The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] I have spoken of how the present era is one in the history of human development that presents humanity with great trials, even though what takes place through these trials largely flows into the subconscious of human souls.

[ 2 ] People, I said, know—and must know—what it means to cross the threshold into the invisible world when they undergo a kind of initiation, when they truly and consciously enter this invisible world. Of course, something like this does not happen overnight, but rather over long periods of time—with humanity itself, as humanity must experience how the interacting forces of thinking, feeling, and willing seem to separate, to peel away from one another, much as thinking, feeling, and willing become independent precisely when crossing the threshold into the supersensible worlds. All of this is linked to significant changes in the innermost nature of the human being, and it is the task of our time to take these changes in the innermost nature of the human being into our consciousness. It is precisely this complacent urge of people today—not really wanting to know what is happening to humanity—this living in illusions and, when it comes down to it, in daydreams about life—that is what must be overcome.

[ 3 ] The best way for us to understand what I have left to say to you today is to reflect on the facts of the supersensible realm that we have long been familiar with—to recall how, upon falling asleep, a person’s I and astral body leave the physical body and the etheric body, and how they return to them upon waking. Now, this is a general description, a schematic description, so to speak. It is generally said that when a person wakes up, they return to their physical body and their etheric body. But this return takes place, so to speak, to varying degrees. If we consider, for example, a small, still immature child, we can never say that the “I” and the astral body are completely submerged into the physical body and the etheric body, that in their activity they become completely one with the activity of the physical body and the etheric body. There is always, so to speak, something in the “I” and in the astral body that does not merge with the physical body and the etheric body. And when we look back to earlier periods of human development, to that important, decisive turning point in human development—which, as I told you, lies in the middle of the 15th century—then we can say that, for the entire human life in ancient times up to that point, a complete immersion of the “I” and the astral body during wakefulness—during the human being’s conscious waking hours—did not take place. Rather, what is of immense significance in human development, particularly in our post-Atlantean era, is that our soul and our spiritual nature—our “I” and our astral body—can now, for the first time, become completely immersed in the physical body and the etheric body; and this occurs, for our time at least—though conditions will change somewhat again later—only after the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth years. This is a profound mystery in the development of humanity. It is only now that human beings actually experience this complete immersion into their physical body—and only after they have reached the fully mature age of twenty-seven or twenty-eight. And what does this complete immersion into the physical body mean? It means that through this immersion we become capable of developing those thoughts, of unfolding those ideas that have been the materialistic, scientific ideas since the time of Galileo and Copernicus. Our physical body is the right instrument for these ideas, for this scientific worldview. This was not achieved in the waking state in earlier centuries; therefore, scientific thinking did not exist. This is entirely bound up with the physical body. Everything else I have had to tell you these past few days is connected to this—namely, the activity that human beings must develop in connection with spiritual-scientific insight in such a way that they, in turn, arouse interest among the beings of the three next-higher hierarchies, as I have explained to you. In a sense, the beings of these three hierarchies have brought us to the point where we can immerse ourselves in our physical body and thereby come to know the dead, mineral outer world through the natural sciences.

[ 4 ] It is simply the task of humanity in the present age to be well-informed about these matters. Without an awareness of these things, people live, as it were, in a state of slumber throughout the current cultural epoch, and therein lies the reason why people today go through the events around them as if in a dream. One must allow these concrete facts to sink into one’s soul so that one can become aware of the forces that are at work in the development of humanity today. One can certainly say: In the present age, much must be renewed—though by “present age” I naturally mean a period spanning a long time. Above all, things such as educational goals must be renewed. I have already pointed this out from our perspective. We must educate people from childhood onward in such a way that they enter, in the proper manner, a stage of life characterized by complete immersion in the physical body. We must enable people to become fully immersed in the physical body. Why, then, can efforts be made to bring about a transformation, a renewal, of our educational system? They can be made because humanity, as it enters a new stage of development, must be prepared for the experiences of this new stage. Anyone who observes life today will know that there are currently an extraordinary number of broken human natures who cannot cope with life. And why cannot they cope with life? Because, as I have described, they cannot look back on experiences they should have had during their upbringing, in their childhood. Certain capacities can only be developed during childhood. If they are developed then, they remain with a person throughout life; one possesses them, and one is then able to cope with life. If one does not possess them, one is not able to cope with life. This is how we should understand the sense of responsibility that we should cultivate today toward the entire field of education.

