The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] Our reflections during my current visit focused on how the anthroposophical insight can be applied with the utmost seriousness to the great challenges of our time. When we say “the great challenges of our time,” one need not always think of what, so to speak, hovers above human beings and must be regulated by certain authoritative figures over the heads of others; rather, one must be clear today that what takes place from person to person in everyday life contains within itself—or, so to speak, has flowing through it—that which belongs to the great tasks of our time. This should, after all, flow naturally through our souls as a first consequence of the anthroposophical worldview. For this anthroposophical worldview leads us to recognize that the spiritual lives in everything—not somewhere in abstract heights, but in the life that surrounds us, in which we are immersed every day. And it is precisely this that we must learn to apply to the great tasks of life and to the small, everyday experiences and actions.

[ 2 ] If we consider life today from this very perspective, we may ask ourselves: What, specifically in terms of the spiritual, do we have around us as the components of this life? In what way do we, as human beings, live spiritually in this age? — We have what remains of old creeds—these various creeds that gather their followers into congregations and teach them, in some traditional or handed-down manner, what is regarded as the belief in the eternal nature of the human being. In the most diverse forms and with the most varied nuances, this belief is taught to people through the various creeds. People then live by this belief and also believe they are satisfying the needs of their souls through it. Alongside this belief, we now have—and it is just as popular as the individual creeds themselves are among their respective adherents—that which stems from the science taught today in our educational institutions. This science has, after all, gradually developed to the point of considering only sensory-physical material, at most penetrating it with a few inadequate mental concepts—which, however, are already more or less on the wane. There is an ever-increasing tendency to regard as science only that which can be discovered through sensory-physical observation and, at most, combined by the intellect.

[ 3 ] Wherever we look in today’s civilized world, we will see that people draw from these two sources: on the one hand, from what is taught to them as so-called serious, exact knowledge, which they accept on authority; for everyone who does not work in one of the academic disciplines themselves accepts knowledge on authority, and above all, the vast majority of people accept this knowledge. And in addition to being informed in popular magazines about how one is supposed to think about astronomical, physical, and chemical facts, as well as biological, zoological, mineralogical, botanical, historical, and so on—in addition to absorbing these things and being educated in this way, and then saying: ‘All of this must be true, for it comes from those people who have been appointed as authorities on the matter by the usual institutions’—besides this, one also absorbs what flows from the various creeds. No bridge is built between the two, for the creeds generally teach people that they must, above all, keep knowledge and faith separate—that they must, above all, not allow knowledge and faith to merge in any way. A conscious effort to see through this state of affairs takes place only in the rarest of cases. People make every effort to fully acknowledge what is communicated to them as exact truth through the usual channels by scientific authorities. But they do not investigate matters to examine the actual nature of the working method by which such scientific validity is attained.

[ 4 ] On the other hand, little attention is paid to the origins of what has been passed down through the ages as creeds and is traditionally presented to humanity by the current official representatives of these creeds. A genuine effort to gain full awareness of what is actually at hand takes place only in the rarest of cases. And when it does take place, there is little opportunity today to view the matter in its proper light. For suppose someone, say, within the Catholic or Protestant faith, rebels against what is called dogma; then what usually happens is that this dogma is regarded as “nonsense,” that one polemicizes against it and thereby discards what constitutes the traditional creed, yet fails to find a way to to replace it with anything else.

