The Rudolf Steiner Archive

After I have spoken about the nature and attitude of spiritual science in general in the first three talks, I would now like to discuss special objects. I note from the start that this talk and that of the next week form a whole as it were. They deal with the questions of the human soul life which are connected with death and with that what follows for the human being from death, and what I would like to call the sense of human immortality.

It is not easy in general to speak just about the topic of this evening in our time; for there are many outer and inner obstacles against a consideration of death in the present time. Above all I have to draw your attention—in order to avoid any misunderstanding today—to the fact that spiritual science has it not so good as some other scientific fields. Spiritual science depends on considering the fields about which it speaks in the strictest sense logically distinguished from adjoining fields.

I must say this because the discussions that should be done today and next time have only a meaning for the human experience, and because a more naturalistic science of the present is inclined to expand that which one understands by death to everything living. Now just spiritual science shows that that what is externally the same for the different beings can be very different concerning its inner nature, and I will probably have the opportunity in the course of the talks to draw your attention to the significance of death in the plant and animal realms. I intend to speak about death of the human being today only.—However, there are some other obstacles. I would like to show the nature of these obstacles—without going into a general characteristic—just from the attitude of spiritual science based on single facts.

 These obstacles are based on a fear of the death problem not clearly arising in the human consciousness. One needs only to consider this fear just with the most enlightened spirits of the present. One could point to many enlightened persons; one would find the same thing. I want to do it relating to the great religious researcher and orientalist Max Müller (Friedrich Max Müller, 1823-1900). ders what he wrote about death here or there that attracts attention above all which faces us also with numerous persons of the present: the timidity to imagine the possibility of investigating anything about death. Even the great Max Müller managed to say that all human thoughts that exceed the human life between birth and death even if they originate from a poet like Dante in his Divine Comedy are only childish poetry. Nevertheless, Max Müller says, if an angel descended from heavenlies onto earth and wanted to say anything to the human being about the conditions of the human life after death, the human being would understand these statements as little as a just born child would understand if one held a talk to it about the conditions of the present life in any human language. Some aversion exists even with the most enlightened spirits of the present to refer to these matters. Besides, Max Müller is not a negative mind in relation to the matters of human immortality; he himself is ensouled by a certain religious security concerning a postmortal life. He does only not want to award the possibility to the human being to attain any knowledge of the postmortal life. He emphasises repeatedly that the human being cannot know anything about the fields that are beyond death.

This fact shows symptomatically which difficulties exist in the present concerning our topic. However, one can also say that the modern scientific view mentioned in the previous talks repeatedly is so significant that it distracts the human being from the idea to gain any knowledge of the postmortal life.

I have spoken in the preceding talks so appreciatively about this scientific way of thinking and so approvingly about that what it has brought to light that today I am not misunderstood if I say briefly why it is difficult with the scientific way of thinking to admit that one can penetrate into the fields beyond death. What is this scientific way of thinking based on? Why has it become great? Because it established the principle of the human sensory observation and the application of the intellectual activity to this sensory observation in the strictest sense of the word.

You can now realise one matter easily. If one makes the principle of sensory observation and the application of the intellect to the sensory observation the exclusive principle of research, one wants, quite certainly, to investigate what the human being receives with his body by his birth and develops in his physical life. That what one could broach as anything “immortal” that has a spiritual life beyond birth, or conception, and death and one cannot enclose it in the field of sensory observation and intellectual research bound to the senses. With his body, the human being most certainly receives what surrounds his being what organises his senses and his reason that binds itself to the senses. The human being certainly acquires that in the area of temporality which research does in the most remarkable sense in the modern scientific way. This belongs to the area in which our being disintegrates if we go through the gate of death. Hence, without any doubt natural sciences completely work with tools, which pass away at death as they originate with birth. One is not surprised if one makes the work with these tools the exclusive principle of research that one cannot investigate what these tools cannot reach.

Therefore, nothing seems to be more foolish than to suppose that one could penetrate with the means of natural sciences into the mysterious fields one day that are beyond death. Hence, it has also happened that not the worst spirits of the nineteenth century finally denied the life after death from the scientific point of view. Since among many extraordinary praises of the scientific way of thinking which controls the general education and thinking more than one believes certainly also that is justified that it has educated the human being so that his preconceptions, his wishes and desires—his subjectivity—do not have a say if it concerns the scientific investigation of anything. One just gets big respect if one sees the efforts of this way of thinking really and works in the experiment with it: operating in the observation strictly objectively in such a way that anything subjective of the human being plays no role. Why should this not be concerning the question of death? However, have not always the human emotions, wishes, and desires played the biggest role if the human being answered to this question? While one has given up in the scientific research that these things play a role, just the ethically not worst persons of the nineteenth century refused the life after death.

If one looks for the reasons why these spirits refused a life after death, one finds noble motives. One has to admit this without further ado. Some materialistic thinkers of the last century said that it belongs to the human egoism to wish that one reached with his little ego beyond death. It is nobler, they said, that the human being should merge that what he works what he acquires between birth and death in the general human life, in the stream of historical development, and that he should know that this ego does not survive, but sacrifices itself on the altar of general humanity. Some moral and academically educated people regarded such a sacrifice, such merging of that what one has acquired in life as that what one can say about the death of the human being.

There are many things indeed which rebel within the human emotions and wishes against such a merging in the general stream of humanity. All that must not have a say answering our question based on real cognition. However, there is one thing that can lead the human being, even if not to an answer, nevertheless, to a correct question at least concerning death and the life after death. Even if one refrains from all wishes, from any fear of death if one refrains from all what he likes as an answer about the life after death, and if one looks, actually, only at that what he is entitled to look, namely at the economy in the universe, then one has to answer possibly as follows. If one considers what the human being acquires in life internally as valuable what revives there in the soul as our innermost possession and as possession concerning that what we can do for love, devotion and other impulses for ourselves and our surroundings, and one asks himself: what is the most valuable?—It is something intimate and individual for any human soul, so that one cannot give away it to the stream of general existence because of its intimate character. Really; so much we can also give away to the general stream of existence—the most valuable is connected so tightly with our soul that we would not give away it that it would absolutely have to sink into the general nothing if we did not go as something through the gate of death. For the most valuable would be lost without doubt for the world economy that the human soul has attained and worked for if the human life were over with death. However, this would contradict what we notice, otherwise, everywhere in the universe. We realise that nowhere in the universe forces develop up to an extreme height that they can develop at first and dissolve then into nothing; but everywhere forces are generated in such a way only that they change, that they keep on working in the world. Should the human being be condemned solely to acquire something that would not be processed further in the universe, but would have to dissolve into nothing?

This is by no means an answer at first, but means putting the following question that is quite independent of human wishes and preferences: how would it be possible for the purposes of a general world economy that that dissolves into nothing what the human being acquires in his soul during life? However, one cannot advance farther than to put this question, actually, with the means of outer research. Since undoubtedly one has to search the immortal of the human being beyond the outer experience. The outer experience approaches us by the senses, and a slight experience shows that also everything that can result from reason belongs to the outer experience, and that that all can only develop within the physical body which we get by birth or conception, and which dissolves at death. However, with it we have no tools that enable us to investigate the problem of death.

In the introductory talks I have already spoken of the fact that the human being is able to develop his soul by the spiritual-scientific methods, indeed, in such a way that it is detached from the bodily experience like by a spiritual chemistry. Thereby it really attains a point of view on which it cannot only express itself as a phrase, but as an immediate inner experience: I know what it means to develop a spiritual-mental activity in myself which does not have the body as its tool. Can we hope that anything can be stated about death by anything else than by investigating it with the means of the described cognitional forces instead of means of the outer experience? Just if one thinks scientifically, one must say that one has to experience what one should investigate. However, with no outer tool one can experience death that just takes away the outer tools from us.

Thus, one can investigate death only under the premise that it is possible with tools that do not exist within the bodily life. I have drawn your attention to the fact that the human being can strengthen his soul life by certain inner intimate exercises, so that really his spiritual-mental is detached from the bodily, like while decomposing water oxygen is detached from hydrogen. Thus, these exercises detach the spiritual-mental of the human being from the bodily and with it, the human can experience internally in the spiritual-mental. If he experiences internally in the spiritual-mental this way, if he gets around to having his own bodily as an object like an outer object beside himself, then he becomes aware of that what the spiritual researchers of all times meant when they moved two experiences closer together: the experience of the so-called initiation and the experience of death.

We must only keep in mind that spiritual research existed at all times. Spiritual research was done already in the oldest times of humanity in the so-called mysteries. Someone who would like to inform himself more exactly about it can read up in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity. However, at that time spiritual research could not be done as today. The human beings change in the course of evolution quite substantially; and before I go further into it, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that in ancient times one had to develop quite different forces in the soul. This is why in sites, which were, so to speak, halfway of art, science, and religion, the human being concerned was brought to the point where by the development of his soul forces the spiritual world appeared to him.

One has to develop soul forces in our times that are different from those of former times, after the souls have been educated during the last centuries scientifically. Therefore, spiritual science must be different in our time where it must be a continuation of natural sciences. However, it always brought those two experiences: the development of the soul capacities, which allow experiencing the spiritual world regardless of the bodily, and the experience of death. Repeatedly we find in the different writings expressed that the human being who was brought to the experience of the spiritual world, its processes, and beings approached the “gate of death” in the mysteries. That means that he experiences something about which he knows immediately that it resembles the experience of death, or that it is something with which one can also know the relevance of death if one recognises it. The initiand knew that he had to approach the border of death. One always said this. In my writing A Way to Human Self-Knowledge, I describe an experience that I have already mentioned here which the human being attains if he opens himself to meditation and concentration for many years. I have said there that if the human being carries out that development of his soul by which it grows out of the body for short times to a body-free experience, he arrives at an infinitely meaningful moment that shakes the soul when it appears for the first time. The spiritual researcher must often repeat it later; but when it appears for the first time, it is a deeply intervening experience. If one increases that soul activity limitlessly which one else calls attention, devotion, the body-free soul forces gain strength in such a way that a particular moment appears in the soul life.

It may appear in the turmoil of the everyday life; it does not even disturb if one ascends to such an experience by a development as I have described it in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds? and the usual everyday experience can go on apart from that. This moment can appear also in sleep. Then one feels it suddenly, or one feels an Inspiration or Intuition during the day life flowing into the general life. Typically, I want to describe what one experiences that way. It can be different a hundred and a hundred times with the human being, but always it has something of that what I would like to describe now. I try to express it in words; but doing this, I am aware that I can express it with words only imperfectly. One feels, as if one is rudely awakened, and one has the feeling that something asks: what happens with me? It is, as if a flash goes through the room where I am and as if it smashes the vessel of the outer physical body. At such a moment of increased knowledge you do not only feel something sneaking that destroys the outer physical body, but you feel almost filled with that what destroys the physical body. You feel that you can only maintain yourself with this experience by means of the strengthened inner soul forces, and you say to yourself now, I know what can exist in the outer world to detach the physical body from me in which I am. From this moment on you know that something spiritual-mental is in the human being that is independent of the physical body. The physical body relates to the spiritual-mental like an outer vessel and tool. From this moment on you know figuratively what death is.

Indeed, it is an uncertain knowledge, an uncertain experience at first; but it gives the soul that mood and inner seizing of a spiritual reality by which it can get into that what enables the soul to penetrate into the regions of spiritual life. It is an intimate experience; but it is an experience of humanly quite general kind because it is so serious that it separates you from that what is connected in the narrower sense with the personal wishes and intentions and familiarises you with that what is, actually, always only behind life. However, it shows something else quite clearly: the difference between achieving the real spiritual-scientific knowledge and that outer knowledge. You obtain outer science, outer knowledge learning this or that, you get yourself into this or that striving; then you have what you desire to learn. You gain for yourself by working what you should know.

It is not the same case with the spiritual-scientific knowledge. Indeed, it is not in such a way that somebody should believe that one gains spiritual-scientific knowledge in such a way that once enlightenment comes over the soul which then surveys the spiritual world. Indeed, some people imagine that one attains spiritual-scientific knowledge without any effort. However, that does not apply. If anybody said that on the part of spiritual research many a thing is said that the historian can bring to light only with efforts in a years-long work from the documents and sources, and then the spiritual-scientific researcher comes and says something without anticipating that one can say such a thing only after years-long research; then this is presumptuousness. One has to answer that the spiritual researcher must not only spend the work that one needs to such years-long investigation of documents or experimentation; but he must carry out the whole work that is necessary for years in himself. However, this work has another aim, another character in a way.

That which one can perform as a spiritual-scientific researcher does not really lead to knowledge but is only its preparation. All that I have said in my writing How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds? characterises that only what the soul has to do to prepare for that moment when the spiritual world reveals itself. Preparation—not elaboration as in the outer science—is that what the spiritual researcher has to carry out at first. Indeed, one learns to recognise this if one can connect sense with the words: I experience myself as a spiritual-mental being within the spiritual world.

Then one still connects sense with something else, namely with that what does not seem so important, indeed, as the question of death because the usual consciousness is accustomed to it, namely with sleep. One learns to recognise the nature of sleep. One recognises that and in which way the human spiritual-mental being leaves the physical body every time with falling asleep as the hydrogen leaves the oxygen if water is decomposed. However, the human soul is not strong enough in sleep to maintain its consciousness. In the normal life, the human being can maintain his consciousness only if he submerges with his spiritual-mental being in the physical body and this reflects his mental experiences to him like in a mirror. He can have this experience only like in a reflection in his mental consciousness. It is in such a way, as if the human being maintained his consciousness only because he would pass by mirrors as it were and while looking in the mirrors he would sense and feel his self. However, if the human being sees himself in the mirror, he knows that not the mirror is the cause of the picture, but he who is standing in front of it.

The human being who experiences a spiritual-scientific development starts knowing that that what he thinks, feels, and perceives in the usual life is like a reflection, and that he is in the spiritual experience a being that perceives itself like in a reflection if it submerges in the body. The body makes the soul strong enough that it can perceive itself; if it is, however, beyond the body, it is not strong enough to know of itself. If the human being comes to the point that he senses and feels his independent spiritual-mental existence as it were, he knows that that is behind the mirror of the usual consciousness in reality. Then he starts knowing, not only as a phrase, but by immediate experience that he is from falling asleep up to awakening in his real spiritual-mental being and experiences that in it from which he can only not get any consciousness in the normal human experience.

The spiritual researcher learns to experience as one experiences in sleep, but only with the big difference that one is unaware in the normal sleep, while the spiritual researcher consciously experiences in his inside preparing his soul and gaining strength compared with the bodily-physical experience. Then the spiritual researcher completely experiences his spiritual-mental essence. Besides, one experience is of particular significance. One would like to call it the “change of the ego-experience.” The ego that we must have in life if life should normally pass lights up from a certain point of childhood. This is the point up to which we remember in life. If we can remember, we know how everything that we have experienced is connected with the ego. We sit down as it were beside our ego and feel united with all our conscious experiences. Our egoity is warranted only because we feel united with the ego with all mental experiences. If the spiritual researcher reaches that point, where he can scrape out his spiritual-mental core from the physical body, then a big transformation of his ego-experience takes place. For that transformation one has to be prepared, so that one does not become upset. A great deal of that what I have described in my writing How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds? is intended to prepare the soul for this experience.

What happens at a certain moment when the soul becomes free of the body? What happens there, what becomes an immediate experience can be shown approximately, and I would like to take the following way.

If we took the human body as the outer science investigates it with its outer tools, one would already get clear by outer logical reasons about the fact that this human body must be penetrated by something, so that it does not follow its own laws and its own inner necessities. Which laws and necessities are these? They appear at death when the physical body disintegrates. Then it is left to its own resources, to its very own laws. One can conclude by a certain logic, which I have also already explained here, that in the human being something higher must exist than this physical body. However, a certain rest must always remain there with such logical considerations that make objections possible if from the start a healthy sense of truth does not exist for that which spiritual science can investigate from the primal grounds of existence. What is it, however, if really the initiation takes place by which the spiritual researcher experiences himself internally independently from his physical-body? There he really has his physical body beside himself, knows himself beyond this physical body, does not have it around himself; and how does it appear to him? One must not believe that it is so nice and cute that one hovers over his body and has his body lying in the bed.

That is not the case. Nevertheless, you perceive something very strange after a suitable preparation. You do not perceive the vital forces of the body but the lethal forces that already exist during the whole life as the dissolving forces. If you want to express yourself scholarly, you may say that you get to know the latent death in the body. Everywhere you get to know the trends of the body to fit into the elements of earth and to disintegrate. One can express this by a comparison; but I do not only mean a mere picture with it, but I use it in order to express inner experiences that one has to do.

Look at a candle flame. The candle burns low. The fuel is destroyed. As long as fuel is there, the flame can be there. Why is the flame there? Solely because the fuel burns gradually and dissolves. If you want to avoid that the fuel dissolves, you must extinguish the flame. You cannot demand that the candle remains intact and the flame still burns. You can only have the sight and use of the flame, while the fuel consumes itself.

Like such a flame the own physical body appears to you in the supersensible sight while it is used up. The body appears like the candle that burns low. You know what takes place in the body because in the body always the tendency exists to consume itself. As the flame of the candle originates by consuming the fuel, the human ego emerges from the forces of death. You would never experience this ego if you did not carry death in your body. That applies to the human being. Put yourself hypothetically in a human body that would be inserted in the world so that it could not die that it would not have the forces that consume it. Its ego would be extinguished; the ego would no longer be there! This is the impressive knowledge that you attain as a spiritual researcher, which one must summarise with the following words. We carry not only the vital forces, but we also carry the forces of death in ourselves. It gives us the possibility of ego-consciousness for the life between birth and death.

Indeed, you feel a transformation taking place by an inner process if you are now as a spiritual researcher out of the physical body. The ego becomes something that one does not like. From a thought, which accompanies you, otherwise, always in life without which you are not there while awake, the ego becomes something that you do not have in yourself that you face like a flame emerging from the picture of the physical death: the ego becomes memory. This is the significant transition to spiritual cognition that you have the ego as a mere memory in yourself about which you know that it is there at which you can look like at a memory, but you cannot have it in yourself now.—You get to know death spiritual-scientifically and its connection with the ego in the normal human life.

Now spiritual investigation can go on. You can divide what we experience in the soul in three groups. I would like to point two groups out as significant, namely the imagining thinking and the will. We must accompany the everyday life with our thoughts. What would we be as human beings if we did not walk thinking through the world if we could not form thoughts of the things? What would we be as human beings if we did not have the impulses to do this or that, to accomplish this or that? Will and thinking are the soul forces that always accompany the human being through his everyday life.

If you advance in spiritual research to the body-free experience, you realise that you are not able to take the thinking into the body-free experience. You have to leave the everyday thoughts outside, also those of the usual science, which follow the experience of the outer senses; they die away, while you enter the body-free cognition. The spiritual researcher understands completely if anybody who wants to count generally only on the life of thoughts as for example Professor Forel (Auguste-Henri F., 1848-1931, Swiss psychiatrist, brain researcher, myrmecologist), says: consciousness falls asleep very soon if it has nothing to imagine from the outside. This is comprehensible. For you cannot take the impressions that come from the outside world with you neither into sleep nor into the spiritual-scientific experience. For someone who wants to become a spiritual researcher this causes something extremely depressing by which he feels apart from everything to which he is attached in the outer life, that he considers as the most valuable about which you can even say to yourself, in the normal life, you fall asleep if you do not have it.

You have to go as spiritual researcher in a life where you cannot have this where you must lay down everything that you were used to think about in the usual life. What do you experience then concerning that which expresses itself in the normal life as thinking if the thoughts, which you normally do no longer have, have died away if they have remained before the threshold of the spiritual world? You experience at first what sleep makes. This is a quite significant experience to know how sleep makes it. Now you learn to agree even in rather modest way with the materialistic thinker who says that the brain is necessary for thinking, and certain movements must form the basis of a thought in our brain. Quite true, very true! One has to dismiss any objection against materialism that the thoughts can also be there without brain. Since thinking is not that, by which we settle in the spiritual world. We do not find them there. Nevertheless, we find that from which the thought in the brain only originates. What sets the brain in particular motions, so that it becomes the mirror of thoughts? These are only the spiritual-mental forces. Behind the thinking—not in the thinking—the spiritual-mental forces work which the spiritual researcher finds. Hence, he agrees with that what the materialistic researcher—if he remains in the borders of his field—can say that the everyday thoughts are results of the brain. However, what takes action in the brain that always makes the physical body the mirror of thinking is the work of the spiritual-mental behind it. We come as spiritual researchers really behind the everyday life into the creative realm of the world. Hence, we also learn to understand sleep and experience how that what is behind sleep mends the worn-out parts of our brain at night.

We look at this regeneration of the body; we get to know the activity of sleep. As spiritual researchers, we get to know the thoughts, which face us by day from the one side, from the other side. Whenever a thought can appear and appears in the mirror of the brain, we get to know it from the other side if the body sleeps if it lives within the brain and stimulates the brain to its activity by day. One gets to know thinking from the other side this way. This is the one part how you get to know thinking.

Now the other part, how one gets to know thinking, is something of spiritual research that you do not like from the start if you have not well prepared yourself. You get to know the inner work, the inner feeling, the inner self-experience of the soul. You get to know the soul as something internally mobile; you get to know an activity of the soul from which one can ask: what does this activity want? It wants to form thoughts. However, in such a way as it appears it cannot form thoughts. You get to know a part of the soul activity that is used to mend the exhausted brain in sleep; you may be content with that. You get to know another part of the soul activity with which you touch the whole physical brain like from the inside from which you may say to yourself: you have it now. While you start investigating more exactly, you realise that you have it by what you have experienced from birth and have processed it in your soul; but it has thereby become something that touches your brain; and this does not let it come about as usual thoughts of the everyday life. The spiritual researcher settles in a condition that way where he feels imprisoned in his body, his wondrous tool of thinking. He feels so touched with it that he says to himself, now you could form thoughts from your inner activity if your brain did not lie there like a heavy mass and cannot be roused to that what the soul wants.

One often speaks of the fact that the methods, which the spiritual researcher has to go through, lead to a certain suffering. Suffering always consists of the fact that something that one would like to carry out in the soul is prevented. Even physical pains consist of it; however, I want to speak about the latter another time. Suffering seizes the spiritual researcher in his development and that which wants to become a thought but cannot become a thought. Since the brain is good only for the thoughts which are obtained in the normal life. Maybe you understand just at this point that the investigation of the death problem becomes, nevertheless, an inner martyrdom of the soul. You can do it only because the human being has the necessary thirst for knowledge in himself to discover the mysteries of life. Yes, you also understand that this investigation is not carried out so often because one makes progress, indeed, generally only if one can be way beyond everything that one likes, otherwise, in life. Hence, one speaks only with a certain melancholy and deep seriousness about what I have indicated just now. Then you are able more and more to look not only at the lack in the spiritual-mental experience, but you learn to renounce to form thoughts from that what you experience with the body. This learning to renounce one can easily express; however, this renunciation belongs to the serious problems of life. This renunciation is connected with bitterness, which justifies itself only because it just leads to knowledge.—If you have experienced to be unable to find an expression in thought of that what you have attained, then you experience it only internally. What do you experience then? You experience what is fit to intervene, indeed, not in the body because the body prevents it but in that what forms the origin of a new physical body that we build for the next life on earth if we have gone through a life after death in a wholly spiritual world.—I speak later about the experiences in the time between death and the next birth.

I have tried to show by means of inner experiences, which the spiritual researcher has, how he experiences his inner, spiritual-mental essence that must emerge because of its own peculiarities in the next life on earth. That is as certain as a sprout evolves into a new plant. Since you do not get to know that of the human being which outgrows death, while you speculate on it, but while you recognise what prepares itself for the life beyond death, if you look for that what you cannot see with the senses and cannot think with the reason engaged in the senses. Spiritual science does not speculate or philosophise on immortality; but it wants to prepare the human soul in such a way that its immortal essence lies there, I would like to say, “spiritually prepared” as one also investigates something in natural sciences, while one extracts it surgically from the surroundings in which it cannot be investigated in its peculiarity. So far about thinking.

The matters of will are different. Here you experience a transformation, too. Then you realise how much the will that one expresses in the outside world depends on the constitution of the body, how a strong will in the usual life is connected intensely with the whole constitution of our body. With any impulse of will we bring our body into the field, so to speak. However, as spiritual researchers we must now have the will without the body. There the will asserts itself straight away in a way, as you are not used to it, otherwise. Otherwise, you are used if you have an impulse of will to bring your body into the field; if the body lies idly in the bed, no impulse of will stirs. We feel impulses of will always connected with the body. Now, however, the soul which wants to penetrate into the spiritual world is beyond the body; the body plays a part in the will impulse. This causes a certain inner tension, as if the will is limited from all sides, as if it is in an impenetrable eggshell, as if you are hindered from thinking, imagining, feeling and perceiving, from walking, from standing, from everything.

You feel the will as self-contained, but as stumbling at the walls everywhere through which it cannot go. You have to do the inner spiritual exercises again so far that you perceive not only this negative of the will, but that you can experience the inside like pressed in the will. Then you realise that you want something again that you do not like to experience. If you apply the will in the outer world, you have the will impulses on the one side, the moral-social order on the other side. You impose duties upon yourself in life, or the moral-social order imposes them upon you. One makes a difference between good will and bad will, between right and wrong; one distinguishes the moral rules from the will impulses in the outer world. This is correct. Now when you have withdrawn from the outer world, the will remains to you in a quite similar way as the ego has just now remained. What you have wanted remains like a memory. I describe how the experiences arise. I have to describe the Imaginative view in this case; this seems maybe fantastic, but I have to show the matters in such a way.

Then you experience something in your pressed will like morality contained in this will. You experience an action that must considered as bad with the outer sensory consciousness in this will in such a way that you have to compensate it. You experience the will in memory in such a way that the compensating force of that what must happen because the immoral action demands this is included in the will. I cannot help saying, if you have done anything bad, it must place itself beside you like a ghostlike enemy who stands beside you, until you have got rid of him by compensating actions. Someone who experiences the will in himself and in his memory what he himself has wanted faces the bad without fail which has an effect, until he has got rid of it by compensating will impulses. You experience what one often calls the inner work of karma.

Then you know for sure: if you experience an act of volition that you have wanted, you experience it in such a way that you recognise that it is done. Since every act of volition belongs, like thinking, to memory. Then you know that it is done, at the same time it has contributed that we advance in our development. Something also spreads over our consciousness that one can call an enlightening purification of that what is done. However, any action has an effect in such a way that you realise how the moral and the mechanical that are separated in the physical life are combined. You realise that something bad or immoral is effective, until you endeavour to extinguish it to a certain degree in the outside life, until we have gained the power to extinguish the bad; that means to make it good. We know if we experience the will in the body-free cognition that this has its inner moral impulses at any price; we know that karma is an active force continuing to have an effect in the world. We experience painfully now recognising that there are many, too many actions in our present life that we cannot compensate. We know about them, because we behold their reality that they go along in our next life on earth and contribute there to our destiny.

You can call investigation of death what I tried to suggest in such a way, because it means to experience what strides through the gate of death as the immortal of the human being. You recognise from all that that the true investigation of death is an intimate, inner research that it is, however, the more a generally human one because it aims at that what one can find in all human beings. For it is due to the outer body and the outer world that we are these particular human beings in the life between birth and death; this does not go with us through the gate of death. That goes with us through the gate of death, which lies behind the physical-sensory realm. That causes the physical-sensory realm and our outer experience between birth and death.

Now we put the following question. Why do we notice nothing of our immortal soul in the usual life? Why does that what can reveal the mystery of death drape itself in such darkness? Because we live on this darkness in the usual soul life between birth and death. We must extinguish our immortal in the usual consciousness, so that we live in the body in the outer physical sensory world, we become fond of it and accomplish our mission on it. If we want to penetrate to our immortal, we must extinguish our everyday life.

If we must extinguish our immortal in our usual consciousness to have the usual physical-sensory everyday life, we are not surprised that we do not find that what can inform us about death within the everyday life for which just the mystery of death must be covered. The spiritual researcher can also show, why one cannot find the mystery of death in the usual life. For while we descend with our spiritual-mental part from spiritual heights to that what is given us by the line of heredity by father and mother, while we combine with the bodily-physical substances and submerge in them, the limited consciousness must extinguish the infinite consciousness. At death where the infinite consciousness lights up again, the limited consciousness is extinguished, and that what can be maintained of it exists as memory. However, the life after death is guaranteed by the spiritual-scientific development of the human soul if it exercises those methods by which it already penetrates into the spiritual world in the usual life and passes the gate of death fully consciously.

Next time, however, I would like to describe the immediate result of that what we tried to discuss spiritual-scientifically today as the mystery of death which is there already during life, and which enables our usual consciousness. Yes, an aversion exists against these matters in the present; one does not like to investigate them. Even good, brilliant thinkers shy away from penetrating into those regions to which I have today pointed related to the death problem.

So it happens that such an excellent person like Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949, Belgian playwright, Nobel Prize in 1911) puts the [most] wrong views of the death problem forward in his recently appeared booklet On Death—which you should read because he has written it so excellently. He who is able to speak about all the other fields of life very brilliantly had to fail with this matter because he has a particular way to approach the matters; namely to describe death with the same cognitive means as the outer matters. He is no spiritual researcher. He does not know that one has to leave these means if the areas should be investigated which are considered with the death problem. Maeterlinck is in the same situation, as once the mathematicians were towards the problem that one called the square of the circle. There were certain times when one sent solutions to mathematical circles how one could transform a circle into a square using a compass. However, all the solutions were dissatisfying, and today everybody is a dilettante who still deals with this problem because it is strictly proved that the problem cannot be solved this way. While one had the opportunity once to count as a genius if one wanted to solve the square of the circle, today someone is a dilettante who still attempts this. Concerning immortality the view of the human beings will also change as the views of those mathematicians changed. For somebody still attempts a solution of the square of the circle in another field today; but one would have to say to him, you demand that one proves the mysteries of death with the means of the usual life. However, it matters, above all, that one realises the proofs. One must also realise that the proofs that want to prove the mystery of death and immortality with means of the usual life are impossible because we have covered the forces of the immortal just in our everyday life, so that we become ego-conscious human beings in the transience.

However, a particular feature still appears with Maurice Maeterlinck. After he has talked at cross-purposes everywhere, he finally concludes—somewhat more brilliantly, belletristically than Max Müller, who did it somewhat more professorially—that the soul should get used to the fact that it cannot really investigate the mysteries of existence in this and not in that life. Then he adds, it is probably good that one cannot investigate them. He would not wish on his worst enemy that he could investigate the real mysteries. He is afraid that the world becomes free of mysteries if they are investigated that it would lose any shine of the mysterious if one penetrated into the mystery of death. He considers it as valuable that a mystery remains a mystery, so that one does not destroy the surprise in the soul if one comes behind such a mystery.

I have already mentioned in another context that the mysteries do not become inferior if one faces them as spiritual science can speak about them. Since just that which we investigate in the mysteries does not make life more superficial, but deeper and deeper. It is still in such a way that if we behold in something of our previous life on earth, this does not solve the riddle of life superficially and does really not deprive the mystery of life of its shine but it makes it even greater, even more brilliant. Spiritual research does not penetrate into the matters so that it deprives the mysteries of existence of their admirable character, but so that our admiration can still increase because one can investigate the reasons behind the matters.

Therefore, one has to answer to someone who speaks about death as Maeterlinck does and says, he does not wish on his worst enemy that the mysteries are investigated, that the mysterious is not taken away from life, while one attempts to investigate it. However, with a trivial word—it is not trivial, but it is meant quite seriously-, one could express what one would like to say to a person who wants to maintain life while he wants to accept it as “unfathomable.” One could ask him, would you want if anybody has been born blind to advise that he should not be operated so that that what is round him remains a mystery to him, and that the shine of the world should not illuminate his inside? Would you like to argue that you did not wish even on your worst enemy that the mystery of the world would be divested of its wonders because he would be operated?—Someone who answers yes could also answer with the question, which Maeterlinck expresses at the end of his book: the world would lose its shine if one investigated its mystery. Spiritual-scientific research shows that this is not the case if one investigates the mysteries of the world. While investigating death our emotional life will just get the view that death forms a necessary link in the whole life, and that not only Goethe's word is true that nature invented death to have a lot of life, but that for the human life the word is true: nature needs death to let perpetually arise always new marvellous things from the origin of life.

Today I would like to speak about the meaning of immortality of the human soul taking up the preceding talk. In case of such a spiritual-scientific consideration, I do not speak using conceptual definitions or theoretical discussions. I would rather like to give some indications from the field of spiritual-scientific research that can shed light on this subject.

It became obvious from the last talk here that spiritual research just wants to penetrate to the immortal essence of the human being. I have said that that research is able to penetrate into the area of human knowledge where this immortal essence is to be found which arises from the development of the human soul that is the only instrument by which we can really penetrate into the spiritual world. I have suggested many a time that everything depends in spiritual research on the fact that single persons are able by means of the mentioned exercises to carry out an inner spiritual-mental activity, detached from the physical body, detached from the tool by which any remaining human soul activity is carried out in the course of the everyday life. By intimate developing processes of the soul, it is possible to free it from the body. I have also indicated that for the spiritual researcher who has really learnt to connect meaning with the words “experiencing beyond the body,” this human soul also arises with its qualities that prove by themselves that the life of this soul outreaches birth and death.

We realise in the course of the today's considerations that such a consideration—attained by initiation of the human soul—gives a meaning to the word immortality. However, I would like to stress first, that we really live in a time in which the deeper human thinking and the more serious consideration of the human life may have the effect that they discharge gradually into the way which spiritual science expounds for the problem of the human immortal soul life. I would like to point only to one matter just from the point of view to gain a meaning of human immortality. I would like to point to that spirit who counts as one of the leading guides of Enlightenment, to Lessing (Gotthold Ephraim L., 1729-1781, German writer, dramatist, art critic), who tried to get a meaning out of the idea of immortality.

In that writing in which Lessing gave his spiritual testament to humanity, he renewed the ancient idea of reincarnation, as he believed; and he undertook this, because he felt forced to understand the complete historical life of humanity on earth as education. One can dismiss easily this testament that he gave as the completion of his striving saying: also great spirits grow old and proclaim many a pipe dream.

However, someone who has learnt to have respect for spiritual life and pursuit cannot dismiss Lessing's Education of the Human Race (1780), his ripest work, in such a way. I cannot go into the details of his writing. I can point only to the fact that to Lessing history appears in such a way that humanity ascends from more primitive conditions of life and views to more and more developed ones. Lessing understands this evolution of the human race as a mysterious education that the spiritual world bestows on the human race. He distinguishes single epochs of the advancing humanity, and from these considerations, the question arises to him who could not yet stand on the ground of our modern spiritual science: how can one position the single soul life of the human being in the historical evolution of humanity?

He says to himself that the single soul life can position itself in the course of the historical development only if one assumes that the human soul lives repeatedly on earth. If one imagines that the soul which lives today has lived repeatedly in preceding epochs in which it has absorbed what these epochs could give the souls. Thus, the question is solved for Lessing in a satisfying way: what about the souls that have lived in ancient epochs and have not taken part of the development of higher soul forces? The answer arises for Lessing that these were the same souls which have lived in former times which have carried over the fruits of the past epochs to their present existence and which gain additional fruits for themselves now which the present can give them. They go with these fruits after death through a wholly spiritual life and they carry them over to future epochs to participate in the progress of humanity. Thus, the whole meaning of the historical development lightens up for Lessing with the sense of the immortality of the human soul at the same time. Thus, this meaning arises for him, and thus the possibility arises for him straight away to remember that the life of the single person is greater and more comprehensive than what can be expressed in the life between birth and death.

As one considers the single life, which this single human soul lives from birth up to death, fits into that what this life can give. It, walks then through the gate of death, casts off the physical body, and penetrates into a spiritual world to look for its further development. One can imagine the complete historical development of humanity and of the earth in the sense of Lessing. What humanity experiences on earth is the “soul” of the earth and everything that geology, biology and other sciences investigate is the “physical body” of the earth which once falls off from the united human souls as the human body falls off from the single human soul at death. Then, however, the earth, after the body has fallen off from it, advances to a future embodiment in the universe to ascend to future spiritual and material heights. One realises that the sense of human existence and of the whole earth evolution arises from this thought of Lessing. Lessing could not be discouraged from this thought by the fact that one can argue that this was a thought which humanity had in the most primitive conditions of the soul development; then, however, it has disappeared from the cultural development. On the contrary, Lessing says at the end of his treatise on The Education of the Human Race, “Is this idea less valuable because it is the oldest, because it lighted up in the human soul before the sophistries of the school paralysed and weakened it?” Lessing imagines without doubt that a future spiritual development brings that to the souls again what they have lost in the interim.

Thus, one attains real forces that carry over the results of ancient times into the present. Thus, one overcomes that impossible point of view where one speaks that “ideas” are effective in the history of humanity, as if “ideas” could be realities one day! However, ideas cannot be effective in history, because mere ideas are abstractions, are nothing real. For Lessing imagines that the real life on earth proceeds because the realities of the human souls carry over what is created in one epoch from epoch to epoch. There we stand on the ground of spiritual realities that hold together the historical epochs of humanity.

You can now ask yourself, what has our spiritual research to say to this thought gained by Lessing on basis of certain historical necessities? Spiritual research finds its way to look at that what exceeds birth and death. Proving this I have to point once again with a few words to what presents itself to the spiritual researcher in the real mental experience. He opens himself to the exercises informed in the previous talk and lives emotionally in such way, after the soul itself has drawn itself out of the physical and has come to an experience in the spiritual. Then this soul has the physical body beside or before itself and experiences it in such a way that it is subjected to death as something external. While the everyday life proceeds, otherwise, in such a way that the human being only develops consciousness if he is, so to speak, within his physical body and uses this as tool to make his surroundings the object of his consciousness, namely the physical-sensory world.

Let us imagine the experience of the spiritual researcher lively that he lifts his soul out of his body that he strengthens the inner soul forces so that he does not depend on perceiving only with the help of the bodily tools, but can control them without bodily forces. Then the spiritual researcher comes to a particular knowledge: where from it comes, actually, that one has a consciousness in the everyday sensory life.

If the spiritual researcher has really freed his soul experience from the physical body, and has this body beside or before him, then he learns to recognise how actually this everyday soul life comes about. I would like to use a comparison. The spiritual researcher does not change the soul life as it is already. What he attains is only that he can behold spiritually what happens, otherwise, in the everyday life. There the spiritual researcher recognises that the activity of the spiritual-mental works on the body in such a way that at first the nervous organs of the human being are treated that one can compare this work to the writing of letters on paper. I ask you to consider what the spiritual researcher recognises at first as spiritual-mental activity is not the thinking, not the feeling, not the will, also not that what one knows in the everyday life as soul activity. However, it is that what works at first in his bodily organs and processes them so plastically that they get those movements only of which the materialistic worldview speaks. These movements in the brain, in the nervous system et cetera are there actually, and in this sense, one has to agree with the materialistic worldview completely. These movements, these oscillations in the brain exist as I write down the letters on paper. As my activity is that of writing, the first activity of the human being that he develops is that he causes movements, oscillations in his nervous system as “letters” at which his soul looks that it is comparable with the sight of my own letters that I have written.

The difference is only that I write the letters consciously on the paper and can consciously read them again. However, if I relate to the outside world, I write the physical activities that are to be carried out in the nervous system unconsciously with the spiritual-mental. If I have written them, they run off, I look at them, and this looking is the conscious soul life.

Thus, we realise that the spiritual-mental in the true sense of the word stands behind that which develops as spiritual-mental in the everyday life, and that between the true spiritual-mental in which the spiritual researcher lives if he has learnt to experience independently of his body and between the spiritual-mental in the everyday soul life the complete bodily experience exists. Between our true spiritual-mental and the everyday conscious life is our body. However, that which this body experiences, how this body puts itself in perpetual organic activity, so that consciousness can originate as a mirror reflects a picture is the result of the spiritual-mental. Behind our body, we stand with our spiritual-mental, and in this spiritual-mental the immortal essence of the human being exists.

If one distinguishes in such a way, one no longer searches the meaning of immortality in the continued existence of those soul contents that one experiences between birth and death; but one has to search the real basic origin of immortality in that what is behind the everyday life. Now we must get a concept of that what is behind this everyday life. However, one can do this while glancing at the real nature of the spiritual investigation.

From that which I have just discussed arises that the everyday consciousness is from the body as comparatively our own picture is reflected by a mirror. Somebody who does not search the spiritual-mental behind the picture but believes that the spiritual-mental originates from the body as the function, as the effect of the body who thinks materialistically resembles a person who says; I see a mirror before myself; it is strange that it lets my picture emerge from its substance. However, it does not let it emerge from its substance, and it is nonsense to believe that the mirror produces the picture; but the mirror reflects the picture.

Thus, the body reflects our own spiritual-mental activity. You can compare your body to a mirror which reflects our spiritual-mental activity, only with the difference that we face the mirror quite passively but treat the body with the spiritual-mental activity first, we write this activity in it which manifests to our consciousness then. The comparison would be correct only if I carried out an activity from my body. This activity would cause a process in the glass which caused the reflection when I stand actively before the mirror and would emit certain radiations et cetera which cause intersections or the like which cause the content of the everyday consciousness and make it possible that the human being appears before himself. However, from that ensues that the human being needs a counterfort for the life between birth and death in which he can reflect his spiritual-mental activity. If you had to develop such content of consciousness without body, you would not be able to do this in the life between birth and death. If the body did not carry out its duty as tool, you would have no counterfort; you would have nothing to reflect the spiritual-mental activity.

If now the spiritual researcher becomes able by the mentioned exercises to lift his spiritual-mental out of the physical body, it also becomes apparent that he can no longer turn his spiritual-mental sight to the outer physical world. This sensory world disappears from the horizon of his consciousness at the same moment when the spiritual researcher lifts the spiritual-mental out of the physical body. I would like to note this only by the way for those who believe that one could be possibly distracted by spiritual research from the pleasant sight of the physical-sensory world with its wealth. O no, this is not at all that way. Just someone who has become a spiritual researcher realises when he lives in his spiritual-mental and the sight of the physical-sensory disappears; but he appreciates its beauty and real value all the more. He returns repeatedly, as long as it is granted to him, strengthened by his stay in the spiritual world; he develops a bigger interest in the beauties of the physical world—and gains a particular support to recognise the beauties of the physical world and their tasks which have escaped him before without spiritual research. Only those make such objections who have not yet come closer to spiritual research.

If it is now really in such a way that the physical world disappears if we do not have the counterfort of the body in order to perceive—and the spiritual researcher has this body beside himself, does not use it as tool, then the question arises: how does the real spiritual consciousness come about? Does the spiritual consciousness not need a counterfort? Does the soul not need anything by which it can be reflected if it wants to go into the spiritual consciousness?

Spiritual research answers this question in such a way that the human being wants a counterfort too when he leaves his physical body with his spiritual-mental and lives in the spiritual-mental, something that is now a mirror to him. Something becomes a mirror to him that is to be endured really still before death if it is experienced in spiritual research only grievously. There we stand again at a point where I must point to the fact that spiritual research leads not only to bliss, but also to tragic moods what one can endure only with big pain. However, the spiritual researcher must just purchase higher knowledge with pain. That what comes up then as a counterfort is the own life which we have gone through from the point of childhood up to which we can otherwise remember. However, we have it in the memory picture in the everyday life in such a way that we are in it as it were that we are combined with it. We ourselves are our thoughts, our experiences, our pains, all memories strictly speaking; we are in them, are one with them. However, with the spiritual researcher it happens that that what one has, otherwise, in memory gets out of him like out of a cover. That with which you are one, otherwise, and about which you say to yourself, I have experienced it, and now I feel combined in my thoughts, sensations and feelings with that what I have experienced—you feel this now like an outer vision, like a Fata Morgana before yourself. You feel that enlarged what comes out of you in which the spiritual-mental is reflected.

