The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Anthroposophical Life-Gifts V

[ 1 ] Yesterday, in the public lecture “The Human World and the Animal World,” I referred, among other things, to a conception one can form of human soul life—a conception that is, of course, by no means hypothetical, but one that corresponds directly to the reality of soul life itself. I drew attention to what constitutes the beginning and end of life in the animal world—events that, in a sense, encompass only two moments: the entry into physical life and the departure from it—conception and death. They relate to animal life in such a way that one could say: Animal life presents itself as a ladder, with conception at the beginning and death at the end. I have pointed out that these two experiences truly run through the entire soul life of the human being, that the human soul life, at every moment, synthesizes into a whole what is experienced in the animal realm when the species soul—which never actually enters the physical plane entirely—establishes an interrelationship with the physical being through conception. And something like a fleeting sense of self-consciousness arises in the single moment of death in an animal. I pointed out yesterday that anyone who is able to observe an animal’s death can already gain an idea of how, fundamentally, what runs through a human being’s entire life—self-consciousness—is present for the animal only in this moment of passing out of life. But the important point is precisely this: that the two moments—which are truly only two moments in an animal’s life—are fused into one, as in a synthesis, and run through human life in such a way that the human head, with its unique mode of organization as I have explained, can develop a continuous process of becoming and dying, gently resonating with it — but such is the life of the human soul, and this gives rise to the justified idea of human immortality — that this life of the human soul flows continuously from the interweaving of conception and death.

[ 2 ] I then added: Every time we have a thought, that thought is born out of the will, and every time we will something, the thought dies back into the will. Schopenhauer, I said, had presented the matter in a very one-sided way by portraying only the will as something real. He failed to recognize that “will” is only one side of the matter—in a sense, merely the dying thought—while “thought” is the will being born. Anyone who describes things as Schopenhauer does is like a person who depicts human life only from about the age of thirty-five until the end. But every person who has been thirty-five years old must previously have been of a different age. There is also something that pertains to the period from birth to the age of thirty-five. Schopenhauer describes only the will; and he regards thought—or rather, the idea—as an illusion. But that is merely the other side of the matter; the thought of the will that seeks to be born, whereas the thought is the dying will. And since we have continually interwoven thought and will in our inner life, we have both birth, which traces back to conception—for perception is conception—and death.

[ 3 ] This concept is one for which—even if one wishes to ground it anatomically and physiologically—one needs nothing more than current science and the will, the good will, to truly observe mental phenomena. Anyone who does not present the findings regarding the human brain in the way that official science currently does, but who instead truly examines—without prejudice—what physiology and biology reveal about the human brain, will find that what I have just said is well-founded scientifically. And if people would not put up with all the frivolous nonsense going on in universities today—where all sorts of things are investigated in psychological-physiological laboratories because anatomists have no thoughts of their own but instead sit at their instruments to first torment and then study the students’ inner lives—if people would not tolerate this, then we would truly be able to observe the inner life and would also gain an understanding of the constant process of birth and death within the human inner life itself—of that metamorphosis which is merely an intensification of Goethe’s metamorphosis. But contemporary science, even after a hundred years, has not yet even managed to understand Goethe’s metamorphosis, let alone truly advance such an idea that was once entrusted to humanity.

[ 4 ] Thoughts such as those I attempted to outline yesterday are nothing other than a further development of Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis. These are all things that can be established without the need for any clairvoyant awareness. All that is required is true science and observation of the soul. If, on the other hand, instead of all the manifold follies to which official science leads people, one were to encourage a number of male and female students to grasp such a concept, then the path would no longer be far from truly imprinting spiritual science upon human culture. For it is precisely such ideas—which can be scientifically established today—that require nothing more than the good will to truly observe and to have thoughts—such concepts, such ideas could form the bridge from external, sensory science to spiritual science, which does not spread not because it would be incomprehensible to those who lack clairvoyance, but because, due to the brutality of the current scientific mindset, something new entering existence cannot spread at all. It does no harm—this is my conviction—if these things are sometimes actually called by their true names and characterized as they really are. One can certainly say: Even more important than the spread of such a thought as a thought is the effect of a thought on the human soul life. For what matters far less is what thoughts we have than what powers we must employ to grasp one thought or another. The state of the human soul must be entirely different depending on whether one grasps some completely lifeless thought of today’s so-called science or a living thought of spiritual science. In the case of the living thought of spiritual science, the whole human being is inwardly engaged, inwardly enlivened, and placed within the cosmos; in contrast, with much of what modern science produces—especially when it goes beyond its narrowest field—the human being is spiritually pushed out of the cosmic context.

