The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] In selecting such a theme as the one I propose for to-day, “Haeckel, The Riddle of the Universe, and Theosophy,” I am aware that to a student of spiritual life it is fraught with difficulties, and that the statements I am about to make may possibly give offence to so-called materialists and theosophists alike. And yet there seems to me a necessity that this matter should, once in a while, be approached from the theosophical point of view, since from one standpoint the “gospel” derived from Haeckel's researches has been made accessible to thousands upon thousands of mankind by means of his book, The Riddle of the Universe. Ten thousand copies of this work were sold within a very short time of its appearance, and it has been translated into many languages. Seldom, indeed, has a book of serious purpose found so wide a circulation.

[ 2 ] Now, if theosophy is to make clear its aims, it is but right that it should take into account so important a publication—one that concerns itself with the most profound questions of existence. Theosophy should deal with it comprehensively, and seek to express its attitude with regard to it. For after all, the theosophical conception of life is not combative but rather conciliatory, desirous of harmonising opposing views.

Furthermore, I myself am in a very peculiar position with respect to Ernst Haeckel's conception of the universe, for I know well those feelings and perceptions which, partly by reason of a scientific consciousness, and partly from the general conditions of the world and the usual conceptions thereof, draw men as though by the power of some fascination towards such great and simple paths of thought as those from which Haeckel has constructed his conception of the universe. And here I may say that I should hardly have dared to speak my mind thus openly were I in any sense an opponent of Haeckel, or were it not that I am intimately acquainted with all that can be experienced in the process of adapting oneself to the wonderful edifice of his ideas.

[ 3 ] The very first thing that anyone bringing his attention frankly to bear upon the development of spiritual life is bound to recognise, is the moral power displayed in Haeckel's labours. For years past this man, imbued with an enormous amount of courage, has fought for the acceptance and the recognition of his conception of the universe—fought strenuously, having again and again to defend himself against the manifold obstacles that impeded his progress. On the other hand, we must not be unmindful of the fact that Haeckel's great powers of comprehensive expression are balanced by equally comprehensive powers of thought: the very qualities in which many scientists are deficient happen to be those with which he is very highly endowed.

In gathering together the results of his researches and investigations under the one comprehensive title of a conception of the universe, he has boldly departed from those tendencies of scientific thought which have for several decades opposed any such undertaking; and this very departure must be recognised as an act of special significance.

Another fact to be noted is, that I am placed in a singular position with regard to the theosophical conception of the universe when I speak about Haeckel; for anyone acquainted with the process of development through which the theosophical movement has passed will be aware of what sharp words and what opposition, not only on the part of theosophists in general, but on the part of the founder of the theosophical movement, Madame H. P. Blavatsky, were directed against the deductions which Ernst Haeckel draws from his work of investigation. Few publications touching cosmogony have been so violently opposed in the Secret Doctrine as that of Haeckel.

You will understand that I speak here without prejudice, for I think that in parts of my book, Haeckel and his Opponents, as well as in my other work on Cosmogonies of the Nineteenth Century, I have to the fullest extent done justice to what I take to be the real truths contained in Haeckel's conception of the universe. I believe that I have sifted from his labours that which is fruitful, and that which is enduring. [ 4 ] Consider the general attitude towards the conception of the world in so far as it is based upon scientific reasons. During the first half of the nineteenth century a totally different spiritual attitude prevailed from that known in the second half. Haeckel's appearance on the scene coincided with a time in which it was an easy thing for the new growth of so-called Darwinism to be subjected to materialistic interpretations. If, therefore, we realise how insistent was this tendency, at the very time when Haeckel was a young and enthusiastic student entering upon the pursuit of natural science, to reduce all discoveries in that domain of learning to a materialistic issue, the consequent bent towards materialism may well be understood, and may therefore lead us into a path of peace rather than of conflict.

If you will consider those men who, about the middle of the nineteenth century, set themselves to confront the great riddle of humanity with calm, unprejudiced eyes, you will find two things: on the one hand, a state of absolute resignation in relation to the highest questions concerning a divine ordering of the world, such as immortality, freedom of will, origin of life—a resignation, in short, with regard to all the actual riddles of the universe. On the other hand you will discover, co-existing with this attitude of resignation, remnants of an ancient religious tradition, and this even among students of natural science. Bold adventuring towards investigation of such questions from the scientific point of view was, during the first half of the nineteenth century, to be met with only among German philosophers, such as Schelling and Fichte, as well as Oken, who, by the way, was a pioneer of freedom without equal, not alone upon this subject, but in many paths of life.

All attempts made by men in the present day towards the fundamentalising of world-theories are to be found in still bolder outline among the works of Oken. And yet all this was animated by a certain subtleness—a breath, as it were, of that old spiritualism which is clearly conscious that, behind and beyond all that our senses can perceive, all that can be investigated by means of instruments, there still lurks something spiritual to be sought for. [ 5 ] Haeckel has again and again told us how distinctly the mind of his great teacher—that deep student of natural science, Johannes Müller, of imperishable memory—was tinged with this subtle breath. You can read in Haeckel's own writings how he had been struck (it was at the time when he was busy at the Berlin University and studying the anatomy of men and animals under Johannes Müller) by the great resemblance apparent not alone in outward form, but also by that similarity which compels attention in the evolution of form. He tells us how he had remarked to his master that such resemblance as this must hint at some mysterious kinship between man and beast, and that the answer made by Johannes Müller, who had searched so deeply into Nature, had been: “Ah! he who lays bare the secret of species will indeed have reached the highest summit.”

What we have to do is to attune ourselves to the spirit, the motive, of such a seeker; of one who assuredly would never have halted had he beheld a prospect of entering into possession of that secret. On one other occasion, when teacher and pupil were travelling together on some journey of investigation, Haeckel again referred to the close relationship existing between animals; and Johannes Müller once more replied very much to the same effect. In alluding to this I only wish to draw your attention to a certain attitude of mind.

If you will look back among the writings of any well-known naturalist belonging to the first half of the nineteenth century—for instance, to those of Burdach—you will find that, in spite of all the careful and elaborate minutiae appertaining to natural science, whenever the kingdom of life comes to be considered, the suggestion is ever present that here no mere physical and chemical powers are in operation, but that something higher has to be taken into account.

[ 6 ] When, however, improvements in microscopes made it possible for man to observe, to a far greater extent than heretofore, all those curious formations which serve to distinguish living creatures, showing that we have to do with a fine web of the minutest animalcules, and that this actually composes the physical body—when, as I have said, so much was made visible, the attitude of the scientific mind underwent a change. This physical body, which serves plants and animals as their garment, now resolved itself, so far as the scientist was concerned, into a tissue of cells. This discovery as to the life of these cells was made by naturalists about the end of the third decade of the nineteenth century, and, seeing that it was possible to ascertain so much about the lives of such animalcules by the exercise of the senses, assisted by the aid of the microscope, it required but a step further for that which acts as the organising principle in these living creatures to be lost sight of, because no physical sense, nothing external, proclaimed its presence.

[ 7 ] At that time there was no Darwinism, yet it was owing to the impression made by this great advance in the domain of practical research that we find a natural science grounded in materialism coming into vogue during the 'forties and 'fifties. It was then thought that what could be perceived by the senses, and thus explained, could be understood by the whole world. Things that now seem puerile created then the most intense sensation, and became, so to speak, a gospel for humanity. Such words as “energy” and “matter” became popular by-words, while men like Büchner and Moleschott were recognised authorities. It was considered an evidence of childish fancy, belonging to earlier epochs of the human race, to suppose that anything that could be minutely examined with the eye was possessed of aught beyond what was actually visible.

[ 8 ] Now, you must bear in mind that, side by side with all discovery, feelings and sensations play a great part in the development of mental life. Anyone who may be inclined to think that cosmogonies are the result of bold calculations of reason makes a mistake: in all such matters the heart is active, and the secret sources of education also contribute their share. Humanity has, during its latest phase of development, been passing through a materialistic stage of education. The actual beginning of this stage is traceable far back, it is true; nevertheless, it reached its apex in the time of which we are speaking. We call this epoch of materialistic education the age of enlightenment.

Man had now—and this was the final result of the Christian conception of the universe—to find his foothold upon the firm ground of reality: the God whom he had so long sought beyond the clouds he was now bidden to seek within his inner consciousness. This had a far-reaching effect upon the entire development of the nineteenth century, and anyone interested in psychological changes and caring to study the development of humanity at that time will be enabled to understand how all the events and occurrences which then followed upon each other, such as the struggle for freedom in the 'thirties and 'forties, can but be classed as separate storms and convulsions of the feelings which were the result of that newly developed sense of physical reality, and which were bound to run their appointed course. We have to deal with a tendency in human education that sought in the first place forcibly to eradicate from the human heart every aspiration towards a spiritual life.

It is not from natural science that those deductions, pronouncing the world to consist of naught but what can be perceived by the senses, have been drawn; they are a consequence of the educational teaching obtaining at that time. Materialism had become interwoven with explanations relating to the facts of natural science. Anyone who will take the trouble to study these things as they really are, bringing to bear upon the subject a mind free from prejudice, will be in a position to see for himself that the case is as I am about to set forth, but it is impossible for me in the space of one short hour to deal with the matter exhaustively.

[ 9 ] The whole of the stupendous advance made in the realms of natural science, of astronomy, of physics and chemistry, due to spectrum analysis, to a greater theoretical knowledge of heat, and to that teaching concerning the development of living organisms known to us as the Darwinian theory—all these come within this period of materialism. Had these discoveries been made at a time when people still thought as they did about the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, a time when a greater spiritual sensitiveness prevailed, then these discoveries would have been so construed as to furnish proofs positive of the working of the spirit in Nature—indeed, by very reason of the wonderful discoveries in natural science the supremacy of spirit would have been deemed incontestably established.

[ 10 ] It is clear, then, that scientific investigations with regard to Nature need not necessarily and under all circumstances lead to materialism. It was merely because so many leaders of civilisation at that time were materialistically inclined that these discoveries became interpreted in a materialistic way. Materialism was imported into natural science, and naturalists, such as Ernst Haeckel, accepted it unconsciously. Darwin's discovery per se need not have tended to materialism.

Materialism points to Darwin's book, The Origin of Species, as its chief support. Now, it is clear that if a thinker inclining to materialism approached these discoveries, he would be sure to invest Darwinism with a materialistic colouring, and it was due to Haeckel's boldly materialistic attitude of thought that Darwinism has received its present materialistic interpretation. It was an event of great moment when Haeckel, in the year 1864, announced the connection between man and the higher animals (apes). At that time this could but mean that man was descended from the higher animals. But since that day scientific thought has undergone a curious process of development. Haeckel has adhered to his opinion that man is the descendant of those higher animals, they being in their turn the developments of still lower types, reaching back finally to the very simplest forms of life. It is thus that Haeckel constructs man's entire genealogical tree—in fact, the lineal descent of all humanity. By this means everything of a spiritual nature became for him excluded from the world, except as a reflection of already-existing material things.

And yet Haeckel, having in the depths of his being a peculiar spiritual consciousness working side by side with his materialistic “thinking mind,” casts about for some means of help, since these two parts of his being have never been able to “come into line;” he has not succeeded in bringing about a working partnership between them. For this reason he comes to the conclusion that even the smallest living creature may be accredited with a sort of consciousness, but he does not explain to us how the complex human consciousness is developed out of that which is latent in the smallest living creature.

In the course of a conversation Haeckel once said: “People are always objecting to my materialism, but I don't deny the Spirit, nor do I deny Life: I only want people to observe that when you place matter in a retort everything in it soon begins to work and effervesce—to ferment.” That remark shows plainly enough that Haeckel possesses a spiritual as well as a scientific mind.

[ 11 ] Among those who, at the time of Darwin's supremacy, proclaimed their adherence to the theory of man's descent from the higher animals was the English scientist Huxley. He asserted the close similarity in external structure between man and the higher animals to be even greater than that existing between the higher and lower species of apes, and that we could but come to the conclusion that a line of descent existed leading from the higher animals to man. In more recent times scientists have discovered new facts, but even then those feelings which for centuries past have educated the human heart and soul were undergoing a change, a transformation. Hence it was that Huxley in the 'nineties, not long before his death, gave utterance to the following view—a strange one, coming from him:

“We see therefore,” he observed, “that in Nature life is conditioned by a series of steps, proceeding from the simplest and most incomplete up to the complicated and perfected. We cannot follow this continuity, yet why should not this continuous line proceed onwards in a region which we are unable to survey?”

In these words the way is indicated by which man may, by the pursuit of natural science, rise to the idea of a Divine being, standing high above man—a being farther removed from man than man himself is from the one-celled organism. Huxley had once said:

“I would rather have descended from such ancestors, ancestors similar to the brute, than from such as deny the human intelligence.”¹

[ 12 ] Thus do precepts and concepts, all the soul thinks and feels, alter in the course of time. Haeckel has continued his work of research along the lines he first adopted. In the year 1867 he had already published his popular work, The Natural History of Creation, and from this book much may be learnt. It teaches the laws by which the living kingdoms in Nature are linked one to the other. We can see through the veil shrouding the grey past and bring what is existent into relation with what is extinct, of which only the last remains may now be found upon the earth.

Haeckel has recognised this accurately. That world-history, here in a wider sense playing its part, I can only elucidate by making use of an illustration. You may find it no more accurate than are most comparative illustrations, yet it fairly bears out my meaning.

Let us suppose that a writer on art appeared upon the scene and produced a book in which he treated with consummate skill the whole period stretching from the days of Leonardo da Vinci to modern times. He presents to our minds all that has been achieved in the pursuit of art during that period, and we believe ourselves enabled to look within at the development of man's creative powers. Let us, then, go further, and imagine that another person came along and criticised the descriptive work, saying: “But, look here! Everything this art historian has put on record never happened at all! These are all descriptions of pictures that don't exist! What use have I for such imaginings? One has to investigate reality in order to arrive at the true method of adequately presenting art in its historical bearings. I will therefore investigate the remains of Leonardo da Vinci himself, and try to reconstruct the body, and then judge by the contours of his skull what brain he is likely to have had and how it may probably have functioned.” In the same way the events described by the art historian are depicted by the professor of anatomy. There may have been no mistake. All may have been correct. Well, then, in that case, says the anatomist, we must “fight to a finish” against this idealisation of our art historian; we must combat his phantasy, his imagination, for it amounts to credulity and superstition to allow anyone to attempt to make us believe that besides the form of Leonardo da Vinci there was some “gaseous vortex” to be apprehended as a soul.

[ 13 ] Now, this illustration, in spite of its manifest absurdity, really hits the mark. This is the position in which everyone finds himself who chooses to assert his belief in the Natural History of Creation as the only accurate one. Nor can this illustration be negatived by merely indicating its weak points. They are there, perhaps, but that is beside the point. What is of importance is that the obvious should for once be presented according to its inner relationship; and that is what Haeckel has done in a full and exhaustive way. It has been done in such a manner that anyone wishing to see, can see, how active is the Spirit in the moulding of the form, where, to all appearances, matter alone reigns supreme. Much may be learnt from that; we may learn how to acquire spiritually knowledge as to the world's material combination, how to acquire it with earnestness, dignity, and perseverance. Anyone going through Haeckel's Anthropogenesis sees how form builds itself up, as it were, from the simplest living creature to the most complicated, from the simplest organism to man. He who understands how to add the Spirit to what is already granted by the materialist may in this example of “Haeckelism” have the opportunity of studying the best elementary theosophy.

[ 14 ] The results of Haeckel's research constitute, so to speak, the first chapter of theosophy. Far better than by any other method, we can arrive at a comprehension of the growth and transformation of organic forms by a study of his works. We have every reason to call attention to the great things which have been achieved through the progress of this profound study of Nature.

[ 15 ] At the time when Haeckel had constructed this wonderful edifice, the world was facing the deeper riddles of humanity as problems without solution. In the year 1872 Du Bois-Reymond, in a speech memorable for its brilliant rhetoric, alluded to the limits placed to natural science and to our knowledge of Nature. During the past decade the utterances of few men have been so much discussed as has this lecture with the celebrated “Ignorabimus.” It was a momentous event, and offered a complete contrast to Haeckel's own development and to his theory of the descent of man. In another lecture Du Bois-Reymond has tabulated seven great questions as to existence, questions which the naturalist can only answer in part, if at all. These seven “riddles of the universe” are:

1. The origin of energy and matter
2. How did the first movement arise in this quiescent matter?
3. How did life originate within this “matter set in motion?”
4. How is it that so many things in Nature bear the stamp of utility to a degree only met with in such human achievements as are the result of intelligent reasoning?
5. Assuming we were able to examine our brain, we should find it to be nothing but a jumble of little whirling spheres; how is it, then, that these same little balls, or spheres, enable me, let us say, to “see red,” to hear the tones of the organ, to feel pain, etc.? Think of a mass of whirling atoms, and it will be plain to you that it is not from them that you derive the sensations expressing themselves in such words as “I see red,” “I smell the scent of the rose,” etc.
6. How do understanding, reason, and speech develop in the living being?
7. How can “free will” originate in a being so circumscribed that his every act is the product of the whirling of these atoms?

[ 16 ] It was in connection with these riddles of the universe put forward by Du Bois-Reymond that Haeckel gave his book the title of The Riddle of the Universe. His desire was to give the answer to the questions raised by Du Bois-Reymond. There is a specially important passage in the lecture Du Bois-Reymond delivered on the “Limits of Inquiry into Nature,” which will enable us to step across into the field of theosophy.

[ 17 ] At the time when Du Bois-Reymond was lecturing at Leipsic before an assembly of natural scientists and medical men, the spirit of natural science was seeking after a purer, higher, and freer atmosphere—such an atmosphere as might lead to the theosophical cosmogony. On that occasion Du Bois-Reymond spoke as follows:—

“If we study man from the point of view of natural science, he presents himself to us as a working compound of unconscious atoms. To explain man in accordance with natural science means to ‘understand’ this atomic motion to its uttermost degree.”

