The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] Today’s discussion will take as its starting point something that was already hinted at in part when I last spoke to you from this very spot. What must continually present itself to human beings today as a kind of enigma of our times—yet which is at the same time a profound enigma of humanity—is the question: How are the phenomena of nature—to which we, as physical human beings, are subject—related to the phenomena of the moral, ethical, and spiritual world, to which we must nevertheless commit ourselves in some way, because otherwise we cannot acknowledge our own human dignity? — No matter how materialistic one may be in terms of knowledge, if one has even a modicum of awareness of one’s human dignity, one will acknowledge the difference between good and evil, what is moral and what is immoral, and—even if they are materialistically minded—they will look up, perhaps reluctantly, but at least in some way questioningly or doubtfully, toward what is a spiritual world, a spiritual world order that permeates the natural world to which we belong through our physical-inner body. But when we consider what may emerge from the current state of our times to enlighten us, so to speak, about the nature of the world, a profound conflict inevitably arises today for human thought, for human feeling, for all human impulses—a conflict that cannot be easily resolved and from which human beings today cannot easily extricate themselves. On the one hand, there is what natural science—which has achieved such tremendous success today—tells us; that natural science which, from the observation of the external sensory world, ascends to justified or unjustified hypothetical views even regarding the beginning and end of the world; and on the other hand, there stands the demand of the ethical, the moral world. But how is the conflict between the two to be resolved when, based on entirely scientific observations, we learn: Once there was a kind of cosmic nebula; out of this cosmic nebula, the cosmos—our Earth—took shape, initially as nothing more than a kind of mineral mass. Then, gradually, the plant and animal kingdoms emerged. Finally, human beings appeared. And if one then extends the same line of thought, the same kind of lawfulness that one has taken into account, to the process of the Earth’s formation, one comes to realize how this Earth will one day return to a kind of mineral mass, how the stage upon which we walk will no longer be able to sustain living beings, how, in other words, this stage will become a vast graveyard that holds buried within it everything that was once alive, imbued with soul, and imbued with spirit. So here we stand between the mineralized world and, once again, the mineralized world right in the midst of it; we have emerged from this mineralized world with all our organs, which are actually nothing more than structures in which the substances constituting the external world are interwoven in a more complex manner than is the case in the external world.

[ 2 ] From what has emerged as a human being within this scientifically hypothetical world, the demand to be moral, to be good, now arises; ideas and ideals emerge within the human being, and the question must arise: What will become of these demands of the moral world, what will become of the ideals, of the ideas, when one day everything we understand through the natural sciences—including human beings—will have fallen into the great final graveyard?

[ 3 ] Certainly, one could say that this is an extension of the scientific way of thinking into the realm of the hypothetical, and that one need not actually go that far. But then one would at least have to raise the question: Where, then, should one turn? Where can one gain any insight into the place of human beings in the universe, insofar as they are moral beings, beings who carry ideas and ideals within themselves? — One would have to raise this question if one does not allow natural science to formulate hypotheses about the end and the beginning of the Earth. But from all that currently accepted human science—which, in essence, has developed entirely out of natural science—offers to humanity, no insight whatsoever can be gained into humanity’s place within the universe. I would like to explain what is now emerging as a conflict within all human feeling in the present—and what is, in essence, intimately connected with all the forces of decline that are making themselves felt so terribly in our time— by presenting a person of the present who has truly absorbed everything that is regarded in our time as enlightenment, education, and scientific knowledge—that is, a person who feels quite well-informed in the present. I want to place him on one side, and on the other side I want to place a person from the Greek cultural community, a person who lived in the pre-Socratic era—roughly the time from which so little has survived, such as individual sayings of the great philosophers Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, and so on. I would like to place such an educated Greek alongside the very intelligent person of the present day. And not, mind you, a Greek in his present-day reincarnation—for then, if he were inhabiting a human body, he would probably also be a very intelligent person of the present—but I would like to place him here as he was as a Greek. So, in his incarnation as a Greek, I would like to contrast him with a very intelligent person of the present.

