The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. The Freedom of the Soul in the Light of Anthroposophical Knowledge

[ 1 ] As you devote yourselves to spiritual life, it is necessary to become aware of why we, as human beings in the present day—by grasping our task as human beings in the present day—have the longing and the urge to cultivate spiritual life. This is because, in fact, since the latter part of the previous century, human beings have been able to relate to the higher worlds in a completely different way than was the case in earlier centuries. This is something that is, in fact, taken far too little into account: that the development of humanity brings forth ever new impulses from epoch to epoch.

[ 2 ] While it was relatively difficult in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries to gain an understanding of the spiritual world and spiritual life from within the human soul, the search for spiritual understanding will increasingly become a natural need of the human soul in the times to come. For since the last third of the 19th century, the gates to the spiritual world have, in a certain sense, opened, so that spiritual knowledge flows from the spiritual world to everyone who is willing to receive it. In this sense, we are standing at the threshold of a completely new epoch in human development. Anyone who today is drawn, as if by instinct, to anthroposophy, to the anthroposophical movement, senses precisely what is written in the signs of the times. The way we come together today to discuss the spiritual mysteries of existence would have been entirely impossible fifty years ago, because back then the waves of spiritual understanding had not yet begun to flow down to humanity. And we must understand that what we strive for and desire must become ever more widespread. To this end, we must also seek out the symptoms that characterize the entire current development of humanity. Today, there are still only a few people who are interested in spiritual life and have the urge to gain insights into the spiritual world. The vast majority still vigorously rejects any spiritual insight. Now we must delve into all that has led to such a state of affairs in our human development. Among the ideas that best reveal what has emerged as a symptom of the present era, the idea of freedom is perhaps the most important; it is the idea that can best illustrate the evolution of the past centuries.

[ 3 ] It is only natural that today, a person out in the world who is not seeking spiritual insights, but who nevertheless wishes to learn about the laws of the world and of human spiritual life, turns to official science, which in turn is dominated by the natural sciences. How, then, do people arrive at an understanding of the world? They turn to those who have learned to acquire a scientific understanding of the world and who may then have also set down in popular science writings how one should think about the human soul, nature, freedom, and so on. How could such a person arrive at any other idea than to inquire of such people?

[ 4 ] However, in the 19th century, official science—in its quest to become a worldview—underwent something very peculiar that is symptomatic. Yet it is precisely these most peculiar symptoms that people fail to notice at all. If one asks a leading figure in science whether there is such a thing as an idea of freedom, they will answer: It does not exist in the sense that the old worldviews understood this idea, for today we know that, for example, when a person consumes a certain substance, that substance immediately affects their brain, and then they can no longer use their brain properly. One sees that the human being is dependent on his brain; how then can he be free? — Or one might say: We demonstrate in rationalist psychology that a person afflicted with a mental illness, who cannot speak or recall speech sounds, exhibits abnormalities in his brain. How can one speak of freedom here, if the human being is dependent on his brain? — That is what conventional psychiatry says. For ordinary, trivial thinking, all these reasons carry a great deal of weight. Such things sound very plausible and gradually take hold of people’s thinking, and unless a spiritual worldview restores order to their minds, people will fall prey to a worldview that completely denies the idea of freedom.

[ 5 ] In this regard, science has come a long way. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, people were always looking for purpose in nature. People asked themselves: Why does the bull have horns? Why do apples grow on apple trees? — A wise divine providence, they said, had done this. It gave the bull horns so that it could gore, and it caused apples to grow so that humans could eat them, and so on. Enlightened minds of the 18th and 19th centuries mocked these utilitarian explanations. They said—ironically—: Why has the world allowed this or that tree to grow? — Because humans want to drink wine and need corks for their wine bottles!

