The Rudolf Steiner Archive

A consideration based on spiritual science

The text of the lecture was created on the basis of a transcription of an only very difficult to read shorthand by Hedda Hummel (ST HH 2) with the help of a very legible but incomplete shorthand by Johanna Arnold (ST JA 12). Numerous unclear passages remain unresolved. For documentary reasons, the lecture is nevertheless published in the appendix, but only in its fragmentary state. Additions by the editor and completed quotations are in square brackets. The quotations were usually only written down in fragments in both stenograms. Therefore, the editor completed the quotations according to the original quotation. The quote itself and the length of the quote were derived from the fragments that were written down or from how they were quoted by Rudolf Steiner in other similar lectures in the present volume. In some cases, words or passages from Johanna Arnold's shorthand notes were inserted; these are indicated in each case.

Dear attendees! Almost every year in recent times, I have had the honor of giving a lecture here in this city in the field of cultural observations, which I take the liberty of calling a “spiritual-scientific worldview”. Since the friends of our spiritual movement in this city had the wish that I should also give such a lecture this year in these fateful times, it will seem understandable if such a reflection in our times is linked to that which concerns people of the immediate present in their deepest concerns the people of the immediate present in their deepest feelings, which deeply affects all of our minds - thinking, feeling and willing - when it is linked to what is happening around us in such a great, powerful, and all-embracing present, and which at the same time has caused so many victims, so much pain and suffering for our present humanity. But not to add yet another reflection to the overwhelming contemporary war literature, which is so abundantly expressed in brochures, books and lectures, even if it is held today, but because one could indeed believe, my dear audience, that with regard to what we are experiencing, a spiritual-scientific reflection also has something to say, even if, of course, this cannot be what other lectures of past years [could be] that [I] have given here and that related to this or that question of spiritual science; even if it must be that the spiritual-scientific aspect lies more in the nature of the contemplation, in the evoked sensations, such a spiritual-scientific contemplation can still appear justified in view of the events.

However, my dear attendees, one has already objected to much of what has been said – especially to what has been said from the standpoint of some kind of spiritual understanding of our present events – that one is dealing first and foremost with a purely political matter of nations. It has even been considered questionable when any kind of spiritual consideration interferes with the judgment of current events, and for all kinds of profound reasons, the cause of what we feel is happening is denied. It has been said that we should not delude ourselves with metaphysical haze when faced with today's events, but see through reality with clear thinking; not embellish with all kinds of fog the words that are so hotly contested in the world, but simply and clearly see what is happening. And it was, indeed it is, I would say, set apart from all kinds of spiritual considerations, that, to begin with, there is a purely political clash of interests between nations – to pick one – that it is, for example, between the German and the English people, a purely external clash of interests of the political past and the political future of Germany.

Now, my dear attendees, one could even, if one stands on a [purely] spiritual-scientific point of view, which is also turned towards realities and not fantasies, be in harmony with such a demand, if on the other hand, one would have to bear in mind that at the beginning of the Middle Ages, when Germanic peoples were fighting against the Roman Empire, one could also have spoken of a clash of interests between Germanic peoples and the Roman Empire. But out of the clash of interests at that time, little by little, all that surrounded us as a culture of more recent times developed. All spiritual reality, in which our souls are embedded today, was contained in this. For example, the fact that Christianity emerged from the Greco-Roman-Oriental world at that time, that at the same time as this Christianity the elemental forces of the Germanic peoples asserted themselves on European soil, and has shown itself in the course of historical development, that only through the influx of Christian impulses into the Germanic peoples - into their elementary forces - could what we see developing as European culture come into being; so that one must indeed say: For a direct examination of the present, there are only, I would say, in the near view, manageable clashes of interests. For those who look a little further, however, what is happening in history is what can contain the deepest impulses for the future development of humanity; and it is above all about this that we should be talking.

Of course, with words, with thoughts, with concepts that are only available to the speaker or to literature or science, nothing decisive can be done about the great events that are unfolding. That is decided by the weapons, by the courageous bravery of those who are on the field of events. But if you survey contemporary history in its context with the past and with a possible future, my dear audience, then you will indeed – I would say brought about by the fateful events of our time – come to a view that makes a deeper consideration of our current affairs not only possible or desirable, but perhaps even necessary.

It has already emerged from a variety of considerations, which have also been employed by others in the present, that, despite all the slander – from left and right, from north and south – against Central Europe in this time. What will emerge as a solid historical fact in the future, despite all these objections, is that the Central European peoples are waging a defense in that mighty struggle of the present, a defense that they did not bring about. This warlike defense, in which - I believe earlier times could not have imagined this - in which 34 individual nations of the earth are wrestling - this warlike wrestling appears before a deeper world observation as the expression of a completely other struggle, for a mighty battle that is also taking place among the spirits, for a battle in which Central Europe, and above all the German spirit, is now also standing in a defensive position, fighting for the most sacred of goods, as is happening in the external fields of battle. And this is the thought on which today's reflections are to be based. Not only have the economic, the external, and the political goods of the German people been attacked in the present - indeed, they have been in the past and will be in the future - not only have the economic, the external, and the political goods of the German people been attacked, but the spiritual life has been attacked and is actually forced to defend itself. And weapons will have to be forged to defend this spiritual life, just as weapons must be used to defend the political, the economic, and the social life.

Today we hear the call resounding from all sides: “These German barbarians!” Some people even add: [illegible word]. “How they have degenerated, the people among whom once lived minds like Goethe, Schiller, Fichte and so on!”

Now, I am sure that those of you who have a spiritual worldview will not take these accusations of barbarism too seriously. For with the same sophistry, the same drivel with which [it] is proclaimed today, [the accusation] will one day be refuted. One day, the words will be found for it, just as many hundreds of true words are found today to justify it. One day, people will say, “Yes, what the Germans have when they refer to Fichte, Schiller, Goethe and the others, Beethoven, that, of course, is not what we meant when we spoke of barbarians.” What was meant, they will say, was the way the war was waged, the way Germany treated other nations during the war itself. But when you look at it more deeply, things are not so simple. For anyone who is even a little familiar with the development of divine culture, of divine spiritual culture, it is not the first time that the saying has been heard that what we hold most dear, what we call our soul, what we call our culture, can basically be called “barbarism”. And strangely enough, my dear audience, in recent times – one has often seen the word 'barbarism' – perhaps most of all, as hard as it may be to believe, perhaps most of all the accusation of 'barbarism' against Central European culture, against Russia, has come from the Russian side. And here we need not refer to external newspaper literature or external newspaper statements, but precisely to what the leading spirits of the Russian essence have advocated as their most significant view.

And so that we can immediately go into something specific, it should be noted how a truly significant spirit in its own right appeared within Russian intellectual life in the nineteenth century: Khomyakov. He tried to survey and characterize the whole course of European culture from his Russian point of view. He tried to give a picture of European history. Three forces, he said, prevail in the course of this European cultural development. The first force is that which still stems from ancient Romanism. The second is that which stems from misunderstood Christianity. The third force is that which stems from Western European barbarism. However, at that time, what emerged through the peoples of the West who are now allied with Russia was also included in this Western European barbarism. And how did Khomyakov, from his point of view, attempt to characterize all the “barbarism” - as he put it - of the West? He said that what is rooted in the depths of the human soul and is directly based on the divine has been inherited by European spiritual development from Romanism. This Romanism had developed and was still effective today as a rationalism of thought. This Romanism had only an appreciation for external state institutions, for external material and social coexistence. But it had no sense for the depth of Christianity, for the Christianity that is to awaken impulses in the innermost chamber of the human being, in the deepest depths of the human soul. Chomjakow believes that the Romans did not understand that Christianity could be transformed or continued only by means of impulses from the soul, but only by means of an external means of state, social, purely political institutions. But this, according to Chomjakow, is the basis for the accusation of rationalism, of purely intellectual culture, which, according to his ideas, dominates the whole of European barbarism in such a profound way.

And then these European peoples tried to continue the course of development that had been initiated by the Romans, says Khomyakov, in such a way that they only evoked in thought that which was to move all the powers of the soul as a Christian impulse, turning it into scholasticism, philosophy, a rationalized Christianity, a thought-based, scientific hustle and bustle. And transplanted – so Chomjakow believes – this Romanism, this rationalized Christianity was into the barbaric soul of Central and Western Europe, [it was] their most significant instincts and impulses were just introduced. It was only from such a Christianity that the subjugation of every alien opinion and the imposition of one's own opinion on every other opinion could have come, and thus perpetual war and subjugation; so says Khomyakov, who, looking at Russia, wants to describe the whole of Central and Western European culture as “barbarism”. And one of his successors, Aksakov, declared, entirely in agreement with Khomyakov, that if one surveys Western European barbarism, one finds everywhere a spirit of subjugation, hatred, restriction of freedom, while - as he, Aksakov, believes - the whole Russian essence is permeated in its depths by “freedom, concord and peace”.

Dear attendees, Danilevsky is one of those who set the tone for the further development of this Slavism, the continuation of which is called Pan-Slavism today. In him, in particular, there is a very clear expression of what, so to speak, the Russian soul can think, feel as thought, about what is called from this side, by Central and Western European “barbarism,” what, with Danilewski, for example, must be called, from the point of view of the Russian, the “rotten, spiritual life of the West.” This is the expression that has repeatedly come to our attention, especially in recent times.

Danilewski attempts to show how certain types of cultural development have successively emerged in the historical development of the barbaric European West: the Romance-Germanic type, which Danilewski believes is initially behind the haze. He distinguishes himself by the fact that people have not been able to penetrate to that which the soul can grasp in its deepest depths, [which] can fill the soul with the awareness that it is connected to the divine spirit of the world. This awareness was only something conceptual, something external, scientific-rational in the Romance-Germanic being. The purely Germanic type of European life must be replaced by the genuinely Russian type, and this genuinely Russian type must know that for those who belong to such a cultural type, there is nothing in the whole wide world but the connection with this cultural type. Everything that can be a blessing for future humanity must be found in what the Russian people have to offer. What the Russian people are capable of must also be evident from the tasks of the Russian people.

[The following sentence is an uncertain reading.] And what is right is what arises from such tasks, but what is wrong is what does not arise from these tasks. It seems strange to the German sense of truth when one hears that the spread of Russia over the Balkans and the conquest of Constantinople is considered to be part of what should be considered truthful – as [for] Danilewski. He spoke of the fact that philosophical truth and what one thinks of the world depends on the fact that one strives to conquer Constantinople. What can come to light through such a view is demonstrated here, I would say, in a small sample.

Danilewski says that for Russia, “the next goal is the annexation of Constantinople,” [...] “without paying attention to the consequences that could arise for Europe itself, for humanity, for freedom, for culture.” This is the goal to strive for. “Without love and without hate – for in this world that is foreign to us,” [that is] all that lives so far removed from the unique cultural type of the Russian people, “nothing can evoke our sympathy or antipathy – to the same extent, indifferent to all, to red and white [...]. /omitting an illegible passage] “Most harmful and dangerous for Russia in Europe is the balance of political power, and any violation of it, from whatever side it may come, is therefore useful and desirable. [...] We must finally give up any solidarity with European interests.”

Dear attendees, one of the greatest minds that Eastern European culture has produced, a truly unique mind, Solowjow, did not find these views at all clear. For Solowjow, too, it was clear that Western European culture was ripe for destruction. It was also clear to Solowjow that salvation could only come from the Russian essence, but Solowjow was able to see that he could advocate for what he saw as future-oriented, because he saw a future in the essence of the Russian people, and he saw what chaotic and disorderly forces this people harbored in their souls in the present, especially in the souls of those setting the tone. And so Solowjow, the great philosopher, became the harshest critic within Russia itself of the Russian character that is characterized by Chomjakow, Danilewski, Katkow, Aksakow and others, and which has found its external expression, I would say symptomatic expression, in what Russia is currently planning against Europe in its greedy and [illegible word] appropriation.

Solowjow accused those in whose midst he himself liked to dwell – the Slavophiles – of having no sense of what is truly ideal, truly spiritual, of confusing the two, and of confusing the sense for the great fallacies of culture, with what is [marketable], what should only live among those who are windbags, corruptible people, corruptible for every slogan that is thrown in the way of culture. And so Solowjow, the Russian himself, found words – and it cannot be said of him that he was a friend of Western European ways – to characterize what is spiritually being prepared there, words that we can truly believe because of his sincere philosophical spirit, because of his deepest connection to the Russian national soul. Solowjow said: “Europe [...] looks at us with apprehension and with displeasure, because the elemental power of the Russian people is dark and mysterious, its spiritual and cultural powers inferior, its demands, on the other hand, clear, determined and great. The clamor of our nationalism, which seeks to crush Turkey and Austria, to beat the Germans, to take Constantinople and, if possible, to conquer India, resounds loudly in Europe.

Politics, as Solowjow said at the end of the nineteenth century, is everything that lives in opposition to the dominant souls of this Russian people.

“If we are asked how we will benefit humanity after the conquest and destruction of all this, we can only remain silent or spout meaningless phrases. [...] Thus [...] the most essential, indeed the only important question that honest and reasonable patriotism should address is not Russia's power and mission, but its sins.”

Not a German, not a Western European, but Solowjow, who knew his Russian present better than anyone, spoke these words. But Solowjow did more than that. He took a look at those who were the architects of what we are facing today in such a painful way. He looked at all those who had seduced the Russian soul into believing in their Pan-Slavic mission. And what did he discover? He found a wealth of Pan-Slavic literature around him. He came across something strange, something that he had to characterize as follows: “Yes, what do you want? You want to reproach the West with a rotten culture, a culture that has sunk into barbarism! You say that all the good fortune of humanity must come from what lives in the Russian people today, you spread this with only scientific principles, [but only] in scientific disguise! I have looked up where [you] got this scientific disguise from!"

And he had looked up, looked up carefully. He had once looked Danilevsky [and] Katkov a little - I would say, if the word were not justified, but I will say it anyway - on the spiritual fingers, and he came to the conclusion that the thought forms, the thought intentions with which these people had worked with as seducers, that they had all been taken from the rotten West, and the most important of these thought forms with which Slavism worked, he found, curiously enough, in the Western European philosopher de Maistre, who was deeply steeped in Jesuitism. These Slavophiles did not even bother to study de Maistre himself, but [Gaston] Bergeret, a somewhat [illegible word] of mind. Western, bad European thinking provided the impetus for Slavic theories.

And [he] looked over Danilevsky's shoulder with regard to his [cultural] historical types. And Solowjow found a half-insane writer, [Heinrich] Rückert, who wrote a book in the [18]50s that scientifically analyzed the follies that Danilewski [illegible word] [made about the development of contemporary history]. That was the discovery Solowjow made about the impulses that were alive around him. These were the weapons that were brought from the West to characterize this West as a rotten culture. Now, my dear attendees, I would like to say how a fundamental tone sounds through all the spiritual life of the last centuries of the East from this saying of the barbaric, rotten West, which is completely immersed in intellectual culture and violence. If you take a closer look, you have to say that all those who talk about the West in the East have become sleepy, dreamy, all that has been incorporated into the center of Europe from the depths of the German soul, of general world culture. Even what we call our treasures, which come from Fichte, Schiller, Goethe and others who cannot all be named, have become dreamy, of course.

But, esteemed attendees, if one tries to give to the souls of those who have sprung up on the soil of the East – which is considered so barbaric – what has sprung up there, , if you give them what has just been mentioned, then you will not get through, as the noble [illegible name] had to experience, who transplanted German Hegelian idealism to Russia. He did it beautifully, but not only did he fail to find an echo, but everywhere he encountered only rejection, contradiction, ridicule and scorn. And if you look more closely at what all this is based on, then it turns out that the whole way in which the German spirit stands to that - what he has to give to world culture, not as the representative of just any historical type, but as the outpouring of the depths of his soul - how the German spirit stands in relation to all this: the profound connection of the German spirit with its world view, the way in which its German world view springs forth from the depths of the soul, the depths in which the soul is intertwined with the divine-spiritual.

We see this way best expressed in Goethe, Schiller [and] Fichte, and it may well be time today to turn our gaze to this, as for a future that will most certainly come, the German also needs spiritual weapons from the armories that our folk spirits have erected, spirits like Schiller, like Fichte.

And not to evoke sentimental feelings, but, I would like to say, to present to our minds the very essence of the German character as exemplified by two important representatives of that essence – linked precisely to those moments in the lives of two great spirits of the German people, Schiller and Fichte, to the moments when these spirits left the physical world and passed over into another world of spiritual life, at the moments of death of Schiller and Fichte. This should be linked with the intimacy with which the German so readily expresses the (illegible word), which is also immediately and still now expressed by the word: “Geistig-Menschliches” (spiritual-human). Those who have to watch over the spiritual life of the German people in this new era, we can also look from what has been handed down to us historically at Schiller's last moments.

Then the younger Voß, the son of the translator of Homer, Voß, leads [us] into Schiller's death chamber, and shows us how, in the weeks and days before Schiller lay down to his last rest, [how] in his whole behavior and appearance before the world and [the] people, [ something spoke] of the tremendous inner victory of the spirit, the soul – the language that comes over a body that is actually already dead – [this] was written by Schiller with the enormous strength that he mustered / gap in the shorthand] and wrote down these last days, but wrote them down in full strength. Then he had to lie down. Then we see how, in his last moments, he still turned his soul to this - to that which he wanted to open up to humanity from the spiritual worlds -, we see how he then, how he received his youngest child, takes it, looks deeply into its eyes, and reveals this child – looking into the eyes, something very meaningful, perhaps painfully tragic, can be seen in his soul. Then he gave the child back and turned away, only incoherent sentences could he speak.

Once again, not to stir up sentimental feelings in you, but to show how one of the greatest Germans is connected to the spiritual essence and the essence of his people, attention is drawn to this Schillerian story. For truly, we can say, without being sentimental, that the look he directed at his child – which Voß believes he wanted to express how much he would have wanted to be the child and not have been able to be – this look – one can think that it met the entire German people – he how much he should still have been for them and could no longer be, and in relation to this people; yes, Schiller, he has expressed what he thinks about the world-historical calling of this, his people, what he thinks about everything that is connected with what he himself wanted to be for his people, what Schiller, as in a kind of testament – it was only found later, a century after Schiller wrote it down, it has only come to human eyes with the opening of the Schiller Archives – one sees in it what Schiller thought about what German essence, from this spiritual conception of the world, must be for humanity. Let us allow these words, which have been constantly coming before the soul of the Germans in recent times, to come before our soul:

He who forms and rules the spirit [must ultimately become the ruler, because
finally, at the goal of time, if the
world has a plan, if human
life has any meaning at all, finally
must custom and reason triumph,
brute force succumb to form
and the slowest people will catch up with all
the fast fleeting ones.
[...]
is destined for the highest,
and as he is in the middle of
Europe's peoples,
he is the core of humanity,
those are the flower and the] leaf.

[He is chosen by the world spirit to work
on the eternal construction of human education during the time struggle, to preserve what time brings,
therefore he has appropriated what was previously foreign
and preserved it within himself.
Everything that was valuable in other times
and peoples, that arose, developed and faded with the times, he has preserved; the treasures of centuries are not lost on him. Not to shine in the moment and to play his role, but to win the great process of time. Every people has its day in history, but
the day of the Germans is the] harvest of
all that time.

Dear attendees, what Schiller meant here is already what he had to believe – given his deep connection to the German essence – would provide the impetus for a world vocation of this German essence.

But what one can really believe – if only it is heard, sensed and felt by those who can only half think or not think at all, who are not connected to the German essence – is that it works like an aggressive being, really in such a way that it is brought about what one must call – because it has already developed and will develop more and more – [an] inevitability that the German defends that which he has among his spiritual treasures against a whole world.

[The following sentence is an uncertain reading.] In this sense, the cosmopolitan Schiller was never a negative spirit at heart, although he was not blind to external circumstances and interests. He saw so deeply into the German character. After all, he also spoke the words:

Two mighty nations [are wrestling
for sole possession of the world;
to devour the freedom of all countries,
they brandish the trident and lightning.

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

The British extend their merchant fleets
Greedily like polyp arms;
And the realm of the free Amphitrite
He wants to close, like his own] house.

Schiller could also be a realpolitiker.

Another phenomenon that presents itself to our eyes when we really want to consider what German impulses have flowed into German development is Fichte, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Fichte, the great philosopher, but at the same time the great human being. And again, the last moments of Fichte's external earthly existence are placed before our soul: At a time when Germany was in a state of decline, deeply beset by the European West, it was as if Fichte, I would say, was indirectly succumbing to the war events of the time. Fichte's wife, a rare woman, had brought home [military hospital fever] from military hospital service.

[She] herself recovered; it had been transferred to Fichte, and he succumbed. In his final moments, we see something most remarkable take place:

In the delirium of fever, the philosopher – the philosopher who spoke the great word, one chooses philosophy as one's worldview, which is dependent on one's character as a human being – the philosopher, in whom humanity and thought were in the most intimate harmony, lay there in his feverish dream. He was connected, not externally, but from the deepest fibers of his human being, with the events of the time. He had delivered the speeches in which he presented the world calling to the German people in a unique, powerful and powerful way during the most painful and difficult times. In his delirium, the feverish fantasy of the crystal-clear philosopher, it moves on the theater of war at that time, this feverish dream of the clear-thinking philosopher went to Blücher's crossing of the Rhine, and he spoke, when he received the news of German victories, expressing his deepest satisfaction with what he was only allowed to experience in a feverish dream. In him, too, the soul had triumphed over the external physical when he spoke. As he saw the remedy before him in his joyful dream in its moving effect, he pushed it away and said, “I will recover!” and he lay down and died.

So out of one casting, so out of one inner unity is this most German philosopher, but also this philosopher who saw the German [in it] called to grasp the spirituality of the whole world. We do not need to point out today which is the core idea of the speech. How Fichte attempts to show how the German essence differs from the Western European essence [in that the German speaks an] original language that comes from his most elementary development, whereas the Roman speaks a language that was grafted onto him later, and therefore cannot possibly be connected to the deepest sources of life itself, but that the German must already be connected to through his language. We need only point out the deep, true pathos with which Fichte presents the German character to his people.

But what spiritual science can assert with regard to Fichte is that Fichte, from tremendous depths, constantly emphasizes the spiritual foundation of the world. Indeed, everything in his philosophy, in his thinking, that also lay above his people, was drawn from the knowledge that he believed he had gained about the deepest essence of his people. Truly, all external world-study, all that seeks to be based on material things, has its powerful opponents in Fichte's truly German Weltanschauung. Thus Fichte says:

Time [and] eternity and infinity [sees] it

- and he means German philosophy -

in [its emergence from] the appearance and becoming visible of that One, which is in itself absolutely invisible, and only in this invisibility is grasped, correctly grasped.

[...] [All persistent existence that appears as non-spiritual life is only an empty shadow, thrown out of sight, mediated many times over by the Nothing, in contrast to which and through the recognition of it as a many times 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.]

But, esteemed attendees, not only has Fichte pointed out in general the spiritual foundation of the world from which the human soul, in the most difficult situations and in the highest tasks, must draw its own impulse, not only because spiritual science today may point to Fichte in such a way that one must say that spiritual science, which wants to have an effect on the future of humanity, must seek its sources in what German spirit, in a crystal-clear and deeply intimate way, has opened up to the world being. Not only that Fichte has thus pointed to all the spiritual foundations of the world, but it is precisely in Fichte that it has been shown how someone who but it was shown in Fichte how someone who wants to create his philosophy out of the whole essence of the German national soul and at the same time as a deep and truthful expression of his soul, how he felt and sensed what spiritual science must raise to full clarity today and in the future.

Fichte did not yet have a spiritual science, but the feelings and perceptions that can only be penetrated by real spiritual research lived in him. These perceptions and feelings point to the worlds that spiritual science seeks to reveal through its research today. And here, just one point is to be emphasized to show how spiritual science can truly be referred to Fichte. Spiritual science today stands on the ground of an extraordinarily active science, and [it says] that all external science, which only surrenders itself to thoughts and external senses, can only reveal one, the lesser side of the world, that must intervene - in order to find the real content of the world - an active science that appeals to the hidden powers of the soul, that must be brought out of the soul, and that leads to spiritual ears and spiritual eyes. It can then be shown that, through such powers, it can be shown, my dear audience, that man can truly know something about that which lies beyond birth and death. Spiritual science does not just speak in an ignorant way about the whole spiritual being of man, but it can be observed, as external substance can be observed, when man only goes through the necessary methods. Mankind does not want to know this. But in the future, through spiritual science, mankind will learn – and then spiritual science speaks like external science of oxygen and hydrogen – that the human soul being is something that cannot be recognized as long as it is connected to the body, but can be recognized by spiritual researchers when it is separated from the physical.

Today, no more than someone who has not heard of chemistry believes that there is hydrogen in water that burns, while water extinguishes. But just as there is physical chemistry today, there will be spiritual chemistry. It will speak of the fact that one can really research and observe the eternal being of man. Fichte could not yet speak of this. The time for spiritual science will only come in our present time. But the following is very strange: if the spiritual researcher speaks today of the eternal core of the human being, he would speak in such a way that this core, after death, receives its spiritual eyes and ears, [listens and] looks at [the] physical body that it has left behind, just as we today look at the outer world.

