The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] We live in a time when it might become apparent what the so-called anthroposophical spiritual science has actually been striving for over the years. And it would surely be the most beautiful fruit of anthroposophical endeavor if it were to take root as a conviction in the hearts and souls of those participating in this movement—that, in a sense, the fiery signs of our time are what can serve as proof of the necessity from which this spiritual-scientific movement has been stepping into the world for years now. No matter how stormy this or that may appear in the outer world today, no matter what form the forces emerging from the deep foundations of human development may take, the true nature and essence of what is happening can actually be perceived only by looking at those events that escape ordinary human perception—which is still the norm today— and which are actually perceptible only when one views the world from a spiritual perspective.

[ 2 ] I would like to begin with a phenomenon that goes largely unnoticed today amid the many turbulent events. It is regarded as something insignificant and inconsequential, but it is there for those who, through spiritual deepening, have acquired the ability to view life as it truly is.

[ 3 ] It has now been about seven, eight, or ten years—it may sound paradoxical, but it is true—since, for the true observer of life, children have been born with a completely different appearance than in the past. Of course, one doesn’t notice it because one doesn’t pay attention to such things—because today, people don’t pay attention to the most important things in life at all. But anyone who has developed an eye for such things knows that there is something hovering over the faces of the many children born in the last seven, eight, or ten years—something like a gloom, like a reserve toward the world. One might say that from the very first days, from the very first weeks, you can see it in the children’s facial features: there is something different from what it used to be. And if one investigates this strange fact—which still sounds paradoxical to people today—one notices that the children’s souls, as they enter the world through birth, already carry within themselves, simply by passing through conception and birth, that which then gives their faces—almost from the moment of birth—a melancholic, —an expression that is perhaps often hidden behind every smile—that was not present on children’s faces in the past. And in their souls, quite unconsciously and naturally, there lives a certain mood of not wanting to enter into life. The souls who are being born today—as I said, this has been the case for almost ten years now—feel something like an obstacle and a hindrance to entering this physical world.

[ 4 ] The fact is that before a human being enters the physical world through conception and birth, they undergo an important event in the spiritual world, which then casts its rays and exerts its effects in the life to come. People die here on Earth; they pass through the gate of death; they shed their physical body and bring their soul into the spiritual world. This soul still carries within it the effects of everything it has lived through and experienced here in the physical world. In essence, having passed through the gate of death, it appears as the very effects of what was directly experienced here in earthly life. Such souls, having now passed through the gate of death, encounter—and this is a fact; I can only tell you this because these things can only be gleaned from the spiritual world through experience—they encounter those souls who are preparing to descend into a physical body in the time to come. And this is a significant event: this encounter between the souls who have just passed through the gate of death and those souls who will soon enter the physical world through the gate of birth. This event is of decisive importance. In a sense, it is there to instill in the descending souls something like a sense of what they will encounter here. And from this encounter stems the impulse that imposes a peculiar melancholy upon the children entering the world today. They do not want to enter this world, which they have come to know through this encounter. For they know how, in a sense, their “spiritual plumage” is ruffled by what humanity on Earth—immersed in a materialistic mindset, a materialistic worldview, and materialistic actions—is going through today. This event—which, of course, can only be observed spiritually—casts, among other things, a powerful light on our entire present, which can only be understood—and indeed should be understood—from such underlying perspectives.

[ 5 ] I was starting from an event that, of course, can only be grasped through spiritual insight. But other events in the present speak to us loud and clear, and these could become immediately apparent even without spiritual insight to anyone who does not go through life in a daze. We see how, to the world’s great misfortune, the great catastrophe of the World War has spread over the last four to five years. Time and again—and I believe every alert soul must do this—we look back at what, outwardly and visibly, led to this terrible catastrophe for humanity. We look at the course of this catastrophe and, finally, at what has emerged today as events stemming from this catastrophe across the widest regions of the world. One thing should be striking to every alert soul. Take, for example, the peculiar fact that this catastrophe of the World War broke out over Central Europe, and that—as is indeed the case—no one really wants to know how things actually came to be. People ask themselves how things came to be this way, blame one person or another, but in the end, when they believe they have figured out that one person or another was to blame, they always tell themselves: “It can’t be that simple; there must be something else at play.”

