The Rudolf Steiner Archive

15. Body, Soul, and Spirit: Their Development Through Birth and Death and Their Place in the Universe

[ 1 ] Allow me today to offer, perhaps in a somewhat aphoristic manner, a few insights into the interrelationship between body, soul, and spirit in human beings, and then, building on that, to make some observations about humanity’s relationship to birth and death and to the universe as a whole. It goes without saying that all of this can only be touched upon. However, those among the esteemed audience who have heard some or all of this year’s winter lectures will find much of what can only be presented aphoristically today more or less substantiated in the previous reflections, which have, after all, addressed important questions of spiritual and soul life in detail. Precisely in the course of this winter and last winter, I often took the liberty of to remark how spiritual science, as conceived in the reflections presented in these lectures, is by no means something that seeks to enter into the spiritual cultural development of humanity today through the whim of a single individual, but rather that it is deeply rooted in the spiritual life as it has gradually developed over time right up to the present day. So one can say: Especially when looking back at the nineteenth century, there are many instances where the seeds of such a spiritual science were already present. However, due to very understandable circumstances, it came to pass that in the course of the nineteenth century, and particularly in the second half of the nineteenth century, the scientific way of thinking—which was, of course, extraordinarily successful and whose achievements are in no way called into question by spiritual science—captured people’s attention, and that as a result, the beginnings of a true spiritual-scientific worldview were dampened more than might otherwise have been the case.

[ 2 ] In particular, it seems to me that Goethe’s worldview contains the most significant initial seeds of a spiritual science, and that, fundamentally speaking, if one truly penetrates Goethe’s worldview, there can be no doubt that within this Goethean view of the world there truly lies something like a seed from which a spiritual science can develop. Certainly, people believed they understood Goethe particularly well in the course of the nineteenth century. They also made a sincere effort to do so. But what exists in him as the most significant seeds of a spiritual-scientific view of the world, one actually gains only when one does not merely attempt to direct the soul’s gaze directly toward what Goethe himself produced, but when one tries to fully immerse oneself in the way he thought, in the way he viewed things—when, so to speak, one seeks not merely to be his observer but to become someone who lives his life anew. It is well known—and I have also drawn attention to this frequently in these lectures—how Goethe rose to a profound view of nature, let us say, first of all, in his reflections on the metamorphosis of plants. What did he intend with this metamorphosis of plants? Well, he first wanted to show that what lives as a plant being in roots, leaves, petals, and fruit consists of individual parts, but in such a way that these individual parts emerge from one another and are transformations of one another. He sought to gain a comprehensive understanding of the plant organism, for example, by attempting to show that what we perceive as a colored flower petal is, from a certain point of view, essentially the same as the green plant leaf—only a metamorphosed, transformed plant leaf. And in turn, the delicate organs we find in the flower—which we refer to as stamens—and so on, all the way up to the fruit, are transformed flower petals. For Goethe, everything in the plant arises through the leaf, as it were, transforming itself both backward and forward. The entire plant becomes a leaf to him, but a leaf that takes on various forms. Through this, the spiritual contemplation in Goethe’s sense—I would say, the intense focus on the individual part of the plant—rises to a whole of the plant, but a whole that is spiritual, and which he now calls the “type” of the plant. It is indeed remarkable how, during his travels in Italy, Goethe believed he could awaken ever more deeply within his spirit that which cannot be perceived in the plant through the external senses, but which lives in the plant in a sensuous-supersensuous way—Goethe calls it a “sensuous-supersensuous form”—and which takes shape in various forms as a leaf, a petal, a stamen, and so on. He also calls this type—which is sensually-supersensual—the “idea of the plant.” And I have, in fact, spoken here before about what was said between Schiller and Goethe—who had both attended the lecture—following a botanical lecture given by Professor Batsch of Jena. Schiller had found that while all of this was well and good, there was no overarching whole; everything crumbled into mere details, and there was no overarching perspective. Goethe took a sheet of paper and, right before Schiller’s eyes, sketched an ideal plant—a plant that cannot be found anywhere in the external world, but which he believed he could grasp as a sensory-supersensory form and which lived within every plant, so that every plant was merely a particular manifestation of this, as he put it, “primordial plant.” So Goethe sketched something that can never be found here or there with the eyes. Schiller, who was not yet entirely at home with such matters at that time—it was in the early 1790s—could not make sense of what Goethe was trying to convey with this “primordial plant.” So he said: “Yes, that is an idea; it is not a perception; one cannot perceive that anywhere!”—Goethe took offense at this objection and said: “If what I have described here is an idea, then I perceive my ideas with my eyes!” Well, that was certainly, from the other side of the coin, expressed somewhat extremely, somewhat exaggeratedly. But Goethe felt that he had not merely sketched an abstract idea, but something that arose within his soul with such inner necessity as the individual life of a plant presents itself to the eye when the eye focuses on that individual plant. This life of the “sensible-supersensible,” as he called it, was a reality for Goethe; it was a reality for Goethe.

[ 3 ] Goethe then pursued such reflections with zeal and genuine effort. Anyone who has studied Goethe’s endeavors knows that he made all manner of observations with genuine scientific rigor, together with the professors at Jena, notably Loder. Goethe zealously pursued these endeavors in order to arrive at something that might justify a similar approach for the entire realm of living beings. And it is well known—one need only read Goethe’s scientific writings to see—how he then attempted to determine, even for human and animal forms, that the various organs are, in essence, merely transformations of a basic organ form. And as I said, one can read in Goethe’s scientific writings how, in a sense through a flash of insight—which was, however, prepared by his careful anatomical studies— during his second trip to Italy, he found an animal skull that had been happily cracked open, and it revealed to him how the bones of the head are merely transformed in their shell-like structure and how their original form is what we find stacked one upon another in the spine as vertebrae. Such a vertebral bone—of which 30 to 33 are stacked one upon another—transformed in the corresponding manner, as it were, puffed up by its inner driving forces—forgive the trivial expression—and internally developed, gives rise to certain parts of the cranial shell, so that for Goethe the cranial shell appears as a transformed vertebral bone.

[ 4 ] I am well aware of how this Goethean perspective has been reshaped by modern views. That is not the point here; what matters is the way of thinking, not the details. Now one can assume that Goethe, perhaps at the very moment when it dawned on him that the skull bones were transformed vertebrae—that something is at work within the vertebrae, which, while remaining hidden within them, pushes upward— —- he might have come to the conclusion that the entire human brain, too, is transformed nervous substance, a transformed nerve segment, just as such nerve segments are now arranged one above the other in the spinal cord. This means that not only do the outer coverings of the spinal cord and the skull present themselves as transformed forms of one another, but that the brain itself appears, at a higher level, as a transformation of what is layered one upon another within the bony column of the spinal cord—namely, the nerve organs, or ganglia, if one wishes to call them that. This idea seemed obvious at the time when Goethe had grasped the other idea with what was for him absolute certainty. But he did not elaborate on this idea, so that it cannot be found in his writings at first glance.

