The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Anthroposophy and the Human Soul I

[ 1 ] When anthroposophy is discussed in certain circles today, alongside many inaccurate statements, it is also said that anthroposophy is intellectualistic, that it appeals too strongly to the scientific mind, and that it takes too little account of the needs of the human soul. That is why, specifically for this short series of lectures—which I am delighted to be able to present here in Vienna before you once again—I have chosen the topic: “Anthroposophy and the Human Soul.”

[ 2 ] The human mind has certainly been cut off from true knowledge by the intellectualistic development of civilization over the last three to four centuries. Today, however, people never tire of emphasizing, time and again, that human beings cannot remain confined to sober, dry reason and its insights; yet when it comes to knowledge, they rely exclusively on this very reason. On the other hand, it is repeatedly emphasized that the human soul must be given its due; yet this right is not granted to it. It is denied any possibility of establishing any kind of connection with the mysteries of the world outside; the human mind is, so to speak, confined precisely to what are merely a person’s personal affairs—to that which is to be determined solely by a person’s most personal concerns.

[ 3 ] Today, let us begin—I would say— as in a kind of historical recollection, discuss how, in earlier times of human development, the human soul was permitted to speak in terms of knowledge, how it was allowed to conjure up grand, powerful images before the human soul—images intended to enlighten people as they sought to find their place within the entire course of the world, within the cosmos, and within the sequence of time. Essentially, in those times when the human mind was still permitted to speak in terms of worldviews, these images constituted the very essence of those worldviews. They depicted the grand, all-encompassing interrelationships of the world and placed human beings within these grand, all-encompassing interrelationships.

[ 4 ] Because this is precisely how I can lay the groundwork for further exploration of the human soul from an anthroposophical perspective, I would like today to present to your soul one of those magnificent, majestic images that were intended to have the effect I have just described; at the same time, one of those images that are, above all, meant to be brought back to people in the present in a new way, which we will discuss later. Today I would like to speak to you about the image that you all know, but whose significance has, little by little, partly faded from human consciousness and is partly misunderstood: the image of the battle, the struggle between Michael and the dragon. It still has a profound effect on many people, but its true, deeper meaning, as I said, has either faded or is misunderstood; at the very least, it is not presented to the human mind in the same way it once was, or even as it was perceived by many people as recently as the 18th century. People today have absolutely no concept of how much has changed in this regard, of how much of what the so-called intelligent person dismisses as fantastical imagery was once regarded as the most serious elements of the old worldviews. This was particularly true of the image of Michael’s battle with the dragon.

[ 5 ] When people today reflect on how they themselves have evolved on Earth, they—in accordance with their materialistic worldview—come to trace the current human form, which is in a certain sense relatively more perfect, back further and further to more imperfect forms, to physical, animal-like ancestors. This line of reasoning actually leads from modern humans—who are capable of experiencing their own being inwardly, in a soul-spiritual sense—to much more material creatures from whom humans are said to have descended, creatures that were much closer to material existence. It is assumed that matter gradually evolved more and more toward an experience of the spiritual. This was not the view held in a relatively recent past; in fact, it was virtually the exact opposite of this view. Even in the 18th century, those people—and there were not many of them at the time—who had not yet been consumed by materialistic views or a materialistic mindset, when they looked back with the eye of the soul to humanity’s prehistory, did not see beings less human than their ancestors; rather, they saw beings more spiritual than human beings themselves. They looked upon beings for whom spiritual nature was so inherent that these beings had not yet taken on a physical body in the sense that human beings do today on Earth—which, incidentally, did not yet exist in those earlier times. When they looked back upon humanity, they beheld beings who lived in a higher, more spiritual manner and who, if I may put it crudely, possessed a body of much thinner, more spiritual substance. This sphere, of which the people there spoke, did not yet include beings of the kind of modern humans, but rather higher beings possessing at most an etheric body—not a physical body—beings who, in a sense, were to become the ancestors of humankind. One looked back to a time when even the so-called higher animals did not yet exist, a time when, at most, there were those animals that are found today—as well as in their descendants—among the gelatinous creatures of the seas. This existed, so to speak, on the Earth’s ancestor as an animal kingdom standing below humanity; above it was a kingdom that, as mentioned, consisted only of beings possessing, at most, an etheric body. What we today list, in the sense of my Outline of Esoteric Science, as the beings of the higher hierarchies would, in a different form, still be what was once conceived, in a certain sense, as humanity’s ancestors.

