The Rudolf Steiner Archive

If I want to make an attempt today to point out the current state of philosophy and science with a few sketchy strokes, the reason for this is that in the broadest context of spiritual-scientific views, clarity does not prevail everywhere as to how an anthroposophist can correctly relate to what otherwise exists in the present in terms of spiritual and scientific endeavors. I have occasionally included philosophical material in the courses of lectures on spiritual science, linking them to specialized fields. I have spoken specifically about Hegel's philosophy and its connection to the present. Today I would like to take a somewhat broader approach and speak in general about the current situation of philosophy and science. Since I have announced the subject to you and the participants in my courses are already aware of the form that such philosophical digressions take, you will not be surprised if I say from the outset that I will not impose any particular constraint on myself with regard to popularity. I would rather evoke the feeling of how, as a strictly scientific person, one can find the relationships between spiritual science and other spiritual endeavors of the present. It is not surprising that there is not much awareness of this in the field of Theosophical literature – something that has to be said in a lecture like today's. As a rule, Theosophical writers are not really philosophers and are not at all familiar with the difficulties that arise for the philosopher when he, with his basic scientific character, wants to approach the field of spiritual science. |

Naturally I can only touch on individual points, but I will pick them out in such a way that when I have finished you will have some idea of the relationship I have referred to. First of all, I want to say that it can make a certain impression on a receptive soul from the outset when there is talk in the field of spiritual science of supersensible knowledge, of the progression from seer research to supersensible knowledge. But anyone who believes that he must approach these things from the presuppositions of contemporary philosophy can and must immediately, if there is any mention of such a thing, consider the fact that the objections which philosophy has to make against many things that it calls direct experience, direct perception, must apply in the same way to everything that we produce in the field of spiritual science, so to speak. As long as we, for example, clothe our seer experiences in such words that when we speak them out we make use — perhaps without being aware of it — of spatial or temporal conceptions, as soon as it can be shown to us that we do this, as soon as we are not able to shape our terminology in such a way that we do not secretly insert spatial and time into our findings, a Kantian or some other contemporary epistemologist can always come and object – either in the old form or in the various forms that these theories have taken in more recent times – that, from an epistemological point of view, space and time themselves are mere categories or forms of our imagination. Even if we clothe our visionary results in such forms, taken from time and space, we would nevertheless thereby give something that is bound to our ability to imagine. So basically – I know that the expression is contestable here – we would then express only something subjective with all our visionary results. That is a possible objection that can always be made. I will mention it as an example of numerous other objections that can be rightly formulated from an epistemological point of view.

If we, as spiritual scientists, can raise such objections ourselves, then we have only then gained the full inner right to make certain statements. This does not justify the fact that we should not devote ourselves to certain communications out of our inner sense of truth. We should do so, for the inner sense of truth can guide us aright. But we shall only be armed for the spiritual movement of the present when we can make such objections ourselves and — at least within our own elaboration — overcome these objections.

We must distinguish between two kinds of objections. Of course, objections to spiritual science will come from all sides. If we are able to know what is coming from all sides, to be able to sort it out ourselves, and then simply not be heard with what we have to say about it, then the blame lies with the others, then we can wait – as we must – until people have matured enough to understand our ideas. But if our views are characterized by dilettantism in the face of the spiritual movements of the present day, then it is our fault if we cannot consolidate our teaching in the appropriate way. We must be able to do this: to distinguish between what is our fault – and in many, many areas it is only our fault, it lies in the theosophical literature, lies in the ease with which some believe that they field, we must therefore distinguish between the things for which we are to blame and the things where we can wait calmly because we can tell ourselves exactly what the spiritual movements of the present have to object to from their point of view. But if we want to do something like this, then we must first of all be clear in our own minds as to what the inadequacy of the spiritual movements of the present actually lies in. We must be able to ask ourselves a little about how these spiritual movements of the present have developed.

You know from my lectures that I do not like to put my opinions on the market. The opinions of an individual are actually of little value. I always strive to let the facts speak for themselves, even in the field of spiritual science. That is why I do not want to present theories rooted in opinions today either, but let the facts speak. I would like to present a fact that allows us to see how, in the course of the 19th century, a lack of intellectual rigor developed. In a certain deeper way, however, thinking can penetrate if it draws conclusions that are truly sharp and truly given by its presuppositions. Theosophy often proves to be so spineless in the face of the objections that are made to it because its intellectual weapons have become blunt.

If we speak only of the intellectual side – I know everything that can be objected to what is said now, but the matter will present itself to everyone who penetrates into the spiritual development of the 19th century – if we start with the purely intellectual, then we have to say that in terms of the sharpness of thought, in terms of the crystallization of thought in the soul, a certain peak of philosophical development was indeed reached through Hegel. One misunderstands Hegel when one speaks so carelessly about him, as his opponents in the second half of the 19th century did. They imagined that Hegel's aim was to spin out everything he had to say about the world from pure thought of content. They just did not take into account that Hegel nowhere claims that the human subject wants to lift anything of real world content out of pure thought. One must take into account that Hegel's standpoint is that thought itself, the inwardly living thought, the active and productive thought, is what draws the content of the world out of itself, and that we, with our cognitive subject, are nothing more than the scene on which thought works. If we take the matter as it actually presents itself in the course of intellectual life, we must say: in this tendency of Hegel's lies his entire monumental greatness. But it also means that this is the source of the entire weakness of Hegelian philosophy. Its greatness lies in the fact that Hegel can, in a previously unimagined way, become the teacher of a discipline of thinking for anyone who really wants to penetrate with him, and that we cannot acquire this discipline in any other way. The Theosophist in particular should acquire this strong discipline of thinking. After all, a vast number of errors and misconceptions arise simply because our thinking cannot achieve the crystalline clarity of a discipline of thought, such as can be learned through the Hegelian system. One can educate oneself through the Hegelian system. One should, so to speak, be imbued with the results of such a discipline of thought in every lecture where one feels a responsibility towards knowledge and truth. One should get into the habit of never using a word in any context that has not first been felt and experienced by us in its full scope and content. When one, penetrating through what seems so abstract, so dry and sober to many, penetrating through Hegel's logic, inculcates oneself with this discipline of thinking, then one never speaks of the word being, becoming , existence as in such places where these words may be inserted in the overall structure of the lecture, because one has first followed the entire development of the content of such concepts, from the simplest, most empty concepts to the most substantial. In this inner discipline of thought, the philosophical lecturer of today and all of today's literature are, in fact, very far removed. I could easily show you that in world-famous contemporary philosophical books, the authors are not even able to capture the content of a concept concisely and accurately in three lines, and then after three lines, they use a concept that they used before in a completely different way. It is quite natural that an inner confusion of the whole structure, which is our thoughts, must then occur. It would be easy, as I said, to prove this to you with contemporary world-famous philosophical books.

Now Hegel's opponents have believed that they could easily beat him out of the field by not understanding this weaving and essence of thought on the stage of our cognitive subject, but by believing – which never occurred to Hegel – that he wanted to spin the content of the world, so to speak, out of the immediate content of thought of the cognitive subject. That this cannot be, that one can never spin any substantial content of knowledge out of the respective subject of knowledge, if the latter remains only in concepts, one must be clear about that. Therefore, in terms of the productive progress of intellectual life, Hegelian philosophy had to remain unproductive for the very reason that its basic idea, that thought itself is what works out of itself, can be correct, but it does not follow from this that the subject of knowledge itself must produce the objective content of the world. How is it possible for the cognitive subject to gain cognitive content out of itself? This is possible only if the subject of knowledge fertilizes itself, makes itself capable of producing cognitive content. But this self-empowerment can never take place on the level of mere thinking. Through mere thinking, one gains a kind of overview, a kind of larger retrospective view of what the human spirit has produced in the course of world history. One can survey the thoughts produced from a certain center. But one cannot gain new knowledge. Hegel's opponents sensed this. They based their opposition on false premises. But this means that mere Hegelianism achieves two things: an almost immeasurably magnificent discipline of thought, but not productive knowledge. In other words, Hegelian philosophy cannot continue to be productive through itself. This is where the productive powers of knowledge must begin, where Hegel's subject of knowledge, elevated as it is to the level of thought, must decide to let in what you find presented, for example, as a means of fertilization of the subject of knowledge in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”.

Thus I would say: if we start from the directly perceptible existence and from the processing that the human mind undertakes with it, we arrive at the level that can be described as the life and activity of the cognitive subject in the realm of the thought-plan. But then further progress is possible only if, from the other side, from the side opposite to the sense-perceptible existence, there comes the fertilization through those means which are presented in this book, 'How to Know Higher Worlds'. In the literature with which I have tried to point to these things step by step — first as prepared by my previous writings, summarized in my “Philosophy of Freedom” — you will find a path that can be taken from external sense perception, from the external processing of the material of existence, up to the realm of thought. There you will also find a characterization of the peculiarities of the realm of thought as well as the significance of pure thinking for the cognitive subject. In the following writings, which are in the actual field of spiritual science, you will find the other side of the world characterized with its forces that fertilize knowledge. You will find epistemologically characterized the seer research, the scope of seer research, which thus flows from the other side, as it were.

If we wanted to draw a picture of the matter, we could say: if we characterize the thought plan with the subject of knowledge on this thought plan, then everything that can be gained through the senses in terms of external, sensory material flows from the side of sensory perception. Within the thought plan, we sense the Hegelian self-weaving, that which is called the dialectic of pure thinking. But then, if we take only this path, we have to stop. We have to wait until we are able to let that which we can receive on the path characterized by my writing “How to Know Higher Worlds” flow into us from the other side. Thus you see that these things join together, and that the Hegelian system was for a certain time a wonderful résumé of the human spirit, but that, when this was given, something had to happen, quite naturally, to which the Hegelian system cannot rise. The plan is fixed where the subject of knowledge must stand; it cannot be repealed, it can only be described from the other side with what can be equally established epistemologically. So that we do not remain one-sided, but acquire the possibility of seeing the strict epistemological method also where mere sensuality is left.

If we consider all this, we can ask: How is it that philosophy itself shows such reluctance to deal with those logical forms by which what comes from the other side can be established just as much as what comes from one side can be established epistemologically? The reason for this is that this philosophy of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century has so far failed to take the step that should have been taken from a properly understood Hegelianism. And so it comes about that this philosophy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries could not find a connection to that which lies beyond the plan of thought. The deeper reason for this, however, is to be found in the fact that Hegel's philosophy has been little understood by the further developing philosophy. For when one rises to the pure plan of thought, then it is quite inevitable — because one stands at the boundary of the supersensible world — that one can also feel those logical foundations that, as something justified, reveal the inflow of the supersensible world. You can feel this very strongly when you encounter this elevation of the human power of cognition to pure thought and then the illumination of the higher worlds in the lectures of our dear Dr. Unger, which cannot be overestimated. Therefore, it must be emphasized: it is a great blessing that we are able to have such a person among us as Dr. Unger is, who is able to elaborate in detail and carry out the theory of knowledge of pure thinking of the knowing subject, which lies as I on the thought plan, in this spiritual-philosophical field. And so, in these lectures, you have provided what can give you points of reference to gain strength in the relationship between spiritual science and other intellectual endeavors.

If you follow this philosophy, which has already been partially gained in Dr. Unger's remarks and will be partially gained, and if you continue on the path you have taken, then you will see that this philosophy as a philosophy will have a completely different character than what exists today as contemporary philosophy. Only recently, a truly remarkable thinker said something about the latter that basically cannot be disputed. If you let your eyes wander without prejudice over what is being brought to light in Germany and other countries, you can see that what this thinker said is really true, namely that today we have metaphysics without transcendental conviction, a theory of knowledge without objective meaning, a logic without content, a psychology without soul, an ethics without commitment, and a religion without a rational basis. That is one characteristic of our time, as perceived by a not insignificant contemporary philosopher. As I said, I would like to let the facts speak, let what is happening speak. Whether it must be said that he does not feel like embarking on the spiritual scientific path, or whether he cannot do so according to his thought suggestions, may be left open — but it must be said that someone who is fully immersed in the hustle and bustle of contemporary life, but who cannot find the way out of the element of thought to a supersensible content, can think like that. Certain intellectual prerequisites must be fulfilled, which are actually found today not in any other philosophy but in what I have attempted to establish in my book on 'Truth and Science', in what is given in 'Philosophy of Freedom' and in Dr. Unger's carefully developed thought operations. There, in the field of spiritual science, the approach to an active philosophy is given, which avoids mixing theosophy into its explanations, which wants to be strictly philosophical and which, precisely because of this strict scientific approach, will fulfill its task in the future.

But now we ask ourselves: how is it that, after it was believed that Hegelism had been done away with, 19th-century thinking in all civilized countries could not rise to such a philosophical processing of the thinking in our subject of knowledge – how did that come about? It is not my intention to go into the profound cultural-historical reasons for this — I do so in some places — but today I would like to remain in the realm of purely philosophical characterization. This is because facts have taken place, that anyone who has attentively followed the course of intellectual life in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s cannot fail to notice how, basically, only in one single area of intellectual development in the 19th century has thinking itself remained strong, while everywhere else it has become too dull to draw the conclusions that lie within itself. Only in one single field does the science of the nineteenth and early twentieth century demand the greatest respect even from the strict thinking of the spiritual scientist, and this is none other than mathematics. Everything that has been achieved in the field of mathematics bears the traces of sharp, penetrating thinking. Therefore, even those who, for example, did their scientific theoretical studies in theoretical physics and chemistry towards the end of the 19th century could feel that it was not the mathematicians' fault that complicated formulas were handed down to them, which they had to complete when they approached, for example, the theory of heat, the vibration theory, the Clausius theory, and so on. If you had gone through that, had a philosophical mind, you had the feeling: it's not the mathematicians' fault — mathematics had become a wonderful instrument for working out everything in finely chiseled systems; but the intellectual weapons were blunt. So when you worked with mathematical formulas in the various fields of physics and chemistry, you could have the feeling that as long as you remained purely within the mathematical, you felt secure everywhere, but as soon as you came to the philosophical characteristic of what you were actually calculating, the ground was shaky everywhere. Thus he proved himself to be out of touch with the minds of those who spoke philosophically at the time. There was no sense of anything other than the purest philosophical dilettantism, which was particularly evident when natural scientists began to philosophize, as for example Da Bois-Reymond did in his “Seven World Mysteries” or in his lecture “On the Limits of Knowledge of Nature”. But that has not improved. So we may say: We have experienced the peculiar phenomenon that the thinking, as it must necessarily be demanded of spiritual science, has remained strong and exact only within mathematics. — The strict demands on thinking are not satisfied today in any other field of research — the strict demands that we make from the spiritual-scientific point of view — than in the mathematical field.

Now I do not want to get into a discussion here of certain contributions – or the characteristics of these – that can be applied to the field of knowledge from a mathematical point of view. I will only point out the symptomatic nature of these things, pointing out that it is precisely in the field that has retained its wonderful inner strength, in the mathematical field, that it has become most apparent how the thinking of the 19th century has matured to the point of bursting the shell that seals off the human subject of knowledge from the transcendental world. And even if they are only hypotheses, sometimes boldly asserted, which have been pursued purely mathematically, we must take what has happened in the mathematical field as an expression of the longing of human knowledge to go beyond the sensual world. And there we have seen this longing realized precisely in the mathematical field. After all, mathematics in its forms, where it is called geometry, has held certain things to be unshakable since ancient Euclid! Who could have believed, for example, that there is anything more unshakable than the theorem that the three angles of a triangle equal 180 degrees, or the other theorem that if you have a straight line here and a point next to it, then in the sense of Euclidean geometry you can only draw a single parallel to the straight line through this point. That is, in the sense of Euclidean geometry, the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to 180 degrees, and in its sense, only one parallel can be drawn to this line. This follows from the assumptions of Euclidean geometry. Who could now believe that this could be different! Nevertheless, and this is the significant thing. As I said, I could say many things for and against the content, but I am only addressing the symptomatic aspect of it, the longing to get out of the sensual realm; I just want to characterize it. The strange thing is that in the 19th century we saw the emergence of geometries other than Euclidean geometry. So it tried to crystallize out of itself a geometry — or geometries — that would be valid apply to something other than our ordinary sensory space, because for this space it is true that the three angles of a triangle together add up to 180 degrees, and that through a point next to a straight line you can only draw a parallel. And in the 19th century, we acquired geometries that do not want to apply only to our sensory space, no. Riemannian and Lobachevskyan geometry are two real geometries, born out of human thought according to strict mathematical laws.

According to the Lobachevsky theory, the three angles of a triangle together are always smaller than 180 degrees, while according to the Riemann theory they are always greater than 180 degrees. According to the latter, you cannot draw a single straight line parallel to another straight line through a point, but according to the former you can draw two straight lines. And these things are not to be taken lightly. For if the mathematician sets a certain constant equal to zero in certain formulas, by which every special relationship given in the Lobachevsky theory can be expressed, he obtains Euclidean geometry as a special case of Lobachevsky geometry. You can extract Euclidean geometry from Lobachevsky geometry.

I do not want to point out that the determinations of neither one nor the other of the two geometries are correct with the results of the visionary research. They are only proof that thought operations can lead beyond the area that immediately encompasses our space. But it must be said that if one understands the implications of these geometries, one can imagine that there are completely different factual connections than in the sensory world. For the latter is ultimately expressed in the formulas of geometry. If different formulas apply to a world than those of Euclidean geometry, then this world is a different world from ours. And we can say: with Riemannian and Lobachevskian geometry, the geometer's yearning to go beyond the world of the senses, to grasp something intellectually that does not lie in the realm of the sensual world at all, is fulfilled. That is why these non-Euclidean geometries are symptomatically significant for our century.

And no less significant is the fact that the Frenchman Poincare has very ingeniously processed these various theories in an epistemological way. However, if you stick to the mere utilization of these non-Euclidean definitions, without wanting to take the step into the field of the humanities, which is where Poincaré came to: to see nothing in all our geometric observations but formulas that our cognitive faculty has to grasp the facts in the most convenient way possible. And this is very clearly elaborated by Poincaré. And the German reader also has the opportunity, through the commendable translations of these books by the Munich mathematician Lindemann, to gain an insight into the significance of what actually underlies the whole matter.

Thus we must say, even if we can only hint at it, that in our time the acuteness of thinking has really been exhausted in one field and that this acuteness of thinking is characteristically enough present in such attempts – however dreary and hypothetical they may rightly appear to the individual: a yearning for knowledge from the world immediately before us.

It is useful in any case to be familiar with at least that rigor that man can acquire through mathematical training. For everything that is legitimately produced in the field of spiritual science must, insofar as a thinking element is involved, be imbued with this rigorously disciplined thinking. This may disappear behind the facts, but anyone who produces in the field of spiritual science should be aware that this thinking should be in the background. Otherwise spiritual science will be something that can easily be trampled to death by those who live outside the spiritual. And we will not be able to say everywhere that there is bad will when we are not understood. In the field of spiritual science, it must become more and more apparent that we place the same demands on our own thinking as, one might say, the strictest mathematician places on himself. The fact that we have seerical research at our disposal will protect us from building mathematical structures into the wind, so to speak. I say this because there are also many arguments to be said against the building of Riemann's and Lobachevsky's geometry. I just wanted to characterize the desire for knowledge. But that it would be useful to be familiar with mathematical structures, I tried to show in my “Philosophy of Freedom”. There is a chapter in it that I would like to call “On the Lustwert of Life”. Until I had written this chapter on the pleasure value of life, there was much talk in philosophical circles of the pleasure balance of life, and one put the 'world of facts in such a way that, for my sake, all the pleasure of a life was summed up as an a and all the displeasure of the same life as a b, and the difference was called the pleasure balance, the excess of pleasure over displeasure. If you put pleasure and displeasure into a formula, you have chosen a difference, you have chosen what you can call the mathematical formula of subtraction. The important thing in that chapter is that I showed how it is impossible to summarize pleasure and displeasure in such a way that they are brought into a relationship of minuend and subtrahend. What you get out of it will never match real experience. I have shown that you only get the pleasure value if you do it this way: if you divide the a by the 5, then the quotient c gives you the pleasure value:

If you conscientiously examine the facts of life, you will find this to be true everywhere. To be able to do what is expressed in this formula in an abstract way about a fact of life, you have to have at least a little grasp of what can follow from the mathematical structure.

Take the question: how can the pleasure value – if the formula is like that – become zero, in other words, how can complete disgust with life arise? – By no other fact than when the fraction has an infinity in its \(b\) — its denominator. Because if you form a quotient, you can only get a zero if there is infinity in the denominator, as long as there is only \(1\) in the numerator. That is, this premise is true in a very different way from the facts of life. The latter shows you – even if a person indulges in illusions – a certain zest for life everywhere. It is present wherever there is life.

Thus we see how useful it can be to apply arithmetic formulas in the right way. If you apply the wrong formula of difference, then you can easily get some excess of displeasure and say: Weariness of life is justified as a quantity. There you also see how useful it is to be able to make strict mathematical logic your ideal.

If we disregard mathematics and look at the various individual fields of philosophy, we have to say that everywhere we look – even in the field of logic, although it has again received some fertilization from the mathematical side through probability theory – we find the impossibility of self-contained thinking drawing its own consequences. And here I would like to point out to you the most important fact in the development of our spiritual life through the 19th century, a fact in spiritual science that took place with a certain impact in the spiritual life around the middle of the 19th century.

At that time, Julius Robert Mayer, and later, independently of him, Helmholtz, discovered what has since been called the doctrine of the mechanical equivalent of heat, the so-called conservation of living force. Now, soon after that had happened, Helmholtz built another theory on this theory of the conservation of living force, which was then also widely accepted and is still considered indisputable by many today: namely, that in the interplay of living the interplay of living forces in the universe, there is a constant conversion of some other, let us say, of the processes in the world-leading living forces, be they the forces of magnetism or electricity, be they other purely mechanical forces, into heat. Now, in the sense of the so-called Carnot cycle, it is never possible to completely carry out the process of converting energy into heat while maintaining the same energy quantum. It must be said that it is never possible to convert all heat back into living force. Incidentally, if I wanted to describe this so-called second law of thermodynamics, I would have to give a few lectures on it. But today I only want to characterize it. It is not important that everything you can learn about it is also said here. In the sense of the second law of the mechanical theory of heat and in the sense of what Hermann Helmholtz made of it in the 1850s, it is the case that in all the processes of our existence, ultimately, in the conversion of heat into power, there must be a quantum of heat that can no longer be converted back into another power. Consequently, all our physical-mechanical processes must ultimately proceed in such a way that their forces are converted into heat. And since there is always a residue of heat, these processes must ultimately come to an end in a goal that consists in all other forces having been converted into heat, that all living forces, so to speak, will ultimately have been converted into heat. We would thus have reached what we can call the heat death of our earth. Of course, no other process could take place if everything were converted into heat. Thus, so to speak, physical thinking up to the middle of the 19th century runs into this law, runs into the statement that, if one consulted what could be physically thought at that time, was actually quite correct: it runs into the statement of the heat death of our earth. And the only consolation that Helmholtz found was this: It is still a long time away, and no one has to fear that the heat death will affect them so soon. And everything we can observe shows us this process to such a small extent that we can hope that life will continue for millions of years without the heat death affecting the Earth. For those who proceed with more thorough knowledge, this remains just a philistine consolation.

But I only wanted to characterize what I could characterize with numerous other examples: how, so to speak, from the progress of scientific thought up to that point - the lecture in which Helmholtz presented the matter was given around 1852 - the configuration of thought had to come to certain results.

In 1856, a Hegelian, Karl Rosenkranz, spoke out against this lecture. He brought to bear all the weapons he could muster from the arsenal of Hegelian philosophy. And anyone who knows Karl Rosenkranz, the sincere, one might say warmly sincere Hegelian, a little better, knows that Karl Rosenkranz is not to be taken as lightly as one very often wants to take him. He brought up everything he could muster from the arsenal of the Hegelian school. So we have the other current there, namely the one that took place in the line of thought. This ran in this direction, as I wanted to show. What physical thinking has come to can be seen in Helmholtz; where philosophical thinking has arrived, in Rosenkranz. There we see that important objections are raised against the mechanical theory of heat. Rosenkranz criticizes Helmholtz for thinking only in terms of analogies. His law must be abstracted from the processes that take place in a clock, a windbox or other things. It is true for the steam engine that some of the living forces that we evoke are lost to the environment and cannot be brought back. As long as we start from such processes, I might say from all sides provided with finite surroundings, so long we cannot avoid the conclusion that such results are achieved as Helmholtz achieved in his treatise on the mechanical theory of heat. Karl Rosenkranz rightly points out that it does not follow that as soon as we go beyond the immediate conditions on earth, there would be no possibility that the heat radiated into space would have to be lost in the same way as with the steam engine. Completely different facts could be present. Today I cannot go into what spiritual science has to say when it comes to the theory of heat. That is where the safe ground lies, which I was able to characterize in the lectures I have now given on the biblical creation story. The Hegelian remained barren because he could not find the transition to this ground. So warmth remained for him nothing more than an inner tremor. Nevertheless, with the concepts that are simply given when one thinks in the strictly disciplined way of so-called finite mechanics, which only applies to the immediate environment, with all its formulas, including the formulas

— all these formulas apply to our immediate circumstances —, with these concepts he turns to absolute mechanics. In the ascent of his scientific system, Hegel has gone through the process from so-called finite mechanics to absolute mechanics, which he applies to the movement of the heavenly bodies. The formulas change so much that the formulas obtained from the steam engine, from our ordinary thermal conditions in the Helmholtz sense, simply cannot be applied to processes that involve larger spatial entities. But to even grasp such a thought, to grasp the possibility that one can ascend from a finite mechanics to an absolute one, requires an internally self-directing logic, which was precisely what 19th-century philosophy and Karl Rosenkranz lacked. For, despite all his objections, there is a strong and constant suggestion to which he is also subject, and which emanates from the overwhelming natural scientific conceptions of the 19th century. They suppress much thinking. To pierce through these natural scientific conceptions, one really needs self-directing thinking. I could easily prove that the correct understanding of the law of the so-called conservation of matter, which plays such a great role, is only possible if one knows the inner structure of thinking. I could show that this law, as it exists in physics today, is nothing more than a projection into space of one's own laws of thinking, whereby thinking still works with blunt weapons. Here we see what we know today in the field of spiritual science: that in higher spheres what appears to us objectively is what is within ourselves — I am not even talking about the conservation of energy — that in a broader sense what I myself have now stated with regard to the conservation of matter still applies. Thus we see how, through the suggestion of scientific findings, in contrast to which one should remain on purely factual ground, in this field the human element of thinking has proved dull, because philosophy was not in a position to pierce the cover that is formed not from scientific fact-finding, but from the interpretation of the facts that have been researched. Spiritual science is fully grounded in the facts of natural science. I would consider it one of the greatest shortcomings of spiritual science if it did not want to go hand in hand with genuine research into the facts of natural science. But the interpretation of the facts is something else. When natural scientists tell us what they have established in the laboratory as facts, then we must gratefully accept their findings. We are then accepting the utterances of nature itself, and to deny them would be to succumb to nonsense. If we do not surrender to them, then we show that we have no sense of truth. But if we were to take the so-called monistic considerations and let them impose themselves as facts, then we would be taking the opinions of men as facts. This happens, however, because the opinions of men have insidiously, I might say, crept into popular literature, but no one is to blame for this but fanatics. For twenty cents we can get not only scientific facts handed down to us, but also the opinions that appear as if they were facts, underlined in such a way that if a person does not believe in them, he does not believe in the scientific results. But one can hold on to the latter and still say that the interpretations are nothing more than interpretations made by blunt thinking weapons.

Just as this thinking is blunt with regard to the simplest physical-chemical things, so of course this thinking must prove to be all the more blunt when higher areas come into consideration, such as those of physiology. The days are long gone when an anatomist as brilliant as the old Hyrtl could bring the anatomical structure of the human being to life for his students in the early years of their medical studies. Today we are dealing with a field that is, above all, not at all aware of itself. To characterize this field, I would like to give it a slightly different guise.

In the sense of what I myself must regard as a spiritual scientific movement, it is my most urgent wish that those who have a background in physiology and medicine should familiarize themselves with the facts of spiritual science to such an extent that they can work through the results of physiology in terms of their factual character. Next spring, I myself will only be able to draw the basic lines of this spiritual scientific physiology at most. A great deal of work needs to be done. Our physiological literature contains the most wonderful material, one has only to know it. But one must also know the borderlands, and one must know how physiology is influenced by a true psychology, which today is very much buried in the rubble. It would be a longing of spiritual research that those of us who are trained in physiology should take a strictly exact look at certain physiological-anatomical results of recent times. Indeed, anyone familiar with the factual material knows that in certain areas that are needed at the moment, nothing has been done. But anyone who appropriates what has already been achieved in this field can easily do so; by appropriating it, they adopt it productively. Then, if he is imbued with spiritual knowledge at the same time, he will not be in a position to create such a basis of physiology where, in the dissection of the organism, each organ is regarded as having the same value. What is the essential thing that prevents today's physiology from coming to the fore? It is that the organism is dissected. We have heart, lungs, liver and so on; we study them all as if they were organic members with equal rights. But that is not the case. All these individual members have different antecedents of their values. And in a piece of liver, you do not have the same matter in your hand as you do in a piece of heart muscle and the like. The point is that, in addition to what is provided by purely external sensory perception, a certain factor is added, which I cannot describe other than as a certain objective value of the organ in question. This will become clear to the physiologist once he undertakes the work of comparing an organ in the fully developed human organism with actual embryology. He will then realize that embryology today works so one-sidedly because it only follows an ascending process and not a parallel descending one. One only proceeds in the right way when one brings out in each stage of embryological development, as in a mathematical function, a factor of decadence and another of productivity. And when we are able to apply what we have learned about valence to the organ in its full form in the organism, when we do not simply juxtapose the heart and liver as equivalent organs – they are of a different qualitative valence – then we will stand before the moment when the great results of our world of physiological facts will receive the greatest light.

What I have characterized for physiology, I could characterize for biology, for history and cultural history. There you see a field of work that lies ahead of us, that needs to be cultivated. There you see the situation of contemporary philosophy and science in relation to what we have, I would say, through the favor of circumstances, through our human karma, in terms of positive results. All around us, the most beautiful results have been achieved through research into facts. Anyone who familiarizes themselves with these facts will see a wonderful development. What is missing is the sharp urgency, the energy of philosophical thinking, which only when it is applied – but courageously applied to the facts – can then present these facts in their true light. This was stated epistemologically in my fundamental epistemological writing 'Truth and Science'. There you will find references to the kind of epistemology that takes into account that our epistemology does not remain without objective significance, but must occur in such a way that there is a fertilization of our epistemological subject in the epistemological results, so that it can submerge into what is given to us by the rest of the situation of science. If we work in the right way with seriousness and dignity in this field, as in all fields of science, on the basis of the beginnings that should develop out of our spiritual scientific movement, if we do not remain with a certain theosophical dilettantism, but immerse ourselves strictly in what is also scientifically given, we shall arrive at having a metaphysic which, through the weapons of a productive theory of knowledge, invades the supersensible through the outer field of sense perception, instead of having, as is really the case today, a metaphysic without transcendental conviction. Then it will have conviction because it will rest on a theory of knowledge, because it will be able to fertilize the human cognitive subject. Logic will acquire its content because the laws of thinking will become world laws. Ethics will also be able to have what one could call bindingness, because productive knowledge pours into our impulses. We will have an ethic with bindingness. Then we will also have what is not a psychology without soul, but a psychology with the soul, because the human desire for knowledge is based on the questions about the soul and its destiny in the world.

This was intended as a weak attempt to show you where we actually stand when we let our gaze wander from what we can feel spiritually within us to the periphery of what has been scientifically researched and what exists around us. If I wanted to characterize every single thing that exists scientifically, I would have to give many lectures. But in the course of time many things will arise. I only wanted to show what the tendency of our spiritual science can be if the possibilities it contains are not sought merely for selfish reasons, to satisfy our immediate personal goals, but if they are sought in order to collaborate on the spirit, on the cultural process of humanity.

During their beautiful friendship, so significant for the newer intellectual life, Goethe and Schiller exchanged the works on which they were working, and when Schiller received parts of “Wilhelm Meister” from Goethe, he wrote to Goethe, overwhelmed by the impression of the chapter he had just received: “So much, however, is certain, the poet is the only true man, and the best philosopher is but a caricature compared to him.”

At the time, this might have sounded strange, but for us today it does not. We enter into Schiller's soul and gain insight into the truth of his words when we measure them against the significant letter that Schiller wrote to Goethe shortly after the beginning of their friendship. Both had discussed their views on nature and the world in their conversations. In the letter in question, Schiller expresses how Goethe does not gain his view through speculation, but seeks a necessary truth in the totality of the world's phenomena. Everything is contained in Goethe's intuition, and he has little cause to borrow from philosophy, which can only learn from him.

In Goethe's way of looking at the world, in his inner attitude, from which he created his works, Schiller sees something that introduces man particularly deeply into the secrets of existence. When one examines the thoughts and opinions that play between Goethe and Schiller, one sees Schiller absorbed in Goethe's imagination, in the inner truth of Goethe's imagination. At that time, Schiller was writing his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, in which he explains how man can develop into a fully human being through evolution, which is inherent in every human being as the higher human being. In Goethe's way of radiating his imagination, Schiller found something that makes a human being a complete human being; he saw in it a way to live into that which can bring a person into true harmony with the origins of things.

When you hear great minds talk about imagination like this, it seems very different from the way imagination is talked about today. Now that it is contrasted with objective observation, it is as if imagination were something arbitrary, something that leads people to put things together in any old way. (Gap in the stenography.)

If we consider that Goethe was a naturalist, so to speak, a specialist, his following statements have a double value: Man strives to fathom the secrets of nature and longs for its worthy interpreter, art. Art and beauty are manifestations of the secret laws of nature, which could never be fathomed without them. When imagination, which only plays out of feelings and impulses, mixes with other achievements of the human soul, we have to admit that it sometimes leads away from the truth. It is not for science and research. But as a forerunner of higher cognitive abilities, it shows the way to hidden connections between things that would not be seen without it. But for certain areas of life, it is absolutely necessary that what the imagination combines be substantiated by research in strict external evidence.