[ 5 ] Another point: We must be clear that the Christ impulse entered humanity during the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. This epoch began in the 8th century B.C. and lasted until the middle of the 15th century A.D. Approximately at the end of the first third of this period, that which gives meaning to the entire development of the Earth—the Christ impulse, the event at Golgotha—entered into human evolution. It entered at a time when humanity was in the stage of development of the intellectual or emotional soul. This stage of development of the intellectual or emotional soul—in which human thinking and feeling were more instinctive than they are today—was succeeded by the development of the conscious soul in the 15th century, in which we now find ourselves. The way in which the event of Golgotha entered human development as an impulse in world history was initially intended for the instinctive understanding of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. It was received by the people of that epoch. For this instinctive understanding, it was self-evident to think that the Christ Being lived within the personality of Jesus of Nazareth—a Being who had descended from cosmic heights during that period to unite with the body of Jesus of Nazareth for earthly deeds. Everyone could intuitively recognize a great, significant supersensible event in the occurrence at Golgotha, just as it entered into humanity at that time. As time went on, what lay within the powers of the intellectual or emotional soul became increasingly dulled. That understanding of the event at Golgotha, which was still present in the first centuries of Christian development, could not endure. It had to give way to an entirely different state of soul within civilized humanity. As a result, with the emergence of the conscious soul, the event at Golgotha itself became increasingly materialized. And so we see how the development of civilized humanity over the last four to five centuries proceeded in such a way that understanding of what actually happened on Golgotha—the indwelling of the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth—diminished more and more. This great mystery, which was instinctively recognized in the early Christian centuries, was understood less and less. It became increasingly materialized, right up to our own times, in which it has even become possible to perceive “progress” in this area in the fact that people no longer wanted to know anything about the supersensible, cosmic Christ, and that they began to speak of Jesus of Nazareth merely as an extraordinary human being, but still a human being of the same nature as the rest of humanity.

[ 6 ] We are also at a turning point here. A new understanding of Christ must emerge. This new understanding of Christ can only emerge if it is sought through the methods of spiritual science, if it is sought in such a way that, through supersensible means, we can once again discover what can truly take place only in the supersensible realm—what can only be revealed in the sensible world. And this new understanding of Christ must emerge from such depths of human nature that, in the face of these depths, the denominational differences that prevail throughout civilized humanity will cease. These denominational differences are all rooted in a state of mind that lies more on the surface of the soul than anything that must today lead, from the foundations of spiritual science, to a new understanding of Christ in Jesus. And this understanding will not be complete; it will not be one that can truly satisfy the needs of the human soul today, unless it also bridges the divisions within humanity that have been brought into this humanity through the denominations. We have reason to hope for something from this new Christ impulse—which, deep down, we must all yearn for if we are serious and sincere in our commitment to humanity—we have reason to hope for something that is being sought today, in a very misguided way, in other spheres. Today, people speak of and pin their hopes on a so-called League of Nations. It is remarkable how much people today long for abstractions to understand reality. Where, then, are the impulses to come from that work through the nations to bring about the unity implied by the so-called League of Nations? Consider all the spiritual impulses that have been put forward so far to justify this League of Nations: they are nothing but a few abstractions. But people today are oblivious to such things. Just how oblivious they are to these matters can be seen from a fact such as the following: Woodrow Wilson, the inventor—or at least the reinventer—of this League of Nations, had stated, back when America was not yet involved in global negotiations to the extent it is today, that the League of Nations could only be properly established if this catastrophe of war produced neither victors nor vanquished. That would be the indispensable condition for the League of Nations. Anyone who took that seriously back then cannot possibly take seriously today what is now being said about the League of Nations. The two are irreconcilable. But people do not realize this. And that is what stands in such stark contrast to healthy human development today—that people actually accept the most contradictory ideas once a certain amount of time has passed. It is as if people today are simply unable to be fully present in spirit with what is actually happening.