There you realise that you must endure in the spiritual-mental experience, in the initiation—not after death—that you have your life as a substantial basis of experience instead of the outer physical impressions. That is in contrast what you can perceive spiritually.—There you realise to what extent you have become a good or bad mirror for the spiritual world. There you get to know above all what it means to face what you have experienced. For that is now the reflecting surface to which everything is in contrast that the spiritual world shows. Instead of having your body as your tool for perceiving, you have your own egoity, your commemorative egoity, and your own experiences as tool. Own experiences must merge with that what you experience spiritually; they must reflect what you experience spiritually. And now you notice—when you do no longer experience your own inside within your body, but have it like a Fata Morgana outside of you—that at this moment this inside presents itself like an etheric being that becomes larger and larger because it is internally related to the whole spiritual universe.

You feel like being soaked up from the spiritual universe. You feel if you have gone through the indicated experiences, as if something exists in the human life between birth and death that is contained in the forces of the physical body. When you have left the physical body with initiation, something becomes free of the forces of the physical body held together as the etheric body. Then that what has become free has the tendency to spread in the spiritual world, it thereby becomes more and more imperceptible—and you risk that your own self, the self of thoughts, dissolves in the spiritual universe, and that you thereby lose its sight because the reflection does no longer exist after the dissolution.

The physical body counteracts it, as long as the physical just lasts. For at the moment when the danger threatens that the subtler etheric of a more spiritual body as it were would lose itself, the physical body asserts its reinforced forces—and one has to go again back into the physical body. Then this is just in such a way, as if you are forced back by the power of the physical body to the everyday perception, to the usual sight and to the physical way. As you can learn from this representation, you get to know the moment that must take place when the physical and chemical forces seize the outer physical body and take it away if death enters. One learns to recognise how the consciousness can live on after death because now the physical body does no longer call back the just described subtler etheric body. It can just live on at first in this form that our own experience faces us as a memory picture, only as long as the forces of the spiritual universe assert themselves and the subtler body disintegrates in the universe.

Thus, we realise how the spiritual researcher causes that condition by his experiences that must come into being with the human being at first after death. As the first, you get to know what takes place after death immediately. Nevertheless, you also learn to recognise that you have only grasped the very first times after death. In my Occult Science. An Outline I have indicated the length of these very first times after death. They last only some days according to the character of the human being. The memory of the past life takes a few days. It lasts as long as the forces of the inner subtler body which spiritual science makes apparent can continue.

If you consider the conditions this way, you ask yourself, what causes the length of the period in which this memory can take place?—If one compares it to the length of that time which this or that person can stay awake in the usual life, then you have the period within which this memory of the past life takes place. You can say, depending on the capacity of his etheric body the human being opens himself to life without falling asleep without having to call forth sleep as compensation, the memory tableau of the past life lasts longer or shorter which presents itself like a living Fata Morgana .

About such a period and about the following ones about which I will still immediately speak you learn to speak in the area of spiritual research by inner consideration, not by outer measuring. What you experience there in the retrospect in the initiation appears in such a way that you know: it contains the forces that the human being must maintain, before sleep overcomes him. You experience the former life for days. What happens then, however, arises from the spiritual research, too. It does not appear in indifferent thoughts what you have experienced in your life between birth and the present moment; but that also appears what you have experienced morally or, otherwise, in the fields of your efficiency, in your fitness for life.

However, this appears in particular way; I would like to discuss it using a concrete example. We look back at our life, look there at a time when we have done something wrong. This wrong appears now to us in that Fata Morgana of the past life. The impression is for the spiritual researcher in such a way that first like in an uninteresting picture, like in a tableau, this life appears and something gradually emerges from it—and in doing so the spiritual researcher beholds more and more tragic conflicts—about which one could say that the whole personal value arises from that what one has done and has experienced. If you have done anything wrong, this wrong first comes out of the tableau of the past-life in such a way that you look at the picture only, knowing that you have done this. Then this picture is penetrated with emotional forces emerging from the spiritual-mental, and you must say to yourself that you cannot be the human being who you should be if you must always look at this what you have done there. You can be this only if you have wiped out this wrong from the perception of the inner destiny, from karma. The longer you succeed in staying with what presents itself like a spiritual mirror, and the longer you look at it, the stronger the emotional experiences appear which say, you must look at your deed as something wrong, until you have extinguished it!

Indeed, the spiritual researcher must go through this. He must see then that in the Fata Morgana which is in contrast to it and becomes a sum of countless self-reproaches what shows him his value quite clearly how far he is, and what he has to deal with in order to make himself the true human being only. Self-knowledge—it is peculiar that it becomes more and more tragic, more and more difficult, the farther you advance in it, and that you face everything as self-reproach in particular that you should not have done, so that you are so fixated on it that you cannot turn away the spiritual glance from it, before it is extinguished.

Up to here, Aristotle (384-322 BC) already recognised the sight of the human spiritual life. He also recognised what must be attached to this Fata Morgana. Aristotle already knew that the human being if he has gone through the gate of death really lives in his being, and looks back-at the own deeds and misdeeds on which his glance is fixated. However, he was not yet as far as a spiritual researcher that he would get beyond this retrospect. This retrospect extends to eternity according to him. Aristotle could not recognise how the human being could escape from it one day; so that he had another retrospect after the first short retrospect that presents itself figuratively before him forever. This is a rather hopeless aspect of his philosophy if you understand it correctly. Aristotle believes that the short life on earth is there to prepare the experience in the spiritual world in which the human being, looking back, would be fixated on the sight of the imperfect existence between birth and death; and his life after death would consist of the fact that he would be fixated on this sight.

His world would be to look at himself in such a way that he was in the life between birth and death; and as we see a world of animals, plants, stones, mountains, seas and so on, we would be fixated on the sight of the experience of our own actions in the time after death.—Franz Brentano (1838-1917), the excellent investigator of Aristotle pointed clearly to it in his book Aristotle and his World View (1911). What I have just stated—even if the words of Aristotle are sometimes in such a way that one can argue about what he had meant with them—arises from Aristotle absolutely. He did not yet know that this is a passageway only as the modern spiritual research can show which presents itself to the human being as such retrospect that is penetrated with inner emotional experiences.

What presents itself to the spiritual researcher if he penetrates into that region which the human being enters striding through the gate of death?

If he has advanced so far that his body does not reclaim him too fast, then that results which is attached to the uninteresting Fata Morgana as retrospect. Since the spiritual researcher can ascend on his way in such a way that he sees a Fata Morgana of his life events and some of his spiritual experiences at first that are obvious; then his body can reclaim that subtle etheric body in his inside, and he enters like from an initiation dream again into the everyday reality. However, if he continues the exercises on and on, he comes so far that he even beholds what lifts out itself from this Fata Morgana, so that that appears which we are not yet which we must become, if we did anything wrong, for example. We are not yet that who has eliminated this wrong; but we must become someone who eliminates the wrong.

This is the internally oppressive again that one feels the forces evoked by the self-inspection, which want to compensate everything wrong karmically. You look at your imperfections. You see them. However, you also see more and more in which way you must do it, so that you can erase the imperfect, the wrong. You see what you must become. This is the self-knowledge that you feel the germinal forces in yourself, which already press us forward beyond death, so that you say to yourself, these forces live in us after death; we do if we are relieved from our body what these demand. Now I must keep the wrong, the imperfections; however, I feel the forces that can eradicate the wrong. Now you know by the inner sight that it lasts for years, until that what presents itself by own experience gradually gets the forces which can really compensate the wrong. Now they cannot compensate it. They must go through a spiritual world first. As true as the physical consciousness says to itself looking at the sun set in the west, now you have to experience the night, then the sun can appear in the east again. As true the spiritual researcher knows if he experiences the germinal forces in the soul: after you have developed the forces gradually, after you have realised after death—or have realised throughout the years—how the compensating forces must be, you must dive into a spiritual world to find the forces. These forces are collected now, as it were, from this spiritual world, so that the human being, after he has experienced the spiritual world between death and new birth, becomes ripe to enter a new life on earth with these forces.

But spiritual research can also get an impression of that what the soul has to experience if it has appropriated those forces spiritually first after death looking at its past life, after it has realised which forces it must have if it prepares for a new life on earth going through the spiritual world. Since the spiritual researcher, as long as he lives on earth, cannot transform these forces. Nevertheless, he looks into the spiritual world; he sees the material for this transformation. He sees as it were originating in himself how the forces demand a new life.

As you can see lungs in a human embryo which has not yet come to daylight, you know that they can breathe: if they come into breathable air. You can also realise if the soul is relieved of the body, the spiritual organs inhaling the spiritual air in the spiritual world that develop spiritually only when they approach a new life on earth. You get to know this spiritual self-development looking at it directly only, you get to know what it means to grasp the spiritual substance with spiritual organs.—If you wanted to use an expression for what happens there with the soul, you would find no other expression in the usual language than that one says: it is a blissful experience in a certain respect. For it is a life in activity, perpetually invoking and acquiring spiritual substance in this existence between death and new birth, causing the preconditions of a new life on earth. In this existence, the soul feels as a part of a spiritual world, and thereby it feels it like heavenly bliss, after it has felt what it must regard as tragic in the past life, what has to develop as the germinal forces on basis of the previous life.

We have now collected everything concerning the sense of the continued existence when the human being goes through the gate of death. First, we have a spiritual, mirage-like retrospect of the past life lasting some days, and then you look back emotionally at this life. Since these emotional experiences are not only a retrospect, but you experience everything that you have committed as imperfections, as wrong what should be different, so that you reach that in the following life which you should reach, and get the forces which you need so that the next life can become different. As long as you have a retrospect of the previous life, you only work on those forces with your thoughts so that you realise, you must have these or those forces in the future life on earth. If you have experienced your life on earth once again after death in the spiritual, then you reach a wholly spiritual region, and you inhale as it were all those spiritual forces, which descend then to combine with that what father and mother can give as physical substance and to form a new life on earth.

It may seem now, as if the passage through the life between death and new birth makes it necessary that the consecutive lives on earth would be more and more perfect. However, this is virtually not the case, because it is true what already a great spirit said out of his almost ill soul: “the world is deep and deeper than the day has thought” (Friedrich Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883)). We can come only slowly and gradually to that what is put in us, and that our human forces are rather imperfect in relation to what they must become once, and what can stand as an ideal of true humanity before us.

Then it becomes apparent that we are not always able to survey after death which forces we have to appropriate in order to compensate the committed wrong. There many forces participate, so that it may be that we believe to compensate with an even bigger egoism or folly what we have committed from egoism or folly in the previous life. Thereby it can happen that the following incarnation is an even more imperfect one, an even harsher training than the previous one was. However, overall the course through the repeated lives is a rise. It is possible that the human being looking back at the past life can be in error concerning the way of compensating something and that thereby imaginary or real descents are caused. Overall, strong rises often follow deep “falls” of the human being, while after death the dreadful happens that we look back at a deep wrong we have committed, or what adhered to us as a big imperfection, and that we experience a big rise after a deep fall.

Many a thing appears if the spiritual researcher pursues the life sharp-sightedly, since this does not only happen. If you have your life after death as background, you merge with the spiritual world, so that you meet the soul—if you meet something wrong that you committed—that you wronged, at the same time and then you witness the wrong which you committed on this soul. Generally expanding the look at something spiritual leads us not only to our own soul at first but to the other human soul.

You learn to observe the other human soul, so that you start observing and pursuing the other soul that is already disembodied—even if it is hard to believe. Indeed, I have to draw your attention to the following. If the spiritual researcher tries to expand his own life in such a way that he penetrates into the space of experience—“space” is thought symbolically, of course—where any soul is, he can witness the destinies of this soul after death. I must say only that you witness the destinies of those souls at first with which you were connected in the preceding life; but if you advance in spiritual experience, the destinies of such souls with which you were connected in former lives also appear. The spiritual researcher realises that he develops relations with almost all souls on earth; however, it is exceptionally difficult to recognise them and you can succeed only using certain aids.

Some questions may become clear to the single listener if I speak this way about the meaning of human immortality. If you take together the previous talk with the today's one, you can say, I can understand that the everyday consciousness can only develop, while it envelops the everlasting of the human soul like a veil, and that we develop the sensory consciousness because we darken what develops after death. We must bear death in ourselves, so that we can have the present consciousness. To such an extent as we develop the forces that lead us to our natural death, we can develop the everyday consciousness. The fact that we can die makes it possible that we can have the sensory world round us.

Thus, one can understand that the human being must die, so to speak, when he has experienced his life. However, someone who hears speaking about the meaning of immortality this way has to ask again, what about those lives, which may end unfilled in the prime of life, maybe because of inner illnesses or inner weaknesses or misfortunes? What can the spiritual researcher say about such deaths? How do they line up in the course of the earth-lives, and what are they after death?

I would not like to speak here abstractly. I have already held these talks for many years here. Hence, it goes without saying that now somebody may believe that I give such portrayals as mere assertions. You experience repeatedly that those who listen to such things for the first time and have not familiarised themselves with the literature make objections which have been cleared up long since. However, I would not be able to progress in our considerations if I had always to say the same every year. Hence, I must refer compared with completely entitled objections to the fact that one must try to penetrate into the literature and to take into account that I have cleared up such objections already in the course of many talks.

We take the case that a misfortune carries off a blossoming human life. Then the spiritual researcher recognises the following. If he pursues this soul beyond the grave, it becomes apparent that it has adsorbed forces by misfortune, which are adapted to prepare higher intellectual abilities for the next life than it could prepare if this misfortune had not been caused. However, you would badly understand the spiritual researcher if you hold the thought in your mind even in the least, that it would be so easy to make yourself more intellectual for the next life on earth if you let a car run over you. That is not the case. Since it becomes apparent that the consciousness cannot decide on that what is necessary in the human destiny beyond the grave but that higher consciousness which becomes effective there before birth or after death in the wholly spiritual world.

With the usual consciousness, we can never survey whether a misfortune has an effect on us in this or that way. Nevertheless, in numerous cases the spiritual researcher realises that, indeed, in the pre-birth spiritual our soul has already caused such destiny in a wholly spiritual consciousness that has led with certain necessity to this misfortune. We are not entitled after birth to decide this. Before birth we direct our existence to the misfortune, with it our soul receives, so to speak, the possibility to destroy the physical body, and thus it has the experience at the moment of the transition: how does our humanity work if this body is destroyed and does not continue to develop naturally? It makes good sense—not for the everyday consciousness but for our superconscious being—that human lives can also perish, so to speak, by misfortunes before reaching the normal age. It is a long shot to state such a thing in the present, but I have to point to it. The spiritual researcher realises with many souls that these or those talents go back to former lives and he beholds how inventive forces, intellectual forces developed by misfortunes in a certain age which can provide services to humanity.

One has to look only reasonably how for these or those performances which are of original kind a certain human age is necessary. Great inventors get around to uncovering certain forces from the depths of life in a certain age by straining their abilities in the extreme. It needs not be an epoch-making invention; it can also be something that completely serves the usual everyday life. This can be because this soul had to go through conditions of life, which destroyed the body at that time. The soul thereby gains inventive forces that control, direct, and penetrate the physical world.—You cannot “prove” with the outer usual logic that such things can be investigated. However, this can be done only what has been shown so often in these talks that the spiritual researcher gets around to observing with a strictly regulated methodology of his soul life what goes forward when a soul experiences any misfortune which leads to this or that, or even to death.

Let us take another case. If a young human life is carried off by an illness, the spiritual researcher realises that the intellectual life is not so much influenced in the next embodiment but the volitional life. Once again, we are not allowed to cause such a strengthening of the volitional life that we wish in the usual consciousness by an illness that we cause artificially. However, if in the whole context of existence, which is controlled by the spiritual world, a human life is carried off by a pneumonia or another illness in the prime of existence, the spiritual researcher realises very often that such a soul could not unfold such willpower that it already possessed in a way. The outer physical body offered resistance. However, while one experienced the illness, and while the spiritual-mental experienced the resistance of the physical body, going through the life between death and new birth it found that in this resistance what gives the willpower. Just by such a consideration, it becomes apparent that life gets its sense in all directions.

Indeed, all pains that we feel in the physical life on earth facing the misfortunes of life or our destiny will always be there. This will not be removed completely, however, it will be reduced if one realises that wisdom pulsates, nevertheless, through our life. From a higher point of view all pains appear which are integrated in life as necessary for our development, and the spiritual researcher assumes that wisdom is to be found everywhere in the world from the start. He considers life with all its strokes of luck and misfortunes as the result of a calculation that is not there, before one has not carried out the calculation. Wisdom does not exist in the human life, before he does not convince himself in many cases with admiration of the fact that wisdom still forms the basis of any life. Because we are in an experience that must happen by the body, the misfortunes will work suitably, will take us with them as human beings, and it would make the life in the body appear an inhuman one if it could not feel pain with misfortunes. Nevertheless, just as the sense perception covers in life what the spiritual-mental is in its importance for eternity, the experience in the body covers that higher point of view from which any conscious experience of the human being appears as penetrated with wisdom.

The spiritual researcher does not become like a dried up field crop by the fact that he can contemplate wisdom even in a misfortune. No, just because he can rise on a higher viewpoint the survey of life appears to him as filled with wisdom, as rational. However, when he enters the life on earth again and lives in his body, he is a feeling human being, of course, as every other human being. As someone who mounts a summit and has a nice sight from it but must not stop to have the sight of that what proceeds below in the valley, the true spiritual researcher can also not lose any compassion and witnesses human happiness and grief if he faces happiness and grief in the life between birth and death. However, just this spiritual research realises that compared to eternity the human being is not born to despair, but that any look at the realm of the spirit shows him the world full of wisdom, meaningful, and that knowledge of true immortality is a knowledge of the meaning of immortality at the same time.

I could only make some indications of human immortality, and from it, the meaning of human immortality has to arise. The spiritual researcher just has to express those matters in words that lie, so to speak, beyond the usual life if he wants to point to that what the human being experiences, after he has gone through the gate of death. What is experienced in the usual life offers no clue to characterise the life after death if one should recognise its spiritual substantiality. Thus, one must take stock of the fact that the human being is not able to carry the picture of a single lion or a single mountain with him through the gate of death, however, that inner spiritual-mental activity which enables us to have a mountain as a mental picture in our consciousness, or to imagine a lion. We carry them through the gate of death. We carry just that mostly through the gate of death what is not “real” in life. If we see various lions, we form the concept of the lion. You can easily prove of course that the concept of the lion does not exist in the sensory reality, but only the single lion; also not the concept of the mountain, but only the single mountain. However, what enables us to recognise mountains and lions and to understand something spiritual-mental, to recognise justice, freedom and so on what enables us to live with a human soul like with our own soul, to penetrate into the human soul by mysterious sympathies, that mysterious weaving from soul to soul—all that we take with us through the gate of death. On the question, whether we are together again with our kith after death we can answer that we are together with them again! We are together with those who are close to us in life. Also already between birth and death ties exist between the souls which belong to the extra-terrestrial—what one only does not recognise because the mental look is mesmerised by the physical sight.

Investigating the spiritual means at the same time recognising the eternity of this spiritual. Recognising the human being as something spiritual means recognising the eternity of the human spirit. Actually, one has to say as spiritual researcher that someone who regards the spirit as mortal does not recognise it in reality. The philosophers who do not believe in the immortality of the human soul are for the investigation of the soul like botanists who deny the existence of plants. It is the certain way of spiritual research that one can say that the soul recognises the spiritual as something natural as the botanist recognises the plant as that what it is.

Therefore, we can say that that is the most valuable for the complete human life concerning the spiritual-mental, concerning the behaviour of the human soul after death what is covered by the outer observation in the physical-sensory experience what is not perceived in this experience. Someone who wants to bring in concepts in the life after death who does not want to suffer from the “hunger for concepts” after death—if you allow me to use the expression—must appropriate concepts which do not apply already here in the life on earth only to the sensorily discernible, but exceed it. We can live on the spiritual-scientific concepts in the life after death. If anybody believed that the hunger for concepts killed him after death, one has to say that an immortal soul can suffer, indeed, from this hunger, but cannot die of it as the physical body can starve to death.

Thus, I could only give you single indications about the meaning of the immortality of the human soul. Of course, I know best of all what those can or must object to such indications who stand so completely in the consciousness of our time. We live in a time that is completely hostile on one side to accept that that development of the soul, about which I have spoken here, leads really into a wholly spiritual experience. However, we live at the same time in a period in which the human soul longs for the knowledge of the spirit in its subconscious depths. There can be also human beings who say, why can the human being not remain with that what nature has given him, with the reason and the senses which nature has given him? However, this would be, as if anybody said that the child should stop at that what it has as a child, and should not learn what it would have to carry out as an adult. Just on the same point of view somebody would stand who said that the soul should stop at the abilities which it already has.

We see where one can break away from the gross preconceptions that one conceives the real nature of the human essence. One can realise that philosophers of the present break away from the wholly physical experience and interpretation of it. Anyway, it is interesting, even if he misses his aim ever so much that the French philosopher Bergson (Henri B., 1859-1941) regards the memory as something that leads into the spiritual realm. However, one sees at such an example that the philosophers of the present have difficulty bringing themselves to acknowledge the spiritual world. One sees in other points again that a healthy soul life comes up to the front gate of spiritual science. It is extremely interesting that unlimitedly increased attention gives the possibility to transform the human being. If one realises then at least that a very significant philosopher of the present, McGilvary (Evander Bradley McG., 1864-1953), comes out of the health of the American nature just up to the point where he says: if one wants to get to know the real soul being if one wants to get to know what soul what immortality is, one can do this only by developing attention. McGilvary says that the human being can know by an effort, by an increase of the forces of attention that one gets the conception of a spiritual-mental that one has like an inner activity. You realise how such attempts lead to the gate of spiritual science.

Another example: I felt highly satisfied when I got a treatise which a very gifted director of a grammar school—Deinhardt (Johann Heinrich D., 1805-1867)—wrote. There you realise how a highly educated man of the more recent past who could not know spiritual science struggles with the highest questions of life. Indeed, also others did this. Nevertheless, it is interesting to realise that in a talk in which he brought his ideas of immortality forward the editor draws the attention to a letter that he received from this teacher. He writes there: if it were still granted to him to continue his attempts, he still would show how the soul still works in the life between birth and death on a subtle body which goes then through the gate of death. It is encouraging to see somebody struggling in the middle of the age of the arising materialism with the problem that I have treated in the two last talks. I tried there to show that one grasps the immortal essence of the human being spiritual-scientifically, which develops on and on, which goes through the gate of death to prepare for a new earth-life with the passage through the spiritual world. That director refers to this “spiritual-mental essence” as a “subtle body” which the soul organises to carry it through death and in which the subtler forces can gather themselves that the soul needs then to continue its development.

Even if today the glance is deflected from the spiritual-mental because of the great achievements of the outer science, and, hence, the immortality of the human soul is not yet acknowledged and is not understood, nevertheless, one sees the struggle for concepts which give the human being a picture of that what exists after death and brings power and assurance into life and makes the human being only a complete human being. One can say to someone who can live without these “metaphysical things” that life must take place in such a way that it brings up that from its depths—even if the mental glance can be darkened for epochs—what releases the natural view into the fields of the everlasting, the immortal.

Thus, one can say that also for that what seems paradoxical today the time becomes ripe in which that is understood as the achievements of science have always been understood. Already once, I have drawn your attention to the fact that we can feel spiritual science in harmony with the present science. Therefore, I would also like to point to something at the end of these considerations that burst out of the soul of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus who did deep looks into the experience of the universe from the viewpoint of his time. He felt his soul taken along by the “stream of becoming” as which he interpreted the whole universe. Heraclitus considered the restless becoming as the real characteristic of the universe. “Being” was a delusion to him. What exists is there in truth only imaginary.

Everything is active in the stream of becoming, and the soul is woven into this perpetually flowing activity. The fire was the symbol of becoming to Heraclitus, he felt his soul positioned into the fire of the universe. Living in it emotionally he felt the impulse of immortality as an inner experience, as an immediate inner observation. He expressed this impulse that way and his words shall close our considerations of human immortality only somewhat changed.

If the soul—freed from the body—soars the free ether, it appears before itself as an immortal spirit freed from death!

Although in these talks I have already spoken repeatedly about the moral life and the moral world order, I would like to summarise what one can say from the viewpoint of spiritual science about the bases of the moral world order in the human life.

Schiller (Friedrich Sch., 1759-1805, German poet) expressed the basic character of the moral human life in a magnificently simple way:

Do you search the highest, the greatest?

The plant can teach you.

What it does unconsciously

Do it volitionally—that's it.

Just the today's discussions maybe show that this saying applies to the basic character of the moral life. However, it matters that in the second half of this quotation a significant riddle is hidden: how, by which means and where from the human being can want what the plant does without will. You have to search the heart of all philosophical and moral-scientific investigations in this riddle.

In our time, a big number of thinkers who deal with the moral questions of humanity can hardly penetrate so far to get to the undeniable fact of any ethical obligation of the human being. We shall realise that the ethical obligations and impulses shine into life as it were for a big number of thinkers who cannot indicate the place based on their worldviews characteristic for the present where from this light of moral impulses shines into the human souls.

Just if we link to Schiller's saying, we can note a peculiar, at first like the moral life lighting up fact which becomes clear in particular if you descend to the lowest realm of nature, to the mineral realm. Let us assume that we turn our glance upon a rock crystal. The essentials, which are not always perceptible, are that you have to do the following requirement according to the circumstances of the universe. If this rock crystal, if this physical thing develops its inherent laws, it represents its being. If one were able—and indeed the ongoing natural sciences will come to such achievements—to state from the special substance of the rock crystal, how its particular crystal form has to result, the known six-sided prism, from both sides concluded by six-sided pyramids, then you can also know if it reaches such a crystal form how this law expresses itself in the outside world. Then it represents its being in the outer space.

In a sense, we can say the same of the beings of the plant realm, maybe less of the beings of the animal realm. However, the same law also applies in the animal realm, even if somewhat modified, because in nature everything only exists in certain gradations. Indeed, one would have to say a lot if one wanted to discuss the peculiarity of this principle. I want to suggest this only. The deeper you immerse yourself just in this fact, the more you recognise that here for our world order a point exists by which the human being differs, nevertheless, radically from the other physical beings.

Let us assume once that one could really recognise all those principles of formation and other principles that are inherent in a human form, as for example, the crystal form is inherent in a rock crystal, and the human being would express this sum of formative forces inherent to him. Then he would not represent his being in the outer space in the same sense as the other physical beings. Since deeply inside the human being are the moral impulses which are characterised at first by the fact that they cause an inner tendency of development which does not show his being concluded to the human being like the other physical beings if he expresses his formative forces. I admit that I express a rather trivial fact with it, but a fact from which one has to start, nevertheless. Worldviews coloured more materialistically do not acknowledge that; however, one has to acknowledge it in case of an unprejudiced consideration of existence. One has to acknowledge that the human being, we say, perceives something from somewhere at first that wants to settle in his being, and that gives him the impulse not to regard his being as a concluded one like the other physical creatures. Yes, one could say, as completely, as perfectly the human being could bring his formative forces into being as the other physical creatures do, he would never be able to declare his being as concluded compared with the moral impulses. This is why Kant (Immanuel K., 1724-1804), the great philosopher, felt forced to separate his worldview in two completely different parts. He differentiated one part that shows everything that is to be recognised of the outside world in such a way that the human being positions himself in this worldview with all his formative forces. The other part projects in the human existence as “categorical imperative:” act in such a way that the maxim of your action could become an imperative for all human beings. Thus, possibly the categorical imperative could be expressed. This other part of the Kantian worldview positions itself in the human life in such a way that it gives the tonic for the human being. However, how does Kant understand it? In such a way, that it speaks from another world than from that which one grasps with the worldview of knowledge and cognition. Therefore, he speaks about a quite different world that Kant tries to fill with all teachings of a divine being, of human freedom, of the immortality of the human soul and the like. Expressly Kant means that one has to listen to the world that is different from that of the usual human knowledge if one wants to perceive what obliges the human being. The categorical imperative is as it were the gate into a world that is above the sensory world.

Thus, one realises that it is probably felt that the being of man is not concluded with his formative forces. In our time, something strange becomes apparent. One would like to say, our time of the more materialistic-mechanistic, naturalistic way of thinking cannot at all speak—if one leaves it to its innermost impulses strictly—of such a world of which Kant was still speaking. Indeed, the fewest people are consequent in their worldviews. They do not expand all basic feelings that result from the requirements of their worldview, to the whole worldview. Those in particular who adhere to a naturalistic-materialistically coloured worldview—and who prefer today to be called monists—must completely reject the possibility to look up in a world, into which Kant looks like through a front gate with his categorical imperative. They also do this. Not only those who stand more or less on a scientific ground and with those it is comprehensible, but also many people who one calls “psychologists” do it in such a way. Numerous psychological thinkers of the most recent past do no longer manage asking: where from do the moral bases of human life come, actually, and where from that what distinguishes the human being from all other physical beings? Then the people say without thinking, ethics must be founded on the fact that not only the single follows those impulses that are directed immediately to his own being, to his own existence, but also that he follows those impulses that are directed to the whole humanity. “Social ethics” has become a word that is in full vogue in our present.

Because one can look up at no higher worlds with the cognitive forces of which one disposes according to their view, one tries to get a clue in certain border areas with that what one can still accept as “real”: the totality of the human beings or any group of humanity. One calls this moral what is in the sense of this totality, in contrast to that what the single person does only for himself. One can find extremely irrational thoughts that want to maintain ethics and morality under this point of view of mere social ethics. In any case, someone who looks deeper into these matters has just to look for the real contents of that what is to be done, or rather for that, where from such contents can come, for the “places,” from which the moral impulses can originate.

In this sense, Schopenhauer (Arthur Sch., 1788-1850) spoke a brilliant word that I have already often quoted here: “Preaching morality is easy, founding morality is hard.” He means with it: it is difficult to visit the forces and impulses in the human soul that make the human being really a moral being, it is easy to pick up certain principles from the historical course of humanity or also from the religious or other systems with which one can then preach morality. Schopenhauer means that it does not depend whether one can pronounce these or those moral principles, but what forms the basis of the moral impulses as forces.

Now, however, Schopenhauer finds these impulses of the human nature in compassion and empathy in his one-sided way. One has said rightly, why should anybody who feels morally connected with a matter which concerns only himself and no one else, avoid a perjury that is only caused by empathy? Why should anybody be prevented morally, for example, from mutilating himself out of certain empathy? Briefly, and I could bring in many such examples: indeed, the impulse that Schopenhauer finds is very comprehensive, one meets something that must form the basis of most moral actions which however cannot be exhaustive at all.

It is instructive at any price that the theories, the views, and opinions of the origin of morality grasp at nothing the more any worldview tends only to that what one can obtain with the outer senses and the reason that is directed to this outer sensory world. It would take too much time of course if I wanted to show in detail that such a worldview is unable to state the place of origin of morality. Nevertheless, the moral-ethical life is hanging in the air with any such worldview that is directed only to the outer sensory world and to the reason that combines the facts of the sensory world or moulds them into principles.

What I have just said should lead to the explanation of something that must appear quite natural after the preceding talks. If one assumes in the sense of these talks that a world of spiritual beings and spiritual facts forms the basis of our sensory world and the world of the reason, then it is just a given, because one cannot find the impulses of the ethical in the sensory world, to look for these impulses in the spiritual world. Since maybe the requirements, views, and opinions of those are right who believe that just in the moral something speaks into the human nature that comes immediately from a supersensible world. Therefore, we want to approach the consideration of the moral life. However, I will summarise for those listeners who have heard only few of these talks quite briefly, how the spiritual researcher ascends to the spiritual world where we want to search the origin of morality.

I have said the following many a time here. If the human being wants to get beyond the realm of sensory experience, he must not stop with his power of cognition that the human being normally has. Any science, any consideration is right which speaks about limits of knowledge in the sense as I have often explained here and starts from the requirement that the human being can develop no other cognitive forces than those, which are in him by themselves. Nevertheless, in spiritual research it matters that everything that is already in the human being is developed further that forces slumbering in the human being can be woken. Many a time I have spoken of the methods that can develop these slumbering forces. I have spoken of that “spiritual chemistry” which goes forward with the same logic and rationality as natural sciences do, but which extends to the spiritual area and its forces, and, hence, has to develop the natural methods and the natural way of thinking in a way different from natural sciences. In this sense, I have often explained where spiritual science must be a continuation of natural sciences in our time. I would like to point to that what should be mentioned only as it were maybe once again for clarification.

I said once that one cannot consider water if you face it only as water that in it the hydrogen is contained which the chemist separates by the outer chemistry. Water extinguishes fire, it is not ignitable; hydrogen, a gas, is ignitable and can be liquefied. Just as little you can discover the nature of hydrogen that is combined with the oxygen in the water, just as little you can consider the spiritual-mental in the outer human body. However, the spiritual chemistry does not consist in tumultuous performances, in something that can be carried out externally like the outer chemistry, but in the following that I would like to show only quite briefly. You can read out the further details in my Occult Science. An Outline or in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?.

The human being is the only tool with which you can penetrate into the spiritual. However, he must advance by particular soul exercises to that point where he can connect a sense with the words: I experience myself in my spiritual-mental beyond the physical-bodily—as the hydrogen would have to say if it could experience itself: I experience myself beyond the oxygen. Persevering soul exercises are necessary to separate this spiritual-mental from the physical-bodily, and that the human being gets around to connecting a meaning with the words: I experience myself in the spiritual-mental, but my physical-bodily is outside of me as the table is outside of me. These exercises last shorter or longer and consist in an increase of attention what is already important in the usual life. However, I do not mean the attention on soul contents caused by something exterior, but on soul contents that one puts in the centre of the soul life. If the human being is able to tense all his soul forces and then to concentrate them upon clear soul contents of which he knows for sure that he himself has put them, then everything is crowded together gradually by this stronger concentration of the soul forces that enables him to lift out the spiritual-mental from the physical-bodily. Only the exercise of meditation must take place regardless of practising the so-called concentration. This is something that the human being already knows in the usual life, but one has to increase it unlimitedly in spiritual science: devotion to the general world process.

The second requirement of spiritual science is to be given away to the general world being, as a human being is in sleep, but consciously and not unconsciously. Many people do not experience the right success of these exercises because they get tired of the systematic and persevering performance of these exercises. While one gives the soul forces another direction by such exercises than they have in the everyday life and strains them in another way as they are strained in the everyday life, one arrives at that strange moment where one knows: now you experience spiritual-mentally. However, while you made use of your brain and your senses once, you recognise yourself beyond the body, as usually the outer objects were outside of you. Our time will force itself to acknowledge such a thing, as the profundities of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galilei asserted themselves. They faced the same out-of-date cognitive forces that the recognition of the spiritual worlds faces today. Whereas the opponents were people at that time who maintained old religious traditions, these are today the so-called “freethinkers” who oppose the recognition of the spiritual-scientific knowledge. Nevertheless, one has to do the step to this recognition, as at the time of Copernicus, Galilei and Giordano Bruno the step to the outer natural sciences was done.

I have never spoken to you in abstractions and speculations, but I have always tried to state the concrete spiritual facts to which the human being comes if he reaches the indicated levels of spiritual knowledge. One can experience that the human being lifts out himself from the physical-bodily and experiences himself in such a way that he obtains a consciousness that differs by the experience even from any illusion and hallucination. You experience yourself beyond your head, and if you submerge again, it is, as if you resume using your brain as an outer tool. This experience is stupefying if it appears first. But one can get it as it is described in the writing How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?. Then one enters into a world of concrete spiritual experiences where one is within spiritual facts as one is with the senses and the reason in a world of concrete sensory beings and sensory facts.

One faces this world in three levels. I have called the first level that of the Imaginative world. This Imaginative world is no imagined world, but a world in which you experience the facts of the spiritual world as pictures that actually express the processes of the spiritual world. You have to work through this Imaginative world, so that you get to know all sources of error gradually which are very numerous and learn to distinguish what deceives you and what corresponds to a real spiritual existence of beings or processes.

Then you ascend to the second level of knowledge that I call that of Inspiration. Inspiration differs from Imagination that with the latter you have the outer surface of spiritual processes and beings in pictures only, while you have now to develop what distinguishes the spiritual perception radically from the outer perception: the fact that you dive into the spiritual percipience. Indeed, it is in such a way that you do not face the spiritual existence in the way as the sensory existence: the fact that it is there—and I am here; but, indeed, with the spiritual cognition something takes place like diving into that what one perceives. It sounds strange, however, it is literally true: your being extends spatially in all things that you perceive in the spiritual world. While you are, otherwise, at a point of space, enclosed in your skin, and all other things are outside, everything of the spiritual world becomes inner world what you are otherwise used to call outer world. You live in it as far as you are able to penetrate into it.

Then there is still a higher level of cognition about which I do not speak today; this is the Intuition, in the right sense understood, not that which is called in the usual sense. One works the way up through Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition into the spiritual world.

The following question should now occupy us. If one leaves the body and the usual experiences of existence, which difference is there between the outer knowledge and the moral impulses, ideas and mental pictures? Are we able to point to a source of the moral life if we can maybe indicate this source in that world which one reaches if one leaves the usual sensory world and penetrates with the own spiritual knowledge into a spiritual world?

We consider the world at first that raises a spiritual imagery around us. I simply tell the facts as they arise for the spiritual observation. There one experiences, if one leaves the sense-perceptible world, a kind of darkness spreading about this world, and a new world of spiritual beings and facts appears in which one is also in sleep, otherwise; but as a spiritual researcher one dives consciously in this world. While one dives in it that way, one notices: what you see as colours, what you hear as tones in the sensory world, all that disappears; what you can take with you in the spiritual world is only a memory of it; something that one can imagine at most. If this disappears, one dives in such a way that the mental activity, the imagining activity, and the feeling activity is seized by other beings as it were into which one dives.

For the essentials are that you dive in the spiritual world, in a world of beings. As soon as you dive in the spiritual world, you find concrete facts and beings; and what you observe in the sensory world appears actually in such a way that you live in the extrasensory, invisible, spiritual world; but if we are enclosed in the body, this extrasensory world shows its reflection by the activity of our body. Indeed, it becomes a concrete fact that the complete outer world is a reflection of the spiritual world of which I have explained that it causes the cerebral processes first which produce the reflecting apparatus by which the outer processes are perceived, and which one cannot perceive. As the human being does not perceive himself if he looks into a mirror, but perceives the reflection, he sees the reflection of the spiritual world if he submerges in the physical world, while by the processes of the body the spiritual world is reflected on the reflecting apparatus. Then you notice that the physical world of perception relates to the spiritual world as the reflection relates to the viewer. Indeed, it is in such a way: as the reflection has a meaning only for the viewer if he looks into the mirror who takes up the picture in his soul, the reflection of the spiritual world, the whole physical world of perception has a meaning as a “picture”—apart from the physical process, which is behind it. You notice this if you enter into the spiritual world.

I do not want to establish a teleological view of nature here. I do not mean that the world is arranged by an infinite reason in such a way that the human being can find the possibility to develop his self. However, I simply want to point to the fact that now the human being can carry on what he takes in his self if he has seen it in the outside world, if he has received it in his soul. This whole world of knowledge is built up by a process of reflection, and what disappears as a process of reflection if you dive in the spiritual world about that you know that it belongs to you, and that is taken from it which is only a reflection in the physical world.

These are the essentials that you get to know when you say farewell from the sensory world and ascend to a spiritual world: only the reflection is added to that what you yourself are what would not be there without you, and to which you yourself belong which has come about only because you are a human organism. This reflection has a meaning for your self, for that what you carry as a spiritual-mental core through the times. Hence, you are, as soon as you are in the spiritual world, in a world that is there without you from which you learn to recognise that it must be reflected, so that we can perceive it. Nevertheless, the being itself is not contained in the reflections.

We look at that moment when we enter into the Imaginative world. What about the moral ideas if we ascend to the spiritual world?

The moral impulses present themselves in the Imaginative world in such a way that you must say to yourself, nevertheless, there you have produced something; there you have put something in the spiritual world. What you recognise you have not put in a world, you have put this only in yourself and you carry it on through the times. What corresponds to a moral impulse, a moral action, or even only to a moral volition is creative; so that you must say if you look at it in the spiritual world: with that which we experience with the idea of the ethical in ourselves, we create beings in the spiritual world. We are the originators of processes at first, then of beings of the spiritual world.

You know that spiritual science speaks of the repeated lives on earth. The life on earth that we experience now is built on consecutive former lives on earth, and always after a life on earth, a life in a spiritual existence follows; and from our present life on earth, we look again at the coming ones.

Our moral experience objectifies itself literally, at first as spiritual processes. How I think and act morally, I notice this in the spiritual world as processes. These processes come out from the self of the human being. While one carries on the cognitive experiences with the self into the following lives on earth, that which belongs to the moral or to the immoral life, is put as processes in the world and works on as those, so that we deal again with them because of the karma in the next life on earth. Someone who ascends to the spiritual worlds notices how the moral impulses have a certain relationship to his self.

We take, for example, one of the principal impulses that the significant psychologist Franz Brentano (1836-1917) called the only impulse of the moral world order, the impulse of love. Who would deny that countless things go forward in the moral life from the different levels of love—from the lowest level of love up to the highest levels, up to Spinoza's (Baruch S., 1632-1677) love, amor Dei intellectualis. Everything that happens under the impulse of love what we count among the field of moral—how do we find it in the Imaginative world? We find everything familiar that originates under this impulse, so that we may say, we can live with that what originates under the impulse of love in the spiritual world.

One feels at home with that which arises from the capability of love, in the spiritual world. These are the essentials, as soon as one enters into the Imaginative world.

However, let us take what arises from hatred what presents itself as an action or only as an intention which hatred dictates. There the very remarkable fact appears that everything that flows from the field of hatred appears in the Imaginative world in such a way, that it instils fear and repels. Yes, it belongs to the tragic sides of the experience of the spiritual researcher that he must see himself how he is put in the spiritual world with the forces of sympathy and antipathy. Anyway, as soon as you enter into the spiritual world, it can be that you feel sympathetic or antipathic about yourself. In the physical world, it does not happen that the human beings regard themselves as antipathic,—as sympathetic, may be. However, in the spiritual world one is subjected, like here to the physical laws, to the spiritual laws. Everything that you accomplish from the capability of love and sacrifice, from a moral impulse or that you feel as a moral attitude all that founds processes, which you behold Imaginatively, in such a way that you are allowed to be likeable to yourself because of your loving thinking, acting or feeling. Everything that is undertaken, for example, with hatred or similar impulses, with malice, vanity and the like, appears in the Imaginative world in such a way that one knows: you are the creator of these processes that are simply the objectification of your hateful or mischievous impulses. You perceive yourself within it in such a way that the processes compel you that you are antipathic about yourself. There we have no other choice but to be antipathic to ourselves.

It is necessary for a spiritual researcher to learn to endure such situations in certain cases in a thorough self-knowledge, and to learn to endure in patience how they appear in the further karma. I do not really want to say that a spiritual researcher should not have such antipathy, but that he should not have the intention to place himself as a saint or as a higher human being. He must strive rather to improve his moral life so that the tragic of this antipathic self-feeling takes place in a decreased measure. Since it means a condition of the most dreadful tension that one wants to escape from oneself; and this feeling appears only while ascending to the spiritual world. There one realises where from the impulses come by which we do the likeable and learn to avoid what we hate. Since what one does in the usual world from such impulses has an effect in the spiritual world as a force. Yes, one may say, when the human being falls asleep, the forces work on which I have just characterised. They have a strong effect on sleep and cause the health of sleep, at least partly. What arises like a result from the day life, and what does not allow the human beings to fall asleep this is at the same time what the spiritual researcher must behold.

