The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. The Twelve Senses of Man

[ 1 ] Before I turn to the subject of our discussion today, I feel compelled to say a few words about the great, painful loss we have suffered on the physical plane in recent days. As you know, Mr. von Moltke’s soul passed through the gates of death the day before yesterday. To give due recognition to what this man meant to his people, to the preeminent role he played within the great, fateful events of our time, and to the significant, profound impulses arising from human history that sustained his actions and his work—all of this will initially be the task of others; it will be the task of future history. In our own time, it is, of course, impossible to provide a completely exhaustive picture of all the matters that pertain specifically to our own days. But as I said, what others and history will say is not to be discussed here today, although it is the deepest conviction of the one speaking to you here that future history will have a great deal to say precisely about this man. But some of what stands before my soul at this very moment may and should be said here, even if it is necessary for me to express one word or another in a way that sounds more symbolic than literal—a meaning that will, after all, only gradually become understandable. Before my soul stands this man and this man’s soul as a symbol—born out of the development of our time—of our present and the immediate future itself, truly a symbol of that which is to happen and must happen in a very, very real, very true sense of the word.

[ 2 ] We emphasize time and again that it is truly not a matter of the arbitrary will of this or that individual to incorporate what we call spiritual science into the culture of the present and the near future; that this spiritual science is a necessity of our time; and that the future will not be able to exist unless the substance of this spiritual science flows into the process of human development. And here, my dear friends, lies the great and significant matter that we must now bring before our eyes as we commemorate the soul of Herr von Moltke. In him we had a man, a personality among us, who stood at the very heart of the most active, most outwardly active life of the present—that very life which has developed out of the past and has, in our time, reached one of the greatest crises that humanity has had to endure in the course of its conscious history—a man who led armies and stood at the very center of the events that form the starting point of our fateful present and future. And at the same time, we have in him a soul, a man, a personality who was all of that, and who sat here among us, seeking knowledge, seeking truth, with the most sacred and ardent thirst for knowledge that any soul of the present can possess.

[ 3 ] This is what should come before our soul. For in this way, the soul of the personality who has just passed through the gate of death becomes, alongside everything else that defines her historically, a towering historical symbol. The fact that he was among those who ranked among the foremost in outward life, that he served this outward life and yet found the bridge to the spiritual life sought by this spiritual science—that is a profoundly significant historical symbol; this is what can plant in our souls a sense of longing—not a personal desire, but one born of the impulse of the times, which can instill this feeling, this longing, in our souls: May many, and ever more, who are in his situation, follow his example! Therein lies the significant example that you should feel, that you should sense. No matter how little this fact may be spoken of in outward life, that is not what matters; indeed, it is best if nothing at all is said about it; but it is a reality, and what matters are the effects, not what is spoken. This fact is a reality of spiritual life. For this fact leads us to realize: This soul possessed within itself the sense of the correct interpretation of the signs of the times. May many follow this soul, who today may still be very far removed, in one direction or another, from what we here call spiritual science.

[ 4 ] That is why it is true that what flows and pulsates through our spiritual scientific movement has received from this soul just as much as we were able to give it. And we should keep this firmly in mind, for I have often spoken of it here. It means that in our time, souls are entering the spiritual world who carry within themselves what they have absorbed here through spiritual science. When a soul in the midst of its most active life passes through the gate of death and is now in the world of light—which we are to discover through our knowledge—when we recognize it there, when, in other words, what we seek is carried through the gate of death by such a soul, then it is through the union it has entered into with precisely such a soul that that it becomes a profoundly significant, active force in the spiritual world. And those souls who are here and understand me at this very moment will never again forget what I have meant here at this very moment regarding the significance of the fact that this soul now takes with it into the spiritual world that which has flowed through our spiritual science over the years, and that this becomes power and effectiveness within it.

[ 5 ] Of course, none of this can be intended to merely alleviate, in a trivial sense, the pain we feel over such a loss on the physical plane. Suffering and pain are justified in such a case. But suffering and pain only become great and significant—and themselves effective forces—when they are permeated by a rational understanding of what underlies the pain and suffering. And so please take what I have said as an expression of the pain over the loss on the physical plane that the German people and humanity have experienced.

[ 6 ] Once again, my dear friends, let us rise:

Spirit of your soul, active guardian!
May your wings bring
The imploring love of our souls
To the son of the spheres entrusted to your care,
So that, united with your power
Our plea may shine forth in aid
To the soul that seeks it with love.

[ 7 ] My dear friends, in recent times I have often spoken to you about how that which, as an occult substance, flows, so to speak, through human incarnation and human evolution, has found an outward expression—and I have, in fact, characterized this outward expression more precisely in my recent reflections— an expression that is already, in many cases, quite external today in all sorts of more or less occult or symbolic fraternities and associations. We now live in an age in which what can be gained as occult knowledge from the spiritual world must be brought to humanity in a different way—the way we have been striving to practice for years—and in which the other paths have, so to speak, become outdated. Certainly, they will continue to exist for a while longer, but in a certain sense they are outdated. It is of great importance that this very fact be understood correctly.