Accordingly, Goethe's words or Schiller's position seem to make it necessary for us to determine in Goethe how he sees something in his imagination that offers truth, in contrast to an arbitrary, disorderly game that we can call the fantastic play of ideas. When we seek to scientifically explore the laws of nature, our observations force us to our judgment. This is not the case with fantasy. Certain ideas or thoughts must be connected by inner necessity if they are to be justified. There must be something that leads them from thought to thought in a certain direction.

When we hear great minds speak of such truths, it is certainly permissible to apply to their insights the standards of the methods used in spiritual research, which lead to the truths that are often discussed. The methods are the so-called clairvoyant ones that enable messages about the facts and beings of the spiritual world. In their presentation, we will also touch on the lower forms of clairvoyance, but only briefly, because they can never lead to real goals. In contrast, we will make the method and scope of the higher clairvoyance, achieved through proper training, the subject of our consideration.

Some who only know the lower form of clairvoyance, which occurs as somnambulism, for example, consider it to be an illness. There are conditions in which the soul life of a person is filled with images from other worlds. It is a kind of sleep, perhaps of such a light degree that the layman mistakes it for complete wakefulness. When such a “clairvoyant” perceives images in this sleep-like state, they sometimes offer something strange and amazing. They can be prophetic in nature. Such a person can make statements about illnesses before they occur, or, what seems even more astonishing to the layman, they can state exactly what will help against them and so on. In such states, the person in question has another world before them. Anyone who denies this has not done any research. What is gained through such a lower form of clairvoyance is not the subject of our consideration today, but rather what is acquired on the path of trained clairvoyance.

The aspiring clairvoyant consciously takes each step, with strict self-control. The only question is this: how should we imagine the development of such a clairvoyant? If we want to define the essential, we can certainly compare it to the means of external research. In science, the researcher seeks to fathom the secrets of nature with the help of instruments. The trained clairvoyant also works with an instrument, and indeed with a very complicated instrument, without which he can investigate nothing. His instrument is precisely himself — not in his everyday state, but only when, through spiritual-scientific methods, he has transformed his cognitive faculty into a different soul constellation and created new spiritual organs for himself, when he can therefore testify from his own experiences. It cannot be that the external senses exhaust the insights. With every new organ, a new content of the environment is formed. There may be hidden worlds around us. For the trained clairvoyant, the otherwise hidden world becomes just as real as the external one. Just as after an operation for the blind, so a whole world flows towards the clairvoyant, which is his experience.

It should not be thought that this can be achieved by external means. I can, of course, only hint at how it happens. Later on I hope to be able to tell you more about how research is carried out. A person will observe most faithfully when he receives what the world of the senses has to tell him, uninfluenced by subjective effects. It is essential that man should only give nature the opportunity to express itself. The less subjective combination there is involved, the better it is. Man cannot help reflecting on the external world from which he gains his perceptions, but it is by no means the case that all his concepts, ideas and images flow into him from the external world. He draws the essential from his own inner being. This can be seen, for example, from the way in which modern thinking has come to understand the structure of the solar system. Copernicus and Galileo may well have seen the same thing that had been presented to the outer eye since time immemorial. But it was they who first established the laws. Copernicus added new combinations to the old observational material and thereby did the essential work. The same applies to orthodox Darwinism. Similar observations had been made before Darwin and Haeckel, but they approached the subject with a new state of mind. We must realize that concepts and ideas are not something that flows into us from the outside, but something that man himself must produce. When you sail out to sea, where you cannot see land, the vault of heaven seems to rest on the surface of the sea in the form of a circle. You will only understand why this is so if you are able to construct the circle around the point in the middle in your thoughts. In this way you can understand all the laws, and then reality must conform to them. Kepler would never have been able to find the path of the planets if elliptical orbits had not previously appeared in his mind.

Thus we carry our ideas to external things, which tell us: We accomplish what you have thought. - And so you come to understand that the same thing that lives in your soul underlies this external sense world as a law. Now imagine that a person tries to hold on to a thought that is constructed in his own soul. If a person succeeds in detaching himself from all external observation and directing his entire inner attention to the thought, a soul process takes place that is called concentration. The human soul must first take hold of something that lives only in the soul and hold on to it with all inner rigor. Now, of course, that is not enough, but it must be repeated over and over again. However, it is not effective to hold on to mental images that come from outside.

Now there is experience in this field, there is advice available on how to best develop the powers of the soul through concentration. There are certain core principles. It is not necessary to be convinced of their reality from the outset. The greater the lack of prejudice, the better it is. One instruction, for example, says: Fill your soul with a certain content, devote yourself solely to this soul content. You need not believe in it, but you must let it work in you, concentrate on it, and you will find that you achieve an effect in your soul through the content. It may be that external truth does not apply to the sentence; that does not matter, what matters is the working power in the soul. You will see that inner experiences arise with constant repetition.

Symbolic pictures are particularly effective. I would like to remind you of one in particular: the deeply significant symbol of the black cross with roses. Let us recall the abstract meaning of the rose cross: Goethe's “Stirb und Werde” (Die and Grow), namely, the demand that we, in developing our soul, must rise above the things of the sensual world so that it disappears around us, dies away. He whose soul remains empty is but a “gloomy guest on the dark earth”. If you succeed and are quite certain that something higher is growing out of the hidden depths of your soul, then you have become new in higher worlds. Dying in the cross, rising in the roses — that is the meaning of the symbol of the Rose Cross. In the mineral and vegetable worlds, spiritual life is everywhere to be found, and a presentiment suggests that the underlying spiritual is of physical origin. The outer world is ultimately only the physiognomy of a spiritual world. The human soul is like steel or flint; it conjures up divine-spiritual content from within the human soul's life. The important thing is to find the right symbol. Someone may say: You may well speculate as to what the Rose Cross means. The researcher is indifferent to that. When we establish a natural law in physics, science tells us something, explains it. The Rose Cross tells us nothing. — But that is not the point. It is most effective when symbols are ambiguous. One enters into a pure, inner soul activity, and by leaning on the symbol as a starting point, one concentrates in the soul on this symbol.

Let us consider what the soul consciously does; that is what matters. What works in the human being are forces that are capable of awakening what is dormant, experiences that are the only guarantee that it is an inner reality when the person comes to the feeling: Actually, the cross was only a kind of bridge. Now I have received something in my soul life, something quite different, which arises in my soul, an experience that I cannot receive through external things. At first the disciple does not know whether he has a mirage or reality before him. It depends on developing further abilities, because even what has just been described is still a detour for the clairvoyant, they are pictures. In the course of further practice, a feeling develops: it depends on what is expressed in the images. — If you press on your eye or apply an electric current to it, a glow of light may appear, determined by the inner constellation of the eye. This is roughly how it is when the images appear; they flash through the soul like spiritual lightning. When you are confronted with an object, you know that it is not produced by your eye, but that it communicates with your eye. The same thing happens in the spiritual realm. The seer now knows just as surely that he did not make the object, that the object expresses itself to him through his inner organs. In fact, the way the pictures are experienced now expresses objective facts. Just as imagination and perception are distinguished externally, so it is necessary that the seer be preserved in his healthy senses, for in hardly any other field is confusion as easily possible as in that of inner experience. Therefore, other things must go hand in hand with it.

If the observer were to practise only what has just been described, he could become a madman who believes that he can magically transform appearance into reality through his personality. It is necessary that the human being learns to renounce everything in the experience of the higher spiritual world that is connected with his desires and inclinations. Psychologically, the present human being behaves differently. He may correct the external sensory impressions, but feeling and subjective inclination are all too easily involved. An experience of spiritual reality must be preceded by the renunciation of every wish that something could be one way or another. Only when all sympathy has been eliminated can one experience objective spiritual reality.

Something else is essential. For those who are led on the way to clairvoyance in a professional, not amateurish way, who learn to see in a way that corresponds to the truth, it is of great value that they do not start the way without certain prerequisites. It is a difficult path. Therefore, one must have absorbed truths beforehand, messages from those who have already researched. It is also possible to start out with less knowledge, but then the soul world remains poor, its contents crowd together like fixed ideas. This is how those clairvoyants come about who then believe, for example, that they have united with God, describe him and so on. When such clairvoyants describe the higher worlds, their descriptions appear trivial. But to anyone who approaches the higher worlds with the tried and tested experiences of the spiritual researcher, a manifold world content appears, and everything outside appears only as a small part of the great world. The person who makes this experience his own knows that what he is experiencing is not deceiving him. He can perceive spiritually with the same certainty as in the external sense world. This is trained clairvoyance.

What must happen for these higher senses to be developed? For spiritual science, the human being is not only an external physical body, but for higher vision he also has the otherwise invisible etheric body and the astral body, the carrier of desire and suffering. You know what sleep represents for spiritual research. The physical and etheric bodies remain in bed, while the astral body and the I act on the physical body from the outside. On awakening, the astral body returns to the physical and etheric bodies, and the sense world reappears. Thus, during sleep, the astral body and I step out of the physical body. How can a person hear and see the sense world? With eyes and ears, otherwise the world would be colorless, lightless, and soundless. When the astral body leaves the physical body, it is in the spiritual world, but it has no organs. If it had such organs, it could perceive the spiritual environment as it perceives its surroundings in the physical. So if a person is to perceive the spiritual world, spiritual senses must develop in him. This happens through the methodical schooling of the soul life. When the astral body of a person who has been trained in this way, using spiritual methods, leaves the body, it is in a completely different situation than under ordinary circumstances. It is as if what was previously a chaotic mass in the astral body is now structured and forms organs. What used to be a misty, smoky mass is beautifully formed. This takes a long time. Since ancient times, this process has been called catharsis, purification or cleansing. The inner being of the human being is then cleansed of drives, desires and passions. This is the first stage.

The second stage follows on from the first. When a person returns to their physical and etheric bodies in the morning, the external organs have the stronger powers; they drown out the subtle new sounds in the internal organs. These are always present, but they are weak as long as they are drowned out by the powers of the etheric body in the sense organs. Later, the human being learns to handle the internal organs so that he can also see the spiritual perceptions alongside the sensory perceptions. This process is called enlightenment, photismos. These are very real processes that have been experienced.

Step by step, in every detail, the person applies the given method to train himself to become an instrument of perception. The schooling should thus cause him to provide his inner man with organs. Just as nature has perfected the outer man, so the path of development is continued, and what nature has begun is carried forward by the person himself. When man in this way gains insight into the spiritual, he owes this to the fact that his inner man has become ruler over the physical and etheric bodies. Man has become his own master. In the beginning he attains control over his etheric body. In the trained clairvoyant this happens in such a way that the etheric body adapts its powers to those of the astral body, it becomes elastic. If clairvoyance occurs of its own accord in pathological conditions, it is due to other causes. It falls under the same laws, but it is uncontrollable. When a person is affected in a certain way, or when he is ill, the etheric body can become partially or completely free from the physical body; it can be loosened. This is not normal. Then the person has an etheric body that is not as attached to their physical body as it is in the normal state of being, and is therefore easy to handle. In contrast, the spiritual student strengthens the astral body and thereby helps it to gain control over the etheric body. In case of illness, a part of the etheric body can be released and then handled by the astral body. Such people can sometimes gain real insights into the spiritual world because the condition is based on the same principles, but they are not reliable. The strict results of spiritual research are not achieved in this way.

The question is sometimes asked: How can a disease process produce extrasensory perception? — Health and knowledge do not have to go the same way, there is no contradiction in this, but also no recommendation. In any case, we see what is based on what leads facts of the higher world into the field of vision of man. Just as we enjoy the surrounding world, so we find in the spiritual world that which first makes the sensual world understandable to us. The communications of the spiritual researcher are based on processes that he has experienced. By telling this, he conveys facts of a world that can also be understood by the ordinary mind, while our soul world is otherwise determined by what is happening in the physical. That, for example, the image of the rose can affect me is possible because the rose lets its forces flow into me. It is the same in the spiritual realm. The trained clairvoyant experiences the spiritual outer world in his soul life. He says to himself: The sense world is determined by law through entities, whose working and rule is opening up to me. I see that a blossom is approaching me in this way, worked out of the spiritual, out of spiritual foundations. I must make sacrifices in my soul life in order to let the world of higher spiritual entities flow into me. Imagine that this world is there and at work, that man could enter into it. This world, which the clairvoyant sees, is all around him. It acts on man as a determining power, which he does not see, but which flows in on him in a subconscious way. The clairvoyant is not satisfied with just seeing the person as he is shaped on the outside.

The soul-power of imagination can also be stimulated by the spiritual worlds. There we have the real basis of imagination and an understanding of Schiller's saying, which characterizes what is created in this way. Thus we can understand Goethe's statement: “There is imagination that has an inner certainty. There is a fantastic quality that combines, and there is a fertile imagination that is inspired by the forces that the clairvoyant beholds. Schiller, in view of his circumstances, could have had no inkling of spiritual science, but he sensed and felt that Goethe was justified in ascribing to imagination the ability to fathom certain secrets. |

No matter how much external fact the intellect can supply, genuine imagination can be much truer. Man is predisposed to ascend into the worlds of the spiritual, for the corresponding abilities slumber in every human being. Every human being will achieve it, even if it takes many lives. Until then, he can be stimulated by art, in which not only the world of the senses is expressed, but the creative spirit itself, which has gone through the medium of imagination. It is the outer image of the same. Thus we may say that imagination and clairvoyance are set for man as a share in spiritual life, as a great goal, as something that some have already achieved and that is superior to all other existence. When trained, clairvoyance leads the human being into the higher worlds. Imagination is its representative in the world of the senses. That is why it has an outstanding significance among the human soul forces. Imagination is the representative of clairvoyance in the world of the senses.

Today I would like to address some fundamental anthroposophical questions about life and then move up from these fundamental questions, from the everyday to the all-encompassing, the fundamental. The most fruitful gain of our striving should be that we learn through spiritual science to judge life more and more in its truth, in its reality, to judge it in such a way that this judgment itself can lead us most efficiently and energetically into life and how it can place us in the position that we have to fill out of our karma, that we have to fill out of our greater or lesser mission in the time in which we are embodied in the earthly body.

And so I would like to start with some of life's qualities that present themselves to us every day, either in ourselves or in our surroundings. We only begin to understand the full scope and significance of these qualities when we are able to view them in the light of spiritual science. I would like to start with two vices in life and then talk about some virtues, starting with the virtues of goodwill and contentment and the vices of lying and envy.

Let us first consider these two vices, which we often encounter in life. It cannot be denied that in the broadest circles, both among the simplest people and among those who, so to speak, already belong to the leaders of life, there is a deep, deep aversion and antipathy towards what we can call envy and mendacity. To mention right away some people who were among the leaders of life, I refer to the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini and to those passages in his autobiography where he says that on close self-examination he must accuse himself of many vices, but may still say that he was never really a liar. This artist therefore finds a certain satisfaction in the fact that, on the basis of his self-observation, he can exclude lying from his character traits. And Goethe once says, as a result of his self-observation, that he must accuse himself of many things, but that envy, this ugly vice, had not really eaten at his heart. Thus we see, as it were, at the summits of life, how one feels antipathy for mendacity and envy, how one is told everywhere, where one is accustomed to look at life a little deeper, even where great abilities are, as it were, inherent in the life of the soul: You must guard against these vices in particular. And who would deny that this fundamental antipathy to falsehood and envy runs through all, all layers of our humanity. You only need to remember how much it would eat away at your heart if, in a certain moment, you had to say to yourself during truly honest and correct self-observation: I am an envious person. If you had to admit this resolutely to yourself, you would certainly feel in this confession that you would have to take something into yourself, such as fighting against this envy, fighting against envy. It is a deeply rooted feeling that mendacity and envy are ugly human traits. Why do we feel that way, then? Yes, you see, people do not always realize why they have such a deep antipathy to this or that. They often do not realize what is slumbering in the more or less subconscious part of their soul life and is undoubtedly present. In the face of envy and mendacity, man feels that he is violating something that is connected with the very essence of humanity and the very essence of human value. We need only utter a word and we will feel this. Spiritual science should gradually make us aware that, in addition to the individual personalities incarnated in the flesh, there is something like a unified, universal humanity that dwells in all souls in the same way as the divine-human. And here it is precisely spiritual science that presents this to us as a great ideal and that gradually leads us to have an understanding of the universal human. And yet, in an emotional way, there is something in all human hearts that always says in a certain way: Seek a bond that holds all people together, that always entwines itself from soul to soul, and you will find it. — And the corresponding feeling is expressed in the word “compassion”. Compassion is such a general human quality that we have to say: In this compassion, it is darkly announced the bond that goes from every soul to every soul. And there one feels again in the subconscious how one is violating compassion, the recognition of what is common in all people in the most eminent sense, with falsehood and envy.

What do we actually do when we tell a lie? We do nothing else than erect a partition between us and the other person. What should connect us with him, the common knowledge of some truth that should live in our soul and in his, if things were right, we tear that apart by telling him a lie. We do not recognize, in the moment when we tell the untruth, that we should actually live in the other with the best part of ourselves.

And when we envy someone, be it for abilities or for something else in life, then we sin against compassion in the way that we do not recognize the person for what he or she should actually be for us, as something that actually belongs to us and whose advantages and gifts and strokes of luck we should actually rejoice in if we felt truly connected to him or her.

So we are sinning against the most beautiful thing in human life, against compassion, when we are envious and untruthful people. And why is this so vehemently expressed in the dissatisfaction with these two qualities? Why is that? Well, both qualities can show us how that which resides in our soul reproduces itself, progresses to the shells of our being and has a meaning for these shells.

Envy is something that, when observed occultly, is clearly expressed in a very specific nature of the astral body when it is present in a person. And an envious person, no matter how much he is able to hide this envy from the outside world, reveals the quality of envy in his astral body. Our astral body has very specific basic properties. Even if it is different in every person and shows the most diverse differences in different people, it still has certain basic properties. And when we look at it with clairvoyant vision as an aura, it has very specific color properties. These fade in a remarkable way in the case of envious people; they fade, they become weak and dull. And the astral body of an envious person becomes, as it were, poor in the strength that it should supply to the whole human organism.

In the case of untruthfulness, it is again the case that it, and also every single lie, expresses itself in the etheric body. The etheric body loses vitality and life energy when a person is untruthful. This can even be observed externally. However strange it may sound for our age, it is nevertheless true that wounds, for example, heal more slowly in people who lie a lot than in truthful people, under otherwise similar conditions. Of course, one should not draw absolute conclusions, there may also be other reasons. But all other things being equal, wounds are more difficult to heal in dishonest people than in truthful people. It is good to observe such things in life. And that is also easily explained. The etheric body of a person is the actual life principle, it is what must contain the life forces. But these are undermined by untruthfulness. So that the etheric body cannot give as much life force as is necessary for a healing if this etheric body has had its life force withdrawn through untruthfulness, if it has not always been permeated by those movements, by those facts that arise from truthfulness. We should pay attention to such things, for we shall understand life better in many respects if we do.

Now you know that we must see what is happening to people in the light of two powers that influence human life as it develops from incarnation to incarnation. We must look at human life under the influence of the forces of Lucifer and Ahriman. The forces of Lucifer are those that act on our astral body, that radiate their power into our astral body and tempt us in relation to it. The forces of Ahriman are those that tempt us in relation to our etheric body. Yes, it is Lucifer who, so to speak, grabs us by the scruff of the neck when we are envious people. Envy is truly a Luciferic quality, a quality that comes from Lucifer, whereas untruthfulness is a quality that comes from Ahriman. For Ahriman sends out the forces and powers that radiate into our etheric body.

Now we can say: It was absolutely necessary that Lucifer and Ahriman were delegated by the wise powers of the world so that they could influence us to become independent. In that they cause us to abuse our independence, they are in a sense enemies of the higher development of mankind. But even if they are in a sense enemies of man in his higher development, they are very friendly and make very peculiar compromises among themselves. We can speak of these compromises when we consider human qualities such as envy and lying.

Envy! The moment a person who is not completely corrupt says to himself, 'I am an envious person', he will do anything to fight that envy. You don't have to be particularly high to do anything. But sometimes things are much deeper than our power, which comes from consciousness. And sometimes people imagine that it is too easy to fight such things. So it happens that they fight such things because they perceive them as ugly, but they do not go away, they actually only change their form, they reappear in a different area. They then appear in masks, in disguises. And because one hates envy so much, one fights against it, but if the soul is not yet strong enough to fight it thoroughly, it disappears as envy but reappears in another form.

You all know that human trait that is so common and that you could call: criticism and faultfinding, paying attention to the faults of our fellow human beings. When someone has to say to themselves, “I am an envious person, I don't want my fellow human beings to have advantages,” they feel bad. They feel that they have to fight it. But when they can say, He feels that the fault-finding is justified to a certain extent, and he feels right in his element. Just imagine, if that were not the case, how many coffee parties and beer societies would have to be abandoned, where basically nothing else is done so often but to give rein to this carping and fault-finding. And then man finds himself justified before himself. He says to himself: Yes, one sees the faults, one must see them, one cannot close one's eyes. — It is only a matter of why we see the faults of our fellow human beings, whether we see the intention to improve life, or whether we follow a tendency of our soul, which is often nothing more than a masked envy. People fight envy because they hate it, but they are too weak to uproot it. So it takes on the guise of a critical nature and continues to roam the soul in this way. Then you have not fought envy, you have only forced it into a different metamorphosis. In reality, what has happened is that man has fought Lucifer, because he is above the envy of the Regent, as he is above much. But Lucifer then says to Ahriman, if I may express it thus: 'See, dear Ahriman, man hates my mode of ruling envy; he does not want to be envious. Now you take him in relation to this quality! Then Ahriman says: Yes, I will press that into the etheric body. — And it is pressed into the etheric body as a critical mind, as a critical spirit, as a misguided judgment about the world. For the ability to judge always has something to do with the movements and forces of the etheric body. Here the command of our soul passes from Lucifer to Ahriman. And so many qualities, which if they presented themselves in their original form we would hate and fight against, appear in disguise. Sometimes they present themselves in such a way that we actually find them very justified and even take some pride in being able to see what is right in life. Then we are truly caught in the tentacles of the other power, the Ahrimanic power. We must not forget that a quality is much more dangerous when it appears in disguise than when it appears in its original form. Therefore, when we see this or that in life, it is always good to ask: Is it not perhaps only a transformed other vice? — This is extremely necessary so that we learn to look at life in its truth. We can only do this if we use the guidelines that anthroposophical wisdom gives us to properly observe life.

Now we must say: What appears in life as this or that vice, whether in its true form or in disguise, we often see as a karmic effect in a single incarnation. We do not even have to wait for the transition from one incarnation to another. We see the karmic effect of a quality that occurs in any period of life in one incarnation. And those who really want to observe life and pay a little attention, will not get to know life if they always forget tomorrow what happened today, but if they consider longer periods of human life, they will find karma at work even in one embodiment, in one life. It is really necessary to pay very, very careful attention to how the sins of life basically only show up after decades. But people are a forgetful generation. Of all the races, beginning with the human race and extending to all higher worlds, people are truly the most forgetful generation. Even if we have known someone for decades, we forget what came to light ten years ago; we are very happy to let it fade from our memory. I may have already mentioned a small example here, but it can show us how we have to look at life in larger periods of time if we want to recognize it in its true form – something external that I just want to insert. It concerns the time in which I had the opportunity to observe many children in different families. When you educate children, you not only have to observe the children you are educating yourself, but also the more or less young offspring of uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews, and so on. And you can take note of many things for life. Well, it was a long time ago, fashions change. When I had children of my own, it was fashionable for their teachers to give them quite a few tins of red wine with their meals during the day as a form of sustenance. It was done, and it was thought to be a good thing. If you made a note of it at the time: this child and that child were given red wine and the other was not, you can now, if you have the opportunity again, as I always try to observe what has become of these children, gather strange insights. I can say that the two- to three- to four-year-old children of yesteryear – now people of twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine years – who were given red wine as children, are fidgety, nervous people who sometimes find it extremely difficult to find their way in life. Of course, one should not just make one's observations over a period of five years. Today it is so common to try this or that, and if it shows some success in the next few months, it is quickly a widespread remedy. People are forgetful in this area too. How many remedies have gone out of fashion after five years, people have forgotten again. But, as I said, if you extend your observation over decades, then you can really feel how life works. There really is a big difference between children who were given red wine in those days and those who were not given any. But you would have to make your observations over three decades, so to speak, to see that. And that is how it is. I have included this to show that if you want to see karma at work, it is necessary not to be forgetful, but to extend your observations over longer periods of time. The same applies to what comes to light in a more psychological way.

If you look at the second half of a person's life in context with the first, you can see how a person who was untruthful or envious, or who expressed envy under the mask of criticism, will experience the karmic effect of this in the second half of their life. Dishonest people always show a certain karmic effect of dishonesty in one incarnation: a certain shyness, an impossibility, one might say, to look people straight in the eye. That will certainly come true. Just try to observe the matter. You will find it confirmed. Folk proverbs sometimes have a deep, wise core. It is not without reason that in many regions people say that one should beware of a person who cannot look another in the eye. This is because of the karmic effect of untruthfulness.

Envy, on the other hand, or envy masked as criticism, manifests itself in a later life epoch of the same incarnation in such a way that the person in question has the characteristic of not being able to stand on his or her own two feet, so that he or she has the longing to lean on others, to need advice on all sorts of things, and always wants to run to someone else for advice. Independence in life is lost through envy, criticism, and a tendency to find fault. Such a person becomes weak in spirit.

Now these qualities, with their karmic effects, confront us spiritually when we consider one incarnation. We will take a moment to consider how the karmic effects play out as we move from one incarnation to another.

But now, so as not to be one-sided, we also want to consider good qualities: goodwill and contentment. Everyone knows what a benevolent person is. A benevolent person is someone who feels satisfied when someone else succeeds or achieves something, when they notice good qualities in someone. Goodwill is present when, in a sense, one experiences what the other person experiences as one's own. This goodwill, in turn, has a very specific effect on our astral body, which is almost the opposite of the effect of envy. We see how the lights of the astral body shine when a person expresses goodwill. The astral body becomes brighter and more radiant when there are feelings of goodwill in the soul of the person. The aura becomes more luminous, more radiant and thus richer; it becomes more saturated, and it is then able to infuse into the person first something like warmth of soul and then even a sense of well-being.

And when we see a contented person before us, a person who is not inclined to be grumpy about everything from the outset, to be dissatisfied about everything, then the etheric body shows us very definite qualities. It is important that we take note of this in a certain way. For we should actually realize how much of our dissatisfaction basically really depends on ourselves. There are those who cannot do enough to ferret out everything that can make them dissatisfied. And we feel that not only happier natures, but also better natures, are capable of paying a great deal of attention to the fact that, however bad things may be, we still have reasons to be happy about this or that. There are such reasons. And if someone does not want to admit that these exist, it is their own fault. Satisfaction, especially when it is brought about by a better quality of our soul, strengthens the etheric body in terms of its life force. And again it is the case – all other conditions being equal – that wounds or other things heal more easily in a contented person who has good reason to be contented, and does not get worked up about what happens to him, than in a grumpy and discontented person who gets worked up about everything and, as I said, leaves unsatisfied, under otherwise similar circumstances. Now we can also see quite clearly in a lifetime – and this is important for us to bear in mind when educating others – that someone who is truly imbued with contentment during a certain period of their life and who strives to seek out things that can satisfy them, perhaps despite pain and suffering, that a karmic effect will occur in the same life, even if it takes decades. This is expressed in particular by the fact that such a person, who has endeavored to acquire contentment in a certain period of his life, radiates a certain beneficial balance of life to his environment. You know that this exists. There are people around whom others have to fidget, and there are those who simply by being there calm others. People who have endeavored to be content in one epoch of their lives gain, as a karmic effect for the next epoch of the same life, the possibility of having a harmonizing effect on their environment, so to speak, purely by their existence, being benefactors to their environment.

We can always observe that benevolent people who have endeavored to be benevolent reap the karmic effect of all things that depend on them and are intended by them succeeding in a later epoch of life. Sometimes it seems inexplicable to us that some people succeed in everything, that they feel up to whatever they undertake, while others do not succeed and everything they touch fails. This leads back to the karmic cause of goodwill or ill will. You can observe these things, which I am presenting to you as guidelines, in life. If you exclude the sources of error that exist, you will see that life confirms what I have said.

When we now pass from one incarnation to another, we have to say: in one incarnation, the karmic effects can actually only show themselves in the soul. The effects of envy show themselves in certain weaknesses and in a lack of independence, the effects of untruthfulness in shyness, the effects of goodwill and contentment as I have described them to you. In this incarnation we do not have the same thorough and profound influences on our bodily organization that would enable us to make more progress with the karmic effects than a psychic basis. These things only take effect in the body, in the structure and organization of the body, in the next incarnation. And while we make ourselves spiritually dependent on others in one incarnation through envy and a tendency to find fault, these have the effect of constituting the body weakly and building it up weakly into the next incarnation. A weak body is built up by someone who was formerly plagued by envy or by masked envy, by a tendency to find fault, to be critical.

But now, if we have studied spiritual science a little, we must also say that it is truly not by chance that we are brought together with this or that person in a new incarnation. We are led into the family and environment with which we have something to do. And so you will not find it very strange if I say: If someone in an incarnation was an envious person, he will be reborn with the people – be they his parents or others – whom he envied, judged or gossiped about, or blamed. He will be reunited with them. And we may be reunited with them because we are led into this environment with weak organization. This makes the matter very practical, bringing the teaching of karma close to our practical life. We can say that when a human child is born with weak organization, This is the consequence of the envious disposition of the previous incarnation, and we are the ones who were envied, and this human child has been brought together with us karmically because we are the ones who were the target of their envy and gossip. It is fruitful when we say to ourselves: If karma has any meaning at all, it is justified to look at it this way. So let's look at it that way.

Of course, the only way to make it fruitful is to ask ourselves: What should we do in the face of such a weak human being? We only need to ask ourselves: What seems morally best in ordinary life when someone persecutes us with their envy and criticism? Perhaps it is not always possible to do the best in our ordinary, everyday lives. But what seems best to us? - Now, most certainly, forgiveness seems to us to be the very best. We may say that our lives are perhaps not such that we can always forgive, but the best is undoubtedly the forgiveness, and the most effective and also the most fruitful in life is the forgiveness. We cannot always practise it in our ordinary lives, but if we can say that the best thing in life is to forgive, it turns out that the real application of the principle of forgiveness is in the right place in all circumstances. This is when we have to acknowledge what I have said as a karmic effect from past incarnations. If a weak human child is born into our environment or brought together with us, we must then say to ourselves: Since karma should not remain merely a theoretical idea, we must think that we were the envied ones, the gossiped about. Now, under all circumstances, we can practice in our deepest hearts the feeling of forgiveness and of forgiveness. We can, so to speak, envelop such a human child in an atmosphere of repeatedly stirred feelings of forgiveness. If we did that in life, if we felt united with people who are weak, and did not just grasp the idea of forgiveness in theory, but always renewed the feelings in our souls, I have something to forgive you for, I want to forgive you, and always renew this feeling, then that would be a practical introduction of the anthroposophical attitude into life. You would certainly see the effect. Just try to put it into practice and you will see that people who are born into our environment in a weak state will flourish when you forgive them in this way and renew the feeling of forgiveness, that our feeling has a healing and invigorating effect on them. And we can become healers, healers of the people with whom we have been brought together by karma. In this way, anthroposophy becomes fruitful if we do not merely regard it as a collection of ideas that interest us. It is basically quite selfish when we begin to get enthusiastic about anthroposophy because the thoughts of anthroposophy inspire us and seem true to us. For what are we satisfying then? We are satisfying our longing for a harmonious worldview. That is very beautiful. But the greater thing is when we permeate our whole life with what results from these ideas; when the ideas go into our hands, into every step and into everything we experience and do. Only then does anthroposophy become a principle of life, and until it does, it has no value.

We can also speak in a similar way with regard to the other qualities. If, for example, we have been liars in a previous incarnation and are born again, we will be brought together with those to whom we may have lied to their faces. It is not uncommon, if one is a true student of the occult, to find that a human being is born into an environment to which he cannot find the right relationship, is not understood by it and does not understand it. Sometimes we have a peculiar effect on our environment. I don't know if you have already observed that this has a much wider impact than just on people. There are certain people: if they want to raise flowers, these flowers thrive, they have a lucky hand for it. The fact that it is they who raise the flowers makes them thrive. Other people can do whatever they want: the flowers wither. That happens. There are simply much more mysterious relationships between the individual beings of existence than one usually thinks. These mysterious relationships are, of course, mainly from person to person. And if we are brought together through karma with a human child who brazenly lied to us in a previous incarnation, it is so that we, so to speak, find it difficult to relate to this child. We should pay attention to this. We should not judge this merely according to our temperament, but karmically. We should say: “This comes from the fact that we were perhaps often lied to by this human child.” Now we can in turn help this human child, strengthen and empower him.

What is the best way to forgive something that can be expressed something like this, another person tells you a lie. The best way to forgive that is to teach him a truth. With the other, by rectifying the lie, you are already doing some good, but you have not helped the person any further. You can help him further by trying to teach him a useful truth. You have to follow a kind of policy in your dealings with people, and that helps people to progress. If we are obliged to look at the matter karmically, it is particularly advantageous that we endeavor to be truthful to people with whom we are karmically brought together and who we know do not find a relationship with us because they are shy around us. Then we will see how these people in turn flourish under our openness and how this openness is of great advantage to them. Thus we see how we can gain life principles by looking at the workings of karma in a practical way.