We ask ourselves now, where from do those moral impulses come which speak in the human soul?

In the usual life, one does not know where from they speak. However, they are there and speak in such a way that someone who uses the reason only which combines the facts of the sensory world and establishes laws cannot find them. Where from does that come what speaks into the human being like from another world?

It is there just as knowledge only if one beholds it in the Imaginative world. However, it works as dark forces whose origin remains dark for cognition, which, however, speak as impulses into the soul. The effects of that what the spiritual researcher beholds are experienced in the sensory world as moral impulses; the causes are in the spiritual world. Hence, the human being appears as a being who must always say to himself, if your power of love is completely developed ever so much, you belong to a spiritual world and you find the other part of your being where you acquire that what expresses itself as moral life here, for example, in the conscience. Conscience is a very big riddle if one wants to be consistent.

We have now found where the forces are rooted which exist as conscience and the like. Let us assume that we face a person and the particular configuration of our image life causes us to hate him. What could induce us to hate him, what we would fear in the spiritual world as processes, this voice speaks in our soul, you shall not hate! What has an effect on the capability of love, by which we may be likeable to ourselves in the spiritual world, speaks into the life on earth, you shall love. Thus, it is with the other phenomena of moral life that crystallise spiritually as conscience.

How does this conscience appear as a fact in the spiritual world?

You do not yet find it as a fact in the Imaginative world. You must dive into the Inspirative world—must dive in such a way that you feel poured out about the whole field of perception in the spiritual and this inner perception as your field of perception that you experience in yourself. The origin of conscience speaks down from there. It expresses itself only as it were in that what one can experience in the Imaginative world, however, its centre is in the Inspirative world. If you rise into it and try once by way of trial to ask yourself, what happens if you refrain from all that what the voice of your conscience says to you? Let us assume once by way of trial that you could do something good as you do something out of hatred, and let us assume that your conscience does not speak,—you would notice that something happens that I want to make clear at first by a comparison.

You experience something like a drop of water in yourself that evaporates on a hot place immediately. Such a thing happens if by way of trial the conscience wants to extinguish itself in the Imaginative world. There you experience that you lose the centre of gravity as it were; you are no longer able to orientate yourself in the spiritual world. It belongs to the most dreadful experiences that you have then to be in the spiritual world and to feel the consciousness dwindling, after you have trained yourself first to carry consciousness into this world. It is a dreadful condition if unscrupulous human beings have experiences there, when they arrive at the spiritual world. Since let us assume that a person who is not very conscientious, otherwise, comes to the spiritual world. Everybody can carry out the exercises, which I have described in the writing How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds? if he carries out them with the necessary energy, so that he perceives then in the spiritual world. One should not have come to it, as long as it is not salutary. Hence, such exercises with which one does not lose the consciousness are also recommended in the mentioned book, which make a person moral, so that his consciousness is not extinguished in the spiritual world.

However, let us assume that an unscrupulous person reaches the spiritual world. Then his consciousness would dissolve immediately, would evaporate. There are such unconscionable spiritual researchers absolutely. They feel the urge immediately to hand over themselves to other spiritual beings because we enter there into a sphere of beings. The unscrupulous human beings who come so far where conscience gives us a firm centre of gravity feel their consciousness there evaporating as it were, give in to another being, make themselves obsessed by another being in order to find purchase on it. One can make this experience. Hence, such a person if he returns to the day consciousness does no longer announce what he has experienced in the spiritual world, but that what a being is speaking through him by which he has made himself obsessed. The integrity of our being is here maintained, while we really carry that voice as a force in us into the Inspirative world, which exists here as conscience. Then you feel in yourself, but in such a way that that what you produce what appears already in the Imaginative world exists that you do not lose the centre of gravity and that it is something that hold and carries you. What can hold and carry the human being in his true spiritual being in the spiritual world speaks through two worlds down, through the Imaginative world, down to the sensory world, and this is the voice of conscience.

Thus, conscience is something whose origin many thinkers cannot discover really about which they think that it developed only by the social order,—and that is carried down from the spiritual world that is effective in the sensorily experiencing human being and whose origin is found in the spiritual world. You can find the mysteries of the whole world only if you really develop those cognitive forces about which I have often spoken here. Then you must say in particular about the world of moral that it sends down its impulses from the spiritual realms, and that the human being if he becomes aware of the moral impulses experiences the effect of that which has its origin in the spiritual world. If you figure the normal world order out correctly, you realise that on one side that spiritual worlds speak through the soul, on the other side, however, also that one creates realities with the moral impulses that continue working, which one finds again. We send these realities to the spiritual world; they are causes in this world. They form the basis of the sensory world.

I could only suggest—while I have not mentioned a wide field of many intermediate stages—what the spiritual researcher has to experience if he ascends from the sensory world to the spiritual worlds. Nevertheless, I would like to add something else. What we see originating that way, while we act morally or immorally what expresses itself in its effects in our moral impulses what we perceive as formative or destructive forces in the Imaginative world appears as the first causes of the world existence generally. We turn our look to the universe where security, order and harmony prevail and we look back at primeval times in which beings were active in a similar way as we are today, where beings sent their moral impulses out which appear so unimportant and as nothing beside the whole world existence. However, these moral impulses grow more and more in time! The moral impulses that originated in primeval times from these beings grew more and more and became the natural forces. One learns to recognise—I have to skip intermediate stages—if one regards the astronomical laws that fulfilled Kepler with such devoutness: the fact that in the universe old and ripe, originally moral impulses are working. Those who became leaders in ancient times had to exceed certain levels—we know from previous talks that one cannot ascend in the same way, as one ascended once in the mysteries to the spiritual worlds, this has to happen in another way today.

One of these highest degrees enabled the soul to behold into the lofty realms of spiritual existence. One called this degree the degree of the sun hero or the sun man. Why sun hero? Because such a soul must have developed the inner life so far that it is not exposed to the inner arbitrariness when it rises in the realms of cognition to which the usual soul life is exposed, but to such impulses which work with internally recognised and experienced necessity. Then you can say to yourself, if you deviated from them, you would cause such a mess as the sun would cause in the universe if it deviated from its way even for a while only. Because one had to attain such firmness of the inner life on such a degree of cognition, one called such recognizers sun men in the ancient mysteries. That pointed to the connection of that what we send out into the world and what grows out of it,—as well as the “laws of the universe” have grown out of moral impulses from beings of distant, distant times.

If you consider this, you begin experiencing a sentence by Kant somewhat different. When he contemplated the moral duty, the moral consciousness generally he pronounced the meaningful words: “Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me” (Critique of Practical Reason). Such connections, which one experiences, which one surveys where one sees the moral law working in time, filled him when he spoke of the “starry heaven above me and the moral law within me.” Someone who recognises the ancient impulses of moral life spiritual-scientifically recognises at the same time how this moral life is connected with the true source of the human being. Hence, spiritual science can give a firm base of this moral life. So one can almost say: yes, any knowledge is there to find ourselves in our inside and to carry what we find in such a way through the world and the times; however, everything that we experience as moral impulses in ourselves makes us creators, co-creators of the world. We can understand how we must despise ourselves as immoral human beings who bring downfall and destruction into the world if we recognise that we are connected by the moral world order more really with the world than by the other knowledge that we take up in our reason. Then you feel what such deep spirits felt like Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) whose 100th day of death we recently celebrated. He says, what is the sensory world? It has no independent, inherent reasonable existence; it is only the sensualised material for duty, for the moral world order. What spiritual science has to bring to light such a deep spirit as Fichte anticipated it concerning the moral worldview who looked at the world in such a way that he said, the moral world order is the most real, and the other is there only that we have a material in which we can express the moral impulses.

Of course, spiritual science cannot position itself on the ground of Fichte's worldview, because it is one-sided. It comes from a time in which spiritual science did not yet exist. Nevertheless, one can see with admiration how Fichte experienced the moral world order in himself. Since spiritual science just shows that all the other knowledge presents itself as a world tableau; however, moral is that what we must be if we want to develop our whole being. This does not only fasten us in ourselves, but positions us with real balance in the whole world order. If one realises in such a way that just spiritual science can find the living support of the moral world order, then one clearly understands what I have already often pronounced in these talks. However, one is with the modern spiritual science in such situation even today, as for example once Giordano Bruno was before his contemporaries when he wanted to extend the worldview to the blue vault of heaven in infinite widths of space. He had to show to the human beings of his time: what you perceive as the blue vault of heaven is only the borders of your narrow view. Such a spiritual phantasmagoria is that what the human being has put in his existence by birth or conception and death. However, as the blue vault of heaven is only the narrow border of our own view in space, birth and death are only the borders for the human view in time. As well as that which the human being set to himself as the borders of space was recognised as Maya, the borders beyond birth and death open up for the human soul, and the infinite worlds are acknowledged which are beyond birth and death.

Today we stand there with the spiritual-scientific information in our time in such a way as the modern natural sciences stood with their views in the aurora of our time. However, one still stands alone in a way. One stands there in such a way that one has the insurmountable confidence of truth that searches its way through the narrowest scratches and rock crevices, even if the opponent powers want to fight against it. One feels isolated, nevertheless, with spiritual science. One feels the modern time interfering into spiritual science how the souls must demand it,—and one feels in harmony with that what the most significant spirits of all times anticipated and thought what they have often pronounced more simply than one must pronounce it today what they properly pronounced nevertheless from their souls, feeling the truth. Thus, one feels in harmony with many spirits, while one has to point from spiritual science to the true sources of the moral life and moral world order coming from the divine-spiritual worlds. One feels also in harmony with a sentence by Goethe I would like to quote which summarises what I have said in the course of this talk. Goethe said a significant word for that who can feel the moral life really: wholly quietly, a God speaks in our breast, wholly quietly, but also clearly; he makes us recognise what we have to grasp and what we have to avoid (fromTorquato Tasso). While Goethe says: wholly quietly, but also clearly a God speaks, he points as it were anticipating to that what spiritual science can find as the impulses of the moral life in the spiritual world.

We look up at the spiritual world, and we say to ourselves, just the moral life testifies that the human being has his origin in the spiritual worlds; since from there the God announces quietly but also quite clearly what we have to grasp and what we have to avoid. Indeed, he covers what the spiritual researcher beholds as the reasons of both, but what the human being expresses in moral impulses. That has its true primal grounds in the spiritual world, what dives from it into our soul, what speaks in the human soul as a real God, as God's voice from the spiritual world, announcing the nature of the human being by which he reaches beyond that what his fellow creatures are in the universe.

Shortly after the death of Voltaire (pen name of François-Marie Arouet, 1694-1778) Lessing's (Gotthold Ephraim L., 1729-1781) writing The Education of the Human Race appeared (1780), and one would like to say that in this writing you can find the starting point of a historical consideration in the spiritual-scientific sense. I have mentioned this writing by Lessing repeatedly in these talks. It tries to find the causes for the view of the repeated lives from the consciousness of the eighteenth century.

Someone who tries to think Lessing's discussions through to the end in this testament of his intellectual work realises that by the ideas of this writing coherence comes into the whole structure of the human historical becoming. We see successive epochs in this historical becoming of the human being, which differ from each other. If we look back at ancient epochs, we realise that the human soul experiences other things, that it searched its ideals in other things than in later epochs. We can say as it were that the different epochs of the historical becoming differ sharply from each other by the character of that what they can give to the human souls. Sense and coherence come in this historical becoming if one considers that this human soul—which could participate in cultural blessings and impressions of one epoch after the belief that the human being lives only once—that this human soul appears for Lessing and the modern spiritual science in repeated lives on earth. Thus, it gets out from any epoch what it can give. Then it experiences a life between death and the next birth in a wholly spiritual world. It appears in the next epoch again, of course with some divergences in the individual lives, to carry over the fruits, the results, and the impressions of the former epoch to the next one. Therefore, we can say that the human soul participates in all epochs through the historical development. Thereby one can really speak taking up the idea of Lessing once again of a kind of education of the human soul by the spirits of the successive epochs. If one goes once spiritual-scientifically even more exactly into that what exists as elementary beginnings already in Lessing's ideas about the education of the human race, then one is in the field of the interpretation of history, where above all our souls develop only so far as one believes to be today in the wholly scientific field. Then only one will have history.

Only then, one brings sense and coherence in the historical becoming; one will recognise how an epoch builds itself up one after the other, what the souls gain from the different epochs, why they are positioned in the different epochs. Then that what spiritual science has to say no longer appears as something fantastic to many people. Then one smiles less about the fact that spiritual science assumes not only a physical-bodily cover of the human being, but that it must recognise an inner spiritual-mental being of the human being which one has to consider, however, in such a way that it develops its different formations and arrangements in the course of the epochs.

Spiritual-scientifically, we distinguish three parts in the human soul, as it has developed up to the present epoch. One may say that the most primitive part of this arrangement is that in which the blind passions work and the desires and emotions pulsate, on which, however, also that works what provides the perception of the physical outside world for us. We call this part the sentient soul. Then as distinct from the sentient soul we speak of another soul part that shows us the human being already with bigger inwardness, shows him in such a way as he can grasp himself if he turns away the look from the physical surroundings and rises above his more unaware desires, emotions, and passions. We call this higher member of the human soul the intellectual or mind soul in which the spiritual life of the human being turns already more inward. We call the highest member of the human soul the consciousness soul, that member in which, above all, the full self-awareness of the human being, the purest ego-consciousness appears.

If we speak about the three soul members—sentient soul, intellectual or mind soul and consciousness soul, we do not talk about abstractions or about arbitrarily constructed concepts and ideas; but we see at the same time how in the course of the historical development these three soul members gradually developing.

If we went far back in the historical becoming, behind the times in which Homer and Hesiod sung in which the Greek tragic poets lived and the Greek philosophy originated, we would find what we recognise in the echoes of the ancient Egyptian and Chaldean cultures even today. The outer research has already brought many things of them to light. Spiritual science, however, shows that in the epoch that dates back behind the eighth to tenth centuries before our calendar until the second and third millennia the human souls, that means our souls experienced something that one cannot compare at all with the modern life. At that time, our modern thinking that appears as something natural to us in the scientific worldview would have still been impossible. It would have also been impossible that the human soul felt isolated and strictly separated from nature at the most important moments of its life. All that was still impossible at that time. The human being felt his soul like living in the whole universe, in the whole nature, felt like a piece of nature, as the hand had to feel as a part of the organism if it could have consciousness. Only with the help of spiritual science, we can imagine the quite different soul life just today that reached possibly until the eighth to tenth centuries before our calendar.

If at that time the human being said, my desires drive me to put forward a foot, or if he said, I breathe—or if he felt hunger or saturation, he felt something in this transition of the inner experience into the movement of the body that he faced in such a way as he faced other experiences if he said to himself, it flashes, it is thundering, or, the wind blusters through the trees. The human being did not distinguish what he experienced emotionally from that what took action outdoors; he was with the whole inner life in nature. For it, however, that he felt himself still as a member in the big total organism, he had an original clairvoyance, he could behold in the spiritual world. He saw nature not in such a way as he sees her today, but ensouled by spiritual beings to which we work our way up again with the methods of spiritual science today. It was natural in those times that one experienced nature ensouled and spiritualised. However, one could not think such thoughts as we think the physical processes but one saw them like in pictures and the pictures were that what the physical principles are for us, and something of these pictures is preserved in the legends and mythologies of the nations, even in the real fairy tales until today. The human being had a pictorial imagination in ancient times.

We can gain these things today not only with the help of spiritual science, but I hope that I have succeeded in the new edition of my World Views and Approaches to Life in the Nineteenth Century (final title:The Riddles of Philosophy, CW 20) in pointing to the fact that one can consider the spiritual life completely philosophically. Then one can realise that a pictorial imagination existed in primeval times which went over to the Greek-Latin imagination only gradually, and that the human soul felt projected in the total organism of the world by the old pictorial imagination that was felt ensouled. This took place mainly in the sentient soul.

The Greek-Roman imagination lasting until the fourteenth, fifteenth centuries preferably demanded the intellectual or mind soul. I have already tried to show the quite different feeling and imagination of those times with the talks on Raphael and Michelangelo. I have explained how the Greek—later also the members of the Latin culture—felt completely one with his “soul body” because in the Greek world mainly the intellectual or mind soul was developed. He felt with his soul living within any single member of his body at the same time. While the preceding times of the sentient soul had a consciousness of the fact that the human being is a member of the whole nature, the Greek had a consciousness that that what lived in his whole body and what this body can give him is for him the immediate, true sight of nature at the same time.

This became different in modern times; also even today, one does not realise these matters with full thoroughness because one does not yet want to penetrate into spiritual science. It changed in particular since the aurora of modern thinking, since Copernicus, Kepler, Galilei, and Giordano Bruno. For at that time the consciousness soul started developing. It started developing in such a way that the human being became a riddle to himself, while he started now feeling separated with his independent soul from the whole nature, while he felt his soul as something particular beside the body at the same time. As strange as it sounds, nevertheless, it is right that the human soul felt more separated from nature when the more materialistic tendencies appeared in natural sciences. What a time arose in the western culture since the fifteenth century? At this time, a net of lawfulness spreads out as it were which extends to unlimited spatial widths.

It is great to see Giordano Bruno standing there in the aurora of modern times and imagining the power of physical laws extending into infinite widths. However, in these spatial widths one cannot find what the human being experiences in his soul. If the ancient Egyptian or Chaldean looked up at the stars, he felt that from the constellation of the stars a force arose which was connected with his own moral experience in this or that way. If the old astrologer looked up at the stars and felt the human destiny in them, this view of nature still allowed him to imagine the soul in the work of nature. Now, however, a time arose which made it to the human being more and more impossible to imagine the soul within nature. Since just with the appearance of modern natural sciences the human being had to struggle with the question: how have I to position myself to the work of nature from which no longer anything soul-like shines to me? The human soul had to get around to asking itself for the position of natural sciences to the own soul. With Giordano Bruno, we see this fight. He imagines the own soul as a monad. Although he imagines the world in the sense of modern natural sciences, he still imagines it as ensouled by monads.

Leibniz (Gottfried Wilhelm L., 1646-1710) also imagines the soul as a monad, and he imagines it in such a way that it can suitably relate to the world. Leibniz asks, how must the human soul be to be able to exist in my view of nature? He cannot answer it without formulating this view of nature in a particular way at the same time.

Leibniz considers everything as a combination of monads. If we look into anything of nature, we find the underlying ensouled monads. What we see is for Leibniz in such a way, as if we look at a swarm of mosquitoes which appears like a cloudscape; if we come closer, this cloudscape disintegrates in the single mosquitoes, and the swarm of mosquitoes appears to us first only in such a way because we do not look exactly at it. I have to imagine the view of nature, Leibniz said, in such a way that the human soul can exist in it. He was able to do this only if he imagined it as a monad among monads. Hence, he differentiates monads vaguely living from day to day, then sleeping, then dreaming monads, then those as it is the human soul. However, everything else that originates because everything that we see originating appears to us only in such a way as a swarm of mosquitoes appears to us as a cloud. We could enumerate the most brilliant spirits until our days. We would find that the fight for the knowledge of the human soul presents itself compared with the modern view of nature in such a way that the human soul feels, I must be able to get an idea of that what can arise as a view of nature, and what does no longer offer any ensoulment of nature. Compared with this fight is that what appears as a more or less materialistically coloured monism only an episode that will pass by. Nevertheless, the human soul that is separated from its view of nature will strive more and more to gain contents in itself, that means to arrive at that what it extracted from nature in old epochs.

Hence, we can say: since the age of modern natural sciences everything aims at deepening the human soul in itself, and everything points to the modern spiritual science, which I represent here, that the human soul can get around—experiencing itself in a spiritual world—knowing to be carried by spiritual-divine powers whose outer expression the outer nature is. As true as the human being when he still lived in his sentient soul recognised himself as a piece of the whole nature, as true as the Greek-Latin age, which experienced itself still in the intellectual or mind soul, did not yet feel separated from the bodily, the modern human being experiences himself in the consciousness soul. However, his soul knows itself separated from nature, since it must get an idea of it that no longer contains anything mental. The human soul had to strengthen itself to conjure up the wealth of spiritual experiences from itself, which can return to that assurance which it had when it still felt as a member of the ensouled universe.

Thus, the modern human soul experiences itself in the development of the consciousness soul since the fourteenth century. From the eighth, tenth pre-Christian centuries until the time of the fourteenth, fifteenth post-Christian centuries the development of the intellectual or mind soul lasted. We have to recognise that the spiritual life that the human soul conjures up from itself will be able to become wealthier and wealthier, so that it can live again in a spiritual realm. What we experience as the inner recognition of the consciousness soul began from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries on. We live for about four centuries in this period.

Voltaire lived in the middle of this period, in the middle between the emerging consciousness soul and us. You understand this spirit if you put him historically in this age of the self-experiencing consciousness soul. Since Voltaire with all his shining spiritual qualities, with his superior intellectual activity, with all the good qualities he had is a symptomatic expression of the pursuit of the consciousness soul, just as he is with all his bad, questionable qualities.

Two matters must face him in this age. One is that a glorious view of nature developed during the last century that got its shine only in the modern natural sciences, in which however no place was for the human soul grasping itself. Besides, the most brilliant spirits attempted to solve that riddle: how does the human soul attain an idea by which it can assert itself compared to this modern view of nature? The view of nature becomes more and more glorious; the striving in the human soul to assert itself to get inner assurance appears more and more in such a way that we see it like surging up and down. Since we see the human soul, as if it wants to attempt repeatedly to find itself compared with the view of nature, but shies away from it repeatedly because it is helpless to find that in itself what the consciousness soul has to conjure up in this time. Thus, we are still fighting and that is the most important reason why spiritual science has to position itself in the fight for the inner universe about which I have spoken in these talks and which the human beings have to search.

Thus, we see spirits like Descartes, Hume, Berkeley, and Locke attempting as it were to answer this riddle: what do I have to do with my soul compared with the view of the outside nature? One could link to each of these spirits who face us there. We want to link, for example, to Locke (John L., 1632-1704).

Locke—who is a symptomatic expression of that what one searched in the English cultural life at the beginning of Voltaire's age to understand the soul—appears to us in the following way. Locke feels, so to speak, completely defeated by the power of the view of nature, so that he must say, we can find nothing in our soul except that, what the soul has taken up only from the outer nature by the senses. The view of nature works so immensely, so impressively that Locke wants to limit all human soul life, in so far it develops knowledge, to that, what the senses induce in it and what the reason can combine as a world view. He faces the world in such a way that he says to himself, we find nothing in the human soul that does not isolate it that does not show it as a “tabula rasa,” as a blank slate, before from the outer nature the sensory impressions come which work on the soul. We realise that the power of the view of nature is so big and immense that Locke loses the confidence to find something in the human soul generally. One must consider the moral-spiritual aspect of Locke's standpoint above all. Indeed, old traditions, the religions connected the human being with the spiritual world. Nevertheless, up to the times of modern natural sciences one believed to be connected with the spiritual of the world, also with the help of spiritual links. There was a view of nature now that worked so overpowering that the human soul did not dare to think anything about itself. Now the soul stood there—and the view with which it stood there originated from spirits like Locke above all.

The human beings said to themselves, we can know nothing that is not delivered to us by the senses and by the reason limited to the senses. Now it mattered to develop so much mental force from the old traditions and emotions that one could recognise—beside that what one can recognise only as a picture of the outer nature—any spiritual-divine world from which one had to admit that one cannot attain it by knowledge, even if one believes in it. The view of nature assumed a form at first that cast off any cognitive connection of the human soul with the divine-spiritual primordial ground.

Thus, that worldview and that attitude towards life originated in which Voltaire was put in his youth at first. He stood at first before the spirit of his time so that it made a tremendous impression on him when he fled soon to England because he had been pursued in France and became familiar there just with that philosophy of Enlightenment. This philosophy limited any human cognition generally to the consideration of the view of nature and still cherished a divine-spiritual world only because of the temperament of the soul. Thus, Voltaire's core was occupied, so to speak, by this world experience, by this soul feeling, and in his so worried and, however, so clever soul the immediate conviction emerged that one stands on sure ground only on the ground of the overpowering physical laws. However, the religious temperament was strong in him. The soul did not give up its faith in a connection with a spiritual-divine world.

We see an infinitely extensive admiration of that originating what the modern natural sciences and the view of nature have brought on one side, and an admiration of the philosophical discussions that Locke, for example, raised. On the other side, we see the need originating in him to exert everything that the human spirit can exert as reasons for such a view of nature. Nevertheless, he adhered to the old idea of the immortality of the human soul, to a connection of the human being with the whole world existence, to the idea of freedom of the human soul in certain limits. Now a peculiar trait of Voltaire faces us that shows us how in him completely a symptomatic expression of that exists what lived in the whole time.

What we face there becomes maybe most vivid if I mention another work that appeared almost at the same time as Lessing's Education of the Human Race, namely theCritique of Pure Reason by Kant. Kant lived since his youth in quite similar conditions concerning the view of nature, as Voltaire did. Kant was devoted to the spirit of Enlightenment in the sense of the word. The dictum is due to him: Enlightenment means that the human soul has the courage to use its reason. It is contained in the nice essay What is Enlightenment? (1784). As to Voltaire Kant is like the fullest consequence of the impulses of Enlightenment. Kant faces like Locke and later Hume the power of the view of nature that showed how the world and the human soul come about. Since one cannot reject what has come up as a view of nature. This worked impressively! This view of nature worked so impressively on Locke that he rejected everything for knowledge that could not come from the sensory impressions and the reason. Kant goes forward “in principle.” He is the thorough, principal man who must lead back everything to the principles, and, hence, he writes his Critique of Pure Reason.

He shows in it how the human being can generally have knowledge only from the outer nature and how the human soul can get a practical but not deniable confidence that can arise from another side than that to which the outer knowledge is due. In the second edition of hisCritique of Pure ReasonKant betrayed his position in the preface: “I had to cancel the knowledge to make room for the faith.” Kant demands an area for the faith where the conscience projects where the categorical imperative speaks which does not give knowledge, however, an impulse to which the human being has to adhere, and leads to the idea of God and the idea of freedom. That is why Kant had to tackle with the matter in principle, while he put the question: if the human soul can attain no knowledge about itself already under the impulse of the modern view of nature, how can we receive a reasonable faith? He asserted a reasonable faith for the human being by the fact that he cast off the knowledge generally from the area where something is to be said about the human soul, while he limited the knowledge to the outer world.

Voltaire did not yet have what Kant had to reduce to a principle without which he could not live which then the whole future lives on. He had the logical side only which said that any cognition limits itself to the physical knowledge. He had to take out from the power of his personality what Kant took out in a principle, from something quite impersonal. Thus, we see Voltaire conjuring up from his temperament, from his ramble mind in his whole life that is identical with a side of the cultural life of the eighteenth century what Kant tried to derive from a principle, the categorical imperative. We see him repeatedly endeavouring in his long life to exert his wit and cleverness to say to himself, we can know nothing compared with the view of nature. But now human soul, step into the breach and try with wit and cleverness to bring all reasons whichever they may be whether good or bad to maintain what must be maintained compared with the view of nature!

Thus, in Voltaire's temperament and ramble mind that lived what had shrunk with Kant to an impersonal principle. Someone who wants to assess human souls must try to search into the structure of a soul with all its fights that as it were must maintain for a long life what can disappear from it by the power and importance of the view of nature perpetually. If we consider Voltaire in such a way and turn the glance at that which he created in detail, then he becomes understandable. Since as he stood there with his soul, he had a world against himself strictly speaking. Voltaire searched a spiritual worldview in which God, freedom, and immortality have space that can be up to the view of nature. Since Voltaire became a more and more ardent and biased confessor of the modern scientific view, and this striving lived and developed in him—because it was the basis of his nature with all the forms which assumed a surely unpleasant character sometimes in the course of his life.

Just at the time in which we recognise Voltaire as the most spirited expression of the struggle of the human soul to find itself as consciousness soul it was almost impossible to realise how this struggle of the human soul relates to an older struggle of the human soul in former epochs. Voltaire could not get to a pure, noble image of the Greek culture, for example. The scientific way of thinking appeared to him much more important and greater than that which the Greeks had intended with their view of nature that contained the picture of the mental-spiritual life at the same time. Therefore, Voltaire had to misjudge an epoch as it were in which in any form of culture the affinity of the human soul with the remaining world expressed itself. One can still recognise this in the figures of Homer and the great Greek tragic poets, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. As to Voltaire, one could not at all compare these Greek tragic poets to that which humanity reached in his time. To him the Greeks with their worldviews were human beings who had produced figments about nature; whereas the age of the great scientific researchers appeared as that which furthered the human beings in shorter time than all former epochs had done. Yes, in the age in which the human soul had to strive to maintain itself compared with the view of nature it had to become unfair compared with former ages in which the human soul could still extract its forces from the surrounding nature, so to speak, without its assistance.

Thus, we see the relation of Voltaire to former times gets a tragic character as it were; and we see him positioned in his surroundings in entire opposition to the world which he had grown out, actually.

If one surveys the French cultural life at the time of Voltaire, one can say that this world still cared less about the big riddles which the scientific way of thinking and the arising consciousness soul had to solve. This world still lived in those traditions that were given as it were to the world, so that it could develop in complete silence to the age of Enlightenment, to the age of the conception of itself. Voltaire saw himself surrounded with a world—and his French world was still filled with the most rigid intolerant Catholic principle—which wanted to extract anything mental-spiritual from the traditions, and which refused what was just dear to him: to be on his own towards the view of nature.

A tremendous aversion emerged in Voltaire against the cultural world surrounding him, an aversion that caused a life full of vicissitudes. He was twice in the Bastille, in 1717 and 1726; then he had to flee to England in 1726 where he stayed up to 1729. Next he returned to France and lived since 1734 a longer time secluded at the castle of the marchioness du Chatelet in Cirey in Lorraine. At that time, he became engrossed especially in scientific studies that should show him how the worldview can be grasped in the sense of modern natural sciences. From that, he got an insight of the necessary spiritual basic conditions of modern times. One may argue ever so much against him that he flattered, that he lied, that he deceived his friends, that he tried often to achieve something with the lowest means, all that was not nice. However, a holy enthusiasm was in him that expressed itself through the often cynical-frivolous form in such a way: the impulses of the human soul demand that the soul finds a worldview from itself, renews itself in a worldview that it can put before itself. At first, he could only have the view of nature. Hence, ardent hatred arose in him against Catholicism. He wanted above all to penetrate with his worldview into that which opposed him. He used any means at his disposal.

While he faced Catholicism that way, he found himself cut-off from everything that could connect him with it. For he hated the facilities and customs of Catholicism, its rites. He recognised no connection with that what resulted from his worldview that he wanted to support on natural sciences. The other matter was that he adhered to God, freedom, and immortality only because of his temperament, of his ramble and clever soul, however, only with abstract thoughts and ideas.

If the Greek looked up to those regions, where from the human being got his impulses, he saw something divine-spiritual prevailing there. Let us look at the works of the Greek tragic poets. We see in them the human world shown, adjacent to a divine-spiritual world, we see the divine world working on the world and the destinies of the human beings influenced by the destinies of the spiritual beings. We see above all in the images of the old times a lively consciousness of these spiritual beings existing in poetry. Exactly the same way as human beings could come to life in the tragedy, in the epic, these contents of consciousness could come to life in poetry. They came to life in the poems of Homer! We see in the age, when the human soul struggled out of the other co-creatures that the connection with such beings got lost to it! We can pursue how the supersensible figures still living in the Greek poetry become more and more abstract, already from Vergil until the modern times—with the exception of Dante who wrote his Divine Comedy on basis of a clairvoyant inspiration, and with whom these figures are alive again, indeed, in the form as he could see them.

Nevertheless, everywhere we see these figures growing paler and paler, and the human beings are left more and more to their own resources. We recognise that the poets must refrain more and more from a supersensible world that they do no longer face. Voltaire was too great to be able to refrain from the spiritual beings with his survey of life. His temperament was too big, too comprehensive. This was in his predisposition. Hence, the strange, the miracle which faces us as it were already in his youth epic, in theHenriade (1723) where he describes the destinies of King Henry IV of France. There we recognise that he cannot confine himself to what takes place in the outer world. However, we recognise on the other side that he feels restricted in his action everywhere, so that he is connected with the words from which he gets ideas of freedom, immortality and God only with abstractions. His soul had developed too far to show life in his Henriadein all the fights which were fought out at that time between the various religious and political parties like somebody who looks only as a human being with scientific view at it, and who grasps the other human life only as abstract ideas of God, freedom and immortality. His soul is too great for that. Hence, we see the longing projecting in Voltaire to connect the human soul with a supersensible world. However, we also realise that he cannot behold a humanly possible supersensible world from Catholicism that he hates. Since hagiography was only a collection of legends, and Christ was more or less a devout, good natured enthusiast to him.

However, Voltaire could not accept that the human life runs during its most important events only in such a way, as it happened around Henry IV of France as it looks if one investigates it with the outer senses and deduces with the reason. Thus, strange figures appear in the Henriade like the Discord(e). Why this figure of Discord with the representative of Enlightenment, with Voltaire? She looks at the events of France that do not happen in such a way, as she wants it. She wants more and more disagreement among the human beings, so that she can achieve her goal. With annoyance, she looks down at what happens against Rome, and, therefore, she takes to the road to Rome to come to an understanding with Rome.

Now one could say that all that is allegory. However, just from poetic impulses one has to say what I have just said: this Discord accepts completely realistic forms, so that one cannot consider her as mere allegory. Voltaire describes, for example, that she comes to the pope, that she is alone with him, and that she gets him around. There she behaves like a flirtatious person of the age of Voltaire; she carries out all possible arts of seduction. Just from the poetic impulses, I would like to say, I do not give an allegory credit for that it is able to sway the pope for the political party in France. With that what the pope can give her she returns to France, works as an agitator, appears in the figure of Saint Francis, as Augustine to the monks, goes from city to city, from village to village, and when she wants that Henry III does not win, she manages to seduce the Dominican monk Jacques Clement. Voltaire put everything into this portrayal what he had on his mind against Catholicism in the sense of his freethinking.

It is interesting to recognise how far Voltaire goes in the representation of this Dominican monk who should be seduced by Discord, so that he causes the doom of Henry III and Henry IV. A prayer is stated in the Henriade, which Clement, the monk, sends to heaven. I would like to read out this prayer, so that you get the feeling for that what lived in his soul against Catholicism from which he expected that one of his devout followers sends the following prayer to heaven:

O God! Whose vengeful justice should descend

To crush the tyrant, and thy faith defend

Is murder now, and heresy thy care

Thy wrath unjust, must we, thy children, bear?

Too long the partial trial we endure,

Too long a Godless monarch reigns secure.

Raise thy dread arm, o God! Thy people save,

Descend upon the king, thy anger gave;

Spirits of ruin his approach proclaim,

Ye Heav'ns announce his wrath in show'rs of flame!

Their trembling host, avenging lightnings blast,

Their chiefs, their soldiers perish to the last!

Let their two kings expire before my eyes,

Drive them like wither'd leaves, when storms arise;

Sav'd by thy arm, thy League its voice shall raise

And o'er their breathless bodies chant thy praise!

Stopp'd by these accents in her mid career,

Discord, in air suspended hung to hear;

The dropt to Hell, and from its dungeon drew

The fiercest fiend those fiery regions knew;

Fanaticism!—Nature abhors the name,

Unown'd the monster from Religion came;

Nurs'd in her bosom, arm'd for her defence,

His aim destruction, zeal his fair pretence.

The Dominican monk prays this to cause the death of Henry III and Henry IV, he prays to heaven, so that God sends death. Discord is attracted by this prayer of the monk, enters his cell, and calls “Fanaticism” as confederate from hell. Voltaire presents a figure again to us quite really! How does he speak of Fanaticism from which/whom he assumes that he finds his best support in the principles of the national disposition in modern times? He speaks about him:

'Twas he on Raba's plains, near Arnon's flood,

Taught Ammon's wretched race the rites of blood;

To Moloc's shrine, the frantic mother led,

To slay her infant which her womb had bred!

He form'd the vow which Jepthe's lips exprest,

And plung'd his #8224 in his daughter's breast!

'Twas he, at Aulis, Calchas voice inspir'd,

When Iphigenia's blood the priest requir'd;

Thy forests, France, were long his dark abode,

Where streams of blood to fierce Teutates flow'd;

Still does affrighted memory retain

The sacred murders of the Druid fane;

Rome, falling, own'd the God' mysterious birth,

From Pagan temples to the church retir'd,

The fiend, with rage, Christ's meck disciples fir'd;

Teaching the patient martyrs of his word,

To brandish persecution's bloody sword.

'Twas he, that furious sect in London bred,

By whom too good, too weak, a monarch bled!

Madrid and Lisbon yet his rites disgrace;

He lights those piles where Israel's hapless race,

By Christian priests, in yearly triumph thrown,

Their fathers' heav'n-taught faith, in flames atone!

Robed in Religion's vestments to our eyes,

Still from the church, he borrow'd his disguise ...

(Translation published by Burton and Co., London, 1797)

Discord fetches this guy from the gorges of Hell. From this guy Clement gets the #8224 with which he wounds Henry III, so that he dies.

We see spiritual powers working in Voltaire's poem that way. We realise that God sent down Louis the Saint, the ancestor of the kings, to encourage Henry IV, to instil wisdom into him as it were. Voltaire does not shrink back from putting words in the king's mouth what should happen in the history of France. We realise also that he links the time of Henry IV in an even worse sense to the fact that—after Henry had first advanced triumphantly and got tired then—he leads back this to the fact that Discord led him to the “temple of love” where he tired in unhappy love, until he is called again to a new fight. One reads this portrayal of the temple of love as he presents it as a kind of magic service that the adversaries of Henry IV are addicted to, as a kind of devil service with altars and rituals, which play a role with certain parties. One can say that Voltaire tends not by his reason, not by his intellect, not by that what he becomes from his fight for the consciousness soul but by his ramble temperament, by the sum of his emotions, to connect the whole human life with a spiritual world. However, in that struggle of the human soul, which takes place in the forecourt of the spiritual life, before one could think of spiritual science, is the tragedy of Voltaire that he must search the connection of the outer life with a spiritual world where he wants to show true experiences of the human life. Nevertheless, he can do it only insufficiently. Hence, the Henriade appears as an “unreadable” poem today because everything that Voltaire could exert along these lines is based on traditions which he hates because he feels unable to portray the secret forces anyhow which are working in the human evolution.

The agility of Voltaire's soul was necessary to keep up itself towards the fact that it can get inner contents less and less from the outer view of nature. Already in the Henriade, with those figures which are mythological figures and do not appear at all as mere allegories one notes Voltaire's soul fighting and looking for something that it can tie the human life to, and still finding nothing. One must consider this side of Voltaire and will properly appreciate what he did to understand the human development. Therefore, his marvellous characteristic of Charles XII and Louis XIV is so exemplary, in spite of all defects because for him the biggest riddle was how one experiences historical becoming. Which forces work in it, which work in the environment of the human becoming?

Because of the power that the view of nature exerted on him, he must express himself with all power and cynicism, besides, so to speak, kicking over the traces everywhere, for example, if he incriminates the Maid of Orleans of everything that he regards as superstition. But just Voltaire's soul is such by which one can recognise how souls feel which face the pulse of time in such a way that they do not hear it beating, but feel in the pulse of their own blood that an age comes to an end and a new age is not yet there.—One feels the tragic of this soul that asks, how do I find purchase compared with the new picture of nature? Today we would ask, how does the consciousness soul struggle out in the human being? We find the answer if we look at Voltaire who looks at everything that France could produce as outer culture and to whom the old traditional powers became abstract which are delivered from prehistory. He describes the heaven, the hell—the heaven even splendidly in a certain respect -, in which Henry IV is taken up by Louis the Saint. He describes how the spiritual forces divide the natural forces, how worlds work into each other,—and how all that gnaws, nevertheless, at the deepest subconscious soul grounds which search the hold where the soul can be anchored with its deepest divine being. However, Voltaire cannot find this anchor.

When the decade approached in which Voltaire died, a seed was put in a soul to search the primary source of knowledge in the human being that immerses itself not only in nature but that can also become engrossed in the spiritual universe. When Voltaire had died, Goethe bore the idea of his Faustin himself. Goethe gets out a figure, actually, of that what Voltaire would have called the most superstitious image, a figure which shows us how to search the deepest longing, the deepest wanting and the highest cognition of the human soul. Under the influence of this look into the deepest depths of the human soul, Goethe put a figure that is rather similar to Voltaire: Mephistopheles, save that Faust who searches the birth of the consciousness soul in another way says to Mephistopheles: “In your Nothingness I hope to find my All!” (verse 6256). Strictly speaking, these words sound to Voltaire from Goethe who searched the striving of modern times for the consciousness soul and its anchorage in the spiritual worlds in another way than Voltaire did. Voltaire is like the star of a declining world to which any striving is directed to achieve the consciousness soul and into which the scientific worldview shines which very strongly forces to the consciousness soul. Voltaire is still the greatest star of this declining world, although he cannot find what extends the human soul again to a spiritual world. Nothing is more typical for Voltaire than a quotation that he did about Corneille (Pierre C., 1606-1684, French dramatist) in his history of Louis XIV. There he says that Corneille edited a French translation of the booklet The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis (~1380-1471), and he would have heard that the French translation would have had 32 editions. He cannot believe this and says: “for it seems to me so unbelievable that a healthy soul can read this book to an end only once.” There we see expressed how Voltaire could not find the possibility to open a source to the spiritual world in his inside.

Today we say that spiritual science is a real continuation of that to which the scientific worldview forces the human being, but also that this spiritual science is a real continuation of the Goethean worldview. We speak of the fact that in the human being a second human being lives who can experience himself emotionally, we speak with the words of Goethe: “Two souls live, alas, in my breast.” Nevertheless, we speak of it in such a way that the spiritual-mental of the human being searches its spiritual-mental native country and can find it. We talk again in spiritual science of a spiritual world to which the human being belongs with his spiritual being as he belongs with his bodily physical to the physical world. However, the view of nature overpowers Voltaire so that he has no feeling for the “second human being” in the human being. While soon after him Goethe lets his Faust strive with all power for that second human being who strives from the physical-bodily human being to the spiritual worlds, we realise with Voltaire that he can understand nothing of such a second human being. A quotation relating to this second human being is very typical: “So much I have endeavoured to find that we are two, nevertheless, I have found in the end that I am only one.” He cannot admit that this second human being is in him. He has taken care, but this is his tragedy: in the end, he can only find that he is only one who is bound to his brain. This was his deep tragedy about which Voltaire himself helped by his cynicism, even by his frivolity. Subconscious soul depths, the second human being in the human being in connection with a spiritual world,—the upper consciousness was not allowed to confess that to itself. The upper consciousness needed numbing. He could find that in the outer experience because the outer experience dedicated itself to the magnificent, clever worldview that he could create within the most inconsistent soul experiences.

 Thus, we can understand that Voltaire had a rather rough ride to manage with himself, and that he wanted many a numbing. One must already look at the greatness of this man to understand such paradoxical matter that he feigned a severe illness and called for the priest one day—it was in Switzerland where he did so many benefits—,so that the priest came along to give him the last rites. After he had received the sacraments, he jumped up and said that to the priest, it was only a joke, and mocked him. However, one must even live in such “derived” world that does not have the real connection of the human soul with the spiritual worlds as Voltaire lived in such a world and could not come to the connection to which he wanted to come.