[ 8 ] Now, please recall that one of the names I like to give to our spiritual science is this: Anthroposophy, and that, yes, years ago I already gave lectures right here in this very place, which I called at the time “Lectures on Anthroposophy.” In our last discussion, I alluded once again to these lectures on anthroposophy on a certain occasion, specifically to the fact that I had emphasized at the time that human beings actually have twelve senses. And I explained last time that the nervous substance distributed throughout the human being in connection with his senses is organized according to the number twelve, because the human being is, in this deepest sense, a microcosm and reflects the macrocosm. Twelve constellations through which the Sun’s annual cycle passes, out there in the macrocosm—twelve senses in which the human “I” actually lives here on the physical plane! Certainly, things are somewhat different out there, in their temporal sequence: The Sun moves from Aries through Taurus and so on, until it returns through Pisces to Aries. The annual solar cycle passes through these twelve constellations. Everything—including what we carry within us and what we experience soulfully—is related to the external world through our twelve senses. I listed these twelve senses back then: the sense of touch, the sense of life, the sense of movement, the sense of balance, the sense of smell, the sense of taste, the sense of sight, the sense of warmth, the sense of hearing, the sense of speech, the sense of thought, and the sense of the “I.” Our entire soul life moves, as it were, within the sphere of these twelve senses, just as the sun moves through the twelve constellations. But the external comparison goes even further. Consider that during the course of the year the sun must pass through the constellations from Aries all the way to Libra; that the sun, as it were, passes through the upper constellations in the light of day and through the lower constellations at night; and that this passage of the sun through the lower constellations is initially hidden from the outer light. So it is with the life of the human soul within these twelve senses. The daytime senses are actually only approximately half of them, just as one half of the constellations are daytime constellations, while the others are nighttime constellations.

[ 9 ] You see, the sense of touch is truly something about which we can say that it draws a person into the nocturnal life of the soul; for through the sense of touch, we grope our way through the external world in a coarse, sensory manner. And just try to explain to yourself how little the sense of touch is actually connected to daily life—that is, to real, conscious soul life. You can see this from the fact that you can easily retain the impressions of the other senses in your memory, but try for yourself how little you can retain the experiences of the sense of touch in your memory. Try to see how little you remember how a particular fabric felt when you touched it years ago—indeed, how little you even feel the need to remember it. It sinks down, just as the light fades and sinks into twilight when the sun sets in the constellation of Libra, descending into the night, into the realm of the night constellations. And completely hidden, I would say, from the waking, open life of the soul are the other senses.

[ 10 ] The sense of life: In very few of the external sciences’ reflections on the soul will you find any mention at all of this sense of life. Usually, people speak only of the five senses—the senses of the day, of waking consciousness. But that need not concern us further. It is this sense of life that allows us to feel our life within us—but really only when it is disturbed, when it becomes ill, when this or that aches or actually hurts us; then the sense of life steps in and tells us: “It hurts you here or there.” When life is healthy, it is submerged in the depths, just as light is absent when the sun is in Scorpio—or, indeed, in any night constellation.

[ 11 ] The same is true of the sense of movement. This sense of movement is, after all, what enables us to perceive how events unfold within us when we set something in motion. Only now is external science beginning to address this sense of movement. It has only now come to realize that the movement our body performs is perceived through the way the joints press against one another—for example, when I bend my finger, one joint surface presses against the other. We walk, but we walk unconsciously. Underlying this is a sense: the perception of the ability to move, which is, in turn, cast into the darkness of consciousness.

[ 12 ] Take, for example, the sense of balance. We actually acquire it only gradually throughout our lives. But we don’t think about it because it lies in the darkness of consciousness. A child does not yet have it; it crawls on the floor. The sense of balance must first be acquired. It was only in the last few decades that science discovered the sensory organ responsible for the sense of balance. I have spoken of the three semicircular canals in the ear, which are perpendicular to one another in the three directions of space. If these are damaged within us, we experience dizziness—that is, we no longer have our balance. Just as we have the outer ear for hearing and the eye for seeing, so we have the three semicircular canals for balance, which are linked to the ear only through a special connection between sound and balance. But they are located inside the temporal bone cavity of the ear. They consist of three semicircles formed by small, tiny little bones. But if they are even slightly damaged, the ability to maintain balance is lost. We acquire sensitivity to this sense of balance only during early childhood; yet it remains shrouded in the darkness of unconsciousness. We are not aware of it.

[ 13 ] Then twilight comes and dawns upon our consciousness. But consider how little those senses that are still somewhat hidden—the senses of smell and taste—actually have to do with our inner life in the higher sense. We must immerse ourselves in bodily life in order to truly experience the sense of smell. The sense of taste is already a strong twilight for human beings; there it is already dawning into consciousness. But you can still, as it were, perform the soul experiment I mentioned earlier regarding the sense of touch: you will find it very difficult to recall the perceptions of the senses of smell and taste. And only when the soul life delves deeper into the unconscious does the sense of smell, so to speak, come into play a little in conscious soul life. You may know, for example, that there have been composers who were particularly inspired by coming into the presence of the same pleasant scent they had once experienced while creating a piece of music. The fragrance does not even dawn in their memory, but the same soul processes associated with the sense of smell dawn into full consciousness. The sense of taste—well, for most people that is already a faint glimmer. Yet most people demonstrate that the sense of taste still lies at least in the twilight of the soul’s life, not yet in the full light of day; for very few people are satisfied with the purely spiritual impression of the sense of taste—otherwise, when something has tasted good to us, we would be just as happy recalling it as we would be if we were able to taste it again. And that, as you know, is not the case for most people. They want it again; they are not content merely to remember what tasted good to them.