What we have just characterized as the effect of goodwill in a single life, we can see as having the effect of harmonizing life, but initially in the soul. People in whom this has an effect from one incarnation to the next, we find that they are actually born with a happier organization, which we can call 'skillful'. Good will, contentment in one incarnation, brings about skillfulness in another incarnation. It is true that this is the case, because it can always be proven in the field of occult research. And one can very well observe oneself and experience some of the ways in which the previous incarnation works its way into the present one. We can be quite sure that it is so in the case of people whose fingers are quite unsuitable for sewing on a button that might tear, or in the case of people who, when asked to carry a glass into the cupboard, happily throw it to the floor – I am exaggerating a little now. But in more subtle nuances, there are very many people who are so organized that they cannot help but move their fingers in the wrong way, that they always make awkward mistakes. Whether one can use the instrument of one's body well or whether it presents treacherous obstacles at every turn has a profound significance for one's life. This is extraordinarily important. And when we see a clumsy child growing up, we must assume in most cases that in the previous incarnation he lacked contentment and goodwill. When we see skill emerging, so that the person, when he touches something, already literally knows how to do it, then that is most certainly the karmic effect of goodwill and contentment. |

If we look at it this way, we can say that we can actually have a wonderful effect from one incarnation to the next. It is possible for us to really work on our next incarnation. And we will change a lot for our next incarnation if we seriously resolve to observe whether we have a little bit of faultfinding and criticizing in us after all. If we try to examine ourselves to see if we have even a little of this, we find that we have it to a considerable extent. It is good to try to examine ourselves to see if we have even a little of it. Then the process of working on ourselves begins. And we may be able to avoid being born weak and pale in the next incarnation, avoid in this life becoming, so to speak, dependent human beings.

When we consider these things, we will say to ourselves: It is no longer a fantasy to combine the individual incarnations like links in a human chain and to really regard the earth as a kind of training through which we learn to use what is offered to us in the individual incarnations so that we come higher and higher, go further and further. After all, why are we incarnated, in principle? We can best understand this by asking ourselves what the two great differences are between our incarnations in the old, pre-Christian times and our present incarnations, which are taking place after the Christ Impulse has been present. There is a very, very significant difference.

This difference between our incarnations in ancient pre-Christian times and our present incarnations could best be described by saying: When you look back at the incarnations of people in the pre-Christian era, to a certain extent the souls in that pre-Christian era had all retained something of what all souls had at the beginning of their earthly incarnations. All souls had natural clairvoyance, an insight into the spiritual world. And the progress of incarnations consists precisely in the fact that this inheritance from the spiritual world, from the spiritual origin, has gradually been lost, that people have increasingly emerged onto the physical plane, and the spiritual world has increasingly faded from them. The Christ impulse means that when we find the possibility to receive the Christ in us, to connect him with our ego, we in turn begin to ascend more and more to what we were at the beginning, only richer. That we are again at the end of the incarnations in the spiritual as we were at the beginning of our incarnations, is effected by the reception of the Christ power, when we apply our next incarnations so that we absorb more and more of the Christ. These are the great differences between pre-Christian and post-Christian incarnations. We are actually still in a transitional period in this regard. We have been pushed far out of the reach of normal human perception onto the physical plane, onto mere physical perception, and today is actually a high point in terms of physical perception. For the Christ impulse is only just beginning, and in subsequent incarnations people will truly take up the Christ, will only come to love these incarnations because they give them the opportunity to experience what can only be experienced through earthly existence: the acceptance of the Christ impulse into the soul. We can observe this even in great personalities, how there is, so to speak, a tremendous difference between the incarnations before the Christ impulse on Earth and after. I would like to tell you a detail.

Some time ago I was called upon to spend a few days lecturing in our southernmost European branch – I mean in so far as we speak of Rosicrucian Theosophy – in Palermo. And when I entered Sicily from Naples by ship, I already had the very definite feeling that there was something to be learned there about occult facts that are difficult to study in the north alone. For there is a personality, an individuality that emerged, which I cannot name now, that played a certain role at the turn of the Middle Ages and the modern era, which made a lot of noise in our and neighboring areas and which makes the occultist wonder: What was the previous incarnation of this personality? That was an important research question for me, and strangely enough, I hoped to find out something about this question through the occult research that was possible there, especially at this entrance to Sicily. And that was indeed the case very soon. Of course, what is being told is something intimate, but within our branches, there is no longer any need to hold back on these intimate things. Something very, very remarkable has been poured out into the whole spiritual atmosphere of Sicily – I do not say the outer, but the spiritual atmosphere. And the pursuit of this remarkable thing really led at last to its origin, to a great sage who worked in Sicily and who is also dismissed with a few words in the history of philosophy, but whom we really know very little about in an outwardly exoteric way. His name is Empedocles.

If one wants to characterize Empedocles as an occultist – and I would like to do this for you – then one must say: in some respects, Empedocles was very much ahead of his time, he was overripe for his time. In other respects, however, he could not go beyond his time. There was a deep conflict in his soul. Empedocles is truly a great, all-embracing personality. He was active in Sicily not only as a philosopher, not only as a mystery teacher, but also as a statesman, as an architect, as all kinds of things – he was a kind of organizer, this wonderful Empedocles. Empedocles lived in Sicily about four or five centuries before the Christ Impulse, and he was ahead of his time in that he had the urge to delve into the material world. In the past, people had never delved into matter as superficially as they do today. When someone spoke of water, like T'hales, for example, they meant something spiritual. Empedocles was the one who, in a certain respect, nevertheless anticipated a materialistic principle by composing all being out of the four elements, which he, however, conceived materially. And by mixing and unmixing this matter, he conceived the constitution of the world. He lost the spiritual because he — precisely as an occult personality, looking back on his incarnations — should have found the Christ impulse; he would have been called to do so. When we look back in the Akasha Chronicle today, we find the Christ impulse at a very specific point; but the one who lived before the Christ impulse could not do so. He could not absorb it as an earthly impulse, because it had not yet existed physically. Empedocles lacked that, it could not pour into his soul. He did not have the counterweight against the materialism that flared up in him. But because he was a personality with strong impulses, albeit with the impulses of an occultist, this led him to live out this disharmony. That is what turned out to be the truth. This led him to want to be one with the material of the four elements, just as one would otherwise, when seeking the truth, want to unite with this spiritual in spirit. And he plunged into the Atna. He really did throw himself into it to be one with the elements. He sought the divine in the material, identifying with the divine that appeared to him in the material image. And I would like to say: this product of Empedocles' combustion in the fiery floods of Etna is still present today in the atmosphere of Sicily as a fertilizing force, like the effect of a sacrifice. Something great and mighty is present, but it is emanating from this, one might say, false, blasé, wrongly placed in time – do not misunderstand the term 'false' – materialism. Empedocles, who, looking back, could not find the Christ, although he should have found him, throws his life away. Thus it happened that he came to life again in such a remarkable way at the beginning of the newer time and lived quite differently. It is not yet time to speak of the personality in which he was reborn. A wonderful view of what the Christ Impulse actually is in the course of evolution arises. Between the previous and the later incarnation of Empedocles stands the Christ event in the midst. And by comparing the two incarnations of Empedocles, one can see, by observing his individuality, what effect it has, whether one, as a spirit belonging to the newer observation, can look back and find the Christ impulse or not. This makes an enormous difference. Just as souls in ancient times had to go back from incarnation to incarnation to see how they had allied themselves with the divine spiritual being in earlier incarnations, so we must have the opportunity, when we go back from our own incarnation and trace the time from our birth to our previous death and again from that to our previous birth and so on, to find the Christ impulse in this way. The spiritual researcher in particular must find it. This Christ impulse lights a light for him, whereas otherwise he would be plunged into darkness at this moment and everything that existed would lie in darkness. We need the Christ impulse like a torch in the field of spiritual research, otherwise darkness comes, otherwise we cannot see clearly into the true reasons of the Akasha Chronicle of ancient times. This can be observed in a wonderful way in examples such as that of Empedocles. Then one gets a feeling for how these incarnations follow one another in our earthly existence; how, so to speak, man has moved in a descending direction up to the Christ Impulse, how he has emerged further and further onto the physical plane, and how we are in the process of gradually ascending into the spiritual realm again. The last great spirit of descent is the great Buddha, the first great impulse for ascent is that of Christ Jesus, and perhaps there is no better way to feel the tremendous difference between the Buddha principle and the principle of Christ Jesus than by contemplating something that the great Buddha once said to his most intimate disciples, looking back at his enlightenment, which is symbolically called the enlightenment under the bodhi tree. There Buddha says: When I look back on earlier incarnations, I see how I proceeded from the divine-spiritual source of the world, how I went from incarnation to incarnation, always dwelling with the spiritual essence in the outer body temple, descending into the physical world. But now, in this incarnation, I have found the possibility of no longer having to return to an incarnation. From body temple to body temple I have gone, in every incarnation the Godhead has erected the temple of my body for me. But now, as I am embodied in it for the last time, I feel how the beams of this body temple are cracking and that I no longer need to return to such a temple. For that is what he proclaimed: that the true striving must be to escape from this earthly activity, to no longer have any connection with this temple of the body, but to strive out of it to the last incarnation, in order to live on only in the spiritual. That was the last reference to man's descent, to the memory that men can have of primeval wisdom, of what stands at the beginning of the human race.

Oh, it must move us when we see the Buddha standing, saying: From temple to temple of the body I have passed; now I feel that it is for the last time. If we compare this – and disregard all metaphysical backgrounds – with an intimate saying of Christ to his intimate disciples, with the words: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again”, we see that in the Buddha was a great longing for the beams of the temple of the body to collapse, so that there would be no need to return to it; but that in Christ there was the promise: “Tear it down, and I will rebuild it in three days.” The love for the earthly world expresses itself in the fact that for the following incarnations of human beings, in which they find the possibility to build their body temple again and again, so that they can learn again and again and ascend higher; so that then, when the earth has reached its goal, the earth itself will become a corpse, so to speak, fall away from the soul of all humanity, just as our body falls away from the soul when we pass through the gate of death. But then people will have come higher and higher. By becoming Christianized, people will be able to live on to new levels of existence as humanity. What is meant by Christ's saying that he himself wants to return to the physical body, but that he will return to the principle of building the body, that he will remain in the earthly existence until the end of the earth.

That is what I tried to express in what I say through Theodora, the seer in the Mystery Drama, where you can see how the Christ will become more and more familiar to human life, although he does not return to a physical body. But he is experienced in the physical body temples of human beings. And in this saying of his, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” lies the promise: Yes, I will make it true that I can enter into the souls of men, so that more and more people can come who, in the sense of Paul, can say, “Not I, but the Christ in me!”

Thus we see how we can contemplate in a small way spiritual science as a principle of life, by gaining the possibility of seeing certain qualities of our character and soul taking effect karmically between birth and death, and of seeing them working their way into the bodily organization of the next incarnation. And so we see how spiritual science presents the loftiest ideals to us and tells us what we will become — Christ-like human beings — when the Earth will become a corpse and fall away from the soul-like in man, when man will be called upon to progress to other planetary conditions. Spiritual science can thus give us the greatest ideals and can flow into the smallest circumstances of life. In this way it becomes practical for everyday life, and it can and should become more and more so. When we become anthroposophists in the sense that all our actions, no matter how remote from what might be considered anthroposophical activity, are imbued with anthroposophical thinking and feeling, only then can we say that our beings have been imbued with anthroposophy. Anthroposophy must be regarded not as a theory but as a way of life, but as a way of life that needs to be learned. And basically we must realize that we have to encourage ourselves through the true, concrete content of anthroposophy if it is to be a way of life for us, not wanting to say: I understand this from anthroposophy and that is the right thing to do, but rather that we first have to familiarize ourselves deeply with what spiritual science has to say to us. Then it must become the strength of our lives. And it can only do so when we permeate ourselves with it. But then it will do so in the smallest and in the greatest, then the perspective for the connections of human progress and for the smallest facts of everyday life will open up for us.

In Munich, as most of you will be aware, beside repeating last year's representation of Edouard Schuré's drama, The Children of Lucifer, we produced a Rosicrucian Mystery Play which seeks in manifold ways to represent some of the truths that are connected with our Movement. On the one hand, the Mystery Play was intended as an example, showing how that which inspires all theosophical life can also pour itself out into Art. On the other hand, we must not forget that this Play contains very much of our spiritual-scientific teachings, in a form in which we shall perhaps only discover it during years to come. This, above all, must not be misunderstood. You should take pains to read the things that are contained in it,—I do not say between the lines, for they are in the actual words, but they are there in a spiritual way. If you were really to take the Rosicrucian Mystery Play in earnest, and look for the things that it contains during the next few years, it would not be necessary for me to give any lectures at all for many years to come. You would discover many things which I am giving in lectures on all kinds of subjects.

It will, however, be more practicable for us to seek these things together than alone. In a certain sense, it is very good for that which lives in Spiritual Science to be among us in this form. To-day, therefore, taking our start from the Rosicrucian Mystery Play, I should like to speak of certain properties of human self-knowledge. But we must first call to mind how the individuality, living and working in the body of Johannes Thomasius, is characterised in this Play. Hence, I should like this lecture on self-knowledge to begin with a recitation of those passages which refer to the self-knowledge of Johannes.

(The second scene: ‘Know thou thyself, O man!’ and the ninth scene ‘O man, feel thou thyself!’ were read out aloud at this point.)

In these two scenes, ‘Know thou thyself, O man’ and ‘O man, feel thou thyself,’ two stages of development in the unfolding of the soul are brought before us. I beg you not to think it strange if I now say the following: I am in no way opposed to the Rosicrucian Mystery Play being interpreted as I have sometimes heard other poems interpreted in theosophical circles. For in this Rosicrucian Mystery there may well come before our souls in a more living and immediate form what I have often said in relation to other works of art I have interpreted. I never hesitated to say: Though the plant or flower does not know what the human being who beholds it finds therein, nevertheless, the flower contains what he finds. I said this once when I was about to interpret Faust. It is not necessary for the poet, when he actually wrote the poem, to have exactly known or felt in the words all that was afterwards found there. I can assure you, nothing of what I may now or subsequently attach to this Mystery Play, and of which I know that it is really contained therein, came to me consciously when the several scenes were created. The scenes grew out of themselves, like the leaves of the plant. One cannot produce such a form by first having the idea, and then translating it into the outer form. I always found it very interesting to see it coming into being, scene by scene. Other friends, too, who learnt to know the scenes one by one, always said. How strange it is; it always comes out differently from what one had imagined.

The Mystery Play is like a picture of the evolution of mankind in the evolution of a single man. And I will emphasise, for real and true feeling one cannot shroud oneself in abstractions when one wishes to set forth Theosophy. Each human soul is different from another, and must indeed be different; for everyone experiences his own evolution, in all that is given as our general teaching, we can only receive guiding lines. Hence the full truth can only be given if we take our start from an individual soul,—representing a single human individuality in a fully individual and characteristic way. If, therefore, any one studies the character of Johannes Thomasius, seeking to translate into theories of human evolution what is specifically said of him, he would be making an entire mistake. He would be much in error if he imagined: ‘I myself shall experience just what Johannes Thomasius experienced.’ That which Johannes Thomasius has to experience applies indeed to every man as to its general tendency and direction. Nevertheless, to undergo these individual experiences one would have to be Johannes Thomasius! Everyone is a Johannes Thomasius his own way. Thus, everything is set forth in a fully individual way, and by this very fact it presents in as true a way as possible, through individual figure, the characteristic evolution of the human being in his soul.

Therefore, a broad basis had to be created. Thomasius is first shown on the physical plane. Single experiences of his soul are indicated, such, for example, as this one, which cannot but be of great significance:—We are told how at a time not very long ago, he deserted a being who was devoted to him in faithful love. That is a thing that often happens, but it works differently on one who is striving to undergo an inner evolution. It is a deep and profound truth: He who is to undergo a higher evolution does not attain self-knowledge by brooding into himself, but by diving other beings. By self-knowledge we must know that we are come from the Cosmos. And we can only dive down by transmuting our own self into another self. To begin with we transmuted into the beings once near to us in life. This therefore, is an example of the conscious experience of one's own self within another. Johannes, having got deeper down into himself, with his self dives down in self-knowledge into another being—into that being whom he had brought bitter pain. So, then we see how Thomasius dives down in self-knowledge. Theoretically we may say: ‘If you would know the flower, you must dive into the flower.’ Self-knowledge, however, is most readily attained when we dive down into the events in the midst of which we ourselves have stood in some other way. So long as we are in our own self, we go through the outer experiences. Over against a true self-knowledge, that which we think of the life of other beings is a mere abstraction. For Thomasius, to begin with, the experiences of other human beings become his own experience. Here, for example, was one Capesius, describing his experiences. We can well understand how such experiences arise in life; Thomasius, however, receives them differently. He listens, but his listening (it is described so in one of the later scenes) is different. It is as though he were not there at all with his ordinary self. Another, deeper faculty reveals itself. It is as though he himself entered into the soul of Capesius and experienced what is going on within that soul.

It is exceedingly significant when he becomes estranged from himself. For this indeed is inseparable from self-knowledge: one must tear oneself free of oneself and go out into another. It is indeed significant for Thomasius when, having heard all these speeches, he finds himself obliged to say:—

“A mirrored picture 'twas of fullest life
That showed me to myself in clearest lines:
This spirit-revelation makes me feel
That most of us protect and train one trait
And one alone in all our character,
Which thus persuades itself it is the whole.
I sought to unify these many traits
In mine own self and boldly trod the path
Which here is shown, to lead unto that goal;
And it hath made of me a nothingness.”

Why did it make of him a nothingness? Because he dived down through self-knowledge into the other beings. Brooding into his own inner life, makes a man proud and arrogant. True self-knowledge leads at first to the pain of diving down into other selves. Johannes listens to the words of Capesius. He experiences in the other soul the words of Felicia. He follows Strader into his cloistered loneliness. All this, to begin with, is abstraction; he has not yet come to the point to which he is afterwards guided through his pain. Self-knowledge is deepened by meditation in the inner self. That which was shown in the first scene, is now revealed by deepened self-knowledge, which—rising out of the abstraction—enters into reality. The words which you have heard resounding through the centuries—words of the Delphic oracle—gain a new life for the human being at this point; yet to begin with it is a life of estrangement from his own self. Johannes, as one who is in process of self-knowledge, dives down into all other beings. He lives in air and water, rocks and streams,—not in himself. All these words which we can only shew resounding from outside, are really words of meditation. At the very moment when the curtain rises, we must conceive the words that sound forth in all self-knowledge—we must conceive them far, far louder than they can be presented on the stage. Then the self-knower dives down into a multitude of other beings. He learns to know the things into which he enters thus. And now the same experience, which he already had before, comes before him in a most terrible way. It is a deep truth. Self-knowledge, when it takes its course in this way, leads us to look at ourselves quite differently than we ever did before. It leads us to learn to feel our own Ego as a stranger!

In fact, it is the outer vehicle of man which he feels most near to himself. A human being of our time is apt to feel it far more nearly when he cuts his finger than when he is hurt by a false judgment passed by his fellowman. How much more does it hurt the human being of to-day when he cuts his finger than when he hears a false judgment! Yet he is only cutting into his bodily vehicle.

This is the thing that emerges in self-knowledge: we learn to feel our body as an instrument. It is not so difficult for a man to feel his hand as an instrument when he uses it to grasp an object; but he now learns to feel the same with one or another portion of the brain. This feeling of the brain as of an instrument occurs at a certain stage of self-knowledge. Things become localised. When we drive a nail in the wall, we know that we are doing it with a certain tool. Now we are also aware that in doing so we make use of this or that part of the brain. These things become objective—external to us. We learn to know our brain as something that is really separated from us. Self-knowledge brings about this objectivity of our own bodily vehicle, until at length it is as foreign to us as our external tools. And as we begin thus to feel our bodily nature as an objective thing, thereby we also begin to live in the outer Universe. Only because a man still feels his body as his own, he is not clear about it; he thinks there is a boundary between the air outside him and the air within. He says to himself that he is there within; and yet, within him is the same air as outside him. Take then the substance of the air; it is within and at the same time without. And so it is in every case so it is with the blood, and with all that is bodily. In a bodily sense, man cannot be either within or without. That is mere Maya. Inasmuch as the bodily ‘inside’ becomes external to us, it is prolonged into the world outside us, into the Cosmos. And so it is, in deed and truth.

The pain of feeling oneself a stranger to oneself,—this was intended in the first scene. It is the pain of feeling oneself estranged from oneself, by finding oneself in all outer things. Johannes' own bodily vehicle is like an entity that is outside him. Feeling his own body outside of himself, he sees the other body approaching him,—the body of the being whom he has deserted. This other one approaches him, and he has learned to speak with that other being's own words. This tells him that his self has now expanded to the other being:

“Ah, bitter sorrow hath he brought to me;
So utterly I trusted him of old.
He left me lonely with my sorrow's pain,
He robbed me of the very warmth of life,
And thrust me deep beneath the chill, cold ground.”

The reproach comes vividly into our soul, only when we are bound to utter the suffering of the other one, with which our own self is connected; for our own self has now dived down into the other self. Such is the real deepening of things. Johannes at this point is really in the pain which he has caused; he feels himself poured out into it and again awakened. What does he really experience? Taking it all in all, we find that the ordinary man undergoes such an experience only in the state that we call Kama-loca. The candidate for Initiation has to experience, already in this world, what the normal human being undergoes in the spiritual world. He must undergo within the physical body the Kama-loca experiences which in the ordinary course are undergone outside the physical. Therefore, all the characteristics which we may understand as properties of Kama-loca are presented here as experiences of Initiation. Just as Johannes dives down into the soul whom he has given pain, so must the normal man in Kama-loca dive down into the souls to whom he gave pain and suffering. As though a box-on-the-ears were given back to him, so must he feel the pain. There is only this difference: while the Initiate experiences these things within the physical body, the other human being undergoes them after death. He who experiences them now will live in quite a different way when Kama-loca comes.

However, even that which man can undergo in Kama-loca, may be experienced in such a way that he is not yet free. It is a difficult task to become completely free. It is one of the most important experiences of spiritual development in our time (in the Graeco-Latin age it was not yet so) to realise how infinitely difficult it is to get free of oneself. A most important Initiation-experience is expressed in the words wherein Johannes feels himself fettered to his own lower body. His own being appears to him as a being to whom he is enchained:—

“I feel the chains that hold me chained to thee.
So fast was not Prometheus riveted
Upon the naked rocks of Caucasus,
As I am riveted and forged to thee.”

That is a thing essentially connected with self-knowledge. It is a secret of self-knowledge.; we must only apprehend it in the right way.

Have we really become better men by becoming earthly men,—by diving down into our earthly vehicles? Or should we be better if we were able to be alone in our inner life,—if we could simply cast the vehicles aside? Superficial people may well ask, when they first meet with the theosophical life, Why should one first dive down into an earthly body? The simplest thing would be to remain above; then we should not have all the misery of diving down. Why have the wise Powers of Destiny plunged us into the body?

In simple feeling, one can explain a little if one says that Divine-spiritual forces have been working at this earthly body for millions of years. Precisely inasmuch as it is so, we should make more of ourselves than we have the force to do. Our inner forces are inadequate! The fact is, if we merely wish to be what we are in our own inner being,—if we are not corrected by our vehicles—we cannot possibly be equal yet to what the Gods have made. Life shows itself in this way. Here upon Earth, man is transplanted into his bodily sheaths - sheaths that that have been prepared by beings during tree Worlds. Man still has the task of building and developing his inner being. Here between birth and death, man is an evil being through the elasticity of his bodily sheaths. In Devachan he is once more a better being, for he is there received by the Divine-spiritual beings who pour him through with their own forces. In time to come—the Vulcan era—he will be a perfect being. Here upon Earth, he is a being who gives way to one lust or another. The heart, for example, is so wisely ordered that it withstands for decades the attacks which man directs against it with his excesses—as, for instance, with his drinking coffee.

Such as he can be to-day by virtue of his own forces, man goes his way through Kama-loca. In Kama-loca he shall learn to know what he can by his own force alone. And that, in truth, is nothing good. Man, to describe himself, cannot describe himself with any predicate of beauty. He must describe himself as Johannes does:

“Yet in what shape know I myself again.
My human form is lost and gone from me;
Like some fierce dragon do I see myself;
Begotten out of primal lust and greed.
And clearly do I see how up till now
Some dim deluding veil of phantom forms
Hath hid from me mine own monstrosity.”

Our inner being is harnessed, as it were elastically, and is thus hidden from us. Truly we learn to know ourselves as ‘some fierce dragon’ when we learn to know Initiation. Therefore these words are derived from the very deepest feeling; they are not words of morbid introspection, but of true self-knowledge:

“Oh yea, I know thee; for thou art myself:
Knowledge doth chain to thee, pernicious beast,
Chain mine own self—pernicious beast—to thee;”

Fundamentally the two are the same; first as the object, then as the subject. ‘I willed to flee from thee …’

This flight, however, leads him all the more into himself. And now the ‘company’ emerges—in which we really are when we look into ourselves. This ‘company’ consists of our own cravings and passions,—all that we did not notice before, because every time we wanted to look into ourselves our gaze was diverted to the world around us. Compared to the inner life into which we tried to look, the world is a world of wondrous beauty. Here, then, we cease to look into ourselves in the illusion or Maya of life.

When human beings around us indulge in vain chatter and we grow tired of it, we take flight in solitude. For certain stages of development, it is important to do so. We can collect ourselves. We should collect ourselves in this way; it is a means of self-knowledge. Nevertheless, there are these experiences we come into a ‘company’ where we can no more be lonely. For at this stage—it matters not, whether within us or without us—beings appear who will not let us be alone. Then comes the experience which man is meant to have. Solitude itself brings him into the worst society of all:—

“Man's final refuge hath been lost to me;
I have been robbed of solitude.”

All these are real experiences, but you must not let their very intensity become a snare. Do not imagine, if such experiences are presented in their full intensity, that you should therefore be afraid. Do not imagine that these things are meant to divert any one from diving down himself into these waters. One may not experience them at once with the same intensity as Johannes did. He had to experience them thus for a definite purpose,—in a certain sense, even prematurely. Regular self-development will go at quite another pace. The fact that it takes place in-Johannes so tumultuously, should be conceived as an individual matter. Because he is an individuality who has suffered shipwreck inasmuch as he infringes on these laws, therefore it all takes place in him in a far more tempestuous way. He learns to know these laws, in that they throw him deeply out of his balance.

Nevertheless, what is here described of Johannes is intended to call forth the feeling that true self-knowledge has nothing to do with trite or easy phrases. Self-knowledge, if it be true, can do no other to begin with than to lead through suffering and grief. Things that were hitherto a refreshment take on another countenance when they appear in the field of self-knowledge. No doubt, we can pray for solitude, even though we have already found self-knowledge. Nevertheless in certain moments of self-knowledge, solitude may be the very thing we lose, if we seek it in our hitherto accustomed way. It is in moments when we flow out into the objective world, and when the lonely one suffers the direst pain of all.

This pouring-out of ourselves into other beings,—we must learn to feel it rightly if we would feel what this Play contains. It is conceived with a certain aesthetic feeling; it is ‘spiritually realistic,’ through and through. A realist with true aesthetic feeling suffers a certain pain at an unrealistic presentation. Here again, that can give satisfaction at a certain stage can be a source of pain at another. All this depends upon the way of self-knowledge. When for example you have understood a play of Shakespeare's—a great work, in the external world—it may no doubt be a source of aesthetic pleasure to you. Nevertheless, there may occur a moment of development when you are no longer satisfied. You feel your inner being rent as you go on from scene to scene. You no longer see any necessity in the sequence of one scene after another. You feel it quite unnatural that one scene is placed next to the other. Why so? Because there is nothing to hold the scenes together,—only the writer Shakespeare, and the onlooker. There is an abstract principle of causality and no reality of being in the sequence of the scenes. It is a characteristic of Shakespeare's dramas; nothing is indicated that works karmically through and through and holds the whole together.

The Rosicrucian Mystery Play, on the other hand, is realistic—spiritually realistic. Much is required of Johannes Thomasius. Without actively partaking in any important role, he is there the stage. He is the one in whose soul it is all taking place. What is described is the development of the soul—the real experiences that are undergone in the soul's development.

The soul of Johannes, realistically, spins one scene out of another. Here, then, we see that the realistic and the spiritual are in no contradiction to each other. The ‘materialistic’ and the spiritual need not—although they can—be in contradiction to each other. The realistic and the spiritual certainly need not be in contradiction to each other. Moreover, a materialist can thoroughly admire what is realistic in a spiritual sense. Shakespeare's dramas can certainly be described as realistic in terms of an aesthetic principle. But you will also understand that an Art which goes hand in hand with Theosophy eventually leads to this:—For him who experiences his own self in the Cosmos, the whole Cosmos becomes an Ego-being. Therefore we cannot abide it that anything should meet him in the Cosmos which does not stand in relation to the Ego-being. Art will in this respect have to learn that which will bring it to the principle of the Ego. For in effect, Christ once upon a time brought us the I. In the most varied spheres this I will live and find expression.

This human reality of the soul, and on the other hand this dismemberment in the world outside, shows itself also in another way. If at that time someone asked: Which person is Atma, which is Buddhi, and which Manas? … truly it was a dreadful Art if it had to be thus interpreted, as saying: ‘This character or that is a personification of Manas.’ There are such theosophical abuses, trying to interpret things in this direction. One could only say of a work of Art that had to be interpreted in such a way, Poor work of Art! Certainly, for Shakespeare's plays it would be utterly false and laughable. These are but illnesses of childhood in the theosophical movement, and we shall wean ourselves of them in time. But it is necessary to draw attention to them. Someone might even set to work and look for the nine members of human nature in the Ninth Symphony!

Yet it is right in a certain sense that the single and united human nature is also distributed among many human beings. One human being has this colouring of soul, and another that. Thus, we can see the human beings before us, representing many sides of the total human nature. Only it must be conceived in a realistic way, it must arise out of the very nature of things. Even as human beings meet us in the ordinary world, there too they represent the several sides of human nature. As we unfold ourselves from incarnation to incarnation, we shall become a totality in time. To present the underlying truth of these things, the whole of life must be dissolved. So, it is in the Rosicrucian Mystery Play. What is intended, in a certain sense, to represent Maria, is dissolved among the other figures who are about her as her companions and who with her together constitute an Ego-hood. Qualities notably of the Sentient Soul are to be seen in Philia; qualities of the Intellectual or Mind-soul in Astrid; qualities of the Spiritual Soul in Luna. And in this sense their names are chosen.

The names are chosen for the several beings according to their nature. Not only in the names; in the whole way in which the words are placed, the characterisation of the three—Philia, Astrid and Luna—is exactly graded. This is especially true of the seventh scene, where the Spiritual—Devachan—is to be shown. The beginning of the seventh scene is a far better characterisation of ‘Sentient Soul, Intellectual Soul and Spiritual Soul’ than can otherwise be given in mere words. Human figures are shown, in answer to the question: What is ‘Sentient Soul,’ what is ‘Intellectual Soul’ and what is ‘Spiritual Soul’? In Art, the different stages can be shown, through the whole way in which these figures stand there. In the human being they flow into one another. Once they are dissolved from one another, they present themselves in this way: Philia places herself into the Universal All, Astrid into the elements, while Luna goes outward in self-action and self-knowledge. And inasmuch as they present themselves in this way, the Devachanic scene contains all that can represent Alchemy in the true sense of the word. The whole of Alchemy is there contained; only we must gradually find it out. It is given not n the mere abstract content, but in the life and being of the words. Therefore, you should not only hear what is said,—and above all, not only what each individual speaks;—you should hear how they speak, in relation to one another. The Sentient Soul inserts herself into the astral body here, then, we have to do with weaving astrality. The Intellectual Soul inserts herself into the ether-body; here, then, we have to do with living, moving ether-essence. Lastly, we see how the Spiritual Soul adorns herself and with inner firmness pours herself into the physical body. That which works through the Soul, as light within the soul, is given in the words of Philia. That which works in an etheric way, so that we stand over against what is true, is given in Astrid. That which gives inner firmness, so that it is united with the physical body which is primarily solid, is given in Luna We must be sensitive to this.

Philia (Sentient Soul)

Ich will erfullen mich	I will myself imbue
Mit klarstem Lichtessein	With clearest rays of light
Aus Weltenweiten.	From cosmic spaces wide.
Ich will eratrnen mir	I will breathe deep within
Belebenden Klangesstoff	Sound-substance that gives life
Aus Aetherfernen,	From distant ether-bounds,
Dass dir, geliebte Schwester,	Dear sister, that thou may'st
Das Werk gelingen kann.	Succeed in this thy work.

Astrid (Intellectual Soul)

Ich will verweben	Through all the streaming light
Erstrahlend Licht	I will weave darkness in
Mit dämpfender Finsternis,	To cloud its radiant beam.
Ich will verdichten	I will make dense and thick
Das Klanges leben.	The living life of sound;
Es soll erglitzernd klingen,	That glowing it may sound
Es soll erklingend glitzern,	And sounding it may glow.
Dass du, geliebte Schwester,	Dear sister, that thou may'st
Die Seelenstrahlen lenken kannst.	Direct the soul-life's rays.

Luna (Spiritual Soul)

Ich will erwärmen Seelenstoff	Soul substance will I warm,
Und will erhärten Lebensäther.	Life's ether harden too.
Sie sollen sich verdichten,	That they may thus condense
Sie sollen sich erfühlen,	And may thus feel themselves
Und in sich selber seiend,	As living in themselves
Sich schaffend halten;	And powerful to create.
Dass du, geliebte Schwester,	Dear sister, that thou may'st
Der suchenden Menschenseele	Prove wisdom's certainty
Des Wissens Sicherheit erzeugen Kannst.	To mankind's seeking soul.

I draw your attention to the fact that Philia, in the last line but one, uses the words ‘Dass dir, geliebte Schwester.’ In Astrid's words we have the darker sound ‘Dass du, geliebte Schwester,’ entering into the denser element. ‘Dass du, ... dass dir ...’ And now in Luna's words it is interwoven with the still more weighty sound, ‘in suchenden Menschenseele.’ Here the u is so interwoven with the neighbouring consonants as to gain a still closer density.

These are the things we can characterise. They are indeed like this. It depends above all on the manner, not on the mere content. Compare the further words of Philia:—

Ich will erbitten von Weltengeistern,	From cosmic spirits I
Dass ihres Wesens Licht	Will beg their being's light
Entzücke Seelensinn,	The soul-sense to enchant,
Und ihrer Worte Klang	The sound too of their words
Beglucke Geistgehor;	To charm the spirit's ear;

with the quite different way in which Astrid speaks:—

Ich will die Liebesstöme,	The love-streams will I guide
Die Welt erwarmenden	That will fill the world with warmth
Zu Herzen leiten	Unto the heart of man
Dem Geweihten;	Who is initiate;

In all these words there is conveyed the inner life and being of the Devachanic element of the world. Through these things we must realise (and for this reason I mention them) that when self-knowledge begins to go out into the outer life and being of the Universe, we need to wean ourselves of all one-sidedness. We can but experience in a dead and Philistine way that which is present at each single point of existence. It makes us rigid to be held fast at a single point in space and to imagine that we can express the truth in words. Mere words cannot express the truth so well, for it is all involved in the actual physical sound. We must feel the quality of expression also.