[ 5 ] One must recognize this. But that is also what spiritual science must truly bring to humanity. For precisely where things begin to take on importance for immediate life—for example, in education, in teaching, and in everything connected with them—it is of boundless significance that living concepts, which intervene directly in life, be able to encompass the human soul. Then it will become clear to the soul itself—which is capable of viewing things in this way—what the tasks are, and what is essential in the contribution of spiritual science to the entire spiritual culture of our time. The full significance of this really ought to be recognized at some point. Only then would we see how necessary it is for us to look with an unbiased eye at the almost completely distorted thinking that sometimes underlies contemporary life. The symptoms of this distorted thinking are not at all easy to grasp.

[ 6 ] I drew attention to one thing yesterday. Even here, in our practice, it is already necessary that nothing at all be allowed to develop of what one might call: carelessness of thought, sluggishness of thought. For just imagine if carelessness of thought were to develop among us! Lately, wherever I’ve had the opportunity to speak, I’ve sung the praises of Oscar Hertwig’s book, *The Development of Organisms*, in every direction. I’ve called it the best book of recent times in terms of scientific achievements. I have not held back, because it was undertaken by a person who stands at the pinnacle of the scientific methods of his time to unravel Darwinism and push it back within its limits. One could follow him right up to the very last pages. Now Oscar Hertwig’s latest book has been published: *In Defense Against Ethical, Social, and Political Darwinism*. And as I have already indicated, one would truly like to find words—as sharp as possible—to counter the impotence, the narrow-mindedness, the limited scope, the triviality, and the nonsense of this book. Here, for once, the natural scientist leaves his narrowest field—and spouts utter nonsense, and what a load of it! And I cited an example, mentioning that the good man says the following about scientific methods: Ultimately, all natural science had to be structured according to the model of astronomy. — Of course, that isn’t original either; Da Bois-Reymond had already said it in 1872 when he spoke about the structure of the atomic world. But consider this: one should observe the facts around us; yet then astronomical theory—which is as far removed from human experience as possible—is held up as the model! Logically, this is no more valid than trying to help a family living in poverty somewhere out in the countryside understand its own inner life by telling them: “You must not try to understand how the father, mother, son, and daughter behave in your own family, but rather how things are in a count’s household; from that you can deduce how family laws should be structured!” — But today, people skim over such matters; they are not taken into account at all. For us, however, it is necessary that such things be taken into account. For us, there must be not only no blind faith in authority, but also no complacency. We are well aware that once a judgment has been passed on a person, one cannot rely on everything else that might come from that same person. This is a different matter altogether, and it must truly be put into practice down to the finest details of behavior. Therefore, no one should be surprised if one of Oscar Hertwig’s actions is one moment lifted up to the heavens and the next moment plunged into hell, so to speak; for this must happen; but one must practice viewing life without prejudice. For whoever does not practice this fails, on the one hand, to perceive the immediate facts of life as they are, and on the other hand, to find the entrance to the spiritual world. I would like to give a small example of this. I do not know how many people have noticed this, but they have noticed it in such a way that they truly draw practical benefit from it in their lives.

[ 7 ] Some time ago, an article by Fritz Mauthner appeared in the *Berliner Tageblatt*, in which he indulged in the most unbelievable—and truly, terribly trivial—refutations of a man who had written a book in which, among other things, he discussed Goethe’s horoscope. With immense self-satisfaction, the literary critic Fritz Mauthner wrote lengthy columns, attempting to show what a disservice this man is doing to the present by writing about Goethe’s horoscope and the like in a book that, moreover, appeared in such a popular series as “Aus Natur und Geisteswelt.” Reading Fritz Mauthner’s article gave one the feeling: This really is a bit too much triviality. But apart from that, the author of this book in the “Aus Natur und Geisteswelt” series is actually a fairly average scholar of our time, and one could not quite understand why there should be anything here to get particularly worked up about. After all, one didn’t really know why Fritz Mauthner was getting worked up at all. It was all the more difficult to understand given that the author of this little book makes fun of all the people who take the topics discussed there seriously, and Fritz Mauthner actually takes issue with this man solely because he talks about horoscopes. Now, the very same man who wrote this little book has defended himself in the *Berliner Tageblatt* and made it clear that it never even occurred to him to advocate for astrology. So the man had actually fulfilled everything Fritz Mauthner could have demanded of him given his role. The two are in complete agreement, but Fritz Mauthner nevertheless lashed out at the man, considering it socially highly dangerous for such a book to appear in such a collection. And the *Berliner Tageblatt* comments on this, stating that it “could not really find fault with Fritz Mauthner’s understanding of the matter; on the contrary, it fully agrees with what Mauthner has written.”