[ 6 ] These beings—Angels, Archangels, Archai—in their forms at that time were, above all, not yet destined for freedom in the sense in which we speak of freedom in relation to human beings today. The will of these beings was not experienced in such a way that they themselves had that peculiar feeling we express with the words: “We will something arbitrarily.” — These beings did not will something arbitrarily; they willed what flowed into their being as the divine will. These beings had their will completely encompassed within the divine will. The divine beings who stood or stand above them—and who, in their interrelationships, represent the divine governance of the world—“willed,” so to speak, through the lower spirits of the Archangeloi and Angeloi, so that these lower spirits willed entirely in the direction and in the sense of the divine-spiritual will standing above them. Thus was the world of ideas of this earlier humanity, which told itself: In that ancient time, the moment had not yet come at all when beings could develop who were to possess a sense of freedom in their consciousness. — In accordance with the divine-spiritual world order, this point in time had been postponed to a later epoch. Then, as it were, a portion of the spirits decreed in the divine will was to attain its own free will. It was to attain its own free will when the time was right in the course of world development.

[ 7 ] My aim today is not to describe anything that I would in any way wish to justify from an anthroposophical point of view—we will discuss that in the coming days—but rather to describe the ideas that were held by even the most enlightened minds right up until the 18th century. I want to describe them historically, for only by bringing them before our minds in their historical form will we arrive at a new understanding of the extent to which these ideas could be revived in a different form.

[ 8 ] But—as these people told themselves—among these spirits, whose cosmic destiny was actually to be determined by the will of the divine spirits, a number of such beings arose who, in a sense, wanted to sever their will from the divine will, who wanted to emancipate their will from the divine will. In a superhuman arrogance, entities arose who, before the time had come for freedom to mature, sought to attain this freedom of their will. And the most significant of these—the leader of these beings—was conceived as the being who then took form as the dragon fought by Michael, that Michael who remained above in the realm of those spirits who wished to continue orienting their will in accordance with the divine-spiritual Will that stands above them.

[ 9 ] From this abiding in the divine-spiritual will arose in Michael the impulse to do what was right for that being who, if I may say so, had prematurely reached for freedom. For the forms possessed by the beings of the hierarchy of the Archangeloi, Angeloi, and Archai were simply not suited to a being that, in the manner described, was to have a free will emancipated from the Divine. The form appropriate for this was to emerge only later in the course of the world’s evolution—namely, the human form. But all of this is set in a time when, within the context of the cosmos, the human form was not yet possible; nor were the higher animal forms yet possible—only those lower animal forms that I characterized earlier. And so, a form that was, so to speak, cosmically contradictory had to come into being. Into this form, the rebellious spirit had to be poured, as it were. It could not be an animal form that was only to emerge later; nor could it be one of the animal forms as they existed at that time in ordinary, so to speak, soft matter. It could only be an animal form that differed from the animal forms possible in the physical world, yet which, because it was meant to represent a cosmic contradiction, became animal-like. And the form that could be created solely from what was possible at that time—this form is the form of the dragon. Of course, it was then interpreted one way by some and another way by others when it was to be painted or otherwise depicted; it will be depicted more or less accurately—or even inaccurately—depending on whether the person depicting it possesses an inner, imaginative insight into what was possible at that time for a being that had developed a rebellious will. But in any case, this form is not among those that have become possible in the physical world within the animal kingdom, up to and including human beings. It had to remain a supersensible being. But such a supersensible being could not exist in that realm inhabited by the beings of the higher hierarchies—the Archangels, Angels, and so on; it had to be, so to speak, placed among those forms that could arise in the course of physical evolution. This is the fall of the dragon from heaven to earth. This is the deed of Michael: that, so to speak, this being took on a form that is super-animal, supersensible, but which cannot remain in the realm of the supersensible, for although it is a supersensible being, it contradicts the realm of the supersensible in which it existed before its rebellion. And so this being was placed into the world—which is the physical world—but as a superphysical, supersensible being. From then on, it lived in the realm of minerals, plants, and animals; from then on, it lived in what emerged as the Earth. But it did not live in such a way that human eyes could perceive it, just as human eyes can perceive ordinary animals. When the eye of the soul turns upward toward the worlds that were, so to speak, intended for the higher plane of existence, it beholds in its imaginations the beings of the higher hierarchies. When the human physical eye turns toward the physical world, it sees what has come into being in the various kingdoms of nature, all the way up to the physical-sensory human form. But when the soul’s eye turns to what is in physical nature, it beholds this contradictory form of the adversary—the one who is animal-like and yet not animal-like, who lives in the visible world and yet is not visible himself: it beholds the form of the dragon. And in the entire process of the dragon’s emergence, these people of an earlier time beheld the deed of Michael, who had remained in the spiritual realm in that form which is appropriate to the spiritual realm.

