The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday we again discussed, from a certain point of view, the connection between the human being and the past and future, basing our discussion on what is revealed in the outer human form; we based it on that threefold division of the human organism to which we have already referred on several occasions; the head organism, which we showed points toward the past; the limb organism, which points toward the future; and then the rhythmic organism—the lungs and heart—which actually belongs to the present. Today, so that we may round out this entire complex of facts tomorrow, let us first consider the other aspect of the human being—the more inner, soul aspect.

[ 2 ] Just as we can distinguish three members in the human physical body—the head, that which is rooted in the rhythmic system, and that which constitutes the limb system—we can also distinguish three members in the soul. We can point to thinking or imagination, to feeling, and to willing; and in a certain sense, this threefold division applies to the soul just as the other threefold division—the one just mentioned—applies to the physical body. One can then, in turn, conduct research into each of these three aspects in relation to the human being’s overall place within the cosmos. First, we will turn our attention to the life of imagination. This life of imagination or thought—thinking—is undoubtedly the aspect that exerts the most decisive inner influence in human beings. The life of imagination is what, in a sense, leads the human being out into the cosmos on the one hand, but also leads them inward into their own inner being on the other. Through the life of imagination, the human being becomes acquainted with the phenomena within the vast expanse of the cosmos. The human being takes in everything that must be understood as the primordial ground from which the formation of the head arises, as we saw yesterday. But on the other hand, the human being takes these thoughts and images back into themselves, preserving them as memories. They build their inner life upon these ideas. This life of imagination, this life of thought, is primarily bound to the human head; it has its organ in the head. And from this alone, it can be concluded in a certain sense that the fate of the life of imagination is connected to the fate of the head. Since the head points back to the past—and we, so to speak, bring the spiritual-soul seeds for the formation of the head into physical existence through birth—this fact already indicates to us that we also bring the life of imagination as such from our pre-birth existence. But there are, of course, other reasons for such an appropriate assessment of the life of imagination. Our life of imagination is, I would say, the most definite aspect of our soul life. It is the most well-rounded aspect of our soul life. It is also the aspect that contains elements which, strictly speaking, are not at all connected to our individuality here in the physical world.

[ 3 ] Consider, for a moment, what we find within ourselves as mathematical truths—or perhaps even as the truth of logic. We cannot verify mathematical truths through external observation; rather, we must develop the truth of mathematics, the truth of geometry, from within ourselves. Within us lies the truth, for example, of the Pythagorean theorem, or that the three angles of a triangle add up to one hundred eighty degrees. We can visualize such truths by drawing corresponding figures, but we do not prove them on the blackboard; rather, through inner intuition, we form what intermingles with our conception of mathematics. And there are many other things that intermingle with our imagination in this way. And it is solely because we are human beings that we know these mathematical truths. Even if thousands, millions of people were to come and say, “The Pythagorean theorem is not true”—we would still know, as individual human beings, that it must be true, through inner intuition. Where does something like this come from? It stems solely from the fact that we do not first develop our life of imagination—as we do our life of feeling and will—within the physical realm, but rather that we bring it with us into our physical existence at birth. What I have just said—and what, I would say, can already be discerned from the very nature of the human being through genuine observation of that nature—manifests itself to the researcher of the spiritual world in the following way. Suppose a person advances to what is called imaginative thinking. What, then, does this imaginative life of the soul consist of? It consists in our living in images—but in images that are not conveyed to us through the external senses. In ordinary external life, we perceive external objects through our sense organs. They provide us with images through our eyes and ears, and we synthesize these images through thought. In imaginative thinking, it is different. There, if we have been appropriately prepared, we have the images without external perception. They arise within us, I might say, but we do not cease to think when we elevate ourselves in the right way to the imaginative life of the soul. We think in inner images, just as we otherwise think about external images when perceiving external objects. But the first thing we experience as we develop toward imaginative thinking—what we experience when we are thinking, when we permeate our soul entirely with thought, yet at the same time the life of images rises up—is not something present. What first appears before our soul are the images of life before our birth or before our conception. Our present life appears before our imaginations only later, after a long period of acclimatization, and by no means with such clarity and definiteness as the life that lies before birth, before conception. This fact is full proof that, when we set aside the perception of objects [— that is, when we live thinking in images —], this thinking can initially present us only with images from the past. In what these images present to us, we find cosmic elements from our pre-earthly life. This and many other things demonstrate precisely how the life of the imagination is that which we initially bring with us as a force from our pre-birth life.