Of course, in today's lecture, I can only hint at all this, not explain it in detail, but just hint that what I have just said will be included in the sense of spiritual culture, as natural science was included centuries ago. And just as people objected to the scientific world view at the time, they object to spiritual science today. Now we discover the remarkable thing about Fichte, something that the ordinary admirer perhaps overlooks in the speeches. This announces something remarkable to us. He wants to say that he has devised an education through which the German people can enter a time in which the German people will free themselves from all foreign domination. He said that those who are completely in the present [who are completely caught up in prejudices] do not dream of education, and now he wants to explain how what he wants [the new] appears to him in relation to the [previous]; in this he expresses himself very strangely. The focus is not so much on the thoughts as on what lies in his feelings.

Time,

said Fichte,

seems to me like [an empty shadow] [that stands over its corpse, from which an army of diseases has just driven it, 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 plague. The invigorating breezes of the other world, into which the departed soul has entered, have already taken her in and surround her with a warm, loving breath. Secret voices of her sisters already greet her joyfully and welcome her. She is already stirring and expanding in all directions, to develop the more glorious form into which she is to grow, but she has no feeling for these breezes or no hearing for these voices, or, if she had it, she is absorbed in pain over her loss, with which she believes to have lost herself.

Admittedly, Fichte is not speaking in a spiritual scientific way, but he is expressing perceptions and feelings that the modern spiritual researcher could not express differently.

We may say, my dear audience, that the development in which Fichte has intervened in such a way is called upon to give the world much of what spiritual knowledge of the world is, of what science of spiritual life is. And it is understandable, my dear audience, that those who are not familiar with this German essence can only sense something unknown in this German essence, something that is dangerous to them in a certain way. A guilty conscience develops towards this unknown, which one does not want to approach, and it expresses itself in accusations such as that of “barbarism”. But has it always been that way? In this respect, it is truly interesting to see how German character, in its entire development, has affected the outstanding minds of other nations.

It is certainly not easy to characterize German character in ourselves, the Germans, without using other people's words. It must be permissible, of course, to present those who are the representatives of this German character. But when we hear the word today, that the Germans are “barbarians,” [and] hear it from all sides, then it is surely appropriate - because this accusation of “barbarism” not only ridicules Germanness, but also because it affects many of those who, I would like to say, the intellectual representatives of the nationalities hostile to us, it is appropriate to see what outstanding intellectual representatives of other nations have thought about German nature, as it [illegible words], from the sources that have just been mentioned - have thought. Above all, Emerson should be mentioned, the outstanding representative of America. He spoke the following words about German nature:

One [quality in particular, which Goethe shares with his entire nation, makes him stand out in the eyes of both the French and English public, namely that everything in his work is based solely on inner] truth.

These words were not spoken in German in Belgium in front of the French, [but] they are spoken in English by Emerson. He continues:

In England and America, [people respect talent, but they are only satisfied when it works for or against a party of their conviction. In France, one is already delighted to see brilliant thoughts, no matter where they go. In all these countries, however, talented men write as far as their gifts reach. If what they present stimulates the discerning reader and contains nothing that offends against good manners, it is considered sufficient. So many columns, so many pleasantly and usefully spent] hours. The German mind

- as Emerson says in English —,

the German mind possesses neither [the French liveliness nor the Englishman's understanding, honed for practicality, nor, finally, the American adventurousness; but what it does possess is a certain probity that never stops at the outward appearance of things, but always comes back to the main question: “Where does this want to go?” The German public demands of an author that he stand above things and simply express himself. Intellectual agility is present, well and good: what does it advocate? What is the man's] opinion? Where does he get all these thoughts from?"

And further, Emerson says:

The English [see only the individual, they do not know how to grasp humanity as a whole according to higher laws.

The Germans think for] Europe.

No German has said: “The English do not appreciate the depth of the German [spirit],” as Emerson says in English.

From such statements, we can see the antagonism that has already developed and will continue to develop, not only against Germany's external political nature, but also against its intellectual life. German intellectual life must be defended, and one must know the methods and weapons with which it is to be defended. Emerson continues:

That is why the terms used in [high-level conversation are all German] in origin.

In this way he indicates the reason why this German essence is so uncanny to the other nations, because the German origins of this [German] essence had to create the distinguishing concepts for what higher spiritual contemplation is. But German essence will have to defend these distinguishing concepts.

While the English and French, who are mentioned here with distinction because of their acumen [and erudition], view their studies and their point of view with a certain superficiality, and their personal character is not too deeply connected with what they have taken up and with the way they express themselves about it], Goethe speaks,

- and again not Goethe alone, but he means 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 of it.

Thus Emerson thinks, Goethe, the head of the German nation, the truth shines out of Goethe's soul and the truth concentrates its rays in this soul.

He is wise in the highest degree, [even though his wisdom may often be obscured by his talent. However excellent what he says is, he has something even better in mind.] [...] [He has that fearsome independence that springs from contact with the truth.

The impression this fearsome independence makes on others certainly produces in others that with which they want to save themselves from this fearsome independence. It produces the accusation of “barbarism”. What could be said: That was a long time ago, Emerson wrote these words in the [first] half of the nineteenth century, and that is basically what we are always told with anger, how the Germans have degenerated since the times of Goethe, Fichte, and Schiller, into this national substance.

Now, that would sound true if there were not other words that an English scholar wrote not long before the outbreak of the present war. These words were spoken by Herford, the gelchrten, in a northern English town because, as he says, he wanted to use his words to draw the attention of the English newspaper-reading public to what lies at the heart of the German character. Now, what the English newspaper-reading public [thinks] of the words that I will read to you in a moment, which were spoken not long before the war in England by the learned mind, you know from what you find in English newspapers today. Herford says:

The highly favored elite among [Descartes' and Newton's] compatriots

- by which he means the French and the English -

the spirit of science was unquestionably known; but the passionate urge for knowledge was taught to modern Europe, if at all, mainly by [thousands of German] researchers,

not in [illegible word] spoken in England in English.

The imagination, [feeling and will asserted their right to be heard alongside or beyond reason, and under their transformative pressure the universe became deeper, wider and more wonderful. The irrational] was [acknowledged as a source of enlightenment]; [wisdom was gleaned from children and flowers; science, philosophy and poetry came close together.

- so the Englishman says, let us compare it with what the [illegible words] said.

Back home in England

- so the Englishman says in English —

[this revival of the imagination created a noble poetry, but left the sciences and philosophy almost untouched. One of the keys to understanding the whole 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 [or] 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 novelty, worked together in fruitful harmony in the genius of] Goethe.

And further from the Englishman shortly before the war:

In Faust [at the end of his eventful life, we see the present-day Germany foreshadowed, the Germany of restless, bold will and action, and we can understand all the better why the great citizen of the world, in whose eyes state and nationality were subordinate and sometimes harmful ideals, nevertheless claims his unassailable position as the highest poet of the German] Reich [besides Bismarck,] his creator.

And a dictum, spoken not in Belgium before the French, but in England in the English language, is from the same Englishman who characterizes German character: “No German words are more deeply imbued with the juice of national ethics than those that denote these things: true, thorough, faithful.”

That is how it sounded to us from across the Channel shortly before the war. Whoever says – because German cannons are unpleasant or the necessary war is not social – that the Germans are “barbarians” must admit that, having just said that this person generates the noblest thoughts in his head and the noblest feelings in his heart, he is a lout because he will definitely use his hands. Such a judgment is absurd, and no sophistry can help over such a judgment.

And the same Englishman continued in those lectures, which he gave, as I said, to teach the publicists:

[On the whole, there is no question that the establishment of the German Reich has been beneficial 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 for her to let the light of the past shine on the confusion of the present, and in that higher light, things that seem hurtful will take on a natural appearance. For when we look to the past, we find that our ancestors looked at France with far greater fear than the wildest rabble-rousers today fear Germany.

A short time before the outbreak of the war, that was the sound coming from across the Channel.

And the fear of our ancestors –

he means the fear of France –

[...] So, to sum up, it can be shown that the founding of the German Empire was an asset for Europe, and therefore also for] Great Britain.

- says the Englishman -

Because the events [of the years 1866-1871 put an end once and for all to the possibility of waging predatory wars against the previously unprotected center of Europe, thus eliminating a temptation to war that in earlier centuries had had so often led astray, 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] maintained peace for forty years. 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, had never been able to achieve, namely to secure the balance of power in such a decisive way that a major war became the most dangerous of all risks.

If the courage of England holds for the result of this historical consideration, then one probably also speaks in his sense – although he will not say this himself, because in the present, as one says [gap in the stenogram] – then all that is talked and rambled about today is German nature /gap in the stenogram]. This includes what he refers to as: “[On the whole, there is no question that the establishment of the German Reich has been beneficial to world peace.] This explanation will seem strange to those [who know nothing but the events of the present, and] to those [for whom] [history is nothing but an eternally changing, dazzling] cinematograph.” It does seem true today that people believe they don't need to know anything about the present. And he reminds us to understand everything that has happened since 1914.

[Lord] Haldane, a name that has caught your eye in human history, has written a preface to the printing of his lecture. And Haldane wrote in this preface:

[The source of the stream of his 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 present-day Germany is to a high degree concrete and practical.

And then he added why he wrote this:

The influence of true knowledge [alone 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.

My dear attendees, it is perhaps not possible to summarize in a few words what is characteristic of the judgments that outstanding people from other nations have passed on the German character in other times. One can only sense all the insults and attacks against German intellectual life that are taking place in the world today and against which German intellectual life must defend itself. We have, for example, had to experience that an outstanding Belgian intellectual, who wrote his words in French and was particularly recognized in Germany, Maurice Maeterlinck, has made the bitterest accusations against, as he German “barbarism”, that he mingled completely with the jesters of the street and used words about the so-called German “barbarism” that are worthy only of that street.

But let us listen to a fellow countryman of Maeterlinck, someone who wrote in the same language as him, and let me say [illegible word] for once. He wants to characterize the influence he has experienced, among other things, from the German character, where it has most deeply manifested itself, for example in Novalis. This French Belgian, I mean this fellow countryman of Maeterlinck's – we we shall see in a moment how close he is to Maeterlinck – he says that when you allow something like what Novalis created, arising out of the German essence, to take effect on you, you can say, you really can't find any words in Europe to characterize the significance of this Scelen essence of Novalis. You have to coin the words in the following way, when Shakespeare wrote this or that: [When Shakespeare or] Sophocles [let their characters act,] they deal with human affairs that interest people on earth. Novalis created something from the depths of the German soul that not only people on earth would be interested in, if you thought that angelic beings, cosmic entities, descended to earth. And if you want to offer them something that would interest them, you can't come up with Shakespeare or Sophocles. That has no meaning for them; you have to come up with something that is so imbued with the sources of the eternal – that also has meaning for other spiritual, ethereal worlds – as what Novalis wrote. And what does this fellow countryman of Maeterlinck's do when he speaks of what he has received from the eternal, weaving soul of Novalis:

But if he [needed other proof, she would lead him among those whose works almost touch silence.

He speaks of silence because language cannot express what one has to say.

[She would open the gate of the realm where some loved her for her own sake, without worrying about the small gestures of her body. They would go together to the lonely plateaus where consciousness rises by one level, and where all those who are restless about themselves attentively survey the immense ring that connects the world of appearances with our higher worlds. She would go with him to the borders of humanity; for at the point where man seems to end, he probably only begins, and his most essential and inexhaustible parts are only in the invisible, where he must be on his guard unceasingly. On these heights alone are thoughts that the soul can approve of, and ideas that resemble her and are as imperious as she is. There humanity has reigned for a moment and these dimly illuminated peaks are perhaps the only lights that announce the earth in the realm of spirits. Their reflection truly has the color of our soul. We feel that the passions of the mind and body in the eyes of a strange reason would resemble the tolling of bells; but the people I am talking about have come out of the little village of passions in their works, and have said things that are also of value to those who do not belong to the earthly community.

Well, esteemed attendees, I have kept you busy for a while with these words of a personality – as I said, one close to Maeterlinck. One may believe that what this personality feels, she could have spoken the words – when she heard what Maurice Maeterlinck presumed to say about German nature in recent times – she could have spoken the words, this soul:

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.

But, my dear audience, I have only mystified you for a while, I would like to say /illegible word>. The one who says what I have read to you about Novalis is in fact Maeterlinck himself. And the one who spoke of the useless clamorers is also Maeterlinck himself. It is a small thing to form an opinion about the attitude that underlies the saying of the German “barbarians”.

[Illegible word], ladies and gentlemen, it was already in 1870 that the German [David Friedrich] Strauß conducted his printed correspondence with Renan, the writer of “The Life of Jesus”. The Frenchman spoke remarkable words about the German character at that time, when Germany had already invaded France in the war of 1870. Renan pointed out that it was only at a later age that he became acquainted with German intellectual life. I would like to present to you what is special about German intellectual life through the words of Renan himself:

One does not need to use German words to characterize what German essence should be for the world. But now let us hear the same Renan express what he thinks about the future of Europe and its relationship to France. He has spoken very interesting words. He has pointed out that there are two currents in France. The first is that which says: We want to try not to cede anything to Germany, we want to try to establish order in France itself and to form an alliance with Germany for the civilization of Europe. But then he pointed out another current, which says: We just want to have peace for once, cede Alsace-Lorraine, but then form an alliance with anyone with whom we can ally against the German race.

What kind of judgment is this, ladies and gentlemen? That is, a person understands, a person who is one of the leaders of his nation understands that what he has recognized in German intellectual life is related to other things that have been offered to him [like differential calculus to elementary mathematics]. And he finds it foolish that his nation is now allying itself with anyone who is available as an enemy of this German essence. Yes, one must not take history like a cinematograph, but one must go into it in depth if one wants to grasp the sentence that German essence will have much to defend in the world and that the tremendous struggle is only the external symptomatic expression. And what other words do we hear from those who, because of their inability – and let us say with Renan's words: to ascend to the “differential calculus of culture” – call us “barbarians”, what else do we hear? We often hear, and always again, that Germany was to blame for this world war. Only the short-sighted can actually be expected to make such a statement. It is easy to prove, ladies and gentlemen, how what is now clashing with each other in a warlike manner has been ruling and weaving in Europe for years and has been pressing for the outbreak. And to say, in the face of what was going on in the countries of Europe, that Germany wanted this war will one day be recognized as pure nonsense, as the unscrupulous claim of those who, to justify their lack of scruples, are afraid of what the Germans call 'barbarism'.

During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, a person with a broader view of European affairs said the following – allow me to add this in conclusion. Carl Vogt, the naturalist, said the following during the Franco-Prussian War:

As for me, I am in no doubt for a moment that a conflict between the Germanic and Slavic world is imminent, that it will be ignited either by the Orient, especially Turkey, or by the nationality dispute in Austria, perhaps by both, and that Russia will take the lead in it on one side. This power is already preparing for the eventuality; the Russian national press is spewing fire and brimstone against Germany. [.-.] The German press is already sounding its warning cries].

1870 is written.

Since then [after the Crimean War, Russia gathered, a long time has passed, and it seems that it is now considered appropriate in [St. Petersburg] to take up the Oriental question again.] If the Mediterranean Sea

- he continues -

[once referred to as the “French Sea” – a term more ostentatious than true – Russia has the even more positive intention of turning the Black Sea into a Russian Sea and the Sea of Marmara into a Russian pond. That Constantinople must become a Russian city and Greece a direct vassal state of Russia is a fixed goal of Russian policy, which finds its lever of support in the common religion and in Pan-Slavism. The Danube would then be closed at the Iron Gate by the Russian barrier.

And from this insight into the necessity of this war, from the desire for the East, the writer draws attention to this goal, how responsible it must become for European civilization if the East were to find its allies in the European West. /Omission of an illegible passage.

Finally, I would like to present something else to you as proof that we are not dealing with something that has only emerged in our present time, but that we are dealing with something that has inevitably developed out of the European conflict and that has prompted the Germans in Central Europe to defend this essence. I would like to characterize in a few words what has happened since early 1914, since a little more than a year ago. Those who have followed contemporary history will know that what I am about to characterize really captures the circumstances of the time. What we could see in the East was the rise of a certain press campaign that took up the ideals of Pan-Slavism. And it shows, long before the assassination of the Austrian heir to the throne, what they want to try to do to satisfy Russia's demands.

The following words could be put together to describe what has happened in just over a year: [...] how a kind of press campaign gradually began in St. Petersburg, [...] how Germany was suspected of this intention. These [attacks] increased in the following [weeks] to strong [demands for pressure that we should exert on Austria in matters where we] could not attack Austrian law [without further ado]. One could not lend a hand to this, because [if we alienated 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 in the past that it could be tolerable 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 talks to Russian friends about such disputes, one cannot exactly contradict them. But 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 aspirations.

This is how one could characterize what happened, let us say, up to the outbreak of the war. My dear audience, the words that I have just read to you to characterize this last period are not mine. I must read them to you again with a small change. They were spoken by Bismarck in the German Reichstag on February 6, 1888. There Bismarck said:

[...] how gradually [a kind of press campaign began in St. Petersburg, attacking German politics and personally suspecting me of ulterior motives. These attacks intensified during the following year] until 1879 [to strong demands for pressure to be exerted on Austria in matters where we could not readily challenge Austrian law. I could not lend my 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 outright contradicted my Russian colleagues who explained such things to me. The incident at the Congress disappointed me, and showed me that even the complete subordination of our policy (for a certain period) to the Russian policy would not protect us from coming into conflict with Russia against our will and against our aspirations.

The same words apply to 1914, which applied in exactly the same way to 1888. And let no one say that this war was caused by Central Europe in 1914 in terms of its reasons. The current was always there. But I believe that today's only outlined discussion has shown that the attack - which includes Germany and Austria as if in a large fortress, and would most like to starve this Central Europe - is not only directed against the external configuration, not only against social economic conditions, but will increasingly be directed against what the German soul is, what the German spirit is. But one can assume, especially when considering minds like Fichte and Schiller, that what lies in the German essence and its development is only just beginning to be realized.

In our feelings and emotions, we can, through Fichte, access the knowledge of the spirit that must continue to spread. To answer the question, why do they call [the people a “barbarian people”? To answer this question,] it is essential to recognize the fog that people want to delude themselves about what must necessarily be defended by the German people for the sake of the world's development. German courage and bravery will decide the war of the present. But we shall need weapons taken from the most sacred part of the German soul to defend the German spiritual essence, which for the same reason will have to and has already experienced attacks. For this German spiritual essence - built on a knowledge of the spirit, sets its goals on [the] knowledge of the spirit - has as enemies all that merely wants to prevail in external philosophy, such as Spencerian or Danilevskyan, has as opponents even that which could develop out of Descartes' Frenchness and so on, and what it has for other philosophies.

This German essence draws its logic from deeper sources, from sources with which it wishes to be connected, this German essence, with the spirit itself. And logic is truly quite rare in the attacks that are still being made today, but if we look at philosophers like [Emile] Boutroux, [illegible name], Bergson – [illegible word] no longer Fils de Montagne – the way they speak, the way they have forgotten how to grasp the capture the living and to look at the spirit, how they are frozen by external materialism, then one would like to ask: Do you really believe that after you have surrounded Germany from all sides, Germany will defend itself by reading Novalis, Schiller and Goethe at its borders and that these poets will not hear your cannons?

You have called forth that which emerged from the German spirit only as a mechanism. But that will not be, without that from the essence, which just in /illegible words] Fichte once had to be brought out, as someone of him said quite aptly: The irresistible of the essence is the incessant mood of his mind through [military] defense of the spiritual essence.

The logic that prevails here, like [illegible word], bears witness to no more than a superficial overview of the facts. With the same logic that is used today to seek the cause of this war among the Germans, it can be said that the Germans are to blame for being attacked from all sides today, because one can only attack them, [because] the art of printing, they invented it, the Germans. So they are to blame for the disgrace that is being done to them. This is the same logic that is heard a lot today. For one can go even further, and say that, after all, gunpowder is used in a barbaric war. One cannot say of the French that they invented gunpowder. One must ascribe the invention of war to the Germans. Thus they are, in fact, also to blame for the fact that this war and all the wars of modern times are being waged at all. But all this is only external. And what the German is called to bring out of the depths of spiritual life, what is inherent in his best minds, what his best minds have pointed to, must be said to show that it breathes the past, it also shows the future, it has inner developmental causes and developmental forces, and from these the German mind and soul draws confidence and hope that the enemies will not overwhelm it, that it will find ways and means, will find strength and endurance to defend the German way of life for the world.

Based on the feelings that have informed everything I have been able to say to you today, I would like to say a few summarizing words in which I would like to express what [illegible word] for our soul can emerge from the contemplation of what is happening to the German essence in our time, what is being predicted and spoken by the power of the enemy to this German essence.

All that is said and chattered about the German character, all that is said about the German character being in decline; not against the German character, not merely out of dark feelings, but out of the clear realization of what the German character is, are the words in which I would like to summarize the core content of this lecture:

[The German spirit has not yet accomplished
what it is to bring to the world.]
He [lives in future] hopes full of hope,
[He hopes for future deeds full of life.
In the depths of his being, he feels powerful
secrets that must still mature.
How can a wish for his end, without understanding,

Dearly beloved! The subject of today's lecture may seem a little strange, for it seeks to combine two things: supersensible knowledge, spiritual research – or, as we are accustomed to saying, theosophy – and everyday life. It might seem as if nothing is further removed from each other than what we experience in everyday life and what the soul aspires to when we speak of supersensible research - of insights into the world that lies beyond our physical-sensual world, beyond the world that our senses perceive and our mind can grasp, which is bound to the instrument of the brain. But on closer inspection, these things are not as far apart as they appear at first glance. I would like to remind you that even the philosopher of pessimism, Arthur Schopenhauer, made a strange statement, which should initially only be considered in relation to his point of view on our topic. He said: “Life is an unfortunate thing, and I have tried to make it bearable for myself by trying to understand it.

We want to completely disregard the fact that this saying is based on absolute pessimism, on the conviction that life is not worth living, and instead turn our attention to the other side. Despite the fact that Schopenhauer regards life as not worth living, despite the fact that he regards existence as one of suffering and pain, and despite the fact that he cannot find anything consoling in the world according to his view, he still thinks that if he rises to enlightenment, he will be able to find something that will enable him to cope with life in the right way and thus to come to terms with it. Thus, even the pessimist speaks of the possibility that a worldview that takes us beyond the world of sense perception may lead us to something that makes this life possible in the right sense.

Theosophy does not lead us to a pessimistic world view, but to a spiritual life that shows us that what presents itself as a material exterior has emerged from spiritual origins. And it also shows that human beings, who pass through the material world when they are schooled by experiences in this material world, have to ascend to a spiritual world again. And that means: the origin and the goal of all world experience must be sought in the spiritual. This alone shows that by looking at the great spiritual goal, through which physical life first acquires its value and dignity, man cannot be absorbed in pessimism if he is able to make this world view his own.

However, Theosophy is still something that evokes not only contradiction but even ridicule in the broadest circles of our present-day humanity. Or it is understood in such a way that those who profess it are only dreamers. Theosophy also still finds hatred and contempt in wide circles. Time and again, one can observe that some people who believe that they are very much part of the people of the present day wonder, when they learn one fine day that some acquaintance whom they thought of as a reasonably reasonable person after what he has done so far has become a theosophist: How can a reasonable person turn to such foolish stuff? They think that anyone who occupies themselves with Theosophy no longer lives in the real world, is no longer capable of anything sensible, and tries to make life as unpleasant as possible for themselves. They think that such a person no longer experiences any real joy, that they pursue all kinds of idle thoughts and shut themselves off from everything that gives other people joy. Perhaps on top of that, they don't eat meat and don't drink – then the disaster is complete, and one is only surprised that they don't hang their heads and look at the world with a gloomy expression. After all, one can have such experiences every day.

But another experience has been made often enough and is by no means an anecdote. A lady hears that her friend professes Theosophy and thinks that it alienates her from life, because Theosophers do not amuse themselves in the usual way and so on, and that her friend must be protected from such a cruel fate. So she goes and says: How can you profess Theosophy? It alienates you from life, it is dangerous; the Theosophists are not only dreamers, but they become half-crazy. Before the friend even gets a chance to say anything about it, the one she warned becomes thoughtful and asks: What is Theosophy actually?

It so happens that when it comes to things like Theosophy, which in a certain sense are supposed to live their way into culture as something new, one often does not allow oneself to form an opinion about the matter and content, but rather judges on the basis of secondary circumstances. It may therefore be useful to consider how Theosophy relates to what we have to go through in ordinary life. Indeed, we shall even see how valuable it can be for life to make some observations about it. Theosophy will admittedly say nothing about how to nourish oneself “theosophically”, how to prepare food, and how the purely external life is otherwise to be provided for through Theosophy. But since it has to bring down for us the knowledge from supersensible worlds, we will see how it can affect our soul life, our mood, our joy and suffering, our desire and pain, how it can intervene in our life practice.

One of the most important truths in this field is one that is viewed with hostility by many people today and as if no rational person could possibly believe such stuff. This truth has already been touched upon in earlier lectures, but since it is one of the fundamental truths, it must be referred to again and again. It is a truth that will become just as established in intellectual life in the not too distant future as another [truth has done in the past]. As late as the seventeenth century, there was still the opinion, not only among laymen but also among natural scientists, that lower animals and even fish could develop from river mud. It was Francesco Redi who first formulated the sentence: Living things can only come from living things. And for this truth, which he dared to speak, he was almost burned. Today there is no rationally thinking person - whether he has drawn his education from Haeckel's work or from his most radical opponents - who would not recognize that a living being cannot arise from the inanimate.