[ 14 ] But then, through the sense of sight, we ascend to where the sun of consciousness rises; we enter full waking consciousness through the sense of sight. The sun rises higher and higher. It reaches the sense of warmth, then the sense of sound, and from the sense of sound into the sense of speech. The sun is at its zenith. Between the sense of sound and the sense of speech lies the midday of soul life. Now come the sense of thought and the sense of the I. The sense of the I is not the sense for one’s own I, but for the perception of the I in the other—of course, it is perception; it is, after all, a sense! Consciousness of the “I,” of one’s own “I,” is something entirely different. I explained this in detail back then in the lectures on anthroposophy. What matters here is not that one is aware of one’s own “I,” but that one stands face to face with another human being and that the other opens their “I” to one. The perception of the other’s “I”—that is the sense of the “I,” not the perception of one’s own “I.”

[ 15 ] These are the twelve senses before which, so to speak, the inner life of the human being appears just as the sun appears before each of the twelve constellations. This demonstrates to you how the human being is, in the truest sense of the word, truly a microcosm. When it comes to such matters, our current science is in many ways still completely ignorant. Our current science still acknowledges the sense of sound, but no longer the sense of language, even though the spoken word, in its higher meaning, could never be grasped by the mere sense of sound alone. For this, the sense of language must be added—the sense for the meaning of what is expressed in words. And the sense of language, in turn, is not the same as the sense of thought, nor is the sense of thought the same as the sense of the “I.” To illustrate how our age is mistaken in this regard, I would like to give you an example. Eduard von Hartmann, who truly sought the truth with great intensity, begins his book Outline of Psychology right away with the following words—which he sets down as if they were self-evident: “The starting point of psychology is psychological phenomena—and specifically, one’s own, since only these are immediately given to one, and no one is able to look into the consciousness of another.” The opening sentences of a treatise on the soul by one of the most significant philosophers of our time assume that one denies the senses: the sense of language, the sense of thought, and the sense of the self. One knows nothing of them. And just think: here we have a case where sheer absurdity—the most utter nonsense—must become “scientific” so that one can deny these things! It is precisely when one is not confused by this science that one can very easily see the errors it commits. For this psychology says: You do not look into the soul of another; you merely interpret it from their expressions. So just think about it: one is supposed to interpret another person’s soul through their expressions! If someone says a kind word to you, you’re supposed to interpret it first! Is that true? No, it’s not true! That kind word has an immediate effect, just like color that affects your eye! And that which lives as love in the soul is carried on the wings of the word into your soul, just as color is carried into your eye. It is immediate perception; there is no question of interpretation here. Science must first shut us off in our egotism through its nonsense, so as not to draw our attention to the fact that, as we live with our fellow human beings—and I have said: it all comes down to the sense of the “I,” the sense of thought, and the sense of language—we live immediately with their souls. We live with the souls of others just as we live with colors and sounds, and anyone who fails to see this knows absolutely nothing about spiritual life. The most important thing is to see through precisely such matters. Today, elaborate theories are being propagated claiming that all the impressions we receive from other people are merely symbolic and are interpreted based on their outward expressions. But there is absolutely no truth to this.

[ 16 ] But now form this image in your mind’s eye: the rising of the sun, the appearance of light, and then the setting of the sun. This is the macrocosmic image of the microcosm of human soul life, which moves—not in a cycle, however, but as is necessary for human soul life—within the twelve constellations of soul life, that is, the twelve senses. Every time we perceive another person’s “I,” we are on the daytime side of the soul’s sun. When we dive into ourselves—if we were to perceive our inner balance, our movement—we do not perceive them, because it is the nighttime side—we are then on the nighttime side of soul life. And now it will no longer seem so improbable to you when I tell you: As the human being passes through the time between death and a new birth, those senses—because they then become spiritualized—that recede into his inner being and fade away here take on particular significance for him, while the senses that rise up here fade away more. Just as the sun rises, so does the human soul rise—I would say, between the sense of taste and the sense of sight—and sets again in death. If, as you can see from various descriptions I have given earlier—which you can read in the cycles—we find a soul over there in the time between death and a new birth, we find it—as is already hinted at in Occult Science—as if inwardly united with us. Not by standing opposite it externally and receiving the impression of its “I” from the outside, but through union do we perceive it. There, the sense of touch becomes entirely spiritual. And what now remains subconscious—I might say nocturnal—the sense of balance, the sense of movement—all of this, in its spiritualized form, plays the greatest role in the life between death and a new birth.