[ 5 ] One such dogma—I will cite a central dogma right away—is, for example, that of the Trinity, the three-person nature of the divine being. Anyone who encounters such a dogma as it is presented to him today by the creeds has, in a certain sense, an easy time arguing against it when he adopts the standpoint of modern scientific thought. For in this sense, he will be able to very easily expose the “nonsense” inherent in such a dogma. But anyone who traces the origins of such a dogma will find that the dogmas of the common creeds have been passed down through humanity over long periods of time; yet at the very starting point of these dogmas lies what I have often characterized as the instinctive clairvoyance—the atavistic clairvoyance—that existed in earlier stages of human development, the ability to look into the spiritual world. Such dogmas have thus emerged from this clairvoyance, and one might say: Something like the doctrine of the Trinity arose from deep, profound insights into the structure of world existence. — Once upon a time, this dogma of the Trinity was a deeply recognized truth. It represented a profound insight into the interrelationships of reality. But this existed in that ancient time when the faculties of the human soul—the powers of cognition, which, as I said, were a kind of instinctive clairvoyance—were in harmony with such a dogma. The dogma has since been passed down. It no longer fits the current development of human soul powers. As a rule, several earthly lives have elapsed since that time for every person who lived through the emergence of this dogma. These souls have undergone various experiences during these earthly lives. In the outer world, the dogma has persisted; it has been passed down from generation to generation. Today it has taken on a form such that it can no longer be understood from the very words used to convey it. And now these souls have been reborn; the dogma is presented to them by the Church. There is no inner human connection between what is presented to human souls through the creeds and what the souls themselves strive to experience and know. What seems so problematic today is not that the dogmas are false, but rather that they take a form of expressing truth that no longer corresponds to present-day circumstances—that the dogmas no longer meet the needs of human souls. So we can say: These dogmas are preached today, yet they are essentially being breathed out into the empty air. — Even those who profess faith in them do not do so in inner spiritual truth, for they mostly do not understand the dogmas. But to accept what one does not understand is an inner untruth. And fundamentally, it is this inner untruth that is the source of so much harm being done in our present time through the world’s insincerity.

[ 6 ] The extent of dishonesty that humanity has endured in recent years is truly immeasurable. But when you get right down to it, it is not surprising that this is the case, for the simple reason that when souls live in the kind of insincerity I have just described, it is no wonder that they have no sense of sincerity in their outer lives. This is something that should be borne in mind above all by those who believe today that they must stand up for traditional creeds. This is indeed a serious matter that must be addressed in this area.

[ 7 ] One could say that the souls who have since gone through various earthly lives have outgrown these dogmas since these creeds were first formulated. Just as one must take seriously the things I have discussed here in my last two lectures in relation to life, so too must one take the concept of repeated earthly lives seriously in this context—treat it with the seriousness that life demands.

[ 8 ] But let us consider, from the same perspective, what is offered to humanity today in the form of external science. There, knowledge is being formed that stems solely from sensory-physical observation. This is to be united with that which lives within us as the human soul; it is to take in and be filled with what is merely sensory-physical observational material.

[ 9 ] Consider the human being standing alive in the midst of life. Within them is the soul that has passed through earthly life, a soul that does not find, in the outward expressions of religious creeds, anything with which it can connect. Yet it does connect—at least in certain areas of life—with what is today recognized as scientific knowledge. The question must be raised: What happens to the human soul when it connects with this recognized science, which observes only the sensory-physical realm? — The souls that incarnate in physical organisms today have, in fact, in earlier incarnations absorbed within themselves what corresponded to entirely different relationships to nature, to their surroundings, and to the world than what is absorbed in this knowledge today. One can find only relatively few souls who are now incarnated who were not, in their previous lives, incarnated in such a way that they associated, for example, with what had been told them about natural phenomena, a certain knowledge or, shall we say, a certain conception of the spiritual. Such a spirit-deprived natural science, as it has developed over the past three to four centuries, did not exist before. What was given to humanity as natural science in those earlier times—in those times that are, relatively speaking, not so long past—was such that, when a sensory fact was presented, there was still something within that sensory fact that imbued it with the spiritual. This is precisely why many people today—who have no particular interest in keeping up with the times—find nothing in contemporary sensory-physical natural science that satisfies them; they therefore set it aside and do not concern themselves with it, but instead track down all sorts of old tomes and now investigate what Basilius Valentinus or some other figure of his kind has bequeathed to humanity in terms of knowledge of nature. It is true that all sorts of spiritual elements still lived within the conceptions of nature held at that time, but usually the deep respect felt by those who concern themselves with these matters today is based solely on the fact that they do not understand them and that they consider whatever they do not understand to be very profound.

[ 10 ] What is important in this regard is that the human souls embodied in their present bodies no longer have any real connection to that ancient knowledge and are instead grafted onto what pervades the rest of life—and what everyone is already fed in school today—that is, they absorb in some way the body of knowledge derived from sensory-physical observation. But when one considers the matter from within, what is actually happening there?