Spiritual research now shows that a similar truth can be spoken of in the realm of the spiritual soul, namely that a person does not merely show us the qualities he has inherited from his parents, grandparents and so on, but that we truly grasp him only when we recognize a spiritual-soul core in him. The life that a person now leads is not the first, and it is the starting point for many lives in the future. And the living essence of a person absorbs and permeates itself with what it can absorb in the way of inherited traits, just as the living germ of a worm absorbs the matter surrounding it. We must distinguish between [a purely spiritual life] between death and new birth of life between birth and death, where we again encase the spirit in matter. Thus, the entire existence is a chain of earthly lives and purely spiritual stages of existence.

If this is asserted today, it is considered to be fanaticism. It is said that [theosophists] know nothing about science and so on. And yet it is just as much a firm result of spiritual research as Darwin's theory is from a scientific point of view. But that is how it is with all truths. What is regarded as reality today was considered heresy when it was first proposed years ago. Later, one cannot understand how one could ever have thought differently. And with regard to the truth of repeated lives on earth, one will no longer be able to understand how one could ever have thought differently.

Another truth is connected with this, the doctrine of Karma. Karma means the law of our human destiny. If we wish to characterize this law, we find it not only in the human world, where it is developed in a special way, but everywhere we look. We need only remember that, for example, edelweiss can only grow on mountains. Every creature is driven into the environment to which it belongs. Every creature strives, as if attracted by magnetic forces, into its own environment, where it belongs. One must learn to understand that man, depending on how he has developed in previous lives or how he has acquired faults, is so constituted that he is driven to where he fits in terms of environment and destiny. What he experiences is not really alien to him, but through the general laws of nature he fits in there. That law is already recognized for non-human beings. In the future, man will learn to recognize: When good or bad luck befalls me, it was necessary for me, and I sought it in a certain way because I laid the groundwork for it in previous lives, which is why I fit into this environment. This law will be self-evident in the not too distant future.

When people talk about the causes of good and bad luck, talents and abilities lying in past lives, it may be said that this is far removed from our everyday way of looking at life and takes us into distant worlds. But the question is: does this law really only apply from one life to another, or must it not also apply in narrower circles, to our ordinary life between birth and death? Through supersensible research, we come closer to understanding this law in relation to our present life as well. People usually see only the shortest periods of time and have a certain aversion to connecting longer periods of time. But one can only recognize cause and effect if one tries, for example, to connect what took place in childhood with what happens at a later age, or similarly to connect the other ages with each other. In short, if one makes an effort to explore step by step - in the way a scientist researches in his field - how [the idea of] karma becomes fruitful for life.

To gain a more thorough understanding, we can start from circumstances that are obvious to everyone and look at them from the point of view of karma. Of course, external circumstances will modify the law of karma, but if we look at life seriously and worthily, we will always come back to the underlying law. We just must not come up with all sorts of objections and cite exceptions and so on – these do not apply in science either. There is a law that a stone thrown in a certain direction falls, but a gust of wind can come and modify that direction - that is why the law applies. Life can only become true and fruitful when we recognize the law of karma and when it becomes a way of life, as the laws of physics are in physics. Theosophy can become something that intervenes in our lives as the laws of physics do in the external processes and activities of life.

Let us move on to something very specific. Suppose that a person, in his youth, say up to the age of 15 or 16, shows us that he gets angry when he sees injustice in his environment. It is easy to do so when you are young. What is stirring in the soul should not be considered worthless, because if a person in his youth can become very angry about injustice and later manages to overcome this anger, to purify himself of it and to refine it through appropriate self-education, then something quite different will come of him than, for example, of a phlegmatic person. Anger is an affect, a part of a passion, and when it is transformed, it becomes something quite different, and the later it becomes, the earlier the anger-fortitude in childhood has occurred. The true student of life will recognize this everywhere. In a phlegmatic person, this transformation will never be seen. But how does anger transform? What we have as blind anger towards injustice [in youth] we apply as helpfulness for our fellow human beings in later life: anger-fortitude in youth transforms in such a way.

Today we are taught in school that warmth is transformed into propulsive force. A similar law, which works in the same way as that of the transformation of natural forces in external life, exists for our inner life, for what can be experienced and felt in the soul. It is no coincidence that a person like Goethe said: What one wishes for in youth, one has in abundance in old age. It is not meant to say that in youth one only has to wish, but Goethe thought: a person who is angry would like to help, but cannot in youth; this wish to help is transformed, and now in old age one has abundance. Today, people still do not believe that this is the case. We have, it is thought, ample opportunity in old age to develop love and goodwill of our own accord. But if you look more closely, you will find that it is precisely those who were wrathful in their youth who are most likely to be helping their fellow human beings.

Another example shows how karma enters our lives. If you have had the opportunity as a child to look up to relatives with reverence and awe, you cannot be grateful enough if you reflect on yourself with sufficient self-examination. And if one had the opportunity not only to worship people, but to rise in devotion before the great facts of life, then this is something to look back on with deepest gratitude. It is an instinctive feeling that the sense of reverence that one can experience in youth has causes that have effects in later life. The underlying principle could be expressed by the image of folded hands and bowed knees. One might say – and life proves it to be true – that those who were able to fold their hands a lot in their youth can figuratively raise their hands a lot in old age to bless and thus become a benefactor to those around them. There are people who enter any circle, and one feels, without them saying much, their mere presence as a blessing. They bless by their mere existence, because they have acquired the appropriate soul powers. Such powers occur in later life when in youth the karmic causes have been laid by shyly looking up to something worthy of veneration. Devotion is transformed into beneficial powers.

We can go much further in such a consideration of everyday experiences to something that most people hate very much and are frightened by, not at a low level of education, but at the highest levels of education - the lie and envy. Yet we never meet these qualities interwoven in character. They can be traced back to earlier experiences, but when we see them occurring, we can say that lies and envy are the causes of something that is already being lived out between birth and death. We know how a person despises himself, as it were, when he has to say to himself, 'I am envious' or 'I have a tendency to lie'. He is convinced from the outset that these are not good qualities. Goethe, for example, says in his self-observation that he is glad that he does not have envy as one of his vices, and Cellini says that he feels particularly fortunate not to be aware of any lies. People try to get rid of these things when they find them in themselves. Let us assume that a person realizes that he is envious; he wants to get rid of it, but he is not strong enough to uproot envy. You can't just uproot something like that, but only transform it, like external forces. The person fights envy so that he no longer thinks: I don't want this or that for this person. Thus, with the intellect, he has overcome envy, but in the depths of his character he cannot, and envy reappears in a transformed form.

There is a legitimate connection between envy and its transformation product, a kind of addiction to criticism. He criticizes everything he can find fault with, and such a person is often very pleased with himself. He no longer notices the envy, and criticizing - that is right and proper, because one must point out people's faults! Of course one must, but it depends on whether one does it to improve people or just to criticize them. In the latter case, it is transformed envy. This is very common in life. Many tea and coffee klatches and morning and evening chats would not exist if envy had not been transformed into criticism. There we see how a quality is transformed under the influence of human soul striving itself. Let us now follow what occurs later in a person when he develops envy and criticism, especially when these have raged in youth. He becomes what we might call a dependent being, a person who needs the advice and help of other people for even the smallest things, who does not know how to cope with life. One can doubt such things, but if one looks into life, one will see that they apply just as much as the physical laws in natural science.

From this, good educational principles for life can be derived. We must see that envy and carping do not run rampant. We cannot eradicate them, but we can transform them in the right way. The educator must use all the means at his disposal to ensure that these qualities do not degenerate into instability, but become what could be called a certain yearning to immerse oneself in the mind, so that the person gets the feeling that there is something inside of me that I sense as a faint presentiment, something that is asleep in me. This is one of the most beautiful fruits that can arise from properly transformed bad qualities when they are guided in the appropriate way.

In general, the worst qualities, when guided in the appropriate way, can have the most beautiful effects. For example, lies and dishonesty. We should pay attention to them as they arise in youth. It is not only telling untruths that is meant here, but one should recall again and again how difficult it is to always be truthful. It is easy to set up ideals in life, but always being truthful is not that easy, and it can even lead the best intention and the noblest of minds to be untrue in some respects. A teacher who tells a young child who is tormenting a worm [and cutting it in two] not to torment this worm, because it feels pain just like you, is telling an untruth, and yet he may be inspired by lofty ideals. When a worm is cut in two, one piece can continue to live. If you tell a child something like this, which it can transfer to itself, then you are drawing its attention to something that is not right, because it could not continue to live if the same thing happened to it. You would have to tell it something completely different to keep it from killing or torturing the worm.

The child may forget such things as “The worm feels pain like you do.” But where does the forgetting take place? In his conscious mind. However, there is a deeper core to the human being, and we may have long forgotten something with our everyday consciousness – but it sits in the astral and continues to have an effect. Something like this, which does not correspond exactly to reality and is not controlled by the conscious mind, nevertheless has the same consequence as a more direct lie. [Through this untruth] the child develops what we can call a shy nature. Such a child becomes shy and does not dare to look people in the eye. Every untruth has the effect of a physical law, even one implanted under the mask of a high ideal. From this example we can see how spiritual science can be useful.

Spiritual science instructs us on how careful we must be with every word. We can see how the study of spiritual science as such affects a person's life in general. Here is a concrete example: Many people suffer from poor memory, with which they themselves are not satisfied and which they claim is getting worse and worse. It is a result of supersensible research that the more a person absorbs only materialistic ideas, that is, only what he can hear, see, or grasp with his mind, the worse his memory must become. Such ideas fill the lives of most people today, but they are the least suitable for generating the powers to truly keep memory alive. We also take certain soul powers from a person whom we only fill with materialistic ideas.

What we, on the other hand, absorb as a result of supersensible research, what enters the soul as spiritual-scientific knowledge, what forces us to grasp very clear and very interlocking thoughts, that supplies the soul with strength. It is certainly not easy to grasp such thoughts, where not one stands next to the other, but one grows out of the other, as in a plant. The consequence of such thoughts is, quite apart from the fact that they convey truths to us, that our inner life becomes more concentrated. Even if he cannot see into the higher worlds himself, a person who deals with such thoughts will repeatedly have certain main concepts before his soul, provided he does not become bored with them. This holds together what we call the ether consciousness, which is not recognized by external science. It is strengthened, and the result is that man retains his memory in a much better condition than usual.

Of course, it is not difficult to refute this. It only takes one person to come and say: Look, this theosophist has spent his whole life dealing with supersensory ideas, and now he has almost no memory at all. - One would just have to look at what he would have become without spiritual science. Such things cannot be compared with each other by statistics and so on, but only by what the person can experience in himself. When memory begins to waver and when a person begins to occupy himself with the supersensible, it becomes easier for him to retrieve it. Memory will take on a different character. From this we can conclude how much our everyday life benefits when we fertilize and permeate it with supersensible ideas.

And further: What do we need as human beings for what we are supposed to achieve? Joie de vivre and contentment, interest in our surroundings. What fate assigns us often cannot be a source of joy, but a source of displeasure, of pain. Life can easily become bleak. But for those who are truly capable of striving for the truths of the supersensible world, there can be no complete desolation in life. For even if the outer world should bring misfortune upon misfortune, supersensible knowledge conjures up joy and delight and enlightens us with the consciousness: No matter where he stands, man belongs to the whole spiritual life, he has his destiny, his task and dignity and also his source of joy of existence and love of life, which no outer fate can take away.

A materialistic age should bear this in mind, because many people only find joy in what can be grasped with their hands. Then comes oversaturation and the greed to receive ever new impressions. And when these do not come and life always brings the same, then comes desolation, because man only knows a source of happiness in what comes from outside. But if he has grasped the concepts of a supersensible world, then these work from within, and so we can create the joy of life within ourselves from what we conjure up from within, even if we have no stimulus from outside. The smallest things in life can become the source of inexpressible joy of life and great happiness. That is the difference between the two kinds of concepts: The outer concepts satisfy only our intellect and only for a short time our feelings; then it stops. The pathfinders in the materialistic field can have the joy of research, but they will soon feel desolate in their souls. But what we take from the sources of supersensible knowledge offers a never-ending source of joy and the power of being.

One would like to refer again and again to something that Fichte, who did not live in the humanities but nevertheless strove for it, said to his audience. He once said: What I have to give you speaks of the facts of the supersensible world, but for this another, a new sense is necessary. He emphasizes the connection between man and this supersensible world in the following words: We only look at what surrounds us in life, such as fate, pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, with the right understanding and in the right measure, and only get the right view of our destiny when we see the connection between man and the divine. When man becomes conscious of this connection, then, says Fichte, he can say: “Ye clouds, descend and pour down upon me in streams; ye mountains, fall upon my body and bury me; ye thunders roll, ye lightnings crush me.” I defy your power, for I have grasped my destiny, and that is eternal, as the spirit is eternal.

A presentiment of such a sense of security can come to anyone who in any way becomes acquainted with supersensible research. It is necessary for human nature that these things should enter into our everyday life. How does this show itself? Take a person who lives in the country, in an area where few newspapers and enlightening literature still reach, and compare him to a city dweller who is at the center of modern education, reads newspapers and magazines of all kinds, and so on. This country dweller cannot, by his very nature, be satisfied with the consciousness that the old traditions give him. And since he has nothing else to read, he delves into the Bible. It often happens that the words of the Bible appeal to such a person's mind, but by not only seizing the consciousness but also the subconscious, they sink into the inner being, which is connected with the need for something superhuman. This is the source of many harmful superstitions. For example, the people concerned think they are prophets, they then found sects and so on. Because the urge for the supersensible lies at the deepest source of the soul, if he cannot find the right path, he seeks something else, and that can turn out to be harmful. Such a person only proves how deeply rooted it is in human nature to find the connection with the supersensible world.

The city dweller, on the other hand, has no opportunity to let the supersensible take effect on him. But the urge for it is there, and man fills the ordinary consciousness with all kinds of things: with spiritualism, with “world riddles” and so on. Many people go to “advanced” world-view meetings and also profess such views, and they do not know that their subconscious soul is longing for something completely different. There it continues to work, and later the effect appears, not as superstitious sectarianism as in the countryside, but as uneasiness, gloom; this or that, all kinds of ideas come over them, they become nervous, lose their mental balance, and if they have money, they go from sanatorium to sanatorium. They ask themselves: What is actually wrong with me? Without knowing it, they are missing the connection with supersensible truths.

Some people today are being deprived of supersensible truths because they are considered to be a flight of fancy. They are being deprived of that which gives mental health and emotional balance. And because the physical is the consequence of the spiritual, they are also deprived of their physical health. Here we see how the results of supersensible research find their way into ordinary life. We often have occasion to see how the very gravest mistakes are made because people do not know how the supersensible works. For example, parents and educators believe that they can do no better than to impose punishment immediately after the “crime” has occurred; they do not know that punishment that occurs only after some time has passed can be much milder and, secondly, much more fruitful. The child should never get the impression that the teacher's punishment is a kind of revenge; he should never see him angry. When some time has passed, this will hardly be the case anymore, and the educator will also see many things differently when he looks at the mistake soberly, with his everyday sense. While he does not believe he can get by without corporal punishment when he punishes immediately, he will be able to apply milder means later. Besides, the consciousness of his wrongdoing has a completely different effect on the child's mind if he is not immediately punished for it.

A true light only falls on this matter when man rises above his fate, which often appears to him as something dark, to what the insights from the supersensible world can open up to him. And this is something that is not just a matter of thought and intellect, but something that, like blood, flows through our whole body. Supersensible thoughts pour into our destiny. A person who is unskillful can even become skillful through them. When what sprouts from the supersensible world passes into the physical, physical mobility is attained. That is why what comes from the supersensible is clothed in such sentences that it can be examined by logic, so that man can accept the truths of the supersensible world with his mind. Then they can flow into our lives, fertilizing it and making us secure in the life we must lead within our destiny.

The application of this truth shows us more than any speculation that man is called to carry down the spiritual forces and facts from the spiritual world into the physical. And when man endeavors to do this, he will become quite certain of his connection with the supersensible world, for he will realize that he is a spiritual being and is rooted not only in the physical but also in the supersensible world, and from this certainty he will draw an ever more secure feeling and greater hope in life. No matter how much the external life may torment him with his impenetrable destiny, no matter how incomprehensible the mighty waves of fate or the pinpricks of everyday life may be to us, we know that there are hidden forces that can open our spiritual can open our spiritual eyes and bring us light about our dark destiny, so that we can face with strong, inner energy everything that comes to us in the storm of life - for the blessing of the world, for the work on ourselves, for the development of all humanity.

Anyone who takes the time to study the four documents about the event in Palestine will soon discover the difference between the first three gospels and the fourth, the Gospel of John. In the first three gospels, the external events are brought closer to people in their minds; in the Gospel of John, more attention is paid to feelings. An infinite inwardness inspired the author, a compassion and empathy for what he felt towards Christ Jesus is expressed here. The personality of the author felt most intensely what took place in Palestine.

This feeling of the author was also complicit in the assertion that, from the critical point of view of a materialistic science, this gospel could be said to be the least truthfully rendered. It was therefore not understood as a historical fact, but as a powerful poem full of deep poetry, as a hymn to Christ Jesus, this powerful, towering personality. But also the spirit of the age in the sense of materialistic thinking contributed to making the first three synoptic Gospels appear closer and more natural to the human mind and feeling of today. The Gospel of John does not fit in well with this, since its Christ cannot be compared with any personality.

This is more readily possible with the first three, and how well our time has profited from the fact that the personality of Christ Jesus as a man among men could be presented as equal to others, like Socrates, Plato and other great men. The “simple man of Nazareth,” how our time likes this saying and how it uses it to try to lower the Christ personality to the human level! This judgment of taste is based on the suggestion of critical science.

In contrast to this is theosophy or spiritual science; it wants to be nothing more than the instrument for understanding these religious documents. Theosophy is completely without preconditions. Today, science does not take the same position as it did 300 years ago, when the teachings of Aristotle applied, and no one looked at nature! [Then] came the great Kepler, and humanity learned to see! On the one side were now the Aristotelians, on the other the unconditional naturalists, and indicative is the statement of the Aristotle student in an argument about the exits of the nerve cords, he believed more in Aristotle than in nature! At that time they had not yet developed the intuitive perception of what lies behind material things, which spiritual science is now trying to emphasize again, not with physical instruments but through spiritual faculties. Theosophy takes the path of first 'looking' and then studying the old records, and it always turns out that both give the same result: what has been seen is proved by the books!

This view will become more and more accepted, however much science may resist it. So we will also examine without prejudice what the matter is with the Gospel of John. It is something like Euclid's geometry; the student listens to the teaching, and through realization it finally becomes his spiritual property and complete fact. In this way, too, we will see how the Gospel of John agrees with what spiritual science has to say about it.

What is the theosophical view of man? We see how man possesses a fourfold nature: first, the physical body; then the etheric body with the principle of growth and reproduction, of fighting against decay. Further, the astral or desire body, the seat of sensations and feelings. When we see the person before us, we recognize that he consists of a sum of pleasure and suffering, of joy and pain. But if we go deeper, we realize that there is a name that is unique in the designation of man. This is the name “I”. Anyone can call an object by the same name, but the name “I” can only be spoken by each person when they mean their innermost being, their self, their individuality. In this sense, the “I” cannot reach our ears from the outside.

So how does the spiritual researcher view the world of matter? Everything physical has its origin in the spiritual. All matter is born of spirit, is condensed spirit, just as ice is condensed water. It is the same with the spiritual realm. It is in our midst. Everything is only the external expression of the spiritual. The physical human being is born out of the spirit. The ego is the divine spark that has flowed out of the spiritual ocean like a drop into man.

Thus we see how, starting from the physical body, the other forms become ever more refined and ethereal. We see how the spirit underlies everything. This spirit, which walks through the world as an infinite being, out of which the physical is born. This spirit, underlying all existence, is described by Christian science as the Logos or the Word, the divine creative Word. Just as certain figures appear on a pure, shiny brass plate when dust particles are stroked with a violin bow, so too can the Logos be described as the creator of everything in the world of phenomena. If we go back to primeval times, we will find the Logos working in all physical bodies, first in the etheric body, then in the astral body, and we see how human beings will emerge from this light. It is only through light that human beings are possible; without light there is no knowledge, no spiritual striving. Only the divine spirit brings about the world realm.

The youngest child of the divine spirit is the “I” in man. This “I” is at first unconscious of its origin, of its divine essence. In the beginning we do not recognize divine wisdom. Christian wisdom therefore refers to it as darkness. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word. And the Word was the light of men, shining in the darkness, but the darkness comprehended it not.

This light, which underlies all bodies, is referred to as the life of the Logos. In the beginning, there was the Logos, from which everything came into being; the life of the Logos becomes light and the light shines in the unconscious human nature.

We have seen how the fourfold human nature arises from direct contemplation of the spiritual world. The author of the Gospel of John was an awakened person, a great initiate who is never referred to as anything other than “the disciple whom the Lord loved” (John 21:20). In him, the entire soul content of Christ continued to work; the entire depth of Christ's appearance was reflected in this disciple and allowed him to look deeply into the spiritual world. He recognized what was hidden behind the personality of Christ, that the highest being that had ever walked on earth was embodied in Jesus of Nazareth.

Until Christ came, man was unconscious of his divinity. Only Christ gave him the sense of “his fulness...” (John 1:16). Everything in the Gospel of John is written from the knowledge of the deepest secrets, for example, the eleventh chapter, the resurrection of Lazarus. Everyone senses that something profound underlies this process. After this act had happened, it was said: “This man does great signs.” (John 11:47) Something happened that made people tremble before the power of Jesus Christ's personality. This is an act of initiation, the first initiation that Christ performed, which is clear from the words: “The disease is not unto death, but that God may be made visible.” (John 11:4) He wanted to show that He is the life and the light, and this light should also illuminate Lazarus and lead him to awakening, since he was a friend of the Master. This was to be shown in the Lazarus process.

There have always been people in whom the great event arises, in whom the world of light becomes reality; the world of the spirit approaches them, their spiritual ear and eye is unlocked and opened to spiritual things. The method of initiation is shown in the ancient mysteries. They distinguish three degrees. The first degree is that of sense-free thinking. The senses must be eliminated and only objective observation of things may take place. Second degree: purification or cleansing. The astral experiences of feeling and sensation are transformed; with new organs one can look into the astral world: spiritual ears and eyes.

The third degree is that of enlightenment. When the initiate returns to the physical world after three and a half days, he always has the spiritual world before his eyes, he is born anew. During the three days, the etheric and astral bodies were driven out of the physical body and afterwards the etheric body felt this imprint of the higher worlds throughout the rest of its life.

The first initiation by Christ was the resurrection of Lazarus. Through Christ a new kind of initiation had been introduced by impressing the whole spiritual truth of Christ upon the one being initiated. From this it can be seen how this event of the resurrection of Lazarus has a much deeper meaning than the usual view. It is only in this sense that Goethe's words can be applied: “For as long as you do not have this dying and becoming, you are only a dull guest on the dark earth!”

Deep silence had to prevail about what happened in the sacred mysteries. The betrayal of the mysteries' processes resulted in death. This may also explain the death of Socrates. Aeschylus could only save himself from death by fleeing to the temple. This was done because at that time humanity was not considered ready for initiation. Christ publicly performed the initiation out of infinite compassion for humanity. Thus, what has become known as the theosophical view has also been taken out of the mysteries.

It is only a question of how these initiation abilities are acquired and what the path to them is. In the Christian method of initiation, man must pass through seven stages, as shown in the following consideration.

First: the plant takes root in the dead mineral, in the mineral kingdom; the plant could not be as it is today if the mineral kingdom had not provided the material for its construction. It will therefore bow down in gratitude to the mineral, without which it could not exist. In the same way, the animal will bow down to the plant from which it gets the nourishment for its own development. It is the same with humans. They must bow down humbly to the natural kingdoms below them, for they are the product of them. Those who have reached a higher level of development must always remember that they were once at every lower level. Thus they will be imbued with universal humility, and then one day the image will arise before them that John presented in the 13th chapter as Christ washing the disciples' feet: “The servant is not greater than the master” (John 13:16).

The second step is that of purification and cleansing. He grasps everything with the mind and distinguishes between reality and illusion. He learns to experience what constitutes a person's perception in reality; one learns to evaluate all facts of experience from the right point of view. Come what may, always stand upright in life. Image of the scourged Jesus.

In the third stage, the person being initiated also learns to control their feelings; they learn the ability to persevere even when what is most sacred and sublime to them is met with ridicule and scorn. Crowning of Thorns. Image of the Crowned Christ.

Fourth stage: the crucified Christ. One feels one's own body as something alien, something external. He becomes strong in spirit through this experience; he feels the crucified Christ as an actual experience. Here also the Simon Peter test approaches him, also the blood test.

The fifth stage is mystical death. Everything around him is absorbed, a lethargic state sets in, a complete calm. An equanimity of his mental state towards all external appearances.

The sixth stage is referred to as the entombment; he feels at one with the earth, he is reborn in spirit.

The seventh stage cannot be explained with physical senses, it is the union with the divine, a purely spiritual process, the ascension.

We see how the entire Christ event takes place within the initiate, how he inwardly passes through all the phases of this event in reality. The whole outer Christ event with all its historical details is taken up inwardly. We no longer need any outer proof, just as it happens to us in the Damascus event of Paul, who had taken up the spiritual Christ within himself.

The eyes are formed by the light for the light; without light there is no eye, and without the historical Christ there can be no inner experience of Christ. Thus the Christ event is experienced, but there are initiates of different degrees. Different images arise for the initiates, depending on their point of view. The apostles were also such initiates. The higher their spiritual level, the deeper they could penetrate into the mysteries of the Christ event.