[ 8 ] This is just a particularly glaring example of the degree of intellectual absurdity that actually underlies all of these things. On the other hand, when one considers how deeply life is actually intertwined with what is expressed in such journalistic—such inferior—intellectual activity, one inevitably arrives at the ideas that characterize contemporary spiritual culture. And these are the very ideas one must have. This is an essential part of gaining an understanding of the tasks that the spiritual-scientific approach can actually fulfill. What one must know above all is that things such as insincerity and lies are real forces, and one cannot imagine anything more insincere than when something like this happens: One person writes a book about astrology, another attacks him because he does not want anyone to write about it at all, and the first person justifies himself by saying, “Hey, I’m just joking around.” — If he had said beforehand, “I’m just joking by including Goethe’s horoscope here too,” then Mauthner would have been satisfied.

[ 9 ] The situation is quite serious and is connected to the most serious trends of our time, above all to what one must also recognize: that spiritual science necessarily faces difficulties in our time in breaking through and in achieving, in any way, what it is actually called upon to achieve. It truly demands strong and courageous thinking, and in addition to all its content, it is necessary to familiarize oneself with the very idea that spiritual science demands strong and courageous thinking. The ground has been pulled out from under this strong and courageous thinking in many ways. How this foundation has been undermined, however, leads us once again to realize something: that in this undermining of the foundation, it was not merely earthly, human beings who were at work, but that for centuries the great Ahrimanic forces have been at work in this regard. Among all the things that the Ahrimanic beings have undertaken to plunge humanity into such a state of confusion—from which the light must be rediscovered—is, above all, the fact that they have led people to no longer recognize that everything material is rooted in the spiritual, and that everything spiritual seeks to manifest itself materially. The world has been torn apart; what belongs together has been separated. Above all, when one considers the external historical course of the ongoing Christian movement—not Christianity itself—one finds Ahrimanic forces working through humanity very much at work in this Christian development. One thing, among many others, should be noted: the tearing apart of what is the Sun and solar power on the one hand, and what is Christ and Christ power on the other. Unless the connection between the Sun and solar power and Christ and Christ power is recognized once more, the world will not always be easily linked to the spiritual. Yet this is precisely one of the main tasks of spiritual science: to rediscover, in a different way—in a way that corresponds to humanity’s spiritualization through the Christ Mystery—the great mystery of the sun, which, in the times before the Mystery of Golgotha, could not yet be the Christ Mystery, but which, thereafter, simultaneously became the Christ Mystery. Julian the Apostate knew the mystery of the sun only in its ancient form; he did not yet understand that it was the mystery of Christ. This is his tragic fate—the tragic fate of having been seized by the delusion, in the context of world history, of imparting to humanity the secret of the sun’s spiritual power. This ultimately led to his assassination during his campaign in Persia.

[ 10 ] However, in the 19th century there was another spiritual undertaking that was established by Ahrimanic forces to prevent humanity from learning what I am about to say: the mystery of the Sun in connection with other mysteries. We must also look these things squarely in the face. I am now going to mention something that, if I were to say it not to a prepared audience but in some scientific society or the like, would naturally be considered madness. But that is not the point. The point is to speak the truth; for the question of whether one is mad oneself or whether others are mad is, after all, a matter that need not be settled here. — It was essentially only in the 19th century that a concept emerged which today dominates the entire scientific world, and which, if it comes to dominate even more strongly than it already does, will never allow healthy conceptions of spiritual life to take root. Among the ideas that are widespread today regarding the fundamental principles of physics and chemistry is the basic concept of the conservation of force and the conservation of energy, as it is understood today. You can inquire anywhere today and will hear it said that forces merely transform. The examples given are, of course, valid in each specific instance. When I run my hand across the table, I exert pressure, but the force expended is not thereby consumed; the pressure is transformed into heat. In this way, all forces are transformed. A transformation of force and energy takes place. “Conservation of matter and force” is, after all, a catchphrase that has, in the most profound sense, taken hold of all scientific thought today. The fact that nothing comes into being or ceases to exist—whether in terms of matter or in terms of energies and forces—is regarded as an axiom. If one applies it within its proper limits, there is nothing to object to. But in the sciences, it is not applied within those limits; rather, it is treated in such a way as to turn it into a dogma, a scientific dogma.