[ 11 ] Today we enter our bodies carrying with us what our souls have experienced in past lives, but in a certain sense we enter our bodies in such a way that we no longer have any connection to what our souls experienced in past earthly lives. Throughout our various earthly lives—and this had to happen, for it was the preparation for the development of freedom—we have developed our souls in such a way that they are, in a certain sense, emptied of what they once absorbed, so that they no longer have any connection to what they once absorbed, and are, in a certain sense, empty in relation to what actually lives in the world. In this regard, we no longer bring anything from our earlier earthly experiences into our souls. We do bring the results of our moral qualities with us, but fundamentally, we do not bring into this earthly life from our earlier experiences—from our previous earthly lives—that which could lead to any kind of innate knowledge of the world’s mysteries. Souls today do not enter bodies in the same way that they did, for example, when they entered Greek bodies. The soul that had passed through birth in Greek times still entered the physical body with a power nourished by ancient knowledge, so that it could infuse this physical body with spiritual-soul life force. That is not the case today. Today, for the most part, the soul enters the body in such a way that it has something within it that consumes the body. And to an ever-increasing degree, this is the case: the souls born today have something within them that consumes the body, that paralyzes it, that, so to speak, permeates it with the forces of death. If development were to proceed in this direction, we would most certainly be heading toward the undermining and decline of earthly life. People would become weaker and weaker in will. People would increasingly demonstrate their inability to rouse themselves to grasp active impulses. People would, so to speak, go through this life merely as automatic recorders of life. How sad it is that we must observe in the present how rare it is for people to allow themselves to be inwardly inspired by living ideas. How deeply do we feel that people today—one might say—suffer from a kind of spiritual sclerosis, that they mull over dead ideas, that they turn over in their minds only what they have absorbed from tradition, and thus become automatons.

[ 12 ] It really is true: If you go through the world today with an open mind and observe the people living their lives today, you actually can’t tell them apart from one another—not even by the dozen. You really can’t tell them apart. You talk to A, to B, to C—they all say the same thing. Everyone naturally believes they are expressing their own thoughts; but you simply cannot pinpoint any specific difference between them—they all say the same thing. You are actually faced with just one type of human being in various incarnations, and you sometimes ask yourself: Aren’t you succumbing to an illusion? Isn’t the person you’re speaking with today the same one you spoke with yesterday? — But that corresponds exactly to what also emerges from considering successive earthly lives in relation to this present, particular earthly life. The souls no longer bring with them what they had before—what passed from one earthly life to the next and always reappeared, albeit with diminishing strength, and what was there like an innate knowledge. That is simply no longer there. And when such souls are then imbued with what is merely externally observed, physically and sensually perceived knowledge of nature, these souls become filled with a knowledge of the transitory—a knowledge that expresses in conceptual constructs only that which is external and fleeting. Indeed, in order to delude itself about this fact through a terrible illusion, the nineteenth century added the so-called “law of conservation of energy” to the already older “law of conservation of matter.” It invented these laws to delude itself into believing that nothing in nature is preserved, but that everything is transitory—that even matter and energy are transitory. When incarnations are repeated in the future, nothing remains of the soul but the “human automaton,” if this empty soul is filled only with the material observed through the senses and studied by the natural sciences. For this exerts no enlivening, no fertilizing power upon the soul.

[ 13 ] The soul is born today, coming from previous earthly lives, yearning to be nourished by something so that it may continue on through the earthly lives that follow. But absorbing knowledge of mere transience brings only the death of the soul; it kills the soul. This is what must be seriously understood today: that if, from now on, there remains only a lack of understanding regarding the outdated dogmas, then only paralysis and death could result from a knowledge of nature that is not imbued with the spirit, and the soul would have to suffer a second death—the death of the soul. It is entirely up to individuals and humanity as a whole to keep the souls alive. People today must not succumb to that comfortable passivity by saying: “I am an eternal being, and my eternal core will remain intact under all circumstances.” — That does not correspond to reality. This eternal core of being does indeed exist within the human being, but it must be nourished precisely in this age of decision if it is not to wither away. And there is no other way to keep the soul alive than to break with merely physical-sensory observations of nature and to establish a true spiritual science—one that demonstrates, even in the face of natural facts, how the spirit lives in everything that can be observed through the senses. What matters is not to accept anything that is merely a record of physical-sensory material, but to demand that all physical-sensory material be permeated by concepts of the spiritual—which indeed lives within it, but must not be driven out. For when souls coming from previous earthly lives take in this spirit-filled knowledge of nature, they are enriched and thereby enabled to carry their vitality over into their subsequent earthly lives. The survival of the soul, its health, indeed the very survival of soul life itself, and the averting of humanity’s spiritual death depend on the spiritualization of our knowledge of nature!

