The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifteenth Lecture

[ 1 ] A fundamental characteristic of the humanities-based approach we practice is not fully appreciated, even among ourselves. Indeed, it may not be so far-fetched for many—perhaps even among us—when this fundamental characteristic of our spiritual scientific endeavor is first pointed out in abstract terms, to think: “That goes without saying; how could it be otherwise!” — And yet, that is not the case. This fundamental characteristic to which I refer is that our spiritual science strives not only to point out in general terms that the spiritual world is a reality, that within the spiritual world individual spiritual beings live as realities, but also to show, time and again in specific instances, how what takes place around us and within us in our ordinary life between birth and death is a creation of the spiritual world. I say: One might hold the view that if one seriously turns the spiritual eye toward the spiritual world, it is already a given that what is all around us should be regarded as a creation of the spiritual world. But it is a long way from these general, entirely abstract, empty, and meaningless thoughts to penetrating to those spiritual realms where one grasps concretely, in each individual instance, how sensory reality is a creation of the spirit. A specific example will illustrate this for us today. An example that can at the same time demonstrate just how far humanity today is from even beginning to grasp what this means: The sensory creation around us, as we experience it between birth and death, is a creation of spiritual reality.

[ 2 ] To explain in detail the specific example we wish to examine today, I would like to remind you of what I was compelled to say yesterday in my public lecture. Today, we want to consider the matter more thoroughly and closely, with reference to certain practical applications.

[ 3 ] Yesterday, and on previous occasions here in this thread, I spoke about what I would like to call humanity’s journey toward discipleship in the course of its evolution. For if we—let us quickly recap what this is about—trace human evolution back to that catastrophe in the Earth’s formation which we call the Atlantean catastrophe, when the continent that once lay between present-day Europe and America sank, giving rise to the Western American and Eastern European worlds, we find, starting from our own epoch, five epochs of human history. The first post-Atlantean epoch, which immediately followed the Atlantean catastrophe as a cultural epoch, is the Proto-Indian culture. It extends far back beyond what can be ascertained through external historical documents. You will find it described, to the extent necessary, in my *Outline of Esoteric Science*. What is important for us today, however, is that we clearly bring to mind the following: In that cultural epoch, people lived in such a way that their spiritual and soul life actively participated in their physical development right up to their fifties. This “participation” is not to be understood in the same way as what we experience today. When one feels tired or old, this is not the kind of participation that a child experiences in its physical development during the first years of life. No, what we experience physically in later life today is not actually directly perceived by the spiritual and soul aspects of our being. We do not participate in the decline of our development. Precisely if we could physically participate in this decline, we would—by undergoing a process of regression—a collapsing, a mineralization of brain matter, a sclerosis of the body—learn an immense amount about the spiritual world. We would experience through our bodies what we must today experience through spiritual science if we are to approach it at all. In ancient Indian culture, people went through this downward phase of development well into their fifties. They remained children well into their fifties—only children who were growing old.

[ 4 ] Then came the second post-Atlantean culture, the Proto-Persian, which was also prehistoric; in this culture, people continued to experience physically what they were undergoing spiritually and psychologically until the end of their forties. Then, in the third cultural period, humanity as a whole had become younger again. During the Egyptian-Chaldean period, souls emancipated themselves from the body roughly between the ages of thirty-five and forty-two. Then came the age of Greco-Roman culture, during which the Mystery of Golgotha took place. During that time, human beings underwent a development with the body—up until the age of thirty-five—that today is experienced only by children. And today we are in the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch—we have, after all, been progressing through this cultural epoch since the fifteenth century—and up until the end of our twenties, we share in what the body experiences; we no longer experience that downward development at all. That is why human beings today, due to their natural disposition, are so little inclined to take the spiritual as such into their souls. In ancient times, the physical body itself provided the spirit; today, the physical body no longer provides the spirit. Therefore, the spirit must be taken in by the soul itself. The soul refuses to do this. In ancient times, it was absurd for a person not to believe in the spirit. To disbelieve in the spirit, one would have had to die before the age of thirty-five. If one lived past the age of thirty-five, one experienced—through the processes of descending development taking place within one’s body—something that presented itself directly as spirit. It was simply inconceivable that people in ancient times would not believe in the spirit. But as things have developed in this way, a moral impulse—a magnificent moral impulse of humanity—has been lost, insofar as its natural development is concerned. I ask that you not underestimate this magnificent moral impulse, which has been lost in a natural way and which must be rediscovered in a spiritual-ethical way. In those ancient times, children learned from their elders: Once one has passed the age of thirty-five, one experiences something as a human being that one cannot experience at a younger age. — Try to vividly imagine this feeling that children and young people grew up with: I have something to look forward to as I enter the phase of decline; I will then experience something I cannot know now, something my physical body simply cannot yet provide. — Imagine the feeling, which was quite different from today’s, in which one anticipated aging under such circumstances. There is, after all, something in life that is immensely different from today’s reality when one anticipates aging in such a way that one knows: “Something is coming that could not have come before.”