[ 11 ] It was precisely in the 19th century that a peculiar Ahrimanic practice of coarsening ideas took shape. A wonderfully brilliant and beautiful treatise by Julius Robert Mayer on the conservation of energy was published. This treatise, which appeared in 1842, was rejected at the time by most of Germany’s leading intellectuals; it was considered amateurish. Julius Robert Mayer was later even confined to an insane asylum. Today we know that he made a fundamental scientific discovery. But that had no impact. For it is easy to prove that those who mention him in connection with this scientific law have not read him themselves. There is a history of philosophy by Ueberweg in which Mayer is also mentioned; he is discussed in just a few lines. But anyone who reads through these few lines will immediately realize: This classic historian of philosophy, whom all students are required to plow through, has read nothing by him; otherwise, he could not have written such a piece of drivel as what the students are forced to wade through. But the matter has not entered people’s minds in the refined manner in which it is treated by Mayer, but in a much cruder way. And this is primarily because it was not the ideas of Julius Robert Mayer, but those of the English brewer Joule and the physicist Helmholtz—who completely disregarded the ideas of Julius Robert Mayer—that have entered the realm of science. But today, people do not find it necessary to take these matters into account. These circumstances should also be taught at our institutions of higher education. One should also learn why Darwinism has spread so rapidly. For believe me, if Darwin’s book *On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection* had simply appeared out of the blue, as a book thrown to the public, it would not have taken all popular circles by storm, even if these views had been carried on the wings of the clouds. No, the groundwork for what actually underlies Darwinism had already been laid. Namely, in 1844—long before Darwin—a cobbled-together book was published that listed, in the most trivial manner, all the things that Lamarck and others had said. It was a purely speculative commercial venture that Robert Chambers had published in Edinburgh, because they knew they could count on the sensibilities of the 19th century and make a success of such a thing. And it was into this atmosphere, already so saturated with such ideas, that Darwin threw his ideas. He merely interwove Lamarck’s ideas with the theory of natural selection; for these concepts had long been familiar to English practitioners. A book had been published earlier: *Shipbuilding Timber and Tree Cultivation* by Patrick Matthew, in which the theory of natural selection is explicitly stated. — The paths by which these ideas entered 19th-century culture would have to be uncovered one day. History, as it is presented, is a myth, a great deception in most areas. The point is to truly take stock of what actually happened. For it is one thing for a young person to know that they are dealing with a scientific fact, and quite another if it concerns the ideas of the English brewer Joule. It makes a difference for them to know whether something has been established through all the scientific investigations of the 19th century, or whether it is the result of an endeavor by the Edinburgh publisher and bookseller Robert Chambers. This is the proper path to the truth. Above all, humanity must attune itself to the truth.

[ 12 ] This notion of the absolute—not relative—immortality of matter and force prevents—as could be established physiologically today, and only the dogma of the conservation of energy prevents people from doing so—the recognition of the point where matter truly vanishes into nothingness and new matter begins. And this one place in the world—though there are many such places—is the human organism. Matter does not merely pass through the human organism; rather, during the process that is experienced psychologically as the synthesis of conception and death, the physical reality unfolds in which certain matter that we take in actually disappears, and forces are consumed and regenerated. The phenomena involved here have actually been observed for longer than one might think. But no importance is attached to these observations. One need only carefully study the blood circulation inside the eye: Using instruments that are already sufficiently advanced today to observe such phenomena externally as well, one will be able to demonstrate—purely externally, physically—through the blood circulation what I have just described. For one will be able to show that blood flows peripherally toward an organ, disappears into the organ, and is generated anew within it in order to flow back out, so that one is not dealing with a blood circulation but with a process of generation and decay. These phenomena exist, yet the dogmatic notions of modern science stand in the way of what is essential regarding them. That is why people today are also prevented from viewing certain processes and phenomena—which are simply real—in their true reality.