He considered that if one were in a position to indicate the precise way in which the atoms moved at any given place in the brain, while saying, for instance, “I think,” or “Give me an apple”—if this could be done, then the problem would, according to natural science, have been solved. Du Bois-Reymond calls this the “astronomic” understanding of man. Even as a miniature firmament of stars would be the appearance of these active groups of human atoms. But what has not here been taken into consideration is the question as to how sensations, feelings, and thoughts arise in the consciousness of the man of whom, let us say, I perfectly well know that his atoms move in such and such a manner. That natural science can as little determine as it can the manner in which consciousness arises. Du Bois-Reymond concluded with the following words:—

“In the sleeping man, who is not conscious of the sensation expressed in the words ‘I see red,’ we have before us the physical group of the active members of the body. With regard to this sleeping body, we need not say, ‘We cannot know’—‘Ignorabimus!’ We are able to comprehend the sleeping man. Man awake, on the contrary, is incomprehensible to the scientist. In the sleeping man something is absent which is nevertheless present in the man awake: I allude to the consciousness through which he appears before us as a spiritual being.” [ 18 ] At that time, owing to a lack of courage in matters concerning natural science, further progress was impossible; there was no question as yet of theosophy, because natural science had, in concise terms, defined the boundary, had set a barrier at the precise spot up to which it wished to proceed in its own fashion. It was owing to this self-limitation of science that theosophical cosmogony had, about this time, its beginning. No one is going to maintain that man, when he goes to sleep “ceases to be,” and on re-awaking in the morning “resumes existence.” And yet Du Bois-Reymond says that something which is present in him by day is absent during the night. It is here that the theosophical conception of the universe is enabled to assert itself. Sense-consciousness is in abeyance in the sleeping man. As, however, the man of science uses as a prop for his argument that which brings about this sense-consciousness, he is unable to say anything concerning the spirituality that transcends it, because he lacks precisely the knowledge of that which makes of man a spiritual being.

By the use of such means as serve for natural science we are unable to investigate matters spiritual. Natural science depends upon what may be demonstrated to the senses. What can no longer be sensed when man falls asleep, cannot be the object of scientific investigation. It is in this something, no longer perceptible in the sleeping man, that we must seek for that entity by which man becomes a spiritual being. No mental representation can be made of what transcends the purely material and passes beyond the knowledge of the senses, until organs, of which the scientist can know nothing if he only depends on his sense-perceptions—spiritual eyes—are developed; eyes which are able to see beyond the confines of the senses.

For this reason we have no right to say, “Here are the limits of cognition;” but merely, “Here are the limits of sense-perception.”

The scientist perceives by means of his senses, but he is no spiritual observer; he must become one. become a “seer.” in order that he may see what is spiritual in man. This is the bourne towards which tends all profound wisdom in the world; not seeking the mere widening of its radius where actual material knowledge is concerned, but striving towards the raising of human faculty.

This also is the great difference between what is taught by present-day natural science and what is taught by theosophy. Natural science says: “Man has senses with which he perceives, and a mind whereby he is enabled to connect the evidences of his senses. What does not come within the scope of these lies beyond the ken of natural science.”

[ 19 ] Theosophy takes a different view of the case. It says: “You scientists are perfectly right, so long as you judge from your point of view, just as right as the blind man would be from his in saying that the world is devoid of light and colour. We make no objection to the standpoint of natural science, we would only place it in juxtaposition to the view taken by theosophy, which asserts that it is possible—nay, that it is certain—that man is not obliged to remain stationary at the point of view he occupies to-day; that it is possible for organs—spiritual eyes—to develop after a similar fashion to that in which those physical sense-organs of the body, the eyes and ears, have been developed; and once these new organs are developed, higher faculties will make themselves apparent.”

This must be taken on faith at first—nay, it need not even be believed; it may just be accepted as an assertion in an unprejudiced manner. Nevertheless, as true as it is that all believers in the Natural History of Creation have not beheld all that is therein presented to them as fact (how many of them have actually investigated these facts?), so true is it that these facts concerning a knowledge of the super-sensual can be explained to everyone.

The ordinary man, held in bondage by his senses, cannot possibly gain admittance to this realm. It is only by the aid of certain methods of investigation that the spiritual world opens to the seeker. Thus, man must transform himself into an instrument for those higher powers, one able to penetrate into worlds hidden from those still enthralled by their physical senses. To such as can accomplish this, visions of a quite distinctive nature will appear. The ordinary human being is not capable of seeing for himself, or of consciously recognising things about him, when his senses are wrapped in slumber; but when he applies occult methods of investigation this incapacity ceases, and he begins to receive quite consciously impressions of the astral world.

[ 20 ] There is at first a state of transition, familiar to all, between that exterior life of sense cognisance and that life which even in the most profound state of slumber is not quite extinguished. This state of transition is the chaos of dreams. To most people these will appear as mere reflections of what they have been experiencing during the previous day. Indeed, you will ask, how should a man be able to receive any new experiences during sleep, since the inner self has as yet no organs of cognition? But still, something is there—life is there. That which left the body when sleep wrapped it round has memory, and this remembrance rises before the sleeper in pictures more or less fantastic and confused. (Should anyone desire more information on this subject, it will be found in my books entitled The Way of Initiation and Initiation and its Results, Theosophical Publishing Society, 161, New Bond Street, W.)

[ 21 ] Now, in place of this chaos, order and harmony will, in the course of time, be brought about; an order and a harmony governing this region of dreams, and this will be a sign that the person in question is beginning to develop spiritually. Then he will cease to see the mere aftermath of reality, grotesquely portrayed; he will see things which have in ordinary life no existence.

Those who desire to remain within the boundary of the senses will, of course, say, “But they are only dreams!” Yet, if they, by such means, obtain an insight into the loftiest secrets of creation, it may surely be a matter of indifference to them whether they gain this through the medium of a dream or by means of the senses. Let us, for instance, suppose that Graham Bell had invented the telephone in a state of dream-consciousness. That would have been of no moment whatever to-day, for the telephone itself in any case is an important and useful invention. Clear and regular dreaming is therefore the beginning, and if in the stillness of the night hours you have come to “live in your dreams,” if, after a time, you have habituated yourself to a cognisance of worlds quite other than this, then will soon come a time when you will learn, by these new experiences, to step forth into actuality.

Then the whole world will assume a new aspect, and you will be as sensible of this change as you would be of threading your way through a row of solid chairs, through anything your senses may at this moment be aware of in their vicinity. Such is the condition of anyone who has acquired a new state of consciousness. Something new, a new kind of personality, has awakened within him. In the course of his further development a stage will at length be reached where not only the curious apparitions of the higher worlds pass before the spiritual eye as visions of light, but the tones also of those higher worlds become audible, telling their spiritual names, and able to convey to the seer a new meaning. In the language of the mysteries, this is expressed in the words, “Man sees the sun at midnight;” which is to say, that for him there are no longer any obstacles in space to prevent him from seeing the sun when on the other side of the world. Then, too, is the work of the sun, acting within the universe, made plain to him, and he becomes aware of that harmony of the spheres, that truth to which the Pythagoreans bore witness.

Tones and sounds, this music of the spheres, now become, for him, actual. Poets who were also seers have known of the existence of something approaching this music, and only those who can grasp Goethe's meaning from this point of view will be able to understand those passages, for instance, occurring in the “Prologue in Heaven” (see Faust, pt. I), which may be taken either as poetic phraseology or as a lofty truth. Where Faust is a second time introduced into the world of spirits, he speaks of these sounds: “Sounding loud to spirit-hearing, See the new-born Day appearing!” Faust, Part II.

[ 22 ] Here we have the connection between natural science and theosophy. Du Bois-Reymond has pointed to the fact that the sleeper only can be an object for the experiments of natural science. But if man should begin to open his inner senses, if he should come to see and hear that there is such a thing as spiritual actuality, then indeed will the whole edifice of elementary theosophy, so wonderfully, constructed by Haeckel—a structure none can admire more profoundly than I—then will this great work glow with a new glory, revealing, as it must, an entirely new meaning. According to this marvellous structure we see a simple living creature as the archetype, yet we may trace back that creature spiritually to an earlier condition of consciousness.

[ 23 ] I will now explain what theosophy holds as the doctrine of the descent of man. It is obvious that in a single lecture like the present no “proofs” can be advanced, and it is also natural that to all who are only acquainted with the theories commonly advanced on this subject everything I say will appear fantastic and highly improbable. All theories thus advanced originated, however, in the leading circles of materialistic thought, and many who would probably resent the suggestion of materialism as utterly foreign to their nature, are nevertheless (and indeed quite comprehensibly so) caught in a net of self-delusion.

The true theosophical teaching concerning evolution is, in our day, hardly known; and when our opponents speak of it, he who does know is at once able to recognise by the objections raised that he is dealing with a caricature of this doctrine of evolution.

For all such as merely acknowledge a soul, or spirit, to which expression is given within the human, or animal organism, the theosophical mode of representation must be utterly incomprehensible, and every discussion touching that subject is, with such persons, quite fruitless. They must first free themselves from the state of materialistic suggestion in which they live, and must make themselves acquainted with the fundamental attitude of theosophical thought.

[ 24 ] Just as the methods of research employed by physical science trace back the organism of the physical body into the dim distance of primeval times, so it is the mode of theosophical thought to delve into the past with regard to the soul and the spirit. Now, the latter method does not lead to any conclusions antagonistic or contradictory to the facts advanced by natural science; only with the materialistic interpretations of these facts it can have nothing to do.

Natural science traces the descent of the physical living being backwards, arriving by this course at organisms of a less and less complicated kind. Natural science declares: “The perfect living being is a development of these simpler and less complicated ones;” and, as far as physical structure is concerned, this is true, although the hypothetical forms of primeval ages of which materialistic science speaks do not entirely conform with those known to theosophical research. This, however, need not concern us at the present moment.

[ 25 ] From the physical standpoint theosophy also acknowledges the relationship of man with the higher mammals, with the man-like apes. But there can be no question of the descent of our humanity from a creature of the mind and soul calibre of the ape, as we know it. The facts are quite otherwise, and everything that materialism puts forward of this nature rests upon an error of thought. This error may be cleared up by means of a simple comparison sufficient for our purpose, though trite.

We will imagine two persons, one morally deficient and intellectually insignificant; the other endowed with a high standard of morality and of considerable intellectuality. We will assume that some fact or other confirms the relationship of these two. Now, I ask you, will the inference be drawn that the one in every way more highly endowed is descended from one who was of the standard described? Never! We may think it a surprising fact that they are brothers. We may find, however, that they had a father who was not of exactly the same standard as either of the brothers, and in that case one will be found to have worked his way up, the other to have degenerated.

[ 26 ] Materialistic science makes a similar mistake to that here indicated. Facts known to it induce the acceptance of a connection between ape and man, yet from this it should not draw the conclusion that man is descended from the ape-like animals. What should be accepted is a primeval creature, a common physical ancestor, from the stock of which the ape has degenerated, while man has been the ascending “brother.”

[ 27 ] Now, what was there in that primeval creature to cause this ascendance to the human on the one hand, the sinking into the ape kingdom on the other? Theosophy answers, “The soul of man himself did this.” Even then the soul of man was present, at a time when, on the face of this physical earth, the creatures possessing the highest sense of development were these common ancestors of man and ape. From amid the multitude of these ancestors the best types were capable of subjecting themselves to the soul's progress, the rest were not. Thus it happens that the present-day human soul has a “soul-ancestor” just as the body has its physical forebear.

It is true that, so far as the senses are concerned, those “soul-ancestors” could not, according to our present-day observations, have been perceptible within our bodies. They still belonged in a sense to “higher worlds,” and they were also possessed of other capabilities and powers than those of the present human soul. They lacked the mental activity and the moral sense now evident. Such souls could conceive no way of fashioning instruments from the things in the outer world; they could create no political states. The soul's activity still consisted to a great extent in transforming the archetype of those ancestral bodies themselves. It laboured at improving the incomplete brain, enabling it at a later period to become the seat of thought activities. As the soul of to-day, directed towards external things, constructs machines, etc., so did that ancestral soul labour at constructing the body of the human ancestor. The following objection can, of course, be raised: “Why, then, does not the soul at the present day work at its body to the same extent?” The reason for its not doing so is that the energy used at a former time for the transforming of the organs has since been directing its whole effort upon external things in the mastery and regulation of the forces of Nature.

[ 28 ] We may therefore ascribe a twofold descent to man in primeval times. His spiritual birth is not coeval with the perfecting of his organs of sense. On the contrary, the “soul” of man was already present at a time when those physical “ancestors” inhabited the earth. Figuratively speaking, we may say that the soul “selected” a certain number of such “ancestors” as seemed best fitted for receiving the external corporeal expression distinguishing the present-day man. Another branch of these ancestors deteriorated, and in its degenerate condition is now represented by the anthropoid apes. These, then, form, in the true sense of the word, branch lines of the human ancestry. Those ancestors are the physical forebears of man, but this is due only to the capacity for reconstruction which they had primarily received from the human soul within. Thus is man physically descended from the “archetype,” while spiritually he is the descendant of the “ancestral soul.”

But we can go even further back with regard to the genealogical tree of living creatures, and we shall then arrive at a physically still more imperfect ancestor. Yet, at the time of this physical ancestor, too, the “soul-ancestor” of man was existent. It was this latter which raised the physical ancestor to the level of the ape, again outstripping its less adaptable brother in the race for development, and leaving him behind on a lower stage of creation. To such as these belong those present-day mammals of a lower grade than that of the apes. Thus we may go further and further back into primeval times, even to a time when upon this earth, then bearing so different an aspect, existed those most elementary of creatures from which Haeckel claims the development of all higher beings. The soul-ancestor of man was also a contemporary of these primitive creatures; it was already living when the “archetype” transformed the serviceable types, leaving behind at different stages those incapable of further development.

In actual truth, therefore, the entire sum of earth's living creatures are the descendants of man, within whom that which in this day “thinks and acts” as soul originally brought about the development of living beings. When our earth came into existence, man was a purely spiritual being; he began his career by building for himself the simplest of bodies. The whole ladder of living creatures represents nothing but the outgrown stages through which he has developed his bodily structure to its present degree of perfection.

The creatures of the present day differ widely in appearance from that of their ancestors at those particular stages where they branched off from the human tree. Not that they have remained stationary, for they have deteriorated in accordance with an inevitable law, which, owing to the lengthy explanation it would involve, cannot be entered into here. But the greatest interest attaches to the fact that through theosophy we arrive, so far as man's outward form is concerned, at a genealogical tree not altogether unlike Haeckel's. Haeckel, however, presupposes as the physical ancestor of man nothing but a hypothetical animal. Yet the truth is that at all those points where Haeckel uses the names of animals, the still undeveloped forebears of man should be installed; for those animals, down to the meanest living creatures, are but deteriorated and degenerate forms occupying those lower stages through which the human soul has passed on its upward journey.

Externally, therefore, the resemblance between Haeckel's genealogical tree and that of theosophy is sufficiently striking, though internal evidences show them to be as wide apart as the poles.

[ 29 ] Hence the reasons why Haeckel's deductions are so eminently suited for the learning of sound elementary theosophy. One need do no more than master, from the theosophical point of view, the facts he has elucidated in so masterly a manner, and then raise his philosophy to a higher and nobler plane. If Haeckel seeks to criticise and belittle any such “higher” philosophy, he shows himself to be simply puerile—after the fashion, for instance, of a person who, not having got beyond the multiplication table, yet presumed to assert: “What I know is true, and all higher mathematics are only imaginary nonsense.” No theosophist desires to deny or contradict the elementary facts of natural science; but the crux of the matter is that the scientist, deluded by materialistic suggestions, does not even know what theosophy is talking about.

[ 30 ] It depends upon a man himself what kind of philosophy he adopts. Fichte has put this in so many words: “The unperceiving eye cannot detect colours; The non-perceptive Soul cannot perceive Spirit.” The same thought has been voiced by Goethe in a well-known phrase: “Were the eye not sun-like—how could we see the sun? Were God's own power not within us, the God-like vision—could it enrapture us?” and an expression of Feuerbach, if rightly conceived, proclaims that each one sees God's image after his own likeness. The slave to his senses sees God in accordance with those senses; the spiritual observer sees the Spirit deified. “Were lions, bulls, and oxen able to set up gods, their gods would resemble lions, bulls, and oxen,” was the remark of a Greek philosopher long ages ago.

The fetish-worshipper, too, has as his highest principle something we may call spiritual, but he has as yet not come to seek for this within himself, and this is why he has not got beyond beholding his god as anything more than a block of wood. The fetish-worshipper cannot raise his prayer above what he can inwardly feel, for he still regards himself as on the same level as the block of wood. And those who can see no more than a whirl of atoms, those to whom the highest resolves itself into tiny dots of matter, such as these, too, have missed recognition of the highest principle within themselves.

[ 31 ] It is true that Haeckel places before us in all his works the information he has honestly acquired, so that to him must be accorded “les defauts de ses qualites.” The sterling worth of his teaching will live, its negative qualities will vanish. Taken from the higher point of view, one might say that the fetish-worshipper worships in his fetish a lifeless object, while the materialistic adherent of the theory of atoms worships not alone one “little god” but a whole host of them, which he calls atoms!² The superstition of the one is about as great as that of the other; for the materialistic atom is no more than a fetish, and the wooden block is made up of atoms too. Haeckel says in one passage: “We see God in the stone, in the plant, in the brute, in man—God is everywhere,” yet he only sees God as he can comprehend Him. How enlightening here are Goethe's words, when he says: “Thou'rt like the Spirit which thou comprehendest, Not me!”) —Bayard Taylor's translation.

Thus does the materialist mark the whirling atoms in stone, in plant, in animal, and in man, possibly, too, in every work of art, and claim for himself a knowledge of a monistic cosmogony that has overcome the ancient superstitions. Yet theosophists have a monistic cosmogony too; and we can say, in the same words as Haeckel uses, that we see God in the stone, in the plant, in the brute, and in the man; but what we see are no whirling atoms, but the living God, the spiritual God, whom we seek outside in Nature, because we can also seek Him within ourselves.

