in earlier times philosophers distinguished a fine, noble, soul body from the coarse body ... a soul, which contained within it a picture of the body which they called a model and which for them was the inner higher man ... More recently even Kant in his Dreams of a Spiritual Seer dreams seriously as a joke about a wholly inward soul man, that bears within its spirit-body all the limbs normally to be found outside ...”

And now Troxler says: “It is most gratifying that the most recent philosophy, which ... must be manifest ... in anthroposophy, climbs to greater heights, and it must be remembered that this idea cannot be the fruit of mere speculation ...”

I do not need to quote the rest. He means that there must be a science which leads to the super-sensible, to the qualities of this super-sensible body, just as anthropology leads to the physical qualities and forces of the physical human body.

I have dealt with characteristic thinkers on this subject in my book, The Riddles of Man. They did not work out these things as the present-day science of spirit can do, but they spoke out of instinctive longing for a future science of spirit that has now to become a reality through this present science of spirit. Thus also the son of the great Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the important philosopher, Immanuel Herman Fichte.

In his Anthropology, the second edition of which appeared in 1860, Fichte says that there can be nothing that persists in matter: “In the elements of matter it is not possible to find the unifying form principle of the body that is active during our whole life. We are therefore directed to a second, essentially different cause in the body. Insofar as this contains what persists in the digestion it is the true, inner, invisible body that is present in all visible matter. The outer manifestation of this, formed out of the never-ceasing digestion may henceforth be called `body' which neither persists nor is a unity and which is the mere effect or image of the inner bodily nature, which casts it into the changing world of substance in the same way that an apparent solid body is made out of the particles of iron filings by a magnetic force, but which is again reduced to dust as soon as the binding force is taken away.”

Thus we see that Immanuel Hermann Fichte instinctively finds himself in the position of having to accept a force-body which holds the material components together in a material body in a certain formal structure like a magnetic force.

You notice, too, that Fichte also longs for an anthroposophy when he deals with the super-sensible in man and draws our attention to it.

Anthroposophy does not appear at a particular time without reason, but it is something that has long been anticipated by the really deep core of our soul life. This can be seen quite clearly in the examples I have given.

Now I must turn to the other aspect of the development of our soul life, the development of the will. What I have said so far was concerned with the development of the mind. The will, too, can be led beyond the condition it has in our normal consciousness. If you imagine that someone—I only want to mention the most important things, the rest can be read in my books—that someone were to look at his inner life in the same way that we look at our ordinary life between human beings under normal conditions, the life of the human community, we can notice our reaction when a desire or impulse awakens when we say: Conditions allow this impulse, this desire to take its course; another time the conditions do not allow us, or we do not allow it. We see that we evolve a certain responsibility toward outer life that is rooted in our conscience. We develop quite definite feelings, a particular configuration of our soul life in our conscience, concerning what we do or do not do. Our normal consciousness is subject to our soul life in developing such inner demands or standards—we obey logic, but when it comes to thinking or not thinking, to whether thinking is clear or restricted, how cool and logical our relationship is to this as compared to our relationship to outer life! We accept the one because we can, as it were, grasp it in spirit, as a mental image; we reject the other. But one cannot experience the intensive life that we feel in our human responsibility when it comes to our purely logical and scientific thinking.

The second kind of exercise consists in pouring out a certain kind of inner responsibility over our thinking, over our mind, so that we reach the point of not only saying: This opinion is valid, this opinion is properly conceived, I can give it my assent and so on, but also that we manage to preserve a mental image in the same duty-bound consciousness as we have when we do not go through with the one or the other action. Morality—though quite a different kind of morality from the one we have in normal life—is poured out over our mind, over our mental images. Inner responsibility poured out over the life of our mental images results in attitudes where in dealing in certain experiences we allow ourselves some mental images and reject others, in the one case accepting them, in the other rejecting them by a justified but temperate antipathy. From this new aspect, sympathy and antipathy activate our inner life. This again has to be practiced for a long time. I will give an example of how this can be supported by accustoming ourselves to allowing a mental image to be present in our souls in as manifold a way as possible.

In ordinary life one person may be a monist, another a dualist, the third a materialist, the fourth a spiritualist and so on. If we learn to immerse ourselves in the life of our mental images our concepts take on a different aspect in the living inner experience of the world of our mental images so that we come to recognize: Of course, there are concepts of materialism, they can be used for a particular province, for a particular sphere of the world. In fact, they must be available, for one can only get something out of immersing oneself in a particular sphere of the world if one has grasped materialism in all its many aspects. For another sphere of the world spiritualistic concepts are needed, for a third, monistic, for a fourth, the concept of idealism and so on. Monistic, dualistic concepts—they enrich the life of our minds and we know that such concepts mean no more than do different photographs of a tree taken from different points. We learn now to immerse ourselves in an inner element, an inner tolerance, that once again is an outpouring of moral substances over our inner life. It is just like someone receiving a picture of a tree that he has actually seen, who would never say, if he received a picture of the tree taken from a different angle, that it was not the same tree. Just as we can have four or even eight pictures which all portray the same tree, so we learn to look at all sorts of ideas, which singly would represent a one sided picture of reality, and to learn about them, to look into them with great care and immerse ourselves in their manifoldness. This is normally underrated when it comes to doing the exercises which have now to be undertaken. This is something that is not much understood today, even by the best, but it does lead to the further development of the will in a way similar to the development of the mind that I have described. We then experience that the will liberates itself from being bound to the body.

Just as oxygen can be extracted from water, so the will is released by means of the energetic pursuit of these various exercises that are described, and it becomes freer and freer, and more and more spiritual. By these means we awaken a real, higher man in ourselves that is not just an image of an ideal nor something thought out. We make the discovery which is still a paradox to most people today, but which is quite real for the science of spirit, that a second, more subtle man lives in us, having a quite different consciousness from our normal consciousness. And this consciousness that we can awaken in this way shows us that it is a much more real man than the one that we live in the physical body and move around in. This man in us can make use of the eye of the spirit, as I called it earlier, in the etheric body, in the way I have described.

The acceptance of such another consciousness of another more all-embracing man—this has a far more intimate connection with nature and its beings and to the spiritual world than our normal consciousness.—The acceptance of this also was instinctively foreseen by the more penetrating scientists of the 19th century. Here, too, the science of spirit brings about a fulfillment. I would only like to point out how Eduard von Hartmann worked in this direction, though I do not wish to advocate his philosophy in detail in any way. In his really controvertible work, The Philosophy of the Unconscious, Hartmann referred to the fact that an unknown soul quality is to be found behind the normal consciousness of the human being that—as Eduard von Hartmann describes it—comes to expression painfully in a way, and which has a kind of underground telephone connection with the unconscious spiritual nature of the outer world, and which can work its way up, and does work its way up, through the astral nature and pours out of the unconscious or subconscious into our normal, everyday consciousness.

Eduard von Hartmann really pointed instinctively to what the science of spirit teaches as a fact. Only he believed that this other consciousness of the human being could only be arrived at by theoretical hypotheses, analytical concepts and inferences. This was what he was lacking because he never wanted to take the path which is appropriate to his time: not just to formulate the life of the soul theoretically, but to take it actively into training in the two ways that have been described.

It has been possible to see from this that the acceptance of this spiritual nature in everything is much more helped by the solution of the mystery of the human being—even from a philosophical viewpoint, if it really remains philosophical—than all that can be done by the rest of science in the ways described above. And this can be proved by what has happened. Just in these matters Eduard von Hartmann proves a remarkable figure.

In 1869 he published his Philosophy of the Unconscious. Here he discussed how the spiritual that lives in the soul, hidden, as it were, in the spiritual soul, also lives in nature, and how the materialist today has only a one-sided idea of how the spiritual that lives in the soul also permeates and invades nature. In was 1869 that The Philosophy of the Unconscious was first published. It was the time when people had the greatest hopes of gaining a new view of the world on the basis of the new Darwinian approach, the laws of natural selection and the struggle for existence. Hartmann energetically opposed everything connected with this approach from a spiritual viewpoint, and naturally enough the scientists who were full of materialistic interpretation of Darwinism reacted to what Hartmann said. They said: Well, of course, only a philosopher can speak like that who is not at home in real scientific research and who does not know how conscientiously science works!—And many works were published by various scientists attacking Hartmann's Philosophy of the Unconscious. They all wrote basically the same thing—Hartmann was a dilettante and one should not bother to listen to him any further. One only had to protect the layman who always fell for such things; that is why Hartmann's position should be exposed.

Among the many works that appeared there was also one which was anonymous. From start to finish everything was brilliantly refuted. It was shown how from the viewpoint which a scientist had to have, he understood nothing about how science works in its approach to the great mystery of the world!—The scientists were tremendously enthusiastic and were in full agreement with what the anonymous author had written, and it was soon necessary to reprint this ingenious, scientific work. Oskar Schmidt and Ernst Haeckel themselves were full of praise and said: It is a pity that this colleague of ours, this significant scientific thinker, does not say who he is. If he will only say who he is we will regard him as one of ourselves.—In fact, Ernst Haeckel even said: I myself could have said nothing better than what this anonymous author has marshaled from the scientific viewpoint against Hartmann.

And lo and behold, a second edition was needed just as the scientists had wished, But now in the second edition the author revealed himself. It was Eduard von Hartmann himself who had written the work! This was a lesson that could not have been executed more brilliantly for people who constantly believe that those who do not adopt their own attitude could not possibly understand anything about their learning and knowledge. It is a lesson from which we can still learn today, and particularly those could learn who, when it comes to opposing what the science of spirit teaches, approach it with a similar attitude.

The scientist of spirit or anthroposophist knows quite well the sort of things that can be leveled against anthroposophy, however well it may be presented. He is fully aware of what can be said against it, just as Eduard von Hartmann was able to present what the scientists found to be excellent and to their liking. Such lessons, it is true, are soon forgotten, and the old habits soon return. But we can recall them, and we should learn from them. It is not only with Eduard von Hartmann but also with others that an instinctive feeling has arisen that quite a different kind of consciousness is at work in the depths of the human soul.

I would remind you of Myers, the English scientist and editor of the reports of psychic experiments which were published in many volumes and which set out to show how there is something hidden in the human soul that exists alongside our ordinary experience,—what James, the American, called the year of the discovery of one of the most significant facts, namely the discovery of the unconscious in 1886. Today scientists on the whole know very little about such things. They know nothing of Eduard von Hartmann's arguments, nothing about James, nothing about 1886 when Myers discovered the unconscious, the part of us that is of a spirit-soul nature and is connected with the spirit-soul nature of the world, and that rises into and awakens our normal consciousness. It is the same as I have described as awakening as if out of our everyday consciousness, out of a dreaming state, and makes our ordinary consciousness into a perceptive consciousness.—But in Myers and James it is to be found in a chaotic and immature state, rather like a hope or promise.—It becomes a real fact for the first time with the science of spirit or anthroposophy.

And so we see—however paradoxical it may appear today—that the development of the inner powers of the soul emerges on two fronts. I can only indicate how what I have described in its first beginnings, when systematically carried out, eventually leads to our being increasingly able to learn to use the spiritual eye in the etheric body by means of the other man that lives in us, and we discover this world of inner processes in ourselves and are able to feel ourselves as belonging to it. How we then learn not only to overcome our conception of space, but also of time. We come to look at time in quite a different way. And, as I have said, we become able not only to carry ourselves back in our memories into the past, but also to gain experience of ourselves at earlier points of time and also to carry ourselves back beyond the time that we normally remember.

You all know that we can remember back only to a certain point in our childhood. This is as far as we can think back to. What we experienced in the first years of our childhood we can only be reminded of from outside. But now we can carry ourselves back to the time in our earliest childhood when as human beings we were not yet able to recognize or perceive our powers, to the time when the forces we need for our ordinary consciousness were needed for the initial growth of the body. That is to say, we learn to perceive not with the ego of our earliest childhood, but the ego that has brought our spiritual nature out of the spiritual world and united itself with what has been inherited in the way of physical forces and substances from our father, mother and ancestors. We go back to this spiritual human being. From the present moment we look back with an awakened consciousness and see through the sense world into the spiritual; we have a spiritual world before us. Similarly, when we carry ourselves back in time we then have a qualitative experience of the life that we live in the body and that comes to an end with death. On the one hand, our ordinary perception cuts us off in our normal consciousness from spiritual reality; on the other, our bodily experience cuts us off in our normal consciousness from what exists beyond the gate of death. The moment we reach the time which we can remember back to, we see on the other hand life bordered by death, and we see what death makes of us. What is beyond death is revealed, together with what is beyond birth, only divided, kept apart by our life in the body. The spiritual man, the eternal in us, is experienced in that we see our physical life as a river; the one bank is birth and the other bank is death. Death, however, is revealed together with what exists before birth.

We also see maturing in us what leads from this life to a further life on earth. For if we have gone through the gate of death we then see what lives in us. Just as we can say that there is something that lives in the plant which, having gone through the dark and cold time of year, develops into a new plant, so we see how our spirit-soul nature that is within us in this life goes through the spiritual world between death and birth and appears again in a new life on earth. All this becomes accessible to our perception when we develop the powers of the soul in the way that it has been described. Just as we grow accustomed to a physical world through our open eyes and open ears, so we accustom ourselves to a spiritual world, really become concretely aware of a spiritual world that exists around us. We live together with spiritual beings, spiritual forces. Just as we recognize our life, our body, as the expression of our spiritual being which begins at birth, or rather at conception, so we also come to know our physical life on the earth, our physical earth, as a further condition or state of something that has been preceded in planetary existence.

We come to see our earth as a metamorphosis, a transformation of an earlier planet, in which we existed as human beings at an earlier stage, not yet with the present-day physical body, but in a spiritual state and with the nature we have today in a spiritual form. The animals have undergone a downward evolution, the human being has evolved in such a way that the point at which man and animal meet is to be found in the spiritual and not in the physical. Man's evolution on the earth is a continuation of the life on an earlier planet, which has been transformed into the present earth, and which will similarly be transformed into the next stage and will enable the human being to take into himself an ego that today is still slumbering in him, but which will become more and more awake in the further course of evolution. The whole world will be spiritualized.

When we speak about nature we do not content ourselves with referring to a vague pantheism existing in the outer world, but in looking at the being of the earth we speak of rising stages that we get to know. Nor do we enter into a spiritual world with a vague pantheism, but as a concrete individual and real human being.

Today one is forgiven least of all for saying such a thing as this. Nevertheless it is true that a real, concretely spiritual world is opened up to us, the spiritual world that we belong to with our spiritual man, just as with our physical man we belong to ordinary physical reality.

And so in bringing about a methodical awakening of inner life the science of spirit or anthroposophy adds knowledge of spirit to natural knowledge and introduces a different picture of the world from the one we have in our ordinary consciousness. In this connection the science of spirit will gradually have to be taken into the hearts of those who are longing for it, but who for the most part do not know that this longing exists in their hidden feelings. But it is there, and it will come to be more and more recognized.

It is remarkable how even the most eminent thinkers of our time and of the immediate past have not yet been able to grasp the details of the kind of experience I have been describing. I wanted to cite the great philosopher Eduard von Hartmann who had an idea of what it was about, but who was only interested in reaching another consciousness in the human being theoretically, and who was unable to discover that one cannot find one's way into the spiritual by theories or hypotheses, but only by experience, by working upon one's thoughts in such a way that they are sent out as messengers into an unknown world, from which they return as experience, and that leads one into the spiritual world, as I have described. But the experience of it must be based on accepting the existence of a world of ideas and images as real.

Forgive me if I say something personal once more, but it is very much connected with this whole subject. I do not particularly wish to do so, but you will see why I refer to it.

In 1894 I attempted in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity to provide the world with just such a philosophical approach as a preparation for the science of spirit, where the individual human viewpoints, which sometimes have such remarkable names, could be understood, not as a choice of mutually exclusive views, but that they could be seen like photographs or different pictures of the same object and that these concepts could be allowed to speak for themselves so that one has a many-sided picture.

Eduard von Hartmann studied this Philosophy of Spiritual Activity in 1894, and he sent me his copy in which he had made notes. I would like to read a passage from the letter he sent me. It contains singular, philosophical expressions but what he means is quite clear even without going into what these expressions mean.

In the first place he says, for instance: “The title should be `Monism based on the theory of knowledge—ethical individualism,' and not `Philosophy of Spiritual Activity'.”

But he has an instinctive feeling for the fact that these two aspects are supposed to throw light on one and the same thing. He thinks, however, that they cannot be brought together. They are in fact brought together in the life of the soul and not by means of empty theories. This is what he meant. And similarly in other points.

Eduard von Hartmann therefore says: “In this book neither Hume's absolute phenomenalism nor Berkeley's phenomenalism based on God are reconciled, nor this more immanent or subjective, phenomenalism and the transcendental panlogism of Hegel, nor Hegel's panlogism and Goethean individualism. Between these two aspects there yawns an unbridgeable abyss.”

Because all these views exist in such a living way, they all testify to the same thing, they characterize one and the same thing from varying viewpoints!

Hartmann has an inkling of this, a feeling for it, but he does not see that what is important is not a hypothetical and theoretical way of putting them together in thought, but a living way of experiencing them as a unity.

He therefore goes on to say: “Above all, the fact is ignored that phenomenalism leads with absolute inevitability to soliphism [this may be a coined word, a `typo,' or the translator really meant solipsism - e.Ed] (that is, to a doctrine of being one, a doctrine of the ego), to illusionism and to agnosticism, and nothing is done to prevent this plunge into the abyss of un-philosophy, because the danger is not even recognized.”

This danger certainly has been recognized! And Eduard von Hartmann once again instinctively uses the right expression: “plunge into the abyss of un-philosophy.”

This is precisely what I have described today! Of course, this plunge into the abyss is not prevented by un-philosophy or by any hypotheses setting out to be philosophical, but only by our real life being led into the other existence, by the unconscious being made conscious, so that what is experienced objectively and independently in the soul can be guided back again into the conscious.

You can see here how the science of spirit or anthroposophy has gradually to get to grips with the longings and hopes for such a science, that exist at the present time, but which in themselves cannot get as far as what has to be achieved in the science of spirit, because for this to happen it is imperative to see that intimate work on the soul has to be done which does not remain mystically subjective, but is just as objective as ordinary science and knowledge.

What then has been done about this up to now? I have cited Oskar Hertwig to you. Oskar Hertwig is one of those who felt the significance of Eduard von Hartmann!

Ernst Haeckel is one of those who mocked most at what Eduard von Hartmann published in his Philosophy of the Unconscious.

Oskar Hertwig still cites Eduard von Hartmann continuously and does so in full agreement with what he says, even where Eduard von Hartmann says that the way in which the idea of natural selection is treated as a modern superstition is like a childhood disease, a scientific childhood disease of our times. This is cited by Oskar Hertwig, himself a pupil of Haeckel, as an appropriate statement about natural science by Eduard von Hartmann. And there is much more like this. It all adds up to a clear statement as to what science is unable to recognize and what it would really have to recognize. But what has happened is that the pupils of the great teachers of science of the 19th century have already started to refute everything that existed earlier in the nature of the hopes I have been talking about.

Oskar Hertwig is extraordinarily interesting because he shows that science today cannot have any objection to such a philosophy as Eduard von Hartmann's.

If the scientists find their way to Eduard von Hartmann, they will also find their way to the science of spirit. But then the general consciousness of humanity too will be able to find its way.

The science of spirit will encounter opposition enough from other directions as well. To conclude, I would like to mention briefly the objections that are constantly brought by the adherents of various religious organizations against the science of spirit. It is remarkable how it is just from the religious viewpoint that the science of spirit is attacked. It is said, for instance, that what the science of spirit has to say contradicts things in the Bible or that are held according to tradition.—But is this really what we should be concerned about? Could we think of not wanting to discover America because it cannot be found in the Bible or in Christian tradition?

If anyone believes that the power of the greatest thing in the world—Christianity—could be endangered because of some discovery, he cannot have much faith in it!

When I hear of how objections can be made by Christians, I recall a theologian, this time not Protestant, but Catholic, a teacher of Christian philosophy, member of a Catholic faculty of theology, who gave his inaugural lecture on Galileo—and we know how the church dealt with Galileo. This really genuinely Christian and Catholic priest, who up to the time of his death never denied that he was a true son of the church, said in his lecture on Galileo: It is with injustice that a really perceptive Christianity turns against the progress of natural science as brought about by such people as Galileo. It is with injustice that Christianity declares certain ideas which are falsely said to be derived from Christianity, to be irreconcilable with natural science. For modern science, thinks this priest and professor of theology, only appears to be irreconcilable with the more limited view of the world held by the ancient peoples, but not with the Christian view, for this Christian view, properly understood, is bound to confirm the discoveries of more and more wonders in the world, and is bound to confirm the glory of the Godhead and the glory of the Christian view; it is bound to confirm the wonders that divine grace has instituted upon the earth.

We can say the same about the science of spirit, for there is no contradiction between it and Christianity, properly understood. But contradiction exists only between it and a false teaching that unjustly purports to originate from Christianity. The only thing that the science of spirit cannot be reconciled with is a narrowly conceived scientific view of the world and not with a broadly based Christian view. And the discoveries of the science of spirit, the wonders that it finds in the spiritual world, will not mean an end to the wonders that Christianity teaches us about, but on the contrary will confirm them.

Laurenz Mueller, also a genuinely Christian theologian and professor, speaks in a similar vein: Christianity does not contradict and is not intended to contradict a doctrine of evolution properly understood, as long as it does not set out to be a purely causal evolution of the world and to place man only within the framework of a physical causality.

The science of spirit does not clash with Christianity, because it does not lead to the deadening of religious life and vision, but, on the contrary, it encourages and fires religious life and vision.

And those today who still believe that their Christianity would be endangered by the science of spirit will gradually have to realize that whereas wrongly understood science has driven away more and more souls, both outwardly and inwardly, anthroposophy or the science of spirit, because it kindles religious life, will bring even educated people back to the great mysteries, not only of Christian teaching, but also of Christian deeds and ceremonial services. This will largely be the work of the future, in fact, of the relatively near future.

Just in this connection one could wish that things would be better understood and that above all there were more willingness to understand the matter, that one would not formulate a picture without really going into it and then setting up this picture as something contradictory to Christianity.

I can only mention this very briefly. I would have to speak for a long time if I had to go into everything in detail—but this could be done—to show that Christianity has not the slightest grounds for turning against such ideas as repeated lives on earth.

To finish with, allow me to say a few words about the teachings of natural science.

Today natural science has arrived at the point of realizing what it cannot attain. Oskar Hertwig—to keep to our former example—hits upon something in a remarkable way in his book Das Werden der Organismen. Eine Widerlegung von Darwins Zufallstheorie.

In a remarkable way he comes to the conclusion that it is not any objective research, nor analytical research into scientific facts, that has led to the materialistic philosophy of Darwinism, but it arises from the fact that the people of this age have borne this materialistic outlook in themselves, have borne the belief in the unspiritual nature of the outer world in themselves, and have applied this to nature.

And here it is very interesting to feel the weight of Oskar Hertwig's own words to show the real nature of the situation.

Hertwig says: “The principle of utility, the conviction of the necessity of unrestricted commercial and social competition, materialistic tendencies in philosophy, are forces that would have played an important part, even without Darwin. Those who were already under their influence greeted Darwinism as a scientific confirmation of the ideas they already cherished. They could now look at themselves, as it were, in the mirror of science.”

“The interpretation of Darwin's teaching,” Oskar Hertwig continues, “which is so ambiguous in its uncertainties, also allows for a varied application in the other spheres of economic, social and political life. Each person can get what he wants from it, just as from the Delphic oracle, and can draw his own conclusions concerning social, hygienic, medical and other questions, and can call on the scientific learning of the new Darwinian biology with its unalterable laws of nature, to confirm his own views. If however these laws of nature are not what they are made out to be”—and Oskar Hertwig sets out to prove, and does prove, that they are not really laws of nature, “could there not also be social dangers when they are applied in various ways to other spheres? We surely do not believe that human society can use for fifty years such phrases as bitter struggle for existence, survival of the fittest, of the most useful, the most expedient, perfection by selection etc., without being deeply and substantially influenced in the whole direction of this kind of ideas.”

This is what a scientist is already saying today. He is not just saying that these materialistically formulated ideas of Darwinism are wrong, but that they are injurious, that they inevitably lead to difficulties in the soul life, and to social and political harm. Only the restricted and one-sided views of certain scientists could maintain otherwise. And sometimes this works out in the most terrible way.

A great scientist of the present day for whom I have great respect—and it is just because I have respect for him that I cite him now—hints in a remarkable way at how the scientist does not perhaps wish to be understood, but at how he must be understood on the basis of his attitude toward what can be expected of a purely naturalistic view of nature. The scientist, for whom I have the greatest respect, says at the end of a significant book—and these are now his own words that I am quoting: “We live today in the best period of time”—this is what he maintains, it cannot be proved with full validity, but he asserts: “we live today in the best period of time, at least we scientists, and we can even hope for better,” he says, “for in comparing the science of today with the achievements of earlier scientists we can say with Goethe who knew so much about nature and the world:

The pleasure ... is great, to cast

The mind into the spirit of the past,

And scan the former notions of the wise,

And see what marvelous heights we've reached at last.”

—Thus speaks a first class scientist at the end of an important book!

I do not know whether many people notice and think about the person whom Goethe makes say this. Is it really Goethe, the one who knew so much about the world and nature, who says this? No, he puts it into the mouth of Wagner

And Faust replies to Wagner:

“How strange, that he who cleaves to shallow things

Can keep his hopes alive on empty terms

And dig with greed for precious plunderings,

And find his happiness unearthing worms!”

This is the real view of the one who knew so much about the world and nature!

And if scientists today do not yet realize what can be built on the basis of the sound foundations to be found in a view of the world, such as also shone through Goethe, one can understand what Oskar Hertwig so rightly says: The materialistic conception of the world and Darwinism with its materialistic bias have arisen out of the general materialistic attitude of the times, their naturalistic methods, their materialistic impulses and feelings, and which have then been applied to nature. But the facts disprove this.

The scientist of spirit replies to this out of what he believes to be a deeper knowledge of the world and of man: No, it is not such a narrow view like the one prevalent around the middle of the 19th century that should affect our study of nature, but our views should be formulated according to the highest possible content that spirit and soul can attain, and they should then be applied to nature to see if nature really confirms them. We can then expect that the resultant view will not be anything like Darwinism. This latter believed the world to exist according to certain laws and, as we have seen, nature herself has disproved this belief.

The science of spirit strives to study the human soul in its depths, and to draw out of these depths the spirit that exists in the broadest and most embracing sense as the foundation of existence in spiritual beings and forces. It is not a one-sided but a many-sided path that it takes, for there is not only one path it follows, but it follows all the paths on which the human soul is led, from out of its own rich inner life. The science of spirit may be allowed to hope that the questions, the mysteries, which nature has put to it will not be refuted by nature, but that the spirit in nature will affirm them because the spirit that lives in nature also lives in man, and not, as in the other case, to deny what the science of spirit or anthroposophy envisages the real nature of the human mystery to be.

I have often characterized spiritual science, as it is meant here, in these lectures. It seeks to be a true continuation of the natural scientific world view, indeed of natural scientific research in general, in that it adds to those forces of the human soul that are used when man faces the external sensory world and uses his senses and mind to explore it, which is connected to the brain, that it adds to these forces, which are also used by all external science, those forces that lie dormant in the soul in ordinary life and in the work of ordinary science, but can be brought out of this soul, can be developed and thus enable the human being to relate in a living way to what, as spiritual laws and spiritual entities, interweaves and permeates the world, and to which man, with his innermost being, also belongs, belongs through those powers of his being that pass through birth and death, that are the eternal powers of his being. In its entire attitude, in its scientific attitude, this spiritual science wants to be a true successor of natural science. And that which distinguishes it from natural science and which has just been characterized must be present in it for the reason that, if one wants to penetrate into the spiritual world, one needs other powers for the spiritual world in the same way that natural science penetrates into the natural world. One needs the exposure of the cognitive faculty in the human soul, of cognitive powers attuned to the spiritual world.

Today, I want to show in particular that this spiritual science, as it is presented today as a starting point for the spiritual development of people in the future, is not brought out of spiritual life or placed in spiritual life by mere arbitrariness, but is firmly anchored in the most significant endeavors of German spiritual life, even if they have perhaps been forgotten due to the circumstances of modern times. And here we shall repeatedly and repeatedly encounter – and they must also be mentioned today, although I have repeatedly presented them in the lectures I have given here last winter and this winter – when we speak of the German people's greatest intellectual upsurge, of the actual summit of their intellectual life, we must repeatedly and repeatedly encounter the three figures: Fichte, Schelling and Hegel.

I took the liberty of characterizing Fichte, as he is firmly rooted in German intellectual life, in a special lecture in December. Today I would like to draw particular attention to the fact that Fichte, in his constant search for a fixed point within his own human interior, for a living center of human existence, is in a certain sense a starting point for endeavors in spiritual science. And at the same time — as was mentioned in particular in the Fichte lecture here — he is the spirit who, I might say, felt from a deep sense of what he had to say, as if through a dialogue with the German national spirit. I have pointed out how Fichte, in contrast to Western philosophy, for example, to the Western world view, is above all concerned with attaining a higher human conception of the world by revealing the human inner powers, the human soul powers. For Fichte, the human ego, the center of the human soul, is something that is constantly being created within the human being, so that it can never be lost to the human being, because the human being not only shares in the existence of this center of the human being, but also shares in the creative powers of this human being. And how does Fichte imagine that this creativity in man is anchored in the all-creative of the world? As the highest that man can attain to when he tries to immerse himself in that which weaves and lives in the world as the Divine-Spiritual. As such supreme spiritual-divine, Fichte recognizes that which is volitional, which, as world-will permeated by world-duty, pulses through and permeates everything, and with its current permeates the own human soul, but in this own human soul is now grasped not as being, but as creativity. So that when man expresses his ego, he can know himself to be one with the world-will at work in the world. The divine-spiritual, which the world, external nature, has placed before man, wants, as it were, to enter into the center of the human being. And man becomes aware of this inner volition, speaks of it as his self, as his ego.

And so Fichte felt himself to be at rest with his self, but at the same time, in this rest, extremely moved in the creative will of the world. From this he then draws the strength that he has applied throughout his life. From this he also draws the strength to regard all that is external and sensual, as he says, as a mere materialized tool for the duty of the human being that pulsates in his will. Thus, for Fichte, the truly spiritual is what flows into the human soul as volition. For him, the external world is the sensitized material of duty. And so we see him, how he wants to point out to people again and again throughout his life, to the source, to the living source of their own inner being.