Thus we see John, the apostle whom the Lord loved, as an initiate who had felt Christ most deeply. Goethe says: “If the eye were not sun-like, the sun could never behold it. If there were not in us the power of God himself, how could we be enraptured by the Divine!” One should not only read the Gospel of John, but really experience it, then this Christ event will also shine for us.

Talking about the beginning and end of the earth seems like a very presumptuous undertaking at first. Only when you consider how infinitely important it is for humans to take a look at the whole place they live in can it become clear how important it is to take a look at the beginning and end of our planet.

Not only must we not forget this, but we must realize that it is not outdated; for all the thinking and feeling of our contemporaries in this field, which we will enter from a spiritual-scientific point of view, has grown out of the so-called scientific facts and only wants to accept scientific knowledge on this basis. Today we will have to discuss many things that one would probably think are not based on the solid ground of facts, which seemingly contradict what is considered scientific fact today.

But spiritual science can never limit itself to staying with what is today called the world of facts – what the human senses perceive around them in the external world or what our scientific methods can be combined through the mind, which is based on [what the senses grasp through the eyes, ears and hands], sensory research.

Spiritual science or, as it is called in the sense of a new current, theosophy, is by no means something that somehow comes into conflict with scientific facts. That would not only be presumptuous, but a nonsensical undertaking if one wanted to put forward any theory that contradicted firmly established, thoroughly researched facts.

But a distinction must be made between what human theory and hypothesis have built out of these facts like a confession; because, in addition to all other religious worldviews, in our time there is a kind of materialistic religion, or, since this is no longer a common word, , a kind of materialistic creed, which only wants to be in harmony and agreement with what the senses see, which only wants to accept what can be seen with the eyes, grasped with the hands, or similarly imagined as real sensual facts in the environment. This could bring Theosophy into conflict.

But [Theosophy] stands on two solid pillars, two insights – hypotheses, you may call them; for the Theosophist they are basic facts, not just convictions.

The one fact is that behind the sensual world there is a spiritual, invisible, supersensory world.

The other fact is that it is possible for man to penetrate into this invisible world through his knowledge and his research.

There are many people today who say: If there is a spiritual world, if there is something transcendental, we cannot explore it. What we know for sure, we know because we can open our eyes to visible things.

Spiritual science, however, says: [Of course] with the abilities of human nature, which such a world view speaks of, which is limited only to the sense world, we cannot penetrate into the supersensible world. But spiritual science, in a much stricter sense than any knowledge based on external facts, holds fast to what we call development. There is much talk of development today — it is also shown how man has developed through many stages to his present form. But when this view has arrived, it wants to stop at a certain point. It assumes that man has developed so far; but this view does not want to know anything about further development. It has a strange inconsistency, which may not be admitted theoretically, but which is expressed step by step in attitudes and feelings, in that one says: Man has developed, but there can be no question of further development.

One could call people with this view the Man- and We-people.

If we put ourselves in the place of popular newspaper articles or other popular writings, in which what appears to be established science flows into the world through a thousand channels, we often find this expression: “one cannot know”, “one cannot recognize” or “we cannot recognize”, etc.

Now, let us ask ourselves this: can a logic that truly understands itself, a thinking that truly understands itself, take such a point of view? Is this not the standpoint from which the blind would view things if the seeing were to tell him about light, radiance and color, and he were to reply: 'All you tell me is mere fantasy, mere imagination; you cannot know this'? Similarly, what our contemporaries — the man and woman in the street — say about a genuine spiritual doctrine of development is no better.

Spiritual science says: There are dormant abilities in every person, spiritual organs that can be developed and through which he can see and perceive more than through his sensory organs. Those others then say: This is fantasy, this is vain dreaming, we cannot know this.

But if you delve deeper into what is to come to humanity through Theosophy [in these times], you will see that in terms of spiritual development for humanity, there is an event that is much [higher and] more brilliant than what someone experiences who is born blind and undergoes an operation and gains their sight. When the man born blind undergoes an operation, he encounters light and color and clarity from the world that was previously shrouded in darkness for him, a world that he only knew through touch. A new world shines before him. If we transfer this to the spiritual life, we have what we call the awakening of the “spiritual eye”, as Goethe calls it. (Goethe says: Through what we know, we must not limit what is there.)

This awakening, this rebirth of man exists; this new world, which he just does not know, it is there. Never may we believe limited by what we know, everything that is here. With each new organ, a new world opens up for man. The development of man beyond the point to which nature has brought him, that is what spiritual science adheres to and where it begins. Theosophy leads us from what we have involuntarily become to what we are to become voluntarily. The sensual eyes have been given to us by nature around us, the spiritual eyes we awaken, acquire ourselves. Just as the sensual eyes perceive sensual light, so the spiritual eyes will take in a spiritual world.

Since Theosophy draws on completely different sources than the combining approach of our contemporaries [of building an event on solid facts], it may initially appear as if there is a bitter contradiction between what science is and what spiritual science has to say; but spiritual science does not deny anything that science says. But with a topic such as today's, where we combine the distant beginning of humanity and the goal of human development in the distant future, the contradiction between spiritual science and natural science will seemingly be there. In reality, spiritual science stands firmly on the ground of scientific facts. Let us first ask: What does science have to say about our topic, and by what means does it seek to recognize the gradual development of our earthly creatures?

Science is limited to sensory perception. It looks at what is around us in the present, as well as at the remains of a more or less distant past.

In the layers of our earth we find not only what our present life promotes and sustains, but also the remains of beings, the remains of beings that belonged to our earth in distant prehistoric times. If we dig into it, or expose it in some other way, the layers of our earth reveal primeval monuments of what took place in prehistoric times on our planet.

We first find the remains of a not-so-distant past in what remains of the graves and dwellings of our ancestors. This allows us to get a picture of these primitive ancestors, of their customs, how they lived, how they cooked, how they hunted.

Furthermore, we find the remains of animals that still exist today but which had a different shape in the past. Finally, we find the remains of animal species that are now extinct. It is easy to see that one layer lies on top of the other: what developed later, always upwards. If we look at all this carefully, we can reconstruct an image of how beings lived and developed on our earth.

Therefore, the natural scientist believes he is justified in saying: When we examine the layers, which, based on their position, are the oldest, it shows that at first no living creatures existed in our form, and then simple living creatures appeared; then increasingly complex ones, right up to humans.

We look back to a distant primeval time of the earth, when the earth was still much warmer, indeed, when it was still in a molten state. We then see how the earth gradually cooled, how the metals hardened, how the solid rock settled; we see how the first simple plants and animals emerged in a way that is unfathomable to science. We see the earth covered with simple plants and animals in the time called the Silurian and Devonian periods, where lower animals such as fish are present first, then amphibians and reptiles.

We then see an age in which the earth is covered over long distances by huge, tree-like plants; we then see how animal creatures lived there that seem adventurous to us today, that are extinct today. Then we see how these creatures become extinct, then how the first mammals arise – such as marsupials – then, relatively late, when the Earth had solidified, how the later mammals gradually arise, how they develop up, how they develop up to the apes; and how then, only very, very late, humans arise.

Natural science can tell us all this, but it has nothing to say about the way in which life develops out of the inanimate. It says: Once life existed, the beings developed ever higher through a constant struggle, [for which they needed and developed organs, and in this way they rose up to become human beings]. This is the confession that is purely limited to sensual facts – an image that would have to present itself from the point of view of natural science, the one who could sit down a chair in space and watch the world come into being over millions of years.

Spiritual science does not contradict this picture. It is important that one can develop a correct picture of the Earth's evolution using such methods. The spiritual researcher knows that there is much that is not right in this picture, because it assumes that higher and higher things have always emerged from the lower material, right up to the spirit. [And so it was initially with the material image that many have gained from the seemingly established facts that the] spirit is nothing more than what arises from material processes for the materialistic mind. Great emphasis must be placed on not overlooking this.

[As I said], this sensory image is not denied by spiritual science. Of course, it can only be recreated in the mind of today's man. Insofar as natural science is based on facts [and uses them to construct the past], it would be nonsense and folly to rebel against natural science. But spiritual science tells us: Behind all sensual existence and all sensual becoming stands spiritual being and spiritual becoming.

We will best understand this if we start from the present-day human being, because what the outer sensual appearance shows in the human being is, for spiritual science, only part of the human being. What presents itself to the senses, to the intellect, is only the human physical body. This physical body of man contains the same substances as all the seemingly lifeless nature around us; forces that live in every mineral being. Only in man are they much more complicated.

For every living being, especially for humans, spiritual science recognizes a second link in the overall being: this is the etheric or life body. If the physical body were left only to physical and chemical laws, it would disintegrate. In itself, the physical body is physically and chemically an impossible mixture. It is only possible because the physical body is permeated at every moment, like a sponge soaked in water, by the etheric body, a body of strength that fights at every moment against the disintegration of the physical body. Death is the moment when the etheric body leaves the physical body. Then the physical body follows the laws of physics and chemistry: it becomes a corpse and disintegrates into its component parts.

Thus, the human being has a second part of his being that he shares with all plants and animals (but no longer with minerals, with seemingly inanimate nature) – the etheric or life body.

Then there is a third part of the human being. Man not only contains what is present under his skin as bones, muscles, nerves and blood, but something lives in man that is much closer to his soul than bones, muscles and blood. What he knows exactly, because it is an experience for him in every moment of waking, is a sum of joy and sorrow, desire and passion. — All that we call soul life, from the lowest desires to the highest ideal — that is his astral body. Man has this in common with animals; no longer with plants.

Then there is a fourth element of the human being, the actual center of the human being, through which he is the crown of earthly creation. One thing is never properly taken into account by our contemporary researchers. There is a name that everyone can only say to themselves; it is the name “I”. Everyone can say “desk” to a desk, “table” to a table. But there is only one thing that everyone can say only to themselves, and that is the little word “I”! This means more than we usually think. None of us can say “I” to another person; it must resound in the innermost part of the soul if it is to express what is really meant by it. Therefore, those who knew the meaning of this word called this “I” the “inexpressible name of God.” They said: When this “I” sounds within man, then the drop of divinity, the spark of divinity in man, announces itself. Then the soul communes with itself. Only the truly divine being has access to this. This has access in the soul by pronouncing the “I am”. Jean Paul remembers the moment when he first became aware of the “I am”. There, he says, he looked “into the veiled holy of holies of his soul”.

These are the four members of the human being: physical body, etheric body, astral body and I. When the naturalist, who believes he can base a belief purely on scientific facts, hears about these four parts of human nature, he may laugh, shake his head or consider the person who comes up with such word combinations and wants to base an insight on them to be a fool. But it would be just a set of words if the material processes of the body were actually to cause feelings, thoughts and the ego. Spiritual science recognizes that the outer body is not the first, but that the first is the ego and the astral body, and that the etheric body and the physical body are nothing but condensations of the spiritual being of man.

For the spiritual researcher, the physical body is to the astral body as ice is to water. If a child comes and shows us a piece of ice and asks what it is – and we say: Dear child, ice is water in a different form!, – at first it may not believe it; but we can make it understandable to it; then it will see it. Thus spiritual science shows that all material being is [transformed] condensed spirit. All that is material has emerged from the spiritual.

If we now look back to the beginning of the earth in terms of spiritual science, we recognize the following: Everything that the hypothetical person would see as a sensual becoming, he would recognize as a condensation of a previous spiritual, as a flowing out of the spirit. In the beginning of the earth's development, we are dealing with nothing but the spiritual. All matter – minerals, plants and animals, the entire world of the senses with all its beings – has developed out of the spiritual.

[Let us consider the state of sleep.] When we look at a sleeping person today, what do we see? First of all, the sleeping person has no inner consciousness. When we fall asleep, our feelings and desires, perceptions and ideas, ideals sink into the darkness. When we wake up, they emerge again [into our field of vision]. Spiritual science explains it this way: When a person sleeps, the physical and etheric bodies lie in the bed; the astral body and the ego are lifted out. Because a person can only interact with the world around them through the instruments of the physical body, the astral body can only have perceptions, it can only experience pleasure and pain when it is within the physical body.

Fichte says: It is not the eyes that see, but the I perceives through them. — In a future state of development of humanity, the astral body will have [organs of perception] of its own, with which it can perceive; the initiate already has them. Then he will perceive the spiritual world as the initiate already does today. The astral body cannot perceive the world around it when a person is asleep. But it would be nonsense to say that the astral body and the human ego are destroyed at night and resurrected anew in the morning. No, the astral person was only in his actual home, the astral world.

For spiritual science, the sleeping human being is a different being than the waking human being. We now ask: What does the astral body and the ego do throughout the night while the person sleeps? Everything in the world, in the cosmos, has its task; so too does the astral body and the ego. Everything is wisely arranged in the cosmos. A being like the human being today could not exist without sleep. If the astral body were always in the physical body, always active in the senses, eyes and ears, the hands, then fatigue would ultimately have a wearing effect.

In the distant past, the astral body lived in the astral world. There it was in harmony with its world. Only in the course of time has it been incorporated into the physical body. There is not yet complete harmony with the physical body. This is expressed through fatigue. During the night, the fatigue must be carried away. We receive strength during sleep through the work of the astral body on the physical body during the night. Natural science says that the human body is refreshed by physical processes. The spiritual researcher does not deny this; but the other thing also happens.

Spiritual research sees the spiritual reasons behind the external facts. For example, let us imagine two people, one of whom slaps the other one in the face. One of the two people watching the scene explains: This person had a particular inner surge of anger [therefore he raised his hand to strike]; that was the cause of the slap. But the other says: You are a dreamer, I saw it: He raised his arm, moved his hand towards the other's face, and that's how he got slapped. Of course, the soul researcher does not deny this event; but he sees that something else was going on. Thus, the spiritual researcher faces the natural scientist.

The actual human being – the I – lives during the night state, albeit unconsciously, in a spiritual existence and works on his physical body. If we trace this image back in the course of the earth's development, it changes continuously. Today's relationship between waking hours and nighttime sleep is not found in all ages. Today we have a ratio between waking and sleeping of two-thirds to one-third. If we go back, we come to times when people slept much more – were outside their physical body for much longer periods of time – and in distant primeval times we find that people slept for the majority of the time and were only in their physical body for a very short time. On the other hand, the activity that the astral body can perform on the physical body is ever more powerful and mighty. At the same time, we see that the physical body is becoming ever simpler and the human spirit is being occupied more and more. If we go back even further, we would find that man has no physical and no etheric body yet, but that he is a purely astral being.

We can imagine it like this: Let us imagine that we have a mass of water and, through some process, cause a part of it to turn into ice. Now we cause [the same process] so that more water turns into ice, and [so on] that this ice becomes more and more complicated. The mass of water is used up more and more, the mass of ice becomes more and more complicated and larger, until finally all the water is used up and we only have an intricate ice formation.

Now imagine that we have not just one but a whole lot of such water balls, of which we treat only a part, as just described. In another, we let the first ice ball fall out of the water mass; because it is separated, no complicated ice ball can form from it. It always remains so simple. At ever further stages, we allow ever more complicated ice balls to fall out, [at the next stage again more]: Thus, in addition to the most complicated ice formations that have emerged from the entire mass of water, we have such formations that fall out of the mother water at an earlier, less complicated stage.

Let us apply this image to the development of our earth and of man, [but bear in mind that] at the beginning of our earth's development there was nothing physical, bodily. The only part of man present was what now slips out during sleep at night. Spiritual science teaches that all other beings on earth (minerals, plants, animals) came into existence later than the spiritual human being. (In the beginning there was nothing but the spiritual human being!)

In the beginning, the entire Earth was like a mulberry (made up of individual berries), composed of spiritual beings. From the astral, the physical first separated like ice balls from water. Some retained the astral [and only formed the physical at a higher level]; for others, what initially separated from the astral substance remained at the first level. The moners [Haeckel's were not there earlier than the spiritual man and] were the first attempt of man to form a physical body of man. Where the first physical rudiments of a physical body fell out of the astral, there the moners formed. But the astral bodies, with the inclusion of the physical, developed higher. Only what fell out of the astral did not advance.

At each level [more complicated beings are formed, and so on; at each level] beings remain who fall away from the spiritual. Let us now look at the entities on different levels that have fallen out and therefore stopped. These fallen out beings have stopped, while the human being, who was the first among all other beings, has separated out everything that was initially in his spirit, so that his complicated physical body was created.

If we look at a preliminary stage of humanity in the not too distant past, we see that the human being still has an awkward body, but also still has the spirituality to develop it to higher levels. But certain bodies remain at this earlier stage; they fall away from spirituality; these are the apes; others ascend, these are today's humans.

If we go back into the past of humanity, we find that the spiritual man is out of the physical body for longer and longer; he transforms the physical body. Thus, the astral man has gradually created today's man, ascending from the lowest form to ever more perfect forms. In the lowest beings, we do not see beings from whom we descend, but backward brothers of man. The other beings, plants and stones, are not the origin of the higher beings either, [but on the contrary, differentiations, retarded products of the same].

The question is therefore wrong: How did the living emerge from the non-living? This gives a completely false picture. We know that coal was formed from plants. There was also life there first. This was transformed into non-life. Once upon a time there were large fern forests and horsetail-like plants on Earth. We find these again in the coal deposits. Everything we now dig up as coal was once a plant. We can see from nature research how the rock kingdom emerged from the plant kingdom.

The spiritual researcher now says: All the mineral kingdom once emerged from the plant kingdom. At that time, the plant kingdom was formed differently and lived under very different conditions than when there was no mineral kingdom. Let us go to the oldest ancestors of the mineral kingdom: granite, which consists of quartz, [feldspar] and mica schist. In the distant past, it was formed from a solidification of the plant kingdom. All that is mineral originated from plant life, all plant life from animal life, all animal life from human life.

In the beginning, only spiritual people were on earth; the animal, plant and mineral separated out of them. What is so often referred to as the first thing to have come into being is the latest to have emerged: the mineral kingdom.

[It is a theosophical principle:] Man is the firstfruits of the earth's development; he contains everything else within him, everything else has emerged from him. All the suggestions of natural science contradict this, but anyone who engages with spiritual science will see the truth. Even where the first mineral, the primeval nebula, occurs, spiritual science says that this primeval nebula is already a creation of the spirit. We must learn to understand everything on earth, starting with human nature.

The future of the earth can only be understood by starting with the human being. [In his own human nature, he is a complicated being.] The physical body of the human being, with the miracle of the brain and the heart, shows us a structure full of wisdom. The smallest piece of the thigh bone is so wisely put together from small beams that the most skillful engineer could not imitate it. This wisdom-filled structure is a condensation of the etheric body, and this in turn is a condensation of the astral body. And this astral body is in turn a creation of the I.

Today, during the night, the astral body is busy working away the fatigue substances from the physical body. In the future, the astral body will become creative again by entering into a relationship with the outside world during the day and getting to know this outside world. In this way it gains knowledge and strength, and these signify increased creativity; with the powers thus acquired, it will continue to work and raise the physical body to levels of higher development. The spirit created the original form of the physical body, it has brought about the physical formation up to the present form and will raise the human form to even higher levels in the future development of the earth.

The spiritual researcher [does not recognize all organs as equal; he does not regard them indifferently, but values them according to different types. He] distinguishes among the physical organs those that are in the process of being regressed, [gradually] dying off, those that have reached their peak in the past, and those that have not yet reached their peak today, that are on the way to developing even more, to perfecting themselves. This is the case with the human heart. The lower organs, which are connected with man's desires and passions, are on the way to dying away; but those which are connected with the higher, with ideal aspirations, are on the way to perfection.

Take the heart, for example, which is a muscle that remains a mystery to anatomists and physiologists. All muscles have a certain structure. Those with voluntary movement, for example the muscles of the hand, have a striated musculature, while those with involuntary movement have longitudinally striated musculature. [The digestive system, with involuntary movement, also has longitudinally striated muscles; only] the heart, which is a muscle with involuntary movement, nevertheless has transversely striated muscles. This makes it a crux for external research.

Spiritual science, however, sheds light on this darkness of material research [by showing that] the heart is on the way to becoming an arbitrary muscle.

In the future, people will regulate their heart and pulse from their soul, with the qualities of their soul. They will gain control over their body. The body will be much more than it is today, the direct expression of the soul's qualities.

We can gain an understanding of this from two facts that already exist in the soul life of man today. The first is what occurs in man when he faces danger. The fear he feels before an event shows itself in the pallor as an influence on the blood, which recedes from the outer parts of his body. What is expressed in the blood is an immediate consequence of the soul process. The other pole of this expression of the soul is found in what we call feelings of shame, where the blood flows to the outer parts of the body, causing the person to blush. These are the two poles of soul feeling.

If we now imagine how the heart develops to ever higher levels of inner formation, until more and more of what takes place in the blood is subject to the will, we have the beginning of what spiritual science presents as the future course of human development. In the future, the human being will discard the organs that point to the past and develop the organs of the future. We look forward to an end of the earth in which man will be spiritualized, so that then, as today his hands are subject to his will, he will have his whole body subject to his will, in a way that today, when we hear about it, seems to border on the miraculous. Today, man already has dominion over many natural forces. He will continue to expand his dominion by gaining control over himself.

At the beginning of the earth, man was a spirit; but his consciousness was a dull, sleeping consciousness. His physical body did not yet exist. Then he separated himself from the astral body. Now the astral body will increasingly dominate the physical body and learn to spiritualize the physical more and more. In the process of higher development, man will again arrive at a spiritual stage, but consciously. In the end, he will stand as the great king of the earth.

The material is a creation of the spiritual, it stands in the middle. Before that, only the spiritual was there and in the future the spiritual will be there again. In the future, the material will recede again, and only what the spirit has drawn out as fruit will remain. Some formations on the human body have already receded. In the beginning, man was completely covered with hair. The hair is already in the process of regressing. Other organs are also in the process of regress.

The eye is formed by the mind. It now perceives the material world. The eye [as an organ] will pass away again; but what the eye has seen, the human mind takes with it as fruit, it incorporates it. Likewise, the ears will pass away as organs; but what man has heard with them, his mind takes with it as fruit. Man has formed his organs for a reason; when all material things cease, he will stand as a spiritual being, more mature, more inward, more perfect. [One day everything physical will be perfected; the earth will crumble into separate parts.] That the earth will one day disintegrate is also taught by physics. But what remains [for the materialist] of [the field of corpses] on earth? If we look at it in a materialistic sense, only the barren nothing remains. In the sense of spiritual science, however, we know that everything seen, heard or felt by these sensory organs will remain as the content of the spiritual man, and with this content the man will ascend to a new cosmic existence in other worlds, still unknown.

We see at the same time the goal of humanity when we consider the beginning and end of the earth's development. This theory is not just gray, but something that pours hope, [trust], strength and confidence into our souls, [inspiring courage and the desire to work. They are distant ideals; yes, but] when man takes up these ideals in his soul, they will help us [and carry us] in the smallest work in everyday life. It is something that makes us eager to work and makes us strong and confident.

We then learn that [we were there as a spirit before our physical matter was there, and that] he creates the form [that he loses], but only enriches himself through the form. [The spirit will emerge victorious again.] What we receive through our eyes and ears, experience in our soul, that will be spiritualized.

[We carry this imprinted spiritual form to ever higher levels of existence.] Those who knew this – [those who looked deeper into the nature of the world] – also knew that man owes his existence to heaven, that he is born out of the world of the stars, that he is more than anything on earth.

We can summarize this with Goethe's words. He felt that man is born out of the great cosmic world, out of which the stars were born. He expresses this in the words he calls “Orphic primal words”:

As on the day that gave you to the world,
The sun stood to greet the planets,
You come and go and go again
According to the law by which You came.
That is how You must be. You cannot escape Yourself,
As the Sibyls and the prophets have said;
And no time and no power dissect
The form that has been shaped, which develops in a living way.

Human life alternates between waking and sleeping. At night, people sink into a state of unconsciousness or subconsciousness. If they want to consciously experience this, they must first be able to suppress the external sensory impressions. To do this, the soul must be artificially emptied of all external impressions. Then, through the will, powerful, strong thoughts must be evoked in the soul. They must flash through the soul. Without a third element, something like an earthquake would be experienced, a shock. Through the will, a state of complete calm, a state of complete stillness, must now be created in the soul. Then the spiritual researcher experiences something similar to what happens at a lower level to a person born blind, who undergoes an operation and gains sight. Color and light flow in. This is what the spiritual researcher experiences. This is the awakening or initiation for him. Now he can judge about what lies behind the sense impressions. These are not dreams of feverish souls. Thus the spiritual eye is opened, the spiritual ear. This is easily judged wrongly, somewhat like a shell when it is first seen in the limestone. It has not grown out of the rock, but has been created by a water shell animal.

What is sleep and dying for the spiritual researcher? He first considers the nature of man, which consists of four limbs. The lowest limb is the physical body. The etheric or life body continuously prevents the body from falling prey to physical and chemical forces as in death. It paralyzes decay; it is a faithful friend between birth and death. No science prevents the assumption of higher limbs of man. Even if positive research were to show that carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen could be combined to form living protein substance, this result could not refute the higher limbs; it would not be a reason to deny the etheric body. In the space that a person fills with his or her being, not only the physical body and the etheric body are present, but also pleasure and pain, perceptions, ideas, instincts, and so on. They also fill this space. And as a fourth link, the ego, that name that cannot be called from the outside, to whom he belongs, who is also the unspeakable name of God: Jehovah-Yahweh.

