The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] It is with great satisfaction that I welcome the fact that we are once again able to be together here for a while, and with no less satisfaction do I welcome the fact that, during the time when we were unable to be here together, our construction project has progressed so beautifully. To all those friends who are contributing to the tasks of this construction with the dedication that is so necessary for it, the deepest gratitude must truly be expressed on behalf of the endeavor that seeks to serve the spirit of our times. Let me express this today as a greeting: every step of progress in our work—which has once again unfolded over the course of months—is something very significant within our spiritual movement. Now, in these difficult times, when the fates of spiritual movements are, one might say, set upon the uncertainty of the future, we must above all keep alive our awareness of the eternal significance of what is happening precisely with a “work” such as the one taking shape here. Whatever the future may hold in store, what is important is that work has been done on such a work, that everything spiritually connected with this work has passed through a number of human souls and hearts, that it has been seen by a number of human eyes, and has thereby become effective in the course of human striving. We may hope that for the dear friends who are collaborating here, what has passed through their souls will also bear fruit in the most diverse ways out in the world. And it must bear beautiful fruit, because from the very beginning it has been connected with the spirit of progress and continued action, of the striving of our time.

[ 2 ] For example, I felt a deep sense of satisfaction when, during my first walk, I was able to pass by the house that has now been erected near the West Gate. It is significant that this house, too, stands here within our grounds. One might say it is significant that such a house could ever have been built. For it stands there as a living protest against all that is traditional in architectural style and design—things that are no longer suited to fit, as they are, into the course of contemporary development. This little house also stands there as a foretaste of something new. And the fact that understanding was found within our circle to erect such a new structure here is far more significant than one might initially think. That this house stands here is of great significance! Whatever objections may still be raised today against this architectural style—it is, after all, the architectural style of the future. And when one tries to understand the artistic longings of our time, one finds everywhere: a dark striving is present, but within this dark striving, one does not know where one is headed. One will learn that even in the darkness, one is already seeking what is being striven for here. One will learn to recognize that one must find one’s way into the forms that are developing here from the very heart of spiritual science. However shocking some aspects of our architectural forms may be, it will not be long before they are no longer shocking; they will appear as the natural outcome of the sensibilities and feelings of the present and the near future. And at present, when there is so much that is bound to cause us pain, there is nevertheless this uplifting aspect for us: that we may place within the so-indefinite destiny of the present what the future of humanity needs.

[ 3 ] Today and tomorrow, I would like to take the time to discuss with you a few things that can point the soul toward all that is rooted in the depths of that soul, is rooted in such a way that much of what is incomprehensible to one’s own soul arises from the depths of the human being—and in such a way that a person’s inner destiny depends on what surges up from the soul, which makes true self-knowledge difficult. The more one approaches this self-knowledge, the more some of the clouds that cloud life dissipate. So let us speak of human nature, of the indeterminate, often so indefinable aspects of human nature.

[ 4 ] I’d like to start with an example; there are many such examples in our time. As you know, for a long time people even took a certain pleasure in feeling like true children of our time, while calling this era the age of “decadence.” People actually felt that this was the proper thing to do, the proper way to behave in our time: to be “decadent”; and for many people, it served as a kind of gospel: If you don’t want to be a philistine, you must possess a certain degree of nervousness. Indeed, if one was not nervous, one was considered a thick-headed philistine or someone who was not in step with the times. This is truly how quite a few people felt in the very last decades. One was considered refined—at the very least—only if one was decadent; one possessed the new nobility, the genuine intellectual nobility, only if one was decadent.

[ 5 ] We will first examine a particular type of decadent as an example today, so that we can then build upon it to arrive at broader insights into worldviews. As I said, just one type. It should also be treated merely as a type; for there are numerous such cases in the present, and we might just as well examine another one.

[ 6 ] Today I would like to discuss the case of a man who died relatively young and who wrote two sensational books. The first is titled Sex and Character, and the second—which was actually published by his friends only after his death—is titled On the Last Things. I am referring to Otto Weininger, who was regarded by many as a true genius of our time. Sex and Character, a thick book he wrote, caused quite a stir, and the opinions expressed about this book vary widely. There are people who have held up this book as a new gospel, so to speak, born of the primal spirit of the present, who have claimed that the deepest truths of the present—even if one-sided, even if perhaps not fully articulated—have nonetheless been touched upon in this book, Sex and Character, by Otto Weininger. There are also others—let us say, for example, those who are psychiatrists by profession—who claim that the two books Sex and Character and On the Last Things belong in no serious library other than that of an insane asylum—and not in the library that the patients read, but in the one that the doctors read, so that they may study these two books as a case of typical modern madness.

