The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] It seems that it might be good, especially at this moment—at this very point in our reflection—to look back on various things that have passed through our souls in the course of these deliberations; to look back, however, not in a repetitive manner, but in a way that provides orientation, shedding light on things once again from a certain perspective. For the reflections we have made during this time—which, in a certain sense, have built upon what we have allowed to come before our souls in previous years—should, above all, in addition to the positive insights they contain, be suited, above all, to filling our souls in this grave time with the very thoughts that the human soul needs at this moment—a time that must be recognized as one of the most serious in the course of world history. Despite everything we have gone through in recent years, we are facing truly grave circumstances. And no one should fail to recognize the gravity of the times—unless they wish, through such failure to recognize it, to distract their soul from much that is, in the most eminent sense, necessary—indeed, urgently necessary—for the human soul if it is to experience the present time with any measure of dignity.

[ 2 ] We have attempted to characterize the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century using the insights that emerge when one considers the important, pivotal events with which human development in the 19th and 20th centuries is connected. You will have recognized that, above all, if one wishes to understand what the most significant characteristic of this recent era is, one must focus on the fact that our time is virtually suffering from an overabundance of intellectuality. This is not to say that humanity in our present age is particularly clever compared to earlier eras. That is not what is meant; rather, it means that the various soul forces of human beings in our time all tend toward intellectuality. And since we live in a materialistic age, intellectuality is used exclusively to interweave material existence with the human soul, and conversely, to interweave the human soul with material existence.

[ 3 ] Our intellectuality in the present age is not high, because it is directed almost exclusively toward the compilation and summarization—or, to put it pedantically, toward the systematization—of material things and material phenomena. But in a certain sense, this intellectuality reigns supreme within the human soul.

[ 4 ] What is the essential quality of the soul’s power that must be added to intellectuality in the coming age, at the dawn of which we now stand? Today, everything is permeated by the intellectual, even if it is an intellectuality that relates exclusively to the physical plane. Science is permeated by the intellectual, art is permeated by the intellectual, and human social thinking is permeated by the intellectual. What must be added is something that, when truly understood, cannot be intellectual at all. And what cannot be intellectual at all, when it is truly understood, when it is taken up into human consciousness—that is the human will, the human will so imbued with love, as I have attempted to characterize the human will in connection with the impulse of love in my Philosophy of Freedom. The human will expresses itself either in the subconscious realities of the drives and desires—whether they be selfish individual desires, social desires, or political aspirations—all of which remain unconscious or subconscious. But if the will is truly raised into consciousness—if that which is otherwise overlooked by the impulses of the will, or at most merely daydreamed about, as the preceding considerations have shown, is raised into the sphere of consciousness—then this view of the will can no longer be materialistic. In our time, we find a telling symptom for every person who truly perceives the world spiritually: that what will is, is not grasped in our time. And this symptom is that, in the way it actually occurs, the question can be raised by those minds who consider themselves the most significant of our time: whether human freedom exists at all or not.

[ 5 ] This question—whether human freedom exists at all or not—reveals, when raised, an unspiritual way of thinking. From a spiritual point of view, one must approach the question of freedom in an entirely different way. One must approach it with the understanding that anyone who can even doubt the fact of human freedom does not understand the human will. Wherever doubts arise regarding human freedom, the very existence of these doubts is proof that the person in question has no idea of the true reality of the human will. For as soon as one recognizes the will, one also recognizes the self-evident correlate of the will—one recognizes the impulse of human freedom.

[ 6 ] However, in our time, people speak of freedom and necessity in such a way that what I explained to you last time—using the trivial comparison of the pumpkin and the bottle—is clearly evident in their speech. I said that if you turn a pumpkin into a bottle, one person might say, “That’s a pumpkin”—and another might say, “That’s a bottle.” — This is how people today argue about the freedom and necessity of human action, and what they have to say is generally worth no more than if one person stubbornly insists that it is a pumpkin, and another stubbornly insists that it is a bottle. It is simply a pumpkin that has become a bottle!

[ 7 ] This is what is important and essential: that people once again take the power of the will into their consciousness. As soon as one speaks of the World Will, one is also speaking of what truly reigns within the World Will: World Love. There is little need to speak of it, however, for it prevails whenever the will is truly present. And it is far more meaningful to speak of the individual, concrete impulses of the will that are necessary in our time than to indulge in sentimental generalities about love, love, and love.