In the Fichte lecture, I pointed out how Fichte stood before his audience, for example in Jena, and tried to touch each individual listener in their soul, so that they would become aware of how the All-Creative lives spiritually within. So he said to his listeners: “Imagine the wall!” Then the listeners looked at the wall and could think the wall. After they had thought the wall for a while, he said: “Now think of the one who thought the wall.” At first the listeners were somewhat perplexed. They were to grasp inwardly, spiritually, each within themselves. But at the same time, it was the way to point each individual to his own self, to point out to him that he can only grasp the world if he finds himself in his deepest inner being and there discovers how what the world wills flows into him and what rises in his own will as the source of his own being. Above all, one sees (and I do not wish to repeat myself today with regard to the lecture I gave here in December) how Fichte lives a world view of power. Therefore, those who listened to him — and many spoke in a similar way — could say: His words rushed “like a thunderstorm that discharges its fire in individual strikes”. And Fichte, by directly grasping the soul, wanted to bring the divine spiritual will that permeates the world, not just good will, to the soul; he wanted to educate great people. And so he lived in a living together of his soul with the world soul and regarded this precisely as the result of a dialogue with the German national spirit, and it was out of this consciousness that he found those powerful words with which he encouraged and strengthened his people in one of Germany's most difficult times. It was precisely out of this consciousness that he found the power to work as he was able to do in the “Speeches to the German Nation,” inspiring his people to a great extent.

Like Fichte's follower, Schelling stands there, especially in his best pages, one could say, like Fichte, more or less forgotten. If Fichte stands more as the man who wants to grasp the will, the will of the world, and let the will of the world roll forth in his own words, if this Fichte stands as the man who, so to speak, commands the concepts and ideas, then Schelling stands before us as he stood before his enthusiastic audiences – and there were many such, I myself knew people who knew the aged Schelling very well – he stands before us, not like Fichte, the commander of the world view, he stands before us as the seer, from whose eyes sparkled what he had to communicate enthusiastically in words about nature and spirit. He stood before his audience in Jena in the 1790s, at what was then the center of learning for the German people. He stood in Munich and Erlangen and Berlin in the 1840s. Everywhere he went, he radiated something of a seer, as if he were surrounded by spirituality and spoke from the realm of the spiritual.

To give you an idea of how such a figure stood in the former heyday of German intellectual life in front of people who had a sense for it, I would like to bring you some words about the lecture, which were written down by an audience member, by a loyal audience member because he met Schelling again and again: Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert. I would like to read to you the words that Schubert wrote about the way Schelling stood before his audience, “already as a young man among young men,” back in the 1790s in Jena. About this, Schubert, who was himself a deeply spiritual person, writes of a person who has wonderfully immersed himself in the secrets of nature, who tried to follow the mysterious weaving of the human soul into the dream world and into the abnormal phenomena of mental life, but who was also able to ascend to the highest heights of human intellectual life. This Schubert writes about Schelling:

Two things stand out in these words of the deep and spirited Schubert. The first is that he felt - and we know that it was the same with others who heard Schelling - that this man speaks from direct spiritual experience, he shapes his words by looking into a spiritual world and thus shapes a wisdom from direct spiritual experience that deals with this spiritual world.

That is the significance, the infinitely significant thing about this great period of German idealism, that countless people then standing on the outside of life heard personalities such as Fichte, such as Schelling and, as we shall see in a moment, Hegel, and from the words of these personalities heard the spirit speak, looked into the realm of these geniuses of the German people. Anyone who is familiar with the intellectual history of humanity knows that such a relationship between the spirit and the age existed only within the German people and could only exist within the German people because of the nature of the German people. This is a special result that is deeply rooted in the very foundations of the German character. That is one thing that can be seen from this.

The other thing is that, in this period, people were formed who, like Schubert, were able to ignite their own relationship to the spiritual world through these great, significant, impressive personalities. From such a state of soul, Schelling developed a thinking about nature and a thinking about soul and spirit that, one might say, bore the character of the most intimate life, but also bore the character of which one might say shows how man is prepared, with his soul, to descend into all being and, in all being, first of all into nature, and then into the spirit, to seek life, the direct life. Under the influence of this way of thinking, knowledge becomes something very special: knowledge becomes inner experience, becoming part of the experience of things.

I have said it again and again: It is not important to place oneself today in some dogmatic way on the ground of what these spirits have said in terms of content. One does not even have to agree with what they said in terms of content. What matters is the way of striving, the way in which they seek the paths into the spiritual world. Schelling felt so intimately connected — even if he expressed it one-sidedly — with what lives and moves in nature that he could once utter the saying, “To know nature is to create nature.” Certainly, in the face of such a saying, the shallow superficial will always be right in comparison to the genius who, like Schelling, utters such a saying from the depths of his being. Let us give the shallow superficialist the right, but let us be clear: even if nature can only be recreated in the human soul, in Schelling's saying, “To recognize nature is to create nature,” means an intimate interweaving of the whole human personality with natural existence. And for Schelling this becomes the one revelation of the divine-spiritual, and the soul of man the other revelation. They confront each other, they correspond to each other. The spirit first created itself in soulless nature, which gradually became ensouled from the plant kingdom to the animal kingdom and to man, as it were, creating the soil in which the soul can then flourish. The soul experiences the spiritual directly in itself, experiences it in direct reality.

How different it appears, when rightly understood, from the spiritual knowledge of nature which is striven for as the outcome, let us say, of Romance popularism. In the development of the German spirit there is no need to descend to the level of tone which the enemies of Germany have now reached when they wish to characterize the relation of the German spiritual life to other spiritual lives in Europe. One can remain entirely on the ground of fact. Therefore, what is to be said now is not said out of narrow national feelings, but out of fact itself. Compare such a desire to penetrate nature, as present in Schelling, where nature is to be grasped in such a way that the soul's own life is submerged in that which lives and moves outside. Compare this with what is characteristic of the Western world view, which reached its highest level with Descartes, Cartesius, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, but has been continued into our days and is just as characteristic of Western culture as Fichte's and Schelling's striving is for German culture. Like Fichte and Schelling later on, Cartesius also takes up a position in relation to the world of nature. He starts by taking the standpoint of doubt. He also seeks within himself a central point through which he can arrive at a certainty about the existence of the world and of life. His famous “Cogito, ergo sum” is well known: “I think, therefore I am.” What does he rely on? Not, like Fichte, on the living ego, from which one cannot take away its existence, because it is continually creating itself out of the world-will. He relies on thinking, which is supposed to be there already, on that which already lives in man: I think, therefore I am — which can easily be refuted with every night's sleep of man, because one can just as well say: I do not think, therefore I am not. Nothing fruitful follows from Descartes' “I think, therefore I am”. But how little this world view is suited to submerging into nature with one's own soul essence can best be seen from a single external characteristic. Descartes tried to characterize the nature surrounding the soul. And he himself sought to address the animals as moving machines, as soulless machines. Only man himself, he thought, could speak of himself as if he had a soul. The animals are moving machines, are soulless machines.

So little is the soul out of this folklore placed in the possibility of immersing itself in the inner life of the external thing that it cannot find inspiration within the animal world. No wonder that this continued until the materialism of the eighteenth century and continued - as we will mention today - until our own days, as in that materialism of the eighteenth century, in that material ism that conceived of the whole world only as a mechanism, and which finally realized, especially in de Lamettrie in his book “L'homme-machine”, even came to understand man himself only as a moving machine. All this is already present in germinal form in Cartesius.

Goethe, out of his German consciousness, became acquainted with this Western world view, and he spoke out of his German consciousness: They offer us a world of moving atoms that push and pull each other. If they then at least wanted to derive the manifold, the beautiful, the great, the sublime phenomena of the world from these atoms that push and pull each other. But after they have presented this bleak, desolate image of the world, they let it be presented and do nothing to show how the world emerges from these accumulations of atoms.

The third thinker who should be mentioned among those minds that, as it were, form the background of the world view from which everything that the German mind has achieved in that time through Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Lessing and so on has sprung, is Hegel. In him we see the third aspect of the German mind embodied at the same time. In him we see a third way of finding the point in the soul through which this human soul can feel directly one with the whole world, with that which, in a divine-spiritual way, pulses, weaves and permeates the world. If in Fichte we see the will grasping directly in the innermost part of man, and in Schelling, I might say, the mind, then in Hegel we see the human thought grasped. But in that Hegel attempts to grasp the thought not merely as human, but in its purity, detached from all sensual sensations and perceptions, directly in the soul, Hegel feels as if, in living in the living and breathing and becoming of pure thought, he also lives in the thought that not only lives in the soul, but that is only meant to appear in the soul, because it reveals itself in it, as divine-spiritual thinking permeating all of the world. Just as the divine spiritual beings scatter their thoughts throughout the world, as it were, thinking the world and continually fashioning it in thought, so it is revealed when the thinker, alone with himself, gives rise to pure thinking, thinking that is not borrowed from the external world of the senses but that the human being finds as thinking that springs up within him when he gives himself to his inner being. Basically, what Hegel wants, if one may say so, is a mystical will. But it is not an unclear, dark or nebulous mysticism. The dark, unclear or nebulous mysticism wants to unite with the world ground in the darkest feelings possible. Hegel also wants the soul to unite with the ground of the world, but he seeks this in crystal clarity, in the transparency of thinking; he seeks it in inner experience, he seeks it in the world of thoughts. In perfect clarity, he seeks for the soul that which is otherwise only believed in unclear mysticism.

All this shows how these three important minds are endeavoring from three different sides to bring the human soul to experience the totality of reality by devotion to the totality of reality, how they are convinced that something can be found in the soul that experiences the world in its depths and thus yields a satisfying world view.

Fichte speaks to his Berlin students in 1811 and 1813 about attaining such a world picture in such a way that it is clear that he is well aware that one must strive for certain powers of knowledge that lie dormant in the soul. Fichte then says to his Berlin students in the years mentioned: If one really wants to have that which must be striven for in order to truly and inwardly grasp the world spiritually, then it is necessary that the human being finds and awakens a slumbering sense, a new sense, a new sense organ, within himself. Just as the eye is formed in the physical body, so a new sense organ must be developed out of the soul in Fichte's sense, if we are to look into the spiritual world. That is why Fichte boldly says to his listeners in these years, when, as far as he could achieve it in his relatively short life, his world view has reached the highest peak: What I have to say to you is like a single seeing person entering a world of blind people. What he has to say to them about the world of light, the world of colors, initially affects them, and at first they will say it is nonsense because they cannot sense anything.

And Schelling - we can already see it in the saying that Schubert made about him - has drawn attention to intellectual intuition. What he coined in his words, for which he coined a wisdom, he sought to explore in the world by developing the organ within him into an “intellectual intuition”. From this intellectual intuition, Schelling speaks in such a way that he could have the effect that has just been characterized.

From his point of view, Hegel then opposed this intellectual view. He believed that to assert this intellectual view was to characterize individual exceptional people, people who, through a higher disposition, had become capable of looking into the spiritual world. Hegel, on the contrary, was thoroughly convinced that every human being is capable of looking into the spiritual world, and he wanted to emphasize this thoroughly.

Thus these minds were opposed to each other not only in the content of what they said, but they were also opposed to each other in such profound views. But that is not the point, but rather the fact that they all basically strive for what can truly be called spiritual science: the experience of the world through that which sits in the deepest part of man. And in this they are united with the greatest spirit who created out of German folkhood, with Goethe, as Fichte, Hegel and Schelling have often said.

Goethe speaks of this contemplative power of judgment in a beautiful little essay entitled “Contemplative Power of Judgment”. What does Goethe mean by this contemplative power of judgment? The senses initially observe the external physical world. The mind combines what this external physical world presents to it. When the senses observe the external physical world, they do not see the essence of things, says Goethe; this must be observed spiritually. In this process, the power of judgment must not merely combine; the concepts and ideas that arise must not merely arise in such a way that they seek to depict something else; something of the world spirit itself must live in the power that forms concepts and ideas. The power of judgment must not merely think; the power of judgment must look at, look spiritually, as the senses otherwise look. Goethe is completely at one with those who have, as it were, provided the background for the world view, just as they feel at one with him. Just as Fichte, for example, when he published the first edition of his seemingly so abstract Theory of Science, sent it to Goethe in sheets and wrote to him: “The pure spirituality of feeling that one sees in you must also be the touchstone for what we create.

A wonderful relationship of a spiritual kind exists between the three world-view personalities mentioned and minds such as Goethe; we could also cite Schiller, we could also cite Herder, we could cite them all, who in such great times drew directly from the depths of German national character.

It must be said that all that was created in Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and in the others, contains something that is not fully expressed in any of them: Fichte seeks to recognize the spiritual world by experiencing the will as it flows into the soul; Schelling turns more to the mind, Hegel to the thought content of the world, others to other things. Above all of them, as it were, like the unity that expresses itself in three or so many different ways, hovers that which one can truly call the striving of the German national spirit itself, which cannot be fully expressed by any single personality, but which expresses itself as in three shades, for example, in relation to a world view in Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. Those who do not stand as dogmatic followers or opponents to these personalities – one could be beyond such childishness today, that one wants to be a follower or opponent of a spirit if one wants to understand it in its greatness – but have a heart and a mind and an open feeling for their striving, will discern everywhere, in all their expressions, something like the German national soul itself, so that what they say is always more powerful than what is directly expressed. That is the strange and mysterious thing about these minds. And that is why later, far less important personalities than these great, ingenious ones, were even able to arrive at more significant, more penetrating spiritual truths than these leading and dominant minds themselves. That is the significant thing: through these minds something is expressed that is more than these minds, that is the central German national spirit itself, which continues to work, so that lesser minds, far less talented minds, could come, and in these far less talented minds the same spirit is expressed, but even in a more spiritual scientific way than in Fichte, Schelling, Hegel themselves. They were the ones who first, I might say, set the tone and for the first time communicated something to the world, drawing it from the source of spiritual life. Even for geniuses, this is difficult. But once the great, powerful stimulus had been provided, lesser minds followed. And it must be said that these lesser minds in some cases captured the path into the spiritual worlds even more profoundly and meaningfully than those on whom they depended, who were their teachers.

Thus we see in Immanuel Hermann Fichte, the son of the great Johann Gottlieb Fichte, how he strives in his own way for a spiritual science, and in such a way that he seeks a higher human being in the sensual human being who stands before us, who is grasped by the outer senses and outer science , whom he calls an etheric human being, and in whom lie the formative forces for this physical human being, which are built up before the physical body receives its hereditary substance from the parents, and which are maintained as the sum of the formative forces when the physical body passes through the gate of death. Immanuel Hermann Fichte speaks of an ethereal human being, of an ethereal human being who is inwardly strengthened and filled with strength, who belongs to the eternal forces of the universe just as the human being here belongs to the physical forces of the hereditary current as a physical human being, probably because of his association with his father, who was a good educator for him.

And one would like to say: How carried to higher heights we find the Fichtean, the Schellingian striving in a man who has become little known, who almost belongs to the forgotten spirits of German intellectual life, but in whom is deeply rooted precisely what is the essence of the German national spirit - in Troxler. Troxler - who knows Troxler? And yet, what do we know of this Troxler? Under the influence of Schelling, in particular, he wrote his profound > Blicke in das Wesen des Menschen in 1811 and then gave his lectures on philosophy in 1834. These lectures are certainly not written in a piquant way, to use the foreign word for something foreign, but they are written in such a way that they show us: A person is speaking who does not just want to approach the world with the intellect, with which one can only grasp the finite, but one who wants to give the whole personality of the human being with all its powers to the world, so that this personality, when it immerses itself in the world's phenomena, brings with it a knowledge that is fertilized by the co-experience, by the most intimate co-experience with the being of the world. And Troxler knows something about the fact that among those powers of the soul that are initially turned towards external nature and its sensuality, higher spiritual powers live. And in a strange way, Troxler now seeks to elevate the spirit above itself. He speaks of a super-spiritual sense that can be awakened in man, of a super-spiritual sense that slumbers in man. What does Troxler mean by that? He means: The human spirit otherwise thinks only in abstract concepts and ideas that are dry and empty, mere images of the external world; but in the same force that lives in these abstract concepts and ideas, there also lives something that can be awakened by man as a spiritual being. Then he sees in supersensible images the way one can see external reality with the eyes. In ordinary cognition, the sensory image is present first, and the thought, which is not sensory-pictorial, is added in the process of cognition. In the spiritual process of cognition, the supersensible experience is present; this could not be seen as such if it did not pour itself through a power that is natural to the spirit into the image, which brings it to a spiritual-descriptive sensualization. For Troxler, such knowledge is that of the super-spiritual sense. And what this super-spiritual sense bypasses, Troxler calls the supersensible spirit, the spirit that rises above mere observation of the sensual, and which, as spirit, experiences what is out there in the world. How could I fail to mention to those esteemed listeners who heard a lecture like the one I gave on Friday two weeks ago that in this supersensible sense and supersensible spirit of Troxler, the germs — if only the germs, but nevertheless the germs — lie in what I had to characterize as the two paths into spiritual science,

But there is another way in which Troxler expresses it wonderfully. He says: When the human being is first placed in his physical body with his soul, with his eternal self, when he stands face to face with the moral, the religious, but also with the outer, immediate reality, then he develops three forces: faith, hope and love. These three forces, which he continues to develop, he develops in life within the physical-sensual body. It simply belongs to the human being, as he stands in the physical-sensual world, that he lives in faith, in love, in hope. But Troxler says: That which is proper to the soul of man here within the physical body as faith, as justified belief, is, so to speak, the outer expression of a deeper power that is within the soul, which, through this faith, shines into the physical world as a divine power. But behind this power of faith, which, in order to unfold, absolutely requires the physical body, lies supersensible hearing. This means that faith is, in a sense, what a person makes out of supersensible hearing. By making use of the sensory instrument for supersensible hearing, he believes. But if he frees himself from his sensory body and experiences himself in the soul, then the same power that becomes faith in the sensory life gives him supersensible hearing, through which he can delve into a world of spiritual sound phenomena through which spiritual entities and spiritual facts speak to him.

And the love that a person develops here in the physical body, which is the flowering of human life on earth, is the outer expression of a power that lies behind it: for spiritual feeling or touching, says Troxler. And when a person delves deeper into this same power, which lives here as the blossom of the moral earthly existence, of the religious earthly existence, when he delves deeper into this love, when he goes to the foundations of this love, then he discovers within himself that the spiritual man has organs of feeling through which he can touch spiritual beings and spiritual facts just as he can touch physical facts with his sensory organs of feeling or touching. Behind love lies spiritual feeling or touching, as behind faith lies spiritual hearing.

And behind the hope that a person has in this or that form lies spiritual vision, the insight through the spiritual sense of seeing into the spiritual world.

Thus, behind what a person experiences as the power of faith, love and hope, Troxler sees only the outer expression of higher powers: for spiritual hearing, for spiritual feeling, for spiritual beholding or seeing. And then he says: When a person can give himself to the world in such a way that he gives himself with his spiritual hearing, spiritual feeling, spiritual seeing, then not only do thoughts come to life in him that so externally and abstractly reflect the external world, but, as Tro “sensible thoughts”, thoughts that can be felt themselves, that is, that are living beings, and ‘intelligent feelings’, that is, not just dark feelings in which one feels one's own existence in the world, but something through which the feelings themselves become intelligent. We know from the lecture just mentioned that it is actually the will, not the feelings; but in Troxler there is definitely the germ of everything that can be presented in spiritual science today. When a person awakens to this seeing, to this hearing and sensing of the spiritual world, when in this feeling a life of thought awakens through which the person can connect with the living thought that weaves and lives in the spiritual world, just as thought lives in us essentially, not just abstractly. Troxler feels his striving for spiritual science so deeply. And I would like to read a passage from Troxler from which you can see just how profound this striving was for Troxler. He once said:

"In the past, philosophers distinguished a fine, noble soul body from the coarser body, or assumed that the soul was a kind of covering for the face within this body, that the soul had an image of the body, which they called a schema, and that the soul was the higher inner man... In more recent times, even Kant in Dreams of a Spirit-Seer seriously dreams, in jest, an entire inward, spiritual man who carries all the limbs of the outward on his spirit body."

Troxler then draws attention to others who have more or less sensed this other side of the nature of the world from the depths of German spiritual endeavor. Troxler continues:

"Lavater writes and thinks in the same way, and even when Jean Paul makes humorous jokes about Bonnet's undergarment and Platner's soul corset, which are said to be , we also hear him asking: What is the purpose and origin of these extraordinary talents and desires within us, which, like swallowed diamonds, slowly cut our earthly shell? Why was I stuck to this dirty lump of earth, a creature with useless wings of light, when I was supposed to rot back into the birth clod without ever wriggling free with ethereal wings?"

Troxler draws attention to such currents in German intellectual life. And then he comes up with the idea that a special science could now arise from this, a science that is a science but that has something in common with poetry, for example, in that it arises from the human soul, in that not a single power of the soul, but the whole human soul, surrenders itself in order to experience the world together with others.

If you look at people from the outside, Troxler says, you get to know anthropology. Anthropology is what arises when you examine with the senses and with the mind what the human being presents and what is revealed in the human being. But with this one does not find the full essence of the human being. What Troxler calls in the characterized sense, spiritual hearing, spiritual feeling, spiritual seeing, what he calls supersensible spirit, superspiritual sense, that is part of it, in order to see something higher in the human being. A science stands before his soul, which does not arise out of the senses, not out of mere intellect, but out of this higher faculty of knowledge in the human being. And Troxler speaks very characteristically about this science in the following way. He says - Troxler's following words were written in 1835 -:

"If it is highly gratifying that the newest philosophy, which we have long recognized as the one that founds all living religion and must reveal itself in every anthroposophy, thus in poetry as well as in history, is now making headway, it cannot be overlooked, that this idea cannot be a true fruit of speculation, and that the true personality or individuality of man must not be confused either with what it sets up as subjective spirit or finite ego, nor with what it confronts with as absolute spirit or absolute personality.

In the 1830s, Troxler became aware of the idea of anthroposophy, a science that seeks to be a spiritual science based on human power in the truest sense of the word. Spiritual science can, if it is able to correctly understand the germs that come from the continuous flow of German intellectual life, say: Among Western peoples, for example, something comparable to spiritual science, something comparable to anthroposophy, can indeed arise; but there it will always arise in such a way that it runs alongside the continuous stream of the world view, alongside what is there science, and therefore very, very easily becomes a sect or a sectarianism. , but it will always arise in such a way that it runs alongside the continuous stream of world view, alongside what is science there, and therefore very, very easily tends towards sectarianism or dilettantism. In German spiritual life — and in this respect German spiritual life stands alone — spiritual science arises as something that naturally emerges from the deepest impulses, from the deepest forces of this German spiritual life. Even when this German spiritual life becomes scientific with regard to the spiritual world and develops a striving for spiritual knowledge, the seeds of what must become spiritual science already lie in this striving. Therefore, we never see what flows through German intellectual life in this way die away.

Or is it not almost wonderful that in 1856 a little book was published by a pastor from Waldeck? He was a pastor in Sachsenberg in Waldeck. In this little book – as I said, the content is not important, but the striving – an attempt is made, in a way that is completely opposed to Hegel, to find something for the human soul, through which this human soul, by awakening the power slumbering in it, can join the whole lofty awakening spiritual world. And this is admirably shown by the simple pastor Rocholl in Sachsenberg in the Principality of Waldeck in his little book: 'Contributions to the History of German Theosophy' — a small booklet, but full of real inner spiritual life, of a spiritual life in which one can see that one who has sought it in his solitude finds everywhere the possibility of rising from the lonely inner experience of the soul to broad views of the world that are hidden behind the sensual one and yet always carry this sensual one, so that one has only one side of the world when one looks at this sensual life. One does not know what one should admire first in such a little book, which must certainly make a fantastic impression today – but that is not the point; whether one should admire more the fact that the simple country pastor found his way into the deepest depths of spiritual endeavor, or whether one should admire the foundations of the continuous flow of German intellectual life, which can produce such blossoms even in the simplest person. And if we had time, I could give you hundreds and hundreds of examples from which you would see how, admittedly not in the field of outwardly recognized, but more in the field of forgotten spiritual tones, but nevertheless vividly surviving spiritual tones, are present everywhere in such people who carry forward to our days what can be called a spiritual-scientific striving within the development of German thought.

As early as the first edition of my World and Life Views, which appeared more than a year and a half ago under the title of Riddles of Philosophy, I called attention to a little-known thinker, Karl Christian Planck. But what good did it do to call attention to such spirits, at least initially? Such spirits are more tangible as an expression, as a revelation of what is now alive, what is not expressed in the scientific activity in question, but nevertheless supports and sustains this scientific activity in many ways. Such spirits arise precisely from the deepest depths of the German character, of which Karl Christian Planck is one. Planck has written a book entitled 'Truth and shallowness of Darwinism', a very important book. He has also written a book about the knowledge of nature. I will mention only the following from this book, although basically every page is interesting:

When people talk about the earth today, they talk, I would say, in a geological sense. The earth is a mineral body to them, and man walks on it as an alien being. For Planck, the Earth, with everything that grows on it and including man, is a great spiritual-soul organism, and man belongs to it. One has simply not understood the Earth if one has not shown how, in the whole organism of the Earth, the physical human being must be present in that his soul is outwardly embodied. The earth is seen as a whole, all its forces, from the most physical to the most spiritual, are grasped as a unity. Planck wants to establish a unified world picture, which is spiritual, to use Goethe's expression. But Planck is aware – in this respect he is one of the most characteristic thinkers of the nineteenth century – of how what he is able to create really does emerge from the very depths of the German national spirit. He expresses this in the following beautiful words in his essay 'Grundlinien einer Wissenschaft der Natur' (Foundations of a Science of Nature), which appeared in 1864:

“He is fully aware of the power of deeply rooted prejudices against his writing, stemming from previous views. But just as the work itself, despite all the unfavorable circumstances that arose from the author's overall situation and professional position,” namely, he was a simple high school teacher, not a university professor — “a work of this kind was opposed, but its realization and its way into the public has fought, then he is also certain that what must now first fight for its recognition will appear as the simplest and most self-evident truth, and that in it not only his cause, but the truly German view of things, will triumph over all still unworthy external and un-German views of nature and spirit.

What our medieval poetry has already unconsciously and profoundly foreshadowed will finally be fulfilled in our nation in the maturity of the times. The impractical inwardness of the German spirit, which has been afflicted with harm and ridicule (as Wolfram von Eschenbach describes it in his “Parzival”)” - this was written in 1864, long before Wagner's ‘Parsifal’! “Finally, in the strength of its unceasing striving, it attains the highest, it gets to the bottom of the last simple laws of things and of human existence itself; and what poetry has symbolized in a fantastically medieval way in the wonders of the Grail, the mastery of which is attained by its hero, conversely receives its purely natural fulfillment and reality in the lasting knowledge of nature and of spirit itself.

Thus speaks he who then gave the summary of his world picture under the title “The Will of a German”, in which an attempt is really made, again at a higher level than was possible for Schelling, to penetrate nature and spirit. In 1912, this “The Will of a German” was published in a new edition. I do not think that many people have studied it. Those who deal with such things professionally had other things to do: the books by Bergson, by that Bergson — his name is still Bergson! who has used the present time not only to revile but also to slander in the truest sense what has emerged from German intellectual life; who has managed to describe the entire current intellectual culture of the Germans as mechanistic. I have said here before: when he wrote that the Germans have descended from the heights on which they stood under Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Schelling and Hegel, and that now they are creating a mechanical culture, he probably believed that the Germans, when they march up with cannons, would declaim Novalis or Goethe's poems to their opponents! But from the fact that he now only sees—or probably does not see—guns and rifles, he makes German culture into a completely mechanistic one.

Now, just as the other things I have been saying during this period have been said again and again in the years before the war, and also to members of other nations – so that they must not be understood as having been prompted by the situation of war – I tried to present Bergson's philosophy in the book that was completed at the beginning of the war, the second edition of my “Weltund Lebensanschauungen” (World and Life Views). And in the same book I pointed out how, I might say, one of the most brilliant ideas in Bergson's work, infinitely greater, more incisive and profound — here again we have such a forgotten 'tone of German intellectual life' — had already appeared in 1882 in the little-known Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss. At one point in his books, Bergson draws attention to the fact that when considering the world, one should not start with the mineral kingdom and then the plant and animal kingdoms, and only then include man in them, but rather start with man; how man is the is original and the other entities in the continuous flow, in which he developed while he was the first, has rejected the less perfect, so that the other natural kingdoms have developed out of the human kingdom.

In my book Rätseln der Philosophie (Mysteries of Philosophy), I pointed out how the lonely, deep thinker, but also energetic and powerful thinker, Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss, in his book Geist und Stoff (Mind and Matter), and basically in fact, even earlier than 1882, this idea in a powerful, courageous way, - the idea that one cannot get along with Darwinism understood in a purely Western sense, but that one has to imagine: if you go back in the world, you first have the human being. The human being is the original, and as the human being develops further, he expels certain entities, first the animals, then the plants, then the minerals. That is the reverse course of development.

I cannot go into this in detail today – I have even dealt with this idea several times in lectures from previous years – but I would like to mention today that this spiritual worldview is fully represented in the German spiritual movement of the 1880s in the book by Preuss, 'Geist und Stoff' (Spirit and Matter). I would like to read to you a key passage from my book “The Riddles of Philosophy” so that you can see how a powerful world view, which is part of the whole current that I have characterized for you today, flows into the spiritual life of humanity in weighty words. Preuss says:

The center of this new doctrine is man, the only species on our planet that recurs: Homo sapiens. It is strange that the older observers started with natural objects and then went so astray that they could not find the way to man, which Darwin only managed in the most miserable and thoroughly unsatisfactory way by seeking the progenitor of the Lord of Creation among the animals, while the naturalist should start with himself as a human being, and thus gradually return to humanity through the whole realm of being and thinking! It was not by chance that human nature emerged from the evolution of all earthly things, but by necessity. Man is the goal of all telluric processes, and every other form emerging alongside him has borrowed its traits from his. Man is the first-born being of the whole cosmos... When his germs had emerged, the remaining organic residue no longer had the necessary strength to produce further human germs. What emerged was animal or plant...

In 1882, what the human soul can experience spiritually, presented within German intellectual life! Then Bergson comes along and by no means presents the thought in such a powerful, penetrating way, connected with the innermost life of the soul, but, one might say, in a slightly pursed, mincing, more and more indeterminate way. And people are overwhelmed by Bergson and do not want to know about Preuss. And Bergson apparently knows nothing about Preuss. But that is about as bad for someone who writes about worldviews as it would be if he knew about it and did not say anything. But we do not want to examine whether Bergson knew and did not say, or whether he did not know, now that it has been sufficiently proven that Bergson not only borrowed ideas from Schopenhauer and expressed them in his own words, but also took ideas from the entire philosophy of German idealism, for example Schelling and Fichte, and seems to consider himself their creator. It is indeed a special method of characterizing the relationship of one people to another, as Bergson now continually does to his French counterparts, by presenting German science and German knowledge as something particularly mechanical, after he has previously endeavored - which is probably not a very mechanical activity - to describe these German world-view personalities over pages. After a while, one realizes that Bergson could have kept silent altogether if he had not built his world view on the foundations of the German world view personalities, which is basically nothing more than a Cartesian mechanism, the mechanism of the eighteenth century, warmed up by a somewhat romantically understood Schellingianism and Schopenhauerianism.

As I said, one must characterize things appropriately; for it must be clear to our minds that when we speak of the relationship of the German character in the overall development of humanity, we do not need to adopt the same method of disparaging other nationalities that is so thoroughly used by our opponents today. The German is in a position to point out the facts, and he will now also gain strength from the difficult trials of the present time to delve into the German soul, where he has not yet succeeded. The forgotten sides of the striving for spiritual science will be remembered again. I may say this again and again, after having endeavored for more than thirty years to emphasize another side of the forgotten striving of German knowledge.