[ 5 ] I might mention that I have been intensively engaged with Goethe’s scientific studies for more than thirty years now, and that it was clear to me from the very beginning: Goethe’s final thought must have followed on from his first. But of course, it would be something special indeed if one could prove that Goethe actually conceived this thought in connection with the first. And when I was then able to work at the Goethe and Schiller Archive in Weimar from 1890 to 1897, it naturally occurred to me, among other things, to investigate such matters, And as early as the beginning of the 1890s, around 1891, I was able to open a notebook that Goethe had kept during the very same period in which he made that discovery about the spiral nature of the skull bones. And in this notebook—which Goethe had started in Venice in 1790—is an entry written in Goethe’s distinctive pencil handwriting: “The brain itself is merely a large central ganglion. The organization of the brain is repeated in every ganglion, so that each ganglion can be regarded as a small, subordinate brain.”

[ 6 ] So the brain—the entire brain—is simply what we find in every part of the nervous system, at a different stage of development! Today I would like to draw your attention not so much to this fact as such, but rather to how Goethe’s mind must have been disposed to recognize such things, to establish such connections in what surrounds us sensually and physically in the animal, plant, and human organizations. What, then, was Goethe actually striving for? Well, we saw it, didn’t we? He sought to find, alongside what mere sensory observation can provide, a sensory-supersensory dimension—something that can be grasped only in the spirit, yet is just as much a reality as that which can be seen with the eyes. This led Goethe to the extreme statement: “Then I see my idea with my eyes!” — Of course, he could only have meant the eyes of the soul, for one cannot see ideas with the physical eyes.

[ 7 ] To show how Goethe’s thoughts on external relationships contain, in embryonic form, what spiritual science has to say today, I must now, so to speak, take a leap. But this leap will seem natural to anyone who attempts to gradually penetrate the spirit of Goethe’s approach. For if one wishes to make progress in this mode of observation—which Goethe, out of what I would call his instinctive genius, initially applied to the outer form of life—it is already necessary for the human soul to undergo those inner developments of which I have been speaking for years now, and especially again this winter; as I mentioned last time, you can find a brief outline of these described on a few pages in the essay I wrote for the recently published journal *Das Reich*, which summarizes some of what you will find described in detail in my books *The Secret Science*, *Theosophy*, or *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*. I would like to say: That which initially enables the soul to perceive the world through the instrument of the physical organism must be elevated through specific soul exercises, which I cannot describe again today, but which I have often described here. Through these inner exercises, through these inner soul activities, the soul must be enabled to truly see the soul-spiritual as such, to perceive it as such. To make that which occurs more instinctively in Goethe the conscious object of contemplation—that is the ascent from sensory science to spiritual science.

[ 8 ] Now I have described—and as I said, you can read about this in the aforementioned writings and essays—how, through certain inner mental processes that it carries out within itself, the soul truly brings about, in its most intimate inner experience, gradual experiences, experiences that are of a completely different nature than the experiences one has in ordinary life through the instrument of the body; how the soul, by giving itself inner impulses that it would not otherwise give in external life, comes to truly detach an inner element from the physical, just as—to repeat what I said the day before yesterday—oxygen is separated from hydrogen in the well-known chemical experiment. Through such exercises of the soul, the soul comes to experience itself purely within the soul element itself, to observe the soul separate from the physical. Since one cannot prove everything over and over again, I would like to point out that today I will present this merely as the result of previous lectures, but that I have indeed said a great deal about this detachment of the soul from the physical.

[ 9 ] As the human being comes to perceive the spiritual-soul aspect as such, detached from the physical, the physical becomes something different to him, and the spiritual-soul aspect also becomes something different. Just as water is no longer simply water—but rather oxygen and hydrogen—when it is broken down in a chemical experiment, so the physical aspect becomes something different, and the spiritual-psychic aspect becomes something different as well—though, of course, only in inner contemplation. But then, when the soul is thus enriched by such genuine, now inner spiritual-soul perceptions, one gradually comes to view the outer world, too, in a completely different way than before. For this outer world, after all, is in turn permeated everywhere by the spiritual. And then, I would say, Goethe’s entire doctrine of metamorphosis becomes much more intense, much more self-contained. Anyone who initially observes only the external sensory world and its course through the instrument of the external body sees only what is expressed in material existence. They may sense that the spirit reveals itself through material existence. But the Spirit itself—how it reigns and weaves within the material—can only be seen once those forces of the soul have been developed, the ones I spoke of in earlier lectures. Then, however, even those organs that one sees with physical eyes in human beings and also in other living beings appear in a completely different light. And then what is inherent in Goethe’s natural science expands in a magnificent way. Then, simply by following a direct continuation of what is inherent in Goethe’s ideas, one learns to recognize how the entire human head presents itself to us as the expression of what the human being actually is in the world from within. This entire human head appears to us as a complex product of transformation from something else. We know—and this can best be understood through a purely external observation of the skeleton—that the human being visibly consists of two parts: the head and the rest of the organism, which is connected to the head in the skeleton by nothing more than small joints. So that we can truly divide the human being into the head and the rest of the physical organism when we view him purely from an external, physical perspective. And now, when—as I said—one enriches one’s observations with inner insight, one comes to realize that the entire head is, in a complex way, a transformation of the rest of the organism. At a different stage of development, the rest of the organism is, in a corresponding way, something similar to the head, just as the vertebrae of the spinal column are similar to the skull. The entire human head is transformed from the rest of the human organism. And one clearly grasps the idea that this human head is, in a sense, like the rest of the organism, which has driven the formative forces within it further. The rest of the organism has come to a standstill at a certain stage; the laws of formation are fixed at a certain stage. In the head, they have been further developed, further worked into the form, further molded, so to speak. The entire human head—the rest of the human being transformed, taken in its external, physical form!

[ 10 ] It would take me a long time to go into the details on this subject. But if one could hold a course in anatomy and physiology here for weeks on end and examine the individual organs found in the head and in the rest of the human organism, one would be able to demonstrate, down to the finest detail and in the strictest scientific sense, how the fundamental idea—which I can only hint at now—can be absolutely substantiated. Now, however, in order to approach, so to speak, an understanding of the whole, complete human being, one must take into account the full significance of what has thus been recognized—the whole, complete significance. After all, when we look at the human being as he stands before us, we are essentially faced with a duality: we see his head, which is at a completely different stage of development and formation than the rest of the organism, and we see the rest of the organism, of which we can say: “It contains formative forces that are merely held back at an earlier stage; were they to be fully developed, they could become the head.” Likewise, we can say: If the head had not fully developed its formative forces today but had left them at an earlier stage, it would not have become the head, but would have manifested itself in an external form as the rest of the organism.