[ 8 ] But we must view things in such a way that this very act of viewing embodies true courage for knowledge and also true energy for knowledge. For knowledge of the complete, whole human nature is necessary in our time. And our time must begin to raise this question as one that concerns the destiny of humanity: How must our view of the human being be shaped if we question the idea—as we have brought before our souls in these reflections—that the sphere of the so-called living and the sphere of the so-called dead are one and the same; that, fundamentally speaking, we live among the living only through our sensory perception and our intellect; but that, insofar as we are feeling and willing beings, live in the same world in which the dead also live. And what contributes to this question of knowledge through inner soul impulses must be followed by a genuine will to understand human life concretely, including how it unfolds between death and a new birth. For without an understanding of this disembodied life of the human being, a true understanding of human existence within the physical body is also impossible—and, in particular, an understanding of the human being’s task within the physical body is impossible.

[ 9 ] Speaking in somewhat abstract terms: It is necessary for present-day humanity to truly take in the inner impulses of the spirit of the age—that spirit of the age which, in the narrower sense, has prevailed since 1879, and in the broader sense has prevailed since the middle of the 15th century—and to familiarize itself with the impulses of this spirit of the age. Most people today have hardly the faintest inkling of this—at least of what is actually meant by the term just mentioned. I have often said in these reflections: What is taught to our youth—our younger and older youth—as so-called history is, for the most part, on the one hand, conventional fable, and on the other, often worthless drivel. If true history is to emerge, we must first understand what the driving forces of the past centuries were and what, within these forces, must change specifically in our own age. Today, people have scarcely any inkling of the tremendous upheaval that has taken place in human thought and feeling with the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, in the middle of the 15th century. The most nonsensical statement regarding evolution is, in fact, regarded by many people today as a guiding principle. This nonsensical statement is: “Nature does not make leaps.” — Just as nature makes its tremendous leap from the green leaf to the colorful flower petal, so nature makes leaps everywhere. And there was not a gradual transition from the fourth post-Atlantean epoch to the first half of the 15th century, to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, which began in the second half of the 15th century; rather, there was a tremendous upheaval. One can only find one’s bearings if one is able, at least to some extent, to compare what the few centuries of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch have brought so far with what preceded it; for the two are fundamentally different from one another. From a certain point of view, I would like to direct your spiritual gaze to this matter today.

[ 10 ] Once one has familiarized oneself with what can be learned from the current state of science and the current state of human education—if one may use the foolish word “education”—and has prepared oneself accordingly, and then picks up writings from as far back as the 15th century, one fails to understand them precisely because one is a particularly learned mind of the present day.

[ 11 ] Now, please don’t misunderstand me. Given all the principles of our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, I am by no means in favor of rehashing old ideas. All that talk circulating so widely in the world today about the need to rehash all sorts of old tomes and all sorts of old views— cannot be applied to the field of our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, because this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science must draw from the immediate spiritual life itself that which is meant to be revealed specifically for the present, and because what is significant for the recipient is being revealed in our time. But one can gain some clarity by observing the way in which even a highly learned mind today might approach the things that have been preserved as a treasure of wisdom—we need not go back any further than, say, the 14th or 15th centuries. If, for example, a highly learned mind today picks up the works of the so-called Basilius Valentinus, the famous adept from the 15th century, he has absolutely no idea what to make of them. What one usually observes today when people pick up something like the works of Basilius Valentinus—it could be others as well, but I cite him because he is the most famous adept of the 15th century—is that they either spout nonsense, amateurish drivel, by stuffing themselves full of what cannot actually be understood, but believe in what they do not understand, or else, as learned pedants, they spout all sorts of nonsense, impotent drivel about what flows toward them from Basilius Valentinus.