We feel tired as soon as the astral body withdraws. Who lifts the hand up? The astral body at the behest of the ego. We see with the astral eye through the instrument of the body. Tiredness sets in where we want to apply the astral body, but where the physical body cannot go with us.

The first organ to fail when we fall asleep is the organ of speech. The inner self can no longer move the outer organ of the tongue. Then the senses of sight, taste and smell fail; finally, hearing, the most spiritual sense, is the last to go. The astral body, which governs everything, gradually slips out. As a person falls asleep, he can feel how external impressions cease. Then a total feeling of one's own being sets in. Mistakes, shortcomings and so on, the spiritual world holds the exterior up to him like a mirror. Then a feeling of bliss; then a twitch as a sign of entering into the spiritual world. Then unconsciousness. Then something can be perceived as a fine rain out of the spiritual world into the physical and etheric body. This is the regeneration, the restoration of that which showed itself as fatigue.

There are certain hypotheses that attribute fatigue to so-called fatigue substances. But this is like two people seeing one person slap another. One says, “I saw how he was boiling inside”; the other describes it like this: “I saw how he raised his hand and slapped him.” The legitimacy of external natural science is admitted, but behind everything external there is nevertheless that which directs and guides it.

In order to rebuild our entire soul life, the astral body draws its strength from the spiritual world at night. Again and again it returns to the spiritual world and carries into it from our daytime consciousness that which can enrich us.

Between 1770 and 1815, events took place that left some people indifferent, but which others processed. However, experiences cannot be processed if they are only simply experienced. They must be sunk into the ground, as it were, as seeds, and then grow like plants. The function of sleep must intervene, as it does between learning something by heart and really knowing it. The experiences must be sunk into the ground in sleep and then picked as experiences in waking, otherwise they remain chaotic like erratic blocks as experiences without wisdom. If you sleep too long, too many of the invisible forces are poured in. Such long sleepers become mentally obese. In spiritual and mental terms, this means that one wants to process too much without having anything. This results in dullness and sluggishness of thought.

Dreams arise when the astral body and the I have connected with the etheric body and not yet with the physical body. This is not to be imagined spatially. The second face also arises as a kind of reflection, as a vision, when the physical and etheric bodies do not merge. The etheric and astral bodies work together. The ego loosens and the astral body submerges into its own world. It is an abnormal intermediate state. If the immersion of the astral body into the visual field is imperfect, then deceptive intuitions arise. If the astral body does not submerge, the connection between the astral body and the etheric body is not in order, then visions arise.

Thus there is an unschooled, disorderly connection of the limbs. In the development between birth and death, almost everything relates to the inner soul abilities. Similar to Francesco Redi's sentence “Living things can only come from living things”, the sentence “Spiritual-soul things can only come from spiritual-soul things” can be formulated. Thus the spiritual soul of man between birth and death comes from a spiritual soul that was already working before birth. Before birth, man worked on the still plastic and malleable physical and etheric body, as he did on the soul body between birth and death. At death, the human being takes an extract of the etheric body with them into the spiritual world as malleable material. There, freed from the physical being, they can accomplish what they were unable to do between birth and death. They can incorporate everything into the spiritual archetype of a new physical body, into spiritual material. The fruit of the previous life can be woven into the etheric body and physical body of the new earthly life.

We must want death to happen. We must be grateful to death. It destroys the scaffolding that would only be a hindrance to our ascent. Goethe said:

Nature invented death in order to have much life.

The spiritual essence has invented death to make a perfection of human life possible. A great poet said:

Man is initially a shadow of a dream.

He has only the shadow of the dream, only the dream of the shadow. That is man of the outer sense world. But if he has a ray of knowledge and light, it becomes as bright as day for him, and joy radiates through all life.

At present we live in the midst of events that arouse every feeling of the human soul in the deepest and most significant way. We live in the midst of events that cause death to pass over the earth very, very frequently, in a comparatively short time, death that has always been looked upon by our spiritual science as a riddle which must be solved. The times in which we live send pain and suffering to many human souls, but let us hope that these times also bear within them forces for the unfolding of man's future development. Many things are born out of pain and suffering, and in these fateful days spiritual-scientific thoughts in particular are well suited to awaken in us forces of confidence and of hope. Let me therefore unfold a few thoughts before your souls. Although not directly, they are nevertheless, indirectly connected with feelings that come to the surface in these stormy and sorrowful times.

What we can see and feel in the manifold events of the present time, is the fact that many people abandon the physical plane, at a comparatively early age of their earthly life. What characterizes the events of the present, is that they call away many young lives from the physical plane.

We know that when a human being passes through the portal of death, he must leave his physical body to the elements of the earth. When he passes through the portal of death, he is, to begin with, still united with his etheric body, his astral body and his ego. And we know that after a comparatively short time the etheric body becomes severed from the human being, who then continues along the path which he must tread between death and a new birth; he passes through the after-death experiences with his ego and his astral body and together with those members of his spiritual nature which can only be acquired in the spiritual world. Afterwards, however, as he continues along his path during the time between death and a new birth, also the etheric body becomes severed from the human individuality and goes its own ways.

Now it must be evident to everyone of us that the etheric body of a man who died young must have an entirely different constitution than that of a man who died after having reached, so to speak, a normal age. We know that the ordinary natural science of to-day always speaks of the fact that forces never go lost, but transform themselves. Natural science recognises this truth in regard to the external world of physical life; it admits that forces do not go lost, but merely transform themselves. Spiritual science must teach that this truth should be recognised in regard to the spiritual world.

When an etheric body abandons a human being who has passed through the portal of death at an early age, that etheric body might still have maintained that man's life on the physical plane for many decades. The constitution of an etheric body must be of such a kind as to enable it to provide the life-forces required by a human being until he reaches an advanced age. But when a human being passes through the portal of death in his 25^th, 26^th or 30^th year, the etheric body that abandons him still possesses the forces that might have enabled it to preserve physical life up to the 60^th, 70^th or 80^th year. These forces live in the etheric body; they do not go lost.

Particularly at a time such as the present one, in which so many etheric bodies are entrusted, as it were, to the spiritual worlds, we should contemplate the following problem: What takes place with the etheric bodies of those who have passed through the portal of death in their early youth?—In order to obtain a sound answer to this question, it will be a good thing to become acquainted first of all with the path trodden by man's etheric body, while he is passing through his life between birth and death.

Man's external physical body (we know this, for it is a trivial truth) grows older and older. But this is not the case with the etheric body. It may perhaps be difficult to understand this, but the etheric body does not in any way grow older; the etheric body grows younger and younger, in the same degree in which the physical body grows older, until it reaches, as it were, a certain childlike stage of etheric existence, when the human being passes through the portal of death after having reached a normal age. We should therefore say to ourselves: When we begin our physical life on earth through birth, then our etheric body, that has become united with our physical body, is, comparatively speaking, old, and in the course of our earthly life it grows younger and younger, until it reaches its childhood stage, when we pass through the portal of death. We might also say: When a human being dies in his young years, his etheric body has not grown young enough, but has instead maintained a certain age. What does this really mean?—A concrete example, already known to many of you, but that I must nevertheless repeat here, a real event of recent times, experienced by quite a number of our friends, may throw some light upon this question.

This concrete example is really connected with a child, with the little boy of one of our members. After an evening lecture at Dornach, we were told that the son of our friend Faiss was missing—a little boy of seven. It was soon evident that a terrible accident must have happened, for a large furniture van had arrived in the late afternoon, moving towards the Goetheanum Building. Curiously enough, this furniture van had appeared in a part where perhaps no furniture van had been seen for a long time, or perhaps never at all, and where perhaps no furniture van would ever be seen again. At a certain spot, this large van had overturned; this had happened towards evening. Nothing else had been noticed, but the little boy was missing. When our friends, with the help of other people, began to lift the van between eleven and twelve at night (the owners intended to lift it the following day for it had fallen most awkwardly and was moreover a very heavy van), sparing no effort in doing so, and when they at last succeeded in lifting it, with the help of other people, it appeared that the little boy, Theodor Faiss, had passed by just when the van had collapsed, so that it fell on top of him. This child (he was only seven years old) was an exceptionally lovable child, with exceptionally beautiful qualities.

In order to see this in the light of spiritual science, let me remind you of a logical train of thoughts which I have often advanced in our circles. I have frequently explained to you that a superficial manner of thinking, an untrained manner of thinking, easily mixes up cause and effect; indeed, such confusions in regard to cause and effect are very frequent. I tried to explain this with the aid of an example, which was only meant, as a comparison. Take the following case: You see a man, who is walking along the bank of a river; you see him fall into the river and try to reach him. Where he fell into the river, you see a stone. You then try to draw the man out of the water; he is dead. What would be more natural than to think that he had stumbled over the stone, thus falling into the water and drowning? But this need not be true at all; a physical investigation may show us that his destiny in no way led him to the stone or anything else, but that at the very moment when he reached the stone, he had a stroke, and this stroke was the cause of his felling into the water. If we were not to investigate matters, we would simply say that the cause of his death was the fact that he fell into the river. Yet this would be the exact opposite of the truth.

In the case of things that are connected, with the spiritual world, it is far more difficult to perceive the true relationship of cause and effect. We should therefore say to ourselves: When we have before us [a] case resembling that of the boy who found his death under circumstances that were so extraordinary (other things too occurred that made it appear extraordinary), we should not think—if we consider the whole case from a higher standpoint—that for instance, the following course of events took place: That the furniture van arrived and overturned, and that the child simply happened to be crushed by it, so that the van was the real cause of the child's death. In a similar case, we think correctly and contemplate it from a spiritual-scientific standpoint, if we say instead that the boy's Karma had reached its end and that the van really arrived at that particular spot because the child had to encounter its death. The van therefore merely provided the external conditions that enabled the child to meet its death, as prescribed in its Karma. Trivially speaking, we might say: The child's Higher Self, that wished to pass through the portal of death, gave orders that this situation should arise, it ordered that these events should occur. Of course, those who think in accordance with the mentality of our time, will find that this is quite an insane idea. Spiritual science must however show that many things which are looked upon as insane by the materialistically minded people of the present time, really correspond to the truth.

In this particular case, however, it is significant that the etheric body of a child of seven severed itself from the child's individuality, from that part of its being which then continued along its path in the spiritual world, united with its ego and astral body. Now I do not mean to speak of the further path taken by the individuality of little Theodor Faiss, but I would rather draw your attention to the fact that this etheric body was of such a kind that its life-forces nurtured that boy's physical existence for only seven years; nevertheless it contained forces that might have enabled it to sustain a whole existence between birth and death, feeding it with life-forces. These forces remained in that etheric body and the significant fact is that all those who had any spiritual connection with the Building which we intend to erect at Dornach in the service of spiritual science, know from that day, which is connected with the death of little Theodor Faiss, what has become of his etheric body.

Many things must be achieved in connection with the Building. Let me now say a few things in regard to the inspirations which must now be brought down from the spiritual worlds. Helping forces are needed if everything that must be brought down from the spiritual world is really to come down. Ever since the death of little Theodor Faiss, we can see that our Dornach Building is enveloped by the greatly enlarged etheric body of this child, as if by an aura that reaches very far. Indeed, we may even determine the limits of this enveloping aura. If you contemplate the Dornach Building you will know (and those who have seen it know this) that it is a double cupola building. (A drawing is made). Here is a separate fire-box building, constructed in a special way, according to principles dictated by spiritual science, and here is another building, where the glass windows for the Goetheanum are cut. Casually I might also add that here you may see the so-called “Haus Hansi”, the house in which I live. Now it is strange to see that little Theodor Faiss' aura, enveloping the whole Building, reaches as far as this spot, near the woods; then it goes past the fire-box building and through the very midst of the building where the windows are cut, and finally past Haus Hansi, but without enclosing it. Consequently, when we enter the Goetheanum, we actually enter this etheric aura.

I have often explained to you that when the etheric body frees itself from the physical body it grows large. Consequently we should not wonder at the large size of this etheric body. It contains mediating forces, and in these we may find certain impressions from the spiritual world, which are needed to create the forms and the artistic structure of our Building. Those who work upon the Building know how much they owe to this etheric aura. And I shall never hesitate to confess that ever since little Theodor's death, the work upon the Building became possible, because the boy's etheric body spreading over the Building supplied the mediating forces that were needed to draw down inspirations from the spiritual world. It would be far easier to hide this fact, or to take on airs as if these mediating forces were not needed. But this is not the essential point; the essential point is to recognise the true facts.

If we consider the facts which I have described to you just now, we can grasp how matters really stand with an etheric body that had to cut itself off from the existence of a human being at a moment when death closed this existence at an early age. It is important to note that the etheric body does not remain, as it were, a mere misty shape, in which the physical body lies embedded. Even the true aspect of the physical body cannot be recognised if we merely describe a mass of muscles, bones, etc. It can only be recognised if we see in it, as it were, a kind of temple, an abode of the Godhead—if we see it standing before us like a microcosm. We recognise what pertains to the physical body only if we realise that its forms are really taken from the whole universe and that in regard to his physical body the human being is a wonderful structure. Those who know the feelings voiced in the first dialogue of my second Mystery Play, “The Souls' Probation”, can have an idea of how the individual human being is placed into his physical existence; all the hierarchies are at work on his physical body, a whole world of divine Beings has the task of placing a human being into his physical existence. If we bear in mind to some extent the observations of clairvoyant knowledge, we fully learn to know the significance of the physical body.

You see, clairvoyant knowledge arises when our soul-spiritual part is lifted out of our physical-corporeal part, so that we are endowed with consciousness and with perceptive forces in the soul-spiritual sphere, outside the body.

From a purely external standpoint, there is really no difference between one who is able to perceive clairvoyantly and one who is asleep, for in both cases the soul-spiritual part is lifted out of the physical-corporeal part. The clairvoyant consciousness is able to perceive outside the physical body, so that it can have an idea of what takes place with the human being when he is asleep.

To facilitate matters, let me draw you a diagram. (A drawing is made.) Now let us assume that this is the physical-corporeal and that the soul-spiritual part of a sleeping human being. When a man is awake, the soul-spiritual part is of course contained in the physical-corporeal part; but let us now imagine a sleeping human being. On the bed lie his physical body and his etheric body; they do not contain his astral body and his ego, as is the case when he is awake. We might say, however: The activity that our astral body and ego carry on within our physical body while we are awake, does not cease completely while we are asleep. To begin with, and seen purely from outside, the sleeping human being lying there on the bed has a lifeless aspect, but to a clairvoyant consciousness the physical and etheric body of the man lying there asleep on the bed do not present a lifeless aspect. The seer must give an entirely different description of a sleeping human being, of this physical and etheric human being, lying there asleep on his bed. A clairvoyant seer must say: The whole day long the sun shone over that region of the earth, where the human beings are now sleeping. Now it is night. (I am speaking of normal conditions; when people are asleep during the night and awake during the day, I am not speaking of the conditions of life in great cities, of metropolitan habits). Darkness envelops that region on which the sun shone the whole day long. And now it is strange to notice the following: The earth, as a living Being, begins to think, and the organs through which the earth thinks are the sleeping human bodies.

The human beings think through their brain, and in the same way the earth thinks through these sleeping human bodies. The earth always perceives by day; it perceives through the fact that the sun shines upon it out of the cosmic spaces. That is the earth's perception. And during the night, the earth works out in thoughts all its perceptions. “The earth thinks”, says the clairvoyant seer; the earth thinks because it makes use of the sleeping human beings. Every sleeping human being becomes, as it were, a brain-molecule of the earth. Our physical body is organised in such a way that it can be used by the earth for it's thinking activity, when we do not use it ourselves.

Just as the earth thinks through the physical body, so it “imagines” (you know what imaginative knowledge is)—it imagines all that is not earthly upon the earth itself, all that belongs to the earth from out the cosmos. The earth imagines this through the etheric body.

We may discern in the sleeping human body parts of the earth's brain, and when the human being is asleep, we may discern in his etheric body the imagination of that part of the universe which belongs, to begin with, to the earth. The etheric body contains, in a play of wonderful pictures, all the forces that must stream into the earth out of the etheric world, so that the earth's events may take place.

As a physical being man belongs to the earth, and just as truly does he belong to the heavens as an etheric being. We can only use our physical body as an organ of thinking, because it is organised for that purpose, because the earth sets it free, as it were, for this purpose, when we are awake. And we can only use our etheric body in such a way that it provides us with life-forces, because the heavens place it at our disposal; when we are awake, and because the heavenly forces of imagination are transformed into life-forces within us, when we are awake.

Thus we cannot speak of our etheric body merely as a misty form, but we should rather speak of it as a microcosmic form reflecting the heavens. When we are born, the etheric body is handed over to us as a specially perfect form. When we are born, our etheric body glistens and shines inwardly, because it is so full of imaginations that come towards it from the great universe. It is a magnificent reflexion of the universe! All that we acquire during our life as culture, knowledge and forces of the will and of feeling, is all drawn out of our etheric body as we grow old in the course of our existence between birth and death. Heaven's cosmic forces give us what they must give us during our life between birth and death, and so we are once more young as etheric beings, when we have lived through a normal life between birth and death, for then we have drawn out of our etheric body everything that could be drawn out of it.

But when an etheric body belonging to a youthful body passes through the portal of death, it still contains a great, great deal of unused heavenly light. That is why it becomes a mediator of the forces which I have described to you. Quite apart from what takes place with the individuality of a human soul such as the one of which we spoke just now, its etheric body almost becomes a heavenly gift, a gift of the spiritual worlds. Such an etheric body can therefore have the inspiring influence that I have described to you.

It would lead us too far to speak of the peculiar Karma of a human soul that is able to make such a sacrifice. This cannot be produced artificially; it must be connected with the whole Karma of the human being that is called upon to make this sacrifice, thus fulfilling something within the process of development of the world that is destined to play a part in the spiritual progress of humanity—and this is the aim of our Building at Dornach, that will house our spiritual-scientific endeavours.

Consider now that we live in a time in which many of these etheric bodies, though they may not be as young as Theodor Faiss, but which are nevertheless etheric bodies coming from youthful human lives, inhabit, as it were, the spiritual atmosphere. Those who crossed the threshold of death on the bloodstained battlefields, pass through this portal of death in a different way than those who pass through it when they die in bed, or as a result of an ordinary accident. In a certain way, they pass through the portal of death so that they reckon with their death, even though this may be more or less unconscious, but in a certain way the astral body reckons with death. We can always say that these deaths are sacrifices. All the etheric bodies, of youthful human beings that thus ascend to the spiritual world contain unused forces. And at present we are facing an epoch in the evolution of humanity in which the souls of men will be able to look up consciously to the spiritual worlds and say to themselves: A time has gone by which sent many, many unused etheric bodies to the spiritual world. These unused etheric bodies contain forces. And from a spiritual-scientific standpoint, we may say even at the present time that these unused etheric bodies contain forces that will be very significant for the evolution of humanity.

When similar things are discussed, it should be emphasized that they cannot apply to every war that was waged in the evolution of humanity upon the earth. What takes place spiritually, what should be contemplated with the aid of spiritual science, is not so easy as natural science thinks. Other wars belonging to the past, require to be spoken of differently. And what I am now explaining to you only applies to the present fateful times.

Now imagine the following: On various occasions we had to emphasize the fact that to-day we do not pursue spiritual science arbitrarily, but that this is connected with the evolutionary process of humanity. It is connected with the progress of humanity that the human beings should gradually become acquainted with spiritual science. We know that every epoch of human evolution has its particular task. You will find this in many of my lectures. And we can realise that man's future salvation, man's welfare in the nearest future, can only flourish if that which spiritual science can reveal, becomes the spiritual property of an ever growing number of human souls.

Consider now—you, who are filled with a heartfelt enthusiasm for spiritual science—consider the difficulties connected with the propagation of spiritual-scientific truths at the present time! Consider the strong opposition that spiritual-scientific truths encounter on the part of people outside. Consider how these truths are slandered, how people look upon them as something insane, distorted and mad, how they consider them to be empty fantasies. Indeed, I might mention striking cases, yet they would all be merely a portion of what everyone can feel, if he is filled with enthusiasm for spiritual science and faces a world, desirous that this world should take up spiritual science ... a world that is so little inclined to take it up!

The spiritual scientist may now say: What the mere earthly forces of humanity are able to attain, seems so weak, so very weak, in comparison to the tasks of spiritual science! But in the near future, the unused etheric bodies of those who had to carry life and soul through the portal of death, on the battlefields where the events of our time are taking place, will be there—and these etheric bodies with their unused forces will be inspiring forces, they will be helping forces in the near future. We only need to look up, but not in an intellectual or theoretic way, we only need to look up to the heavenly etheric bodies of those who in the present fateful times passed through the portal of death in their youth; we only need to direct our souls, as it were, in the mood of prayer towards these etheric bodies ... all those who are filled with enthusiasm for spiritual science only need to direct their souls towards these forces, and they will obtain help from these etheric bodies. Help will come! Those who are genuinely filled with a spiritual-scientific mentality and having a deep life in common with these etheric bodies will find that among the many fruits that will fall into the lap of our earnest time there will also be the one that the souls of men who are filled with enthusiasm for spiritual science will receive the instreaming forces of the youthful etheric bodies that were sacrificed in these terrible times; these forces will flow into them. The souls of those who will live in physical bodies in the near future, and who genuinely feel this, will be filled by the forces of the etheric bodies that were thus sacrificed; their forces will stream into them. And these will be heavenly forces, that is to say, forces pertaining to the spiritual world! Entirely different forces will in future hold sway in the world, so that the world may receive what it should receive: a spiritual-scientific mentality. If we but find the possibility of recognising what is taking place now, if we recognise it in accordance with the explanations given to you just now, this fateful present will acquire a deep, deep significance, also for those who pursue spiritual science.

I already explained to you how wonderful are the imaginative forms contained in man's etheric body! Yet they would present a different aspect, if they had not passed through a human etheric body. We may also apply to this field the saying: “Out of nothing, comes nothing.” Although this is not an absolute truth, it is nevertheless valid for this particular field. The etheric body that man receives through the fact that the human soul enters physical existence through birth, contains a whole collection of forces pertaining to the spiritual world. These forces are gradually used up during physical life. They do not come from nothing, they exist in the spiritual world. They may, of course, also be found in the spiritual world, but it is difficult to discover them directly in the spiritual world; for this we would have to unfold far greater powers. They can be used and they can help us more easily when they have passed through a human being who died young, and in that case they appear together with what they contain through the fact that they passed through that human being. All the forces that lived in the youthful etheric body of little Theodor Faiss would be in the spiritual world even if he had not existed, but without him, it would be a Herculean task to draw them down. Ever since they have become accessible to us through that boy, it is far easier to be inspired by them, so that there is a difference.

Think how important it is for the whole progress of human evolution that in the near future such a great number of etheric bodies with their unused forces will be at the disposal of humanity! Since these forces (I must always call them heavenly forces) have passed through human beings, they have become, as it were, emancipated from the cosmic laws on which they depend. Outside, in the cosmos, these forces that are drawn directly out of the cosmos, cannot possibly be used in an evil way.

Let us now consider the following: All those who pass through the portal of death as a result of the war, or through some other accident, would not yield such a great number of etheric bodies, had the war not broken out. Of course, all these forces also exist in the cosmos, but they could not be employed by the human beings on earth, for it would be too difficult to use them. Another reason why they could not be employed is that they would be entirely used up in the life of men who die at a normal age. This is a very significant fact, it is most important that these heavenly forces should have passed through human bodies, for this renders them, as it were, free from the ordinary course of development. Yet this very freedom also makes it possible that these forces be used for other purposes than the salvation of humanity.

These forces could be used in different ways. Let us take for granted that human life develops in the light of freedom. Let us then assume that Ahriman succeeds in darkening human thought and reason to such an extent as to induce him to reject spiritual science. The etheric bodies would then still be there, but no souls would be there, filled with enthusiasm for spiritual science and able to place these forces at the service of the earth's progress. Lucifer and Ahriman would in that case be able to exercise their influence and they would make use of these etheric forces, either by leading them into the world built up by Lucifer, or into that built up by Ahriman.

Consider the tremendous importance of this fact! It means, that it will depend on man, as it were, how these forces, bestowed upon the world through death-sacrifices, will be embodied in the evolutionary process of the earth. They serve the evolutionary process of the world through the fact that they can inspire us with what spiritual science has kindled. If materialism were to take hold of every mind, or if nationalism were to spread out exclusively in the form of passion, then Lucifer and Ahriman would be able to use these forces for their own end and in that case these forces would be unable to further the progress of the earth. If we consider these connections, then the deep significance which spiritual science has for the human development on earth rises up before us. And only then shall we be able to say: In order that these forces, sacrificed through death, may be rightly used for the progress of human development, it is necessary that the new spirit, which is the outcome of spiritual science, should take hold of those human beings who are capable of grasping it. If we consider spiritual science in connection with the spiritual process of evolution, which comes to the fore so clearly in these fateful days, then we realise that spiritual science is something tremendously great and sacred. The new spirit which can be acquired through spiritual science thus becomes something that may be compared with the mood of prayer and it may be comprised in the words:

O cosmic spirit, let us be completely filled with the spirit that grows out of spiritual science; so that we may not fail to wrest from Ahriman and Lucifer that which can be of help to the earth, for its salvation and its progress!

Our Building is intended to be a symbol of the soul-attitude that humanity should adopt through spiritual science; for that reason, it is built in such a way that its forms are an artistic expression of what spiritual science is able to give us.

I would be obliged to speak of many things were I to explain to you all that is contained in the details of this Building. But you will learn to know them when you shall see the Building in the course of time and participate in what takes place within it.