If we look once again at Goethe, he takes a “vagrant”—Faust—to show how the deepest impulses arise in the human soul. If we pursue the whole life of Goethe, we realise how he tries to find the human character in its full juiciness in the simplest souls. Voltaire completely lives in a derived layer, in his educated class where everything is uprooted. There he cannot find what ties together the human soul with a spiritual world, and thus he can even speak to that derived layer. Today we can hardly understand that a spirit like Voltaire says: “I do not deign to write for shoemakers and dressmakers; to give those anything that they can believe in, apostles are good for that, not I.” He does not want his holiest conviction to be treated as we would want it today, namely that it penetrates into any human soul. However, he does the typical quotation that he writes only for the educated class because he grew out of it: “Only an upper class can understand heaven and earth which arise to my enlightened mind; the lowlife is in such a way that the silliest heaven and the silliest earth is just the best for it!”

In this respect, Voltaire lives within a dying cultural sphere. This is his tragedy. However, such cultural spheres also have the possibility to develop maturity concerning certain tendencies. Voltaire developed that maturity. It expresses itself in his clever, urgent judgement that does not confuse itself, even in the joke, it expresses itself in his healthy way—even if he is frivolous—to work on the world and to relate to the world in a way. Thus, one can also understand that a spirit who was so great in many a respect, as Frederick the Great (1712-1786), could feel attracted to Voltaire, could push off him again, allowed him to return after some time repeatedly, saying about him, this Voltaire deserves, actually, nothing better than to be a learnt slave, but I estimate what he can give me as his French. He could still give him even more than only the element of language. I have tried to indicate this today.

One can understand that the eighteenth century that had to put everything in the right light on one side what hampered the emerging consciousness soul what had to show a certain greatness, however, just in the downward spirit of the cultural current. One can understand that this had to be expressed in such a peculiar way just with Voltaire. You see Voltaire in the right light if you put that as a counter-image what we have found as the positive, as the continuing in the sense of Lessing or Goethe for the pursuit of the consciousness element. Indeed, what I have spoken about Voltaire today can serve only to cause a consciousness of how difficult it is to gain an objective picture just of this peculiar man: He fought for many things, he strove for live as something natural today in us—also in those who do not intend at all to read Voltaire's writings.

Yes, one can say just with Voltaire that humanity can outgrow his writings; but it cannot outgrow what he was as a force because it has to remain always as a part of the spiritual striving of humanity. Since what had to result as the liberation of the human soul is based on the fact that at first something had to be cleared away by such a decomposing, one would like to say, Mephistophelian spirit like Voltaire. One is not surprised that similar applies to the historical picture of Voltaire what happened to his mortal remains. In the honorary burial parts of the Pantheon in Paris they were buried first; when another political current got the power, it was exhumed again and dissipated; then when the third political current replaced the previous one, the bones were collected again and buried. Some people state now that these bones fetched back again are not the real ones. The historical picture of Voltaire will be right which is portrayed from the one side like that of a liberator from bondage, like an apostle of tolerance, on the other side, however, is denigrated so much. With the whole complexity of Voltaire's personality, it can easily happen if one considers the historical picture of Voltaire objectively that then some people maybe say that it is not right, as the bones buried in the pantheon are not the real ones. Nevertheless, I say, if spiritual science can fulfil its task in the present and future, the picture of the great destroyer, of that who abolished so much, can maybe arise before spiritual science in its full objectivity.Since Voltaire is a human being—he pronounced it even towards Frederick the Great—with all mistakes of a human being and, one would even like to say, a human being with all “miracles” of a human being who is well-suited to fulfil the poet's saying:

By the parties' favour and hatred confused,

His portrayal of character fluctuates in history. (Schiller in the prologue of “Wallenstein”)

His personality was such that his picture can only “fluctuate.” However, although it fluctuates, one has to confess compared with the picture of Voltaire with those to whom he is likeable as well as with those to whom he is unpleasant that he was, nevertheless, a great human being who filled a place in the ongoing education of the human race.

The today's topic is within this series of talks indeed the most ambitious; nevertheless, I would like once to do some remarks about this particular object of spiritual-scientific research. I am allowed to require with these talks that once also such a special object of spiritual-scientific research is accepted, after I have tried so often to allege the possible proofs and evidence of the beneficiary of this spiritual research in a more general way. Today I have to refrain from all these arguments and documents of course. Since what I want to say about the life between death and rebirth, I say in such a way that I tell the suitable spiritual-scientific results, as I got them. Although that makes certain conceptual difficulties to the present consciousness, and the modern consciousness of time must still reject the results of spiritual science, nevertheless, I would like to do the following introductory remark. I am well aware to speak in a time which has the great discovery of Robert Julius Mayer (1814-1878, German physician), the transformation of natural forces more than sixty years behind itself, more than half a century the great discoveries that Darwin made. It has experienced the great results of natural sciences, for example, spectral analysis, the achievements of astrophysics and experimental biology. Nevertheless, in full recognition of these scientific results I would like to speak about the object of the today's topic, in spite of the contradiction that it must cause with those who believe to be able to stand only on the firm ground of natural sciences refusing the spiritual-scientific research.

I would still like to make a second introductory remark. If I did not know clearly that within the strictest spiritual-scientific methodology that what I have to say about the life between death and rebirth of the human being is as sustainable as the results of the mentioned scientific fields, I would regard it as frivolous to speak before this audience about results of spiritual-scientific research. Since I am aware of the responsibility to speak just about these fields in a modern scientific sense. Indeed, the whole way is not very popular today how the soul must relate to truth and truthfulness of research if it wants to take up the results of spiritual-scientific research impartially. Quite briefly, I would like to go into this spiritual condition first which must exist with the spiritual researcher and in certain sense also with someone who should recognise the results of spiritual-scientific research as true.

Another attitude concerning truth and truthfulness, concerning the human knowledge than it exists today is necessary. Somebody who wants to obtain spiritual-scientific results with the methods that I have discussed in these talks has to face that knowledge with holy shyness, with unlimited reverence above all. How easily does one accept that attitude to truth who wants to decide everything from the start that presents itself just to the human life, so that he assumes, I can judge that what can be stated in the fields of existence and reality with the soul capacities that are given to me. Nevertheless, the spiritual researcher and someone who wants to accept his results need another mind-set saying to himself: in order to receive truth my soul needs preparation, needs the experience of a constitution that exceeds the everyday life. If one lives in spiritual science—I ask you not to misunderstand this expression in an ascetic or other sense—you feel very much how impossible the everyday mind-set is to be able to live really with truth, with knowledge. You feel knowledge like something hovering over you that you can approach if you exceed as it were your usual self if you exert all forces to prepare yourself to receive truth worthily. You feel as unworthy if one wants to judge truth with the everyday spiritual condition—this is something that you can know from spiritual science-, and then one is waiting, until the soul has made some progress again in its preparation, until it prepares that power and worthy reception which is justified towards truth and knowledge. One feels often in such a way that one says to himself, I still wait, rather I am patient and let it hovering over me, I am not allowed to enter it; otherwise I would spoil it maybe because I am not yet ripe for it.

With these and other words with which I could still characterise the matter I would like to turn your attention to the mood of holy shyness, to unlimited reverence compared with truth and truthfulness and knowledge which must be typical of the spiritual-scientific research. More and more arises from that how the soul must outgrow itself as it must be less and less anxious to make final judgements from the usual day constitution, and that it must use more and more care to prepare the forces for reaching a worthy point of view towards truth. Very briefly: the truth seeker acting in the spiritual-scientific sense gets around more and more to using care for the preparation of the soul, for the development of abilities for truth and more and more he abandons from wanting to approach this truth with the usual soul forces, with the usual criticism.—With these introductory words, I wanted to suggest only the mood in which spiritual science is compared with such matters. Now I want to come immediately to the object that was sufficiently prepared by the talks of this winter.

If the human being goes through the gate of death, he belongs to a world that is accessible, however, only to spiritual research. This spiritual research can gain knowledge that only the body-free soul can attain.We have often discussed the methods by which the human soul gains not only knowledge because it uses the body and its senses to get into contact with the outside world, but that the soul really leaves the body, so that this body is outside like an outer object, and experiences itself in a spiritual environment. I have often explained how the soul of the spiritual researcher gets around to doing that. Thereby it enters that world which the human being enters after death. Now I want to tell without farther preparation what the spiritual researcher has to say about the life between death and rebirth by the methods discussed for a long time here.

The first matter is that the human soul experiences a change of its position to the world of thought if it has become free of body after death in natural way. I have often emphasised that the human soul carries the forces of thinking, of feeling and willing in itself. This division of the soul forces applies, strictly speaking, only to the life between birth and death. I have to fight beside the generally ambitious of the topic still with the difficulty of finding expressions for a quite different world. Since the expressions of language are coined for the sensory life; and only because I try to characterise the quite different soul experiences after death from a certain viewpoint that uses the words approximately I will manage with this field. You have to consider that we have to speak about a field, for which the words are missing, actually.

After the human being has walked through the gate of death, he experiences something in relation to his thinking, to his thoughts. We have the life of thoughts in the life between birth and death in such a way that we have the thoughts in our soul, we think. These thoughts are to us at most images of an outer reality between birth and death. When the human being has cast off his physical body, the thoughts become outer reality in a peculiar way. This is the first experience that the dead has in the spiritual world that he feels the thoughts detached from himself that they are as it were outside of his soul. It is as if the thoughts walk to an outer soul world. The thoughts walk, one could say, a certain way so that they are detached from the immediate soul experience as the thoughts which become our memories in the usual life. However, we have the feeling with our memories that they dive in an unaware experience down from which they can be brought back at the suitable moment. They break away from the present life, but in such a way that we have the sensation that they are in us. After death, the thoughts also break away from us in such a way that the whole world of thoughts that the human being has collected in the life between birth and death becomes an objective world. They do not break away in such a way that we have the consciousness that they submerge into an uncertain darkness; but they become independent in such a way that they form an outer spiritual world of thoughts except us. In this world, everything is in the form of thought that we have gained as experiences in the last life between birth and death in such a way that we have thereby become just richer in experiences of life.

This is spread out as it were to a kind of life tableau about which we say to ourselves, you have experienced this in your last life in such a way that it becomes a conceptual experience of life; this is round the soul after death. However, it does not look like fleeting thoughts, but as if the thoughts become denser, more vivid when they break free from the soul and get independent life, and establish a world of beings. This world in which we live then is the world of the thoughts leaving us which have an independent existence. Indeed, this world is like a tableau of memories, but like one which has made itself independent, and about which we know that one has acquired it, but that it lives objectified in the outside world.

This experience of the soul in the world of thoughts lasts individually different for the single human beings, however, lasts some days. For then after days the dead experiences that this whole world goes away like in a spiritual perspective, as if it goes far, far away from him. After some days, this world of thoughts disappears gradually in far distance. I have drawn the attention in my Occult Science to the fact that it lasts longer with those human beings, who spent the days easier without sleeping in the life before death. As long one gets along without sleep in life, as long this tableau of memories lasts. Hence, someone who gets tired sooner—but it matters, above all, which forces the human being has—who cannot stand it at all without sleep if it is necessary to wake longer with that person the tableau of memories goes away sooner than with someone who can exert himself to maintain his forces longer without sleep. However, one does not need to exert in this direction, but it concerns only what the human being can possibly perform in this respect.

What appears as the new consciousness is connected with it. What we have as our usual awake consciousness between birth and death is stimulated by the fact that we collide with the objects of the outside world. In sleep, we do not do this, then there we also do not have our usual consciousness; but we collide also with the hearing, with the eyes with the outside world, and thereby we have the everyday consciousness. As the consciousness is stimulated in the usual life by the contact with the outside world, our consciousness is unfolded after death by the fact that the human being knows himself connected with that what I have described as the experience of thoughts after death, which go away. This is the stimulation of the consciousness after death that consists in the fact that the soul has the remaining sensation: your thoughts have gone far away, you must search them! With it, I could characterise the impression which the soul experiences then, and which forms the force that the spiritual consciousness is stimulated after death: you must search your disappeared thoughts. This knowledge of the disappeared thoughts forms a part of the self-consciousness after death. We will see immediately afterward which role this kind of self-consciousness plays.

After death, the world of willing and the world of feeling change different from the world of thoughts. Actually, one cannot speak at all of such a separation of willing and feeling after death as one can do it in the life between birth and death. Hence, I must already say that something exists in the soul after death like a willing or desiring feeling, or like a will completely filled with feeling. The expressions that we have for feeling and willing do not match after death. At this time, the feeling is similar even more to that, what one experiences in the will; and the will is penetrated much more with feeling than in the life between birth and death. While the thoughts form a world outside of the soul after death as it were, one has to say of the willed feeling and the felt will that these are closer connected with the soul. Now the soul experiences a strengthened willing and a willed feeling except the specified part of the self-consciousness. This gives an infinitely more intensive inner life than the inner life of the soul is when it lives in the body. The human being feels when the thoughts have gone away for a long period, which can last for decades, as his principal world in his inside. This inside becomes so powerful that he has to draw his attention—if I am allowed to use this word, although it does not correctly match the postmortal life—upon that which arises there inside as the felt willing and willed feeling. This felt willing and willed feeling looks back at the past life on earth for years. The human soul feels something like a longing for the felt willing and willed feeling, and with it for that, what the last life offered. Any life offers many a thing, but the possibilities of experience are far bigger than what the human being absorbs in reality.

When the human being dies, he feels willing, or he wants to experience feeling everything that he—I cannot say “knows”—but of which he feels that he could still have experienced it. All uncertain emotions, all possible experiences that life could have brought and has not brought, all that is connected with the previous life, with that what the soul experiences. In particular, that what the soul should have done according to its sensation appears as strong, as intensive inner experience. What the soul owes other human beings, all that appears as the feeling of lacking love of which we are not aware in the life between birth and death; the dead feels that intensely. Hence, we can say that after death years pass in which the soul is occupied with breaking free gradually from the last life, from the connection with the last life. These years do not pass in such a way that we are torn out of the experiences of the last life. We are connected with the human beings whom we have left whom we have loved; but we are connected because we have gained certain feelings and connections with them in life; and on the detour of that what life offered or refused us we are connected with them. I have to express myself always figuratively. After death, one can absolutely remain connected with somebody to whom one was close in life, but only by the fact that one has a connection in the feelings that one had in life with him. An intensive connection with him thereby develops. One lives together after death with the living but also with the dead with whom one had a connection in life. You have to imagine the life after death lasting in this way for years.It is a life, in which the soul experiences everything that it wants, desires and demands as it were in the felt and willed connection of memories with the last life.

If one investigates how long this time lasts, one realises that the first years of childhood are without influence on these years after death. The time from birth until the time up to which we remember later where we learn to experience our self-consciousness is unimportant for these years at first. The life that follows the middle of the twenties is also more or less unimportant for the durance of that soul condition which I have just described. The soul has a connection, a relationship to this experience of thoughts, and it must find it again, because it is that by which it has become in the life on earth what it is; but it has gone away. Like an outer life about which one knows that it is there one faces these experiences of life transformed in thoughts. One experiences the other world which one lives through after death if this world of thoughts has gone away in its strengthened willing and feeling.

Then the time comes when one escapes from the mere strengthened inner life where it is in such a way, as if beings appear gradually from the spiritual that are adapted to the spiritual world as the beings of the physical world—minerals, plants, animals and physical human beings—are adapted to our sensory physical world. That is you leave yourself and you enter a spiritual world. You enter a spiritual environment so that you feel quite different towards this world from towards the sensory world when we are in a physical body. I would have to state many things to characterise this quite different sensation; but I would like to bring in one example only that is striking.

If we see the objects of the outside world, we say that we see them if light of any source falls on them, we become aware of them this way. While we now settle in the objective state of the spiritual world after we have felt our last life on earth back, you experience that you have let something mature like an inner light from the time of the last life on earth in yourself, like an inner soul force. This gives you the possibility more and more to perceive and to look at the outer world of the spiritual beings and processes, to live within them. If you can feel the time of that described soul state like a kind of breaking off the connection with the previous life on earth, you experience that in the deepest inside of this feeling will and willing feeling that inside world which is basically the inside world of many years has matured in itself. You spread this inner light like a force by which the processes and beings of the outer spiritual world become visible. Then you know: if you had not developed this inner light in yourself, it would be dark around you in the spiritual world and you would perceive nothing. The force that you must apply to overcome the connection with the last life on earth is at the same time that force which must be spent and which is like an inner light. There a soul force awakes for which one has no words in the usual world, because there is such a thing in the usual sensory life only for that who penetrates with spiritual research just into the spiritual world.

If I wanted to use a word for what the human being experiences as a force of the illumination of the spiritual environment coming out of himself, I would like to say, one develops something like a creative will that is penetrated with intensive feeling at the same time. Something creative is therein; one feels as a part of the universe that is creative, however, in this just discussed part that floods the spiritual world. You have the sensation: because I feel in myself as a part of the universe, the spiritual world is noticeable, knowingly experienceable to you, while you experience what one can call the “soulhood” (German: Seelenheit, neologism by Steiner)) after death and the fact that one settles in what becomes more and more visible and experienceable.

Today I portray this world between death and the next birth more from an internally experienced, from an internal state. In my Theosophy or in my Occult ScienceI have described this world more for the spiritual-scientific view from the outside. Because I do not like to repeat, I choose the other way today. Someone who knows, however, from how many viewpoints one can describe a field of the sensory world, knows that it is completely the same what I have characterised with other words in the mentioned books.

The soul feels how it settles in the world of the spiritual processes and spiritual beings. I have expressly to say that to these spiritual processes and spiritual beings in which the soul settles because of its own light also those human souls belong with which one had a connection—indeed, only these and not those with which one had no connection in life. So one can say:

While you have experienced more your inside in willing desire and feeling willing through the years, you start now more and more experiencing the spiritual outside world objectively, you start working in it as you work with regard to your tasks and experiences in the sensory world. However, I have to mention one thing: what you experience that way as an inner force of light develops gradually and cyclically. Thus, it develops that you feel: in me the force of light has awoken; it enables me to experience certain other beings and processes of the spiritual world; but it dawns away if you have used it for a while. As you feel the outer sun setting in the evening, you feel the inner force of light more and more tiring in the life between death and rebirth. However, when this has tired, another condition comes into being. In this condition the soul feels strong in its inside which it experiences repeatedly; but again it experiences that internally what it has brought from the other condition where it had developed the force of light. Thus, one must say that the conditions in which we are given away to all spiritual processes and beings alternate with those where the inner light expires again and is, completely extinguished. However, our felt willing and willing feeling awakes there again in such a way that everything lives as memories in it that we have experienced in the spiritual world what comes from the outside. Thus, you have conditions that alternate, as if you live once in the outside world, then again as if you have taken the outside world completely in yourself, so that it appears as inner experiences. It is a change between these two conditions.

We can also say that we experience ourselves once like in extensive sociability with the whole spiritual world; then this condition alternates with inner loneliness in which we have the whole experienced spiritual universe in ourselves. However, at the same time we know that we live now in ourselves. What is experienced there is that what our souls have kept, and we are now not in contact with something else.—With the regularity as sleeping and waking alternate in life, these conditions change in the spiritual world between death and new birth, namely: the condition of expanding in a mental outer world and the condition of inner self-enjoyment and self-knowledge where one feels: now you are alone in yourself, excluding all outer processes and beings; now you experience in yourself. Both conditions must alternate, because only thereby the inner force of light survives that the human being is rejected repeatedly on himself.

I have described these processes more detailed in my writing The Threshold of the Spiritual WorldThis cyclic self-experience, once in a lonesome, then in a sociable life, is necessary, because thereby the force of light survives This goes on in such a way that one settles down in wealthier and wealthier spiritual worlds for which one needs more and more inner force of light. This lasts a long time. Then one feels that one is subjected to a certain border because one has settled in these spiritual worlds. This border depends on the capacities that one has appropriated in life. One soul creates a smaller horizon, the other a larger one.

However, then a time comes when one feels the inner force of light decreasing. This happens when one approaches the middle of the time between death and new birth. There one experiences in such a way that one feels: now the inner force of light decreases more and more; now you can light up less and less what is round you. The light becomes fainter and fainter, and the time approaches, when those times become more significant in which the inner experiences become more intensive. The inner experience becomes wealthier; the survey becomes darker and darker until the middle of the time between death and rebirth where one experiences what I have called the spiritual midnight in my mystery drama The Soul's Awakening (The Soul's Probation). Since you experience a time where you are fulfilled with the spiritual world where you wake, but wake at “night” where you experience yourself as concluded in the spiritual world. It is a feeling of the most intensive experiencing-in-yourself in the middle between death and rebirth. This experiencing-in-yourself produces a condition which is intolerable for the soul in the long run. It is knowledge of a knowledge that is intolerable that you do not want to have because it is only knowledge. You feel in yourself: you bear a world in yourself that you experience only knowingly, while you know that you are concluded by it in the reality; you have lost the force of light. Night enters in the spiritual world.

However, in this condition we have the experiences that are mentally passive, otherwise, in the physical body. Now they become something active. While you settle more and more in the twilight and, finally, in the night of the spiritual world, the longing for an outside world becomes bigger and bigger. While the longing, the desire for the world of the life on earth is something that must find its satisfaction from the outside, is that what one experiences at spiritual midnight like a longing for a force which develops with us as under suitable conditions the electric or magnetic forces develop. It is a longing in the soul that bears a new force that is able to conjure up an outside world before the soul again. The soul has settled more and more in a spiritual inside world; this has become bigger and more tremendous. However, the longing lives in it to have an outside world around itself again. This longing is an active force, and the outside world, which it creates, is a quite peculiar one.

The first what we experience, after we have reached the middle between death and rebirth, is that an outside world places itself before us which is, however, again none. We face pictures if we awake from the loneliness which appear from our preceding life on earth. Therefore, an outside world that is, nevertheless, again our past outside world is around us, and the longing that is an active force has led us to it. We face our experiences on earth as an outside world for a while and we face them judging. While we have experienced them, we were within them; now we face them.

There a second longing originates to compensate the defects and imperfections of the former earth-lives compared with the new consciousness. Now the time enters in which the soul feels what it has to do concerning the thoughts that have hastened away from it. It receives the sure knowledge now that awakes in the second half of the life between death and new birth: your experiences of thought have run ahead of you; you can find them only on the detour of a new life on earth. From this second experience, that compared with the old life on earth and the knowledge that one can only find his thoughts which have run ahead if one calls back them again to a new life on earth,—from there the instinctive drive for a new life on earth originates. It cannot be judged according to the last life on earth. At the specified time, the soul regards it as a matter of course to unite again with that what as thoughts has gone away from it and what it can only find on the detour of a new earth-life where it finds the possibility only to correct imperfections and defects at the sight of the past earth-life.

Now new experiences appear perpetually from the twilight of the spiritual world. This is the connection with affiliated human beings. We had this connection before we experienced the time before that spiritual midnight; we worked with them in the spiritual world and we were connected with them in spirit. Now those appear again, with whom we had an unbalanced relation in life, with whom we were related by blood, to whom we were affiliated in life. They appear in such a way that we can assess according to their appearance what is still unbalanced what we still owe to them what we still have to compensate. We feel connected with these souls, as we have to feel connected with them according to the result of the living together in former earth-lives. This is the first experience after our life on earth that we want to live together in a new life on earth with the souls with which we have once lived closer together. In the farther course of this time, those souls appear with which we had a less close connection with which we had the same religion or nation in common with which we formed an entity so to speak.The souls which were placed in our earthly development appear in such a way that their appearance show how our soul must form its new embodiment to search what must result as an effect from the former earth-lives in the life with the souls which appear there.—Finally, the connection with souls or also with ideals appears from the spiritual twilight. After we have experienced the survey of our past life on earth, of the persons who have been close to us in the past life on earth, with the communities which have been close to us, those persons face us who were ideal figures for us in the last life, even if we had no contact with them personally. We face our personal ideals, our mental world.

From these experiences, the force develops in the soul to combine again with the life on earth. However, I have still to mention that also in the second half of the postmortal existence life runs cyclically. We have to distinguish the time of life in that outside world where we behold our former friends and relatives, our ideals et cetera externally objectively as it were, and then that other time where we have them only in our inside. This alternates again with necessity for the soul as in the usual life waking and sleeping, day and night alternate. From the forces that develop in the soul by the sight of everything that I have just characterised, the ability originates in the soul to form the prototype of the new life on earth at first spiritual-mentally. What we had to send off as the experiences of life transformed into thoughts we do not yet behold immediately if we enter into the second half of the life between death and rebirth. Nevertheless, the creative willing and feeling cause that the soul feels this life as an increase of strength; and this increase causes that from the surrounding spiritual substance something crystallises like the prototype of a new life.

In the spiritual world, the relation between perceiving and experiencing mentally is different from that in the physical world. In the physical world, we perceive the outside world; then it is in our thoughts, but the thoughts are passive. If we experience the spiritual world in the described way, if we consider the mental leftovers of our past life, of our former friends and relatives, of our ideals in the spiritual world, a force develops which enlivens us. This strengthening drives us to a new life on earth.—Excuse me choosing some unusual expressions; but I have also to describe unusual conditions.

Now more and more these only vaguely felt forces appear to the human being who lights up the outer spiritual world round himself that lead to the escaped experiences of life. The prototype of a new life becomes more and more certain, and this causes that the human being feels driven down to the physical world on earth by the forces that are in himself. He feels driven down in such a way that he feels attracted by that parental couple which can give him the physical cover that can correspond to the prototype of his future life on earth created in the spiritual world. Three things combine with the rebirth of the human being: the male, the female, and the spiritual. One can say that long before the human being enters the new earth-life, this developed force moves to the parental couple concerned; since the human being is internally, substantially this force which grows, one could say, as the force, which drives to the prototype at first and then to the new life on earth.

However, just the most different relations can happen there. One has to consider at first that the human being gets a review of his former life on earth. He thereby attains the inner longing for a new earth-life. Now it can happen that the human being feels very well: you must embody yourself on earth; but you cannot arrive at that point where you can embody yourself in a new earthly body in such a way that you can grasp the experiences of life that have run ahead of you.

We consider this case that arises to the spiritual experience. While we live on earth, we do not make all experiences that we could make. Spiritual science is not necessary to realise this; since if already in the life on earth many things pass our attention, one must say even more that many things penetrate to us that we are not aware of. With other words: if we pay attention, we have to admit that we do not make the experiences that we could make. Nevertheless, the experiences approach us. If we consider ourselves as pupils of life, we must say that all that approaches us. This experience also belongs to our experiences in the postmortal life. However, if we get to the second half of the postmortal life, we have convinced ourselves that we cannot come with all what you have appropriated to the point where you can fully combine with a new life on earth. Then it is necessary to combine with a new earth-life earlier than it is necessary because of the thoughts which have run ahead—and to reproach yourself that only in a second life on earth, maybe only after two or three lives on earth, you will have arrived at the point where you experience your thoughts which have run ahead. This will cause that such a human being does not have the intensive longing for the life on earth as he would have it in the other case and would grasp life completely.

There is the possibility that the human being combines not intensely enough with the life on earth; he has probably attained the force to embody himself again but not that force that he could have experienced everything that was to be experienced. Hence, in such case he does not have enough joy of life slumbering in the soul depths. Everything that induces a person not to take the life on earth seriously enough comes from this side. Here something appears to the spiritual researcher that often weighs heavily on his heart.

As a spiritual researcher, one faces any life with empathy. Let us consider a criminal's life spiritual-scientifically which is directed in the most comprehensive sense against the human order. One can have the deepest compassion, even if one does not want to deny the guilt, with such a life and want to explain it from his life. If one tries to get an answer for such a question, it becomes apparent that human beings get, actually, to the wrong, to the crime who cannot take life seriously because of the mentioned conditions. I have convinced myself, while I have followed these matters until the so-called thieves' slang that even in it something is contained of an attitude that does not take life seriously, underestimates, and despises it. One must not be fully aware of this. The day consciousness often knows little about that what exists in the depths of the soul. The criminal often develops a strong self-feeling, he wants life; but in the depths of his soul to which the consciousness does not reach you find disdain of life. The fact that he has not reached the place where his thoughts have run ahead is the reason why he does not take life seriously. Search in the lives of criminals, and you find that contemptuous mood towards life is there until the expressions of the thieves' slang. Tremendous riddles reveal themselves to the attentive observer of life. I would like to say that spiritually premature infants develop there.

Therefore, they did not have the force because they came too early to take life completely seriously, to develop the feeling of responsibility completely that is necessary in life. A life, which reaches that time at least approximately, where the thoughts transformed into objective beings have run ahead, grows together most intimately with the life on earth. This grows together with the forces, which one can develop only on earth, those of conscience, of responsibility. This grows together with all that what takes the earth-life seriously, so that morality develops. Since one must have the feeling towards the earth-life that one must completely combine with it if right morality should arise in the soul. There is, for example, one thing that becomes explicable to us considering the human life in the light of spiritual science and, indeed, it enriches our feelings and sensations towards life and towards the human beings because we can manage easier and orientate ourselves easier in life if we understand it.

The spiritual researcher finds, for example, a life that is finished in the time between birth and death earlier than it is normal either by illness or by misfortune. That has such an effect on the other life between death and rebirth that by the untimely penetration, may misfortune or illness cause it, in the spiritual world forces for the soul are created which would not have been there, otherwise, for it. As strange it sounds, as paradoxical it appears, what can lack from our former life on earth to develop all forces that can be ours by other conditions we can maybe attain only by the fact that we finish our life earlier than it is normal for a human being. However, spiritual science will never give the authorisation of an artificial end of life anyhow which the human being himself causes before the normal end of life or before an end caused by other conditions.

Just if one tries to look into the spiritual life between death and rebirth this way, one realises that quite different forces are active there than those in the life between birth and death. However, these forces are attached naturally to everything that the outer life in the body offers to us. To be perfectly honest I could never have come with any only philosophical thoughts, with any intellectual efforts to that what I dared to tell you today. Only on the way of spiritual research, which I have so often described here, these matters can arise. If then one has them, however, and asks himself whether they match the life on earth, they match life completely. Even if the question could emerge, why the human being does not remember his former life on earth, one can answer that the spiritual researcher sees when the human being descends to an earthly life that he must use the forces which could remember everything that I have told now for the inner arrangement of his sensory-physical body. The forces that the human being uses to transform the twilight of the first years of childhood into the wake consciousness of the later life on earth are those forces that the human being could transform to remember his former life on earth. They flow into the body; they make the human being strong for the life between birth and death.

Not before the spiritual researcher breaks his soul from his physical body,

Not before he comes to an experience outside the physical body,

Not before he frees the forces again which the human being uses, otherwise, to make his eyes    seeing, his limbs moving,

Not before he applies these forces to experience purely in the soul,

His view extends to the wholly spiritual horizon where he experiences what I have described today. The spiritual researcher beholds the forces of memory transforming which one could suppose in the human being.

In the human being is an everlasting, immortal soul core. However, in the life between birth and death it is used at first in such a way that it is taken up in the performances of the sensory body. Indeed, one can say that we live in a period of transition in which the human being attains a new relation to the body where he also hurries up to a reinforced inner life of the body. Therefore, spiritual science feels the task to inform its results because the soul develops from life to life more and more internally and realises in future, what I have said today as a necessary knowledge without which it cannot live in its whole constitution. Because then a natural clairvoyance appears again, which becomes explicable and to which I have now drawn your attention.

So spiritual research takes another way speaking of the soul's immortality than that which a mere conceptual philosophy can take. Spiritual science does not approach the question of immortality in such a way that it wants to prove immortality, but it goes forward in such a way that it searches the ways to the essentiality of the soul. If one has the soul, if one knows how it experiences itself internally, then one does not need to invent philosophical proofs of immortality. Since then one notices that that which goes beyond death what goes through a life between death and rebirth leads to a perpetually renewed earth-life. This is in the life between birth and death already within us, and while we recognise it in ourselves, we recognise it in its immortality at the same time. This is included in the life as surely as we know of a seed that it develops producing a new plant. Thus, we can know that the soul is immortal. Nevertheless, we know of the plant seed that one can use it as human food. One does not perceive such a loss with the human soul core; but indeed that what lives in the soul is the claim of following earth-lives, and with it the claim of the soul's immortality, and it is not used for something else as it can happen with the plant seed. Hence, one can speak of the immortality of every soul.

I have already mentioned at the beginning of the today's consideration that this is very contrary to the consciousness of our time. However, how should the consciousness of our time look benevolently at that what I have explained in this and in the other talks? On the one side, the consciousness of our time longs intensely for knowing something about the soul; on the other side, however, it is keen to limit the cognitive forces if one wants to know anything. One often accuses spiritual science of illogicality and superstition. Well, spiritual science can endure this. Since if it looks at the opposing “logic,” it knows why spiritual science can settle only so slowly in the human hearts. Again, I can point to a book that brings thoughts about death (Arthur Brausewetter Thoughts on Death, 1913). You find a strange sentence there that I quote only for formal reasons: “Immortality cannot be proved. Even Plato and Mendelssohn (Moses M., 1729-1786) based on him were not able to confirm the immortality and the simplicity of the soul; since even if one wants to admit the simplicity of the soul, the soul is, nevertheless, an object of the inner constancy which is unproven and unprovable.”

One does not need to go into the other explanations; since somebody who writes the sentence: Plato and even Mendelssohn could not prove the immortality of the soul from its indestructibility, should write even immediately, one cannot prove the immortality of the rose from its red colour. Since if one talks of the immortality of the soul, one cannot speak—if one is not thoughtless—of the fact that it is not immortal because it cannot be proved.—One writes such matters down today and you can read them in a book that will have and has a big public because our contemporaries like such a book, and because one ignores such things. So one ignores something that is a principle of the opponents of spiritual science. If they accuse spiritual science of illogicality, they look, above all, at their own logic. I have often spoken about all the other objections against spiritual science; therefore, I do not want to come back to them, but state only what I have also brought forward as a final sensation in other talks:

One feels always united with the results of spiritual science with the most enlightened spirits of the earthly human development. Even if they did not had spiritual science, because it is possible in this form only today, nevertheless, they had a premonition of that direction in which spiritual science moves. If on one side some monistic or other spirits allege that immortality cannot be proven, one would like to point as a spiritual researcher to a great man among the anticipating spirits in this respect with whom one feels united.

What does spiritual science say about what I tried to explain? It shows what already so develops in us between birth and death that it has to experience all conditions which I have described today. One does not get to know the human soul between birth and death if one does not know what it is able between death and rebirth of. If some denominations do not feel in harmony with spiritual science because it creates an extended idea of God, one can only say, how much disheartened are you with your idea of God, with your religious feeling! This appears in such a way, as if one had said to Columbus, do not discover America, why should you discover this unknown country? In our country, the sun shines so beautifully; can one know whether it shines as beautifully in another country?—The reasonable human being would have responded: oh, everywhere it shines as nicely as it shines here!—The spiritual scientist feels his idea of God like a shining spiritual sun. He knows that the idea of God, the religious feeling, and the faith of those must be disheartened who say, the God whom we revere in our religious life will not prevail in the worlds of the spiritual-scientific researcher. However, if the religious feeling is strong enough, it will feel the radiance of this spiritual-scientific idea of God in the spiritual worlds, and the idea of God will suffer as little damage by spiritual science as Copernicus and Galilei damaged it.

However, spiritual science knows that the soul prepares itself already in the body for the life between death and rebirth. The life between birth and death gets sense and meaning, while we look at the existence between death and the next birth. That is why we feel in harmony with the most enlightened spirits. One of them anticipated what I have explained today. Goethe said once, I would like to say with Lorenzo di Medici (1449-1492, Florentine statesman) that those are already dead in this life who do not hope for another. Spiritual science feels in harmony with these words. Since it knows that the soul must accept what may occur to it, while it looks at that what may happen to it outside of the body and after the life in the body. As the existence of a plant seed is only justified because it develops a new plant, that towards which we live with our souls is not that which we have already in ourselves, but what we can hope for. Immortality is proved best by the fact that we only need to look at the forces on which we live. Since we live on the forces that we can hope for as the immortal forces. Yes, spiritual science leads us to that basic feeling which penetrates and seizes our whole life that Goethe expressed so nicely with the just cited words. Spiritual science says, prove the feeling to us that someone is already dead for the life in the body who cannot hope for the life in spirit and for that what the soul is as spirit for the whole world!

Often I have indicated how spiritual science wants to position itself in the spiritual life of the present. I have also often spoken about what it can be for the human beings and what it can bring to them, and I will do this in detail in the last talk. I have also pointed in the course of these winter talks repeatedly to the fact that one can understand that on one side numerous human beings of the present, maybe more than they already know it, strive instinctively for this spiritual science out of the unconscious soul forces. On the other side, one can understand that from the general attitude of our time opposition arises against spiritual science. The spiritual researcher also understands the objections, although they are based on prejudice. However, the whole attitude of our civilisation to a possible spiritual science depends to no small measure on the fact that one does not want to realise how spiritual science can basically understand all other worldviews and can completely acknowledge the reasons which are brought forward by this or that side against it. I have drawn your attention to the fact that spiritual science wants to be the large circle which extends the human knowledge of all fields of life, and that all other worldviews are small circles within this large circle, which, of course believe to be right from their viewpoints. Spiritual science can mostly affirm the positive aspects of these worldviews. However, one cannot say this of the other worldviews that one asserts today, in the same sense. Since just on the following point of view one will not position oneself: this or that—may it be put forward for materialism, spiritualism or realism—is to be regarded as one-sided in a certain respect, and only by overcoming this one-sidedness one can attain knowledge satisfying the human being. In its fields, that worldview which must appear as one-sided is often fully entitled, so that it can produce truth at its place. Spiritual science cannot stop there recognising these truths as something all-embracing, but it has to go over to putting them at their right place. That is why we deal in particular in spiritual-scientific fields with the opposition of that worldview which believes to stand firmly on the ground of modern science, and which must—I say expressly “must” -- regard spiritual science from its point of view as fantasy and daydreaming.

I choose a form of worldview that believes to stand strictly on the firm ground of scientific methodology. I want to characterise this worldview somewhat radically. It says that one has to consider the physical, chemical and mineral forces and substances of the human being if one wants to understand the human being and gets clear about the fact that, as any other being is composed according to the principles of nature, also the human being, as the crown of creation, is composed.

This worldview thinks, if it has succeeded once in getting to know all natural principles and substances that work in the human nervous system up to the subtlest processes of the brain, then it recognises, as far as it is scientifically possible, how the human thinking, feeling, and willing arise from the physical laws. It is an entitled ideal of this worldview to understand the human being wholly scientifically.

I know that I must cause, indeed, contradiction from some researchers taking action a little more seriously who already say today that one has left that more materialistic worldview which believes there that the human being is understood completely if he is understood completely according to the outer physical processes. However, it does not depend on that that one admits there or there already that one has not understood the human being if one knows the wholly natural processes that go forward in his nervous system up to the brain. However, that is the point that in spite of this consciousness even in the scientific methods also of the philosophically thinking contemporaries nothing else exists than the view, which positions itself on these natural processes. Since most people who believe to be based on science reject a view as it is meant here as spiritual science.

The view of spiritual science has to admit on basis of its research results that with any thinking, with any research which can survey the processes of the sensory world and can pursue them up to the processes in the nervous system one can find nothing else than the wholly natural human being. However, this wholly natural human being is only the cover of that which we got to know as going over from one life on earth to another which experiences an existence in a purely spiritual world between death and new birth after every life on earth. I tried to show this in the last talk. Spiritual science must realise that this everlasting must remain concealed in the human nature to any philosophy that wants to turn only to the forces accessible to this view of nature. One can investigate this everlasting in the human nature only with forces that one attains with an inner development, as I have described it more exactly in my Occult Science. An Outline and in the bookHow Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?. However, even the philosophers who stress the necessity of spiritual life, yes, even the philosopher who has become famous in such weird way, Rudolf Eucken (1846-1926, Nobel Prize for Literature in 1908) who speaks in his essayistic philosophy of the “spirit” repeatedly, restricts himself to this natural human being. He nowhere betrays that he has a sensation of the fact that spirit and spiritual world can be investigated only with the mental forces that certain spiritual-scientific methods bring out of the soul.

Spiritual science is not the adversary of such scientific views, also not of such philosophical worldviews, but it has to show their limits, has to show what they are capable of and what they can show. Concerning this standpoint of spiritual science to the other worldviews, I have also emphasised here repeatedly that it feels in harmony with those spirits of the human development who indeed did not yet have spiritual science. Nevertheless, because they had a thorough inkling of truth from their deepest feeling, they spoke in a clear, understandable way where they expressed this inkling.

This applies to two personalities of the nineteenth century, to Goethe and to the less known Robert Hamerling (1830-1889, Austrian poet)) about whom I would like to speak today. Both poets have dealt with a problem like from a deep spiritual-scientific feeling, but poetically, while I want to stress the spiritual-scientific colouring of this problem.

I would like to ask: could not the thought even arise in a head: what originates really if one invents the human being as a being in such a way that one does not count on the everlasting forces slumbering in the human soul? Which picture of the human being originates if one only uses the natural forces and substances and the physical principles?

The spiritual scientist can assess such a picture only from his point of view. If you develop the forces slumbering in your soul to spiritual beholding, you experience yourself in the soul so that you experience and recognise that these abilities are not bound to the senses and not to the forces of the brain. You experience this way that you are really with your soul beyond your senses, beyond the brain, beyond the body, yes, you face everything that is bound to the body as an outer object. Now you face what you consider, otherwise, as belonging to your ego, your body, as you face the table. You face your destiny too, as far as it takes place in the outer world. You have become a new human being to whom that what you were before has become objective and outside you.

If you consider the human being in such a way, you attain the possibility to assess how much is valid what one can think up as a picture of the human being with only natural substances, natural laws and abilities. One realises that this picture is something very real; but for the human being it is not real in the sensory world, but it is a part of the human being, it penetrates and invigorates the human being.

Those listeners who remember the ambitious attempt eight days ago have heard that the human soul, after it has gone through the purely spiritual life between death and a new birth, enters a new earth-life with forces developed in this life, that it is attracted by a parental couple and that it adapts itself to the inherited forces of father and mother. However, the spiritual researcher realises that the human soul descends to a new embodiment on earth, must wrap itself during the penetration into the physical embodiment in forces that are as it were an essence of the whole physical nature. Before the everlasting human being hurries to his embodiment, he has to attract as it were forces and substances from the spiritual substance by which he hardens the picture that he has developed purely spiritually like a prototype for the next embodiment and wants then to embody himself physically within the line of inheritance. We can say that with the human embodiment an intermediate link puts itself between the completely spiritual which prevails between death and a new birth, and that what stands then in the physical world as a human being before us. In this physical human, we just have what has come from father and mother, and that what comes from the former embodiments, the spiritual-mental. However, in between is, one would like to say, a purely etheric human being, a still spiritual human being that is invisible, supersensible, that contains, however, the forces in himself which are like an essence of the whole physical world process. It is strange: if the human being believes to be on the firm ground of natural sciences and develops a corresponding picture of the human being, he gets to a picture that is not real in this physical human being who contains the everlasting soul. It is a mere abstraction that works, however, in this physical human being, it is that in which the human being wraps himself up before he descends to the physical embodiment.

It is a real being what the human being snatches from the everlasting spiritual life and forces into the life between birth and death what prevails in us between birth and death, what is spiritual, but what lifts us from the physical and what hands over us to the spirit. However, it is not physically visible but to a higher beholding.

Hence, the strange fact emerges that those are not completely wrong who believe to think materialistically correctly, while they form a fantastic picture of the human being completely according to the principles of nature. This picture has meaning for the human being between birth and death, and causes during the life on earth that the soul forgets its spiritual life as it were. However, it does not exist as a thing of nature with mere physical substances and principles, but it penetrates the human nature only. This link between the outer and the everlasting human being walks through the physical world.

Goethe considered this thing as something “supersensible-sensory,” one would like to say, and he characterised it as Homunculus in the second part of his Faust. The materialistic worldview develops fantastically that what Goethe meant with his Homunculus as the picture of the human being. However, this picture of the human being does not exist in truth. It impregnates the human being; it divests him of his everlasting meaning between birth and death and works in the physical-sensory nature.