[ 12 ] If one reads someone like Basilius Valentinus with the discerning eye of a connoisseur—with a truly spiritual discerning eye— one very soon realizes that Basilius Valentinus contains a wisdom that is, admittedly, of no use to people of the present, who are preoccupied with the common concerns of the present; yet this very Basilius Valentinus contains all the more wisdom of the kind that emerges when one is able to connect with the souls who exist between death and a new birth. One might say that what currently seems unnecessary to people—this wisdom as it appears in Basilius Valentinus—is all the more necessary for those who live between death and a new birth. Nor do they need to study Basilius Valentinus, for in anthroposophically oriented spiritual science we have something that speaks the language common to both the so-called living and the so-called dead. What anthroposophically oriented spiritual science offers is sufficient to speak with the dead in the manner familiar to us. But I mention this, in a sense, as a historical fact: the way in which the dead receive what is known as “world knowledge” bears a certain resemblance to what is conveyed in writings such as those of Basilius Valentinus. For Basilius Valentinus speaks of all manner of chemical processes, seemingly referring to what is done with metals and other substances in retorts and crucibles. In reality, he speaks of the knowledge that the dead must acquire if they are to carry out their tasks in that lowest realm of which I have spoken—the realm that is, in fact, the lowest realm for them: the animal realm. He speaks of what one must know about those impulses that emerge from the spiritual world in order to comprehend the microcosm itself as emerging from the macrocosm. This is, after all, the soul’s cognitive activity between death and a new birth, which today, however, can only be properly carried out if it is prepared for between birth and death. This existed as an atavistic legacy, as an ancient heritage of wisdom, right up until the 15th century. And Basilius Valentinus speaks of this ancient heritage of wisdom, speaks of the mysteries of how the human being is connected to the macrocosm, speaks of true, divine wisdom—in imaginations, as we would say today.

[ 13 ] This way of relating to the cosmos through knowledge has disappeared over the course of the last few centuries. It must be regained—in a more spiritual way than it existed before the 15th century, it must be regained once more. For it must be practiced both in science and in socio-political life. Salvation for humanity is possible only if such goals are pursued. And it must be recognized that salvation for humanity is possible only under the influence of such goals.

[ 14 ] An ancient legacy—which could, in a sense, be called a primordial revelation—was passed down through the centuries. It was lost in the materialistic fifth post-Atlantean epoch. It must be regained in a new way. It can only be regained, as we have explained time and again, when a person, by actively and consciously permeating themselves with the Pauline “Not I, but Christ in me,” but actively and willingly, with the Pauline “Not I, but Christ in me,” when he calls upon those forces that emanate from the Mystery of Golgotha, so that, after receiving the mystery forces of Golgotha into his own soul, he may now explore the universe with these forces. And only in this way can we unite with the dead who reign among us. Otherwise, we will be separated from them, for the simple reason that the plan of the world—which we can grasp only through imagination and sensory perception—can never bring us into any relationship with the dead.

[ 15 ] But as I said, how does the learned mind of our time view this ancient wisdom? Much like that scholar who spoke these words: “The final and most important operation” by Basilius Valentinus “is the gradual heating of the philosophical mercury and gold over the course of ten months in the ‘philosophical furnace,’ whereby the ‘black raven’ gives birth to the ‘peacock,’ and the peacock in turn gives birth to the ‘white swan,’ which in turn produces the ‘phoenix’ with its young. This, however (a red substance), is the Philosopher’s Stone, which can multiply to infinity. “Unfortunately, one cannot”—says the modern scientific mind—“unfortunately, one cannot comprehend how anyone, even the most skilled and enthusiastic adept (as the men who possessed the secret of the Philosopher’s Stone were called), could follow such instructions.”

[ 16 ] So says Theodor Svedberg in Uppsala, who has written a book on these matters from the scientific standpoint of the present day and who, in this regard, is merely the representative of all those learned minds who simply have to say: “Unfortunately, one cannot comprehend.” — It is still best when they say: ‘Unfortunately, we cannot comprehend.’ — For all of them, Basilius Valentinus has already written down the necessary dismissive words himself, stating in his Twelve Keys to the Universe and Its Understanding: ‘If you now understand’ what I am saying, then you have opened the first lock with the key and pushed back the bolt of the threshold. But if you still cannot fathom the light within, then no glass vision will guide you, nor will natural eyes be able to help you find what you lacked at the beginning. Then I will say no more about this key, as Lucius Papirius has taught me.”

[ 17 ] Thus speaks Basilius Valentinus to all those descendants who, when faced with the ancient heritage of wisdom, can offer nothing more than the words: “Unfortunately, we are unable to comprehend it.” — But these people of the present do, after all, have other things to do than to comprehend the spiritual! These people of the present must concern themselves with all sorts of other things; and whenever the spirit is mentioned in any way, they must, above all, set about slandering this talk of the spirit. And an enormous amount of time is spent today on slandering this talk of the spirit.