[ 14 ] It is on the basis of these facts—and not out of any arbitrary prejudice—that we today strive for this spiritualization of the natural sciences. And if many members of humanity oppose this spiritualization of the natural sciences, then this humanity—precisely because it is ignorant of the true significance of the facts—is being incited by spirits whom we know well, spirits who are able to assert themselves all the more in human nature the less the soul has brought with it from its previous incarnations. From the entire fabric of our present-day life—which, spiritually speaking, consists of a natural science stripped of the spiritual and creeds stripped of meaning—emerges that which, time and again, in the most absurd manner, stands in opposition to the will for a spiritual permeation of scientific knowledge. It cannot be emphasized often enough how necessary it is in our time to understand this state of affairs deeply within ourselves and, if I may use the term, to attune ourselves to this reality. We cannot take seriously enough what is happening today in terms of the rejection of a science imbued with spirit, whether it springs up in the manner I heard mentioned this afternoon—I do not know to what extent it is based on truth—: that even following a resolution by the students wearing the colors, the lectures held just last week were boycotted, or whether it manifests in another form. One can, after all, gather together whole stacks of writings today that are directed against this spiritual science. And what is asserting itself in rather dark, murky currents—those who love to sleep through these things will, perhaps, be able to perceive it quite strongly in a relatively short time. After all, it is still more convenient today to remain inattentive to these matters than to pay attention to them. But we are no longer at the point where we could turn back and remain unaddressed by the world. That is no longer possible. And that is why there is only one way forward. But this moving forward is tied to active participation in the “discussions”—one can no longer really call them discussions, but let’s call them that for now—of our time, which are taking on ever more dire forms. Only if we succeed—drawing on a powerful force that can coalesce only when everyone does their part—in standing up for spiritual science and not shying away from unflinchingly and unreservedly exposing, wherever it exists, the hidden hostility toward spiritual science, only then can there be any hope of prevailing. This is much less a matter of merely countering what might, taken literally, appear as opposition to spiritual science and taking a defensive stance against it. That is certainly necessary in one case or another; but it is not enough. For ultimately, this is only a secondary phenomenon—when malicious opposition to the spiritual sciences arises from foolish misunderstandings or misinterpretations. This is, so to speak, something secondary that must, of course, be put into the proper light from time to time. It is, of course, secondary when—as I recently mentioned in a public lecture—people like Frohnmeyer make claims about the central figure of the sculptural group in Dornach, which can be experienced as the figure of Christ: that there is a “statue of the ideal human being” in Dornach, “with ‘Luciferic’ features at the top and animalistic characteristics at the bottom.” — It is certainly necessary to point out such things, but ultimately not even to simply defend our spiritual science, but from a much deeper, more significant foundation. Anyone capable of spreading such a terrible untruth into the world has a harmful effect on humanity in everything they write and say, precisely where they are supposed to have an educational influence on humanity. And what is significant is not that such a person utters a blatant lie once in a while, but rather that this symptom—the fact that a person is capable of lying so brazenly—reveals the paths along which certain leaders of humanity are walking today. One can see from the attacks against spiritual science what the current sense of truth is like. And the work in this spiritual field must be extended to this broader arena. That is what matters. We must not shy away from seeking out this lack of a sense of truth in all areas. And humanity must learn to understand that only with a genuine sense of truth can we work toward the future, if souls are to find the path from the incarnation of this age into the incarnations of the ages to come. What is at stake today is not something formal, but rather the very real life of the soul through successive earthly lives. Seek, and you will find the connection between that inner untruthfulness of thought—which I described to you earlier—manifested in outward professions of faith made to the soul without establishing an inner connection to the truth—and the untruthfulness in the outer world. For after all, it is a curious phenomenon that such insincerities occur so strongly—though I do not mean to say that they are absent among members of other faculties—particularly among those who are actually supposed to be the teachers of humanity, the great custodians of religious truths.