From what has emerged entirely from the British essence of knowing directed only at the outside world, we have the so-called Newtonian color theory. And the power of the British essence, not only externally but also internally, spiritually, is so great that this Newtonian color theory has taken hold of all minds that think about such things. Only Goethe, out of that nature which can be won from German nationality, has rebelled against Newton's theory of colours in the physical field. Certainly, Newton's theory of colours is, I might say, in one particular chapter, what de Lamettrie's L'Homme-Machine can be for all shallow superficial people in the world. Only the case with the theory of colours is particularly tragic. For 35 years, as I said, I have been trying to show the full significance of Goethe's Theory of Colours, the whole struggle of the German world-view, as it appears in Goethe with regard to the world of colour, against the mechanistic view rooted in British folklore with Newton. The chapter 'Goethe versus Newton' will also come into its own when that which lives on in a living, active way, even if not always consciously, comes more and more to the fore and can be seen by anyone who wants to see. And it will come to the fore, precisely as a result of the trials of our time, the most intimate awareness of the German of the depth of his striving for knowledge.

It is almost taken for granted, and therefore as easy to grasp as all superficially taken for granted things, when people today say: science is of course international. The moon is also international! Nevertheless, what individuals have to say about the moon is not at all international. When Goethe traveled, he wrote back to his German friends: “After what I have seen of plants and fish near Naples and in Sicily, I would be very tempted, if I were ten years younger, to make a journey to India, not to discover anything new, but to look at what has been discovered in my way.” Of course, science is international. It is not easy to refute the corresponding statements, because they are self-evident, as everything superficial is self-evident. But as I said, it is also international like the moon. But what the individual nations have to say about what is international from the depths, from the roots of their national character, that is what is significant and also what is effective in furthering the development of humanity from the way in which the character of each individual nation relates to what can be recognized internationally. That is what matters.

To this day, however, it cannot be said that precisely that which, in the deepest sense, represents the German character has made a significant impression on the path of knowledge in the period that followed. Within the German character itself, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel initially had such a great effect that posterity was stunned and that it initially produced only one or the other, one or the other side, that even un-German materialism was able to gain a foothold within the German spiritual life. But it is particularly instructive to see how that which is primordially German works in other nationalities when it is absorbed into them. And Schelling, for example, is primordially German. Schelling has had a great effect, for example within Russian spiritual life. Within Russian spiritual life, we see how Schelling is received, how his powerful views of nature, but especially of history – the Russian has little sense of the view of nature – are received. But we also see how precisely the essentials, what matters, cannot be understood at all in the east of Europe. Yes, it is particularly interesting – and you can read more about this in my writing “Thoughts During the Time of War” – how this eastern part of Europe in the nineteenth century gradually developed a complete rejection of precisely the intellectual life not only of Central Europe, but even of Western Europe. And one gets an impression of German intellectual life when one sees how this essential, which I have tried to bring out today, this living with the soul in the development of nature and the spirit, cannot be understood in the East, where things are accepted externally. In the course of the nineteenth century, consciousness has swollen terribly in the East, especially among intellectuals – not among the peasants, of course, who know little about war even when they are waging it. The intellectual life of the East is, however, a strange matter. I have already explained it: Slavophilism appears in the first half of the nineteenth century, in the 1830s, precisely fertilized by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel; but it appears in such a way that Fichte, Schelling and Hegel are only taken superficially , quite superficially, so that one has no inkling of how Fichte, Schelling and Hegel — the tools of the will, of the soul, of thinking — actually live objectively together with what outwardly interweaves and lives through the world. And so it could come about that this Russian element, which in terms of its sense of knowledge still lived deeply in medieval feeling, took up Fichte, Schelling and Hegel in such a way that an almost megalomaniacal view of the nineteenth century, which in literary and epistemological terms is really a kind of realization of Peter the Great's Political Testament, whether falsified or not.

What did they know about the German world view over there! In one of my recent lectures, I showed how Goethe's “Faust” truly grows out of what we, once again, can allow to affect our souls as a German world view. But we have only to hear Pissarew — who as a Russian spirit is deeply influenced by Goethe — speak about Goethe's Faust, and we shall see how it is impossible not to understand what is most characteristic and most essential to the German national soul. Pissarew says, for example: “The small thoughts and the small feelings had to be made into pearls of creation” - in “Faust he means the small thoughts, the human feelings that only concern people! “Goethe accomplished this feat, and similar feats are still considered the greatest victory of art; but such hocus-pocus is done not only in the sphere of art, but also in all other spheres of human activity."

It is an interesting chapter in the history of ideas that in the case of minds such as Ivan Vasilyevich Kireevsky or Khomyakov, for example, precisely that which lives great and significant as inwardness, but as clear inwardness, dark and nebulous sentimentalism, has continued to live in such minds and we could cite a long line right up to the present day, precisely from Russian ideological minds - how in this Russian ideological mind the conviction has generally formed: that which lives to the west of us is an aged culture, a culture that has outlived itself; it is ripe for extinction. The Russian essence is there, that must replace what is in Central Europe and they also meant Western Europe in the nineteenth century, especially England - what is in England.

This is not something I have picked out at one point or another, but it is a consistent feature of Russian intellectual life, which characterizes those who matter, who set the tone. In Kireyevsky's work, this intensifies around 1829 to a saying that I will read in a moment, and one will see from such a saying that what is heard today from the East did not just arise today, but that it is deeply rooted in what has gradually accumulated in this East.

But before that, I want to cite something else. The whole thing starts with Slavophilism, with a seemingly scientific and theoretical focus on the importance of the Russian people, who must replace an old and decrepit Europe, degenerating into nothing but abstract concepts and cold utilitarian ideas. Yes, as I said, this is something that is found again and again in Russian intellectual life. But where does this Slavophilism actually come from? How did these people in the East become aware of what they later repeated in all its variations: the people in Central and Western Europe have become depraved, are decrepit; they have managed to eliminate all love, all feeling from the heart and to live only in the mind, which leads to war and hatred between the individual peoples. In the Russian Empire, love lives, peace lives, and so does a science that arises from love and peace. Where do these people get it from? From the German Weltanschauung they have it! Herder is basically the first Slavophile. Herder first expressed this, which was justified in his time, which is also justified when one looks at the depth of the national character, which truly has nothing to do with today's war and with all that has led to this war. But one can point out that which has led to the megalomania among the so-called intellectuals: We stand there in the East, everything over there is old, everything is decrepit, all of it must be exterminated, and in its place must come the world view of the East.

Let us take to heart the words of Kirejewski. He says in 1829: “The fate of every European state depends on the union of all the others; the fate of Russia depends on Russia alone. But the fate of Russia is decided in its formation: this is the condition and source of all goods. As soon as all these goods will be ours, we will share them with the rest of Europe, and we will repay all our debts to it a hundredfold.”

Here we have a leading man, a man repeatedly lionized by the very minds that have more often than not rejected the ongoing development of Russian intellectual life. Here we have it stated: Europe is ripe for destruction, and Russian culture must replace it. Russian culture contains everything that is guaranteed to last. Therefore, we are appropriating everything. And when we have everything, well then we will be benevolent, then we will share with the others in a corresponding manner. That is the literary program, already established in 1829 within Russian humanity by a spirit, in whose immaturity, in whose sentimentality even Fichte, Schelling and Hegel have worked.

There is a remarkable conception in the East in general. Let me explain this in conclusion. For example, in 1885 an extraordinary book was published by Sergius Jushakow, an extraordinary book, as I said. Jushakow finds that Russia has a great task. In 1885, he finds this task even more directed towards Asia. Over there in Asia, he believes, live the descendants of the ancient Iranians – to which he also counts the Indians, the Persians – and the ancient Turanians. They have a long cultural life behind them, have brought it to what is evident in them today. In 1885, Yushakov said that Westerners had intervened in this long cultural life, intervening with what they could become from their basic feelings and from their worldview. But Russia must intervene in the right way.

A strange Pan-Asiaticism, expressed by Yushakov in a thick book in 1885 as part of his program! He says: “These Asiatic peoples have presented their destiny in a beautiful myth—which is, however, true. There are the Iranian peoples over there who fought against Ahriman, as Jusakhov says, against the evil spirit Ahriman, who causes infertility and drought and immorality, everything that disturbs human culture. They joined forces with the good spirit Ormuzd, the god of light, the spirit that gives everything that promotes people. But after the Asians had received the blessings of Ormuzd within their spiritual life for a while, Ahriman became more powerful. But what did the European peoples of the West bring to the Asians, according to Jushakow? And that is quite interesting. Yushakov argues that the peoples of the West, with their cultural life, which in his view is degenerate and decrepit, have crossed over to Asia to the Indians and the Persians, and have taken from them everything that Ormuzd, the good Ormuzd, has fought for. That is what the peoples of the West were there for. Russia will now cross over to Asia – it is not I who say this, but the Russian Yushakov – because in Russia, rooted in a deep culture, is the alliance between the all-fertility-developing peasant and the all-chivalry-bearing — as I said, it is not I who say it, Yushakov says it — and from the alliance of the peasant and the Cossack, which will move into Asia, something else will arise than what the Western peoples have been able to bring to the Asians. The Western peoples have taken the Ormuzd culture from the Asians; but the Russians, that is, the peasants and the Cossacks, will join forces with poor Asia, which has been enslaved by the Westerners, and will fight with it against Ahriman and will unite completely with it. For what the Asians, under the leadership of Ormuzd, have acquired as a coming together with nature itself, the Russians will not take away from them, but will join with them to fight against Ahriman once more.

And in 1885, this man describes in more detail how these Western peoples actually behaved towards the Asian people plagued by Ahriman. He does not describe the Germans, for which he would have had little reason at the time, but he, Yushakov, the Russian, describes the English. And he says of the English that, after all they have been through, they believe that the Asian peoples are only there to clothe themselves in English fabrics, fight among themselves with English weapons, work with English tools, eat from English vessels and play with English baubles. And further, in 1885, Yushakov said: “England exploits millions of Hindus, but its very existence depends on the obedience of the various peoples who inhabit the rich peninsula; I do not wish anything similar for my fatherland – I can only rejoice that it is sufficiently far removed from this state of affairs, which is as glorious as it is sad.”

It is likely that these sentiments, which were not only expressed by Jushakow in 1885, but also by many others, led to Russia initially not allying itself with the Asians to help them against Ahr Ahriman, but that it first allied itself with the “so brilliant as it is sad state” of England in order to trample the “aged”, “marshy” Europe into the ground.

What world history will one day see in this ring closing around Central Europe can be expressed quite simply. One need only mention a few figures. These few figures are extremely instructive because they are reality. One day, history will raise the question, quite apart from the fact that this present struggle is the most difficult, the most significant, the greatest that has occurred in the development of human history, quite apart from the fact that it is merely a matter of the circumstances of the figures: How will it be judged in the future that 777 million people are closing in on 150 million people? 777 million people in the so-called Entente are closing in on 150 million people and are not even expecting the decision to come from military valor, but from starvation. That is probably the better part of valor according to the views of 777 million people! There is no need to be envious about the soil in which a spiritual life developed as we have described it, because the figures speak for themselves. The 777 million people live on 68 million square kilometers, compared to 6 million square kilometers on which 150 million people live. History will one day take note of the fact that 777 million people live on 68 million square kilometers, ring-shaped against 150 million people on 6 million square kilometers. The German only needs to let this fact speak in this as well as in other areas, which prevents one from falling into one-sided national shouting and ranting and hate-filled speech, into which Germany's enemies fall.

I do not want to talk now about those areas that do not belong here and that will be decided by weapons. But we see all too clearly how, today, what one wants to cherish and carry as German culture is really enclosed, lifted up above the battlefield of weapons, enclosed by hatred and slander, by real slander , not only hatred; how our sad time of trial is used to vilify and condemn precisely that which has to be placed in world history, in the overall development of mankind, in this way. For what is it, actually, that confronts us in this German intellectual life with all its conscious and forgotten tones? It is great because it is the second great flowering of insight and the second great flowering of art in the history of humanity. The first great flowering of art was Greek culture. At the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, the development of Germany produced a flowering of which even a mind like Renan said, when, after absorbing everything else, he became acquainted with the development of Germany in Goethe and Herder: “I felt as if I were entering a temple, and from that moment everything that I had previously considered worthy of the divinity seemed to me no more than withered and yellowed paper flowers.” What German intellectual life has achieved, says Renan, comparing it with the other, is like differential calculus compared to elementary mathematics. Nevertheless, on the same page on which he wrote these words to David Friedrich Strauß, Renan points to that current in France which, in the event of the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, called for a “destructive struggle against the Germanic race”. This letter was written in 1870.

This German intellectual life has been recognized time and again. But today it must be misunderstood. For how else could the words be found that are spoken in the ring that surrounds us!

If we look across, not with Yushakov's eyes, but with unbiased eyes, to Asia, we see a human culture that has grown old, that also strove for knowledge, but that strove for knowledge according to an old, pre-Christian way. There, the ego is sought to be subdued in order to merge into the universe, into Brahman or Atman, with the extinction of the ego. This is no longer possible. Now that the greatest impulse in human history, the Christ impulse, has become established in human history, the ego itself must be elevated, strengthened, not subdued as in Oriental spiritual life, but on the contrary, strengthened in order to connect as an ego with the spiritual-divine in the world, which pulsates and weaves and lives through the world. That is the significant thing, how this is again shining forth in the German spiritual striving. And this, which is unique and which must be incorporated as one of the most essential tones in the overall development of humanity, is what is coming to life in the 6 million square kilometers, compared to the 68 million square kilometers. This fact must be obscured from those who, as I said, do not fight with weapons, but who fight with words and slander this Central European spiritual life. They must cover this fact with fog. They must not see it. But we must admit it to ourselves, we must try to explain to ourselves how it is possible that these people can be so blinded as to fail to recognize the very depth of this connection of one's own soul with the spiritual life outside in the world.

Boutroux, who traveled around here in Germany for a short time before the war and even spoke at universities about the spiritual brotherhood of Germany and France, now tells his French audience how the Germans want to grasp everything inwardly. He even makes a joke: if a Frenchman wants to get to know a lion or a hyena, he goes to the menagerie. If an Englishman wants to get to know a lion or a hyena, he goes on a world tour and studies all the things related to the lion or the hyena on the spot. The German neither goes to the menagerie nor on a journey, but withdraws into his room, goes into his inner self, and from that inner self he creates the lion or the hyena. That is how he conceives of inwardness. It is a joke. One must even say that it is perhaps a good joke. The French have always made good jokes. It's just a shame that this joke is by Heinrich Heine, and Boutroux has only repeated it.

But now, when you see how these people want to cloud their minds, you come up with a few things. You wonder: How do these people, according to their nationality, seek to delude themselves about what German nature actually is? For the Russians, it must always be a new mission. I have also described this in my booklet: “Thoughts during the time of war”. They must be given the opportunity to replace Western European culture, Central European culture, because it is the destiny of the Russian people – so they say in the East, anyway – to replace the abstract, purely intellectual culture built on war with a Russian culture built on the heart, on peace, on the soul. That is the mission.

The English – one would not want to do them an injustice, truly, one would like to remain completely objective, because it really does not befit the Germans to speak in a one-sided way based solely on national feelings. That should not happen at all; but when one hears, as in the very latest times in England, declaiming that the Germans live by the word: “might is right,” then one must still remind them that there is a philosophy by Thomas Hobbes, an English philosophy, in which it is first proved in all its breadth that law has no meaning if it does not arise from power. Power is the source of law. That is the whole meaning of Hobbes's doctrine. After it has been said from an authorized position - there is also an unauthorized authorized position, but it is still an authorized position in the outside world - that the Germans live by the rule “might makes right”, that they have have come far by acting according to the principle “might is right,” I do not believe that one is being subjective when one objects that this is precisely an English principle that has become deeply ingrained in the Englishman. Yes, one can well say: they need a new lie. And that will hardly be anything other than a terminus technicus.

The French – what are they deluding themselves with? They are the ones we would least like to wrong. And so let us take the word of one of their own poets, Edmond Rostand. The cock, the crowing cock, plays a major role in Edmond Rostand's play. He crows when the sun rises in the morning. Gradually, he begins to imagine that the sun could not rise if it were not for him crowing, causing the sun to rise. One has become accustomed – and that is probably also Rostand's idea – to the fact that nothing can happen in the world without France. One has only to recall the age of Louis XIV and all that was French until Lessing, Goethe, Schiller and others emancipated themselves from it, and one can already imagine how the conceit arises: Ah, the sun cannot rise if I do not crow for it. Now, one needs a new conceit.

Italy – I heard a not insignificant Italian politician say before the war: Yes, our people have basically reached a point, so relaxed, so rotten, that we need a refresher, we need something to invigorate us. A new sensation, then! This is expressed in the fact that the Italians, in order to dull their senses, have invented something particularly new and unprecedented: a new saint, namely, Sacro Egoismo, Holy Egoism. How often has it been invoked before Italy was driven into the war, holy egoism! So, a new saint, and his hierophant: Gabriele d'Annunzio. Today, no one can yet gauge how this new saint, Sacro Egoismo and its hierophant, its high priest, Gabriele d'Annunzio, will live on in history!

On the other hand, we can remain within the German spirit and consider what is truly interwoven with this German spirit and what was unanimously felt by the Germans of Austria and Germany, on this side and on the other side of the Erz Mountains, as the German people's – not in the Russian sense of mission, but in the very ordinary sense – world-historical mission. And here I may well conclude with the words to which I have already drawn attention when, speaking of the commonality of Austrian intellectual culture with German, I also spoke of Robert Hamerling. In 1862, when he wrote his “Germanenzug”, the future of the German people lay before Robert Hamerling, the German poet of Austria, which he wanted to express by having the genius of the German people express it, when the Germanic people move over from Asia as the forerunners of the Germans. They settle on the border between Asia and Europe. Robert Hamerling describes the scene beautifully: the setting sun, the rising moon. The Teutons are encamped. Only one man is awake, the blond youth Teut. A genius appears to him. This genius speaks to Teut, in whom Robert Hamerling seeks to capture the representative of the later Germans. Beautifully he expresses:

To whom will the word break out of the depths of the soul
As your people, so rich, so delicate, so powerful?
Who breathes so solemnly into the strings
His innermost being? To whom do the senses draw so magnificently
Into the blue of heaven, granite hieroglyphics
Of the soul's upsurge and the narrowness of life?
Who finally ties the strands
of the searching thought to the stars
so boldly and strives and fights on all paths?
Whom leads so high, so deep his urge, his foreboding?
Who grasps the near and the far so faithfully?
Where does every earthly and heavenly zone
reflect itself as in your thinking, O Teuton?

And what once lived over there in Asia, what the Germans brought with them from Asia like ancestral heritage, it stands before Robert Hamerling's soul. It stands before his soul, what was there like a looking into the world in such a way that the ego is subdued, the corporeality is subdued, in order to see what the world is living through and weaving through, but what must emerge in a new form in the post-Christian era, in the form that it speaks out of the fully conscious ego, out of the fully conscious soul. This connection with the ancient times in the striving of the German people for the spirit, how beautifully Robert Hamerling expresses it:

But however proudly you aspire, high above other swarms, you will always keep the ancient, sacred fire: the dream-filled, drunken rapture of God, the blessed warmth of heart of the ancient Asian homeland. This holy ray, a temple fire of This holy ray, a temple fire
Of humanity, free of smoke, with pure flame
Glow away in your chest and soul mate
You remain and pilot your rudder!
You only strive because you love: your boldest thinking
Will be devotion that wants to sink into God.

Thus the German-Austrian poet connects the distant past with the immediate present. And indeed, it has emerged from this beautiful striving of the German soul, which we have tried to characterize today, that all knowledge, all striving wanted to be what one can call: a sacrificial service before the Divine-Spiritual. Even science, even the recognition of the spiritual, should have the effect of a sacrificial service, should work in such a way that Jakob Böhme could say: When one searches spiritually, it is so that one must bring it to go its way:

Walking in God – And striving in God –
And dying in God – And being buried in God.

Hamerling expresses this by having the German Genius say to Teut:

You strive only because you love: your most daring thought
will be devotion, sinking into God.

The affinity of the German soul with God is so beautifully expressed here. This shows us how deeply rooted true spiritual striving is in the German national character. But this also clearly gives rise to the thought in our soul, the powerful thought, that one can ally oneself with this German national spirit, for in that which it has brought forth in spiritual achievements - one current guides the other - this German national spirit is at work. It finds expression in the great, immortal deeds that are being accomplished in the present. In conclusion, let me summarize in the four lines of the German-Austrian Robert Hamerling what emerges as German faith, German love, German hope of the past, present and future, when the German unites with what is the deepest essence of his people. Let me summarize what is there as a force – as a force that has confidence that, where such seeds are, blossoms and fruits must develop powerfully in the German national character despite all enemies, in the German national character – let me summarize what is there as a force in his soul, in the words of the German-Austrian poet Robert Hamerling:

And if ever the German name
should prove a hostile day,
From ocean to ocean will run
The course of the German spirit!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“When you see the depths”

he means the depths of heaven

"When you look at the depths of heaven

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

referring to a certain Strachow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And so he continues, Yushakov:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spiritual scientific findings concerning the natural world and the human being as part of this world

For the spiritual scientist, familiarity with current and recent work in other sciences is most important. If there is anything which right away establishes the need for an anthroposophically orientated spiritual science, it is above all the relationship which this science must have to natural science.

Among the attacks against the particular science of the spirit of which I am speaking those directed against my own relationship to natural science are always of special interest to me. It is easy to understand that opposition has to arise from the natural science side against an approach which, whilst it is firmly grounded in natural science, must in almost every respect go beyond that science. It is, however, strange, and certainly of some significance for the whole position held by the science of the spirit, that I myself have been repeatedly accused in recent times of not objecting to current research findings in the natural sciences but basing myself wholly on natural science. This objection is raised by people who see themselves as representing a ‘spiritual scientific’ approach. And I think I am entitled to say that with the scientific approach presented in these lectures, one finds oneself caught, as it were, between opposition coming from the natural scientific side and opposition coming from various rather vague, mystical spiritual sides that are almost equally vociferous.

I must say, however, that for the science of the spirit which I am representing in these lectures one does not just have to confess that it is indeed a matter of necessity that one bases oneself on natural science, but also that natural science, the way it is and has to be at the present time, has achieved things that provide stimulus and support in every respect. For this we not only are but indeed must be grateful. People who are working in the science of the spirit eminently need to come to an understanding with people who are working in natural science, for in a certain respect the science of the spirit needs to have the most recent findings made in natural science as a foundation if it is not to be amateurish, vague and unclear.

This may seem strange to people who have already got to know something of this anthroposophically orientated science of the spirit. But then I may well have to say quite a few things today that may seem strange from various points of view. I would therefore ask your forgiveness, especially tonight, if I consider it necessary above all to present spiritual research findings, and my only purpose in presenting such results will be to arouse interest. To furnish proof for every detail of what I am going to say tonight would require a course taking a whole week.

We need to consider the essence of recent developments in natural science if we want to establish the right kind of relationship to it, especially as spiritual scientists. Natural science does not, in fact, owe its character to what scientists themselves say are its great virtues, but to entirely different conditions and facts. The particular character which the natural scientific way of thinking has assumed over the last four centuries, and especially in the 19th century and up to the present time, is due to the fact that quite specific tendencies and gifts have arisen in the search for knowledge in the course of human evolution.

The origins of the natural scientific way of thinking are often presented like this: Well, for thousands of years in the past people looked at things in the wrong way, especially where science is concerned, and now—perhaps I won’t use the commonly quoted phrase ‘seeing how much wiser we are today’⁵³—but let me just draw your attention to how many good, honest and upright followers of the natural scientific way of thinking do believe that humanity has now been able to arrive at the ‘truth’, at the ‘right view’ where some things are concerned, and that in earlier times people had been entirely ‘on the wrong track’.

Yet if we give some consideration to the essential nature of scientific development, we can see that it was not really the case that a sudden miracle happened in the 16th century, with people arriving at the one and only truth, but that from that century onwards quite specific gifts, tendencies and approaches to investigation arose. These tendencies, these human needs, this predilection, as I might call it, made people on the one hand focus attention on the natural world and on the other hand give their knowledge of that world the character which we must so greatly admire today, especially if we base ourselves on the science of the spirit.

One of the truly outstanding gifts to arise was the ability to observe tangible physical objects very accurately. Another tendency went hand in hand with this predilection and gift, and this was to give tangible, physical things preferential and indeed exclusive value, thinking that anything which went beyond this must inevitably take human beings into spheres that were somehow forbidden, spheres of vague fantasies, or, in short, into an abyss in their search for knowledge.

This is particularly evident if we consider the efforts made to make the human being himself an object of scientific study. These efforts went in the direction of applying the forces and laws that apply in the natural world outside the human being to the human being himself, that is, to see him purely as part of the natural world, the kind of creature that has shown itself to the scientific eye in more recent times. The triumphant progress of natural science extends not only to the natural, physical aspect of the human being but also to efforts somehow to study the human psyche, using scientific methods, and indeed to bring this, too, as close as possible to something governed by the laws of nature. And I would say we can see pride and satisfaction when a modern psychologist discovers that an irrefutable law of nature can also be applied, he thinks, to the inner life of man. I am speaking of rather extreme situations that go in this direction because I really want to make my point.

Someone who still takes the point of view that the human psyche is an entity in itself will of course also think that this human psyche, complete in itself, can come to expression through the power of will impulses—we’ll consider freedom or the lack of it the day after tomorrow—using the organism. The idea that the psyche is the primal source of energy, as it were, for the movement and actions of the organism lives strongly in some minds even today.

People who think that they should think in purely natural scientific terms say to themselves, on the other hand: In the 19th century natural science arrived at one of its most significant laws, the law of the constancy or conservation of energy. This says that energies are converted in such a way that nothing new can arise in the system of energies, and nothing can in any way intervene in this system unless it is already part of it. If, it is said, the soul were able to set the organism in motion, it would need to develop the necessary energy. This would then have to be added to the energies the organism already has from food intake and other ways of relating to the world around it. The soul would have to be a source of energy, as it were; energy would have to come out of nothing, so to say, but the law of conservation of energy only permits energies the human organism takes in with food and the like to be converted to energy. A movement or the development of body heat thus cannot be anything but the conversion of food energies and other forms of energy that have been taken in from outside. Conflict thus arises with this law of the conservation of energy, which has played such a significant role in scientific developments during the 19th century, when one comes up against the idea that the soul can be the source and origin of some form of energy.

People were really pleased to have experimental proof that a ‘reservoir of energy’ capable of intervening in the process of energy conversion did exist in the soul. The experiments the well-known biologist Rubner⁵⁴ did in this field with animals, and the continuation of them with human beings by Atwater⁵⁵ are regarded with some satisfaction by psychologists to this day, I would say. Rubner showed that the heat energies and the kinetic energies animals produce are, according to the measurements made, nothing but the converted energies of food they have taken in, with nothing coming from a psyche. Atwater extended these experiments to human beings, selecting subjects who we might think should be able to do even better—people doing mental work, physical work, at rest, or developing inner energies. He was able to show that up to a certain percentage—always important in experiments—nothing that comes from inside the human organism derives from a reservoir of energies in the soul, and that the energies available had been converted from energies the human organism had to take in first. Psychologists like Ebbinghaus⁵⁶ also stated, with some satisfaction, that there was no question of any form of psychology being in conflict with the law of conservation of energy.

Hundreds of other examples could be added, from many different points of view. They would show you how significant and characteristic the triumphant progress of the natural scientific way of thinking has become, even in our culture in general. It is thus easy to see why this triumphant progress, as we may call it, is still relatively recent and does not want to be held back at any point by something else, like the science of the spirit, for instance, and why it still has all kinds of tendencies—speak ‘prejudices’ perhaps—with regard to this that are extraordinarily difficult to deal with. If the necessity did not arise of its own accord from natural science itself for the science of the spirit to develop from it in its own way—as the child must of necessity grow to be an adult—it would probably still be a very, very long time before the science of the spirit would find anyone in the world of science prepared even just to listen when it comes up in one place or another.

No I have to make some critical comments my starting point today. One does, of course, always have to consider individual aspects, for I do not want to talk in abstract terms. Quite generally, I do not want to give general characteristics today but rather start with specific instances and use these to make my point.

If we review the character and the way of thinking and forming ideas which the natural sciences have assumed in more recent times, we have to say that this is above all ruled by the idea that the things we learn from nature must somehow come from somewhere that is separate from the human being. I’ll not go into a philosophical discussion of this; but there is a borderline issue we must consider briefly. Not that I would consider it to be of quite specific significance for natural scientists today, nor do many natural scientists enter into discussion of this issue; no, the reason is that their desire for knowledge is going in that direction, unconsciously so, in a way, and can only be judged if we consider it with regard to its movement in this direction, or to this goal.

Let me take up an idea which no doubt originated in philosophy but lurks in many people’s minds, and that is the idea of ‘things in themselves’. The philosophical question in the Kantian or some other sense will of course be of little interest to natural scientists. But the whole direction, the whole endeavour in natural scientific thinking shows a tendency to go towards this ‘things in themselves’ idea. Irrespective of whether one is basing oneself on the earlier atomic theory, or on or modern theory of ions, of electrons, whether one takes one standpoint or another in biology, people will of course say from the very beginning that they merely wanted to know the ‘laws of phenomena’, leaving the ‘things in themselves’ to the philosophers, but the way in which the phenomena are approached, how they are in fact investigated, is based on the premise that there is some ‘thing in itself behind the phenomena and that if one were able to go more deeply into the region made accessible by means of microscopy, let us say, or other scientific methods, one would come closer and closer to such a ‘thing in itself’.

This notion gives natural scientific thinking its direction, at least at an unconscious level, for if you assume a world of atoms, for instance, or assume that ether waves lie behind the tapestry of colours and nuances of light that surrounds us, you are of course thinking that these ether waves belong to a sphere of the ‘thing in itself,’ as it were. Eduard von Hartmann, the philosopher of the unconscious mind who wanted to found a natural philosophy, actually made it a challenge, saying that the world of atoms and the like, or of forces behind the things we perceive through the senses, must be accepted by scientists as something on a par with the ‘thing in itself.’

For a scientist working in anthroposophically orientated spiritual science this search for a ‘thing in itself’ behind phenomena, this whole trend—I am now not speaking of philosophical hypotheses but of this trend in natural science—is analogous to an attempt to see what is behind a mirror when one sees various images in it. It is as if one were walking round to the back of the mirror to see where the images have their origin. That origin does not lie behind the mirror, however. It is in front of the mirror, where we are standing. We are in the region where the images have their origin,⁵⁷ and we would fall into the most incredible delusion to think we should reach into the back, behind the mirror, to find something that would be the source of the images. It may sound grotesque and be unexpected, but the ideas and concepts of natural science are based on the illusion that one has to reach behind the mirror. The ‘thing in itself’ is behind the mirror if one thus deludes oneself. But in reality it is not there.

Why is that so? It is so because as human beings we are not merely in an outer material world behind which there is a ‘thing in itself’, but right in the midst of everything on which this world is founded. It is just that not all of it comes to our conscious awareness. We are right in the midst of it! And analysing the phenomena of the natural world outside will not show us the origins, just as you cannot perceive the true nature of a person, get to know this mirror image as a physical human being, by analysing the mirror image of that person. Analysing the phenomena does not give insight into their essential nature. Instead we must intensively, if I may put it like this, go beyond the level at which our conscious mind works in everyday life. And this is done by the methods I have characterized in my first lecture here.