[ 5 ] Things have changed, but not in as abrupt a way as one might imagine. Isn’t it true that when one states a truth such as the one just alluded to, today’s intellectual habit immediately demands an “either-or” answer? But in reality, things are never such that one is dealing with an “either-or”; rather, one is generally dealing with a “both-and.” The spiritual does not arise of its own accord when one ascends once more into the development of old age. But when the spark of the spiritual is kindled in the soul in the way intended by spiritual science, then one does indeed benefit from growing old; then something does rise up from the declining body that particularly immerses itself in what one has learned and come to know through the path of spiritual science. If you remain today without any scientific contact with the spirit—and by “scientific contact” I do not mean in a technical sense, but rather in a way that makes it accessible to everyone, even the simplest of minds, for spiritual science can become popular if humanity so desires—then you will experience nothing special as you grow old; you will not know how to appreciate the process of growing old. Nor will you harbor any particular anticipation of growing old during your childhood and youth. The situation is different if the spark of spiritual insight is kindled in the soul not through natural development, but through educational development—a development that reaches out to the souls of the human community. Then, if what spiritual science can be for the soul in a living way is properly understood, it is precisely through this spiritual science that the feeling will be rekindled—now in a conscious way: I have something to look forward to as I grow old. Growing old means something. When I am thirty-five years old, what lives within me will be different from what it is now, when I am a young man of twenty. — This mood is something immense for the human soul—this mood that I would like to describe as the mood of a life filled with expectation, a life that simply knows: The creation that you experience within yourself—you must seriously regard it as a creation of the spirit.

[ 6 ] In today’s world, where people are unwilling to be moved by knowledge of the spirit, is human creation—even if one expresses it in a clichéd way—seriously regarded as a creation of the spirit? No, in practice, people certainly do not. For if they did, they would say to themselves: There is a purpose in growing old. The entire course of human life is a spiritual creation; we do not grow old in vain—the spiritual is constantly unfolding anew within us. That which arises within us, that which reveals itself from within, will always reveal new facets. — Living with anticipation, expecting something from growing older and older with each passing year—this is a consequence that arises from taking seriously the statement that what is around us and within us is a creation of the spirit. This is a state of mind—this life of anticipation—that must become ingrained in the entire educational system; it must flow into the very constitution that governs education. So that children, from an early age and as they become young men and women, and even later, come to feel: As long as we are young, the spirit does not yet give us everything; but as we grow old, it reveals more and more that which rises up in the soul. — We need only the inspiration from the knowledge of the spirit so as not to overlook, so as not to disregard that which seeks to rise up from the depths of our being—not because it is meaningless, but because it is meaningful that we grow old. Today, even the youngest people are annoyed when one still expects them to have such a feeling; for even the youngest people today feel ready to be elected to parliaments and state representative bodies—as a matter of course—even though they do not belong there, because the point is that one can only pass judgment on human social structures from the vantage point of a mature outlook on life. If one possesses even a hint of that spirit of expectant living, then one knows: what one takes for granted about external institutions, one cannot yet know vividly, nor can one know it intuitively, until one has reached a certain age.