[ 7 ] As you can see, it’s hard to imagine more extreme opinions. On the one hand, there is a reverence bordering on worship for a great, brilliant work; on the other, there is its condemnation as a product of utter madness. Admittedly, some of what is written in this book, Sex and Character, is curious. But it is surprising only to those who have not engaged deeply with the various ideas that have come to the surface in recent decades.

[ 8 ] Weininger says at the outset—not in these exact words, but I must briefly summarize a book this thick—that the way people have been viewed up to now is a philistine view, a pedantic view. And this philistine view, this pedantic view, has always believed that there are two kinds of people in the world: men and women. But such a prejudice—that there are men and women in the world—can only be held by a true philistine. Anyone who truly understands the world rises above this philistine judgment; for it is not true, Weininger argues, that there are men and women: there are only masculine and feminine qualities. He designates the masculine qualities—he expresses himself very correctly and diplomatically—as M, and the feminine qualities as W. But there is no individual in the world—according to Weininger—who is entirely M or entirely W. It would also be terrible if there were such an individual whom one would have to designate as entirely M or entirely W. For, says Weininger, what is a true woman? A true woman is not even a “something” at all, but rather the negation of “something”—she is nothing. Yet such individuals do exist—individuals who are not truly and rightfully in the world, but exist only as Maya. Those individuals who represent only W would not exist at all if they were merely W. The fact is rather that every human individual consists of M+W. Every human individual possesses certain masculine and feminine characteristics. If M predominates somewhat, the individual gives the impression of a man; if W predominates somewhat, the individual gives the impression of a woman. And because she still has a great deal of M within her—the woman—she, too, is something and not nothing. The fundamental character of a human individual now depends entirely on how much of the M or the W the individual in question possesses, and on the nature of that mixture.

[ 9 ] This, then, is how Weininger views humanity, and he says that everything depends on people finally bringing themselves to abandon this old prejudice—as if men and women actually existed. A great deal, he believes, depends on finally realizing that every human individual is something precisely because they possess masculine qualities—that they are a W with Something insofar as they possess masculine qualities, and a W with Nothing insofar as they possess feminine qualities. Every human being, then, is fundamentally composed of Something and Nothing.

[ 10 ] Well, this entire thick book is based on this view. And everything that takes place in the world—from the life of a single human being to the course of history—is now viewed from this perspective, viewed in a truly mathematical way. Thus, Weininger naturally considers the fundamental character of a human individual to be very strongly dependent on the quantity—the quantum, let us say, of W—that is mixed into the human individual, that is, this “nothing” mixed into the human individual. If a great deal of W is mixed in, a different human type emerges than if less of W is mixed in.

[ 11 ] Please forgive me for presenting some of Weininger’s line of thought. You might perhaps take the view that it would not even be entirely proper to present everything in this way; but one must not bury one’s head in the sand like an ostrich—one must come to understand these things; I am describing a type. Many people think this way, and many of those who think this way today simply aren’t aware of it. So please excuse me—the judgments I am about to express are not my own, but Weininger’s.

[ 12 ] So let us assume: If a great deal of W were mixed into a human individual—a certain maximum amount were mixed in—then we are dealing with a type of human being who appears in the form of a woman. If less of W is mixed in, then we are dealing with a different type, one that only outwardly resembles a woman. If a great deal of W is mixed in, then we are dealing with the type of the mother; if little is mixed in, then we are dealing with the type of the hetaera. Thus, two new fundamental characters of human individuality are established: the mother and the hetaera. The mother is the most backward type of humanity; she hovers entirely in the lowest planes of existence and can only become the girlfriend of the most philistine men; she can contribute nothing to cultural progress, for she comes closest to nothingness because she contains the greatest amount of W. If there is less W mixed in, one obtains the type of woman who can become the friend of brilliant men: the type of woman, the hetaera, as Weininger puts it, who can participate in the progress of human culture, who already lives in higher regions of existence.