Such an important process as the self-knowledge of Johannes is only rightly experienced when he courageously achieves it, when he grasps it bravely. This is the next act. Self-knowledge has shattered us and cast us down. Now, having learned in the Universe outside—having perceived the Cosmos as related to us; having known the very being of other beings,—now we begin to take it into ourselves. Now we make bold to live what we have known. It is only half the battle to dive down, as Johannes did, into a being to whom we brought suffering—whom we ‘thrust deep beneath the chill, cold ground.’ We now feel differently; we take courage to balance-out the pain. Then we dive down into this life, and in our own being we speak differently. This, to begin with, is what meets us in the next scene.

While in the second scene the other being called to Johannes:

“Ah, bitter sorrow hath he brought to me;
So utterly I trusted him of old.
He left me lonely with my sorrow's pain,
He robbed me of the very warmth of life,

And thrust me deep beneath the chill, cold ground.”

—now, in the ninth scene, now that Johannes has experienced himself at the place whither all self-knowledge drives us, now; the same being calls to him:

“Thou must find me again and ease my pain.”

This is the other side. First the shattering experience, and then the needed compensation. Therefore, the other being calls to him: ‘Thou wilt find me again.’

This lifting of experience into the Universe—this filling of the self with living experience of the Universal All—could be presented in no other way. True self-knowledge—emerging as it does out of the Cosmos—could only be presented in that Johannes awakened with the very same words. Quite naturally it must begin thus in the second scene:—

“'Tis thus I hear them, now these many years,
These words of weighty import all around.”

But then, when he has dived down into the ground of earth,—united himself with the earth beneath,—then there arises in his soul the force to let the words arise in a new form. That is essential (in the ninth scene):

“... For three long years
I have sought strength of soul, with courage winged,
Which doth give truth unto these words, whereby
A man may free himself to conquer first;
Then conquering himself may freedom find ...”

Then come the words: ‘Know thou thyself, O man!’ by contrast to the words in the second scene: ‘O man, feel thou thyself!’

Again, and again, the same picture meets us. While on the one hand the scene goes downward:

“It seems mine own peculiarities
And all the world besides live in these words:
‘Know thou thyself, O man! Know thou thyself!’”

afterwards it is reversed; it changes. The scene portrays the real process. So, too, we heard the terrible, shattering word in the second scene:—

“But then, Maria, does thou realise
Through what my soul hath fought its way but now?”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“Man's final refuge hath been lost to me:
I have been robbed of solitude.”

And in the ninth scene it is shown how his being only now gains confidence and certainty. Such is the congruence of the two scenes. These are not purposeful constructions. The real experiences are so and must be so—quite as a matter of course. Thus, we should feel how in a soul such as Johannes Thomasius, self-knowledge is gradually purified, till it becomes living self-experience. And we should feel how this experience of Johannes is distributed over many human beings. His own self-knowledge is distributed over all the human beings in whom—in their single incarnations—the several portions of his being are expressed. In the Sun-Temple at the last, a whole company of human beings are there. They all are there like a tableau, and yet all together are a single man. The properties of a single human being are distributed among them all. It is at bottom a single human being. A pedant would say: ‘Then there are too many parts, there should be nine instead of twelve.’ Reality, however, does not create so as to agree with theories; yet it is more in agreement with the truth than if in regular and theoretic fashion the several members of the human being were to be marched on to the stage.

Imagine yourself now in the Sun-Temple. There are the single human beings, placed in the actual way in which they belong together karmically. There they are standing together, even as Karma has put them -together in life. And now imagine: Johannes himself is there, and the character of every single one is reflected in his soul. Each single one is a soul-quality of Johannes. What, then, has happened—if we sum up the result? Karma has brought them together, as at a nodal point of Karma. Nothing is meaningless, aimless or purposeless. All that the single human beings have done, signifies not only single events, but in each case an experience of Johannes' soul. Everything takes place twice over: in the Macrocosm and in the Microcosm—the soul of Johannes. And that is his Initiation.

For instance, as Maria is to Johannes himself, so is an, important member of his soul to another member of the soul. These are the real congruences, strictly carried out. That which is action outwardly,—inwardly in Johannes is a process of evolution. That which the Hierophant says in the third scene is about to happen here:—

“Within our circle there is formed a knot
Of threads that Karma spins, world-fashioning.”

The knot has been formed. The well-tied knot reveals whither all is leading. On the one hand is the absolute reality—the way in which Karma spins, world-fashioning. It is no aimless spinning. It is the knot as the Initiation-process in Johannes' soul. And yet, such is the whole, that a single hum-an individuality is there over and above them all. It is the Hierophant, who plays his active part and guides the several threads.

You need only think of the Hierophant in his relation to Maria. This passage in the third scene can indeed illumine what self-knowledge is. It is no joke to go out of oneself; it is a very real process. The human vehicles are deserted by the inner force; then they remain behind and become a battlefield for subordinate powers. The very moment when Maria is sending down to the Hierophant the ray of love, can be presented in no other way than thus: Down there is the body, taken hold of by the power of the Adversary, and saying the very opposite of what is going on above. Above, the ray of love rays down; below, a curse is uttered. These then are the contrasting scenes: Devachan in the seventh scene, Maria describing what she actually did; and in the third scene the world below, where, as the body is left behind, the curse of the demonic Powers against the Hierophant is uttered. Here you have two complementary pictures. It would be very bad if one had to construct them so, artificially.

To-day, then, I have based my lecture on one aspect of the Mystery Play. I hope we have thus been able to illumine certain characteristic facts that underlie Initiation.

The fact that certain things have had to be sharply emphasised—so as to describe the processes of Initiation—should not render you pusillanimous in striving for the spiritual world. Descriptions of dangers have no other purpose than to steel the human being against adversary powers. The dangers are there, the pains and sufferings are certainly before us. It would be a very poor aspiration if we were only willing to ascend into the higher worlds, so to speak, by the most comfortable ways. The spiritual worlds cannot be attained as comfortably as in modern railway trains, where you simply let yourself be rolled along, or as the outer material culture generally does it in the things of outer life. That which is here described is not intended to make us lacking in courage; quite on the contrary. Our courage shall be steeled precisely by making ourselves acquainted in this way with the attendant dangers of Initiation.

Just as it is in Johannes Thomasius, whose tendency made him incapable of guiding the brush any longer, and this was translated into dire pain, and pain at length into knowledge; so too, all that which kindles pain and grief will be translated into knowledge.

But we must seek the path in real earnest. We can only do so by realising that the theosophical truths are not so simple after all. They are deep truths of life,—so much so that we can never come to an end in seeking to comprehend them. Examples of life itself enable us most nearly to comprehend the world. We can speak far more exactly of the conditions of higher development when we describe the development of Johannes, than we can do when we describe the human being's development in general. In the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, the higher evolution is described such as it can be for every human being. The pure possibility, which can indeed be realised, is there described. When we describe Johannes on the other hand, we describe a, single human being, and in so doing it is not possible to us to portray higher development in the abstract.

I hope you will not find occasion to say that after all I have not yet told you the truth. The fact is, there are two extremes, and we must find the grades between them. All I can do is again and again to give you hints and suggestions. These must then live in your hearts and souls. After the hints, I recently gave you on St. Matthew's Gospel I said, ‘Try not to remember the literal words, but when you go out into the world try to create in heart and soul that which the words will there have become. Try not to read only in Lecture Cycles, but also with earnestness to read in your own soul.’ To do so, however, something must first have been given to you from outside; something must first have passed into your soul; otherwise, you would only be deceiving yourself. Try then to read it in your soul, and you will see that that which has sounded into your soul from outside will yet resound there in quite another form.

This and this alone would be the true anthroposophical striving:—In every lecture that is given, there should be as many different ways of understanding as there are listeners present. He who would speak about Theosophy can never wish to be understood in one way only; he would fain be understood in as many ways as individual souls are there. Spiritual Science can afford this.

One thing, however, is necessary—I do not say it as a mere aside. One thing is necessary, namely that every single way of understanding be true. It may be individual, but it must be true. Some people go so far in their individual ways of understanding that they understand the exact opposite of what is said!

Thus, if we speak of self-knowledge, we must also realise: It is more useful in self-knowledge to look for the mistakes within us and the True outside ourselves. We do not say: ‘Seek for the truth within thyself.’ No! You will find what is true in the world outside, it is poured out into the Universe. We must become free of ourselves through self-knowledge, and we must go through all these stages of the soul. Loneliness can be a very bad companion; but we can also feel the full measure of our own weakness, when in our soul we sense the echoing greatness of that Universe from out of which we are born. And at this moment we take courage. If we make bold to experience in life what we cognise, then we shall find it confirmed:—Out of the loss of the last refuge of our life there will spring forth life's first and last refuge—life's first and last security. It is that certainty which makes it possible for us first to overcome ourselves, and then to find ourselves anew—in that we find ourselves within the Cosmos.

Oh man, experience the World in thee!
Then only, going beyond thyself,
Thou wilt have found thyself in thy true being.

If we feel these things as living experience, they will become steps in our evolution.

If we look back upon the evolution of humanity, if we look back—let us say—as far as history permits it, we shall encounter something very strange. Various phenomena enable us to examine what we thus encounter. Above all, (and we shall see to-day that what we are about to say may be applied to every human heart, to every human soul) we may examine the evolution of humanity with the aid of various documents, traditions and writings which have been pre served. We shall find in them something very strange and peculiar. If we go back to the conceptions which were formed by the various peoples of ancient times in connection with the origin of the world and of the sources of what is good and moral, we shall find that the conceptions which thus arose are laid down in legends—in myths and legends. We come across such legends and myths in a more or less beautiful, lofty, sublime or even less significant form among the various peoples of the earth. A modern man is so very much inclined to consider these myths and legends as poems and to say: They were invented by the peoples during their infancy, because they did not as yet possess the sources of modern science. They have, for instance, formed all kinds of ideas about the origin of the world: the Greeks and their gods, the ancient Germanic peoples and their gods, and, if you like, the American peoples, whose legends have recently been dscovered and which are found to correspond with what exists among other peoples. If we learn that among the Central-American peoples Quetzalcoatl and Vitzliputzli play a role which is more primitive but similar to that of other mighty characters created by other races we shall see that such legends and myths exist among all these peoples ... And, as already stated, a modern man is easily inclined to say: These are poems, fantastic inventions of man's spirit, in order to explain the origin of the various beings of the world and of the various phenomena of Nature!

Among the various documents, there is one which I have already considered with a greater number of the friends who are now present. It is a lofty, mighty document: the Genesis, the beginning of the Old Testament. At Munich we have already seen how infinitely deep are the contents of the Genesis.¹ Several of you have also heard the explanations supplied by spiritual knowledge in connection with the various Gospels, which are, as it were, the last documents of this kind. We find that such documents have been preserved and that they have arisen at various periods of time as we were passing through our preceding incarnations, periods of time through which we have passed during our preceding lives on earth. Those who advance in spiritual knowledge must learn to realize that they have lived during times when men spoke, for instance, of Zeus, Hera and Chronos, and so forth, when they spoke of the phenomena of Nature in a different way from the one which is usual to-day, that they spoke of them in the form of myths, legends and fairy-tales. We must bear all this in mind. We must say to our selves: How do matters stand with our soul that has taken up these things (most people are not aware, so to speak, of what has been deposited within them) which now come to the fore again?

I shall now describe to you very simply what happens with a person who takes up within him these documents—to begin with, in the form of legends, myths and poems—and who then penetrates into occult science, into occultism, and who uses occult science as an instrument enabling him to understand them more and more. He will experience something very strange. I will take, for instance, just one case: What will take place within him in connection with the Old Testament?

In the case of the Old Testament, which most modern men read in such a way that they consider it as a very beautiful collection of all kinds of images about the world's origin, he will find that he will gradually say to himself: Infinite wisdom is contained in these things which are rendered in such a peculiar way! And he will gradually discover that the single words and sentences contain things—provided he understands them rightly—to which occult investigation can lead him along entirely independent paths. And his respect for these writings will grow. The most efficacious means perhaps of increasing our appreciation of these documents is to penetrate to some extent into spiritual science.

A question may then arise and may be placed before our soul. The human being may then say: How do matters really stand as far as this question is concerned? The ancient documents have been preserved: if we penetrate into them we discover in them the deepest, most significant spiritual meaning. Even if today we cannot feel entirely convinced of the fact that these documents contain, indeed, an overwhelming wisdom, we should persevere in our search and penetrate into them more and more. We shall then see that the wisdom which they contain is indeed overwhelming. It is not we who bring anything into them ... it would be quite ridiculous to say that we bring anything into them. The documents themselves contain this wisdom. Indeed, the greatest discoveries which can be made in the, sphere of spiritual science, the loftiest things which can be found again with great effort through occult investigation—all this may afterwards be discovered, for instance, in just one word of the Bible in the Genesis. This is very strange, is it not so?

We find, however, that there is a certain difference between the Old Testament and all the other legends, myths and documents. This is a fact which we should bear in mind. For there is a difference. Consider, for instance, the legends of the Greeks, of the ancient Germans, even what is contained in the Vedas of the Hindoos, or Persian documents. Take whatever you like—if you compare it with the Old Testament you will find a tremendous difference. This difference appears quite clearly to the unprejudiced investigation of an occultist the more he penetrates into these things. This difference appears in the following way: We shall gradually discover that all the other documents set forth in a legendary form the riddles of the phenomena of Nature, the riddles connected with all these phenomena of Nature, and also with the human being, in so far as he has a kind of natural form of life, in so far as the powers of Nature compel him to do this or the other thing. The Old Testament, however, is the one and only document in which we find the human being described from the very beginning as an ethical soul-being, not merely as a being of Nature. And everything in the Old Testament is described in such a way that the human being is placed within the course of evolution, as an ethical soul-being. Every other statement made by modern science rests upon a very weak foundation; it dissolves into nothing if we really observe things. This is the great difference which appears to us. We may therefore say: Everything else in the world shows us that men have obtained mighty revelations from one or the other direction, they have obtained mighty revelations which were expressed in the legendary form of myths and which have arisen out of deep wisdom. We may also say that as far as the Old Testament is concerned the human beings have had certain definite revelations which are connected with the ethical soul-mysteries of man. This is a fact which is, in any case, quite clear.

Another difference appears, however, if we compare the New Testament with all the other documents of this kind. We find in it a spirit which differs entirely from the one contained in any other document, even in the Old Testament. How can we grasp this difference if we approach the question as anthroposophists? We shall realize this difference if we first place another phenomenon before our soul.

Let us imagine, first of all, a man who has never heard anything about spiritual science, who is entirely the product of a scientific or of another so-called sensible education of our modern time, and who has, therefore, never had the chance to permeate the ancient documents with spiritual science. We may perhaps imagine him as a learned person or as an unlearned person—the difference is not so great—we may imagine him in any case as a person who has had no contact with spiritual science and we see him approach these ancient documents, Greek, Persian, Indian, Germanic documents, and so forth. We imagine him approaching these documents, equipped with everything which modern thinking can give him, if he is really unable to feel even a breath of what constitutes spiritual investigation a very strange thing will appear. There will be a difference according to his more or less greater inclination toward poetry or toward a matter-of-fact mentality, but on the whole we may say that something very strange will appear. Such a man will never be able to understand the ancient documents, he will never be able to penetrate into the way in which wisdom is offered by them, he is simply unable to do it, it is quite impossible for him to understand them. In this sphere, we come across the strangest examples; it may suffice to refer to one of the most recent attempts to explain these ancient documents. A little book has just appeared, which is extremely interesting because it is so absurd. It attempts to explain, as it were, all the myths up to the Gospels, beginning with the earliest documents of the most primitive peoples. It is really a book which is extraordinarily interesting because of its grotesque way, its grotesquely stupid way of grasping things. It is entitled “Orpheus,” and its author is Salomon Reinach, who is well known in France as an investigator in this sphere, and among scientists he is a characteristic example of a man who has not even had the slightest inkling of the way in which it is possible to penetrate into such things. In this book, a definite method is applied to everything, and the author passes sentence upon everything. He sees nothing but symbols, and there are no real beings behind Hermes, Orpheus, etc. These characters are merely symbols and allegories to him ... It is not proper to repeat the explanations which he gives for these symbols; he speaks of them in such a way that it is not necessary to repeat them. Every reality contained in these things can thus be proved to be non-existent ... the reality of Demeter and of Persephone is explained away, he decrees that they do not exist. According to this author, all these names are merely symbols. He follows a method according to which it would be easy to prove to children, eighty years hence, that a man named Salomon Reinach has never lived in France at all, at the beginning of the twentieth century, but that the civilization of that time has merely comprised the contents of this book in the name of Salomon Reinach. This could be proved quite well! In spite of all, these things have caused a great sensation. And according to this same method evidence has been produced in Germany to the effect that Jesus has never lived at all. This too has caused a great sensation.

You see, we may now ask: Why is it not possible to-day to penetrate into these things without the aid of spiritual science, (and it is a fact that it is not possible to do this without spiritual science) what is the true reason for this? If we wish to understand the true reason for this, we must gain a deeper insight into the evolution of humanity. We must look back a certain while into this evolution of humanity. And as a result we shall really feel compelled to say: Indeed, the science which men possess to-day, the science which is taught to-day in the elementary schools concerning the sun, and so forth, this is something which the ancients did not possess they did not possess a science which could be grasped with the understanding, with the intellect. This is something to which the human race has advanced little by little. And when our souls were born during earlier incarnations, they were certainly not able to take up this form of science, for this did not exist, this was not as yet incorporated in our civilization But the more we go back into the course of evolution, the more we shall find (quite apart from the fact of seeking the reasons for this which have often been explained to many of you here, in this or in that direction) that men possessed a deep wisdom of an entirely different kind from the one of to-day, wisdom concerning spiritual things which modern men are unable to express in their scientific form. This wisdom ruled in the souls of men, it lived in their souls. Wisdom was simply there. Particularly the initiated leaders of humanity possessed this wisdom, and if the anthroposophical spirit lives within us, it can be proved historically that a primal revelation, a primal wisdom was spread over the whole human race upon the earth, a wisdom which took on this or that form, ac cording to the various stages of evolution. If anyone considers history with a truly anthroposophical spirit he will discover this primal, original revelation. But something else is needed: the ordinary, modern scientific mentality must pass through a preparation if it wishes to penetrate into these documents and grasp their true meaning—I shall now relate a simple fact—a preparation is needed enabling a modern man to penetrate into the spirit of these writings. If he passes through this preparation he will be able to penetrate into the spirit of these writings. This preparation consists in the study of the only documents which can be studied to-day in a direct and immediate way, namely, the Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul. If we are filled with an anthroposophical spirit it is possible to approach these documents in a direct and immediate way and to understand them.

Even if we know nothing whatever about Anthroposophy, but if our feelings are filled with an anthroposophical spirit (this can be the case with many people) we may feel that something special lives in the Gospels and in the Epistles of St. Paul. This is indeed a strange fact! And in the case of an occultist another strange thing arises, something quite special will arise in his case. Namely, in the case of an occultist we may find that in accordance with modern prejudices he has, let us say, a certain aversion to approach these Gospels. It is quite possible to be filled with an occultistic spirit and yet to feel an aversion to the Gospels, to say, that they are only one religion among many others. No attempt is made to approach the Gospels, and it is possible to understand this aversion. But if we do this as occultists, if we have this strange attitude as occultists, we shall find that we cannot grasp what is contained in other documents. Everywhere we shall find something which we cannot understand. We may be content with this, but if we continue to penetrate more and more deeply into these things we shall never reach a goal unless we have passed through a preparation by studying the Gospels. On the other hand, it is a fact that if someone who may even be a well-trained occultist approaches an oriental or an occidental document and comes across a very hard nut which he cannot crack ... he will immediately be enlightened about the things contained in other documents if he approaches—even if it is only in spirit—the events of Palestine and if he allows them to inspire him. This is an undeniable fact. A ray of light can go out of the Gospels, and this is an experience which can be made. We must admit that the Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul are indeed necessary if we wish to go back into earlier times. It is not possible to ignore them, to take no notice of them. Particularly the occultist will always realize this. If he is really able to read the spiritual documents, the Akasha Chronicle, it will not be necessary for him to consult the written Gospels—but he must approach the events of Palestine, he cannot ignore them. Otherwise, certain preceding things will always remain dark. I am therefore not drawing your attention to the records, or to the written word, but to the events, in the form in which they have rea1ly taken place within the course of human evolution. This is a very important fact.

I wish to throw some light upon this fact also from another side. Let us bear in mind what I have already stated. It is not possible to ignore, as it were, the event of the Christ, and if we wish to understand what has been given to humanity in the form of a primordial revelation we shall always trip up somewhere. I must say the following if I wish to describe the true aspect of things. Let us suppose that a modern occultist investigates the past and that he has no understanding (for it is this understanding which is so important) for the event of the Christ. He disregards the event of the Christ and proceeds to investigate earlier events of human evolution. He will then find that he grows uncertain everywhere, really everywhere. Of course, he can persuade himself that he feels quite certain about these things, but if he is honest he will have to admit that things are not entirely as they should be. Let us now imagine an occult investigator before the time of Christ Jesus, an occult investigator who has reached such a high degree of development in clairvoyance and also in other directions that he is able, even before the Christian era, to survey the whole past in such a way that, had he lived after the event of the Christ, he would have passed through the Christ event in his retrospective survey, a man who is therefore in advance of his time. Let us suppose that he lived five or six centuries before Christ and that he reached the maturity of a modern occultist; that is to say he is able to go back into the earlier events of human evolution by passing through the Christ event. And we may then ask ourselves: How would an occultist who is so much in advance of his time, that even five or six centuries before Christ he can go back into the earlier events of human evolution by passing through the Christ event, how would such an occultist have to appear in order to avoid falling a prey to the luciferic and ahrimanic powers? Let us suppose that it would really be necessary for him to pass through the Christ event ... This Christ event, however, has not yet taken place at the time in which he lived. In the case of such a man it appears that he will easily content himself with what he discovers—and he will then speak of all kinds of things which are not quite correct, for it is not possible to speak correctly about things if they are not seen correctly—but otherwise nothing will happen to him. Or else he will reach the point of saying: “There is something amiss, something I cannot find when I turn my gaze backwards. I cannot discover this something which I need along my path.” And he will then have to admit to himself: “Here I begin to grow uncertain. I must find this missing ‘something,’ but it does not exist as yet upon the earth. It cannot as yet be found within the evolution of the earth.”

You see, I have now painted theoretically, as it were, the portrait of a personality who lived during the 5th and 6th century before Christ, a personality who would have been mature enough to discover Christ Jesus in a retrospective survey, but he could not discover him because Christ Jesus had not as yet appeared upon the earth. He could not discover Christ Jesus as an earthly fact. A short time ago this theory took on the form of a vivid reality. I experienced it this year during a visit to one of our groups abroad which has adopted the anthroposophical manner of contemplating the world, during a visit to our group at Palermo. As the ship approached Palermo, I suddenly realized: “The solution of a riddle will present itself to you, a riddle which can only be solved easily here, at this place, through the immediate impressions which can be gained here.” Soon afterwards I found the solution of the riddle. The personality concerning whom I have just spoken to you in a theoretical manner, immediately appeared in the whole atmosphere of Sicily, I might say, in the whole astral body of Sicily. His presence was an altogether living one. In the whole atmosphere of Sicily continued to live a personality that is very enigmatic in many respects, the personality of Empedocles, the ancient philosopher. This ancient Greek philosopher has in fact lived in Sicily during the fifth century before Christ, and even external history knows that he was a profound initiate in many different spheres and that he accomplished magnificent things just here, in Sicily.

If to begin with, we turn, as it were, our spiritual gaze upon this man he will appear to us, from an occult standpoint in a very strange light. The occult fact which presents itself to us is the following. If we look back upon the development of Empedocles, if we follow his occupations as statesman, architect and philosopher, if we follow him upon his journeys, if we see him in the midst of his enthusiastic pupils initiating them into the various mysteries of the world—if we follow him spiritually in this manner, without the aid of external history, we shall discover in him a personality who possessed an infinite amount of scientific knowledge of the kind which is only known to a modern man. Empedocles had an altogether modern mentality, a modern aura, and he was indeed constituted in such a way that he sought to discover the origin of the world. In fact, according to his degree of development and everything which had taken place, he would necessarily have found the Christ in his retrospective survey. But the Christ had not yet appeared. It was not possible as yet to find Him upon the earth; He was still absent from the earth. These experiences in particular made Empedocles waver and developed within him a strange desire, and in his case it transformed itself into something entirely different from what takes place in the superficial minds of modern times. This desire transformed itself into the passion to consider the world in a materialistic way. Lucifer approached him. We should try to form a vivid picture of the way in which this took place. Empedocles possessed a modern spirit, but at the same time he was initiated in many different mysteries. He was clairvoyant to a high degree. Let us now imagine vividly that his modern way of thinking made him feel inclined to consider the world from a materialistic aspect; he has, in fact, drawn up a materialistic system which describes the world more or less from the stand point of a modern materialistic chemist, namely, as a combination and separation of elements. The one difference is that Empedocles distinguishes only four elements. He thought that various beings arise according to the way in which these four elements combine. As a result of these thoughts he felt the strong desire to discover in a true and real way what lies behind these material elements, what air and water really contain. If we peruse the Akasha Chronicle today and look into water, air, fire and earth we shall discover in them etherically the Christ. Empedocles could not find Him, but he felt the tremendous impulse to discover something in air and water, fire and earth, to find out what they really contain. And we can see how this personality is seized by the strong desire to penetrate at all costs into what constitutes the material elements. This desire finally induces him to make a kind of sacrifice. It is not merely a legend that Empedocles threw himself into the crater Aetna in order to unite himself with the elements. The luciferic force, the strong desire to grasp the elements, led him to a bodily union with the elements. The death of Empedocles continues to fill the atmosphere of Sicily, and this is a great mystery connected with this strange country.

Let us now picture the soul of Empedocles who has laid aside his body by allowing it to be burned. His soul is born again in a later period of time, when the Christ has already appeared upon the earth. Entirely new conditions now exist for this soul. In the past, this soul has, as it were, sacrificed itself to the elements. Now it is born again. But now it can discover the Christ when it looks back into time. And all the past knowledge concerning the elements rises up again in a new form, the knowledge which this soul once possessed arises in a completely new form. In fact, the personality of Empedocles was born again later, but at the present moment it is not permissible for me to mention his name. If we study the reincarnation of Empedocles in a more northern country, if we observe him as he then lived at the turning point of the Middle Ages and the modern time and if we compare this character with the Empedocles who threw himself into Mount Aetna, we shall see livingly before us the gigantic impulse which has arisen through the fact that the Christ event has in the meantime taken place upon the earth.

What thus takes place in the case of this one definite personality applies, however, to every soul, to the souls of each one of you. At the time in which the Christ event was drawing nigh, all these souls have looked back with a certain feeling of discomfort into past, even if they have not felt the mighty impulse experienced by Empedocles. They felt uncomfortable because they had lost their bearings and because the time of the modern scientific man who looks back into the past ... was gradually approaching, and something resembling the case of the men of earlier times begins to spread ... If we go back to earlier times we find that those who have preserved this tradition faced the masses and related to them—let us imagine this vividly—mighty tales which are contained, for instance, in the legends told to the ancient Greeks. But this induced the ancient Greeks to experience the truth of these legends, when they were, let us say, in a special condition which was still possible at that time to a greater extent than now, and these legends gave them, as it were, a push enabling them to look into the spiritual world. But the human beings lost this capacity. The inner force enabling them to rise into the spiritual world was lost to the extent in which intellectual knowledge began to develop. You may calculate and find in any little manual when our modern conceptions began to arise, these modern conceptions which children take up, if not with the mother's milk, at least with the school milk! These modern conceptions reach back to a few centuries before our Christian era. This is a tremendous turning-point. And if we wish to go back still further, if we wish to understand the ancient documents, it will not be possible for us to understand them, for now they appear to us merely as poems, legends and myths. We cannot go back further, and this is something which should really be borne in mind more clearly. More and more it will be the case that people who do not bring with them, as it were, an inherited disposition to understand the ancient documents, will be unable to understand them.

The opinion will gradually spread that there is a great field of illusion behind everything which is accepted as science, because the majority of scientists believes that now we fortunately know how the earth moves round, and that all the explanations of earlier times in this connection are nonsense. This opinion is already prevalent to-day. We go backwards into time ... The Copernican world-conception arises somewhat later, but even in the case of geometry we cannot go back further than Euclid. And further back, behind all this, a modern man can only see black darkness. He cannot find wisdom and the primordial revelation, he cannot find the path which leads into them. If we really accept this as a fact, something resulting from the deepest anthroposophical studies may then condense itself to a fundamental conviction—and this may take place even in the simplest mind, provided the feelings are sound.

Man must, after all, reach the point of saying to himself “The form in which I see the world is not its true aspect.” If this were its true aspect it would not be necessary to investigate it. Investigation would not be necessary at all, for the world would immediately appear in its true aspect. Modern investigation, however, does not consider the world in this way. The Copernican system would not exist if men were simply to accept what the senses reveal to them. Even external science contradicts the experiences gained through the senses. If we progress we shall see that we cannot stay by what the senses give us, by what we obtain through the external experiences which we make in the physical world. These must in any case be corrected, even by external science. This fact is perhaps not generally recognised; nevertheless, it is true. As soon as we begin to understand our own being—even if it is only with the aid of ordinary thinking and with what we can learn to-day—we shall be obliged to admit that the essential point of everything is to have an insight into the illusion created by the senses, for otherwise science would not exist and reflection would not exist. If this is indeed the case, we must discover something which enables us to understand without any difficulty in which direction and toward which goal the world is gradually developing. We shall find the confirmation of this fact if we consider matters a little in the light of Anthroposophy. We may therefore say to ourselves: Once upon a time there was a primordial wisdom; the human beings were constituted in such a way that they received a primordial wisdom which they could only see in pictures, but nevertheless they possessed such a primordial wisdom, and they have gradually lost the understanding for such a wisdom the more human evolution progressed; men were less and less able to grasp this primordial wisdom. And another fact is quite clear, namely, that they began to lose this understanding to the extent in which science and the intellectual understanding developed. We may now ask: What can have arisen at a certain definite moment?

Let us imagine the whole situation. Let us picture a man of pre-Christian times, who lived under certain conditions. He will have looked out into the world, he will have seen all manner of things, but within his soul there also lived the possibility of seeing behind these things. He still possessed this disposition. Consequently, it was an undeniable fact for him that there is an etheric body behind every flower. This was a fact for him. Gradually he began to lose this capacity. He lost it because it was banished by the intellectual understanding which rules to-day. The intellectual capacity cannot be united with the other one, for they are two hostile forces. This is an undeniable fact, and every occultist knows by experience that the understanding, or ordinary thought, sears and burns the clairvoyant manner of looking upon things. Even in the course of history, the knowledge based upon the ancient clairvoyance was lost to the extent in which the understanding, or the intellect in the ordinary meaning, have arisen, and the loss of the old clairvoyant wisdom also implied the loss of the capacity to understand the ancient traditions. A few centuries had to pass, and the kind of man I have just described to you had to be replaced by another kind who might perhaps have said: “It would, of course, be a serious prejudice to think the truth can be discovered in the way in which the world presents itself to our senses. Human reason must supplement everything!” Particularly this belief in human reason was the decisive factor; human reason must first pounce upon the phenomena which appear to the senses and then grasp them logically.

Such a kind of man would perhaps have said: “The special advantage of the human being over all the creatures of the earth is the fact that he is endowed with reason, that he can understand cause and effect as they manifest themselves behind the sense-phenomena. He is able to discover this. And his intellect enables him to communicate with other men through the means of speech. For it is easy to see that speech is a child of reason.” And he might also have said: “Reason is, of course, the highest of all things.” Now, if we wish to draw a vivid picture of such a person, we should imagine him saying to himself: “Rely on your understanding and reason, dissect everything with your reason, and then you will surely reach the truth!” Let us suppose that we are actually facing such a man. I have given you a description from a theoretical standpoint, yet this particular type of man has appeared very frequently. A characteristic thinker of this kind was Cicero, who lived shortly before Christ. If you study Cicero you will immediately see that he thinks exactly in this way, namely, that reason is able to grasp everything. It is not true that the world appears as it presents itself to the senses, nevertheless human reason is able to grasp everything! Just in the case of people who lived shortly before Christ we find an invincible faith in reason. They even identify reason with God himself, who rules within things. Cicero adopts this standpoint.