This latter is the third that comes to the other two. While the materialistic thinker believes to put the most real before us with his picture of the human being; he puts an abstraction, he puts something supersensible. This ideal of modern monism, this Homunculus, that what the modern monism would like to describe as a “human being,” Goethe used it in the second part of his Faust for a particular mission.—I can indicate these things only briefly not to drag the talk out too much.

Faust has experienced what is known from the first part of the drama under the guidance—or by the seduction—of Mephistopheles. He has gone through all phases and tortures of the desire of knowledge, has experienced serious human guilt, and now in the second part Goethe shows how Faust is snatched away from the usual imagination. Faust shall not get the possibility to penetrate farther into the world, so that he works up his way with the usual consciousness again from everything that his soul has experienced. A night is presented to us, it means, Faust's consciousness is removed at the beginning of the second part. From the spiritual worlds, forces are put in his sleeping consciousness in which he does not immediately become aware of that; however, they become effective, as Goethe suggests, in Faust's soul where the everlasting forces prevail, so that he can advance. Hence, spirits speak in his sleep, like Ariel, and others. Therefore, he feels “life's pulses beating with fresh vitality” (verse 4679); he is given back to life and can begin the struggle for existence anew.

I want to refrain from all other things and state only that one demands from him to conjure up the pictures of Paris and Helen. Faust himself gets the desire to behold Helen; and one understands it after Goethe's portrayal that he himself gets this desire.

What a figure is Mephistopheles? He places himself beside Faust as the spiritual being that wants to keep the human being in the outer-sensory world, in the natural existence. Mephistopheles is absolutely a spiritual being, but a being that denies the spiritual world towards the human being. Faust has to demand from Mephistopheles that he enables him to penetrate into those fields of existence where the everlasting-mental of Helen exists. Mephistopheles can give him only the key of this world; since it is the world of the mothers, the everlasting forces of spiritual existence. Now a conversation develops in the second part of Faust where the spiritual-scientific attitude of Faust and the refusal of this attitude by Mephistopheles face each other. Mephistopheles regards that world as nothing into which Faust wants to penetrate. However, Faust replies to him: “in your Nothingness I hope to find my All” (verse 6256). As to Mephistopheles the world into which Faust wants to penetrate, is nothing.—Faust meets the primal figure, the everlasting of Helen in the realm of the mothers. He brings up it. He is immature to face it. I do not want to mention everything that still happens, but only this one: Faust is not so purified as in such striving someone who wants to face the spiritual really has to purify the forces. He approaches Helen as if she is a sensory appearance and the result is that Helen paralyzes him. His consciousness is snatched away from him because of his violent passions. In paralysis, his dream emerges which leads him into the realm where Helen has lived.

Now the big question originated for Goethe: how can one continue the life of Faust poetically? Goethe was no symbolic poet; he was a realistic poet, even if spiritually more realistic. The question originated in him: Faust must be able to face Helen as a human being, as she lived as a human being. She has to descend to the realm of the human beings, she has to embody herself, and Faust must be able to face Helen as a human being: how can one do this in the spiritual-realistic sense?

When Goethe wrote this scene in the twenties of the nineteenth century, he remembered former studies. What he had studied in his youth as spiritual science, affected him more and more. Hence, the second part of this drama is riper all the more what caused, however, that some people regarded this second part as a miserable product of the old Goethe because they had no use for it. Goethe asked, how can I use my spiritual-scientific studies to bring Faust where one has to search the spiritual of Helen? There he remembered what he had read in the book De generatione rerum naturalium by Paracelsus (1493-1541), he remembered the “Homunculus.” Paracelsus declares in this book how a picture of a completely natural human being can be produced, so that one can see him really.—It would lead too far to go into that what Paracelsus shows, simply because his explanations are not at all satisfactory for us today. I want to go into the matter more in the style of modern spiritual science, and not into that what Paracelsus showed.

Paracelsus talks of the fact that one can mix different substances and treat them according to the methods of his time. If one goes into it how the human beings thought in this respect at his time, it mattered not so much how the substances were mixed how they decomposed and combined, but it mattered that the human being stood before the chemical processes and let them work on his soul. The effect of these processes caused a clairvoyance to be produced by other means today. Then one beheld that figure which Paracelsus describes which is really a paradigm of the human being, a little human being, but only radiant, without body, not embodied. These are the essentials in the sense of modern spiritual science that those processes produced that condition of consciousness while the Homunculus became visible.

So Goethe said to himself tying on Paracelsus: this Homunculus is a being which stands between the supersensible and the sensory, namely in such a way that it can bring the human beings down from the everlasting into the physical-sensory world which works in the human being as a force but is not embodied. Goethe moulded the Homunculus into a poetic figure. For he presents a spirit of such kind at first about which one can say in the sense of Faust, such spirits look greedily for treasures and are happy if they find earthworms. Goethe presents such a spirit in Wagner, a figure that is really an ideal of people with modern worldview who look for treasures and are happy if they find the laws of the earthworms.

  To two sides the picture of Wagner arose to Goethe. Since there is beside aFaust book also a Wagner book first; and then there a strange man lived at Goethe's time: His name was Johann Jacob Wagner (1775-1845, philosopher). This man stated that one gets a little human being really, if one mixes substances and so on in the retort according to certain methods. From these two Wagner figures, Goethe melted down a figure, the Wagner of the poem. Thus, the figure of that Wagner originated who stands before his retort and mixes substances and waits until the “well-behaved little human being,” the Homunculus, originates. He would not originate without further ado. Neither in the retort of Johann Jacob Wagner nor in that of the Goethean Wagner a human being would originate, or what some modern scientists imagine as the human being, unless Mephistopheles slipped in the processes, unless the spiritual power of Mephistopheles worked in the background. A purely spiritual being originates in Wagner's retort that way, it is radiant, it wishes, however, to be embodied and it does not lack mental faculties, but it lacks efficiency—a being that the materialistic worldview considers as the human being:

He's well supplied with mental faculties,

but sorely lacks substantial attribute.

So far he weighs no more than does his vial

but hopes that he may soon obtain a body. (Verses 8249-8-9-8252)

Homunculus wants to embody himself, but he is a being only living in the spiritual. Since those present a bad abstraction who search the “real.” However, Wagner can only believe that he has caused the super-creation in reality. He stands before the retort and believes:

It works! the moving mass grows clearer,

the super-creation (conviction) the more certain; (Verses 6855-6-5-6856)

This passage is so little understood in the Faust literature even today that people believe that it concerns a “conviction” (German: Überzeugung). However, Goethe means it in the sense of Nietzsche's “superman” (Über-mensch) as super-creation (Über-zeugung).

Homunculus turns out to be a being that belongs to the spiritual world. Since he attacks Faust immediately in a weird way. Faust lives in dreams of ancient Greece. Homunculus is clairvoyant; he beholds everything that Faust is dreaming. Why? Because Goethe imagines him in the spiritual world, not emerging from the physical world. The human being has it as forces in himself. There Homunculus loses his abstraction. One will even concede to the monists that this abstraction would be clairvoyant if they beheld it in the spiritual world where it is real. Since Homunculus, the human being, as Ludwig Büchner (1824-1899, philosopher) and others invented him exists as a spiritual being and is a clairvoyant being in the spiritual world. However, a person like Büchner would not suppose this. Hence, Homunculus can really become the leader in the regions where Helen shall reincarnate where she shall appear and face Faust. However, Homunculus must appropriate the forces for that only which are in the physical nature apart from everything else.

Homunculus as a clairvoyant being becomes the leader of Faust in the Classical Walpurgis night. There he gets advice from the ancient philosophers, from Thales and Anaxagoras, from Proteus also, how he could get to a natural existence. He who wants so much to be embodied, who “is well supplied with mental faculties,” but even more, “he sorely lacks substantial attribute.” Nevertheless, if once the materialists realise how that what we imagine fantastically could get to natural existence?! Proteus advises to develop through all realms of nature. Goethe's tip to that is great where it concerns the passage through the plant realm, Homunculus says there:

I like the way the air smells fresh and green!

(German: Es grunelt so, und mir behagt der Duft!) (Verse 8266)

The verb “gruneln” is derived from “becoming green” to show the effective fresh life of the plant realm. However, one thing is said to Homunculus: that he can get on this way only to the time when the human being comes into being. He is the mediator between the bodily and the everlasting. When it concerns the birth he must submerge head first into the natural forces, must be taken up in the merely cosmic elements. Hence, one says to Homunculus, experience all that, and that he has “lots of time before you must be human” (verse 8326). Then one tells him:

just don't aspire to the higher places,

for once you have become a human being

you've reached the end of everything. (Verses 8330-8332)

How wonderfully is that in harmony with the mission of Homunculus with the process of human incarnation; since if he has become a human being, he completely goes into the human nature. Hence, one says to him, stay here, do not aspire to higher places (German: Orten and notOrden = medals (or classes) as in most editions). - Here, one must say “places.” For the copyist made a mistake there. This part of theFaust exists only as a duplicate, and because Goethe spoke with Frankfurt accent, the writer understood Orden (“medals”) instead of Orten (“places”). The modern commentators have believed that already the old Proteus spoke of “medals,” one of the unhappiest ideas that slipped in the Faust literature.

Goethe portrays the merging of Homunculus into the elements splendidly where Helen should originate where she should face Faust, so that her everlasting unites with the forces that come from the elements, so that she can enter the earthly existence. The sirens say:

What miraculous fire transfigures our waves,

that break on each other and shatter and sparkle?

Lights wave and hover, the brightness comes nearer,

what moves in the darkness is pure incandescence,

and all is enveloped in eddies of fire.

Let Eros now rule, the creator of all! (Verses 8473-8479)

That is: if the human being enters the physical existence from the eternally spiritual by love, Eros, then one can clairvoyantly behold this merging in waves. “Waves” are meant spiritually. Hence, one says:

Hail to Ocean and the waves

now embraced by sacred fire!

Hail to Water! Hail to Fire!

Hail this strange and rare event!

Hail to Air and its soft breezes!

Hail to Earth's mysterious depths!

To you four, o Elements,

Here we offer solemn praise!(Verses 8480-8487)

That is: Homunculus is now taken up in the elements, and Helen appears in the third act. The reincarnated Helen appears who does not smash Faust.

Thus, Goethe knew how to use the figure of Homunculus poetically. Thus, Homunculus is also in Goethe's eyes that in the human being that leads a completely mechanical existence in which purely mechanical forces prevail. However, the human being is the highest member of creation because these forces dissolve when they enter into him. However, what the human being is not in reality he can be it in his imagination. Out of human freedom, he can get an idea of his ideal and that he can deny his everlasting spiritual which he does not want to take into consideration, and that he can imagine: I am only a being that consists of completely natural substances and forces. Then he can also live in a corresponding manner.

In a time which produces materialism in theory which thinks in theory in the described way, it is not harmless that it has something in its whole attitude that denies the everlasting spiritual and makes just that the natural human being what we have got to know as Homunculus. A certain desire must be there to develop the Homunculus forces particularly; then one has taste to a worldview that regards this Homunculus as the human being.

In the sixties of the nineteenth century, a weird catchword circulated in psychology. One has always believed of psychology that the human beings would not go so far into Homunculism in relation to the soul that they wanted to know nothing about the soul and accept the purely bodily only. However, there the catchword “psychology without soul” emerged (by Friedrich Albert Lange in hisHistory of Materialismup to Wundt (Wilhelm W., 1832-1920, psychologist). That is: one wants to study the mere phenomena of the soul life to the details. These are just “events,” one says; but one does not turn to the soul itself.-

Of course, it is in the nature of this Homunculism to deny the soul; since one must deny the soul if one considers Homunculus as the true human being, because Homunculism cannot be reconciled with the soul. A time in which the catchword “psychology without soul” could originate must show Homunculism as a hidden desire of human life. A time, which believes that the human being is only that what one can recognise with the usual forces engaged in the nervous system, shows homunculoid characteristics in the majority of its human beings.

There the thought may arise in a poet: how would it be if I hold up a mirror to the time and show: you imagine what would result from you if you believed to originate only from purely physical forces and principles. He is a poet who takes the catchword “psychology without soul” seriously and says to himself, the human beings have not only said this, but they also lived it. I want to put a human being who is invented exactly after the picture as they imagine him. They do not know only that he is in such a way as he works. However, I want to invent strictly what would originate from the picture of the modern materialist.

Such thoughts worked in Robert Hamerling (1830-1889, Austrian poet), and he carried out these thoughts on his sickbed and sent out the picture of theHomunculus in the world. One knows this poem little today, although 5,000 copies were sold during the first five months after its publication. However, this is also something that is in the sense of Homunculism, of our time.—Hamerling created his Homunculusas I try to show him in few words. I can show him in such a way. As I got around to regarding that as correct what I say about Goethe after a more than 30-years study, I can do it concerning Hamerling too. Since shortly after Homunculusby Hamerling had appeared, I wrote a treatise about it, and Hamerling still wrote to me that I had understood his idea completely.

Robert Hamerling had taken the idea to put once before the modern human being what is contained in the views if one imagines the human being consisting of wholly physical forces and substances according to natural laws only. Hence, he let the modern professor be serious to create a human being according to the physical forces and principles. Indeed, the scientist who believes to construct a worldview based on physical laws says that one is not yet able to create a human being that way today. However, the poet can say, let us assume that this time has already arrived that that could be performed what was theory once. Thus, we see the academic monist standing before the retort, we see him treating the substances accordingly—and the little human being, Homunculus, appearing:

“Bravo, little doctor!” he shouted

Still a second time, while he

Slipped shivering in a little jerkin,

Which was ready for him;

With gracious look he knocks

On the shoulder of the producer.

“So on the whole and from the pure

Chemical-physiological point of view

Considered, is that, my dear,

What you created, a respectable,

Praiseworthy piece of work.

In detail, one could say

Many a thing about it.”

Homunculus continued

And gave some learnt,

Estimable hints.

He spoke much about albumin,

About fibrin, about globulin, too,

Keratin, mucin, and other things,

And about their correct mixture,

And taught his creator

And producer thoroughly how he

Could have made it better.(Literal translation)

Thus he is there in reality—that is in the reality of the poet, as he is invented in the heads of many materialistically minded people. From this materialistic attitude that is given to the “well-behaved little human being” that originates also which this little human being shows as his first tendency. If one looks at the world for the tendencies of the “youngest” people, one already understands how Homunculus can come to such like that:

Gradually he started quibbling

And grumbling in the book,

Which he had in his hands,

The Homunculus. This was interesting

To the doctor, and he wrote

The remark in his notebook:

The first literary emotion

Of a little human being—Review

However, it will not go at all. Since Homunculus grows out of the thoughts of his creator, we say, of his super-creator, and brings many things with him that lived in his thoughts because of the whole condition of our time. He is nervous; he brings nervousness with him. Nevertheless, there his learnt producer cannot do anything with him. That is why he casts him back into the retort, makes him the human embryo again. Homunculus is correctly conceived and born now by a mother, so that we have a not entirely right Homunculus, but one who is only without a natural father.

Then he goes through his apprenticeship. He also becomes a poet, of course. He experiences what many poets experienced in our time: he looks for publishers. He develops a pleasant relation not only to his publisher, but also to his daughter who is promised to him, if his poems find the necessary distribution. Of course, one has “connections”in the era of Homunculism. One praises the book very much; how can Homunculus assume it different! But behold: when the year was over, the publisher had sold thirteen copies only. He takes away the daughter from him, and Homunculus must search his further journey through life.—He chooses all possible ways. He comes to a spa resort, and there he gets to know the customs and traditions of Homunculism, I would like to say, the customs and traditions of modern spa life. Then he grasped the plan to found a newspaper,News for Everything and for All People.

Councillors, councils of state and other councils or also the leaders of powerful, financially strong parties, the leaders of big bank companies and trading companies urge to it and write their editorials and reports.—I beg you to consider—because Homunculus was published in 1888—that with it no satire was intended about something that appeared much later.—However, Homunculus is not content with it; he still aims at something higher. He sells his newspaper to a corporation—this is no satire—and he devotes himself to his other enterprises. Then he becomes a millionaire and lives in a very strange way. I would like to stress that he settles very well in the time of Homunculism. What Non-Homunculism attains by lifeless forces if, for example, anything is supported by columns still belongs to the past times. The big tamed snakes in his garden pavilion hold its cupola. One had trained squirrels once and had imprisoned them in cages. Homunculus does not do this; he lets them work as machines. This is the right Homunculism. Such a thing would already come out if some thoughts existing already today were developed further.

However, even if he is a millionaire he does not arrive at a satisfying life. He did not know a “soul life” because he had no soul. Thus, his existence dissatisfies him extremely, and, therefore, he plunges into the Rhine River. There a being saves him that also has no soul, the mermaid Lurley. Now Homunculus and Lurley become a couple. Because all old worlds are not enough for them, they immigrateto a quite new region.—One would still have to describe the interesting Literary Walpurgis night that is celebrated at the wedding feast of this couple. Some things of it apply to our time, too.

One would have to carry back one's mind only to Hamerling's time, but one would also have to say the same here that it should be no satire of modern conditions:

The host of water poets was

Completely addicted

To harsh world-weariness,

To bitter weariness of life,

To dark melancholy,

And to Prometheic

Liverish pessimism.

The beer and wine poets

Felt much more comfortable in their skin.

To these the world was just

Right, and they suffered only

From one evil: hydrophobia.

The absinthe poets, in the end,

With the wine and beer poets

Shared hydrophobia,

And with the host of water poets

The vulture bite of the dark,

Melancholy-weary,

Liverish pessimism.

Therefore, they were twice miserable.

“Art and literature” are studied rather interesting.

They immigrate into a region not yet sicklied by the faith in the soul. The soulless man and the soulless mermaid emigrate into an Eldorado. This is an Eldorado of some party systems; and something that prevails in a party system today is portrayed brilliantly. I only want to suggest that Homunculus also does not manage here with the establishment of his model state, the Eldorado, even his Lurley is taken away from him by a party man who walks around with the slogan: “nobody shall outvote us!” However, Lurley says, he is a character, and Homunculus has to move on. Nevertheless, he is an inventive head and wants to think the things to their ultimate consequences. He says to himself, you can bring about nothing with the human beings if you want to put Homunculism into reality; nevertheless, they are not able to do this. However, why should I not take the ultimate consequences? Could I not develop the monkeys to human beings? Modern science already teaches that the human beings have developed from the monkeys. I gather the best of them and transform them into human beings rather fast.—He founds an enterprise in which he wants to transform the monkeys into human beings, a quite new realm. Now one tells us about the monkey school:

The teachers of the monkey school

Only complained about restlessness,

Since it was hard to tear

These noble offsprings

From certain habits

Of their race

From climbing up, for example,

Everywhere.

They forgot themselves now and again

So far, in long lessons

To delouse each other,

Attacked the teacher

In wild hordes to delouse his head.-

When the monkeys were now educated,

They competed the human beings

In any field. They were

Very competent at fine arts

Because of their innate imitation talent.

They were unequalled—of course—

As stage artists,

And undertook tours

With brilliant success.

Farce, comedy, operetta,

Parody—all that was their field.

If they made faces, these were:

Showpieces and masterpieces

Of drastic and finest comic,

As one had never seen before.

They had world-famous recitals -

Howling monkeys were the soloists,

Now and then they beat

Human choirs at prize singing.

Baboons, grinning like fauns,

Developed to fops,

To elegant strollers,

Were also at balls smart

Dancers, and the gallant style,

Which they showed perkily

With the women, was partly

Very much after the taste of the latter.

Concerning the monkey women,

They equalled the human women

And soon before also

In the skill of flirting.

Who would understand better

To dress up always fashionably

Than a monkey? They understood

To festoon themselves with jewellery

With tassels, ribbons, and bows...

And so on. Nevertheless, Hamerling thinks that one cannot transform an educated monkey to a human being. Indeed, the monkeys referred to many a “monkey ancestor,” but they only became similar to the humans with one “virtue,” that of conviction. They soon declared that it is actually inferior to be a human being; because these have not even become “monkeys.” This led to the fact that the elected monkey rector, the monkey “Doctor Krallfratz” replaced Homunculus. Thus, Doctor Krallfratz replaced him. Nevertheless, the monkeys had less luck with it. Indeed, the human beings did not cope with the monkeys that had become human beings; but in wild regions the human beings living still there in the primordial state coped with them, they simply killed the monkeys.

Now a chapter comes which one held against Hamerling very much.—Hamerling did not want to go among the anti-Semites; he strictly protested against it where he made Homunculus the leader of the Jews immigrating to Palestine in the eighth song. They do no longer stand it here under the today's conditions.

One should assume that this is something noticeable in a time that knows the attempts of Zionism. However, it is important what arises now for Homunculus from it, the Jews crucify him because they do not endure being together with him. When he is attached to the cross, only Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew, visits him. He frees him from his bonds, and they both have to walk on together.

Indeed, Homunculus has thought up to the ultimate consequence what he believes to have gained from modern science. However—and this should appear with people who deal with ideological questions—he has not really dealt, actually, with science. He begins now to deal with scientific problems. Indeed, there he manages to win a big part of humanity for an idea which appeared first with the philosopher of the unconscious out of pessimism which is also a kind of Homunculism in certain sense: from Eduard von Hartmann's pessimistic philosophy. Not many people still know today what pessimism has to announce to the human beings: oh, the world is bad, as bad as possible, and it would be the best of all to escape this bad world. It is necessary that one realises that the world originated from the will, and if all human beings grasped the volition to finish their existence, world and life would be finished by the united volition of all. Eduard von Hartmann (1842-1906, Philosophy of the Unconscious, 1869) describes in detail that it were possible to eliminate humanity from the world by a common volition.

Homunculus founds a society not only of human beings but also of animals under this viewpoint. One holds congresses and speeches, and so on. In the end, a time is determined at which all human beings should decide simultaneously: now we want to exist no longer. Besides, even the earth should perish. All agree; the day, the hour approaches, but it stops the sun only. What had happened? Homunculus and Lurley had wished a child; however, they could not get it in Eldorado. Hence, they accepted two children of the prehistoric humans living there; they called them Eldo and Dora. However, both could not cope with Homunculism. When all human beings gather to carry out their decision, Eldo and Dora meet again after long separation, they fall in love, and therefore they come too late. They were absent when the whole humanity gathered at the agreed time, and all efforts were pointless. Homunculus himself has built up those who ruin his decision. Oh, Homunculism will create the “Eldo” and “Dora” in manifold way from itself who come too late if Homunculism wants to take the ultimate consequences. Then the sun of spiritual life, of spiritual science rises!

Nevertheless, in the end Homunculus must reach something from his science. He builds, after he has investigated all forces of nature, a huge telescope with which he can see into the most distant regions of the universe, all that is increased hugely with which the modern worldview has grown up. Except this huge telescope, he constructs a huge stethoscope and a gigantic smelling pipe; and, one can say, he still builds everything that one can obtain from the mechanical forces! From these mechanical forces in the most modern style, he builds a gigantic airship. I note once again: in 1887, Robert Hamerling in his Homunculus writes the history of the dirigible airship! With this dirigible airship, Homunculus leaves the earth sphere. He can race along with his airship faster than the light does. But he is not content with that what he is able to do: he can travel around with his airship in the cosmic space, can look out with his huge telescope into the world of the stars, he can listen to the earth with his huge stethoscope, and he speaks with a gigantic megaphone down to the human beings. There he comes into a thundercloud, lightning strikes his airship, it cannot destroy the rudder, the engine, but it destroys its controllability! Thus, Homunculus is handed over with his airship to the elementary forces. He can still take one thing along: when he approaches the earth once again, he discovers the corpse of Lurley and carries it with him on his dirigible gigantic airship.—Hamerling closes his epic with the words:

Whom the holy nature,

The mysterious mother,

Gave life by love,

Gave life in love.

She also refuses death to him,

The happiest death, above all, is

Dying down in love.

The vast universe has for him

No grave of blissful rest,

No place of everlasting peace.

Who can say where

And how long with Homunculus

And the mermaid that joins him

The ruling fate does chase

The charred gigantic airship

In the whirl of iron laws,

Of substances and forces

On roads without barriers?

Sometimes in starry nights

Sunday's children still see

That wreck as a dark planet

High above in immeasurable distance,

And shuddering they suspect

The fate of the forever restless.

Hamerling showed in his way that that what Homunculism invents cannot belong to the world in which the human soul lives but only to the completely mechanical forces. Mechanical forces of nature tear him away. Indeed, the poet could have this idea that the modern human being who develops his completely natural human ideal looks, actually, only at that in himself what is abstraction, what is something unreal and belongs to the completely natural elements. Hamerling means that what also Goethe said where his Homunculus disintegrates in the elements:

Hail to Air and its soft breezes!

Hail to Earth's mysterious depths!

To you four, o Elements,

Here we offer solemn praise!(Verses 8484-8487)

Whereas Goethe's Homunculus contributes his forces to the incarnation of Helen, the Homunculus of Hamerling as soulless being, as the representative of that human ideal that denies the soul has to be taken up in the elements of the universe.

One can say, Hamerling had the intention—I leave it to others to assess whether he was successful or not—to hold up a mirror to that modern attitude which wants to know nothing of the spirit and conjures up a human ideal divested of spirit before itself. It is another question whether the reflection is also recognised. However, it is something that is not real in the physical nature that rightly those can deny who just put up it. Strange disaster! Goethe solves the riddle somewhat. He reminds of the other word:

Simple folk never sense the devil's presence

not even when his hands are on their throats. (Verses 2181-2182)

Wagner who produces Homunculus in his retort also does not notice that the devil is that who produces him, actually. Since Mephistopheles brings in the spiritual forces. It is an inspiration of the “father of all obstacles” of that what is a product of modern science what materialism wants to put as the modern human being.

I read about Homunculus a third time. I say it somewhat bashfully; however, I do not want to shrink back from a remark that forced on me already once. I read a book of the learnt economist Werner Sombart (1863-1941) who describes the modern economic human being. Read the final chapter about the bourgeois; it is written very interesting; and at last, the modern economic human being appears whom the forces seize like with tentacles that prevail in the modern economic life and who is driven from enterprise to enterprise. As the last, he has also lost religion, Sombart says. “Religion has become business.” The modern human being is in Sombart's humanity. Someone who knows something of it has to say, does he not exist; do not the economists describe him?

It arises from everything that one has to overcome Homunculism by the living understanding of the spiritual life. As Homunculism cannot see many things, it also does not see to what its own forces lead him. The poets tried to show it, and spiritual science completely feels in harmony with such poets who felt out of their inkling what spiritual science has to found anew. What spiritual science can be as a treasure for life to the human being that it can grasp his soul that it is the only true overcomer of any Homunculism; I show this in the next talk. Today I just wanted to bring into view how spirits who looked with open eyes and sense recognised that what prevails in the conditions of the presence as Homunculism.

I believe that one understands Hamerling on the ground of spiritual science; one understands just the last words:

Who can say where

And how long with Homunculus

And the mermaid that joins him

The ruling fate does chase

The charred gigantic airship

In the whirl of iron laws,

Of substances and forces

On roads without barriers?

Sometimes in starry nights

Sunday's children still see

That wreck as a dark planet

High above in immeasurable distance,

And shuddering they suspect

The fate of the forever restless.

Nevertheless, you permit that I use a well-known and somewhat changed proverb compared with this quotation: why should we look with the eyes of the Sunday's child at the wreck in the vast universe? Homunculus is so close that even Sombart can describe him! Homunculus is very close to the modern human being, and one can only hope that many anticipating and sighted souls become Sunday's children in this respect by spiritual science that recognise the very close Homunculism, the wreck of a worldview. More and more of such Sunday's children will be there. And what also—let me use this expression—Homunculism is able to argue against spiritual science, spiritual science will give humanity what it cannot lack, what it craves for and what it must hope for: the soul, and with the soul the spiritual life. Hence, one has not to be worried about the future of spiritual science.

This will be the topic of the last of these winter talks.

I would like to finish the course of these winter talks today with a consideration about the significance of the spiritual science for the human life.

I have pointed many a time to the fact that spiritual science does not want to be only a theory of the world that one accepts or refuses like other theories. No, spiritual science hopes to be able to be a real new element of life, something that can penetrate into the whole human being, and that the human being thereby gets a real treasure for life. What I have suggested in this respect already at the suitable places of the single talks I do summarise not only today, but I will also explain it somewhat more in detail.

In the course of these talks, I have pointed repeatedly to the fact that spiritual research is based on something quite different from any other research in our time. I have mentioned that with any other research it matters, above all, that the human being unfolds his faculty of judgement, his willpower, as well as he has them, and that he applies them immediately. If we face life, we are forced to appeal to our judgement immediately to make a decision in this or that sense. On the other hand, we face life in such a way that our will should be used, we can only seek to apply that willpower which we have unfolded with our normal education.

Briefly, we are forced at any moment of the usual life, but also in the usual science, to accept ourselves as we are anyway.

On the other hand, the position of spiritual science is quite different, actually. Just this fact brings it adversaries and opponents in abundance. The spiritual researcher cannot take himself in such a way as he is. With the portrayal of the life between death and a new birth, I have especially emphasised this. What we apply, otherwise, in life directly to the outer world the spiritual researchers uses it first as preparation for the level of knowledge which he should attain only after this preparation. The maturity of judgment and willpower are not applied to the outside, not in such a way that we make decisions directly or put acts of volition in scene. Nevertheless, they are applied in a spiritual process so that the spiritual researcher uses the techniques, the inner handling of the faculty of judgement to further his soul to make it riper and riper. The will is practiced in such a way that a development of the soul from another viewpoint is possible than that he has already.

That is why one could say: what one applies usually directly to the world—one applies in spiritual research for the preparation of that what one should only attain after this preparation. That is the point that the soul transforms itself into another instrument of knowledge and willing than it is at first. Hence, that mood also comes which the spiritual researcher has compared with knowledge that he has, actually, always the feeling: what you have applied usually directly to judge the things—now you must withdraw it from the outer world to further yourself; now you must wait, until your soul has become ripe to let the knowledge of truth approach you. What flows out, otherwise, from our soul is used first to the work on the soul. However, thereby the human being experiences a mood of inner activity, not that mood of simply accepting the world.

Then we have realised that all outer sense perceptions or thoughts and mental pictures, bound to the brain, cannot supply any cognitive force to spiritual research, but that it must appeal to the stimulation of forces that are slumbering, otherwise, in the soul. I draw your attention to the fact that the real clairvoyant knowledge is based on the fact that at every moment the spiritual-scientific researcher must submerge in the processes and things which he wants to recognise, and that that which he wants to perceive and recognise is extinguished at once if he does not submerge with his whole active soul. We abandon ourselves to an outer colour or an outer tone passively; they have an effect on us. We have to be active if we want to recognise anything in the spiritual world. If we faced the things and beings passively in the spiritual world, the recognised would be extinguished or would change into hallucinations or illusions if it is still there. No moment the soul is allowed to rest in the spiritual world.

If we consider that the soul can ascend to the levels of Imaginative, Inspirative, and Intuitive knowledge only, while it is internally active continuously, then we realise that the spiritual-scientific research can deliver knowledge to the human beings only, which also necessitates a particular kind of understanding. I have pointed already repeatedly to the fact that one has not to be a spiritual researcher to understand what the spiritual researcher explores in the spiritual worlds. Since there is in every soul an immediate, secret language by which it can understand, what the spiritual researcher says, even if it cannot be active spiritual-scientifically, as one can understand a picture, even if one is not a painter. However, the human being of the present has also to fight for it; since nothing is more obvious to him to say: truth must get at me; I must behave passively to it, it has to be given to me! One feels insecure if one shall do anything if one shall first develop the soul to recognise truth. Hence, one can object to the spiritual researcher very easily: you put up concepts of truth which are not in such a way, as the concepts of truth of the outer life or the outer science; and these truth concepts say: I believe what is confirmed to me by facts what can be revealed, so to speak, by facts.

Many years ago, I called this attitude concerning knowledge and life facts fanaticism, on one side. On the other side, one dedicates himself to a certain dogmatism of facts. It signifies the same like any other dogmatism for the soul. One feels, so to speak, that one has no inner power to grasp truth if one is no longer kept to the apron strings of the outer facts or the outer science. However, spiritual science necessitates—because it has to speak about matters and processes which do not belong to the field of usual life—that you bring yourself to an understanding that is not kept tied to the apron strings of the outer facts and that also does not submit to any dogmatism of facts, but feels the light of truth shining in an inner, mental experience. The modern human being must get used only to the inner conception of the living truth. One can almost say, the modern soul is not able to bring itself to develop those strong inner forces that are necessary not to let dictate the truth, but to experience it immediately. However, this feeling is necessary if the human beings should check and understand the spiritual-scientific results. If one brings himself to experience truth in such a way, spiritual science is clear for any soul immediately. Since that does not speak against spiritual science what some people argue that anywhere in the field of the natural sciences or history anything would be that could persuade anybody that the so-called spiritual-scientific truths would be errors or pipe dreams.

Not a single scientific or historical truth contradicts the knowledge of spiritual science. I have often emphasised this in these talks. Nevertheless, those who get used to the scientific thinking at first absorb prejudice with it that one only must overcome. The opposition does not arise from the judgements of science, but from the prejudice against spiritual science. Spiritual science creates cognitive forces that have to become active if the soul wants to penetrate into the spiritual world. Therefore, one understands spiritual science only if the human beings get used gradually to bringing up the active forces from their soul depths that must be animated as free inner activities in the soul.

I have almost avoided out of this attitude using illustrations or photos for these talks. The modern human being is inclined very much to look at something passively. However, one has to grasp internally what spiritual science brings to light; one has to think, to feel, and often to want with it. While spiritual science appeals to this what exists, indeed, in any soul, but slumbers in the souls, it calls forces in the soul for the spiritual life which—if they are used for it—represent a high treasure for life which the human beings need more and more.

Only somebody who is short-sighted can deny that this human life becomes more and more complex, that our development runs in such a way that inner forces of orientation will be more and more necessary to cope with life in any direction. Except various other reasons that speak for the emergence of spiritual science in the present culture, it is also valid above all that the human souls must use these stronger forces to orientate themselves in the outer life, the more we settle in the future. Life itself requires these stronger forces from the human souls.

Of course, we cannot bring everything forward in a short talk that spiritual science—I do not say spiritual research now—has to offer as treasures for life by the living understanding of that what spiritual research brings to light. We can only characterise the single categories, overall. There I would like to start from that what is connected directly with the single human being.

I have repeatedly pointed in other contexts to the rhythmical change that happens in the human life in the course of 24 hours, waking and sleeping. I have partly mentioned in the various talks what is one can say about it from the spiritual-scientific point of view. I want only to suggest today that the human being has the sleep as a means of recovery of particular kind beside that what he has for his immediate mood from sleep and can feel immediately subjectively. Today you have only to listen to the outer medical science; it is of the opinion that the healthy sleep is a remedy. Since sleep unfolds such forces in the human being which compensate a certain daily consumption of forces. Whereas the awake life weakens the body in a way, we are mainly concerned with the development of the forces of recovery. In sleep, healthy forces have an effect on the human being. One of the best remedies for some illnesses is that one causes a healthy sleep. I cannot speak, of course, in this talk how one causes a healthy sleep. I explain on a separate occasion whether spiritual science has to say anything particular about that.

Now the human being can recover by that what develops in sleep only what we have consumed. In sleep the soul withdraws from the physical body; the spiritual-mental is in its own world, in the spiritual world. This different relation of the soul to the body when it is awake is connected with the stimulation of recovering forces. Now spiritual research appeals—as we have seen—the spiritual-mental of the human being to become free from the bodily, from the physical—for one cannot investigate the spiritual-mental in another way. Everything that the spiritual researcher investigates he investigates outside of his physical body. If he expresses the investigated in concepts and words, and if the human soul attains an understanding of this what he has to say, then that makes a particular influence on this human being who is no spiritual researcher, but only faces the communications with understanding. This soul takes care to develop understanding forces for the results of spiritual research. These forces are more or less independent of the physical body. While we understand that what the senses and the reason offer, we remain dependent with this understanding on our physical body, we wear out it, let our activity run in the whole sphere from which diseases come. If we put ourselves with our lively understanding in that what spiritual science offers, we live in the sphere of the healthy forces.

One can deny this easily, saying that one knows many people who deal with the results of spiritual science and do not at all make such an impression, as if they live in the field of the recovering forces. This may be completely entitled. However, if one deals with the results of spiritual science in the same way, as one deals with other sciences or the usual life, one does not penetrate into it. What I have called “Homunculism” in the last talk, one can unfold as well as in other sciences in spiritual science.

If one wants to understand spiritual science in the same way as one wants to understand the results of the usual sciences, then one is not correctly related to it. Spiritual science comes from spiritual research, from the spiritual life of the spiritual researcher, from a perpetual activity; and the understanding, which it gets, appeals at least to tiring the physical body, that means to what the common cognitive forces of the usual life appeal.

However, truth itself must thereby become something like a living being for the spiritual researcher as well as for the supporter of spiritual science. It will also become this. While one receives the truth, otherwise, like a sum of judgements, like something that one just thinks only, one receives spiritual science like something that pulsates through the soul like spiritual blood that animates it internally. One receives the truth like a sum of spiritual living beings; one feels penetrated with living existence by spiritual science if one meets it with understanding. Then, however, it has a recovering effect up into the physical body. As sleep, during which the soul is also beyond the physical body, is a remedy against some illnesses in the true sense of the word, spiritual science can also be such a remedy. However, only those can regard it as a remedy who want to understand the following important matter. It is comprehensible that one approaches spiritual science as one approaches the outer medicine or art because one maintains the same habitual ways of thinking. If one wants to penetrate into it, one often asks, which remedy do you have for this illness, which for that? The information of remedies is often demanded from spiritual science. Indeed, spiritual science will also give real concrete remedies; but one has to understand that it wants to give not only this or that remedy, but that it presents itself, above all. Nevertheless, one does not always accept it with understanding. Spiritual science can answer if one asks for a remedial method, take me, and then you feel my curative forces! However, this is uncomfortable for some people who often look for something completely different.

Of course, it is trivial to object that spiritual science could not help somebody who dealt with spiritual science and died early or fell ill by this or that disease. Since one would have to issue a rebuttal first whether somebody who has survived with the help of spiritual science up to his forty-fifth year had become without it maybe thirty-five or forty years old only. The methods of disproof are not often so simple.

Above all, I must draw your attention to the fact that sleep can compensate only what is used in the physical body, can take forces only from the spiritual worlds as far as the borders of the spiritual predisposition reach which the human being brings by birth in his existence. Spiritual science gets its forces from that world with which the human being is connected spiritually. Therefore, one can say that sleep is a remedy in this respect that it can compensate spent forces. Spiritual science supplies forces to the human being, which he has not yet in himself, either by what it is as such, or by what it can give. It opens a higher source of recovery for the human being as the usual life can also supply to him with the best sleep. One can compare what can work recovering from the soul by lively acceptance of spiritual science with that of which usual medical art is capable. Since also the usual medical art is able only to call those healing forces for the recovery of the human being that are already in him that are only suppressed by opposing forces. Spiritual science, however, brings new forces in the human being to effectiveness, which only develop, which are not innate. It appeals not only to the human being as a microcosm but also to the connection of the human being as a microcosm with the big spiritual world.

In order to make this clearer, I would like to point to something that already is on the border of physical and spiritual. Although it is correct that spiritual science gives the human being a treasure for life by which he can prevent illnesses in a certain respect, a much more important treasure for life strikes us for the life of the soul itself; I mean the memory. Who has not to complain of decline in memory when he becomes older? The forces with which we are equipped for our memory become exhausted. One could live ever so healthily, nevertheless, they become exhausted; even if with some outer means something may be improved, the innate forces become exhausted.

However, if one grasps spiritual science internally and if one appropriates habitual ways of thinking and imagining that are quite different from the usual ones, one notes that, indeed, the retentive power decreases that it is substituted, however, with something that is a much better memory. This appears gradually from the spiritual undergrounds of the soul what one can call retrospect of events. As we look, otherwise, at the things in space, we learn gradually to look at the things in time. The forces which memory does not develop, otherwise, because it has a reserve usually in the bodily which remain hidden, until this slumbering retentiveness is brought out of the soul and becomes retrospective forces of the past. With correctly settling in spiritual science, we instil something in the course of life that continues our usual, instilled memory by which a human being, who grasps spiritual science vividly, can survey the past much longer than someone who does not want to get involved with spiritual science. These forces become also forces directing to the future. Someone who goes into such things and their subtler differentiations notes that memory becomes something different, but something that works more reliably than that memory which is innate by the bodily forces.

This shows us with a careful observation of life how refreshing and strengthening the treasures for life are which spiritual science can give beside other things. Of course, spiritual science cannot heal spiritually what is destroyed physically in the body. Spiritual science never turns in a fanatical opposition against the outer scientific medicine as it happens with similar directions in these fields sometimes; it draws attention to the fact that that what one has to cure physically one has to cure physically. What the forces of a reinforced spiritual life can pour into us gives an inexhaustible treasure for life.

How has that become gradually mere dry knowledge with the materialistic attitude what is good for health or furthers life! Not in order to prove something, but only in order to explain something, I would like to show how we can observe the remedial instincts with animals. However, we can find the tendency with the human being to leave the healthy life more and more, and thereby he would want to change everything that is good for him into outer, dry knowledge. Today one already sees people who can no longer develop their instincts completely which say to them while eating: now you have enough. Beside their plate are scales and now they weigh how much the piece of meat weighs they eat. I expressed that only somewhat radically; but he who pursues the things realises that the sensations of life change slowly more and more into abstract knowledge. This also expresses itself in the fact that people cannot act out of their feeling concerning health or illness, but like to hand over the care for it to others.

In this respect spiritual science will be an exceptionally significant treasure for life, while it strives for penetrating a world from which the human being, indeed, only seems to be descended in which he stands, however, still inside. Since in truth his mental and physical being have arisen from the spirit. While someone goes away from the life instincts with that part of his being that is bound to the brain and nervous system, he approaches the active life again by understanding settling in spiritual science. Therefore, he does not return, indeed, to the animal desires. He will penetrate them from the mind in such a way that an abstract knowledge cannot dictate what he has to eat and to drink, how long he has to walk, to do gymnastics and so on. However, it will happen that he spiritualises his desires immediately that he lets the spiritual treasure he got from spiritual science flow into his desires and thereby knows: you should do this so and so in life. One could almost say, the human being has gone away from life by that knowledge which is bound to the brain and nervous system; however, he penetrates life again with new contents by spiritual science, and thereby he knows again immediately what is good for him, what is advantageous to him, what is not good for him. He will go with certainty through life; he will firmly stand in life because he builds a bridge between the deepest grounds of life and his existence. This will apply not only to health and illness, but also to the whole life.

It is necessary if we want to be healthy to appeal to spiritual forces that are active that ascend in lively direction. If we judge, otherwise, in life, it happens in the way that we make our judgement dependent on that what we have seen; we remain quite passive with our own soul. Just the usual science is proud if it should make judgements without taking the forces of judging from the own soul. This is the one treasure for life that spiritual science enlivens the forces of truth, of judgement. The soul has to get used more and more not to accepting judgements but to judging actively, to opening an inner source of judging. Thereby it attains skill of judging, inner freedom to handle the power of judgement, presence of mind that arises directly from the soul if it has to orientate itself in the world or to deal with the world. One could foresee a treasure for life of spiritual science that one can characterise in the following way.

Let us suppose that we have to educate, and we perform the development of the young human being spiritual-scientifically. The human being thereby grows up in such a way that he is inclined more and more to appeal to the power of inner judgement, to develop presence of mind, to experience truth. The human beings who were educated in the sense of spiritual science stand up in life quite different from those who have experienced another education. They feel instinctively because their thinking will not be an abstract one, but goes into the feelings that it is good to begin this or that. How some people stand there today within our materialistic civilisation with their lives, with their thinking and judgments and do not know what they are good for and what they should do. This will happen less and less if the souls known with spiritual science come in situations where they must decide. They will feel in such a way that their spiritualised instincts give pleasure to them. This pleasure will not deceive them; it will be the right one, and they properly familiarise themselves with life.