[ 17 ] It is truly the case that we move through the whole of life just as the sun moves through the twelve constellations. We enter our lives as our sensory consciousness, so to speak, rises at one pillar of the world and sets at the other. We pass these pillars as we move, so to speak, from the night side to the day side of the starry sky. This is precisely what these occult or symbolic societies always sought to point out, calling the pillar of birth—which a person passes through upon entering the life of the day side—Jakim. Ultimately, you must seek this pillar in the heavens. And what constitutes the external world during the life between death and a new birth are the perceptions of the sense of touch spread throughout the entire world—where we do not touch, but are touched; where we feel how spiritual beings touch us everywhere, while here we touch the other. During the life between death and a new birth, we live within that movement, so that we feel this movement just as if a blood cell or a muscle within us were feeling its own movement. In the macrocosm, we feel ourselves moving between death and a new birth; we feel the balance, and within the life of the whole, we feel ourselves to be part of it. Here, our life is confined within our skin; there, however, we feel ourselves within the total, universal life and feel ourselves maintaining our own balance in every situation. Here, the Earth’s gravity and our particular physical constitution provide us with balance, and we are generally unaware of it. At all times, we feel this balance in the life between death and a new birth. This is an immediate sensation, the other side of the soul’s life. The human being enters earthly life through “Jakim,” affirming through “Jakim”: That which is out there in the macrocosm now lives within you; you are now a microcosm, for that is what the word “Jakim” means: within you, the Divine poured out over the world.

[ 18 ] Boaz, the other pillar: entry into the spiritual world through death. What is summed up by the word Boaz means roughly this: What I have sought within myself until now—that strength—I will find poured out over the entire world; in it I will live. — But one can understand such things only by penetrating them through spiritual knowledge. In the symbolic brotherhoods, they are symbolically alluded to. They are alluded to more extensively in our fifth post-Atlantean epoch so that they are not lost to humanity entirely, so that people may come later who will also understand what has been preserved in the word.

[ 19 ] But you see, everything that manifests itself outwardly in our world is, in turn, a reflection of what exists out there in the macrocosm. Just as our inner life is a microcosm in the sense I have indicated to you, so too is the inner life of humanity, in a certain sense, formed from the macrocosm. And for our time, it is very significant to have, as it were, the two images of the two pillars I spoke of presented to us in our history. These pillars represent life one-sidedly, for life exists only in a state of balance between the two. Neither is Jakim life—for it is the transition from the spiritual to the physical—nor is Boas life, for it is the transition from the physical to the spiritual. Balance is what matters. And this is so difficult for people to understand. People always seek one side, always the extreme; they do not seek balance. That is why, in a sense, two pillars truly stand erect for our time as well, but if we are to understand our time correctly, we must walk right through the middle—neither imagining one pillar nor the other as the fundamental force of humanity, so to speak—but walking right through the middle! We really must grasp what actually exists in reality, not brood in that thoughtless existence in which today’s materialism broods. If you seek the pillar of Jakim today, you will find it in our own time; the pillar of Jakim is present in a very significant man who is no longer alive—who has already died—but it is present: it is present in Tolstoyanism.

[ 20 ] Consider that in Tolstoy there appeared a man who, in essence, wanted to divert all people from external life and direct their attention entirely to the inner life—I spoke about Tolstoy in the early days of our anthroposophical movement—who wanted to direct attention entirely to what takes place within the human being. So Tolstoy did not see the spirit in external activity—a one-sidedness that struck me as particularly characteristic when I spoke about Tolstoy back then—it was one of the very first lectures given here in the very early years. At that time, this lecture on Tolstoy could still be presented by a group friendly to us. Tolstoy understood the first two-thirds, but not the last third, because it dealt with reincarnation and karma; he did not understand that. — He exemplified this one-sidedness, this complete suppression of external life. And how infinitely painful it is to realize that he embodies such one-sidedness! Just imagine the immense contrast that exists between Tolstoy’s views—which dominate a large portion of Russia’s intellectuals—and what is now once again sweeping over from there. Oh, it is one of the most terrible contrasts imaginable! That is one-sidedness.

[ 21 ] The other, the Boas pillar, is also historically reflected in our time. It, too, represents a one-sidedness: the search for spirituality solely in the external world. A few decades ago, this manifested itself in America, where—I would say—Tolstoy’s antithesis came to light in Keely, whose ideal was to construct a motor powered not by steam, not by electricity, but by the very waves that human beings themselves generate through their voice and speech. Imagine an engine designed to be set in motion by those waves that one generates, for example, when speaking—or that a human being can generate in general through his or her inner life. It was still an ideal—thank God it was just an ideal back then—for what would have become of this war if Keely’s ideal had actually been realized at that time! Once that is realized, only then will we see what the harmonization of vibrations means in terms of external motive power. That is the other one-sidedness. That is the Boas Pillar. One must pass between the two.

[ 22 ] The symbols that have been preserved contain much, much more. Our time is called upon to understand these things, to delve into them. The contrast that will one day be felt between everything that is truly spiritual and that which will sweep in from the West once the Keely motor becomes a reality—that will be a very different contrast indeed from the one that exists between Tolstoy’s views and what is sweeping in from the East. Oh, there is no need to speak further on this!

