The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Twelfth Lecture

[ 1 ] In order to complete our task as originally intended, we must now study the character of our own time in much the same way as we have studied the character of the four past post-Atlantean epochs leading up to the emergence of Christianity. We have seen how, following the Atlantean catastrophe, the ancient Indo-European period, the ancient Persian period, and the Egyptian-Chaldean period developed. And in our characterization of the fourth epoch—the Greek-Latin epoch—we have seen that, in a certain sense, humanity was working its way into the physical plane, and that humanity’s penetration into the physical world had reached a low point.

[ 2 ] The reason why this period—which we call, on the one hand, a low point in human development, yet which, on the other hand, is so appealing and appealing to today’s observer—is that this low point became the starting point for many significant events of the current cultural epoch. We have seen how, during this era of Greco-Roman culture, a union between spirit and matter was forged in Greek art. We have seen that the Greek temple was a structure in which the god could dwell, and human beings could say to themselves: I have brought matter to such a point that it is for me an imprint of the spirit, that in every part I can sense something of this spirit. So it is with all Greek works of art. So it is with everything we have to say about the life of the Greeks. And this world of artistic creations, into which the spirit was implanted, made matter so immensely attractive that here in Central Europe, the great Goethe sought to portray his own union with this cultural epoch in the tragedy of *Helena* within *Faust*.

[ 3 ] If, in the period that followed, culture had continued in the same direction, what would have been the result? We can illustrate this with a simple sketch. During the Greco-Roman cultural period, humanity descended to its lowest point, yet in such a way that it never lost the spirit within any aspect of matter. In all the creations of that era, the spirit was embodied in matter. When we consider a Greek deity, we see everywhere how the Greek creative genius imprinted the spiritual upon the external material form. The Greeks had indeed conquered matter, but they had not lost the spirit in the process. The normal course of culture would then have been to descend below that level, to plunge beneath matter, so that the spirit would have become a slave to matter.

[ 4 ] We need only cast an unbiased glance at the world around us, and we will see that, on the one hand, this has indeed happened. Materialism is the expression of this descent. It is true that in no other era has humanity conquered matter more than in our own, but only to satisfy physical needs. We need only consider the primitive means by which the gigantic pyramids were built and compare them with the momentum and soaring inspiration with which the Egyptian spirit was able to penetrate the mysteries of the world’s existence. We need only recall how, in the deepest sense, the Egyptians’ images of their gods were imprints and representations of what had taken place in the cosmos and on Earth in the past. Those who, in Egypt at that time, were able to look into the spiritual world lived within what had become invisible in the Atlantean epoch, but which had been a reality of Earth’s evolution in the Lemurian epoch. And those who did not become initiates—who belonged to the people—were able to participate in these spiritual worlds with their entire sensibility, with their entire soul. Yet the means by which one had to work outwardly on the physical plane were primitive. Let us compare this with our own time. We need only read the numerous eulogies of today from our contemporaries, which speak of the great progress of our time. There is, of course, no need for spiritual science to object to this at all. Humanity is achieving more and more through the mastery of the elements. But let us consider the matter from another angle.

[ 5 ] Let us look back to times long past, when people ground the earth’s grain with simple grinding stones and, at the same time, were able to gaze upward to the immense heights of spiritual life. The vast majority of humanity today has no idea whatsoever of the heights toward which those gazes were directed. They have absolutely no idea of what a Chaldean initiate experienced when he perceived, in his own way, the stars, animals, plants, and minerals in connection with human beings, or when he recognized healing powers. The Egyptian priest-sages were people whom today’s doctors cannot hold a candle to. People today cannot immerse themselves in these heights of spiritual life. Only spiritual science will be able to form a concept of what the ancient Chaldean-Egyptian initiates saw. What is presented today, for example, as an interpretation of the inscriptions—which contained profound mysteries—is merely a caricature of their original meaning. Thus, in ancient times, we find that people had little power over the means of working on the physical plane, but possessed immense powers in relation to the spiritual world.