[ 4 ] A person from the Greek era would say: “Yes, you people of today—you know absolutely nothing about human beings anymore, because, deep down, you don’t really know anything about the world either.” — “Why is that?” — a wise person of the present day would ask. He would say: We have come to know some seventy elements—hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, and so on. We are, however, now at the point where it seems that all these elements can in turn be traced back to a single one; but we simply haven’t reached the point yet where we can trace them back to that one. We recognize these seventy-two elements, which mix and separate, combine and break apart, and which actually constitute everything that takes place in the physical, sensory world. Whatever one sees is based on the combination and separation of these elements.

[ 5 ] A Greek would say: “That’s all well and good that you now have so many elements—some seventy of them—but with all these elements, you certainly won’t come to know human nature.” That is out of the question, for the beginning of human knowledge—as the ancient Greek would say—must start not by speaking of seventy-two or seventy-six elements, of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and so on, but rather by saying: Everything that surrounds us externally through our senses consists of earth, water, air, and fire.

[ 6 ] Now, a sensible person today would say: Yes, that was a long time ago, back in the days of childhood, when people didn’t know as much as we do today. Back then, they spoke of earth, water, air, and fire, but we’ve moved beyond such childish notions. Back then, people assumed there were four elements; now we know there are seventy-six elements. That was a very childish way of looking at things. We know that water is not an element. We know that air, too, cannot be considered an element. We know that heat—fire—is not a substance at all. We are incredibly clever. You were just at a childish stage of worldview.

[ 7 ] Now, perhaps the Greek might reply: I have already given some thought to your seventy-odd elements, and the way you view them—and it all depends on the way you view them—these seventy-odd elements, in our imagination, belong to the earth, not at all to water, not at all to air, not at all to fire, but to the earth. It’s certainly admirable of you that you differentiate and specify this earth and can even conceive of it as being divided into seventy-two or seventy-six elements in great diversity—that’s all well and good; we haven’t yet reached the point of understanding these interesting details, but we’ve summarized it all under the term “earth.” But what we understood by water, air, and fire—you understand nothing of that, and because you understand nothing of it, you cannot have any knowledge of human nature either. For you see—as a Greek of that time would say—there are two kinds of human beings: first, the human being who wanders about between birth and death, first as a child, then as an adult; and second, the human being who lies as a corpse for a few days and is then in the grave. We are speaking only of the physical human being—the Greek would say—and there is indeed this twofold form: the human being who walks about from birth to death, and then the human being whom one sees as a corpse for a few days and who subsequently lies in the grave. And what you learn from your seventy-two or seventy-six elements, which combine and separate, applies only to the person lying in the grave—to the human corpse. The way things are in the human corpse can be understood through your chemistry and physics; but you cannot discern anything at all with them about the human being who walks about alive between birth and death. You have a science that relates only to the observation of the human being after he has died. You understand nothing at all about the human being who is alive. You have successfully developed your science so that it is a science of the dead human being, not at all of the living human being. For if you wish to have a science of the living human being, then you must first consider the all-encompassing, universal interplay and life of that which we call “water.” We do not call the coarse, liquid element that flows in a stream “water,” but rather we call everything “water” where cold and moisture interact in the world; that is what we call water—as the Greeks would say. And as we seek to form a living conception of the interplay of moisture and cold in all their forms, we first realize the necessity of no longer conceiving in terms of mere concepts, mere ideas, or mere abstractions, but rather in images. And the Greek will now say: When one can perceive moisture accompanied by some sensation of cold, when this merges into other forms of moisture—shaped by the moist element or manifesting itself in another sensation of cold—then one obtains interwoven, living images in moisture and cold. And one ascends to an understanding of the plant world and begins to grasp the interweaving of moisture and cold in such a way that—not in coarse, material water, but in this interweaving of cold and moisture—the plant world arises in images in the spring, as it tears itself away from the ground, as it tears itself away from the cold through the moisture within itself, for the earth is dry and cold. And in the formation of the plant world throughout spring, summer, and fall, one sees another aspect of this interweaving of the watery element, and the mighty imagination of this outer interweaving and life of the watery element grows into one within us. But the entire plant world, with all its forms, is contained within it.