[ 23 ] But it is necessary that we gradually delve a little deeper into the mysteries of humanity’s development, that we come to understand how what is expressed in human wisdom throughout the millennia—whether symbolically or otherwise—will one day become reality in various stages. Today we are merely groping in the dark, and in one of my recent reflections I drew your attention to how a man like Hermann Bahr—with whom I spent a great deal of time in my youth— is now, having reached the age of fifty-three and having written so many works, on the one hand groping his way through Goethe, searching tentatively, and admitting that he is only now beginning to grasp Goethe, and on the other hand beginning to comprehend that there is such a thing as a spiritual science alongside the external sciences. I have pointed out to you how the character of Franz in his novel Himmelfahrt (Ascension), which he has just published, represents, in a sense, Bahr’s own developmental path—how he has made his way through the external sciences. He studied under the botanist Wiesner in Vienna, worked with Ostwald in the chemistry laboratory in Leipzig, attended Schmoller’s seminar on political economy in Berlin, studied psychology and psychiatry under Richet in France, and worked with Freud in Vienna — of course, a person of our time would also have been with Freud in Vienna while exploring the various scientific sensations —, was with the Theosophists in London, and so on. You know, I did read the relevant passage to you: “Thus he explored the sciences—first as a botanist with Wiesner, then as a chemist with Ostwald, in Schmoller’s seminar, at Richet’s clinic, with Freud in Vienna, and immediately afterward with the Theosophists in London; and then the arts, as a painter, etcher...” and so on. Yes, but now do you see what belief this Franz—who is truly one of the groping souls of our time—is struggling to arrive at? It is very interesting: he stumbles and gropes, and then something dawns on him, which is then expressed in the words:

[ 24 ] “He was no longer in a state of intellectual innocence. But was there not, perhaps, a kind of second innocence—a regained innocence? Was there not a piety of the mind that recognizes its limits, of the humbled intellect; a faith of the knowledgeable; a hope born of despair? Have there not always been solitary, hidden, wise men, turned away from the world, connected to one another through secret signs, working wonders in silence with an almost magical power, in a higher realm above the peoples, above the creeds, in the boundless, in the realm of a purer humanity closer to God? Is there not even today, scattered and hidden throughout the world, a knighthood of the Holy Grail? Are there not disciples of a perhaps invisible, inaccessible, merely sensed, yet omnipresent, all-governing, fate-determining White Lodge? Was there not always on earth, so to speak, an anonymous community of saints who do not know one another, know nothing of one another, and yet influence one another—indeed, work together—merely through the rays of their prayers? Even during his theosophical period, such thoughts had occupied him greatly, but he had apparently only ever encountered false theosophists; “perhaps the true ones could not be known,” and so on.

[ 25 ] These thoughts occur to Franz after he has raced across the world, been everywhere I’ve told you about, and then returned to his homeland—it’s probably Salzburg we’re talking about. So, in his Salzburg homeland, these thoughts come to him. It may not be modest, and it is not meant to be: Franz wasn’t here with us; but one can perhaps understand a little why he wasn’t here with us. As he searched for people who strive for spiritual enrichment, he recalled an Englishman he had once met in Rome. He also describes this Englishman he met in Rome:

[ 26 ] “He was a clever man of mature years, from a good family, wealthy, independent, a bachelor, and a true Englishman—sober, practical, unsentimental, completely unmusical, unartistic, a coarse, cheerful hedonist, an angler, rower, sailor, a hearty eater, a heavy drinker, a bon vivant whose contentment was disturbed by only one passion: the curiosity to see everything, to get to know everything, to have been everywhere—really with no other purpose than to be able to say, with satisfaction, about whatever place was being discussed: Oh yes!, to know the hotel where Cook had put him up there, and the sights he had visited, and the people of rank or fame with whom he had associated. To travel more comfortably and have access everywhere, he had been advised to become a Freemason. Fr praised the usefulness of this organization until he believed he had discovered that there must be another similar, yet better-led, more powerful organization of a higher order, which he now absolutely wanted to join—just as, if there had been another, better Cook to be found anywhere, he would naturally have turned to him. He would not be dissuaded; the world, he insisted, was ruled by a very small group of secret leaders; so-called history was made by these hidden men, who were unknown even to their closest servants, just as those servants were unknown to theirs, and he claimed that, following the trail of this secret world government—this true Freemasonry, of which the other was merely a highly foolish copy with inadequate means—he had found its seat in Rome, specifically among the monsignors, though of course most of them, too, were unsuspecting extras whose throng served merely to conceal the four or five true masters of the world. And Franz still had to laugh today at the comical desperation of his Englishman, who now had the misfortune of never encountering the right person, but instead always coming across mere extras—yet he did not let this throw him off, but instead gained even more respect for such a well-protected, impenetrable society, into which he vowed he would eventually be admitted, even if he had to remain in Rome until the end of his life, and even if he had to take the habit or perhaps even undergo circumcision; for, having traced the invisible threads of a power spun across the entire world everywhere, he was not averse to holding the Jews in high esteem as well, and he would occasionally voice, in all seriousness, the suspicion that perhaps, in the innermost circle of this hidden world-web, rabbis and monsignors sat together in perfect harmony—which, incidentally, would have been of no consequence to him, if only they would let him share in their magic.”

[ 27 ] There you have a caricature of what I told you—how there is, as it were, an “empire within an empire,” a small circle that projects its power onto the others. Only the Englishman—and the Frenchman along with him—imagines it as a community of rabbis and monsignors; those are precisely the ones who aren’t part of it! But you see, he’s just stumbling his way through. Why is he stumbling, anyway? Ah, he recalls once again the Englishman’s fanciful ramblings:

[ 28 ] “And it was not until much later that it occurred to him to wonder whether someone who was not born with such abilities might also acquire them—whether one could train oneself to develop such powers, or learn them through practice. But the theosophical exercises soon disappointed him ...”