[ 4 ] Self-observation, provided it is conducted with sufficient objectivity, shows us that our emotional life develops gradually through our physical experiences. We cannot imbue our feelings in the same way as we do with something as definite as mathematics or concepts. Everything we develop in terms of feelings, we must develop from childhood onward—but precisely from childhood onward—throughout our lives since birth. The more we have experienced since birth, the richer our emotional life becomes. A person who has gone through severe suffering and serious blows of fate has a different emotional life than a superficial person who has flitted so lightly through life. The twists and turns of fate prepare us for our emotional life. A mathematical insight that penetrates our imagination arises suddenly. We cannot suddenly develop a feeling. A feeling emerges slowly over the course of life and is itself something that grows with us, something that participates in our entire process of growth in physical life.

[ 5 ] And the life of the will is something that, at first glance, seems to connect us very little to the cosmos. It is that which pulses forth from the indeterminate depths of our soul. Through our actions, however, we do carry the life of the will into the cosmos; but just consider for a moment the difference between being connected to the cosmos through the life of the imagination and the other kind of connection through the life of the will. We are connected to the cosmos through the life of the imagination when we go out into the starlit night and, in a sense, have the cosmos as an image before us, embracing it in our thoughts. We can also feel it. How small, by contrast, is the fragment of action that we detach from our element of will and place into the cosmos! This testifies, first of all, that the element of will is rooted in the human being in a completely different way than the element of imagination. Compare the element of will in particular with the element of imagination as well as with feeling. The element of imagination, once we have awakened sufficiently to it, connects us in an instant with the entire cosmos. The element of feeling gradually draws near. It draws near as slowly or as quickly as our fated life unfolds between birth and death. Yet it is still something that connects us to the cosmos, albeit less intensely and less extensively than the life of imagination. Just consider how universally human it is to be connected to the cosmos through the life of the imagination: Three people go out into a starry night; they stand in one place, all three are surrounded by the same cosmic image, all three see the same thing, and if they have learned to synthesize this image in their thoughts, all three may, under certain circumstances, be able to hold the same image in their minds in an instant.

[ 6 ] It’s different with emotional life. Let’s take, for example, a person who has lived a rather thoughtless, superficial life, opening himself up to the world of the stars at most occasionally at night; and let’s compare what such a person feels when they step out into the night and see the star-studded sky with what another person feels when, one evening, they go for a walk with someone they had hardly known until then—a walk that draws them into profound questions of fate and life, into a discussion that lasts for hours, continuing until the stars set. Let us suppose that, at a moment when the sky is shining wonderfully with stars, the friends grow close to one another, and let us further suppose that, years later, after that friendship has taken on the most varied forms, such a person gazes upon the star-studded sky in just the same way. What feelings might well well up within him, echoing the experience of that friendship! There, indeed, the feelings reach out into the cosmos, but they reach out in accordance with the life that has been lived since birth. Through our imaginations, our thoughts reach out into the cosmos, because we are born as human beings and have brought a spiritual-soul element into our physical existence through birth. Through feeling, the inner life of the soul reaches out to the things of the cosmos, but only in accordance with what has taken place in this physical life itself.

[ 7 ] If you try to come to terms with what I am setting forth here, you will be able to say to yourself: The life of the imagination is brought into physical existence through birth; we develop our emotional life between birth and death; but how little of what emanates from us into the cosmos arises from the actions of our volitional impulses! How little of what flows from our volitional impulses enters the cosmos! — Here we are dealing with something that appears primitive in comparison to emotions, and even more so in comparison to the life of the imagination. The spiritual researcher can explain the reasons for this when he rises to the level of intuition; there he reaches the impulses of the will. At the moment when he has risen to intuition through inner soul development, when everything else has been extinguished in his soul life, it is not his present life of action that stands before him, but something very remarkable. What stands before him as the first experience of intuition is not his actions themselves, but everything that his actions can present to him as destinies, as seeds of destiny for the future. Everything that appears to intuition as a first impression is future—what can become of us, since we have gone through such a sum of actions that we ourselves do not see, the seeds of which step before our soul. It follows from this that the life of the will is what we carry over through death, what points to the future. So we can say schematically: If we stick to the physical, we have the head-human, the rhythmic lung-and-heart-human, and the limb-human. The head-human points us to what we bring with us from the past. The rhythmic human being points us to the present between birth and death. The limb human being points us to the future; this later becomes the formation of the head in later life. If we turn to the soul, we have the life of imagination, which points us to the past; the life of feeling, which points us to the present; and the life of the will, which points us to the future.