Somebody who represents spiritual science today relates to it in another way than one relates to another spiritual current. However, thereby one does not have the right attitude to it that one is inspired by the results of spiritual science subjectively, and that one feels the urge to inform these results to his fellow. There many a man would maybe restrain with this or that today, because it does not belong to the conveniences of life to represent spiritual science, if one arrived at the aims of spiritual science in such a way as one arrives at the aims of other sciences. However, one arrives at that what induces one to talk about the knowledge of spiritual science if one recognises that a civilisation which has become materialistic penetrates into the souls and makes them more and more passive and that spiritual science is necessary for the progressive life while the human being learns more and more to orient himself in life. If one recognises that those forces must die down, which put the human beings firmly in life in natural way, then one is urged to proclaim the spiritual-scientific knowledge. Then one would like to have more than the human language—unmanageable in certain respects—offers to show how necessary the treasure for life is in the further human progress which spiritual science can only give in our time.

If one notes less what it means to be completely subject to a dogmatism of facts, to the specialisation in science caused by fact fanaticism, one maybe understands why spiritual science can only induce that human being to become internally free and to get inner mobility who can put himself in life in such a way that he understands the basic source of life, because his soul is connected with the primordial forces of existence. More and more humanity will need to develop inner elasticity of the power of judgement in subtle activity. Spiritual science has to bring this as a treasure for life to humanity. A thinking that bears the force of truth in itself that the human being needs in the more complex future is a treasure for life which spiritual science can give humanity.

One will have to get used to developing understanding for what one can grasp only internally, because one allies with the internally living truth by spiritual science that cannot be forced to judging from the outside. As the organism is invigorated with the living force of blood and breathes in the right relation to the outside world, spiritual science invigorates us with the internally living truth. It is like a spiritual-mental heart that breathes in the surroundings where one has to inhale something spiritual to make the soul healthy so that it can oppose the inner breathing air what it makes a free inner organic force.

One would like to say that one cannot believe in this spiritual breathing today. In the future one will be able to believe in the inner heart of spiritual breathing. The soul thereby develops human freedom. As the human being can develop as a living being only because he can inhale not only the breathing air vividly, but transforms it vividly and develops a separate living physical organism in a subtle way, he will spiritually develop inner mental blood more and more which enlivens him and makes him a really free being, while he is active and transforms the outer knowledge.

If we go from knowledge to will, we have to remember that spiritual science brings the human beings mental pictures,, concepts, ideas, and results of spiritual research which live as it were so freely in the soul that they are independent of the mental, of the externally bodily, also of desires and outer impressions.

How does the human being act under usual circumstances? He acts based on outer impressions or impulses. Spiritual science is not concerned with that what is connected with the outer organism. It fulfils the human being with that what only lives in the organism what comes from the spiritual world and not directly from the organism. More and more the possibility is omitted for the human being to act from outer impulses and sensations; but what comes up to him from spiritual science supplies inner forces to him, so that he comes to action from the inside. This gives a significant impact for the human life.

Which force comes up to action if the outer world does not supply the impulses? Which impulses can work then?

One will realise by a simple consideration that it must be a comprehensive impulse, so that it fulfils the soul with a comprehensively working force. This is the impulse of love which pours out of the soul directly, but only if it is driven by inner impulses. Spiritual science supplies a treasure for life to the human being that is of unlimited value: a freer and freer incline to his action what can invigorate the power of action if the impulses are spiritual and with it to the power of love.

I have pronounced in these talks more often that spiritual science is the big school of love for life. That does not mean that spiritual science wants to talk about love at every opportunity. This talking of love reminds of a saying of Schopenhauer: “preaching morality is easy, founding morality is hard,” but still of something else. If one always hears talking love, love, love, then it is similar as with the good Gothamites who wanted to catch the light in bags and to empty them in their houses. One cannot empty love in the soul that way. It is with the human soul similar as with an oven that one has not to persuade to make the room warm, because this is its task as an oven. It does it by itself if we put wood into it and kindle it. Somebody maybe could say that the wood does not look at all that it delivers warmth. Nevertheless, there is warmth! While we put the quite different looking wood into the oven and kindle it, we bring warmth in our house. While we get used to the spiritual-scientific concepts, we get used to a free judgement, to a free orientation in the world. While we thereby fertilise our memory, we bring the impulses of the human ability of love in our souls and we get used to them. As certain it is that warmth originates in a house if the wood is properly used, it is as certain that active love that can really help is kindled by those impulses, which enter with spiritual science in the souls. Spiritual-scientific concepts are the heating material of the soul for love.

Indeed, one can also object much. Above all, it one could object that some do not find enough love with those who deal with spiritual science. However, the human being has to finally manage to regard something that seems to be unloving there or there is perhaps rather loving. For example, if anybody causes this or that less nice thing from a wrong instinct or from pure egoism, and one bawls him out of a healthy instinct, that can be a better activity of love than some words which could be quite “loving” at such moment, but would aggravate the condition from which the person concerned made this or that mistake.—The right, true experience will show that nobody who penetrates himself with spiritual science remains without its influence concerning the development of love.

Spiritual science will work as a strange treasure for life just in moral fields. It will not work like outer means, which should deter from doing this or that. It will work quietly in the soul of any human being, so that he finds the right ways of the activity of love. Spiritual science works as the inner voice of conscience which does not punish outwardly but is a more certain leader of the soul. Someone who settles in the spiritual-scientific concepts experiences that where he does wrong spiritual science has put a force in him which works like a strengthening of conscience, like correcting, giving life a direction. Thus, spiritual science will not work best by programs and outer associations in moral fields; but it will work, while it incorporates itself in the civilisation, as the moral conscience developing in humanity. With the increase of moral conscientiousness, a treasure for life is given to the modern civilisation if spiritual science finds understanding.

If one considers it in such a way, one can get a concept of that what it can be for the physical and moral healthy stimulation of the human soul. One will no longer deny that it can be an unlimited treasure for life in physical and moral respect. It can be a treasure for life which one needs very much in the future which can invigorate the human being because it wants to be recognised because it does not approach the human being from without but unites internally with his soul. Internally,one realises this: spiritual science arouses hostility much less. Today one can still understand if people come with their materialistically coloured knowledge and say that one attains knowledge which invigorates the human being also if one looks at the outside world; there one attains right knowledge. This is indeed right. However, we look once, now not only in theory, but lively, and we realise that spiritual science just gives lively knowledge everywhere; and we compare that with what a materialistically coloured worldview gives the human being.

Those persons who still build up such materialistic atomistic world edifice who are still, so to speak, at its origin are still active with theirsouls. Haeckel (Ernst H., 1834-1919, German naturalist) himself, Ostwald (Wilhelm O., 1854-1932, chemist, philosopher), his next pupils and others, they are still involved actively; they can still develop inner forces, and one could still compare that what they work with their science internally with that what spiritual science attains appealing to the inner soul forces.

With those, however, who are not in the first row with the realisation of the materialistic worldviews, or where one absorbs such a worldview passively the materialistic worldview corresponds to a food that one does not digest which cannot develop the forces for what the soul really starve. One can expel hunger, without eating really. It is possible. However, what the hunger indicates cannot be expelled for the outer organism without food. Thus, one can also suppress the hunger of the soul for the spiritual treasure for life, while one ruins the appetite for the spiritual life by a materialistic worldview. Nevertheless, the human does not stand that in the long run.

I would not like to speak here about truth and error of spiritualism. Indeed, it contains some grains of truth, not only error or fraud and the like. I would only like to point out that those who stand on the ground of a materialistic worldview do not approve spiritualism apparently. If one thinks about it with a thinking that does not invigorate itself internally, one can only say that the materialistic worldview is the same far away from spiritualism as from spiritual science. However, if one really looks into the becoming of the world, one knows something quite different. Then one knows that the hunger of the soul for a spiritual treasure for life cannot be suppressed, and that the materialists themselves produce spiritualism! One fights from materialistic side against spiritual science. However, one will realise that everywhere where spiritual science does not succeed spiritualistic associations and circles form. The representatives of a materialist worldview are the fathers of spiritualism. With an abstract thinking, one does not figure this connection out. There one makes the same error in reasoning as that who says, I plan to build up a rather good son from the child that has been born now; I prepare everything for it. However, the son does not always turn out as the father has supposed; he may become possibly a rather bad brat. That has nothing to do with lively life which ideas the materialists have of the world connections. Thus, it can happen that they produce the “son,” the brat, which they do not recognise as their son. For spiritualism is the son of materialism. Why that? Because the appetite of the soul cannot satisfy the hunger for spiritual life, and it finally happens as the physicist or chemist does that the outer events of life are demonstrated where the “spirit” is presented without inner cooperation. This is more comfortable than to have to exert oneself internally at every moment when one should climb up to the spirit. Nevertheless, this is also nothing but searching for the same worldview which materialism produces.

I want to bring in this only as an example how an abstract thinking positions itself in life. Such thinking will regard it as natural that materialism cannot produce spiritualism. How should it do it! However, a thinking that has inner power in the sphere of truth will figure the world out in quite different sense, and with such thinking the human being can position himself quite different than with an abstract, dead thinking which is “Homunculism” too.

Thus, we can regard spiritual science as a sum of life goods. Indeed, someone does not regard the said as especially valuable who thinks that life consists of outer goods only. Indeed, someone who knows that even the outer goods are dependent on the inner sense of direction in the world and on the recovering forces of the soul does not regard the idea as bold—with reference to all social conditions and what is today an occasion for so many “cures”—that such conditions can be seen correctly and that one can find the right remedies only if the human beings soar up towards spiritual science. One must really say that something is included in all that what pushes the words onto the lips of someone speaking about spiritual science.

Spiritual science finds much opposition still today. I have repeatedly pointed in the course of this winter to the fact that there must be such opponents. Their reasons are apparently striking because one can find them so easily, and because they are so extremely evident. One can understand any opponent of spiritual science very well, and, besides, he does not say something wrong; he may even say something completely right. Let me mention finally that he may say something right.

Suppose that a quite clever human being says, a spiritual researcher comes here and talks about all kinds of wrong stuff that Kant disproved for a long time, because Kant proved that the faculty of the human being is not sufficient to penetrate into the spiritual world. If this spiritual researcher had studied Kant, he would soon be quiet about that.

It is not quite wrong what the clever man says. It can be quite right. If anybody said in the time when there was not yet a microscope so that one could find macroscopic things only because the human eye cannot look into smaller things, this was quite astute. Nevertheless, what does it benefit the further progress of human thinking and life? Although it is right that the human eye cannot see down into the cells of organisms because the eyesight is limited, the human beings constructed the microscope, and the telescope and see now where the eyesight of the human eye does not reach.

As it can be very astute that somebody proves that the human eye can see no cells and the like, it can be very right what those human beings argue who speak of the limitations of the human cognitive faculties. However, does it matter whether it is right or not? As it is right that the human eye can see no cells, but that civilisation led to sharpening the eye, there are spiritual methods that strengthen the soul life, so that the human being can behold into the spiritual world. One has to understand this and other things that somebody states as an opponent of spiritual.

Actually not to boast but to inform something, I would like to mention that, nevertheless, more and more human beings note the fertile impulse of spiritual science also in the present. One can prove this by the fact that we are able to build a college of spiritual science in Dornach near Basel. One does not intend to concentrate spiritual science upon one place; I would like to stress this. However, we want to prove that we can show how spiritual science can be creative in the fields of architecture, sculpture, and painting. With this building, only a model should be given that spiritual science is able to deal with life directly. The fact that friends of spiritual science were found who donated the relatively big means that were necessary to create this college building is already a proof that this spiritual science is partly rooted in the souls of the present.

Only by the way, I would like to mention that about this building for spiritual science in Dornach all possible fairy tales are put in the world. For example, in the newest fairy tale that was put to me on the table you can read that the college that should be once built, indeed, in Munich, could not be built because we would have been rejected there. In truth, we were not rejected but certain circles in Munich, which must be asked, could not cope with their expert judgement. They let us wait for ten years; however, we could not wait with the building for ten years!

Another fairy tale tells that because of the building among various cities a kind of competition had originated, and that these would have triumphed over Munich. I would not like to say anything against the artistic Munich. Even if the inhabitants of Munich regret that the college of spiritual science is built now somewhere else, nevertheless, not so many cities scrambled to get it! Besides, the concerning newspaper is not informed especially well if it writes that Basel seems to emerge as the most favourable city from this competition.

I want to mention this only because now also more opponents appear due to this building. For it can be an outer sign that spiritual science finds already understanding that the building can be started, that such an artistic landmark can show the significance of spiritual science in the world. The opponents always ask, who are these supporters of spiritual science? They must be people without judgement, people who easily listen in good faith! However, usually those who talk in such a way would prefer that one listens to their authority or to that what they regard as authority. Those people are opponents because the supporters of spiritual science do not do this and have advanced to be unbiased in a way. However, being unbiased of a materialistically coloured or any dogmatic worldview is necessary if one wants to understand spiritual science. With this understanding one calls the life goods in the soul—as I have suggested it today—with those who get involved with spiritual science more intimately.

Someone who notes and understands their lively life, realises more and more, that this spiritual science is connected with that what must give the necessary new spiritual life blood to the future of humanity. Even if that what is connected with spiritual science may cause some childhood diseases, not everything should be justified that appears where one believes that it works correctly. I allow myself to express something just today at the end. Something that could entice us from the outside that could induce us internally in the same way to present spiritual science does not exist. But it is solely the knowledge that with spiritual science the true and fertile life goods for which any soul must be hungry enter in this human soul, and that this soul, even if it does not know it today, craves these life goods if it should not become empty. This sensation forces itself on the representative of spiritual science that lives in him, while he represents it. With this confession, I would like to close these winter talks:

This science faces the representative of spiritual science as if the real of a fertile future culture demands from him that he represents it. What gives him hope and confidence for life and for the salutary of spiritual science in future crowds together in a sensation of something real. He must develop the confidence that comes from true knowledge, which also knows in a certain respect that spiritual science has to work, even if so many opponents arise; it must be victorious. As it appears to the supporter who has a real attitude, it is the real of the future development of humanity.

I finish these winter talks expressing confidence in spiritual science.

For years now, I have been privileged to speak here in this place about questions of spiritual science. It seems right to me to continue the lectures, which have always begun at this time, this winter as well. For how could there not be a need, especially in our fateful times, to delve into matters of spiritual life! Above all, however, it seemed necessary to me to take the immediate starting point of what is now so close to all our hearts in the two introductory lectures, which are to be held today and over eight days. For it seems impossible to me to speak about anything in our time without bearing in mind that the words we speak today must be able to stand up to those who, in the West and the East, are giving their all for what the times demand. Who could say otherwise than that words that are to be worthy of speaking today may be addressed in spirit to those who bleed to death for our cause? And how could we not start from the immediate impressions of the time, since we have experienced something great and powerful, that in a few days the world of souls, the world of hearts, can show a new face! An infinite amount of selflessness, of devotion, of willingness to sacrifice – we saw it flourish in the first days of August, and we are all under the impression of the greatness of the time.

But if I want to start with the genius who is so intimately connected with all that he has given to his people and to humanity, who is so intimately connected with the whole development of Central Europe; if I want to start with Goethe, it is mainly because because, however strange it may sound, I believe that in all the years I have not spoken a word from this place that could not stand up to Goethe's judgment – even if what spiritual science has to say cannot always be literally substantiated with what we know from Goethe. His spirit reigns over us. And what can be justified before the spirit of Goethe is what I mean as spiritual science in our present time.

It is not only what comes out of our lungs, what comes out of our hearts, that speaks to us today; it is also close to our hearts to hear how the facts speak a powerful language. Many today have to sacrifice their lives. Those we hold dear are returning wounded from the West and the East. In these days, the facts speak of the spiritual world. And I know that they speak in the hearts of those who have to leave their physical lives behind on the battlefields. There, what connects us to the lasting, to the eternal, here on this earth, becomes an immediate spiritual reality, with which, above all, those who must physically leave this reality know they are connected. Folklore, the national soul, these become very real concepts; today you can hear it from those who come back or who send reports home from the battlefields. Those of the honored audience who have heard the lectures of recent years here will know that I rarely touch on personal matters. But today the starting point of the personal will be allowed, since basically we are all personally connected in our innermost soul and heart with what is happening and with what shines forth as fruits in our hopes from what is taking place.

In a sense, I experienced what has become an event today in Austria years ago. And when today's events are discussed – after all, all eyes are turning to Austria, from which, as it were, what appears to us to be great and painful in these fateful days has emerged – I may, since personal matters are connected with the general human aspect of these days, start from this – I would say – Austrian experience.

In the 1970s and 1980s of the last century, I was part of a group of people in Austria who saw an ideal shining before them, which, to a certain extent, has been fulfilled in Central Europe in recent days. Even though all those to whom I belonged in Austria at that time may have had a very different idea of the connection between the Austrian and German peoples, the union of the Austrian peoples with the German peoples still lived in numerous hearts at that time as an ideal. And when I, who as a child had absorbed with the sounds of the German language everything that was present in the Austrian Germans in the 1860s in the way of ill will towards Prussia, especially after 1866, and everything connected with it – when I, in the 1870s and I attended the University of Vienna in the 1870s and 1880s, the words of an Austrian German professor first reached my ears. At that time, I was at the center of Austria's intellectual endeavors, and these words gave me and others, as it were, the slogan for the unity of Central Europe's intellectual life. And I may read to you the words that were spoken at the time by a German in Austria to his students:

"The year 1870 brought the development of the German people to a close.

The hope that the remaining thirty years of our century will drive the seeds of intellectual life in Germany to rapid development, even if poetry will initially have to take a back seat, must prompt us to come to terms with the recent past in order to face the immediate present without a backlog of files, so to speak.

We in Austria find ourselves in a peculiar position at this significant turning point.

The free movement of our national life has removed the barrier that separated us from Germany until recently; the elementary school law and the new educational institutions have given us the means to work our way up to a common cultural life with the other Germans. Now, just now, the case has arisen,» – please note: this was written in the immediate aftermath of 1870!

"that we should not participate in a great action of our people. The North has taken the lead in Germany and formed a state from which we are excluded. This could not create a dividing wall in German intellectual life. The roots of this are not political, but cultural and historical. We want to keep an eye on this unbreakable unity of German intellectual life, in which not only western Austria, but even the Germans of Hungary and Transylvania play a decisive role. May mutual love prevail in this intellectual realm on both sides. We in Austria want to go hand in hand with intellectual life in the German Reich and acknowledge and strive to follow where we are ahead; in the German Reich, however, we want our difficult cultural task to be appreciated and honored, and not to be held accountable for the past, which is our destiny, not our fault."

The man who spoke these words, Karl Julius Schröer – no longer among the living – often spoke them to his Austrian students. What inspired him in his innermost being? He himself was a German born in Hungary. What connected him to the entire German intellectual life? It is expressed in one word, which held it together - in the word: Goethe. For this man was completely filled with Goethe's spirit. And Goethe's spirit, it worked like the living bond, but also like the fire that went over from the Germans of Germany to the Germans of Austria, the Germans of Hungary, to all the Germans of Europe.

Now, when speaking of Goethe, one can easily object: To how many souls, to how many hearts within the German people does Goethe speak a living language today? Will there not be many who bleed to death outside for German nature and who do not know much about Goethe?

That is not the point when one speaks of the guiding geniuses of a nation and of humanity. For more than in any other area, the saying “You shall know them by their fruits!” seems true to me here. Central European cultural life, German culture, must be recognized by its fruits – and by its ripest fruit, by Goethe. And Goethe has had such an influence that many Austrians feel German character as their own. The most German of Austrian poets, Robert Hamerling, spoke a word that can be used, so to speak, as a kind of motto for those I have just spoken of, as a meaningful motto; because it was spoken from the soul of many, many during the time of which I have spoken. “Austria is my fatherland,” says Robert Hamerling, ‘but Germany is my motherland!’ And all such words, but above all such sentiments, were spoken under the influence of Goethe, who was active in the German national substance. So here too I may take the personal as a starting point for the universal human.

Goethe became a kind of guiding genius for me. More and more he appeared to me as the genius of Central Europe, who represents not only what one can get to know in Goethe's works, what one can get to know in the abundant messages that we have precisely from Goethe's life; indeed, Goethe did not even appear to me exhaustively in what he himself has presented to us as a living entity, like that of his “Faust”. Rather, Goethe always seemed to me as if, in everything we can know of him from his communications, from his works, from what is already living and working in the culture of Central Europe, indeed in the whole culture of humanity, as if all of this, there is something more comprehensive, something more universal, something that emerges from a magic mountain in the intimate moments of life when we truly engage with Goethe. Like the old Barbarossa himself in a renewed form with the genius of Central Europe – so in Goethe we encounter a being intimately connected with what is to be taken from the German spirit and incorporated into human culture. And the words at the end of Faust seem to go deeper than we can understand today:

All that is transitory
Is but a parable;
The inadequate,
Here it becomes reality;
The indescribable,
Here it is done.

Faust, after a life in which the perpetual striving of Central Europe is so well expressed, ends with his soul merging into the spiritual world. Goethe's way of thinking seemed to me to be a reference to the fact that from Faustian striving, with which man connects, the connection of man with the spiritual world must emerge. And it can appear to one in the following way. One can devote oneself to Goethe, to all the magnificent and great things he has said; one can absorb the tremendous world wisdom of Faust with a devoted heart. But one can also delve more intimately into the way Goethe strove, into the way the secrets of humanity and the world worked, lived and stirred in his soul. One can resolve to strive with him. Then, I believe, the soul will be transported, pointed to the worlds that the spiritual science I am referring to here represents. In my last book, “The Riddles of Philosophy”, the second edition of my “World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century”, I tried to show how the crowning of Western philosophy can be won from Goethe's spirit. Today I can only briefly touch upon the subject, which I have so often discussed here from this same platform. Let us delve into Goethe's spirit. We find him — and if we delve deeply enough into his way of thinking, it is not one-sided — we find him above all striving to descend deeply into those spheres of nature where the sources flow, where nature and human nature are one. Goethe's mind is such that natural science becomes directly religious life, religious being. Goethe did not delve into nature with understanding and reason alone; rather, his whole heart, his whole soul plunged deeply into the secrets of nature, so that what was a natural secret to him was at the same time an earthly friendship. What the West has always striven for – to rediscover the connection between the human soul and nature, as it existed in Greece and as modern humanity has lost – can be gained through Goethe's way of thinking. All of Goethe's powers strive towards this one goal. His comprehensive imagination guides understanding and reason along the paths by which the human soul penetrates to the sources of existence, where not only external, mechanical knowledge of nature can be found, but also such universal laws as we encounter as the thoughts of the Godhead itself. With his whole soul, Goethe plunges into the depths of being, where science simultaneously becomes religion, into those depths of which Schiller says:

Take the Godhead in your will,
And she descends from her throne in the world.

Thus it is that Goethe was not only a poet, not only an artist, that he became a researcher, a scientist, because he wanted to strive for what the human soul strives for as a whole. And so the most comprehensive and mature nature ever portrayed by a human being appears to us: the Faustian nature, to arise from Goethe's soul, that Faustian nature that stands before external reality with words that have almost become trivial today, but in the face of which one must take the standpoint from which Goethe experienced them. Thus Goethe was able to create the figure in Faust who stands before external reality with the words:

Alas, now have I,
Law and Medicine,
And, alas! also Theology,
Studied thoroughly, with ardent endeavor.
There stand I now, poor fool that I,
And all my wisdom is as before!

But what do we experience in this Faust? — We experience that the soul, which has fallen into doubt about the external world, builds up from its inner being the elements that lead it into universal existence — scientifically, artistically, universally. And then we recognize that it is in this Faustian nature that the spirit of Central Europe lives, above all the spirit of the German people, and we recognize this spirit of the German people particularly when we hear Faust speak the words:

Sublime Spirit, thou gavest me, gave me everything
Why I asked. You did not turn your face to me in vain
in the fire.
You gave me the glorious nature of the kingdom,
the strength to feel and enjoy it. Not
only allowing cold, astonished visitors,

and then the powerful words that penetrate deep into the soul:

Allow me to look into her deep chest
As if into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the line of the living
Before me, and teach me my brothers
In the silent bush, in air and water.
And when the storm roars and creaks in the forest,
The giant spruce toppling neighbor branches And crushing neighboring trunks, And the hill muffled hollow thunders, Then you lead me to the safe cave, show Then myself, and my own chest, Secret deep wonders open up.

One cannot feel these words, cannot penetrate them, without – I would like to say – becoming one with what the German folk soul is, this folk soul that wants to sacrifice itself with its thoughts and feelings, with its fantasy and imagination, on the altar of spiritual life, in order to see the fire rise on this altar, leading up to the spiritual worlds. And when we follow the conclusion of Faust, we cannot but remember that Goethe wanted to tell us through him: Only the path for those who have rejuvenated themselves leads to this ascent into the spiritual worlds, where it can truly become clear to him: “All that is transient is only a parable.” For Faust is presented to us with a double life. We first see him as he is old, and then as he has enjoyed the rejuvenating potion and ascends into the spiritual worlds. In times such as these, one is tempted to see the words as having a very special depth. The German people have often been compared to Hamlet. The words of Hamlet, “To be or not to be,” have often been used to characterize the nature of the German people. Oh, one hears it in the words and in the great confidence that we hear today in everything, this “To be or not to be.” But how? Not in the sense of Hamlet, but in the sense of Faust! In the sense of the certainty that what is as firmly established as the national soul, out of which Faust grew, belongs to that for which “all that is transitory is but a parable”, that is preserved for eternity. And so Faust truly appears to us not as a skeptic, but as a symbol. We follow the German people from the earliest times, of which Tacitus tells us in such a grandiose way, and find it in a Faustian way always rejuvenating – but always knowing the one thing: can we already be “German” now? We cannot be that yet; we will become that in eternal striving! And again we hear the words of Faust:

Who always strives and strives,
We can redeem him;

as well as the others:

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

And the German cannot say of himself, “I am a German,” as the Englishman says of himself, “I am an Englishman,” as the Frenchman says, “I am a Frenchman,” as the Italian says, “I am an Italian.” For the members of these nations know what they are when they say that. The German knows that what he has in mind as a “German” is an ideal that is connected to the deepest sources of the spiritual, that one becomes and always will be a German - and never zst. And so the German striving itself always goes up into spiritual worlds - like Faust's striving ultimately rises in his soul from step to step into worlds that Goethe so wonderfully portrayed. Even if in many German hearts little is consciously left of Goethe's portrayal, the power that lived in Goethe lives today in Central Europe. And it is certainly no exaggeration to say that Goethe's genius is fighting in the souls, in the hearts, in the veins of those who stand in the West and in the East. For the humanities scholar, the old Greek myth that the most valuable geniuses of a nation are among the spiritual comrades-in-arms when the fate of that nation is decided becomes reality. For anyone who truly knows Goethe, it is clear that everything that Western culture has produced, everything we can call Western culture, has become a person in Goethe, has become a universal personality, has been reborn in Goethe, so that from now on, anyone who embraces culture must be touched by Goethe's genius. This gives us faith that Goethe's genius reigns over us, especially in our time.

That is how it was for Austrian Germans who heard the word “Goethe” in the midst of the period of those struggles, when the Austrian peoples were not yet allowed to fight alongside their German brothers. That was what also contained the pull that I myself felt towards Germany. And just as a personal note, I would like to mention the deepest satisfaction I was able to feel when I was able to work for six and a half years on the great Weimar Edition, which was to bring Goethe's entire spiritual heritage to mankind. And since that time, it has been my unalterable urge to make progress in grasping Goethe's genius. And here I may refer to a personality whom I have already mentioned from this place, a personality who, in the last third or in the second half of the nineteenth century, fully represented Goethe's spirit in German intellectual life: Herman Grimm. Herman Grimm's lectures on Goethe, which he gave at the University of Berlin in the 1870s, were an event in German intellectual life. I do not want to say that I can support every word in these lectures by Herman Grimm; but more significant than his words was the consciousness that lived in Herman Grimm.

In his very first lecture, he spoke about Goethe's relationship to the intellectual life of Germany in the following way: |

"Goethe has influenced the intellectual life of Germany as a mighty natural phenomenon would have influenced the physical. Our coal seams tell of times of tropical warmth when palm trees grew here. Our caves, which are opening up, tell of ice ages when reindeer were native to our country. In enormous periods of time, major upheavals took place on German soil, which in its present state gives the appearance of being eternally unchanging. It is therefore fair to say that Goethe's influence on the intellectual atmosphere of Germany was comparable to the effect of a telluric event that increased our average climatic warmth by so and so many degrees. If something like that happened, a different vegetation, a different way of farming and thus a new basis for our entire existence would occur.

Thus it was natural for Herman Grimm to think in Goethe's spirit. One might say that every word of Herman Grimm can show us how, in Herman Grimm, we can see, as it were, the spiritual representative of Goethe in the second half of the nineteenth century. Goethe's genius itself worked through Herman Grimm. And Herman Grimm was convinced – and this is where Goethe's spirit was truly reflected in him – that hundreds of years would be needed to fully understand and appreciate Goethe's spirit. Therefore, Herman Grimm himself knew that what he had to say about Goethe would have to be revised once this spirit of Goethe's was properly understood. Thus Herman Grimm's description of Goethe also appears to us as an external description. It is a peculiar experience to delve into Herman Grimm's descriptions of Goethe's mind and of Goethe's creations. Germany's social, political and intellectual life is spread out before Herman Grimm, and within it he sees Goethe, how mightily he strides and how, through his genius, he intervenes deeply in Germany's circumstances in the scientific, political and artistic realms. But we see him only from the outside. Herman Grimm was aware of this himself, and he has the feeling that times must come when one must first connect inwardly with Goethe's way, and that there is still an infinity to come from Goethe.

In these fateful days, we may recall Herman Grimm's thoughts when speaking of Goethe's mind. In the introduction to my lecture, I referred to Karl Julius Schröer. One of the words this man spoke will remain unforgettable to me, for when Schröer spoke about Goethe in Vienna, it fell like a spark into my soul. He began a lecture in which he explored what the peculiarity of the German mind is, how German art, German imagination – Goethean art, Goethean imagination – is founded on the deepest truth of being; and one might say: illuminating a wide field in a flash, the Goetheanist Karl Julius Schröer said: the German has an aesthetic conscience! Many questions become matters of conscience for the German out of his Faustian nature. And so even the greatest events he faces – those events of which Goethe says that they are connected with the “great gigantic fate that lifts man up when it crushes man” – become, above all, questions before his conscience. Herman Grimm strove to take this conscience into his soul. That is why he said many things that one would like to repeat in these days, when, in the face of voices from all over the world, in the face of all that is being called to us from everywhere, we want to ask nothing more than conscience: whether we can stand up to it?

What does Goethe's German conscience say to Herman Grimm?

I believe that the words he speaks are significant, words that could become particularly significant in our time:

“The solidarity of the moral convictions of all people is today the church that unites us all. We are seeking more passionately than ever for a visible expression of this community. All truly serious aspirations of the masses have only this one goal. The division of nations no longer exists here. We feel that no national distinction applies to the ethical worldview.”

This could be said in 1895, out of Goethe's spirit, which, like no other, had the quality of lovingly immersing itself in all things human, including all things national.

“We would all sacrifice ourselves for our fatherland,” and here are significant words:

"But we are far from longing for or bringing about the moment when this could happen through war. It is no lie to say that keeping the peace is our most sacred wish. ‘Peace on earth and goodwill towards men’ permeates us.

Anyone who is familiar with the essence of Central Europe knows that these are true words, words that can stand up to what has just been called the “German conscience”! And as a lead-in to what Goethe, the living Goethe, can still become for us, here are the following words of Herman Grimm:

“... As a totality, human beings recognize themselves as subject to an invisible court enthroned in the clouds, before which they consider it a misfortune not to be allowed to exist and whose judicial proceedings they seek to adapt to their inner disputes. It is here that they anxiously seek their right.”

How universally, how lovingly, and with what attention to the universally human does Herman Grimm, speaking from the spirit of Goethe, say in 1895:

“How hard the present-day French are trying to make out that the war they have in mind against Germany is a moral imperative, demanding recognition from other nations, yes, even from the Germans themselves.”

Do we not hear in these words the assurance that lived in Central Europe that it could never have brought about the war for its own sake? But do we not also hear the awareness of facing an ironclad necessity? “We would all sacrifice ourselves for our fatherland; but we are far from longing for or bringing about the moment when this could happen through war.” We know that this is true! And that is why we know that the cause and the ‘fault’ for today's events cannot be found in the people in whom these attitudes lived. But the Goetheans were not blind. They knew that war would come after all. “How today's French are trying to present the war against Germany, which they are planning, as a moral demand, the recognition of which they demand from other nations, even from the Germans themselves!”

Even in Goethe's time, people spoke of Goethe's objective sense, of his loving way of immersing himself in people, but also in things, of connecting with everything with his own soul. An important psychologist of his time, Heinroth, used the word of Goethe's objective way of thinking and looking at things. This concreteness leads precisely to the world view that can be called the “Goethean world view” and which no one can ignore if they want to absorb the culture of modern times. Basically, we have not been far removed from recognizing such things. Has Goethe's way of thinking remained so unknown? I would like to point to words that have been spoken and that can show us how Goethe's way of thinking has not actually remained so unknown – words such as the following:

There are also some remarkable words with regard to the French and English:

“The highly favored selection among Descartes' and Newton's compatriots knew the spirit of science unquestioningly; but the passionate urge for knowledge was taught to modern Europe, if at all, primarily by thousands of German researchers...”

”... Imagination, feeling, will, made their claim to be heard beside or above reason, and under their transforming pressure the universe became deeper, wider, and more wonderful. The irrational was recognized as a source of illumination; wisdom was drawn from the child and the flower; science, philosophy, and poetry drew near each other. In England, this revival of the imagination gave birth to noble poetry, but left science and philosophy almost untouched.

One of the keys to understanding the period is the fact that, while in England and France the poetic, philosophical, and scientific movements flowed mostly in separate channels, in Germany they touched and merged completely. Wordsworth sang and Bentham calculated; but Hegel caught the genius of poetry in the net of his logic; and the thought that discovers and explains, and the imagination that produces the new, they worked together in fruitful harmony in the genius of Goethe.

“In Faust at the end of his eventful life, we see the present-day Germany foreshadowed, the Germany of restless, bold volition and action, and we can all the better understand why the great cosmopolitan, in whose eyes state and nationality were subordinate and sometimes harmful ideals, nevertheless claims his unassailable position as the highest poet of the German Empire alongside Bismarck, his creator.”

These are words that show you have some sense of Goethe's way of thinking. These words were spoken in 1912, and where? Are they being spoken somewhere in Germany for the sake of prestige? No! They were spoken in Manchester, by Herford, the Englishman, who is referring to German intellectual life. And they were spoken, as we are told in the preface to the book in which they appeared – a book well worth reading in these fateful days for us! – in order to teach the newspaper people something that might lead to a better understanding of what German genius is. I leave it to everyone to judge, in the light of recent events, how much these newspaper people have learned from it. But there is something else in these lectures. There is a meaningful sentence where Goethe was discussed and the lecture continues immediately:

“No German words are more deeply imbued with the juice of national ethics than those that describe these things: true, thorough, faithful.”

So spoken in Manchester in 1912. We may claim to understand something of what it means to be “true and loyal”; and we may say—especially in view of the place where these words appear—that we have learned something from Goethe! A preface has been printed at the beginning of the book, from which I would also like to share a few words with you. Lord Haldane—you may know the name from the discussions of the last few days—says:

"The source of the stream of (Germany's) intellectual and political life lies in the Reformation. But at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, a current unique in world history began to flow in a way that has been as continuous as it has been characteristic since that time. Since the days of ancient Greece, the world has not seen such a spectacle of the closest fusion of the life of the statesman with that of the thinker. The spirit of Germany today is to a high degree practical and materialistic.

Why does Lord Haldane write these words? He also expresses his opinion on this, for he says:

"Only the influence of true knowledge can dispel the clouds of mistrust and free us from the burden of arming ourselves against attacks that in reality none of us has in mind.

Well then! I need add nothing to the light that is thrown on our fateful days from this side. But they give us, so to speak, from the internationality of the German essence, the right to hold to Goethe, to find consolation and hope in Goethe, and also support in Goethe in these fateful days. Above all, and I could refer to many, many things today, we find a saying of Goethe's. Oh, I have often thought of this saying of Goethe's in the last few days and weeks! That shots were fired at the cathedral of Reims – so it was spread throughout the world. I do not believe that I am second to anyone in my admiration for the unique and wonderful cathedral of Reims. I saw it in 1906; I admired it. But I have also seen how this cathedral has become fragile, and it cut me to the heart when I had to say to myself: Not thirty years from now, and it will no longer be able to stand as it does now. But we heard that this cathedral was said to have been shot at – I do not want to investigate the fact – and there was much talk about it. Then I had to remember a Goethean idea, a Goethean feeling. It was from Goethe's spirit that the word was spoken, which can make such a deep impression: What would the countless stars be, what would all heavens be, if they did not ultimately shine into a human eye, if they were not reflected in a human soul and grasped by a human heart? Anyone who understands Goethe's way of thinking knows that there is a higher work of art than all cathedrals, that there is a higher work of art than all the works of art created by human beings, however much he admires them; he knows that there is the divine work of art created by man! And then, however paradoxical it may sound, the following may be said to a people who have been educated in error: if war is a necessity and must be, and shots are fired at the greatest work of art, which is greater than all cathedrals, then one feels — in the Goethean sense — that it is hypocrisy to lament the fact that bullets can also fall on cathedrals!

Once again, because it is connected with current events, let me turn my attention to the country that is being talked about so much today: Austria. But first, I would like to raise a question, because in many respects it depends on the right questions being asked whether the right answers are obtained.

Much is said about the “guilt” for the present war; much is said about the fact that the present war was ignited here or there. But I think one question can be decisive, and it must be important – the question: Who could have prevented this war? That it was bound to happen one day is another question. I am now speaking only of its immediate beginning in our time, and there is no other answer to this question than that: the Russian government alone could have prevented it! That is certain. From everything that is very easy to know, people today can give themselves this answer.

But now back to the “local” starting point. That group of people, of whom I said earlier that the idea of the Germans of Austria joining those of the German Reich shone before them, repeatedly heard a word from Bismarck during the years when what has now become an event was being prepared. It was a word spoken with superior humor, but – I would like to say – one that includes fate. “Autumn crocus” was the term Bismarck used to describe a number of people who did not want to go along with the mission that the Berlin Congress in 1878 had given to the Austrian state in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Why the name Herbstzeitlose? At that time in Austria we had a parliament whose leader was a great and important man. His name was Herbst. Like many others, he saw the English parliamentary system as the highest ideal of political effectiveness. From this parliamentary system, one could derive a great deal. Among other things, the Herbstians derived something that they represented with great virtuosity: that one should not claim Bosnia and Herzegovina for oneself. Bismarck called these people “Herbstzeitlose” (autumn crocus) in reference to their leader, because he saw the task of the time connected with what Austria had to carry out in Bosnia and Herzegovina at that time.

How did that come about?

Russia had at that time continued its efforts to expand its sphere of influence over the Balkan countries. France and England were the main opponents of this endeavor. Today, we must remember who it was that had instructed Austria in relation to Bosnia and Herzegovina at the Congress of Berlin, because only the context of the facts can instill a proper feeling in our hearts. England and its representative at the Congress of Berlin, Lord Salisbury! At that time, England regarded it as a necessity of modern times for Austria to extend its sphere of influence over Bosnia and Herzegovina. And those who were not autumn crocuses, but who at that time claimed to speak the language of modern times – the language of the people of the times, not of autumn crocuses – could not go along with the autumn people in Austria, but had to submit to the modern demand: to extend Austria's sphere of influence to Bosnia and Herzegovina. What happened later is a consequence of what happened then, and it has settled into those people who, one might say, wanted to combine the Austrian spirit with the modern spirit at that time.

Now, there is also a beautiful saying of Goethe's that he spoke when he once commented on one of the oldest rocks on earth, granite. He said that nature, with all its consistency, attracted him again and again because it led him away from the inconsistency of people and their actions. — This dominates Goethe's entire way of thinking: inner consistency. And when this inner consistency in Goethe's style is observed, it gives the soul security and true, genuine goals. One must gradually work one's way up to this consistency if it is to become the consistency in people's actions.

If we now apply Goethe's way of thinking to those who formed their German ideal in Austria, what should they think of the consistency or inconsistency of people when they have to learn that Austria, in its vital question – continuation of what was intended by English policy at the Berlin Congress of 1878 – encounters resistance from the southern Slav elements, thereby provoking Russia – and finds England on Russia's side? What should have happened to please English policy? What it wanted in 1878 – or something else? In history, facts are intimately connected; they continue consistently. And right must be, who is able to base his actions on this consistency! Might the Austrian German now turn to the authors of his mission regarding the southern Slavs, and, taking up Bismarck's word, expand the term “Herbstzeitlose” somewhat? This, too, seems to be Goethe's spirit in our days: the consistency of the events to which we are bound in our own days.

When we turn again to Goethe and to what he was in the depths of his soul, we find that he sought this inner connection between the human soul and the sources of all being relentlessly and portrayed it so vividly and so captivatingly in his “Faust” » so vividly and so thrillingly because he knew that a heavenly, a spiritual and divine element shines in the human soul, and that this heavenly, this spiritual and divine element is greater than what human beings can grasp with their intellect, with their weak reason. That is precisely the Faust problem: to sense God in the soul, the creating, the working, the speaking God in history. — What characterizes Goethe's spirit does not always have to be associated with Goethe's name; but “by their fruits ye shall know them”. I said that it can be applied to the culture of the German people, and the most mature, the most glorious, the most enduring fruit of this culture is Goethe's spirit. But what we see at the root of this culture, what we feel at the root of this culture, we see everywhere that we encounter Germanness, Germanity in its immediacy.

Again, we ask this Germanness, which is also Goethean, in the face of something else that comes up again and again: “Belgium's neutrality was violated by Germany,” we hear over and over again. It is not my job here to discuss military necessities; because anyone who knows the circumstances knows what military necessities are at this moment. But there is another aspect to be considered. Across the Channel we hear: Yes, because you violated Belgium's neutrality, we were morally obliged to start the war with you!

Firstly, I do not want to be one of those people who, when certain facts occur, are often said to have been wise after the event and say that they had known this for a long time. But one may say that those who were concerned with public affairs in this case well knew that this war would come one day, and that England would then be found among Germany's enemies. However things might have come about, they were such that they had to come about. For this reason, one cannot give much credit to England's current moral indignation – although I do not want to talk about the violation of Belgium's neutrality. But I will speak about the moral outrage from Goethe's way of thinking.

Goethe pointed out that when the human soul finds itself at the sources of the eternal, it then also sees the eternal necessities shining within itself. And Schiller, as so often, coined a phrase from Goethe's mindset: “World history is the world court.” Let us assume that an injustice has been done in violating Belgium's neutrality. Who would be the judge? The one who thinks in Goethe's, in Schiller's way of thinking answers: “Now world history!” German history will have to submit to its judgment. But Schiller, in the spirit of Goethe, would never have said: “English politics is the world court!” – Herman Grimm spoke of how close Bismarck was to Goethe. Therefore, in connection with the above, a word of Bismarck may be recalled; for it may be said to be related to what has been said about “world history” and “world judgment”.