[ 10 ] And now the Earth came into being, and with the Earth, humankind; and humankind was to come into being in such a way that it would, so to speak, become a dual being. On the one hand, it was to reach upward with a part of its being—its soul-spiritual part—into what is called the heavenly, the supersensible world; with the other part of his being—the physical-etheric part—he was to belong to that nature which arose as the earthly nature, as a new world body, the very world body to which the rebellious spirit, the adversary, was banished. That is where humanity was to come into being. He was the being who, according to the original plan underlying the whole, belonged in this world. Humanity belonged on Earth. The dragon did not belong on Earth, but had been banished there.

[ 11 ] And now consider what human beings encountered on Earth when they came into being alongside the Earth in the course of evolution. He encountered what had developed as external nature from the earlier natural kingdoms—a process that took on a certain tendency, culminating in the present mineral kingdom, our plant kingdom, and animal kingdom, all the way up to his own physical human form. That is what he encountered. In other words, he encountered what we are accustomed to calling non-human nature. What was this non-human nature? It was—and still is today—the continuation of what was intended by the highest creative powers in the ongoing plan of the world’s development. Human beings may therefore, by experiencing this in their inner being, look out into external nature; they may observe the minerals along with everything connected to the mineral world; they may gaze upon the wondrous crystal forms; and they may also look upon the mountains, the clouds, and other forms, and he then sees this outer nature, as it were, in its lifelessness, in its inanimacy. But the human being regards it as that which exists as lifeless, as something that a former divine world has itself set forth from within itself, just as the human corpse—albeit now in a different sense—is set forth from the living human being at death. If this sight of the human corpse, as it first presents itself to the human being, is not something that can make a positive impression on the human being, then what is, in a certain sense, also a divine corpse— but a corpse that has arisen on a higher level and within the mineral kingdom, be regarded by human beings as that which, in its form and shape, reflects the originally formless, living Divine. And in what is then brought forth as the higher kingdoms of nature, a further reflection of that which originally existed as the formless Divine is seen. Thus, human beings may look out into all of nature and may sense from nature that this non-human nature is a mirror of the Divine in the world.

[ 12 ] After all, that is precisely what nature is meant to give the human mind. Naively, without speculation, human beings should be able, upon seeing this or that aspect of nature’s essence, to feel joy, sympathy, and perhaps even an inner exultation and enthusiasm toward nature’s forms, toward its sprouting and blooming. And then, with regard to what he does not fully grasp in this exultation, in this enthusiasm, in this overflowing joy over nature, the feeling should actually live deep within him—how he feels so intimately connected to this nature in his entire soul, so that he can say to himself, even if it comes to his consciousness only dimly: The gods have placed this in the world as a mirror of themselves—the very same gods from whom my own spirit originates, the very same gods from whom I come by another path. — And in fact, all inner exultation over nature, all joy in nature, everything that arises within us as such a liberating feeling when we relive the freshness of nature inwardly and vividly, should be attuned to the fact that the human spirit feels a kinship with that which lives in nature outside as a mirror of the divine.

[ 13 ] But human beings are at such a stage in their development that they take nature into themselves: they take it in through nourishment, through breathing, and—albeit in a spiritual way—by observing nature with their senses and perceiving it. In three ways, then, human beings take external nature into themselves: by eating, by breathing the air, and by perceiving. As a result, human beings are dual beings. With their spiritual-soul nature, they are related to the beings of the higher hierarchies, and they must form a part of their being from what exists as nature outside. They take this into themselves. And as it is taken in as food, as a stimulus for breathing, and even in that subtle, ethereal way in which it lives within the process of perception, it continues within the human being the processes that are observed in the natural world. This revives within the human being as instinct, as impulse, as animal desire, as everything that rises from the depths of human nature as the animal aspect within the human being.