• 1. Readers who are unacquainted with Huxley's famous reply may be glad to have it in extenso, as given by Edward Clodd in Thomas Henry Huxley, published by William Blackwood and Sons:
  
  “At the meeting of the British Association at Oxford, on 28th June, 1860, Owen emphasised the statement that ‘the brain of the gorilla presented more differences, as compared with the brain of man, than it did when compared with the brains of the very lowest and most problematical of the Quadrumana.’ To this Huxley, in polite English, gave the lie direct, and pledged himself to ‘justify that unusual procedure elsewhere.’ Two days after, by mere chance, he was present at the reading of a paper by Dr. Draper ‘On the Intellectual Development of Europe considered with reference to the views of Mr. Darwin.’ In the discussion which followed, Bishop Wilberforce, throwing a glance at Huxley, ended a suave and superficial speech by asking him ‘as to his belief in being descended from an ape. Is it on his grandfather's or his grandmother's side that the ape ancestry comes in?’ Huxley did not rise till the meeting called for him. Then he let himself go. ‘The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands,’ he said in an undertone to Sir Benjamin Brodie. After showing how ill-equipped was the Bishop for controversy upon the general question of organic evolution, although it was an open secret that Owen had primed him for the contest, Huxley said: ‘You say that development drives out the Creator, but you assert that God made you; and yet you know that you yourself were originally a piece of matter no bigger than the end of this gold pencil-case?’ Then followed the famous retort:
  
  “‘I asserted, and I repeat, that a man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man—a man of restless and versatile intellect—who, not content with success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.’”
• 2. The word “worship” is, of course, not to be taken literally, for the materialistic thinker, though he has not yet been weaned from “fetishism,” has lost the habit of prayer.

Foreword

This booklet contains a lecture given by me, after a series of objections had been brought forward in a lecture from another quarter against the views summed up under the name “Anthroposophy” or “Spiritual Science.” I came to know of these objections through the circumstance that the lecturer himself had them printed in a newspaper. When the occasion of the observations contained in this booklet is borne in mind, it might seem as if their special publication were unjustified. With regard to this it may be said that even though the objections in question were, to begin with, only the subject of a single lecture, they are the ones with which it is intended from many quarters and in divers repetitions to refute the spiritual science (Anthroposophy) referred to in this booklet. They are to a certain extent typical “refutations.” They are typical, not only because of what is alleged, but because of the manner in which an attitude is taken towards that to which objections are raised. This manner is characteristic. It is often the case that people do not fix their attention upon what spiritual science says and direct their attack against this, but they fabricate an idea of what they think it says, and then attack this idea. A curious position results. The one attacked may quite agree with his opponent in his judgement of all that is attacked, and yet he is obliged to find that he is condemned, together with the distorted idea formed of him. The following example is particularly characteristic for this form of attack. A building is being erected for the purposes of Anthroposophy (Spiritual Science). This is to be a “College of Spiritual Science.” In the artistic form of the building it is sought to realise that for which this Spiritual Science can give the stimulus. The building is intended to bring to artistic expression that for which it is the frame, as it were. Certainly, the manner in which this is accomplished may be objected to from one or another artistic point of view. And the author of this pamphlet is far from thinking that what is being attempted in this building will be fully attained. But he is endeavouring to see that every sort of inartistic symbolism or allegorising is kept far removed from it. It is only necessary to open one's eyes in order to find that, when it is viewed, there is absolutely nothing symbolical or allegorical of the kind often met with where not Spiritual Science such as is to be pursued in this building, but unhealthy mysticism or such like is found. Yet in spite of this, one of the objections raised against this building is “One who enters this building will find all kinds of mysterious symbols which are Incomprehensible to the non-initiated, etc., etc.” In this way what we wish to attain in the building is successfully attacked, but only through the attack being directed against something which does not exist, and which, if it were really so, the one attacked would repudiate just as his opponent does. But by far the most of what is brought against the spiritual science we represent runs on this line. First a caricature of it is made, which sets all scientific thought at defiance, and then this caricature is attacked with the weapons of science. Another caricature is made, which is attacked from the point of view of religious feeling, whereas in truth no religious confession would have the slightest occasion to think anything but kindly of this spiritual science, if its true form were kept in view instead of a caricature of it.

In such a state of affairs it is almost impossible to do anything more than meet these attacks by stating the actual aims of spiritual science or Anthroposophy, and the lines it takes. I endeavoured to do this in the lecture upon which this pamphlet is based. Above all it is shown that the attacks are inapposite, because they are directed against self-made targets and not against Anthroposophy.

In this pamphlet, therefore, the true form of spiritual science is delineated in contradistinction to the imaginary one.

In the “Afterword,” a little more is said which amplifies the hints given in the lecture. The word “we” often occurs in the lecture; this is because I spoke to a certain extent as the representative of the movement in which Anthroposophy is cultivated.

Rudolf Steiner
April, 1916.

If I try to put forward this evening something about so-called spiritual science, about the way in which it is to be dealt with in the building at Dornach with which you are acquainted, and about that building itself, it is in no wise my intention to propagandise or arouse feeling either for Spiritual Science or for the Building.

I have especially in view the consideration of certain misunderstandings, which are known to exist with reference to the aims of the Anthroposophical Society. I will begin with the way in which a more or less unknown thing is judged when it makes its appearance anywhere. It is very easy to understand that anyone unfamiliar with a subject sees in its name something by means of which he thinks he can understand it. Anthroposophy and the Anthroposophical Society are names which have become more widely known than they formerly were, through the building at Dornach. “Anthroposophy” is by no means a new name. When some years ago there was a question of giving our cause a name, I thought of one which had become dear to me because a Professor of Philosophy, Robert Zimmermann, whose lectures I heard in my youth, called his chief work Anthroposophy. This was in the eighties of the nineteenth century. Moreover, the name Anthroposophy takes us still further back into literature. It was already used in the eighteenth century, indeed, still earlier. The name, therefore, is an old one; we are applying it to something new. For us it does not mean, “Knowledge of human beings.” That would be against the express intention of those who gave the name. Our science itself leads us to, the conviction that within the physical human being there lives a spiritual, inner one — as it were, a second human being.

Whereas that which man can learn about the universe through his senses and through the intellect which relies upon sense-observation may be called “Anthropology,” that which the inner, spiritual human being can know may be called “Anthroposophy.”

Anthroposophy is therefore the knowledge of the spiritual human being, or spirit-man, and that knowledge is not confined to man, but is a knowledge of everything which the spirit-man can perceive in the spiritual world, just as physical man observes physical things in the world. Because this second human being, the inner one, is the spiritual human being, the knowledge which he acquires may be called “Spiritual Science.” And this name is even less new than the name Anthroposophy. That is to say, it is not even unusual, and it would be a complete misunderstanding if anyone were to think that I, as has been said, or anyone closely connected with me, had coined the name “Spiritual Science.” The name is used everywhere where it is thought possible to attain knowledge which is not merely physical science, but knowledge of something spiritual. Numbers of our contemporaries call history a spiritual science, call sociology, political economy, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion spiritual sciences. We use the name, only in a somewhat different sense, that is, in the sense that spirit is to us something real and actual, whereas most of those who nowadays speak of history, political economy, etc., as spiritual sciences, resolve the spirit into abstract ideas.

I will now also say something about the development of our Anthroposophical Society, because errors have been circulated on the subject. For instance, it is said that our Anthroposophical Society is only a kind of development out of what is called the “Theosophical Society.” Although it is true that what we aim at within our Anthroposophical Society placed itself for a time within the framework of the general Theosophical Society, yet our Anthroposophical Society must on no account be confused with the Theosophical Society. And in order to prevent this, I must bring forward something apparently personal, about the gradual rise of the Anthroposophical Society.

It was about fifteen years ago that I was invited by a small circle of people to give certain lectures on spiritual science. These lectures were afterwards published under the title, The Mystics of the Renaissance. Up till then I had, I may say, endeavoured as a solitary thinker to build up a view of the world which on the one hand fully reckons with the great, momentous achievements of the physical sciences, and on the other hand desires to rise to insight into spiritual worlds.

I must expressly lay stress on the fact that at the time when I was invited to speak to a small circle in Germany on the subject connected with spiritual science already mentioned, I did not depend in any way upon the works of the writer Blavatsky or of Annie Besant, nor did I take them particularly into consideration. These books, in their way of looking at things, were but little in keeping with my view of the world. I had at that time endeavoured, purely out of what I had discovered for myself, to give some points of view about spiritual worlds. The lectures we're printed; some of them were very soon translated into English, and that by a distinguished member of the Theosophical Society, which at that time was particularly flourishing in England; and from this quarter I was urged to enter the Theosophical Society. At no time had I any idea, if the occasion should have presented itself in the Theosophical Society, of bringing forward anything else but what was built up on the foundation of my own, independent method of research.

That which now forms the substance of our Anthroposophical view of the world, as studied in our circle of members, is not borrowed from the Theosophical Society, but was represented by me as something entirely independent, and represented within that Society in consequence of an invitation from it, until it was there found heretical and turned out; and what had thus always been an independent part of that Society was further developed and further built up in the now wholly independent Anthroposophical Society.

Thus it is an entirely erroneous conception to confuse in any way that which is living within the Anthroposophical Society with what is represented by Blavatsky and Besant. It is true that Blavatsky has in her books put forward important truths concerning spiritual worlds, but mixed with so much error that only one who has accurately investigated these matters can succeed in separating what is important from what is erroneous. Hence our Anthroposophical movement must claim to be considered wholly independent. This is not put forward from want of modesty, but merely in order to place a fact in its objectively right light.

Then came the time when it became necessary to represent in an artistic, dramatic form that which our spiritual science, our Anthroposophy, gave in its teachings. We began doing this in 1909 at Munich. From that time onward to the year 1913 we tried every year to give artistic expression in dramatic representations at Munich to that which our investigations lead us to acknowledge is living in the world as spiritual forces, as spiritual beings.

These dramatic performances were at first given in an ordinary theatre. But it soon became evident that an ordinary theatre cannot be the right framework for that which, in a certain way, was to enter the spiritual development of humanity as a new thing-. And thus the necessity arose for having a building of our own for such representations, and for the prosecution of our spiritual science generally and the art which belongs to it; a building which, moreover, in its form of architecture is an expression of what it is desired to accomplish. At first it was thought that it would be well to erect such a building in Munich. When this proved impossible, or, at any rate, extremely difficult, the possibility arose of our erecting the building at Dornach near Basle, on a very beautiful hill, where a large piece of land was offered us by a Swiss friend, who had this ground at his disposal, and who has our cause at heart. And thus, through easily comprehensible circumstances, it has come about that the building has been erected just in the north-western corner of Switzerland.

And now, before speaking further about the Dornach building, I should like to deal with the mission of spiritual science itself. It may be quite easy to understand that spiritual science or Anthroposophy, in the sense here intended, is misunderstood. One who has become conversant with this spiritual science finds it entirely comprehensible that many misunderstandings should be brought against it; and one who knows the course taken by the Spiritual development of mankind, will not be surprised at such misunderstandings. Opinions such as, “It is mere imagination; it is dreaming,” or perhaps worse, are comprehensible. In the same way as this spiritual science have, as a rule, those things been received which have entered the spiritual evolution of mankind for the first time. Moreover, it may very easily appear as if this spiritual science resembled certain older views of the universe which are not exactly popular at the present time. If the objects of spiritual science or Anthroposophy are looked at merely from the outside, it may be thought that they resemble those pursued by the Gnostics in the first Christian centuries. But one who really learns what our spiritual science is will find that it bears no more resemblance to the Gnosis than does the natural science of the present day to the natural science of the eighth or sixth century a.d. True, resemblances may be found between all possible things, if only a sufficient number of their distinguishing features be eliminated. It may, for instance, be said, “This spiritual science, this Anthroposophy, desires to know the world in a spiritual way. The Gnostics also desired to know the world in a spiritual way. Consequently spiritual science and the Gnosis are one and the same.”

In a similar manner may Anthroposophy be confused, let us say, with alchemy, with the magic of the Middle Ages. But this is all due to a complete misapprehension, a complete misunderstanding of the real aims of this spiritual science or Anthroposophy. In order to gain insight into this matter, it is necessary to look first at the modern method of thought in natural science, which for three or four centuries has been developing out of quite a different method of thought. It is necessary to realise what it meant for mankind when three or four centuries ago the revolution took place which may be expressed in the words: up to that time everyone, learned and ignorant alike, believed that the earth stood still in the midst of the universe, and that the sun and stars revolved round the earth. It may be said that in consequence of what Copernicus, Galileo, and others taught at that time, the ground under men's feet was made movable. Now, when the movement of the earth is looked upon as a matter of course, there is no feeling left of the surprising effect produced upon humanity at large by this and everything connected with it.

Now what natural science then sought to do for the interpretation and explanation of the mysteries of nature, spiritual science seeks to do for the spirit and soul at the present time. In its fundamental nature, spiritual science desires to be nothing else than something for the life of soul and spirit similar to what natural science then became for the life of external nature. One who believes, for instance, that our spiritual science has something to do with the ancient Gnosis quite ignores the fact that with the view of the world taken by natural science, something new entered the mental evolution of mankind, and that as a result of this new element, spiritual science is to be something similarly new for the investigation of spiritual worlds.

Now spiritual science, if it is to do the same for spirit that natural science has dome for nature must investigate quite differently from the latter. It must find ways and means of penetrating into the sphere of the spiritual, a domain which cannot be perceived with outer physical senses, nor apprehended with the intellect which is limited to the brain.

It is still difficult to speak intelligibly about the ways and means found by spiritual science for penetrating into the spiritual sphere, because the spiritual world is generally considered, from the outset, as something unknown, indeed, as something which must necessarily remain unknown. Now spiritual science shows that the perceptive powers which man has in ordinary life, and which he also uses in ordinary science, are by no means able to penetrate into the spiritual world. In this respect spiritual science is in full accord with certain branches of natural science. Only natural science does not know certain faculties in man, which are latent within him, but capable of being developed.

It is again difficult to speak of these faculties at the present time, for the reason that they are, far and wide, confused with all manner of diseased phenomena in man. For instance, there is much talk nowadays of the possibility of man's acquiring certain abnormal faculties, and the natural scientist thereupon declares that it is true that they may be acquired, but they are only due to the fact that the otherwise normal nervous system and brain have become abnormal and diseased. In every case in which the investigator in natural science is correct in making such a statement, the spiritual investigator at once acknowledges it. But the aim of spiritual science should not be confused with what is often and widely called “clairvoyance,” in a superficial way. Neither should spiritual science be confused with that which appears under the name of spiritualism, etc., etc. The essential thing is this, that this spiritual science should be distinguished from everything that is in any way due to diseased human predispositions.

In order to make myself quite intelligible on this point, I must indicate, if only in a few words, the manner in which the spiritual investigator institutes his researches. The method of research in spiritual science is founded on something which has nothing to do with the soul-forces of man in so far as they are bound up with his bodily organism. If, for instance, it is said that spiritual science is founded on what is to be attained through some form. of asceticism, or on something for which the nervous system is prepared and stimulated in a certain way, or that it results from the bringing of spirits into manifestation in an outer, physical way — all such assertions would be utterly inaccurate. That which the spiritual investigator has to do to gain the faculty of looking into the spiritual world, consists exclusively of processes of the spirit and soul; they have nothing to do with changes in the body, nor with visions arising from a morbid bodily life.

The spiritual investigator will be most careful not to let the body have any influence over that which he spiritually perceives. I mention by the way that if, for instance, a large number of the adherents of spiritual science are vegetarians, this is a matter of taste, which in principle has nothing to do with spiritual methods of research. It has only to do with a certain manner of making life easier — I would even say, with a more comfortable regulation of life, since it is easier to work in a spiritual way if no meat be eaten.

The main point is that spiritual science, with its methods of research, only begins where modern natural science leaves off. Humanity is indebted to the view of the world taken by natural science for what I would call a logic which educates itself by the facts of nature itself.

An important method of training has come in, among those who have studied natural science, with regard to the inner handling of thought. I will now try to make clear by a comparison the relation of spiritually scientific research to that of natural science. The mode of thought used by the investigator in natural science I would compare with the forms of a statue. The logic developed from the outer facts of nature has something lifeless in it. When we think logically, we have images in our conceptions and ideas. But these images are only inner thought-forms, just as the forms of a statue are forms.

Now the spiritual investigator sets out from this mode of thinking. In my books, The Way of Initiation, Initiation and its Results, and The Gates of Knowledge, directions are to be found as to what must be done with thinking in order that it may become something entirely different from what it is in ordinary life and ordinary science. The spiritual investigator develops his thinking; he makes it undergo a certain, special discipline. I cannot in this short sketch enter into details; these are described in the books I have named. When thinking, when the logic that bears sway in man, is treated in a certain way, the whole inner life of the soul becomes changed. Something happens which changes this soul-life into something else, which I will once more make dear by a comparison.

Imagine that the statue — this, of course, cannot happen, but let us assume that it could — imagine that the statue, which previously stood there with its lifeless form, were suddenly to begin to walk and to become living. This the statue cannot do; but human thinking, inner logical activity, can. By means of the soul-exercises undertaken and carried out by the spiritual investigator, he puts himself into such a state, that there is within him not only a thought-out logic, but a living logic; logic itself becomes a living being within him. Thereby he has grasped something living and bearing sway within him, instead of lifeless conceptions. He becomes permeated by this living, ruling element. And when spiritual research assumes the existence of an etheric body, besides the physical body which is visible to bodily eyes, by this is meant not something merely imagined, but it is meant that man, by bringing logical thinking to life within him, becomes conscious of a second human being within him. This is a matter of experience which may be arrived at. The experience must be made, in order that the science of the spiritual human being may arise, just as the outer experiments of natural science must be made, in order to learn nature's secrets.

Just as thinking is so transformed that it no longer leads merely to images, but becomes inwardly active and alive, so may the will also be developed in a certain way. The methods by which the will is so treated that we learn to know it as something different from what it is in ordinary life, are also to be found described in the above-named books. Through this development of the will, something of quite a different kind results from what comes through the development of thinking. If we desire to do something in ordinary life, if we work, the will, as it were, penetrates into the limbs. We say, “I will”; we move our hands; but the will only comes to expression in this movement. In its real essence it remains unknown. But by using certain exercises, the will may be released from its connection with the limbs. The will may be experienced in itself alone. Thinking may be made active, so as to become something inwardly alive, a kind of etheric body. The will may be isolated, separated from its connection with the bodily nature, and then we realise that we have within us a second human being in a far higher sense than is the case with thinking. Through the development of the will we become aware that we have a second human being within us, which has a consciousness of its own. If we work at our will in an adequate way, something takes place which I can only make clear by reminding you that in ordinary human life there are two alternating states, waking life and sleep. In waking life man lives, consciously; during sleep, consciousness ceases.