[ 8 ] And so the Greek says: What matters to us is not the sensory, but what is known as the supersensory; the weaving of the cold and the moist—that is what matters to us. And we perceive the weaving and life of the plant world within this fluid, watery element. If we come to know this—not through abstract concepts, but through these images that themselves stir us to inner activity—then we need only cast a glance inward, and we perceive in what we can observe outside in spring, summer, fall, and winter—in the sprouting plant world, in the way warmth overcomes the cold, in everything that unfolds as fall approaches and again as winter draws near—in all of this we perceive something that we can then imagine as a miniature image. When a person falls asleep, something happens within them that is very similar to spring, and as they continue to sleep, something similar to the sprouting, budding life of summer takes place within them. And as they then wake up again, it resembles the life of winter. One sees a miniature image of external life—insofar as this external life gives rise to the vegetative—in what constitutes the human etheric body. A Greek would have said: In your seventy-two or seventy-six elements, you come to know only the human corpse. But this human corpse is permeated by something that can only be known through images—specifically, the kind of images that arise when one thinks of the vegetative aspect as permeating the watery element. There one learns to recognize what, from birth to death, animates the etheric body—that which you, through your seventy-odd elements, come to know as the element of death. And because you do not ascend to the watery element, you will never come to know the human being as a living being.

[ 9 ] But now something else begins. It is precisely the earth that represents what is dead within the human being. The moment a human being dies, their corpse is taken over by the earth; it is taken over by the seventy elements; the law of the earth, the law of the earth element, extends over them. Where is the law of the element that is water? This law is not on Earth; this law is out there in the cosmos. And if you want to seek—as the Greeks would say—who brings forth this surging of the cold and the moist through spring, summer, fall, and winter, then you must look up into the cosmic element, first to the planets, then to the fixed stars, looking up into the vastness of the cosmos. Your earthly element has significance in relation to human beings only when they lie in the grave; the human being who walks here on Earth is, in every single moment—insofar as he carries his etheric body within himself—subject to the laws of the cosmos. These are the laws that work their way in from the interplay of the planets or from the forces of the fixed stars. — And so essential was the watery element to the Greeks in the period I have indicated that they would have said: In that which is the watery element—which surrounds the Earth, envelops it in mist, or discharges itself in thunderstorms—insofar as this watery element is at work, the cosmos acts upon the Earth with its forces. What takes place in the watery element is not to be sought at all in the element of earth or down in the earthly realm, but rather in the cosmos; and human beings already ascend into the cosmic element by simply having their etheric body actively at work within them—that which snatches the elements from fate, or, shall we say, from chemistry, between birth and death.

[ 10 ] But that is actually still a long way from truly understanding the human being. One has only grasped what permeates him as life forces, what makes him grow, what enables him to digest, what accompanies him as life forces between birth and death. But a third element—and the Greeks of the period I have spoken of would also point this out—a third element makes itself felt in the human being; it is certainly active the entire time between birth and death, but it manifests itself in a very special, distinctive way, unlike the ordinary life forces. These are the forces that lie in our rhythmic system, in our respiratory system, in our circulatory system, and so on—everything within us that is rhythm and rhythmic activity,