Our ordinary, everyday waking consciousness serves merely to develop the conceptual tools we need to put the phenomena in some order and system, establishing the laws’. To go beyond this, the conscious mind must first be transformed, developing powers that lie dormant in it. Then the imaginative, inspired and intuitive perception which I have tried to characterize as perceptive vision, perception in images, must arise from the depths of that conscious mind—nothing nebulous, of course, but in the strictly scientific sense.

We would never be able to learn something about the nature, the physical nature, of the human being by looking at a mirror image unless we also had self-awareness. We must therefore strongly feel ourselves to be physical human beings, we have to get a feeling for ourselves and know that it is I myself who is standing in front of that mirror. In the same way we cannot arrive at the essential nature of natural phenomena unless our inner life, which is right in the midst of those phenomena, grows so strong that it gains the ability to perceive things in a way that is different from ordinary waking consciousness. With regard to this perceptive awareness, perception in images, and so on, I would refer you to my last-but-one book.⁵⁸ I would just say that, in principle, it is not a matter of a new organ in physical terms, but of developing a real ability to perceive purely in the soul realm, developing non-physical organs that add something new to everything the soul perceives in the world around it when in its usual waking conscious state. This is just like the newly opened eyes of someone born blind who has had an operation and now sees the world of colour of which he had only heard people tell before.

The task therefore is not to develop some kind of material hypotheses or draw conclusions concerning a ‘thing in itself and get at something that lies ‘behind the phenomena’, but to strengthen our inner faculties so that we are able to see the essence in front of the mirror. It will, of course, be a long time before such perceptive awareness will be taken seriously by greater numbers of scientists, despite the fact that I have characterized neither a miracle nor anything that is not accessible to human beings. It is something everyone can find from their own resources, though it has to be said that present-day habits of thinking, inwardly responding to things and gaining insight are an obstacle when it comes to awakening such perceptive awareness.

I would now like to give you some of the results of this perceptive awareness specifically relating to the sphere we may call ‘nature’. It will, of course, be necessary to speak of some things where it will not be easy to communicate with people who are firmly wedded to natural science. But perhaps this may be an occasion where it is permissible to speak of something personal. What I am offering here are not ideas that have come into my head, nor anything I have thought up. These are the results of years of investigations done in full accord with the more recent natural scientific developments; some of the things I am going to say—I would not have been able to formulate them like this even a short time ago.

My aim is above all to refer to things that are very real, going into detail. The theory of evolution, or ‘descent’, has had a considerable influence on scientific thinking in recent times. And it has to be said that anyone who is not an amateur in this field will know what fruit—leaving aside the shadow sides—this theory has borne for modern thinking, the whole modern way of looking at the world. Of course, if we really want to appreciate the nature of this theory we must ignore all the amateurish philosophical views into which so many scientific findings have unfortunately developed in recent times. ‘Monistic’ and other movements often arise because people know little of the form science has recently taken in the field in question. It is often grotesque to see how such efforts limp and lag behind scientific advances that can in no way be said to be in agreement with such things.

Yet when we speak of the theory of evolution, we also think of its early days, of all the great, idealistic hopes which Ernst Haeckel⁵⁹ had for it in the 1860s and 1870s—I do not wish to either overestimate nor underestimate him—and which he passed on to his students. I am not so much going to refer to the radical conclusions Ernst Haeckel arrived at in his day, though his scientific achievements are tremendous and often also positive. What I would like to mention is that even cautious investigators who have entered into the field—among them Naegeli⁶⁰ and Gegenbaur⁶¹—not only became aware of the fruitful nature of this theory but also demonstrated this with reference to their involvement in recent developments in the sciences. I could give a long list of names. But something strange can also be noted if we consider the relatively brief history of the theory of evolution.

Great indeed were the hopes Haeckel and his followers had for the development of Darwinian principles in natural science.⁶² Consider the role which catchwords like ‘theory of natural selection’ and ‘survival of the fittest’ have played. Some people had such hopes for a view of the world where they might say that some vague powers full of wisdom intervening in world evolution had now been overcome. People would have to realize that powers that were like powers of pure chance meet others arising from sheer natural necessity in the developmental stages of one organism or another, resulting in selection, with the fit surviving whilst the unfit do not, and the fit thus might be said to get more and more perfect compared to the unfit that has dropped away; one should not, however, think in terms of any kind of teleological principle of purpose. To this day there are people⁶³ who think they are representing modern views in saying that even if everything Darwin has presented in his theory of evolution were to disappear from this world, the progress made in disregarding ‘higher powers’, as Eduard von Hartman calls them, intervening in the purely inorganic laws of the realm of nature to let organic life arise⁶⁴—this progress cannot be undone.

Seen from a particular point of view, the thinking which has developed there, the thoughts that have come to human beings to liberate them from certain prejudices to which they used to be attached, are of particular value. But we have seen a strange thing. When Darwinism evolved, eliminating all the higher powers that were said to intervene in the evolution of organic life, Eduard von Hartmann’s book on the philosophy of the unconscious appeared in the late 1860s,⁶⁵ that is, when Darwinism was in full flower. I am not defending Hartmann, but this is simply a fact. Eduard von Hartmann was against a theory of pure chance. He said something quite different—powers giving direction, powers of a higher nature—must intervene in the lifeless, dead functions of purely inorganic natural laws if there was to be organic evolution. Selection cannot create anything new; anything new that did arise would have to arise from inner impulses; selection could only be made of things that already existed, removing anything unfit, but it did not have magical powers that would enable it gradually to let something perfect develop from something imperfect. Eduard von Hartman produced some brilliant thoughts in his refutation of Darwinism, which raised such hopes at the time, a theory of evolution in purely mechanical terms. People did not take the philosopher of the unconscious seriously because he was a philosopher and not a naturalist. They said: ‘Well, he’s an amateur and does not understand the principles of natural science; anything he has to say can be of no real value in the development of science.’ Remarks like this were used to reject the things Eduard von Hartmann had to say.

Refutations addressed to this ‘amateurish, dilettante philosopher’ were published. One, was about the unconscious from the point of view of physiology and the theory of descent, was by an anonymous author.⁶⁶ It was a brilliant refutation of Eduard von Hartmann from the point of view of Darwinism as it then was. Oskar Schmidt,⁶⁷ Darwin’s biographer, Haeckel himself, and others took a very sympathetic view of this refutation by an unknown, saying that it was excellent—this is more or less how we can sum up their views—that someone whom one could see, with every page read, to be firmly founded in the true scientific approach, was dealing with an amateur such as Eduard von Hartmann. This anonymous author—one dyed-in-the-wool Darwinist wrote—should just make himself known to us and we’ll regard him to be one of us! Someone else, also firmly grounded in mechanical Darwinist theory, said: ‘He has said everything I myself could say against Eduard von Hartmann’s amateurism.’ The man did say this. In short, the Darwinists made a lot of propaganda for this publication, which was soon sold out. A second edition had to be printed. This time the author gave his name—Eduard von Hartmann! From then on silence reigned among those who had previously praised the publication, and little further reference was made to it.

What follows may seem strange but I think it is all the more remarkable. One of Ernst Haeckels’ most important followers, someone who as a student lived wholly in the then current theories of evolution that arose in connection with Darwin’s name, was Oscar Hertwig.⁶⁸ Last year, in 1916—just consider how little time has passed since Darwinian theories were in full flower—Oscar Hertwig published a book that is truly exemplary as a scientific work. The subject is how organisms evolve—a refutation of Darwin’s theory of random chance. Eduard von Hartmann is one of the people Oscar Hertwig says should be taken note of when speaking of different powers being active in the realm of organisms from those active in the inorganic world.

It certainly is strange to see that within a relatively short time someone came from among the best people who had been developing the old theory of evolution of the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s who actually refuted one of the fundamental principles of that theory. This should give some pause for thought to people who make up their own—‘monistic’—philosophies by just putting together amateurish ideas.

I now need to go into some definite issues relating not so much to the more recent theories of evolution but to theory of evolution as such. This may show you the position that has to be taken in anthroposophically orientated spiritual science. The theory of evolution is based on considering the facts and drawing the conclusion that something perfect, ‘perfect’ as we know it today, or, perhaps better, something with a more differentiated organization, has gradually evolved from something that was less perfect, less differentiated in its organization. To prove this, scientists refer not only to geology and palaeontology but also to embryology, the theory of individual development. Oscar Hertwig’s new book is exemplary in so far as it offers a theory of individual development, though he does it by making comparisons with animal embryology. All theory of evolution must begin with the development of the individual; Haeckel established his biogenetic law to show that the embryological development of an individual shows the evolutional history of the species, so that the embryonic development of higher animals goes through the morphological and physiological functions, at a particular level, of the simpler animal forms that existed earlier.⁶⁹

Strange though it may seem, however, a theory of individual development where one seeks to apply its laws to the evolution of organisms in general will not provide the answer to a very simple question. I feel I must in fact apologize for speaking of something as commonplace as this; the matter has been discussed many times, but, as we shall see, it concerns an important principle. The question is, very simply: What came first in evolution, the chicken or the egg? The chicken comes from the egg, but—the egg can only come from a chicken.

The issue is of little importance today, when any facts you investigate take you into vagueness whichever direction you take. But it does have significance if we want to form an idea of the way in which individual development relates to world evolution. For in that case it proves necessary to consider that there must have been conditions in which the ovum, that is, the basis of individual development today, was able to evolve on its own, without descent from any kind of entities that had already reached some level of perfection. As I said, I can only refer to this briefly, but anyone who considers the issue in more detail will soon find that, though commonplace, the matter is of major importance.

If one is conscientious and honest in tackling this question, the concepts natural science has developed for embryology will not prove adequate. Somehow or other one finds oneself at what I have called the ‘frontier posts of knowledge’ in my first lecture, ‘points’ where one has to develop the higher powers of awareness in images. We might even say that such questions can provide significant stimuli for the development of inner powers that may otherwise well have continued to lie dormant in us for a long time. If we pursue the matter not using the approach where one seeks to reach behind the mirror but one where we consider the cause for the phenomena to be in front of the mirror, we find, as we progress to awareness in images, that even today it would be a serious error to say that the egg develops in the chicken through the chicken or merely because the chicken is inseminated. That is how it looks on the surface, in the mirror image, we might say. But if we develop awareness in images and are able to see what is truly there, we come to realize that the egg does indeed develop and mature under the influence of powers that come not only from the cock and the hen.

A scientific view based only on what is sense-perceptible and tangible cannot lead to any view other than that the interaction between cock and hen and the processes that occur in the hen’s body lead to the development of an egg. But if you then want to arrive at views on such a matter you will arrive at rather mystical concepts—mystical in a negative sense, the kind of concepts many people work with, even Hertwig—an example being the concept of a ‘germ, rudiment or potential’.⁷⁰

Speaking of such a ‘rudiment’, you can explain anything in the world by saying: Well, now it is there, previously it was not there, and the first thing to be there was, of course, the ‘rudiment’. This is about as clever as speaking of a ‘disposition’ with regard to certain diseases which only develop in some people under the same conditions and not in others. So you see, one can always push things further back in this way. Unless you try and somehow get a clear picture you will merely arrive at a term that has no real meaning and lacks clarity. ‘Rudiment’, ‘disposition’—those are the wrong kind of mystical terms that will only gain meaning if we are able to consider the reality that can be perceived in the spirit.

A mind with vision also sees all kinds of other things. Just as a blind person is able to see colours when he’s had an operation, so a mind with vision sees all kinds of other things. And in the present case these other things it is able to see make it clear to us that although today it is still an egg which develops in the hen, it arises from powers that are not in the hen but are brought to bear in the hen out of the universe. The hen’s body which surrounds the egg really only provides the native soil. The powers that configure the egg come from the cosmos; they come in from outside. Fertilization—I cannot go into the details today but they can be exactly determined—simply means that a possibility is created for the powers from the cosmos that are active in this site, giving them a reference point, as it were.

The egg which develops in the hen’s body has been developed out of the cosmos and is an image of the cosmos. If you find this inconceivable and cannot think of analogies in other fields, just think what it would be like if you wanted to ascribe the direction in which a magnetic needle is pointing purely to forces inherent in the needle. We do not do this; we ascribe it to a terrestrial effect, that is, forces that have to do with the whole earth. Forces from the environment influence the magnetic needle. Here, in the inorganic field, discoveries can be made purely on the basis of sensory perception. It will need a science made more productive by the science of the spirit to show that powers influence the egg that must be looked for not only in the ancestry but out there in the whole cosmos. Many different results, which will also prove of practical value, will be obtained once it is taken into account that essentially the knowledge we have in outer natural science, however sensual and factual, is merely an abstraction, something people rely on because they do not know of the more effective powers.

A mind with vision sees powers that go beyond individual nature influencing every insemination and embryonic development. These could be described in detail. In my small publication Human Life in the Light of Anthroposophy⁷¹ I refer to this method of research in another field; today I want to refer specifically to this particular field.

I truly do not feel contempt for empirical scientists, as they are now called, but admire them greatly. The results gained with the empirical approach have yielded a much richer store of human insights, I would say hundreds if not thousands of times as many human insights than the rudimentary concepts one is able to use in natural science today. When an embryologist produces facts, especially if he has been using a microscope, which has been developed to an admirable level today, a spiritual scientist following his work will say to himself: Everything the embryologist is establishing as fact may be external, sensual and factual, but when he describes how the male germ unites with the female germ, and so on, how parts of cell nuclei are repositioned so that one thing or another develops—these descriptions are extraordinarily interesting and significant—someone taking the point of view of anthroposophically orientated spiritual science sees the footsteps in all this of a comprehensive spiritual influence that simply comes to expression in the changes which are apparent to the senses. If one wanted to consider the things seen under the microscope, with all kinds of staining methods applied, to be something that stood entirely alone, something one merely had to describe to know the processes of germ cell and embryonic development, one would be like someone who goes along a road where someone else has left his footsteps and believes that those footsteps were made by inner forces in the soil and not that another person had made them. The explanation for these footprints would be quite wrong if I were to say that there are all kinds of forces down there which push the forms up from below. Instead I have to assume that someone went that way, stepping on the soil. In the same way I must consider the spiritual principle if I want to come to the real facts. The spiritual leaves its final traces, and what we see under the microscope, using staining methods, comes into existence—please forgive the expression—as if by processes of elimination.

But when a mind with vision takes hold of the matter, we also come to something else. We come to compare this process, which arose on the basis of pure empiricism, purely external experience of the facts through the senses, with something that we can only get to know of through investigations made by a mind with vision.

In the first lecture I gave an outline of what happens in human beings when they use their thinking to process sensory perceptions further, when they develop ideas. A real process occurs in the psyche, but materialistic thinkers do not consider it to be real; they limit their investigations to nerve functions. Yet once perception in images has awakened we can follow this process, which has inner reality. We cannot do so if our minds are limited to the kind of abstractions produced in modern psychology and indeed in logic—that ideas ‘connect’, are ‘reproduced’, and so on. But if we are able to develop a psychology of the kind I outlined here in my first lecture and turn the mind’s eye to this inner aspect of the way in which ideas develop and part of our feeling, this will give us something that belongs together with the discoveries our embryologist made in his field and in progressive cell development altogether. We then see in a way that is like comparing an original and its copy in a very factual way—on the one hand the inner process of forming ideas and the feeling process in the soul, and on the other hand the processes of insemination, division of the nucleus and so on, and actual cell division. We then see that the two have to do with one another—I want to put this as carefully as possible—have to do with one another in that the one represents in material form, as it were, what the other is in the sphere of soul and spirit.

Something else will also arise if we truly concentrate on this process in soul and spirit. We realize that it can only be the way it is in the human soul and spirit today, for the whole of our natural environment, with the human being within it, provides the physical body as a basis for it. If someone is truly able to see this in the spirit, the faculties that enable him truly to see the essential nature of something that belongs to the sphere of soul and spirit, will expand. We thus realize that under present-day conditions the organ which develops for forming ideas and feeling can only do so, in the way it happens today, on the condition that the whole takes place in the presence of a living human body. In its inner nature, however, the process shows itself to be one that moves back in time. Time becomes something real. It moves back in time. And you actually come to realize that what happens in us today when we think, and do part of our feeling, is indeed something which in the far, far distant past, when no such earthly environment existed, was able to develop on its own, without the human body.

This is the way—time is short, so I can only refer briefly, as it were, to the starting points for a road that goes far and wide—in which elements from the sphere of soul and spirit are related in a real way to the things that happen before our eyes in the sense-perceptible world. We then gain a very different understanding of the connection that altogether exists between sense-perceptible physical nature outside and the elements of soul and spirit that flow and billow through the world. If we then develop the things of which I have only been able to present the most elementary first beginnings, taking—if we proceed with the science of the spirit—not the external scientific approach of geology or palaeontology or Laplace’s theory but the approach based on genuine inner experience in spirit and soul, we come to states of the world that go a long way back, when it was not possible to do external, physical things, like embryonic development from a physical cell, as we know it today, but when the things that could be real at that time were in a form that belonged to spirit and soul. You look back to an element of spirit and soul that was a precursor of what happens today in the physical world perceptible to the senses.

The element of spirit and soul has withdrawn into the cosmic sphere today, as it were. It acts by the roundabout route via the living body and in a hen, let us say, if we go back to our earlier example, it causes the egg to have the density of matter which it did not need to have in the dim, distant past. However, in that dim, distant past the element of spirit and soul was able to use these powers—which one gets to know, with no need to speculate or set up hypotheses; we get to know them if we observe the inner laws of ideation and thinking from the inside—without there having to be the environment of the hen’s body, to create not a mystical ‘rudiment’ or ‘potential’, but a first thing. Later, when conditions changed, this needed to be protected by the ‘environ-body’ of the hen as it is today.

Someone working with the science of the spirit is thus on the one hand taking full account of natural science. On the other hand he has to go beyond it, beyond the things that are considered scientific today, not with speculation but with truly developed powers of insight through vision. These must replace theories and hypotheses—which are merely the outcome of speculation, thoughts that have been added—with things truly learned in the realm of the spirit. If one has advanced along this route, truly in such a way that nowhere are sins committed against facts that have been established in natural science, then the modern theory of evolution in particular will be seen in the right light.

I have to say paradoxical things at every step today, but I want to stimulate your thinking. I am exposing myself to the danger that people may hold me up to ridicule; but I want to stimulate your thinking. I merely want to say that this science of the spirit we call anthroposophy exists; it may not be accepted as yet, but it is able to offer research findings which, we believe, can be spoken of with the same scientific justification as the findings discussed in natural science that are based on sensory perceptions made with the help of microscopes and telescopes. It has to be said, not from presumption but because it is the way things are, that working with the spiritual scientific approach represented in these lectures one does not have it as easy, in many respects, as in working with natural science. So we can understand it if someone says: ‘The things he is saying are really difficult to understand.’ Comprehension will, of course, be easier if we only take note of purely factual elements, things that are immediately apparent; it is in the nature of the thing that understanding is difficult with the kind of issues I can only present briefly here. But with regard to practice, too, things are not so easy in anthroposophy. This is particularly apparent if we consider the human being as part of the natural world from its point of view, that is, not merely in theory.

As I said, I do not undervalue the theory of evolution. In fact, I believe it to be one of the most significant achievements in intellectual history. Attacks have come from people who did not understand these things particularly because in my book The Riddles of Philosophy and in other publications I made a strong case for justifying the theory of evolution. Just look in the second volume of my Riddles of Philosophy to see if I ever speak from a point of view that does not do justice to this theory of evolution. But things are not as easy in anthroposophy as they are in purely—as it is called today—empirical science. For if we consider the human being we have to say: ‘The idea that the human being, as he is in his physical form, has simply evolved from animal forms which in turn developed from lower animal forms, and so on, this idea is utterly amateurish if compared to the view taken in the science of the spirit.

If we want to consider the human being as part of the natural world from the spiritual scientific point of view, we must first of all differentiate this human being—this may seem strange, but that is how it is. Taking Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis further in a scientific way—anyone who has read my books will know that I have made special efforts in this field—one has to differentiate the human being. We cannot simply take him as a whole but have to establish a particular premise, which must, however, be a fully substantiated premise. It is this. We take the head on its own, realizing that the human being we have before us today can only be known and understood if we take the head on its own, with the rest as a kind of appendage organism—this just as an aid to understanding for the moment. The head on its own, therefore; we have to look for the descent, the origins, of this head as such. This human head—this is not entirely accurate, for the head does continue on into the trunk (this changes the situation; but after all it is only possible to speak in approximate terms about these matters). This human head, then, is indeed something with a morphology that has been transformed from other forms that lie immensely far back. We may say, therefore, that in so far as the human being has a head, he is descended from long way back. For the details I would refer you to my Occult Science and other writings. One actually finds that the entity which has gone through the transformations to make the present-day form of the human head possible must be sought much further back in time than the origins of all the animals and plants we have today. Considering the human being with regard to the head, we must therefore go back into a much earlier time.

The appended organism, as we may call it, has been added to the head—roughly speaking, for appendages existed even in early times. The head was the premise for its development. The principle which evolved, ultimately to become the human head principle, had the opportunity also to develop the remaining human organization which is close to the present-day animal body. The time when this organization evolved was also the time when general evolution had advanced so far that animals could develop.

This brings us to a strange theory of descent, though it is strange only compared to the ideas people have today. We have to say that in so far as human beings have a head they are descended from ancestors that went through a gradual transformation. In far distant times they undoubtedly had a different form from the one human beings have today, but it is really only the human head which is descended from them. It was during the time when general conditions for evolution made it possible to evolve creatures of the kind we have in the animal world today that the human being added to his human nature the elements that lie in his animal nature.

Again you have an early approach—for here, too, I can only give the elementary first beginnings—to a theory of evolution that arises if we do not believe the human head to have merely grown out of the rest of the organism, as it were, but rather that this human head is really the original part of the human being to develop, with the remaining organism added to it. It is because such an organism was added at a late stage in evolution that humanity entered into a line of evolution that may indeed be considered together with the line of evolution that was the descent of animal forms.

The discoveries made in the theory of evolution to this day provide genuine insights in this field. If one knows them really thoroughly, if one carefully—much more carefully than people are in the habit of doing in natural science today—considers also the work done in palaeontology, embryology, all the knowledge gained in the study of muscles, the investigations that can provide information on the way the human skull is built, then one is able to say to oneself: It is exactly the things not known from theory—meaning the theory modern natural scientists like Oscar Hertwig have refuted—but empirically, things that are there for us to see, which we only have to take up, letting the light that can be gained through the science of the spirit shine through them—all this offers tremendously far-reaching prospects. The modern theory of evolution has certainly served a good purpose and has not been just an aberration but on the contrary one of the most fruitful developments we have seen. In time to come it will really come into its own and prove immensely fruitful because it will cast its light incredibly far into the secrets of the universe.

If I might add something about the way I feel about the way the science of the spirit goes beyond pure and factual natural science, it is this: This theory of evolution from the second half of the 19th century is indeed the seed from which great, significant insights will come; the seed from which something will come that does not yet exist in general human awareness. And it is this which will in fact provide the best stimulus to develop a genuine philosophy, which takes its orientation from anthroposophy. This philosophy actually shows that the academic work which we think is final and conclusive and needs only be added to the facts perceived through the senses in order to explain them, that this academic approach—which we also find in a work as excellent as that by Oscar Hertwig and the works of others—does not provide real answers to our questions but only enables us to put our questions in the right way. Once they have been put in the right way they must then be answered. And the outside world will again and again provide answers if we know how to ask the right questions. If they are the right questions, the outside world will answer with the insight we gain through higher vision.

However, if I speak of a modified theory of descent, saying that we have to think of the human being the other way round, as it were, looking for his origin in the principle on which the head is based and having to make the head our starting point if we wish to understand the human being, whereas the matter is usually considered the other way round—when I say this, we must at the same time base ourselves on a genuine and true idea of the present-day human being. This brings me to another finding made in anthroposophical research relating to nature as a basis for the human being.

When people speak today of the way the soul relates to the human body, they really consider only the nervous system as the bodily ‘tool’, as it is put, though it is not a ‘tool’—we’ll be speaking about this the day after tomorrow—looking for it in the living body as a counterpart to the psyche. If you look at books on psychology today, with the first chapters always giving a kind of physiological preliminary to psychology itself, you will find that reference is really always only made to the nervous system as the ‘organ of the soul’.

Members of the audience who have heard me on a number of previous occasions will know that I’ll only rarely speak of personal things. But perhaps it is necessary this time, for I can only characterize the subject in outline. What I have to say on this is the outcome of investigations that have truly been going on for more than 30 years, taking account of everything that is relevant from physiology and related fields. Anyone with real knowledge of the findings modern physiologists and biologists have made in this field will find that they prove in every respect what I am going to tell you. To see the nervous system as something that is simply parallel to the psyche is to take a very biased view. No one has shown more clearly how biased it is than a scientist I hold in particularly high regard as one of the most outstanding psychologists, Theodor Ziehen.⁷² He, too, speaks mainly of the nervous system in discussing some of the relationships between soul and body, soul and the nature-related basis of the human being, and therefore comes to treat the emotional life—which properly considered is just as real as the life of thinking or ideas—as an appendage to the life of ideas. Theodor Ziehen does not really manage to consider the emotional life in his psychology. It is the same with other people. They will then speak of the ‘emotional overtones of ideas’; the ideas, which have their bodily counter image in the nervous system, are ‘emotive’, they say, and one need not think of a separate bodily counterpart to the emotions.

Read the psychology of Theodor Ziehen or other books—I could give you a whole list of truly excellent works in this field. You will find that when these authors come to speak of the will, they actually have no possibility whatsoever truly to speak of the will, which is a wholly real sphere in our inner life. The will simply slips from Theodor Ziehen’s grasp as he writes about physiological and psychological things; the will is simply disputed away; it does not exist for the author; in a way it exists merely as a play of ideas. Because of the existing bias, therefore, violence is done to something we quite clearly know from experience, just as serious violence is also done to other things in such investigations.

Yet if we really consider everything that has so far been achieved in physiology, this exemplary science—though much is still open to question and questionable—if we consider all the things that merely are not seen in the right light, we come to see—I can only refer to this briefly—that the whole human organism is counterpart to the whole human soul. In my latest book, Riddles of the Soul, which is due to appear shortly, or perhaps it is out already, I discussed questions concerning the limits of ordinary science and of anthroposophy, and this includes the issue which we are considering here, though again it is only presenting results. There is nothing to be said against the notion that the life of ideas has its bodily counterpart in the first place in the nervous system, though we have to see the whole situation very differently from the way it is seen in modern science; I am going to talk about this the day after tomorrow. When we want to look for a bodily counterpart to the life of ideas, we have to look to the nervous system for this.

Not so when it comes to the emotional life! I almost hesitate to put something so far-reaching in such brief words, something I have found in investigations taking not years but decades. When we speak of the emotional life, it is not possible to look for a connection between it and the life of the nerves the way we look for a connection between the life of ideas and that of the nerves. There is a connection, but it is indirect. The emotional life—this seems almost unbelievable if one takes the biased view commonly taken in modern science—has a direct connection with what we may call the breathing rhythm in all its ramifications, and this is a connection similar in nature to that between the life of ideas and the nervous system. In the nervous system one has to go into the finest ramifications; and the same applies to the rhythmical movements that originate in the breathing rhythm and then branch and divide everywhere, also influencing the brain. Comte’s ideas on the mechanics of the human body are very interesting in this respect.⁷³ The bodily counterpart of the emotional life must be sought in this rhythmical play of movements in the human being, all of them really dependent on the breathing rhythm, in rhythmical movements that also encompass the blood rhythm.

I know, ladies and gentlemen, that it must seem as if countless objections could be raised against what I have just been saying. All of them can be refuted, however. Let me draw your attention to just one of them—briefly. It would be easy to say, for instance: Well yes, the aesthetic effect of music depends on our feelings; but these feelings are aroused by sensory perception of the sounds, that is, a sensory perception of something outside, and the effect of this does of course continue on in the nervous system; so you can see—as the objection might be—that you are in error in saying that something which in its aesthetic effect is definitely dependent on our emotional life is connected with our breathing rhythm, when in fact the music is perceived by the senses and we gain this perception via the ear and the auditory nerve! This objection is illusory, for the real process is much more complex. Such things can indeed only be reached by the kind of vision that takes its orientation from the powers gained in an awareness that has vision. It is like this: In the brain, the breathing rhythm meets with the processes that occur in the nervous system. And the emotions we experience with music arise from this interaction, this encounter between the part of the breathing rhythm that extends into the life of the nerves and the structure of the nerves. The latter reacts to the breathing rhythm and this creates the feelings we have on hearing music. It is therefore possible to explain the feelings that are experienced properly if we consider the breathing rhythm, and the life of breathing altogether, to be the bodily counterpart to the life of feeling, just as we have to consider the nervous system to be the bodily counterpart to the life of ideas.

And now we come to the will impulses, to the things we do. If we examine everything people have been saying about the physiology, using the possibilities given when we are able to have awareness in vision, we find that everything which the soul experiences as our will expressed in doing has its bodily counterpart in metabolic processes. Life in the body is essentially made up of metabolic processes, breathing rhythms, and processes in the nerves; there are just two exceptions, which I’ll refer to later.

The subject gets difficult merely because a nerve must, of course, also be shown to be such that the life of nutrition or of metabolism extends into it. However, it is not the nutrition nor the metabolism in the nerve which is the bodily counterpart of the life of ideas but something entirely different. I wrote about this in my book Riddles of the Soul: in so far as the nerve depends on metabolism it merely acts as a mediator of the will process.⁷⁴ The fact that one system—metabolic system, rhythmical breathing process, nervous system—extends right into another, so that the systems are not side by side in space but change on into the other or extend into each other, makes it particularly difficult to study these things. Essentially, however, it is like this: In the nerve, the basis of the life of ideas is not the fact that it is touched by rhythm, nor the fact that it is provided with food, but yet another, very different inner activity. In the finest ramifications of the breathing rhythm it is this breathing rhythm itself which forms the basis for the life of feeling, and everything specified as metabolism in the organism, down to its subtlest ramifications, is the bodily counter image of will processes.

We have now related the whole of the soul to the whole of the human body. From the point of view of anthroposophical spiritual science, which I represent, I believe—believing this in no other way than the way one normally believes things in truly strictly scientific terms—that today we need only the facts known in physiology to substantiate fully what I have just been saying. I am convinced that the empirical sciences can be progressively developed further along these lines of orientation and will then prove immensely fruitful in all directions in life. Significant new ideas can be given in medicine, psychiatry and all possible kinds of fields if we take the whole of the human soul together with the whole of the human body in this way.