[ 6 ] And man descends ever deeper into matter, using his mental powers more and more to conquer the physical plane. Might it not be said that the human mind is becoming a slave to the physical plane? And in a certain sense, it descends even below the physical plane. If modern man has expended immense mental powers to create the steamship, the railroad, and the telephone, what use are these to him? What a vast amount of mental energy has thereby been diverted from life in the higher worlds! The spiritual scientist, however, fully agrees with this; he does not wish to criticize our time, because he knows that it was necessary to conquer the physical plane, but it remains true nonetheless that the spirit has plunged down into the physical world. Does it mean anything special, anything more significant, anything at all to the spirit when, instead of grinding grain with millstones oneself, one speaks to Hamburg by telephone today to order what one needs, so that it can be sent by steamship from America? What immense spiritual power has been expended to establish a steamship connection with America and many other distant countries today! We ask ourselves: now that we have established such a connection between all continents, has not a vast amount of spiritual energy been expended merely to satisfy material life—our physical needs? And since everything is distributed throughout the world, not much spiritual energy remains for humankind—other than what has already been expended on the material world—to ascend into the spiritual world. The spirit has become the slave of matter. Whereas the Greeks saw the spirit embodied in their works of art, today the spirit has descended deeply, and we have evidence of this in the many technical and mechanical devices of our industry, which serve only material needs. And now we ask ourselves: has humanity truly descended too far?

[ 7 ] It would have happened, and it would have come to pass that humankind would have made the greatest and most powerful conquests on the physical plane in the future, had it not been for what we discussed in the previous reflection. At the lowest point of human development, the Christ Impulse instilled within humanity something that gave it the impetus for a new ascent. From that point on, the entry of the Christ Impulse into human development has constituted the other side of civilization. It has shown the way to overcoming matter. It brought the power through which death can be overcome. Through this, he further offered humanity the possibility of rising once more above the level of the physical plane. This most powerful impulse had to be given—an impulse that became so effective that matter was overcome in such a magnificent way, as depicted in the Gospel of John, in the baptism in the Jordan, and in the Mystery of Golgotha. Christ Jesus, who had been foretold by the prophets, gave the most powerful impulse in the entire evolution of humanity. Thus, humanity first had to separate itself from the spiritual worlds in order to reconnect with them through the Christ-being. But we cannot yet fully understand this unless we delve even deeper into the interrelationships of humanity’s entire development.

[ 8 ] We must point out that what we call the appearance of the Christ on Earth is an event that could only occur at the lowest point, when humanity had sunk that far. The Greco-Latin period lies right in the middle of the seven post-Atlantean epochs. No other time would have been the right one. Where humanity became a personality, God, too, had to become a personality for humanity’s salvation, in order to give humanity the opportunity to ascend once more. We have seen that it was not until the Roman bourgeoisie that the Roman became conscious of his personality. Previously, humankind had still lived in the heights of the spiritual world; now it had descended all the way down to the physical plane. And now it had to be led back up again by God Himself.

[ 9 ] We must delve even deeper into the third, fifth, and middle periods. We must not approach Egyptian mythology in a scholastic manner, but we must highlight the characteristic features that lead us deeper into the emotional and sensory life of the ancient Egyptians, so that we may then ask ourselves how this is being rekindled in our own time. We need to give this some thought.