[ 6 ] Such objections to the reckless notion that nature thinks just as humans do are entirely justified. With a human being, one can always ask: What purpose is he pursuing with what he does? — Now, nature had been humanized or anthropomorphized; an anthropomorphic worldview had been created that asked nature about its goals just as one might ask a human being about his. It was entirely justified that the 19th century resisted this anthropomorphism, which saw nothing in nature itself but had merely projected humanity onto nature, The minds of the 19th century wanted to observe nature directly, to ask nature itself. They did not want to project onto nature the kinds of purposes that humans have. This endeavor was entirely justified, for the old way of looking at things had carried human inner life into nature. And it is justified to say that one wants to observe nature as it is, apart from humans. It was said: We want to cast out of nature everything that belongs to humanity. — This then led in the 19th century to a picture of nature in which nothing of humanity remained. This gave rise to a materialistic natural science. Human concepts were pushed out of nature. In a certain sense, it was a proper reaction against the old doctrine of utility or teleology.

[ 7 ] Thus, a materialistic natural science emerged on the premise that nothing human could be found within it. At the time, that was a perfectly legitimate demand. But in the second half of the 19th century, it became clear that people were saying: We must also view human beings as a product of nature; we must view them in the same way as we view nature. This second demand—to view human beings according to the material conditions of nature—changed everything, for human beings had been expelled from nature. It was quite clear that human beings could no longer be found in this newly structured natural science. This developed over the course of the 19th century. What happened was that everything belonging to the human soul was distilled out of natural science—which is comparable to saying, for example: I have a bottle, and there is water in it. But I want an empty bottle, so I pour the water out of the bottle. —And then one is surprised that there is no more water in the bottle. With the bottle, everyone immediately realizes that the bottle is then empty. In the natural sciences, people did not realize the folly of wanting to understand humanity from a nature that has been emptied of humanity. I am convinced that a materialist gathering would only laugh at these simple observations, for they are not aware of this fundamental error. Among these misconceptions, the idea of freedom, immortality, and the like has suffered the most. For anyone who views the matter as it has just been described finds it quite natural that no insight into these concepts can be gained from natural science.

[ 8 ] The point is that it is indeed necessary, especially for a spiritual worldview, to come to the realization that while human beings, in their physicality, belong to the external natural world and its laws, they nevertheless carry within themselves, as souls, something that can only be found through spiritual means. In other words: If we wish to recognize the human being in his very essence, then we must not look at that which in the human being serves as his outer shell between birth and death, but rather we must look at that which, passing from incarnation to incarnation, is his actual, true essence. And it will be the task of anthroposophy to direct people’s attention to those processes of inner life that prove that there is such an eternal core of being within the human being, independent of the outer physical body.

[ 9 ] If one first considers human beings in such a way that one acknowledges that the true human being does not merely live between birth and death, but is that which places the human being within physical existence and which also remains after death, then one will recognize the necessity of elevate human knowledge and cognition to the realms where the human being participates, through its cognition, in that higher world to which it belongs by virtue of its soul-spiritual nature. But the moment the human being enters the higher worlds with its cognition, it encounters spiritual beings of the higher worlds just as it encounters the beings of the three kingdoms of nature here in the physical world.

[ 10 ] Now, it is the most unjustified view of all—one that Pascal, the famous Christian thinker, once expressed, and with which Maeterlinck, for example, so wholeheartedly agrees today that he says Pascal intended it once and for all. — Pascal says: We have nothing else from earthly existence, really, except that it hides eternity and infinity from us. — It must be said that this belief is very widespread. Wherever one listens, everywhere one finds a justified longing for the spiritual, the eternal, expressed in such a way that one says: Earthly existence is, after all, quite unsatisfying. Only in the vision of the eternal can a person truly find satisfaction. — But when one truly enters the eternal worlds, something else is added to Pascal’s statement. For when one enters eternity, one experiences that it by no means conceals earthly existence from one, but rather shows one that everything there is designed to lead back to earthly existence.

[ 11 ] The doctrine of reincarnation is sometimes met with the strangest objections. A lady to whom I explained the necessity of reincarnation in detail told me: “I don’t want to come back to Earth; I don’t enjoy life enough.” — I tried to make it clear to her that her feelings had nothing to do with the matter. She listened to me and then left. From the next train station, she sent me a postcard on which was written: “I really don’t want to be reborn!” — One might laugh at such an attitude. It is often encountered. One simply does not consider that the attitude does not matter at all; what one says here on Earth within this life does not matter. One simply does not know that it can be quite insignificant whether one wants to return or not. One does not know that in the time between death and rebirth, one carries within one’s soul all the forces that urge toward reincarnation, that wish to return. These forces are indeed present there. Everything there is geared toward ensuring that the forces one develops there can only be satisfied by re-entering earthly life. One senses that the soul has remained imperfect, that it has not developed certain qualities in its last earthly life. Here on earth, one may perhaps be indifferent to whether one is perfect or imperfect, but not in the life between death and a new birth. There, irresistible forces urge one to transform imperfection into perfection. One realizes that in many cases this can only be achieved through suffering and pain, and one knows that to attain perfection, one must take upon oneself the sufferings and joys of an earthly life. And so one enters a new incarnation with all one’s might.