The zone of the senses, as I would call it, and the life of movement drop out of the context of the human organism in two directions. Modern science is on thin ice particularly when it comes to the theory of the senses on the one hand and the theory of movement on the other. Scientists working in psychology as well as in physiology understand very little, I would say, of these two opposite poles in human nature. This is because here human beings no longer belong wholly to themselves but partly to the outside world, with the soul living out into the outside world both in the zone of the senses, in the sphere of sensory life, and in the sphere of movement life. When human beings move, their movement involves a state of balance or dynamics that integrates the individual into the sphere or moving play of forces in the outside world. And when human beings go beyond living purely in their nerves and enter into life in the zone of the senses, that is, when their souls experience themselves right into their actual sense organs, it happens that the individual actually goes beyond his own sphere. The senses are bays where outside world extends into our lives, and we shall only have a sensible theory of the senses if we take this into account. It is something that cannot be gained by following the approaches taken in natural science today.

It has not been my intention to discuss general principles or offer general characterizations, especially in describing the relationship between anthroposophy and natural science and the human being’s foundations in the natural world. Although it can be risky to do so, I have taken individual real findings and areas where results were obtained, in order to characterize how anthroposophy should be seen in relation to established natural science. We can see that prejudices and partiality will have to be overcome in the world of science before anthroposophy can be understood. Today, sensuality—I am speaking of views taken of sensual and factual things, not sensuality in the moral sense—is even more powerful than it was at the time when the whole world raised the objection to the views of Copernicus that they went against the evidence of their senses and refused to accept them. Copernicus went against the evidence of the senses, feeling compelled to establish something for the outside world perceived through the senses which the outer evidence of the senses cannot give us. In the science of the spirit we are compelled to go beyond the evidence of the senses in yet another respect. This is sure to meet with resistance many times over. In a lecture like this, one can only point the way here and there. I would ask you, however, to take this into account. It is only too easy to criticize such pointers from a fixed and established point of view. The indications I have given can of course be criticized to the nth degree; I myself would be perfectly able to raise all the objections that can be raised. On the other hand, however, you will be able to see that providing people do not want to prevent this, the truths that live in natural science can develop further so that the more profound secrets of the world may be unveiled in far-reaching revelations.

The day after tomorrow I will be speaking of the fruitfulness and significance of this for the whole of human life in its widest sense. My subject will be the practical application of this in the sphere of morality, of social and also religious life, political life, the theory of free will and other practical applications.

I had to risk getting misunderstood because I referred to individual and real findings. Many things today militate against human beings being able to rise to the regions of genuine and actual, true life in the spirit. Today people think that to be an enlightened person one has to say about the most profound question in our hearts, which is the question of immortality—this is something else I’ll be speaking about the day after tomorrow—that this cannot be judged because man’s ability to gain scientific insight does not go that far.

Fritz Mauthner, a man with a brilliant mind, has been writing about human capacities for insight in his German dictionary of philosophy. It is a stimulating work to read, for you feel you have entered a sphere where your mind goes round and round in circles without ever getting anywhere; if you think you have a quarter of a result, it is refuted and you are taken forward again, continuing to go round in circles. Mauthner, whose great merit it is to have shown how inadequate ‘accomplished knowledge’ proves to be wherever you look, even thinks that talking of the spirit was a crafty invention made by Hegel, saying more or less that Hegel infected philosophy with the concept of the spirit which we have today, and that the earlier concept of spirit was taken purely from that of the Holy Spirit.⁷⁵ He finds that the situation with many who imagine themselves to be critical and particularly enlightened minds and indeed to be ‘spirits/minds’ [the German for ‘mind’ and ‘spirit’ is the same word Geist, tr.]—perhaps they won’t put it like that themselves, for ‘spirit’ is something they do not accept; let us say therefore to be human beings who are at the pinnacle of knowledge and insight—Mauthner says that with many of them the situation is this: People want to use their rational minds and common sense to gain insight; but ‘the rational mind is a silver axe without a handle, and common sense is a golden handle without an axe’, and people somehow want to use these two imperfect things to penetrate the essential nature of the world!

People of that kind like to refer to Goethe’s comprehensive concept of nature. Fritz Mauthner also quotes Goethe, suggesting that Goethe, too, considered the human being to be wholly part of nature. Yet even in the essay on nature, which Fritz Mauthner quotes, you find that Goethe said things like this about nature: ‘It has been thinking and is always reflective’, speaking not of the human being, of course, but of nature. The kind of nature Goethe thought of—yes, that one could accept! It is something different from the nature which generally is the subject of natural science today. If we then also consider what Goethe said to Schiller: ‘If my natural laws are supposed to be ideas then I see my ideas before my own eyes’,⁷⁶ we can find naturalism acceptable in that spirit, for it’s a naturalism that definitely does not exclude the science of the spirit but includes it. I believe that if what Goethe intended for the grand design of his theory of metamorphosis, which he developed to a high degree, but only in its elements, is taken further, developed and taken beyond into the realm of the spirit, it will be a real basis for a true science of the spirit with an anthroposophical orientation.

I know that what I have said today about the origins of man and the relationship between the human soul and body is in harmony with the Goethean approach, though the Goethean approach has been taken forward into our time and made scientific.

When people who seem to be enlightened in their criticism and refuse to accept any kind of genuine spiritual insight think they can refer to Goethe, one does have to say to them: Consider Goethe’s approach at its deepest level. What you think you find in him, and also have in you, is described in the words Goethe directed to another scientist, a man of considerable merit, who had written:

Into inner nature
No mind that has been created can ever enter,...
Happy is he to whom
She shows but her outermost shell.⁷⁷

Goethe responded:

I have heard this repeated for 60 years,
I curse it, though only in secret; ...
Nature has neither kernel nor shell,
She is everything at one and the same time;
Examine yourself most of all
If you be kernel or shell!⁷⁸

If the human being develops his kernel or core in this Goethean spirit, he will also penetrate—even if it takes infinitely long, serious and honest investigative labour—to the core, the essence of nature. For this does come to expression in the human being. Seen rightly, it is this and nothing else which is reflected in the human being. Spirit is nothing else but nature’s flower and fruit. In a certain respect nature is the root of the spirit.

That is indeed a truly Goethean approach! The science of the spirit will have to develop it scientifically.

Questions and answers

Following the lecture given in Zurich on 12 November 1917

Question. If conscious awareness correlates with death, what is the situation with animals, which also die, though one has to assume that conscious awareness is in all circumstances different from the way it is in humans?

When I am going to talk about practical aspects the day after tomorrow, I also intend—though again and again I hesitate to do so—to give brief consideration to various questions relating to a concept that is widely used today, the concept of the ‘unconscious’. This does of course also play a major role in psychoanalysis, a method that is well known here in Zurich. Important and indeed crucial questions arise in this field, and the day after tomorrow we will see, or least lightly touch on, how the attempts made in psychoanalysis to answer these crucial questions relate to the questions themselves. Today I will merely take up the idea of the unconscious, doing so with reference to your question. Eduard von Hartmann made the ‘unconscious mind’ a philosophical term. He stated the basis of existence to be firstly the natural world, secondly the conscious mind, which, however, must always be grounded in nature, and the unconscious mind, which is wholly non-physical but, of course, unconscious.

The position is, however, that in the science of the spirit one does not know what to do with the idea of the ‘unconscious’ as such. ‘Unconscious mind’ is about the same in spiritual science as ‘headless human being’ in the natural realm. It is certainly possible to think of ‘mind’ in abstract terms as being without conscious awareness, just as we can think away the head. We can make a drawing of a headless organism.

There are actually people who suffer from hysterical partial blindness, that is, their blindness is not organic but hysterical, who suffer from the defect that when they walk in the street they see only the bodies of people and never see anyone’s head. There are such people with this specific form of hysterical illness. They see only the body and no head, that is, nothing but headless people. You see, for some people, and they are exceptional, the evidence of their eyes would be that one might think human reality to be such that people had no heads. But of course that is not the reality. Thus the ‘unconscious mind’ is not real and can never be real. We’ll talk about what follows from this the day after tomorrow.

We now come to the question you asked. Animals as such certainly do not have human minds, but they do have conscious awareness. Earlier on today I had occasion to say that things are not as easy, as a rule, in the science of the spirit as they are in today’s established science, where things are considered more in terms of concepts rather than reality. Even when it comes to thinking, we have to proceed in a different way in the science of the spirit than one is generally used to today. Thus we read in our physics books that solids are impenetrable, meaning that if you have a solid at a point in space, no other body can be in that space. In the science of the spirit we cannot accept this definition as it stands but have to say, from this different point of view: A solid body or a life form which occupies a space to such effect that no other body or life form can occupy that space at the same time, is in fact impenetrable. Something given as a definition, if you like, simply changes into a postulate or something similar for the spiritual scientist.

It has to be clearly understood that animals may not have human minds but they do have conscious awareness. The point is that with our usual habit of thinking today we think that death equals death. People die, animals die, and plants, too, are allowed to die. The matter is not as simple as that when it comes to the science of the spirit. The fact that the concept is the same may not mean that the reality is also the same. Seen from an inner point of view, in its reality, human death is something very different from the death of animals. This is how we look at things in real terms! And to speak of the death of plants carries about as much meaning in the science of the spirit as if we were to speak of the death of a clock, which also ‘dies on us’ at some point; I think you’ll agree that it can die on us. This would have to come to an end, therefore. That is not the concept of death. The concept of death includes many things that make human death into something very different.

We need to consider the following. Essentially the conscious awareness of animals is such that the things which human beings send into the zone of the senses, which I mentioned earlier today, and there experience separately, are not experienced separately in the zone of the senses by animals. The things animals experience in the zone of the senses are of the same kind as the things they have as their life of ideas. That strict separation between sensory perception and idea which we can make for the human being, cannot justifiably be made for animals. This can be seen directly if the mind has developed vision; on the other hand you can also see it in the anatomy and physiology. Let me just remind you that the animal eye, for example, is inwardly organized in a completely different way than the human eye. In humans, certain elements of the eye are taken back into the internal organization, more into the organization of the nerves; in animals they extend into the eye. You will find a pecten, or marsupium, falciform process, in some animals, physical anatomical structures that may be said to show how the vital principle enters into the zone of the senses in animals. In humans this vital principle withdraws. Human beings thus experience the presence of their soul in such a way in the zone of the senses—please take careful account of this—that they experience something very different here than animals do. This experience which humans have in the zone of the senses, which develops further into image-based, inspired and intuitive awareness and then again continues on in the life of ideas and of memory—this experience in the zone of the senses gives the human mind a very different colouring, if I may put it like this, than is found in the conscious awareness of animals.

It is altogether necessary to revise many concepts. If you ask someone today which ideas are the most spiritual, being least connected with the physical body as a basis, I think very many people will agree when you say that the most philosophical ideas are the most spiritual! You see, from the point of view of spiritual science it is the philosophical ideas that are most abstract, and mathematical ideas, too, which are more than any other bound to the physical body. If there were only philosophical ideas we could be absolute materialists; these ideas are really purely physical and only have significance between birth and death. Something which people generally consider to be most spiritual is solidly founded in the physical world and in the physical body.

What matters, however, is that humans, being endowed with souls, are involved in the life of the senses in such a way that here, where the outside natural world extends into them rather like a bay, because vitality has withdrawn, they are already experiencing death all the time. In so far as this zone of the senses is inwardly reflected, the result, the conscious result of this zone, penetrates the inner life with what I have called ‘atomistic’ death.

What I mean is this. The death phenomenon is blended into life in the zone of the senses in human beings, and this makes it justifiable to speak of death in conjunction with conscious awareness in their case. In animals we have to connect the gradual fading of reproductive powers with what exists as conscious awareness. Death comes for the animal when the reproductive powers have gone; in humans, the fact that the death phenomenon comes in later has been an additional gain which does not exist for any animal. Here the human being has quite a different basis.

What I would really like to stress is that we only gain the right insight into the situation between birth and death if we connect the specific nature of human conscious awareness, which has to do with that special experience in the zone of the senses, with the much more vital experience which animals have in the zone of the senses. Animal awareness does not have that added element, if I may put it like that, which is forever bringing about death in the human conscious mind.

Question. It is possible to say something from the point of view of spiritual science about the concept of entropy in modern physics?

Concerning the modern concept of entropy one has to say first of all that anything covered by this concept is above all merely abstracted from the view taken in inorganic natural science. If we define the term by saying that the final state of present evolution will come because more and more heat remains when mechanical energy is converted to heat energy, so that ultimately the state of the world can only be a state of heat, this is an abstraction taken wholly from the laws of the inorganic world. There can be no objection to this in itself from the point of view of spiritual science. People who follow the entropy idea know that in postulating this end state one also assumes there to have been an initial state; both logically and scientifically it is necessary to assume an initial state if one then lets everything drift towards such a heat death.

From the point of view of spiritual science, the situation looks like this. Again I am immediately considering something real. In the first place, the observations made in the science of the spirit do not connect at all with an idea which is widely accepted in speculations on inorganic nature, and that is the idea of the dissipation of energies, with people always thinking that the dissipation of energies may go on to infinity. Speaking of energies in terms of modern science, I thus always think of something that goes out into infinity. On the basis of experience gained in the science of the spirit, we cannot do anything with this idea, for from the point of view of this science, and considering their morphogeny, all energies prove to be elastic. This means that when they spread out, they do not dissipate into infinity but only as far as a certain limit from which they then return into themselves. This may, however, take such a long time that it has no immediate relevance for the earth period that lies directly ahead. In the science of the spirit one does indeed have to realize that the concept of dissipation into infinity is nebulous and that any form of energy that spreads does not dissipate into infinity but returns to itself. Applying this concept in the field of entropy, we have a final state which is the polar opposite, so that the dissipating energies may come back to themselves again, as it were. This, then, is one point.

The other is the following. If you look at my Occult Science you’ll find that this state, which I refer to by the technical term ‘Saturn state’ is indeed shown to be entirely a state of heat. This on the basis of a system of spiritual observation which is a more developed form of what I have today been presenting in its elementary form. I go back and by spiritual scientific methods arrive at an initial state—which is not constructed but seen. The whole of evolution which follows arises from this heat state. When people arrive at an end state that is a heat state with their idea of entropy, this is an end state which I have to take as an initial state. The consequence is that there must then be a new beginning, starting from this. So there is no ‘beginning and end’, for beginning and end are merely a link in a sequence of evolution. The end state, when reached, would thus be merely the starting point for continuing evolution.

Question. Wouldn't it be possible that you could let the human being evolve as a simple organism in such a way that he does not arise first as a head principle, with an appendage added later? Modern scientists also work with very long time spans and an infinitely long period of evolution, and I think that with this it would be just as possible to have the human being arise as a uniform organism.

When one is dealing with such matters in a general way it will of course always be possible to say the kind of thing which the gentleman has just said. I would stress that today my aim has been to present positive and real findings made in anthroposophically orientated spiritual science, that is, to give individual examples of positive findings. One of them is indeed that if we do not want to consider the human being as solely part of the natural world, in a theoretical way—and this is what today’s lecture was about—he cannot be understood if we use the approach that is generally accepted today. The human being is of course also seen as a ‘uniform entity’ if one sees him as a head principle with appendage—I did say I was presenting this only in approximate terms. What matters is where we look for the starting point for human evolution and not if we treat the human being as a ‘uniform entity’, that is, what we look for further back in time. If we go further back in time in looking for the principle which today appears in metamorphosed form as the head, this makes the human being as an entity in the natural world different from the way he is when we use the theory of evolution to place him in world evolution in the way it is done with today’s banal Darwinism, a banal theory of descent.

It is not a matter of long time spans. Present-day hypotheses make these, too, hypothetical. Time can only have significance in an explanation if we are, as it were, configuring the before and after out of a real situation, and not simply postulating an evolutional sequence and bringing in time as something external. People presenting the theory of descent actually say that time is available to an unlimited degree. The question is, however, if anything that is available to us for such a thought actually also plays the same role in real terms when we consider the human being in absolutely real terms.

Reality organizes itself in such a way that the element I have called an appendage—the term is, of course, approximate—proves to be more recent in the process of evolution, with the head organism the earlier one. Time configures itself out of this. The lineage of the head organism goes back to far earlier times than something which is younger. It truly is a matter of having to make sure that our thinking must be wholly real in the field of spiritual science. Today I would emphasize once again that we cannot advance in the science of the spirit in any other way but by being able to relate to reality in a completely different way than is done in what is called empirical science today, a science which I would not underestimate. No one will be able to accuse me of underestimating it if they read my books. But one has to relate to reality in a very different and very real way.

Answering a question the last time I was here, I said that our ideas must be much more real. We'll also come back to this need for thinking in real terms when I speak about practical human issues and matters concerning the human psyche the day after tomorrow. Thinking in real terms means that with every idea we consider we are aware how far this idea relates to reality. You see, in abstract terms a rose I have before me is a real thing; and we may take it to be real. For a thinker whose concepts are fully connected with reality the concept of the rose can exist in no other way but that he is aware that in itself this rose is something abstract; in real terms it can only exist on a rose bush, and this in turn only in connection with the whole earth, and so on. A spiritual investigator will thus not present something as an isolated idea when in reality it is connected with something else but can be artificially taken out of this context. In pursuing his ideas, a spiritual investigator will thus always be aware of the degree to which the inner, substantial nature of ideas takes him into the real world. Here is another example, a paradox: you put a cell nucleus under the microscope to study it. You are studying it in isolation from everything that goes with it. A spiritual investigator will be fully aware of this; he knows that there is a difference if I look at a cell nucleus or a small animal under the microscope. I see the animal in its wholeness. Looking at a cell nucleus, however, I am not seeing something that is as real as that small animal, which does not grow larger and is thus a whole.

Having thus inwardly always the reality-character of the life of ideas in mind—that is one of the first preconditions for conscious awareness in vision. I made this clear in my book The Riddle of Man, published two years ago. This needs to be taken into account with such a question. I therefore said that the 19th century scientific theory of evolution has considerable merits to this day. But the issue is not dealt with in sufficiently real terms. If we want to study human evolution, it is not without significance where we start with this in the human being. It is not a valid objection, for instance, to say: ‘Here I have a life form; in its present form this life form has special climbing feet.’ There are life forms which in their present form—please forgive me for comparing a small creature with the human being, but we are in the field of science, and so it does not matter—so there are tiny creatures, lice—please forgive the rudeness—that develop special climbing feet. These feet are a product of later evolution. The original creature did not have them. They arose from adaptation to later conditions. It is important to realize that the original creature, living in different conditions, did not have such feet. This species of louse developed special climbing feet under later conditions. Many examples could be given. It is important, therefore, to see the real situation. Forgive me if I now move on to the human being. It is important to realize that the original form has the potential which in direct descent, in direct continuance, leads to the head organ, and that everything else is something acquired later. That is the real situation. And if we do not consider the human being in this way, we cannot understand him in the context of the whole evolution of nature.

Of course I can only refer to these things briefly. As I said, I’d have to give a long course if I were to give you all the details. Anthroposophy is still evolving today, and please do not consider it silly of me to say that it does not yet feel right to present anthroposophy in fully established courses. It needs to be done in form of suggestions made in individual lectures, and all one can do is refer to one thing or another. Because of this we have this imperfection which is the only possible thing in speaking like this. The things I have said, however, no more go against the view that the human being evolves as a uniform entity, than the evolution of lice that do not yet have feet to climb with into lice that do have them speaks against this being the evolution of a uniform entity. It is thus a matter of characterizing the evolutionary process, the special aspect of it. This is what matters in the present case.

---

• 53. Goethe, J. W. (see note 49), Faust I, Faust’s servitor Wagner in ‘Night’. Tr. P. Wayne. Penguin Classics.
• 54. Rubner, Max (1854–1932). Die Gesetze des Energieverbrauchs beider Ernährung, Vienna 1902.
• 55. Atwater, W.O. ‘Neue Versuche über Stoff- und Kraftwechsel im menschlichen Koerper’ in Ergebnisse der Physiologie Bd 3.1904. S. 497-622.
• 56. Ebbinghaus Hermann (1850–1909), German experimental psychologist. Abriss der Psychologie, 2. Aufl. Leipzig 1909, I. Kapitel ‘Allgemeine Anschauungen’.
• 57. Eckermann reported Goethe’s views on the natural scientific thinking to which the lecture refers as follows. ‘But it is not usually enough for people to see the archetypal phenomenon; they think it must go further than this and are like children who, having looked in a mirror, immediately turn it round to see what is on the other side.’ Johann Peter Eckermann, Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens, zweiter Teil, Gespräch vom 18. 2. 1829.
• 58. Steiner R. The Riddle of Man (note 3).
• 59. Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich Philipp August (1834–1919), German naturalist [Tr.]
• 60. Naegeli, Karl Wilhelm von (1817–1891), Swiss botanist. Mechanisch-physiologische Theorie der Abstammungslehre 1884.
• 61. Gegenbaur, Karl (1826–1903), German comparative anatomist. His chief work, Comparative Anatomy, was translated into English in 1878 [Tr.].
• 62. Haeckel in The Natural History of Creation (1868).
• 63. In the preface to Das Werden der Organismen (Jena 1916), Oscar Hertwig wrote: ‘For we would agree with Huxley that if Darwin’s hypothesis were to disappear, the theory of evolution would remain where it is. It is a lasting achievement of our century based on facts, and certainly one of its greatest.'
• 64. In System der Philosophie im Grundriss (Bad Sachsa 1907), Bd. II, Grundriss der Naturphilosophie, S. 172 & 208.
• 65. 1. Aufl. Berlin 1869.
• 66. Das Unbewusste vom Standpunkt der Physiologie und Deszendenz- Theorie (Berlin 1872). The second edition, this time bearing von Hartmann’s name, was published in 1877.
• 67. Schmidt criticized Eduard von Hartmann in his Die naturwissenschaftlichen Grundlagen der Philosophie des Unbewussten (Leipzig 1877), but praised the anonymous publication, saying that it had ‘fully confirmed the conviction of everyone who had not sworn an oath in favour of the unconscious that Darwinism is in the right.’
• 68. In Das Werden der Organismen (see note 63), Hertwig gave a long quote by E. von Hartmann.
• 69. ‘Ontogenesis, or the development of an individual, is a fast, short recapitulation of the phylogenesis, or evolution, of the species.’ Anthropogenie, 4. Aufl. Leipzig 1891, Bd I S. 64 (Evolution of Man 1874).
• 70. Concept used by Oscar Hertwig e.g. in Die Elemente der Entwicklungslehre des Menschen und der Wirbeltiere (Jena 1910), 4. Aufl. 4. Kapitel ‘Entwicklungsphysiologische Experimente’.
• 71. Human Life in the Light of Anthroposophy (from GA 35). Tr. S. M. K. Gandell. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1938.
• 72. Ziehen, Theodor (1862–1950). Leitfaden der physiologischen Psychologie 15 lectures, Jena 1891, S. 146. In the 9 lecture: ‘On the other hand (compared to the “older psychology” and Kant), our discussions so far have shown that feelings of inclination and disinclination simply do not exist in such an independent form but merely occur as characteristics of inner feelings and ideas, as emotional colouring.’
• 73. Comte, Auguste (1798–1857), French philosopher and social theorist. Cours de philosophie positive, 6 vols, Paris 1830-42, esp. the 40th-45th lectures.
• 74. See Von Seelenrätseln (note 1), Seite 156 f.
• 75. Literally: ‘And when Hegel had the arrogance to say that he had found the ultimate of all conceptual thought, presenting it in his head or in his system, when Hegel had infected the language of philosophy with the concept “spirit”, “nature” came to be the opposite of “spirit” ... When there is no longer contrast to nature in the human being, the mind and spirit no longer needs to “move itself’ with such effort to liberate the human being from nature. The spirit, of which no one ever knew what it was, a pale shadow of the Holy Spirit, of the decorative member of the Trinity, the spirit with which Hegel had made a final, for the time being, major attempt to drive nature out of the human being and the human being in his turn out of nature.’ Wörterbuch der Philosophie, 2. Bd., München 1910, S. 141 & 147 (Artikel ‘Natur’).
• 76. In conversation with Schiller in July 1794. Goethe wrote about this in an essay entitled ‘Glücklichs Ereignis’ in Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften (scientific writings, see note 10).
• 77. From Albrecht von Haller’s didactic poem ‘Die Falschheit menschlicher Tugenden’ (1730), verse 289 f.
• 78. In response to von Haller’s didactic poem, title ‘ Allerdings. Dem Physiker’(1820).

Wilhelmstraße 92/93, House of Architects

Report in the “Mitteilungen für die Mitglieder der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft (Theosophischen Gesellschaft), herausgegeben von Mathilde Scholl”, No. 6/1914

At 10:30 a.m., Fräulein von Sivers opens the General Assembly with the following words:

My dear friends! On behalf of the Executive Council, I warmly welcome you to the second General Assembly, the first ordinary General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society! For as long as we have held general meetings of the Theosophical Society, it has been customary for the General Secretary of the Theosophical Society to also chair the general meeting. However, it is the right of the general meeting to elect the chair. On behalf of the board, I propose that Dr. Steiner be elected to chair this general meeting. I ask you to vote on whether you agree to this.

The meeting unanimously accepts this proposal.

Dr. Steiner: My dear Theosophical friends! We are gathered here for the first time in a regular General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society, and it is my duty to greet you most warmly and to express my joy at the large number of you who have come. I would also like to express the hope that this first General Assembly of our Society will be fruitful in all respects. My dear friends, you have surely brought with you hearts filled with an anthroposophical spirit for this day, hearts throbbing with the enthusiasm that is necessary if a spiritual current is to be brought into existence in the world, a spiritual current like ours, which can certainly, without being guilty of the slightest exaggeration, be said to have to be born in pain. And from the many antecedents that have befallen us in recent times, it will indeed become clear that we have a great need to approach our task with great seriousness and a certain urgency at this time.

Before I try to continue the train of thought that I have stimulated with a few words, I would like to dedicate the word to those who have left the physical plane since we last gathered here and, as members of our movement, which is so close to our hearts, now look down on our work from the spiritual world. I would like to take this opportunity to emphasize once again that those who have passed away from the physical plane will continue to be considered our members in the most beautiful sense of the word, and that we will feel united with them as we did when we were still able to greet them on this or that occasion on the physical plane.

First of all, we would like to remember an old theosophical personality, old in the sense that she was connected with what we call true, genuine theosophical life for the longest time of most of our ranks, Baroness Eveline von Hoffmann. She is one of those who have imbued their entire being and active will with what we call the theosophical attitude. Many have come to appreciate the deeply loving heart of this woman, if only because they have felt infinite strength flowing from this heart in times of suffering and adversity. Although little of this became known to the outside world, Mrs. von Hoffmann was a loyal and self-sacrificing helper to many. And we may consider it a particularly valuable thing that she, who had been involved in theosophical development for a long time, was last in our midst. And with her dear daughter, who is still with us, we will keep the memory of this loving, loyal, and helpful woman, who wants to be united with her in the spiritual world.

I also have to remember some old members who left us for the physical plane this year. I have to mention our dear old friend Edmund Eggert in Düsseldorf. If some of us perhaps know the great inner difficulties that our friend had to struggle with, the heroic strength with which he became involved in what we call our spiritual current, then those who knew the good, dear man will certainly join me in making unceasing efforts to continue to be loyal friends of our dear Eggert in the spiritual worlds. And those of the dear friends who hear this, what I say from a troubled heart, will faithfully send their thoughts to the one who has passed from the physical plane.

I also have to remember a dear, loyal member, a member who always gave us sincere, heartfelt joy when we were able to see her in our midst time and again, our dear Mrs. van Dam-Nieuwenhuisen from Nijmegen, who left the physical plane this last time, and who certainly was one of the most beloved personalities among those who were her close friends, who worked faithfully for our cause as long as we knew her, who in particular also did a great deal to ensure that our cause was appropriately represented among our Dutch friends.

I must also mention a loyal, if perhaps quieter member, who always gave me great joy when I was able to see her in the circle of our dear Nuremberg friends, Fräulein Sophie Ifftner. She was much appreciated in the circle of our Nuremberg friends, who will ensure that the way is created through their feelings so that we will always find her when we seek her in the spiritual worlds.

I would also like to mention another faithful friend who has been active within the circle of our worldview for many years. She has been tragically recalled from the physical plane to the spiritual worlds. I would like to mention one of those to whom she has become dear and precious, and who want to be and remain with her in their thoughts, Miss Frieda Kurze.

I would also like to mention our Julius Bittmann, who was torn away from his dear family and from us, until his last difficult days, the fixed point of his inner life, despite difficult external circumstances, in what we call Theosophy. It was a deep joy for me to be able to spend the evening before the death of our dear Bittmann at his side once more, and I am sure that those of our friends who were closer to this man will not fail to form the path here as well, on which the theosophical thoughts unite us with the friend in the spiritual world.

I must also mention Jakob Knotts in Munich, who was a man who, after all his various struggles in life, finally found his firm support and his definite point of reference in Theosophy, so that his friends will be his mediators in the same way.

I must also mention another friend who left the physical plane during this period. Mr. Eduard Zalbin, who had come to us from Holland, was sadly mourned by his wife and children when we saw him depart from the physical plane through a quick death. Shortly before this occurred, Zalbin was still at our last general assembly, and his departure from the physical plane had to be pointed out there.

I would like to remember an old friend of the Stuttgart Lodge, who had organized her innermost life in such a way that she associated everything she thought with Theosophy, and who will now certainly be surrounded by the thoughts of all those who knew her, Miss Duttenhofer.

I must also mention Miss Oda Wallers, who we felt was connected to our cause with all her soul, for a long time. She was one of those souls who was as loyal to the cause as a human soul on earth can be, so loyal that we not only saw this soul depart from the physical plane with deep sorrow – a sorrow that does not need to be particularly emphasized in this case because all those who knew Miss Oda Waller knew her, felt it with the deepest sympathy – but at the same time we looked up to her in the spiritual world with the most beautiful hopes, with those hopes that are justified in the case of such a faithful soul, who, like Oda Waller, has firmly established in her heart to remain connected to the theosophical cause for all time. There will be more than a few who, united with their dear sister Mieta Waller, will be in heartfelt contact with our dear Miss Oda Waller.

I have to remember our Munich friend Georg Kollnberger. Those who knew him will be our mediators when we reflect on him with our feelings and emotions.

I have to remember a dear friend in Bonn who left the physical plane not so long ago, Miss Marie von Schmid. Those who knew her feel deeply how closely connected Miss von Schmid's soul was to the spiritual life. Those who felt a close connection with Miss von Schmid, a soul so open to the spiritual life, have lost a great deal, as have those who felt a close connection with an outwardly shy and withdrawn nature. It is so pleasant to meet such a nature in life. Precisely because she was so reserved, we got to know her so little. Those who knew her understand what I mean by these words.

We have to remember a member who, in terms of his physical strength, was unfortunately taken from us all too soon, a man who was happy to put his physical strength at the service of our cause, but who will also be an esteemed member in the form in which he is now connected to us, Mr. Otto Flamme in Hannover.

I must also remember our friend Fräulein Munch, who was found in the circle of our Nordic friends in our midst, and who, after a long, heroically endured illness, despite the most careful and loving care, finally had to leave the physical plane. Perhaps those who were closest to her will have the most understanding for what I would like to say about this soul, when we consider how she clung to the theosophical cause, I would say with inner strength, and passed through the gate of death with it.

I would also like to mention a friend who had also become acquainted with our friends in Berlin and who, after long and severe suffering, has recently left the physical plane. She was fully aglow with the yearning to implement in practical life on the physical plane what shone so beautifully for her heart and soul. We are sure that she will now continue her work in other places in a way that we also assume for our dear friend Flamme from Hannover.