[ 7 ] No, this League of Nations is completely useless. For what is to be established within humanity must flow to the surface from the depths of the human being. Only a new understanding of the Christ impulse can develop what can be established today throughout the entire civilized world from contemporary human impulses—for reasons that do not rest in the differentiation of nations. Only this Christ impulse, understood anew through spiritual science, can be what reconnects the nations—which are fragmenting amid hatred and misunderstanding—across the civilized world. This should sink deep, deep into the souls as a conviction. For everything else that does not move in this direction is today an obstacle to the development of humanity. And, fundamentally speaking, it is reckless to speak of the requirements of human development in any way other than from the deepest foundations of that development. If the Earth has found its true purpose with regard to human development through the event at Golgotha, then today is the time when this purpose must be understood in a new way. And until humanity imposes upon itself the obligation to achieve this understanding, there will be no healing for the wounds of our time. Today, one cannot drive the things that must happen side by side from this perspective; one must drive them into one another. Today, one cannot engage in politics superficially, nor can one seek to establish a League of Nations superficially. These things demand that they be internalized through the deepest impulse of humanity—the Christ impulse.

[ 8 ] It is the duty of the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science to point out, in a certain way, what each individual human being can awaken within themselves only as a personal, individual being—but which must be awakened. For as soon as these things are touched upon, the full gravity of our time must be felt. It is deeply painful that, fundamentally speaking, this gravity of our time is still so little felt that people avoid engaging with the great insights that must absolutely be incorporated into human consciousness. We have lived through an epoch that has led us very far away from that inner impulse which guides us toward the insights necessary today. Ask a modern natural scientist or someone who thinks in the spirit of contemporary natural science: What would have become of the Earth’s evolution if humanity had not participated in it? If a natural scientist today thinks rationally at all on the basis of his hypotheses and views, he can give no other answer than this: Then humanity would not exist, and the Earth would develop without humanity; its mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms would also develop. Things would proceed much as they do today, only humans would not be present—at most, no houses would have been built, no cities would exist, and so on. —So one must say, if one grasps the essence of modern natural science, that the Earth would have evolved without humans, even if humans were not present. And yet, this is a complete fallacy. If you take into account everything you can find in the various discussions we have been having for nearly two decades, you will find what I am about to say to be self-evident. One simply needs to be made aware of it.

[ 9 ] What a human being carries within themselves as their physical body is interwoven with the soul throughout their existence between birth and death. Now that we have entered this epoch, it is even interwoven with the soul in a special way: the “I” and the astral body are completely immersed in the physical body. And again, whether we return the remains of our physical body to the earth through cremation or burial, to the current scientific perspective this means nothing more than: These remains consist of various substances that, upon a person’s death, are returned to the earth and follow their own paths according to the various principles pursued today in organic and, especially, inorganic chemistry. But all of this is sheer nonsense. What is at stake, rather, is this: that the human body is not merely an insubstantial vessel; that from birth to death it is inhabited by the human spirit-soul being. And we hand over our physical body to the earth in a form and condition that it could only have acquired because it was lived through from birth to death by that being which, before birth—or rather, before conception—lived in the spiritual world as the human soul-spirit. And the Earth, in its present state of development, would long since have begun to decay and become desolate if it were not, as a kind of ferment—whether through burial or by fire—to absorb what are, after all, human bodies that have been abandoned by the souls but were lived through until death. When people used to bake bread—that’s how it was done in the past; today it’s become a bit contrived—they would set aside some of the old dough to use as yeast when baking the next batch; that was part of the process. In a similar way, the Earth would not be able to develop without human bodies—not animal bodies—being added, so to speak, as a leavening agent. They ensure that the Earth, which would otherwise have long since disintegrated, will carry through to the end in its development whatever is within it. Human beings play a part—and especially now—in the entire development of the Earth. And even what we contribute to the Earth’s development through our death has significance for it.

[ 10 ] And the other thing that happens to human beings in their development—especially from the present epoch onward—is that as they reach a more mature age, passing the twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth year, they enter into a connection with their physical body in the waking state that has a very special effect on the spiritual world, on the supermundane world. This is the remarkable polarity in human development: When a person passes through the gate of death and leaves their body behind, they separate from that body something that serves as a catalyst for the Earth’s development. When they pass through the period from the twenty-eighth to the thirty-fifth year, they give something to the spiritual world—something that is, however, necessary for that spiritual world. What one gives up there—I will speak about this in the future, explaining how the matter differs for young people who die before the age of twenty-eight; that would take us too far afield today—what one gives up to the spiritual world is the most important thing one rediscovers when, after death, one relives one’s life in the spiritual world. This is what one truly surrenders to the supernatural world, just as one surrenders the physical body to the earthly world.