[ 15 ] This is the first duty of people today who wish to have any connection to spiritual life: to seek out the untruthfulness that has become part of cultural history. It is remarkable how deeply ingrained this cultural-historical untruthfulness is. It is a defining characteristic of our age. From politics, where it has spread its noxious weeds, it has ultimately penetrated many other areas as well. And we have already reached the point where people can hardly distinguish between truthfulness and untruthfulness with regard to certain phenomena of life. You see, a certain phenomenon—untruthfulness, which we encounter at every turn in daily life—plays a role both] in this daily life and in the great affairs of life. After all, untruthfulness today has sprung from the same tendency, regardless of whether it appears among the enlightened gentlemen—albeit illuminated by a peculiar light—who were gathered in Geneva, or whether it appears at the various bourgeois and proletarian coffee-house gatherings. What has lived as a spirit in Geneva and in the bourgeois and proletarian coffee-house gatherings has become popular as insincerity, and, as an aside—and I hope those present will not hold this against me, as an aside I am surely allowed to say—it is by no means eradicated within the Anthroposophical Society. This insincerity is a cultural-historical phenomenon of the present, and we must address it. Above all, it must not simply be excused in any area, but rather it must be characterized and presented to our contemporaries. We see time and again that, whenever the urgent need arises to point out such things, even people within the anthroposophical movement—because these matters make them uncomfortable, because they must live within insincerity, and because the characterization of insincerity in one case or another is therefore highly uncomfortable for them— this characterization of insincerity is time and again taken amiss.

[ 16 ] The things I have said today, when considered in connection with what I said in the two previous reflections regarding the reincarnation of souls throughout today’s civilized world, as well as the interest that exists among a portion of humanity in preventing the decisive force that seeks to reach humanity in the present age from actually reaching this humanity—can give an idea of the great gravity of the tasks of our time in which we are immersed. |

[ 17 ] These contemporary challenges are indeed imbued with the deepest seriousness. And precisely because it is so necessary, especially in our context, to approach matters from this perspective, I spoke at the end of our last session about how painful it is for me that so much time is being taken up today without, at the same time, the possibility of continuing the earlier anthroposophical work as it existed before the necessity—and it is indeed a necessity — arose to work on the matters that have often been discussed here and that must certainly be addressed today. However, if we wish to establish the proper relationship to these matters, then it is necessary—necessary precisely out of the spirit of the great tasks of our time.

[ 18 ] In fact, we must make the following point increasingly clear to ourselves today: Our friends have, in many ways, become deeply rooted in the anthroposophical movement, which has, after all, existed since the beginning of this century. This anthroposophical movement is something that is truly not merely a reality here on the physical plane, but is continually a matter of the spiritual worlds—a direct matter of the spiritual worlds. Of course, even the most practical measures are a matter of the spiritual worlds, but not in the same sense as the anthroposophical movement itself is. And I must say a few words about that today. — The anthroposophical movement, in its spiritual aspects, continues regardless of whether the people here who represent it are diligent or lazy; regardless of whether the people who represent it make an effort to move things forward or not—it simply moves forward more quickly or more slowly, but it remains present in its spiritual reality. Since it has become necessary to bring practical matters into being that have grown directly out of the demands of the present, the situation is different with these matters. These matters must be carried out at the right time, since it is impossible to manage them if they are not completed at the right time. With matters of practical life, it may be the case that if they are carried out at a slow pace, they simply arrive too late. Within the anthroposophical movement, however, people have in many cases become accustomed to approaches that can proceed slowly or quickly. And the practices adopted there are now frequently being applied to situations where such approaches are not feasible. And that is, primarily, what underlies what I recently sought to characterize by pointing out that we must once again create the possibility of nurturing that from which, after all, everything flows: the anthroposophical movement as such. How long have I had to point out that it is simply not possible to have personal conversations at this time? Yes, my dear friends, in the last few days of the previous week—the few people who are actually able to work on practical matters—we have been occupied until around three in the morning. And yet people are always reluctant when the desire for a personal discussion cannot be accommodated. But I would like to know where the time for that is supposed to come from. This must be understood. This must not lead to a lack of seriousness in anthroposophical life itself; on the contrary, it must result in a genuine revitalization of anthroposophical life. For rest assured, when this revitalization of anthroposophical life comes, then the other necessary things will also follow of their own accord in the practical spheres of life. But this revitalization must come above all else. It must come in such a way that we strive to drive all dreaminess out of our souls. That which merely seeks to brood on some island of life, that which refuses to concern itself with what is happening in life today—that is precisely what so paralyzes the pursuit of life’s real tasks. These tasks are paralyzed when people, on the one hand, simply remain blind and indifferent to what is taking place in the outer world, and seek their salvation—which is, in fact, more the indulgence of their souls—in grappling with all manner of otherworldly, mystical problems on their “islands of life.”