It was in 1866 when Bismarck was advised from a high position to punish Austria because it was the only guilty party in the rivalry with Germany. And Bismarck is said to have spoken the words: “We do not have a judicial office to rule, but to pursue German politics; Austria's rivalry against us is no more punishable than ours against Austria.”

I wanted to say this in advance because I believe that it can serve as a basis when the call for England's moral outrage over Germany's violation of Belgium's neutrality is heard. In the spirit of Goethe, we would say to such voices: You do not have a judicial office to rule, but you pursue your policy! And whatever the case may be, it was out of politics and political necessities that what had to be done was done by Germany in Belgium. But if you want to defend Belgium's neutrality, you do it not out of morality but for political reasons. And just as Germany had to deal with Belgium's neutrality at its discretion for political reasons, so you had to deal with that neutrality in your own way for political reasons!

When one hears such talk, one is reminded of the English judgment I have already quoted: “No words in the German language are more saturated with the juice of national ethics than those which denote these things: true, thorough, faithful.” It is true that in war it is states that pursue their policies, not morals. It is only right that in 1914 we should face the consequences of what was undertaken in 1878. Whether it is right to take action against someone for continuing in 1914 what was committed to him in 1878 is a matter for those who speak of the “morality” of their policy.

I did not want to go into what touches on current politics, because, especially in our fateful days, we must remain true to what Bismarck said: that those who have to stay at home should, in a way, remain silent when events speak for themselves out in the field. I also did not want to talk about this or that about Goethe. But I did want to say that, starting from Goethe, something can sound in our hearts and souls when, in the face of such fateful events in the physical world as today's, we feel the necessity to hold as true: that all that is transitory is only a parable, that the inadequate can only be achieved in the spiritual, that the indescribable is done there alone. I know that, especially in these days, for those who are out there in the field, the prospect of the spiritual world was what they needed, what they longed for. And I have heard the assurances that came from those on whom it depends today – the assurances that war speaks a clear language, but a language about the spiritual life, about the reality of the spiritual life. These days one can study the feelings, those feelings: “Wherever I may let my blood flow, wherever I may draw my last breath, I know: my soul is safe in the spiritual life, and reality is what remains behind!” And not only for those who are outside in the East and in the West, but also for those whose fate has determined otherwise, “spiritual grasp of the world” is a great word. Should one not be ashamed, not to be out there in the field, when one feels the difference within oneself: “You are certain that your blood will not flow; only the others are exposed to a difficult and harsh fate?” Should one not be ashamed to belong to the former, when one should not know that the spirit and spiritual bonds are common to all, that those who bleed to death are with us? Even if it cannot be explicitly expressed by everyone who is out in the field, how it lives in him, which has borne its most mature fruits in Germanness — it lives in him at least in his subconscious. And it is true — let it be said again: fellow fighters are not only those who are out on the battlefields, but also the geniuses who have emerged from the people as ripe fruits. And Goethe is one such ripe fruit that the culture of modern times cannot ignore; but certain people still find it difficult not to ignore this culture. And finally, allow me to point out these difficulties that exist and also what is connected with these difficulties in our fateful days.

We turn our gaze to the East, and there too we may say: By their fruits ye shall know them. Let us single out one of the most important Russian intellectuals, who grappled particularly with the intellectual life of the nineteenth century: Alexander Herzen. How is he connected with the intellectual struggle of the time? Let us consider the soul of Herzen, the Russian intellectual. We raise a question: Was he touched by Goethe's spirit? He who is touched by it believes in eternal things, in the future of humanity and human value, in the groundedness of the human in the divine; and when he is victorious, he still believes, with Goethe's Faust, in the rejuvenation of the human being – and from all doubt and from all distress about the misery of existence, hope still flows to him, Faustian hope. Herzen familiarized himself with the intellectual life of Western Europe. John Stuart Mill seemed to him to be one of the most enlightened minds of Western culture. Let us hear what he says about Mill:

"He was not exaggerating when he spoke of the narrowing of the mind, of the energy, of the polished nature, of the constant flattening of life, of the constant exclusion of general human interests from life, of the reduction of the same to the interests of the commercial office and of bourgeois prosperity. Mill speaks openly about the fact that in this way England will become China – and we add: and not only England.

And further, Herzen says:

“Perhaps a crisis will save us from this Chinese wasting away. But where it will come from and how — I don't know, and Mill doesn't know either.”

And now Herzen exclaims:

“Where is that mighty thought, that passionate faith, that ardent hope, which makes the body stronger and the soul more and more ecstatic, which feels neither pain nor privation and walks firmly to the stake?” Look around you! What can uplift the people?"

The Russian intellectual addresses such questions to European culture. What conclusion can be drawn? Well, the answer that the present time gives is the one that those who believed in Goethe have given themselves in their souls. That is why they are so connected with the great events of the time with this soul, with the soul of the heart. And even if those who are Goetheans could never have raised the question, “Where is that mighty thought, that passionate faith, that ardent hope that hardens the body and drives the soul into that ‘convulsive rapture’ that feels neither pain nor privation and walks firmly to the stake?” Even if they could not have asked in this way, they felt that what comes from the sources from which Goethe drew, in a certain sense goes to its death for the culture of modern times! And the answer resounds to us from our fateful events: “Look around you! What can uplift the nations?”

Mereschkowski, another contemporary Russian intellectual, says the following in the book in which he also speaks about Herzen:

"Herzen's last vision of death is Russia as the ‘land of free life’ and the Russian peasant community as the savior of the world. He took his old love for a new faith, but realized, it seems, in the last hour, that this last faith was also an illusion. However, even if faith deceived him, love did not deceive him; there was a certain correct outlook in his love for Russia: not the peasant community, but the Christian community will perhaps become the faith that the young barbarians are to bring to ancient Rome.

Meanwhile, however, he dies – without any faith at all!"

Thus he says from the heart:

“Farewell, corrupt Rome! Farewell, my homeland.” Why this homelessness, when we look eastward, among the best intellectuals? One might say: one can recognize what is still missing in the East from a nakedness that Mereschkowski displays in his last book, “The Advance of the Mob.” On page 25 of this book, he says:

"When Goethe speaks of the French Revolution, he suddenly bends to the earth, as a giant might be crushed and shriveled to a dwarf by an evil spell; from a Hellenic demigod he becomes a German citizen and – if the shadow of the Olympian will have mercy on me – a German philistine, “Herr von Goethe, Geheimer Rat des Herzogs von Weimar und anständiger Sohn des anständigen Frankfurter Krämers.”

We see the nakedness; we see the intellectual who could not get close to Goethe, who wonders: “How did Goethe speak about the French Revolution?” and gives himself the answer: “From a Hellenic demigod He becomes a German citizen and – the shadow of the Olympian be gracious to me – a German philistine, “Herr von Goethe, Privy Councillor to the Duke of Weimar and decent son of the decent Frankfurt shopkeeper.” But this Goethe became the one who conjured up in his “Faust” the greatest revolution that humanity has experienced, the revolution of the human soul on its way to the divine. And the right appreciation of this magical creation is what modern culture must understand if it wants to ignite not unbelief, the “Farewell, my homeland”, but confidence and faith in the divine life in people. What do the intellectuals of the East see in Western culture? Well, in the way described, they bypass the thing by which the West has reached its prime! But just as ancient Greek and ancient Roman culture live in our veins, just as the Christianity of the early centuries has penetrated into our veins, so too will the people of the East one day carry in their veins the cultural heritage that has reached the sun through Goethe's spirit. Man resists most what he must ultimately succumb to, for he hates what must of necessity come upon him. The future of humanity is not determined by what the Russian soul has attained from Byzantinism or what it has received of external culture from the West, but by what of Greek and Roman culture and early Christianity has become the lifeblood of the highest nations of Central Europe. But nothing can be skipped! In Goethe, what is alive in the culture of Central Europe in the way of Greek, Roman and early Christian elements has been resurrected. And in what comes from the East, we still see the childlike resistance, the lack of understanding of what must be taken up by the soul. And we begin to understand – and this is also Goethe's way of thinking – and then to look to the future with knowing confidence and knowing trust when we are asked: Why are we at war with the East? – Mereschkowski also gives us an answer to this when he talks about Chekhov:

But what a source of rejuvenation, what a source of hope even in difficult times Goethe is, that becomes very clear when one knows: the West necessarily had to go through an epoch of materialism. Those who are only able to see materialism can despair; but in the midst of materialism, such spirituality arises that can be summarized in Goethe's spirit! Truly, the German has proved it: he takes in with love, with devotion, the Russian spirit. But he must also show understanding for what the Russian spirit is not yet. Strange words—which Gorky says are cruel but true—are those spoken by a Russian intellectual who is not touched by Goethe's spirit. Gorky says:

"Yes, what is he to you, this man? Do you understand? He takes you by the scruff of the neck, crushes you under his nail like a flea! Then you may feel sorry for him! Yes! Then you may reveal all your foolishness to him. He will stretch you on seven racks for your pity, he will wrap your guts around his hand and tear all your veins out of your body, one inch per hour. Oh you... Pity! Pray to God that you may be beaten without any pity, and that's it! ... Pity! Ugh!

Cruel, but true, says Gorky. So speaks he who has yet to wait for what Goethe's spirit has to say.

This spirit of Goethe contains something that is eternal in the face of the ephemeral, the parable of life, something indescribable in every age because it is ever-growing, ever-generating new hopes. And if one speaks in these days of that which reigns as a good genius over Central Europe, which justifies the trust that is so firmly rooted in the souls of Central European humanity, then one may speak of it in Central Europe in such a way that it has become part of the universal blood of humanity in Goethe. And when we look at what lives in the struggling Central Europeans, what lives with them in soul and spirit, what also lives there in their blood, then we may say: it is the spirit of Goethe's spirit, and it will endure as long as Goethe's spirit endures! In these fateful days, we can also find hope and consolation in the words coined by Schlesermacher, which are also rooted in Goethe's spirit. For it is a truth: Schleiermacher coined it out of a Goethean spirit because he knew that Goethe's way of thinking is connected with knowledge and contemplation of the spiritual world, and that what lives in the German people is itself an eternal spiritual reality. Thus one can say, full of consolation and hope in the spirit of Schleiermacher: “There blows like a breath of the Central European spirit, of the Goethe spirit, upon the ranks of those upon whom the spirits look today, because the destiny of mankind is grounded in them.” Thus it whispers in our fateful days, that we may speak it with increased strength and with increased confidence, because we know: the fateful words of Schleiermacher, which are also Goethe's words, live in the hearts of many who are suffering outside, because they are shaped in his spirit:

“Germany still exists, and its invisible strength is undiminished” – and we add: resilient!

How we look in our fateful time at those who stand outside in the east and west and with their blood, with their soul, stand up for what our time demands, we saw it eight days ago in the lecture. In this lecture too, I do not intend to violate the word that Bismarck has spoken in relation to those who have remained at home. At a time when great destinies are still being decided for humanity in other ways and in other fields than through the word, the word must not interfere in an improper manner with the decisions that must be brought about in a different way. Only that which speaks externally and to our hearts, wherever we look, triggers trust, hope and confidence; it triggers devotion and selflessness in such a wonderful way.

Now, in our time, where the basic tone of speaking is more materialistically colored than it can be here, there is much talk of heredity, of inherited traits. Today, in view of the great things happening outside, it is easier to translate into the spiritual what is spoken of today in a more materialistic sense as inheritance. What lives outside in the deeds of those who bleed for their people? And what should live in the hearts of those who want to be genuinely connected to the great fateful, destiny-bearing time?

Perhaps one will not encounter misunderstanding today if one still uses the word “inheritance” in a higher sense: if one points to the real powers that emanate from the great ancestors and continue to work, that blow through the ranks like a magic breath; if one points out that the same thing lives in the deeds of the warriors as lived in the great geniuses of the Central European people. And perhaps one will not encounter misunderstanding if one dares to say that by this life one means something real, that it is really not just as expressed in the Greek fairy tale: that the power of the great ancestors lives in the present as if blessing the present, but that this reality permeates and pulses through blood and souls. And since we, as human beings with full consciousness and knowledge, should actually live in what is also spiritually around us, perhaps two personalities may be singled out today from the ranks of the great Central Europeans who, so to speak, are still close to the present, two geniuses, one of whom has most certainly become part of the heart and soul of the Central European population, while the other, so to speak, can stand before us, expressing in his spirit the greatest and highest of this Central European population. Even if it may be said again today that there are perhaps many who play a heroic role in this time and yet know little of Schiller, and even less of Fichte, we can still be inspired by the fact that the same power that flows outwardly in Heldenbhute is the same power that flowed in Schiller, in Schiller's creations, and in Fichte's great encouragement of his people. Truly, not to evoke sentimental feelings in your hearts, but because I believe that there is indeed something characteristic in the fact that the German people so eagerly want to be intimately connected with the most important moments of their greats, I would like to point out the last moments of the earthly life of the two great geniuses who are to be discussed today.

Schiller –- he passed through the gates of death in such a way that the last-mentioned great German, Herman Grimm, could speak of Schiller's death: “Goethe passed away, Goethe fell asleep; Schiller died.” The younger Voß literally leads us into Schiller's death chamber. We see how Schiller lived with the greatest expenditure of the powers of mind and soul; we know that he was able to sustain himself up to the age that he unfortunately only reached, in that mind and soul achieved a tremendous victory over the body. Thus we see that in the last days, when the body was already in some respects given over to death, this soul is still heroically connected with all the great things it has thought, conceived and created throughout its life, and we follow at the hand of the younger Voß into the room where Schiller died; we see the last moments of the great genius. We see how his spirit, in his weak body, still tends towards his great ideals; we see how he then has his youngest child brought into the death chamber, how he looks at this child with the same eyes with which he had looked at the world, has looked at the world, looks at this child, looks deeply into his eyes, then hands him over to his attendants and then apparently – we sense this – takes a look into the deepest part of his soul, of which we can say: Certainly, the younger Voß is right when he says that Schiller may have thought that he could have been much more to his youngest child in life. But this act may appear to us symbolically, to the effect that we feel: if Schiller had looked into the eyes of all of us and then turned away into his own inner being, thinking that he also had much, much to say to us, then we feel as his heirs in a completely different sense than just the heirs of his works and of what he himself said; then we feel we feel connected to his innermost impulses, so connected that we know: we must, if we want to be like him, if we want to be worthy of him, if we want to place ourselves before life and the world from the same deepest impulses, want to be a spirit like his spirit!

And Fichte – in difficult times, he tried to shape and clothe in words what he had gained from the deepest reasons of his philosophical nature, which he spoke to his Germans in the time of German humiliation and German misery, in order to lift them up and breathe greatness into them for the further life of the people. And he was completely united with all that then led to the liberation struggles of his people. And it is a wonderful thing to look back now at the last moments of Fichte. He had often considered whether he should not go out to the battlefields himself; but he had then found that he could wield another sword better for the good of his people: the sword of the word – and he did so in a valiant manner. But his wife – she was a loyal carer for those who had fought in the battles – brought the military hospital fever home to him, and he was seized by it. During his last moments, his son brought him the news of the Germans crossing the Rhine and the state of the liberation struggle at that time. And now we see how one of the greatest philosophers, who has shaped the most powerful but also the most crystal-clear thoughts, lives out his feverish fantasies – but these feverish fantasies are characteristic. In the last moments of his life, he saw himself in spirit in the midst of the fighting. And what he believed he could give to the world and the German people from the deepest root of life's impulses, what he could have done for Germany's redemption, that resounded from the soul of the great German philosopher in his feverish fantasies; a moment that can deeply move us. The medicine was given to him. He rejected it with the words: “Leave that alone, I need no medicine; I feel that I have recovered!”

They stand there like warriors themselves, the two great minds, fighters for the best that the world has produced, and at the same time we see the two, Schiller and Fichte, united with everything that the time, the immediate present, demands.

And now we turn to the two greats; let us try to recognize in them what – to use this Fichtean saying – sprouts in the deepest root of German life. Let us turn to Fichte to help us, so to speak, to see for ourselves what we have to say for ourselves – even if not at first for others in these much troubled times – when judgments about European culture come at us from so many sides, coming from sources that certainly do not emphasize German nature and German spirit. We can see this from Fichte, the people who are now so often to be called barbarians.

Fichte posed three questions when he wanted to speak to his people about what could uplift this people; and we must be clear that when Fichte gave his so inspiring “Speeches to the German Nation” at that time, it happened in a different time than today, in a time with a different character. Fichte posed three questions that today - at most with a single intermediate sentence - can no longer be posed in the same way. But it is precisely from these three questions of Fichte that we can learn an enormous amount for the present day. The first question is:

“Whether it be true or not that there is a German nation, and that the continued existence of this nation in its original and independent character is now endangered?”

If we disregard the second part of this question, we have to say that it is impossible to ask this question today in this way, because Fichte's descendants have proven that there is a German nation. Similarly, his second question can no longer be asked today:

“Whether it is or is not worth the effort to preserve it?”

And the third question is:

“Is there any sure and effective means for this preservation, and what is this means?”

Well, here I have spoken year after year about the spiritual life of people. And truly, especially with regard to what has been said about this spiritual life of man, I was convinced that it is the further development of what was already before Fichte, before Schiller and other souls. Fichte tried to find the means to lead the Germans out of oppression and misery, the means for a German to become aware of himself, to work from the deepest root of life. Fichte wanted a complete transformation of education; and from the way in which the German people express themselves in their “language”, he wanted to recognize the way in which they relate to other cultural worlds. Today, there is no possibility of engaging with the way in which Fichte developed these questions; what matters is that the force that can inspire and invigorate us in Central Europe today is the same as it was for him. Today we shall seek to discover the nature of the German people neither in language, as Fichte did, nor in the spirit of the age, although we certainly want to honor the full significance of language; nor do we want to speak today of Fichte's educational system, which, after all, could not be carried out at the time. But we may point out that out of the impulses of life, out of which Fichte spoke his “Addresses to the German Nation” at that time for the self-preservation of his people, there resounds the spirit which, further developed, gives true spiritual science. We can gather this from many a thing that is perhaps not always sufficiently taken into account when these wonderful addresses of Fichte's to the German nation are read today. Let us speak today — and it has often been spoken of from this place — that there is not only materialistic science, materialistic knowledge, which looks at man as he develops between birth and death; that there is not only that knowledge which passively surrenders to external appearances and forms its judgment according to what is gained from the external world in the sense of this knowledge. Rather, we are talking about a courageous, active knowledge that dares to grasp the “innermost roots of human life,” as Fichte put it, in order to grasp man where his being reaches beyond birth and death, where, according to Lessing's great idea, he grasps what passes from life to life in physical reality. There is a knowledge that, through a brave and courageous grasp of the soul's inner powers, rises to that which, even after death, looks down on man's physical activity and on his corpse itself; there is a science that truly grasps the soul, the science that leads to the divine just as much as outer science leads to the natural. For if we grasp the outer man, the material man, with the help of outer science, natural science, we find that man emerges from all the forces of nature, as it were as nature's flower; but if we grasp man with the help of spiritual science, we perceive how the soul, with its deepest roots, is connected with the Divine, with that which lives and weaves in the spiritual. Even if we can no longer take Fichte's standpoint with regard to his individual statements, we can take what lives as an attitude, as a tendency in his thinking. Thus we find it ourselves, how the basic nuance, the fundamental tone of spiritual-scientific knowledge lies in the discourses through which he wanted to awaken enthusiasm in his people when he utters the words:

“Time and eternity and infinity beholds it (the philosophy he means) in its origin from the appearance and becoming visible of that One, which in itself is absolutely invisible, and only in this its invisibility is grasped, correctly grasped.”

“All persistent existence appearing as non-spiritual life is only an empty shadow, cast out of sight, and mediated many times over by Nothing. In contrast to this and through the recognition of this many-mediated Nothing, seeing itself is to rise to the recognition of its own Nothing and to the acknowledgment of the Invisible as the only True.”

It has been pointed out here several times how the soul can grasp itself in that innermost being in which it becomes aware of what goes beyond death. Then it may speak – not from a passive, but from an active science – of how, after death, man looks down from this eternal core of his being to his body in a higher consciousness. There is something strange in Fichte that lives in him like a presentiment. We can hardly imagine that someone who does not already have the presentiment of such spiritual knowledge, which can arise from his own presentiments, would use a simile as Fichte does. He speaks of a new education of his people; of how people should learn to find their way into something that people have not experienced before and that is difficult for them to find their way into because it is difficult compared to the familiar, which one must discard. And Fichte now describes what it is like for this people when it is to rejuvenate and will look back on its old being, from which it is to slip out, as it were, according to its ideal; and he speaks in such a way that the parable he uses seems to have been taken from the modern spiritual science of the immediate present. In that he wants to inspire the people, he says:

"Time appears to me like an empty shadow, which stands over its corpse, from which an army of diseases just drove it out, and laments, and cannot tear its gaze away from the once so beloved shell, and desperately tries all means to get back into the dwelling of the plagues. The invigorating breezes of the other world, into which the deceased has entered, have already taken her in and surround her with a warm breath of life; the friendly voices of the sisters already greet her and welcome her; she is already stirring and expanding within her in all directions, to develop the more glorious form to which she is to awaken; but she has no feeling for these breezes or hearing for these voices, or if she had, she is absorbed in pain over her loss, with which she believes she has lost herself at the same time."

Truly, one feels that this comparison is taken from what modern spiritual science has to say about the experience of the soul! And then we stand, one might say, much more “faithfully” before Fichte than he could stand before himself, so that we say: Yes, something of that in which we want to hold fast as a spiritual knowledge of the true nature of man stirs in this personality.

And how did he who, in his spiritual life, at least for a time, lived in close union with Fichte, how did Schiller, like Fichte, seek, each in his own way, to reach the innermost source of the soul's life impulses!

Oh, today, despite the fact that Schiller has become so dear to our people, it has not yet been fully recognized what fruits the forces have borne in the people of Schiller and Fichte. And one would like to say: we have to catch up with our knowledge of what is already being gloriously demonstrated on the battlefields in the West and the East; for these are the same forces that have been spiritually elevated in Schiller. Schiller was incessantly seeking — to use his own expression — in human nature, in contrast to what the everyday person is, what the person is who lives with the things of the outer world, who takes these things of the outer world in and processes them; incessantly he sought, in contrast to this person, what he calls the 'higher person', which lives in everyone. And what Schiller expresses in his Letters upon Aesthetic Education concerning the search for this higher man is one of the greatest cultural achievements. In the last lecture I ventured to point out that one professes and reckons with Germanness in a different way than the members of other nations relate to their nationality: one is German, but one seeks an ideal that can still be elevated; one seeks something higher than what lives in ordinary human beings. And so, in his Aesthetic Letters, Schiller seeks to express how, on the one hand, man does not come to the fullest comprehension of his innermost stirrings of life – which is his higher self – if he lives only for the external world, only for the externally real. He who lives only according to external impulses is, as Schiller says, like a slave who lives under the impulses of external sensual necessity. But for Schiller, he who is inclined only toward abstract thinking, who submits only to the necessity of reason, is also not a complete human being. On the one hand, Schiller sees the necessity of reason; on the other, sensual necessity. But he seeks the human being in the everyday person who can live out his life in such a way that he is able to look at the ennobled nature in such a way that the sensual life meets him with the expression of beautiful spirituality, but to whom reason also reaches. Only he who is able to confront the spiritual with the same liveliness, with the sense of the beautiful, as the other confronts sensuality, is a complete human being. And from the middle mood that arises from this, Schiller believes he can deduce the manner by which a higher human being can be conjured out of the everyday human being. But that man must do this, Schiller finds as the highest ideal of man, and with that he is again one of the great inspirers of true spiritual-scientific knowledge, which seeks with all its powers what lives as a higher man in man, and which cannot help it if it wants to seek this in the truly modern spirit, as to tie in with the impulses, as they can flow, for example, from Schiller's Aesthetic Letters. Precisely what I took the liberty of saying in the lecture I gave eight days ago: how, as a German, one always seeks, not the “German” one-sidedly, but the human being who goes beyond all nationality, who regards all nationality as something that belongs to the outer man, — that so beautifully in what Schiller strove for, what he sought to express in his letters on the aesthetic education of man and what is basically expressed in all the works of art that Schiller presented to his people and that have become so dear to the people's hearts and souls.

And Fichte – does he shape a one-sided concept, a one-sided idea of Germanness? No! we can say; he coins a universal concept of Germanness, a concept of which it can truly be said: The German always wants to become; and he believes that one can only be a German in the fullest sense of the word if one is a human being in the fullest sense of the word. Hence the beautiful word in Fichte's “Address to the German Nation,” this wonderful, heartening word:

“The principle according to which it” — whatever Fichtean philosophy is — “has to conclude this is presented to it; whoever believes in the spirituality and freedom of this spirituality and wants the eternal development of this spirituality through freedom, wherever he was born and in whatever language he speaks, is of our race, belongs to us, and will join us.”

Those who think this way belong to us and will join us. This is Schiller's way, this is Fichte's way: to become German by seeking the higher man in man in the most comprehensive and universal sense of the word, who seeks the way to what is foreign to the outer man, who is human and great because he is able to love everything great and to be loved in other people of other nationalities as well. And this Schiller seeks as a whole German, in that he was allowed to speak the words, which only came out long after his death, not only in the face of the German people, but of all civilized humanity:

"He who forms and rules the spirit must ultimately gain the upper hand; for at the goal of time, if the world has a plan, if human life has any meaning at all, custom and reason must ultimately triumph, brute force must succumb to form – and the slowest people will catch up with all the fast, fleeting ones.

To him – the German – is destined the highest honor, and just as he is situated in the center of Europe's peoples, so he is the core of humanity, those are the flower and the leaf.

He is chosen by the world spirit to work during the struggle of time on the eternal construction of human education, to preserve what time brings.

Therefore, he has appropriated what was previously foreign and preserved it within himself.

He has preserved everything that was valuable in other times and peoples, that arose with time and disappeared, it is not lost to him, the treasures of centuries.

Not to shine in the moment and play its role, but to win the great process of time. Every nation has its day in history, but the day of the Germans is the harvest of all time.

Thus they spoke. And in their spirit – in the sense that as Germans we will always strive and never remain with what we have already achieved – we, their students and successors, can become like them. Swearing by these words of our ancestors to the letter cannot be our way. But this can be our way: to try to understand our time, to continue to work and to create out of the same innermost impulses of life that created them. And in so doing, we have turned our gaze to these great ancestors. We now ask ourselves – even if perhaps in the course of the nineteenth century and up to our time many things have become different from what these great geniuses directly imagined in their consciousness: have these impulses they have given produced something that corresponds to them? Is there something in Central Europe that reveals the spirit of Schiller's spirit, the soul of Fichte's soul?

Now, it is undoubtedly not easy to speak in the immediate presence of what one's own people have achieved, what lives in them. And you will understand that in a way one may shrink from even remotely coming to what seems like a self-characterization – even if only a self-characterization of the people – in our fateful times. Therefore, I will choose a different path, so that it cannot be said that this people, who have been called “barbarians,” indulge in self-praise and self-love. I would like to choose a path through which we can hear, as in an echo, what has become of the people of Schiller and Fichte. Let us choose words that have been spoken – in English – by the great American Emerson, words that are not our words. Emerson, the great American, spoke about the nature of the German people in the post-Schiller, post-Fichte period in the following words – as I said, not even in German – by saying what he had to say about Goethe:

"One particular phenomenon that Goethe shares with his entire nation makes him stand out in the eyes of both the French and English public,

– as I said: a quality that Goethe has in common with his entire nation! – “that everything in his work is based solely on inner truth. In England and America, people respect talent, but they are only satisfied when it works for or against a party of his conviction. In France, one is already delighted to see brilliant ideas going anywhere. In all these countries, however, talented men write within the limits of their gifts. If what they produce stimulates the discerning reader and contains nothing that offends against good manners, it is sufficiently respected. So many columns, so many pleasantly and usefully spent hours. The German mind has neither the French liveliness nor the Englishman's understanding, honed to practicality, nor, finally, the American adventurousness; but what it does have is a certain probity that never stops at the outward appearance of things, but always comes back to the main question: Where is this going? The German public demands of a writer that he stand above things and simply express himself on them.

There is intellectual activity: well then, what is it in favor of? What is the man's opinion? — Where does it come from? — Where does he get all these thoughts?

This, says Emerson, is what the German public demands of anyone who wants to speak to them and be something for them. We can hear another of Emerson's words as an echo of what emerged from the impulses of Schiller and Fichte:

“The English see only the particular and do not know how to grasp humanity as a whole according to higher laws.... The Germans think for Europe.”

— The English-speaking man in America says this! —

”... The English do not appreciate the depth of the German genius.

And what has become of these reasons that Emerson cites for himself here? He also provides the answer to that. Again, these are his words that I want to read:

"For this reason, the distinctive terms used in higher conversation are all of German origin. While the English and the French, who are so highly esteemed for their acumen and learning, look upon their studies and their point of view with a certain superficiality, and their personal character is not too closely connected with what they have taken up and with the way they express themselves about it, Goethe speaks,»

— Emerson is speaking here in reference to the German nation, even though he is talking about Goethe —

"the head and the content of the German nation, not because he has talent; but truth concentrates its rays in his soul and shines out from it. He is wise in the highest degree, even though his wisdom may often be obscured by his talent. However excellent what he says may be, he has something in view that is even better... He has that awe-inspiring independence that springs from the truth."

Thus the English-speaking American on what has become of the impulses of those whom the Central European regards as his great geniuses.

Now, one sentence from Emerson's writings may be particularly engraved on our consciousness in our present time, the sentence where Emerson says: “The English do not appreciate the depth of the German genius.” It is self-evident that when we speak of spiritual knowledge, we are aware that when we speak of “man”, we can never speak of this man being identified with his nationality. Spiritual matters are matters of the whole of humanity; there are no differences between nations and races. So it is not individuals that are at issue; rather, if we, as we now want to do, turn our attention to what the German nation has of Schiller and Fichte, this is something that is above the national, that is anational, that is divine and eternal. And were we always of this opinion? We may ask. Did what was said in cooler days seem less significant to us than what is being said today?

Now, there is a strange anomaly here. And even if you do not want to go into the detailed book – or books – by Miss Wylie, which Lord Haldane has prefaced and which has also been published in German, you can still delve into Miss Wylie's arguments if you pick up the two special issues of the “Süddeutsche Monatshefte”, those brown issues that are available at every train station. I will just pick out one thing that an Englishwoman said about the nation of Schiller and Fichte shortly before the outbreak of the present war; and her words may be quoted because she lived in Germany for eight years and got to know the nation that Emerson says is not known in English-speaking countries. Miss Wylie not only got to know German intellectual life directly, but she also got to know how German intellectual life manifests itself in hospitals, schools, universities and industry. She says:

"We read much about the new Germany and its new spirit. But there is no new Germany and no new spirit. The existing one is the mature work of generations, what has always been there. Blinded by the sudden splendor of Germany's prosperity, we are inclined to forget that, except for prosperity, it has rarely occupied a place other than one of the very top among nations. In religion and philosophy, Germany shone at a time when everything around it was dark; in literature, it gave an epoch-making impetus; in music, it has always dominated.

— That is the echo! We are not saying it ourselves.

"German literature, German religion, German philosophy are books with seven seals for us. What we do know is how many dreadnoughts Germany has and how much its trade has increased. What is really important is not the dreadnought, but the brain of its builder, the courage and talent of its commander. What is really important is not the increase in turnover, but the human qualities that prompted it.

Forty years ago, Germany was fighting for its existence. And it is still fighting for it today. It is completely wrong to believe that Germany has already reached its peak. It is fighting a quiet but determined fight against powerful rivals whose power and experience was gained generations ago... Its opponents are sitting on every border and across the water, commercially and politically, and are eagerly awaiting the moment when Germany slackens just a little to pounce on it and crush it. Germany knows this full well.

So says the Englishwoman. Yes – she knows it! But others have known it too. Last time I mentioned a book, “Germany in the Nineteenth Century,” by Herford, which was based on lectures given at the University of Manchester and was intended to educate those who know nothing - namely, as the book itself says, “the press people” - about what German character is. Today I may quote, even if only a few words, from this book, which was said as a kind of admonition about the German character in Manchester in 1912 – so also recently – because it refers to the real conditions of the very immediate present. This is how it was said in Manchester:

"On the whole, there is no question that the establishment of the German Empire has contributed to world peace. This explanation will seem strange to those who know nothing but the events of the present and for whom history is nothing more than an ever-changing, dazzling cinematograph. But history should be something more. It is fitting for the light of the past to shine on the present confusion, and in that higher light, things that appear hurtful will take on a natural appearance. For when we look to the past, we find – spoken in Manchester, in English! “that our ancestors looked on France with far greater fear than the wildest rabble-rousers today fear Germany. And the fear of our ancestors had good reason. ...

To sum up, it can be shown that the founding of the German Empire was an asset for Europe.

– and this was said in Manchester! –

"and therefore also for Great Britain. For the events of the years 1866 to 1871 once and for all put an end to the possibility of waging predatory wars against the hitherto unprotected center of Europe, and thus removed an inducement to war which in earlier centuries had so often on the wrong track; they enabled the German people to develop their hitherto stunted political abilities, and they helped to establish a new European system on a secure basis, which has maintained peace for forty years.

— So spoken in English in Manchester in 1912! —

“This blessing resulted from the fact that German unity achieved in one fell swoop what Great Britain, despite all its expenditure of blood and money, could not have achieved, namely, to secure the balance of power in such a decisive way that a great war became the most dangerous of all ventures.”

So it has been recognized to some extent that there is some truth in what I had the liberty of saying in my lecture eight days ago, quoting Herman Grimm: that the German will indeed sacrifice himself for his fatherland at any time when the time demands it, but that he would not long for or bring about the moment when this can happen through war. And in view of the fact that we also hear this as an echo from outside, we may also turn our gaze to what our immediate present is. Therefore, I ask you now – I would like to say: to direct our feelings to the way we have to look at what we are in these fateful times – to remember what happened in the days at the end of July and the beginning of August, which is well known. I would like to try to characterize in a unique way how the events may present themselves; with words in which an unbiased observer of Central Europe – or may the others also say: a “biased” observer – could have expressed how this Central Europe feels about the great war. Let us remind ourselves of this. I will try to do so with the following words.

We recall the newspaper comments that came to us from Russia as early as the spring of this year. It could be seen from them how a kind of press campaign gradually began in St. Petersburg, attacking German policy. These attacks increased during the following period to strong demands for pressure that we should exert on Austria in matters where we could not readily challenge Austrian law. Germany could not lend a hand here; for if we estranged ourselves from Austria, we would necessarily become dependent on Russia if we did not want to be completely isolated in Europe. Would such dependence have been tolerable? One might have believed earlier that it could be, because one said to oneself: we have no conflicting interests; there is no reason why Russia should ever break off friendship with us. When one speaks with Russian friends about such disagreements, one cannot exactly contradict them. However, the events showed that even a complete subordination of our policy to Russia's – for a certain period of time – did not protect us from coming into conflict with Russia against our will and against our efforts.

I believe these words could show what a person of the present day could say to characterize spring and summer. But I did not put these words together; I did not write them at all. I only changed them a little. These words were spoken by Bismarck on February 6, 1888 in the German Reichstag, when he had to defend a defense bill and wanted to explain that this defense bill was not in the interest of an aggressive war, but in the interest of peace. And now I will read his words to you:

”... how a kind of press campaign gradually began in St. Petersburg, and I personally was suspected of my intentions. These attacks increased during the following year, until 1879, to strong demands for pressure that we should exert on Austria in matters where we could not readily attack Austrian law. I could not lend a hand to this; for if we estranged ourselves from Austria, we would necessarily become dependent on Russia if we did not want to be completely isolated in Europe. Would such dependence have been tolerable? I had believed earlier that it could be, telling myself: we have no conflicting interests; there is no reason why Russia should ever break off friendship with us. At least I had not directly contradicted my Russian colleagues who explained such things to me. The incident at the Congress disappointed me, and showed me that even if our policy were fully implemented (for a certain time), we would not be protected from coming into conflict with Russia against our will and against our aspirations.

This characterizes the forces that have been present not for a year, but since that time, and which were well known to anyone who knew what smolders and glows in Europe. Those who look at the historical context in this way will be able to see from the mere fact that what can be felt today coincides with what Bismarck said at the time that it would have been impossible to avoid the conflict with Russia even if “German policy had fully taken Russian interests into account”. I think that this kind of historical perspective says a great deal. And what was the mood at the time when these words were spoken? Was it only Herman Grimm who spoke of the fact that Germany, that the German as such wants peace, that he also wants to put his armaments in the service of peace? In the same speech, Bismarck said something else that should also be borne in mind: he had done so much for Russia at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 that he should have been awarded the highest Russian order with diamonds for it – if he had not already had it. Nevertheless, he had to speak these words, which he spoke at the time. And we also hear him speak about the mood in which they flowed:

"One does not attack with the powerful machine that we are training the German army to be.” If I were to stand before you today and tell you – if the circumstances were different from what I am convinced they are –: “We are under considerable threat from France and Russia; it is foreseeable that we will be attacked; I believe this as a diplomat, according to military intelligence; it is more useful for us to use the advance of the attack as a defense that we are now about to launch; it is more advantageous for us to wage a war of aggression, and so I ask the Reichstag for a loan of one billion or half a billion to wage war against our two neighbors today – yes, gentlemen, I don't know if you would trust me to grant it. I hope not.

All this tends to confirm the conviction that Germany only wanted a war if it arose out of European necessities, and that she was far, far from wanting a war for the sake of war. But then one may decide whether these voices – including this voice about the immediate external events – correspond to what German intellectual life is. – I cannot help but say a few words about another impression that German intellectual life made at a certain point.

This summer we heard how one man truly could not find harsh enough words – and I say harsh – to berate German “barbarism”. This same man once cited three spirits who had most, or at least a great deal, influenced his worldview: the mystic Ruysbrock, the American Emerson, and the German mystical poet Novalis. The man who speaks of the German mystic poet Novalis among those who have led him to his spiritual vision poses a remarkable question: What, after all, is everything that is in Shakespeare's dramas, what is negotiated between the individual persons and what plays from person to person, what is that compared to what lives in many other poems? For suppose, he says, a spirit came to us from another planet, who lived under quite different conditions from the souls on earth: would he be in the least interested in what the persons in Shakespeare's plays experienced? Would we not have to offer him something quite different, something that is not expressed in everyday life, something that comes from the human soul, if he were only to pay attention to us? And then he remembers how a German mystical poet, Novalis, has brought him something that speaks of what he would rather remain silent about, but of which he believes that the soul of another who comes down from another world would see something worth sharing in it. And so the person in question speaks of Novalis, the German mystical poet, who has something in his soul that, as coming from the innermost part of the human being, could even be shown to a spirit alien to the earth if it asked:

Thus says a man who has been impressed by Novalis and wishes to express his views about Novalis. This is the same man who has now spoken in a very peculiar way – you will know it well – about Germanness and the German character: Maurice Maeterlinck. When we hear that something like this has been said by Maeterlinck, can we not say that he has actually changed his nature quite “essentially”? Could one not even say that his present words sound in such a way that one could say of them: In truth, it is difficult to question his soul and to hear its weak child's voice amidst the useless cries that surround it? One would truly like to count him among these useless screamers, against whom weak children's voices cannot prevail. But I also took these words from Maurice Maeterlinck; for they are his own words, which he also speaks on the occasion cited: “In truth, it is difficult to question one's soul and to hear its weak child's voice amidst the useless screamers that surround it.”

We have tried to fathom a little of what Schiller and Fichte wanted from their people. And we have tried to recognize, even if only in an echo, the extent to which these impulses have been realized. Today, there is much talk of all kinds of feelings that Germans are supposed to have towards other nations with whom they are at war; for example, there is talk of feelings of hatred that Germans are supposed to have towards Russians, towards the English, and also towards the French. Truly, after what I have said today and last time, what I am about to say now will not be interpreted by me as an un-German sentiment, but as one that must flow from the true foundations of spiritual science. For I believe that if we look at the innermost roots of the German's life, then these feelings of hatred and contempt for other nations are all untrue! Even if many a word may be spoken in the present day that we ourselves might perhaps find “un-German” within the German, the truth is what could be said about Schiller and Fichte: He who seeks the “human being,” the higher human being in the human being, as Fichte himself says, belongs to us! And the German relentlessly seeks to go beyond the narrow fetters of his nationality. Therefore, I do not believe that it can go beyond everyday life if feelings other than feelings of devotion are also spoken of as the most valuable in other peoples today. And are we not allowed to adduce evidence for this too?

Oh, we may believe that what has emerged as the highest fruit of German intellectual life really does live in the most primitive German nature. Does the German really hate the English? I would like to say: no. I would even coin the paradoxical word: the German has proved that he loves even the English more than they love themselves. Let us take seriously the saying: by their fruits ye shall know them. How has the German cultivated Shakespeare? Compare the importance Shakespeare has acquired in the German intellectual life with what he has become in England. We can then say: we see the new awakening of Shakespeare in the German intellectual life. The Germans have cultivated Shakespeare more than the English have, however this is taking things to an extreme. But as it was said that the marshal's baton is in the knapsack of every soldier, so this sentiment is in the soul of the humblest German, even if it must be sought for a little, since the German is now threatened from all sides. But we can also go to more recent times. We have spoken of Goethe. Goethe also belongs to those who, with the most loving disposition, have immersed themselves in what is universally human, in all nationalities and at all times. We see him immersing himself in that which was so dear to him, in ancient Greece; we see this immersion symbolically depicted in the second part of Faust, in the union of Faust with Helen, as a symbol for the union of the two national elements. And Goethe lets something emerge from this union: Euphorion, who, after all that we have already been able to say about Faust, can appear to us as something that is connected with Goethe's ideal of humanity. Euphorion is a strange figure. Let us remember words of Euphorion that can resonate deeply, deeply in our souls, especially today. Euphorion says:

No, I have not appeared as a child:
The youth comes to you in arms!
Join the strong, the free, the bold,
He has already done so in spirit.
Now away!
Now there
The path to glory opens up.

Then further:

And do you hear the thunder on the sea?
There, valley after valley thunders again,
Hordes upon hordes in dust and waves,
Thrust upon thrust to pain and agony!
And death
Is the law;
That is understood.

And then:

Should I watch from afar?
No! I share the sorrow and the need!

Who was Goethe thinking of when he wanted to paint this essence of humanity in front of his soul? Byron, the great English poet, was his model for what he presented in his “Euphorion”!