[ 6 ] People are saying to themselves: The great social movement has emerged from this catastrophe of the World War. People—whether they are party members or not—are trying to understand what is actually supposed to happen in the midst of this social catastrophe. All the thoughts people have about this are, in fact, mere “thought mummies” in the face of events—thoughts that are completely unable to cope with the force of events and their true nature. And if one looks even more closely—especially now, when all sorts of memoirs are being published by a number of people who were apparently quite directly involved in the origins of the global catastrophe—one must ask, based on what these people write: Were they really in the thick of things four or five years ago? Did they actually know what they were doing? Did they have any idea of the far-reaching consequences of what their minds had concocted? More and more people today would have to admit something like the confession of the Russian minister Sukhomlinov, who, referring to the three to four hours when it mattered most—when he made his most important decisions—said in court: “I must not have been in my right mind then; I must have been out of my mind!”

[ 7 ] Such events speak volumes. And they indicate that a state of mental confusion has swept through the broadest circles of those involved. And anyone who truly has what it takes to look deeply into the horror of current world events will come to realize—and more and more people will come to realize—that morally, not much has gone wrong, but intellectually, all the more so, due to the inability to make sense of world events in any way. And today it is no different. How helpless, when it comes down to it, is the vast majority of humanity in the face of the world events that have broken upon us. This should raise the most serious question: What, in fact, lies at the root of this? — There is something underlying this that is extraordinarily difficult to grasp, especially in our age, which is permeated by a materialistic mindset: that precisely since that pivotal moment in world history when the tide of the materialistic worldview reached its peak, the strongest spiritual force that has ever sought to enter human life from the spiritual world is now seeking to enter it. That is the defining feature of our time. Since the beginning of the last third of the 19th century, the spirit—the spiritual world—has been striving with all its might to reveal itself to humanity. Yet human beings have gradually reached a point in their development where they wish to use only their physical body as an instrument for perceiving anything in the world. Out of their materialistic worldview, they have become accustomed to maintaining—even theoretically—that the physical brain is the instrument for thinking, even for feeling, and even for willing. They have convinced themselves that the physical body is the instrument for all spiritual life. They have not convinced themselves of this without reason. They had good reason to do so, namely that, in the course of human development, people gradually came to the point where they could use only the physical body; indeed, it has gradually come to pass that only the physical body could be used as an instrument for spiritual activity. And so today we stand at an infinitely important juncture in human development, where on the one hand the spiritual world seeks to reveal itself as if in a storm, and where on the other hand human beings must find the strength to work their way up from their deepest entanglement in the material world to a new receptivity to spiritual revelations.

[ 8 ] Humanity today faces the greatest test of its strength: the test of its ability to work its way upward toward the Spirit, which comes to meet humanity of its own accord, provided that people do not close themselves off from this Spirit. But the time has passed when the Spirit could reveal itself to human beings through all manner of subconscious and unconscious processes. The time has come when human beings must receive the light of the Spirit through a free inner act. And all the confusion and all the uncertainty in which people live today stem from the fact that they must now receive something they do not yet actually wish to receive: a completely new understanding of things.

[ 9 ] Amid this terrible, terror-filled catastrophe of the World War, the old way of thinking—the old way of viewing world events—has run its course, and the infinitely significant warning signs of this World War catastrophe point to nothing other than this: Try to think differently; try a new way of looking at the world, for the old way can only ever lead to chaos and confusion. This must finally be recognized: The leading figures of 1914 had reached the point where nothing more could be achieved with the old understanding. That is why they led humanity into disaster. People today must engrave this fact deeply in their souls; otherwise, they will not make the strong, resolute decision to truly meet the Spirit and their own lives from a place of free inner initiative. It is, after all, the tragic reality of our immediate present that we see things manifesting everywhere that cannot be understood through previous worldviews and attitudes toward life. But people cling to these old worldviews and attitudes toward life and do not want—do not want—to arrive at entirely new ways of looking at things. The anthroposophical worldview sought to prepare humanity to arrive at these new ways of looking at the world. In essence, this anthroposophical worldview had no real opponents other than the complacency and inertia of the inner human being, who cannot bring himself to direct the innermost forces of his soul toward the wave of spirit that is breaking in so powerfully, especially in our time.