[ 11 ] You will be able to sense a certain connection between your life—which is now no longer merely physical, but also a spiritual being—and your breathing, if you bring the following to mind, something that every person is familiar with. You have probably woken up at times with a particular sense of anxiety. You emerge from a state of anxiety with your consciousness and realize: Something is not right with your breathing. Certainly, the connection between breathing and the life of the soul is a mysterious one; but it can at least be perceived when a person wakes up from a nightmare and notices the irregularity of their breathing. There is indeed a connection between our inner life—between all the sensations and feelings surging within us, the feelings of anxiety and fear, the feelings of joy and pleasure—and the rhythm of our breathing and circulation. This rhythmic system is something other than the mere system of life. This rhythmic system has to do with our soul nature; it is closely connected to our inner life and our soul being. It is, after all, the air we breathe that actually stimulates the entire rhythmic system, and in ancient times people still spoke of the element of air and its relationship to human beings—for example, during the era when the mystery schools studied those rhythms that govern human inner activity, the very rhythms from which, at the same time, Homer’s meter, the hexameter, was derived. If you take the average normal rate of the respiratory rhythm and the circulatory rhythm, you have the following: you have approximately eighteen breaths per minute and four times as many heartbeats. The ratio of the blood rhythm to the respiratory rhythm is four to one. Consider the hexameter: long, short, short—long, short, short—long, short, short: three metrical feet, with the caesura as the fourth. The four heartbeats correspond to half a breath; after the caesura: dactyl, dactyl, dactyl, followed again by the caesura. The internal structure of the Homeric verse—and indeed the internal structure of ancient verse in general—is derived from the human rhythmic system. In the distinctive structure of the Homeric verse, we find an expression of the relationship between blood circulation and the rhythm of breathing. By taking seriously the element of air—which unites with the human being and then separates from it again—people sensed that, through this element, they were absorbing something within themselves that relates to the regular experiences of the human soul. And when the Greeks began to speak of the element of air, they began to speak of both the most beautiful and the most ordinary aspects of human soul life, and he recalled that a person takes 25,920 breaths in the course of a twenty-four-hour day, and that the sun completes one full circuit around the entire celestial vault—with its vernal equinox—in 25,920 years. And he brought the rhythm of the world into harmony with the daily rhythm of human beings. He pointed out the connection between the soul of the world and the human soul, and he said: With the life that flows between birth and death—which, in its twenty-four-hour cycle, presents us with a miniature picture of spring, summer, autumn, and winter— from this aqueous law that extends to the cold and damp in the cosmos—which is governed by the cosmic—in this relationship between the human etheric and the cosmic, which is expressed in the seasons and in the changing weather, which is regulated by the movements of the planets—in this relationship we find what is expressed in the human etheric body. When we turn to the rhythmic system, we must turn to the element of air. We must turn to that which, in ancient times—when it was still better understood—gave rise to the formation of that soul aspect that came to light in poetic structure, because people sensed the connection between the human soul and the world soul. One still enters into the spatial realm when observing life. One must, however, ascend into the cosmic-spatial realm. But one emerges from space and perceives what is sent in from time as rhythm into space when we turn to the rhythmic system.

[ 12 ] You see, in the rhythmic element—which is the element of air—the Greeks still perceived something of what they described as: The human soul is rooted in the world soul, and it is the world soul itself that lives in its own rhythm and sends miniature images of that rhythm into human life. Out there, the world soul causes the starting point of spring to advance a little each year; in 25,920 years, it completes a full cycle around the sun, and in 25,920 breaths, a person’s daily rhythm contains a miniature image of an immensely long world rhythm. In twenty-four hours, a human being embodies within himself a rhythm that is a reflection of a world year lasting 25,920 years. Thus, the human being is rooted in the world soul by being present within it with his soul, living within it.

[ 13 ] If one then ascends to the element of fire, one has not only the soul, but also the spirit that permeates us through the “I”; one also has that which finds its physical expression in the element of blood. Just as one perceives the relationship of the human soul to the world soul through the element of air, so too does one perceive, through the element of warmth or fire, the relationship of the human spirit—the human “I”—to the world spirit. In earlier times, human beings were led up into spiritual realms by hearing about those elements which today’s highly intelligent people believe to have sprung from a childlike mode of imagination. On the contrary, we must find our way back to this mode of imagination; only we must reach it fully consciously, not instinctively, as was the case in those days. But when we first enter the watery element, we experience the world itself as a great living entity, for we are immediately led out into the cosmos with its sources of life. We experience the world as a living entity. As we enter the rhythmic element, we experience the world as something imbued with soul, and when we then enter the element of warmth, we experience the world as something imbued with spirit.