[ 12 ] I have cited this because such a matter makes it very clear that our worldview must be all-encompassing; we must not draw conclusions about the desires and interests we have between death and rebirth based solely on life between birth and death, as it presents itself to our desires and interests. A person only learns to think in a thorough, energetic way when, through a spiritual worldview, they develop this comprehensiveness, when they learn to recognize that every thing must be viewed from different angles. Everyday life already compels us to do this. If someone says, “Fire is beneficial,” they are right. But if one says, “Fire is very harmful, for it burns cities and villages,” that is also true. The absolute statement, “Fire is good,” or “Fire is evil,” does not hold true. With regard to fire, everyday experience already teaches us to recognize these two sides. But when the same is demanded of beings of the higher worlds, for example, Lucifer and Ahriman, people are reluctant to accept this; instead, they ask: Is Lucifer a good or an evil being? Is Ahriman a good or an evil being? — People want definitions that give them an answer to such questions, and an answer that says, “Lucifer and Ahriman can be both good and evil,” is considered highly unsatisfactory. We do not demand this of fire. Here, practical experience helps us transform an incorrect judgment into a correct one,

[ 13 ] Among the various things currently circulating in Germany, for example, with the aim of attacking us, is this: it was recently said that: He—that is, Dr. Steiner—presents things in his public lectures as they appear to his perception, but he avoids giving specific definitions or judgments. — My dear friends, in a Greek school of philosophy, they once wanted to arrive at a very specific definition of what a human being is. After much back-and-forth discussion, they agreed to define the concept of a human being as a creature that walks on two legs and has no feathers. The next day, someone brought in a plucked rooster and said: So this is a human being, for it has two legs and no feathers. According to the definition, this must therefore be a human being! — The thing about “specific concepts” is that, upon closer inspection, they can be very far removed from reality. That is why the spiritual worldview, in particular, will accustom people to characterizing things from all angles. Natural science has also produced a fair share of one-sided thinking, and even those who wish to rise above natural scientific thinking with their spirit often display—despite all good will—a certain admirable naivety. In this field, one must truly develop, step by step, the will toward complete clarity.

[ 14 ] Just as I tried to show yesterday that people who can be regarded as thorough natural scientists—and whose names should not be disparaged—are unable to judge, particularly in the field of humanities research, so too, without being unfair, one should not immediately be taken aback by an idea that may be put forward with good intentions but is nonetheless unsubstantiated. Take, for example, the natural scientist William Crookes. He made many significant contributions to scientific research, yet at the same time he was someone who wholeheartedly dedicated himself to research into immortality. He sought to attain certainty regarding immortality using standard scientific methods, and he achieved remarkable results in his research into mediumship. Now, he once expressed an idea in such a way that one can also take this idea on board, go along with it to a certain point. If someone claims: that we see colors depends on the nature of our eyes, that we hear sounds is thanks to our ears, and if we had different sensory organs, the world around us would be quite different—then that is quite correct. Now, when William Crookes says: “Why do you deny the existence of a supersensory world, which is not there for you simply because you have organs that are not suited to perceiving it?”—this is also correct. He expresses this entirely valid idea more precisely by proceeding from the premise that: We perceive colors, we hear sounds, but of electricity and magnetism we see only effects. They are forces of nature whose nature man does not know, even though he applies them in practical life. One finds this everywhere, that people say these are forces of nature whose nature man has not fathomed. — Granted! In reality, it means nothing other than: For colors, humans have their eyes; for sounds, their ears, and so on; in the case of magnetism, humans do see that the magnet attracts iron, but they do not see magnetism itself—that which magnetism actually is. With electricity, they perceive effects of light and heat, but not electricity itself. — Now William Crookes says: What would the world look like to beings who could perceive electricity and magnetism directly with special sensory organs, but not light, colors, sounds, and so on? If we could not perceive light, for example, a crystal would be opaque to us, as would glass, and installing windows would then serve no purpose. They would only prevent us from having a connection with the outside world. If, on the other hand, we had organs for electric current, we would see a telegraph wire as a line of light stretching through the dark space; we would perceive flowing, luminous electricity there. If we had an organ for magnetism, we could perceive magnets in such a way that magnetic forces would radiate in all directions, and so on. — William Crookes now says: It is not unlikely that there are beings whose organs are attuned to vibrations that leave our organs unaffected. Such beings live in a world entirely different from ours. — And he then considers what this world would look like. Glass and crystal are dark bodies in this world; metals, since they conduct electricity, are somewhat lighter, interspersed with dark parts. A telegraph wire would be a long, narrow hole in a body of impenetrable solidity. A working dynamo would resemble a conflagration, and a magnet would even fulfill the dream of the medieval mystics of an eternal lamp that never goes out.