[ 10 ] As I said earlier: people have lost the habit of using anything other than their physical body for thinking, and this has ultimately led to a materialistic worldview. Now there is one thing that must absolutely be understood in the present. Nature, as studied by today’s triumphant natural science, can be understood using the physical brain—or the physical body in general. But human life cannot be understood using the physical body. Human life can only be understood if one can rise to a level of thinking that is not derived solely from the physical body. And it is this kind of thinking that should be cultivated through the anthroposophical worldview. Of course, people say: “Yes, the anthroposophical worldview—what’s written in the books, what’s spoken about—we don’t understand it.” — One believes people when they say they don’t understand it. But what does it mean that they don’t understand it? It means nothing other than: I want to use only the physical brain to understand; I don’t want to learn a way of thinking other than the one that can lazily rely on the physical brain. Of course, the anthroposophical worldview cannot be understood in this way. It’s not as if one has to be clairvoyant to understand it, but one must practice a kind of thinking that is not bound to the physical brain. And what is found in anthroposophical literature—what can be grasped with common sense (which is not bound to the brain, only the sick, materialistic mind is bound to the brain—what can be learned through common sense gradually trains a way of thinking, feeling, and willing that is capable of meeting the challenges of the present. You may interpret this as you will, but it is true: what the present demands of us cannot be grasped through the instrument of the physical body; it must be grasped through the instrument of the etheric body—that body which, as a body of formative forces, underlies the physical body.

[ 11 ] The spiritual world that is breaking through and seeks to reveal itself to humanity actually makes its presence felt to people only through very unconscious feelings. People have a deep-seated fear of it. It is really just an excuse when people say they do not understand spiritual science. The truth is that they are afraid of the spiritual world as it reveals itself. It is only because people do not want to admit this fear of the spiritual world that they say they do not understand spiritual science, or that it is not logical, or whatever other excuses they choose. In truth, they are afraid of it, and that is why they resort to all sorts of things to escape precisely these great, powerful problems. How glad people are when they can escape the great challenges, the mysteries of present-day life! People may have discussed important contemporary issues in one way or another, but they found it uncomfortable. Then, however, they turned to Ibsen’s plays, which touched on some of the great problems of the present. But people didn’t have to believe in them, because that was “merely” art. The intrusion of the spiritual world into the physical world made people uncomfortable when it was spoken of directly to them. Björnson, too, dealt with such themes in his plays; yet there was no need to believe in them—that was “merely” art. People had a deep-seated fear of taking these things seriously. And again: class antagonisms—the gulf between the ruling classes and the proletarian classes—were growing ever wider. Puzzles arose from the social question. People talked about these puzzles, and that was uncomfortable. But people went to the theater and watched Hauptmann’s *The Weaver*; there was no need to take a serious stance on it; instead, one could get a little emotionally stirred up by what were perceived as the abysses within humanity, but there was no need to take a stand, because it was, after all, “just” art, and so on. People took refuge in something they did not have to take seriously. This is a characteristic phenomenon of the psychology of the time. But what lies behind this characteristic phenomenon of the psychology of the age? What lies behind it is that people should have strived, out of the tendency toward the revelation of the spiritual world, to take certain things seriously—things that cannot be grasped through the instrument of the physical body, but can only be grasped through imaginative powers, just as art itself can only be grasped through imaginative powers. The human physical body is structured like a product of nature; the human etheric body is structured like a work of art, like a real sculpture—only it is in constant motion. And whatever else a person accepts for their own pleasure in their perception of art must become more concentrated, must become more luminous, must become serious contemplation: imagination, inspiration, intuition. Then a person will understand what seeks to reveal itself to them today. For lurking behind today’s events is that which can only be understood spiritually. One should feel and sense deeply how that which seeks to enter the present world as a spiritual revelation can only be grasped through spiritual science itself—that is, through that thinking, feeling, and those inner impulses of the will that can be cultivated through spiritual science, which operate in the same realm as the artistic, though the latter operates there in a frivolous manner, as a mere reflection.