Let us suppose, however, that someone succeeds in discovering the secrets connected with all this. Let us suppose that someone contemplates all this in an entirely unprejudiced way and sees how everything results little by little. How would he then describe the whole period? Let us suppose that one century before Christ a man who is endowed with deep insight contemplates all these things ... How would the whole course of history appear to him? Well, he would say: “We can see two currents in humanity. One is the old clairvoyant power, with a descending course. Reason appears in its place, and it roots out and destroys within the human being the possibility of looking into the spiritual world. A great darkness spreads over the spiritual world. Those who accept the authority of reason will indeed think that their reason can discover what lies behind things. But these people forget the true nature of reason, about which they talk so much. Reason is linked up exclusively with the brain. It is a force which can only use the brain as its instrument. It belongs to the physical world and must, therefore, share the qualities of the physical world” ... Such a man would say: “You may, if you like, rely on your intellect and I say that it enables you to grasp what lies behind things, since the things in themselves are not real. Consider, however, that reason itself belongs to these things. You are a physical being among other physical beings, and your reason belongs to the physical world. If you think that reason enables you to discover what lies behind all the other things, you will demolish the foundation under your feet.” This is what he would say, and he would add: “Indeed, men are more and more inclined to use their reason, to rely upon their intellect. They have this inclination. But in doing so, they raise up before them a wall hiding the spiritual world, for they make use of an instrument which can not be applied to the spiritual world, for it is limited to the physical world. Humanity, however, unfolds in the very direction of developing this instrument.” And if this man had known the real course of events, he would also have said: “If men return to the spiritual world at all, they should not only be able to use their intellect, which can be applied solely to the physical world, but an impulse must arise enabling them to ascend once more to the spiritual worlds, an impulse which drives the intellect itself along this upward path. But this can only take place,” this person would have said, “if something dies within the human being, if something which calls forth in him the firm belief in the exclusive rule of reason perishes. This must die.” In fact, we imagine the human being gradually descending into the material world and developing his brain more and more. If the human being were to depend exclusively on his reason, he would be unable to abandon it, to come out of it. His physical body would then deceive him and persuade him to do away with everything which cannot be grasped by earthly reason. But it is the physical body which dulls man in this manner, because it gradually develops to a very high degree, and man does not realise that he thus remains within the physical world. Try to imagine this and you will see that the human being is then caught as if in a trap. He is quite unable to escape out of himself. Human evolution has so far reached the point of preventing man from going out of his own self, and so he faces the danger, of being gradually overwhelmed by his physical body. What can help the human being at all in this case? If just at the time when the intellect reaches this point, there arises the possibility of changing the intellect so, that the part which blinds it, dies, then this part must die. An impulse must arise which is able to overcome once and for all that part in man which can overwhelm him through a blind faith in mere reason. Try to feel the power of this impulse; try to feel that this was the meaning of human evolution! The bodily constitution developed in such a way that it would have overwhelmed man. He would have reached the point of thinking that he must remain within the physical world and yet be able to penetrate through Maya, without bearing in mind that he himself lived in this Maya through his intellect. This would have taken place had not something arisen which can tear him out of it, as soon as he accepts it, and which is able to counteract the fall into the physical sphere. Indeed, its influence reaches as far as the etheric body, so that the etheric body is then able to kill what leads man into a similar illusion. The human being would otherwise have remained imprisoned in this trap.

Let us now turn away from such a person who would have spoken in this way when the time of Christ Jesus was approaching, and let us consider the way in which a modern man, or anyone of us, would look at things. He would say to himself: If I consider the development of man in an unprejudiced way and see how the intellect, this instrument belonging to Maya, has gradually gained strength, I would undoubtedly be on the wrong track if I follow merely the course of the world's evolution. For, this is arranged in such a way that if I do not take up within me the impulse which kills that part leading me astray in this direction, I am unable to free myself from the intellect. What must therefore have taken place? I must be able to look back upon a time in which this impulse has entered. I must find something within the historical evolution of humanity which brings about the fact that the continuous stream of evolution has been reversed in a materialistic sense. If to-day I were to look within my own being without finding anything of this kind, what would I then have to find? I would trace in that case the gradual growth of the intellect, until I reached a time, at the beginning of our era, when the intellect began to work ... and further back? There it grows dark, pitch black darkness rules there, and I shall need something entirely different. Then it will grow light, and here everyone must encounter the Christ! Anyone who is at all willing to believe in the possibility of progress, and that during the following incarnations he will have within him something which will lead him upwards and will prevent his being overwhelmed by Maya, must meet the Christ when he looks back into time. Upon looking back, everyone must encounter the Christ. This can give him an impulse leading him upwards.

Let us now suppose that the gospels did not exist, and that we would not need them as anthroposophists. Let us suppose that we do not need the gospels; that all we need is to study the course of human evolution in an unprejudiced way and to say: What would become of every human being if he were unable to look back upon an event which has swung the whole meaning of the earlier course of evolution over to the other side? We simply must encounter the Christ if we go back into the course of evolution! Anthroposophists must be able to find Him, and the clairvoyants will find him under every circumstance. This is a mystery which is connected particularly with Christianity. Documents may be questioned. Indeed, the gospels are not real historical documents. All the clever people, Jensen and others, who decree in a trivially learned manner that the gospels do not exist and upon them as mere legends, have a certain justification for doing this, because they depend solely upon their external reason. But if we are anthroposophists we are able to say that we do not need the gospels; we only need the facts supplied by spiritual science itself, and if we go back into time we shall discover the living Christ, as He appeared to Paul in the event of Damascus. Paul has experienced in advance what we, too, are able to experience if we search for the Christ in a truly anthroposophical spirit. Paul was, after all, in the same position of a modern anthroposophist who does not wish to accept the gospels. At his time the gospels did not exist, but Paul was able to go to Jerusalem. Nevertheless, this did not convince him, for otherwise he would not have left Jerusalem. The events described in the gospels did not convince him. It is not necessary, therefore, that the contents of the gospels should convince a modern person. All that is necessary is that he should be in a position to experience, through Anthroposophy, what Paul has experienced, and this experience will then become for him an event of Damascus. He will then have the proof of Christ's existence, in the same way as Paul, without the aid of documents.

Of course, this points to very deep things in human evolution, to extraordinarily deep things in the evolution of man. In a certain sense, every human being, even the simplest man, may experience what the reincarnated Empedocles has experienced during the 15th and 16th century, who looked back into earlier times and was able to see what he was unable to see before. Before, he had grown so uncertain that he threw himself into Mount Aetna. He cast his glance backwards during the 15th and 16th century and what he was unable to grasp in any way during his previous incarnation he was now able to grasp clearly through the Christ principle. And this enabled him to become one of the most remarkable personalities of the later era.

This is how matters appear to every human being, without the aid of any document, simply through retrospection. At some later time, all men will be able to look back into an earlier incarnation and they will distinguish exactly the incarnations before and after Christ. What may be felt to-day instinctively by a simple soul who reads the gospels, will arise, later, in the form of knowledge. This is the chief difference between the gospels and other documents: they are the first documents which we must understand. The gospels are a great, beautiful and mighty point of transition. It we pass through it, light begins to spread, while everywhere else there is darkness.

It is indeed so. Christianity is only at the beginning of its evolution, and a modern man may find that he often loses his thread when he investigates earlier things. But if he returns to one of the events in the life of the Christ he will feel inspired, and it will grow light about him. Even a simple person may experience what occultists discover, namely, he will be able to feel within his soul a reflection, as it were, of what I have just explained. He may feel very depressed owing to his human weaknesses and mistakes and he may admit to himself: “What I am to-day, is the result of all the generations!” But then he would deny this and would have to admit to himself, instead, that he himself has been his own father and his own mother. There is, consequently, something within us connecting us with the rest of humanity, and we may feel very depressed by all human mistakes, weaknesses and illnesses. Nevertheless, even the simplest soul always has the possibility of rising. These words should not be understood in the orthodox meaning. What is possible for an occultist is also possible for the simplest soul. Such a simple man may feel as weak possible, but if he begins to read the gospels, strength will flow out of the gospels, because the power of the Word streams out of them and penetrates into the etheric body. The gospels are strengthening words, words of strength. They do not speak merely to the intellect, but penetrate into the deeper forces of the soul. And they are not merely based upon the intellect which exists in Maya, but they penetrate into the deeper forces, which can, as it were, console the intellect concerning its own nature. This is the great strength of the gospels; they exist for every one of us, and this is the powerful element distinguishing them from all the other documents. This fact, too, may not be accepted, but its rejection would imply that the possibility of human progress is denied altogether.

You see, this points to a fact which cannot be grasped right away. And now you will be able to realize what was needed for the preparation of a person whom I have already set before your soul hypothetically, who announced, one century before our era: “A man must come who will give us the impulse which will bring about the great turning point in the course of events.”

This person was a significant man, and he also underwent the necessary preparation. For a long time, the attempt had already been made, among those who knew things, to bring about the possibility that at least a few people, as it were, should understand the times which were approaching, that they should understand what was being prepared, namely, that, on the one hand, men were being drawn into a snare, and that, on the other hand, through the appearance of the Christ, they could be led upwards again. This was taught prophetically. The man who was chosen to teach this prophetically, more than one century before our era, within the circles of people who were able to understand these teachings, was an initiate of the community of the Essenes, which was closely related to the circles frequented by the Christ. He announced the coming of One Who would lead men upwards again. The man who taught this within the community of the Essenes was a very significant individuality. External history really knows very little about him, but at least a few writers mention the legends referring to him which were handed down traditionally. Thus he is not merely a mythological character, or one who is named exclusively in occultism, He lived a hundred years before Christ and he even instructed one of his five or six pupils to write down his teachings. One of the pupils of this man, who drew attention to the Christ and announced His coming, understood the meaning of his teachings. This man, therefore, had a pupil, who was called Matthew, and he wrote down the mysteries relating to the Christ. The individuality who taught them was Jeshu ben Pandira.² He had to suffer martyrdom because he taught these things, he was stoned to death in his own country, and afterwards his lifeless body was hanged. We should not confuse Jeshu ben Pandira with Jesus of Nazareth. Jeshu ben Pandira, the great prophet of the Christ, instructed his pupils to write down what he knew, and these documents then came into the hands of the man who included them with the mysteries which they contained, into the gospel which is known to us as the Gospel according to Matthew. It is an important, a preeminently important fact to realize, in the first place, the necessity of the Christ impulse, and in the second place, in an occult historical way, how Jeshu ben Pandira, through the fact that he was first stoned and immediately afterwards crucified, set forth, as it were, symbolically what took place afterwards in the Mystery of Golgotha. Christ was not stoned, but crucified, and a wonderful thing took place simultaneously with His death, for at the very moment when His blood streamed out of His wounds something passed over into the atmosphere of the earth, which brings to those who take up this event in their etheric body when they look back into time, to those who pass through this event and look, as it were, into the grave of the Christ, something leading them into a past filled with light, because they have passed through this moment. But without this experience, darkness spreads over everything which lies before it.

Consider what has been said to-day. It was my task to point this out to you. This subject, however, is so vast and encompassing that mere indications can be given. Nevertheless, these indications were treated so that if you investigate what you already know and what you carry in your heart, you will find to what a great extent life itself and your own soul prove the truth of what I have told you to-day.

• 1. Secrets at the Bible Story of Creation
• 2. Compare the lecture published in German by the Philos. Anthrop. Verlag “Jeshu ben Pandira, der Vorbereiter für ein Verständnis des Christus-Impulses.”

Translated by Catherine E. Creeger

Today in this branch meeting we will begin with several of life’s crucial issues that touch each of us daily. After that, we will rise to higher spiritual viewpoints for a while. I would like to start with two human qualities, two human errors or failings that are experienced as negative, as decreasing a person’s worth. We will speak about what we call envy and lying.

If you look around in life, you will easily notice that as a rule, there is a very natural antipathy to these two human qualities. Also, when we look up to other people as leaders among human beings, we see that they value the absence of these two failings. Goethe, for instance, was very concerned with self-knowledge and thinking about his own mistakes, and mentioned that while he had certain faults and certain assets, what seemed most important to him was that he could not count envy among his fadings. And the famous Benvenuto Cellini said that he was glad he didn’t need to accuse himself of lying. So we see that these great personalities sensed the importance of struggling against these two human qualities. And even the simplest, most unsophisticated individuals agree with leaders of humanity in their negative assessment of these failings.

If we ask ourselves why these two qualities are so instinctively condemned, we realize that almost nothing else is less compatible with one of the most important earthly qualities; envy and lying are incompatible with what we call empathy for other people. When we envy someone, we tend not to yield to the particular virtue devoted to the deepest, inmost kernel of that person’s being, to the divine in the other person. Actually, to empathize with someone is of value only when you are also able to appreciate the other person’s essence, his or her spiritual being. However, as a basis for empathy, appreciation for others includes recognition of their assets and the ability to take pleasure in their successes and level of development. All of this precludes envy. Envy shows itself to be a quality that is very closely related to an individual’s greatest egotism.

Something similar can be said about lying. If we tell an untruth, we break the law that applies to the truth—to create a bond that includes all individuals. What is true is the truth for all human beings. More than anything else, truth allows us to practice the development of a consciousness that includes all human beings. If we tell an untruth, we commit a heinous act against the bond meant to connect one human heart with another.

This is how things look when we consider them from the viewpoint of human beings. When we consider them from the viewpoint of spiritual science, we know that the effects of our earlier incarnations are being worked out in this lifetime, and that we are subject to many different influences. There are two great influences in particular that have to be worked through again and again—specifically, what we call the luciferic and the ahrimanic influences. We will not attempt to cover these from the cosmological point of view today, but will restrict ourselves to the life of human individuals. We will imagine that we have passed through many incarnations and that the power of Lucifer was already working on our astral body when we were going through our very first incarnation. Since then, this luciferic power has always been the power that tempts our astral body. Forces are present that proceed from Lucifer and exert an influence on our astral body. Basically, Lucifer’s efforts are directed toward gaining influence over the human astral body on Earth. We can find him in everything that pulls the astral body down, in all the qualities that live in our astral body as egotistical passions, desires, urges, and wishes. Thus, it must be clear that envy is one of Lucifer’s worst effects on us. Everything living in our soul that can be counted as envy falls into his territory, and each time we have an attack of envy, Lucifer takes hold of the urges in our astral body.

Ahriman, on the other hand, influences our ether body. Everything to do with disturbances of judgment derives from him—both the unintentional disturbance of arriving at a false judgment, and the deliberate one of lying. When we succumb to lying, Ahriman is at work in our ether body.

It is interesting that we feel these influences strongly enough to experience such great antipathy when they appear, and that people will do everything to combat these two qualities of envy and lying. You will not easily find people who consciously admit that they want to be envious. To be sure, “I envy you” has crept into our language as an idiom, but what it means is not so very bad; we do not mean actual envy when we say it. In any case, as soon as we notice envy or lying in ourselves, we do everything we can to combat it, and in doing so we take up the struggle against Lucifer and Ahriman in this particular area.

Often, however, something then happens that we should notice when applying ourselves to spiritual science. We can combat individual attacks of envy and lying, but when these qualities are stuck in our soul—when we have acquired them in earlier incarnations and are now combating them—they then appear as different qualities. When we try to combat a tendency to envy stemming from earlier incarnations, this envy puts on a mask. Lucifer says, “This person has noticed feelings of envy and is fighting me; I’ll turn this person over to my brother Ahriman.” And then a different influence takes effect, one that is a consequence of combating envy. Qualities that we are struggling against appear in disguise. Often the envy that we are fighting takes the form of an urge to seek out other people’s mistakes and to make them aware of them with a great deal of reproach. We encounter many people in our life who always discover the mistakes and negative aspects of others, as if with a certain clairvoyant strength. If we search for the basis of this phenomenon, we find that envy has been transformed into a compulsion to reproach, which the people in question take to be a very desirable quality. It is a good thing, so they say, to make people aware of the presence of their bad qualities. However, there is nothing more behind this compulsion to reproach than transformed envy in disguise. We should learn to recognize whether such qualities are the original ones or whether they are transformations of something else. In the process, we must consider whether such individuals were envious as children—perhaps we drove the envy out of them, and they have now become compulsive reproachers.

Lying also often transforms itself in our lifetime and shows itself in disguise. Lying can make us feel ashamed, but it’s not easily uprooted, and very often it metamorphoses into a certain superficiality with regard to the truth. It’s important for us to know these things so we can observe what we encounter in another person in life. People like this are satisfied with answers that make us ask, “How can they possibly be satisfied with an answer Eke that?” It is easy for them to say, “Yes, yes, of course, that’s the way it is.” Very often, this is the end product of the transformation of a personal tendency toward lying. We need to test the law of karma, particularly with regard to such qualities. People don’t pay attention to them, for among all the various beings at work on different planes, human beings are the most forgetful.

For instance, if we are acquainted with a person and remain close over the years, we can observe how some things in this person change. If we are still close after thirty years, we might find noteworthy connections within that person’s life when we look back over a lifetime together, while the person in question knows nothing about it, and has forgotten it all. We really should observe such things in life, however. Important connections become evident. For example, a certain person is envious as a child. Later, the envy is no longer evident, but at a later age it appears transformed as a lack of independence in the person in question, of wanting to be dependent on others. It appears in the form of ideas of being unable to stand on one’s own two feet, of always needing other people around to advise and help. A specific moral weaknesS appears as a consequence of the transformation of envy. When someone has this moral weakness, we will always find that this is the karmic consequence of transformed envy.

When transformed, lying creates a shyness later in life. In later life, someone who tended to lie as a child doesn’t dare to look people in the eye. Out in the country, people have an instinctive elemental knowledge of this, although it doesn’t function on the level of concepts. They say that you shouldn’t trust a person who can’t look you in the eye. Shyness and reserve that stem not from modesty but from fear of meeting other people are the karmic consequences of lying during the same incarnation.

What appears in this way as a moral weakness within an incarnation has an organizing influence on the next incarnation. The soul’s weakness resulting from envy cannot significantly destroy the body during this present incarnation, when the body has already been built up. But when we die and return in a new incarnation, the effect of these forces is such that they become organic weaknesses in building up the new body. We find that people who have possessed transformed envy in a previous incarnation form a weak body. We say without prejudice that a person is weak simply because people need to know what is weak and what is strong. When a person is easily susceptible to different influences and puts up no resistance, then we know that the person s body is weak, and that this weakness is the result of envy that was transformed earlier.

Now we must realize, however, that when a child is born into a particular environment as a weak child, we should not imagine that only this inner karma is active, but also that people are brought together in their surroundings for a reason, and not by chance. This aspect of karma—our adaptation to our environment—is extremely easy to see. A flower such as an edelweiss, for example, can only thrive in the environment to which it is adapted, and a human being also thrives only in the environment to which he or she is adapted. The simplest possible logic necessarily tells us this, for we can only understand life when we take this into account. Each being conforms to its environment; nothing is by chance. Therefore, we are born into the group of people we have envied or reproached; we find ourselves with our weak body among the people we have envied for their accomplishments in a previous incarnation, or something like this. It is infinitely important to know these things, because we understand fife only when we include them in our considerations. When a child with a weak body is born into our surroundings, we should ask ourselves how we are meant to relate to this. The right way to relate to it must be the most morally meaningful way—that is, to forgive. This will lead most surely to the goal in this case, and is also the best education for such a person. It has an incredibly educational effect when we can lovingly forgive a weak child who is born into our surroundings. The person through whom forgiveness occurs in a truly forceful way will see that the child becomes stronger and stronger because of it. Loving forgiveness must even affect thinking, because that makes it possible for the child to gather the forces needed to turn old karma around and get it moving in the right direction. Through this the child will also become physically strong. A child such as this often demonstrates unpleasant qualities. The healing effect is strongest when we love the child in the depths of our heart, and we soon find out just how effective the healing is.

Something comparable applies when we look at the other quality: lying. Within a single incarnation, the person who lies becomes shy in later life. This is a soul quality. But in the next incarnation, this quality takes effect as the body’s architect. In this case, the child appears not merely weak, but unable to acquire a proper relationship to its surroundings—that is, the child is mentally handicapped. In this case, we must think that we are the people to whom this person often lied, and we must repay the bad that happened to us with the best we can offer. We must try to communicate a great deal of the truths of spiritual life to such a person, and then we see how that person begins to blossom. We must always keep in mind that this individual lied to us a lot in earlier incarnations, and do everything possible to bring about a right relationship between this child and his or her surroundings.

When we consider these things, we find that as human beings we are always called upon to help other people come to terms with their karma in the right way. People understand nothing of karma if they think others must be left to their own karma. If we were to meet individuals who had lied to us, and we were to believe these people must come to grips with their karma by themselves, this would show that we do not have a correct understanding of karma. The right idea would be to provide help wherever possible. When it is said that we should leave people to their karma, this could only apply in the esoteric realm, but never in actual life.

Let’s imagine that we would make an effort to help other people according to their individual karma. Take a person with a shy nature. We concern ourselves lovingly with that person, creating a connection between that person and ourselves. We will then see in later life that something comes back to us from this person. We must leave this to karma, however; we are not allowed to hope for it. We must regard it as our obligation to help the other person. At this point we come upon a subtle law: Everything we do to help another person bear and overcome karma not only helps that person, it also does something for us. As a rule, however, what we do for the sake of our own quick progress will not help much. The only thing that can bear fruit for an individual is what he or she does for others. We cannot send good things in our own direction. The best effects come from helping another person overcome his or her karma, since what we do for others is a gain for humanity. We can do nothing for ourselves; that must be done in turn by others. That’s why we must understand empathy for other people in the highest sense of the word. If we develop this empathy in the highest sense, then we also feel an obligation to empathize with another person with regard to envy and lying. In this way we develop a feeling of solidarity that extends to all human souls.

In fact, humanity possesses the potential for each human being to always feel a connection to humanity as a whole, and this feeling, in all its different manifestations in life, should also be present and active in the individual’s struggles against Lucifer and Ahriman. By helping people whose physical bodies have become weak through the influence of envy that has been overcome, by coming to understand how we should behave toward these people, it can become clear to us that the world is filled with the impulses of Lucifer and Ahriman. How they can be overcome in the course of the Earth’s evolution also becomes clear. Anyone who traces such connections in his or her feelings necessarily comes to an ever deepening feeling for all of humanity. The possibility exists, so to speak, for each of us to feel what connects him or her to all human beings. However, this feeling has changed greatly in the course of human evolution. If we go back three or four thousand years, the feeling of what human beings have in common was very pronounced in everyone.

If we go back still further—back through the post-Atlantean cultures, back to old Atlantis, and still further back—we come to an incarnation in which we came down into a physical body for the first time. Before that, we existed in a spiritual state—or so it was still said three or four thousand years ago. At that time, wisdom-filled feelings such as this were to be found in all people. The human soul asked, “What does it mean to be a human being?” And it answered itself, “Before I came down into my body for the first time, I existed in a sea of divine-spiritual interweaving life. I was within it, and all other human souls were within it. That was our common point of origin.” This basic feeling in the souls of human beings made it possible for them to feel kinship, to feel that they had something in common with all human beings, because they felt that all human souls had a common origin. And if we recall how all the ancient mystery schools worked on people to make them good people who would be receptive to the most profound, intimate, and moving feelings, we can see that this was always done by pointing to their common origin, to the fact that all human beings proceed from a common divine source. It was easy to sound this note in their souls then, but it became more and more difficult. For example, if this note had been sounded then in the number of people now sitting here, it would have made an overwhelming impression.

But human feeling for our common origin became ever colder. This was necessary because humanity had to pass through a certain point in evolution. And if I describe that point, we will also have to look toward our human future, toward the goal of Earth’s evolution.

Just as our origin is common to all of us, just as all human souls sprang from a common source, so too all human souls will come together in a common goal. And how can we reach this goal so that we can continue to evolve once Earth has achieved its own goal and the material sphere beneath us is dissipating and falling away? How can we have a common understanding of this goal so that we proceed into our future together? The awareness of what we have in common will need to extend into the deepest sinews of our soul. This is only possible if we develop a feeling for our future, similar to the feeling people in ancient times had for their human origin, a feeling that is growing ever colder among humanity. Now, the feeling and the certainty of a common goal held by all human beings must come to life more and more in our souls. Regardless of our individual degree of development or where we stand in life, the very fact that we are human beings must make possible a soul experience that allows us to say we are all striving for a single goal. In looking toward this goal, we must also be able to realize that this is something that can concern each and every human being.

In our most profound inner depths, we must be able to find something in which we can all come together in a single point. Esoteric teaching calls this “something” the Christ. People thousands of years ago felt, sensed, and knew that our souls are all born out of a common divine source. Similarly, we will increasingly learn that just as we can be united and come together in something we think in common, something that can live in all human heads, there is also something that can live as a common element in all human hearts, something that can flow through all human hearts like the blood of life. If this pervades us more and more warmly in incarnations to come, these incarnations will then run their course in such a way that Earth, having achieved its goal, will be able to proceed to the next planetary stage—the Jupiter state—and human souls will come together as one in the common element of the Christ.

For this to be a possibility, the Mystery of Golgotha had to take place. In Jesus, the Christ became human so that this common stream of warmth could flow from human heart to human heart. The feeling for our common human goal has its origin in the cross on Golgotha, which connects past and future. This is the goal of future human evolution. It is not important whether we retain the name “Christ” for what we have in common. What is important is that all human beings learn to grasp that the feeling people originally had for their common origin is being transformed into a feeling for our common earthly future.

Earth’s evolution is divided into halves—one lasting until the time of the cross on Golgotha, and the other from that time until the end of Earth. We human beings have a great deal to do to grasp the Christ and his evolution. Once these things have been grasped, we as human beings will come together in a common goal for the Jupiter evolution. All the knowledge we have as individuals culminates in finding this principle of the Christ-like.

Today we tried to recognize how karma works from one incarnation to another to shape the body. Having done so, we understand how human beings can become more and more perfect as they go through incarnation after incarnation. We are still speaking of the Christ, though without using that name, because we are turning away from the personal element. When we are confronted with a child who lies to us, we ask ourselves how we can help this child transform his or her karma. We do not ask whether being lied to hurts us. We turn to the very center of the child’s being, and in doing so we help karma move on. In this way, deep human compassion will increasingly take effect in the world.

Thus, what we call spiritual science—if we also include in it a real grasp of life’s processes related to reincarnation and karma—prepares us to truly grasp the Christ impulse in the world. How people formulate this in words is not important. Those who really understand this evolutionary law cannot help but be Christians, whether they are Hindus or Muslims or belong to some other religious tradition. What’s important is that they take this impulse into their souls, the impulse for a common goal for humanity, as in ancient times the impulse to look toward our common human origin was alive in people.

Thus, spiritual science always leads to the Christ impulse. It cannot do otherwise. It would also be possible to summarize spiritual science as it appears today by saying, “Even if those who meet spiritual science want to know nothing of Christianity, in truth they are already being led to the Christ.” In reality, that is where they are being led, even if they resist this in words.

Today we have shown our souls something that has a direct connection to life. We have seen how we should act when a child lies or is envious. It must be clear to us that the thread of karma runs through all of the incarnations of a human soul, that its karma is spun according to its destiny. Having looked back to our origin in God, we look to God again when we look ahead to our human goal.

When we look back on the culture of the ancient rishis, we see that they pointed to the human origins, to the world in which human beings existed before descending into incarnation. This teaching persisted for hundreds and thousands of years. The great Buddha taught it when he spoke of how everything that created a connection to the world of our origin has been lost to people because they cling to embodiment. He challenged people to leave the world of embodiment so that their souls could once again live in the spiritual worlds of their origin. The prophets, in announcing the coming of the Christ, also pointed to a future in which human beings would once again discover their proper earthly goal. And then there was the Christ himself, and the act of the Mystery of Golgotha. Through this Mystery of Golgotha, the individual human being can now be led toward our Earth s divine-spiritual future.

Perhaps there is nothing quite as shattering as two similar statements of the Buddha and the Christ, which present to our souls the contrast between the old times and the new. As the Buddha stands among his pupils, he draws their attention to the body and says, “I look back from incarnation to incarnation and see how I have again and again entered a human body such as the one I now wear. Again and again, the temple of this body has been built up for me by the gods. Again and again the soul attempts to enter this bodily temple in new incarnations. Now, however, I know that I no longer need to return to a bodily temple. I know its beams are broken, its pillars collapsed. Through my knowledge, I have freed my soul from this body. The wish and desire to return to such a body has been killed.” This was a great and powerful result of the old time of looking back on our human origin. The Buddha, with his pupils and successors, strove to become free of the body. How powerfully different this is from the Christ standing before his intimate pupils and saying, “Tear down the temple of My body, and I will build it up again in three days.” These are the words of the Christ, taken at face value, regardless of how we interpret them. The Christ does not long to be free of the temple of the body. He wants to build it up again.

It is not as if the Christ himself would be there again in such a physical body in future incarnations. But what he teaches his pupils and all human beings is to return into this earthly temple again and again in order to make the Christ impulse greater and more intense in each successive incarnation, so that we human beings are able to take up more and more of earthly existence. In the end, we will be able to say that we spent these incarnations working to become more like the Christ. We become more like him by taking into this bodily temple what the Christ permitted to stream forth from his own being from the cross on Golgotha. We allow this to stream from human soul to human soul, for only through this can we understand each other now. This is what all human souls will have in common in our earthly future. And then the time will come when Earth as a planet will cease to exist, will fall into dust, and human beings in a spiritualized state will proceed to their next incarnation on a different planet.

The words of the great Buddha—“I feel how the columns of my bodily temple no longer bear weight, how its beams are breaking apart”—can stand before our souls as the endpoint of our common human origin. And when we turn to what the Christ says to his disciples—“I will build up the temple of this body in three days”—this can be for us like the beginning of the time that points to our earthly goal. We can expand upon this statement, saying: “In death, this temple falls apart, but we know that the best forces we have acquired in this incarnation are used for our next incarnation. We have received these forces by devoting our souls to the knowledge of Christ. In this way, we will always make progress from incarnation to incarnation.” When we human beings build up this bodily temple for the last time, we will have arrived at an understanding of our common earthly goal for the future.

It is the Mystery of Golgotha alone that can be the common impulse for humanity as a whole, for human and Earth evolution.

When we wander at this time of year through the streets of large cities, we find them full of all sorts of things which our contemporaries want to have for their celebration of the approaching Christmas festival. Indeed, it is one of the greatest festivals of the year which humanity can celebrate: the festival which commemorates the most powerful impulse in the evolution of mankind. And yet, if we contemplate what will take place in the coming days in large cities such as ours, we may well ask: Does all of this correspond rightly to what is meant to flow through the souls and hearts of man?

If we don't give ourselves up to illusions but simply face the truth, then perhaps we cannot help but admit to ourselves: All these preparations and celebrations of the Christmas festival which we see in our time fit in very poorly on the one hand with all other happenings of modern civilization around us; and on the other hand they fit in equally poorly with what should live in the depth of the human heart as a commemorative thought of the greatest impulse which humanity received in the course of its evolution.

So it is perhaps no overstatement if we express the following view: There is a lack of harmony in what our eyes perceive, when we wish to permeate ourselves with the Christmas mood, and wish to receive this Christmas mood from what we can see in today's environment. There is a discord in seeing the streets bedecked with Christmas trees and other decorations in preparation for the festival, and then seeing modern traffic rushing through the midst of it all. And if modern man does not feel the full extent of this discord, the reason may well be that he has disaccustomed himself to be sensitive to all the depth and intimacy which can be connected with this approaching festival. Of all that the Christmas festival can do to deepen man's inner nature, basically no more is left today, especially for the city dweller, than a last faint echo. He is hardly in a position to feel even vaguely its former greatness. His habits prevent him from perceiving this greatness any longer, a greatness to which humanity had become accustomed in the course of centuries.

It would be totally wrong if we would look with pessimism at the fact that times have changed, and that in our modern cities it has become impossible to develop that mood of profound intimacy which prevailed in earlier times with regard to this festival. It would not be right to allow such a pessimistic mood to arise, for at the same time we can feel an intimation—in our circles this feeling should certainly be present—that humanity can once again come to experience the full depth and greatness of the impulse which belongs to this festival. Seeking souls have every reason to ask themselves: “What can this ‘Christ festival’ mean to us?”. And in their hearts they can admit: Precisely through Spiritual Science something will be given to humanity, which will bring again, in the fullest sense of the word, that depth and greatness which cannot be any more today. If we don't succumb to illusion and phantasy we must admit that these can no longer exist at present. What has become often a mere festival of gifts cannot be said to have the same meaning as what the Christmas festival meant to people for many centuries in the past. Through the celebration of this festival the souls used to blossom forth with hope-filled joy, with hope-borne certainty, and with the awareness of belonging to a spiritual Being, Who descended from Spiritual heights, and united Himself with the earth, so that every human soul of good will may share in His powers. Indeed, for many centuries the celebration of this festival awakened in the souls of men the consciousness that the individual human soul can feel firmly supported by the spiritual power just described, and that all men of good will can find themselves gathered together in the service of this spiritual power. Thereby they can also find together the right ways of life on earth, so that they can mean humanly as much as possible to one another, so that they can love each other as human beings on earth as much as possible.

Suppose we find it appropriate to let the following comparison work on our souls: What has the Christmas festival been for many centuries, and what should it become in the future? To this end, let us compare, on the one hand, the mood which social custom creates nowadays in certain parts of the world around us, with the mood that once permeated the Christmas festival. On the other hand, let us compare this mood of the present time with what can come about in the soul as a renewal of this festival, made as it were timeless, through Spiritual Science.

For a modern urban dweller it is hardly possible to appreciate truly the full depth of what is connected with our great seasonal festivals. It is hardly possible to experience that magic which like a gentle breeze permeated the mood of soul of those who believed that they bore the Christ in their hearts during the great festivities surrounding Christmas or Easter. Today it has become very difficult indeed, especially for the city dweller, to sense anything of this magic, which permeated humanity like a gentle spiritual breeze during those seasons. For those who have had the opportunity of experiencing even a little of this magic wind which permeated the soul mood in those times this will most certainly be a wonderful, glorious memory. As a young child I was able to behold the last remnants of such a magic wind as it permeated the souls, the mood, of country folk in certain remote German villages. When the Christmas season approached I could behold how something arose in the deepest, innermost soul life of young and old, which differed essentially from the feelings and sentiments that prevailed during the rest of the year. When Christmas approached this could still be sensed quite distinctly in certain farming villages as recently as a few decades ago. The souls had then a natural way of making themselves inwardly beautiful. And they really felt something like this: “Into deepest night-enveloped darkness has the physical sunlight descended during autumn. More outer physical darkness has come about. Long have the nights become, shortened are the days. We must stay home much of the time. During the other seasons we used to go outside, to the fields, where we would feel the golden rays of the morning sun coming to meet us, where we could feel the warmth of the sun, where we could work with our hands during the long days of summer. But now, we must sit inside much of the time, we must feel much, much darkness around us, and we must often see, as we look outside through windows, how the earth is being covered with its winter garment.”