[ 11 ] We gain further insight into these circumstances when we now turn our attention to the human soul. And this human soul can only be understood if one truly rises above ordinary human knowledge to what I referred to earlier—and can only describe in broad terms today—through higher knowledge, through inner, supersensory insight. As you know, there is also what is called psychology, a science of the soul. And especially in our time, this science of the soul seeks to emerge through the very same approach used in the external natural sciences. People who still retained something of the earlier approach to the soul within themselves, yet wished to give full consideration to the entirely legitimate demands of modern natural science, attempted to fathom the human soul life as it unfolds. A truly significant researcher of the soul—who still retained something of an older science of the soul that now seems to have been overcome, and who wanted to give full consideration to modern natural science—is Franz Brentano. However, in his *Psychology*, published in 1874, he was unable to rise to anything more than classifying what lives within the soul. One usually classifies this inner life into thinking, feeling, and willing. Brentano classifies it somewhat differently. Franz Brentano is precisely the kind of observer of the soul who cannot rise to a spiritual vision, but who seeks to apply to the inner life the mode of observation that is otherwise reserved only for external nature, for sensory perception. He arrives only at a classification. Even in external nature, Goethe does not seek to arrive at a mere classification—what is called a “system”—but rather seeks to arrive at a metamorphosis; he attempts to elucidate the transformation and, in doing so, to trace—as it were—that which lives supersensually in its various formal transformations and to attain a unity of overarching insight in the whole. Brentano, the psychologist, also breaks down the life of the soul and, in turn, is unable to make sense of the individual phenomena of the soul. One really must say: It is a tough nut to crack when one examines contemporary psychology—as it developed particularly in the nineteenth century—through the eyes of a researcher of the soul who is trained in the manner I have often described here. There one encounters this inability to arrive at anything other than mere categorizations: thinking, feeling, and willing.

[ 12 ] What Goethe already seeks to shed light on through all material things that are alive—this transformation and metamorphosis, this life—not in a static conception that places things side by side and categorizes them, but in a dynamic, living reality. This conception of life must be applied in particular to the life of the soul if one truly wishes to grasp it. One cannot simply take thinking, feeling, and willing into account. That is entirely impossible; one ends up merely categorizing them into thinking, feeling, and willing. But when one examines the life of the soul—thinking, feeling, and willing—with a gaze sharpened by spiritual research, one finds within it a much more intense form of metamorphosis and transformation than in what shines through the outer form of living nature. One grasps, as it were, the transformation itself.

[ 13 ] Can one truly recognize the essence of a thought if one perceives it merely as a thought? No, one simply cannot! This becomes evident precisely through spiritual contemplation. Within the soul itself, the thought transforms into feeling, and the feeling, in turn, into the will. And one must be able to grasp the metamorphosis of thinking, feeling, and willing vividly in one’s inner dynamism; only then does one grasp the soul. This is possible only when one has separated the soul from the physical body. And then, in an immediate inner experience of insight, one perceives what happens when we have a thought and compare it to a feeling, and in turn compare feelings to the will. We come to observe, in inner experience, every thought within us that has arisen through the transformation of feeling. Every thought is a transformed feeling; and indeed, if one wishes to observe this inwardly, one must perceive in every thought the incomplete—but partial—fading of the feeling. Thought life is an emotional life that has died off. In thought, I would say, the remnant of emotional life lives on. Thought life is transformed emotional life, but in such a way that emotional life, so to speak, transitions from a living state—one that can be inwardly grasped—into a more lifeless state.

[ 14 ] When you put it that way, it just sounds abstract. But when you experience it vividly from within through soul-gazing—when you truly live through everything that causes your feelings to transform into a thought—for example, when you have felt something vividly in the present moment and later recall that feeling through a memory, and then trace the path by which that feeling became a thought—then you experience something as intense inwardly as, for instance, ‘when, with a primal, healthy sense of family, one sees a family member pass from life to death. In the inner life of the soul itself—if one is willing to recognize it—this soul life is already permeated with intense inner vitality and deep inner involvement. And no one should believe that the ascent from the observation of external nature to what is called the observation of the life of the soul is merely something abstract, or merely what is often referred to as confused mysticism—which usually consists only in constructing a worldview out of a vague feeling; but true science of the soul arises through the inner experience of the metamorphosis of the realities of the soul,

[ 15 ] But a thought, too, can be reawakened as a feeling, and it can be transformed into will. If one observes—as has often been suggested here—how a thought seizes us as an ideal and then pulses through us, permeating our soul with enthusiasm until it becomes will, then one experiences, I would say, a birth, once one has elevated that experience to the level of soulful observation. This inner soul experience is what arises as a result of the exercises described, for example, in my book *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds*. Through this, however, as you can see, an inner soul life is opened up that lies behind ordinary soul life. Ordinary soul life proceeds with thinking, feeling, and willing as separate processes. But this inner life of the soul, which I have just described, lies behind the thinking, feeling, and willing that are usually directed toward the outer sensory world. It is not something that the spiritual researcher creates from scratch; it is something he merely experiences within ordinary thinking, feeling, and willing—something he simply arrives at. He does not create it any more than someone who enters from outside and sees the table here creates the table, even though he creates an image of it by entering and looking at the table. In the same way, the spiritual researcher creates the image of the soul life that lies behind ordinary soul life; but this soul life is present in every human soul. It lies, so to speak, beneath the threshold of ordinary consciousness, which is directed toward the external world or, indeed, toward sensory perception in general.

[ 16 ] I would like to say that there are also approaches to discovering this inner life of the soul. Such approaches are particularly evident in the spiritual development of the nineteenth century. Because there is a longing for knowledge of the soul in all human beings, these approaches have captivated people even in the broadest circles. One such approach is found in the concept—which Eduard von Hartmann did not exactly introduce, but rather elaborated upon—of the unconscious life of the soul. He derived all conscious life of the soul from an unconscious life of the soul. But there is indeed something amiss with this Hartmannian unconscious, precisely because it is characterized only in negative terms. When one says, “What underlies the conscious is the unconscious,” one is saying nothing more than: everything that is here outside of this table is not-table, is simply anti-table. Now, if I describe everything that is sitting and standing here as “not-table,” as “anti-table,” I have not yet said anything specific. It cannot be described in any other way than negatively if one remains within the realm of conscious soul life. And that is precisely what Eduard von Hartmann wants. One must internally enrich the life of the soul, as has often been described here, and this ordinary life of the soul must descend into the other, so that the subconscious and unconscious life of the soul is grasped by an expanded consciousness—a consciousness different from the ordinary consciousness that is directed toward the sensory world.

[ 17 ] You see, a soul life is thus grasped through spiritual vision. Now, this soul life that is grasped there, that appears directly in spiritual vision—what else is it but that which works inwardly within the human being, and of which one must surely imagine that the outer physical body is somehow its expression, its manifestation? But just as we experience our ordinary conscious soul life, its very advantage lies in the fact that this conscious soul life does not act directly upon the body. Just imagine for a moment if the conscious soul life were to act upon the body—indeed, it is really no exaggeration when I describe what follows. Let’s suppose we see the hand of a stranger and want to grasp its form. If this form were not to appear to us as a mere idea, but were to penetrate us, to truly come alive within us, then our own hand would have to undergo a metamorphosis and become just like the other person’s hand. We would have to be able to become completely absorbed in, and bring to life within ourselves, that which we currently perceive only in abstract terms. And if we were faced with a whole, complete human being who made such a strong impression on us that the impression existed for us not merely as an abstract idea, then we ourselves would have to take on the form of that person. Thus, what functions as ordinary conscious soul life would not fulfill its purpose in the world at all if it were not so far separated from our physical life that it does not interfere with physical life and allows it to develop independently.