[ 15 ] William Crookes has analyzed this beautifully, and in this way one can already begin to grasp how absurd it is to claim that this sensory-physical world is the only one, that there is no other world besides our own, and that there cannot be beings other than human beings. All true! But there is something else to be said about this idea—and here begins the other side of the matter, which concerns the true spiritual researcher. Let us suppose we ask the question: What would it be like if, instead of eyes, human beings actually had these organs for directly perceiving electricity and magnetism; if this idea, which a person naively posits, were realized in us humans, what would that be like? Then we humans would find our way just as directly in the realm of electricity and magnetism as we now find our way in the realm of light and sound. But that would have a consequence. If humans had an organ for the direct perception of electricity and magnetism, they would possess, along with this organ—which would then serve as an organ of cognition—the power and the ability to kill or sicken any other human being. Such an organ would confer this ability directly.

[ 16 ] This is what spiritual science has to say about William Crookes’s idea, because spiritual science knows that human beings are permeated by forces that are related, here on earth, to magnetic and electrical forces. Now the question takes on a completely different meaning; now the naivety inherent in simply proposing such an idea becomes all the more apparent. While a person who lacks higher insight proposes the idea of looking into electrical and magnetic forces, for the spiritual researcher, what has just been said immediately follows from it. When we bring this to mind, we can finally realize that we must not remain on the surface if we truly wish to delve into and understand the wisdom underlying the order of the world. For this insight of the spiritual researcher shows us that it is very good for human beings that they do not possess the electrical and magnetic organs, and thus cannot harm their fellow human beings with them. In this way, their lower instincts and desires cannot initially find outlet in such a manner and become disastrous for them and the world. Human beings are surrounded by a world that, through a slow and gradual process of education, enables them to overcome these lower forces and only then to ascend to the higher forces.

[ 17 ] This is the whole purpose of Earth’s evolution: that through many Earthly lives, in manifold undulating waves of ups and downs, humanity gradually moves toward perfection—but in such a way that it learns to place its lower powers, instincts, and longings in the service of higher ideas and motives. He would not have been able to do this if, during the time when he first had to educate himself toward morality in the course of Earth’s evolution, he had been given organs that allowed him to perceive electricity and magnetism directly; for then the temptation would have been too strong to kill those people whom he disliked for whatever reason, and to leave only those people on Earth who were to his liking.

[ 18 ] Thus we see that it is really only a spiritual worldview that gives us the ability to view existence from all angles and to penetrate it more deeply. If a person truly becomes a spiritual researcher in the way that could only be briefly described in yesterday’s public lecture, they truly enter the spiritual world and then become aware that the higher hierarchies are there around them, just as the three kingdoms of nature are here around them. There we come to recognize certain beings whom we call the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings. What, then, are the Luciferic beings as forces? They are beings who, during the previous incarnation on Earth—in the ancient Lunar Age—remained behind in their development; that is, they did not enter into the full hardening of earthly existence that human beings have entered, but rather remained at a stage that lies prior to the materialization of the human being. As a result, their forces have remained more spiritual than those of human beings. In their development, they were only able to reach a stage that is more spiritual than the stage in which human beings undergo their earthly incarnations. By permeating human nature with their forces, they have caused this human nature to contain more of the spiritual than it should actually possess. If these Luciferic forces had not existed, human beings would have, in their astral bodies, forces that are subordinate to the conscious ‘I’ forces—unconscious forces that are personally spiritualized, as the Luciferic forces are—but not the kind of forces they now possess. In their lower nature, human beings have become more spiritual through the Luciferic influence than they would otherwise have been. Humanity would have received everything it was meant to receive on Earth from the purely progressive forces, but it would not be as spiritual as it is today. It would be without the Luciferic influence.