[ 14 ] Let’s take a good look at this. Out there we have the wonderfully formed crystals, the masses of minerals piling up into gigantic mountains, the fresh masses of minerals pouring over the earth as water in the most varied ways; there we have the plant substance and essence sprouting before us with a higher capacity for formation; there we have the most diverse animal forms; and there we also have the human physical form itself. Everything that lives out there is a mirror of the Divine; it stands before the human soul in wondrous, naive innocence, because it mirrors the Divine and is, in essence, nothing but the pure reflection. One need only understand the reflection. At first, human beings cannot understand it with their intellect; as we will hear in the next lectures, they can understand it precisely with their soul. But when a person truly understands it with his soul—and in the earlier times of which I am now speaking, he did understand it with his soul—then he sees it as the mirror of the Divine. But now he contemplates what lives out there in nature—in the salts, in the plants, and in the animal components that then enter his own body—and observes what sprouts in the innocent green of the plants, and what still exists in a naive, animalistic way within the animal body. The human being now contemplates this, looking inward at how it surges up within him as drives, as animal, instinctual desires, as animal instincts; he sees what nature becomes within him.

[ 15 ] That was the feeling still held by many of the most enlightened people of the 18th century. They still vividly sensed the difference between nature as it exists outside and nature as it becomes when humans consume it, breathe it in, and perceive it. They so rightly sensed the difference between the naive, external, sensually perceptible nature and the sensuality welling up from within the human being. This living distinction still stood before many people with a wonderfully keen vitality; in the 18th century, they described to themselves and their students nature and humanity, and how nature and humanity are caught up in the conflict between Michael and the dragon.

[ 16 ] As we now behold this polar opposition—nature outside in its elemental innocence, nature within the human being in its guilt—before the inner eye of the human being even in the 18th century, we must now recall the dragon that Michael placed in this world of nature, because he did not deem it worthy to remain in the world of the spiritual. Out there in the world of minerals, in the world of plants, even in the world of animals, that dragon—whose form contradicts nature—has not taken on any of the forms that natural beings have assumed. It has taken on that dragon form, which seems so fantastical to us today, and which must remain in the supersensible realm. It cannot enter a mineral, it cannot enter a plant, it cannot enter an animal, nor can it enter a physical human body. But it can enter that which, within the physical human body, has now become the outer, innocent nature in the form of guilt within the surging life of the instincts. And so many people in the 18th century still said to themselves: “And the dragon, the ancient serpent, was cast down from heaven to earth. At first, however, it had no place to go. But then it established its stronghold within the human being, and so it is now entrenched in human nature.”

[ 17 ] Thus, that powerful image of Michael and the dragon still offered a glimpse into human nature for those times. If one were to present an anthroposophy appropriate to the 18th century, one would have to say that within the human being—insofar as he takes external nature into himself through eating, breathing, and perceiving—a place is created for the dragon. The dragon dwells in human nature. I would say that this idea was still so vivid in the minds of 18th-century people that one could quite well imagine such people of the 18th century perhaps having transplanted some kind of seer onto an alien celestial body and having it map out the Earth. This seer would have depicted the Earth in such a way that everything living in the mineral, plant, and animal realms—in short, in the non-human realm—would have been depicted as dragon-free, whereas the dragon would have coiled itself through the animal nature of the human being, thereby representing an earthly being. But with that, the situation for those people—even in the 18th century—had become different from the situation out of which the whole had emerged in prehuman times. For prehuman times, one had to, so to speak, shift Michael’s battle with the dragon into the objective-external realm. Now, however, the dragon was nowhere to be found externally. Where, then, was the dragon; where was one to look for it? Everywhere there are people on Earth! There he was. So if Michael now wished to continue the mission he had carried out in pre-human times within objective nature—where he had to defeat the dragon externally as the beast of the world—he now had to wage his battle within human nature. Michael’s struggle—which had been waged for a long time, since ancient antiquity, but right up to the 18th century—was thus transferred to the inner being of the human being. Yet those who spoke in this way knew that they had now transferred to the inner being of the human being an event that had formerly been a cosmic event. And they said, for example: Look back to time immemorial. There one must imagine that back then the dragon was cast down from heaven to earth by Michael—an event that took place in the worlds beyond humanity. And look to more recent times. There one must consider how the human being comes to Earth, how he takes outer nature into himself and transforms it, so that the dragon can take possession of it. And from that point on, one must transfer Michael’s battle with the dragon to Earth.