[ 18 ] But we need only look back at human evolution to see at least a glimmer of what we—as I pointed out the day before yesterday—might call the shaping of the forms of the human organism from within. When we observe human beings, particularly in their very earliest childhood, we see how what is within them takes on a plastic form that later develops into what they become. We see there how the spiritual enters into the physical form. Of course, there are many objections specifically to the assertion I am making now. However, as I said, one cannot cover everything in a single lecture. These objections can be very easily dispelled if one can discuss them in detail. So we see yet another plastic influence of what is inwardly present in the human being during adolescence, in childhood, and in pathological conditions. We see how the spiritual-soul aspect vividly intervenes in physical development. Ordinary soul life—one might say, thank God—cannot intervene in physical development; it would not fulfill its purpose. But read this excellent chapter in Schleich’s new book, *The Mechanism of Thought*, this beautiful—I would say epoch-making—chapter: “Hysteria—A Metaphysical Problem,” and you will see how it points out that, in pathological conditions, the soul-spiritual—that which is grasped in thought—does indeed affect the physical formation of the body. We are healthy precisely because this is not the case in a normal state. I will cite only the most basic example from this book. Such examples have, of course, always been familiar to anyone who deals with such matters; but the way in which they are presented in this particular book has indeed brought about something truly epoch-making. Here is one example: A doctor enters a lady’s room where a fan is humming. She says—she is hysterical; it is a pathological condition he is dealing with—: “There’s a big bee!” At first, the doctor naturally tries to talk her out of the idea that it’s a big bee; after all, it’s just a fan. Then she says, “If it were to sting me!” The doctor initially tries to make it clear to her that even that wouldn’t be so bad. But at that very moment, her eye swells up into a lump the size of a chicken egg.

[ 19 ] Here we see how a mere thought works. And as I said, our ordinary thoughts, thank God, are not thoughts of this kind. And precisely because they are incapable of this, they are the right thoughts for ordinary life. They do not take shape in this way; they do not penetrate into the organism. Pathological conditions must already be present; but then we see how thought can take hold of material life. Schleich quite rightly calls this an “incarnation of thought.” But one must not believe that one can remain within ordinary soul life when speaking of such things. The ordinary thoughts that a person has are meant for understanding the world and as a foundation for their actions; and if they are a healthy person, then these thoughts certainly do not intervene in ordinary soul life in any plasticizing way—pathological conditions must simply underlie such a process. But under normal circumstances—especially when one looks at things spiritually—one finds that what constitutes a person’s development from childhood onward, that which shapes the forms, is now based in a healthy way on the same principle as the spiritual-soul aspect, which, though still unconscious and remaining so, continues to shape things in a formative way. And this is precisely what constitutes the further experience of the human being: that what first enters the organism, what first takes hold of the organism, later separates itself from the organism, exists as a spiritual-soul entity in its own right, and is experienced precisely as spiritual-soul. This is the very essence of the human being’s further development as an individuality.

[ 20 ] I have presented certain lines of thought to you; but these lines of thought are truly not contrived, nor are they in any way logically constructed—rather, they are drawn from the contemplation of the soul. And as I said, this is not a game of analogies; rather, it follows from the observation of the soul—based on developed spiritual insight—that the very same principle that can later intervene as a formative force in pathological conditions also intervenes in a normal way in childhood life. The thoughts I have thus stimulated lead further—not through logical elaboration, but by continuing the soul-spiritual contemplation of the world. The observation of bodily life gave rise to the following thought: The human body, apart from the head, contains the same formative forces as the head, only at a less advanced stage; the head contains the same formative forces as the rest of the body, but at a far more advanced stage. These thoughts are interconnected in inner perception. One attains this more intimate familiarity with natural life by coming to know the spiritual and soul aspects within nature as well. In higher contemplation, one must, through this more intimate acquaintance with the subconscious spiritual life—as I have just described it—bring the following to clarity. And this can be achieved through this more intimate familiarity. Certain ideas—I would say, ideas that philosophers have only intuited—become completely clear inwardly through the kind of knowledge referred to here. Time and again, philosophers mull over these ideas—and I do not mean this in a derogatory sense at all—in an effort to arrive at some concept of substance or matter. In his “Ignorabimus” speech, D’Bois-Reymond brilliantly compiled everything that proves that what matter actually is—or, as he puts it, where matter haunts space—cannot be grasped by cognition. —- Matter, fundamentally speaking, always remains something unknown to ordinary cognition; it remains outside the realm of ordinary cognition. Through spiritual cognition, one truly comes to realize that matter itself cannot be perceived and that matter cannot enter into our inner being, any more than the brass of a seal, which I imprint in the sealing wax, can enter into the substance of the sealing wax—even though everything that is meant to enter, let us say the name Müller, passes from the seal onto the sealing wax. What is materially external cannot be brought into the inner realm. But that which is meant to enter does so in a manner similar to how the name “Müller” passes from the seal to the sealing wax. Thus, what is within us cannot penetrate at all into the realm where matter exists in space. Ordinary cognition cannot grasp substance. Matter is simply not perceptible. I would have to say a great deal more if I were to explain in detail—as is possible—that matter cannot possibly be perceived as such. Matter can only ever be hypothetically postulated in relation to perceptions.

[ 21 ] What, then, is the basis for this? It is based on the fact that we do not perceive anything material at all. If only matter were spread out, and if we ourselves were composed of matter in the ordinary sense, we would not be able to perceive anything. Matter is not perceptible! What makes matter perceptible? Matter becomes perceptible because, in addition to matter—you don’t need to dwell on this “in addition” just now—there is also, in the world around us, ether, an ethereal essence. When I speak of ethereal essence, I must of course point out—as I have often said here before—that the concept of ether, as it is meant here, does not coincide with any concept of ether as defined by physics, although it can, of course, overlap with it in many ways. But after all—what kind of concept of ether does modern physics have—this modern physics that is actually on a wondrous path among those who conduct research with all the tools of modern natural science, who go to great lengths to cultivate the scientific way of thinking and mindset and to cultivate it more and more? From certain physicists—whom one must truly take seriously, in a sense entirely different from the amateurish talk of a monistic worldview—we already have the following statement today: If one wishes to form any conception of the ether at all, one can do so only by imagining the ether as devoid of any material properties whatsoever; The ether must be conceived in such a way that all material properties are kept entirely separate from it. And right now we are witnessing the marvelous phenomenon of two opposing views of reality clashing head-on. In the midst of these turbulent times, we are witnessing the fierce clash of two worldviews regarding the external, physical world—a fact of ineffably great significance for anyone capable of assessing such a matter in all its gravity. We are witnessing that even that which physicists have never really addressed properly until now is now being investigated: namely, gravity. And here we see—I can only allude to these things in a purely historical sense—that, on the one hand, the more materialistic view is asserting itself and, in a sense, attempting to derive a conception of the ether from ideas about the material world, that is, from purely material properties. And on the other hand, we have, in a marvelous way, investigations into gravity of which one can say—and it has already been said—that they strive to shed the material and to dematerialize the natural in order to comprehend gravity—to dematerialize it. In short, if one wishes to understand today what true science is striving toward, one must not in any way trivially rely on all the rhetoric of the so-called monistic worldview, but must engage with this genuine and serious scientific endeavor—permeated by truly impressive methodological discipline—which, by attempting to ascend from matter to the ether, strives more and more to achieve what I just meant when I said that some physicists even state: “The ether can only be conceived if it is no longer conceived as possessing material properties.”