[ 11 ] Such mysteries are linked to the development of humanity, and present-day humanity simply must bring these things into its consciousness. These things are not merely intellectual sensations—truly not! They have a much, much deeper significance still. For whoever is able to take these things seriously, whoever can experience them with their full weight in their soul, can also take life much more seriously than others. And this deepened seriousness toward life is necessary for people today. And a thorough understanding of what our threefold social order is intended to provide—the external understanding, of course, can be conveyed to the external, I would say the exoteric world, and must be conveyed to it—but the truly profound understanding, such that the most conscious participation in today’s social evolution is possible, must spring from a seriousness of life grounded in the worldview of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Otherwise, we do not grasp things deeply enough. Out in the world, the things related to the threefold social order must be proclaimed. Here in this place, we hope to kindle in people’s souls the necessary fire, the necessary enthusiasm, so that those who can acquire such an understanding from the perspective of spiritual science will do everything possible to impart the necessary understanding to others—through the warmth of their own conviction, through their own enthusiasm. With the superficial understanding that people out in the world have today—which leads precisely to the belief that the Earth could develop even without human involvement—with such superficial understanding, the necessary seriousness for our time cannot be achieved. That is why, as we walk through the great cities today, our hearts bleed at the utter lack of connection to what is actually happening in human evolution.

[ 12 ] These things have been in the making. Their preliminary culmination was precisely what is called the catastrophe of the World War, into which flowed what had been gaining more and more ground in terms of superficial views. Today, however, it is humanity’s duty to attain that threefold deepening of which I spoke yesterday, in relation to the beings of the three hierarchies above us. For we must realize today that we are, in fact, living within this complex of realities. As humanity, we must pass through the epoch in which the ego and the astral body descend deepest into the physical and etheric bodies, and are thus exposed to the strongest temptations arising from the fact that we, as human beings, come into such close connection with our physical body.

[ 13 ] There are two aspects to this: first, a way in which this temptation can arise, which I would like to call the Western form of this temptation, and the other is the Eastern form. The Western form becomes increasingly pronounced the farther one looks toward the West, but we carry this temptation particularly strongly within our own nature. It consists in the fact that, as we delve deeper and deeper into our physical body, we come into intimate connection with the earthly forces to which the physical body is bound. Our physical body is bound to the earthly forces. It is torn away from these earthly forces only by overcoming, in its consciousness, the weight of the earth and similar forces that bind it to the earth. Human beings have no idea how they overcome the forces at work within them through their own constitution. I once cited an example here that can illustrate what I am now mentioning. I said: The human brain is so heavy that if it were to exert its full weight, it would crush the blood vessels located directly beneath it. However, there is a remarkable mechanism in the human organism whereby this brain floats in what is known as cerebrospinal fluid. According to Archimedes’ principle, any body in water loses an amount of weight equal to the weight of the volume of water it displaces. For this reason, the pressure exerted by the brain on the blood vessels beneath it is reduced, precisely because the brain floats in cerebrospinal fluid, and in this way we overcome the brain’s weight. — This is how we overcome many things. It is precisely these forces, to which so little attention is paid, that reveal—even in the physical realm—what a wonder of the world is present in the human organism. Thus we are connected to the forces of the Earth, but we must not come into direct contact with these forces. The temptation to become too closely involved with these forces exists in the Western world, in all Western attitudes toward life. This temptation is an Ahrimanic one. It can only be counteracted if we truly succeed, step by step, in deepening our understanding to the point where we are able to survey the development of humanity throughout history and truly understand the event of Golgotha as a real fact at the center of this historical development of the Earth—just as we can understand the place of Caesar, Augustus, or Socrates in history. Only by incorporating Christ into its scientific and epistemological perspective—by allowing Christ to permeate the entire thinking of the Western worldview—can the Western worldview protect itself from the Ahrimanic temptation and its consequences.

[ 14 ] The Eastern worldview is in the opposite situation. In a certain sense, the Eastern person remains at a childlike stage, in that he does not allow his ego and his astral body to be submerged into the physical body and etheric body—even in the present epoch, in which humanity is destined to bring about this submersion. The Eastern person flees from this submersion. It is interesting to understand the most significant phenomena of the present from this perspective. Some very beautiful speeches by Rabindranath Tagore have been translated, including into German. If you read these speeches—and if you have a feel for them—you will say to yourself that they have a completely different flavor than what we encounter when reading any Western author. A completely different spirit speaks here. Just as the perspective is different when Easterners paint or draw than when Westerners do, so too is the entire spiritual disposition of this Rabindranath Tagore different from that of a European or an American. This stems from the fact that even today’s educated Easterner, if steeped in Eastern culture, shuns this connection with the physical body. In this lies a temptation—one of a Luciferic nature—not to make proper use of the human physical body, but to leave it unused. While the American strives to use the physical body too much, the Eastern person strives to use it too little.