[ 14 ] But one cannot come to know the watery element through our abstract concepts—through all the concepts you can acquire today by going through elementary school, middle school, high school, and universities; with all these concepts, you gain nothing that would enable you to comprehend the watery element. This must be grasped through imagination; it reveals itself only in images. Then, in a certain sense, ordinary abstract thinking must be transformed into concrete thinking—into an artistic perception of the world. Now, today’s philosopher will immediately come along and say: “That doesn’t exist—grasping the world through images; grasping the world artistically—that doesn’t exist.” I construct a theory of knowledge; the laws of nature must be encompassed by logic. One must be able to express everything one wishes to understand about the world in abstract concepts, in abstract laws. — People may well demand this and may well establish such theories of knowledge, but when nature creates artistically, it simply cannot be captured by such theories of knowledge; it must simply be grasped through images. It is not for us to dictate to nature how it should allow itself to be understood, but rather we must listen to it to discern how it wishes to be understood. And in its aqueous element of the plant world, it can be grasped only through imagination; and in its rhythmic life, extending all the way to the rhythms of the vast universe, it can be grasped only through inspiration, through following the rhythmic life, through immersing oneself in the life of breathing.

[ 15 ] If you have nightmares, it is because the rhythm of the world is pressing down on you so forcefully that you cannot bear it. But once you have gone through certain exercises and can now slip into this element of air yourself, moving in time with its rhythm, you enter the world of inspiration; you are outside your body, just as the air itself, as it flows in, is outside your body. Then you move with the air into and out of your body. Then you will come to understand what a human being truly is—not what lies in the grave after death, nor what modern science can comprehend.

[ 16 ] But at the same time, one must rise above abstract concepts and purely logical images to reach the realm of imagination, inspiration, and then intuition. Today, however, abstract thought has been taken to an exceptionally high level. It is ingenious. One can, after all, so beautifully imagine the following. I may have mentioned this here before, but it is important to point out such things again and again.

[ 17 ] You drive past two locations at a reasonable speed. At one location, a cannon is fired; at another location, which you pass later, a cannon is also fired a little while later. Naturally, you hear the cannon blast from the location where the second shot was fired only after you have heard the blast from the first location. Now you can easily imagine the following: If you move faster and faster, you will eventually reach a point where you are moving at the speed of sound. If you move as fast as sound travels, then when you pass the second location, you will be able to hear the two booms at the same time. And if you move even faster than the speed of sound, you will hear the later boom first and the earlier one later, because you have outrun it by moving faster than the speed of sound.

[ 18 ] People engage in a lot of speculation like this these days. People wonder: How can I hear two cannons being fired if I’m moving faster than the speed of sound? I’m outpacing the sound; so, wouldn’t I have to hear the shot fired later sooner than the one fired earlier—the one I’ve already outrun! — You see, there you have the opportunity to come up with something quite logical, but it isn’t realistic. For if you were moving as fast as sound, you yourself would be sound, and you would make a sound; you would turn into sound; you would merge with the sound. It is simply impossible for anyone who thinks realistically to engage in such speculations. But such speculations are being made today. They’re called Einstein’s theory. Einstein goes to America; the newspapers report that he’s had enormous success, but that he’s said in London that not a single person in America understood him. So he must have found success among all those who didn’t understand him. That may be so. In London, however, there was a great folly in presenting these abstractions—which, after all, sprang from a thoroughly abstract mind—as the greatest, most significant event in the world, and even old Lord Haldane felt compelled to emphasize what had actually happened there. Basically, nothing else really happened other than that one man took to the extreme the power of abstraction, the spirit of unreality, the preoccupation with concepts and ideas that are completely alien to any reality—ideas that possess even less substance than the power of that logic which applies to a dead person in a grave; for with Einstein’s concepts one can no longer even comprehend the corpse, but only an extract of the corpse. But fundamentally, there is no corrective at all against what is spreading among humanity today. This corrective exists solely in anthroposophical spiritual science, which in turn seeks to find the path to concepts that correspond to reality. And these concepts that correspond to reality lead us, in turn, out into the worlds—for example, the cosmic worlds that still extend spatially. There we have the world before us as a great living entity, much as Goethe spoke of this world in his prose hymn “Nature,” drawn from a powerful intuition. But then, rising from this world, one arrives at the world soul, at the world rhythm—that which was once, in essence, called the harmony of the spheres. One arrives at world rhythms when one develops this understanding, when one translates it into imaginations, into rhythms—where one finds what I attempted to depict in my Outline of Esoteric Science, where the world rhythm is thus portrayed and, emerging from the world rhythm, the formation of the Saturn, Sun, Moon, and Earth eras, as well as the future Jupiter era, the Venus era, and the Vulcan era. These things are the manifestation of world events arising from the world rhythm. But look at the way these successive, unfolding world rhythms are described! First of all, the human being belongs to these world rhythms. Human beings do not arise from some random whirlpool—whether mineral or animal in nature—but rather from the spiritualized whole of the world; and wherever we find the world, we also find human beings. But you will find something else as well; when you approach the world in which these rhythms are discussed, you cannot help but speak of divine-spiritual beings at the same time as you speak of this world. Do you think it makes sense to speak of Angeloi, Archangeloi, and Archai in connection with the world described in a modern physics or chemistry textbook? Of course, it would be very out of place if one were first to speak in chemistry of the specific compounds of carbon, of the etheric compounds of carbon, of alcohol, and so on! If one were to list all these formulas with their carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and so on, and then say: “This pertains to angels, that pertains to archangels”—that, of course, would not work. But when one ascends to that region where one is compelled to let the becoming of the Earth emerge from the Saturn, Sun, and Moon phases, when one beholds this fabric that lives in the world, in the rhythms of the world, which plays into the human soul through the inner human rhythm—a rhythm one can trace in the soul all the way into the verse—and if one can simultaneously point out how the verse is structured in relation to the rhythm of the blood and the rhythm of breathing; if one ascends to these regions where one describes Saturn, the Sun, the Moon, and so on, then one is compelled to speak of beings of the spiritual hierarchies. One enters a world in which real spiritual beings exist, not merely a world in which that vague pantheism is supposed to dwell—a pantheism to which even today some who do not wish to be materialists still aspire, saying: “The world is imbued with spirit.”