To-day I will just mention one thing connected with the explanations which I gave just now. There will be a plastic group in a significant place of our Building, where it turns to the East. This plastic group in particular expresses something that should completely fill our consciousness at the present time. Apart from the details that will be added to the group, we may say that it consists of three chief figures. Three Beings express themselves in this plastic group. In this sculpture we shall see a kind of rock with a projecting part, and in this projection there will be a cave. The central figure of the group will stand upon the projecting rock. It is quite indifferent what name we give to this central figure, but we may see in it the representative of man on earth, man's representative in the highest meaning of the word. And if we see the ideal of humanity in that human being who for three years bore within him the Christ, then we may also see the Christ in this central figure of our plastic group. Yet we should not simply face the statue with the thought: “That is meant to be the Christ”, for this would be wrong. Instead, we should experience everything in an artistic way, that is to say, we should not interpret things symbolically from outside, but everything should result from what the forms themselves reveal.

Above, you may see a second shape. This Being has a head resembling (I can only say, resembling) a human head. It is really formed in such a way that it has a strongly developed skull and particularly a strongly developed forehead. Whereas in man these parts are relatively rigid, everything in that Being is extremely mobile. That is to say, everything is an expression of the soul. Just as we can move our hands and fingers, but not the upper parts of our head, so this Being can move everything up there. And the sculptural work expresses that everything up there is mobile. In this Being, the lower part of the physiognomy recedes in a marked way. One might say that the mighty skull dominates the face, that recedes. (I can only discuss a few details, for every line of this sculpture is significant). It is characteristic that the ear of this Being is connected with that part which has, in the case of man, deteriorated and become his larynx. The lobe of the larynx grows upwards and forms the lower part of the ear, whereas the upper part of the ear is formed by the forehead. On the other side, we can see two protuberances that remind us of birds' wings, and in between there is a form that, as a whole resembles a transformed human countenance. The wings, larynx and ear are one form. We may therefore say that this Being lives with its wings in the harmony of the spheres; it swings through the spaces, through the waves of the harmony of the spheres, and this becomes localised in the ear. (In man, all this has deteriorated). Through the fact that the Representative of Mankind raises His left hand, the wings of that Being break against the rock. You may now guess that this falling shape with the broken wings is meant to be Lucifer.

Below in the cave, we can see another shape. Its wings do not resemble birds' wings, but those of a bat. Its body is like that of a dragon, or of a worm, and its head again reminds us of a human head. Whereas in Lucifer's forehead everything is powerfully developed, the forehead of this second Being recedes and is quite undeveloped. Instead, the lower parts, towards the jaw, are strongly developed. This Being is enwrapped in gold; it is the gold contained in the earth. The gold of the earth takes on the shape of strong fetters that chain this shape to the cave. It writhes under the influence of Christ's hand pointing downward, the hand of the Representative of Mankind. The shape in the cave is Ahriman; it is Ahriman fettered by the gold of the earth.

The above explanations can really give you, as it were, an idea of the whole. Yet this idea merely indicates the essential point. The essential point that we must bear in mind is that we should never imitate the mistake of the old theosophists, who always work with symbols; the essential point which we must bear in mind is that everything in spiritual science that tends towards human feeling should be transformed into something artistic. We should therefore not say: that these sculptures express “this or that”, but they should reveal to us, through what they are artistically and through what we can see in them, the relation of man, or of Christ, to Lucifer and Ahriman. For that reason, it is impossible to express this with the artistic means of the past. Every movement of the fingers and of the hands, the way in which the hands are shaped, are significant, for they must express something significant. At first we may think that Christ raises His left hand and sends out forces with the intention of breaking Lucifer's wings and of causing him to fall. We might also think that the right hand of Christ pointing downwards sends out forces that fetter Ahriman. Yet it would be quite wrong to think so.

In order to explain the significant fact contained in this, let me remind you of one of the greatest works of art that have so far been produced, of Michelangelo's Last Judgment, in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. There we see Christ sending the righteous men to heaven and the sinful ones to hell. We see Christ sending one part of mankind to a good world and the other part to an evil world. The Christ that is portrayed on Michelangelo's picture is not the Christ whose true nature we must, from now onwards, learn to know through spiritual science. The true Christ never condemns in wrath, nor does he mete out praise in ordinary love. His influence goes out of him simply because he is there; Lucifer's wings do not get broken, but it is Lucifer himself who breaks them, as a result of what takes place within his soul through the fact that he is in the proximity of Christ. And Ahriman fetters himself, as a result of what takes place within his soul, through the fact that he is in the proximity of Christ. When Christ raises his left hand and points downwards with his right hand, he only expresses purest compassion with the world. Lucifer, there above, cannot bear this, he cannot bear the proximity of Christ's hand. And what he thus experiences within him induces him to break his wings. It is not Christ who breaks them, it is Lucifer himself who breaks his own wings.

Michelangelo was not as yet able to portray the real Christ. Christ is such a significant Being and it is so difficult to understand Him, that this understanding can only be reached in the course of time. Only in [the] future shall we be able to grasp the Christ Who induces the other beings to condemn or to redeem themselves, simply through the fact that He is there. The Christ on Michelangelo's painting still has Luciferic and Ahrimanic traits, for he sends the sinners to hell in wrath and leads the righteous to heaven, so that his passions are active. But in our sculpture, Christ is mute impersonal, and the Beings that approach Him must judge themselves.

You may therefore see that man's position in the world that contains the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic forces will be significantly expressed in our Building. You will see in it the artistic expression of Beings that can only be found in the spiritual world. Naturalism in art and everything towards which art has striven in recent times as a result of materialism which took hold of man, must be overcome by the art which we cultivate here. Even in the sphere of art, something entirely new must enter the world through spiritual science, something that is able to overcome even the greatest artistic achievement—the Christ, portrayed in Michelangelo's Last Judgment.

It is permissible to say this, if we emphasize on the other hand something that we should not forget: that in spite of everything, our Building is but a first, primitive beginning. Everything in this Building is still imperfect and elementary, it is merely a beginning, yet it is the beginning of an entirely new impulse. We should of course bear in mind that everything is imperfect, yet at the same time we should not fail to notice in this the new impulse that will enter human life.

Consider how easy it is to ignore a gift of cosmic life consisting of the unused forces pertaining to the etheric bodies of human beings! Consider how these unused forces of the human etheric bodies can fall a prey to Lucifer and Ahriman, if we do not find the possibility of including them in the evolution of the earth, for the welfare of the earth!

Here we touch upon a great mystery, connected with the evolution of humanity upon the earth. It is the mystery of the connection existing between the Christ-impulse and the impulses of Lucifer and Ahriman. This connection of the Christ-impulse with the Lucifer-impulse and with the Ahriman-impulse will be grasped more and more clearly in the near future.

Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces surge through the world, but owing to the fact that man is conscious of Christ, owing to his Christ-consciousness, he is like a sailor who must steer his boat through the storms called up by Lucifer and Ahriman. He can steer his boat through that ocean, whose living substance consists of Lucifer and of Ahriman; he can do this in spite of everything, because he sits in his Christ-boat.

The true reason why we come together in our Group-meetings is not that of learning in a theoretical way one or the other truth which spiritual science can reveal, but the true reason why we assemble is that everything that lives in our souls should be filled with the spirit that can flow out of spiritual science. The essential point is not WHAT we think, but HOW we think, feel and will. The smallest or the greatest things in the evolution of the earth may rise up before our soul's eye, yet everything shows us how necessary it is for the human beings of the future to become acquainted above all with the significance of the triad, Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman. Michelangelo was unable to grasp this, and in the times that have gone by men were unable to see how these three Beings stand within the world. The true nature of Christ will only be grasped in the right way if we can see Him in relation to the forces which are active in the same way in which the North and the South poles are active: in relation to the forces of Lucifer and of Ahriman.

Many things connected with these thoughts will be discussed in the next few days for those who can remain. To-day I wished to bring before your souls thoughts that render the spiritual-scientific attitude so important even in regard to the significant things that will in the near future appear in the spiritual world to those who can discern the spiritual behind the physical events.

O how earnestly one would like to entreat the guardian spirits and the guardian divinities, of the earth and of humanity to give man strength, so that the things needed for the welfare of mankind may take place!

There above, will be the unused etheric forces of those human beings who passed through death in their youth. But here on earth there must be human hearts and human souls who look up to these forces so that they can be included in the right direction of human evolution. It is not only essential that these forces should exist up there, for they can fall a prey to Lucifer and Ahriman, but it is essential above all that here below physical bodies should be inhabited by human souls that send up their reverent thoughts to these sacrificed etheric bodies. On this circumstance will depend the way in which these forces will stream into the evolution of humanity, these forces that arose on the battlefields streaming with blood, where sacrifices are made and suffering is borne.

This indicates more or less what spiritual science is able to contribute to the future development of humanity, if a certain number of people really takes in that which can only be recognised through spiritual science.

Before I close this lecture, let me once more address to your souls a few pragmatic words that express what the present time, so fraught with destiny, is able to give us:

From the courage of the fighters
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the nation's sacrifices,
Shall grow forth a spirit-fruit,
If souls will lead, in spirit-consciousness,
Their mind and heart into the spirit-realm.

Original German Text:

Aus dem Mut der Kämpfer,
Aus dem Blut der Schlachten,
Aus dem Leid Verlassener,
Aus des Volkes Opfertaten—
Wird erwachsen Geistesfrucht,
Lenken Seelen giestbewusst
Ihren Sinn ins Geisterreich.

We are presently within an era of events which call for all the sensations of the human soul in the deepest, in the most important sense. We stand in the midst of events which cause that which is always posed as a riddle for our spiritual science—death—very often in relatively short time on earth. We are in a time which spreads out grief and pains about countless souls, and in a time of which we hope that it bears important forces in their laps for the future development of humankind. If so many things are to be born from pain and grief, and if just spiritual science teaches us that many things are to be born from pain and grief, just spiritual-scientific considerations can also stimulate some strength of confidence, some strength of hope in us in this destiny-burdened time. Let me today develop some considerations before you which are not connected directly, but indirectly with the sensations and emotions which can be aroused in this stormy and painful time.

What we see occurring so variously in our present is that human beings leave the physical plane at an early age of their physical existence. Just this is the peculiarity of such events like the present ones that they recall youthful lives from the physical plane. We know that the human being when he goes through the gate of death has to hand over his physical body to the elements of the earth that he is still united with his etheric and astral bodies and his ego at first, while he goes through the gate of death. We know that after a relatively short interval this etheric body is separated from the human being, and that then the human being continues his journey, which he has to do between death and a new birth, with his ego and astral body, united with those members of his spiritual nature that he can get only in the spiritual world.

The etheric body, however, separates from the human individuality and goes through its own way. Now it must strike us that the etheric body of an early deceased human being is in another condition than that of a dead one who attained a normal age. We know that the external natural sciences speak about the fact that forces can change that, however, they cannot get lost. For the external world of the physical existence the natural sciences recognise this truth absolutely that forces never get lost, only change. Spiritual science has to teach to acknowledge this also for the spiritual world. If an etheric body frees itself from a human being who went through the gate of death as young man, then his etheric body could still have supplied the life of this human being on the physical plane for many decades.

An etheric body must be arranged in such a way that it can give all that vitality which the human being has to take up until the highest age. If the human being goes through the gate of death, we say, in his twenty-fifth, twenty-sixth, thirtieth year, his etheric body goes away from him, but this etheric body still has forces through which he could have preserved his physical life up to the sixtieth, seventieth, eightieth year. These forces are in the etheric body, these forces do not get lost. We are to be preoccupied with the question—just in such a time like the present one when so many of such etheric bodies are entrusted to the spiritual worlds: what happens with the etheric bodies of those human beings who went through the gate of death in early youth?—It will be good if we familiarise ourselves—to answer such a question rather thoroughly—with the way the etheric body of a human being goes through, while the human being goes through the life between birth and death.

The external physical body of the human being gets older and older. That it gets older and older does not apply to the etheric body even if that is hard to understand. But the etheric body gets younger and younger to the same degree as the physical body gets older and older. The etheric body arrives at a certain, one could say, childish level of etheric existence in the time when the human being goes through the gate of death in a normal age. So that we must say to ourselves: when we start our physical earth existence with birth, then that is old which has been united as an etheric body with our physical body—we can say comparatively—and gets younger and younger during life and arrives at its childish level when we go through the gate of death. We could also say: if a human being dies in his youth, his etheric body does not get young enough, but it keeps a certain level of its age.—What does that mean really? An example can teach us what that means. Some of you already know this example which I have again to mention here, a concrete example of the last time which could be experienced by a number of our friends.

This concrete example concerns, actually, to a very young child, the little son of a member of ours. It was just at an evening lecture in Dornach when we got to know after the lecture that a boy of seven years, the son of our friend Faiss, was missing. It was soon clear to us that a big misfortune must have happened. A van had come in the late afternoon nearby the Dornach construction, strangely in an area, in which long before no van has probably gone, and will also not after. This van had toppled over at a particular place. This had happened towards evening, nothing else had been noticed; however, the boy was missing. When our friends, together with others, endeavoured to lift the van between ten and twelve o'clock in the evening which had not been lifted by the people to whom it belonged—they had saved themselves it for the next day because the carriage had fallen very unfavourably and was very heavy. When the helpers had succeeded in lifting it, it became apparent that, indeed, the child, the little Theodor Faiss, had passed just at the moment when the van toppled over, and that the carriage had fallen on the child. This child was only seven years old—an exceptionally dear child, a child who had exceptionally nice qualities.

I would like to remind you of a logical consideration which I have often done in our circle to show such a fact in the light of our spiritual science. I have often said that one can mistake cause and effect using external thinking, untrained thinking, and that such mistakes of cause and effect appear exceptionally often. As an example I tried to illustrate this, an example which should be only a metaphor. Imagine that one sees a person in the distance going along a riverbank. One sees him falling into the river, one tries to approach him, and one sees a stone lying just where the person had fallen into the water. One tries to pull out the person from the river: he is dead. What is more obvious than to say: the person tripped over the stone, fell into the river and drowned? This does not need to occur at all in such a way, but here the simple physical investigation may teach us that at the moment when the person entered this place he got a cardiac arrest, without his destiny having to do anything with the stone or anything else. That is why he fell into the water, so that the cardiac arrest was the cause of the fall into the water, while one would say if one makes no effort to come to the cause that the fall into the water is the cause of his death. One would assume the opposite of the right thing.

Cause and effect are distinguished more difficultly if one deals with matters related to the spiritual world. That is why one has to say: in such a case like in the case of this child who really finds his death under such extraordinary circumstances—which were still extraordinary in some other respect—one does not have to remember from a higher point of view that now this has happened: that the removal van came and toppled over and the child got under the carriage by chance; that the carriage is the cause of the child's death. On the contrary, one thinks in such a case correctly spiritual-scientifically that the child's karma had run off, and that basically the carriage went to that place because the boy should find his death; that the carriage brought only about the external conditions to give the boy his death, which was predestined in his karma. One could say trivially: the higher ego of the child wanted to go through the gate of death and ordered the whole situation, all the events that way. Indeed, it would be something totally crazy for the human being, who thinks according to our time, to hear of such an idea. Spiritual science has to show us that something that the materialistically minded human beings of today consider as something crazy corresponds to the truth.

However, it is important that just in this case the etheric body of a seven-year-old child was separated from the individuality of the child, from that which goes then in connection with the ego and the astral body through the spiritual worlds. Now it should not be my object to speak about the further life of this individuality of the little Theodor Faiss, but my task is rather to draw your attention to the fact that the etheric body supplied the physical life with vitality only for seven years; but it had forces in itself to supply a long life with vitality between birth and death. These forces remain in the etheric body. The important matter is that somebody who dealt with our Dornach construction in any spiritual relation since the death of the little Theodor Faiss can now know what came into being from the etheric body of the little Theodor Faiss. Various things of the construction are to be accomplished. We still talk immediately about the Inspirations we have to get down from the spiritual world. One need supporting forces if everything comes down that should really come down from the spiritual world. There it becomes obvious that our Dornach construction is wrapped up by the enlarged etheric body of this child like by an aura since his death—up to a far-reaching circumference. It is possible to really determine the extension of this covering.

When you see the Dornach construction—those who have already seen it, know it, it is a double rotunda [see drawing next page]. Here we have built a heating house in a particular way according to the principles of spiritual science, and then here we have built another house where the glass panes are cut and engraved for the construction. Only by the way, I want to mention that there is the so-called “House Hansi”—this is the house in which we live. Now it is strange that towards the wood, then just along the heating house, dividing this construction in the middle where the glass panes are cut, and here along this house, House Hansi, not enclosing it, this aura of the little Theodor Faiss wraps up the whole construction. So that one enters this etheric aura if one enters the building.

(Bau = construction, Heizhaus = house of the heating system, Haus für Glasfenster = glazier's workshop, Umgrenzung der Aura = boundary of Theodor's aura, Villa Hansi = House Hansi, Wald = wood)

I have often pointed out to you that the etheric body extends if it becomes free of the physical body. Hence, it does not surprise us that this etheric body appears enlarged to us. In this etheric body are the mediating forces through which one finds certain impressions of the spiritual world one needs for the forms and artistic decoration of the construction. Somebody who has to work for the construction knows what he owes to this etheric aura. Never will I hesitate to admit that since the death of this little Theodor Faiss the work is thereby made possible for me that mediating forces are given for the Inspirations in this etheric body of the boy spread out over the construction. It would be much easier not to mention such a matter. One could boast about the fact that one does not have need of such mediating forces. But it does not concern such matters but that one recognises the truth.

If we imagine these just described facts, we get an impression of how it is with an etheric body which must separate from a human life if this life is finished by death in youth. Now it is important to take into consideration that as to us the etheric body of a human being does not remain only like a nebulous formation in which the physical body is embedded. We do also not recognise a physical human body by the fact that we describe it only like a mass of muscles and bones et cetera, but by the fact that we look at it as something like a temple of the godhead, as a microcosm. We only recognise the physical body correctly if we realise that its forms which are stamped on it are really taken out of the whole cosmos that the physical body of the human being is a miracle. Somebody, who can feel the emotions which are expressed in the first conversation of the second mystery drama The Probation of the Soul, can get an idea in which way an individual human being is put into his physical existence concerning his physical body by all kinds of hierarchies; that a whole world of gods aims at it as their goal to put this human being into the physical existence. We get to know so surely which significance this physical body has if we consider the clairvoyant knowledge a little.

The clairvoyant cognition is the cognition which comes about by the fact that the human being pulls out his psycho-spiritual entity from his physical body and that he can then be conscious and perceive outside his body in the psycho-spiritual realm. One cannot recognise any difference between the human being who perceives clairvoyantly and the sleeping human being who has also pulled out his psycho-spiritual of his physical body. However, because the clairvoyant consciousness can perceive outside the physical body, it can gain an idea what happens with the human being during sleep. This schematic drawing may make it easier. We assume that this is the physical body and this is the psycho-spiritual entity of the sleeping human being. Of course, the psycho-spiritual entity is in the physical body when he is awake. We imagine the human being in his sleeping state. The physical body and the etheric body lie there in the bed; they do not contain the astral body and the ego as they contain them when they are awake.

But one would like to say that what the astral body and the ego accomplish in the physical body during the waking state is not stopped completely in sleep. For all that which the human being can perceive at first the human being lying in the bed is lying there as lifeless. For the clairvoyant consciousness this physical human being and this etheric body which lie in the bed are not as lying there lifelessly. The clairvoyant must say something completely different of this sleeping physical and etheric human being. He has to say: during the whole day the area of the earth on which now the human beings are sleeping was shone on by the sun. Now it is night. I talk about the normal circumstances if one sleeps at night and is awake during the day, not about the modern urban or big-city circumstances. Darkness spreads out over the area on which the sun has shone during the day. It is strange, but one notices there that the earth as a being starts to think and the organs with which the earth thinks are these sleeping human bodies.

As well as the human beings think with their brains, the earth thinks with these sleeping human bodies. It perceives continually during the day—and the percipience consists in the fact that it is shone by the sun from the universe, this is the perception of the earth—and at night it processes thinking what it has perceived. The earth thinks, the clairvoyant says, and it thinks using the sleeping human beings. Every sleeping human being becomes as it were a brain molecule of the earth. Our physical body is established so that the earth can think with it if we ourselves do not use it.

But as well as the earth thinks with the human physical body, it imagines—you know what an Imaginative knowledge is,—it imagines everything that is not earthly on earth that belongs to the earth from the whole universe. It imagines that in the etheric body. In the sleeping physical body of the human being one recognises brain parts of the earth, and in the etheric body of the sleeping human being one sees that cosmos imagining which belongs to the earth at first. One can behold this interplay of forces in the etheric body as miraculous pictures which must flow from the etheric world of the earth, so that the events of this earth can take place. As true as the physical human being belongs to the earth, he belongs as an etheric human being to the heavens. Only so we can use our physical body for ourselves as a mental organ because it is created for thinking because, so to speak, the earth gives him off during the waking state. That is why we can only use our etheric body in such a way that it gives us the vital forces because the heavens give it off during the waking state, and because the forces of Imagination of the heavens are transformed to vitality in us during the waking state. So that we will talk not only about our etheric body like about a nebulous thing, but about a microcosmic thing reflecting the heavens in it.

Our etheric body is handed over to us as a particularly perfect creation at our birth. At our birth our etheric body glitters internally and gleams from nothing but Imaginations which come from the big cosmos to it. It is a marvellous reflection of the cosmos. What the human being can get as education, as knowledge, as forces of will and soul during his life, while he grows old between birth and death, this is got out of this etheric body. The cosmic heavenly forces hand over to us what they have to hand over to us during the life between birth and death. Therefore, we are again young as etheric human beings when we have run through a normal life between birth and death, because we have then sucked out everything from this etheric body. If such an etheric body goes through the gate of death which belongs to a youthful body, then there is still a lot of unused heavenly light in it. Hence, it becomes a mediator of such forces as I have told. Completely apart from the fact what the individuality of such a human soul becomes, like that of which I talked before, the etheric body becomes something like a gift of the heavens, a gift of the spiritual worlds. That is why this etheric body can work inspiring in the described sense.

It would go too far to talk about the peculiar karma which has such a human soul who is able to make such a sacrifice. For this cannot be brought about artificially, but it must be connected with the whole karma of such a person. He has to do something that has to play a role in the spiritual world process of humankind as we intend it for this Dornach construction which should surround our spiritual-scientific efforts.

Now, however, consider that we go towards a time, in which many such etheric bodies, even if they are not so youthful concerning their age but their life, are in the spiritual atmosphere. Those who have gone on the bloody battlefields through the gate of death go in another way through the gate of death than somebody who goes in his bed or because of an everyday accident through the gate of death. They go in a certain way through the gate of death so that they reckon with their death, even if more or less in the subconscious—the astral body reckons with the death in a certain way. One can say that this death is always a sacrifice. All the etheric bodies which go up in this way from youthful human beings to the spiritual world have unused forces. A period of human development lies ahead to us in which human souls can consciously look up to the spiritual world and can say to themselves: a time has passed which has sent many unused etheric bodies to the spiritual world. In these unused etheric bodies forces are included, forces of which we can say spiritual-scientifically already today which significance they have for the development of humankind.

If one discusses such a matter, one must expressly point to the fact that that does not apply to every war which took place in the development of the human beings on earth. What happens spiritually and should be considered by spiritual science is not so simple as natural sciences make it easy to themselves. Other wars of former times required that one has to talk about them differently. What I have to say applies to the present destiny-burdened times. Think once the following: at different occasions I had to emphasise that it does not arise from arbitrariness if we cultivate spiritual science today, but that it really lies in the developmental process of humankind that the human beings get to know spiritual science gradually. We know that every epoch of the earth development of humankind has a particular task. We can gather this from different cycles of talks. We can recognise that the welfare of the future development of humankind can only blossom if really the revelations of spiritual science become mental property of more and more souls.

I assume that most of you are warmly enthusiastic for spiritual science, but take into account which difficulties are there with reference to the propagation of the spiritual-scientific truth in the present. Take into account that the human beings outside in the world oppose against this spiritual-scientific truth. Take into account that this truth is defamed, that the human beings consider it as mad, as distorted, as crazy, as a raving. Really impressive examples could be given, but, nevertheless, all the examples would be only a small part of that which basically everybody can feel if he is enthusiastic for spiritual science and faces the world from which he would like that it would take up spiritual science—and does so little today. Now the spiritual scientist may say to himself the following: what has to be accomplished with the bare earth forces of humankind seems to be rather weak compared to the task of spiritual science. But in the immediate future there are the unused etheric bodies which had to carry soul and life through the gate of death on the fields of the events in our time. The etheric bodies with their unused forces become inspiring forces, supporting forces in the immediate future. We only need to get the attitude—now not intellectually, not theoretically, but out of heart and soul—to look up to the heavenly etheric bodies of those who have gone in early youth through the gate of death in our destiny-burdened time.

We need to turn our souls as it were only in praying mood to these etheric bodies, and those who are enthusiastic for spiritual science only need to turn their souls to these forces—and they will have help from these etheric bodies. So that if ardent spiritual living together with these etheric bodies is possible because one is penetrated with a real spiritual-scientific attitude, one also finds those among the various fruits which are in the lap of our destiny-burdened time. For into the souls of the spiritual-scientific enthusiastic human beings of the future that will stream which lies in the forces of the sacrificed etheric bodies of our destiny-burdened time. Through the souls of those who live in the physical body in the next future the forces of the sacrificed etheric bodies can flow if these souls are penetrated with the real attitude. These are heavenly forces, forces of the spiritual world. Then quite different forces are able to prevail in the world to bring spiritual-scientific attitude into the world. We have only to find the possibility to bear witness of that which happens now in the sense of the just given explanation, then these destiny-burdened days are also deeply significant for somebody who stands in spiritual science.