[ 19 ] But there is something else that human beings would not have either. Without this influence, human beings could not have had freedom, for if this Luciferic influence had not come, they would have carried out all their actions in such a way that, whenever they had to do this or that, they would have been able to look only to the motives that came to them in the form of ideas flowing in from the spiritual world. Whatever a human being might accomplish on Earth, he would accomplish it in such a way that he would look to the idea underlying it like an image showing him what must happen, without having to form this idea himself. It would be like an inspiration from the higher worlds, and this would affect him in such a way that he could not possibly resist it. He would follow the will of the gods as a matter of course.

[ 20 ] But now the Luciferic influence was present. Through it, human beings have come to a point where they cannot simply allow the motives for an action to flow into them, but must first prepare these motives themselves through their own work, drawing them from the depths of their soul. They must educate themselves toward moral ideas, and this self-education toward moral ideas would not be possible for human beings if the Luciferic influence had not come. For through this, something more spiritual has entered our astral nature. As a result, the idea of morality does not merely operate within the ego-consciousness—which would function in such a way that no human being would think of doing evil, since divine-spiritual beings would place the idea of good for an action directly before their spiritual eye—but the drives and passions also come into play. This idea could not arise in the ego-consciousness at all if its astral nature, individually shaped by the Luciferic influence, did not oppose it. This Luciferic influence has brought about the necessity for purification to take place within our nature, from the unconscious toward the conscious, so that we must work our way up to conscious moral ideas and motives in the struggle with ourselves, and then follow these ideas of our own accord. Thus it is Lucifer who enables us to follow moral ideas after we have first worked them out for ourselves.

[ 21 ] Now we can say: There is, after all, a force that rises from within us as we strive toward moral ideas. Where is this force within the human being, if the human being is not inherently moral but must educate themselves to be so; where is the force that works within the soul from the unconscious to present moral ideas to the human being? Where is it within us that we can draw it out of ourselves? — When a person becomes a spiritual researcher, when they are able to look into the spiritual world, then they also discover where the force is that generates moral ideas. It works continuously within the unconscious forces; it is within the human being, but in the ordinary world it is used for something entirely different. When we act in the ordinary world before we have set moral goals for ourselves, we act under the influence of our drives, desires, and instincts. But we can only act if we set our body in motion. In doing so, we are constantly working with unconscious forces, for who, unless they have studied spiritual science, knows what forces are at work when one bends an arm, puts one foot in front of the other, and so on? Without spiritual science, one cannot know what these forces are that are at work within the human being. No one knows how their movements, how everything that is at work there, enables them to be an active human being in the physical external world—how this comes about and what force is at work there. The spiritual researcher first becomes aware of this when they arrive at what is called imaginative knowledge. There, one first creates images that work by drawing stronger forces from the soul than are otherwise employed in ordinary life. Where, then, does this force come from that unleashes the images of imaginative experience in the soul? It comes from where the forces are at work that make us active human beings in the world, that allow us to move our hands and feet. Because this is the case, one can only attain imagination if one can remain at rest, if one can bring the will of one’s body to a standstill, if one can master it. Then one notices how this power, which otherwise moves the muscles, flows upward into the soul-spiritual realm and forms the imaginative images. One thus accomplishes a reorientation of the forces. Down there in the depths of the physical body, then, is something of our very innermost being, of which we feel nothing in ordinary life. By shutting out the physical, the spirit—which is otherwise expressed in our actions—rises up into the soul and fills it with what it would otherwise have to devote to the physical. The spiritual researcher knows that he must withdraw from the body that which the body would otherwise consume. For imaginative insight, therefore, the physical must be set aside. In ordinary life, we do indeed think, we do form ego-conscious ideas, but the force just discussed flows down into our organs within our organism during waking consciousness, becomes active there, and is generally not used at all to become spiritually visible in the soul.