[ 29 ] He’s given that up! You see, in our time there’s a lot of fumbling and groping around. People like Bahr—as they reach old age, they come to realize this, and then they come up with grotesque ideas. One such grotesque idea is still present here. Yes, you see, Franz has now been invited to his hometown to stay with a canon. This canon is a very mysterious figure, a canon of the Salzburg Cathedral who holds great importance in Salzburg—the city of Salzburg isn’t named, but you can tell it’s there—greater importance than the cardinal; for the whole city no longer speaks of the cardinal, but of the canon: The canon—even though there are a dozen canons there—but people speak of the canon, so that Franz sometimes wonders whether he himself might be one of those from the White Lodge. You know, it’s easy to come to such conclusions. Well, Franz is invited to a gathering at the canon’s house. There are quite a few people there, and the canon is truly a very tolerant man—just imagine: he’s a Catholic canon, and he’s invited a Jewish banker, a Jesuit, Franz, a few others, and a Franciscan monk. It’s a lively luncheon. The Jewish banker, incidentally, is a banker to whom almost everyone owes some kind of heartfelt gratitude, but who does all this truly selflessly, for he generally doesn’t demand that people pay him back what they seem to be borrowing from him; rather, he simply wants to be invited every year by a gentleman like the canon—that’s what brings him joy. And soon the Jesuit and this Jewish banker are engaged in a conversation that becomes too much for Franz. He leaves because they’re now really making obscene jokes, goes to the library, and the canon follows him.

[ 30 ] “It”—the library—“was not large, but well-chosen. On theology, only the bare essentials: the Bollandists, a great deal on the Franciscans, Meister Eckhart, the Spiritual Exercises, Catherine of Genoa, the mysticism of Görres, and Möhler’s Symbolism. There was more in philosophy: the complete works of Kant, including the writings of the Kant Society; Deussen’s Upanishads and his History of Philosophy; Vaihinger’s Philosophy of the As If; and a great deal on the critique of knowledge. Then the Greek and Roman classics, Shakespeare, Calderón, Cervantes, Dante, Machiavelli, and Balzac in the original, but of German authors only Novalis and Goethe—the latter in various editions, his scientific writings in the Weimar edition. Franz picked up one of these volumes and found many marginal notes in the canon’s hand; at that very moment, the canon left the young monk and the Jesuit and approached him. He said, “Yes, nobody knows Goethe’s scientific writings.”

[ 31 ] It is characteristic what the canon finds in Goethe’s scientific writings—characteristic both in terms of what is actually contained therein and what becomes clear to the canon, as well as in terms of what becomes clear to him precisely because he is, in fact, a Catholic canon.

[ 32 ] “Yes, nobody knows Goethe’s scientific writings. Unfortunately! Suddenly, the old pagan—which he is said to have been, after all—looks quite different, and only then does one truly understand the ending of Faust.”

[ 33 ] The canon is right about that. You can't understand the ending of Faust unless you're familiar with Goethe's views on the natural sciences!

[ 34 ] “I could never have imagined that Goethe was just suddenly pretending to be Catholic, just for the sake of dramatic effect.”

[ 35 ] So, of course, the canon always hits him on the back of the neck, but that doesn't matter.

[ 36 ] “My respect for the poet—for every poet—is simply too great for me to believe that anyone, especially when speaking their final words, should put on a costume.”

[ 37 ] That’s what most people really believe—that Goethe was simply putting on a costume when he wrote the magnificent, grandiose final scene of his Faust! “But in his scientific writings, every page shows just how Catholic Goethe was ...”

[ 38 ] Well, the canon calls everything he understands and is comfortable with—and that needn’t bother us any further—Catholic.

[ 39 ] “... how Catholic Goethe was—perhaps unwittingly, and in any case without the true courage to embrace it. It reads as if someone, unfamiliar with Catholic truths, discovered them, so to speak, unexpectedly on his own, though of course not without a certain amount of contrivance and eccentricity; yet on the whole, nothing decisive, necessary, or essential is missing—not even that touch of superstition, magic, or whatever one might call it, which always remains so suspect to the true, born Protestant regarding our holy doctrine—not even that! I have often scarcely believed my own eyes! But once you’re on the trail of Goethe, the cryptic Catholic, you soon see him everywhere. His trust in the Holy Spirit—whom he, of course, prefers to call “Genius”—his deep feeling for the sacraments, of which there are still too few for him, his sense of the “spiritual,” his gift for reverence, and even more so the fact that he, in a thoroughly un-Protestant way, never content with mere faith, but pressing everywhere for the acknowledgment of God through living action, through pious works—and even that rare, supreme, and most difficult understanding that a person cannot be brought to God unless he brings himself to God—the understanding of this terrible human freedom to have to choose for oneself and to accept the grace offered, but also to be able to reject it—a freedom through which alone God’s grace becomes a personal merit for the person who chooses it and takes it for himself—all of this remains, even in his exaggerations and distortions, so thoroughly Catholic …»

[ 40 ] We would be particularly interested in what the canon calls an exaggeration; but the canon calls it Catholic.

[ 41 ] “... all of this—even in its exaggerations, even in its distortions—is still so staunchly Catholic that, as you can see,”—the canon, you see, addresses everyone he likes informally—“I’ve often been able to write in the margins passages from the Council of Trent where the same thing is stated, at times in almost the exact same words.”