[ 13 ] The other type of human individuals—men, of course, if one is to use the traditional term—can also be divided into those who have a great deal of M and those who have less of M. Those who have a great deal of M have the great advantage of being able to take on great guilt and commit great evil; those who have little M dwell more in the lower regions of existence; they have less capacity to do evil or to bring guilt into the world. What, then, is the greatest guilt that those individuals who have a great deal of M in their nature can take upon themselves? What, in fact, is the greatest guilt that exists, first and foremost within our limited physical, historical existence? Yes, you see, I told you before that, in Weininger’s theory, W is actually nothingness. But how can nothingness exist in the world? Why is nothingness—W—in the world at all? What, then, is this W, this nothingness, when one examines it more closely? It is nothing other than the guilt of man. Thus, the “W” has no real existence at all; rather, it exists solely through the guilt of “M,” so that women would not exist at all if men had not taken on the guilt of creating women through their desires. Woman is a creature of male guilt. That is the Fall of humanity.

[ 14 ] Yes, all of you who, outwardly, look like women—you must therefore imagine that, according to Weininger’s theory, you were essentially brought into existence through the fault of men, in some unknown, occult way! This is, one might say, expounded with great genius in the book—just as human genius has often been understood in recent decades. One critic even said of Weininger’s literary achievement: It proves that one can still derive some joy from contemporary life—this philistine, pedantic present—because there are minds such as Weininger’s!

[ 15 ] The book is not meant to be frivolous; it is not merely a work of fiction. The man who wrote it earned his doctorate at a university based on the first part of it—not the whole thing, but the first two or three sheets. So the first sheets were accepted as a doctoral dissertation at a university. He later revised it somewhat. Of course, when writing a doctoral dissertation, one must adapt even the most ingenious writing to a somewhat pedantic style, and he certainly managed to do that skillfully. So it was taken very seriously, and a number of theories were subsequently developed based on it. The book caused quite a stir, and not only that—it also had a major influence.

[ 16 ] Let’s take a closer look at this man. From the very beginning, Weininger was what one calls a gifted child; even in his earliest years, he had many clever thoughts—something many parents are so happy to see. He was a serious child who was preoccupied with intellectual matters. When he started school, one couldn’t even say that he didn’t do what the teachers expected—that goes almost without saying, doesn’t it?—but the teachers couldn’t quite figure him out! Weininger always had to do something different from what the teachers wanted him to do, especially once he entered high school. While the teachers, in his view, said very boring things, he read all sorts of things on his own. Others do that in practice, too; you let the teacher talk—after all, he says nothing other than what’s in the book, which you can then read more briefly at home; and, well, under the desk— —!

[ 17 ] When he wrote essays, he would sometimes elicit astonishment—and sometimes even disgust—from the teachers who graded them. Nor was he willing to put up with anything at school. When he eventually entered university, he proved to be a highly gifted individual who had his own ideas about much of what was being discussed there. He then received profound literary influences from a wide variety of sources. The various intellectual movements of the late 1890s had a significant impact on him. Naturally, the social circle in which he moved also had a profound influence on him. He lived in Vienna at the end of the nineteenth century in a circle of people of whom it was rightly said that many geniuses—though decadent geniuses—were among them. It was said of this circle, in which Weininger lived around the turn of the century, that the most gifted among them, by the time they were twenty, considered Raphael a fool. At twenty, of course, one is a full-fledged genius and reforms the world every day. He was part of that circle as well, but precisely as a brilliant, gifted person with ideas. For after all, what I have presented to you are, after all, ideas. One may consider them as erroneous as possible, but they are ideas. They are also new ideas.

[ 18 ] Weininger was particularly influenced by certain racial theories that have taken deep root in our time. He was Jewish and became familiar at an early age with the development of humanity as it relates to the Mystery of Golgotha; he devoted much of his attention to Christ. He then developed a very peculiar theory. To him, Christ was, on the one hand, a Jew; but precisely because he was a Jew, he was able to transcend Judaism most intensely. A complete transformation—as he believed he observed it in human development—made a deep impression on Weininger. And while he had previously defended his Jewish identity with a certain pessimism, he found bliss in the thought of converting, of becoming a Christian, of following Christ’s example, of undergoing a transformation. And so something like a modern Christ poured into his ideas—only that Christ had freed humanity from evil, from sin, from original sin; Weininger, however—he did not voice this, but one can see it reigned in his soul—believed that, because he had recognized something even deeper, he was to redeem modern humanity from all that is feminine, from all “W”; only then could human history continue to develop, once it had been redeemed from all “W,” not just from all sin; for if “W” no longer exists, then of course the guilt of “M” no longer exists either, since “W” is merely the guilt of “M.” And Weininger saw this as a kind of fulfillment of Christianity—that he, as a Jew, could redeem humanity from “W”; he regarded this, in a sense, as his mission.