[ 10 ] We have seen how all the powerful images of the Sphinx, Isis, and Osiris in Egyptian myths and mysteries were memories of ancient states of humanity. All of this was like a reflection in the souls, a reflection of ancient processes on Earth. Humanity looked back into its ancient past and saw its origins. The initiate was able to relive the spiritual existence of his ancestors, his forefathers. We have seen how human beings originally evolved out of a group-soul existence. We were able to point out how these group souls have been preserved in the four forms of the apocalyptic beasts. Human beings also evolved out of such a group-soul existence, but in such a way that they gradually refined their bodies and arrived at the development of individuality. We can trace this historically. Let us read Tacitus’s *Germania*. In the times described there—which reflect the conditions in the Germanic regions during the first century A.D.—we find that the consciousness of the individual is still largely absorbed into a sense of community, that the tribal spirit still prevails, and that the Cherusci, for example, still felt themselves to be members of their tribe. This consciousness is still so strong that the individual takes revenge on behalf of another member of the same group. It finds expression in the custom of blood vengeance. Thus, a kind of group-soul attachment still existed. This group-soul attachment persisted into the late post-Atlantean era. But all of this is merely an echo of the past. In the final period of Atlantis, group consciousness generally disappeared in essence. We have just described only the lingering remnants. In truth, people at that time knew nothing more of the group soul. In the Atlantean era, however, people were still aware of it. Back then, they did not yet speak of themselves in terms of “I.” This sense of group soul attachment was then passed on only to a limited extent to subsequent generations.

[ 11 ] As strange as it may seem, it is true that in earlier times, memory had a completely different significance and power. What, then, is memory today? Think for a moment: do you still remember individual events from your earliest childhood? There will be very few. But your memory does not extend beyond childhood. You will not remember anything that happened before your birth. That was not yet the case in the Atlantean era. Even in the early post-Atlantean era, people still remembered what their father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had experienced. And it made no sense at all to speak of a “self” existing between birth and death. Back then, memory extended back through the centuries. As far as the blood flowed down from the forefather to his descendants, so far did the “I” extend. The group “I” in those days was not to be conceived as spatially spread out among contemporaries, but rather as extending upward through the generations. That is why people today will never understand what echoes of this are found in the ancient patriarchal narratives: that Noah, Abraham, and so on lived to such an advanced age. They counted their ancestors back through several generations as part of their own “I.” Modern people can no longer conceive of this. In those times, it would have made no sense to name a single individual between birth and death. Memory extended upward through the entire ancestral line across the centuries. As far back as people could remember through the centuries, that was the extent to which they were given their name. Adam was, so to speak, the “I” that flowed through the generations in the blood. Only when one knows these real facts does one understand how such things stand. Within this line of generations, people felt secure. This is what is meant in the Bible when it says, “I and Father Abraham are one.” When the Old Testament believer said this, he felt all the more strongly that he was a human being within this lineage. This awareness was still present even among the earliest post-Atlantean peoples, and even among the Egyptians. People felt the commonality of their blood. And this also had a special effect on spiritual life,

[ 12 ] When a person dies today, they experience a life in Kamaloka, followed by a relatively long life in Devachan. But this is already a consequence of the Christ Impulse. This did not exist in pre-Christian times; back then, people felt bound all the way back to the time of their ancestral forefathers. Today, in Kamaloka, a person must wean themselves from the desires and longings to which they had become accustomed in the physical world; the duration of this state depends on this. A person clings to their existence between birth and death; in ancient times, people clung to much more. Back then, they were so closely connected to the physical plane that they felt themselves to be a link in the entire physical lineage. Back then, in Kamaloka, one did not merely have to endure attachment to one’s individual physical existence; one truly had to pass through in Kamaloka everything connected with the generations all the way back to the forefathers. One relived this in reverse. This gave rise to the profound truth underlying the saying: “To feel secure in Abraham’s bosom.” — The human being felt: After death, one ascends through the entire line of ancestors. And the path one had to traverse there was called: The Path to the Fathers. — Only when a person had traversed this path, only then could they ascend into the spiritual worlds; only then could they walk the Path of the Gods. In those days, the soul traversed both the Path of the Fathers and the Path of the Gods.

[ 13 ] Well, the cultures did not really succeed one another so abruptly. The essence of Indian culture has remained, but it has changed. It has persisted alongside the cultures that followed. Something similar also emerged in the Egyptian continuation of Indian culture, which took place at the same time. Today, it is all too easy to confuse what came later with what came earlier. That is why I have emphasized so strongly that I was only making allusions to the most ancient times. Among other things, the Indians have also adopted the concept of the Path of the Fathers and the Path of the Gods.