[ 13 ] What does it mean for modern science when people die—die purely as physical beings? Science takes no notice of this. Otherwise, scientists do indeed concern themselves sufficiently with the dead, because they cannot reach the living, but in science, they take no notice of the fact of dying. As for the fact that science otherwise deals with the dead, I was told an example of this just yesterday. In 1889, Hamerling was provisionally buried in Graz. Later, he was to be transferred to another crypt. During the transfer—the gentleman who uncovered the matter told me this just yesterday—from the provisional crypt to the permanent one, the skull disappeared. The skull was not there. The gentleman in question investigated the matter, and it turned out that a plaster cast of the skull had been taken at the University Museum. The skull, wrapped in newspaper, had been sitting there in one spot, and it was only because the matter was uncovered at that time that it was returned to its grave to rejoin the rest of the body. — So people are already concerned with the dead, but not with the fact of death itself. For this fact of death also leads us to recognize something of the utmost importance. Namely, human dust—as I have already pointed out in one of my recent reflections—takes very special paths. I have pointed out that it actually attempts to make its way upward. In fact, the dust that comes from human beings—unlike other dust—would disperse throughout the entire cosmos, regardless of whether the corpse is cremated or decays, if it were not seized by the power of the sun, by the power that is in the sun. In fact, the force that shines upon the surface of a glittering stone, or when we see the colors of plants, is nothing but a force of the sun; it is the very force that Julian the Apostate called the visible sun. Then we have the invisible sun, which underlies the visible one, just as the soul underlies the outer physical human organism. This force—which, of course, does not descend with the physical etheric rays but rather comes to life anew within them—animates human dust in a very special way, just as it animates nothing else: neither mineral, nor plant, nor animal dust. A continuous interaction takes place after death between what remains of the human being in a purely external, physical sense and the forces that radiate down from the Sun. The two meet. The forces that stream down to move human dust are, in fact, the very forces that the deceased—now as a spiritual-soul individuality—discovers after death. While we, being incarnated in the physical body, see the physical sun, the deceased, once they have passed through the gate of death, first discovers the sun as the cosmic being that animates human dust down here on Earth. This is one of the many discoveries the deceased makes after death. They come to know the interweaving of solar power—of soul-sun power—with human dust. And as they come to know this interweaving between human dust and solar power, they first come to know the mystery of reincarnation itself, viewed from the other side, preparing for the next incarnation, weaving the next incarnation out of the cosmos. Furthermore, he learns to recognize, from the other side, certain facts upon which the mystery of reincarnation is based—facts that we will also discuss >in the near future.

[ 14 ] This brings us back to the realization of just how different the experiences of the inner life of the human soul are once the soul has passed through the gate of death, compared to the experiences the soul has here. These experiences after death are different even in the very structure of the soul. Just as we alternate here between sleeping and waking, so too does the deceased alternate between states of consciousness. I have already drawn attention to this in these lectures, but I would like to briefly characterize it once more from a different perspective.