Now at first it is a mere assertion to say that the soul and spirit do not cease to be conscious between the time of falling asleep and awaking. But they are no longer directly in the body, they are outside it. The spiritual investigator succeeds in voluntarily giving his bodily life the same form that it takes involuntarily when he goes to sleep. He orders his senses and his ordinary intellect to be still; he achieves this by developing his will. And it then happens that the same condition is voluntarily brought about that is usually involuntarily present in sleep. Yet, on the other hand, what is now brought about is the complete opposite of the sleep-condition. Whereas during sleep we become unconscious and know nothing about ourselves and our surroundings, through developing the will in the manner described we consciously leave our bodies; we see the body outside ourselves, just as we usually perceive an external object outside ourselves. Then we notice that in man there lives a real spectator of his thoughts and actions. This is no mere image, no merely pictorial expression, but it is a reality. In our will there lives something which is perpetually observing us inwardly. It is easy to look upon this inner spectator as something intended to be taken pictorially; the spiritual investigator knows it to be a reality, just as the objects of sense are realities. And if we have these two, the living, moving thought-being, the etheric human being, and this inner spectator, then we have brought ourselves into a spiritual world, which is actually experienced, as the physical world is experienced with the senses. A second human being is found in man in this way, as oxygen is found in water by the methods of natural science.

That which is attained by developed thinking, is not visions, but spiritual sight of realities; what is attained by a developed will, is not ordinary soul-experiences, but the discovery of a different consciousness from the ordinary one. There now act one upon the other, the human being who is logic in motion, and the other human being who is a higher consciousness. If we learn to know these two within man, we know that part of man which exists even when his physical body falls into decay, when he goes through the gate of death. We learn to know the being in man which does not act through the outer body, which is of a soul and spirit nature, which will continue to exist after death, which existed also before birth, or, let us say, before conception. We learn to know the eternal essence of man in this way, through having separated it, as it were, out of the ordinary mortal human being, just as we can separate oxygen out of water by a chemical process.

All that I have now brought before you must of course still be looked upon as fantastic at the present time; in relation to customary ideas, it is as fantastic as the words of Copernicus seemed, when he said, “It is not the sun which revolves round the earth, but the earth revolves round the sun.” Nevertheless, what appears so fantastic is really only something unaccustomed. It is not the case that something invented or dreamed has been related in what has just been set forth, but the point is that the spiritual is actually experienced as a fact by means of inward processes. The spiritual investigator is not speaking in a simple manner of man's nature when he enumerates, “Man consists of a physical body, etheric body, astral body, etc.,” but he is showing how that which is human nature, when it is contemplated as a whole, becomes split up into certain principles of which it is composed. And if the matter be regarded in accordance with its fundamental essence, nothing magical or mystical in a bad sense is meant by these principles of man's being. Spiritual science shows that man consists of different gradations, different shades of human nature. And this in a higher sphere is no different from the fact, in a lower one, that light may be so treated as to appear in seven colours. Just as light must be split up into seven colours in order that it may be studied, so must man be divided into his several parts in order that he may be really studied.

It should not be expected that what is spiritual can be brought before bodily eyes, before the senses. It must be experienced inwardly and spiritually. And to one who will not admit that inward experience, a spiritual experience, is in any way a fact, anything said by the spiritual investigator will be but empty skirmishing with words. To one who learns to know spiritual facts, these are realities in a far higher sense than are physical facts. If a plant grows, and develops blossom and fruit, a new plant again develops out of the seed; and when we have learnt to know the germ, we know that it has the full force of the plant within it, and that a new plant arises from the g-germ.

What is of the nature of spirit and soul must be learned from facts belonging to the spirit and soul; then we know that in the living thought, which is apprehended by the consciousness that is liberated out of the will, a life-germ has been discerned, which passes through the gate of death, goes through the spiritual world after death and afterwards returns again to earth-life. And just as truly as the plant-seed develops a new plant, does that which is the kernel of man's being develop a new earth-life. This new human being can be seen in the present one, for it becomes inwardly alive.

Natural science has methods of calculating certain events which will happen in the future. From the relative positions of the sun and moon it may be calculated when eclipses of these will occur. It is only necessary to know the corresponding factors in order to calculate when a certain conjunction of the stars will take place. In these cases it is necessary to use mathematics, because we are dealing with external space. The life-germ, which is inwardly experienced, also contains in a living way the indication of future earth-lives. Just as future eclipses of the sun and moon are indicated in the present relations of those bodies, so are future earth-lives indicated in that which is now alive within us. In this case we are not dealing with what, according to more ancient views, is called the transmigration of souls, but with something which modern spiritual research discovers from the facts of spiritual life, which are capable of being investigated.

Now certain things must be carefully kept in view, if we wish to understand the real foundations of spiritual research. We arrive at leaving the body with our soul and spirit through treating thought and will in the manner that has been indicated. We are then outside the body; and just as we usually have outer things before our eyes, so do we have our own physical body before us. But the essential thing is that we can always observe this body. And if it is a case of spiritual research in the true sense of the words, as it is here meant, that must never happen which does so in a diseased soul-life. For what is the characteristic feature of an abnormal or diseased soul-life? If some one is put into a hypnotic state or a so-called trance, as certain conditions are called, and speaks out of the subconscious, which is often denominated a kind of clairvoyance, the essential thing in the process is that the ordinary consciousness is not present whilst the changed consciousness is active. The former has been transformed into a dulled, abnormal consciousness. It will never be possible to say, when observing an abnormal and unhealthy condition of soul, “The healthy condition of soul is present at the same time as this,” for in that case the person would certainly not be unhealthy or abnormal.

In real spiritual research the fact is that man arrives at a changed consciousness, but that as a normal human being he is all the time standing by. The condition in which the spiritual investigator is, is not developed from out of ordinary normal soul-life, but by the side of it, if the condition is the right one. In the case of a genuine spiritual investigator, he lives, during his researches, outside his body; but his body continues to work on undisturbed together with all his normal soul-functions and his ordinary intellect, which remains completely normal. The man, if he is a true spiritual investigator, remains a normal human being, in spite of the fact that he has left his body, together with what he has developed within himself; and one who cannot himself investigate spiritually, really need not see that the other is living in a different world. The non-hypnotised person is not present beside the hypnotised one; the person with a normal soul-life is not present beside the one who is developing an abnormal soul-life. But the characteristic feature of spiritual research is that whilst it is being pursued, the person's normal condition is completely maintained. Just on this account the spiritual investigator is in a position accurately to distinguish true spiritual research from that which appears in any diseased conditions of soul.

Another mistake arises when it is thought that spiritual research has anything in common with ordinary spiritualism. By this it is not meant that all manner of facts may not be discovered through spiritualism, but these belong to natural science, not to spiritual science, for that which is discovered through spiritualism is presented to the outer senses, whether by means of materialisations, or knockings and the like. That which can be presented to the senses belongs to natural science. That which offers itself as an object to the spiritual investigator is of a soul and spirit nature, and cannot be presented externally, for instance, in space; it must be experienced inwardly.

Through the inner experience which has been described there is formed a comprehensive spiritual science, which not only throws light on the being of man and the passage through repeated earth-lives, but is also enlightening about the spiritual worlds and spiritual beings which lie behind nature. Spiritual research is able to enter the world through which man passes after death. Only it must not be thought that what appear in ordinary life in a certain sense as abnormal faculties have any special value in spiritual science. There is much talk nowadays of the possibility of telepathy. We will not now enter into all the pros and cons of this matter. People must grow accustomed to many things in the course of time. Just at the present time serious investigators are wrestling with the problem of the significance of the divining-rod, which is now so widely used, and about which one of the most matter-of-fact investigators is just now making important experiments, in order to ascertain what influence a person is under who is successful with the divining-rod. But all this belongs to the department of finer natural science. In the same way does the fact belong to this department that thoughts entertained by one person are able to influence another at a distance. True spiritual research cannot use such forces for gaining knowledge about the world of soul and spirit. It is a complete misunderstanding of spiritual science to think that it looks upon the teaching about telepathy as anything else but a part of a refined physiology, a refined form of natural science.

The way in which spiritual science investigates must not be confused with that which nowadays appears as spiritualism. When spiritual science remembers the human souls which are passing through a purely spiritual life in a spiritual world between death and re-birth, spiritual science knows that those souls are in the spiritual world in a soul-state pure and simple. Now it is possible for the spirit and soul that is in a human body to turn to the dead in such a way that a real connection is made with them. But this turning to the dead must itself be of a purely spiritual and soul character. Spiritual science shows this. And the direction of our own soul-life to our beloved dead may acquire deep significance, even whilst we ourselves are still in the physical world. It cannot be at variance with any religious belief if, through the view of the world taken by spiritual science, remembrance of the dead and active communion with them is cultivated in this way, if spiritual science stimulates this living together with the dead. In this connection it must always be borne in mind that the dead person can only be aware of what we are thinking and feeling for him in our souls if he desires such a connection with us. This also is shown by spiritual science. The exercise of any sort of power over the dead is entirely remote from the intentions of the spiritual investigator. He knows quite well that the dead are living in a sphere in which the relations of the will are different from those in the physical world; and if he were to wish to penetrate into the spiritual world, taking with him what he is able to develop here within the physical world, it would seem to him as though — to use a comparison — a company of people were sitting here and a lion suddenly appeared through the floor and committed ravages. So would harm result if an earthly human being were to force his way into the life of the dead in an unbefitting manner. Therefore there can be no question in spiritual science of summoning the dead, in the way in which this is attempted in spiritualism, just because the relations of the living to the dead are illuminated in a wonderful way by that which spiritual science arouses within our souls. And since amongst the numerous errors which have been urged against our spiritual science, one is that it has a connection with spiritualism with regard to the dead, it is very necessary to emphasise this misunderstanding sharply. Nothing less than the exact contrary of the truth is asserted with regard to spiritual science in this matter.

As already said, I do not wish to proselytise or arouse feeling for our cause, but only to mention misunderstandings which I know to be prevalent, and to indicate in the clearest way possible the relation of spiritual science to these matters.

Now the question is also asked — and it is even called an urgent one — what is the position of spiritual science or Anthroposophy towards the religious life of man? Its very nature, however, prevents it from interposing directly in any religious confession, in the sphere of any religious life. In this connection I can perhaps make myself clear in the following way. Let us assume that we have to do with natural science. Because we gain a knowledge of nature, we shall not imagine that we are able to create something in nature itself. Knowledge of nature does not create anything in nature. Nor, because we gain knowledge of spiritual conditions, shall we imagine that we are able to create something in spiritual facts. We observe spiritual conditions. Spiritual science endeavours to penetrate behind the mysteries of the spiritual conditions in the world. Religions are facts in the historical life of humanity. Spiritual science can of course go so far as to consider the spiritual phenomena which have appeared as religions in the course of the world's evolution. But spiritual science can never desire to create a religion, any more than natural science surrenders itself to the illusion of being able to create something in nature. Hence the most various religious confessions will be able to live together in the profoundest peace, and in complete harmony within the circle of the view of the world taken by spiritual science, and will be able to strive together after knowledge of the spiritual — so to strive that the religious convictions of the individual will not thereby be in any way injured. Neither need intensity in the exercise of a religious belief be in any way lessened by what is found in spiritual science. Rather must it be said that natural science, as it has appeared in modern times, has very often led people away from a religious conception of life, from the exercise of true, inner religion. It is an experience which we have in spiritual science that people who have been alienated from all religious life by the half-truths of natural science can be brought back again to that life through spiritual science. No one need be in any way estranged from his religious life through spiritual science. For this reason it cannot be said that spiritual science, as such, is a religious belief. It desires neither to create a religious belief, nor to change a man in any way with regard to the religious belief which he holds. Nevertheless it seems as though people were talking about the religion of the Anthroposophists! In reality such a thing cannot be said, for all religious beliefs are represented within the Anthroposophical Society; and no one is prevented by it from practically exercising his religious belief in the fullest, most comprehensive and most intense way. It is only that spiritual science desires to include the whole world in its survey; it desires to survey historical life, together with the highest spirituality which has entered historical life. That for this reason it also takes a survey of religions is absolutely no contradiction of what I have just said. And thus it comes to pass that the view of the world taken by spiritual science must in a certain respect deepen a man, even with regard to the objects of religious life.

But when, for instance, it happens that spiritual science is accused of not speaking of a personal God, when it is said that I prefer to speak of the Divinity, not of God, when it is asserted that what is called “the divine” in spiritual science is of a similar nature to that which is so designated in the pantheism of the Monists or Naturalists, this is all the opposite of the truth. Through the very circumstance that in spiritual science we are led to real spiritual beings, and to the real being that man is after death, just because we are led to concrete, real spiritual beings, we arrive at being able completely to understand how unreasonable it is to become a pantheist, how repugnant to common sense to deny personality in God. One arrives, on the contrary, at seeing that one may speak not only of the personality, but even of a super-personality of God. The most thorough refutation of pantheism may be found through spiritual science.

Can it be a subject of reproach that the spiritual investigator only speaks with deep reverence when, out of the feelings which his knowledge arouses in him, he points the way with awe to the divine? How often it is said in the circle of our friends, “In Him we live, and move, and have our being.” And one who wishes to comprehend God with one idea, does not know that all possible ideas cannot comprehend God, because all ideas are in God. But the recognition of God as a being who has personality in a much higher sense even than man, in a sense which even through spiritual science cannot be fully perceived, becomes quite, I would say, natural to people, specially through Anthroposophy. Religious conceptions are not made misty, in the pantheistic sense, through spiritual science, but, in accordance with their nature, become deepened. If we say that God is revealed in our own hearts and souls, this is surely the conviction of many religious people; and it is again and again said in spiritual science that there can be no question in this of wishing to deify man.

I have often used the simile that a drop taken out of the sea is water — do I therefore say that the drop is the sea? If I say that something divine speaks in the individual human soul, a drop out of the ocean of the infinite divine, do I therefore say anything which deifies the individual human soul? Do I say anything which unites nature with in a pantheistic way? Far from it. And finally, if from certain deeply-seated feelings which are aroused by spiritual science itself, the name “GOD” is, in reverential awe, not named but paraphrased, should this be a subject of blame from the religious point of view? I ask, is not one of the Ten Commandments, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain?” May not spiritual science stimulate to a faithful fulfilment of this command, if the name of God is not perpetually on the lips of its followers?

And the name and being of Christ? It is just of spiritual science that it may be said that it makes every effort to understand the being of Christ, and that in doing so it is never at variance with that which is developed, from true foundations, by any religious denomination. Only, in this very domain, we meet with something most singular. Some one comes and says he has a certain conception or feeling about Christ, about Jesus, and we say to him, “Certainly, we recognise these feelings as wholly justified; only spiritual science leads to thinking many other things about Christ as well. It does not deny what you say, it accepts it. Only it must add much more to it.”

Just because spiritual science widens the spiritual sight, the eye of the soul, to extend over the spiritual world, is it necessary not only to recognise in the being to whom the Christian looks up as his Christ, the one who walked this earth, but to bring this being into connection with the entire cosmos. And then, again, much else is the consequence of so doing. But nothing which results from it takes anything away from the knowledge of Christ, only something is added to what the religious man, the really Christian religious man, has to say about the Christ. And when some one attacks the conception of Christ Jesus held by spiritual science, it always seems to the spiritual investigator as though some one comes and says, “I have this or that to say about the Christ; do you believe it?” “Yes!” we say. “Yes, but you not only believe that, but more besides!” This he will not allow. He is not satisfied with our admitting what he advocates, but he forbids us to declare something still greater and grander about the Christ than he himself declares.

For can it really be a heresy when spiritual science, out of its fundamental basis, out of the observation of that which, as spirit, holds sway through the whole progress of the earth with regard to human and other evolution, arrives at saying, “The whole existence of the earth would have no meaning in the universe if the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place within the earthly sphere?” The spiritual investigator must say, “If any inhabitants of distant worlds could look down upon the earth and see what it is, they would see no meaning in the whole evolution of the earth unless Christ had lived, died, and risen again upon it.” The event of Golgotha gives meaning and purpose to earth-life for the whole world. If you were to study the results of spiritual research, you would see that reverence for Christ and devotion to Him cannot be diminished by such research, but on the contrary can only be enhanced.

Time presses, and I cannot enter into many other misunderstandings which have been spread abroad concerning certain thoughts about the Bible which are said to be prevalent in circles of Anthroposophists — as they are called, although the word would be better avoided, and only “Anthroposophy” used. The point in this case is that a person may be a very good spiritual investigator without in any way being able to accept what has, for definite reasons, been said for those members of our society who wish to know something about the Gospels or the Bible generally. But if what is said be read with the context, it will be found that, for instance, I never uttered such nonsense as that repeated earth-lives could be proved from the Bible by means of the passage in which Nathanael is spoken of. It has been asserted that I thought that when the Christ says, “When thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee,” he is referring to an earlier incarnation, in which he saw Nathanael sitting under the fig-tree. I can do but one thing when these misunderstandings fly about the world to-day, I can do but one thing — wonder how such things have been able to arise at all out of what was really said. They are just proofs of the manner in which what is really said becomes altered in the most diverse ways when it is repeated from one to another, and how the contrary — for in this case it is the contrary that came out — of what I had said was attributed to me.

I will not now discuss other misunderstandings, which could easily be refuted. I will only mention one thing, which may very easily be said, “What do you think of the fact that nothing about repeated earth-lives is found in the Bible?” It might be that some one would say that he could not believe in these repeated earth-lives, for the simple reason that, according to his convictions, there is a contradiction between the acceptation of these repeated earth-lives, which, certainly, minds such as Lessing's, for instance, admitted as true, and what is in the Bible.