[ 14 ] The more a person had been initiated, the more he had freed himself from attachment to his homeland and to his ancestors, the more he had become homeless—the longer the path of the gods became, and the shorter the path of the ancestors. The one who clung to the fathers with every fiber of his being had a long path of the fathers and a short path of the gods. In Eastern terminology, the path of the fathers was called Pitriyana and the path of the gods Devayana. When we use the term “Devachan” today, we should be clear that it is merely a term we had to use. An ancient Vedantist would simply laugh at us if we presented him with the descriptions we give of Devachan. It is not so easy to grasp the Eastern way of thinking and perceiving. At times we must even defend these truths against those who claim to present Eastern truths. Many who today receive certain teachings presented as so-called Indian doctrine are unaware that they are being given a rather confused doctrine. Modern spiritual science, after all, need not claim to be an Eastern-Indian doctrine. In certain circles, people do tend to favor what comes from far away—from America, for example. But truth is at home everywhere. Antiquarian research belongs to the scholars, but spiritual science is life. Spiritual scientific truth can be explored at any moment and anywhere. We must keep this firmly in mind.

[ 15 ] Now, for the ancient Egyptians, what we have just mentioned was not merely theory but also practice. What was taught in the great mysteries of Egypt was also practical. There was a special significance to this, which we will come to understand as we delve deeper into them. The mysteries of the ancient Egyptians strove for something quite special. Today, people may easily smile at the idea that, at a certain time, the pharaoh was a kind of initiate, or when told how the Egyptians viewed their pharaoh and their state institutions. To the contemporary European scholar, it is particularly ridiculous that the pharaoh would bestow upon himself the title “Son of Horus” or even “Horus.” It seems strange to us today, doesn’t it, that a human being could be worshiped as a god; one cannot imagine anything more abstruse. People today simply do not know the pharaoh and his mission. They simply do not know what the pharaonic initiation truly was. Today, a “people” is seen merely as a group of human beings that can be counted. For modern people, a “people” is an insubstantial abstraction; reality consists solely of a certain number of people inhabiting a specific territory. This is not what the “people” means to those who view the world from the perspective of occultism. Just as the finger, as an individual limb, belongs to the whole body, so do the individual people of a nation belong to a national soul. They are, so to speak, embedded in it; only the national soul is not physical—it is real only as an etheric form. It is an absolute reality: the initiate can converse with this soul. For the occultist, spiritual experiences are also valid; in this context, the national soul is something entirely real. Let us consider, in very schematic terms, this relationship between the national soul and the individuals.

[ 16 ] If we think of individual human beings as small circles—the individual “I”s—then, from an external, physical perspective, they are merely separate entities. Whoever views them spiritually sees these individual personalities embedded, as it were, in an ethereal mist, and this is the embodiment of the national soul. Now, when an individual human being thinks, acts, feels, and wills something, he radiates his feelings and thoughts into the collective national soul. This soul is colored by this radiation. As a result, the national soul is permeated by the thoughts and feelings of individual human beings. And if we look beyond the physical human being and consider only his etheric and astral bodies, and then consider the astral body of an entire people, we see that the astral body of an entire people derives its shades of color from the individual human beings.

[ 17 ] The ancient Egyptian initiate knew this, but he knew something more as well. When the ancient Egyptian contemplated this national essence, he asked himself: What actually lives in the national soul? — What did he see there? He saw in his national soul the reincarnation of Isis. He saw how she had once walked among human beings herself. Isis was at work in the soul of the people. He saw in her the same effects as those emanating from the moon: these forces were at work in the soul of the people. And what the Egyptian saw as Osiris was at work in the individual spiritual rays; in them he recognized the Osiris effect. But he saw Isis in this soul of the people.