[ 22 ] If we are not spiritual researchers, we have no control over this power; we must leave it down there in the subconscious, but this power does have an effect. It influences our moral ideas. When it flows up consciously, one uses this force to cultivate imaginative insight; when it is not consciously applied to this end, it serves the human being in their actions in the world. But human beings are not always in action, in activity; then this power, which lies down there, is released unconsciously, and it then also works toward the emergence of moral ideas. The same power, therefore, which moves the limbs, which spiritually permeates the body so that a person can grasp, walk, and so on, occasionally makes itself free in the human body and generates moral ideals. If one can admire a moral thinker somewhere who develops lofty ideals in solitude, one sees in these ideals the liberation of the very same forces that are at work in his hand movements and so on. To develop moral ideals, therefore, human beings must, so to speak, first come to rest.

[ 23 ] However, one can also develop moral ideals and then fail to follow them, for the powers we use to develop moral ideas are the same ones we use to motivate ourselves, and they can be applied to either purpose. Developing moral ideals does not in itself mean being moral. Only following them means acting morally. Moral ideals then emerge like memories. As long as one still has to educate oneself toward them, one must use the same energy to generate them that one will later need to follow them. We carry them within us as images of memory, as our moral standards. Therefore, a person must be educated in morality so that these images of memory may rise within them as their moral standards and they may follow them.

[ 24 ] Who, then, is it that works within us to conjure up these moral ideals from our very nature? It is Lucifer. He compels us to generate our moral ideas, our free morality, from within ourselves. It is thanks to Lucifer that human beings must generate their moral freedom from within themselves. Freedom does not exist in nature. Freedom is found only when one carries out, brings to fruition, what permeates the human being as spiritual-soul life. By penetrating into the lower desires of the human being, Lucifer became not only the tempter of humanity, but at the same time the creator of human freedom. Through Lucifer’s impulse, the human being was set free.

[ 25 ] If, then, we study the innermost nature of our physical body in the same way that the natural sciences study nature, and in doing so follow the laws of logic, we arrive at this source of human freedom. If someone were to say today: “I don’t believe in magnetism; I see only iron, and it is impossible for one piece of iron to attract another—that is pure fantasy”—this is refuted by practical experience. In the spiritual-soul realm, however, people do behave in such a way that they deny the existing forces. Luciferic forces are inherent in freedom. Without these Luciferic forces, we could not be free beings; we could never develop ethical impulses from the depths of our souls and act in accordance with them. One will only understand freedom when one understands that the physical-sensory nature of the human being is permeated by a spiritual-soul aspect that already manifests itself in the movement of the hand, but which can liberate itself—consciously in the imaginations of the spiritual researcher, unconsciously in the setting forth of moral motives. When we look into our inner selves, we also come to know the good side of Lucifer, and one can no longer say: Lucifer is an evil being—for he is at the same time also the bringer of human freedom.

[ 26 ] But human beings also transform other forces within their soul into physical actions, for example when speaking, by setting the speech organ in the brain in motion. Here we are not in action with the whole body, but by setting the organization of the physical body into motion from the spiritual-soul aspect, we perform an inner activity. When we speak, spiritual-soul forces intervene in the so-called Broca’s area, which is located in the third cerebral convolution, and then in the larynx. If we, as it were, draw this force—which acts upon the Broca’s area—out of speech, if we become conscious of it without using it for speaking, then we have grasped it in its spiritual-soul aspect. Let us suppose, for example, that you meditate in such a way that you immerse yourself in the forces of your soul that are otherwise expressed in speech, without speaking; you remain silent. When one thus holds back the soul within oneself, as it were, before it intervenes in the physical, one has grasped a force within oneself that leads to what is called inspiration, to spiritual hearing. This is the basis of the occult saying about so-called “silent knowledge.” What is meant here is a silence in which one uses inwardly the forces that would otherwise flow into the larynx. There they penetrate into the soul and make the soul inwardly active. Thus one enters the world of inspiration.