[ 19 ] Well, the world is imbued with spirit; something spiritual is spreading everywhere—it’s kind of like when someone says, “A lion”; you claim it has a larynx with which it roars, and an esophagus and trachea and lungs and a stomach—that’s none of my business, I don’t want to talk about that; it’s just completely ‘permeated by a lion.’ — Much like when someone says, “It’s completely ‘lion-ified’”—that is the philosophical posturing of the pantheists, who imagine this nebulous spiritual essence spreading everywhere.

[ 20 ] But if one truly wishes to speak of the spiritual, one must speak of individual spiritual beings. Then one must know how, as soon as one ascends from the water element into the air element, one encounters the spiritual beings described in the hierarchies. As soon as one enters the fire element, one arrives at the highest hierarchy: Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim, and only then at the actual spiritual structure of the world, in which, however, human beings can no longer distinguish individual entities. But before one enters what superficial pantheists would like to call the nebulous “All-One,” one passes through the world in which the individual, concrete spiritual beings live. And in these concrete spiritual beings, one now recognizes what also lives in the nature that surrounds us. For one does indeed reach the very foundations of the nature that surrounds us. Human beings cannot be part of the nature that surrounds us and that we study through chemistry and physics. Human beings can only be part of a nature that also contains the water, air, and fire elements.

[ 21 ] As soon as we enter the ethereal element, we encounter the beings we describe as angels, archangels, and so on. There we enter into the concrete spiritual reality of the world. There we also enter a world that we can comprehend both morally and physically. We simply do not see it because today we cloud our vision with the notion that from the same world from which, for example, poetic meter truly resounds, true morality also resounds. The world containing the seventy-six elements is certainly not the origin of morality; nor is it there that we find what animates human beings; even in the world that is cosmic and spatial, in the world dominated by the element of water, the moral world does not yet exist. But the moment we enter the realm of rhythm, we simultaneously enter the world of morality. And the human being of the present faces the task of recognizing the moral world once again as a real one—of recognizing that the very same material or substance from which his astral body is formed is contained in moral ideas. The very same substance from which our “I” is formed is contained in religious ideas and in the religious ideal.