[ 18 ] Osiris was therefore not visible on the physical plane. Osiris had died to the physical plane. Only when a person had died was Osiris revealed to him once more. That is why we read in the Egyptian Book of the Dead how the Egyptian felt that in death he would be united with Osiris, that he himself would become an Osiris. Osiris and Isis worked together in the state and in the individual human being as its members. Now let us consider the pharaoh again and reflect that this was a reality for him. Before his initiation, the individual pharaoh received instruction so that he would not merely grasp this with his intellect, but so that it might become a truth, a reality for him. He had to be brought to the point where he could say to himself: If I am to rule the people, I must sacrifice a part of my spirituality; I must extinguish a part of my astral body, a part of my etheric body. The principles of Osiris and Isis must be at work within me. I personally must not will anything: when I speak, Osiris must speak; when I act, Osiris must act; when I move my hand, Isis and Osiris must be at work. I must embody the son of Isis and Osiris, Horus.

[ 19 ] Initiation is not a matter of scholarship. But being able to do something like that—to sacrifice oneself as the pharaoh did—is connected to initiation. For what he sacrificed of himself could be filled with parts of the collective soul. The part that the pharaoh relinquished—the part he sacrificed—was precisely what gave him power. For legitimate power does not arise from elevating one’s personality as one’s own, but rather from absorbing within oneself that which transcends the limits of the personality: a higher spiritual power. The pharaoh had absorbed such a power within himself, and it was represented outwardly by the uraeus serpent.

[ 20 ] Thus we have once again gained a glimpse into a mystery. We have seen something far greater than the explanations offered today when people speak of the pharaohs.

[ 21 ] If the Egyptians harbored such feelings, what must have been of particular importance to them? It must have been important to them that the collective soul of the people become as strong as possible, that it become as rich as possible in positive forces, and that it not be diminished. The Egyptian initiates could not rely on what people possessed through blood kinship. But what the forefathers had gathered as spiritual assets was to become the property of the individual soul. This is hinted at in the Judgment of the Dead, where the person is brought before the forty-two judges of the dead. There, the deeds of each individual are weighed. Who are the forty-two judges of the dead? They are the ancestors. It was believed that a person’s life was interwoven with that of forty-two ancestors. In the afterlife, the person was to give an account to them as to whether he had truly taken in what they had offered him spiritually. Thus, what the Egyptian mystery teachings contained was something intended to be applied to practical life, but also to be utilized for the time beyond death—for the life between death and a new birth. In the Egyptian epoch, human beings had already become entangled with the physical world. At the same time, however, he had to look up to his ancestors in the other world and had to cultivate what he had inherited from them in the physical world. Through this interest, he became bound to the physical plane, in that he had to participate in what the fathers had accomplished.

[ 22 ] Now we must consider that today’s souls are reincarnations of the ancient Egyptian souls. What, then, does what happened back then mean for the souls living today who experienced it during their Egyptian incarnation? Everything the soul experienced back then between death and a new birth—all of that has become interwoven with the soul, is within that soul, and has been reborn in our own era, the fifth, which brings forth the fruits of the third era—fruits that manifest in the inclinations and ideas of the present day, which have their roots in the ancient Egyptian world. Today, all the ideas that were planted as seeds in the souls back then are emerging once more. Therefore, it is easy to see that what people are striving for today on the physical plane is nothing more than a coarsening of the focus on the physical plane, as existed in ancient Egypt—only today, people have become even more deeply entangled in matter. We have already seen in the mummification of the dead a cause of what is lived out as a materialistic outlook on the physical plane.

[ 23 ] Let us imagine a soul from that time. Let us imagine a soul who lived back then as a disciple of an ancient initiate. Such a disciple had his spiritual gaze directed upward toward the cosmos through genuine spiritual vision. The way Osiris and Isis walked upon the moon had become a spiritual vision for him. Everything was imbued with spiritual-divine beings. He absorbed this into his soul. He will be reincarnated in the fourth and fifth epochs. In the fifth epoch, such a person will experience all of this again. It returns to him as a memory. What happens to it now? The disciple looked up at everything that lives in the world of the stars. This gaze comes alive again in some human being of the fifth epoch. He remembers what he saw and heard back then. He cannot recognize it because it has taken on a material character. It is no longer the spiritual that he sees, but the material-mechanical relationships arise again, and he recreates the thought in materialistic form as a memory. Where he had once seen divine beings—Isis and Osiris—he now sees only abstract forces without the spiritual connection. These spiritual relationships appear to him again in thought form. Everything arises again, but in material form.