All those who have passed away, as well as those who have become less well known in the circles of our members, we remember in this solemn hour: Mr. Brizio Aluigi from Milan, Mrs. Julie Neumann from Dresden, Mrs. Emmy Etwein from Cologne, Mrs. E. Harrold from Manchester, and we affirm that we sense, we want to live with them in thought – with these dear departed members, who, after all, have only changed the form of their way of life for us – that we want to surround them with the forces and thoughts with which we are accustomed to connecting with those friends who have left the physical plane; we affirm this will and remembrance by rising from our seats.

Dr. Steiner continues:

My dear friends!

First of all, I have to read out some letters that have been sent to the General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society.

To the General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society. On behalf of the Swedish members, we send our fraternal greetings and wish that the coming year may bring good success for our spiritual striving. We also express our heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Steiner, Miss von Sivers and our German brothers and sisters for all that we have received in the past year.

Stockholm, January 15, 1914.
The board: Gustav Kinell, Gustaf Ljungquist,
Anna Wager Gunnarsson.

Zwolle, January 17, 1914.
Zwolle working group sends warm greetings and best wishes for the meeting.
[Gaston] Polak.

Prague, January 17, 1914.

The Prague working group sends its warmest greetings to the assembled members and asks the holy protecting powers to help us all so that we may work together to bring about a vibrant and harmonious development and prosperity of the high teachings and revelations entrusted to us. May our Society remain inwardly healthy and strong, and may it continue to be a spiritual brotherhood that brings help, consolation and blessing to all people for a long time.

Ptikryl

I am sure that you will all accept these very warm greetings with thanks.

My dear friends!

Perhaps I may, in accordance with the custom of earlier years, say something in advance to this assembly; something that is really meant not otherwise than as a kind of greeting from the bottom of my heart to your hearts and souls, a greeting that I feel so deeply this year because we are united in this way for the first time within our Anthroposophical Society. For in a sense, the constituent assembly that we had to hold last year was what we had to hold. But only this year have we been able to see how many souls want to walk with us. And it shows itself to us through your extraordinarily large attendance. Perhaps it is right, at the very point of origin of our anthroposophical endeavors, to bring ourselves face to face with what we actually want to be with our goals and endeavors. When we turn to these goals and endeavors with our thoughts, two feelings must prevail in our souls, side by side, for they can hardly go hand in hand. One is a deep awareness of the necessity and importance of the spiritual life, to which we want to be devoted in our time with seriousness and loyalty, a feeling that must be connected with the earnest desire and the striving for sufficient energy to participate in what can deepen our time spiritually. The other sentiment that must go hand in hand with the first is what one would call, not wanting to be sentimental, but precisely in order to express something quite serious: the humblest modesty. Only in the humblest modesty and in the feeling of our inability to accomplish the great task can the necessary counter-image be created in our souls to what could so easily lead to an overestimation of ourselves and to pride. Because that is precisely the most important thing: the seriousness, the importance and the dignity of spiritual striving on the one hand; on the other hand, we can only advance in the right way on the path we have chosen in the most humble modesty towards our inability. And, my dear friends, if I may now pick up on the first thought that was expressed, we must never lose sight of the need for true and honest spiritual striving in our present time.

What I would like to tell you, I must summarize here in a few words. But there are some things I do not want to leave unspoken. What is connected with the serious feelings is what must make us attentive to the whole course of the spiritual life of our time in the broadest sense. In particular, this makes it my task time and again to point out, in a way that I certainly do not seek from a different point of view, these or those other spiritual currents, which should truly not be fought in a superficial way, but only to show how little they are suited to meet the deep, serious longings of the souls of our time. But people do not yet know about most of the deep longings that are present in the souls. Unconsciously, they rest in the depths of the souls. But the spiritual scientist tries to dive down into these depths of the soul. He knows how necessary it is to make progress in this area and to integrate spiritual science into the currents of life as far as possible. People today do not always admit that there is something in the depths of the soul like the call for these spiritual necessities. But anyone who clearly sees in the eye of the mind what souls strive for without knowing it in their innermost being can find this silent, silent call for spiritual life everywhere. And this call becomes a duty in our soul: to work together on spiritual work in order to make progress in this area.

One symptom is shown of how these or those personalities fight us, how they refute us and describe the things that come to our attention through our teaching as fantastic and unscientific. Sometimes, however, they give themselves away in the way they reject something, and by rejecting us they show that in fact they agree with us at the deepest level. Perhaps one of the most daring assertions that I have often made is that the materialism of our time, the monism in [contemporary] intellectual life, is based on fear. I have had to experience it that people from the audience, especially after such statements, approached me after the lecture and were horrified by such a grotesque assertion. I will not mention any names, I will only mention one man who has already achieved a great deal for our present intellectual life, who bears a revered name in connection with the name of our great Schiller, Alexander von Gleichen-Rußwurm, who belongs to the descendants of Friedrich Schiller, and who has already achieved a great deal. I will quote his words, which—one might perhaps call it “coincidence” if one were not a theosophist—yesterday “karma” delivered to my desk:

Balzac once dared to express the wish that a professorship in occultism would be established at the University of Paris. Such a professorship, however, is not about to be established, nor is the laboratory for the purpose of researching occult things, which Schrenck-Notzing presents as a desideratum. Even today, most people, and not only the devoutly religious, feel uneasy, afraid, horrified, and physically and psychologically repelled by any study of such things. This is usually only manifested in attempts to ridicule these things and to deny their reality. It is what Madame de Staël so beautifully calls 'Le côté nocturne de notre nature', and hand on heart: we are all afraid in this nocturnal darkness.

Please pay particular attention to these words: “We are all afraid.” Here you have expressed the opposite point of view to our own, which has been expressed again and again as a result of decades of research: that all clinging to materialism arises out of fear. So, sometimes people betray themselves by saying things that show how right we are with our views. We hear, when people betray themselves, especially when they put their hand on their heart, affirmations such as: “We are all afraid in this nocturnal darkness...”. One must look at what is going on between the lines of present life. Then one will feel the justification that is emphasized by the necessity of our spiritual work.

And, my dear friends, however slowly it may proceed, we do see fruits that show us how what is sought in spiritual heights can be implemented in practical life. I would remind you of a saying that I have taken the liberty of saying and writing often in the course of the striving of our German Section: on the one hand, our task is to search for the secrets of the spiritual worlds, to make that which we can explore , to make it our spiritual heritage and to care for it among those who belong to us; on the other hand, our task is to make fruitful in the right way what we are exploring in the spiritual life in our lives, wherever we can. And we see fruits in this respect too - I would like to mention just one symptom. Souls are maturing in our midst who, we may say, are willing to carry into the place in life where they are placed, what can be won on our ground, even outside the circle of our Anthroposophical Society. Among many beautiful phenomena, let me mention one because it was deeply satisfying for me. Our young friend Karl Stockmeyer wrote a significant essay in a journal for the Baden school system about the impossibility and impracticality of what is being striven for from many sides: to use the cinematograph to teach mathematics in schools. It is wonderful to be able to guide the soul along such paths through the problems of life, where something can be gained if one engages with the way we have to approach the matter. This is exemplified by our dear young friend Karl Stockmeyer, who in such a modest way allows what has become his to be exemplary for what is meant when I have repeatedly said and written: In addition to cultivating the wisdom treasures, one should also make practical use in life of what we can gain in our souls from these wisdom treasures. I would like to sincerely request that as many of our friends as possible familiarize themselves with the unpretentious but very valuable essay.

I always want to speak only symptomatically about such things, I want to speak so that it can be seen from the example how the things are meant. What we strive for from spiritual heights can be fruitfully applied in the particular. So when we try to bridge the gap between our spiritual values and the demands of practical life, we will gain the opportunity in many ways to let real theosophical-spiritual striving, anthroposophical spiritual life, flow into the life of the present. And such a task we have, we have a task! I would like to place all the emphasis I am capable of on this simple word: we have a task to carry into the world in a proper and correct way what we recognize as being right, what we are able to research.

The mood in the world is not one that makes such a task easy. There are people who call themselves theosophists and who have done much to tarnish the reputation of the name “theosophy”. All the more reason for us to take on this task when people who believe they are at the height of spiritual culture repeatedly condemn us for giving a bad name to theosophy. For example, in a German journal, 'Die Tat', Giuseppe Prezollini uses strange words. In a lengthy essay, he describes what he means by theosophy. He starts by talking about all kinds of philosophical schools and characterizes them - one might say - wittily. Then we have the following sentence:

Theosophy and spiritualism are becoming more popular and enjoying the increased attention that all cheap imitations receive when the real product rises in price. Of course, women are not missing either, because women go wherever the wind blows, and their presence is both a sign and the best guarantee of success.

My dear friends! It is symptomatic that such things are written by people who are taken very seriously in their field. We must really bear in mind that what presents itself to our soul as a duty, that we have to regard a sacred belt in such a way that we have to stand up for it. The direct transition is made in this essay from philosophical education to the university. I would like to make the transition to the German university.

All kinds of cheap books are appearing today. There is a collection; “Bildung der Gegenwart”; in it there is the following chapter on modern theosophy:

In Germany, the Theosophical Society in Leipzig (founded in 1897) is a center of the movement. It is a branch of the “International Theosophical Fraternity,” which considers its main purpose to be “to form a nucleus of a general brotherhood that spiritually encompasses all of humanity, without distinction of race, nationality, creed, class and sex, around which the theoretically already recognized ideas of universal human love and human brotherhood crystallize, and the highest ideals of humanity can be realized.

This direction particularly appreciates the writings of the former physician Franz Hartmann, who spent a long time in India with H. Blavatsky († 1912).

Rudolf Steiner can be considered the spiritual leader of another (more aristocratic) theosophical group based in Berlin. He draws particularly on Goethe and the Romantic period. He wants to give Germanic-Christian mysticism a modern form that will also stand up to the criticism of scientific thought. In contrast to the Buddhist disdain for our world of experience, which can easily lead to quietism, he values Christianity as a source of positive life-enhancement and a powerful way of shaping life. The existence of supersensible powers is a fact that can be grasped by direct, intuitive insight. He believes that everyone can acquire this ability of intuition through training. On the basis of such inspirational insight, he gives teachings on the cosmic development of the planets and the epochs of human history, which, however, descend into wild fantasies. (Prophecies of major events, especially of violent wars and other catastrophes, are also common in theosophical circles).

Steiner regards the soul, the actual “higher self”, as an immortal force that comes from the Godhead and returns to it. (This is reminiscent of the doctrine of the nus poetikos in Aristotle and his Arabic interpreters, cf. vol. I, p. 68, 109; vol. II, p. 4.) From here, Steiner arrives at the doctrine of the re-embodiment of the soul (to which Lessing and Goethe also tended, and which Schopenhauer, in line with Buddhism, advocates).

So now anyone can educate themselves about Theosophy for little money. But what is distressing is that this is in a treatise on the “History of German Philosophy from the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to the Present”. What is distressing is that the man who writes this refers, for example, to something that I certainly never quoted as a source: a Buddhist catechism, a superficial compilation that no serious person can use. He goes on to quote the “Secret Doctrine”. But then he gives the sources from which he has informed himself; he mentions Hans Freimark's (!) “Moderne 'Theosophie” (1912). But that is not yet the distressing thing, because if an ordinary writer had done that, it would not have meant anything for our culture. But this is written by the full professor at the University of Giessen, Dr. Messer. We learn from it how official representatives of the highest intellectual life judge us. We must conclude: this is how men who teach our youth today write.

With such conscientiousness, a licensed professor of philosophy, an official representative of science, teaches himself about things. Is one not entitled to conclude from this: if this man writes and teaches about Kant, Fichte, and Schelling, how is our youth taught today?

I do not want to say anything against the views that Messer presents against Theosophy. It is not this opposing criticism that concerns me, but how the man who writes such things informs himself about the things. What value can his explanations of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, etc. have if this is how the man informs himself? How, then, did that which is currently being disseminated as “science” and so accommodatingly believed by many come about? Can one not see the bleakest of circumstances here!? I am not talking about the fact that Messer is our opponent; I am talking, independently of that, about the nature of his “scientific conscience.” The final sentence in Messer's account reads:

Undoubtedly valuable ethical and religious tendencies are at work in this Theosophical movement, but only critical reflection will be able to prevent it from lapsing entirely into arbitrary and fantastic enthusiasm.

Undoubtedly, there is sometimes good will and the belief that something is known associated with what today calls itself philosophy and the like. Nevertheless, it will take a great deal of serious and genuine spiritual striving to put the incredible arbitrariness and ignorance that is spreading today into the right perspective for our time. I do not wish to shrink from pointing this out in a fitting manner, in order to show how deeply significant what I understand by seriousness and dignity is, and how it must be taken if we want to help what we call our spiritual heritage today to find its appropriate place in the world. Those who know how I avoid saying such things on all other occasions will forgive me if I put these things in their proper light on this occasion, in order to show how things stand and what tasks we must take on.

My dear friends! If, on the one hand, we link these considerations to the feeling of how serious and necessary our task is, then on the other hand, we should never forget how incapable we are, how modest we must be, how we must know how little we are actually capable of in the face of our great task. I am convinced that those who understand me will always adhere to this most humble modesty. So we must endeavor to bring our spiritual knowledge to people in such a way that we never lose the most humble modesty. If we were to take pleasure in the fact that we are compelled to speak such words, if we were to let ourselves be carried away by a feeling of superiority for a moment, it would be bad for us. We do not want to do that! We want to strive for our spiritual good in all seriousness and dignity, but we want to do so in such a way that this striving is carried by the most humble modesty, and that we carefully keep every trace of self-esteem, every trace of arrogance, away from our souls. Let this, what Karma has brought me, let this be kept in mind. I did not seek out the symptoms; they forced themselves on me. I was obliged to take Messer's book in my hands because I am obliged to inform myself about these things at the moment when I am working on a philosophical book myself. In the same way, the journal 'Die Tat' was also sent to me. This is a social monthly for German culture. I bought this, as they say, by chance from a newsagent. I really wasn't looking for these things. But I want to avoid telling you something else that I found in the farthest reaches of my mind that was similar to what I've been describing. I'll leave it at that.

I wanted to address these words as a first greeting to your souls. I think it is the best greeting I can offer you, when I speak those words that also touch me deeply, and that can contribute to our being together in the right spirit in these days, and to give an impulse for what we decide in our souls for the Anthroposophical Society, if we all decide it in the right spirit.

We come to the second item on our agenda, the report of the members of the Executive Council.

Fräulein von Sivers: The membership movement is as follows: The total number of working groups and centers is 107; of these, 47 are in Germany and 60 in other countries. The number of new members is 3,702. Of these, 19 have died and 36 have left. The total number is therefore 3,647. Of these, 2,307 belong to the working groups in Germany.

Dr. Steiner: Does anyone wish to comment on this report? Since this is not the case, we will move on to the third item on the agenda, the financial report.

Mr. Seiler: The financial statements can be described as favorable, on the one hand because voluntary donations have been received, and on the other hand because two large items have ceased to apply, namely contributions to Adyar and contributions to congresses.

Cash report

The financial statements of the Anthroposophical Society from February 2, 1913 to August 31, 1913 are as follows [in Marks and Pfennigs]:

Dr. Steiner: Does anyone wish to comment on this financial report?

Mr. Tessmar: The meeting has just heard the figures that make up the final result. The two auditors commissioned to audit the books have done so and dutifully checked the accounts. It is to be said that we found everything to be correct and in order, and we can testify that the sum of 5,340 Marks 32 Pfennigs is deposited at the savings bank; the proof of this was presented to us. I would like to emphasize that this cash report covers the period from February to August 1913, and that this year was particularly difficult because three financial statements had to be prepared. The accounts have been properly and correctly prepared. I therefore take the liberty of proposing that the treasurer be granted discharge for the period from February to August.

Mr. Seiler: I would like to point out that a large number of members are unclear about the contributions. Each member has to pay five marks in entrance fees and at least six marks in annual dues. If a member belongs to a lodge or a group, they will be registered with us by the group. In this case, the group is then obliged to pay a contribution of three marks to the central fund. It is up to the individual lodges or groups to decide what contribution they charge their members. Members who do not belong to a group have to pay six marks to the central fund. The question has now arisen as to how much should be demanded from a regional group – foreign country, section. Basically, this issue is hardly acute, since the need for regional groups is hardly present. It only exists in one case. It has now been proposed to raise one mark from the members of such a regional group. At present, the dues for foreigners have been reduced to one mark to support the group. I would also like to mention that in previous years, the individual groups had to pay a fee for the charter diploma. A fee of ten marks was charged for these diplomas.

Dr. Steiner: Does anyone wish to comment on the financial report?

Fräulein Scholl: You have heard that it has been considered whether only one mark should be paid to the central fund by the individual lodges abroad for the member. However, as long as there are no national associations (no sections), there can be no reason for foreign lodges to pay only one mark in membership fees. This is simply for the reason of sending the “Mitteilungen”. In any case, it turned out that postage costs of around 80 to 100 marks had to be paid from Berlin for each issue. In 1913, seven issues were published, which resulted in additional postage costs of around 600 to 700 marks, a large portion of which was for shipments abroad. For the “Mitteilungen”, a standard rate, an annual contribution of at least two marks from each member, should also be levied. Relatively speaking, that is still very, very cheap, since a lot of the work is done for free. In other societies, much more is levied. I would like to propose levying two marks annually as a standard rate for the “Mitteilungen”.

Mrs. Geelmuyden: If it should be necessary to translate the “Mitteilungen” into foreign languages, then it might be appropriate to set the contribution so low. As long as we enjoy the same rights, it is only fair that we foreigners also bear the costs.

Mrs. von Ulrich: I would like to agree to change the membership fee and maybe make it an occult number, so that seven marks would have to be paid as a membership fee.

Mrs. van Hoek: I would like to ask whether sending the “Mitteilungen” would not be simplified by sending the “Mitteilungen” only in one package abroad, and then having the respective lodges take over the mailing to the individual members themselves?

Fräulein von Sivers: But in the future it will probably be even more necessary to address the mail personally to the individual members. The possibility has been created that a member belongs to several working groups: This also means a complication of the management. It will be necessary to start from a registry of personalities, not from branches, when sending messages and communications of any kind.

Mr. von Rainer: If I understand Mr. Seiler correctly, there are two types of members. Those who belong to a working group and those who do not belong to a working group, the latter pay six marks to the central fund. If Fräulein Scholl's proposal is accepted, each member who is directly connected to the headquarters would have to pay eight marks. I would like to propose that we accept Ms. Scholl's proposal. Each member is managed by the working group in which they pay.

Dr. Steiner: It would be a great help for the registry if each member were registered at the time of their registration and in all correspondence at the headquarters: “Member so-and-so, managed by working group so-and-so, belonging to working groups so-and-so.”

Fräulein Stinde: If we could call the working groups that are dedicated to specific studies study groups, then there would be no confusion. Dr. Steiner: But groups could also be formed that are not dedicated to a specific study. Perhaps we could just say “group” to indicate the difference. So let's note this for once, that we say “group” and call the others “working groups” to distinguish them.

Mr. Hubo: I would like to support Miss Scholl's proposal.

Miss von Sivers: Even if this proposal is accepted, the clause can remain in place that a reduction could be granted if necessary and at the request of the student.

Mr. Tessmar: Couldn't a conflict arise from the fact that it would be very difficult to account for the costs of sending the “Mitteilungen” in Mr. Seiler's account? Let's just drop the “Mitteilungen” and simply say: the contribution will be increased. That might be assumed. If the motion passes, then it must also be determined from when this increase should be introduced.

Mr. Meebold: But if one group claims the right to a discount, difficulties will easily arise. Our group in London would have nothing against an increase in dues. But they are doing it with sacrifices, and it will be more difficult for them to continue if other groups have discounts. The “Mitteilungen” thing isn't really fair, because the foreign members receive it in German.

Fräulein von Sivers: Perhaps the dues could just be increased by two marks for all German-speaking members.

Mr. Baster: I would like to ask whether it is necessary to increase the contribution at all, since the cash balance was quite favorable. One must not forget that individual lodges already have a lot to pay for. Could not those members who receive the “Mitteilungen” directly from headquarters contribute to this?

Fräulein von Sivers: I would like to point out that we are trying very hard to reduce expenses and that it would be necessary to enlarge the office space. We are forced to work under very uncomfortable external conditions at Motzstraße 17; our rooms there are quite inadequate in the long run. It is equally necessary to increase the number of employees as our society continues to grow. This year, we received a particularly large sum of voluntary contributions from the collection in Cologne before the Anthroposophical Society was founded, and we cannot count on this in the future. We have not touched them yet, in order to have something in the coffers for future cases, but we may soon be forced to make use of them because we do have to adapt external circumstances to the rapid growth of the movement.

Mr. von Rainer: If in the future it should turn out that the contribution of two marks is too much, then that can be changed again at any general assembly.

Mr. Bauer: It does not seem entirely practical to me that the two marks should be taken especially for the “Mitteilungen”; one could then do without the “Mitteilungen”. We may certainly make the request in the interest of simplifying the work: for German members, an annual contribution of five marks will be levied for the central fund; for foreigners, a contribution of three marks. If perhaps some fear that our current increase in contributions will not be met with entirely friendly feelings, I believe the matter can be smoothed over if we decide to introduce the increased contribution only for the year 1915. That is so far away that no one will be upset.

Ms. Scholl: Mr. Bauer will excuse me if I do not agree with him on this. I find this last suggestion unjustified. I would consider it right to pay an additional two marks for the past year, for the “Mitteilungen” that have already appeared. After all, one can look back on work that has already been done. You know what had to be published in the interest of our movement, and how so many members abroad in particular were able to be informed about the true events within the Theosophical movement. When you look back on it, you have to say that it has a value that cannot be paid for with two marks today. That should encourage us to pay later rather than postpone it. I propose that we stick with the first motion to raise the dues by two marks. If individual members are unable to pay these dues, then there are certainly wealthier members in the individual lodges who could step in for them. This way, no one will be harmed.

Fräulein von Sivers: Although I can understand Fräulein Scholl, who empathizes with the difficult external conditions under which work often has to be done in the cramped rooms on Motzstraße, I would still like to ask you to accept Mr. Bauer's proposal. 1915 is a normal point in time. The building in Dornach is standing, and the huge sacrifices that had to be made for the Johannesbau have been overcome. Of course, we have received proposals in which members propose an increase in contributions. Although they show a complete lack of knowledge of the situation, they are nevertheless very well intentioned. These proposals would now have to be read out.

Dr. Steiner: My dear friends! It is sometimes in the nature of such discussions that they expand endlessly. But the whole matter can be simplified. Before deciding whether to accept the more rigorous approach of Miss Scholl or the more liberal approach of Mr. Bauer, and before voting on the Sivers motion – which would create the possibility that after some time members will be happy to pay again – we must first read two motions from our Tübingen friends.

Fräulein von Sivers:

Tübingen, January 3, 1914
for Sunday, January 18, 1914,
three proposals from the plenum.
Proposal Tübingen, regarding membership fees.

A letter dated October 15, 1913, signed by Mr. Franz Seiler and attached to the membership statistics, informed the chairmen of the groups, lodges and branches of the Anthroposophical Society that our fiscal year would be changed from the September period to the calendar year and requested the advance payment of a four-mark membership fee for 16 months. This request directly contradicts the membership fee of six marks per year stated on page 6 of the draft of the principles of the Anthroposophical Society, according to which eight marks should have been charged for the aforementioned 16 months. These six marks annual contribution must be considered as intended only for the Anthroposophical Society and do not include any local membership fees.

In the interest of improving our financial situation, with due regard to our steadily growing income and expenses, the following motion is proposed:

Motion 1: The annual contribution to the Anthroposophical Society should be maintained at six marks in accordance with the draft principles, and the corresponding four-mark contribution should be levied retroactively for each member for the 1913/1914 financial year.

Furthermore, it should be noted that until the Anthroposophical Society was founded, we were obliged to pay three marks per capita membership fee to Adyar each year. This obligation to pay dues to Adyar has expired for each member upon their entry into the Anthroposophical Society.

Almost at the same moment, we have decided to regard the execution of the Johannesbau as a sacred duty, and to do our best to make it possible. Therefore, it must be considered a matter of course and unavoidable that the three marks of annual membership dues that have now been freed up by breaking away from Adyar should be donated to the Johannesbauverein.

This leads to proposal 2:

The annual membership fee of the Anthroposophical Society in the amount of six marks should be increased by a further three marks for the Johannesbau and collected retroactively for the 1913/1914 financial year.

Rudolf Schenkel.

In principle, the above motions to increase
membership dues are supported by
Christian Schuler, Bertha Hauff, Johanna Hauff, Paul Hauff.

Motion Tübingen in favor of the
Theosophical-artistic fund

The news that this year's Munich festival made a loss of around 15,000 marks, which was only whispered and only became known in a roundabout way, aroused deep indignation in many circles of our Anthroposophical Society, especially since, according to reports, previous festivals had also ended with at least a similar deficit.

However, it must be noted that such unofficial information, which gradually leaks out, is increasingly likely to arouse suspicion about the management or financial management of an organization. It should therefore come as no surprise that otherwise generous members everywhere are very reluctant to donate through their foundations.

The unfortunate consequence of such administrative techniques is the annually recurring recourse to the capital strength of individual members who are well-to-do.

This practice must be rejected out of hand in the interest of our Anthroposophical Society, because every participant in the festival would have been willing, without further ado, to pay an entrance fee that was more in line with the expenses, even double the amount, if properly informed in a manner consistent with the spirit of truthfulness.

It must therefore be deeply regretted that following the request to exchange any incorrectly issued tickets during the last days of the Munich festival, no member entrusted or charged with managing the Theosophical-Artistic Fund reported on the deficits that were growing larger every year. And if there had been even the slightest suggestion that the reimbursement of ticket prices could be waived in favor of covering the deficit, then practically minded members would certainly have gone so far as to propose that they would rather contribute to covering the previous and also the expected deficit by paying a voluntary contribution.

This would have had two practical advantages:

1. the costs incurred by the events would have been passed on to the participants to a much greater extent – and quite justifiably – and

2. the capital of the financially strong members, who were exceptionally called upon to cover the deficit, would have been reserved for our more extensive endeavors, such as the Johannesbau.

From the above considerations arises

Proposal 3: For future festival or similar events organized by the Theosophical Artistic Fund, an admission fee should be charged that is more appropriate to the value of these events and more commensurate with the costs incurred, if possible based on the previous year's financial statements.

Furthermore, consideration should be given to how, in the future, participants in such events can be made aware of the occurrence of such deficits in a dignified way and be asked to help cover them, although ideally only while they are gathered at the event and are therefore most willing to contribute financially. This will, frankly, cause many a prejudice and other thing against the management at our events to fall away and open many a hand more willingly to further donations in support of our efforts, but above all in favor of the Johannesbau.

Rudolf Schenkel.
In principle, the above motion to increase
entrance fees for the performances is supported by
Christian Schuler, Bertha Hauff, Johanna Hauff, Paul Hauff.

Dr. Steiner: You can now include these motions in the discussion.

Mr. Schuler: The author of the motion is solely responsible for the wording of the two motions. The other signatories have only endorsed them in principle. The contributions alone should create a certain basis. We have had exceptionally low contributions so far. I take the view that the lower the contributions, the lower the efficiency. The dues would surely have to be increased bit by bit. In my experience, the truly needy and poor people are the ones most willing to pay all dues and increases. Regarding the opinion on increasing the dues, I would like to say: Those who can pay three marks can also pay five marks. The individual lodges would have the opportunity to demand higher dues on their own initiative.

Dr. Unger: It was to be expected that Dr. Schuler would present a justification for these Tübingen proposals. These proposals are a serious matter. In the final analysis, it is not a question of payment here; after all, everything is moving towards the same goal. However, it is a different matter when it comes to creating clarity about the conditions that actually exist. It is not that the proposals contain truly strange things, but rather that these things are present due to a misunderstanding of the situation. We must pay particular attention to this at our Annual General Meeting, because such things are likely to cause confusion, which then proliferates again and again. These proposals speak of mistrust arising and so on. Furthermore, these Tübingen proposals show a tremendous confusion of the most diverse things. One should gradually start to distinguish between the Anthroposophical Society, the Theosophical Artistic Fund and the Johannesbau Association. In this proposal, the Theosophical Artistic Fund is placed in a kind of opposition to the Johannesbau Association and the Society itself. It is important to point this out because one should not actually base proposals on ambiguity. The matters of the Theosophical-Artistic Fund have been treated in this application out of complete ignorance of the facts. One really has no right to stick one's nose into such things. The point is that in recent years everyone has felt a sense of deepest gratitude, of deepest respect for all that is behind the Theosophical-Artistic Fund. We would never have had mystery plays today if these plays had been based on any kind of income. This is a pure gift that we accept in the appropriate way. Income and expenses do not and cannot play a role. It is a matter of course that an entrance fee is charged, but this should certainly not give anyone the right to interfere in these matters; we can only look up and accept this gift with the deepest gratitude.

The Johannesbau Association is now endeavoring to create a framework for these mystery plays. So when people talk about the fact that funds are being withdrawn from the Johannesbau through the Theosophical-Artistic Fund, it is a gross distortion. We would not need a Johannesbau if we did not have the Mystery Plays, the gift from the spiritual worlds. It is deeply regrettable that these motions have been tabled with the best of intentions. That is precisely why they are completely unacceptable.

Fräulein von Sivers: I would just like to add to what Dr. Unger said that it is one of the greatest ironies I have experienced in my working life within the Theosophical Society, which has been so rich in experiences, that what is being discussed here in this proposal has become possible. So a gift is made out of the purest, most unselfish motives, a personal, private gift. If two months of the year were not set aside for these performances, given the demands that the members place on Dr. Steiner's time, the mysteries would probably never be written at all. And it would never be possible to put on a performance in this short time if one had to ask society whether a worker could be given 50 pfennigs more or less in tips, or whether an artist could be compensated in this or that way. Anyone who knows just a little about everything that goes into a venture would give up from the outset under such conditions. The project was born out of personal initiative, and it was not even considered to ask society for contributions. How can one speak of a deficit when only expenses are calculated! How could such a low entrance fee even cover the expenses? Out of pure enthusiasm for art, to make possible something that is considered a gift, not only for society but for all humanity, the funds are given.

The Mystery Plays have been enthusiastically received, and a worthy setting had to be created for them. The Johannesbau was created from this idea. So it cannot be said that it is the more enduring. Many of us are convinced that these dramas will live longer than a building made of wood and stone.

Now it has proved expedient for the Theosophical Artistic Fund to provide an address for donations for the building. These will be receipted with the note “Theosophical Artistic Fund for the Johannesbau”. So they have nothing at all to do with the performances and are kept strictly separate from them.

Fräulein Stinde: The Theosophical Artistic Fund was set up so that the mystery plays could be performed and only secondarily for the Johannesbau. Of course, we older members who set up the fund find it easier to understand all this than the younger members. That would be an excuse. But they could still know what it is about. Of course, most people don't appreciate the monetary value of art and performances; they don't realize that when a new play is performed in a theater, the costs amount to 60,000 to 80,000 marks. Thanks to the great willingness of our artists to make sacrifices, we are only able to make such performances possible; it would be impossible if we had to pay our artists. The entrance fee that is charged cannot be counted against the costs.