[ 15 ] This is how one must come to understand national psychology today. If the catastrophe of the World War were to have been avoided, one would have had to examine, for decades, the nature of the relationships between the Eastern and Western peoples, even within Europe. It was certainly not for nothing that I gave a lecture on national spirits in Kristiania in 1910. Read through various passages in that lecture series, and you will gain some insight into what has transpired in the catastrophe of the World War over the past five years. But what all these things really come down to is that we must prepare ourselves—in all seriousness—not to flee from reality, but to grasp it in such a way that we position ourselves within the course of human development so that we do not selfishly withdraw into ourselves, focusing only on our immediate surroundings. We cannot fulfill our task today unless we develop the good will to place ourselves, at least in our consciousness, within the entire course of human development.

[ 16 ] What I have said is not intended to be a critique of the past. I have often said that, from a humanities perspective, a critique of the past must be regarded as foolish. What is at stake is the realization that, for the future, one must act and think differently than one has thought and acted in the past; that one must be willing to carry into the future that which arises from spiritual knowledge.

[ 17 ] I have hinted to you in recent days how a person should view their entire life between birth and death. As we pass through birth, we bring the forces of the supersensible world from our supersensible existence into our sensory-physical existence. These forces continue to work. This is something that people today find very difficult to understand. How do they continue to work? They continue to work in everything that human beings develop as spiritual life in this physical world. We would have no way of having poets among us; we would have neither the ability to develop a worldview or science nor to generate impulses for the education of people; we would have absolutely no way of developing a spiritual life at all if we did not carry through birth those impulses that originate from our pre-birth existence. What constitutes spiritual life stems from our pre-birth existence. What we, on the other hand, develop from impulses of the will within economic life—brotherhood, love of humanity, thinking not only for ourselves but for others, working not only for ourselves but for others—what we do, so to speak, behind the scenes as we are immersed in economic life—this provides us with the most important impulses for what we carry as impulses into the spiritual world. Just as we draw from the spiritual world the forces that primarily constitute our spiritual life here, so do we carry the forces we develop in economic life—in the form of love for humanity and brotherhood—back into the spiritual world. There they accompany us; there they serve as important impulses for us. If we look at what emerges in a child’s life from year to year, we see in it the legacy of what comes from the spiritual world, so that human beings here can unfold their spiritual realm. And when we look at what happens in economic life—that through our will we develop the capacity to work for others—we are thereby looking at what we carry into the spiritual world as we pass through the gate of death. And what develops solely between birth and death appears to those who can perceive the spiritual world as the opposite of what develops in the spiritual world between death and a new birth.

[ 18 ] If you look up what I have said in the book *Theosophy* about the realm of the soul and the realm of the spirits, you will find that it is described in terms that arise entirely from a living perception of those conditions. But everything that constitutes the constitutional state is the opposite of the impulses at work in the life between death and a new birth. We ground our spiritual life in the forces from the time before birth or conception; we develop our economic life so that we can carry the forces thus unfolded into the spiritual world; and what is developed here—that which belongs solely to the earth—is the political realm, the law, and state life, which have no connection to the spiritual world.

[ 19 ] People make things easy for themselves by usually interpreting matters in these areas however they please. Today, there are many people who apply the biblical saying to the present—perhaps sometimes to be a little monarchist again in these republican times—: “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” This saying is ill-suited to the present day, for it can only be understood within its historical context. The Roman Caesar was himself a god in those days; the Roman Caesar demanded divine worship. Caligula demanded such divine worship by having the Greek statues brought to Rome—only the statue of Zeus was saved—having the heads cut off everywhere, and then having Caligula’s head placed on them, because he thought that was the right thing to do. And even back then, when Jesus of Nazareth spoke those words, he intended to give them this meaning: Give to the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor, and reserve something for the God whom you must seek in a being other than the Emperor. — Many aspects of the Gospel need to be properly contextualized for our time, differently from how they are currently understood; then we will increasingly come to embrace that conception of reality that is necessary for our time.