[ 22 ] In spiritual science, the ether reveals itself through inner contemplation and inner experience, just as one otherwise comes to know external existence, sensory existence. This is possible only through the first stage of spiritual vision. You can read about this in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*. There, the so-called imaginative cognition is cited as the first stage of spiritual vision—please do not misunderstand this expression. But this is merely an expression, a technical term. What is meant is the kind of cognition—as I have often described here in my recent lectures—in which the human being does not simply accept perceptions, but must construct the perceptions themselves. Just as one constructs externally, for example, what one also has in reality by writing it down, so imaginative insight gives inner expression to what one experiences spiritually. But through this insight, one does in fact come to form a conception of the ether that cannot be conveyed through external, material images. And then one comes to realize that ether is widespread out in the world and creates the possibility that things, figuratively speaking, turn their surface toward us so that they can be perceived, and that there is ether within us that meets the external ether. Ether from within and ether from without meet, and through this, what flows to us from things in an etheric form and what rises from us in an etheric form within our organism are encompassed. These elements encompass one another internally, and only through this does that which we call perception arise. What makes it so difficult to understand sensory perception is precisely the lack of knowledge regarding the facts just described.

[ 23 ] Just take the human eye! The human eye provides images of our surroundings precisely because, in a sense, the material processes from the outside world continue within the eye. What takes place in our inner eye is, after all, merely—without our consciousness being involved—a continuation of the laws of light that exist out there in the world. And as the outer ether extends into our eye and is taken up by the inner ether, this perception of light arises. What I am saying now is a direct continuation of what is written in Goethe’s beautiful and significant chapter on physical colors and their perception.

[ 24 ] Thus we ascend from external matter to the ether, and in doing so we draw closer to what lives within us. For that is the other aspect. Matter ascends toward the ether; we have ether within us, and the inner ether interacts with the outer ether. That is one process. And now let us consider it from the other side. We have seen: When we have our soul life—the conscious soul life, which in a healthy state must not interfere with matter, but which nevertheless contains the potential for formative forces—this conscious soul life leads us down into a subconscious soul life. And this subconscious soul life possesses, I would say, a power quite different from that of the conscious soul life. The conscious is the abstract life of the soul, the life of the soul that does not hurt us. I would like to cite just one example of this: In the conscious life of the soul, we can calmly tell a lie; it does not hurt us. But when the lie arises subconsciously, then it hurts; that is to say, it has the power to develop into reality. Beneath our conscious soul life lies the formative soul life—the soul life that is not separate from matter but can now intervene in matter, though initially only in the matter available to it. This subconscious soul life, in turn, can intervene in what exists within us as ether. And between what lies behind matter as ether and what lies beneath our consciousness as the subconscious life of the soul, an interaction arises that lies beyond our consciousness and above matter. This takes place in our inner depths. If you think this through, you can now easily understand pathological states of the soul as well. There isn’t enough time to go into them here. The subconscious—I have often referred to it here using a term that may even, quite rightly, seem terrifying to some at first, and which truly invites both good and bad jokes—I have called this subconscious life of the soul: the astral inner life of the human being. Well, the term itself shouldn’t be the point. So when we consider the whole, complete human being, he naturally consists of matter, just as other external things consist of matter; of the etheric being he possesses internally, which interacts with the external ether; and of the subconscious life of the soul, which can now intervening in the ether in a formative way. And that which arises in the interaction between the subconscious life of the soul—which we discover in spiritual vision, into which we immerse ourselves in spiritual vision—and the weaving, undulating ether—that is precisely imagination, the first stage of spiritual vision.

[ 25 ] And then, when a person has worked his way through insight to that which is not consciously experienced within him, yet is inner life, he also experiences how this inner life proves to be related to that which now lives in the external world but is not matter—and must not be conceived of as material at all, even according to modern physics—and how the two become one within him.

[ 26 ] We can gain an even deeper understanding of what I have often described in these lectures as the inner human being within the human being. Conscious soul life descends into a subconscious soul life, and this subconscious soul life is now more powerful than the conscious one and organizes itself together with the etheric life. Through this, we actually have what is present in the human soul life. And when a person, through the exercises described in the books and essays I have repeatedly mentioned, awakens this soul life within themselves, then—and only then—do they truly perceive what can be called the spiritual world, just as they perceive the outer sensory world with their physical organism. The possibility of perceiving a spiritual world and of knowing that one oneself originates from this spiritual world lies in the full organization of one’s etheric body.

[ 27 ] And now this idea expands and merges with the other idea derived from Goethe’s worldview. For once one has grasped the inner human being, one can now begin to ask oneself: Well, what is the situation, then, with these two aspects of human nature—the head and the rest of the body—which exist at different levels of development? Here it follows that one must relate what one can conceive of spiritually and psychically to the head in a completely different way than to the rest of the organism. When one perceives the spiritual human being through clairvoyance—but not in the sense intended in spiritualism or in trivial superstition, but truly in the sense that is always characterized here—the spiritual human being that underlies the outer human being, including the human being with ordinary consciousness—for this is not something immediately soul-related, but rather what lies beneath it— if one can perceive this human being, then one sees this inner human being in a completely different relationship to the main part of the human being and to what constitutes the rest of the human body. And one now finds the following: When one examines the head, one finds in the head a form so vividly shaped, such a configuration, that the spiritual-soul element has flowed entirely into the form; the spiritual-soul element expresses itself fully in the form and has even expressed itself in this form to such an extent that it retains some of its formative powers. And these retained formative powers are the very ones we can then develop into our thoughts. But what is developed in our thoughts only abstractly from the head lies, in a form accessible only subconsciously, at the foundation of the formation of our head. And in a completely different way, the spiritual-soul aspect underlies the rest of the human organism. These formative forces do not penetrate as deeply into the rest of the human organism; there they retain a certain independence; there the spiritual-soul aspect coexists much more strongly alongside the physical-bodily aspect. If I am to speak figuratively, in imaginative-figurative terms—please allow me this tautology—I would therefore like to say: When the observer has the human head before him, he perceives a spiritual-soul form, but alongside it, only in a very sparse form, something spiritual. When he has the rest of the human organism before him, he perceives the physical form, but the spiritual is richly developed—it simply has not yet organized itself into the material to the same extent as in the head. In the head, the spiritual has flowed into matter to a much greater extent than in the rest of the organism. The human head is much more material than the rest of the organism. The rest of the organism is such that the spiritual has flowed only slightly into the material and still possesses greater independence.