[ 19 ] Amid such thoughts and feelings, he had reached the age of twenty or twenty-one. In a relatively short time, he wrote this enormous book, Race and Character, which draws on a great deal of contemporary scholarship and scientific knowledge and is permeated with ideas of the kind I have hinted at to you. Then came a time when he began to reflect on how a genius such as himself could not be understood in the present day. All those individuals, he believes, for whom the “W” plays any special role—that is, all those who, outwardly, go about the world as women, and also those who, outwardly, are not women but who possess a large part of the “W” within themselves—cannot understand Weininger from the outset; he must do without them. That, of course, is far, far more than half of humanity. “Women will never understand me,” Weininger told his father. They are completely sidelined.

[ 20 ] Then, once his book was published, he was seized by a kind of wanderlust. He felt compelled to travel, and so he went to Italy. There, one can make a curious discovery, for he wrote down his ideas on the journey to Sicily, and these ideas were later published by his friend Rappaport in the posthumous work On the Last Things.

[ 21 ] There are strange ideas in it—ideas even more radical than those in the book Sex and Character, ideas that are more radical, yet of a very, very peculiar nature; ideas that all bring to mind what we call imaginative insight; ideas covering virtually the entire scope of human life, expressed aphoristically. Admittedly, what is said there about illnesses, for example, is enough on its own to convince any doctor that Weininger was completely insane. But all these ideas, collected in the book On the Last Things, are actually like imaginative insight—paradoxical, but like imaginative insight. They are structured in the manner of imaginative insight. Let’s take one example: “Evil arises in humans,” he said, “and neurasthenia arises.” Let’s look at neurasthenia, Weininger says; indeed, we find that neurasthenia is growing everywhere out there, for the entire plant world is neurasthenia incarnate! It is the parable of neurasthenia. If that which lives in its proper place in the plant world comes to predominate within a human being, then the human being becomes neurasthenic, for the human being is, in a certain sense, a plant, and is neurasthenic to the extent that the plant-like nature gains the upper hand. Paradox! An idea that is by no means nonsensical, yet expressed paradoxically! One might say: Something that must be held within imaginative cognition has been dragged into intellectual cognition and thereby turned into a caricature.

[ 22 ] Likewise, he says, evil dwells within human beings; but let us look around: wherever there are dogs, evil dwells. The dog is the symbol of evil. Man is just as much a plant—and thus a neurasthenic—as he is a dog—and thus an evil being. It is, for example, entirely true that the whole of the rest of nature is concentrated within man; everything that is spread out in nature is within man; it occurs within him. — At the same time, deeply emotional insights emerge from Weininger’s soul: He stands on a fire-spewing mountain. I won’t even repeat what he compares it to; but he sees the setting sun and says something like this: This setting sun is only bearable here on this land, where one has the crater beneath one’s feet at the same time; otherwise, it would be disturbing.

[ 23 ] You see, this soul perceives things strangely: where other souls experience beautiful, magnificent feelings at sunset, he can only bear it when it becomes a contrast. And so many things are quite different in this soul than in other people. It is interesting how he describes what it is like to approach people and look into their eyes—how one essence gazes out from one eye and another from the other. He captures it precisely; he has imaginative visions, but he brings them to light in an insanely distorted way.

[ 24 ] Then he comes home; lately, he has been full of complaints about the world’s lack of understanding, wondering how long it will take before something like what he has to write can be understood by the world. The father is thoroughly convinced—even though his son moved away because he couldn’t live with the family—that he is dealing with a brilliant young man; he doesn’t notice anything unusual about him, even though he naturally disagrees with his ideas; but if all parents who disagree with their sons’ or daughters’ ideas were to consider them mad because of it—wouldn’t that be something?—then something beautiful would come of it in the world!

[ 25 ] Then, one day, he takes a room in Beethoven’s final residence. After living there for a few days, he shot himself in that very room, as if following a plan, having previously announced to a group of younger friends that he would shoot himself because that was precisely in keeping with his individuality. He was about twenty-three years old at the time. He shot himself in Beethoven’s death house.