[ 15 ] We live here, among other things, in our thoughts, inwardly and spiritually. The dead enter into a reality. What for us are merely thoughts is this reality. While in physical life we perceive the external mineral, plant, and animal worlds—and have our own physical world in addition—that which we experience only as a shadow in thought is immediately present to the deceased once they have passed through the gate of death. And this world into which they enter truly relates to the physical world just as objects here relate to shadows. In our thoughts, we have only the shadows of what the deceased experiences. But the deceased experiences this differently than we experience thoughts. Through thoughts, they experience something different than people here do—at least in our present age. Ordinarily, people dream in relation to their thoughts. The deceased, however, experiences that by thinking—that is, by living in thoughts as in realities—they become, grow, and flourish; to the same extent that they leave thoughts behind—that is, do not live within them—they wither away, becoming thinner and more emaciated. After death, coming into being and passing away are themselves connected to living within thoughts and living outside of thoughts. If it were the case here that people who do not wish to think would grow thinner, a strange world might unfold. But we experience only the ineffective shadows of thoughts, which have no real effects. The dead person experiences thoughts as realities; they nourish him or consume him in his soul-spiritual existence. And this time, during which thoughts nourish or consume him, is at the same time the time in which he develops his supersensible life of perception. He sees how thoughts flow into him and how they flow away again. It is not a perception like that which normally occurs in our ordinary consciousness, where we have only finished perceptions, but rather a continuous stream of thought life that is always connected to one’s own being. No matter how many things the physical human being sees on earth, once he has seen everything, he remains exactly the same—except that afterward he is usually aware of what he was before, though this has not significantly altered his constitution. With the dead, it is different; they see themselves in constant transformation through what they perceive. That is one state: this perception of the inflow and outflow of a living stream of thought. The other state is that this ceases, and a calm bringing to consciousness of what has flowed through them takes place: a more intense recollection, a recollection that is not our abstract memory, but one that is once again connected to the whole process of becoming. These two states alternate. That is why the dead are, in fact, receptive only to those thoughts that are conveyed to them from a spiritual scientific or spiritual perspective. The kind of thinking that people today usually engage in hardly reaches the dead at all, and the kind of thinking that does reach the dead is not particularly cherished by people today. People today love thoughts that they can somehow draw from the outside world. But they do not love thoughts that can only be attained by working them out inwardly—thoughts that thus already contain, in the soul, a trace of what thoughts possess after death: that flexibility, that life. This is far too difficult for people today. That is why people, even when they sit comfortably in the laboratory with a microscope, examining cells under it, making the appropriate incision with a scalpel, observing the incision, or processing other observations in whatever way, can write such excellent books as Oscar Hertwig’s *The Development of Organisms*. But the moment they start to think, they can write books as nonsensical as those by the current Oscar Hertwig. The only difference is that a book like his second one would not have required “thought corpses.” For scientific books, only “thought corpses” are necessary; for books of the kind of the second one, living thoughts would have been necessary. He doesn’t have them! Yet it is necessary to truly love such thoughts, to be able to live within them. For at the very moment when one, as one left behind here, truly wishes to build a bridge to the one who has passed through the gate of death—and with whom one was karmically connected—at that very moment, one needs at least a disposition that inclines toward life in thought. If one has this disposition, then the thoughts of those left behind are truly a very special addition to the life of the deceased and change much—infinitely much—in the existence of those who stand between death and new birth. However, if there were to dwell in human souls a vague sense of everything that the dead believe should be different on Earth than it actually is, then the living would find little solace in this thought. Such a vague sense does exist. People fear that the dead’s views on many things—what people think and feel, do and believe in their physical lives—might come to light. Yet this fear remains unconscious; nevertheless, it keeps people trapped in materialism. For the unconscious, even if it does not become conscious, is nonetheless effective. One must use the courage of thought not only to permeate what constitutes conscious imagination, but also the deepest depths of the human being. This must be said again and again if spiritual science is to be taken in all seriousness. For what matters is not that one grasps this or that statement, or finds this or that interesting or important in itself, but rather that all the details—just as an organism is composed of many details—coalesce within the human being into an overall constitution of the soul, which, for our time, can only ever be characterized as I have attempted to do from the most diverse points of view. It is absolutely necessary that there be some people in our time who know how to take spiritual science seriously from this perspective: that it gives our time a dynamic, living intellectual life, so that no one attacks another, even though they are in complete agreement—and thus there is absolutely no reason to bark when someone says something about a horoscope. In such cases, one is not looking at the matter properly at all.

[ 16 ] A time in which such a state of mind prevails gives rise to many other things at its core. Unfortunately, one can only hint at this quietly, but the opportunity must also be created to truly confront what lies at the core of our times—and what is already manifesting itself in such a catastrophic manner. Some people are indeed beginning to engage in serious reflection today. But one can see how difficult it is for people to move beyond the untruthful attitude toward the world and toward humanity that currently holds their souls captive. In how many respects does this question come to light—the one I have touched upon briefly today and which I will elaborate on in the near future—the question: What position has Christianity actually held over the course of the centuries and millennia, such that, having been active for centuries and millennia, it has nevertheless allowed today’s conditions to come about? — The question has been raised in various contexts. But one can see that the materials needed to answer it are not yet to be found among what humanity today calls scientific, religious, or other forms of reflection. Only spiritual science will be able to provide this material. For it is indeed a serious question: How should people today relate to Christianity, given that this Christianity has been active for such a long time throughout the centuries, yet has nevertheless allowed these conditions to arise today? The most curious, in any case, are those people who demand a return to some form of Christianity that existed before these conditions arose—people who thus have no sense that, if one returns to the same source, the same result must inevitably follow. These people will certainly not easily grasp that something radically new and profound must enter our spiritual life. More on this next time.