It is not possible to depict in detail all the beautiful, the wonderful soul moods which awoke in the simplest farm homes on Sunday afternoons and evenings as the Christmas season approached. One would have to depict very intimate soul moods. One would have to tell how many, who had been involved in a good share of fights and mischief during the rest of the year, would feel a natural restraint in their souls, as a result of being filled with the thought: “The time of Christ draws near.” They would feel: Time itself is becoming too holy to allow mischief to occur during this season.—That is only a minor aspect of what was extensively present in past centuries, and what could still be seen in its last remnants in those remote villages in recent decades. When the celebration of Christmas retreated into the homes as a family festival you would see there no more than a little display representing the stable in Bethlehem. The children would enjoy everything connected with it, as they saw Joseph and Mary, with the shepherds in front, and the angels above, sometimes done in a very primitive way. In some villages you would find such a display of the “manger” in almost every home. What had thus retreated into the homes was more or less a last echo of something which we will touch upon later.—And when the main days of the Christmas festival, the 25th and 26th of December, had passed and Epiphany, the festival of the Three Kings, approached, you could still see a few decades ago small groups of actors wandering from village to village—the last actors to present plays of “the Holy Story.” The actual Christmas plays had already become quite rare, but a last echo of “The Play of the Three Kings” could often still be seen, as it might be even today (1910) in some remote villages. There were the “Three Holy Kings”, wearing strange costumes, different for each one, with paper crowns and a star on their heads. Thus would they move through the villages, seldom lacking humor, but with humor and reverence together. With their primitive voices they would awaken all those feelings which the soul should feel in connection with what the Bible tells of the great Christ Impulse of human evolution.

The essential thing is that a mood prevailed during the Christmas season, the days and weeks surrounding the Christmas festival, to which the heart was given over, a mood in which the whole village would participate, and which enabled people to take in with simple immediacy all the representations that were brought before their souls. Grotesque, comedy-like presentations of sacred scenes, such as have become customary in our time in imitation of the Passion Plays of Oberammergau, would have met with no understanding in those days. The memory and the thought of the great periods of humanity were then still alive. It would have been impossible to find anyone willing to experience the events of the Holy Night and of the Three Kings during any other days of the year. And it would have been just as impossible to accept the Passion story at any other time but Easter. People felt united with what spoke to them from the stars, the weeks, the seasons, what spoke out of snow and sunshine. And they listened to tales of what they wanted to feel and should feel, when the so-called “Star-Singers” went around, wearing paper crowns on their heads, and lately wearing simply a white jacket. One of them used to carry a star, attached to a scissor-like device, so that he could project the star some distance out. Thus they would wander through the villages, stopping at various homes, to present their simple tales. What mattered most was that just at this time people's hearts were rightly attuned, so that they were able to take in everything that was supposed to permeate their souls during this season. I myself have still heard quite a few times these “Star-Singers”, reciting their simple poems as they wandered through the villages, and this is for me still a beautiful memory. An example follows *:

In God's Name now our tale begins.
From Orient came the Holy Kings.
They ride with speed on distant ways,
Four hundred miles in thirteen days.
They ride by Herod's palace-walls
As Herod from his window calls:
Whither go ye, relax your speed!
To Bethlehem our journey does lead.
Ye Holy Three Kings be guests of mine,
I will draw plenty of beer and wine,
I will serve venison roast and fish;
To know of the newborn king is my wish.
In truth, we cannot tell just where;
We have to follow the star we bear:
Over the house the star will shine bright.
Over the mountains the holy men ride.
There found they Jesus Christ, our Lord,
Who is the Savior of all the world.¹

The whole village would take part in such things. As certain lines were recited the star would be projected far out. This star of Christmas, of the Three Kings, was an expression of the consonance of the season, the festivity, and the human hearts. That was a great thing, which had spread through centuries like a magic breath of air over large parts of the earth and into the simplest hearts and minds. We must try to place something like this before our souls. As seekers after spiritual knowledge we are able to do so, because through our years of contemplative work on this great event we were able to develop again a feeling for the real power which was thereby given for all of mankind and for the whole evolution of the earth. And it is to this event that our thoughts should be directed during this festival season.

So we may expect to gain some understanding of how in times past the whole Christmas season was immersed in a festive mood, especially among the people of Germany and Western Europe, and how this festive mood was achieved by the simplest means. But perhaps only the spiritual seeker can understand today what was essential in those ancient Christmas plays. What I have presented to you just now as the “Star-Song” is, in fact, only a last remnant, a last ruin. If we would go back several centuries we would find vast regions where Christmas plays were performed when this time approached, in the presentation of which entire villages took part. As regards our knowledge of these Christmas plays we may well say that we were merely in a position of collecting something that was rapidly vanishing.

I myself had the good fortune of having an old friend who was such a collector. From him I heard many stories of what he encountered as a scholarly collector of Christmas plays, especially in German-Hungarian regions. In certain “language islands” in Hungary the German language had been kept alive both as a mother tongue and for colloquial speech, up to the time of the so-called magyarization in the fifties and sixties of the nineteenth century, when the Hungarian language was imposed. There one could still find many of the Christmas plays and Christmas customs which had vanished long ago into the stream of oblivion in the German motherland. Individual colonists, who migrated into Slavic regions during the previous centuries, had preserved their ancient heritage of Christmas plays, and they renewed them, whenever they could find the right people to play the parts, always recruiting the players from among the villagers themselves. I can still well remember—and perhaps you will take my word for it—with how much enthusiasm the old professor Schröer spoke of these Christmas plays, when he told of having been present when these people performed these plays during the festival season.

We can say without exaggerating, that an understanding of the inner nature of the artistic element in these plays can only be reached by actually visiting these village people and witnessing how they have given birth to the simple artistry of such Christmas plays out of a truly most holy mood. There are people today, who believe that they can learn the art of speech and recitation from this or that teacher. They will go to all sorts of places in order to learn certain breathing exercises which are considered to be the right ones for this purpose. And there exist nowadays dozens of “right” breathing methods for singing and for declamation. These people believe that it is essential for them to make a real automaton of their body or their larynx. Thus they cultivate art in a materialistic way. I would only hope that this strange view will never really take root in our circles; for these people have no idea how a simple, yet true art was born out of a most reverent mood, a prayerful Christmas mood.

Such art was actually performed by village lads who engaged in good-for-nothing pranks and behaved in a very loose way during the rest of the year. These very same lads would act in the Christmas plays with a most profound Christmas mood in their souls and hearts. For, these simple people, who lived beneath their thatched roofs, knew infinitely more about the relation of the human soul, even the whole human being, and art, than is known today in our modern theaters or other art institutions, no matter how much ado surrounds these things. They knew that true art has to spring from the whole human being; and if it be sacred-art then it must spring from man's holy mood of devotion. That, indeed, these people knew! And this can be seen, for example, in the “four principle rules”, found in those regions which Schröer could still visit.

As the months of October or November approached, in the regions of Upper Hungary, one person who knew the Christmas plays would gather those people who he felt were suitable to perform them. These plays were passed on by oral tradition. They were never committed to writing. That would have been considered a profanation. And during the Christmas season some people were considered suited, of whom one would perhaps not have thought so at other times: really roguish good-for-nothing lads, who had been involved in all sorts of mischief during the rest of the year. But during this time of the year their souls immersed themselves in the required mood. The participants had to abide by some very strict rules during the many weeks of rehearsals. Anyone who wanted to take part had to adhere strictly to the following rules.—Try to imagine life in these villages, and what it would mean not to be allowed to participate in these Christmas plays. “Anyone wishing to act in the plays must:

1. stay away from the girls,
2. sing no bawdy songs during the entire Holy Season,
3. lead a decent life,
4. obey my orders.

A fine will be levied for all violations, and also for each error in memorizing your lines.”²

Do you recognize in this custom something like a last echo of the kind of consciousness that prevailed at the holy sites of the ancient mysteries? There too, one knew that wisdom cannot be achieved by mere schooling. Likewise, an awareness prevailed here that the whole human being, including his mind and morals, must be cleansed and purified, if he wished to partake in art in a worthy way. These plays had to be born out of the whole human being! And the attunement to the Christmas mood brought about something like this, brought about that devotion and piety would take hold even of the most roguish lads.

These Christmas plays, of which I have just told you, and which Schröer and others could still observe and collect, were the last remains of more ancient plays, indeed, merely the last ruins. But through these plays we can look back into earlier times, into the 16th, 15th, 14th century and even further, when the relations between villages and cities were quite different. Indeed, in the Christmas season the souls of village people would immerse themselves into an entirely different mood through what these plays would offer them, as they presented with the simplest, most primitive means the holy legend: the birth of Christ with all that belongs to it according to the Bible. And just as Christmas day, the 25th of December, was preceded in the church calendar by the “Day of Adam and Eve”, so what was considered the actual Christmas play was preceded by the so-called Paradise play, the play of Adam and Even in Paradise, where they fell victim to the devil, the snake. Thus in the most primitive regions where such plays were performed, people could gain an immediate insight into the connection between the descent of man from spiritual heights to the physical world—and that sudden reversal which was bestowed on man through the Christ Impulse, upward again towards the spiritual worlds.

Suppose when reading the Epistles of St. Paul you would sense the greatness of the Pauline conception of man, who descended as Adam from the spiritual world to the world of the senses, and then, of the “new Adam and Christ, in whom man ascends again from the world of the senses into the world of the spirit. This can be sensed and felt in Paul in a grandiose way. The simplest people, even down to the children, could sense this in an intimate, loving, fulfilling way in the depth of their hearts and souls when they beheld in this season in succession first the fall of man in the Paradise play of Adam and Eve, and then the revelation of Christ in the Christmas play. And they felt profoundly the mighty turning point that had occurred in the evolution of humanity through the Christ Event. A reversal of the path of evolution, that was the way the Christ Event was experienced! One path, that led so to say from heaven to earth, was the path from Adam to Christ; another path, that leads from earth to heaven, is the oath from Christ to the end of earth time. That is what many thousands of people felt in a most intimate way, when the two plays which I have just characterized were so primitively performed before their eyes. These people really could then experience the complete renewal of the human spirit in its very essence through the Christ-Impulse. Perhaps you can feel in all of this a kind of echo of something that was once felt in regard to this reversal of the entire progress of humanity through certain words which have come down to us from very ancient times, from the first Christian centuries. These words were often spoken, even in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, in those regions of Europe where Christianity had spread. There people felt something tremendous when words such as these were spoken:

Ave maris Stella
Dei mater alma
Atque semper virgo
Felix coeli porta

Sumens illud Ave
Gabrielis ore
Funda nos in pace
Mutans nomen Evae!

Ave (I greet you) star of the sea
Divine youthful mother³
And virgin eternal
Thou happy portal of heaven.

Receiving this “Ave” (greeting)
From the mouth of Gabriel
Be thou our foundation for peace
By reversing the name Eva!

When these words were spoken people felt man's path from heaven to earth through the Fall—and the ascent of man through Christ from earth to heaven. They felt this even in the names of the two female characters, the name Eva (Eve) and the name they associated with the mother of Jesus, with which one greeted her so to say: Ave! Ave is the reverse of the name Eva. When you spell Ave backwards you have Eva. That was felt in its full significance. These word; express what people sensed in the most elementary phenomena of nature, and at the same time, what they saw in the human elements of the Holy Legend:

Ave, star of the sea,
Divine young mother
And virgin eternal
Thou happy portal of heaven.

Receiving this “Ave”
As a greeting from Gabriel
Be thou our foundation for peace
By reversing the name Eva!

In such simple words one felt the greatest mysteries, the greatest secrets of human evolution. And in the reversal of the name Eva to Ave people would feel in a subtle way that same truth which we can learn in a grandiose way from the Epistles of Paul when we read his words about Adam, the “old” Adam, and Christ, the “new” Adam. This was the mood in the days of the Christ-festival when these plays were performed one after the other in that primitive way: the “Paradise play” which shows us the Fall of man, and the “Christmas play” which awakens the hope for the future, in which each single human soul can share by taking up the force that lies in the Christ-Impulse. But it should be perfectly clear that to feel this requires a mood, an inner attunement, which simply cannot exist in this way anymore today. Times have changed. Back then it was not as impossible to look towards the spiritual worlds as it is today. For, that fundamentally materialistic trait, which permeates today the minds of the simplest as well as the most sophisticated people did not exist then. In those times the spiritual world was accepted as self-evident. And likewise a certain understanding was present of this spiritual world and how it differs from the world of the senses. Today people can hardly conceive how one could feel spiritually as late as the 15th or 16th century, and how an awareness of spirituality was present essentially everywhere.

We intend to present such a Christmas play in our art center. It is one from the region known as the Upper Palatinate (Oberpfalz). If we succeed, understanding can again be awakened, also in the outer world, for the spiritual mood that lives in such plays. For us, certain lines in such a Christmas play should become signposts, as it were, by which we recognize the spiritual sensitivity of the people who were to understand the Christmas play at the festival season. For example, if in one or another Christmas play Mary, expecting the Jesus-child, says, “The time has come, I see a little child”, this means she clairvoyantly beheld the child in a vision in the days preceding the birth. Thus it is in many Christmas plays. And I wonder where you could find a similar tale today for such an occasion. The time when a conscious connection with the spiritual world was present is no more. You should appreciate this fact neither with optimistic nor with pessimistic feelings. Nowadays you would have to go very far afield, to the most remote and primitive rural areas, to find instances of a vision of the child that is to be born in a few days. But it does still happen!

What people brought to the Christmas season by these primitive memories and thoughts of the greatest event of human evolution, this could only be carried by a mood such as we described. Therefore, we must find it quite understandable that in the place of this former poetry, this simple primitive art, we have today the prose of electric railways and automobiles, speeding forth so grotesquely between rows of Christmas trees. An aesthetically sensitive eye must find it impossible to view these two kinds of things together: Christmas trees, Christmas sales, and cars and electric trains running through their midst! Today this impossible situation is naturally accepted as a matter of course. But for an aesthetically sensitive eye it remains nevertheless something impossible. Even so, we want to be friends of our civilization, not enemies. We want to understand that it must be so as a matter of course.

But we want to understand too how much this is connected with the materialistic trait which has pervaded not only those who live in the city, but those who live in the country as well. Oh, by listening carefully, we can actually detect how this materialistic mood has taken hold of human minds. When we go back to the 14th or 13th century we find that people knew full well that something spiritual is meant when such a thing as the tree of knowledge in paradise is mentioned. They understood rightly what was presented in the Paradise play. When they were shown the tree of knowledge or the tree of life they knew to what to relate it spiritually. For in those days superstition about such matters had not yet spread to the extent it did later, in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. In fact it can be historically documented that already in the 15th century, in the vicinity of the city of Bamberg, people went out into the apple orchards on Christmas night because they expected to see physically, materially, that a specially chosen apple tree would bloom that night. Thus people's minds became materialistic, in the period beginning in the 13th or 14th century and extending into the 16th and 17th century. This happened not only in the cities, but also in the souls of simple country folk.

Even so, much of the ancient poetry found its way into the homes, with the Christmas tree. But what wafted through the ancient villages as a most sacred mood, like a mystery, has become merely external poetry, the poetry of the Christmas tree, still beautiful, yet merely an echo of something much greater.

Why is this so? Because in the course of time humanity must evolve, because what is most intimate, what is greatest and most significant at one time, cannot remain so in the same way for all times. Only an enemy of evolution would want to drag what was great in one time over into other times. Each period of time has its own special mission. In each period we must learn how to enliven in ever new ways what should enter the souls and hearts of man. Our time can only appreciate that real Christmas mood, which I have sketched here in brief outline, if this mood is seen as a historic memory, a thing of the past. Yet, if we do accept the symbol of the Christmas tree also into our own festival gatherings, we do so precisely because we connect with Spiritual Science the thought of a new Christmas mood of mankind, of progressively evolving mankind. For Spiritual Science means to introduce the secrets of Christ into the hearts and souls of man in a way that is appropriate for our time. Even though modern conveyances rush past us when we step outdoors, or perhaps will even fly away with us through the air—and soon these things will awaken humanity quite differently to the most sobering and terrifying prose—nevertheless men of today must have a chance to find again the divine-spiritual world, precisely by an even stronger and more meaningful deepening of the soul. This is the same divine-spiritual world which in bygone centuries appeared before the eyes of those primitive minds when they saw at Christmas time the Holy Child in the manger. Today we need other means to awaken this mood in the soul. Certainly we may like to immerse ourselves in what past times possessed as ways to find the Christ Event, but we must also transcend what depends on time. Ancient people approached the secrets of Nature by merging with her through feeling. That was only possible in a primitive time. Today we need other means.

I would still like to give you some idea how people felt their way into nature when the Christmas festival approached. They did this quite primitively, yet they could speak in a very real and living way out of their sensing and feeling of the elements of Nature. If I may share with you a little “Star Song”, you will perhaps feel only through one single line, how the elements of Nature spoke out of the soul—the rest of the song is rather primitive. But if you listen more carefully you will be able to observe this Nature mood in several other lines.

Namely, when the one who gathered his actors for the Christmas play, or for the Three Kings play, would wander with them, and when they would then perform at some place, they would first extend a greeting to those who were assembled there. For, the sort of abstract attitude which prevails today between actors and audience did not exist in those earlier times. People belonged together, and the whole gathering was enveloped by an atmosphere of community. Therefore the actors would start by greeting in a primitive way those who were present, as well as those of the community who were not there. This really would bring out the Christmas mood.

The Star-Song

The star singer:

Beloved singers mine, let's gather as a clan
Like fritters in a frying pan,
Beloved singers mine, take up your place,
We want to pass our while with singing in this space.
Beloved singers mine, so strong and smart,
With greetings do we want to start.
Let us greet God-Father on His highest throne
And let us greet also His only Son.
Let us greet the Holy Spirit by name
And then greet all three together again.

Joseph and Mary enter the stage.

Let us greet Joseph and Mary mild,
And we also greet the little child.
Let us greet the ox and also the ass,
Which stand near the crib with straw and grass.
Let us greet them through sunlight and moonshine
That shine on the sea and the river Rhine.
Let us greet them through foliage and grassy blade,
Through the holy rain that has wet us all made.
Let us greet the emperor and his crown,
And him who made it, a master of great renown.
Let us greet the squire, Sir Palfi by name,
Also his officers we greet the same.
Let us greet our fathers of the church, so stern,
Because this play they allowed us to learn.
Let us greet the judge and the jury elect
With worthy honor and respect.
The whole honored community we greet
All who together here we meet.
Let us greet the honored council of this place
By God ordained to serve in this space.
Let us greet them through the roots, large and small,
Which are in the earth, many and all.
Beloved singers mine, turn now to another thing.
To greet the star we shall now sing.
Let us greet the slats, so carefully matched,
To which our star is then attached.
Let us greet the scissors that can stretch out far
By which can wander around the star.
We greet all the little slats of wood
As many as make our star look so good.
Beloved singers mine, harken well to my words
We sang to the star and to all of its parts.
Now we greet our master singer with glee
And also his hat which here you see.
Let us greet our teacher, who indeed,
With God's help taught us what we need.
Beloved singers mine, note well this thing,
To all of these we did now sing.

Now I ask you, please notice what this means: to call upon Nature in such a way that one greets everyone whom one wishes to greet with a certain mood in one's heart, a mood which arises from: “the roots, large and small, which are in the earth, many and all.” That is empathy for Nature's own mood.—Thus we must recognize that people in those days were connected with all that was holy, with all that was great and spiritual, right down to the roots of trees and grass. If you can enter into such a feeling, then, through a line such as the one I have just cited, you will feel something grandiose in the secrets of the evolution of mankind. The times are past when such feelings were naturally present, when they were a matter of course. Today we need to make use of other means. We need ways which will lead us to a well-spring in human nature that lies deeper, to a wellspring of human nature which, in a certain sense, is independent of external time. For the course of modern civilization makes it impossible for us to be bound by the seasons. Therefore, if you truly understand the mood which was felt in olden times as the Christ mood of the holy Christmas night, you will also be able to understand our intent, as we attempt to deepen artistically what we can gain from Spiritual Science. We strive to enliven that well-spring in the human mind which can take in the Christ Impulse. No longer can we awaken this great impulse directly within our souls during the Christmas season, even though we would be happy if we could. Yet we constantly search for it. If we can see a “Christ-festival of the progress of humanity” in what Spiritual Science is intended to be for mankind, and if we compare this with what simple people could feel when the Child in the crib was displayed during the Holy Christmas Night then we must say to ourselves: Such moods and feelings can awake in us too, if we consider what can be born in our own soul when our inner-most wellspring is so well attuned to what is sacred, so purified through spiritual knowledge, that this wellspring can take in the holy mystery of the Christ Impulse.

From this point of view we also try to discover true art which springs from the spirit. This art can only be a child of true devotion, a child of the most sacred feelings, when we feel in this context the eternal, imperishable “Christ festival of humanity”: How the Christ-Impulse can be born in the human soul, in the human heart and mind. When we learn to experience again through Spiritual Science that this Christ Impulse is a reality, something which can actually flow into our souls and hearts as a living strength, then the Christ Impulse will not remain something abstract or dogmatic. Rather this Christ Impulse, which comes forth from our spiritual movement, will become something able to give us solace and comfort in the darkest hours of our lives, able also to give us joy in the hope that when Christ will be born in our soul at the “Christmastide of our soul”, we may then look forward to the Eastertide, the resurrection of the spirit in our own inner life.

In this way we must progress, from a material attitude which has entered and taken hold of all minds and hearts, towards a spiritual attitude. For, that renewal, which is necessary to counterbalance today's prosaic ways of life, can only be born out of the spirit. Outside, the traffic of cars may move by, electric trains may speed on, perhaps even balloons may fly across the sky. Nevertheless, in halls such as these, it will be possible that something of a holy mood lives and grows. This can however only happen as a result of what has flowed to us from spirit knowledge throughout the entire year. When this fruit of the entire year brings Christ closer to us, as could happen in former times in a much more childlike mood, then we may rightly hope that in a certain sense these halls will be “cribs”. We may then look upon these halls in a similar way as the children and the grown-ups used to look on Christmas eve upon the cradle that was set up for them at home, or in still earlier times, in the church. They used to look at the little Child, at the shepherds before Him, and at “the ox and also the ass which stand near the crib with straw and grass”. They felt that from this symbol strength would stream into their hearts, for all hope, for all love of man, for all that is great in mankind, and for all goals of the earth. If on this day, which shall be consecrated and dedicated to remembering the Christ Impulse, we can feel that our earnest spiritual scientific striving throughout the entire year has kindled something in our hearts, then on this day our hearts will feel: “These our meeting halls are truly cradles! And these candles are symbols! And just as Christmas is a preparation for Easter, so these cradles, by virtue of the holy mood that fills them, and these candles, through the symbolism of their light, are meant to be a preparation for a great era for humanity, the era of the resurrection of the most Holy Spirit, of truly spiritual life!”

So let us try to feel that in this Christmas season our meeting halls are cradles, places in which, secluded from the outer world, something great is being prepared. Let us learn to feel that if we study diligently throughout the year, our insights, our wisdom, can be condensed on Christmas eve into very warm feelings, which glow like a fire, fueled by what we have gained throughout the whole year by immersing ourselves into great teachings. And let us feel that thereby we nurture our remembrance of the greatest impulse in human evolution. Let us also feel, therefore, that in these halls we may have faith that what now begins to burn within such a confined cradle as a holy fire, and as a light, filled with certainty of hope, will find its way to all mankind at some future time. Then this fire and this light will be strong enough to extend its power even to the hardest, most down to earth prose of life, to permeate it, to enkindle it, to warm it, to enlighten it! Thus can we feel here the Christmas mood as a mood of hope in anticipation of that World-Easter-mood which is to express the living spirit, needed for a renewal of humanity.

We best celebrate Christmas when we fill our souls in the coming days with this mood: In our Christmas we spiritually prepare the “Easter festival of all mankind”, the resurrection of spiritual life. Yes indeed, cradles shall our places of work become at Christmas time! The child of light is to be born, whom we have nurtured throughout the entire year by immersing ourselves into the wisdom-treasures of Spiritual Science. In our places of work Christ is to be born within the human soul, in order that spiritual life may be resurrected at the great Eastertide of humanity. In its very essence humanity must come to feel spirituality as a resurrection, by virtue of what streams forth as Christmas mood from our halls into all humanity, in the present time as well as in the future.

• 1. From “Deutsche Weihnachtspiele aus Ungarn”, described and communicated by Karl Julius Schröer, Vienna, 1862, “Oberschützener Sternsinger” (The Star-Singers of Oberschützen), p. 160.
• 2. See “Weihnachtspiele aus altem Volkstum; Die Oberufer Spiele” (G.A. 43, Dornach 1965), Christmas Plays from Oberufer, translated by A.C. Harwood, Rudolf Steiner Press, London.
• 3. A more conventional translation of alma is ‘bountiful’, but Rudolf Steiner translates it as ‘young’.

By receiving the Spirit the human soul develops to ever further stages in the course of cosmic existence. The Spirit is eternal, but the way in which it takes effect, how it manifests in what man can feel, love and create on Earth—that is new in every epoch.

When we think in this way of the Spirit and its progressive manifestation in the course of man's existence, the Eternal and the Transitory are revealed to our eyes of soul. And in particular manifestations of life here and there, we can constantly perceive how the Eternal reveals itself, comes to expression in the Transitory and then vanishes again, thereafter to assert its reality in perpetually new forms.

And today too we can feel that the emblems of Christmas around us are reminiscent of past forms in which the Eternal, manifesting in the outer world, was wont to be symbolised. Certain it is that in the second half of December at the present time, when we go out into the streets of a great city and look at the lights that are intended to be invitations into the houses to celebrate the Christmas Festival, our aesthetic sense must be pained by displays of so-called Christmas goods, while inventions out of keeping with Christmas trees and Christmas symbols whiz past—motor cars, electric tramcars and the like. These phenomena, as experienced today, are utterly at variance with each other. We feel this still more deeply when we realise what the Christmas Festival has become for many of those who want to be regarded in the great cities as the representatives of modern culture. It has become a festival of presents, a festival in which little remains of the warmth and profound depth of feeling which in a past by no means far distant surrounded this most significant season.

Among the experiences restored to us by our anthroposophical conception of the world and way of thinking, will certainly be the warmth of feeling that pervaded the human soul at the times of high festival in the ancient Church's year. We must learn to understand once again how necessary it is for our souls to become aware at certain times of the connection with the great Universe out of which man is born, in order that our intellectual, perceptive and also moral forces may be revitalised. There was an epoch when Christmas was a festival when all morality, all love, all philanthropy could be revivified; in its symbols it radiated a warmth undreamed of by the dreariness and prosaicness of modern life. Nevertheless deep contemplation of these symbols could be a means of developing the perceptions, experiences and convictions of which we ourselves can be aware concerning the resurrection of mankind, the birth of the Spirit of Anthroposophy in our souls.

There is indeed a connection between the earlier conceptions of the Festival of Christ's birth and the modern anthroposophical conceptions of the birth of truly spiritual ideas and ways of thinking, of the birth of the whole anthroposophical spirit in the cradle of our hearts; there is indeed a connection. And maybe it is the anthroposophist of today who will most readily enter into what for long ages was felt at the time of the Christmas Festival and could be felt again if there were any hope of something similar emerging from the atmosphere of materialism surrounding us today.

But if we want to experience the Christmas Festival in the truly anthroposophical way, we cannot limit ourselves to what the Christmas Festival was once upon a time or is now. Wherever we look in the world, and into a past however distant, something that can be compared to the thoughts and feelings connected with the Christmas Festival has existed everywhere. Today we will not go back to the very far past but only to the feelings and experiences which men living in the regions of Middle Europe might have had before the introduction of Christianity at the time of the year when our own Christmas Festival is drawing near. We will think briefly of epochs prior to the introduction of Christianity into Europe, when in regions subject to relatively harsh climatic conditions our forefathers in Europe were obliged to make their living by spending the summer as pastoral or agricultural workers, while their feelings and inclinations were intimately connected with the manifestations of the great world of Nature. They were full of thanksgiving for the sun's rays, full of reverence for the great Universe—a reverence that was not superficial but deeply felt. And when the herdsman or cattle breeder of ancient Europe was out on his rough fields, often in scorching heat, he was inwardly aware not only of the outer, physical aspect of Nature, but in his whole being he felt intimately connected with whatever was radiated to him from Nature; with his whole heart he lived in communion with Nature. It was not only that in his eyes the physical rays of the sun were reflecting the light, but in his heart the sunlight kindled spiritual jubilation, summer-like exultation which culminated in the St. John's fires when the spirit of Nature shouted for joy and was echoed from the hearts of men. Intimate community was also felt with the animal world as being under man's guardianship.

Then came autumn, followed by the season of rigorous winter—and I am thinking now of times when winter swept through the land with a bleakness of which modern humanity has little idea. This was a time when, with the exception of what it was absolutely essential to preserve, the last head of cattle had to be slaughtered. All outer life was stilled; it was actually as though a kind of death made its way into the hearts of men, a kind of darkness, in contrast with the mood that pervaded these same hearts throughout the summer. Those were times when the unique manifestations of climate and of Nature, enabled echoes of ancient clairvoyance still to persist in Middle Europe. People who during the summer were full of joy and merriment, as though Nature herself were rejoicing in their hearts—these same people could become inwardly quiescent during the time of approaching winter; their own souls could respond to an echo of the mood that pervades a man when, unmindful of the outer world, he withdraws into his own inner world in order to become aware of the indwelling Divinity.

So it can be said that Nature herself made it possible for these ancient European peoples to descend from life in the external world deep down into their own inmost being. When November came near this descent into death and darkness was felt for weeks to be a solemn season, to be a harbinger of the approaching dawn of what was called the Yuletide Festival. This mood was a clear indication of how long the remembrance of ancient clairvoyant faculties had persisted among all the peoples of Northern and Middle Europe. During the season following the period roughly corresponding to our months of January and February, men felt inwardly aware of the portents of renewed rejoicing, renewed resurrection in Nature. They were aware of a foretaste of what they would subsequently experience in the external world; but when the fields were still covered with snow, when icicles were still hanging from the trees, when outside in Nature nothing indicated a future state of exultation, there was a persistent condition of withdrawal into themselves, of inner repose which was ultimately transformed in the soul in such a way that a man was, as it were, liberated from his own selfhood.

This intermediate state experienced by our forefathers at the approach of the season we now call spring was felt by them somewhat as the clairvoyant feels his astral body, before that astral body is completely cleansed and purified. It was as if the spiritual horizon were filled with all kinds of animal forms. And those men tried to give expression to this. For them it represented a transition from the profound, festival mood of approaching winter to the mood which would again pervade the soul during summer. And they imitated in symbols what the astral body reveals, imitated it in the form of uninhibited games and dances; by donning animal masks they imitated this transition from a state of complete inner repose to a state of exultant abandonment to great Nature.

When we ponder over this, when we reflect that the hearts and minds of peoples over wide areas were completely given up to such a mood, then we understand that there was present on this soil the feeling of sinking down into the outer physical darkness, into the outer physical death of Nature; we also understand the deep, persistent feeling that in sinking down into the physical death of Nature, into physical darkness, the supreme light of the Spirit can be revealed; and how the experience of being submerged in physical death is directly transformed into that mood of unbridled abandonment to which expression can be given by animal masks, unrestrained dancing and music. Admittedly there was not yet any fully developed feeling that if a human being is to find the highest light he must seek for it in the deepest depths of being; but through an inner, loving union with the weaving forces of Nature a soil was prepared into which there could be planted a knowledge to be imparted to men concerning their further evolution through the power of the Christ Impulse. To these peoples living all over Europe it was only necessary to say—not in dry, abstract words but speaking to the heart by means of symbols: ‘Where you plunge into darkness, into the death of outer Nature, there—if you have prepared your souls to perceive and feel rightly, you can find an eternal, imperishable Light. And this Light has been brought into the evolution of mankind through the quickening power of the Mystery of Golgotha, through the events in Palestine’.

It is characteristic of the centuries immediately following, that in Europe the warmest, most intimate feelings for the Christ Impulse were to be kindled by the thought of the Christ Child, by the birth of the Christ Child. And if we believe that mankind has a mission, what conception must we have of that mission? We must conceive that man has a divine-spiritual origin, that he can look back to that origin, but that he has descended farther and farther away from it, has become more and more closely interwoven with physical matter, with the outer physical plane. But we must also be aware that through the mighty Impulse which we call the Christ Impulse, man can overcome the forces that led him down into the physical world and tread the path upwards into the heights of spiritual life.

Having grasped this we must say to ourselves: as the human Ego is today, incarnated in a physical body, it has descended from divine-spiritual heights of existence and feels entangled with the world of the outer physical plane. But this Ego that has become sinful is rooted in another Ego, a guiltless Ego. Where then, does the Ego that is not yet interwoven with the physical world contact us? At the point when, looking back in memory over our life as it takes its course between birth and death, we come to the moment in our early years when consciousness of our Ego dawned for the first time. The Ego is there, although we are not aware that it is living and active within us, even when there is no realisation of Egohood at all. The Ego looks into the surrounding world, is interwoven with the physical plane even before there is any consciousness of Egohood. In its childlike, innocent state the Ego is nevertheless present and may hover before us as an ideal to be regained, but permeated then with everything that can be experienced in this school of physical life on the Earth. And so, although it will inevitably be difficult for the prosaic intellect to find words in which to clothe it, this ideal can be felt by warm human hearts: ‘Become what your Ego is before there is any concept of it! Become what you could be if you were to find your way to the Ego of your childhood! Then that Ego will shine into everything acquired by the Ego of your later years!’—And inasmuch as we feel this to be an ideal, it shines before us in Jesus of Nazareth, in whom the Christ subsequently became incarnate.

Experiences such as these enable us to understand that an impulse promoting growth and development could move the hearts of the simplest people all over Europe when they contemplated the incarnation of the Being who was afterwards able to receive the Christ into himself. So we realise that it was truly a step forward when feelings connected with the Festival of the birth of Jesus were inculcated into experiences connected with the old Yuletide Festival. It was indeed a mighty step forward and may perhaps best be characterised by saying that in those dark days, when souls gathered together in order to prepare for the rejoicings of the new summer—in that darkness the light of Christ Jesus was kindled!

An echo of what took place among European peoples in those early times still persists in the Christmas Plays which during the nineteenth century, or at any rate during its latter half, had become little more than objects of study for learned investigators and for collectors. During the Middle Ages, however, these Plays were already being performed in a characteristic style during the Christmas period. All the emotions, all the vitality kindled in souls living in the regions where, when Yuletide was approaching, people of an even earlier period had experienced what I have been describing—all these feelings were awakened by the Plays. And as we turn from the description of the old Yuletide Festival to the medieval Christmas Plays, we ourselves can realise what warmth swept through the European peoples with the advent of Christianity. An impulse of a unique kind penetrated then into the hearts and souls of men.