[ 12 ] At the time, I attempted to draw attention to something in a particular field that is urgently needed today. Naturally, this was not understood due to the philistinism and narrow-mindedness of our science, and the monstrous horror that is today’s official university scholarship. In my *Philosophy of Freedom*, published in 1894, I titled a chapter “The Moral Imagination.” From the perspective of the humanities, one could also say: the imaginative moral impulses. I wanted to point out that the realm which is otherwise grasped only artistically in the imagination must now necessarily be taken seriously by humanity, because this is the stage that human beings must ascend in order to bring the supersensible—which is not grasped by the brain—into themselves. I wanted to point out—at least with regard to the understanding of morality in the early 1890s—that the time has come to take the supersensible seriously. These are the things one should feel today. One should have a sense that the thoughts, the inner soul impulses, which were carried forward all the way to the catastrophe of the World War and into the era of social upheaval, are no longer useful, and that new impulses are needed. If one comes forward today with a new impulse, it is precisely this new impulse that is least understood. For one comes with an impulse that has been drawn alive from the spiritual world as a remedy for the ills of our time. Then people on the left squawk, and people on the right squawk, and everyone squawks together in a chorus from the far right to the far left, and they all feel that this is something they do not understand. Of course, one cannot understand it if one wants to remain stuck in old ways of thinking. But today it is precisely necessary that we not remain stuck in old ways of thinking, but rather that we inwardly transform and reshape the entire soul. All external revolutions—no matter how much they may align with the desires of one party or class or another — will run into the worst dead end and bring the worst misery upon humanity unless today’s external revolutionary movements are illuminated by the inner revolution of the soul, which is taking place in the process of moving away from immersion in a purely materialistic worldview and toward receiving the spiritual wave that seeks to break into the development of humanity as a new revelation. The revolution from matter to spirit—that is the only salutary revolution, and all other revolutions are merely childhood illnesses—they are scarlet fever and measles, the precursors of that which seeks to be born as something healthy in the present-day emergence of the spirit.

[ 13 ] Today, a strong inner resolve is necessary in order to rise to the challenges that the present demands of us. And let us consider in all seriousness that it is a spiritual world that seeks to break into our own, that what is demanded of us is this: that spiritual forces be present upon which we are to base our decisions, our actions, and our entire thinking. This is what is demanded of us! In such a time, much changes. Here I may again point to a symptom that, when stated, will sound paradoxical once more, but which, when viewed from an inner, spiritual perspective, is of the utmost importance. We have—as we know from spiritual science—in addition to our physical body and our etheric body—which I have just described to you as an instrument that becomes necessary for a certain spiritual perception of what otherwise need only be a reflection in art—we also have the actual soul within us. You may call it the astral body, or whatever you wish to call it. This is what is even more essentially spiritual than the etheric body; it is that from which human beings, naturally, have been even further removed during their physical development than from their etheric body. For the etheric body, as the foundation of the physical body, has a kind of form—even if it is a form in constant motion—but the astral body is actually formless. And when one speaks of it, one speaks only of an image, knowing that the image is meant merely to represent it, for in truth it is formless. This astral body has changed quite significantly in modern humans—a process that has been unfolding for three to four centuries. People of the past had an astral body that was still, to a relatively large extent, permeated and infused with spirituality and all manner of spiritual forces; and whatever spiritual sensations and impulses people experienced in life came from this spiritual element that resided within the astral body. Now the astral bodies have actually become empty. They are strangely empty. And they are empty because, at a time when the spiritual world is, so to speak, seeking to reveal itself with great force from the outside, human beings are meant to take in this external spiritual world. That is why their astral bodies have gradually become empty. They are meant to be filled once again with what is revealed from the outside. This has a very specific effect on human beings. And now I come to the fact that—as I have already said—will seem quite paradoxical when spoken aloud, just like the melancholic face of a child. But it is nonetheless a fact.

[ 14 ] The most important event in the history of how the catastrophe of the World War came about—insofar as this history unfolded in Berlin—took place on August 1, between the afternoon and the evening, roughly between a quarter past four in the afternoon and eleven or twelve at night. Various people were involved—naturally, people of the materialistic present. This is the most inopportune moment that can exist today for a human soul when it is called upon to make decisions, especially if that human soul makes these decisions out of a materialistic mindset. For we have entered a very, very important phase in human development. People today cannot make any sensible decisions at all if—as strange as it may sound, but this is a truth, and humanity will increasingly recognize it as such from external facts—if they do not wake up with those decisions already in mind early in the morning. They do not need to have them in their conscious mind at that moment. But in the subconscious, a person experiences during the night what they may encounter the next day. They are not yet able to foresee it prophetically, but that is not what matters. However, if you entertain a thought at half past three or at six o’clock—you have already had it during the night; it arises within you once more. If, on the other hand, a thought arises that was not already conceived during the night—one drawn from the events of the day—then it can no longer be a reasonable one for people today. People today are precisely called upon to draw their most important impulses from the spiritual world. The most important impulses for human beings do not come from the physical world at all. In a sense, we are compelled today to be irrational if we do not already bring these resolutions with us, if we do not appeal to this connection with the spiritual world. When our astral body is free at night—outside the physical and etheric bodies—and in communion with the spiritual world, the most essential processes take place within it; thus, it is better prepared for the rationality of the day than was the case with our ancestors. The moment of waking should therefore be sacred for people today, because they should feel: I am emerging from the spiritual world; I am entering the physical world. And all that is good— everything that enables me to be a rational human being—I have experienced this through my communion with the spiritual world from the moment I fall asleep until I wake up; through my communion with the dead whom I knew in life and who have passed away before me; in short, through my communion with those who are not now in a physical body—when I am with them in the purely spiritual world. And from this experience in the spiritual realm, I should draw the fundamental sense of the sacredness of the moment of waking. Then this fundamental sense will bestow upon me, throughout the day, the ability to say to myself in one instance: “Here, a spiritual impulse helps me”—and in another: “Here, nothing helps me; everything remains undecided; that may only be decided tomorrow.”