[ 7 ] Let it not be said that spiritual science, when properly understood, is something abstract that has no bearing on practical life. As spiritual science is understood more and more deeply and accurately, it will have a profound impact on practical life, for it will become ingrained in our concrete experiences; it will cause people to grow up differently and to anticipate differently what each new year of their lives may bring. Spiritual science contains the most powerful educational catalysts, the most powerful educational impulses. It contains moral impulses that affect the human mind in a way quite different from the moral impulses of which people today boast; for it contains impulses that flow into the human soul from the whole meaning of life, from the universal meaning of life. By this I do not, of course, mean to say that everyone who knows spiritual science must immediately have all their ideals fulfilled. But that is how it is with morality in general: it hangs over a person initially as an ideal, and the person must incorporate it into themselves according to the impulse of their free will. But spiritual science as such contains these significant moral impulses. It is not merely a guardian of earthly morality, but a guardian of universal morality. One need only perceive these things in the proper light. Yet it is of the utmost necessity that a mindset connected to what I have just outlined gain access to people’s minds through spiritual science. For what has led our time into such a disastrous catastrophe is precisely that we are living in that transitional period which seeks to infuse something new into the human soul, and that people have not yet let go of their attachment to the old, that they are unwilling to embrace such new feelings—especially in the principles of education. In outward life, which springs from materialistic culture, one often finds that the very opposite of what the future so urgently demands of humanity is being cultivated. It is essential, above all, that this focus on the meaning of life as it unfolds be instilled in young people. And today, in this regard, everyone is still a young person, for spiritual science has been so little internalized that each person must first immerse themselves in what spiritual science can offer for the education of the human soul. For humanity must rid itself of the belief that by the age of twenty or twenty-five one is a fully formed human being who has developed everything and need only set out to live, and for whom life has meaning at most insofar as one applies what one has learned, or by enjoying life, and the like.

[ 8 ] If one looks more deeply into the context of life, what has been said strikes a very, very deep chord in the soul. It is that which developed naturally within human beings in ancient times, and which in more recent times is meant to develop within human sentiment through educational nurturing: a life filled with anticipation. Oh, it is a significant thing when a person, at the age of thirty, says to himself: In the future, simply by becoming five or ten years older, mysteries will be revealed to me through this process of aging; I have something to look forward to. — Just consider what this is and what it means to incorporate such a concept into education! But it is also something real. It is a flowing essence that comes to the fore in human beings, one that came to the fore of its own accord in ancient times and that must be nurtured in more recent times. For it is indeed there, emerging within the human being; just because we do not pay attention to it or care about it does not mean it is not there. Do not believe that you can escape becoming wiser—or receiving mysteries—as you grow older simply by ignoring these mysteries. The spirit is at work within you. You will all become spiritually rich! The only difference is that one person willingly embraces it, while another—having resolved to become a wise man as early as his twenties (which is especially common today in the so-called world of the intelligentsia)—rejects the idea of incorporating anything into his development at a later stage. The youngest people today—they write, they compose poetry, they do all sorts of other things. And what a range of feelings one has toward these things! How little sense do they have of the meaning of life, which consists in the emergence of human becoming as a creation of the Spirit. But the Spirit does not let up, even when the youngest people today write plays or feature articles and the like. It may still be the case that they possess the spirit; they simply know nothing of the spirit that is developing within them.

[ 9 ] What happens to this spirit, to the true spirit that developed of its own accord in ancient times? Yes, my dear friends, this spirit must dissipate. Truly, it does dissipate. It spreads throughout the spiritual atmosphere; it spreads throughout the aura of humanity. And this is something that must be repeated time and again to our present age, though of course it does not believe it—for the simple reason that it naturally regards it as fantasy when someone tells it: “Well, there is a young feature writer who thinks he is very clever. He knows nothing of the spirit, but the spirit passes into the aura of humanity; it dissipates. Yet his spirit is still there.” — The human aura today is completely imbued with such a dispersed spirit. This spirit must be held together again by human beings, precisely through the mood I have spoken of. For we are already very close to the point today where a terrible evil would inevitably arise if this dispersing spirit were to continue developing further and further. For it is a significant law of spiritual life that a spirit becomes something entirely different from what it originally was when it leaves its bearer. Please take this to heart: A spirit that leaves its bearer—that dissipates—becomes something entirely different than if it were held together by its bearer. It is essentially degraded, worsened; it is transformed in an Ahrimanic manner. And what is bound to emerge—what is not yet clearly evident today because we are at the very beginning of what could become terrible if we fail to take it into account—is a dreadful spiritual wasteland. People will search for something to occupy them, because they have allowed the spirit that should actually occupy them to be scattered. A search for something without knowing what one is seeking—this is something that is bound to spread more and more if this evil is not curbed. We can already see the beginnings of this today in many of the things I have already mentioned.