[ 27 ] This world of inspiration is, in essence, when the spiritual researcher first enters it, a world that is distinct from the world of mere imagination. It is a world through which other beings of the spiritual realms reveal themselves to us. In our present epoch, it is the case that, as if by a natural necessity, such forces are increasingly coming to the fore in human beings—even unconsciously—that otherwise find their expression only in the organs of the physical body and their inner activities.

[ 28 ] When the power that a person normally uses for speaking naturally comes into play within them, this power enables them to perceive something spiritual that corresponds to inspiration. This is different from perceiving images through imaginative insight with the eye of the true seer. This power, which works within our moral ideas, enables us to recognize the good side of the Luciferic beings. When we can perceive with this power, which is otherwise used for speaking, we enter the sphere for which, without any religious prejudice, the Gospel of John gives us the correct understanding by saying: “In the beginning was the Word.” — One hears this “Word” when one can dampen one’s own speech, one’s own physicality, to such an extent that one can hold back the power that otherwise speaks through the larynx before it reaches the larynx, thereby setting it free.

[ 29 ] So what was the obstacle that prevented people from perceiving the Word of the World from the very beginning? It was that they had to learn to speak! But as things develop further, language will indeed become something very strange. Language has changed considerably in the course of human development. If one goes back to the earliest stages of language, people were still directly connected to it. Even today, in rural areas, one finds that people there live and breathe much more within it, are intertwined with it. When they utter a word, they still feel that it contains something like a replica of what they see around them. The further human development progresses, the more abstract the word becomes; it becomes merely a sign of what it is meant to express. Language becomes increasingly inorganic,

[ 30 ] Language is becoming increasingly ornate, increasingly alien to human beings. Where does this come from? In this alienation of language from the inner meaning of words, the very forces that were once used to shape language are laid bare. This, in turn, is connected to the fact that a spiritual perception of the Christ Being will soon come about, precisely because human beings are gaining freedom of the language-forming power. In earlier times, language was closely intertwined with the human organism; now it is beginning to emancipate itself from it. Through this, the language-forming power is set free and will be used for the perception of the World Word, the spiritual Christ.

[ 31 ] Thus we have considered two aspects of human nature: how, on the one hand, human beings use the Luciferic force in the free creation of moral ideals, and how, on the other hand, through the liberation of the language-forming force—that is, through something they share with all of humanity, since these forces become free within all of humanity—they acquire the power to perceive Christ spiritually. We approach the Christ impulse by virtue of being members of the entire human race. To the same extent that language becomes increasingly abstract and the power of speech emancipates itself from the organism within human nature, human beings prepare themselves to truly perceive the spiritual Christ. This is the other side of human development. While human beings have become inwardly freer through the Luciferic influence, in that it gave them the opportunity to form their own moral ideas, they will, as if by an external force, acquire the ability to connect with the Christ. The Christ will approach humanity in such a way that He will pour out His being—as the embodiment of moral ideas—over the entire evolution of humanity. When the Christ-being becomes known to all humanity in this way, it will possess within itself something of the nature of moral motives. And here we touch upon something that shows that anthroposophy can rise to a level capable of uniting the highest sense of truth with the noblest moral motives. In my book *The Philosophy of Freedom*, which was completed twenty years ago, I attempted to show that true freedom exists in the human soul when a person follows the moral motives they have raised into their consciousness. What is the nature of these moral motives? They do not compel us; we follow them without compulsion. No motive that compels is moral. Motives that we follow out of compulsion are imposed on us from the external world. Moral motives are recognizable by the fact that we cannot be compelled to follow them. We must allow their value to permeate us of our own free will. A person commits to ethical-moral motives in a truly moral way only when he turns to them of his own accord, when they are not imposed upon him. This is the defining characteristic of moral motives. When humanity comes to recognize Christ in spirit, he will share this with ethical motives in that one can also deny him, that he compels no one to acknowledge him. The ancient gods still acted upon other powers of the human soul. They still reached people where they had not yet been led up to consciousness. Christ, however, will appear to humanity in his spiritual nature to the extent that humanity has freed itself in consciousness and has raised itself up to him. He will be there for all who wish to recognize him, without anyone being compelled to acknowledge him. He will appear before humanity in such a way that one can follow him freely. Just as a moral motive does not compel a person but leaves them free to follow or not follow that motive, so it will be with the Christ Being: that a person must be fully conscious of the value of this Christ Being if they wish to follow him. In the future, the recognition of the Christ-being will be, for every individual, at the same time a free act of the soul. This will be of infinite significance: that we may bring ourselves to embrace a truth that does not compel us to acknowledge it, but which we acknowledge only when we perceive its full value.