[ 22 ] We must once again find the bridge between the observation of nature and the contemplation of the spiritual world—but not merely the generally vague spiritual world, but rather the spiritual world from which our moral intuitions arise. I had already sought to point out this interplay between the world of perceptions and the world of intuitions in my Philosophy of Freedom (1893). I wanted to show how concrete moral intuitions are drawn from a world that lies beyond the world of perceptions and are incorporated into that world.

[ 23 ] After all, this is the great task of our time: not to remain stuck in that world which is actually relevant to human beings only when they lie in the grave, but to ascend to that world which reveals to us what a human being is like when they live out their spiritual life in harmony with the rhythm of the physical. But it is precisely through the rhythm of the physical that one learns to understand the rhythm in its very essence. In this way, one learns to understand the rhythm of the world, and one cannot understand the rhythm of the world without understanding the sources, the origins, of the moral world. Only then can such an understanding lead one to say: Yes, I currently have a natural science; it is applicable to human beings as corpses. — Of course, it must then originate from the world’s corpse, be drawn from that which perishes in the world. It must relate to that part of the earth which will one day become the earth’s corpse. But in what we grasp in the rhythmic—what we pour out, for example, in verses, in images, in the spiritual realm in general, so that it lives as it lives in the rhythms—and in what we intuitively grasp in our moral ideals, we create something that outlives the death of the Earth, just as the individual human soul outlives human death. The Earth will perish according to the laws of nature that we recognize today; according to these laws, the Earth will perish. And according to the laws we recognize as we draw closer to the spiritual world, and according to the laws we recognize when we grasp moral intuitions—when we truly grasp religious intuitions—according to these laws the soul is formed, human souls are formed, which will leave the Earth, when it falls away in death, for a new future existence.

[ 24 ] And so it is that today we have an officially recognized science: it teaches about death; it teaches about that which will one day cause the Earth to perish in the great grave of the world. And we need a spiritual science that earnestly strives to understand the words of Jesus Christ: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” We need a spiritual science that seeks the real, the true substance of these words of Christ, for these words speak of rhythm, of morality, of the divine, and of that which passes into new stages of existence when the Earth and even the cosmos fall apart and become corpses. And we must be aware that we must move away from a science that speaks only of death, and toward a science that rises to the living and, through the living, to the soul and the spirit.

[ 25 ] Until the year 333—roughly the first half of the 4th century A.D.—the mystery science actually still existed; in fact, it was not until the 6th century that the last Greek sages were completely driven out. But what was the purpose of this mystery science? This mystery science sought to help people overcome the great danger of physical life. And back then, it was still relatively easy to help people overcome the great danger of physical life, because people still possessed a certain unifying power, a group soul. This sense of group soul was still very strong up until the 4th century A.D. It was only after the Migration Period began and this sense of group soul was broken by the distinctive element emanating from the Germanic peoples that things changed. But these mysteries attracted only a select few, whom they regarded as particularly chosen, and developed them within the mysteries to a special level of spiritual education. But in doing so, they did not merely benefit these individual initiates; rather, because the group spirit was at work, everything in the surrounding community—within which the teacher or other initiate was active—was simultaneously transformed. Especially when we look back to ancient Egyptian times, there were only a few initiates, but they were at the same time the intellectual leaders in all fields, the leaders of the entire Egyptian people; and because group soul consciousness existed there, their power extended to the other people who were not initiated. Thus, in those days, only a few individuals needed to be initiated.

[ 26 ] What was the actual purpose of this initiation? It was intended to do nothing less than to save people from the danger of their souls becoming mortal. In Egypt, after all, people had a different conception of immortality than we do today. Today, people generally think of immortality as something that is rightfully theirs, something they cannot possibly lose. In the Samothracian mysteries, for example, it was taught: There are four Cabiri; three of them always kill the fourth. — But in reality, it was believed that a human being has a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and an “I.” The physical body is initially subject to death as a physical corpse. The etheric body dissolves into the cosmos, and the astral body also dissolves in a certain way, as I have described in my Theosophy. If the “I” does not preserve its self-consciousness through participation in the spiritual realm, then the three also kill the “I” and drag it down into mortality. In the Mysteries, one sought to preserve human immortality. One did not imagine that immortality could be attained through prayer; they did not imagine that one could merely adopt a passive attitude toward immortality or anything of the sort; rather, they believed that those who were initiated, through the special transformation of their soul nature, through their awakening, and through the awakening of their “I,” overcame the danger of failing to grasp themselves in the spirit and thereby being compelled to follow the path of their mortal body. And because individual initiates possessed this power to think beyond the mortal body, they were also able—thanks to the presence of the group soul spirit—to communicate it to other people. Today, there is no longer any group soul connection. Since the first third of the 15th century, this has been increasingly prepared; today we are called upon to develop freedom as individual human beings. Today we are, in essence, at the point where we face the opposite danger.