Now repeated earth-lives will be accepted as a scientific, a spiritually-scientific fact, and people will learn to think in the following way about the relation to the Bible of such a fact of spiritual science, which had sooner or later to be discovered. Would it be thought possible for anyone to say he did not believe in the existence of America because the Bible does not mention such a place? Or would it be thought any injury to the Bible to say, “I think the existence of America is quite in harmony with my reverence for the Bible, in spite of America's not being mentioned within its pages”? Is there anything in the Bible about the truth of the Copernican view of the universe? There have been people who for this reason have looked upon the Copernican view of the world as something false and forbidden. Nowadays there is no one really versed in the culture of his time who could say that he found a contradiction between the teaching of Copernicus and the Bible — notwithstanding that the teaching of Copernicus is not in the Bible.

In the same way it may be said of the spiritually-scientific fact of repeated earth-lives that there is no injury done to the cardinal truths of the Bible, merely because nothing can be found therein about reincarnation, and because, indeed, much of its contents may be so interpreted as to seem to contradict this knowledge. These points must only be looked at from the right point of view. If they are so looked at, it may very well be remembered how such things change in the course of time. If some one says he will not admit the truth of repeated earth-lives for the reason that it contradicts the Bible, I am always reminded that there was a time when Galileo was treated in a very peculiar, well-known way, because he had something to say which apparently, but only apparently, contradicted the Bible. Or we may remember how Giordano Bruno was treated, because he too had something to say about which it was asserted that it could not be demonstrated out of the Bible.

I must, moreover, remember a priest who became the rector of a university some years ago, from the theological faculty, and who in his rectorial address, the subject of which was Galileo, spoke as a Catholic priest somewhat as follows. He said that times change and with them the way in which people accept recognised facts. Galileo was in his time treated as we all know; but now every true Christian sees that through the discovery of the grandeur of the cosmic system, as it became known through Galileo, the glory and majesty of God and devotion to Him can only be increased, not diminished. This was like a priest, it was like a Christian, indeed, it was perhaps said for the first time in a really Christian way. And the fine recognition of Galileo was Christian, which was gained for him from the whole address of this priest.

On the whole I would say, speaking from the convictions of spiritual science, that the spiritual scientist must, through his teachings, so think of what Christianity is, and of what Christ is to the world, as to say, “How fainthearted are those who think that in consequence of some discovery in the physical or spiritual domain the greatness which breathes towards us from the revelation of Christ can be diminished.” To the spiritual investigator he seems faint-hearted who thinks that through some fact, even such a weighty one as repeated earth-lives, some fact which is discovered in the physical or spiritual sphere, the splendour of the Christ-event and the influence of Christ can be lessened to the Christian; one who believes this might also believe that the sun loses power because it does not shine only for Europe, but for America too.

Whatever further physical or spiritual facts may be discovered, in any far-distant future, the great truths of Christianity will outshine them all. This is discerned by one who approaches the Christ-impulse and the entire Christian conception of the world with the attitude of spiritual research. Such a one has no fear. He is not so faint-hearted as to say that the splendour of Christianity can be diminished by any investigation. He knows that one who believes that Christianity can be imperilled by any physical or spiritual research, does not think much of Christianity.

It is really a question whether perhaps the numerous misunderstandings which exist with regard to that for which the Dornach building is an outward sign, an outer home, can be overcome. About the Dornach building itself I will only say to-day that it is intended to be nothing else but an artistic putting into form of that which is aroused in our perceptions and feelings when we have received into our souls the living essence of spiritual science or Anthroposophy. Therefore it should not be thought that the ideas of spiritual science are pictured by means of symbols or allegories in the forms of the building. Of that there is no question at all.

If you visit this building you will find that it has the peculiarity of having nothing at all mysterious in it, not a single symbol, nothing allegorical or the like. This has, from the very nature of the building, been kept entirely remote from it.

It may perhaps be said, “But it is necessary to know the thoughts belonging to spiritual science in order to understand what one sees!” This is true, but it is what the art of the Dornach building has in common with every other art. Take the Sistine Madonna, the wonderful picture of the Mother with the Child Jesus. I think that if a person who had never heard anything about Christianity were to stand before the Sistine Madonna, it would be necessary to explain to him what it is, for he too would not be able to understand the subject out of his own feelings. Thus it is a matter of course that it is necessary to live quite in the current of spiritual science in order to understand its art, just as it is necessary to be in the midst of Christianity in order to understand the Sistine Madonna.

The attempt is not made, in the Dornach building, to express the ideas of spiritual science symbolically, but there underlies it this fact of our view of the world, namely, that spiritual science is something — and this follows from what I have said here to-day — which takes hold of man's inner being in such a living, powerful way, that faculties otherwise dormant in him — artistic faculties as well as others — are awakened. And as spiritual science is something new — not a new name for something old, but something really new — just as present-day natural science is new as compared with the natural science of the Middle Ages, its art too must be something new and different from existing works of art. Gothic art came forward as new, compared with the antique; anyone who is of opinion that only antique art is of value may despise the Gothic; in the same way may a new style be abused, which arises out of a new way of feeling.

An accessory building is found especially bad. Near the building with two domes stands a heating-house. The attempt has been made to construct a useful building artistically out of the most modern of materials, concrete. The concrete was taken into account. And on the other hand everything that is in the building was taken into account. If anyone explains the form emblematically, if he sees all kinds of symbols in it, he is just a dreamer, a visionary, not one who sees what is there. Just as a nutshell is shaped so as to fit the nut-kernel, so does the artist try, in what he constructs, to form a shell for what is within it, a shell as it were in conformity with nature, so that the outer form is the appropriate covering of what it contains. That is what is attempted. And one who criticises this building and does not think it beautiful can be understood, for one must first grow used to these things. But he might perhaps try to imagine another chimney, as chimneys are now built, beside our heating-house, a correct, red chimney with its ordinary surroundings, and he might then compare the two.

It is true we very well know that what is attempted in the building at Dornach is but a beginning, and an imperfect beginning, but it is intended as the beginning of something which is arising out of a new view of the world, as a new style of architecture. There are also people who said, “Look, you have made seven columns, seven on each side of the principal hall. You are a very superstitious society; you believe in the mystical number seven.”

Well, one who sees seven colours in the

rainbow might also be thought superstitious. In that case it is really nature, which causes the fact, which should be thought superstitious. But anyone who talks about these seven columns should not at first consider the number, but consider what has been newly attempted in the matter. Elsewhere, similar columns are placed near each other. The capitals of our columns are designed to be in continuous development; the second column is different from the first, the third again different; one capital arises out of another. This results in an organism, which has inner laws in the same way as have the seven tones, from the tonic to the leading note.

It will thus be found that nowhere have ideas, symbolism or the mysterious been elaborated, but the endeavour has everywhere been made to develop something artistic in forms, colours and so forth. We have striven to make the whole building the right framework for what is to be carried on within it. Buildings have walls. In walls as they have hitherto been built, people are accustomed to see something so framed as to shut off space. Our walls are so covered over with forms from inside that there is no feeling of space being shut off by the form, but one has the feeling that the wall is pervious and that one is looking out into the infinite. The walls are so constructed in their forms that they seem to efface themselves, and we remain in connection with nature and the whole world.

In this short account I have not wished to convince anyone. I wished to do only what I laid stress on at the beginning; I wish to interest, not to convince. But one thing I would fain emphasise once more — the way in which people become conversant with a particular view of the world depends on their habits of thought. And one who is acquainted with the course taken by the spiritual evolution of mankind knows that truth has always had to be developed through obstacles. Only consider how Giordano Bruno had to come forth before humanity, a humanity which had always believed that the blue vault of heaven was the limit of space. Giordano Bruno had to tell people, “There is nothing at all where you see the blue vault of the sky; you put something there yourselves when you look at it. Space stretches out into infinity, and infinite worlds are in the infinite space.” What Giordano Bruno then did for physical observation, spiritual science has to do for soul and spirit, and for what is temporal. In regard to soul and spirit there is also a kind of firmament, on one side birth, or let us say conception, on the other side, death. But that firmament is actually just as little a reality as the blue firmament above; merely because people can only see as far as birth or conception and as far as death with ordinary human faculties of perception, they think there is a boundary there, as people used to think the firmament was a boundary. But just as the blue firmament is no boundary, but infinite worlds exist in infinite space, so must we, with enlarged faculties, look out beyond the firmament of birth and death into an infinity of time, and behold in it the development of the eternal soul throughout successive earth-lives. In the spiritual sphere things are not different from what they are in the sphere of natural science. Therefore it may be asked: How is it then that so many misunderstandings arise from so many quarters about spiritual science? In this case I must say, if I may treat the matter more or less personally, that I think the reasons why spiritual science meets with so much hostility and misunderstanding are partly objective and partly subjective.

Amongst the objective reasons I would place this one first and foremost: Spiritual science is something upon which it is necessary to concentrate one's thoughts seriously. Long and earnest work is needful in order to understand it, work which is inseparable from many experiences and even from many disappointments. But this is in reality the case with every subject of knowledge. The paths of Anthroposophy cannot be found without such work. It seems to be the custom to say that for the understanding of a watch it is necessary to learn how the wheels work together. This demands some trouble. But it does not seem to be equally customary to make a similar admission with regard to the universe at large. In this case difficult, apparently complicated views are not allowed to have any value, and yet they are only difficult because the subject in hand is so. Instead of studying spiritual science themselves, people find fault with it because, judged from their own point of view, it is difficult.

Then there are subjective reasons. And these are to be found in what I have already said. It is difficult for people in general to reconcile ideas which they have once formed with ideas to which they are unaccustomed. Such unaccustomed ideas need not even contradict those already entertained, but need only add something to what has already been thought.

It has always been thus with truth. What is contradicted are people's habits of thought. And from this point of view, if the subjective reasons for misunderstandings about spiritual science are sought, we must say that the reasons are to be found on the same ground from which the teaching of Copernicus was rejected by the whole world, when it first appeared. It was just something new. But truth has to make its own way in the world, and does so in the end. This may well be felt by one who has at heart spiritual science, and all that to which it stimulates.

He relies on the experience that truth always works its way through the smallest crevices in the rocks of prejudices which have been set up. Perhaps spiritual science may still be hated now. But one who hates it will, at the most, only be able to make others hate it with him, people who are attached to him and swear by what he says. But never yet has a truth been effaced through having been hated. Truth may at any time be misunderstood and misinterpreted, but there will always be found those who know and rightly understand, in the face of those who misconstrue and misjudge. And even if that which spiritual science has to say in our time is not now recognised as true, if it is misunderstood and unappreciated, the time will come for this science also. Truth may be suppressed, but not destroyed. It must always be born again, however often it may be suppressed.

For truth is intimately, deeply and vitally bound up with the human soul, in such a way that one may be convinced that the human soul and truth belong to one another like sisters. And even if there are times and places in which dissension comes about between them, and some misunderstanding arises, recognition, and mutual love must always reappear between the soul and truth. For they are sisters, who have a common origin, and must always be lovingly mindful of their common origin — their origin in the spirituality which rules throughout the universe, and the discovery of which is the very task which Anthroposophy sets itself.

Afterword

By means of the details given in this booklet, it was to be shown how anthroposophical spiritual science receives its form at the present time as knowledge of the spiritual world, by going along lines which can hold their own by the side of the authorised lines of a scientific way of looking at things. In order to penetrate into the spiritual world in just as trustworthy a manner as natural science does into the world of matter, spiritual science must take paths which are different from those of natural science. In order to satisfy in a spiritual sphere the same demands which natural science satisfies in its sphere, it must work with faculties of perception and knowledge which are adapted to the spiritual, just as those of natural science are adapted to nature. A spiritual science with aims such as these cannot in any way be confused with more ancient tendencies of thought such as the Gnosis, etc. We can observe how in the course of modern times the effort to arrive at it appears quite clearly. Therefore it does not come forth as something which is voluntarily fabricated at the present time, but as the fulfilment of hopes which can be observed in the mental development of the West. Many things might be adduced to prove this; but we will only give two examples here, which show that “Anthroposophy” is something that has been thought about for a long time. Troxler, a thinker of the first half of the nineteenth century who is much under-estimated, published his Vorlesungen über Philosophie in 1835. In this work there is the sentence, “Although it is highly gratifying that the latest philosophy ... winds upwards in every Anthroposophy, i.e., it must be revealed in poetry as well as in history, we must not overlook the fact that this idea cannot be the fruit of speculation, and the true personality or individuality of man may not be confused either with what it sets up as subjective spirit or final ego, or with what it contrasts with this as absolute spirit or absolute personality.” What Troxler brings forward regarding his idea of Anthroposophy is confined to statements which clearly show how close he is to the acceptance of principles of human nature beyond the physical body. He says, “In earlier times philosophers differentiated a delicate, sublime soul-body from the grosser body. This they considered to be a sort of vehicle of the spirit, and it was an image of the body. They called it the pattern, and looked upon it as the inner, higher man.” The connection in which these words are found in Troxler's work, and the whole of his conception of the world, testify that we may see in his case aspirations which are fulfilled in the spiritual science indicated in this booklet. Only, as Troxler is not in the position to recognise that Anthroposophy is only possible through the development of soul-capacities in the direction indicated in this booklet, his own views relapse to points of view which, as compared with those attained by J. G. Fichte, Schelling and Hegel are not an advance, but retrogression. (See my book Die Rätsel der Philosophie.) In the work of J. H. Fichte, the son of the great philosopher, viz., in his Anthropologie, second edition 1860, page 608, we find the following sentences, “Anthropology ends in the result which is confirmed from various quarters, that the true nature of man's being and the real source of his consciousness belong to a super-sensible world. But sense-consciousness and the phenomenal world which appears before his eyes, together with the whole of the life of the senses, have no other importance than merely to be the place where that super-sensible life of the spirit is realised, by his bringing the spiritual contents of ideas into the sense-world through his own free, conscious act. ... The final result of this fundamental comprehension of human nature raises ‘Anthropology’ to ‘Anthroposophy.’“ In connection with the explanation of these sentences J. H. Fichte says (p. 609), “Thus, finally, Anthroposophy itself is only able to find its final conclusion in Theosophy.” The reasons why J. H. Fichte with his own view of the world did not arrive at Anthroposophy, but fell behind J. G. Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, are the same as in Troxler's case. For the present we will only give these two examples out of a multitude of facts contained in the history of the spiritual development of mankind, which could be adduced to prove that the anthroposophical spiritual science characterised in this booklet responds to a scientific tendency which has existed for a long time.

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In a lecture which I gave in 1902 before the Giordano Bruno Union, I referred to these statements by J. H. Fichte (which seemed to me to be the expression of a modern intellectual movement, not merely of an individual opinion); that was the time when a beginning was made with what now appears as the anthroposophical way of looking at things. From this it may be seen that we had in view the extension of the modern tendency of thought to the genuine observation of spiritual reality. We did not try to bring forth certain views out of the publications then called “theosophical” (and still so named at the present time), but we strove to continue the aspirations given birth to by modern philosophers, aspirations which, however, in their case remained in abstractions, and thus did not gain entrance to the true spiritual world. At the same time, this continuation seemed to me to be an extension of the view which Goethe, placing it at the foundation of his view of nature, which he described as being “in accordance with the spirit,” did not actually express, but felt. One who has followed my writings and lectures may gather all this from them; and I would not specially mention this matter if the misrepresentation of the truth were not brought up again and again, when it is said that I have changed from all that I wrote and said formerly and have turned to the views represented in the works of Blavatsky and Besant. One who carefully studies, for example, my Theosophy, will find that everything contained in it is developed in accordance with and as a continuation of the above-described direction of modern thought; he will find that the matters dealt with are presented in accordance with certain presuppositions contained in Goethe's conception of the world, and that only in certain places is it mentioned that ideas which I had arrived at (etheric body, sensation body, etc.), are also to be found in literature which is called theosophical. I know that by these explanations I shall not be able to do away with certain attacks made against me again and again, for in many cases these attacks are not made in order to arrive at the actual facts of the matter, but for something entirely different. But what can be done in the face of ever-recurring inexactitudes? Nothing can be done but to reiterate the truth!

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The searcher who works on the basis of the kind of knowledge indicated in this booklet sees that the method of his investigations is in complete accord with the endeavours of present-day natural science. But he knows that these endeavours of natural science must everywhere come to a stand-still or run into blind alleys if they do not meet what spiritual science can bring to light from opposite starting-points. A true view of the matter would look upon both directions of work as being like the boring of a tunnel, which commences from opposite directions, but, when the work is properly arranged, the two parties meet. The facts of contemporary work fully confirm this view. It is only misled opinions-regarding these facts which deny this and presume that spiritual science and natural science contradict each other. This contradiction, however, does not really exist. We have a brilliant example of the importance of the meeting of natural science and spiritual science in a book which has just been published, in, my opinion an epoch-making book. Vom Schaltwerk der Gedanken: Neue Einsichten und Betrachtungen über die Seele, by Karl Ludwig Schleich. If you read the important chapter on “Hysteria—a metaphysical problem,” you will see how a practical physician, who is at the same time a penetrating thinker, confronts facts which can only be fully elucidated by spiritual science, facts which compel him to say: “In the production of tissue through the impulse of hysteria we have the metaphysical problem of incarnation,” in “mediumistic vision, a kind of clairvoyance of possibilities of disease.” But a person would be under one of the very worst of illusions if he seriously thought that without the results of spiritual science he could explain all the actual experiences of man by the facts discovered by natural science. The scientist who refuses to consider spiritual science is like a man who has a piece of magnetic iron in his hand, but has no notion of magnetism and only uses the iron for an instrument in which magnetism plays no part. What would have come out of it if he had put the magnetism and not the material iron to some use? If you also read in Schleich's book the chapter on “The myth of the change of matter in the brain,” you will see for yourself how, by constraint of thought, the scientific physician comes to a formal description of what spiritual science—from a comprehensive presentation of spirit-life—appropriately describes as the etheric body of man. It is interesting to notice how this particular chapter in Schleich's book shows that at the present time natural science and spiritual science often talk in vain, because the co-operation of natural scientists and spiritual scientists in intellectual affairs is so difficult, on account of the dissipation of our intellectual life. Here we come to the painful thought: How different these things would be if scientists were really to become acquainted with spiritual science, instead of passing it by and leaving it to the foolish misrepresentations of those who act in accordance with the axiom: “Do not examine, but keep your irrelevant, prejudiced verdict!” At the close of the above-mentioned chapter Schleich says—and the case is important, because there is no question of ill-will, it is the statement of an upright, true investigator—“If Goethe, that seer and prophet, observed so many connections in nature and demonstrated that the skull with all its parts is nothing but an expanded cervical vertebra, because all the constituent parts of the latter can be traced in the bony covering of the brain, it would not surprise me if the thought I have just expressed, namely, of the heaping up of the brain out of the elements of the spinal marrow, did not also slip into the labyrinth of his thought. I should not be surprised if some day a slip of paper by Goethe on this subject was found.” Such is our intellectual co-operation at the present time! In 1916 an honest searcher expects that some time a scrap of paper of Goethe's will be found. But this was found by me as long ago as 1891. In the Goeian Annual for 1892, page 175, in the article Goethe as Anatomist, written by Professor K. v. Bardeleben, you will read, “The fact that Goethe occupied himself not only with Osteology, but also with the ligaments, the muscles, as well as the brain, is shown by various notes, most of them on loose leaves. In the Venetian Diary for 1790 R. Steiner found the following sentence, which may be closely connected with Goethe's thought on the vertebral nature of the skull-bones: ‘The brain itself is only a large principal ganglion. The organisation of the brain is repeated in each ganglion, so that each ganglion is to be looked upon as a small subordinate brain.’“ On the basis of this and similar things which I found, I was able to write in 1897 in my book, Goethe's Weltanschauung, out of purely scientific thought, “Each nerve-centre in the ganglia was to him (Goethe) a brain at a lower stage.” And this, in addition to many other things in connection with it, I have often mentioned since. This is only intended to be a small example of the manner in which investigators talk in vain in our pursuit of modern science. I shall certainly be the last to reproach Schleich for not knowing Goethe's Annual for 1892 and my book of 1897; the uncertainty in our pursuit of science comes not from people but from the conditions.