[ 18 ] Such a turn of thought was not of the kind of abstractness that people today so often like to talk about. Today, people love to get by with thoughts that are as narrow-minded as possible. People say: Well, in the past, people simply projected an event like Michael’s battle with the dragon outward. In the course of its development, humanity has become more inward-looking, and so now such an event is viewed only from within. — One truly need not envy those who can remain at the level of these abstractions, but these people certainly do not grasp the course of world history as it pertains to human thought. For, as I have now described, it came to pass that Michael’s external, cosmic battle with the dragon was transposed into the inner human being, because the dragon could find its place only within human nature. But with this, the dawn of human freedom was precisely embedded within the Michael problem, for human beings would have become mere automatons if the struggle within them had continued in the same way as it had previously existed externally. By being transferred into the inner being of the human being, the struggle—taken, so to speak, in an external, abstract sense—became a struggle of the higher nature against the lower nature within the human being. But for human consciousness, it could only take the form that led people to look up to the figure of Michael in the supersensible worlds. And, in essence, even in the 18th century there were still numerous guides for people, all of which boiled down to how they could enter the sphere of Michael in order to combat, with the help of the Michael force within themselves, the dragon dwelling in their own animal nature.

[ 19 ] Such a person, who would have looked into the deeper spiritual life of even the 18th century, would have had to be depicted artistically something like this: outwardly, the human form; in the lower, animal part, the dragon, writhing and even coiling around the heart. But then, behind the human being, as it were—because the human being perceives the higher realm with the back of the head—the outer cosmic form of Michael, towering, resplendent, retaining his cosmic essence, yet reflecting this essence within the human being’s higher nature, so that the human being presents an ethereal reflection in his own etheric body of the cosmic form of Michael. And then, visible within this human head but working its way down to the heart, would be the power of Michael, crushing the dragon, so that its blood flows down from the heart into the human limbs. This was the image that many people of the 18th century still carried within themselves of Michael’s inner struggle with the dragon. At the same time, it was the image that suggested to many people of that era how human beings, with the help of the Higher, must overcome the Lower—as it was expressed—and how human beings need the power of Michael for their own lives.

[ 20 ] The mind envisions the Kant-Laplacean theory, envisions the Kant-Laplacean primordial nebula—perhaps a spiral nebula; from this, the planets emerge, giving rise to the Sun at the center; on one of the planets, the kingdoms of nature gradually come into being, and humanity emerges. And when one then looks ahead to the future, all of this in turn merges back into the great graveyard of natural existence. The intellect cannot help but conceive of things in this way. Precisely because this intellect has been granted ever greater and greater sole dominion over human knowledge, this worldview gradually became for humanity at large what it has now become. But in all these people I referred to earlier, I would say, the eye of the soul was at work. In the intellect, a person can isolate themselves from the world, for everyone has their own head and their own thoughts within it. In the soul, they cannot do this, for the soul is not bound to the head; the soul is bound to the human being’s rhythmic organism. The air I now have within me was not within me just a moment ago; then it was the universal air, and when I exhale it again, it will once more be the universal air. Only the head isolates a person; only the head turns him into a hermit on earth. Even with regard to the organs, human beings are not isolated in this way in terms of the physical organization of their soul; there they belong to the universal cosmos, are merely a part of the cosmos. But little by little, the soul has become blind, while the head alone has become sighted. The head alone, however, develops only intellectuality and isolates human beings. Indeed, when human beings still saw with their soul, they did not see abstract thoughts within the cosmos for its interpretation or explanation; rather, they still saw magnificent images there, such as the image of Michael’s battle with the dragon. Then this human being saw what lived within his own nature and being—something that, in the way I have described today, had emerged from the world, from the cosmos. Then he saw how the inner Michaelic struggle within the human being, within Anthropos, came to life, arising from the outer Michaelic struggle in the cosmos. Then he saw anthroposophy develop out of cosmosophy.

[ 21 ] And so, everywhere, as we return to an older worldview, we are led away from abstract thoughts—which touch us coldly and soberly, which make us shiver at their intellectuality—toward images, one of the most magnificent of which is this image of Michael in battle with the dragon, Michael, who first cast the dragon down to earth, where the dragon, I might say, was able to gain his human stronghold. And then Michael became the dragon-slayer within the human being in the manner described. In this image, which I have set before your soul, Michael stands cosmically behind the human being. Within the human being lives an etheric image of Michael that carries out the actual battle within the human being, through which the human being can gradually become free in Michael’s battle, because it is not Michael who carries out the battle, but rather human devotion and the image of Michael evoked thereby. Within the cosmic Michael, that being to whom the human being can look up—and who initiated the original cosmic battle with the dragon—still lives on.