Mr. Bauer: One more comment! It would be easy to say at first that a good opinion underlies the request, and therefore the rest could be overlooked. But we don't want to cloud the issue ourselves; we have to look at this opinion at its core. It may be well meant, but if we look closely, this good feeling has a heavy shadow. Otherwise this proposal would not be possible, because it could only come about from a bad opinion of others. One does not assume a sense of truthfulness in others. We must also be clear about this; specifically, he presents a good opinion based on mistrust.

Dr. Steiner: My dear friends! We still have a great deal of work to do in the so-called business part of our General Assembly. Now, however, we must allow the time to come when some refreshment must be taken for the less intellectual organs. This point cannot be postponed any longer, because our stomachs would not be able to appear in such a way with the tea that is offered to us here at six o'clock that we would be able to achieve as much as possible. So we will now take a break and meet again here at four o'clock this afternoon to continue our negotiations.

Adjourned at 1:30.

The negotiations adjourned at 1:30 will resume at four o'clock.

Fräulein von Sivers: The many arguments about the financial situation were perhaps quite useful in order to be able to know what the situation is. But since we have to make such strong demands on the willingness of the members of the Johannesbau this year, I hereby make the request that the assembly refrain from increasing the membership fee this year and break off negotiations on this point.

The proposal is adopted.

Mr. Walther: I propose that we also not enter into negotiations on the two Tübingen proposals, but rather assign them to the Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society for resolution.

Mr. Schuler: I have no objection to this, but I would like to emphasize that these are not “Tübingen proposals”. The proponent is responsible for the proposals. The others have only agreed to the increase in contributions.

Dr. Steiner: The term “Tübingen motions” was not intended to refer to the Tübingen working group; it was meant only geographically, just so that the motions came from the city of Tübingen.

The proposal is accepted.

Dr. Steiner: We now come to the proposal of our auditor, Mr. Tessmar, to grant discharge to the treasurer and cashier.

The assembly grants this discharge.

Dr. Steiner: It will be necessary to deal with the Boldt proposal as the next proposal. I am obliged to present this Boldt proposal and to provide a little background information so that we are able to discuss this proposal in a reasonably objective manner.

Mr. Ernst Boldt, a member of the Munich I working group, wrote a paper in 1911 that was published by Max Altmann in Leipzig at the time: “Sexual Problems in the Light of Natural and Spiritual Science”. I would like to explain Mr. Boldt's intentions with a few words from the brochure that was sent out by the publishing house at the time and from which I will read a few passages:

This book stands out from the abundance of modern sex literature in a unique and purposeful way. It occupies a special position in that it seeks to establish the scientific basis and framework of an independent philosophy of sex and thus to open up new perspectives on life, independently of contemporary research. The inadequacy of the relevant literature, which mostly only gropes around the outside and surface of these problems and not infrequently speculates on the hidden lustfulness of the reader, prompted the creation of this thoroughly honest and solemnly written book. It can therefore lay claim to attention in the widest circles, because it offers the thinking person, who must be highly dissatisfied by the common vituperation of this topic, a wealth of new perspectives and rich thought content.

This is indeed a new publication that will, over time, provide the most important impetus and will truly break new ground for all sexual research. It is a fundamental work of sexual philosophy that literature has yet to match.

The author initially bases his ideas on the results of modern science, but in order to do full justice to his subject, he finds it necessary to supplement and deepen these with the little-known and much-misunderstood extrasensory or occult findings of spiritual or secret science (theosophy). Despite his spiritual research methods, Boldt agrees with the monists insofar as they remain on the firm ground of true science and do not stray into the barren swamps of materialism through vague hypotheses; but he turns with implacable severity against the dualists and their culturally backward tendencies. The author himself stands beyond monism and dualism, since both mean only stages of human knowledge to him. Seen from a higher vantage point and illuminated by the light of spiritual research, 'the world reveals itself in a completely new form. And the author had to base his explanations on this in order to enable a real solution to such profound problems.

Boldt has a calm and confident command of his subject and thus does justice to a great task. In seven concise treatises, he reveals the deepest mysteries of the past, present and future of human nature in terms of sexuality. It is precisely these broad views of the past and the future that sharpen the eye tremendously for the present state of things. Certainty about the “where from” and “where to,” which has always been the greatest concern of the deeper thinker, also sheds light on the “why,” allowing people to most clearly recognize their most pressing tasks. In this

sense, Boldt gets to the root of the problems. The simple and clear style facilitates understanding of the complicated, occult facts, which have so far remained inaccessible to both the layman and the academic, and which are presented and explained in the strangest of images. Although the reader must initially accept these “facts” without question, the explanations that Boldt bases on them meet the requirements of a self-contained, strictly logical thought process that can withstand any criticism. The author provides more detailed information about the sources from which the occult ideas in his book are drawn in the introduction and in a corresponding appendix.

The book is of equal interest to men and women, scholars and laymen.

This is what is known in the book trade as a “blurb”, which is always added to books when they are first published. I don't know who wrote this particular blurb; sometimes authors write their own. But I don't want to claim that in this case, I just want to mention a very common usage in this instance, because not all of our members are informed about the practices of book distribution.

If I were to tell the story of how I came to write this book, which culminates in my arguments, I would have to keep you waiting a very long time. I don't want to do that, but I would like to mention that Mr. Ernst Boldt originally intended to cover this subject, which was then condensed into his 1911 book of 148 pages, in a great many volumes. Then various things led him to make this short extract from his so-called “research”. I may well admit that long before this book was written, Mr. Boldt's various views and pretensions were brought to my attention by Mr. Boldt himself, according to various practices existing in our society, and that I was not in a position to Mr. Boldt made to me at the time – with the exception of the obvious, which is to tell a younger man: He should move in this or that direction in the field of thought so that he can move forward and also to give this or that piece of advice that you yourself consider good. Then, after this advice had been given, Mr. Boldt came to write this book. He also wrote me a letter of many pages, while the book was actually already in print. I am really not always able to respond to all such requests and to deal with all the details of what is in the literary intentions of our members. I also think it better if someone has the pretension to appear scientifically literary that he proves less in need of support in such a case. Now the book was published. Mr. Boldt had the obvious requirement that not only our various Theosophical working groups should display the brochure for this book – I have read it out so that you can judge it – in the lodge rooms in order to do their part for this book, but he also had the requirement, which is evident from his current behavior, that I should recommend the book in our circles; indeed, even assumes that the various measures or lack of measures that he criticized so sharply can be traced back to the fact that I did not recommend this book, and that I—despite Mr. Boldt's statement that I personally often asked how things were going with his book—never gave any information other than one that was “neither warm nor cold” when he asked me about it. You can understand that an author may easily feel that a piece of information is neither warm nor cold to him if it is not given to him exactly as he had imagined it. But not only did I have reasons not to deviate from a judgment that is “neither warm nor cold,” but I also had my good reasons, which I did not conceal from Mr. Boldt, in a gentle way, not to recommend the book. There will be more to say about some of this later, so I will mention the main reason I gave to Mr. Boldt first. I told him, roughly, that the book still has a very immature, amateurish character, and that this is especially evident from the fact that the whole execution is such that you can't do anything with it if you really want to get involved with the subject. Despite the cover, which says that it is a new publication that will change the whole of sex research over time, the book is actually such that, in my humble opinion, no one, even if they are responsive to the issues at hand, can really learn much from it.

There would have been only one reason – I don't know if anyone of those who know me better could see this as a reason for me in this case – to recommend this book: it contains many praiseworthy and laudatory things about myself. But that is no reason for me to recommend the book just because Mr. Boldt praises me. And I must confess that I would have preferred it if what I have endeavored to produce over decades in various fields of knowledge had not been presented in such a way in a book. The fact that someone pays all kinds of adulation that refers to me will never be a reason for me to give a special recommendation about anything; the only reason for this can be the quality of the performance.

So I did something for which, in addition to all the reasons I have given, there was another reason that could perhaps be appreciated: that it is my right to remain silent about something! I don't know if anyone doubts that I am entitled to do so? If one were to doubt that I am entitled to remain silent about anything, I would have to regard that as the worst kind of tyranny. If someone, as in this case, comes to me with the assumption that I am obliged to recommend this or that and would be acting incorrectly if I did not do so, I would have to regard that as the harshest and most terrible imposition that can possibly be placed on a human being. For I would like to know what would become of the freedom of mankind if a society were founded in which the person to whom some people adhere is obliged to recommend a book or other article by a member? You can imagine the tyranny that could result. So it happened that I could not give such a recommendation. I could give you many reasons for this; perhaps that could be done in the course of the negotiations. But our friends – perhaps with the exception of the 25 percent to which Mr. Boldt refers – did not particularly enjoy this work either. So it was left out of consideration. The great “injustice” has been done: this book has been ignored, let us say, has not been bought! My friends! In the past few days, a large number of us have received a brochure that now reads as follows:

Please pass this on!
Munich, January 1914.

Dear Members of the Anthroposophical Society! The undersigned respectfully takes the liberty of personally informing the esteemed members of his recently self-published work “Theosophy or Anti-Theosophy? - A Free Word to Free Theosophists”. In it, the author seeks, in the interest of our great cause, to shed light on various abuses within our circles and to bring them up for discussion at the upcoming second general assembly. The writing is of an intimate nature and therefore cannot be published by a bookshop. It is “printed as a manuscript” and is addressed exclusively to the members of the Anthroposophical Society, for whom this topic is likely to be of particular interest.

With theosophical greetings
Ernst Boldt, Munich, Adelheidstraße 15/111

Then, at the bottom, is the order form. A few days after the brochure appeared, I received the pamphlet “Theosophy or Antisophy? — A Free Word to Free Theosophists” from Ernst Boldt. The brochure contains the following words:

The writing is of an intimate nature and therefore cannot appear in bookstores. It is “printed as a manuscript” and is addressed exclusively to the members of the Anthroposophical Society, for whom this topic is likely to be of particular interest.

In the “preliminary remarks” of the brochure, I immediately read the words:

The following observations are taken from the manuscript of a larger work in the process of being written. They formed the first introductory chapter. However, since the completion and publication of this extensive work may be delayed for years due to the unfavorable economic and health conditions of the author, it seemed advisable to publish these observations now as an independent work, initially within our circles. Whether these remarks will be taken up in the Anthroposophical Society or not will determine whether they should later be included in the work intended for the general public, which has been temporarily set aside by this announcement.

So, it is said, if the members are well-behaved and accommodating, it will be refrained from being carried out to the wider public; but if the members do not behave well, this printed “manuscript” may perhaps be presented to the wider public after all. However, it is very strange that this was only learned after the booklet had been purchased. I did not buy it, because it was sent to me for free. This booklet – which is not to be read out because it is not desired – contains many accusations against the backwardness and ignorance of the members of our “Anthroposophical Society”, who, in their developmental naivety, ignore such things that address the most important problems of the present.

My dear friends, had the whole matter come to me before the program of our present General Assembly was sent out, I would have had – not exactly because of Boldt's proposal, which has more symptomatic significance, but for other reasons that could arise from the negotiations - I would have had reason enough not to give the four lectures announced, “The Human and the Cosmic Idea”, and instead to speak about the inferiority of some scientific work in the present day. For there is much that can be said about the subject that is called “sexology and related subjects”, which could one day provide an opportunity to say a few necessary words to those who hold many dubious views on this point at the present time, not to say it to our members, but so that our members can counter many of the corresponding pretensions in the present day by advancing the thought processes presented through their own research.

In the brochure “Theosophy or Antisophy?” the author relies heavily on Nietzsche as a fighter against ascetic ideals, and Mr. Boldt finds that he needs to tell our members the truth quite bluntly. On page 28, he writes:

It is entirely in the interest of keeping the Christian-Theosophical blood of life pure when we seriously warn against its parasites.

However, Mr. Boldt does not look for these “parasites” among the 25 percent who are in favor of him, but among the other 75 percent.

However “occult” they may behave, these “believers” are nothing more than a lively swarm, a lot of love, a lot of folly, a lot of non-bearded worship... anyone who knows the fleeting, cowardly human race should not believe in these springtimes and colorful meadows!

Woe betide if these half-wits spoil everything here too – there is no lack of tendency in that regard! For the intellectual posing as a Theosophist, to whom Theosophy means little more than a fashion, a kind of sport, is undoubtedly more dangerous to the anthroposophical movement than the monist who is disappointed in Theosophy. If the yearning flirtation with ascetic ideals, which is already “good form” in Theosophical circles, also becomes dogma and an epidemic, then we can no longer refrain from exclaiming indignantly with Nietzsche: “All our ‘reverence for the ascetic ideal, provided it is honest!’ But we may 'all these coquettish...

here the printer was probably unaware that he should have used a z instead of a g; for Nietzsche writes “Wanzen” and not “Wangen”, and since I do not believe that Mr. Boldt wanted to speak of the “flirtatious cheeks” of our members, I assume that the printer stumbled here.

... cheeks whose insatiable ambition is to smell of the infinite, until the infinite smells of bugs.

One cannot demand that the members of the Anthroposophical Society always be treated politely; nor can it be said that the least has been done here to be reasonably polite. There is not much politeness in the other sentence either:

In the interest of the great cause, which seems to me to be endangered by this behavior, I long for the day when Dr. Steiner will say with Nietzsche's Zarathustra: “Let them go and fall... and do not complain! Better still blow with rustling winds among them, - blow among these leaves,... that all that is withered may flee from you even faster!

(“On the Renegades.”)

So much for the tenor of how – and I am addressing the other 75 percent – you are addressed yourself. I myself am addressed in a peculiar way. If I put before me the figure in which I appear, then allow me to characterize it with an expression that is perhaps better understood in Berlin and the surrounding area than in the circles further outside this narrower country – that I say: the person who appears under the name “Dr. Steiner” seems to me like a “Konzessions-Schulze in the disguise of a superman”. That is more or less how I must appear after what I am portrayed as in this book. I don't know how widely this expression will be understood; but members who live further away and don't understand it can ask their friends in Berlin what a “Konzessions-Schulze in the disguise of a superman” is. Among other things, it is said that I have a right to do everything I do, but that because I have to make a pact with the 75 percent of the backward ones - those who are supposed to run away and who will contribute to the fact that infinity will one day smell of bugs - I am forced to say what my true opinion is. What I should actually have said about Mr. Boldt's book, I don't know; but in any case, I am the one who wears masks and has to rely not on telling the truth, but on saying what is pleasant for his 75 percent followers. So I appear in a very peculiar light:

I repeat: a philosopher as a great educator may and must be reserved with his true thoughts and judgments; he has the right and the duty to use masks and gestures. But should there not be a limit that must not be exceeded? The logical fictions and false judgments, which are undoubtedly necessary and fruitful for the theosophical movement in a certain initial phase of development, must have a hindering and paralyzing effect as soon as this development enters a second, higher phase. In other words, if these fictions and false judgments are part of the conditions of the former group and current, they must be felt by the second as a paralyzing poison.

Then it is said that it would indeed be necessary to gradually change tack, with the following words:

But in The Will to Power there is also an essay (980) that sheds even more light on this subject and can be applied to Dr. Steiner's powerful personality: “Let us imagine a philosopher as a great educator, powerful enough to draw long chains of generations up to him from a lonely height, then we must also grant him the uncanny prerogatives of the great educator. A great educator never says what he himself thinks, but only what he thinks about a matter in relation to the benefit of the person he is educating (and wants to be thought about it, I might add). In this pretense, he must not be guessed at; it is part of his mastery that one believes in his honesty. He must be capable of all means of discipline and punishment: he can only bring some natures forward by lashes of the whip of scorn, others, the indolent, the indecisive, the cowardly, the vain, perhaps with exaggerated praise. Such an educator is beyond good and evil; but no one must know it.

It's strange: what you have had to experience over the years! I must say: I do not want to expand the term “concessionary school in the disguise of the superman” any further, but only state a few things about how the 75 percent of the members who do not belong to Mr. Boldt are treated, and how I myself am treated, so that you may know a few things even if you have not been prompted by the brochure to read it. The brochure was sent to me together with the following letter:

Munich, January 9, 1914,br> Adelheidstraße 15/III

Dear Dr.

Since summer 1911, I have repeatedly asked you for a factual statement about my book (“Sexual Problems in the Light of Natural Science and the Science of the Spirit”), which was published at the time. Since you have given me only inadequate, contradictory, evasive and confusing answers to my private questions and have repeatedly promised me “critical marginal notes” on my book but have repeatedly promised me, I saw myself compelled, for reasons of spiritual and intellectual self-preservation, to deal with this embarrassing and distressing subject in a pamphlet (“Theosophy or Anti-Theosophy? - A Free Word to Free Theosophists”) and to submit it to you as my contribution to the second General Assembly, with the urgent request that you take a stand on it in the next few days. I have announced the publication of my writing by sending 2,500 brochures to all branches of the Anthroposophical Society and have already sent out a number of copies; I may therefore assume that the content of the brochure is known at the General Assembly. Although the dam of cold objectivity may be breached here and there by the stream of feelings in my remarks, I know that you will have to call me to order strictly for this, but I would still ask you to always separate the factual content from the jagged form and not to give the latter too much weight. In any case, I ask for leniency as far as the form is concerned; not everything is meant as badly as it may appear in the rigid print on paper. I have not named any personalities and certainly did not want to offend anyone. It is in itself quite unimportant who said this or that, but the fact that it was said is what I could not get over. Should anyone feel offended, however, well, he may justify himself as best he can, or apologize and regret his behavior. I will certainly not be unreceptive to it. Whoever knows how much I have suffered from these things over these years will understand that I could not remain silent any longer. And you, dear Doctor, should know first that it was only pain that guided my pen. If freedom and independence, truth and truthfulness are not to remain empty phrases or abstractions in our circles, then these words, wherever they take on concrete life, must also be respected and duly appreciated; otherwise, the same applies to us as to what Lykophron of Phrygius says (pages 24-25): “You are all shadows without life, larvae without will” and so on. But we want to be free men indeed, over whom the sun of Christ can rejoice. I still remember exactly your wonderful words in Düsseldorf (1909) about the praise of the ability to make “first judgments”. At the time, you lamented finding this ability so undeveloped in our circles, where you would so much like to encounter it. Well, I did not wait to be shown the way to take a step – I did not need to be seduced or goaded – I had the strength, the courage and the good conscience for my “first judgment”! – I hope it is not misunderstood and held against me as a crime – I passed it with the best of intentions.

Since it is financially and physically impossible for me to come to Berlin myself, I kindly request that this letter be read at the general assembly.

With deepest admiration yours, Ernst Boldt.

In the last few days, the explicit request has been made to discuss this letter first and to add the following:

Munich, January 15, 1914.
To the General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society, Berlin.

Dear Doctor!

As was to be expected, my brochure has caused a storm to rage against me, especially here in Munich. This is also expected to continue in Berlin at the upcoming general assembly. Since it is unfortunately not possible for me to attend the meeting for the reasons mentioned, and to defend myself against any attacks and distortions of my intentions, I would like to kindly ask you, dear Doctor, to read this written material yourself in the order given, or to have it read.

The evening before yesterday, Director Sellin delivered to me the order of our lodge board to declare my resignation from the local lodge I, otherwise I would have to consider myself already excluded. From this I may well conclude that our board feels offended by my pamphlet. It is therefore to be assumed that he will speak in his defense at the general assembly, and in the sense in which he has already spoken here. He has claimed that I have besmirched him and a number of members from top to bottom with dirt, that I have severely insulted Dr. Steiner and accused him of moral cowardice, as reported to me by Director Sellin, who also made these claims.

I must protest in the strongest possible terms against this understandable but nevertheless outrageous distortion of the facts, against these objective untruths. It is not true that I threw mud at the ladies; I only pointed out facts in strong words and castigated the excesses that will have to get out of hand if we do not work energetically against them in time. In saying this, I was only expressing the convictions of about 25 percent of our members; if they now also have the courage to openly stand up for their convictions, this would certainly be in the interest of our great cause. It is also untrue that I severely insulted Dr. Steiner and accused him of moral cowardice. Only very superficial thinking, unacquainted with deeper psychology, can make such unfounded assertions. Those who are sensitive to nuances and have eyes for true greatness of mind and character will have to admit that this serious accusation does not apply to me in any way; rather, I have fully and completely done justice to the great mind and character of this superhuman personality, who, for his extraordinary purposes and goals, must also make use of extraordinary means and methods. Even if at one point, on pages 25-26, I asked for clarification regarding some points that had long weighed heavily on me, I believe that this is my good human and intellectual right.

On pages 25-26 of the brochure, the words can be read:

My question pains me deeply, but it must nevertheless be asked: Does Dr. Steiner do the “in the field of theosophy working”, who have not only made the cultivation and dissemination of the existing treasure of extrasensory knowledge their mission, but also “wherever it can be, observe where life needs and can experience a deepening by the theosophical way of thinking' - does Dr. Steiner not do them an injustice when he ignores their honest striving, apparently as a result of their compromising with backward groups and currents, as inadequate or inadmissible? And further I ask: Theosophy, which disregards every possibility of “making the highest realizations fruitful for the most everyday things of life”, as certain circles have proved by their behavior, does not lead in the best way “to things to which it should least lead to: the formation of sects, narrow-minded dogmatics and so on, which leads to a theosophical priesthood and sisterhood, which I already warned against so energetically in Düsseldorf, because I saw it coming for sure? Dr. Steiner, forgive me for asking this last question: If he is inclined to preserve the Theosophical Society in its primitive, initial stage by suppressing efforts of my kind, then he seems to me to be cutting off the lifeblood of this movement in its progressive impulses and thus falling into an unfathomable contradiction with himself.

Should the anthroposophical movement ever need a Luther in the future, which is likely, he can refer to me as his modest forerunner, who is willing to be fried for his convictions, mindful of the words: “Here I stand - I cannot do otherwise - God help me - Amen!”

That is there, as required by “good human and intellectual law.” I continue to read the letter to you:

Not everything is immediately clear and transparent to me, because I am not concerned with mere allegiance, which is certainly very cheap. As we know from him, Dr. Steiner has to defend himself against the blind adoration of these followers, as if they were astral clouds that block his work. I don't want any part in the formation of these astral clouds, I don't have the talent for that. I have no doubt that Dr. Steiner does not feel at all offended or accused of moral cowardice by my profound remarks. I am also convinced that Dr. Steiner will take the serious questions and honest striving of an independent thinker seriously again. Those who, like me, strive to understand rather than to admire, will best protect themselves against desertion and subsequent opposition. After all, “we should not show external reverence and admiration for our teachers, but we should strive for their understanding.” (Messages No. X, p. 3.)

This “aspiration” is quoted from the messages no. X, page 3, where the sentence is: “We want to be praised less, but understood more diligently.” - Now Mr. Boldt continues:

And that is the great crime of which I am accused by the blind admirers and admirers. “O sancta simplicitas!” - If only the Theosophists would take their Theosophy more seriously, they would not have so much time to admire and criticize, and would not compromise themselves so embarrassingly with their accusations...

Anyone who was present at the cycle in Düsseldorf in 1909 will know that it was Dr. Steiner himself who drew my attention to this $4 in Nietzsche's “Beyond Good and Evil,” with the words: ” The questioner (who was none other than me) once quoted 2sche; now, he should also be familiar with $4 in Beyond Good and Evil, where Nietzsche posits the sentence: “The falsity of a judgment...” and so on. This just needs to be understood correctly, and the questioner will understand me if he understands Nietzsche. This sentence also applies to the theosophical movement: if it is to be fruitful in a certain sense, then it does not depend on the pure truth, but... and so on, as I have reproduced almost literally on p. 16 of my writing.

There are the words that a great educator can tie up anything to people if they only believe in his honesty.

Well, I have understood Nietzsche and through him Dr. Steiner better than my indignant accusers. If they want to make up for what they have neglected and work their way to a deeper understanding of their great teacher, then they will also have to acquit me of the offence of which they now accuse me. So much for now in this point for my justification.

Furthermore, I am accused of vindictiveness due to hurt vanity as a writer because the ladies did not do any propaganda for my book. I understand this argument perfectly in view of the mentality of my judges; but nevertheless I must acquit myself of this accusation in every sense. I therefore expressly repeat that I have a completely impersonal interest in these conditions and processes. When I wrote my brochure, I was well aware that the personal impact and the sharpness of my speech would make it easy for my opponents to twist it into a rope. And yet I could not bring myself to change my mind; after all, I am addressing my writing only to free and insightful Theosophists, and I expect them to be able to distinguish between the factual content of my writing and its sharp form. In this sense, the board of a larger lodge wrote to me today, whom I do not know personally, but who addresses me in the name of his lodge or in the name of the few free and insightful: “Our dear Mr. Boldt”: “Your brochure is a painful call! But the good in it will be drowned out by the reproach that will be made to you by those who think they are “chosen”: that the non-acceptance of your book is to blame!” - This, however, was the starting point of my considerations; as such and in itself it is quite unessential and accidental. Only the conditions and events that attached themselves to it as an independent event were essential and necessary. Just as I do not feel personally attacked and hurt by this rejection, so it is not my intention to attack or hurt anyone personally, which is also criticized, and to which I can only reply with Nietzsche: “I never attack people; I only use the person as a kind of powerful magnifying glass with which one can make visible a general, but insidious, and hardly comprehensible state of emergency.” – (“Ecce homo” 1.7.) So much in general; in particular, I have the following to add. After I sent out the brochures, I was asked in writing in the most amiable way by our board to pin them up in the hallway and put them on the library table or distribute them to the members at the door themselves. Nothing else could be arranged without favoritism. I then enclosed the following lines with my brochure mailing:

Munich, January 10, 1914.

Dear Countess, dear Miss Stinde!

I was pleasantly touched by your willingness to help with the publication of my last brochure. I was actually quite surprised, all the more so because I still had feelings about you that you had caused about 2.5 years ago with the brusque way in which you responded to my request to announce the first brochure. While you have given me enough time to think about the step I have now taken, you have done nothing to make up for what you neglected to do, nor to apologize for it. If you had shown me even half as much kindness back then, this brochure, dictated by pain, could have remained unwritten. I deeply regret that it had to be written, but I also hope that it will not be without effect. This in response to your kind words. More details about this matter will be discussed at the upcoming general assembly in Berlin.

Kind regards, sincerely, Ernst Boldt.

In response to this, I received the following letter, which I can share here without incurring the accusation of indiscretion, due to its factual content:

Munich, January 11, 1914.

Dear Mr. Boldt!

Even before I can read your brochure, I would like to answer your card, which arrived earlier, to avoid any misunderstandings. According to this, you are surprised that we are accommodating you regarding the announcement of your last brochure, while we had to refuse to announce your first brochure. Perhaps you missed a lodge evening about 18 months ago, when we announced the following. We said then that it had always been our custom not to publicize any programs for works or lessons or other matters of our members in the lodge, that we had never hung any programs or brochures or the like in the library or in the hallway because it could have opened the floodgates to all manner of extolling of the work, leading many of our members to believe that we or even Dr. Steiner endorsed it. (Unfortunately, we have had more than enough experiences of this kind.) We were then asked by another lodge to provide the addresses of our members so that they could send a brochure. However, since we consider giving out our members' addresses to be an indiscretion, but still wanted to accommodate our friendly lodge, we decided, albeit very reluctantly, to display these brochures in the library and to pin them up in the hallway, thereby overturning an old principle and now also allowing all our members to display their programs and brochures in the library or pin them up in the hallway. Since then, our members have made much use of this permission, as they must have noticed, right? So displaying your brochure was not a concession on our part, but simply the result of the decision made by the lodge's board at the time. This from the board. – Personally, I would add that for me, there is no reason to apologize to you and I would not want to go back to that tone and manner. If you had donated your work to the library with an inscription stating that it was given by the author, as other writers do, that would have been the best way for the members to have read the book and commented on it.

Yours sincerely,
Countess Pauline Kalckreuth.

I am enclosing my response to this letter (copy) with the urgent request that it be read at the general assembly. It touches on a topic that urgently needs to be discussed in the interest of our cause and complements the content of my brochure. This letter was not read here on the last evening of the lodge, and I had to take the severe attacks by Director Sellin upon myself without being able to refute them or defend myself because I had already been expelled from the lodge. Therefore, I ask once again, politely but urgently, that this letter also be made known.

Finally, I would like to repeat my request for leniency regarding the harshness of my writing, which I condemn in a sense myself. After all, it has helped to hit the nail on the head and provide an unambiguous description of the hardships and events discussed. But let uncompromising severity and objectivity prevail as regards the content of my writing. Here I claim no mercy, no compassion; here I want to find an incorruptible judge. Should my expulsion from the Anthroposophical Society really be necessary in the interest of our cause, then I will submit to it, for I do not wish to serve myself but the cause, and in this case I am happy to sacrifice myself for the benefit of your great work. That is, after all, the fate of the firstlings. At least I will have the satisfaction of having set the ball rolling and thus achieved what I set out to do. May I be judged on the basis of my sharp polemics – after me there will come someone who will say the same thing and much more in terms of content, but who will not take a personal starting point for doing so and will avoid all polemics on principle. I would like to have broken the ice for him and paved the way – and this too is entirely in the interest of our great and lofty cause.

I remain in the most sincere veneration and unchanging loyalty,

Yours sincerely, Ernst Boldt

Munich, January 14, 1914.

To the board of the Munich branch of the Anthroposophical Society

Frau Gräfin Pauline von Kalckreuth Munich.

Dear Countess!

Please allow me to offer a few thoughts in response to your esteemed letter of the 11th of this month. Based on this, it could appear as though you are entirely in the right and I, beset by error, have taken hasty action. To superficial thought and appearances, this seems obvious. On the basis of deeper reflection, however, this is not the case at all, as I will show.

I knew very well that some time after my first prospecting affair, such a decree was announced in the lodge, and I also noticed the application of this new decree. But I also knew that this break with the old principle was not a free, insightful act of our board. You yourself admit that you were only “very reluctant” to decide to overturn this old principle. Ideologically, in spirit, you still represent this backward principle today, and that is the crucial point – formally, outwardly, you had to break with it because the spirit of freedom and progress cannot be kept in chains in the long run. As everywhere, and at all times, it had to enforce its just rights here too, since it is never voluntarily granted.

At the time, I complained to various quarters about this restrictive principle, which is unworthy of the free spirit of our movement, and this will not have remained without effect. I knew very well that nothing more should stand in the way of the publication of this second brochure, since the same rights apply to everyone. I was only extremely gratified and surprised by your kind offer, without my having asked for permission to distribute the brochure in the lodge, because I had no intention of making use of this favor this time, since I had already sent about 300 brochures to about 50 addresses of our Munich members. I therefore expressly repeat: it was not the permission to distribute my brochure that I addressed as an unexpected concession, but only the unsolicited willingness, the kind invitation to do so, which should be very understandable. This on my part to avoid any misunderstandings.