[ 42 ] Imagine a Catholic canon who writes down resolutions from the Council of Trent alongside the words of Goethe! There you have what runs through humanity, and what one might call the core of spiritual life, which is common to all people. One must not take this as mere rhetoric, but must take it as it is intended. And then the canon continues:

[ 43 ] “And if Zacharias Werner said that a sentence in Elective Affinities converted him to Catholicism, I take him at his word. Which is not to say, of course,”—now the canon is going overboard again! — “that there is also a pagan, a Protestant, and even an almost Jewish Goethe,” — that doesn’t bother us at all; it suits us just fine — “and I certainly don’t want to hold him up as the model of a Catholic...”

[ 44 ] But what the canon has to say on this matter can be quite pleasing to us, at least—I don’t want to impose this on anyone else, but I find it quite appealing—: If he himself were Catholic, “which, incidentally, he still was more so than the shallow, pleasure-seeking monist of the woods and meadows that the New German schoolmasters parade under his name...”

[ 45 ] This, of course, refers to Richard M. Meyer, Albert Bielschowsky, Engel, and the New German scholars who have written their New German works on Goethe.

[ 46 ] So you see that, deep down, we are already doing something that reflects where the secret, dark longing of our time is headed—and where it must ultimately lead—a serious matter.

[ 47 ] And now, please recall something else. Do you recall some of the first lectures I gave in our branches during that fateful time, in which I spoke of a deeply moving occult experience—the experience that the soul of Franz Ferdinand, who was assassinated in Sarajevo, plays a special role in the spiritual world? Most of you will remember how I explained that his soul had, as it were, attained a cosmic significance there. And now this novel has been published; people have been buying it in recent weeks, and in it Archduke Franz Ferdinand is portrayed as a man who, under the guise of a simpleton, hired himself out as a servant to a Salzburg landowner—Franz’s brother—who was stubbornly stuck there and had to be beaten into working. When the assassination in Sarajevo takes place, he behaves in such a way that people beat him up again—this Blasl, this simpleton. Just imagine, he says, when he finds the news of Franz Ferdinand’s assassination posted on the church door: “Yes, that’s how he had to end up; it couldn’t be any other way!” Well, what else could people assume but that he was part of the conspiracy, even though the assassination took place in Sarajevo and Blasl was in Salzburg? But that doesn’t bother people who are investigating the matter: of course he’s part of the Sarajevo conspiracy. And since they find books written in Spanish in his possession, he’s obviously a Spanish anarchist! Now this Spanish booklet ends up in the hands of the regional court judge—or whatever he is—who, of course, doesn’t speak Spanish and who wants to wrap the whole thing up as quickly as possible after Blasl has been handcuffed and brought before him. He’s to go to Vienna, where they’ll decide what to do with this Spanish anarchist—he can’t very well make a fool of himself! He’s also an avid hiker, and this might be the last beautiful day: so let’s get going! He doesn’t understand any of it. One thing is certain, though: he is indeed a Spanish anarchist. — Then he remembers that Franz was in Spain—I’ve told you, Bahr was in Spain too—Franz can read this; he should make an excerpt from it for him. So Franz takes this manuscript, and what does he discover? The deepest mysticism! Absolutely nothing anarchistic—the deepest mysticism. There really is a great deal of beauty in this manuscript. So this Blasl, that simpleton, wrote it because his own mysticism had led him to the point where he wanted to renounce the world. Of course, I don’t mean to defend this path. Blasl is actually a Spanish infante. Here, the character traits of the Spanish infante converge with those of Archduke Johann, who once left the Austrian imperial house and set out into the world. He couldn’t characterize the Austrian, but you can see the figure through it all; that’s when he comes to say, “He’s a Spanish infante.” You can imagine what that means in Salzburg; you can imagine the situation in poor Salzburg! They had captured an anarchist, put him in chains—and now he’s a Spanish infante! But the man who knew the heir to the throne—what does he now say about the heir to the throne, now that he was already appearing as an infante and as a mystic?

[ 48 ] “The enchanted prince, now freed from the spell—still in his old clothes and in every other way exactly the same as before, yet different now that Franz knew it was a disguise—said with a smile: ‘Please forgive me for the deception, which, as far as I’m concerned, wasn’t really one at all. I have long since ceased to be the Infante Don Tadeo. If circumstances now compel me to impersonate him again for a time, this role is much harder for me to play. To myself, I truly was the old Blasl, and if I lied at all, I would have been lying to myself, not to you. I could not have known that I would cause you any inconvenience. I’m truly sorry. Of course, it was the silliest misunderstanding. I knew the heir to the throne well—though I’d never actually met him—and he was very dear to me; we were in contact, though not in the way people do here.” — “Here,” he meant in reference to contact on the physical plane. —“He had long since crossed the boundaries of earthly activity and already had one foot in the other realm of purely spiritual action. He now had to cross over completely; I knew that: in order for his mission to be fulfilled, he could no longer remain. Only from there will his deed be accomplished. I was only surprised that fate had hesitated so long with him. And when, stepping out of church that Sunday—where I had just been reassured anew through prayer—I found the anxious crowd, I knew at once that he was finally free. What is to be accomplished through him can only be carried out from the other side. Here, he could only promise it; his life was merely a foretaste. Only now can it come to pass. I could never have imagined him as a constitutional monarch, with parliamentarianism and all that nonsense. He was too great a figure for that. But now, in a single stroke, he has seized the initiative. This dead man will now truly live—and from the ground up. That is what I felt upon hearing the news; that is what my words meant.