[ 26 ] Yes, well, you see, we have a peculiar personality before us, and a typical one at that. There are many people of this sort, even if this is an isolated example in which certain ideas are developed in a particular way. There are many individuals among people today who are of the same disposition as Weininger. For the psychiatrist, it goes without saying that both the book Sex and Character and On the Last Things are crazy nonsense. The psychiatrist compares Weininger’s biography with the ideas he has put forward and, naturally, finds signs of abnormality everywhere. There is hardly a single person in whom such signs cannot be found. That really depends more or less on one’s subjective point of view. Only the psychiatrist doesn’t know that. But as I said, it’s easy to prove that there’s already an abnormality at play when someone resists his teachers as much as Weininger did, when he reads books under the desk while the teacher is lecturing on something entirely different. It is indeed a troubling trait when someone regards himself as a prophet; it is a troubling trait when someone rents a room in Beethoven’s death house specifically to shoot himself there! There are many such traits in Weininger, and one must say: A psychiatric treatise written about Weininger is entirely accurate, though one could write such a treatise about many people. But it is nonetheless entirely accurate. What stands out most seriously and significantly, however, is that one must nevertheless recognize a certain underlying trait, a certain fundamental character in the distorted, caricatured ideas found in Sex and Character and On the Last Things. One can safely admit that the whole thing is madness, but it must be of interest because of the way the ideas are formulated.

[ 27 ] If one seeks to understand this fundamental character through rigorous, spiritually-infused, sound science, one must say: We see how everything that expands out there in the world as the macrocosm is like a parable, just as the human being is a microcosm that carries within itself everything that exists outside. When the idea arises in Weininger—albeit in such a distorted, caricatured form—that the plant is neurasthenia incarnate and the dog is evil incarnate, it is, I would say, conceived according to the archetype of imaginative insight, as if someone were distorting true imaginative insight into a caricature; but it is conceived according to the archetype of imaginative insight. And yet, at the very core, this Weininger is a man utterly useless to life, a man who is in no way whatsoever a factor in life! For, when all is said and done, no one can learn anything from these two books, and it is only characteristic of our time that literary figures often find far more interest in such feats of strength than when imaginative insight confronts them as it ought to. Then it does not interest them. But when it confronts them in the form of insane ideas, then it interests them.

[ 28 ] So we are really dealing with imaginative insight that appears only as a distorted image. What is actually going on here? Since a character like Weininger’s is of no use in life, we must be able to get to the bottom of what is actually at play. What exactly caused Weininger to become this peculiar person? Yes, you see, if one had observed him—I’m saying this as a hypothesis, because I haven’t personally observed Weininger’s case, but what I’m saying as a hypothesis is certainly correct—if one had observed Weininger as a sleeping person during the times when he had sound sleep—which he certainly must have had very little of— then one would have found that in the “I” and the astral body—which were outside the physical body during sleep—there were indeed magnificent intuitions and imaginations from the spiritual world. If, then, we were to consider this “I” and this astral body separately from the physical and etheric bodies, we would perceive a magnificent, brilliant soul with wondrous intuitions and imaginations that are remarkably accurate. This soul, properly understood, could indeed be a great teacher for our time; but it could only act as a teacher by allowing the physical and etheric bodies to sleep, and the students would be permitted to perceive only what the ego and astral body of the person in question have to say to them while they are in a sleeping state. But Weininger himself was not yet ready to perceive this. He was not awake enough to perceive it; he had not undergone what is called an “initiation” in our time. So he himself knew nothing of what lived within his “I” and his astral body when he was outside his physical and etheric bodies. If Weininger were to have become a person who could mean a great deal to his fellow human beings today in a spiritual sense—how would he have had to become such a person? Well, he would have had to become someone who, through initiation, could have brought his great gifts—which could only emerge when the “I” and the astral body were outside the physical and etheric bodies—into clear vision outside the physical and etheric bodies, and that he could then have immersed himself in the physical and etheric bodies in order to use the spiritual powers and abilities one possesses in the physical and etheric bodies to contemplate what he perceived outside the physical and etheric bodies. In other words, if he had been here in the physical world while awake, he would have had to regard his great ideas as inspirations and imaginations. He would not have had to believe that he had to produce them—as one produces mathematical truths—from within the physical body.

[ 29 ] Instead, something else happened. Instead, the following happened: Imagine for a moment that this were Weiner’s physical body, this his etheric body, and this his astral body (a diagram is drawn). So if one were to observe this astral body with the “I,” one would see the most beautiful, most significant things. He himself possessed them. Now, then, this astral body and the “I” submerge into the physical body; they are now within it. Instead of the human being now being able to detach and look toward the astral realm, the astral realm presses itself into the physical body and becomes as alive within the physical body as is otherwise only the case with what a normal person possesses in the astral body. So whatever great imagination the astral body possesses—which should remain in the astral body—forces its way into the physical body. As a result, instead of the brain being structured as is normal for human beings of the present cycle, what should remain solely in the astral body as imagination is pressed into it as if into a soft mass of wax. Imagine that the brain is really like butter or wax. Instead of having the form it must have in a human being—so that the astral body, as it were, merely passes through it like air, leaving it unchanged—what is meant to remain in the astral body is instead pressed into the brain. This then expresses itself within the brain, and the human being, as a physical being, utters what he should be expressing as a spiritual being.