[ 10 ] What does a person do today if they have failed to pay attention to their spirit? They tend to search for something; only this search plays out in a peculiar way in a wide variety of areas. One very common area is this: people found associations—associations with good programs. All sorts of demands are placed before people. These may be quite sensible things, but they are mostly things that arise simply because one has remained stuck at the childhood stage and then allowed childhood ideas to become ossified, until, later in life, one unleashes them upon the world in the form of club programs. In this area, people today know an immense amount about what to do. But they know little about working spiritually in a real sense, about starting from a small core of spiritual activity, allowing people to join of their own accord, and keeping alive and vibrant that which is a human community.

[ 11 ] You see, this is the root cause of so many conflicts arising in our society—conflicts that remain latent for certain reasons, which I do not wish to discuss here. Wherever I myself can exert some kind of influence, I would like all statutes, all rules, and all laws to remain as far removed as possible. After all, why do we need statutes when a group of people comes together to cultivate spiritual life? One can draw up such statutes to present to the authorities; that is a different matter, it has nothing to do with the matter itself, but what really matters is what such statutes mean to us. The point is that such a community should be alive, so that every new person can bring something new into it. Such a community is meant to be alive; it cannot be defined by any set of statutes. After five years of existence, it may just as well be something different, just as a child at twelve is different from what he or she was at seven. But that is not the way of thinking in today’s world. The mindset of our time is to live as lifelessly as possible, to constrain everything as much as possible within abstractions. That is one thing. One could cite many examples, all of which stem from a lack of awareness of the disintegrating spiritual life. People search and search in every possible way. Just think how many women’s and other associations there are today in even a moderately large city! People search and search because they do not know that what they are supposed to hold onto is disintegrating. So they search because they lack precisely what they are not paying attention to. This searching means a desolation of life. This desolation of life would become terribly rampant if humanity did not come to understand that the mood of life I have just spoken of must arise.

[ 12 ] Isn’t that right? That’s exactly what people don’t want to understand today: life as it is! The principle that what exists is a creation of the living spirit certainly demands flexibility of experience. Never declaring oneself complete or finished is, in a certain sense, uncomfortable. But this is a necessity if humanity’s spiritual development is to move forward. And to understand spiritual science in such a way that it serves as the inspiration for a living life—that it truly attunes itself to what the times demand at humanity’s present stage of development—that is precisely the task of those who truly devote themselves to spiritual science: to live with humanity and to recognize what it must go through in the course of historical development, what it is destined to undergo.

[ 13 ] Try to gain an unbiased perspective on the events unfolding around you today. In fact, most people are oblivious to what is actually happening around us today. They simply think that conditions must return to what they were before 1914, and they wait for that to happen. They do not realize at all how profoundly significant the actual issue is, nor how necessary it is for humanity to work its way toward entirely new concepts that did not exist before. Understanding life within the context of historical development—that is, above all, the task of the spiritual scientific school of thought.

[ 14 ] This is one aspect: that the spirit dissipates because people pay no attention to it, as so often happens today. But only a part of it dissipates; the other part remains behind, accumulating in the human organism, yet it does not enter consciousness. It unconsciously permeates the organism. It enters the blood, the flesh; it works in the unconscious. Part of what a person is meant to become aware of in the course of their life dissipates, while part of it is driven down into the subconscious. What does it do in this subconscious?