[ 28 ] Now that spiritual insight I have spoken of comes to truly grasp the essential meaning of what I have just said. What, in fact, are these formative forces within the human head that have, so to speak, reached a stage far, far ahead in their development compared to what can be observed in the rest of the organism? If one learns to observe what underlies the head, if one learns to apply spiritual insight to the human head, then one begins to experience soulfully what is processed within the human head. When one experiences soulfully the formative forces contained within the human head—I can only hint at these things aphoristically today—one finds that what is processed there truly expands directly into a spiritual world, that one must truly conceive of these formative forces as emanating from the spiritual world—even if they flow through the human genetic stream. Here, too, we have yet another beautiful point of contact between modern natural science and spiritual science. Such points of contact exist everywhere. There are natural scientists today who, based on their own research, readily admit that such cosmic formative forces play a role in the development of the human being while it is forming in the mother’s womb. We therefore have something in the human head that is formed from the cosmos. The human head bears a direct imprint of the cosmos when one looks at the soul.

[ 29 ] If one now ascends further into the spiritual realm, in the way I have described to you, one goes even further back. For one gains the following insight regarding the head: At birth—actually, quite soon after conception—the human head is such that its formative forces pass entirely into the material realm, leaving only a little of the soul behind, and play out their full course within the material realm. But these formative forces lead back to a time before conception. They lead back up into the spiritual world, so that human beings have essentially already lived through in the spiritual world that which arises from the cosmos in the formation of the head before they were conceived or born. And when we move from the soul to the spiritual, what originates from a previous earthly life will then become apparent to us within this spirit as we contemplate the formation of the head. It is precisely through the observation of the human head from a spiritual-scientific perspective that one passes directly from the present earthly life into a previous earthly life. And this complements the other idea when one now considers what is present in the rest of the organism, apart from the head. In this rest of the organism, the soul-spiritual life is still separate; the whole of human life, as it is lived from birth to death in interaction with the external world, in relation to other people, to the things of this world, to nature, and to all the spiritual conditions in which we live, as well as to all social conditions; this is imprinted in what is spiritual within us, in the rest of the organism, summarized in the human heart. This is not merely a metaphor, but a genuine spiritual-physiological fact. But because this human organism has acquired its fixed form at birth, it can initially remain only spiritual-soul-related. Yet it is present as formative forces; it remains present as formative forces; and as formative forces, it passes through death. If we trace, in a soulful way, what is present in the human organism—apart from the head—we find that the spiritual gaze points us toward what lies beyond death; and when we consider the human being spiritually, we find that this is transformed into the next earthly life.

[ 30 ] And further: Concrete observation teaches us that the head, as it now manifests itself with its inner formative forces, is the result of our physical life—excluding the head itself—in a previous earthly life. Our head is truly metamorphosed, transformed from a previous earthly life, and our present organism—excluding the head—with all its experiences retains these formative forces in a spiritual-soul manner; upon death, it surrenders them to the spiritual world, and they develop in such a way that they participate in the formation of our head in the next earthly life. And we arrive at the great, significant law: In what constitutes the inner formative forces—note well, the inner formative forces—of our head, we find the result of the formation of that to which the rest of the organism, apart from the head, was predisposed in a previous earthly life; and in what struggles and strives within the rest of our organism, we find that which enters into the formation of the head in the next earthly life. Once we have this insight, we will be able to make a serious, scientifically rigorous distinction between what lies within the line of heredity and what does not. In this field, I would say, natural science still has to open certain very significant doors, so to speak, if it is to engage with what spiritual science, for its part, has to say about the spiritual-soul aspect.

[ 31 ] I just want to draw attention to one thing. Certainly, modern science rightly attributes certain characteristics we possess to the principle of heredity; we have inherited them from our father and mother, grandfather, grandmother, and so on. But one must not think that anything is being said when the natural scientist comes along and says: ‘Yes, the spiritual scientist attributes inner formative powers to previous earthly lives; after all, we learn all of this through heredity!’ The spiritual scientist does not deny what can be explained scientifically through heredity—what may lie within the physical line of descent—just as the spiritual scientist stands firmly on the ground of natural science in general. But, as I said, natural science must first open certain doors; it must first adhere to certain guidelines. Just consider the following: A person reaches maturity at a certain age—as I pointed out the day before yesterday—to produce offspring; sexual maturity is attained. At that point, they possess all the capacities to pass on to the next generation whatever physical formative powers they have. They must, after all, possess these powers. No new faculties can arise afterward. Whatever abilities a person acquires later—which they in turn partially incorporate into themselves, just as they previously incorporated the capacity for procreation— do not enter into the reproductive stream; rather, these abilities act and work within the human being in such a way that they form the seed for that which passes through the gate of death, travels through the spiritual world between death and new birth, and reincarnates in a subsequent earthly life in the manner I have described, A transition then takes place, and one can say—as grotesque as it still sounds today—that the formation of the head—but, as I said, the head shaped from within—contains forces that we must seek as a spiritual-soul element accompanying the body that existed apart from the head in a previous earthly life. But what we now have physically in ourselves apart from our head—before the spiritual-soul element has fully poured itself into the physical—prepares the configuration and form of the head in a subsequent earthly life. This is certainly still a paradoxical assertion today, and yet, this is how a doctrine of metamorphosis encompassing the whole human being is built up—a doctrine of metamorphosis that encompasses spirit, soul, and body and which shows how the reality that is within the human being passes through birth and death, and how this reality within the human being is related to the universe. What, exactly, belongs directly to our earthly life? What belongs directly to our earthly life as individual human beings living between birth and death? Our head! That which—as we usually find—is outwardly the most spiritual in form is most closely related to the earth. That which is less closely connected to the Earth passes into worlds other than the Earth in the time between death and a new birth. And when, after the human being has passed through the gate of death, it has gained the powers from the spiritual realm to transform itself into the form of a head, then it has attained its goal.