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In this booklet it has been pointed out how unfounded is all antagonism to spiritual science proceeding from religious points of view. We mentioned the excellent rectorial address given in 1894 by a catholic priest who was professor to the theological faculty at Vienna University. We are referring to Doctor Laurenz Müllner and his discourse on Galileo's Importance to Philosophy. In this address Doctor Milliner, who has remained a faithful son of his Church, says the following: “Thus a new conception of the world appeared (he is referring to the Galileo-Copernican view), which in many points was apparently at variance with opinions regarding which it was asserted, with very questionable right, that they proceeded from the doctrines of Christianity. It was much more a question of the contrast of the widened world-consciousness of the modern age to the more limited one of the antique, a contrast to the Greek, but not to the rightly understood Christian conception of the world, which could only see fresh marvels of divine power and wisdom in the newly discovered starry worlds, whereby the miracle of divine love accomplished on earth could only acquire greater importance.” In a similar manner with respect to the relation of spiritual science to religion it may be said that this spiritual science is often apparently at variance with opinions which are often represented as belonging to Christianity, but which with very questionable right assert their origin in the doctrines of Christianity. It is more a question of the contrast of the world-consciousness of our modern age which has extended into spiritual reality, to the narrowly limited natural-scientific consciousness of the last few centuries, but not to the rightly understood Christian conception of the world, which should only see in the spirit-worlds of Anthroposophy new marvels of divine power and wisdom, whereby the miracle of divine love accomplished in the world of sense can only acquire enhanced importance. As soon as in certain directions there is a fundamental insight into spiritual science such as was possessed by the above-mentioned noble priest and theologian, Laurenz Milliner, into modern natural science, all the attacks which are often made in such an unfounded manner upon spiritual science from the standpoint of religion will cease.

Guest performance at the Court Theater, Weimar

The person who first explained the greatness of Shakespeare's dramas from the fact that their poet was an actor had a happy, illuminating idea. It is less important that this poet practiced the art of acting professionally than that he was, by his very nature, an actor. It is part of the essence of such a nature that it can, with complete denial of its own personality, immerse itself in other characters. The actor renounces being himself. He is given the opportunity to speak out of other beings. And the more malleable, the more transformable he is, the more of an actor he is. It has a deeply symbolic meaning that we know next to nothing about Shakespeare as a person. What is he to us as a person? He does not speak to us as a person; he speaks to us in roles. He is the true chameleon. He speaks to us as Hamlet, as Lear, as Othello. Shakespeare plays theater, even when he writes plays. He no longer feels what is going on in his soul when he creates the characters in his plays. Because Shakespeare was only an actor, his plays can only be performed by real actors. It will always be the sign of an actor's deficiency if his art fails in Shakespeare's dramas.

These thoughts crossed my mind last Sunday when I saw Mr. Wüllner's Othello. I couldn't shake off a certain impatience throughout the performance. I wanted to see Othello and all I saw all evening was Mr. Wüllner. I wanted to understand how Othello could gradually fall into this terrible rage of jealousy, and I only got to know the feelings that dominate Mr. Wüllner when he looks at Othello. Mr. Wüllner has not the power of self-expression which makes the true actor. At every moment he lets us see to the bottom of his own being.

Do not be unfair to Mr. Wüllner. His art is no small one. He has a great command of his means of expression, he is a master of the nuances of acting. There are many things to praise. But it is annoying when you see such art applied where the main point is missed.

Mr. Wüllner used to be a learned philologist. I think I recognize the scholar in the actor. The scholar lacks the ability to slip into the unknown; he only observes it, he usually just ponders it. And Mr. Wüllner did not play Othello, he played about Othello. He played what he pondered about Othello. But what does the audience care what Mr. Wüllner feels about Othello, no matter how vividly it is felt. I would rather see Mr. Wüllner's feelings and thoughts about the character of Othello set down in a literary work than acted on the stage. I have no doubt that such a work would be interesting. But I am not interested in interesting doctrines on the stage. They don't seem interesting there. It was therefore boring and tiring to watch Mr. Wüllner's Othello to the end. To portray a character in such a way that he stands there as if from a single mould, that the spectator has the feeling with every word, with every gesture, with every step, that all this must be so: this, it seems, Mr. Wüllner cannot do. With every detail one has the feeling that it could be different without changing anything as a whole. Mr. Wüllner offered a mosaic of acting nuances, not a uniform character. His art lacks style. It seems mannered. It represents the flip side of good acting. It denies everything that makes good actors great. Mr. Wüllner cannot eradicate the "doctor" in himself.

On October 2, 1895, the Marie Seebach Foundation was opened in Weimar. The founder created a friendly home for sixteen German stage artists who had become unfit for their profession due to old age or illness. In doing so, she realized a wonderful idea within the limits imposed by the circumstances. Compared to the large number of German stage performers, however, the cause has a modest reputation. It can only be regarded as a fortunate and very grateful suggestion. However, the founder has understood how to set an example that is truly worthy of imitation. If imitation were to take place in abundance and if the same sure sense of what meets the needs were always demonstrated as with Marie Seebach, then an important social issue for German stage artists would indeed be solved.

Guest performance at the Neues Theater, Berlin

The Italians currently call Ermete Zacconi their greatest actor. For a few days now, we have been seeing him every day at the Neues Theater in Berlin. Before that, he did a guest performance at the Carl Theater in Vienna. The news we received about this guest performance from Vienna bordered on the unbelievable. Not since Duse had thrilled the art community in the city on the Danube had anything similar been experienced there. People fell into a delirium when they saw Zacconi. Eight days ago, a Viennese theater critic wrote in this magazine that for weeks, while Zacconi was with them, the theater-goers of Vienna were preoccupied with the question: what is the secret of the great actor? Now we have also seen him here in Berlin. His first role was that of Oswald in the "Ghosts". The message of the Viennese delirium had so little effect on the Berliners that on the third day of his guest performance, when he played Oswald for the third time, Zacconi produced himself in front of empty benches. And there was absolutely no sign of any excitement about the question: what is the secret of the great actor? And I must confess that I, too, cannot quite understand the excitement in Vienna. Zacconi has taught me only one thing. When the art of acting emancipates itself from drama and appears obtrusive and self-important to us, it becomes repulsive. We want the actor to carry out the poet's intentions. We call an actor great when he succeeds in bringing the poet's intentions to the stage in the purest, most unadulterated way. This is the secret of the great actor for anyone of understanding. There is no other. Zacconi has not given us the slightest explanation of this problem. Basically, his art has nothing to do with this kind of acting. It is ridiculous to argue about whether Zacconi is a great actor in the sense that he aspires to be. He is not interested in poetry. He has become acquainted with Ibsen's drama "Ghosts". He has seen that there is a paralytic in it. Now he plays the course of the paralysis in a masterly way. The way in which he portrays the development of this illness in all its phases is of indescribable perfection. Probably nothing better can be created on stage in this direction. He portrays paralysis in ideal perfection, just as Goethe portrays the type of the noble woman in Iphigenia. He elevates a clinical image to a work of art. 'But Ibsen's drama is none of Zacconi's business. Zacconi is indifferent to what happens in this drama apart from Oswald going mad. The whole plot could go differently than Ibsen portrays it: Zacconi would play everything the way he plays it after all, if only one thing were certain, that Oswald is a paralytic. One could become angry when one sees how the intrusive art of the comedian deals with great poetry. But you don't get angry. And that is the strange thing about Zacconi. His art is again so great that you are drawn into its spell. It is so great that one forgives even his acts of violence towards poets. One says to oneself: Ibsen's Oswald is not portrayed by Zacconi. But what Zacconi portrays is interesting in every turn. You follow every word, every gesture, every movement with the most rapt attention. You say to yourself, if an actor can do something so important, let's enjoy him for once, even if he moves in the wrong direction. Zacconi is also forgiven for appearing in the worst possible plays. Where we are not interested in the poet, we are genuinely interested in the actor.

I was curious about Zacconi as Kean. I told myself I was dealing with an actor who was nothing more than an actor, a comedian. In the silly play "Kean", Zacconi had to play a comedian. I thought that must be his best role. It will show what he can actually do. The actor as a human being, I thought, is what he will bring to the stage. What the comedian suffers and what joys he feels, that's what Zacconi will portray, I thought. And strange! It was precisely as Kean that I liked Zacconi the least. He doesn't portray the actor as a human being, but as an actor. Zacconi's Kean is not only acting when he plays Hamlet on stage; he is also acting when he talks to members of high society in the drawing room; he is also acting when he receives visits from his lovers in his dressing room. In Kean, Zacconi has revealed his nature. He has given his whole personality to the art of comedy. His individuality, his soul, has been absorbed into this art and has completely disappeared. He is no longer human at all; he is just a comedian. And he is a comedian in everything he brings to the stage. That's why we admire his tricks, but we are never moved, never enraptured. We try to figure out how he does this and that, but that's as far as our feelings towards him go. He does not depict human actions, but soulless images of these actions.

Zacconi's acting is an independent art. And an art that loses all justification in this independence. Poets could not write dramas for the stage if all actors played the way Zacconi plays. They would only have to write instructions for the actors. Ibsen should not have written his "Ghosts", but the general outline of a plot in which a paralytic appears. He should have left it to the brilliant actor to carry out this plot in detail. As long as playwrights create as they do at present, Zacconi's way makes no sense.

Guest performance in Berlin

If I were to describe in a few words the feeling I have when Adele Sandrock is on stage, I would have to say: I revel in the pleasure of mature, sweet beauty. I leave the theater in the harmonious mood that I usually only have when I have succeeded in completing a difficult work to my complete satisfaction. A soothing calm takes over my soul. Not a calm similar to that which comes from idleness, but a calm similar to that which comes from a properly completed life.

This was not always the case when I saw Adele Sandrock. Ten years ago, when she was just beginning to be regarded by the public as a great actress, I left her performances with a hot head and feverish nerves. Everything in me twitched when I saw her Eva, her Alexandra - in Richard Voss' plays - or even her Anna in Gunnar Heiberg's "King Midas". A great nature spoke from her. Everything one had in the way of vitality excited her. But back then you had to find peace through yourself. It gave you nothing to restore the torn harmony of your soul. There was always something missing that belonged to full beauty. It must also calm the waves it has stirred. Sandrock was once a stormy wind, now she has become a power that knows how to evenly distribute storm and calm. That is why I say her art has the hallmark of mature beauty that comes from harmony.

I believe that Adele Sandrock owes this to the fact that she came to the Burgtheater at the right time. Her style was mature, and in the Burgtheater she found a calm. Beauty blossomed there, but the warmth of passion and temperament had died in this beauty. The whole Burgtheater was like Charlotte Wolter. Adele Sandrock brought with her everything that Charlotte Wolter lacked, and with the manner of a genius she appropriated what she could learn from Wolter.

Now, at her Berlin guest performance, I found in Adele Sandrock all the traits that once made me feel hot, but everything is muted by the noble artistry that was always at home in the Burgtheater.

This was already clear to me on the first evening when she played Francillon. It became even clearer to me during the performance of "Mary Stuart". This Mary was all life and also all art. The innocent-guilty woman appeared in large, noble-beautiful features, in whom one could believe at any moment that a noble soul can submit to great misfortune.

And the following evening, this Christine in Schnitzler's brisk, genuinely dramatic, fragrantly beautiful insignificance "Liebelei". The Viennese girl with all the magic of loveliness that is so charming in the city on the Danube. I always had to ask myself: where have I seen this girl? She seemed like a good acquaintance to me. And yet again everything was played in the style of the Burgtheater. Immediately afterwards, the high-spirited, cynical exuberance of Anni in Schnitzler's "Abschiedssouper". The two roles are like black and white, and Sandrock didn't miss a note in either of them.

However, old memories came back most vividly when she played Eva. That was one of the roles in which she shone ten years ago. How differently she plays it now. A noble dignity always forces the erupting passion back into beautiful form. Adele Sandrock says today what she said ten years ago, but she has recast everything in the same way that Goethe recast his Iphigenia in Italy. Her passion is still the same as before, her warmth is still the same as before: but above the passion, above the warmth, stands the personality of the artist, who no longer allows herself to be subdued by the forces of her soul and is driven by them. Today she rules over them with playful power.

When Adele Sandrock recently made a guest appearance in Berlin, she published a short article in the Berliner Tageblatt in which she advocated the employment of female directors. The idea is certainly very appealing, and if one is generally in favor of opening up to women the professions to which prejudice and error have so far prevented them, then one can only applaud the proposal of the great Viennese actress. Nevertheless, one should not suppress reservations in this respect. The reasons put forward by Adele Sandrock are the main reason for this. In many cases, directing is a matter of arrangements that women take care of in real life. They should therefore - in Adele Sandrock's opinion - have more understanding than men when it comes to working out these arrangements on stage. One thing is not taken into account: It is another to do a thing in real life, another to imitate it in the field of art. This seems to be a fundamental error in Adele Sandrock's conception of art. Could not the male imagination be better suited than the female imagination to imitate those things on stage that women do in life? Of course, it cannot be denied that there will always be some women in the ranks of actresses who have a distinct talent for directing. They should not be deprived of the opportunity to use this talent. 'There will also be plays that definitely need a female hand. They will be those in which feminine feelings and views are in the foreground. In short, Adele Sandrock's suggestion will not be easy to reject. Incidentally, Berlin will soon get to know the advantages of a female director - the enterprising Nuscha Butze will not fail to add to the burden of direction in her "theater, which she takes off Lautenburg's shoulders, also that of the "Oberregie", with which her predecessor was also burdened.

Dr. Raphael Löwenfeld, the meritorious director of the Berlin Schiller Theater, has just had the lecture "Volksbildung und Volksunterhaltung" (Popular Education and Popular Entertainment), which he gave on June 8, 1897 at the general assembly of the Gesellschaft für Verbreitung von Volksbildung in Halle a.S., published. He advocates working on the education of more classes of the people through popular theater with cheap admission prices and by organizing lecture evenings. The example of the Schiller Theater, whose activities Löwenfeld describes, illustrates how a popular theater should be conceived. The lecture evenings are intended to present individual artistic personalities to a larger audience. On such an evening, a characterization of a poet or sound artist should first be developed, and this should be followed by declamations or musical reproductions of individual creations by the artists concerned. It is to be hoped that the author's fine intentions will be well received. For one must agree with him when he considers art to be the best means for the further development of a mature person. Those who are no longer able to follow scientific debates after a hard day's work can very well refresh and enrich their minds with the creations of art. Löwenfeld rightly says: "Those who come from gainful employment, physically tired and mentally exhausted, need stimulation in the most appealing form... Not factual knowledge, not specialist training, but intellectual stimulation in the broadest sense is the task of popular education."

November 13, 1897 brings back an interesting memory. It was the centenary of the birth of the composer Gustav Reichardt, to whom we owe the song "Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland". After the wars of liberation, the song was sung in a different melody. It was not suitable to become popular. Reichardt's succeeded to the highest degree. It is said that the composer wrote down the melody in the old little chapel on the Schneekoppe during a hike.

*

An essay by the Berlin court conductor F. Weingartner in the "Neue Deutsche Rundschau" is a true example of unclear thinking. After Weingartner has unreservedly vented his resentment towards the younger composers, their followers and praisers, he describes the "coming man" in music, the savior from the confusion caused by the young originalists. "At first I think of him as independent of all party politics and not concerned with it, because he stands above it; I think of him as neither narrow-mindedly Germanistic nor vapidly international, but as having an all-human feeling, because music is an all-human art; I think of him as being filled with an ardent, unbridled enthusiasm for what has been created by the great spirits of all times and nations, feeling an insurmountable aversion to mediocrity, with which he comes into contact through compulsion, at most once through his own good-naturedness. I imagine him without envy, because he is aware of his own high value and trusts in it, therefore far removed from any petty propaganda for his works, but, if necessary, thoroughly honest, even ruthless, and therefore not particularly popular in many places. I think of him as not fearfully closing himself off from life, but with a tendency towards loneliness - not hating people with exaggerated world-weariness, but despising their pettiness and narrow-mindedness, therefore choosing only exceptions for his closer contact. I imagine him to be not insensitive to success or failure, but not to be moved one step from his path by either, very indifferent to so-called public opinion, a republican in his political views in the sense of Beethoven. ... Feeling himself truly related only to the greatest geniuses, he nevertheless knows that he too is only a new link in the chain which they form together, and also knows that other great ones will follow him. So he too belongs to a direction, but one that hovers above the heads of mankind and flies over them." Does Mr. Weingartner really believe that nature will see fit to realize his fantasies? And if not, why is he writing down his ideal of the future musician? Incidentally, this ideal would be extremely useful for any creative work. If Badeni's successor had the qualities described by Weingartner, the confusion in Austria could give way to the most beautiful harmony. It is incomprehensible how a highly talented artist can please himself with such gimmicks of idle thinking.