[ 18 ] One might add to Max Dessoir’s Berlin nonsense—I have not yet been able to read the drivel myself, but I have been told quite a bit about it—the Dutch portrait of the philosopher Bolland, who, after all, has rendered some service to the development of philosophy by stirring up enthusiasm among the philosophical youth of Holland through his regurgitation of bits and pieces from Hartmann and Hegel, but who, it seems, has also been unable to resist using his recent philosophical unproductivity to slander our spiritual science with all sorts of untrue nonsense.

[ 19 ] This must be emphasized again and again, for a true assimilation of spiritual science into our souls also involves paying attention to the way in which the present, in its spiritual-scientific impotence, relates to what humanity needs.

[ 20 ] This contemporary science—I am not speaking here of the external science, which, as you know, I fully acknowledge, even if I do not follow every natural scientist—but what is often called philosophy and the like is, at present, little more than abstract talk conducted amid complete confusion regarding the concepts of a pumpkin and a bottle. Unfortunately, it still happens far too often among us that we fall for the nonsensical talk—particularly that of contemporary philosophers—time and time again, and are even sometimes pleased when, here and there, some philosophical figure finds, let’s say, nothing to criticize in what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks to achieve. As if, even if he finds nothing to criticize, it were not at least his duty and obligation to do so! We need not rejoice at all, as many among us do, when a word of praise happens to be uttered from this or that quarter. Even these words of praise are, for the most part, not exactly borne of great understanding. But we must prepare ourselves for the fact that such slanderers of the Dessoirs or Bollands variety will appear again and again, and that their numbers will even increase in the near future. After all, these people have to occupy themselves with something! And since they are far too lazy to engage with what must be brought from the spiritual world for the salvation of humanity in the present age, they must occupy themselves with slandering what is being brought.

[ 21 ] Basilius Valentinus, I said, offered an ancient, atavistically inherited legacy—a science of how the human being is fashioned from the cosmic whole, a science that is, above all, the science of the soul liberated from the body, but which must also be the science that seeks to participate in everything that is not merely external nature. This science can only be advanced if the recognition of the will is incorporated into the pure—and indeed materialistically oriented—intellectual elements of the modern age; a will that, when truly recognized as will, can only be recognized in its spiritual nature, because it expresses itself only spiritually at the present stage of humanity’s development. A fearless drawing upon the life impulses from the sphere of the will—that is what is so sorely lacking in the present day. The present day wants, above all else, to talk, talk! That is good, but only on the basis of true knowledge. It is not the latter that the present day wants—everyone wants to talk, everyone wants to talk, even on the basis of trivial premises. And we have seen, after all, that the very misfortune of our age lies in this failure to take the spiritual element into account in the world. In the present day, one is sincere about the development of humanity only when one is truly willing to engage in the exploration of those impulses of will that are necessary to propel the waves of human development forward.

[ 22 ] Of course, these things need not be taken personally. At this or that point in life, anyone can naturally ask: “Yes, what am I supposed to do?” — Certainly, it can never be a requirement that we understand today what we are supposed to do in order to somehow take the first steps tomorrow toward undertaking something that will shape a new epoch in the world. What we are to undertake, karma will bring to us. But what we must do is open our eyes—I mean the eyes of the soul—to truly recognize, to truly see through the times. What we must do is: not to sleep through this time, but to look into what is happening! What the materialism of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch has taken from human beings—and necessarily had to take, because human beings first had to orient themselves purely on a personal level—are comprehensive ideas, such as the very outflows of the spirit of the age; these are comprehensive ideas that we can share with the so-called dead. The intellectualistic nonsense that has become so prevalent in our time has not only taken hold of human souls; it has therefore also taken hold of the social and historical development of the age itself. Faced with the necessities of history—and with a certain justification, for these matters are not to be criticized but rather characterized—humanity has, with a certain justification, handed over to the machine much of what it previously accomplished out of its own human initiative; I mean, out of its organic human initiative. The materialistic age is, after all, at the same time the age of the machine. And this age of machinery, through its machines, not only produces what is needed for everyday life, but war itself has become the maintenance of a vast machinery. It could not have turned out any other way, for over the course of the last few centuries, humanity has not only developed a certain social stratum but has also cultivated, within this stratum, views that are primarily concerned with recognizing as scientific only that which can be realized within the external social order in the development of machines: either in the development of mechanical machines—if I may use this tautology, this pleonasm—or in the development of social machines. For a vast machinery has been, for example, financial management up until the war—the international financial management of the world. Everything has been machine-like. Humanity has ceded much to this machine-like nature. Essentially, a certain segment of humanity wanted to retain from this mechanistic order only that which makes the trivial necessities of life pleasurable. One could say: to toil in winter, go to the beach in summer, and think only as much as is necessary so that the machinery of the world toils for you—that became the hallmark of the age.