[ 15 ] This is one way of living a spiritual life—when one truly takes spiritual factors into account. Of course, people in the materialistic age do not take spiritual factors into account, because they are always “smart.” They believe that the physical body provides everything they need to be smart. They do not consider what might become of them when they are separated from the physical body and, in their astral body, are in communion with the spiritual world. Only the will to live a spiritual life—the will to allow spiritual resolutions and spiritual impulses to play a part in what we do in the physical realm—can truly restore humanity to health.

[ 16 ] This is what people today should really give serious thought to. For an anthroposophical worldview cannot consist of simply absorbing a set of abstract concepts, viewing them as a kind of catechism based on their abstract content, and then being satisfied that we have a different worldview from others. No, the anthroposophical worldview must consist in our entire way of thinking becoming different, our entire way of feeling becoming different, and that great moment of spiritual awakening taking place within us, so that we know: We must allow the Spirit to illuminate our lives. And the misfortune of present-day humanity has arisen because the refusal to accept the spiritual has been taken to the extreme. Never has an event such as this catastrophe of world war arisen from such external causes, from such purely material causes. And that is why it has also become the most terrible. From it, humanity should learn that it was driven into this catastrophe by its former ways of thinking, feeling, and willing, and will not emerge from it—even if it takes on other forms—until it undertakes the inner transformation, the inner metamorphosis of its soul, with bold resolve.

[ 17 ] The facts I have presented to you are facts: the melancholic gloom on the children’s faces, the necessity of using our etheric body to understand the world, and the necessity of appealing to the moment of waking—to that which, as it were, glows within us as a remnant of what remains from our previous sleep—for our impulses of will. This allowing the spirit to have a say is what is necessary—and is becoming ever more necessary—for the future development of humanity. One must understand that the anthroposophical worldview is not meant to be a sensation for idle souls—and today’s mystics are often nothing more than idle souls—that it is not something that offers a sort of dessert of life, an external physical pleasure, but rather that it is something connected to the deepest impulses of our culture. This is what one should realize. And also that our culture cannot be restored to health unless it is enriched by the anthroposophical worldview. This is something one should take deeply to heart today, once one has become acquainted with the anthroposophical worldview.

[ 18 ] With this, I have sought to illustrate to you, from a certain perspective, at what decisive moment in the world’s development of humanity we actually find ourselves. Certainly, it is tempting to condemn as folly those things that must be said today as the most essential, if one judges from the prevailing ideas of the time. People believe themselves to be Christians, yet they have not even understood the saying that what is wisdom to humans is often folly to God, and that all folly—and perhaps even madness and madness—in the eyes of humans could still be wisdom to God, just as people today so easily forget the inner impulses of things and gladly cling to the outward form of phrases. If one speaks to people today and says the word “Christian” or “Christ” or “Jesus” every fifth word, then one is speaking “Christianly,” even if one is otherwise saying something very unchristian. But if one presumes to proclaim what Christ is placing in our souls today and, in doing so, considers the word that has ultimately been adopted into Christianity: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain,” people consider that unchristian. For people parrot the Ten Commandments, take the name of their God in vain at every turn, and consider themselves particularly Christian precisely because they utter this name. Likewise, one is not considered a “good” German if one does not always have the word “German” on one’s lips. Today, the most important thing is to recognize how the deepest forces of German culture have been trampled underfoot over the last thirty years and must be restored precisely through spiritual deepening.