Marvellous, we have said, are the Imaginative formations of the human etheric body. Nevertheless, they are different than they would be unless they had gone through an etheric body of a human being. But also on this field the sentence holds true: nothing comes into being from nothing.—This is not an absolute sentence, but it applies to this field. What a human soul adds as an etheric body, when it enters in the physical existence, gathers forces of the spiritual world which are used up during the physical life. These forces are not from nothing, they are there in the spiritual world. Indeed, one can find them also in the spiritual world, but if anybody wants to find them directly in the spiritual world, it is difficult. One must use much bigger instruments of power. If they have gone, however, once through a physical human being who has died early and show themselves as it were with that which they have in themselves because of the passage through the human being, it is easier to use their help.

All the forces which are in this young etheric body of the little Theodor Faiss, indeed, would also be in the spiritual world, but it would be a spiritual Herculean task to pull them, otherwise. Because they have come along on the detour through the boy, it was substantially easier to be inspired by them. Imagine then what a tremendously great significance for the whole further development of humankind it has that such a big amount of etheric bodies with still unused forces are given to humankind in the next future. But because these, I would like to say that repeatedly, heavenly forces have gone through human beings, they freed themselves as it were from the laws to which they are subjected in the universe outside. It is impossible that in the universe these forces, which are got directly from the universe, are used in a bad sense. Assuming that all the human beings who go now because of the military events or other circumstances through the gate of death, they would not deliver such a sum of etheric bodies if the war had not come. All these forces would also be in the universe, of course; then, however, they could not be used by the human beings, because it would be too difficult to use them. That is why they could not be used, because they would be used up in the lives by the human beings who reached their normal age. This is quite important that these heavenly forces have gone through human bodies. They thereby escape as it were from the usual progress of development. However, this freedom makes that these forces can be also used in another way than to the welfare of humankind.

They can also be used in another way. The human life must develop in the light of freedom. Assuming that Ahriman would really succeed in darkening the thoughts and reason of the human beings, so that they all would reject spiritual science. Then, nevertheless, these etheric bodies would be there, but there would be no spiritual-scientific enthusiastic souls who take these forces into the service of the earth progress. Then Lucifer or Ahriman would be able to intervene and would use these forces either in the world of Lucifer or in the world of Ahriman. Consider that I express something tremendously important with it. I express that it is put as it were into the hands of the human beings in which way the forces are incorporated in the earth process which were given to the world by sacrificial deaths. The fact that these forces can be used to the progress of earth development inspiring that which was aroused by spiritual science.

Otherwise, it could be—if materialism seized all minds or if nationalism spread out in a purely passionate way—that Lucifer or Ahriman would take these forces into their service. Then the earth progress could not have anything of these forces. The deep significance of spiritual science for the human earth development becomes apparent to somebody who considers these connections. He learns to say to himself: how necessary is it that sacrificial forces are used in the right sense in the development, how necessary is it that individual human beings can be touched by the spiritual-scientific attitude.—This spiritual science becomes something holy if one considers it in the connection with the spiritual development, as it expresses itself during our destiny-burdened days. The attitude which can originate from spiritual science becomes something like a prayer which can be summarised in the words: spirit of the world, let us rightly be penetrated with this spiritual-scientific attitude, so that we do not fail to wring that which can be used to the welfare and progress of the earth out of Lucifer and Ahriman.

Our construction should serve like a landmark what spiritual science should become to humankind as an attitude. Hence, it is arranged in such a way that its forms express artistically what spiritual science can give from itself. I would have to speak a lot if I wanted to explain to you what is put into every detail of this construction. You experience all that, if you visit the construction in the course of the years, and join in the matters which should take place there. Today I will only talk about one matter in connection with that which I have just explained.

At an important place of the construction, where it turns eastwards, a sculptural group will be. In this sculptural group should be expressed in particular that which has to penetrate the consciousness of our time to the right degree. This group consists of three figures basically, apart from that which will be added. Three beings find expression in this group. Something like a rock will be there. This rock has a projection forwards, and in this projection is a cave. The central figure stands on the rock projection. You may call it as you want, but you have to see the representative of the earthly human being in it in the truest sense of the word. If you want to see the ideal of the earthly human being in that human being who carried the Christ being for three years of his life on earth, you may also see Christ in this central figure. But this must not happen in such a way that you stand before this group with the consciousness that this should be Christ, but everything must be felt artistically. That is, it must not be interpreted externally as a symbol, but everything must result from the forms themselves.

Here on top is the second being. This being has a humanlike head. The head is really formed in such a way that one can say, a human head reminds of this head. Since this head is so formed that the skull is extremely developed, in particular the forehead. While these parts are relatively immobile with the human being, everything is mobile with this being. Everything is an expression of soul. As well as the human being can move his hands with the fingers, but not this part here, this being can move everything. One notices in the sculptural work that everything is movable. The lower part of the face recedes very much with this being. One may say that the mighty skull arches over the receding face.

I can only discuss some parts, because every single line of this figure is very significant. Then, however, it is the peculiar that a connection exists between that which has atrophied to the larynx with the human being and the ear of this figure. That which is as a little larynx in it bends up and constitutes the lower part of the ears. The upper part is formed by the forehead. On the other side, two formations, reminding of bird wings, adjoin between which a body is spread out resembling a reshaped human face on the whole. Wings and larynx and ear are formed as a unity, so that one recognises: with the wings the being lives in the music of the spheres inside, moves through the space, through the waves of the music of the spheres, and this is located in the ear. With the human being all that has atrophied. Because the human representative lifts the left hand to the figure on the rock, its wings are broken, and it falls off the rock.—You anticipate: this figure is Lucifer who falls off the rock with broken wings.

Here at the bottom, in the cave, is another figure. It does not have bird-like wings, but bat-like wings, a kind of worm-like or dragon-like body and a head again reminding of the human head. But what is a mighty forehead with Lucifer recedes in this lower figure completely, has atrophied. The lower parts toward the mouth are extremely developed with this figure. This figure is wrapped with the gold of the earth. The gold of the earth turns into chains, which tie up this figure therein. This figure writhes because of the effect which goes out from the downward showing hand of the human representative, Christ. This figure at the bottom is Ahriman, who is tied up with the gold of the earth.

What I have just said is, as it were, the idea of the whole. But with this idea I have only pointed to that which it concerns. Never will we adopt the bad habit of the old theosophists who have always worked with symbols, but everything that moves from spiritual science to the human feeling has really to be raised to the artistic realm. Hence, one must not say: these figures express this and that,—but they have to show the relation of the human being, or of Christ, to Lucifer and Ahriman artistically. That is why this cannot be expressed using the old artistic means. Each movement of the fingers, the way as the hands are formed, is important, because something important has to express itself in it. One could have the idea at first that Christ lifts the left hand up and would allow to emit forces which break the wings of Lucifer, so that he falls off. The forces by which Ahriman is tied up would be emitted by the right downward showing hand again. One would have imagined something completely wrong if one had imagined this.

To explain the especially important aspect of that, I may remind you of something that really belongs to the greatest pieces of art up to now: The Last Judgement by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. There one sees Christ pointing the good to the heaven, the bad to the hell. One sees in Christ that he sends the ones to the good world, the others to the bad world. This Christ, as he is shown there, is not from now on the Christ whose true being we should only understand by spiritual science. The Christ who is the true Christ does not condemn, does not praise, using rage or usual love, but has an effect by his own nature. Lucifer's wings are not broken, but he breaks them because of his attitude while approaching Christ. Ahriman ties up himself because of the soul events while approaching Christ. Hence, the downward and upward lifted hands must not have anything that is not pure sympathy with the world. On top, Lucifer cannot endure on his part that the hand of Christ approaches him. The experience of this in himself breaks his wings, Christ does not break them.

That also holds good for Ahriman. Michelangelo did not yet know how to form Christ as He is in reality. The Christ Being is so significant, the understanding of the Christ Being is so difficult that this can only be reached in the course of time. The Christ Who persuades the beings by His nature, so that they condemn or release themselves, is understood in future. Christ in the picture of Michelangelo has something luciferic-ahrimanic because He leads the bad human beings to hell in His rage, the good to the heaven: He is engaged with His passions. In our sculptural group, Christ stands as somebody impersonal, and the beings condemn themselves who approach Him.

You see that the position of the human being in the world is expressed, in which luciferic and ahrimanic forces are included, at an important place of our construction. Beings must find expression that can be found only in the spiritual world. Any naturalism of art, any tendencies of art just in the last times when people were seized by materialism must be overcome by the art we cultivate here. Something novel, also in the field of art, has to enter the world by spiritual science, so that the greatest achievement of art is also overcome which was possible up to now: the Christ figure of Michelangelo in his Last Judgement.

One is allowed to express such things, if one emphasises, on the other side, what must not be forgotten: the fact that of course this construction can only be a primitive start. Everything is imperfect, everything is elementary, everything is only a start, but the start should already be something novel. The fact that everything is imperfect, this can be known of course, but one has to point to something that should come as an impulse in the whole human life.

Take into consideration that it suggests itself to pass a gift of the cosmic existence indifferently, which consists of the unused forces of human etheric bodies. Take into consideration that these forces could become a prey of Lucifer and Ahriman if the human being did not find the possibility to serve the welfare of the earthly development. There we have touched a tremendous secret of our earthly development: the secret of the relation of the Christ Impulse to the impulses of Lucifer and Ahriman. This relation of the Christ Impulse to the impulses of Lucifer and Ahriman can be understood by humankind more and more in the next future. Lucifer's and Ahriman's forces prevail in the world, and the human being must become with the help of his Christ consciousness like a being who sits in a boat which is always exposed to the storms Lucifer and Ahriman excite. The boat has to roll from side to side, however, it finds its way through the sea whose living substance consists of Lucifer and Ahriman, through which, however, the human being steers his Christ boat.

We do not come together in our branches to learn this or that theoretically what spiritual science can reveal to us, but we come together that everything that lives in our souls is filled with an attitude which can flow from this spiritual science. It does not depend on that which we think of spiritual science, but how we think, feel and will. Whether the smallest or the biggest what we can observe in the earth development of humankind stands before our soul eyes, everywhere can come before our eyes that it is necessary for the human being of the future to familiarise himself just with the significance of the triad of Christ, Lucifer, and Ahriman. Michelangelo could not correctly see, the past times could not correctly see this triad existing there in the world. But one will only recognise Christ properly by His being when one sees Him in His relation to that which works in the world like the North Pole and the South Pole: Lucifer and Ahriman.

Some of these matters are to be discussed for those who can be present still during the next days. Today I wanted to put on your souls that which allows spiritual-scientific attitude to appear to us as something very important also for important matters which can appear in the spiritual world in the next future to somebody who is able to understand also spiritually what happens physically.

One may beg the good gods and spirits guarding the earth and humankind that they give the human beings strength, so that that can happen which must happen for the welfare of humankind.

Above there the unused etheric forces of the human beings are who went through death in their youth. But human hearts and human souls have to be here on earth which look up to these forces, so that these forces can be brought in the correct direction of development by them. It depends not only on it that there above the forces are which could also become a prey of Lucifer and Ahriman, but it concerns that here below human souls are in physical bodies that send their pious mood to these sacrificial etheric bodies. It will depend on that in which sense the forces flow in the human development which are created on the fields on which the blood runs on which sacrifices are offered on which pains are suffered.

This shows the contribution of spiritual science to the course of the human development if that which can be recognised only by spiritual science is really seized by a number of human beings.

What can come into being from the present destiny-burdened days, I would like to express it in the end in some pragmatic words before your souls once again:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

Die Menschenraetsel In Der Philosophie Und In Der Geistesforschung (Anthroposophie). (The Mystery of the Human Being. Lecture given at Zurich, Switzerland, October 9, 1916)

It is often said today that when man's spiritual life is in a confused, chaotic condition and human souls have lost their courage, their confidence, and their hope for the future, then all kinds of occult and mystical endeavors are likely to spring up. And in circles which are not inclined to make exact distinctions, Anthroposophy is often reckoned among such endeavors. This evening's subject, which concerns the nature of Anthroposophy, is intended to show you how little it is justified to confuse anthroposophical research with much else with which it is often confused today. Anthroposophy starts from that scientific seriousness and conscientious exactitude which have been developed particularly in the natural sciences in the course of recent centuries and especially in the nineteenth century. Anthroposophy, however, seeks to develop what can be achieved within certain limits by natural science, up to what can be called the supersensory worlds, up to the comprehension of those fundamental riddles with which the deepest longings of the human soul are concerned, the longing for the comprehension of the eternal in the human soul and of the relation of this soul to the divine, spiritual foundations of existence.

Although Anthroposophy begins from scientific foundations, it had to develop—since it is concerned with these comprehensive problems which concern all human beings—in such a way that it comes to meet the understanding of the simplest human heart, and the practical needs of human souls and spirits at the present time, when there is so much need for inner steadiness and certainty, for strength in action, and for faith in mankind and its destiny. Anthroposophy had to come to meet varied social and religious endeavors in the way that I will describe this evening, although having itself a thoroughly scientific origin. But Anthroposophy must take more seriously than do many who believe that they are standing on the firm basis of present-day scientific research, the possibilities which this research leaves open. Anthroposophy has to contemplate with particular attentiveness what are regarded by some careful thinkers today as the limits of science.

If we use the methods of scientific research, observation of the sense world, experiment, and thought, which combines the results of observation and experiment, and find in this way the laws of nature as we are accustomed to regard them, we easily come to the conviction that this research has its limits. It cannot reach beyond the world of the senses and its laws, and cannot comprehend more of the human being than that part of it which belongs to this sense world as the human physical, bodily nature. It has to accept that it has limits as far as the real value, dignity, and being of man are concerned, and that it cannot penetrate the real soul and spirit of man. Anthroposophy, if it seeks to be taken seriously, has to take conscientious account of these things. It has to see this danger seriously: one may not arbitrarily extend that thinking which has been acquired in natural science, beyond the sense world. It would be arbitrary to do so because this manner of thought has acquired its strength and its training through the use of the senses and at once becomes empty, vague and unsatisfactory if it attempts by itself to penetrate to regions which are beyond the sense world. You know that there are certain philosophical speculations, through which thought by itself attempts to go from the sense-given data to the supersensory. Such thinking, relying upon itself alone, attempts to make all sorts of logical inferences which lead from the temporal to the eternal. But anyone who in an unprejudiced way makes the attempt to satisfy the needs of his soul for a knowledge of the eternal through such logical inferences will soon be dissatisfied, for he will recognize that this thinking, which can observe the beings and phenomena of nature so confidently, must at once lose its confidence when it leaves the realms accessible to the senses. Hence the conflict of different philosophical systems; each chooses according to its subjective peculiarities the way in which it leads beyond the world of the senses and develops its own theory. No harmonious, satisfactory conception of the world can come about in this way. Anthroposophy has to see clearly how an unprejudiced mind must regard such ways of thought, which rely upon themselves alone. Here it sees one danger which must be overcome if the eternal in man and in the universe is to be truly known.

Thus Anthroposophy recognizes the limits set to our knowledge of nature, and it must recognize on the other hand how some more far-reaching minds look elsewhere for the help in answering the great riddles of existence, which natural science cannot give them. They turn to what is called mysticism or inner contemplation, where the soul seeks to turn and to descend into its own depths, and to discover there what cannot be found by science, or in the ordinary consciousness. But he who takes the search for the eternal as seriously as the anthroposophist must do, has to recognize in these other paths the illusions into which such mystics often fall. Anyone who can observe the life of the human soul without prejudice knows the meaning of the human memory in the whole life of the soul. Memories have their origin in the external perceptions of the senses; here we receive our impressions. We call up again the pictures of such impressions from our memories, often years later, and it may then happen that some external sense impression has been received by our soul, perhaps half unconsciously, without being observed with the necessary attentiveness. It has sunk into the furthest depths of the soul, and it comes up again, intentionally or unintentionally, years later. It may not reappear in its original form, but changed in such a way that it will only be recognized by someone with an exact knowledge of the soul's life. What was originally stirred in the soul by an outer impression has been received by all kinds of feelings and impulses of will, received indeed by the organic, bodily constitution; it may arise in the soul years later, entirely changed. He who has taken hold of it may believe that what is really only a transformed sense impression, which has passed through the most varied metamorphoses and has reappeared during mystical self-immersion, is the revelation of something that is eternal and does not originate from the external world of the senses. Anthroposophy has to see how mystics, who look for their revelations in this way, fall into the most grievous illusions; and it has to recognize that such mysticism is a second danger. It has to overcome the dangers which arise both at the limits of our knowledge of nature and at the limits of our own human soul life.

I had to say this first, in order that it can be seen how conscientiously Anthroposophy is alert to all the sources of error which can arise. For I will now describe the ways Anthroposophy itself adopts in order to reach the spiritual, supersensory worlds. I will have to describe much that is paradoxical, much that today is quite unusual.

It is easy to believe, and many people do believe, that Anthroposophy is nothing but a more or less fantastic attempt to acquire knowledge of worlds with which serious scientific research should have nothing to do. Anthroposophy sees clearly, in what ways knowledge about the spiritual is NOT to be achieved and in this way comes to a starting point for genuine research. Having learned about the ways which can lead to illusions and errors, it reaches a real preliminary answer to this question. It can say: With the ordinary powers of knowledge which we have in everyday life, and which are used by our recognized sciences, it is not possible to go further (because of the limits of our knowledge of nature and of mystical self-immersion) than external nature, and what is received by a man from this external nature into the life of his soul. If we are to reach further, we must call on powers in the soul's life which in our ordinary existence are still asleep, and of which man is ordinarily unconscious. Anthroposophy develops such sleeping powers in the soul in order that, when they are awakened, they can achieve knowledge of realms to which our ordinary powers cannot reach. Serious and exact researchers do indeed already speak today about all sorts of abnormal powers of the human soul, or of the human organism, through which they try to show that man is involved in other relationships than those recognized by ordinary biology or physiology. But Anthroposophy is not concerned with such abnormal powers of the soul either. It uses the normal powers of the human soul life, but develops these further. For this one thing is indeed necessary from the first which I would like to call intellectual modesty.

We must be able to say to ourselves: In early childhood we came into the world in a dreamlike condition, and could only use our own limbs very imperfectly, or were quite unable to orientate ourselves in the world. But through education and through life itself, powers which at first only slept in us developed out of the depths of our human constitution. And now that we possess the powers developed by education and by life we must be able to say to ourselves: Within our souls may sleep other powers also which could be unfolded from some starting point that life provides, just as the powers of the child have been developed up to the present time. That this is indeed the case can only be shown in practice, and this is what anthroposophical research does. First we have to consider the whole life of the human soul, in order that we can develop its powers further, from the condition in which we found them in ordinary life.

To begin with, we are concerned with the human power of thought on the one hand, and with the will on the. other. Between these two, between the thinking which has trained itself through the impressions of the senses, and also through the guidance given to us in life—between this power of thought and the power of will through which we can enter life as active human beings, lies the whole realm of our feelings. For anthroposophical research we shall be principally concerned in developing our powers of thought and will up to a higher level than they possess in ordinary life. For knowledge about the eternal cannot be achieved by outer measures, but only through an intimate education of the powers of the soul themselves. But when the power of thought on one side and the power of the will on the other, are developed further than in ordinary life, then the power of feeling, which is the deepest, most essential part of the human soul, will also be in some way transformed, as we shall see. To begin with, we are concerned with the question: How is the power of thought to be prepared for a higher stage of knowledge than that acquired in ordinary life?

Now in my book, “Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment,” and in other books as well, I have described these methods and exercises. Today I will describe the development of the soul's capacities in principle, and must refer you to these books for the details. For an introductory lecture it must be sufficient to point out the fundamental principle, which makes clear the real purpose and essence of the matter.

The power of thought which we have in ordinary life depends upon the external impressions of the senses. These impressions are living ones. Before us stands the world of colors and tones, and from it we receive living impressions. There remain behind in our soul the thoughts formed through these impressions, and we regard these thoughts rightly as shadowy. We know that in ordinary life these thoughts have a lesser degree of intensity for the soul than the impressions of the senses. We know too that the ordinary thoughts connected with sense impressions are in a sense taken more passively by man than are the immediate sense impressions.

Now our first task is to take that very vitality with which the soul experiences the impressions of the senses as a standard for the enhanced and strengthened life of thought which is to be developed in Anthroposophy as an instrument of research. The life of thought is to be enhanced and intensified in the following way. What I have to describe will appear simple, though the science of the spirit as a whole, as it is intended here, is no simpler than research in an observatory, in chemical or physical laboratories, or in a clinic. What I am here describing in principle in a simple way demands in practice, according to a man's capacities, years, months, or weeks. There are many such exercises for the soul. I will choose a few characteristic ones.

First, we must observe how we really stand toward thought in ordinary life. Strange though it sounds, the unprejudiced observer of his own thought should really say: The expression, “I think” is not quite exact. Thought develops in contact with external things; we only become conscious because in a sense we look back on our own physical organism and regard ourselves in a way from outside, that this developing thought is bound to our physical organism. Hence we say, “I think.” For the ordinary consciousness this “I think” is by no means fully justified. Anthroposophical research works in a direction through which it can become fully justified. It takes for example a simple idea or a simple group of ideas, and puts it in the midst of the soul's whole conscious life. The whole conscious life of the soul is concentrated on this one idea or group of ideas. This can be achieved through practice; I have described particular exercises in the books I have mentioned.

These exercises can help one to guide one's attention in such a way that it disregards everything else which otherwise occupies the soul from outside or from within, and by one's own innermost decision, as otherwise happens only with tasks of a mathematical kind, one is exclusively concerned with a simple group of ideas or single idea. But it is best, and should really be so, that an idea of this kind is not taken from one's memory. In memory, all sorts of experiences are engaged in alteration and metamorphoses, as I have already indicated.

Therefore it is good to seek out the ideas upon which attention is to be directed, from a book, or something of the kind, which is quite new to one—like an entirely new sense impression to which the living attention of the soul can be directed, and which has its effects through itself alone. Or one can receive from a person, who has experience in these things, a group of ideas of this kind, in order to have something which is entirely new.

There is no need to fear that in this way another person acquires power over one's soul in an improper manner, for it is not a question of letting this group of ideas have an influence upon one, but of developing the soul's own strength through uttermost attentiveness. The result then is that just as the muscles of an arm can be strengthened by exercise, thinking as a power of the soul can be made stronger and more intensive by being concentrated with the uttermost attentiveness upon a definite group of ideas, and by the repetition of such exercises in a rhythmic sequence. In this way the life of thought itself, without being dependent upon the impressions of the senses, can be made as living and intensive as is otherwise the experience of an external sense impression. Before, we had only pale thoughts, as compared with the living sense impressions; now, through these exercises, which I call meditation or concentration, a thinking is to be developed which gains inner strength until it is just as vivid as are sense impressions.

Here you see at once, that anthroposophical research goes in the opposite direction from that followed in the development of certain pathological conditions. What comes about in visions and hallucinations, through medium-ship, or through suggestion under hypnosis and things of this sort, goes in a diametrically opposite direction from the extension of the normal power of thought in anthroposophical research. If a man develops anything which leads him to hallucinations or visions, through which he becomes susceptible to suggestion, the powers of his soul are diverted in a certain way from the sense impressions and stream down into his physical organism. A man who suffers from hallucinations and visions becomes more dependent upon his physical organism than he is upon external sense impressions.

But the anthroposophical path of knowledge aims at the kind of experience which the soul has with external sense impressions. One who practices meditation and concentration must devote himself by his own individual choice, with the attentiveness he develops by his own decision, to that content which he has placed in the midst of his consciousness. Something comes about in this way which is different in principle from all pathological conditions, which can only be confused with the anthroposophical path through misunderstanding. If a man becomes subject to hallucinations and visions, or if he becomes open to suggestions under hypnosis, his whole personality is submerged in this life of hallucinations and visions. Into this disappears his ordinary consciousness, with its power of healthy human judgment.

The opposite is the case when a kind of higher consciousness is developed through meditation and concentration, carried out in the way I have described. If a man really acquires a power of thought which is enhanced and strengthened in this way, he has indeed higher faculties of soul.

But the ordinary clear-minded human being as he is occupied otherwise in knowledge and the fulfillment of his duties, remains active, side by side with the new, in a sense, second personality. The everyday man stands beside this second personality, who possesses a higher power of knowledge; he stands beside him with the ordinary power of knowledge, actively testing and criticizing. That is a difference in principle, which cannot be emphasized enough, when anthroposophical knowledge is described. And then, when in this way, thinking has been strengthened by meditation and concentration, one becomes able to say at a certain point of development: Now I am really the one who thinks within me; now I have experienced in an increased measure my own I within the world of my thoughts. As I experience myself otherwise in the external life of the senses, I experience myself now in thought itself.

This thinking is transformed, however. It does not appear before the soul's gaze like the ordinary pale thinking which is developed for use in the sense world. It is an abstract thinking no longer; it is experienced as intensively as colors and tones and one feels oneself strongly within it. And at a certain point one knows that one is no longer thinking with the help of the bodily instrument. (For ordinary thought always uses the physical instrument; Anthroposophy acknowledges this completely.) Now thinking has detached itself from the nervous system. This is known through inner experience. One knows when the moment has come in which the soul can live independently in thoughts, which however are no longer abstract, but pictorial.