[ 24 ] Let us apply this to a particular soul who, at that time, gained insight into the great cosmic connections; let us imagine that what was once spiritually perceived in Egypt arises before this soul. It arises again today within this soul, in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch: and we have the soul of Copernicus. The Copernican world system thus arose as a vision born of memory of the spiritual experiences in ancient Egypt. The same is true of Kepler’s world system. These individuals gave new life to these great laws from their memory, drawing upon what they had experienced in the Egyptian era. And now let us consider how something like this revives in the soul as a faint memory; let us consider that what such a spirit actually thinks was experienced by him in ancient Egypt in spiritual form. What, then, can such a spirit tell us? That it is as if he were looking back upon the land of ancient Egypt. It is as if he were now bringing this back in a new form when such a spirit says: “But now, since the first dawn has risen for me for a year and a half, since the full day has dawned a few months ago, and since the pure sun of the most wonderful contemplations has finally risen a few days ago, nothing holds me back anymore; I want to rave in holy fervor; I will taunt the children of men with the simple confession that I am taking the golden vessels of the Egyptians to build a tabernacle for my God from them, far beyond the borders of Egypt.” Is this not like a real memory that corresponds to the truth? And Kepler uttered these very words. We also find him saying: “The old memory pounds at my heart.” This is how wonderfully things are interconnected in human evolution. Many a meaningful, enigmatic saying gains light and significance when one senses the spiritual connections. Only then does life become grand and mighty; only then do people feel themselves part of a great whole, when they understand that the individual is merely an individual manifestation of the Spiritual that moves through the world.

[ 25 ] I have also pointed out before that the depiction by the Egyptians of their gods in animal form is a materialistic simplification of those deities, which has resurfaced in our time as Darwinism. Thus, I was also able to show that, if one truly understands Paracelsus, one can recognize that his medicine is a revival of what was taught in the temples of ancient Egypt. Let us consider a mind such as Paracelsus’s. We find a remarkable statement from him. Anyone who delves deeply into Paracelsus knows what a lofty spirit lived within him. He made a remarkable statement, saying: In many ways he had learned much; though he had learned the least at academic institutions, he had learned a great deal from the people and from ancient traditions during his travels through the lands. - We are unable to do more than point to examples of how profound truths still exist among our people—truths that are no longer understood at all, but which Paracelsus was able to draw upon. He said he had found a book containing profound medical truths. And which book does he name? The Bible! By this he means not only the Old Testament; essentially, he means the New Testament. One need only be able to read the Bible to find within it what Paracelsus found there. And what became of Paracelsus’s medicine? It is true that it is an ancient remnant of the ancient Egyptian healing method. But because he absorbed the mysteries of Christianity—the upward impulse—his works have been permeated with spiritual wisdom; they have been infused with the spirit of Christ. This is the path into the future. This is what all those who wish to increasingly pave the way back from the fall into matter in recent times ought to do. There is a way not to underestimate the great material advances. But there is also the possibility of allowing the spiritual to flow into them.

[ 26 ] Anyone who studies today what material science has to offer—who delves into material science and is not too complacent to immerse themselves in it—will also do well as a scholar of the spiritual sciences. There is much to be learned from purely materialistic researchers. We can penetrate what we find there with the pure spirit that spiritual science has to offer. When we penetrate everything in this way with the spiritual, that is Christianity properly understood. It is nothing but a slander against spiritual science when people say it is a fanciful worldview. It can stand firmly and securely on the ground—on the ground of all reality. And it would be only the most elementary beginning of spiritual science if one were to delve into a schematic representation of the higher worlds. What matters is not so much that the student of spiritual science merely knows these things and memorizes the concepts of spiritual science. That is not the only thing that matters. Rather, what matters is that the teachings and insights about the higher worlds bear fruit within the human being, so that the true teachings of spiritual science are carried into everything, including everyday life.