[ 49 ] “This is how it was bound to end!” he said at the time of the attack.

[ 50 ] I must say, I was deeply and strangely moved when I read this passage a few days ago in Bahr’s Himmelfahrt. Compare what we now encounter in the novel with what has been said here, drawn from the reality of the spiritual world! Try to recognize through this just how deeply one is immersed in reality through spiritual science! How those who seek knowledge—even if only groping and stumbling at first—still walk these paths; how those who wish to embark on these paths come to understand, down to the finest details, what is being developed here. For it is hardly conceivable that what was said back then could have been revealed to Hermann Bahr by any of our members. But even if that had happened, it was not rejected but accepted.

[ 51 ] We do not want to put into practice anything that is merely a hobby. We want to put into practice what is a necessity of our time and what manifests itself most clearly as a necessity. And even if, in recent times, many things have been put forward that are nothing but slander, people in our time are very inclined to direct their sympathy precisely toward those who are being slandered. Today, people are far less inclined to direct their sympathy toward what is just; rather, precisely where wrongdoing occurs, it is believed that those who had done what was right must be the first to extend a hand, and that those who have committed the wrongdoing must be appeased. We experience this time and time again. We experience it time and time again right within our own community. My dear friends, today is not the right mood for this, and I am not concerned with addressing such matters. I only ever address these matters when there is a certain necessity to do so. But let me conclude with one more point.

[ 52 ] In the little book that has been published, I drew attention to how consistent the goals of our spiritual science have been from the very beginning of our work. And I have pointed out what a grave slander it is to speak of any shift, of anything that would contradict what we did at the beginning of our movement. You will find this characterized on page 37:

[ 53 ] “I referred to these statements by J. H. Fichte”—which seemed to me to be the expression of a modern intellectual current, not merely the opinion of a single individual—“in a lecture I gave in 1902 at the Giordano Bruno Society; at that time, when the beginnings were being laid for what is now known as the anthroposophical worldview,” and so on.

[ 54 ] There I recount how, before the German Section of the Theosophical Society was founded, I gave a lecture in Berlin in which I sought to provide the starting point for this movement—not based on Blavatsky and Besant, but rather on the newer spiritual life that is independent of Blavatsky and Besant—within the Giordano Bruno Society, in connection with Goethe. And yet today people dare to say that the name “Anthroposophy” was merely invented when, as they claim, we wanted to separate from the Theosophical Society!

[ 55 ] “It is evident from this that the aim was to expand the modern quest for a worldview into a genuine contemplation of spiritual reality. The aim was not to extract any particular views from the publications that were called “theosophical” at the time (and are still called that today), but rather to continue the quest that had begun with the modern philosophers; yet with them, this quest had become stuck at the conceptual level and thus had failed to gain access to the real spiritual world,” and so on. After all, these things also bring about favorable karmic conditions. And so today I no longer need to rely solely on the memories of the few individuals who, back in 1902, heard my lecture at the Giordano Bruno Society—before the German Section was founded—to present what I wrote a few weeks ago, so that you can now read it in print; rather, today I can provide you with documentary evidence of it. As things go, I have recently received—thanks to the kindness of a dear member, Miss Hübbe-Schleiden—the letters I sent to Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden at that time, before and during the founding of the German Section. These letters have now come into my possession following his death.

[ 56 ] The German Section was not founded until October 1902. This letter is dated September 16, 1902. There are a few lines in this letter that I would like to read to you. Please forgive me, but I have to start somewhere. At that time, there was much talk of joining forces with the theosophist Franz Hartmann, who had just held something like a congress. I really don’t mean to say anything against Franz Hartmann today, but I must read aloud what I wrote back then:

[ 57 ] “Friedenau-Berlin, September 16, 1902.

[ 58 ] ... Let Hartmann tell his people about his trinkets; for now, I intend to take our theosophy to where I believe I can find people capable of sound judgment. Once we have established a connection with “academic youth”—which, of course, has only been achieved to a limited extent so far!—then we will have achieved a great deal. “I want to build, not patch up ruins.” — That is how this theosophical movement appeared to me at the time. — “In the winter, I hope to hold a course at the Theosophical Library: ‘Elementary Theosophy.’ — I did indeed hold this course, and one of the lectures took place precisely during the founding of the German Section; the title of this course is listed here. — “In addition, I will hold an ongoing course somewhere else: ‘Anthroposophy, or the Union of Morality, Religion, and Science.’ I also hope to give a lecture at the Bruno Society on ‘Bruno’s Monism and Anthroposophy.’ These are just preliminary plans. This, in my view, is how we must press forward.”

[ 59 ] That was on September 16, 1902. Here you have the document, my dear friends, that can prove to you that these things are not merely being claimed after the fact, but that they actually happened this way. This is, after all, a favorable turn of events: at a time when so much slander has been directed specifically at our cause—and will continue to be directed at it more and more—we will be able to show where the truth lies.