[ 8 ] Yesterday we saw that the human head is connected to the periphery, to the entire cosmos, and that the human body is connected to the Earth. The same is true of the soul. The life of imagination is connected to the cosmos, the life of the will to the Earth, and the rhythmic life—the element of feeling that mediates between the two—is precisely the balance between them, between the heavenly and the earthly. We have also pointed out that, since ancient times, out of an instinctive recognition of primordial wisdom, that which works from the Earth into the human limbs—and which is only tempered by the cosmos and its influence—has been designated as “strength.” And that aspect of the human being which finds expression in the formation of the head—which is cosmic but tempered by the earthly—has been referred to since ancient times as “beauty,” while the balance between the two, which lives within the rhythmic human being, is called “wisdom.” However, these same terms have also been applied to the life of the imagination—which, in the sense of ancient mystery wisdom, is conceived as permeated by the principle of beauty—to the life of feeling, which is conceived as permeated by wisdom, and to the life of the will, which is conceived as permeated by strength.

[ 9 ] Now we can also look at the human spirit, just as we have looked at the physical body and the soul. Here, too, we see a threefold spiritual being in the human being. However, when it comes to the spirit, we must speak of three states. First, we can distinguish what the spirit reveals to us—I would say—in its full clarity when we are fully awake. We can observe the spirit in its other states, when it dreams between waking and sleeping, and we can contemplate the spirit when it is unconscious of earthly life in deep sleep. This is the threefold spirit: the waking, dreaming, and sleeping spirit.

[ 10 ] Let us consider waking life. Waking life is—as is in fact quite clear to the unbiased observer—the most mature form of human life; it is the life that a person brings with them into physical existence through birth. Even if it does not appear so at first glance, it is nonetheless the most perfect, the most mature; it is what a person possesses by virtue of being born as a human being. So we can say: Wake life points us to the past; dream life—it seems strange at first, of course, to say that dream life points us to the present, but it is indeed so. At a certain age, you can observe very clearly how the dream life points to the present. The child—the very young child—dreams, after all; it does not yet have a fully developed waking life. Only when the past enters into the child does waking life begin. But the present is the dream life; and the fact that we bring the waking state into the dream life stems from the fact that our prenatal existence, our past, extends into the present. The present educates us only in dream life. And sleep life—it is that through which we do not yet belong to the present at all; it is related to our life of the will, which is the most imperfect part of us, the part that must first become perfect; it is that which prefigures the future within us, which points toward the future. Thus, the spirit belongs to the past, the present, and the future: to the past through waking life, to the present through dream life, and to the future through sleep life.

	Past	Present	Future
Physical	Head-oriented person	Rhythmic Being	Limb Being
Soul	Imaginative Life	Emotional Life	Volitional Life
Spirit	Waking life	Dream life	Sleep life
	Beauty	Wisdom	Strength

[ 11 ] We can relate these three states—these three different stages of human existence—to the past, present, and future of the cosmos. We already did this yesterday with regard to the physical body. We said: The entire development of the head is connected to what the Earth went through in its earlier states on Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon. The limb-human testifies that something is developing within the human being that cannot yet reach completion on Earth. You found it amusing that I spoke to you about the Venusian state, where human development will proceed quite differently than on Earth. On Venus, I told you, the human being will lose their head in the middle of their life’s development. In its place, another head will grow from his “limb-human,” which, I thought, might be very pleasant for some in the present, but simply cannot be the case. Here, because the “limb-human” has the tendency to become a head—but can only do so after passing through the state between death and new life outside the earthly realm—we must be content with just one head. But this “limb-human” points to what we will become physically through the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan states. The head thus points to Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon; the “limb-human” points toward the future, toward Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan. The “rhythmic human” points to the present of the Earth.

[ 12 ] The life of the imagination does not take us back as far as the head does. In a sense, the head had to exist first in the cosmos before it could imagine. It merely points us toward the sun and the moon. The life of the will points us toward the future, toward Jupiter and Venus. And the life of feeling, in turn, belongs to the present.

[ 13 ] Now we come to the spiritual realm. There we have waking life and sleep life. Waking life points us only to the lunar evolution; that is where it took shape. Waking life is the legacy of the ancient lunar evolution, of the imaginative conception of the lunar evolution. During the solar evolution, there was not yet a true life of imagination. Sleep life points us toward the Jupiter state. After the Jupiter state, what is active in sleep today will take on external forms; after the Venus state, what is the state of the will will take on external forms. And the limbs, as has already been stated, take on external forms through the three subsequent states of the Earth. Thus we see that the human being can be related to the cosmos in terms of body, soul, and spirit.