[ 32 ] You see, spiritual science speaks in a very concrete way about what belongs to the eternal aspect of the human being. And in a very concrete way, it is able to describe how the human being is situated within the entire universe. It points out how that which is within the human head is, as it were, so engaged by the forces of the earth that the entire spiritual-soul aspect has poured itself into the head, and how that which exists outside the head is first preparing itself to join it in the next earthly life. We see how one earthly life is linked to the next, joining together like links in a chain to form a chain extending into eternity. When a person—not in an external, abstract description, but inwardly—grasps what can be experienced as the inner human being, when the subconscious grasps the etheric and the inner human being becomes active, then the soul is grasped, and it can be understood beyond birth and death in connection with the universe, And when a person has awakened this within themselves, then a spiritual world becomes visible to this inner human being—a concrete spiritual world—just as the physical world becomes visible to the physical eyes, which emerge from transformed matter. The spiritual world and the soul world manifest themselves in a very specific, concrete way. And just as we become acquainted with concrete physical things and beings in the physical world around us through our physical organization, so too do we become acquainted with a spiritual world in concrete, individual forms through the higher human being—the human being who lives spiritually and soulfully within us. But the spiritual-soul aspect within the human being must be grasped in a living way; otherwise, it remains merely a vague inkling that can find expression only in a conceptual construct. The only way to reach the spirit and the soul is to descend from ordinary consciousness into the subconscious and truly develop a new consciousness for the subconscious, thereby forming, through what otherwise permeates matter as ether, a higher human being within the human being. This is possible through experience, through genuine inner living along the paths described in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*. If one does not attain this spiritual realm, then one remains confined to what manifests from the soul-spiritual realm within the physical organism. Essentially, one remains stuck in what exists within the human being between birth and death, and thus arrives at that vague mysticism which, unfortunately, many confuse with true—but now crystal-clear—mysticism, attained in the manner I have just described: through the experience of the inner, concrete spiritual-soul human being. And because this confused, blurred mysticism is mistaken for what becomes crystal clear within, the pursuit of spiritual science is still so widely misunderstood today. That nebulous inner “I,” experienced only indirectly through the body, does not truly expand into a “world-I,” but rather dissolves into a general sense of the world. It is difficult to put this into words. That unclear, blurred mysticism is merely what the soul can experience with the aid of the body as an instrument. The soul must first be freed from the body; only then will the soul-spiritual be truly experienced. And the spiritual must be perceived, but not with the same powers of cognition with which the conceptual and lawful, the laws of nature, are perceived in the sensory world; for these are perceived with the aid of the physical instrument, which does not even accompany us through the gate of death. Natural laws have significance only between birth and death—not for nature itself, but for us. But when a person awakens the inner self and the spiritual world surrounds them, then they behold a concrete spiritual world in which spiritual beings exist, just as physical beings exist in the physical world. And then one does not arrive at what an otherwise quite commendable—yet limited—metaphysics leads to: through all manner of paths, one moves from a mere inkling of the spirit—which one embellishes with concepts—to pantheism, this nebulous construct that sees a universal spirit everywhere, just as if one were to see not individual plants and animals everywhere, but rather a universal nature. Whether one sees the will everywhere, as Schopenhauer does, or arrives at panpsychism through philosophical means, all these “pane” concepts arise solely because the spiritual and psychological realm operates solely through the instrument of the human mind. And, when all is said and done, mere philosophical idealism—which I have indeed tried repeatedly this winter to describe in all its grandeur—could come to nothing other than a conceptual grasp of the world; for the true spiritual world is attained only in the way I have indicated. But precisely when one now works out this concrete view—and I could only sketch it out aphoristically today—what I have said can truly be brought into full harmony with the scientific worldview and does not offend any religious sentiment. You will soon be able to read about this in my short treatise *The Task of Spiritual Science*, which will be published in the coming weeks. Everything I have described here is what first enables human beings to comprehend the world around them in all its manifestations. The spiritual world is, after all, present in the external world through its effects, but these effects can only be fully understood once one grasps the spiritual foundations underlying them. The soul-forming forces that underlie the world, the spiritual forces at work—only when one grasps these can one gain insight into what the world actually is.

[ 33 ] Goethe initially sought to see the weaving and surging of the spirit—which had remained unconscious to him—reflected in the external material world, and he could perceive this only in the animated material world through its metamorphosis. Indeed, when Goethe’s way of thinking is extended to body, soul, and spirit, a true science of body, soul, and spirit will emerge. Then such a science will also become possible—as I hinted at the day before yesterday—for understanding the individual national souls and for comprehending the historical course of human development unfolding on Earth in general.

[ 34 ] One could say that the longing to attain such a spiritual science has always been present. Today we call it anthroposophy; that is to say, I am attempting to justify this name for it. Anthroposophy, because anthropology views the human being in the same way one views him when one relies solely on his external organs. Anthroposophy arises when one allows the inner, awakened human being to direct itself toward that which is human. In earlier lectures, I cited a statement by Troxler from the year 1835, from which it can be seen how such an anthroposophy had been longed for. For in the era when Goethe’s worldview was at work—more or less unconsciously—in the better souls everywhere, there was already a longing and hope for such an anthroposophy. And as evidence of this, let me quote today another statement made by Immanuel Hermann Fichte—whom I also mentioned in one of my recent lectures—in 1860; it will prove to you that what is sought here today as a spiritual science was indeed something longed for and hoped for in the spiritual movement of the nineteenth century, even if it was somewhat subdued for the reason mentioned. Immanuel Hermann Fichte, the son of the great philosopher, states at the conclusion of his *Anthropology* in 1860: “But even anthropology ends with the conclusion, substantiated from the most diverse perspectives, that human beings, according to the true nature of their being and as in the very source of their consciousness, belong to a supersensible world. Sensory consciousness, on the other hand, and the phenomenal world arising from its vantage point—along with the entirety of sensory life, including human sensory life—have no other significance than to be the place in which that supersensible life of the spirit unfolds, as it introduces the otherworldly spiritual content of ideas into the sensory world through its own freely conscious act... This thorough understanding of the human being now elevates “anthropology,” in its final form, to “anthroposophy.”

[ 35 ] Anthroposophy, as understood here, is truly not something arbitrarily invented, but rather something longed for and hoped for by the finest minds of the nineteenth century. And I am personally convinced that it is based on a genuine insight into the spirit of Goethe’s worldview. When, a few years ago, the question arose: What should be the name of the society within which this spiritual research—as referred to here—is to be pursued? — I would therefore have preferred at that time to have named this society the “Goethe Society,” had the name not already been taken by another Goethe Society. It was named the “Anthroposophical Society”; but for good reasons, for you see: What appears today as spiritual science has long been yearned for and long hoped for, and it is that which today—I would say—is brought to the surface from subconscious depths of the soul, merely the fulfillment of those hopes that were truly absent even among the worst of minds.

[ 36 ] And such hopes were _ present in other ways as well, in a remarkable way and, I might add, stemming precisely from Goethe’s worldview—in the case of a mind that lived so completely, with his very soul, within Goethe’s worldview—namely, Herman Grimm. Here, something wonderful comes to light. Herman Grimm is, after all, a historian—specifically, an art historian. He attempted—truly drawing from Goethe’s spirit—not to say how he was able to grasp it, but rather how he was able to internalize it, imbue it with his own soul, and spiritualize it—to depict the course of historical developments in the spirit of such a Goethean worldview. What does he arrive at? In one passage of an essay he wrote about Macaulay, Herman Grimm sought to clarify for himself how one might understand the historical unfolding of events and the individual human being’s place within history. He attempted to formulate a concept regarding this: How does the human being fit into the course of history? He still hesitated, for when he wrote the essay—it was in the early 1870s—the time was not yet ripe to describe spiritual science in the way it can be described today—even though it is still often regarded as fantasy or something worse. He does not attempt to ascend to the level of the science of the spirit, but rather to form a thought—which he says he wants to allow, for the time being, to remain merely a fantasy—a thought through which he can imagine: how does the individual human being, from a historical perspective, fit into the universe?