Conditions now are, of course, different from those of earlier times, and in the nineteenth century these Plays were regarded simply as perquisites of erudition. Nevertheless it was a moving experience to make the acquaintance of older philologists and authorities on Germanic mythology and sagas, men who with intense enthusiasm devoted profound study to whatever fragments remained of the Christmas Plays that were performed in different regions. I myself had an elderly friend who during the fifties and sixties of last century had been a Professor at a College in Pressburg and while there had devoted a great deal of time to research among the Germanic peoples who had been driven from Western to Eastern Hungary. He also admired the charming customs and the language of the now Magyarised German gypsies and of other folk living at that time in Northern Hungary. It came to his knowledge that early Christmas Plays were still performed in a village near Pressburg. And he—I am speaking of my old friend Karl Julius Schröer—went to the village in an attempt to discover what vestiges of these old Plays still survived among the country people. Later on he told me a great deal about the wonderful impressions he had also received of what was left of Christmas Plays belonging to far, far earlier times.

In a certain village—Oberrufer was its name—there lived an old man in whose family it was an inherited custom when Christmas came near, to gather together those in the village who were suitable to be alloted parts in a Play in which the Gospels' story of Herod and the Three Kings would be presented in a simple way.

To understand the unique character of these Christmas Plays, however, we must have some idea of the kind of life led by simple folk in olden times. It now belongs to the past and must not be repeated. To make the gist of the matter clear, let me just put this question: Is there not a particular time of the year when the snowdrop flowers? Are there not for the lily-ofthe-valley and for the violet particular seasons when they take their own places in the macrocosm? Certainly, under glass they can be made to flower at other periods but it really gives one pain to see a violet flowering at a time other than that which properly belongs to it. There is little feeling for such things in our day but something of the kind can be said about the people of earlier times. What men felt during certain periods of the Middle Ages at the approach of autumn and of Christmas, when the dark nights were drawing on apace, what they felt in such a way that their intimate experiences were akin to the manifestations of Nature outside, akin to the snow and the snowflakes and the icicles forming on the trees—such feelings were possible only at the time of Christmas. It was a mood that imparted strength and healing power to the soul for the whole of the year. It renewed the soul, was a real and effective power. And how deeply one was moved a decade or so ago when the last indications of such feelings were still to be encountered here or there. From my own personal experience on the physical plane itself I can confirm that there were utterly good-for-nothing fellows who would not dare to be dissolute as the days shortened. At Christmastime those who were invariably the most quarrelsome, quarrelled less and those who quarrelled only now and then stopped quarrelling altogether. A real power was active in souls at that time of the year and these feelings abounded everywhere during the weeks immediately before the Holy Night.

What was it that people actually experienced during those weeks? Their experiences, translated into actual feelings, were that human beings had descended from a divine-spiritual existence to the deepest depth on the physical plane, that the Christ Impulse had been received and the direction of man's path reversed into one of reascent to divine-spiritual existence. That is what was felt in connection with everything to do with the Christ Event. Hence it was not only Christian happenings that people liked to present, but just as the Church calendar couples Adam and Eve's day on 24 December with the birthday of Jesus on the 25th, a performance of the Paradise Play was followed directly by the Play presenting Christ's birthday, denoting the impulse given for man's reascent to divine-spiritual existence. And this was deeply felt when the name EVA resounded in the Paradise Play – EVA, the mother of humanity, from whom men had descended into the vale of physical life. This theme was presented on one day and on the next there was a Play depicting the impulse which brought about the reversal of man's path. This reversal was indicated in the actual sounds: AVE MARIA. AVE was felt to be the reversal of EVA: AVE-EVA. People were deeply stirred by words which rang out countless times to their ears and hearts from the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth centuries onwards, and which were understood.

Ave maris stella (Hail, star of the sea,)
Dei mater alma (Nursing mother of God,)
Atque semper virgo (Virgin for ever and ever,)
Felix coeli porta (Blissful door to the heavens above.
Sumens illud Ave (Adopting that ‘Ave’
Gabrielis ore (Out of the mouth of Gabriel,
Funda nos in pace (Establish us in peace
Mutans nomen Evae! (Altering the name of ‘Eva’.

(Tr. by Owen Barfield)

It was felt that the Paradise Play must be performed in the mood of piety befitting the Holy Night of Christmas. This was a deep conviction, and as anthroposophists, when we hear how the performers in the Christmas Plays rehearsed, how they prepared themselves, how they behaved before and during the performances of the Plays, we may well say: Is this not reminiscent of the attitude to truth adopted in the Mysteries?—although that, admittedly, was a matter of even greater significance. We know that in the Mysteries truth could not be received in any superficial mood of soul. Those who are aware to some extent of the holiness of truth know how absurd it is to imagine that it could be found in the arid, prosaic lectures of modern times, lectures in which there is no longer any indication that truth must be sought by a pure, unsullied, well-prepared soul and that it will not be found by a soul inwardly unsanctified, whose feelings are not duly prepared for its reception. There is no longer any conception of this in our age of materialism when truth itself, in the way it is presented, has become utterly prosaic.

In the Mysteries, truth might be approached only after the soul had passed through probationary tests of purity, inner freedom and fearlessness. Are we not reminded of this when we hear of the old man whom Karl Julius Schröer had known, who while he was assembling his players demanded that they should observe the ancient rules. Anyone who has lived among village people knows what the first rule signifies. The first rule was that during the whole period of preparation none of the actors might visit a brothel. In the village this was a matter of tremendous importance, signifying that the task lying before the actors must be steeped in piety. Nobody, while he was rehearsing, might sing an unworthy song; that was another rule. Further, nobody should desire anything more than a good, honest livelihood. That was the third rule. And the fourth was that he who was the authentic guardian of the traditional Christmas Plays should in all things be obeyed. It was an office not willingly transferred to anyone else.

In the second half of the nineteenth century people collected these Plays, although by then the old feelings associated with them had vanished. Later on I myself came across indications of the piety and fervour of scholars who still had some contact with country folk living in the scattered provinces of Hungary, for example, and were collecting the old Plays and Songs. When I was once in Hermannstadt about Christmastime I found that the teachers at the Gymnasium (Grammar School) there had been busily collecting these Plays and I came across the Herod Play. And so in the second half of the nineteenth century it was still possible to find people who were gathering evidence of old customs in regions which I have mentioned in connection with the Yuletide Festival. Do not let us think of anything theoretical but let us picture this warm, magical breath of the Christmas mood presented in these Plays. We then have a conception of mankind's belief in divine-spiritual reality—a belief acquired through the Christ Impulse.

This deep study of the Christmas Plays was something that could be highly instructive for the present age when the realisation that Art is the offspring of piety, of religion and of wisdom has long since been lost! In these days, when people are apt to regard Art as being detached from everything else, when Art has degenerated, for example, into formalism, much could be learnt from considering how Art in all its aspects was once regarded as a flower of human life. Simple as was the presentation of these Christmas Plays, it nevertheless indicated a flowering of man's whole nature. In the first place, the boys taking part in the Plays must be God-fearing, must absorb into their whole character something that was like an essence of the Christmas mood. They were also obliged to learn how to speak in strict rhythm. At the present time, when the Art of speaking in the ancient sense has been lost, there is no inkling of the vitally important role played by rhythm and rhyme, or of how every movement and gesture of men otherwise accustomed only to handling flails were rehearsed in minutest detail. The actors devoted themselves for weeks on end to practising rhythm and intonation, and were wholly dedicated to what they were to present. For a true understanding of Art, much could be learnt from those customs today when we have forgotten to such an extent how to speak artistically that hardly more than the intellectual meaning of what we have to say is expressed. The essential charm of these old Christmas Plays, however, lay in the fact that in rhythm, intonation and gesture the whole man became articulate. It was indeed a significant experience to have witnessed even the last remnants of these customs.

When the Christmas days were over, the actors taking. the parts of the Three Holy Kings walked through the villages, but at no other time than immediately after Christmas. I still remember seeing the Three Kings going through the villages from house to house. They carried long strips of lattice work attached to shears, a star being fixed to the end of the lattice work. The star shot out when the shears were opened and the lattice work swung back in harmony with the rhythmic movements made by the Three Kings. The Kings wore the most primitive costumes imaginable but their way of bringing the appropriate facts to the notice of the people at the right time of the year and their complete forgetfulness of self, induced a mood of soul that will be utterly incomprehensible to our age unless there can be a spiritual awakening. What should awaken in us as the life of the spirit, transformed through Anthroposophy into Art, can be presented in Plays which transcend the normal standards of the present age. Such Plays will not necessarily be connected with festivals but will be concerned with what is eternal in the human soul, unrelated to any particular season.

The Christ Impulse that was a reality for the souls of a certain epoch could become for us a living experience. True, in a certain sense we are already deeply rooted in an age when materialism in the outer world has taken such a hold in every sphere that if this Christ Impulse is to be renewed, stimuli quite different from the simple methods employed in the Middle Ages are called for. A revitalisation of man's inner life is necessary. The goal of Anthroposophy should be to draw forth the deepest forces of the human soul, forces quite different from those indicated to us by the present Christmas symbols and customs. True as it is that through our Anthroposophy we can become aware of the breath of enchantment which filled men's hearts during performances of the Paradise and Christ-Plays and during all the experiences connected with the festival seasons, it behoves us also to face the other fact—that the eternal Spirit must live in ever new forms through the evolution of humanity. Hence the spectacle of the Christmas symbols should be an incitement to infuse into the Christmas mood the spirit of anthroposophical thinking. Those who have a right feeling of the mysteries of the Christmas night will be filled with hope as they look forward to what will follow the Christmas Festival as a second Festival: they will look forward to Easter, the Festival of Resurrection, when He who was born in the Christmas night will be victorious.

Thus we are convinced that all cultural life, all spiritual life must be pervaded and inwardly charged with anthroposophical conceptions, anthroposophical feeling, thinking and willing. In the future, my dear friends, there will either be an anthroposophical spiritual science or no science at all, only a kind of applied technology; in the future there will either be a religion permeated with Anthroposophy, or no religion at all, merely external ecclesiasticism. In the future, Art will be permeated with Anthroposophy or the various arts will cease to exist, because cut off from the life of the human soul they can have only a brief, ephemeral existence. So we look towards something that shines with the same certainty as Theodora's prophecy of the renewal of the vision of Christ in the first Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation. With as great a certainty there stands before our souls the resurrection of the anthroposophical spirit in Science, Religion, Art and in the whole life of humanity. The great Easter Festival of mankind is arrayed before our foreshadowing souls.

We can understand that still there are ‘mangers’, still lonely places in which there will be born, as yet in the form typical of childhood, that which is to be resurrected among men. In the Middle Ages people were led into the houses and shown the manger—an imitation of the stable with the ox and the ass—where the Child Jesus lay near his parents and the shepherds, and the people looking on were told: There lies the hope for the future of mankind!

May all that we cultivate in our anthroposophical centres become in the modern age new mangers in which, under the guidance of the Being we call Christ Jesus, the new spirit may come to life. Today this new spirit is still at the stage of childhood, still being born as it were in the mangers which are the centres of anthroposophical activities, and bearing the pledge of victory—the pledge that we, as mankind, will celebrate the great Easter Festival, the Resurrection Festival of humanity in the new spirit which we already anticipate and for which we strive—the spirit of Anthrophosophy.

The character of Spiritual Science is such that the truths and data of knowledge contained in it increase in difficulty the farther we descend from universal principles to concrete details. You may already have noticed this when attempts have been made in different groups to speak about historical details, for example about the reincarnations of the great leader of the ancient Persian religion, Zarathustra, or about his connection with Moses, with Hermes, and also with Jesus of Nazareth.¹ On other occasions too, concrete questions of history have been touched upon. As soon as we descend from the great truths concerning the universe as pervaded and woven through by Spirit, from the great cosmic laws to the spiritual nature of a particular individuality, a particular personality, we pass from matters where the human heart will still accept, comparatively easily, this or that questionable point, into realms teeming with improbabilities. And, as a rule, those who are insufficiently prepared become incredulous when they confront this abyss between universal and specific truths.

Our study is intended to be an introduction to lectures which belong to the domain of occult history and will present historical facts and personalities in the light of Spiritual Science. In these lectures I shall have many things to say to you that will seem strange. You will hear many things that will have to reckon upon the will-for-understanding promoted by all the spiritual-scientific knowledge brought before you in the course of the years. For, after all, the finest, most significant fruit of the spiritual-scientific conception of the world is that, complicated and detailed as the knowledge is, we finally have before us not a collection of dogmas, but within us, in our hearts and feelings, we possess something that carries us beyond the standpoint we can reach through any other world-view. We do not imbibe so many dogmas, tenets, or mere information, but through our knowledge we become different human beings. In a certain respect, the aspects of Spiritual Science we shall now be considering call for more than a purely intellectual understanding—for an understanding by the soul, which at many points must be willing to listen to and accept intimations that would become crass and crude if pressed into too sharp outlines.

The picture I want to call up in your minds is that behind the whole evolutionary and historical process, through the millennia up to our own times, spiritual Beings, spiritual Individualities, stand as guides and leaders behind all human evolution and human happenings, and that in the greatest, most significant events in history, this or that human being appears with his whole soul, his whole being, as an instrument of spiritual Individualities standing and working with set purpose behind him. But we must familiarise ourselves with many a concept unknown in ordinary life if we are to gain insight into the strange and mysterious connections between earlier and later happenings in the course of history

If you will remind yourselves of many things that have been said through the years, you will be able to picture that in ancient times—and in Post-Atlantean times, too, if we go back only a few thousand years before what is usually called the historic era—men fell into more or less abnormal states of clairvoyance. Between our matter-of-fact waking consciousness, limited as it is entirely to the physical world, and the unconscious sleeping state, there was once a realm of consciousness through which man penetrated into spiritual reality. And we know that what is nowadays explained as poetic folk-fantasy by scholars who are themselves the originators of so many scientific myths and legends, is to be traced back to ancient clairvoyance, to clairvoyant states of the human soul which in those times gazed behind physical existence and expressed what it saw in the pictures contained in myths, fairy-tales and legends. So that in old, genuinely old myths, fairy-tales and legends, more knowledge, more wisdom and truth are to be found than in the abstract erudition and science of the present day. Therefore when we look back to very ancient times, we-find men who were clairvoyant; we know too that this clairvoyance faded away more and more among the various peoples in the different epochs. In the Christmas lecture to-day² I told you how in Europe, at a comparatively very late time, abundant remains of this ancient clairvoyance still survived. The extinguishing of clairvoyance and the advent of consciousness limited to the physical plane occur at different times among the different peoples.

You can conceive that through the culture-epochs after the great Atlantean catastrophe—through the ancient Indian, ancient Persian, Egypto-Chaldean, Greco-Latin culture-epochs and an into our own—the effects produced in the plan of world-history by the activities of men have been very diverse—inevitably so, because the peoples all stood in different relationships to the spiritual world. In ancient Persian and also in ancient Egyptian times, what man inwardly felt and experienced extended upwards into the spiritual world, and spiritual Powers played into his very soul. Not until the Greco-Latin epoch did this living connection between the human soul and the spiritual world cease in essentials; nor did it disappear completely until our own times. As far as outer history is concerned, the connection exists in our time only when, with the means that are accessible to man to-day, the link between the human soul and the realities of the spiritual worlds is sought consciously. Thus in ancient times, when man looked into his own soul, this soul enshrined not only what it had learnt from the physical world, had pictured according to the pattern of the things of the physical world, but the spiritual Hierarchies ranging above man up into the spiritual worlds were experienced as immediate realities. All this worked down to the physical plane through the instrument of the human soul, and men knew themselves to be connected with these individual Beings of the higher Hierarchies. When we look back, let us say, into the Egypto-Chaldean epoch—but it must be the earlier periods of it—we find men who are, so to say, historical personalities; but we do not understand them if we think of them as historical personalities in the modern sense.

When as men of the materialistic age we speak of historical personalities, we are convinced that it is only the impulses, the intentions, of the actual personalities in question that take effect in the course of history. But with this conception we can in reality understand only the men of the last three thousand years: that is—approximately of course—the men of the millennium which ended with the birth of Christ Jesus, and those of the first and the second Christian millennia in which we ourselves are living. Plato, Socrates, possibly also Thales and Pericles, are men who can still be understood as having at any rate some resemblance to ourselves. But farther back than that it is not possible to understand human beings if we attempt to do so merely by analogy with those living to-day. This applies, shall we say, to Hermes, the great Teacher of the Egyptian epoch, also to Zarathustra, and even to Moses. When we go back before the thousand. years preceding the Christian era we must reckon with the fact that wherever we have to do with historical personalities, higher Individualities, higher Hierarchies stand behind and take possession of these personalities—in the best sense of the word, of course. And now a strange phenomenon comes to light, without knowledge of which the process of historical evolution cannot really be understood.

Five culture-epochs including our own, have been enumerated. Many, many thousands of years ago we come to the first Post-Atlantean culture-epoch, the ancient Indian; this was followed by the second, the ancient Persian; this by the third, the Egypto-Chaldean; this by the fourth, the Greco-Latin; and this by the fifth, our own epoch. When we go back from the Greco-Latin to the Egyptian epoch we must change our whole way of studying history: instead of looking at the purely human aspect—which it is still possible to do in connection with the figures of the Greek world as far back as the age of the Heroes—we must now apply a different criterion by looking behind the single personalities for the spiritual Powers which represent the super-personal and work through the personalities as their instruments. We must have These spiritual Individualities always in mind, so that working behind some human being an the physical plane we can discern discern a Being of the higher Hierarchies who, as it were, takes hold of him from behind and Sets him at the appropriate place in evolution.

From this point of view it is highly interesting to perceive the connections between the really significant happenings—those which were determinative factors in the course of history—in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch and in the Greco-Latin epoch. These two culture-epochs follow one another, and to begin with we go back, let us say to the years from 2800 to 3200–3500 B.C.—which comparatively speaking is not so very far. Nevertheless we shall not understand happenings then—of which ancient history is already able to tell something to-day—unless behind the historical personalities we discern the higher Individualities. But then it also becomes evident to us that in the fourth, the Greco-Latin epoch, there is a kind of repetition of the really important happenings of the third epoch. It is almost as if things that in the earlier epoch an be explained through higher laws, must be explained in the following age through laws of the physical world, as if everything had sunk down, had become a stage more material, more physical. There is a kind of reflection in the physical world of great events of the preceding period.

By way of introduction, I want to draw your attention to how one of the most important happenings of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch is presented to us in a significant myth, and how this event is reflected, but at a lower stage, in the Greco-Latin epoch. I shall therefore be speaking of two parallel happenings which in the occult sense belong together, the one taking place half a plane higher, as it were, and the other entirely on the physical earth but like a kind of shadow-image on the physical plane of a spiritual event of the earlier epoch. Outwardly, it is only in the form of myths that humanity has ever been able to tell of events behind which stand Beings of the higher Hierarchies. But we shall see what lies behind the myth which describes the most significant event of the Chaldean epoch.³ We will look only at the main features of this myth.

There was once a great king, by name Gilgamesh. From the name itself, one who understands such matters will recognise that here we have to do not merely with a physical king, but with a divinity standing behind him, a spiritual Individuality by whom the king of Erech is inspired, who works and acts through him. Thus we have to do with one who in the real sense must be called a god-man.⁴ The story narrates that he oppresses the city of Erech. The city turns to its deity, Aruru, and she causes a helper to arise out of the earth. These are pictures of the myth. We shall see what deeply significant historical events lie behind it. The Goddess of the City produces Eabani out of the earth. Eabani is a kind of human being who, in comparison with Gilgamesh, seems to be of an inferior nature, for we are told that he was clothed in the skins of animals, was covered with hair, was like a wild man. Nevertheless in his wild nature there was divine Inspiration, ancient clairvoyance, clairvoyant knowledge, clairvoyant perception.

Eabani comes to know a woman of Erech and is attracted by her into the City. He becomes the friend of Gilgamesh and this brings peace to the city. Gilgamesh and Eabani together are now the rulers. Then Ishtar, the Goddess of Erech, is stolen by a neighbouring city. There upon Eabani and Gilgamesh go to war with the marauding city, conquer the king and bring the Goddess back again to Erech. Gilgamesh lives near her, and here we come to the strange fact that he has no understanding of the essential nature of the Goddess. A scene takes place, directly reminiscent of a Biblical scene described in the Gospel of St. John. Gilgamesh confronts Ishtar, but his conduct is very different from that of Christ Jesus. He upbraids the Goddess for having loved many other men before she had encountered him, reproaching her particularly for her most recent attachment. Thereupon the Goddess carries her complaints to that deity, that Being of the higher Hierarchies, to whom she belongs. She goes to Anu. And now Anu sends a bull down to the earth; Gilgamesh has to engage in combat with it. Those who recall Mithras's fight with the bull will see a resemblance here. All these events—and when we come to explain the myth we shall see what depths it contains—have led meanwhile to the death of Eabani. Gilgamesh is now alone. A thought comes to him that gnaws at the very fibres of his soul. Under the impression of what he has experienced, he becomes conscious for the first time of the thought that man is mortal; a thought to which he had previously paid no heed comes before his soul in all its terror. And then he hears of the only man of earth who has remained immortal, whereas all other human beings in the Post-Atlantean epoch have become conscious of mortality: he hears of the immortal Xisuthros far away in the West. And because he is resolved to fathom the riddle of life and death, he sets out on the perilous journey to the West.⁵—I can tell you at once that this journey to the West is nothing else than the search for the secrets of ancient Atlantis, for happenings prior to the great Atlantean catastrophe.

Gilgamesh sets out on his journey. The details are interesting. He has to pass through an entrance guarded by giant scorpions; the spirit leads him into the realm of death; he enters the kingdom of Xisuthros and there learns that in the Post-Atlantean epoch all men will inevitably be more and more penetrated with the consciousness of death. Gilgamesh now asks Xisuthros whence he has knowledge of his eternal being; how comes it that he is conscious of immortality? Thereupon Xisuthros says to him: “You too can have this consciousness, but you must undergo all that I had to experience in overcoming the terror, anxiety and loneliness through which it was my lot to pass. When the god Ea had resolved to let perish” (in what we call the Atlantean catastrophe) “that part of humanity which was to live no longer, he bade me to withdraw into a kind of ship. I was to take with me the animals that were to remain, and those Individualities who are truly to be called the Masters. By means of this ship I outlived the great catastrophe.” Xisuthros then tells Gilgamesh: “What was there undergone, you can experience only in your innermost being; but you can attain the consciousness of immortality if for seven nights and six days you refrain from sleep.” Gilgamesh wishes to submit to the test but soon falls asleep. Then the wife of Xisuthros baked seven mystic loaves which by being eaten are to be a substitute for what would have been attained in the seven nights and six days without sleep. With this “life-elixir” Gilgamesh continues his journeying, bathes as it were in a fountain of youth, and again reaches the borders of his own country in the region of the Euphrates and the Tigris. A serpent deprives him of the power of the life-elixir and so he reaches his country without it, but all the same with the consciousness that there is indeed immortality, and filled with longing to see the spirit at least, of Eabani. The spirit of Eabani appears to him, and from the discourse which then takes place we can glean how, for the culture of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, a consciousness of the link with the spiritual world could arise.—This relationship between Gilgamesh and Eabani is very significant. I have now outlined pictures from the significant myth of Gilgamesh which, as we shall see, will lead us into the spiritual depths lying behind the Chaldean-Babylonian culture-epoch. These pictures show that two individualities stand there: the individuality of one—Gilgamesh—into whom a divine-spiritual being has penetrated; and an individuality who is more of a human being, but of such a nature that he may be called a young soul, who has had few incarnations and for that reason has carried over ancient clairvoyance into later times—Eabani.

Eabani is depicted as being clothed in skins of animals. This is an indication of his wild nature; but because of this very wildness he is still endowed with ancient clairvoyance an the one hand, and an the other hand he is a young soul who has lived through far, far fewer incarnations than other souls who have reached a high level of development. Thus Gilgamesh represents a being who was ready for initiation but was not able to attain it, for the journey to the West is the journey to an initiation that was not carried through to the end. On the one side we see in Gilgamesh the actual inaugurator of the Chaldean-Babylonian culture, and working behind him a divine-spiritual Being, a kind of Fire-Spirit.⁶ And beside Gilgamesh there is another individuality—Eabani—a young soul who descended late to earthly incarnation. If you read the book Occult Science, you will find that the individualities returned only gradually from the planets.—The exchange of the knowledge possessed by these two is the root of the Babylonian-Chaldean culture, and we shall see that the whole of this culture is an outcome of what proceeds from Gilgamesh and Eabani. Clairvoyance from the divine man, Gilgamesh, and clairvoyance from the young soul, Eabani, penetrate into the Chaldean-Babylonian culture. This process, enacted by two beings working side by side, each of whom is necessary to the other, is then reflected in the later, fourth culture-epoch, the Greco-Latin, and in fact reflected on the physical plane. We shall of course only very gradually reach complete understanding of such a process. A more spiritual process is thus reflected on the physical plane when humanity has descended very far, when men no longer feel the relation of human personality to the divine-spiritual world.

These secrets of the divine-spiritual world were preserved in the places of the Mysteries. So, for example, many of the ancient, holy secrets which proclaimed the connection of the human soul with the divine-spiritual worlds were preserved in the Mysteries of Diana of Ephesus and in the Ephesian temple. A great deal in these Mysteries was no longer comprehensible in an age when human personality had come into prominence. And like a token of how little the purely external personality understood what had remained spiritually, there stands the half-mystical figure of Herostratus, who has eyes only for the superficial aspect of personality—Herostratus who flings the burning torch into the temple of Ephesus. This deed is like a token of the clash between the personality and what had survived from ancient spirituality. And on the very same day when a man, merely in order that his name might go down to posterity, throws the burning brand into the sanctuary of Ephesus, there is born the man who has achieved more than all others for the culture of personality—and on the very soil where the culture of were personality was meant to be overcome. Herostratus flings the burning torch on the day when Alexander the Great is born—the man who is all personality! Alexander the Great stands there as the shadow-image of Gilgamesh.⁷ A profound truth lies behind this. In the Greco-Latin epoch, Alexander the Great stands there as the shadow image of Gilgamesh, as a projection of the spiritual on to the physical plane. And Eabani, projected on to the physical plane, is Aristotle, the teacher of Alexander the Great.

Here indeed is a strange circumstance: Alexander and Aristotle standing, like Gilgamesh and Eabani, side by side. And we see how in the first third of the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch there is carried over, as it were, by Alexander the Great but transformed into the laws of the physical plane—that which had been imparted to the Babylonian-Chaldean culture by Gilgamesh. This comes to wonderful expression in the fact that, as a result of the deeds of Alexander, there was established an the scene of Egypto-Chaldean culture Alexandria itself, the city founded by Alexander in 332 B.C. in order that the great achievements of the Egypto-Babylonian-Chaldean culture-epoch might be brought together in one centre. And gradually all the streams of Post-Atlantean culture that were intended to come together did indeed converge on Alexandria, the city established an the scene of the third culture-epoch but with the character of the fourth.

Alexandria outlasted the beginnings of Christianity. Indeed it was in Alexandria that the factors of greatest significance in the fourth culture-epoch developed, when Christianity was already in existence. There the great scholars were working; there the three most important streams of culture flowed together: the ancient Pagan-Grecian stream, the Christian stream and the Mosaic-Hebrew stream. They interpenetrated one another in Alexandria. And it is impossible to conceive that the culture of Alexandria which was built entirely on the foundation of personality—could have been inaugurated in any other way than through the being who was inspired by personality—Alexander the Great. For now, through the very existence of this centre of culture, everything that formerly was super-personal, extending from the human personality upwards into the spiritual world, assumed a personal character. The personalities we find in Alexandria have, as it were, everything within themselves; the Powers from higher Hierarchies who guide the personalities and set them in their allotted places, are very little in evidence. All the sages and philosophers working in Alexandria seem to be embodiments of ancient wisdom transformed into human personality; it is the personal element that speaks out of them. The singular fact is that everything in ancient Paganism that could be explained only by the teaching of how gods came down and united with daughters of men in order to bring forth heroes—all this is transformed into personal forcefulness in the men in Alexandria. And the forms which Judaism, the Mosaic culture, assumed in Alexandria can be described from what is in evidence precisely during the period when Christianity was already in existence. Nothing is to be found of those deep conceptions of a link between the world of men and the spiritual world which were present in the age of the prophets and are still to be found in the last two centuries before the beginning of our era. In Judaism too, everything has become personality. There are gifted, able men in Alexandria, men possessed of extraordinarily deep insight into the secrets of the ancient occult teachings ... but everything has become personal; personalities are working in Alexandria. And it is there that to begin with, Christianity appears, shall we say, in a distorted, debased state of infancy. Christianity, whose real function is to lead the personal element in man upwards into the impersonal, made its appearance in Alexandria in a very ruthless form. Christian personalities, in particular, acted in such a way that we often have the impression: their deeds are anticipations of later actions by bishops and archbishops working on a purely personal basis. This applies both to Archbishop Theophilus in the fourth century and to his kinsman and successor, St. Cyril.⁸ We can judge them only an the basis of their human failings. Christianity, which was to give to mankind the greatest of all gifts, reveals itself to begin with in its greatest failings and from its personal side. But in Alexandria a sign and token was to stand before the whole evolution of humanity.

There again we have a projection on the physical plane of earlier, more spiritual conditions. In the Orphic Mysteries of ancient Greece there was a wonderful personality, one who was initiated in the Mystery-secrets and was among the most loveable, most interesting pupils of these Mysteries, well prepared by a certain Celtic occult training undergone in earlier incarnations. This individuality sought with deepest fervour for the secrets of the Orphic Mysteries. The pupils of these Mysteries had to live through in their own soul what is described in the myth of Dionysos Zagreus, who was dismembered by the Titans but whose body was carried away by Zeus into a higher life. How, as the result of a certain path taken in the Mysteries, man's life is surrendered to the outer world, how his whole being is torn in pieces so that he can no longer find his bearings within himself—this was to become an actual, individual experience in the pupils of the Orphic Mysteries.

When in the ordinary way we study animals, plants and minerals, what we learn is merely abstract knowledge because we remain outside them; but anyone who wishes to obtain knowledge in the occult sense must train himself to feel as if he were actually within the animals, plants and minerals, in air and water, in springs and mountains, in stones and Stars, in other human beings—as if he were one with them. all. Nevertheless, a pupil of the Orphic Mysteries had to develop the inner strength of soul which would enable him, re-established as a self-based individuality, to triumph over the disintegration of his being in the external world. When all this had become an actual human experience, it represented in a certain sense one of the very highest secrets of Initiation. And many pupils of the Orphic Mysteries had undergone such experiences, had lived through this disintegration in the world and, as a kind of preparation for Christianity, had therewith attained the highest experience within reach in pre-Christian times.

Among the pupils of the Orphic Mysteries was the loveable personality of whom I am speaking, whose earthly name has not come down to posterity, but who stands out clearly as a pupil of these Mysteries. Already in youth and then for many years, this person was closely connected with all the Greek Orphics during the period preceding that of Greek philosophy—a period of which no account is given in books an the history of philosophy. For what is recorded of Thales and Heraclitus is an echo of what the Mystery-pupils had accomplished in their way at an earlier period. And one of the pupils of the Orphic Mysteries was the individual of whom I have just spoken, whose pupil in turn was Pherecydes of Syros, referred to in the lecture-course given at Munich last year: The East in the light of the West⁹

Investigation of the Akasha Chronicle reveals that the individuality of that pupil of the Orphic Mysteries was reincarnated in the 4th century A.D. We find this individuality amid the activity and life of those gathered together in Alexandria, the Orphic secrets now transformed into personal experiences of the loftiest kind. It is very remarkable how all the Orphic secrets were transformed into personal experiences in this new incarnation. At the end of the 4th century, A.D., we find this individuality reborn as the daughter of a great mathematician, Theon. We see how there flashes up in her soul all that could be experienced of the Orphic Mysteries through vision of the great mathematical, light-woven texture of the universe. All this was now personal talent, personal genius. These faculties had now to be of so personal a character that it was necessary even for this individuality to have a mathematician as father in order that something might be received from heredity.

Thus we look back to times when man was still in living connection with the spiritual worlds, as was this Orphic pupil; and we see the shadow-image of this pupil among those who taught in Alexandria at the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 5th century A.D. This individuality had as yet experienced nothing that enabled men at that time to see beyond the shadow-sides of Christianity at its beginning. For all that had remained in this soul as an echo of the Orphic Mysteries was still too powerful to enable any Illumination to be received from that other Light, the new Christ Event. What arose round about as Christianity, represented by men of the type of Theophilus and Cyril, was in truth of such a nature that this Orphic individuality, working now with personal faculties, had things far greater, far richer in wisdom to say and to give than those who represented Christianity in Alexandria at that time.

Theophilus and Cyril were both filled with the deepest hatred of everything that was not Christian in the narrow ecclesiastical sense in which these two bishops, in particular, understood it. Christianity had assumed in them such an entirely personal character that these two patriarchs levied hirelings in their service; men were collected from far and near to form bodyguards for them. Their aim was power in its most personal sense. They were utterly obsessed by hatred of what originated in ancient times and yet was so much greater than the new that was appearing in caricatured shape. The deepest hatred was directed by the dignitaries of Christianity in Alexandria against the individuality of the reborn Orphic pupil. The fact that she was branded as a black magician will not therefore surprise us. But that was enough to incite the whole mob of hirelings against the noble, unique figure of the reborn pupil of the Orphic Mysteries. She was still young, but in spite of her youth, in spite of the fact that she was obliged to undergo much that in those days, too, imposed great hardships an a woman during a long period of study, she found her way upwards to the light that outshone all the wisdom, all the knowledge existing in those days. And it was wonderful how in the lecture halls of Hypatia—for such was the name of this reincarnated Orphic pupil—the purest, most luminous wisdom in Alexandria was presented to the enraptured listeners. She drew to her feet not only the Pagans, bat also Christians of deep and penetrating insight, such as Synesius. She was an influence of outstanding significance, and the revival of the old Pagan wisdom of Orpheus transformed into personality could be experienced in Alexandria in the figure of Hypatia.