Head	Imaginative Life	Waking Life	Sleep Life	Volitional Life	Limb-Human
Saturn			Jupiter	Jupiter	Jupiter
Sun				Venus	Venus
Moon	Moon				Vulcan

[ 14 ] Again, when comparing waking life, the life of dreams, and the life of sleep, the situation is such that, according to ancient wisdom, beauty is attributed to waking life and wisdom to the life of dreams. Strength is attributed to the life of sleep. From sleep, we draw the strength we need for life. Ancient wisdom was based primarily on such things, which stem from the context of life.

[ 15 ] Now, however, we can in turn apply what we have developed through the threefold human being in spiritual science to human life. Perhaps we can begin by considering the spirit and ask ourselves: How does a person relate to external life when they wish to survey it with clear concepts? They can carry the life of imagination that is within the mind out into the external world. From the waking state, they can permeate their external life with imagination. This is a special way of engaging with the external world—permeating it with the life of imagination. Everything that happens in this way belongs to the special realm of spiritual life.

[ 16 ] Let us now turn to the conditions that arise from life, which on the one hand is an emotional life of the soul, but in terms of the spirit is a dream life; what form does this dream life take? Indeed, just study life, and you will sense precisely how this dream life prevails among human beings. I ask you to pay attention to this when you form friendships, when you develop feelings of love between yourself and another person; don’t you realize that you cannot be as fully awake in those moments as when you are thinking through the Pythagorean theorem? If you examine these experiences properly, you will have to admit to yourself: The state you experience inwardly when you form friendships with people, when you do this or that for someone out of affection, is truly comparable to the dream life. You find the dream life in those feelings that prevail from person to person in outer life.

[ 17 ] This is life, which we also develop to the fullest extent in the legal sphere. There, one person stands face to face with another. There, people must generally find a way to relate to one another. We find our particular, specific relationships by loving one person, hating another, forming a friendship with one, being unable to stand another, and so on. These are the specific relationships that arise in various forms here and there. But human life on Earth is only possible if all people can enter into certain relationships with one another—relationships that we can describe as political, state-related, and legal. They are not governed by the same waking daily life that permeates existence; they are governed by the life of dreams. And we are dealing here with the life of law when a person incorporates the second element—this life of dreams—into the external world.

[ 18 ] And what happens when he incorporates the life of sleep? Observe life with an open mind: You are hungry, you take pleasure in a golden ring set with gemstones, you feel the need for a volume of Irish poetry—in short, you have all sorts of needs. They are satisfied by others. But now I ask you: Can you overlook this, even just as you overlook your friendships or legal relationships? No one can. The individual can lead a dream life with regard to legal relationships; one cannot grasp economic relationships on one’s own—there, one must associate with others. What one person does not know, another may know. The individual’s consciousness disappears into the association. There is something at work here that takes place entirely in the unconscious and can only happen because the individual cannot grasp it at all, but instead allows his consciousness to submerge into that of the association. Therein lies economic life.

[ 19 ] Spiritual life is dominated by social wakefulness, legal life by social dreaming; in modern parliaments, it is downright dominated by a nightmare, which is also a form of dreaming. Economic life is permeated by social sleep. And where human spiritual life initially disappears into the unconscious, love must spread throughout associative life. Love—which is an element of the will—and brotherhood must permeate economic life. Freedom is the element of waking life; brotherhood is the element of social sleep. And what lies between the two is that in which all people are equal—what they develop as equals—in which the individual disappears with his waking life, determined solely by the relationship of one to the other, from the dreamlike element of life.

[ 20 ] Thus, what is within the human being—I would say—flows into what social life is; and one cannot truly understand social life except by realizing what flows from the individual human being into this social life.

[ 21 ] 1. Spiritual Life: Social Wakefulness
2. Legal Life: Social Dreaming
3. Economic Life: Social Sleep

[ 22 ] Now, from a certain point of view, we have once again grasped a human connection. We will elaborate on this further tomorrow. But consider how these things actually reach people today. The fact is that people today can begin, for example, by reading my *Theosophy*. This may seem somewhat paradoxical in light of what one has learned. At first, one might not have much regard for what is presented, but one can go further, read the other books, and see how the ideas in *Theosophy* are further developed. Then one will see that one thing supports the other, that one thing builds upon the other, and that these ideas are well-founded. Or, on the other hand, one can focus on the “Key Points.” At first, one might say: I cannot yet see why the social organism should be subject to a threefold division. — Now add to this everything we have already gathered from a wide variety of perspectives to reinforce, time and again, how this social life must indeed be subject to a threefold division.