[ 23 ] It’s not as if this could have been avoided. This machinery of the world was bound to emerge; that goes without saying. To criticize what has happened is a form of dilettantism in which spiritual science cannot participate. But the matter must be understood and recognized for what it truly is, for only then will one be able to develop the right impulses of will in response to it.

[ 24 ] Time and again, people have emerged who have already articulated the ideas appropriate for this age. But these proponents of appropriate ideas were, in fact, regarded as impossible human beings, particularly in the second half of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century. As for such minds—who clearly saw how the social structure of humanity must be organized across the earth under the influence of the Machine Age—as for minds like Bright or Cobden, subsequent generations have simply moved on to the order of the day—these subsequent generations, who, admittedly, would have had to expend some mental effort to discern precisely how appropriate Bright’s and Cobden’s ideas were for the Machine Age! But to force the will into the intellect in order to see through reality—that is precisely an effort from which people of the present shrink. They do not want to imbue their thoughts with will. They want to let their thoughts drift sentimentally toward that which, as they say, warms their hearts when they wish to lift their spirits. And under the influence of such will-deprived thinking—which, however, feels so warm and comfortable when indulging in sentimental chatter—one becomes accustomed to approaching even the most important questions with a will-less, cowardly mindset. Above all, one becomes accustomed to learning nothing from the development of world history. Is humanity currently ready to learn? This, too, is not meant as a criticism, but merely as a characterization.

[ 25 ] Everything I say is not motivated by a critical perspective, but rather by a desire to inspire the will. It is necessary to clarify how to channel into one’s thoughts the impulse of the will that can serve the good of humanity. Unfortunately, people today are too reluctant to learn. They let things pass them by, discuss them, and believe that by discussing them they have also mastered the element of will. How much idle chatter—meaningless chatter—has there been during the time when the disastrous causes of this global catastrophe were taking shape! How much idle chatter has there been in response to the Tsar’s peace manifesto nonsense! This could happen because one might say that people first had to learn that these were nothing but peace manifesto frivolities, and that all this idle chatter associated with them was millions and millions of miles away from the possibility of stirring up impulses of will in humanity. But a lesson was to be learned. Is it being learned? No, for the time being it is not being learned—and the point is not to criticize this failure to learn, but rather to see through this failure to learn so that one may learn. What has taken the place of all that chatter about all manner of global goals linked to the peace manifesto nonsense of the now-deposed Tsar? The other nonsense—the peace manifesto frivolities of the windbag Woodrow Wilson! Exactly the same thing in place of the same thing! What must be learned is that humanity does not want to learn. And in the recognition of this unwillingness to learn, the sacred will to true volition will be kindled in our souls—a will that must arise from a true insight into that which is at work and weaving its web in our time.

[ 26 ] I have said in my public lectures that, essentially, what has developed over the course of the last four centuries in humanity’s historical dream was articulated as a world program during the 19th century by people such as Karl Marx and others like him. The impulses had already passed by the time it was articulated; but what was articulated thereby was, in essence, the foundation for the historical development of the last four centuries.

[ 27 ] What is the situation? The situation today is that the broader strata of society have abandoned all thinking about social relationships. They leave it to the professors of economics, who have, over the course of the last few centuries—and especially decades—spouted enough nonsense. True social thinking—which must arise from an understanding of the impulses emanating from the spiritual world—has been lost among the so-called ruling classes. Only one class has brought ideas of world-historical significance into the world in recent times: the class that, in occult terms, are the “Brothers of the Shadow” in contrast to the “Brothers” of the bourgeois parties of the past centuries. Social democracy has brought forth ideas of world-historical significance—albeit shadow ideas—gray shadow ideas of a particularly dangerous kind, since they are entirely imbued with the spirit of the past centuries. But it is precisely these ideas of world-historical significance that have been completely lacking in the other strata of humanity. For the other strata of humanity would have had to borrow them from the spiritual world; they would have needed not merely to develop their religious, social, and historical ideas in a generally unctuous manner, but to gain insight into social development on the basis of solid knowledge. No one will truly gain insight into social development who is not willing to approach it from the starting points that have underlain our reflections here in recent weeks.