[ 27 ] While up until the 4th century A.D., people faced the danger of, so to speak, being unable to grasp the spiritual realm, so that they had to be awakened to it, today’s human being—through the special development of his physical body and the special development of matter—is, in fact, truly a thinker, and he lives intensely within his thoughts. Those people who believe they are living in reality are, in fact, living all the more in their thoughts. People today are terribly abstract-minded; they also fall for everything abstract immediately because they have an inner affinity for the abstract. But these abstractions—these thoughts that are concocted—are not merely misinterpreted when one says they depend on the brain; they are truly dependent on the brain, because the brain mimics the processes that the human being undergoes in the spiritual world before birth or before conception. The brain is the imitator of what my soul did before it descended. Since this thinking—which is developed today with a particular degree of perfection—is merely cerebral thinking, materialism is correct. It must be emphasized again and again: With regard to the thinking that prevails today, materialism is correct, for it is merely an imitation of true, living thinking. And therefore, human beings must come to grasp freedom in their thinking and thereby save themselves; that is, they must come to not merely let their brains think, but to take hold of their thinking in such a way that they become aware: they are free beings. That is why I have placed great emphasis on pure thought, on free thought, which at the same time manifests itself as will, so that one thinks, but in reality wills, so that willing and thinking are one and the same substance, which manifests itself in pure freedom, as I have set forth in my Philosophy of Freedom. It is meant to show human beings: You are free only when you grasp that which is within you—your immortal self—through which you can save yourself, through which you can carry yourself across the death of the four Kabirs.

[ 28 ] However, one is entering territory that, I would say, consists of thin ice—a territory that modern man is reluctant to enter, because he would prefer that some external, worldly power guarantee his immortality in some way, so that he would not have to do anything himself to awaken within himself that which might otherwise fall asleep, that which might otherwise share in death as the human body passes through it. And as we in modern humanity make thinking ever more similar to the physical processes of the brain, modern humanity is in fact not merely facing the danger of no longer understanding anything about immortality, but is facing the danger of losing immortality itself. This is, after all, Ahriman’s greatest ideal: to destroy the human being in his individuality, to prevent him from being individual any longer, but to incorporate the powers he possesses—the power of thought—into the earthly forces, so that when the Earth one day becomes a great corpse, this corpse will be interwoven with all the forces that humanity, through its logic, has incorporated into the Earth. So that one would have a great earth spider, within which the seventy or so elements would live, completely pulverized; but woven into it, like gigantic spiders tangled together, would be human thought, following the pattern of mere abstract thought. This is the ideal that Ahriman seeks to achieve: to destroy human individuality in order to transform the Earth, through the power of human thought, into a web of gigantic thought-spiders—but real spiders. This is the Ahrimanic goal, which must be averted by humanity’s being truly gripped by the language of the spirit: “Not I, but the Christ in me,” as the true self becomes alive within them—the immortal self that can understand the words: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” That wisdom cannot pass away which is reality itself, which encompasses that reality through which—when the earth is a corpse—the whole being of the human being propagates itself into a new existence. The New Jerusalem in the Apocalypse is meant to speak of such an existence. But these things must, in turn, be understood. The greatest obstacle to such understanding is, of course, all the “Einsteinism” and the like—all that which today sweeps through the world as a great, terrible addiction to abstraction, which is entirely suited to furthering the forces of decline; whereas the sole salvation for humanity can lie only in making use of the forces of ascent—the true physical, soul, and spiritual forces. That is what I wanted to speak to you about today.