[ 30 ] And how does this happen? How does this astral body—as it were, forcing its way into the physical body—do what it is not supposed to do? How does this happen?

[ 31 ] Yes, my dear friends, there are good reasons why this is so; for what Weininger has expressed today as intuition and imagination are truly ideas of the future! Please do not be misled into thinking that everything discussed here regarding the masculine and the feminine is merely an idea of the future. These are not ideas of the future; they are already caricatured ideas that have been forced into the mind. But they are truly not merely this M+W. When observed in isolation, they are something truly magnificent—something that humanity today does not yet understand, but will only come to understand in the future, when something will truly be poured out upon humanity, through which people will no longer face one another merely as they do today—divided by gender—but through which they will face one another as more than just human beings. It is truly the case that, when one observes them in isolation and does not explain them by forcing them into the physical body, there is something of the future present in these ideas. But we must call all ideas “future”; for while you now live here in the twentieth century, you develop thoughts for the twentieth century; but in the depths, within the astral body and within the I, the ideas you will need for your next incarnation—which you must take with you as the fruit of this life—are already present. They are already present to some extent in every human being; they just do not come to the surface yet. Just as the seed is within the plant, so too are the ideas of the next incarnation already present, working there within the brain. What Weininger describes as this separate astral body and the “I” doing within the physical and etheric bodies is incorrect, for this should first be prepared during the time between death and a new birth and should help build the next body. It would be correct for it to press itself into the next body.

[ 32 ] You see what this is about: the present incarnation and the next one are not in harmony. They interfere with each other; they do not maintain a proper separation. The next incarnation is intruding into the present one. What would truly be something significant and right in the next incarnation is intruding into the present body, where it only causes disruption, and manifests here in distorted forms.

[ 33 ] I have often told you that we are now living in a time of transition, and there will come a time when the people living today will be reincarnated. Then these people will have to establish a different relationship with their previous incarnations. They will have to look back on their previous incarnation, unlike now, when everyone is conscious only of their present incarnation. This is in the process of being prepared, and irregularities arise as a result. And it is precisely in individuals like Weininger that this manifests as an irregularity. It manifests as an irregularity right down to its ultimate consequences. For why do we actually die? So that we can live in the next incarnation! Among the many things that make death magnificent is this: that we—I am now speaking of completed life courses—when we live in one incarnation, then pass through the gate of death, carry the fruits of life with us, and build our next existence with them, with these fruits. But dying is just as much a part of life as being born or growing. Just as a plant is, in a sense, killed by the seed within it—the seed causes it to wither; first the leaves grow, then the flowers, then the fruit, and then it begins to wither—so, in a sense, our next incarnation kills us. If our next incarnation is convoluted or twisted, it can also distort what it is rightfully meant to do: it regularly brings about the death of the present incarnation. The next incarnation that haunts the previous one: in Weininger’s case, it brings about death as a caricature, as suicide. This lack of harmony between what is supposed to rest in the present incarnation as the next incarnation, but instead haunts it—this is what brings about the caricature of death, suicide. You can trace this lack of harmony between the physical and etheric bodies on the one hand, and the ego and astral body on the other, in this human individual all the way to this consequence.

[ 34 ] I would like to say that, as illustrated in a specific example, we see something that lives on in many ways today. Only spiritual science will be able to grasp this. But what is important is to understand it and engage with it wherever it appears in the present. To the uninformed literary figure, Weininger may be the genius of the present; to the psychiatrist, he is a madman; but to those who wish to understand the times, who wish to immerse themselves in events with loving insight, he is the archetype of the transitional life of our age—one of the most interesting archetypes. It is important to approach life through such interesting examples. For this is where spiritual science becomes practical, because we live in an age in which life is becoming ever more difficult, in which people are increasingly preoccupied with themselves, in which self-knowledge will become ever more difficult, and in which the surging pressure of that which stirs and lives down below—and which often makes us seem so incomprehensible and prone to depression—becomes ever more oppressive. We must gain an understanding of what it means to be human from the insights of spiritual science.

[ 35 ] Let's talk more about that tomorrow and expand on it as a broader topic.