The soul now really experiences itself for the first time, and at a certain moment, when a man is sufficiently mature, the first result of anthroposophical research appears before the soul's gaze. The entire earthly life appears in a mighty single picture, stretching back from the present moment toward birth. Otherwise this earthly life can be reached by memory, but to begin with it is a subconscious or unconscious stream within the soul. With or without our own decision, a few memory pictures can be raised from time to time from this stream, which goes back into our early childhood; but the stream of memories living in the soul more or less unconsciously is not what is meant by the great picture of our lives described here, through which we have in a single moment the inner being of our human experience before us, insofar as this experience takes place on earth. It is not as if we had particular events before us as they appear in memory; we have what can be contemplated as those impulses, which give us our abilities, that which gives us, from within, our moral powers, and that too which from within guides the powers of our growth and our assimilation. We have before us what I have called in the books I have mentioned the body of formative forces, or if we make use of older names which have always existed for such things, the human etheric body or life body.

This is a second, supersensory organism. It cannot be reached on the paths of ordinary natural science, or on the paths of logical thought alone; one must have developed what I have described as an enhanced power of thought, which is called, in the books I have mentioned, “Imaginative knowledge”—not as something concerned with fantasy, but because this thinking lives in the soul in a pictorial form and is itself knowledge. And so one experiences in addition to the external physical body, with its spatial limits, what I would like to call a time body, which is in constant movement, which can be perceived by the soul all at once, like a mighty picture of our life, and which contains everything that has worked from within upon our form, as far back as we can see in our earthly lives.

This body of formative forces, which is the first element in the higher, supersensory man, cannot be immediately represented in a drawing. Anyone who wished to draw it would have to realize that this is like painting a flash of lightning of which only a single moment can be represented. Anything drawn or painted of the etheric body would be like a flash of lighting, held fast only for a moment of its unceasing movement.

Through this the knowledge has been acquired that man in his inner being does not contain only the result of chemical and physical processes in his physical body; it has been learned in direct perception that man bears within him something akin to the nature of thought, and which can be reached through concentrated and strengthened thought processes. It is the first result of anthroposophical development, that one comes to know in perception this first super-sensory member of man's nature, the body of formative forces, or etheric body.

In order to reach further it is now necessary not only to do exercises of concentration and meditation in the way that has been described. It is necessary to observe that although one can give one's attention to such meditation and concentration by one's own decision with absolute clarity like a mathematician making his calculations, one gradually becomes completely absorbed in the subject of this concentration. It becomes difficult to detach oneself from the object of this uttermost attentiveness. Thus side by side with these exercises in concentration, it is necessary to do others which are entirely different. These have the aim of making possible the dismissal from the soul of all that has been placed before one's consciousness through one's own decision, and upon which one has concentrated. This must be dismissed with exactly the same clarity and conscious choice. By doing for a long time, in rhythmic sequence, such exercises in the rejection of ideas which first have been placed in the center of our consciousness with all our strength, a particular faculty of soul is acquired which has great importance for further research. One becomes able to achieve what I would like to call “an empty consciousness in full wakefulness.”

What is meant by this can become clear when we consider how a man who receives no external impressions, or has impressions that are similar to none at all, because they are monotonous or continually repeated, has his power of attention weakened. Under such conditions a man's consciousness becomes sleepy and dull. To achieve an empty consciousness without regular practice is impossible. It can be done only through practicing first an awareness of strongly intensified thoughts which are then dismissed from consciousness. Our consciousness can then remain so intensive and wakeful that it can retain this wakefulness, even when it has at first no content. This empty consciousness has to be achieved if one wishes to reach beyond the first result of anthroposophical research, the power of perceiving in a single picture the soul's inner being since birth.

If such exercises in the dismissal of ideas have been practiced long enough, and a certain maturity in doing this has been achieved, one will be able to dismiss this whole picture of life, which I have described, after it has been present to the soul. A second stage of higher knowledge is achieved if one can dismiss from consciousness (without letting this consciousness then be filled by external impressions) this life picture, which consists of our entire inner human being as it reveals itself during this earthly life as something constantly mobile forming our body from within. This life picture is our inner, etheric, earthly manhood, our body of formative forces, which is to be dismissed from consciousness.

I have called the first stage by the name “Imaginative knowledge;” it gives us only our subjective inner being in a life picture, as I have described. One must be entirely clear that through this first stage of supersensory knowledge one has only this subjective inner being. Then one will not fall into illusions, and even less into visions or hallucinations. A spiritual researcher in the anthroposophical sense is completely clear about every step of his path of knowledge.

If an empty consciousness is achieved through the dismissal of this life picture, the second state of higher super-sensory knowledge begins. I have called it “Inspiration.” Nothing superstitious or traditional is meant by this, but simply what I myself describe.—A terminology is necessary. When this has happened—when an empty consciousness has arisen through the dismissal of the life picture, the body of formative forces—then there arises in the soul through Inspiration what the soul itself was as a being of pure soul and spirit before birth, or, more precisely, before conception, when it was within a world of soul and spirit. The great moment now comes in such research, where one comes to know in immediate contemplation what is eternal in man's nature.

You see, the one who speaks from anthroposophical points of view cannot point to abstract conceptions which prove through logical inference or in some way that immortality exists. Step by step, he has to show what the soul has to do in intimate inner exercises in order to reach that moment when it can perceive what lives as eternal being within our soul. It can perceive this eternal being in the soul at that moment when the soul united itself through conception with the physical, bodily forces which are derived from parents and grandparents.

You may ask: When through Inspiration something of soul and spirit can be perceived, how does one know that this is the spiritual entity of the soul before conception? I can only explain through a comparison what is experienced directly at this point: Anyone who remembers an earthly event has perhaps a picture of what he experienced ten years ago. The content of this picture tells him that he does not have something before his mind which is directly aroused by an event of the present. He knows that the content of the picture directs him to something which happened ten years earlier. What now is experienced through inspired consciousness shows through its own content that it is something utterly different from what is present in the physical, sensory nature, where the soul is within the body. Time itself is part of the experience, as with the memory of earthly events. The impression itself reveals that we are concerned with the life before birth, with the experience through which the soul passed in a pure world of soul and spirit, before it has entered through the mother's body into the physical, sensory nature, which clothes it during earthly life.

After this stage of inspired knowledge has been achieved, and the question of immortality opens out toward a certain solution in one direction, in the direction of unborn-ness,—through other exercises which again have the character of knowledge, the other direction of the problem of immortality can be pursued. This can only happen through certain exercises of the will. Again, you will find exact details in the books I have mentioned, but here I will describe the matter in principle.

Man's will does not think; it does not resemble ordinary thought. Ordinary thought is aroused through external impressions, while man's will originates from within his organism. But in ordinary life we experience what this will is, only in a peculiar way. Take the simplest decision of the will, for example, the movement of the arm or hand, which is carried out because of an impulse of will. What of this impulse of will is really present in consciousness? Ordinarily this is not considered. But methodical research must have a firm starting point. At first we have the thought: we intend to raise and move the arm or hand. How this thought then dives down into our organism, how it stimulates the muscles and takes holds of the bones, how will makes itself effective within our organism, is completely unknown to the ordinary consciousness. Only later through an external impression, with which he can connect a thought, is he aware of the arm or hand which has been raised; of what happens between the first thought and the last impression, it must be said by real knowledge of the soul: This is beyond the grasp of our consciousness just as our experience between falling asleep and waking is beyond our consciousness, with the exception of the chaotic dreams borne up out of the waves of sleep.

It can be said: Man is really entirely awake only insofar as his life of ideas and thought is concerned. Through the element of will, a kind of sleep is included in our waking life. Paradoxical as it sounds, it must be said: Between the thought, which aims at an impulse of will, and the executed action there is a transition which is entirely comparable with falling asleep and awaking. The thought falls asleep into the unknown realm of will and awakens again when we observe the executed action.

The more one penetrates into the mysteries of the will (I can only indicate this briefly) the more one realizes that between these two regions I have described, the thought of intention and the thought which takes account of the observed execution of the act, there is really a kind of sleep present in man's waking life. A great alteration in the nature of the will can then be achieved by exercises, by particular exercises of the will.

Of the many exercises for the will mentioned in my books, I will single out a few here.—The will can be exercised, for example, by the direct influence of thought. The capacities of thinking, feeling and willing, which we have to distinguish in abstract thought when we wish to describe anything about the soul, do not lie so far apart in the real life of the soul, but play into one another. Thus the will plays into our thinking, when we connect or distinguish thoughts.

Now one can perform an exercise of the will by thinking backwards by one's own decision, something which ordinarily is thought of forwards, in the sequence of the external facts. For example, one can think a play backwards, from the fifth act to the first, beginning with the last events of the fifth act and ending with the first events of the first act. Or one can feel in thought the last lines of a poem, or of a melody in reverse order.

An exercise which is particularly valuable is at evening to allow the experience of the day to pass in part vividly before the soul, beginning with the last event of evening and progressing toward the morning. Everything must be taken atomistically as possible; one must go so far as to imagine the ascent of a staircase in reverse, as if it were a descent from the top to the lowest step. The more one forms ideas in this way in an unaccustomed sequence which is not dependent on the external facts, the more one liberates the will, which is accustomed to abandon itself passively to the external facts, from these, and also from the physical body.

After doing such exercises, further support can be won through others which I would like to call “exercises in serious self contemplation and self education.” One must be able to judge one's own actions and impulses of will with the same objective detachment as one can judge the actions and impulses of will of another personality. One must become in a sense the objective observer of one's own resolves and actions.

And one must go further: If you observe life, you know how you have changed in the course of the years. Everyone knows how in the course of ten years he has changed in his whole mood and attitude.—But what has been made of us in the course of the years, has been achieved by life, by external reality. These things must be seen objectively; it must be recognized how passively man accepts this external reality.

But now a man can practice self-education actively, in order to find the way into higher worlds. He can take his self-education in hand, by deciding, for example: “You will overcome this habit.” He uses all his powers to overcome a particular habit, or to acquire some new quality. If through one's own training, one achieves what otherwise is attained only through the influence of life, one gradually acquires the detachment of the will from the physical bodily nature. Something now happens which again I can only describe in a paradoxical way.

These things sound paradoxical because present-day thought is unaccustomed to them, but they are absolutely secure results of the anthroposophical path of knowledge which can be followed in the way I am describing, in order to enter higher worlds.

Although it will sound strange, you can make a comparison between an eye in which the vitreous body is obscured, or which has some kind of cataract so that through some opacity it cannot serve for vision, and an eye which is entirely healthy and transparent. The eye, which does not draw attention through its own bodily nature but takes a selfless part in our whole organism, through this very fact serves for our seeing. In ordinary life, our whole physical organism is comparable to a great opaque eye. Through such exercises of the will, our entire organism is made transparent. This is not done in any unhealthy way but in a way that is thoroughly healthy for ordinary life.

Nothing which is abstract or unhealthy for ordinary life should be attempted for the sake of achieving an entry into higher worlds.—It is a spiritualization of the will. We penetrate into the realm lying between the two thoughts—the thought containing the purpose of an action, and the thought of the action after it has been perceived. By making our organism in a sense entirely transparent for the soul, we enter a spiritual world. This is our task!

Just as the eye is not in the organism for its own sake, the whole physical organism is no longer there when these exercises of the will are continued; in a sense it becomes transparent. And just as it is the physical organism which catches up our impulses of will and makes them opaque, put them to sleep, through its instincts and impulses, its emotions and its entire organic processes,—in the same way everything now becomes transparent, as through the transparent, vitreous body of the eye, what is material is transparent in the eye. Through thus forming our entire physical organism into a transparent sense organ, we have now raised to a higher level a power of the soul which many are unwilling to accept as a means of knowledge, as I well know. It should indeed not be regarded as a means of knowledge as it exists in ordinary life. But through its further development it becomes such a means. This is the power of love.

It is the power of love which in ordinary life gives men a value as social beings. Love is the best and noblest power in ordinary life, individually and socially. When it is enhanced, as it can be enhanced through these exercises of the will, and when these exercises of the will make our organism transparent in this way, love develops to a higher level.

We gain the power to pass over into objective spiritual reality and the third stage of knowledge begins, that of true Intuition,—what I have called “Intuitive knowledge.” The word intuition is used also in ordinary life, and I will return to this point. Not in the sense used in ordinary life, but in this developed form as I have explained it, am I using the phrase “Intuitive knowledge” here. This is a knowledge in which man stands within the spiritual after he has made his body in a sense transparent, has transformed it into a sense organ. Through this knowledge something fresh enters the consciousness of the soul; we now learn how man can live within the will which has become independent of the physical body.

Man lives with the thought, which he has strengthened and united with his will, outside his body; and this provides him with the reflection in knowledge of the process of death.

What happens at death in full reality: that the soul and spirit detach themselves from the physical body and, after the human being has passed through the gate of death, continue their own existence in the world of soul and spirit—this is perceived in a picture, in a reflection that is a basis for knowledge, through intuitive perception, when, through an exercise of the will, we have transformed our whole organism into a sense organ. Thus immortality consists of two sides; on the one hand, of Unbornness, and on the other side, of Immortality, in the exact sense,—the fact that the soul is not destroyed by physical death. The eternity of the human soul consists in Unbornness and Immortality. It can be perceived through real anthroposophical research. Thus man comes to know in direct perception his own eternal and immortal being.

But as man comes to know his own being of soul and spirit, he also comes to know the environment in its soul and spirit nature. Through Inspired and Intuitive knowledge he comes to know the world of soul and spirit, in which the human soul lives before conception and after death. It is a world of real spiritual beings. Just as the world which we perceive with our senses lies before us with all its beings, there lies before the soul which is learning to experience itself in its existence as soul and spirit, the world from which we came at conception and through birth, and into which we enter again at death.—And just as our own bodily nature falls away from us, there falls away the sensory, bodily element which related us to other human beings, and we find ourselves in company with other men through our existence in soul and spirit.

Thus immortality, and the period of our existence in the spiritual world, become real results of knowledge. And this world of soul and spirit which always surrounds us, and which cannot be investigated by thought relying on its own resources beyond the laws of nature—this world of soul and spirit which is hidden in the spiritual part of nature, as the colors and tones are hidden in the sensory world—appears before the perception which can be developed in the way that has been described. The whole of nature then becomes something different from which it was in sense perception. It is not as though external nature with its material qualities and substances were to disappear. Before supersensory knowledge all this remains in existence, just as the healthy human being with his sound human understanding remains side by side with the personality which develops as the possessor of higher power of knowledge. To external nature is added a supersensory, spiritual nature, if you will allow me the seeming contradiction.

I will give one example for this spiritual perception within nature: For our ordinary sight and scientific knowledge the sun with its definite outlines exists in cosmic space. Through astronomy and astrophysics we form a definite picture of the form of the sun as something present in physical space and having its effects there. However, the sun becomes something quite different for the kind of research which uses the higher faculties that I have described. Through this it can be learned that the physical body of the sun present in space is only the body for a spiritual reality—and that this spiritual reality fills the whole space accessible to us. What belongs to the nature of the sun fills all the space accessible to us, and passes as a stream of forces through minerals, plants and animals, and through our human organism as well. In a way it is consolidated or concentrated in the external, spatial body of the physical sun, but what belongs to the sun-nature is present everywhere.

Just as we learn about external nature by representing it in abstract thoughts, through which external nature lives on in pictures, in the same way the spiritual foundations of nature live on more deeply in our spiritual human being. If we observe our abstract thoughts within us, we recognize that they are pictures of external, perceptible nature. If we observe the spiritual element in the external world and perceive how what belongs to the sun-nature works on within our being, we really come to know our own organism. For we find what belongs to the sun's nature within our own human constitution, in all those forces which work particularly strongly while we are still growing; these are the forces permeating us in our youth and which have their point of departure particularly in our brain and work in a plastic and constructive way upon our physical organism especially during early childhood. We come to know what is akin to the sun-nature in our own organism. And we come to know our particular organs: heart, lungs, brain, and so on, with a characteristic development of the sun forces in each. We come to know each organ, as far as its constructive, formative forces are concerned by learning about its relationship with the sun-nature.

I do not hesitate to describe these things, which are assured results of anthroposophical research, although they still appear paradoxical and perhaps fantastic to man today.

Just as we come to know the sun-nature, we can come to know all that stands in relation to the moon. We know the physical outlines of the physical moon; but the moon-nature too fills the whole of cosmic space accessible to us, and has its effects in all realms of nature,—has its effects in plant, mineral and animal,—has its effects too in our physical organism. We come to know the moon-like forces in their work within the whole human being. These are the destructive powers, those powers which are particularly active as we grow old. But these destructive forces are always active, in youth as in old age, within the process of assimilation, side by side with the sun forces.

We come to know how the whole cosmos with its forces streams into man. We come to know all that is present in man as varied processes. We understand the connection of the universe with the human being. And as I could describe in principle what the sun-nature and moon-nature are, the same could be done for other forces in the universe as well. A more intimate relationship than that recognized by ordinary science becomes known in this manner between the human being and the spirit in the universe.

In this way I have reached the point where I can describe how Anthroposophy, although it has developed as knowledge of the supersensory in the way I have described, can come to meet practical life and every region of scientific study. First I must point out how man becomes transparent for knowledge in quite another way, when he is understood in his relationship to the universe. Even physical man becomes the sum of many processes; what appeared to us before as the separate organs of heart, lung and brain, is transformed in a way that we never imagined into processes, in their growth and change. We come to know how constructive and destructive forces are contained in every organ in a different way.

As spiritual physiology and biology can be built up, such knowledge proves itself fruitful, particularly in the field of medicine, for pathology and therapy. When the human organism becomes transparent in this way, abnormal constructive forces, processes of rampant growth, can be known for what they are in the human organism. The abnormal destructive forces, processes of inflammation for example, can be understood in their connections too. For example, one comes to know what exists as polar opposite to an abnormal construction, that is, a process of rampant growth, through understanding the cooperation of sun-nature and moon-nature. One comes to know the corresponding remedy in a plant or a mineral. One comes to know how a process of rampant growth in the human organism corresponds to a destructive process in a plant or a mineral, and similar things. In short, one can go on from mere experiment among remedies to clear knowledge of how everything in nature, through the constructive and destructive processes contained within it, and through the other cosmic processes at work in everything, has its effects in the human organism.

When this is worked out in detail, it proves so fruitful that quite a number of physicians have felt themselves called to take up a rational medicine of this kind. Already there exist clinics at Dörnach near Basle and in Stuttgart, led by trained physicians who have taken up in a fruitful way the results of anthroposophical research into the basic spiritual facts which can supplement all that external research into the human body and into remedies can discover.

It must be emphasized that neither in this field, or in any other, does Anthroposophy engage in any unjustified opposition against what is really justified as scientific in the present time. On the contrary, Anthroposophy, when it is rightly understood must build on exact scientific method. Recognized medicine is in no way to be attacked, but only to be developed further.

Another field is that of the arts. Anthroposophy has existed already for two decades. At a particular time, a number of friends of the anthroposophical conception of the world could feel the necessity of building of Anthroposophy its own home. For reasons which I cannot describe in detail here, this home was built near Basle.

How would this home have been built by a different spiritual movement? If something of the kind was necessary in another spiritual movement, an architect would have been chosen who would have erected a building in the Classical, Renaissance, Rococo, Romanesque or Gothic style, or in a mixture of these styles. This would have been an outer frame for what was done inside it.

Anthroposophy cannot act in this way. It does not desire to produce a theory—something only concerned with the intellect, with the head,—and which can be contained in any sort of building. Anthroposophy seeks to work upon the whole human being. Just as it makes use of the whole human being as a sense organ, so everything that comes into the world through it proceeds from the whole, the entire human being. One cannot imagine a nutshell being formed by any other laws than is the nut itself. It is the same when Anthroposophy has to build, paint or carve, in order to provide a surrounding for itself. Everything artistic then must in a sense proceed from the same laws from which proceed the ideas that are spoken from the rostrum, out of the perception of the spiritual world. Hence, an ordinary, existing style was formed. It may still be very imperfect—it is a first attempt, a first beginning.

What has to be attempted can be described in this way: The shape of every wall and column, all sculpture and painting at Dörnach had to manifest the same thing as do the words spoken from the rostrum when Anthroposophy expresses in ideas what can be discovered in higher words through immediate perception. The spoken word is only another form of all that should work in an artistic way as the surrounding; everything really has flowed into artistic form.

What did Goethe say, when he wished once to express his ideas of art in the most intimate way? He said “Art is a manifestation of secret laws of nature, which without it would never be revealed.” And he also said significantly, “The man to whom nature begins to reveal her most intimate mysteries, feels a deep longing for her most worthy interpretress, Art.” One feels this longing most of all when the spirit which works in nature reveals itself in one's soul through supersensory vision. For then one receives no abstract allegories, but a real spiritual formative power, which has a sense for the materials and which can be embodied in particular substances as true art. Anthroposophy thus has a fruitful effect upon the field of art in all its forms.

A third field where it is shown how Anthroposophy provides fertile new impulses for life, is education. This has often been described in detail in lectures and writings in connection with the foundation and rapid growth of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. It is a question of transforming what Anthroposophy can give into immediate educational skills; it is not a question of imposing anthroposophical ideas upon the children in the school. Through the fact that Anthroposophy provides a real knowledge of man, it gives a spiritual foundation for carrying out in practice the good principles expressed by the great educators of the nineteenth century. In educational practice, a real knowledge of man is needed. When one has come to know the whole of the human being fully, in body, soul and spirit, it is possible to derive from the child's nature itself the curriculum and the aims of education for each year of the child's school life.

Finally, to mention a few other areas, I would like to point out that Anthroposophy can have a fruitful effect upon social life as well, since the knowledge it achieves is concerned with the whole human being. We have seen how the one-sided use of the way of thinking developed in natural science has its definite limits, and cannot reach the true being of man, so that this way of thinking, if it shapes social purposes, is bound to work destructively.

I do not think that today there is sufficient unprejudiced judgment in wide circles capable of realizing the destructive character, for all human culture, of what has become, in the east of Europe, practical reality—and realized illusions at the same time. Those social impulses are derived from taking into account external nature alone. Like a great threat, there hangs over our entire present-day civilization what has begun its destructive course in the east of Europe. [Steiner refers to the spread of Communism resulting from the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, October 1918.—Ed.]

If social impulses are deepened by considering not only in an external way what is instinctive and natural in man and reckoning free actions in a sense as more highly developed instincts, then the true freedom of man in the spirit can be recognized. I have attempted to do this in my “Philosophy of Spiritual Activity” [published at the beginning of the nineties] on the basis of such anthroposophical principles. In this way a sum of social impulses can arise which relate whole human beings to whole human beings, and which can correct and spiritualize what is hanging over human civilization in such a destructive way, as a threatening specter of the future.

These are a few examples which show how Anthroposophy can be fruitful for life. If one considers the ethical and moral life in an unprejudiced way, as I have attempted to consider it and to place it upon a secure basis in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, one comes upon the concept of Intuition of pure thinking, through an unconscious moral Intuition of pure thinking, through an unconscious moral Intuition. The true moral impulses which arise from the conscience are moral; their true source through Inspired and Intuitive knowledge as I have described these today from the anthroposophical point of view.

Thus with its knowledge Anthroposophy comes to meet the most intimate and important feelings and impulses of the human soul, above all, religious devotion. It would be utterly misleading if it were said that Anthroposophy sought to institute a new sect or found a new religion. Since Anthroposophy stands upon the basis of knowledge in the way I have described today, it cannot have about it, or desire anything of a sectarian nature. Nor can it institute a new religion. But if the supersensory reveals itself to knowledge, this can only be of benefit for the religions, and the religious needs of mankind.

One would believe that the representatives of religious faiths must feel deep satisfaction if a spiritual stream appears in our time, able to confirm from the side of knowledge what is sought by faith. Fundamentally it is incomprehensible that the official representatives of religious faiths do not see in Anthroposophy a confirmation of religious life, but often regard it as if it were something hostile. If they really grasped the fundamentals of Anthroposophy, and did not regard it superficially, they would see in it the firmest basis for real piety and real religious life.

For when the light of knowledge comes to meet the seeking soul, not only from the world of the senses but from supersensory worlds as well, then faith is not harmed, but strongly supported; and ethically too, the soul acquires powerful sources of goodness. For moral action it receives meaning, security, and purpose for life, since it comes to know itself as a member of a spiritual world as the external body is a member of a physical world. In this knowledge of himself as a member of a spiritual world, man can come to recognize again his true human dignity and a true ethics and morality worthy of his manhood.

I would like to sum up, as in a picture, what I have tried to describe as the nature of Anthroposophy. We have the human being before us; we see the form of his physical body. We only come to know his whole being when we see how his physiognomy is the expression of his soul and spirit. We have in natural science, which is fully recognized in its justified purposes by Anthroposophy, in a sense the knowledge of the external body of the world. In the natural science of the physical we have something that is itself a kind of intellectual body. Just as we have only the whole of man before us when his soul and spirit is revealed through his physical bodily nature, in the same way we have the knowledge of the world in its entirety, only when as if through a kind of wonderful physiognomy, through all that science offers us in its facts, its experiments, its hypotheses, its natural laws—a cosmic knowledge in soul and spirit comes to expression. For that body of knowledge, given in external natural science, Anthroposophy seeks to be the soul and spirit of a real and complete knowledge of man and of the world.