[ 20 ] In recent days, it has been my duty to draw your attention, from various perspectives, to how it is the task of human beings today to strive to reach this perspective on reality, which can only be achieved by viewing spiritual reality as something concrete alongside sensory reality. What causes the most harm today is turning a blind eye to reality. For long enough, people have pursued precisely this “policy” in politics—not in a “political” sense: turning a blind eye to what is real. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks something serious: it seeks to open people’s eyes to reality. After all, we see today that these eyes are still only very, very slightly open. One hears quite strange things being said today that bear strong witness to people’s lack of a sense of reality. Please do not misunderstand; I must draw your attention to such things because they illustrate the times. — There have been various figures closely connected with the events that have brought this calamity upon Central Europe—a calamity that is not yet at its end, but is in fact only just beginning— figures who actually revealed their true faces to humanity only when the terrible events of the summer of 1918—and especially those of the fall of 1918—occurred. It was then that some people, who are responsible for so much, revealed their true faces. They found themselves in strange situations—“strange situations”—because these situations differed from their earlier ones. I have indeed met people who look upon the current situations of these responsible figures with a certain regret and do not even ask themselves: Are there not countless millions of people in the world who are still far worse off today—both mentally and physically—than those who have now, as responsible figures, found themselves in these new situations, which differ from their previous ones? — In these matters, the aim should be to open people’s eyes, to take seriously what must become an understanding of reality in the present. Hype consists in indulging in certain favorite ideas that one embraces because they are convenient, without paying attention to what reality itself says. It is not comfortable today to speak the truth about such things. But if, with a bleeding heart, one has had to watch how things have developed, how fanciful idealism arose precisely where one believed one was seeing practical living, if one has had to experience how this fanciful idealism broke in with devastating force, while what looked at reality was regarded as utopian idealism, then there is an obligation to point these things out. And we should truly not be denied compassion now that things are quite clear, now that their own confessions are on the table, now that we in tormented Central Europe must look upon such fanatics as, for example, this Ludendorff, who never deigned to see reality as it is, but instead wanted to shape it according to his own convenient ideas. In this realm, too, reality must be seen in its true light, for today we are dealing not with minor but with major reckonings. All these poorly crafted attempts to justify oneself before the world are, in fact, the harshest accusations before the world. And until one feels that these matters must be taken seriously—that they must finally be seen in their true reality—there can be no salvation. I did not come here to speak of these things out of some subtle inclination. In connection with the seriousness of a spiritual scientific movement, I feel the necessity, the obligation, to speak about these things. We were able to witness—and had to remain silent because, like Papageno, we were shackled—that the reality of Michaelis’s style of governance, at a crucial moment in the last four to five years, was that the most utterly incompetent individuals were called upon to hold leadership positions. These things must also be addressed. Like shadows, they stand today alongside the great truths that flow through humanity and must continue to flow through it.

[ 21 ] I know how many people still say today that they feel hurt when the truth is told to them about these matters. Yet we must not continue to turn a blind eye to the world in these matters. Only by looking honestly at these things will the power spring forth that can move humanity forward. We need such power. We need to grasp what is fundamentally different from what was grasped by those who have led humanity into a situation like the present one. We must have the courage to grasp what is new. The things that have been spoken here and elsewhere within the anthroposophical movement have already served as preparation for grasping this new reality, even in the external world. They were not intended to be, so to speak, better Sunday afternoon sermons. They were meant to proclaim the gravity of our times. And an anthroposophist in the true sense of the word is only the one who is seized by the spirit of the times, who seeks the truth, not the lie that has so badly entangled us in the affairs of the present. If only I had been able to penetrate your hearts with the few words in which I have sketched the outline of what is necessary. For I did not wish to speak merely to the intellect, but above all to the hearts, for it is from the hearts that the great understanding of our times—which is so necessary—must come. We must find the impulses that can lift humanity up again. To do this, however, we must first come to realize how deeply, how profoundly deeply, we have become entangled in empty phrases and untruths in every sphere. Truth will come from the spirit. Wisdom lies solely and exclusively in the truth. One should engrave this deeply upon one’s soul. I have said a few things that characterize people in the present, that characterize our very epoch of human development from a spiritual standpoint. I have brought these things up because I believe that through them, what is most essential for the present can be brought to the human heart—that mood of the soul from which springs the seriousness necessary to live today in the service of humanity. To evoke a feeling of this seriousness within you—that was the task I set for myself during my stay this time.