[ 15 ] Let’s take a closer look at what specifically causes the mind to be driven, at least in part, into the subconscious. The cause of this is usually those flawed educational principles that encourage children and young people to become precocious, working toward ensuring that children remain as childlike as possible. How much credit do people give themselves today for encouraging a child to form their own judgments as early as possible, for raising the child in a manner different from that described in my booklet *The Education of the Child from the Perspective of Spiritual Science*? It is essential that the child live, above all, in pictorial imagery, and that intellectual concepts be introduced to the child as late as possible. Yet people today have very little appreciation for this. Even culture itself has little appreciation for this. But one should not seek to hold back this culture; spiritual science will never become reactionary. It will, of course, take external, material cultural progress into account; but this very external, material cultural progress demands that a counterbalance be created. Things were different for people in times when one did not learn to read and write in one’s youth. I do not wish to advocate illiteracy—please do not misunderstand me in that way—but today it is considered a misfortune when people are illiterate, for one sees the value of a human being not in what lives within the soul, but in what is imparted to the person, which ultimately has very little to do with the human soul itself. In those olden days, when writing was still a pictographic script, when each letter conveyed the mystery of a word, writing was something. But today: those little spirits that appear on white paper before the eyes of the youngest children and must be deciphered, those little spirits that the children themselves conjure up on the paper—what connection do they have to the soul? They are merely signs, arbitrary signs. One might imagine that the whole body of written work we have here could be arranged quite differently. Some people today already have a tendency to want this to be organized differently. After all, shorthand has also been developed. There is no necessity for what exists to approach people in this way; it could just as easily be entirely different. But this is a necessary requirement of earthly culture; it is the reactionary who opposes this, not the spiritual scientist. This was bound to happen, of course. But a counterbalance will emerge. Spiritual science will not regard the abolition of school as an ideal; but there will be a counterbalance in that children will receive pictorial instruction—the kind of instruction that contains hint after hint about the mysteries of the worlds, an instruction that connects the soul to the mysteries of the worlds through everything that is learned. Every animal, every plant, in its form, expresses something that is mysteriously connected to the whole of creation. The true freshness of spirit needed to perceive such expression is found only at a certain age. One must grow together with creation at a certain age.

[ 16 ] Let’s take an example here as well. I have previously recalled a phrase that my old friend Vinzenz Knauer, the historian of philosophy, often used. Speaking from his thoroughly medieval scholastic perspective, he said to those who claim that everything is made of the same kind of matter: Well, just look at the same matter as it exists in a wolf and in a lamb; lock up a wolf so that it cannot get any other food, and feed it only lambs. If the matter of the lamb were truly the same as the matter of the wolf, then the wolf would gradually have to become a lamb—or at least it would have to become as docile as a lamb. — This clearly indicates that in that which forms the wolf—we call it the group soul—in that living essence that determines the wolf’s structure, there lies something different from the structure of the lamb. To look merely at matter, not at formed matter, not at matter imbued with spirit, does not lead into creation but away from it. The animals around us are structured in the most diverse forms. Just look at how, in this respect, human beings differ from animals. Consider very carefully what is actually at work here. Human beings, apart from minor differences that lie in the various racial characteristics—which can be significant but do not come close to the differences between animal genera—are uniformly formed across the earth. Why? Because the balance within them is different from that in animals. The animal is the result of the balance that develops in relation to the Earth. You can see this in the monkey, which is almost upright in its posture. Animals are designed such that their spine is actually predisposed to run parallel to the Earth’s surface, so that their hindquarters are at the same height as their forequarters. The most significant point is that humans are predisposed from the very beginning such that what is located next to the hindquarters in animals is built above the hindquarters, covering them. In humans, the line running from the head to the earth coincides with the line of the center of gravity, whereas in animals it does not. Because humans are called upon to establish their own position of equilibrium in relation to the earth—a capacity that becomes a caricature in apes but is a natural essence in humans—they rise above the specific form characteristic of every animal species. Humans therefore do not have a configuration as fixed as that of animal species because they transcend it—because they transcend form and are able to place the head above the abdomen. This is something of immense significance. The Darwinists have not even considered this yet. Yet this is what really matters.