Sometimes it seems as if the Germans are also tempted to emphasize their distinctiveness in the face of foreigners. Then one must only know how in this emphasis there is always something that wants to defend itself against something. There are words that Friedrich Schlegel once spoke when Paris made a great impression on him: “Paris would actually be a wonderful city, only there are too many Frenchmen in it.” Of course, such words have also been spoken. But there is more to it than that. In particular, there is something that symptomatically indicates how the German wants to stand at least in the midst of cultural life. There is more to it than that, as Schiller looked to a great figure in world history. Others have also looked to this figure in world history: Shakespeare, Voltaire – an Englishman, a Frenchman. I am talking about the “Maid of Orleans”. If we really think about it, we cannot help but say: Shakespeare approached the Maid of Orleans in a narrow-minded national way; Voltaire treated her with cool, dismissive skepticism. On the other hand, it must be remembered that Schiller could only express himself about her by saying: “The world loves to blacken what is radiant and drag the sublime into the dust.” And so he sought to portray her, who for him had become a messenger of heaven, a messenger of the spiritual world. Schiller has often been criticized for creating the figure of the Maid of Orleans. Today, when considering the way in which the German places himself in the cultural life, one should remember how Schiller tried to live himself into everything that came to him from the French as a gift from heaven, in order to embody it, but which, in the judgment of the German spirit, is connected with struggle and conflict and victory. It is hard to believe, if you do not think like a German, that courage and a fighting spirit and a willingness to engage in a dispute can unite in the soul – and that humanity can still be preserved in the heart. That is precisely what Schiller wanted to express. Whereas people who do not think like a German say it is not possible, we have to say that, fundamentally, it is possible for every German, if we look at German nature at the roots of its vital impulses. The German, unlike many others, approaches battle and war, and it is in him – sometimes darker or clearer – that he has to treat the one with whom he is fighting only like an enemy in a duel. He does not hate him; he faces him and is happiest when he can touch him in the highest humanity. I would like to say: Schiller sought to infuse such a truly German quality into the Maid of Orleans. Those who know what the Maid of Orleans was will find it natural that Schiller was so moved by her, even at a time when the Germans had no reason to glorify the French spirit. But Schiller also — and that is why he has become the greatest source of inspiration for German intellectual life again — included the weaving of the forces of the unseen in his drama. And so they weave in as in the Invisible Man, in Talbot, who appears as a black knight. It has been widely criticized; but Schiller could not help but let the eternal spiritual powers also play a role in his drama. Therefore, he truly represents the quality that is quintessentially German: to make no distinction from nation to nation where the greatest, the highest in human life is at stake. That is why I said: I do not believe it when people today talk about feelings of hatred and antipathy of the Germans towards other nations, that these feelings go to the very roots of the German life. Therefore, one need not be blind and dull to what is coming to light; but one can distinguish between what comes from outside and presses upon man, and what man, with his higher nature, seeks to overcome. And Schiller is not so far removed from outer, practical life that we would have to say that he was blind to what is external to the various nations. He wrote a poem “The Beginning of the New Century”; in it we read the significant lines, which are also very close to our present life today:

Two powerful nations wrestle
For the world's sole possession;
To devour all countries' freedom,
They brandish the trident and lightning.

Gold must every landscape weigh for them
And, like Brennus in the rude times,
The Frank lays his brazen sword
In the scales of justice.

The British extend their merchant fleet
Greedily like a polyp arm,
And the empire of the free Amphitrite
He wants to close, like his own house.

These are also words of Schiller, which sounded, despite the fact that Schiller was one of those who, in a truly German way, wanted to cultivate the principle of not seeking the human in the national, or rather – one can also put it this way: to seek the human in every national. Therefore, it may be said that something for which Schiller and Fichte longed for their people may well emerge from our fateful days as the most beautiful fruit: the German has often said that he knows how to live together with other nationalities. And when we look today at a country that borders directly on Germany, and that has not only in an external sense, but also in the innermost depths of human behavior, managed to remain neutral, when we look at Switzerland, at the Switzerland in which Fichte found in Pestalozzi the roots for his German national education, we can say: We see in this model country of nationalities that it is possible for Germans to live together with other nations. Anyone who is able to follow Swiss life knows that it is of the utmost importance to the inhabitants of this country, where three nations live together in an exemplary manner, that they can maintain in spirit what is truly in their own interest for their national territory, the spirit of neutrality. But the spirit of neutrality should be respected and it should be remembered that the Swiss know full well from their own sound judgment what the historical mission of the German spirit is. And one should understand that it can justifiably offend this sensitivity if one floods an area that is of particular importance for the immediate present because it stands on the side of the most honest neutrality with what is today called “educational literature”. I believe that someone who speaks about the mission of the German language as I have done can also draw attention to this.

So we may now say: We can hear the effects of the impulses of Schiller and Fichte like an echo. Let us once more, in conclusion, place before our soul's eye the words that Emerson spoke of Goethe: “He is wise to the highest degree, though often his wisdom may be obscured by his talent. How excellent is what he says, he has something in mind that is even better... He has that awe-inspiring independence that springs from dealing with the truth.” But from this ‘dealings with the truth’ also springs this trust, this confidence and hope, as well as the selflessness and sense of sacrifice that we see all around us and that are put at the service of our great time to make true what Emerson speaks of again:

"The world is young, great men of the past call to us in a friendly voice. We must 'write sacred scriptures to reunite heaven and the earthly world. The secret of genius is not to tolerate a lie, to make everything we are aware of a truth, to inspire faith, determination and trust in the sophistication of modern life, in art and science, in books and in people, and to honor every truth by not only recognizing it but also making it a guiding principle for our actions, in the refinement of modern life, in art and science, in books and in people, and to inspire faith, determination and trust, and to honor every truth by not only recognizing it but also making it a guiding principle for our actions, in the refinement of modern life, in art and science, in books and in people, and to inspire faith, determination and trust, and to honor every truth by not only recognizing it but also making it a guiding principle for our actions, in the refinement of modern life, in art and science, in books and in and trust, and to honor each truth by not only recognizing it, but making it a guiding principle of our actions, from the beginning to the end, in the midst of our journey and for endless times to come.

In the contemplation of German life, which, out of an attitude such as that of Fichte and Schiller, strives towards true spiritual insight, personalities such as Emerson emerge. And then we understand how — as if from the elementary — that which is intimately connected with this search for the higher human being in the everyday human being is also expressed in Bismarck's speech of 1888. What is intimately connected? I already said at the beginning of the lecture when I pointed out how, in the end, the best German geniuses point the way to spiritual science: As the outer man rests in outer nature, so that which can be found as the higher man in man, that which passes from life to life, that which passes from one nationality to another in the course of earthly lives, rests in the divine All-existence. And when man grasps the roots of his innermost being, he feels connected with the God whose nature permeates and pulses through the world. And Schiller and Fichte speak of this God, of whom Bismarck also speaks, in his elementary way, in the already mentioned speech, calling out to the Germans the words:

"We can easily be bribed by love and goodwill — perhaps too easily — but certainly not by threats! We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the world; and it is the fear of God that makes us love and cultivate peace. But anyone who breaks it will see that the militant patriotism that called the entire population of the then weak, small and exhausted Prussia under the banners in 1813 is today common property of the whole German nation, and that whoever attacks the German nation in any way will find it united and armed, with every soldier with the firm belief in his heart: God will be with us!

The German has always tried to seek this God of his in the spiritual realm. As I indicated last time, the German has tried to create in Goethe that Faust figure which cannot be said to be “German” or “French”, “English”, “Russian” or “American”; but which can be said to be human and which can only arise from the German spirit. I also pointed out how one always becomes as a German. But Goethe places the figure of Mephistopheles, the embodiment of evil and, above all, of untruth, right next to his Faust. Thus the German may look in his consciousness at the juxtaposition of Faust and Mepistopheles – and, recognizing his mission in the world, as Emerson expresses it, he may emphasize: Wherever we Germans may spread our influence, we carry with us the consciousness expressed in the words of Faust: “On free soil with free people stand!” These are words that are spoken out of the spirit that in reality respects and understands the true value of every nationality and hates none. Thus the German can look with calmness at one of the last great ancestors, at Bismarck himself, and at the words: “We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the world.” And he can, listening to this great statesman, hear, as if from the spiritual realm, certain words that are nevertheless—one only has to know Bismarck—genuinely Bismarckian: “There is no doubt that the threats and insults, the challenges that have been directed at us, have also aroused a very considerable and justified bitterness in us, and that is very difficult for a German, because he is inherently less susceptible to national hatred than any other nation; but we are trying to appease them, and we want peace with our neighbors as much as ever.” Therefore, anyone who knows the German must search deeper if he wants to find something in him to despise, something to hate. Goethe searched, but he did not create a human being; instead of Faust, he created Mephistopheles! Wherever people live, we will seek out their humanity, regardless of nationality. But we must not be blind to what lives in people. by the spirit of untruth. Especially in our time, when so much that is harsh and untrue sounds to our ears, we may still say: it is as if we were hearing Bismarck's words. He always strove not to disdain his opponents, but to do them justice, for example when, living at war with the French, he pointed out the old French, the fine French nature, with which he so liked to negotiate. This was also the case with the speech already mentioned, where he said: “Bravery is the same in all civilized nations; the Russian and the French fight as bravely as the German.” Indeed, the German does not look to the others for what he might have to hate, reject or dislike. He is spiritually inclined, he looks for the spiritual, just as Goethe in his Faust looked for the spiritual in the lie in Mephistopheles. And so, in conclusion, we can say, as if we were hearing Bismarck himself, whispering to us from the realms of the spirit: When we hear untruths being spoken in the West, Northwest and East, we should not allow ourselves to be led to hate and contempt for personalities and nationalities; for just as it is true that the German, when he reaches into his higher self, finds the universal humanity that can be found everywhere on earth where the human face appears, so it is also true that the German must first find the object of his hatred through spiritual contemplation. It is true that just as the German feels united with his God in his innermost, most sacred self, so too can he only go to the deeper roots of his hatred in those places where he is allowed to hate, to the spiritual level. It is true, in a certain sense deeply true: the German fears God, but nothing else in the world. But in the face of all that comes to us, I would say, from all directions, the word may also be coined that will prove to be true once we look more clearly than today at the roots of the German character:

The German, basically, hates no nationality, no human being, insofar as they live on the physical plane. The German hates only – if it is to be spoken of – the spirit of lies and dishonesty; for he loves and wants to love the spirit of truthfulness wherever it can be found!

In the first two lectures with which I began this winter lecture series, I tried to use the impulses that the great events of the time in which we live can give us to tie in with the essence of German spiritual culture as it presents itself in its great personalities. What I tried to elucidate through these reflections was that it is in the nature of this spiritual culture to become more and more imbued with the consciousness of the reality of the spiritual, of eternal existence. To a certain extent, I will try to give a special chapter from what spiritual scientific reflection has brought about in our time, in order to gain a basis for what should form the content of tomorrow's lecture: a reflection on the nature of the European folk souls. In doing so, I would like to suggest, at least with a few traits taken from spiritual science, what the latter has to say, from its point of view, to help us understand what is happening around us.

The contemplation that is to be undertaken today about the human soul in life and death is, after all, always close to man as one of the greatest riddles of life – in our time, especially so – where we see the question of life and death way, where so many are intensely affected by this question through the reality of existence, where we see that — as it were through the facts — the noblest sons of the people are confronted with this question in every hour of their existence. In the lectures I have been privileged to give here over the years, I have often pointed out that we are living in a time when questions such as the nature of the human soul, the fate of the human soul and of man in general, and similar questions enter into a scientific approach, into an approach that is demanded by the development of that other scientific field that has been so greatly perfected in the last two to four centuries: the field of natural science. To place what can be known about the soul-spiritual in a truly scientific way alongside what has been scientifically conquered for humanity, that has often been described here as the task of spiritual science; and it has also been said that it should come as no surprise if this spiritual-scientific approach is still rejected by the vast majority of people today. This fate is shared by spiritual science with everything that wants to enter human spiritual and cultural development as something new, and it also shares it with natural science itself, which in its time appeared in exactly the same way, met with opposition after opposition, and which first had to prove - but could only prove it after centuries - what it is called upon to achieve for human development. Spiritual observation must relate to what we call knowledge and science in a completely different way to that of natural science. In order for spiritual contemplation to be called scientific in the true and best sense, it must proceed differently, it must approach the human being in a different way than what constitutes the essence of the scientific approach. In the scientific approach, we first turn our gaze outwards to the facts of nature and life, and from the abundance of the manifold that comes to us, we recognize the laws of life. What reaches us through the senses becomes an inner spiritual experience in us, it becomes thought, concept, idea. But who does not feel that with this ascent from the full contemplation of external diversity to the clarity — but also to the abstractness — of ideas and natural laws, the human soul with its inner experiences actually moves away from what one could call reality? We have the fullness of nature before us; we appropriate it in science, but we feel how, in principle, we present concepts and ideas that contain the laws of nature for us, and we feel how thin, one could say reality-less, we are in the face of external reality. And so we ascend from the abundance of external reality, which is spread out before our senses, to the — I would say — ethereally thin soul experience that we have when we have taken possession of the laws of nature in our world of ideas. In a sense, we distance ourselves from nature and its abundance; but we strive for this distance because we know that we can only recognize nature and its laws by distancing ourselves from it. This is the highest thing we strive for in science: the inner soul experience in ideas and thoughts.

Spiritual research must take exactly the opposite path if it is to be scientific. The ultimate consequence of the inner experience of science in relation to external nature is preparation — merely preparation — for the knowledge of the spiritual, of the soul; and it would be a complete mistake to believe that spiritual science could proceed in the same way as natural science. What natural science ultimately strives for is the preparation for spiritual science: living in inner soul experience, immersing oneself in that which strengthens the soul inwardly and which it cannot obtain from external nature. In short, knowledge and science can only be a preparation for what one ultimately comes to: to beholding, to perceiving the spiritual world. One could say: in natural science, one strives for knowledge and science; in spiritual science, one prepares oneself through knowledge and science for what is to approach the soul, and everything that one can have in the way of knowledge and science remains, basically, in spiritual science an inner matter for the soul. But what the soul and spirit live through does not lead to something merely subjective, something that concerns only the individual soul of the person, but it leads to what is real, just as external nature is only real.

I have often pointed out the way in which this preparation for beholding, for the real inner experience of spiritual reality, is designed. I will do so again today from a certain point of view.

Only through this preparation can one lead the soul further and further, so that in the end what is spiritual reality spreads out around it. We leave nature; it is there. We go forward to the spirit. We must seek spiritual reality. We cannot start from it, it is not there at first; we can only prepare ourselves for its contemplation. But when we prepare ourselves inwardly for its contemplation, then it comes to us like a grace, spreading out of the spiritual twilight. We must acquire the ability to contemplate it.

The first thing needed to experience the human soul in its reality, so to speak, is an inner experience — not paying attention, not just thinking, but an inner experience of that which we otherwise have only as a reflection of external reality – the world of thoughts, the world of feelings – that which we otherwise feel within us when we confront the external world, and which we regard as a reflection of nature, as an image in which nature is embedded. We have to experience this intensely and powerfully by turning our gaze away completely from external reality, by making ourselves blind and deaf to external sensory reality; we have to experience it so that we allow it to be intensely present as the only inner reality in the soul. The natural scientist seeks to extract a law of nature as a thought from the outer reality of the senses. The spiritual scientist gives himself up to a thought, or to a thought imbued with feeling, in inner experience; he lets, as it were, neither the eye nor the ear send out into the outer reality, and lets the inner interweaving and interworking of the soul and turns his most intense attention to this inner experience; he forgets himself and the world and lives only in what he, as it were, lets rise in his empty but alert consciousness from the depths of his soul. And then the strange thing happens: the thought to which we devote ourselves with infinitely increased attention over a long period of time, this thought, the stronger it becomes through our inner strength, the weaker it becomes precisely in relation to what it contains; it becomes more and more transparent and transparent, more and more ethereal and ethereal. One could say: the more the spiritual researcher endeavors to be present in the thought, which is called inner thought concentration, the more the content of the thought fades away. The more we endeavor to make the thought firm and, as it were, visible by devoting ourselves to it, the more this devotion leads to the thought fading away more and more, as if dissolving in a fog, and then disappearing completely from consciousness. One could also say, expressing a principle of this inner experience: the more the thought is experienced in its sharpness in the soul, the more it gains in energy through our own activity, the more it dies in the soul. To put it in an epigrammatic way, we can say: in order for the thought to reach the goal of spiritual research, it must die in the soul; and in dying, it undergoes an inner destiny, the destiny that also has the seed that is sunk into the earth to rot. But from its rotting, the strength for a new plant arises. When thought dies in us in the concentration of thought, it awakens to a completely different life; and one does not discover this different life until thought has died in inner sharp concentration. One must stop thinking in order to let the soul plant, that which arises from thought, germinate within oneself.

And what then arises from the thought?

It is difficult to express in human language what arises from the thought, because human language is created for the external sense experiences and not for the internal soul experiences. Therefore, in a certain respect, one can only hint at the inner experiences that come into question. As the thought, made energetic, dies away, the soul inwardly feels a burgeoning power, a power of which it becomes aware and of which it knows at the moment it becomes aware : This is spiritual-soul power; this is something that is not tied to your body; something that you carry within you without the mediation of your nervous system and your brain. But in grasping not the thought but the power of thought, there arises, as if by an inner necessity, the question that presents itself like a flash of lightning: “Where has the thought gone? After all, it was basically you yourself, in that you gave yourself over to it in sharp concentration of thought. You lived in the thought, and when it dissolved and died, it carried you away with it. Where has it gone? And where have you arrived now?” — Here one must choose a comparison. Just as we carry the thoughts we have of external nature within us, just as we know we have the thoughts, so we immediately perceive a state in ourselves through which we say: the thought as you had it has died in your concentration of thought; but through this it has awakened to another life – and has taken you with it. You are now thought of in the spiritual world!

This is a harrowing, great, tremendously significant experience in the life of the spiritual researcher. For only in this way can one ascend into the spiritual world, by feeling itself grasped by it – as thought, if it were alive, would feel itself grasped by us. And basically, there is no other way to experience immortality than to appeal through our inner soul development to the invisible spiritual beings that always rule over us – just as the beings of nature visibly rule over us – and by appealing to our relationship with these spiritual beings, who begin to take the thought for themselves and think it for us the moment the thought fades. Now we begin to know: within the spiritual world there are beings whose existence goes beyond mere nature; as we human beings think with our thoughts, so our spiritual beings think, so these higher geniuses think the content of our soul. They hold us, they carry us; and through the fact that we are in them, our immortal being, which goes beyond our physical existence, is conditioned. We tell ourselves through spiritual science: If we cannot hold ourselves in death, if we lose what we have been able to create for ourselves in our existence between birth and death as inner experience through outer nature, then we pass through the gate of death and then see from the results of spiritual science that what is independent of us in the body is basically thought from higher beings.

It is not the case that what we call the spiritual world expands around us in a similar way to the external nature – which many expect. External nature stands before us; we stand before it and we look at it. When we ascend into the spiritual world, it is different. There the spiritual world penetrates into our own experience, which we have only transformed; there we do not think about the spiritual world, there we must inwardly experience how we are thought. We are in the same situation vis-à-vis the spiritual world as our thoughts about external reality are vis-à-vis our soul. This is basically the most surprising thing about the external reality. It is the experience of spiritual reality that is reversed compared to that of sensual reality, that we say to ourselves: in the face of spiritual reality, when we really experience it, we feel the way nature should feel in the face of sensual reality; we do not think about the spiritual beings; we experience that when we have risen to them, we are thought of and held by them. If you want to express it pedantically and scientifically, we become the object of the spiritual world. Just as we are the subject in relation to the outer reality of nature, so we become the object in relation to the spiritual world. And just as the outer reality of nature stands before us as an object, so we rise to an experience of spiritual reality in which we ourselves are the object; for the spiritual reality comes to us as a subject — or as a multitude of subjects.

This inner experience is very often, but always only by those who do not know it and who have no will to enter into it, presented as something subjective, as a purely personal matter. In a sense, the objection that is raised with this is quite correct. For what one can get to know in the first stage of spiritual research has a subjective character; this carries a personal nuance in all the struggles and inner conquests that one has to undergo in the process. And one can justifiably raise the objection that The researcher has the task of defining the limits of human knowledge, and he should be aware that what goes beyond the general limits imposed by external nature can basically only be subjective knowledge. The objection is justified, and none will recognize it as much as the spiritual researcher; but it is only valid up to a certain stage, and for the reason that in reality everything that one can go through subjectively, personally, is only preparation. In the moment when the preparation is sufficient, the objective spiritual reality comes to us as if by a grace that comes upon us as strength. What is experienced as preparation can basically be quite different for the most diverse people; but where they arrive in the end is the same for everyone. The objection is also often made that the spiritual researchers usually communicate what they communicate in a subjectively colored way; one says this about the facts of the spiritual world, the other that. That is quite right, but only right because many do not know how to communicate what presents itself through the grace mentioned, but because it is still their personal, subjective knowledge that they communicate, because they have not brought it to the point where the spiritual researcher arrives at a spiritual world that stands before him as objectively as the images of nature appear objectively before the human soul. The objections raised against spiritual scientific research — I have often said this here — are best understood by the spiritual researcher himself.

When the spiritual world is reached by the spiritual researcher after sufficient preparation, then this spiritual researcher knows himself as experiencing an invisible, supersensible world. Knowledge has ceased to have meaning for him. This knowledge has been completely transformed into direct experience, into the most immediate inner perception. And now the spiritual researcher experiences what becomes immediate truth for him. He knows: Now you live in the world in which you are always during the course of twenty-four hours; you now live in the spiritual realm, in the soul's existence, in which you are otherwise always unconsciously during sleep. Through spiritual research one gets to know the state of sleep, learns to recognize that in it the human soul is really outside its body, that it has the body before it, as one otherwise only has the objects of the external world before it. How does one learn to recognize this? By the fact that one is now really in a state in which one is otherwise during sleep, only in a completely opposite way. In sleep, consciousness is depressed and darkness spreads around us. But now, as a spiritual researcher, one can look at this state because one experiences it – but not unconsciously, as in sleep, but consciously. One knows: One is, by having come out of the body – for one consciously comes out of the body – inwardly united with the spiritual world; one has become one with the spiritual world. And now the question is answered: Why is it then usually the case that the soul is unconscious during sleep? Why is it outside of its body in this dull, dark state? This question is answered for the spiritual researcher by the fact that he can now recognize what has been removed through his preparation in his inner soul being, and what is there for the soul when it is asleep. For the spiritual researcher arrives at a battleground, at an inner battleground, through his preparation, and it is difficult to find words to express what comes to man with tremendous intensity, with an inner tragedy, when he wants to bring the thought to extinction and to rebirth in another sphere. What takes hold of the human soul and can lead to the human soul being torn apart is that, if you do not properly control yourself, an inner opposition, an inner rebellion arises against what you do inwardly. For at the moment when the thought extinguishes itself inwardly, one feels: the more one lives out of one's own consciousness into the consciousness of the invisible spiritual beings that rule in the invisible, the more inner forces are awakened that lead the most fierce opposition against this rising out of one consciousness into another. One senses something coming that does not want to be done. And that inner discord, that rebellion against one's own act becomes the tragic inner struggle that every true spiritual research has to fight intensely. All words are too weak to really express what has to be lived through. For when one is so inwardly absorbed, one feels as it were removed from oneself, when one is lifted up into another sphere, then that opposition asserts itself, which says: “You do not want to lose yourself, but you do everything to lose yourself. It is indeed death that you are preparing for yourself; you do not live with your being in you, you become the thought of another. You die within yourself!” And everything that can be mustered with an enormous will, in protest against inner action, asserts itself as an opposition to this absorption.

The next step is to gain control over this inner opposition, over what arises from the depths of the soul. One must first find it, which offers the possibility of getting out of this state. Once one has found it, the second step is to add to the concentration of thought, which, as it were, is subject to the second greatest spiritual law of the development of the human soul.

One asks oneself: What is it in you that rebels? What is it that rears up like a terrible rebel? And just as one builds on the thought by having it and making it disappear and resurrect in another sphere, so too must one now build on what one already has. And that which one has, which one must build on, is what one can call human destiny. This human destiny approaches us in such a way that we experience its inner blows – whether good or bad – as coming from outside. How far removed are we in human experience from taking what fate is as something other than what “happens” to us, what “coincidence” is in the best sense of the word? But one can begin to take it differently. And by beginning to take fate differently, one becomes a spiritual researcher. One can start by asking oneself: What are you actually in relation to your fate? You can look back into your past, which you can survey in your youth or in the years you have lived through so far, and survey your destiny; you can look at the individual events of this destiny, as far as you can grasp them, in retrospective investigation, and you can ask yourself the question: What would you actually be if this destiny with all its “coincidences” had not befallen you? And if you look into this question, which must now be a very personal one, very deeply, you realize: however the blows of fate may lie, whether they have turned out well or badly, what we are now, we are through all the good and bad blows of fate; we are basically nothing other than the result of our fate. One wonders: what are you, then, other than the result of this fate? If this or that had not affected you, it would not have shaken and stirred your soul, and so you would not be what you are now. And when you then survey your entire destiny in this way, you find that you, with your present self and all your experiences, are basically connected with destiny in the same way that the sum in an addition is connected with the individual addends and addents. Just as the sum in an addition is nothing other than what flows together through the individual addends, so we are basically nothing other than the sum of all the good and bad blows of fate we have suffered, and we grow together with our destiny by contemplating it. The first feeling we can then give ourselves over to is: You are one with your destiny. And whereas we used to separate ourselves from our destiny, whereas we used to stand apart as a special ego, now the special ego flows into the stream of these events of destiny. But it flows into it in such a way that it does not just stand there like a result in the stream of the present; but by gradually experiencing this flowing together, our destiny takes our ego – that which we are – with it, so to speak. We look back on the course of our destiny and, as we look at our destiny, we find our own activity in it; we grow into the becoming of our destiny. We not only feel at one with our destiny, but we gradually grow into our destiny to such an extent that we unite with destiny and its deed. And now it is again one of the most significant, great inner experiences that, looking back on a stroke of fate, we do not say to ourselves: it hit us, it happened to us by chance, but that we say to ourselves: we were already involved in this fate; through it we have made ourselves into what we are today.

Such a contemplation cannot be carried out only in thoughts, in ideas and images. Every step of such contemplation is filled with inner emotional, vital soul reality. The growing together with destiny is experienced; the I expands through destiny. And what expands – one learns to recognize it as something quite different from thought. As the other soul element, one learns to recognize it as present in us, as the will that is carried by feeling. We feel the thought as it concentrates, dies away and, as a force, rises up in a foreign spiritual world, from which we are, as it were, thought; our will, our will carried by feeling, grows back into the vastness of time, grows out of itself, so that it coincides with our destiny and becomes ever stronger. By feeling ourselves as one with our destiny, we do not experience dying in thought, but an ever-living and becoming-alive of the will. While the will is initially concentrated in the single point of our present, and we let it flow into our deeds and words, it expands, as from a small point of germination, in the stream of time to that which shines backwards, which, as it were, has created us ourselves. Our will – that is the second law that comes into play here – by giving itself to fate, by losing itself to fate, becomes stronger and stronger, more and more powerful. It moves from the state in which we usually have it to a completely different state.

The thought dies in order to be reborn in a new existence. With the will, we stand in such a way that at a certain moment it is dead to our destiny; it is dead to the vicissitudes of fate. If we guide the will in inner meditation about our destiny, it becomes stronger and stronger – by sacrificing itself and, as it were, becoming more and more devoted to our destiny, by recognizing that we ourselves live in our destiny. The thought passes from its strength to its dying away and to its revival in another sphere; the will passes from its momentary effect to an enormous breadth, in that it becomes the bearer of our entire destiny. And here is where experience really expands into a realm that is not accessible to outer experience. Outer experience is only accessible to the extent of experiences where consciousness has awakened, where outer memory begins: in the third or fourth year of a person's life. But when we really live through ourselves with our will, so that we no longer regard our destiny as something alien, as something that is “outside,” then we no longer remain — and with time this inner experience develops — with the consciousness of the soul in our present life. Then we look back into the far, far distance, look back to the states of our soul that preceded our birth or conception, look back to times when our soul itself lived in the spiritual world before entering into physical earthly existence, look back to a state of the soul when it prepared forces to take hold of our body. Thus, by preparing the will to undergo the opposite of what is experienced in the concentration of thought, we grasp our own life beyond birth and death. If we want to grasp the thought, we must detach ourselves from external reality, we must become blind and deaf to the external sensory reality, we must withdraw completely into ourselves; then the thought is transformed so that we ourselves are thought by higher consciousnesses. With the will, we must do the opposite: we must spread into what is otherwise only outside of us. With our thoughts we go within ourselves; with our will we go out of ourselves, go into our destiny and through the passage through our destiny we find the way into the spiritual worlds, where we, according to the reality of our soul, stand in the most comprehensive reality, in that reality which has already taken hold of us before we descended to physical existence. What I am expounding here, seemingly theoretically, is only a description of the inner experiences that the spiritual researcher has to undergo in order to ascend to the knowledge of the spiritual world, to come to the vision of the spiritual world. In relation to external nature, nature precedes and knowledge follows; in relation to spiritual nature, knowledge — that is, something that proceeds like knowledge — precedes as preparation; the vision follows. And now we recognize ourselves in what basically always lives in us, but which humanity will also have to look at scientifically if the development of culture is to continue spiritually; but in order for this to enter consciousness through the progressive forces of development, the scientific grasping of these processes must precede. Of course — one should not even have to mention this — we do not “make” the soul experience by grasping it in this spiritual-scientific way; but we perceive that which is always within us. But just as in the knowledge of nature, experience and knowledge develop out of observation, so in spiritual science, if human evolution is to progress, then the knowledge of spiritual processes must develop into an understanding of the spiritual world. And what one recognizes is that which is independent of the outer physical body, which, as it were, attracts it by descending from the spiritual world into the physical.

But even in our ordinary everyday life, we live out of our physical body, in that – for reasons that have been discussed here many times – we alternately enter into a state of sleep within the course of twenty-four hours. And when we consider the state of sleep, we can ask the question: Why does that which otherwise enters into spiritual consciousness become dulled during sleep? Why is there darkness around us then? And then, through spiritual science, we recognize precisely at the moment when the soul, through real preparation in concentration of thought and meditation, takes hold of itself powerfully, how this power enters the body, and we also recognize, because we then grasp the inner, immortal power, what obscures it in ordinary sleep, what makes it impossible to see spiritual reality in sleep when one is out of the body. When one examines this, when one beholds the spiritual reality, which is otherwise darkened, one notices: There is an excess of desire in the soul, an overgrowth of cravings, an emotional penetration of the most intense life of desire, a much stronger life of desire than is present when the soul submerges back into the body and wakes up. And what does the sleeping soul desire? This can be seen through spiritual scientific research: in sleep the soul desires to re-enter the physical body, into that which it has left, in an intense way. And because the desire to re-enter the body is overwhelmingly strong in the soul, this desire, like a fog that covers the clarity, extinguishes for the soul what it would otherwise perceive as belonging to the spiritual world: the consciousness of higher beings and their experiences, their — the soul's — inclusion in higher beings — and their inclusion in these before birth and death. But because the soul needs the forces that can come to it only from the spiritual world, just as the body needs the forces that can come from the world of atoms, it must immerge again and again into the spiritual world. But because it always desires to immerge into the body, its consciousness for the spiritual processes remains extinguished, even when it is free of the body in sleep. What a person experiences in his body, he will never be able to experience directly without this body. What he experiences in this body is that the little power he has in his soul to see the spiritual directly is overgrown in ordinary life by the desire for the body, and that this power in the body, where the soul has this power, becomes stronger and stronger. In the body, the soul learns to develop consciousness and self-awareness. That is the essence of this bodily life. The soul undergoes this life in the body, not as in a dungeon, not as a form of imprisonment, but as something necessary for its overall experience. For the soul can only become what it is meant to be through experience, and this experience changes from a dull to a brightly conscious one. But the conscious powers are first stimulated in the body. When the soul has, as it were, received its satisfaction, it devotes itself to being overshadowed by consciousness. This consciousness passes over into the soul as a power. And then — this is made especially clear by spiritual science — when the soul experiences 'becoming conscious' in the body, it retains the after-experience of this consciousness. Something comes into force that is higher than ordinary memory, but still similar to ordinary memory. In our lives, we remember through our ordinary memory what experiences we have gone through; we can call this up again in the soul. What the soul experiences in the body – this brightening of consciousness, this permeation with consciousness, this remembrance of self-awareness – occurs in the spiritual researcher when he undergoes what I have spoken of, so that he has the experience in his soul as in a memory. We must hold on to this.

The spiritual researcher lives in a higher spiritual world; he becomes, as it were, a thought of higher beings. But by permeating himself with what spiritual research can give, what would otherwise become rebellion becomes such an inner experience that he now, by living in the spiritual world, remains afflicted with a memory of his bodily life. Now he knows: this physical life does belong to you after all. And now this rebellion is stripped away by the memory that one has gained through the expansion of one's destiny. One knows: now one is not exposed to spiritual death in the spiritual world. For however much one may merge into the consciousness of higher entities, one lives oneself up in such a way that although the thoughts are grasped by the higher entities, we remain in the power of inner experience; we preserve ourselves, we retain ourselves when we live ourselves up into the higher consciousnesses, how the thoughts are preserved in the consciousness of the higher entities. What we keep in our memory as a memory is not reality until we bring it up from our memory. How it is down there in the dull subconscious is of no interest to man at first; there it has no reality. That is why I called it what the spiritual researcher then has, something like a higher memory, which is similar to memory after all. It is as if we live ourselves up into the consciousness of higher beings, as if all our thoughts retained independent reality, and the stream of our experiences is not just like a stream for our memory, which is there for us to draw up into our memory, but as if the experiences in their own spiritual reality are floating in it. Thus, through the experience that has been hinted at, through the memories, we live our way up into a higher world, but these memories are ourselves, grasping us in our own remembering. It is hardly different from a parable, but it expresses the fact when one says: by developing itself further through meditation, through concentration of thought and through outpouring of the will over fate, the human soul becomes something for those entities which it takes up in its consciousness and which it holds in the regions in which it lives after death and before birth. But just as thoughts only have an existence that is borrowed from us, so we live our way up into the “thought-being” of the higher consciousnesses, and in that they look back on us, they look back on us as on entities that have remained independent. By taking hold of ourselves in our destiny, we maintain ourselves in the consciousness of higher entities.

All that I express in this way is only the knowledge of the facts, which is always there for the soul. For what the spiritual researcher experiences is nothing other than the knowledge of what the soul experiences when it goes beyond the external reality through the gate of death. But as external natural events take place without our initially knowing about them, so too does death pass us by and makes the soul what it must make it. But in the course of human development, man must learn to know what death makes of the soul; through spiritual science he must acquire knowledge about what is called: the approach to the riddle of death. That is why what the spiritual researcher comes to in his inner soul development has been called, with a certain justification, “arriving at the gate of death”. From the observation made about sleep, it can be seen that the human soul, in its purely spiritual existence, is “dulled” by the desire for the body. When it passes through the gate of death and detaches itself from the body, it does not remain dulled by this desire. Rather, by withdrawing from the body, it is cured of the desire for the body; the desire pushes itself out of the soul, and the soul experiences being together with the spiritual world. The soul learns to experience itself in the spiritual world. But it would be dependent if it had not passed through death. The soul must pass through death because it is the greatest fact, the greatest experience for it. As we must enter the body through birth, so we must leave the body, pass through death, must die, in order to grasp ourselves as a self in the spiritual world through the experience of death and dying. We become a memory of higher consciousness by shedding the consciousness of the present that we have in the body; and after death, what our self gives us is presented to us in a different way than it is presented to us in the form of our self between birth and death. Between birth and death, we are so immersed in life that we lose our sense of self when consciousness is dulled, that we obscure what we experience in our sleep. Simultaneity exists between us and our body, but also between us and our self-awareness. After death, this changes. What in ordinary life between birth and death is, as it were, the ordinary spatial relationship to our spatial body, becomes after death a relationship to our being in time. After death, we look back on what we have gone through in our corporeal existence, and in this looking back, in this connection with our corporeal existence, we feel our self-awareness, we feel ourselves as selves. In time, the relationship to our self becomes. By looking at our spiritual surroundings, we merge into the higher beings in which we live. We retain our independence, our full self-consciousness after death, by immersing ourselves with our memories in the past life of the body — just as we immerse ourselves each day in the existence of space in order to arrive at our self-consciousness.

Thus the human soul passes through the full experience, which includes death, to which death belongs as something necessary; for to self-awareness in the spiritual world belongs the experience of death in the sense world. With this, we can at the same time suggest – but only suggest; in the following lectures this winter, this will be explained in more detail – how this experience of death presents itself. Of course, when a person passes through the gate of death, he will remain unconscious of what he is experiencing. But as he becomes more and more familiar with the spiritual world, he strengthens himself with the forces that can flow to him from the spiritual world, and purifies himself from the forces that, between birth and death, as the desire for the body; and in this inner purification from dullness, the retrospect into one's own self arises, and with it, the insight into the spiritual world arises. The experience after death occurs, so to speak, in such a way that the memory of the experience of death gradually arises in the human soul only as the human being penetrates into the spiritual world after death. But then, when looking back on earthly life each time, it is the case for the human being that his self-awareness blossoms just as it blossoms within the sensory world when he normally awakens.

What has been explained here cannot, of course, be proven externally. Therefore, it is very easy for those who do not want to engage in the true proof of the spiritual world to make objections. Anyone who demands that the spiritual world should be proved in the same way as the facts of external natural science and its laws, and who then, when that is not possible, is of the opinion that all talk about a spiritual world is only subjective talk, must be told: The spiritual world cannot speak to the general public in such a way that anyone can conduct the experiment, the observation. But that is why spiritual science does not remain mere subjective talk, but something that has value and significance for the general public; because there are methods, the workings of the soul, that lead every person to penetrate into the spiritual world when they go through them. Therefore, if someone says, “Your spiritual world is not clear to me; prove it to me according to the methods of external natural science,” the reply must be: You must obtain the proof for yourself by applying to your soul what is applicable to every human soul as the methods indicated by spiritual science!

What I have today only been able to discuss in general terms, about the thought, its dying away and its revival in another sphere, about the spreading of the will over fate, and how it must work there in detail, I have presented in more detail in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, which has now been extensively revised and is available in a new and I have also tried to present it in a different way in the book 'The Riddles of Philosophy', which has now been published as a second edition of my 'World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century' with a 'sketchy outlook on an anthroposophy' as a result of the entire spiritual-philosophical development of the West.

Let it be emphasized once more: spiritual science does not give something that would not be there without it — just as natural science does not give something that would not be there without it. But the fact that man knows something presupposes that the facts of knowledge are there first. But when the facts are absorbed into consciousness, spiritual science will give the human soul what equips the soul with strength and power, as it will need it in the future. The soul has certainly had an awareness of its connection with the spiritual world in the past as well. But humanity continues to develop and evolve. And the results of spiritual scientific research will increasingly be part of what the soul will need for its inner strength, what will bring it to an awareness of itself, will be a real knowledge of the spiritual world, the world of the soul, which can only be imparted through research, just as knowledge of nature can only be imparted through research. Through this spiritual scientific research, the human soul is given what memory expands beyond the horizon, beyond which it can otherwise only roam. Today, this can only be hinted at. As the will expands to embrace destiny and the human being becomes one with destiny, and as the will in man grows to such strength that he grasps what blows of fate are in good and evil, and knows: I myself have formed all this —, memory grows back over earlier experiences, and also grows into those times that represent earlier human lives on earth. Only a hint can be given of what is to be explained in later lectures: intimately connected with the expansion of will over fate is the realization that man not only accomplishes one earth-life, but that this one life is the result of previous earth-lives, that this preparation of the will of fate has taken place in previous earth-lives. And so it presents itself in our consciousness that what we now grasp with our will is the cause for later earthly lives, and has an effect on later earthly lives.

Especially in the spiritual culture of Central Europe, the stages by which outstanding leader spirits have grasped this connection between the human soul's experiences and the spiritual world have always emerged in their souls. And if it has been said today that the human soul can, through the concentration of thought, cause this thought to die away and to revive in a higher world, then reference can be made to a spirit to which I have already drawn attention in earlier lectures: to Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He did not yet have spiritual science. But he was so immersed in German, Central European spiritual life that he saw the certainty of the human soul's place in eternity from the way he found himself placed in this spiritual life, as if from an elementary, impulsive consciousness. In many places in his works, Fichte has expressed what emerged to him, what he felt about the human soul's standing within the world of a higher consciousness; but perhaps there is no place where he expresses this connection of the human soul with eternity more intensely than in his appeal to the public, in which he defended himself against the false accusation of atheism. There he says – addressing external nature as “thou” and the I that comes to grasp itself as “I” – the following words:

These convictions are not merely theoretical realizations; these convictions are experienced. And that is what I wanted to bring to the feeling and emotion in the last of my lectures here, that precisely Central European, German intellectual life is the one that contains the best, the most beautiful, the most energetic seeds for this experience. Hence it is that out of this spiritual life itself there may flow the consciousness of its significance in the world, and that now, when in the outer life of Central Europe this spiritual life too is confronted with the question of being or non-being, this spiritual life can know from its own direct knowledge what its calling is and how it must live, and how it must not perish because it is necessary to form the bond between the human soul and the eternals. Then, especially from this spiritual life, flows that consciousness which sees, as it were, in an intense form when one now turns one's gaze to all – we may already say – heroic natures who stand between life and death in the stream of today's events. We look at the great riddle, at the great question of fate that is posed to us today by the epoch — also in this form in which it is posed to us by today's events: the question of life and death. And when we look from the point of view of spiritual science at what lives in the human body, lives in the knowledge that it is sheltered in the consciousness of higher beings, that it can believe itself to be preserved as a living, independent memory then, when this body is destroyed, — that which lives there, that is what must appear before our soul today, when we see so many bodies fall in sacrifice, in the great sacrifice of the time.

We ask ourselves: When viewed from the perspective of spiritual science, do the events of the soul really impose themselves on the soul of the one from whom death is demanded by the events of the time, mostly at a young age? We look up to the one from whom death is demanded in the sacrificial service of time, we look at what we grasp spiritually as a soul-like measure of strength, and we know: The thread of life is torn from that which lives in the body in the bloom of youth, at a time when the soul and spiritual powers could still experience for a long time. But truly, when we have recognized these spiritual powers through spiritual science, then we know that they remain alive, that they pass over into a spiritual world, into a new context, when they detach themselves from the old one. And when we then think how we ourselves become memories and thoughts in higher consciousnesses, then this death of the times, which appears so tragic to us today, will appear to us in a higher light. So that we see the forces that we see taken from the body penetrating into higher consciousnesses – and see these higher consciousnesses looking down on physical life on earth. With their strengthened powers, they have absorbed everything that man has sacrificed to them. And because it is the higher consciousnesses that offer us spiritual nourishment, the powers for the fertilization of the soul, the powers of preservation and life, just as physical powers offer us physical nourishment, we can look up to those who today, through the events of the times, go into the spiritual world with a sacrificial death, as something that in the future will look down strengthening and invigoratingly on what is taking place on the physical plane of the earth. It acquires a real, a true meaning when it is said: the sacrifice on the battlefield acquires a meaning through the whole development of humanity. And what is meant by this becomes understandable when we know: just as we, as physical human beings, face nature and it gives us its nourishment, so we give ourselves to the spirits and gods for nourishment; but they themselves give us what we need for nourishment and for strengthening the soul. And when young forces, who die on the battlefield or languish from the consequences of their wounds, leave the body, then these young forces are refreshment forces for the human evolution of the future.

It becomes very real when the one who sacrifices himself on the battlefield is imbued with the consciousness that he does not merely die, but lives in his death and will live differently than if he had died a different death, will live for the salvation and for the vigorous future of humanity. We look at the meaning of these sacrificial deaths by recognizing how the seeds are sown for the prosperity of humanity in the future, and by knowing how consciousness can permeate the warrior, that he experiences his death today, that he experiences his wounded fate today, but that he retains the strength through which he will remain united with that for which he dies throughout the future. Torn out of all sentimentality and placed in the simple reality,

reality, is placed in what otherwise could so easily only be taken symbolically or figuratively. Such a spiritual contemplation, as we have undertaken today, about the life of the human soul in the outer existence and also in the supersensible existence, I believe, in the right sense, creates right impulses in that which we experience today as the “fate of the times”. And if, in the context of a significant spiritual experience, a poet — Robert Prutz — has spoken beautifully of the ideal deeds of his people, then we may, from the point of view of spiritual science, give these words an even deeper meaning in view of current events. Regarding what the human soul experiences in life and in death, we may ask: What is the meaning of the death and suffering that are now demanded of us by the times? And today, deepening the meaning of Robert Prutz's words, we can say to anyone who will sympathize with and experience what is demanded of us today: what Robert Prutz said in the face of an event less significant in world history:

It is for the coming generation,
It is for the future dawn,
It is for freedom and for the right,
It is for life and for death!