[ 28 ] This is supported by the very best that the so-called living can receive from the spiritual world today, and by the very best that the dead reveal to us about their lives between death and a new birth. This is supported by that new understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, which we must strive toward through the deepening of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. This is supported by everything that we should allow to move through our souls as serious Christmas reflections in these solemn times. For the sake of humanity’s salvation, the Being whose birth is celebrated at Christmas has entered into the development of the Earth—not merely for the sake of comfortable soul-searching, but so that the human soul may be permeated by—if I may use this paradoxical term—the will to will, the will to desire. If this will to will permeates human souls, it will provide the impulse for a longing for truly new ideas, for the old ones have been exhausted. Sometimes we can no longer even use the words.

[ 29 ] We are living in catastrophic times. To call what is happening “war” is almost anachronistic; it stems merely from the old habit of still calling a bottle a “gourd.” But just as what is happening should not be called “war,” so too should we not lightly speak of peace in the old, complacent way! Powerful signs are emerging in our time, and it is incumbent upon humanity to try to understand these signs. The events themselves are transforming. In 1914, a world-shaking event began that one might perhaps have called, at the outset, a war between the Entente and the European Central Powers. But beneath what is so called, something fundamentally different is at work; entirely different enemies stand opposed to one another! And in our own day, a serious symptom is revealing itself to us—one that smolders beneath what we still, quite inaccurately, call a war between the Entente and the Central Powers— a symptom is becoming apparent to us—one that consists in the sad clash between the populations of northern and southern Russia—a significant symptom, even if it may still fade away for the time being, a significant symptom of what is smoldering beneath the events. People today do not like it when things are called by their proper names, because they do not want to will, because they prefer to ignore the gravity of the times as long as they possibly can, as long as their stomachs are not growling too loudly. What is at stake is that we truly develop the will to see the deeper foundations of events, that we finally develop the will to cast aside all superficiality in order to look things in the face with the eyes of the soul.

[ 30 ] As we allow what we now have in a kind of overview to pass through our souls, we will have further points to make in the coming lectures regarding various matters connected with the deeper impulses to which we have devoted ourselves in these reflections. But I believe that in this age, one honors the mysterious threefold necessity that runs through the becoming of the world—and which is the sibling of human freedom and the freedom of other creatures—most of all when one refuses to weave a veil before one’s eyes. Here on this earth, we must understand freedom. In this regard, too, the gaze of modern humanity learns a great deal when it turns toward the dead; for the dead know that freedom in the life between death and a new birth comes to them through what they bring with them from the life between birth and death. Being embedded in the intelligences of the higher hierarchies is something that becomes a natural necessity for us when we pass through the gate of death; when we live on the other side, we are embedded in the intelligences of the higher hierarchies and follow their impulses, just as a natural phenomenon here necessarily follows natural impulses. Then, even after we have passed through the gate of death, we remain free if we carry over into the spiritual world, within our soul, that which we can acquire here as knowledge of spiritual development and spiritual beings.

[ 31 ] This is something that is now also connected, in the deepest sense, to the Mystery of Golgotha. And because this is so, I believe that Christmas reflections during this time must not be sentimental, but must instead appeal to the will to will.

[ 32 ] For take the Gospels: how much is there in the Gospels precisely in the way of an appeal to the will to will! The Gospels are not sentimental writings; they are writings that speak, admittedly, to the most humble aspects of human nature, but they are also writings that seek to awaken in people the strength of will that they are capable of mustering. The Christmas candles should burn not only so that we may, in a certain sense, indulge in pleasurable contemplation, but also so that they may serve as symbols for kindling the light of the will that serves the world’s salvation.

[ 33 ] Humanity has a lot of ground to make up; and it must make up that ground! For as it develops the strength that lies in making up this ground, it will develop true, healing powers to emerge from the current catastrophic times. Humanity has not been tasked merely with entering these times; far more important is the task of emerging from them. This task stands, I believe, as a sacred sign, written in flames behind all the Christmas candles that have now been burning before our souls for four years in a different way than in many years past!

[ 34 ] Tomorrow we’ll meet at 4:00 p.m. at the Basel branch for a Christmas party. On Monday at half past four, we’ll gather here for the first performance of the “Paradeis Play,” and I’ll follow that with a Christmas reflection for those of our friends who aren’t kept away by anything at home, but who are here right now, devoting themselves to their work and such, and who might prefer to spend Christmas here on this day.