[ 17 ] I can only touch on this today; if I were to elaborate further, I would have to give many lectures, and it would shed light on the profoundly significant question of the difference between animals and human beings. But that is of less interest to us today; what interests us today is that human beings overcome the animal form within themselves by assuming an upright posture, by establishing a different center of balance on Earth. In this way, they make themselves independent of the Earth. But this is true only of the physical human being. Let us turn to the etheric body; there, things are different. This etheric body is mobile in itself; its form changes from moment to moment in every single human being. If someone looks at a lion, a clairvoyant will see the form of a lion in the person looking at it. If you look at a hyena, you yourself become hyena-like in the supersensible realm. In the physical realm, human beings transcend external forms, but in the etheric body they adapt to whatever appears in their surroundings. This, in turn, is precisely what distinguishes human beings so significantly from animals: the animal has its specific form; the lion facing a dog cannot imitate the dog’s form in its etheric body—it always remains, even inwardly, a lion; in truth, it recognizes only another lion. Observe how an animal of the same kind relates to another of its own kind quite differently than to one of a different kind. Human beings, however, are versatile; they are multifaceted; they adapt their etheric body to their surroundings. But the crucial question is whether this adaptation is regular or irregular, whether it intervenes in life in a meaningless or meaningful way. The fact that animals are so diversely formed—that they embody in their physical form what human beings, through constant transformation, can become—means that the entire animal kingdom is not merely what today’s zoologist sees, but that every animal form has a specific meaning, and the relationships among animals make a specific sense. In a certain way, one can discern this meaning of the entire animal kingdom. In doing so, however, one builds a bridge between oneself and the spiritual world, such that the meaning of what exists out there in fixed form becomes clear, and one then meaningfully relives it by becoming that thing oneself.

[ 18 ] In ancient times, people tried to intuitively grasp the meaning of the world around them. What has survived into historical times are the various symbolic stories about animals: animal tales, animal legends, animal fables, and the like. We cannot return to that. But something else must be developed in its place, so that people do not merely learn, in a completely abstract way, about the forms of animals. How such animals are described in today’s schoolbooks! The descriptions seem so boring to children precisely because they are entirely superficial. Let the description be meaningful; let the lion once again become something that manifests itself in creation in a different way than the hyena or the kangaroo. Then human beings will once again live meaningfully within creation; then they will take creation in with a living sense. This will, however, have a certain consequence, for the spirit becomes agile and rich in content when it immerses itself in creation in this way. Then it will no longer be satisfied with what official science often offers today. You can indeed experience all sorts of things in this regard today. If one traces the evolution of the animal kingdom as today’s official science conceives it—even where it is somewhat more open-minded—you can encounter strange things. You don’t even need to go as far as Darwinism; you can stick with Zamarck, who is far more insightful than what has developed in a materialistic way from Darwinism. There, too, you can find descriptions of how the various animal forms have developed through adaptation to their living conditions. Certain animals have developed webbed feet as their living conditions evolved to require life in water. Other animals have acquired grasping organs because they had to find their food high up in trees and the like. Indeed, if such habits led to the development of these organs, they must have been different beforehand. Animals that have acquired webbed feet must not have had them before; they must have had different ones. Their current feet then developed as a result of their living conditions. One gradually comes to realize that those animals with webbed feet developed them from different types of feet, and those without webbed feet developed their differently shaped feet from their earlier ones. — That is indeed the case. It’s just that we don’t notice it; we study diligently, but we don’t notice it. If the giraffe has a long neck, we explain: It evolved from a short one because the giraffe had to reach the tree. — If the giraffe had a short neck, it would have evolved from a long neck to a short one through different lifestyle habits. You don’t even realize that you’re tossing things around and letting them tumble about. Today, people have absolutely no idea of the confusion, the bewildering thinking, in which a worldview exists that fails to build a meaningful bridge to what is in the human environment.

[ 19 ] But this is what must be incorporated into education, to mention just one thing: this meaningful experience of the surroundings; not merely comprehending the surroundings intellectually, but experiencing them meaningfully, so that one truly takes in, with one’s whole soul, the forms of the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms. What a blessing it would be for a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boy or girl if you were to take them for a walk and say: “Look at these cloud formations!” — Then again on the next walk, where the clouds are shaped differently: “Now look at these clouds. Commit them to memory so that you have a picture of these forms!” — After letting the child observe the whole scene for a while, go to their bookshelf and take out Goethe’s *Natural Science Writings*, where he describes the various cloud forms—how they emerge from one another and disperse—in a meaningful way. The child will understand this immediately, will immediately become immersed in this vivid, meaningful visualization of the cloud forms, and will experience something wonderful.

[ 20 ] Or let the child observe a plant in the garden—how it looks in spring, summer, and fall—and then read to them Goethe’s poem “The Metamorphosis of Plants.” That’s a meaningful way to introduce them to nature.