[ 32 ] Thus, the idea that anthroposophy offers us regarding Christianity—which is yet to emerge in its true form—will indeed bring a truth to humanity that is, in the most profound sense, a free truth. To this can be added the following, presented in symbolic form, which can then be further understood through meditation. The same word has been used twice in the development of humanity: once during the temptation in Paradise, when Lucifer said to humanity: “You will be like gods; your eyes will be opened.” This is the pictorial expression of the Luciferic impulse. With this, Lucifer poured spirituality into the lower nature of human beings and thereby gave them the possibility of attaining inner freedom through moral motives. And a second time it was said, this time by the Christ: “Are you not gods?” — The very same words! From this we see that it does not depend solely on the content of a word, but on the being who utters it, on the manner in which a word is spoken. Here we see the necessary connection between the deed of Lucifer and the deed of Christ expressed figuratively as well, as religious texts are wont to do.

[ 33 ] Lucifer is the bringer of personal freedom for the individual human being; Christ is the bearer of freedom for the entire human race, for all humanity on Earth. This is the significance of anthroposophy: it teaches us that the recognition of the Christ-being will take place in such a way that it is up to each individual to recognize Christ or not, just as it is up to each individual not to be moral.

[ 34 ] Christ is meant to be a free truth for the human soul. All other truths, which belong to all of humanity, compel us. But there are still truths lying dormant in the bosom of the world that are connected precisely with the Mystery of Golgotha; their recognition must be a free act of the human being, and they ennoble and refine this human being by being acknowledged of its own free will. So deeply does free truth—concrete, free truth—penetrate the human being as it develops on Earth. It becomes clear to us how truth, gained in freedom, belongs to the fundamental laws of human development.

[ 35 ] We have seen how freedom could only enter human development through the Luciferic influence, and that human beings first had to rise to the truth with the help of this Luciferic impulse. At that time, humanity was still compelled to accept the truth; one could only acknowledge the truth through compulsion. But humanity can regard as an ideal for the future the ability to develop toward freedom in the manner described here and to acknowledge truths freely. Much could be said about anthroposophy, but it will not be easy to find anything more intimately connected to our need for freedom than what has just been said about free truth—something that must speak in the deepest, noblest way of what lies in our human destiny.

[ 36 ] We only truly understand what it means to be human on earth when we know what stands before us as a conscious ideal: the ideal of freedom and truth, of the truth that will create an outward form for itself in freedom.

[ 37 ] It was necessary to speak to you about such ideas of freedom precisely at the moment when we, as the Anthroposophical Society, had won our own liberation from bonds that had become impossible for us to bear, in order to use these ideas to offer an intuitive suggestion of the kind of mindset one should have in a society that makes such ideals the goal of its existence.

[ 38 ] Now I would like to say to you most sincerely—as all our friends who have come from abroad to meet with our Swedish friends here will surely feel the same way— how deeply satisfying it is—and even more so at the conclusion of our event—that here in this country, what has been presented here has been met with such a deep, thorough understanding, and that such a thorough understanding has developed here for what we aim to achieve through the founding of the Anthroposophical Society. And truly, not to fight against anything, but to serve in the right way our freely conceived anthroposophical ideal—let this be chosen as a parting word. May the Society that you have founded among yourselves contribute much more in work and achievement to what we were able to discuss today in our lecture on the freedom of the soul in the light of spiritual scientific knowledge. May this work allow that which already exists there in the spiritual worlds—waiting and hoping—to flow down to us, which will surely come to fruition for us humans when, through our work, we accomplish what will become so immensely significant for the development of humanity’s spiritual striving. May this be the work of this very branch! With these words, I would like to bid you farewell.