World-karma was working in the truest sense symbolically. What had constituted the secret of her Initiation was now projected, mirrored, on the physical plane. And here we come to an event that is symbolically significant in the case of many things that have taken place in historical times. We come to one of those events that is seemingly only a martyrdom, but is in reality a symbol in which spiritual forces, spiritual intimations are coming to expression.

On a day in March in the year 415 A.D., Hypatia fell victim to the fury of these who formed the entourage of the patriarch of Alexandria. They resolved to rid themselves of her power, of her spiritual power. The utterly uncivilised, wild hordes were rushed in from the environs of Alexandria as well, and the chaste young sage was fetched away under false pretences. She mounted the chariot, and at a given sign the enflamed rabble fell upon her, tore off her clothing, dragged her into a church, and literally tore the flesh from her bones. The fragments of her body were then scattered around the city by these hordes, completely dehumanised by their rapacious passions. Such was the fate of the great woman philosopher, Hypatia.

Symbolically, so to say, there is indicated here something that is deeply connected with the founding of Alexandria by Alexander the Great—although it happened a long time after the actual founding of the city. In this event, important secrets of the 4th Post-Atlantean epoch are reflected. This epoch, destined as it was to represent the dissolution, the sweeping-away, of the old, contained so much that was great and significant, and with paradoxical grandeur placed before the world a most pregnant symbol in the slaughter—one can call it nothing else—of Hypatia, the outstanding woman at the turn of the 4th-5th centuries of our era.

• 1. See among other lectures by Rudolf Steiner: Deeper Secrets of Human History in the Light of the Gospel of St. Matthew, lectures II and III; The Gospel of St. Matthew, notably lectures I, II, III; The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind, lecture III; From Jesus to Christ, lecture VIII.
• 2. The lecture, not yet printed in English, was entitled: Yuletide and the Christmas Symbols. Stuttgart, 27.12.1910.
• 3. See Rudolf Steiner, World-History in the light of Anthroposophy, notably lectures III, IV, V.
• 4. See also: Jastrow (Mords), Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, Chapter XXIII. (Boston, 1898.) Budge (E. A. Wallis), The Babylonian Story of the Deluge and the Epic of Gilgamesh. (London, 1920. Revised by C. J. Gadd, 1929.) Thompson (Reginald Campbell), The Epic of Gilgamesh (London, 1928.) Contains a fairly full text.
• 5. See Budge, op. cit., p. 50:
  
  "I myself shall die, and shall not I then be as Enkidi (Eabani)
  Sorrow hath entered into my soul,
  Because of the fear of death which hach got hold of me do I wander over the country ..."
  
  Xisuthros, said to mean "the exceedingly wise," is a Greek corruption of an earlier designation. He is the same being as Uta-Napishtim in the versions of the Epic mentioned abovc, and is the Babylonian Noah. He tells the story of the Deluge to Gilgamesh. Cp. Cory (Isaac Preston), Ancient Fragments, p. 49; also Enc. of Religion and Ethics, Vol. VI, pp. 642—3; and Budge, op. cit., PP. 25—40.
• 6. See Langdon, op. cit., pp. 207—8. The name Gilgamesh is said to mean: " The Fire-god is a commander."
• 7. Cp. Jastrow, op. cit., pp. 516–17
• 8. Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria, 385–412. Persecuted the followers of Origen. Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria. Played a prominent patt at the Council of Ephesus in 431.
• 9. The passage on Pherecydes of Syros occurs in lecture 4 of the Course entitled The East in the Light of the West, pp. 67—71 in the English edition.

In the introductory lecture yesterday our attention was drawn to the fact that certain events in the more ancient history of mankind can be rightly understood only when we not merely observe the forces and faculties of the personalities themselves, but when we realise at the outset that through the personalities in question, as through instruments, Beings are working who allow their deeds to stream down from higher worlds into our world. We must realise that these Beings cannot take direct hold of the physical facts of our existence because, on account of the present stage of their development, they cannot incarnate in a physical Body which draws its constituents from the physical world. If, therefore, they desire to work within our physical world, they must make use of the physical human being—of his deeds, but also of his intellect, his powers of understanding. We find the influence and penetration of such Beings of the higher world the more clearly in evidence the farther back we go in the ages of the evolution of humanity. But it must not be imagined that this downpouring of forces and activities from the higher worlds into the physical world through human beings has ever ceased; it continues even into our own time.

To the spiritual scientist who for years now has been absorbing principles which lead his feelings and ideal to accept the existence of higher worlds—to him a fact such as this will certainly, from he outset, be to some extent comprehensible; for he is accustomed always to draw the connecting threads which link our knowledge, our thinking, our willing, with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. But from time to time the spiritual scientist is also in the position of having to guard against the materialistic conceptions which are so prevalent in the present age and make it impossible for those who stand aloof from the development of the spiritual life even to enter into what has to be said about the working of higher worlds into our physical world.

Fundamentally speaking, it is considered an antiquated attitude in our time even to speak of the influence of abstract ideas in the events of history. Many people to-day regard it as quite impermissible, in face of the genuinely scientific approach, to speak of certain ideas, abstract ideas which properly speaking can live only in the wind, taking effect in the successive epochs of history. A last semblance, at least, of belief in the influence of abstract ideas—although how they are to work is incomprehensible precisely because they are abstract ideas!—was still in evidence even in the 19th century, in Ranke's exposition of history¹⁰ But even this belief in ideas as factors in history is gradually being discarded by our progressively materialistic development, and in a certain respect to-day it is regarded as the sign of an enlightened mind in the domain of history to believe that all the characteristic features of the several epochs merely represent the convergence of physically perceptible actions, outer needs, outer interests and ideas of physical human beings. The time is now past when spirits such as Herder, as if through a certain inspiration, still portrayed the development of human history in a way which enables one to perceive that it is based on the assumption, at least, of the existence of living powers, living super-sensible powers manifesting through the deeds and the lives of men.¹¹ Those who want to be accounted very clever to-day, will say: “Well yes, a man such as Lessing certainly had many really intelligent ideas, but then, at the end of his life, he wrote nonsense such as you find in The Education of the Human Race, where the only way in which he could help himself out of his difficulties was by linking the strict conformity to law shown by the flow of historical development with the idea of reincarnation.” In the last sentences of The Education of the Human Race,¹² Lessing has actually expressed what is described by Anthroposophy on the basis of occult facts—namely, that souls who lived in ancient epochs and then absorbed active, living forces, carry over these forces into their new incarnations, so that behind physical happenings there is not an abstract onflow of ideas but an actual and real onflow of the spirit. As I said, a clever ass will insist that in his old age Lessing hit upon ideas as confused as that of reincarnation, and that these ideas must he ignored.—This reminds one again of the bitterly ironic yet brilliant note once written by Hebbel in his diary, to the effect that a fair motif would be that a master, taking the subject of Plato in his school, has among his pupils the reincarnated Plato, who understands what the master is teaching so little that he has to be severely punished!

The conception of the historical evolution of humanity has lost much of the earlier, spiritual insight, and Spiritual Science will really have to guard against the onslaught of materialistic thinking which comes from all sides and regards communications which are based on the spiritual facts as so much lunacy. That things have come to a pretty pass is shown, for example, in the fact that all those mighty pictures, those grand symbolical conceptions which emanated from the old clairvoyant knowledge and are expressed in the characters of legends and fairy-tales, have interpreters of the very oddest kind. The most curious production in this domain is undoubtedly Solomon Reinach's little book Orpheus, which has caused a certain furor in many circles in France. Everything from which the ideas of Demeter, of Orpheus, and of other mythological cycles are supposed to have sprung, is traced back in this book to purely materialistic happenings and it is often utterly grotesque how the historical existence of this or that figure, standing, let us say, behind Hermes or Moses, is alleged to have originated, and with what superficiality an attempt has been made to explain these figures as the inventions of poetic license, of human fantasy. According to Solomon Reinach's method it would be easy, sixty or seventy years hence, when outer memory of him will have faded somewhat, to prove that there never was such a man, but that it was simply a matter of popular fantasy having transferred the old idea of Reinecke Fuchs to Solomon Reinach. According to his method this would certainly be possible. The absurdity of the whole book is on a par with what is said in the Preface—that it has been written “for the widest circles of the educated public, even for the very young.” “For the very young”—since he emphasises that he has avoided everything that might cause a shock to young girls—although he has not avoided tracing back the idea of Demeter to a pig! He promises, however, that if his book gains the influence he hopes for, he will write a special edition for mothers, which will include everything that must still be withheld from their daughters.—That is the kind of thing we have come to!

One would like to remind students of Spiritual Science particularly, that it is possible to prove on purely external grounds that spiritual powers, spiritual forces have worked through human beings right up to our own century—and this quite apart from the purely occult, esoteric research with which we shall be mainly concerned here. But in order that we may understand how it is possible for Spiritual Science to maintain, on purely external grounds, that super-sensible powers exercise sway in history, let me point to the following.

Anyone who gains a little insight into the development of modern humanity, let us say in the 14th and 15th centuries and on until the 16th, will realise how infinitely significant in this outer development was the intervention of a certain personality, one in respect of whom it can be proved from completely external evidence that spiritual, super-sensible Powers worked through her. In order to throw a little light on the occult understanding of history, we may ask the question: What would the development of modern Europe have been if at the beginning of the 15th century the Maid of Orleans had not entered the arena of events? Anyone who thinks, even from an entirely external point of view, of the development that took place during this period, must say to himself: Suppose the deeds of the Maid of Orleans were erased from history ... then, according to the knowledge obtainable from purely external historical research, one cannot but realise that without the working of higher, super-sensible Powers through the Maid of Orleans, the whole of France, indeed the whole of Europe in the 15th century, would have taken on an altogether different form. Everything in the impulses of will, in the physical brains of those times, was directed towards flooding all Europe with a general conception of the State which would have extinguished the folk-individualities and under this influence a very great deal of what has developed in Europe during the last centuries through the interplay of these folk-individualities would quite certainly have been impossible.

Imagine the deed of the Maid of Orleans blotted out from history, France abandoned to her fate without this intervention, and then ask: Without this deed, what would have become of France? And then think of the role played by France in the whole cultural life of humanity during the centuries following! Add to this the facts which cannot be refuted and are confirmed by actual documents concerning the mission of the Maid of Orleans. This young girl, certainly not highly educated even by the standards of her time, suddenly, before she is twenty years old, feels in the autumn of 1428 that spiritual Powers of the super-sensible worlds are speaking to her. True, she clothes these Powers in forms that are familiar to her, so that she is seeing them through the medium of her own mental images; but that does not do away with the reality of these Powers. Picture to yourselves that she knows that super-sensible Powers are guiding her will towards a definite point—I am speaking to begin with, not of what can be told about these facts from the Akasha Chronicle, but only of what is confirmed by documentary evidence.

We know that the Maid of Orleans confided her vision first of all to a relative who—one would almost say, by chance-happened to understand her; that after many vicissitudes and difficulties she was introduced to the Court of King Charles who, together with the whole French Army, had come to his wit's end, as the saying goes. We know too, how after every conceivable obstacle had been put in her way, she finally recognised and went straight to the King, who was standing among such a crowd of people that no physical eye could have distinguished him. It is also known that at that moment she confided to him something—he wanted to test her by it—of which it can be said that it was known only to him and to the super-sensible worlds. You also know from ordinary history that it was she who, under the unceasing impulse and urge of her intense faith—it would be better to say, through her actual vision—and in face of the greatest difficulties, led the armies to victory and the King to his crowning.

Who intervened at that time in the course of history?—None other than Beings of higher Hierarchies! The Maid of Orleans was an outer Instrument of these Beings, and it was they who guided the deeds of history. It is possible that someone may say to himself: “If I had guided these deeds I would have guided them more wisely!”—because he finds one thing or another in the procedure of the Maid of Orleans at variance with his own way of thinking. Adherents of Spiritual Science, however, should not wish to correct the deeds of gods through human intellect—a very common practice in our so-called civilisation. There have also been people who quite in the Spirit of the present age, have wanted, as it were, to unburden modern history of the deeds of the Maid of Orleans. A characteristic modern work with this materialistic trend has been written by Anatole France. One would really like to know how materialistic thinking manages to reconcile itself with much irrefutable evidence—I am still speaking only of actual historical documents. And so because we are in Stuttgart and I sometimes like to take account of local matters, I want to quote from a document to which reference has already been made here.

Those who belong to Stuttgart certainly know that there once lived here a man¹³ who carried out important research on the Gospels. As spiritual scientists we certainly need not agree with the things—some of them extremely clever—that were brought forward by Gfrörer—that was his name—and we may be quite sure that if he had heard what is now being given in the domain of Spiritual Science he would have used terms he was often wont to apply to his opponents—whom he, with his stubborn-headedness, by no means always let off lightly. He would have said that these Theosophists, too, are people who are “not quite right in the head.” But this was before the time when, as is the case to-day, historical documents can be passed over for purely materialistic reasons if they happen to deal with inconvenient facts and obviously point to the working of higher forces in our physical world. And so I will again quote from a short document—a letter published in the first half of the 19th century. I will read you just a few paragraphs from this letter, which was quoted by Gfrörer at that time in justification of his belief. I will read a passage characterising the Maid of Orleans, and then ask you to think of the implications of such a vivid description.

After the writer of this letter has set forth what the Maid of Orleans accomplished, he continues:

“This and much more has the Maid brought about, and with God's help she will accomplish still greater things. The girl is of appealing beauty and manly bearing; she speaks little and shows remarkable sagacity; when she speaks she has a pleasing, delicately feminine voice. She eats little and abstains from wine. She takes pleasure in fine horses and weapons and admires well-accoutred and noble men. To be obliged to meet and converse with large numbers of people is abhorrent to her; her tears often overflow; she loves a happy face, endures unheard of toil, and is so assiduous in the manipulation and bearing of weapons that she remains uninterruptedly for six days—day and night—in full armour. She says that the English have no right to France, and therefore—as she says—God has sent her to drive them out and conquer them, but only after previous warning. For the King she shows the deepest veneration; she says he is beloved by God, is under special protection, and will therefore be preserved. Of the Duke of Orleans, your nephew, she says that he will be delivered in a miraculous way, but only after a demand for his release has been made to the English who hold him prisoner.

“With that, revered Duke, I bring my report to a conclusion. Still more wonderful things are happening and have happened than I can write of or describe to you in words. While I write this, the afore mentioned Maid has already gone to the neighbourhood of the city of Rheims in Champagne, whither the King has hastily set off for his anointing and crowning under God's protection. Most respected and powerful Duke, and greatly venerated master! I commend myself to you in all humility, while praying the Almighty to protect you and fulfil your desires. Written at Biteromis, the 21st day of June in the year 1429.

Your humble servant
PERCEVAL
Lord of Bonlaninth. Counsellor and
Chamberlain of the King of the French
and of the Duke of Orleans, Seneschal of
Berry.”

This letter¹⁴ was written by one who knew the Maid and was in close contact with the King. It is indeed amazing when one discovers all these things on purely occult grounds and with occult means of proof—for they are indeed to be found in the Akasha Chronicle—and then sees how, in cases like this, actual historical documents can also be produced. In short, it seems almost madness to doubt what was working through the Maid of Orleans. And when we also take into consideration the fact that through her deeds the whole history of modern time assumed a different aspect, this gives us the right to say that here, verified by documentary evidence, we can see the direct intervention of the super-sensible worlds. When the spiritual researcher goes further and seeks in his own way for the one who was the real Inspirer of the Maid of Orleans, he finds something very remarkable as he investigates the successive epochs of time. He finds that the same Spirit who worked through the Maid of Orleans as his instrument at that time had inspired—in a quite different form, a quite different way—another personality who was a philosopher at the Court of Charles the Bald. This was Scotus Erigena, through whose philosophical and theological ideas in an earlier period Europe had been so deeply influenced. And so we see that the same Powers work in different epochs in a different way through human beings who are their instruments; that there is continuity, an onflowing stream of happenings in what we call history.

I showed you yesterday how a significant myth of Babylonian-Chaldean times points to the penetration of the spiritual worlds into men upon whom much depended for the third Post-Atlantean period, for the whole of historical development in ancient Chaldea, in ancient Babylonia. But we must now also observe from the standpoint of occult science the two personalities hidden behind the legendary names of Gilgamish and Eabani. In the Sense of occult history we have to see in them personalities who stand at the starting-point of the Babylonian-Chaldean epoch of culture. The impulses proceeding from them are to be discerned again in the development of the really spiritual culture of ancient Babylonia and Chaldea.—Now Gilgamish was a personality who had many incarnations behind him and may therefore be called an “old” soul within the evolution of humanity.

You know from the book Occult Science that during the Lemurian epoch of earth-evolution only very few human beings had outlasted, on the earth itself, the happenings of this evolution, that only a few remained on the earth during the Lemurian epoch; that before the actual danger of the mummification of everything human began, the majority of souls withdrew from the earth to other planets, continuing their life on Mars, Saturn, Venus, Jupiter, arid so forth. Then, from the end of the Lemurian epoch and during the Atlantean epoch, these souls gradually came down to the earth in order to incarnate in earthly bodies under the changed earthly conditions, and to appear in ever new incarnations. Thus there are souls who came down comparatively early from the planetary worlds and others who came down late; indeed not until the later periods of Atlantean evolution. The souls who came down early have therefore more incarnations behind them in earth-evolution than those who came down later; hence we can call these latter, in contrast to the former, “younger” souls—souls who have taken less into themselves.

The individuality hidden behind the name Gilgamish was an old soul, and a younger soul was incarnated in Eabani, at the starting-point of the Babylonian civilisation. Indeed, in connection with human souls being younger or older in this sense, something very remarkable discloses itself—something that might almost be said to cause astonishment even to the occultist. If someone has reached the point to-day of giving a little credence to the truths of Spiritual Science, but otherwise still clings to the prejudices and criteria of the external world, it will seem plausible to him that modern philosophers or scholars, for example, should be accounted among the older souls. But, strangely enough, occult research finds just the opposite; and for the occultist himself it is surprising to find that in Kant, for example, there lived a young soul. Yes, the facts show that it is so ... it cannot be gainsaid. It can also be intimated here that younger souls—the majority at any rate—incarnate in the coloured races, so that it is the coloured races, especially the negro race, which mainly brings younger souls to incarnation. The characteristic quality of that kind of thinking which comes to expression in erudition, in the materialistic science of to-day, calls for younger souls. And it can be shown that in the case of many a personality where one would not in the least expect it, the preceding incarnation was in an uncivilised race. That again is what the facts tell us! It must be kept strictly in mind, for it is so. Naturally this does not in the least detract from the significance or value of the opinions we have formed about the world around us; nevertheless it must be grasped in order fully to understand the essentials here. In this sense, in Eabani we have to do with a young soul and in Gilgamish with an old soul in ancient Babylonia. The whole nature of an old soul will enable it early in life to grasp not only the essential element, the essential factor, in the existing culture, but also that which strikes into it as a new impulse, opening up a wide vista into the future.

There will be many, of course, who will protest if one tries to make it plausible to them that the Theosophists whom they are wont to look down upon are, generally speaking, older souls than people who deliver scientific lectures. Investigation shows, however, that this is so; and although spiritual research must not be misused for the purpose of forcing people to change their criteria of judgment, or of scoffing at what is after all part of the very make-up of our civilisation, nevertheless the truth must be faced fairly and squarely. Gilgamish, then, was a personality who, owing to his particular condition of soul, participated in the most progressive spiritual elements and spiritual factors of the age—in everything that threw light far into the future and at that time could be attained only if such a personality went through a kind of initiation. Through the imparting of something that can be received only through a certain initiation, Gilgamish was to be enabled to provide a kind of leaven for the Babylonian culture. He had to experience an initiation up to a certain degree.

Let us think of this Gilgamish at the point where he stood in the evolution of humanity before this initiation. He was a man of the third Post-Atlantean epoch. But in this epoch twilight had already fallen over the natural human clairvoyance, over what men were able to achieve through forces that were innate in them. These forces were no longer present to the degree that could enable any great number of men to look back into their earlier incarnations. If we were to go farther back, into the second or into the first Post-Atlantean epoch, we should find that the majority of human beings then on the earth could look back into their earlier incarnations, into the course of their soul-life before their present birth. But that faculty had been lost. In the case of Gilgamish, the Being who was to reveal himself through him, and who could do so only by leading him presently to a kind of initiation, kept a guiding hand upon him from the outset and set him at the place where he came to recognise his own position in the history of the world. As it were through super-sensible events, presented to us in the pictures of the myth I outlined to you yesterday, a friend was placed at the side of Gilgamish, a friend whose barbarity and uncivilised nature are indicated by the statement that his outer form was half animal. It is said that this friend had skins of animals on his body, which means that he was still covered with hair like the men of primeval times, that his soul was so young that it built for itself a body which showed the human being still in a savage state. Thus the more advanced Gilgamish had in Eabani a man at his side who, because of his young soul and the bodily Organisation conditioned by it, still possessed ancient clairvoyance. This friend was given to Gilgamish in order that he might find his own bearings in life. With the help of this friend he was then able to achieve certain things, such as the retrieval of that spiritual Power presented to us in the myth in the picture of Ishtar, the Goddess of the city of Erech. I told you how this Goddess had been stolen by the neighbouring City and that for this reason Gilgamish and Eabani together waged war against this city, vanquished its king and brought the Goddess back.

If we are to understand in the true historical sense such things as are presented to us in these old myths, we must investigate their occult background. Behind this rape of the City Goddess there lies something similar to the rape of Helen, who was carried off to Troy by Paris. We must realise that there are good grounds for what is stated in my little book, Blood is a very special Fluid. It is pointed out there that in the peoples of ancient times there was a kind of collective consciousness. A man did not merely feel his personal ego within his skin, but he felt himself as a member of the tribe, of the city-community. Just as the individual human soul is felt to be the centralising factor for our organism as a whole, uniting fingers, toes, hands, legs, so did man in very ancient times feel himself a member of the group-soul. Something of the kind still persisted in the early city-communities, even in ancient Greece. One common spirit, a folk-egohood, a tribal egohood, lived and weaved through the single personalities of the tribe or folk. But whatever could come to men's consciousness from this collective egohood had to be under the guidance of the Mysteries in the secret temples, where the priests directed the common spiritual affairs of a city or a tribe. And it is not a mere figure of speech, but in a certain sense an actual reality, to say that such a temple-sanctuary served as a dwelling-place for the city-ego, for the group-soul. There this group-soul had its habitation, and the priests of the temple were its servants. It was they who received the instructions of this group-soul through inspiration—through what was known as an Oracle—and bore them out into the world in order that one thing or another might come to pass. For we must think of the Oracles exactly in the sense I have indicated.

Now the direction of these temple-sanctuaries was bound up with certain secrets, and many conflicts in ancient times arose because the temple-priests of one city were carried off by the neighbouring city, so that in this way, together with the priests, the most important secrets of a city came into the hands of the neighbouring one. There you have the reality behind the picture of the abduction of Ishtar, the city Goddess, the group-soul of Erech, by the neighbouring city. The priests, the trustees of the temple secrets were made prisoners, because the neighbouring city hoped in this way to come into possession of the holy secrets and therewith of the power of the city in question. That is the real background.

In the condition of soul at first prevailing in him, Gilgamish could not himself be aware of such things; he did not see their full implications. But a younger soul could be for him as it were the clairvoyant sense which enabled him to recapture the temple treasure for his own city. Gilgamish now realised that in human life, especially in times of transition, there is such a thing as is described in the legend of the blind man and the cripple: each is helpless alone, but together they can make progress inasmuch as the blind man carries the cripple on his shoulders and the cripple lends the blind man his power of sight. In Gilgamish and Eabani, whose respective gifts differed so greatly, we see the same kind of co-operation transformed into the spiritual. In the historical facts of ancient times we find this at every turn. And it is important to understand it, for only then do we realise why it is that myths and sagas so often tell of friends who have to achieve something together—friends who are generally as unlike in their nature of soul as were Gilgamish and Eabani. But what Gilgamish also acquired through his friend Eabani was this: he was as it were “infected” by Eabani with a clairvoyant power of his own, so that to a certain extent he could look back into his own earlier incarnations. This would certainly have been beyond his normal faculties. And now let us picture vividly how Gilgamish must have been influenced by this vision of his past incarnations.

What was he able to experience from the moment when it became possible for him to look back into what his soul had lived through in earlier incarnations? At first it all seemed alien to him. He could not penetrate fully into what he himself had been in these earlier incarnations; he did not, as it were, recognise himself. So it would be with any human being if he began to look back into his previous incarnations. In most cases things would be different from what they are in the vain imaginings which are always so much in evidence when there is talk of some person or other being an incarnation of this or that individual. We may well come across a person who cites a whole series of great names in history as those of his former incarnations ... in fact numbers of people are convinced that they were never below the rank of a queen or a princess! In these matters, which should be treated with great earnestness, there must be no unlawful play of fancy, no misusage.

Now one who, like Gilgamish at that time, begins to look back on his successive incarnations, may also now and then be veritably astonished. Gilgamish himself looked back to incarnations when he was still involved in all kinds of conditions determined by the sway of the group-soul. To be sure he had, in a certain respect, as a person, worked his way out of these connections; through Eabani he had also come to know for the first time the whole import of what is symbolised in the myth through the figure of the city Goddess. But when he looked back there was much in his earlier incarnations that did not please him, that went against the grain. He found, for example, that in these incarnations his soul had had unusual friendships, human connection, of a kind which in his present life he would have regarded as shameful. Thus, in face of what the City Goddess had revealed to him indirectly, through Eabani, he began in a certain way—as the myth indicates—to upbraid, to reproach his own soul. In the myth it is said that he reproaches the Goddess about her lovers, for he is jealous of them. He is looking as it were across the horizon of his own soul and the visions are living realities before him, as real as human beings who stand around someone in the physical world, eliciting feelings of sympathy or antipathy towards them. In the reproaches leveled by Gilgamish against the Goddess we perceive that he is really speaking in terms of what is happening in his own soul. Thus, for example, when it is said that he reproaches the Goddess about her previous relationship with one who is called Ishullanu (Ischlanu) in the myth, this signifies that his own friendship with a certain person who had been his master's gardener in the preceding incarnation was not pleasing to him.¹⁵ What took place in the soul of Gilgamish and which first imparted to it that inner content, that inner realisation, which he needed in order to become the inaugurator of the Babylonian civilisation—all this is shown to us in the picture of the regaining of a certain clairvoyance, of the ascent into super-sensible worlds which, because he was an old soul, were in a certain sense lost to him. This is shown to us in the myth.

And then Gilgamish was to undergo a kind of initiation by being led back to that kind of vision which his own soul had possessed during Atlantean incarnations. What the myth presents as the journey over the sea, and the wanderings of Gilgamish to the West, is nothing else than the inner path towards initiation by which his soul is led upwards to spiritual heights where it can perceive its ancient Atlantean surroundings, when, still clairvoyant, it had gazed into the spiritual world. The myth tells that an this, his spiritual journeying, Gilgamish was brought to the great Atlantean Being, Xisuthros, This was a Being who belonged to certain higher Hierarchies and who during the Atlantean time lived in the sphere of humanity but was afterwards transported from the world of men to dwell in higher regions. Gilgamish was to meet this personality in order that through beholding him he might come to know the condition of souls when they are able to look into the spiritual worlds. Thus he was to be led upwards again into the spiritual spheres by being transported in his life of soul into Atlantean times. And when he is bidden not to sleep for seven nights and six days, this signifies nothing else than an exercise which was to make the soul capable of penetrating fully into the corresponding spiritual regions. When we are now told that he was not able to endure the test, Isis again signifies something of great importance, namely that Gilgamish is represented as a personality who was brought to the very brink of Initiation—who was destined, as it were, to look through the portal of Initiation into the mysteries of the spirit but owing to the conditions of the times was not able to penetrate fully into their depths. In short, this is intended to indicate that the inaugurator of the Babylonian civilisation had remained at the portal of Initiation, that he could not look with full clarity into the higher worlds, with the result that he gave Babylonian culture the stamp that is a sign of no more than a glimpse into the secrets of Initiation.

We shall now see that the nature of external Babylonian culture was indeed such that it confirms what has just been said. Whereas, for example, everything points to the fact that Hermes was a personality who gazed into the very depths of the holiest secrets of Initiation and could therefore become the great inaugurator of ancient Egyptian culture, it must be said that the Babylonian culture was prepared in the way I have just described: through a leading personality who had in his soul all those qualities which develop when penetration into the innermost essence of Initiation has not been fully achieved. Hence historical development in ancient Babylonia gives clear evidence of an external culture and an inner, esoteric culture running parallel to one another. Whereas in the life of ancient Egypt there was greater interplay between these two aspects, in the ancient culture of Babylonia they fell apart. And within what must be regarded as the Babylonian culture inaugurated by Gilgamish, there was enshrined the content and substance of the most sacred, most hidden Mysteries of the Chaldeans.

The Initiates of these Mysteries were indeed initiated into the innermost secrets, but this influence flowed through the external culture only as a tiny stream. This external culture proceeded from the impulse given by Gilgamish. Everything that has been said points to the fact that Gilgamish, as a personality, had not actually reached the point where he could have experienced complete Initiation. But just because at the time in which he was working he did not give effect to his own, personal impulses, did not impart his own personal forces to the world, he was very specially able to let one of the spiritual Beings we place in the rank of the Fire-Spirits, the Archangeloi, work through him. Such a Being did indeed work through Gilgamish, and it is in a Fire-Spirit that we must see the source of the ordering of Babylonian life and its impelling forces, for which Gilgamish was the instrument. So we shall rightly conceive of this Gilgamish in a picture that suggests the symbol of the ancient centaur. Such ancient symbols correspond more closely to reality than is generally supposed. A centaur—half man, half animal—was always intended to represent how in the more mighty of men of old the highest spiritual manhood and that which united the single personality with the animal organisation in a certain sense actually fell apart. Gilgamish gave the impression of a centaur to those who were capable of judging what he was, and it is the same to this day.

Remarkably enough, this picture of the centaur is cropping up again in the field of modern scientific thought. There has recently been published a book which sets out to base itself entirely on scientific facts, and yet goes to work with a certain absence of prejudice, hence it does not produce such an amateurish, senseless hotch-potch as do those who call themselves Monists. The author makes a genuine effort to understand man, and how, as an independent being of soul-and-spirit, he is related to the physical organism. And then this author, who bases himself on natural science, comes out with a remarkable picture. Quite certainly he was not thinking of the centaur when he conceived this picture, but referring to what results from natural-scientific ideas about the relation of the soul to the body, he says: This may be likened to a horseman riding upon his horse. The facts of natural science, when rightly understood, compel one to say: The soul is independent and uses the body as its instrument, as a rider uses his horse.—Yes, the centaur is here again; things will develop rapidly, and before people are aware of it, spiritual-scientific ideas will take root in our contemporaries under the compulsion of the facts of natural science itself. Not long ago I was talking to a philosopher who sets great store by materialistic ideas, and he said to me: “Of course the picture of the centaur arose because the old inhabitants of Greece saw certain tribes coming down from the North on their horses, and as it was generally misty, they thought that horse and rider were a single form. With all their superstition they might easily imagine this.”

That is a really ingenuous idea—perhaps not exactly philosophical—but certainly ingenuous! This picture of the centaur, which did not arise because the Greeks could not distinguish the rider how his horse but because the earlier peoples inevitably thought of the spiritual being of man as independent of the bodily nature—this idea of the centaur is again cropping up in our time out of the very concepts of natural science. It must therefore be said that despite all materialistic ideas we are coming to the point to-day when materialism itself, if only it will take the facts as they really are, will lead by and by to what Spiritual Science has to say from its occult sources. But if, in line with our studies, we want to focus our occult observation upon a figure such as Gilgamish—who has already become an object of interest to external research—we must realise that there we have to do with penetration by a Being of the spiritual Hierarchies. So that while we must in truth see every human being, in respect of his spirituality, in the picture of the centaur, in the case of one who works as Gilgamish worked, we must recognise, in addition, that the spiritual part of the centaur is directed by higher Powers who are sending down their forces to further the progress of humanity. And we shall find an going farther back into history that this is revealed even more clearly. We shall also see how modification takes place in the course of the ages up to our own time and how spiritual forces, when they work through human beings, assume constantly different forms the nearer we come to the immediate present.

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• 10. Leopold von Ranke, 1795–1886. See Rudolf Steiner, Karmic-Relationships: Esoteric Studies, Vol. II, lecture XIV.
• 11. J. G. Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, written between 1784 and 1791. Tr. by T. Churchill; Outline of a Philosophy of the History of Man. (London, 1803.)
• 12. G. E. Lessing. The last paragraphs of The Education of the Human Race, published in 1780, are as follows:
  
  “But ... why should not every individual man have existed more than once upon this world?
  “ Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest? Because the human widerstanding, before the sophistries of the Schools had dissipated and debilitated it, lighted upon it at once?
  “Why may not even I have already performed those steps of my perfecting which bring to man only temporal punishments and rewards ?
  “And once more, why not another time all those steps, to perform which the views of Eternal Rewards so powerfully assist us?
  “Why should I not come back as often. as I am capable of acquiring fresh knowledge, fresh expertness ? Do I bring away so much from one, that there is nothing to repay the trouble of coming back?
  “Is this a reason against it? Or, because I forget that I have been here already? Happy is it for me that I do forget. The recollection of my former condition would perrnit me to make only a bad use of the present. And that which even I must forget now, is that necessarily forgotten for ever?
  “Or is it a reason against the hypothesis that so much time would have been lost to me? Lost?—And how much then should I miss?—Is not a whole Eternity mine? "
  
  Tr. F. W. Robertson (1872).
  Reprinted (1927) by Anthroposophical
  Publishing Co.
• 13. August Friedrich Gfrörer, 1803—1861.
• 14. Letter of Perceval de Boulainvilliers, 21st June, 1429. See: Procés de condamnation et de réhabilitation de Jeanne d' Arc, ed. Quicherat, Tome V, pages 114—21. (Paris, 1849) where the text is in Latin. The name Boulainvilliers is said to have been incorrectly rendered in several of the earlier translations.
• 15. See Thompson, op. cit., p. 33. (Gilgamish is reproaching Ishtar):
  
  Lovest thou, too, Ishullanu, the gardener he of thy Sire, Bringing delights to thee ceaseless, while daily he garnish'd thy platter...."
  
  (From the Sixth Tablet.)