[ 22 ] Truly, events do not occur solely on Earth. These events that take place on Earth are, in essence, incomprehensible to human beings unless they can view them as images of events occurring in the supersensible world, unless they can see their causes in the supersensible world. And so, once before in the realm of the supersensible, shortly before our time, a Michael deed took place—that Michael deed which I would like to characterize in roughly the following way. I must speak in a manner that is frowned upon today as anthropomorphic, but how else could I describe it other than by using human language for what takes place in the supersensible world.

[ 23 ] That time was thought of as lying far in the past, as the pre-human era in which Michael cast the dragon down to Earth. But then humankind appeared on Earth, and what I have described began to unfold: Michael’s inner human struggle with the dragon became ever more intense. It was precisely toward the end of the 19th century that Michael could say: Now the image within the human being has become so condensed that the human being can become inwardly aware of it, that he can now feel within his soul the dragon-slayer—at least sense something of the image. In the development of humanity, the last third of the 19th century truly signifies something extraordinarily important. In earlier times, there was initially only something like a faint image of Michael within human beings; it became increasingly condensed. In the last third of the 19th century, the situation was as follows: In earlier times, the invisible, supersensible dragon was powerful, working within the drives and instincts, within desires, and within human animalistic lust; it remains sub-sensory to ordinary consciousness; it lives in the animal nature of the human being. But there it lives, it works itself out; there it stirs up the human being, gradually turning him into something subhuman; there it lives in everything that seeks to drag the human being down. It was the case that Michael himself always intervened in human nature so that human beings would not sink too low. But in the last third of the nineteenth century, the image of Michael within human beings became so strong that it depended, so to speak, only on human goodwill to reach upward, consciously elevating oneself to the image of Michael, so that on the one hand the image of the dragon might appear, as in an unenlightened emotional experience, and on the other hand, in spiritual vision—and yet already accessible to ordinary consciousness—the radiant figure of Michael might stand before the eye of the soul. Thus the inner state of mind can arise within a person: Here within me is at work the power of the dragon, which seeks to pull me down; I do not see it, but I feel it as that which seeks to bring me down below myself. But in my spirit I see the radiant angel whose cosmic task has always been to defeat the dragon. I concentrate my mind on this radiant figure; I let its light shine into my mind. — Then the mind, thus illuminated and warmed, will carry the Michael force within itself, and through free will, the human being will be able to defeat the dragon force in his subhuman nature through his alliance with Michael.

[ 24 ] If goodwill were mustered in the widest circles to elevate such a concept to a religious force and to inscribe it in every heart, then we would not have the feeble ideas in our present-day life that we find everywhere today—ideas that appear as reformist notions and the like—but rather we would have something that could once again grasp the whole human being from within, because such a concept can be inscribed in the living soul—that living soul which, the moment it truly comes to life, will also enter into a living relationship with the entire cosmos. And then those luminous thoughts of Michael would be the first harbingers of humanity’s return to the supersensible world. Contemplation based on knowledge would be able to become religiously internalized and deepened. Through this, human beings would be prepared for the festivals of the year, the understanding of which still only dawns on them from ancient times—but at least it dawns—so that they might celebrate with full consciousness that festival which appears on the calendar at the end of September, at the beginning of autumn: the Feast of St. Michael.

[ 25 ] This festival will only regain its significance when we are able to bring such a living vision before our souls. And by being able to experience it in a living way and make it the instinctive social impulse of the present, this Michaelmas festival, because the impulses here come directly from the spiritual realm, be regarded as the crowning achievement—indeed, as the very beginning—of the impulses we need if we are to emerge from today’s decline; if, alongside all our talk of ideals, we were to add something that did not originate in the human mind or heart, but rather an ideal spoken forth from the cosmos. And as the trees shed their leaves, the blossoms ripen into fruit, as nature sends us its first frost and prepares to enter its winter slumber, we could then—just as we experience Easter with the sprouting, budding spring—feel the awakening of the spiritual, with which human beings are meant to connect. And then, as citizens of the cosmos, we would be able to bring impulses into life that—because they are not abstract thoughts—will not remain as ineffective as abstract impulses usually are, but will prove their effectiveness immediately. Life will only regain its spiritual substance when we can develop impulses in our hearts that spring from the cosmos. I will speak further about this in my next lecture.