[ 21 ] Such things are essential for creating the atmosphere of a life filled with anticipation; such things are essential if we are to ensure that the spirit is not held back and does not enter the blood and the flesh, but is instead appropriately embraced within by the soul. Certain things must not, in the course of development, pass into the flesh, but must remain in the soul. What happens, then, when they pass into the flesh, into the blood? Then they give rise in the subconscious to emotions and passions that are given names and masks, and which are sometimes something entirely different from the masks given to them. So much of what exists today—and finds expression in human development—has arisen because what should have remained in the soul has passed into the blood and the flesh. And what does this give rise to? It gives rise to strife, discord, and disharmony across the earth. This masks itself in all manner of forms; it masks itself in the fact that the Italian cannot stand the German, that the Englishman cannot stand the German, that the German cannot stand the Romance peoples; it masks itself in these passions that rage across the earth. One need only understand the deeper reasons behind these things and realize what is incumbent upon humanity—what humanity’s mission is—in order to achieve what absolutely must be achieved.

[ 22 ] What exists in the present should serve only as clear signs of what we must learn in order to lead humanity toward a prosperous future. We must not remain on the surface, as people do today, but look into the depths of the human soul. The fact that the 19th century made a mistake in education—because it was a time of transition, because it allowed what should have entered the soul to instead enter the flesh and blood—is being fought out today on the battlefields. The blood that absorbed what should have entered the souls now reigns in the passions raging wildly across the earth. This is why people cannot understand one another. This is why people talk past one another. This is why they have so little sense of shared feeling and shared life.

[ 23 ] The signs of the times are serious, very serious, but they are a call to look into the depths of the unfolding of the world, so that from these depths we may recognize what our task is. I already said last time: This is not an objection to the wisdom of the world, to divine wisdom. Divine wisdom must guide humanity through these signs, because humanity is not meant to be an automaton but is meant to become self-determined. The question is not: Why has humanity fallen into all this? — but rather: What must be done for the salvation of humanity? — It is a matter of action and of the great universal ethical impulses. This is what is incumbent upon us from week to week, from hour to hour, from minute to minute: to engage with what must happen. And the one who, in the manner suggested today, has expected each new year of life to bring him something that was previously a mystery to him, kindles within his soul what humanity will also need in the future: a living, not a dead, sense of immortality. The person who knows that every new year brings new mysteries also knows that life after death brings new mysteries; for them, doubting the continued existence of what brings something new in contrast to the development of the body makes no sense. For him, however, this life after death also becomes real—truly real: it becomes not merely that egoistic principle as it so often appears today, but rather a principle of humanity.

[ 24 ] Today we pass through the gate of death, bringing with us many observations about life that we have not yet processed here. But this still has significance for the Earth. The wisdom we have acquired here will continue to benefit the Earth even after we have passed through the gate of death. But here on Earth, there must be people who are willing to make use of it. Those who have had these experiences know how to speak of them. In public, to avoid making oneself look completely ridiculous, one must still speak of these things as I did, for example, yesterday: that Planck would think differently today than he did in the 1880s. As a spiritual scientist, one actually means something else by this. One knows: This person’s soul has carried so much through the gate of death that there is an abundance of what can still be useful to the Earth. Yes, anyone who knows that their living sense of the living soul is not diminished by the gateway of death also knows that the so-called dead are in constant connection with us, that we need only receive what is brought to us by them. Those who have experience in this matter may perhaps also speak of these things in a modest way, drawing on their personal experience. I know that I have not merely built upon Goethe’s worldview, but that I have written what I have written about Goethe’s worldview in various ways solely because I knew it sprang from the inspiration of Goethe’s soul itself—naturally, to the extent that a feeble descendant can grasp it.

[ 25 ] But this involves a living engagement with the soul that remains alive—not merely an abstract veneration of the dead, but the absorption of the living essence of the dead into our own souls, which are embodied here in the physical body. Oh, much—very much—that is fruitful, meaningful, and essential will flow into the development of the Earth when the dead, through the attitude of the living, can become humanity’s guides. I know how far our attitude still is from this. I know that people today ask: What does the twenty-two-year-old say, the twenty-three-year-old—or whatever the age limit may be for the various parliaments—what does the twenty-four-year-old say about anything that is to become law?—But they do not ask: What does Goethe say today about what is to become law?—But that, too, will come. The dead will be our fellow citizens. If one takes to heart the feeling that every year a new mystery can be revealed to us, then one will go even further: then one will also know what it means to make the great transition, together with the sum total of Earth’s evolution, through the gate of death. Then the dead will be the co-advisors of the living. For it is not merely a matter of belief in immortality, but rather that which is immortal may bear fruit in all the fields where it is truly meant to bear fruit. Human beings need strength to break through the barrier that today separates them from what the spiritual world still holds within itself.