[ 37 ] Here Grimm utters the following words: “It is conceivable that the spirit of a human being, detached from its physical bonds, might hover above the earth, much like a mere mirror reflecting what is happening.” — He even formally apologizes at the time, since there was no spiritual science yet: “I am not setting forth an article of faith here; it is merely a fantasy. Let us assume that, for some people, immortality takes this form”—we have it, the fantasy: immortality takes this form for spiritual science!—“so that, unhindered by what formerly blinded them, they float over the earth, and all the destinies of the earth and of humanity before the planet’s birth are revealed to them...” Herman Grimm must imagine life in the spiritual world between death and a new birth—at least hypothetically and imaginatively—in order to truly conceive of and grasp humanity’s place within history. And that is why he said: Well, how can we understand the individual human being? — “Well, suddenly, let’s dream on”—one must, of course, dream, but the dream becomes reality! —, “if this spirit, which surveyed things so freely, were compelled to reunite with the body of a mortal human being.” — That is to say, in order to conceive of history and humanity’s place within it, Herman Grimm necessarily had to think in terms of repeated earthly lives. Only in this way can he conceive of history.

[ 38 ] This is how deeper minds viewed history, the historical process, and humanity’s place within it. But as I said, such things flowed—I would say—beneath the prevailing current of the worldview development of modern times, which was more oriented toward the material and the physical, and will likely be brought to the surface from our time onward, for our time already senses that one must recognize the spirit and the soul once again. Indeed, one senses this most keenly precisely when one attempts to understand the historical development of humanity. And today it is natural to seek to understand the historical development of humanity, since we stand at such a significant juncture in this historical process. When one looks, on the one hand, at such a view of history—for which Herman Grimm found it necessary to conceive of repeated earthly lives—and then at another historical conception, one becomes truly aware of how far mere attachment to the material realm can lead, especially when one seeks to understand the historical development.

[ 39 ] I have in mind a certain mindset, about which I would now like to share a few brief remarks with you at the end, because it is, of course, very far removed from any understanding of the spiritual or the psychological. And yet this certain mind seeks to explain historical development—for example, why religions of various kinds arose, why there was initially polytheism, then monotheism emerged, and from monotheism Christianity arose, and from Christianity Protestantism emerged—externally, this certain mind seeks to explain all of this. Yes, he cannot, of course, rise to the level of recognizing that spiritual and soul forces are at work there. But based on what can be observed externally—albeit only in a rough way, when the external world, including the external world of history, is viewed solely through the instruments of the body—he now attempts to understand how the history of religions has developed. He says—the words themselves are not particularly important to the idea at hand, but I will read them by way of introduction: “As long as consolidation continues to advance, the organism that functions most cheaply at any given moment will be the one that prevails, and this tendency is just as evident in abstract thought as it is in commerce and war.” So, if one wishes to understand how a later state arises from an earlier one, one must, in his view, examine how the later state became more economical than the earlier one.

[ 40 ] And he applies this to religions: “The most striking evidence for this principle is provided by the development of religions. Monotheism is cheaper than polytheism.” In other words: People gradually sought to keep things simple in the spiritual world. So they moved from polytheism to monotheism, which is simpler! It does not require as extensive a cult as polytheism! So: “Monotheism is cheaper than polytheism. Consequently, the two great monotheistic religions were able to survive in Cairo and Constantinople—the two commercial centers of the early Middle Ages—while the Roman cult declined, just like the Greek and Egyptian cults and the various Persian religions.”

[ 41 ] So we have the later monotheistic religions because they’re cheaper! They have only one God, so they require a simpler form of worship—they’re cheaper! Then he goes on to say: “In the same vein, Protestantism is cheaper than Catholicism.” If you look only at the outward appearance, you can’t deny it: the Protestant church doesn’t have as many trappings, hasn’t yet developed as elaborate a ritual, and is cheaper.

[ 42 ] “That is why Holland and England”—and I’m not the one saying this!—“adopted Protestantism when they wrested trade with the Orient from Italy and Spain.” So because the Dutch and the English wanted it to be cheaper, they adopted Protestantism!

[ 43 ] “Atheism, after all, is cheaper than any religion, and it is a fact that all modern commercial centers tend toward skepticism, that the modern state itself seeks to reduce the costs of worship to a minimum.” Here we have the cost factor as a principle of progress for religions! However, this is yet another example of the perspective I outlined the day before yesterday: that one can see here how, within the various cultures, there is a striving either to conceive of the course of human development in more spiritual and psychological terms, or to focus more on what can be attained solely through external observations.

[ 44 ] The person who wrote this is Brooks Adams, an American, and Roosevelt wrote the preface to this book! I have nothing further to add to these thoughts; they show, so to speak, where the asymptote lies of what a worldview focused purely on the external must ultimately lead to. Certainly, what is grasped as spiritual and soul-related will often appear to a purely external view of the world as mere dreaming. Dreaming—yes, people today would even forgive one for dreaming from a materialistic point of view. I am convinced that if someone were to invent a machine in a dream—which is, after all, possible—and then construct it in external reality, people would believe in that dream. Of course, all it takes is the power to recognize as real, as actual, that which is found solely within the spiritual and soul realm.

[ 45 ] In the various lectures I have given during this difficult time of trial, I have specifically sought to explain that this spiritual power belongs to the principles of development and education inherent in precisely that evolution of worldview that has found expression through German spiritual life. And once one has gained an understanding of what spiritual science will be—and must be—for the future of humanity, and sees how, ever since the emergence of a German development, the educational principles of this German development have, let us say, “dreamed” their way toward this spiritual science, this provides a steadfastness and certainty that allows one to remain firmly rooted within the spiritual life of one’s own people—without needing to denigrate other spiritual lives or utter words of hatred such as those we heard again just the day before yesterday, in order to gain inner strength—or, so to speak, inner justification—in the rejection of what is foreign. German spiritual life may gain inner justification and inner strength by contemplating what lies within itself.

[ 46 ] And so, to conclude this lecture, let me offer—as something that may take root as a feeling in the soul—a comparison between what spiritual science seeks and what, in many ways, already exists as seeds within German educational life. The way in which the spiritual-soul aspect is anchored in German cultural life gives us an inner certainty that German culture cannot be overcome, for—based on the seeds it contains within itself—it is destined for greatness in the development of the world and humanity. We can say today: England possesses one-quarter of the land area of the entire dry world, the solid land; Russia one-seventh; France one-thirteenth; and the German essence barely one-thirtieth of the land area! Thus, those who have spread out over a quarter, plus a seventh, plus a thirteenth of the dry land stand in contrast to those who have spread out over barely one-thirtieth of the dry land. And so those who have spread out over this one-thirtieth—and who, with full awareness, must today face what stands on one-quarter, plus one-seventh, plus one-thirteenth—must immerse themselves in what can be experienced through an understanding of their innermost being. There, one can undoubtedly experience—out of inner necessity—that those who stand on one-thirteenth plus one-seventh plus one-quarter against those who stand only on one-thirtieth must not, therefore, overcome the latter, as they often claim today in their fanatical ideal of hatred. For that which lives at this one-thirtieth level seems, by its inner nature and essence, to be destined for what, within the earthly context, can still be called a long, long time—and, for the human imagination, a temporal eternity. This German essence carries within itself the assurance of its continued existence. And from this certainty arises what can be summed up in a few words: They will not overcome it, for if the world is to have meaning, they must not overcome it!