[ 23 ] Consider how we arrive at the threefold social order from within the human being himself—from his spiritual and soul states, from this threefold division of spirit and soul. Once again, one aspect supports the other. And of course, much more could be added to what has already been gathered here; one would see more and more the justification for the call for the threefold structure of the social organism. But compare what I have just said with the attitude of our contemporaries. How do they very often approach what this anthroposophical spiritual science seeks to convey to them? I don’t know exactly how things stand, nor do I wish to present this as a definitive account here, but I was recently told that during a lecture Dr. Boos gave to theologians in Basel—if this is not accurate, he can correct it at a later time—he was able to ask the very man who had attacked me most vehemently whether he had already heard my lectures. The man is said to have replied that he had heard one, perhaps even two. — Well, that’s just one example among many. People tend to feel the urge to listen to a single lecture or to glance through a book and read a few pages. But one cannot judge spiritual science and everything connected with its social consequences on that basis; for spiritual science demands an entirely different relationship to everything than what such people claim. Such people train those entrusted to them without this spiritual science, as far as possible—and they train themselves without the spiritual science—and then they come along and take brief note of it. That simply won’t work; rather, the only way forward is for spiritual science to truly permeate our entire educational system, and for what is imbued with anthroposophy to take the place of what has become spiritless over the course of the last few centuries. It is important that we bear this in mind, that we at least know for ourselves what is necessary. It can never benefit the development of spiritual science—even if it happens here and there for one reason or another—if someone is dragged along to a single lecture, for such an encounter will usually result in nothing more than the person being put off. Spiritual science must be pursued in such a way that the path is paved for it to enter the entire educational system and the whole of contemporary life. This, of course, is what makes the path of spiritual science difficult; yet, on the other hand, it imposes upon us the necessity—indeed, the obligation—to devote our entire being to this spiritual science once we ourselves have grasped its essence.

[ 24 ] This commitment of the whole person has, unfortunately, not always been cultivated, especially within the Anthroposophical Society. We must constantly remind ourselves how people have at times been ashamed to identify as anthroposophists. — We might want to organize a lecture here or there, but the words “Theosophy” or “Anthroposophy” must not be mentioned; it must simply be anthroposophical, but must not be called “anthroposophical,” or the “anthroposophical movement,” or “Theosophy,” and so on. We have also seen this with eurythmy: people demand that it be introduced into schools, but its origins must not be mentioned. People want—as the popular expression goes—to let something “flow in” here or there. By allowing this to “flow in,” by shying away from fully embracing it, we do not move forward; instead, we are confronted everywhere with those things that are truly born of the spirit of the present age and that are, in fact, cultural outrages. Recently, Ms. Baumann, the Waldorf eurythmy teacher, wrote a very nice article for a Swiss women’s magazine about eurythmy as a pedagogical tool. The essay was also reprinted; but whenever anthroposophy or even my name was mentioned, the editors had carefully struck it out. These things show that people are indeed willing to make use of this spiritual heritage, but in today’s deceitful world, they want to have this spiritual heritage without the very forces that are needed to carry it forward in accordance with the necessities of the present.

[ 25 ] The Anthroposophical Society itself has played a significant role in this through this “allowing things to flow in,” through its reluctance to fully embrace the movement. It is precisely those who approach this anthroposophical body of thought and see how the various elements support one another with mathematical clarity who should find courage and strength from the cause itself to stand up fully for it before the world. A true service to humanity is certainly not rendered by shying away from full commitment, and this full commitment must first be learned from the opponents. They stand fully behind it—they stand fully behind it in the face of opposition! One can see time and again how, especially when directed at us, every sharp word that must be wrested from necessity is taken amiss. For example, I was recently taken quite amiss for calling Count Keyserling what he is, for saying that he had lied! Anyone who claims that I based my views on Haeckel need only read my commentaries on Goethe’s scientific writings; they will see what my starting point has been, even in my own writing, and they are lying when they say I based my views on Haeckel simply because I once wrote a pamphlet about Haeckel in the course of my life. The inner connections are not perceived by such fools as Keyserling. These vacuous people have a large following because one doesn’t have to think at all when one surrenders to them.

[ 26 ] It is, however, necessary to finally recognize that when harsh words are spoken on our soil, they are born of necessity; that there is truly no sympathy for these harsh words, but that one must not then come and say that it was done out of a lack of love. Should one love those who lie and thereby obstruct the path of truth? And things must also be viewed from this perspective. Anyone who thinks we are too harsh in our polemics should not turn to us, but should turn to the attackers. For if we vigorously oppose the attackers, it will help somewhat; but it will not help at all if we leave a few people alone in their necessary defense.