[ 19 ] I am thus touching on something extraordinarily important, something that is a direct application of the ideas about the great tasks of our time to our own movement. — Each and every one of us must contribute to strengthening this anthroposophical movement. One can only contribute to strengthening this anthroposophical movement by cultivating a free and open-minded view of the broad-scale manifestations of decline in our cultural life. It is not acceptable for anthroposophists to ignore these broad-scale manifestations of decline. It is unacceptable for you not to turn your attention to what is permeating today’s civilization with a force that is driving it into the abyss. — Even though, on the one hand, this is not welcome to hear, and on the other hand, it is constantly forgotten, I must repeatedly point out that things will not get better on their own. And the contemplative brooding of today—which for many is a kind of transcendental demonstration—is precisely what is causing us extraordinary harm. Instead of rousing the will and saying to oneself, “I will act,” people brood over whether conditions here or there are such that one can do anything.

[ 20 ] My dear friends, if people had thought about the anthroposophical movement in this way at the beginning of the century, it would never have become what it is today. For the clever people who spoke up back then said that in Munich one had to work this way or that; and the even cleverer ones distinguished between Schwabing and Munich, and heard the grass growing everywhere, which told them what the respective places were like. Then there were those who found very special circumstances in Hanover and Frankfurt. That was something one encountered everywhere. If we had paid any attention to that, we wouldn’t have made a single step forward. It was already a bad thing back then, but today, when we’re often dealing with the tasks of practical life, it’s an even worse thing. For today it’s not a matter of tracking down such “grass-growing,” but of summoning our will to do something, to truly work. Of course, it is incredibly easy to say: “In the transcendental atmosphere of this or that place, I sense that one cannot do this or that”—it is much easier than simply wanting to do something. One should rely as little as possible on external circumstances today, and set one’s inner self in motion as much as possible. That is something that truly cannot be emphasized often enough.

[ 21 ] And on top of that, while we must certainly maintain our anthroposophical seriousness, we really must muster the strength to simply engage with external matters with genuine interest. After all, we need to know what is going on in the world—and a great many things are happening. But it is astonishing how little attention is paid to what is happening, even within our own circles.

[ 22 ] I want to highlight a distressing fact. There are many reasons for this, but there isn’t enough time today to explain all of them to you. But the fact remains that our magazine on the Threefold Social Order has gained almost no new subscribers since May. And yet we are an organization with thousands upon thousands of members. It is truly quite sad that such a fact must be noted. But such facts exist, and this is just one of them. Believe me, it is absolutely true: our opponents are a different breed; they are at their posts everywhere. And their machinations are spreading. I do not say these things without careful consideration, and especially not without considering what we must be prepared for if we do not muster all the strength we have within us, if we do not combine all these individual, personal strengths. That is what we need. We must now have enough anthroposophy within us to set to work; otherwise, we will be too late. And I do not see that what needs to be done is being undertaken by others; otherwise, I truly would not be led to say that we, of all people, are running out of time.

[ 23 ] There are many positive developments on the horizon, above all the participation of a portion of the student body in our efforts. It is precisely from this area that the most fruitful results can arise, if one approaches this cause with genuine, true understanding; but we must also be clear about how to approach this cause. It certainly cannot be done with vague mysticism. It is a matter of approaching the cause out of an inner zeal for life.

[ 24 ] This and many other things might be worth mentioning today, but I think the rest might come to you on your own if you continue to develop the lines of thought that have been suggested within yourselves. But that you might wish to develop them further—that is what I would like to offer as a tentative hope at the conclusion of this final lecture. And now, given the times we live in, I cannot express such a wish with the expectation that it will be fulfilled years from now; rather, I can only look ahead to the coming weeks until I can be here again. For, fundamentally, things now stand such that we truly need this time—and every week we fail to make use of could truly be lost.

[ 25 ] Therefore, my dear friends, I would like to say two things to you at the end of this lecture: First, I would like to express the hope that what I have said today will be understood by the time we meet again. Second, I hope that this reunion might indeed take place by pointing to things that align with this wish. With this in mind, I bid you farewell!