*

During these days, the newspapers have been publishing statistical reports on the repertoire of the past season on German stages. They showed that the most popular plays were the Blumenthal-Kadelburg company's "Im weißen Rößl" and "Hans Huckebein", while interest in classical performances had declined considerably. I have long been extremely suspicious of such statements. They say nothing at all. For they do not reveal what our audience is really interested in. We can see that the views of theater directors today no longer correspond to the tastes of the audience. The line-up of our miserable repertoire does not arise from the fact that our audience does not want anything better, but from the fact that the theater directors believe that people only want to see spicy trash. They only try to present something better, as Burckhard, for example, did in his afternoon performances at the Burgtheater in Vienna: the audience really finds itself. There is some truth in the saying: every theater director has the audience he deserves. Our appalling repertoire does not prove a decline in general taste, but only that our theater directors prefer to perform bad plays rather than good ones, and that they therefore attract the lovers of bad plays to the theater, while keeping the audience with better taste away from the theater. Classical performances, presented in a dignified manner, will always have an audience. If the theater directors want to be "poets" at the same time and want to sell their own works of art, then the evil is the greatest imaginable. It should become a kind of rule of decency for theater directors never to perform their own plays at their own institutions. Perhaps such a rule of decency demands some qualities that are not given to everyone; but every code of honor demands such a thing.

I don't see why theater directors should determine taste. In recent years they have shown themselves to be so prejudiced that you don't have to agree with them when they say: we can't put on anything better because no one else will go to the theater. They should try something else. Perhaps they will then have different experiences. I would even seriously advise many of them to stop writing plays.

Stage adaptation

Heinrich Jantsch, the director of the "Wiener Jantsch-Theater", who used to be a member of the Meiningen ensemble, has published a stage adaptation of "Wilhelm Tell" (Halle 1898). He explains that he wants to open a debate with his work about how plays can best be rehearsed. He provides a director's book containing all the instructions necessary for the actors in a play. This director's book should contain everything about a role that takes place while the performer is in front of the audience. One will certainly not be able to refrain from expressing serious reservations about such far-reaching instruction books. Performers who insist on their independence will rebel against such "drill". But consider that the author can hardly have the will to suppress legitimate independence. He wants to make a suggestion - nothing more! "If the performer of the role is intellectually higher than the one who made the 'remark', yes, if he believes he is only allowed to express his own opinion, no one will stop him. He grows beyond the remark, perhaps precisely because of this first suggestion. In any case, it has taken the place of nothing - something!"

It should not be forgotten that in countless cases there will not be enough time to formulate such an opinion. A book like the one Jantsch has in mind must not, of course, be the result of random ideas. It must be the result of a long experience. And then it will serve even the most cradled and talented actor excellently. It must contain what has stood the test of time. "Such a director's book need not be the work of a single person, just as our most beautiful scenery is often created with the help of many actors. Don't complain about the drill that seems to grow out of such a scenario, it is a thousand times better than chaos; it declares war on thoughtlessness on stage." Some of Jantsch's introductory remarks will be reproduced here to characterize the tendency and nature of the proposal.

"The smaller the role, the more necessary the comment and explanation, not only with regard to the external but also the internal design. - Let's take the much-maligned servant roles, one of which is not even mentioned on Lessing's playbill for "Emilia Galotti". - We are at the pleasure palace Dosalo, the prince together with Emilia. Then the prince's mistress, Countess Orsina, intervenes, whom no one had suspected. - A servant delivers this terrifying news with the words:

"The countess is just arriving."

The prince: "The countess? What kind of countess?"

Servant: "Orsina."

The catastrophe of the play germinates in this servant's role! - This slick journeyman, who has grown up in the sins of his master, loses all sense and reason at the news that the Countess has just arrived. - For him, for the prince, for everyone in the castle, she was "the Countess! not Countess Orsina, not the Countess. - In the servant's imagination, there is only one count and one countess at this moment, and this count is the prince himself.

Does the director of the middle stages have time to make these - so necessary - comments? Will he - if he gives them - be thanked by the actor in the role of the servant, who - otherwise a highly esteemed member of the chorus - is reluctant to be "trained"? - In the choir rehearsal he is used to the dressing down, in the play it would be humiliation - so great is the misjudgment. - If the note is written in his role, then it's easier, otherwise the member is not a disavowed enemy of role-reading - which should also happen.

"That's how I recognize my Pappenheimer." The word owes its immortal ridicule to the poor devils who appear in audience with Wallenstein dressed in cardboard armor as the ten cuirassiers of Pappenheim. - As long as the play had been performed before, it was the Meininger who made the cuirassier scene what it is. - There was no laughter! Why should there be? A bit of drill and the audience takes us seriously.

The great value Schiller - the eminent stage practitioner - placed on the role of the servant is demonstrated by the fact that he repeatedly put announcements in the mouths of the heroes themselves. Thus in "Wallenstein" after the monologue "If it were possible". - The Swedish colonel is to be reported. The page enters.

Wallenstein to the page: "The Swedish colonel? Is it him? Well, here he comes!" In Wallenstein we have the example that the message:

"Ten cuirassiers

From Pappenheim demand you in the name

To speak in the name

*

Carl Heine, the director of the theater performances organized by the "Leipziger Literarische Gesellschaft", put together an ensemble with which he gave performances of Ibsen's works in various German cities. On the occasion of the Vienna guest performance of this ensemble, Dr. Heine has now developed the aims and character of his "Ibsen Theatre" in an interesting essay in the weekly magazine "Zeit", the main points of which I think are worth mentioning here.

Heine starts from the conviction that Ibsen is the best school for an ensemble striving for St]. He quite rightly emphasizes that Ibsen is a blessing for actors because they are forced to play not roles and theatrical templates but life types and individualities in his plays. If you want to cast one of Ibsen's later plays - this is not yet the case with the earlier plays - you cannot possibly stick to the old subjects: the bon vivant, the character player, the sedate lover, the chaperone and so on; in Heine's ensemble, the roles of Rank, Aslaksen, Wholesaler Werle, the Stranger, Rosmer and Jörgen Tesmann are all in one hand, as are those of Brendel, Dr. Stockmann, Brack, Hjørgen Tesmann. Stockmann, Brack, Hjalmar Ekdal, Oswald, Günther and Gabriel Borkmann. Such a lack of expertise forces the actor to stick to individual life, to observation, not to the custom and tradition of the theater.

Directing the dialog in Ibsen's dramas also requires a special art. Heine believes that facial expressions and gestures are less important than in older drama. He uses them only as an aid and as sparingly as possible. On the other hand, he attaches great importance to grouping. The position of the characters in relation to each other, their following each other, their fleeing, the elimination of a character and their closer or further distance from the main troupe form, in his opinion, a large part of what is called mood. Only by striking in this direction that which corresponds to the poet's intentions can the illusion be created which is necessary for the audience to properly absorb an Ibsen drama. The difficulty lies in the fact that in almost every work by this poet different means of this kind must be used, because each of these works has its own style. That style which is demanded by the content. Only those who know how to arrange all the details of the stage direction in such a way that they come together, as required by the individual character of an Ibsen play, can stage such a play in an artistic manner. "Ibsen forms a preliminary school for this ideal requirement. Not two of his dramas have the same style. Just compare "Nora", "Enemy of the People", "Rosmersholm>, "Hedda Gabler" and "John Gabriel Borkmann". But each of his dramas has its own, strictly defined form, which becomes more artistic, purer and clearer from drama to drama... Thus Ibsen is also a teacher for the actor in that he leads him from the simpler tasks to the most artistic; and just as in Ibsen's social dramas the men seek truth, the women freedom, so in Ibsen's drama is the school for the actor which can mature him to the ultimate goals of art, to the goals to which art of every age has aspired: to freedom and truth."

*

In numbers 11 and 14 of this magazine, we spoke of the plan to found an Alsatian theater and of the objectives pursued by this foundation. This plan is now approaching its realization. An association has been formed to found the Alsatian Theater. Its chairman is Dr. Julius Greber, the author of the dramatic morality play "Lucie" - which has been banned by the censors -, then the young painter and poet Gustav Stoskopf, as well as Mr. Hauß, editor and newly elected member of the Reichstag, Bastian, the author of Alsatian folk plays, and Horsch.

The author of the article "Theater und Kunst in den Reichslanden" (No. 14 of this journal) has already pointed out that political tendencies were not intended with the new foundation, but that only the desire to see Alsatian folk life on the stage was decisive. The association's statutes are also drafted with this in mind.

Eight novelties are to be performed next winter. Alexander Hessler, the former director of the Stadttheater (Strasbourg), has been appointed artistic director of the new theater company. He is said to have a keen, sure artistic sense and a good eye for judging artistic forces.

If one considers the tremendous success of the popular performances of the people of Schliersee everywhere, one can open up the best prospects for the future to undertakings such as the Alsatian folk theater. Such ventures are very much in line with a remarkable trend of our time. Our art is becoming more and more international in character. Language is almost the only element that still reminds us that art grows out of the soil of nationality. Folkloric and even regional ways of thinking, viewing and feeling are disappearing more and more from the materials of our artistic achievements. And the term "good Europeans" is by no means a mere phrase today. Today, we understand the Parisian mores shown to us from the stage almost as well as those of our home town. In addition to this one extreme direction, however, there is another. Just as we cherish our youthful experiences, we cherish the folkloric idiosyncrasies that are, so to speak, the nation's childhood memories. And the more cosmopolitan culture in general leads us away from them, the more we like to return to them "here and there". Indeed, watching the Schlierseer play today seems like a memory of our youth; a memory of our youth is the content of the plays they perform for us, and a memory of our youth is above all the level of art that we can observe in them.

I would like to see undertakings similar to the Alsatian Theater spring up in various parts of Germany. Perhaps they are the only means of saving the individualities of the countryside for a while longer, which are being mercilessly swept away by the cosmopolitan tide of the times. In the end, however, cosmopolitanism will remain the winner.

*

What actually is "theater"? Hermann Bahr raises this question in issue 200 of Die Zeit. "A poet's play fails, and it is then said that it is unfortunately not "theater" after all. Or we see a crude person dominating the stage with bad things of a mean kind, and the excuse is that he knows what "theater" is. So what is this "theater"? Nobody wants to answer that. Everyone senses that there are things that are not "theatrical" and others that are, but that's all they seem to know. It is claimed: you can't say it, you have to feel it. So we always go round and round in the same circle. When asked what it must be like to be effective in the theater, we are told that it must be theatrical, and when asked what is theatrical, we are told: what is effective in the theater. So we can't get out of the circle."

I am somewhat puzzled by these statements from a man who has always pretended in recent times that he has finally found the key that opens the door to the theatrical. Hermann Bahr was once a terrible striker and rager. He could not do enough in his condemnation of the "theatrical". The pure demands of art were paramount to him. I don't think he thought about it very long ago: what is effective in the theater? What is theatrical? He thought about: what does "modernity" demand of dramatic technique? Then he persecuted everything that violated this "modern" technique in the worst possible way. And if Mr. von Schönthan or Mr. Oskar Blumenthal had come to him back then and told him: your "modernism" is all very well, but it doesn't work in the theater, he would have scolded them for being miserable doers and driven them - albeit only critically - out of the temple of art.

In recent years, Hermann Bahr has become tamer. He has explained this himself.

Marco Brociner had a play performed in Vienna last autumn that was not "art" at all, but only "theater"; Hermann Bahr wrote: "When I was still a striker and a rager, I hated Mr. Marco Brociner's plays. They are what you call "unliterary", and that was terrible for me back then. I was a lonely person back then, such a solitary and independent person who didn't recognize anything and didn't want to submit, but let his mind and taste rule. Now I am more modest; it has become difficult for me, but I have gradually realized that there are other people in the world. They want to live too, but the young man can't understand that. Today I say to myself: I have my taste, other people have a different one; whoever writes what I like is my author, but the others want their authors too, that's just cheap..."

Not only in the essay he wrote about Marco Brociner, but also in quite a few other omissions, Hermann Bahr says that he thinks more modestly today than he once did when he was a "striker and a rager".

The fact that one has to make concessions, this principle of all true philistines, was happily discovered by Hermann Bahr as the last word of wisdom for the time being. He repeated it over and over again in the last issues of "Die Zeit". "The man has learned to obey, he renounces himself, he knows that he is not alone; - he has another passion; he wants to help, wants to work. He feels that the world is not there to be his means, but that he is there for it, to become its servant."

But why am I writing here about Hermann Bahr's latest transformation? Why am I trying to find out what the path is from "Stürmer und Wüterich" to half court councillor?

Only because today, the "half court councillor" raises questions that the "striker and poor rake" would once have described as highly superfluous.

Yes, probably superfluous. And the rest of us, who cannot make up our minds to take the leap into the semi-hierarchical, know how to distinguish between the "theatrical" that crude people bring to the theater with bad things, and the "theatrical" that is genuine and good poetry despite all its "theatricality". A real playwright creates in a theatrical way because his imagination works in a theatrical way.

And if the question is put to us today: "What is theatrical?", we simply laugh. Shakespeare already knew this, and Hermann Bahr would have known it too if he hadn't been on his way from "Stürmer und Wüterich" to tame court councillor.

But that's the way it is: you have to unlearn a lot when you have come so far that you realize what Hermann Bahr realized: "He who has measured his strength and recognizes where he should step with it is immune, nothing can happen to him anymore: because he has become necessary. Becoming necessary, finding your place, knowing your role, that's all."

*

The lawyer Paul Jonas spoke about the current state of theater censorship in Berlin in one of the latest issues of the "Nation" (October 1898). He emphasizes that this current state of affairs has grown into a calamity, and that conditions in this area are hardly better than in the neighbouring Tsarist empire.

As in so many other cases, the guardians of public order are also served by decades-old police regulations when handling the censorship pen. Playwrights writing in the present day are judged according to regulations from July 10, 1851. The High Administrative Court recognized that the censorship pen must pass over matters that "only indicate a remote possibility that the performance of a play could lead to a disturbance of public order", and that this pointed instrument may only be used if there is a "real imminent danger" in prospect. Nevertheless, the pen in question from Hauptmann's "Florian Geyer" found it necessary to destroy the following sentences:

"Eat the plague all clerical servants."

"The priests do nothing with love, but pull the wool over their eyes."

"The Pope barters away Christianity, the German princes barter away the German imperial crown, but the German peasants do not barter away Protestant freedom!"

"If you want to keep your house clean, keep priests and monks out of it."

"The Rhine is commonly called the Pfaffengasse. But where clerics step on a ship, the ship's crew curse and cross themselves, because it is said that clerics bring disaster and ruin to the ship."

What an idea the official wielding the questionable pen must have of the consciousness and feelings of a theatergoer today! A man who can believe that the views of an educated man of the present day could be devastated by hearing the above words from the stage knows nothing of the life we lead today. The behavior described is likely to open the eyes of the widest circles to the gulf that exists between the ideas of the bureaucratic soul, educated in the tradition of the state, and the feelings of those circles that share in the progress of life.

According to the police ordinance of July 10, 1851, kissing appears to be one of the acts that "give rise to moral, safety, regulatory or trade police concerns". This is because a red police line once deleted the passage from Max Halbe's "Jugend":

"Annchen, you are so beautiful! So beautiful when you sit like that. (Grabs her arm.) I could forget everything. (Out of her mind.) Kiss me, kiss me!"

The banning of Sudermann's "Johannes" sheds a particularly harsh light on the police situation. It is a pity that the Higher Administrative Court did not reach a decision on this ban. As is well known, the play was released by an imperial decision. The police authorities had banned the performance because public representations of the biblical history of the Old and New Testaments were "absolutely inadmissible" according to the regulations. And in response to the objections made to this, the Chief President replied that "the presentation on stage of events from biblical history, and in particular from the life story of Jesus Christ, appears likely to offend the religious sensibilities of the listeners and spectators as well as the audience not attending the performances, to cause alarm among large groups of people and to cause disturbances to public order, the preservation of which is the office of the police". The order clearly shows that the official who issued it felt no obligation to first examine the content of the drama and ask himself: is it such that it could offend anyone's religious sensibilities? But this official obviously thinks that the mere fact of seeing the biblical characters on stage is enough to cause such an offense. He has not yet arrived at the modern conception of the theater. He knows nothing of the fact that art comes right next to religion in our perception. He says: every thing is profaned by stage representation. Modern feeling, however, says: it is ennobled by it. The bureaucratic sensibility drags prejudices along with it that the rest of life has been shedding for centuries.

The practical consequence of all this is that the artists and directors of art institutions always have to make the disgusting choice between two evils: either to make concessions to the bureaucratic "spirit" and appear pretty well-behaved on the outside while things are rumbling on the inside, or to constantly tangle with the police powers. If it had been up to the tendencies of the characterized spirit, then in the Cyrano performance of the "Deutsches Theater" a foolish monk should not have been called a "God's sheep" and Madame d'Athis' little fox should not have been given an enema. It was also considered reprehensible that the king's stomach clenching had been presented by the doctors as an insult to his majesty and that his sublime pulse had been restored.

The dispute that broke out between the police authorities and the Deutsches Theater over these lines may be discussed at another time. For this time, it was only a matter of contrasting the "spirit" of police power and the spirit of life in the present. The essay "Censorship Pranks" by Dr. P. Jonas provided a desirable starting point for this.

*

Adam Müller Guttenbrunn, the director of Vienna's new Kaiserjubiläums-Stadttheater, has just published Kleist's "Hermannsschlacht". The introduction he has written to the drama deals less with its artistic qualities than with Kleist's love for Austria. This love can be explained by the circumstances in which Kleist lived. At the time when Napoleon was humiliating the Germans, the manly actions of Emperor Franz and his commander, Archduke Carl, were an inspiring act. The reason why Müller-Guttenbrunn, in a preface to Kleist's "Hermannsschlacht", emphasizes everything that the poet said in praise of Austria in order to be able to call the drama "A poem on Austria" is probably that the new theater director needed a hymn to his fatherland for his temple of art built for the 50th anniversary.