[ 19 ] We look to the West and find a culture that seeks to become entirely materialistic, a culture that nevertheless possesses a certain inner security of instinct and is thus unable to drown in materialism. And we look to the East and find a culture that despises everything Western—and us as well—because this Eastern culture still stands rooted in an ancient spirituality, an ancient spiritual tradition, and in a certain way renews this ancient spiritual tradition. And we stand right in the middle of it all and are called upon to find the right path between Western materialism and Eastern spiritualism, which is not beneficial to us. And here in the heart of Europe, we should become aware of this great sense of responsibility—and also realize how much this sense of responsibility has been lost to us in recent decades. What has become of spiritual life? An appendage of political life, an appendage of economic life. The state, as the administrator of intellectual life—especially the school system—has ruined our intellectual life. Economic life, as the master, has further ruined it. We need a free intellectual life, for only through a free intellectual life can we truly instill within ourselves what the spiritual world seeks to reveal to humanity. This tide of intellectual life must be broken! It will never reveal itself to the civil servant, the state professor, or those who, in spiritual life, are the laborers of economic life; but only to those who struggle daily with spiritual life, who are immersed in a free spiritual life. The course of history itself demands the liberation of spiritual life from the shackles of the state and the economy.

[ 20 ] These things, which are also proclaimed today in a different form through the program of the “Threefold Social Order,” are Christianity today; they are spiritual revelations clothed in outward forms. They are what people need; they alone offer the real foundation and real possibility for the rethinking and relearning that is so necessary for humanity. We had to wage war against a country that possesses an instinctive political life of high sophistication and that has long had many colonies and an industrial system linked to those colonies. We waged war as a country that had only a nascent industrial base, one that was just beginning to seek colonies. We would have needed the Spirit for this endeavor, and no one has committed the sin against the Spirit more than those who have led economic life in Germany over the past three decades. For the program was there: the rejection of spiritual life, the surrender to mere chance—to unspiritual chance. It is as if the World Spirit had wanted to teach the German people the greatest lesson by imposing the greatest trial upon them. This people was to be shown that it cannot do without the Spirit. And this people will have to realize that it cannot do without the Spirit. But it seems as though it is difficult for them to realize that it cannot be done without the spirit, for they are still inclined to condemn everything else rather than their own lack of awareness of responsibility toward the spirit. The events unfolding so lamentably in this realm in our day—the complete failure to realize how ill-suited these people are to guide the fate of the German people, a task currently entrusted to them vis-à-vis the West; how senseless this entire expedition is on the part of those involved; and the refusal to examine or even look at what is happening—all of this still bears witness to the slumber of souls who should long ago have said to themselves: What has occurred in Versailles, sent there by us, is unsuitable—as unsuitable as possible—for grasping the present moment in world history. But such things will only be judged properly when people become aware of their responsibility toward the spirit, when they realize that they are living in the greatest moment in world history and that they have an obligation not to take things lightly in a general sense, but to take them seriously. But in certain areas today, people can talk and talk—it does no good, and it is, after all, more convenient to say that those who have been placed in their positions will take care of it. Those who are placed in their positions today with old ways of thinking—whether they are old aristocrats, decadent aristocrats, or Marxist socialists who know nothing of the world and have at most absorbed something from Marx’s *Capital*—whatever they may be: if they do not find the will to bring about that great transformation of souls toward new ways of thinking, then there will be no salvation. The revolution of November 9, 1918, was no revolution. For what has changed is only the outward form. What has changed is most evident in those who now bear the outward form in place of those who previously bore it. These things must be viewed in their foundations. But this requires thought. One must have the good will to engage in these thoughts, and this good will will come only if one cultivates it through engagement with the spiritual world. That is why this engagement with the spiritual world is the only true balm that humanity needs today.

[ 21 ] I wanted to take this opportunity, now that we have been given the chance, speak with one another here once again, as it must appear to us today in light of current events—to present this to you, to bring it into your souls, so that within our anthroposophical movement, that striving may arise more and more and in ever wider and wider circles—a striving that can not only give the individual an inner sense of well-being but can also bear fruit for the cultural life of all humanity.

[ 22 ] It gives me deep satisfaction to see how many more friends of our anthroposophical movement are sitting here than a year ago. May the spirit vibrating within today’s world and human development bring about an influx of at least as many—or many more—people each year. For the more human souls this spirit fills with conviction regarding the new ways of thinking, feeling, and willing, and regarding the new sense of responsibility, the better it will be.