[ 26 ] You see, today’s way of thinking is actually more or less intended to help us develop within it the strong power needed to penetrate to the spirit. But the time has already come when people must clearly grasp certain things, because they are meant to understand them for themselves. That is why these signs are set before the human soul—because people must learn: This must not be there at all; that must be completely overcome. And because they are meant to overcome it themselves, that is why it had to arise among them.

[ 27 ] Two extremes stand in opposition to one another in external life—though there are many such extremes: Wilsonism, and, in opposition to it, Trotskyism or Leninism, call it what you will. These two things stand there, born of a non-spiritual worldview—the most non-spiritual worldview conceivable. It is humanity’s task to ensure that everything which, in its ultimate consequences, leads to Leninism or Wilsonism is eradicated. But much Wilsonism and much Leninism can be found everywhere; they are very, very widespread—one simply does not notice it. One need only look things squarely in the eye. But anyone who has studied spiritual science even a little knows that this spiritual science gives them the eye of the soul to look things squarely in the eye in this realm as well. Today, it is a vital necessity for people to look clearly at the world, to observe things, and not to let them pass them by. For people have all too many reasons to often drape masks over what is true. And people are all too gullible; that is why they believe in the masks and do not see what is hidden behind them. One cannot develop the kind of thinking that enables a certain flexibility of mind—which is necessary for spiritual science—without, after a certain time, once one has truly found one’s way into this flexibility, acquiring a clear, calm perspective on what is happening in the world. One must not let things pass one by; one must awaken through spiritual science if one does not wish to be lulled into a certain complacency in life. There is a great need to allow such a spirit to flow into the soul, but the will—especially among many who see themselves as leaders of humanity—to take this need into account is lacking. The will toward the spirit is present today even in the simplest of natures; they simply do not yet understand themselves because they are misled by what is widely disseminated today as “public opinion”—Schopenhauer called it “private stupidity.” Leaders are often inclined to speak of the limits of human nature where they do not wish to lead people beyond those limits. You find this in all areas today. How comforting it is for people—to mention just one example—when something like what is now happening to the French “theologian Loisy” can occur, who has also taken such a strangely vacillating position between modernism and non-modernism, even though he had apparently stood on his own two feet for a time. But now, in the face of these catastrophic events, he has asked himself: Yes, what has actually become of Christianity in light of the events shaping the world situation today? Has this Christianity perhaps failed? — Not Christ as such, Loisy says, but he asks himself: Has this Christianity perhaps neglected certain things? — Some have written about this moral dilemma raised by Loisy. One person said: Well, one simply has to reckon with human imperfection. Christianity certainly wants something different from what is now happening across the earth, but what is happening must happen because human beings are imperfect. — Reflecting on that is not the point at all; rather, the point is to reflect, ponder, and empathize with how human beings can become more perfect, how they can ennoble themselves, and how they can rise to a higher ethical level by integrating themselves more and more into the universal order of the world. In many cases, the questions must be posed quite differently than people tend to ask them today.

[ 28 ] These are the feelings I wanted to instill in your souls during our time together this time. Even more than before, it is important to me this time that my words not only be understood intellectually, but that they be taken as they are meant: that they stir our hearts, so that they may become the seeds within our hearts for a profound understanding of what is to happen in the course of human development and the course of human history. For each of you will, perhaps before too long—according to your own nature and karma—find yourselves, in one position or another, confronted with important questions of life that you will not be able to handle if you insist on clinging to old, comfortable notions. We must learn to adopt new ideas. Spiritual science can serve as a guide to such new ideas. My words were intended to stir the souls to wakefulness. Even if they seemed to be based on facts, those facts were chosen precisely to touch upon what is most important for human beings at this very moment—in relation to their emotional life and their entire inner life.