[ 27 ] It is not important to preach about universal brotherly love. It is best to speak as little as possible about it. Such a phrase is like saying to a stove: “Dear stove, your job is to heat the room. Do your job.” — So it is with the teachings conveyed through such phrases. It comes down to the means. The stove remains cold if I merely tell it to be warm. It becomes warm when it has fuel. People, too, remain cold in the face of exhortations. But what is fuel for modern people? The specific truths of spiritual teachings are fuel for people. One must not be complacent and stop at “universal brotherhood.” People must be given fuel. Brotherhood will then follow naturally. Just as plants stretch their blossoms toward the sun, so must we all look up to the sun of spiritual life.

[ 28 ] It is essential that we not merely accept such things—which we have looked into—as theoretical teachings, but that they become a source of strength within our souls. For every person, in every role in practical life, they can provide inspiration for what they have to accomplish. People who today look down on spiritual science with a certain scorn feel superior to its “fantastical” teachings. They see in it “unprovable assertions” and say that one should stick to the facts. — It could easily happen—if the spiritual scientist were made weak rather than strong by his life in spiritual science—it could easily happen that he would be shaken in his confidence and energy when he sees how precisely those who ought to understand spiritual science are the very ones who fail to grasp it at all.

[ 29 ] Our age is so quick to look down on what the Egyptians called their gods. “Insubstantial abstraction,” people say. But modern man is far more superstitious. He clings to entirely different gods, who represent authority to him. Precisely because he does not bow his knee before them, he does not realize what kind of superstition he is practicing.

[ 30 ] My dear friends, now that we have been together again, let us always remember that when we part, we should take with us not only a collection of truths, but also an overall impression, an emotional impression that most accurately takes the form known to the spiritual scientist as a “will impulse”: the impulse to carry spiritual science into life and not to allow anything to shake one’s conviction.

[ 31 ] Let us conjure up a picture in our minds. One so often hears: “Oh, those spiritual seekers! They sit together in their lodge, engaging in all sorts of fantastical nonsense. A person who is in step with the times simply cannot go along with that.” — Today, followers of spiritual science sometimes come across as a despised class of people, as uneducated and unschooled. Should this give rise to discouragement? No! Let us bring an image to mind and awaken the feelings associated with it. We recall similar situations in times past; we remember how something very similar happened in ancient Rome. We see how early Christianity spread precisely in ancient Rome among a thoroughly despised class of people. Today, for example, we look with justified delight at the Colosseum, which imperial Rome built. But we can also turn our gaze to the people who considered themselves at the height of civilization back then, as they sat in the circus and watched the Christians being burned in the arena and incense being lit so that the smell of the burning corpses would not rise.

[ 32 ] And now let us turn our attention to the ranks of the despised. They lived in the catacombs, in underground passages. That is where Christianity, which was just beginning to spread, had to hide. Down there, the first Christians erected altars on the graves of their dead. Down there, they had their miraculous signs, their sanctuaries. We are overcome by a strange feeling when we walk through the catacombs today, through the underground, despised Rome. The Christians knew what was in store for them. What was despised—the very first seed of the Christ impulse—was confined on earth to the underground catacombs. What remains of imperial Rome? It has vanished from the earth. But what lived in the catacombs back then has been exalted.

[ 33 ] May those who wish to become bearers of a spiritual worldview today retain the certainty of the early Christians. May the representatives of spiritual science live on, even if scorned by contemporary scholarship; may they know, however, that they are working precisely for what will blossom and flourish in the future. May they learn to endure all the hardships of the present. We are working toward the future. This can be felt with humility and confidence, without arrogance, standing firm against the misunderstandings of our time.

[ 34 ] With such feelings, we strive to make what has come before our souls something lasting. Let us take it with us as a source of strength, and let us continue to work together in a spirit of brotherhood in the truest sense!