*

In the important treatise "On the Use of the Chorus in Tragedy", which preceded his "The Bride of Messina", Schiller showed how deeply connected the question of the chorus is with ideas about the nature of dramatic art. No one is qualified to speak about idealism and realism in drama who has not fully clarified this question. In realistic or even naturalistic drama, the chorus is of course an absurdity. In stylized drama it is not. Stylized drama must incorporate symbols into its body. It will want to express things that cannot be expressed with the means that everyday life has for its expression. In drama, things often have to be said that cannot be put into the mouth of a single person.

Any attempt to describe the significance of the chorus in tragedy must therefore be welcomed with joy. One such attempt is the booklet by Dr. Friedrich Klein "Der Chor in den wichtigsten Tragödien der französischen Renaissance" (Erlangen and Leipzig 1897). The author has carefully studied the large number of "Poetics and verse doctrines in metrical and prosaic form" as well as the extensive commentaries on Aristotle's "Poetics", which "have been published in Italy and France since the middle of the sixteenth century", and on the basis of this study has provided excellent information on "the state of theoretical knowledge of the tragic chorus in the sixteenth century". These pages will provide a detailed examination of the work. [Has not been published.

*

Since there are still supposed to be people with a rabble-rousing attitude in some corner of the world, I would like to expressly note that the above essay ["Auch ein Kritiker" by L. Gutmann] was sent to me by a man whose name I have not yet known, and that I would consider it cowardice to reject it with regard to the rabble. I myself have no need to defend myself to Mr. Kerr. He calls me a critic to ball; I confess that I enjoy the idea of the "balling Kerr" as much as his observations, written in a learned Gigerl style, on the societies of western Berlin, his landlord and other important matters. I am only reprinting the above essay because it shows what dares to pose as a great man.

*

A highly significant work for German dramaturgy has just been published: "Deutsche Bühnenaussprache. Results of the consultations on the balancing regulation of the German stage pronunciation, which took place from April 14 to 16, 1898 in the Apollosaale of the Königliches Schauspielhaus in Berlin. Published by Theodor Siebs on behalf of the commission (Berlin, Cologne, Leipzig 1898). - The "Dramaturgische Blätter" will soon publish a detailed report on this important publication. [The report has not been published}

*

In the work "Unser Wissen", which is published in Vienna, Richard Specht has published a particularly successful dramaturgical study under the title "Zehn Jahre Burgtheater". The only possible approach to the theater is characterized here with excellent words: "The play that the poet has completed at his desk can be a work of art - it is only a dramatic work of art from the moment it appears, in other words, from the moment it is able to make a complete artistic impression on the stage through the help of creative personalities other than the poet. It is obvious that this assistance is only possible when the work itself remains imperfect per se, when it leaves room for the artistic creations of others - the actors, the director, the musician, the painter. Those masterpieces of dramatic form whose vessel is completely filled by the soul of the poet and which leave no room for the artistic drive of others have hardly ever been done justice to by a stage performance. This is not because there is "too little" performing art, but because in such works the performing art is simply - too much. A play in which the personality of the poet predominates so immensely that it completely prevents the expression of the personality of the actor is a play which makes an equal or greater impression on the reader than on the listener. Thus the stage is rendered superfluous for such a play, which here cannot supplement but merely interfere, and thus such a drama is perhaps a nobler work of art, but certainly a bad play. The ideal of "good plays" in this sense will probably always remain "Hamlet".

This will have to be emphasized again and again in the face of so many attempts to misjudge the nature of the theater and to portray its significance within artistic life in a distorted light."

A second passage of the essay should be mentioned here, which views Burckhard's departure from the Viennese court theater from the point of view characterized by the above fundamental dramaturgical truth. Specht says of Burckhard: "He has brought literary life into the theater, but he has weakened the acting life. The stage, however, can only live primarily from the actor, and despite the successful attempts to help modern acting styles achieve a breakthrough, the actual fame of the Burgtheater - as a whole a wonderful ensemble and individually splendid people who are able to express themselves as actors - has declined considerably under him, if not been lost altogether. Nevertheless, it must be said that he himself learned so much during his time as director that Max Burckhard's name could have been mentioned when looking for the next capable director. But the bitterness and spitefulness of the too often justifiably angry and irritated artists would have been too great to be able to think of fruitful joint work, and this consideration alone had to be enough to make Burckhard's departure an irrevocable one."

The sinner Max Halbe in front of the forum of the archiepiscopal ordinariate in Freiburg im Breisgau

The following letter from the Archbishop of Freiburg: "Disparagement of the Catholic clergy by the theater" looks like a document that has been dormant in the archives for a long time. However, it was written in our day and refers to a dramatic work of art of our time.

"We have the honor to inform the Grand Ducal Ministry of Justice, Worship and Education:

In the second half of April, the "Youth" by Max Halbe was performed at the Court and National Theater in Mannheim. The Catholic press ("Neues Mannheimer Volksblatt, No.91 and 99) rightly took cause from this to protest in the strongest terms against such an abuse of the stage. In view of this public accusation against the Mannheim theater management of having "prepared and more than conceivably narrated an act of indecency in a Catholic rectory in all its details", we could not avoid the task of reviewing the play in question. To our great regret, we have to conclude that the performance of such a play is nothing other than a refined

is nothing other than a subtle and serious disparagement of the Catholic clergy, against which it is our duty to protest. We only want to emphasize that in the play a chaplain "comes to the coffee table in the Messornav, that neither of the two priests in the play has chosen his profession with the moral seriousness that the Church demands and his holiness prescribes, that the chaplain represents scandalous principles about the choice of profession, that on the one hand he behaves as an angry fanatic and yet on the other hand dances with a girl after obtaining the dispensation of the priest. At the end there is an "absolution", which is a degradation of the sacrament of penance. Considering the downright immoral character of the play, we believe that it is in the interests of public order and morality to take action against such abuse of a theater, and we urgently request that measures be taken to prevent it in the future. signed. Thomas. Keller." Should one regard such manifestations of the Catholic Church as a symptom of the growing self-confidence of the representatives of medieval views? Given the regressive nature of our "new course", such a view cannot be ruled out. Max Halbe will now, of course, "laudably submit" to Professor Schell's example and henceforth only represent the sentiments of the infallible Roman chair in his dramas.

*

Prof. Dr. Walter Simon, city councillor in Königsberg i. Pr., who is known in wide circles as a warm-hearted patron of the arts, announced a competition for ten thousand marks to win a new German folk opera for the German stage. This is probably one of the most gratifying manifestations of German interest in the arts for a long time. All German and German-Austrian composers may take part in the competition. Full-length operas which have not yet been performed and which deal with a German bourgeois subject, such as Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea", are eligible. Material from more recent German or Prussian history, since Frederick the Great (for example Eleonore Prochaska), as well as freely invented material are also welcome. The works are to be sent postage paid in score, piano reduction and book to the chief director of the Leipzig City Theatres, Mr. Albert Goldberg, entrusted by the prize donor with the implementation of the competition, by July 1, 1901 at the latest, observing the usual regulations, about which the printed regulations of Prof. Dr. Walter Simon's competition provide more detailed information. These regulations will be sent to interested parties free of charge and postage upon written request by Mr. Goldberg, Leipzig, Neues Theater. The following gentlemen, who enjoy a well-established reputation in the theatrical world, have taken on the role of judges: Senior director Anton Fuchs, Munich, senior director Math.Schön, Karlsruhe, Großh. Hoftheater, senior director Hofrat Harlacher, Stuttgart, Kgl. Hoftheater, Hofkapellmeister Aug. Klughardt, Dessau, Herzogl. Hoftheater, Königl. Kapellmeister Prof. Mannstädt, Wiesbaden, Kgl. Theater, Prof. Arno Kleffel, Cologne, Stadttheater, and senior director Albert Goldberg, Leipzig, Stadttheater. It should be of particular value to the composers that the prize-winning opera will also be performed immediately at the Leipzig Stadttheater.

Mr. Dr. Erich Urban, our former music critic

A lively protest has been raised from respectable quarters against the way Dr. Erich Urban spoke here two weeks ago about Mrs. Carrefio and Mrs. Haasters. It was said that neither the sentence about Mrs. Carrefio's arms nor the one about Mrs. Haaster's marital love had any place in an art review. It seems that the indignation was also directed at me, the editor responsible for the magazine, who allowed such things to be printed in the paper. I owe the public an explanation. Dr. Erich Urban came to me some time ago and asked me to start his critical career in the "Magazin". I was reasonably pleased with the work he submitted for my consideration and, despite his youthfulness, I gave him a try. It went quite well at first. His reviews were not bad and met with some applause. This acclaim was the young man's undoing. It went to his head. It didn't make his reviews any better. Recently, I was forced to let the red pencil work on Mr. Urban's manuscripts in an unusual way. What would the complaining Mr. Bos and Mr. Woldemar Sacks say if they had seen what my red pencil has been doing over the last few weeks! Now one receives current reviews at the last moment before the end of a paper. You have to check them in a short time. My red pencil, which I usually use against Mr. Urban, failed in the criticized passages. I overlooked them. They therefore remained. I had already made the decision not to present Mr. Urban's reviews to the readers of the "Magazin" before the complaint reached me. The conclusion of the last review he wrote for us appears today.

Furthermore, I can only say that I regret having been mistaken about Mr. Erich Urban and that I am completely on the side of his accusers. Unfortunately, he has not been able to escape the influence of the critical nature that I have in mind in my editorial today, and which I strongly condemn. In his youthfulness, he has become an imitator of bad role models. There are enough of these role models. But these gentlemen are clever and know how to keep a sense of proportion. Mr. Urban did not understand such moderation. He did not merely imitate mistakes, but applied them in an enlarged form. He wanted to be quite amusing, and what he wrote with this intention became merely tactless.

But to those gentlemen who cannot forgive the fact that my red pencil slipped once, I wish that nothing worse ever happens to them in their lives.

For an announcement[1]

We intend to discontinue publication of the "Dramaturgische Blätter", a supplement to the "Magazin für Literatur", as of January 1, 1900. In doing so, we are responding to a very often expressed wish from the readers of this weekly publication. They were not sympathetic to a supplement dealing with the special issues of the stage and dramaturgy. When the current management founded the "Dramaturgische Blätter", they hoped that there would be a lively interest among stage members and others close to the theater in dealing with questions of their own art and its connection with other cultural tasks. Experience has not confirmed this, and the above "announcement" recently proves that the hopes cherished in this direction cannot count on fulfillment. It was not possible to achieve more active participation by members of the stage. However, publications such as the "Schiedsgerichtsverhandlungen des deutschen Bühnenvereins" (Arbitration Negotiations of the German Stage Association) put the patience of other readers to the test in the belief that they were serving a special class. These readers will prefer to see the space previously occupied by such pedantic-legal, lengthy and, for non-stage members, completely uninteresting discussions filled with things that belong to the field of literature and art.

1 I hereby inform the general public that our contractual relationship with the "Dramaturgische Blätter" has been terminated by me as of January 1, 1900.

The President of the German Stage Association: Count von Hochberg

I have been the editor of this magazine for more than three years. I took up my task in July 1897 with the best of expectations. My intention was, without any concession in any direction, to express a certain view of the world and of life and to serve contemporary art and public life in the spirit of this view. I was reluctant to use any other means to achieve my goals than the inner strength of this view itself, in whose value I believe and for which I will always devote my life. I was particularly reluctant to achieve an effect by gaining "sonorous" names that are well established with the public or by exploiting sensational events. It was my intention from the outset to stand up for the cause I represent within the framework of this magazine for as long as this is possible through its content alone. More important to me than "illustrious" names was to introduce newly emerging talents to the public, who in my opinion were justified; I attached particular importance to giving a voice to those who, as lone fighters with their views, had little prospect of expressing them elsewhere.

I can leave it to the unbiased readers of this magazine to judge the extent to which I have fulfilled my intentions. I have not lacked the approval of those whose judgment is of the highest value to me. The friends I have seen rise to my cause have been able to give me complete satisfaction over some of the hostility I have naturally received.

From the very beginning of my editorial work, I was under no illusion that my intentions could only be achieved through sacrifices of the most varied kind and, as the circumstances were, only through difficult struggles. I can say that for three years I willingly made these sacrifices and took on these battles for the sake of the cause. The approval of many an estimable personality has helped me to overcome many difficulties. Making these sacrifices any longer is beyond my strength.

The "Magazin für Literatur" was founded in the year of Goethe's death. More than anything else, the fact that it has maintained its existence to this day testifies to the importance of this existence. Under different management, it will continue to serve art, science and public life.

I am not handing over the reins with a light heart, because over the past three years I have become more attached to this magazine than I would like to say. It has been a matter close to my heart, but I am stepping down without bitterness. I am aware that I have worked in the way that was only possible for me. I carry within me the feeling that my goals have an inner justification and that I will continue to find ways and means to dedicate my life to them. May those who have become my friends through this magazine accept here the expression of my deepest gratitude. Through my editorship, an inner necessity has brought me together with many people from whom an external event, such as giving up this editorship, can no longer separate me.

The two gentlemen who are approaching the task of continuing this magazine with full, fresh energy are known to their readers through their proven collaborations. Johannes Gaulke, the subtle and energetic art writer and critic, and the no less esteemed writer and artist Franz Philips will take on this task. I place the leadership in their hands with the best wishes that they may be granted abundant success. I cannot, however, refrain from adding my heartfelt thanks to all the friends who have supported me and to the staff and friends of the "Magazin", as well as to S. Cronbach and his publishing house, who have met me with true understanding, interest in the cause and willingness to make sacrifices. The fact that the publishing house is being continued by this company gives me particular satisfaction.

A cycle of one-act plays by Otto Erich Hartleben
Performance at the Lessing Theater, Berlin

Otto Erich Hartleben travels to Rome every year. I now understand that certain philistines have to visit a North Sea resort every year, but why Otto Erich has to go to Italy at the same time of year every year: that seemed to me to be worth asking the bearer of this peculiar habit before the last trip to Rome. I found a suitable hour for this question - and in this way I received an answer. Otto Erich told me that he had to go to Rome every year to escape the misery of life in Berlin. In this beautiful city one is a resident and therefore plagued by a thousand little things, day and night. I won't even conceal the fact that on this occasion he spoke of the trouble that his co-editorship of the "Magazin für Literatur" caused him. In short: in Berlin, one is forced to see the "small lines" that life draws. Otto Erich Hartleben wants to escape these small lines for a few weeks every year to see life in "big lines".

This is Otto Erich Hartleben. There is no pinnacle of observation that he could not stand on to look at life. But he looks for the most comfortable way to reach this pinnacle. There is an old saying that there is no royal road to mathematics. I suspect that Otto Erich will never bother with mathematics. I don't know of any depths of worldview that are not accessible to him. But he gets quite disgusting when it takes work to get to the depths. He knows the seriousness of life like no other, but he has the gift of taking this seriousness as lightly as possible. I have never met a person in whom I have found a noble Epicureanism as realized as in him. He is a man of pleasure, but the pleasures he seeks must have exquisite qualities. He is incapable of doing anything remotely reminiscent of the common.

Everything he does has greatness. And his greatness never gives the appearance of importance. He prefers to make a suitable joke when the others start to get pathetic and attach lead balls to their speeches so that they are taken seriously.

You have to know these characteristics of Otto Erich Hartleben to understand the first play in his cycle of one-act plays, "The Stranger". When I read it, I immediately remembered the "great lines" for the sake of which he goes to Rome every year. It's the eternal problem: a woman has loved one man, married another for some reason, can't bear it, and finds delayed happiness with the first one she loved. How this plays out in life is basically irrelevant. The depth lies in the relationships between people. And Hartleben has depicted these relationships in "broad strokes". Whether the people who want to "see" everything get their money's worth is also irrelevant. For these people, who ask what is "going on", the poet would of course have had to invent a "dramatic fable" with all kinds of interesting details and work them into three acts. But he didn't bother with these people. That's why he "disregarded all the details" and presented the main features of the story. Goethe, who wrote "Tasso", would have enjoyed the "Stranger".

From the performance I expected above all greatness and style. I found none of that. Theater was everything. But this little drama requires art. It would have been an honorary task for the Lessing Theatre to show what can be achieved through theater. A good performance of this one-act play could have silenced all the speeches of the opponents of modern theater for a while. I'm sorry, but I have to say it: when I read the drama, I felt greatness, the Hartleben greatness I described earlier. When I saw it, I felt no trace of this greatness. Everything was reduced to the smallest detail. I would have loved to run away.

The second one-act play, "Farewell to the Regiment", seems much less valuable to me than "The Stranger". I can take no particular interest in either the officer's wife, who has been married by the man so that he can pay his debts, or this man, whom she is cheating on with a regimental comrade. interest. The fact that in the end the affair is revealed, the officer is transferred to another garrison and killed by the seducer after the farewell dinner: all this is all the same to me. But I have nothing to say about that. What I do want to talk about is Hartleben's mastery of dramatic technique. Everything fits together perfectly here: you are swept along by the "how", even if the "what" is all the same to you.

I don't want to dwell on this weakest of the four one-act plays. It was followed by "Die sittliche Forderung". Rita Revera has escaped from Rudolstadt, which is under moral pressure, and has become a celebrated singer. She finds "Friedrich Stierwald, merchant, owner of the company C. W. Stierwald & Söhne in Rudolstadt". He wants to lead her back into the moral life of Rudolstadt. In his opinion, it had to: because one had to be moral in order for morality to exist. Incidentally, Alfred, my Kerr, says: "Weiland Paul Lindau made the same joke. He shouted: What would morality be for if you didn't have it?" But good Kerr: do you understand neither Lindau nor Hartleben? I really don't have time to tell you anything about the difference now. I'm just asking you: don't you know that Nietzsche would have been delighted by the "moral demand" and that he would have liked Paul Lindau ... - no further. Yes, I read your Berlin letters from Breslau and should actually know that you do not like Nietzsche.

I'm coming to the last one-act play, "The Lore". I have always found the story of the "torn button" so delightful that I think the publisher S. Fischer has made the most brilliant business with it and everyone knows it. So I won't tell you about it. I will only say this much: to see it dramatized on the stage is a rare pleasure. Here, what Otto Erich has in his power, the light, the everyday, has become art.

I should not praise my co-editor. That is why I have only highlighted the weaknesses of his four one-act plays.