To stay with the matter at hand, I would like to briefly discuss why I called the old principle, which you only “very reluctantly” overthrew, backward and incompatible with the free spirit of our movement. First, a preliminary question: Don't you have any sense that there is something hurtful for these members in the assumption that our members could make the “most conceivable recommendations” to us in the lodge? But let us assume that not everything that is announced is theosophically tenable; how can we develop our independence and judgment if the executive committee anxiously withholds from us everything that could help us to develop our ability to make “first judgments”; if, in other words, we are so carefully patronized. Eating alone makes you fat, thinking alone strengthens the mind. I am reminded of the unrefined way in which we were recently patronized in the case of Fidus, the lecture. An approach that caused widespread outrage - but, as so often, many fists remained in their pockets. As adults, members should be left to form their own opinions about the things that come up to them. If they are not considered capable of it, “then away with all hypocrisy of freedom and independence. Just say: the Theosophists have to wait ‘to take a step that you can ’show them the way and so on. (Based loosely on Steiner: ‘Philosophy of Freedom’, pp. 155-156, and Schur &: ‘The Children of Lucifer’, pp. 24-25).

Returning to your letter, I would like to continue. Regarding the tone and nature of your rejection at the time, to which you do not wish to go back, I maintain my view that you, as the board, were at fault on this point and should therefore have apologized to me. I would like to remind you of the inappropriate phrases you used at the time: “I cannot possibly mention such a dirty subject in the lodge” and “We do not do any propaganda for theosophical books in the lodge”. These are two objective untruths; firstly, the area of procreation and reproduction, the area of human sexuality, is neither dirty nor clean in itself; it is a neutral area of nature that we simply have to take into account in the interest of our racial and spiritual development. As a lodge executive committee, you should be clear about this. Perhaps you could find out about the nature of this area from Dr. Steiner: “Lucifer-Gnosis, first edition, issue 23, page 345, where it says, among other things: ”In fact, noble divine powers are at work in this (dirty?) area, regulating and organizing... Refinement... but not destruction... of this whole area... is what occult science teaches,” and what I too have taught and advocated in my book in a way that cannot be misunderstood. According to Dr. Steiner, their tendency to regard this area as ‘dirty’ can ”only be the result of occult principles that have been misunderstood and distorted into misleading asceticism.

From this explanation it follows that my book cannot be un-Theosophical, which any unbiased reader will confirm. Since you have not corrected these two prejudices to date, I must assume that you still hold this untenable point of view for a lodge board, which makes me feel offended and insulted in my Theosophical honor. Formally, everything would have been fine if you had simply informed me objectively about your lodge principle, which was still unknown to me at the time, but not in such a harsh, insulting way, without having read my work. I make this accusation not to you personally, but to you in your capacity as a lodge board member, as a member.

I find your belated suggestion that I should have donated my book to the library to be bluntly naive. You can't seriously be trying to persuade me that the library would have accepted my book – and even if it had, that it would then have been lent to members. If such “dirty behavior” could not be mentioned in the lodge, then it could not have found a place in the Theosophical library either. This in response to your error-correcting lines.

Director Sellin discharged his duties to me yesterday evening. In response, I have to say that I am not inclined to resign from the lodge, for the reason already stated in my brochure, because I do not want to voluntarily deprive myself of Dr. Steiner's great wisdom, because I can no longer do without it. But should my expulsion be demanded, I must resign myself to it.

I request that this letter be read at the lodge this evening, but I leave it entirely to your discretion. Had I not already been denied entry, I would have read it myself, since it is not personal but entirely factual.

Yours sincerely, Ernst Boldt.

Munich, January 20, 1914.
To the General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society, Berlin.

Dear Dr. Steiner!

Please be so kind as to also communicate the enclosed lines to the General Assembly. I have received another letter, but I do not yet know whether I am allowed to make use of it.

With the highest regard,
Yours truly, Ernst Boldt.

Munich, January 19, 1914.

Dear Mr. Boldt!

We read your brochure with great interest. We fully support your endeavors, all the more so since we had already read your book “Sexual Problems” with great benefit.

With best regards,
Karl Pschorn, Hedwig Pschorn, Emmy Zormaier, Heinrich Perri,
Deisenhofenerstr. 8/0.

My reply:

Munich, January 19, 1914.

Dear Mr. Pschorn,

Thank you for your kind words. I am pleased about them in the interest of our good cause. I have already received a letter of appreciation from the board of a larger lodge. Please let me know immediately whether I can present your letter to the General Assembly in Berlin if necessary and whether you and the other three want to stand up for your convictions there with your names. Only recently I had to experience a severe disappointment with a theosophist who reserves the right to put me in the dock because I had included in the brochure his opinion, which he had communicated to me in a letter, about my “sexual problems”. According to this, there are theosophists who have two opinions about a matter, one private and one public. Such experiences could seriously displease one about belonging to this society.

Yours sincerely,
Ernst Boldt.

The reply to this letter is:

Mr. Ernst Boldt, Munich,
Adelheidstraße 15/111.

Of course agreed.

On behalf of:
Pschorn.

In addition, Ms. von Sivers will read a letter from Mr. Horst von Henning, because Mr. Horst von Henning is mentioned in the brochure “Theosophy or Antisophy?” in a special way that may be considered symptomatic. It says on page 10:

Mr. Horst von Henning writes to me: “The reading of your writing interested me all the more to a high degree, since I am one of the oldest students of Dr. Steiner and head of the local (Weimar) branch of the Anthroposophical Society: I will remain concerned about doing my part to spread your book in serious circles.

Fräulein von Sivers: Mr. Horst von Henning writes regarding the Boldt affair:

Weimar, January 13, 1914.
Luisenstraße 19.

Dear Fräulein von Sivers!

You have so often kindly represented the members of our small Weimar branch at the general Meetings that I would like to ask you to do so at the upcoming General Meeting as well. Please find enclosed the relevant power of attorney.

Furthermore, however, I would like to address a personal request to you, as unfortunately I have to refrain from coming to the general assembly myself for financial reasons and therefore have no opportunity to counter any misunderstandings that may arise with regard to myself in the event of a discussion of the recently published brochure by Mr. Ernst Boldt, Munich.

Some time ago, Pastor Wendt here gave me a writing by Mr. Boldt about “Sexual Problems in the Light of Natural and Spiritual Science” to read, which interested me all the more because the author professed to be a follower of Dr. Steiner and also let it be seen in the brochure that he believed he could base his views on Dr. Steiner's teachings or bring them into line with them. Even after studying the paper, I couldn't shake the impression that Mr. Boldt was stretching this assumption a bit far and I didn't want to identify with Mr. Boldt's views at all. However, the paper encouraged me to pursue the problems developed in it, which is why I turned to Mr. Boldt with the request to help me with the further material mentioned in his writing and to tell me where to find the relevant literature.

Under the impression of the writing, which, as already mentioned, I could not approve of in all its parts and up to the conclusions drawn in it, but which interested me in some respects and took me for the author because of the frank language, I gained the impression that the problems raised in it could well be discussed by serious anthroposophists at some point, which is why I wrote to Mr. Boldt: “The reading of your writing interested me all the more, as I am one of the (I believe I said) older students of Dr. Steiner and lead the local branch of the Anthroposophical Society. I will do my part to spread the word about your book in serious circles.”

I then received a letter from Mr. Boldt, from which I gained the impression that he had interpreted my words more in his favor than I had intended, and that I was dealing with a personally annoyed man. I therefore refrained from any further correspondence with him and also refrained from recommending his writing, since I had second thoughts, despite all the recognition of the good intentions, it does not provide a suitable basis for the proper discussion of this extremely difficult problem. But now, a few days ago, I received several copies of the following announcement of another of Mr. Boldt's writings, which I had sent to me in order to be informed about everything, but otherwise refrained from further promoting the writing. I only mentioned it to Pastor Wendt, who had lent me Mr. Boldt's first writing at the time.

How great was my surprise and astonishment to see the above-mentioned sentence from my letter to Mr. Boldt reproduced on page 10. Although I now have the honor of being mentioned alongside the highly esteemed gentlemen Edouard Schuré, Ludwig Deinhard and Friedrich Lienhard, I believe that these gentlemen, like myself, will not be pleased to be named in the brochure as Mr. Boldt's supporters, so to speak. In any case, I will make it clear to Mr. Boldt that I consider it to be a lack of tact to have published parts of my private letter without my prior knowledge. The entire content of the new brochure is now such that I must strongly object to being associated with it in any way. I suspect, and not without good reason, that when Messrs Schure, Deinhard and Lienhard wrote approvingly about Mr Boldt's first book, they only wanted to make it known to me that they found it commendable to discuss the sexual problem in connection with our movement, they will certainly also reject the conclusions drawn by Mr. Boldt and, in particular, strongly condemn the recent attempt to force Dr. Steiner to make a public statement. It is unfortunately often the case that writers confuse the interest shown in their work with full approval of their statements, and I would never have revealed my personal relationship with Dr. Steiner to Mr. Boldt if I had suspected that he would make such an unpleasant use of it – or rather, misuse it. In any case, this unpleasant incident will serve as a warning to me and cause me to exercise the utmost restraint in disclosing my student status to Dr. Steiner. But one can certainly recommend a book for study without identifying with the content of the same; indeed, one can do so in order to get the discussion flowing and to see the errors corrected. It was with this latter in mind that I wrote the lines already mentioned to Mr. Boldt, but not to appear as an unconditional supporter of his views. After these explanations, you will understand that I am extremely annoyed to see my name misused in this brochure, the content and overall tendency of which I am very far removed from. I would like to ask you to take the opportunity of the general assembly to make this known in a way that you consider appropriate, so that the members attacked by Mr. Boldt do not consider me to be one of Mr. Boldt's supporters. I am not ashamed to admit that I would not consider it a mistake if the sexual problems, which have such a profound impact on human development, were to be properly examined by a serious party, and that I would deeply I would express a deep desire for understanding if he found it right to step out of his reserve, which he has certainly observed for good reason up to now. However, I must absolutely condemn any desire to exert the slightest pressure on the resolutions of our great teacher in this direction. Likewise, I am willing to admit that, due to my current state of mind, I may have shown more interest in Mr. Boldt's remarks than would be the case today. However, I strongly object to being considered Mr. Boldt's partisan and attach particular importance to the statement that I never authorized Mr. Boldt to consider me as such, much less to publish my private lines in a brochure.

I am taking a keen interest in the proceedings of the General Assembly. Please extend the special greetings of the Weimar branch to those gathered. I remain with the expression of loyal sentiments and warmest thanks for your efforts

as always, your very devoted
Horst von Henning.

A second letter, which arrived on January 15, reads:

Weimar, January 15, 1914
Luisenstraße 19

Dear Miss von Sivers!

Please forgive me for bothering you a second time with a request regarding the Boldt matter.

I thought it right to address the following circular to Messrs Ludwig Deinhard, Edouard Schuré and Friedrich Lienhard, and I have already received the same, along with the attachment, back from Mr. Deinhard, who writes to me that he, too, finds it an unparalleled lack of tact that Mr. Boldt, without asking him, printed in his brochure a statement that was only made orally and which, in his (Deinhards opinion) is full of tactlessness. Unfortunately, however, Mr. Deinhard does not have Mr. Schuré's address, and since I do not know it either, I would kindly ask you to forward the circular letter and its attachment to Mr. Schur&, with the request that he then also forward it to Mr. Lienhard. I enclose a stamped envelope for your convenience and would also ask you to take note of the copy of my letter to Mr. Boldt attached to the enclosures. With warm regards to you and all dear friends there, I remain always

Your grateful
Horst von Henning

Fräulein von Sivers says: It would probably also turn out that Mr. Schure and Mr. Lienhard, like Mr. Deinhard, only gave Mr. Boldt a verbal assurance; after all, a well-meaning man like Mr. Schuré would hardly want to say anything other than, “Quite interesting!” to a young writer.

Dr. Steiner: Ms. Wolfram has asked to speak first.

Mrs. Wolfram: One could indeed just shrug off the Boldt case with a smile, and wave the application away with a hand gesture into the waste paper basket, and get on with the agenda. But since this “Boldt case” is a typical case, since there is not just one Boldt, but unfortunately many “Boldtes”, and it can happen to us again and again that our precious time is taken up and stolen in this truly unqualifiable way, I would like to present some of the facts of this case and conclude with an appeal to you, so that this Boldt case remains the only one of its kind and is not repeated. After all, we have better things to do than to waste our time on these matters, which are as tragic as they are comical.

To avoid appearing to be concerned only with what Mr. Boldt said out of annoyance at the fact that his book was not accepted, and to avoid giving the impression that the book might not have been all that bad after all, and its author might have had some reason to write his pamphlet, then I would like to quote a few passages from the book to prove that we are dealing with a work that is as stupid as it is brazen and shamefully dishonest. From this it will be clear that if Mr. Boldt had read this book in 1911, he would no longer be with us today. Because if someone could write such a book, then he no longer belongs in our midst. We want to develop a sense of who belongs in our society and who does not. On page 2 of his book, Mr. Boldt says:

The publication of this book may now bear witness to the fact that the Theosophical movement has made some progress in these six years, even if it is only a small one at first. We want this little book to be seen as a modest attempt to incorporate the theosophical truths into one of the practical areas of life. We believe that we have sufficiently trained our thinking, feeling and willing in the “eternal laws of existence” to be able to step out into life and promote the cultural process in a proper, timely manner by solving the problems at hand.

The sexual area is one of the most fundamental areas of life, in which, because it was shrouded in night and fog and held in awe and fear by the most dreadful ignorance, it has been possible to sin in quite appalling dimensions; it therefore most urgently needs the light and its spiritual reforming idea. And the naturalist and spiritual researcher who, free of all materialistic and moral blinkers, seeks to plow up this field overgrown with weeds in the spirit of Schiller's “Aesthetic Letters,” Steiner's “Philosophy of Freedom,” and in the spirit of theosophy, must necessarily arrive at the present results through logical, appropriate thinking. If the mission of the spiritual researcher is now mainly to seek out and proclaim the occult truths and eternal laws of existence as the primary foundations of all life reform, then it is our task to work on the secondary development of the individual spheres of life in the sense of these truths and laws, and to build on the existing abilities of the given human material with full understanding of the tasks of the Theosophical movement within our cultural epoch, and to raise it by one step.

* * *

In the introductory words to the essay on the “Education of the Child”, Steiner set out the program for social reform work at a higher level. Since the existing sex literature does not meet these high standards, we felt compelled to establish a new one.

Yes, what impression do you get from that? The author is not a bit megalomaniac! He speaks of himself in the greatest conceivable modesty! I say this above all to show you that these accounts are teeming with examples of the impotence of consistent thinking. But the author does not notice any of this himself; on the one hand, he contradicts what he has said on the other. This only needs to be stated once. Because it is important to me to point out: we do not want to do it like our dear Mr. Horst von Henning, who may have read the book briefly. We want to approach the book with one thing in mind: whether it is sound or not. In this day and age, it is not difficult to publish a book teeming with mistakes – it is almost painful to listen to the chaos that it presents. And everyone who values logical thinking should get used to listening to this chaos. The young man continues (p. 4):

The monistic-spiritualistic literature on this subject, as attempted for the first time in this book, contains new, future-oriented values of a higher order and leads the herd-man out of the present dilemma of the sexual Scylla and Charybdis onto the only real path of the mountain-man to the goal of his highest perfection in the super-man.

We call the tendency of this book monistic-spiritualistic because, independently of contemporary sexual literature and overcoming it, it seeks to establish new foundations for life.

In his brochure, however, he says (p. 4):

As an occultist, I stand beyond monism and dualism...

In the book, however, he says “monistic-spiritualistic,” and then it continues:

It treats this material by drawing on occult, spiritual scientific research results, without therefore leaving the real ground of monism.

Just think about this tangle of thoughts! And on this ground, Mr. Boldt now wants to graft everything that the seer gives in terms of spiritual science! This is now amalgamated by Mr. Boldt and the further ground is created from it, on which we - we “bugs” - can develop further. Furthermore:

With its head in the sky, it seeks to gain a firm foothold on earth and vice versa: rooted in the physical world, it strives with its blossoms and fruits into the spiritual world. - For this reason, we too will not be able to please any of the contemporary parties, because our premises are also - since they are theosophical - “far beyond all party politics”.

When it comes to the various issues of the day, there is no reason to ignore the gender issue in favor of the other cultural issues, for it asserts itself in all its harrowing scope. The theosophist must therefore not withdraw his attention from it. He must also allow the light of his spirit to fall on this area of life and fertilize it with the spiritual reform ideas of Theosophy. This has been admirably stimulated by Steiner's two lectures on 'Man and Woman' and 'Man, Woman and Child in the Light of Spiritual Science'. Our task was now to treat this subject in a broader developmental-historical sense and to bring together all occult knowledge about it.

Where are the Theosophists, one might ask, who have so far dared to approach the reform of sexual life in the spirit of Theosophy? And how many are there who are able to bring the necessary interest and understanding to such endeavors? It is understandable that a pioneering undertaking like this one must meet with great resistance, especially from the partisans of the dualistic and monistic schools. But if such resistance also arises in part from the theosophical movement itself, this is merely due to the immaturity of the majority of its “followers”. But this movement is certainly not concerned with followers; it needs free spirits and big hearts that see through the life of the present with a bright, clear gaze and find the right points of attack for social action.

It is really not that difficult to see that this is written by a young, rather self-confident man, in whose head it not only looks quite chaotic, but also hovers in a rather ominous way the spirit of megalomania. And it must be said that during the time this young man has been our member, he has not only forgotten nothing of his megalomania, but has also profited nothing from the teachings of spiritual science. What does the insistence that we must deal with sexual problems mean to anyone who reflects on the facts of developmental history that have been given us through spiritual scientific research? The frequent references to sexual problems are somewhat superfluous. If one has only studied and thought about what has been communicated to us, for example, about the development of the human being, about the course of development of the world and humanity, from the fact of the influence of the spirit into the world and so on, then everyone will have to say to themselves: How foolish it would be if we Theosophists were now to coin a very specific formula for how we wanted to deal with this sexual issue. After all, this is about the most personal area of each of us, and everyone will know that it is self-evident how a person should behave in their particular case. It is a different matter if we wanted to know what foolish views prevail in scientific circles. In the case of Mr. Boldt's book, however, one can only conclude that it is a stupid and brazen book; but it is also a shamefully dishonest book. And I will prove this to you.

If one wanted to say that this Mr. Boldt was not aware of the terrible things he is saying and doing, that is no excuse. It only makes it much worse that in our circles, where enough can be learned, it is possible that a person writes, dares to write, that he lies and is not supposed to know it himself. So such things are growing in our circles. I still have to show you that there are other “Boldtes”, which is why I want to treat this case as a typical one. Mr. Boldt then talks about the “sources” of his book, cites works by Dr. Steiner and then says page [7-8]:

The elementary, ethical-aesthetic content of this writing is the author's own. Nevertheless, it should not go unmentioned that it is fully in line with what Steiner has set down in his brilliant “Philosophy of Freedom” and in the magnificent book on “Friedrich Nietzsche.

If you are not careful, you will not notice anything, not notice what the “ethical-aesthetic content of ideas” is. I must confess that I could not believe my eyes when I saw where Mr. Boldt finally ended up as a result of his interesting and valuable research, what he considers to be right for the sexual life of our time (p. 54 of his book). One can only describe it: that the ideal of asceticism should already be recognized, but that it should hover over people like a very distant ideal for the future. We humans are not yet so far that we could think of realizing such an ideal. When Mr. Boldt wants to think, he always quotes Nietzsche, and then he explains what is the only right thing for our time. It is remarkable that I, of all people, always have to say such things: the unrestricted freedom of the individual to experience lovingly sexually whatever he desires; and Mr. Boldt then presents the “Oneida practice” as something worthy of imitation. He says that what he quite openly proclaims as the conclusion of his ideal, his ethical-aesthetic idea, must be based on what Dr. Steiner himself says. In the remarks that follow $135 - as is the case with all profound works, there must be a commentary on them - things are said to explain why Dr. Steiner says the same thing as what Mr. Boldt proclaims as the ideological content of this book, which is his own soul property:

11) When Foerster often finds a “hymn to the powers of procreation” in the sexual education literature of recent years and thereby “really gets the feeling that religion has not disappeared, but has been transferred from the soul to the sexual sphere, and that God no longer reveals himself in conscience, but in the organs of procreation...”, he is by no means mistaken; spiritual science fully confirms the accuracy of this feeling. God reveals Himself not only in the free, thinking human spirit, but also in the organs of procreation. The wisdom of Foerster, “that sex itself is a street urchin,” is vigorously rejected by modern spiritual research. In his journal “Lucifer - Gnosis,” issue 23 “From the Akasha Chronicle,” Steiner comments on this as follows:

And now you shall see what it is capable of when we let all those into our circles who brutally and dirtyly exploit everything for themselves.

His (the human being's) entire lower half – that which is often called the lower nature – has now come under the intellectually shaping influence of the higher beings (the Jehovah-Elohims)... One can also say that those noble spiritual powers... have now descended to unfold their power in the area of reproduction. In fact, noble divine powers have a regulating and organizing effect in this area.

But all this is done in such a way that the reader thinks that Dr. Steiner said it.

And with that, an important sentence from The Secret Doctrine is expressed, which reads: The higher, noble divine powers are related to the seemingly lower powers of human nature.

And so on:

12) To supplement this thought, read Steiner: “The Secret Doctrine”, $. 65 to 75. There is talk of a “hidden spiritual” that “works in the revelations of the body”. Because “in everything that the senses perceive, they also receive a spiritual... The lowest pleasures can be revelations of the spirit. The satisfaction that the hungry being gets from eating is a revelation of the spirit. For through the intake of food, that is brought about, without which the spiritual could not find its development in a certain respect... Sensual pleasures the I must have as long as it lives in the body, even insofar as it is spiritual. For in the sensual the spirit reveals itself; and the I enjoys nothing but the spirit when it surrenders to the light of the spirit in the sensual world... This sensual world is a revelation of the spiritual hidden behind it. The ego could never enjoy the spirit in the form in which it can only reveal itself through the bodily senses if it did not want to use these senses to enjoy the spiritual in the sensual.

And what does Boldt make of it? He reinterprets everything in a sexual way!

As long as a person is moderate in his enjoyment, “sensual enjoyment as an expression of the spirit means elevation, development of the ego”; on the other hand, if “reasoned enjoyment increases to excess and debauchery,” it has an impoverishing, desolating and destructive effect on the ego.

What has been said here regarding the satisfaction that the hungry being derives from ingesting food also applies to the pleasure that loving beings experience through sexual union; for hunger and love grow on the same wood, as Schiller also indicates in his poem “The World Sages”.

The reader can find more details about enjoyment in “Lucifer - Gnosis”, issue 13 (“How to Know Higher Worlds?”), as well as in “Theosophy” (“The Path of Knowledge”).

There are still some passages that mean an increase.

The assembly has expressed its will to refrain from further reading!

Mrs. Wolfram, continuing: What do we have here? You cannot make even more unscrupulous use of another person's intellectual property! If Mr. Boldt had read the book thoroughly, he would no longer be in our ranks.

And now I would like to make an appeal to you, after first adding something to what I said earlier: that there are many Boldtes, and that this one is just a typical case. Unfortunately, there is a view among far too many people that our movement is there to support all those who do not want to help themselves. Our society would be such a large aid institution, and one would be obliged, if one is the head of a branch, to support such and such a person in his outer life. In short, the greatest demands are placed on society. Those who now enter society with a state of mind like Mr. Boldt, for example, and who believe that they can do everything with their heads, although they can do nothing at all, these only form a choir of the discontented. It was people like that who could not play a role; they have now done what they could - which then led to their exclusion from our society.

In order to give you a proper foundation, I would like to read a few words from No. 7/8, Volume IV, 1914 of Theosophy, edited by Dr. Vollrath, part of which is edited by Casimir Zawadzki. A year ago, he wrote me a letter asking me to do whatever I could to restore the old, good relationship between him, Dr. Steiner and the Society. This Zawadzki was a member of our Society for a while, and not a very comfortable member at that. I did what I could until he plagiarized Dr. Steiner's work in an outrageous manner, until he was expelled and threw himself into the arms of Dr. Vollrath, where he still is. He then thought that since he is Polish, it would be nice if he could perhaps become Secretary General in Warsaw. But when he realized that under Besant's aegis the matter was becoming shaky, he thought he would do better if he could work under Dr. Steiner again. And now I would like to point out how really not that much is needed to know whether someone fits into our society or not. Sometimes something like an impotence of logical thinking manifests itself in a single word. The letter reads:

Leipzig, January 31, 1913.

Dear Madam!

I must thank you most sincerely for the friendly welcome you gave me last Sunday and at the same time I would like to kindly request you once more to talk to Dr. Steiner about my matter and then give me news. As I said, I would like to be a disinterested co-worker in Dr. Steiner's work, because I have never stopped deeply admiring him.

My separation from Dr. Vollrath is imminent, I will hasten the matter myself as best I can. Perhaps Dr. Steiner will be so kind as to grant me an interview, through which the old good relationship between him and me, for which I long so much, can be restored. First of all, I definitely want to become a member of the German Section, which is under Dr. Steiner's leadership, but then I want to start work in Poland in line with Dr. Steiner's thinking. ... I would like to become a member of the lodge again, also without any interest, just for the sake of the cause and unity in the spirit, if I am to remain in Leipzig for some time. ...

Anyone who can write this has not just lost their marbles, they have lost several screws!

It is completely hopeless to believe that someone who is capable of writing such a thing can deserve to be taught by us. He lacks any possibility of correct thinking when he writes this in a letter in which he wants to present himself in the best possible light. This gentleman then launched a sensational advertisement about a teaching course – again about sexual matters. I then wrote in reply to his letter that it was not acceptable, and the matter was dropped. Now Zawadzki is writing an article in No. 7/8 of Theosophy that is linked to No. III of the Mitteilungen für die Mitglieder der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft (Communications for the Members of the Anthroposophical Society). So it is possible that a person like that could have had this No. III!

This number must be judged with a sense of history. It has value for the literary historian. Today's common sense has no way of verifying the facts stated here. Only those who have been able to distill the events that are documented in it through their own sense of truth would be able to criticize; the way in which they would do so would show their attitude. Today's educated person, who has risen above domestic morality and ethics, already regards his neighbor's private life as something sacred, untouchable, as a legal sphere that is none of his business, as a circle whose author is responsible for its weal and woe.

This is now attributed to Dr. Steiner because he published the letters of Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden.

Even higher than this person is the educated man who has gone through the training of some theosophical system of stories or is still in it. For him, not only the private but also the public duties of his neighbor are something untouchable, something sacred.

Can you understand this? I can't! And I would like to point out that there must be no confusion where it is not possible to see at first glance what is important. It continues:

Dr. Steiner settles the score with Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden. He has changed his style in a gratifying way since earlier. He used to get his words from the language of the servant when he couldn't find reasons.

He goes on to discuss Dr. Steiner's “servant manner” and the complete lack of feeling for human dignity and reverence, talks about Dr. Unger and Mrs. von Reden, and then talks about the “Esoteric Section”:

It was precisely this strange thing that Dr. Steiner did that made him unpopular in the Theosophical Society. Now at last people recognize the poison of this institution; they recognize the tremendous moral dangers associated with such a theosophical circle. One must distinguish between the abuse of the Esoteric Section and the institution itself. Institutions are neither good nor bad.

Now he is slobbering again, something is going around in his mind, and so is Mr. Boldt.

It is only use that falls under the law of karma and makes them bad and good tools. Mrs. Wolfram in Leipzig has often emphasized that Dr. Steiner, as head of the Esoteric School, should be given the vow of obedience by handshake. Now the “Mitteilungen” make the following statements about the Esoteric School: “The vow of unconditional and immediate obedience, as required in the Esoteric School, is a sign of a degenerate mind. It is self-aggrandizing presumptuousness towards God and man. An act that calls down the wrath of the God within man. ...

There is no other way to say this about the Besant institutions. — Another gentleman also wrote to me, saying that I should do everything I could to help him meet Dr. Steiner again; but in the same issue of Vollrath's Theosophy, he is at it again.

And now I would like to say the following. Everything must be done to counter the infiltration of certain elements by nurturing certain attitudes and feelings. There is a concept of tolerance within our society, of course we should be tolerant; but what do we mean by that?

That we have recognized that there is an unspeakably valuable teaching material that can be handed down to us, and for which we feel a responsibility. We can still be tolerant of those who appear beautiful, but not of those for whom the sensation of what is true or untrue, what is beautiful or hypocritical, is no longer there in the brain. Observe what is first presented in the cases of Fidus, Hübbe-Schleiden, Prellwitz and others, and then how it is said, “That is not at all so,” and then they still write, “... with deepest reverence,” and so on. It is not true that we are a hospital. And by this I mean that we want to make a little front against the intrusion of such elements into us! Because that means being tolerant of what is most precious to us! The lodge boards could be granted more rights – which is only right and proper vis-à-vis a lodge board. There is so much debate about what a lodge board can and cannot do, but nothing is said about the rights it should have. I do not see a lodge committee as a “jack of all trades” who only has to ensure that the lodge rooms are clean, that lectures are available – and has nothing further to say. I think that a lodge committee should above all have the freedom for the waste paper basket once they have been trusted by being elected. The patronage of all possible products of the various Theosophical members must stop. In ordinary life, I am not legally obliged to read or buy something that someone sends me; and yet the lodge boards are supposed to be obliged to display something in the lodge rooms if someone has produced it, and you get a cold if you don't do it? In this regard, every lodge board must be able to ensure the most meticulous cleanliness of the atmosphere. If he can ensure the cleanliness of the lodge rooms, he must also be able to do the other. And it is really not that difficult to know who belongs to our ranks and who does not. If only we could get rid of the eternal judging according to emotional values, according to what someone “says”! A person is not what he says – he may believe it of himself; a person is what he does. And if he has done this or that on the physical plane as an expression of his being, then I judge by his deed. If a Hübbe-Schleiden, a Boldt and so on have done this or that, I know what they have done. And if he wants to be taken up again, he must bring forth a different deed as a metamorphosis of his being.

The various lodge boards and the general board must at least have one resolution in the soul of each of them: from now on, everything must be done to ensure that the kind of people we have heard about today are the very last of their kind among us. If that were possible, then the matter could have been dealt with at our board meeting. If the Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society is so sure of the trust that is so often mentioned, then it would be a matter of course that such documents as the Boldt case, when they arrive, are simply consigned to the wastepaper basket!

I would like to propose that the board be given the right, on the basis of the trust placed in it by the election, to dispose of such matters as it sees fit, so that we do not waste our time on such things, as is the case now.

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps something else would happen if the “concession Schulze in the disguise of the superman” would dare to stand up for Mr. Boldt's book. If I were to be as bold as Mr. Boldt wants me to be and recommend his book to the 75 percent of our members who are lagging behind, what would happen then? On page 14 of his brochure, Mr. Boldt says:

The probable consequence of this would be that in a few weeks the most tender friendships with an erotic touch could be seen developing among Theosophists of both sexes. Of course, the tendency towards this has always been present, and not exactly weakly, and here and there many an immoral yearning has found satisfaction – as it also happens in other circles; for nature is always true and life is always right. But the situation would only become embarrassing if those living in free love could invoke the authority of Dr. Steiner. Like Ellen Key in Sweden, he would be held responsible in Germany for every illegitimate Theosophist offspring. This could have the most disastrous consequences and seriously endanger the living conditions of the Theosophical Society.

This is just an appetizer. And now I ask you to enjoy the other dishes as fully as possible!

The meeting is suspended for tea; the negotiations will be continued on Monday, January 19, 1914.

The continuation of the protocol will be published in the following issue of Mitteilungen.