The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] I would like to add a few things to what has been said in recent days for the friends who have come here for the Easter course and who may not have heard some of what has been said here recently—specifically regarding karmic connections. For those friends who were here during the previous sessions leading up to the Easter Conference, some of this may be a repetition, but that is, after all, necessary given the nature of our current gathering here.

[ 2 ] I have, in fact, emphasized quite strongly of late how the historical life of humanity must be brought into alignment with the contemplation of human beings themselves. All our efforts are, after all, directed toward placing the human being once again at the center of our view of the world. This achieves two things: First, it is only through this that a view of the world becomes possible at all, because what is spread out around the human being in non-human nature represents only a part, a certain realm of the world. A worldview limited to this realm of nature is roughly akin to an observation of plants that always stops at the sight of roots, green leaves, and stems, and never gets to see the blossoms and fruit. Such a view simply does not capture the whole plant. Could you imagine a being that is always born and lives only at a time when the plant has grown only as far as the green leaves, that never sees a flower, that dies just as the flower is about to bloom, and only reemerges when only roots and green leaves are present? Such a being would never come to know the full, complete plant; it would speak of the plant as a being that has only roots and leaves.

[ 3 ] The modern materialistic mindset has placed itself in a similar position with regard to its overall view of the world. It considers only the broader foundation of life, not that which springs forth from the totality of earthly becoming and being: human beings themselves. Our view of nature must certainly be such that nature is considered in its vastness, yet at the same time it appears to us, in this contemplation, as if it were compelled to create human beings out of itself. Through this, human beings truly appear as a microcosm, as a concentration of everything found in the vastness of the cosmos.

[ 4 ] As soon as one applies this way of looking at history, one is no longer able to view human beings merely by focusing the forces of history on them and seeing a unified, coherent being within them; rather, one must view human beings as they pass through various earthly lives, for they are connected to one earthly life in an earlier time and to another earthly life in a later time. And the fact that this is so, in turn, places the human being—but now the totality of the human being, the individuality of the human being—at the center of consideration. This is one of the things achieved through such a view of nature and history.

[ 5 ] The other point is that it is precisely when one places human beings at the center of one’s considerations that, from an ethical standpoint, a certain modesty will take root in human character. Arrogance actually stems only from a lack of self-knowledge. A profound and comprehensive understanding of human nature in the context of world and historical events will certainly not lead a person to overestimate themselves, but rather will result in a more objective view of themselves. It is precisely when a person does not know themselves that those feelings spring up within them which arise from the unknown aspects of their own nature. Instinctive emotional impulses well up from within them, and these instinctive emotional impulses, rooted in the subconscious, are what actually make a person immodest, arrogant, and so on. In contrast, when consciousness descends more and more into those regions where a person recognizes how they belong to the vastness of the universe and to the flow of successive historical events, modesty will develop within them in accordance with an inner law. For adaptation to existence in the world always evokes modesty, not arrogance. Everything that can be cultivated as a real, true contemplation in anthroposophy certainly also has its ethical side and gives rise to ethical impulses. Anthroposophy will not produce a view of life like that of the modern materialistic era, which regards ethics and morality as something external; rather, ethics and morality will be something that is inwardly driven forth from everything that is contemplated.

[ 6 ] Now I would like to show how, in certain human beings, earlier epochs are carried over by the human being himself into later epochs. I would like to illustrate this with specific examples even today. Here we have what I would call a very compelling example that can lead us in our consideration to these regions of Switzerland.

[ 7 ] Let us turn our attention to a person from pre-Christian times, roughly a century before the founding of Christianity, and there we find—I am recounting what could be discovered through a humanities-based analysis—a figure who is a kind of slave overseer, who, as I said, was a kind of slave overseer in the southern regions of Europe a century before the founding of Christianity.

[ 8 ] One should not imagine a slave overseer of that time as the figure that immediately comes to mind when we hear these words. After all, slavery in antiquity was something that was widely regarded as the norm, and by the time I am referring to here, it had in fact already been substantially mitigated, and the slave overseers were educated people. In fact, during this period, even the teachers of very prominent people were often slaves, because among the slaves, education—literary and scientific education of the time—was widespread. So one must adopt a more balanced view of slavery—without, of course, defending it in the slightest—when considering antiquity in this regard.

[ 9 ] So we have a person whose job it is to oversee the distribution of work and the treatment of a number of slaves. But this individual—who is exceptionally kind and gentle, and who, if left to her own devices, would do everything to make life pleasant for the slaves—is now under the authority of a harsh, somewhat brutal individual. Using today’s terminology, we would call that individual the supervisor. This individual must obey him. As a result, certain things occur that generate resentment among those under her command. And it then turns out that when the personality I am speaking of—the slave overseer—passes through the gate of death, she is surrounded, in the time between death and a new birth, by all the souls who were connected to her through her role as slave overseer. But the individuality of this personality was particularly strongly connected to that superior, namely because, when she was a slave leader, she had to follow this superior—often reluctantly, but always in accordance with the customs of that time for such a social relationship. This established a deeper karmic connection. The relationship that existed in the physical world between the slave overseer—who, in many respects, could also be called a slave teacher—and the group of slaves also established a deeper karmic connection.

[ 10 ] So we must imagine that another life now unfolds between death and a new birth, among all these human individualities of which I have just spoken.

[ 11 ] Then, around the 9th century A.D., the individuality of this slave overseer is reborn in Central Europe, but this time as a woman. We are thus now dealing with a reincarnation of that slave leader as a woman—specifically, because of karmic connections, as the wife of precisely that superior who is reborn as a man. And a not particularly harmonious marital relationship develops between the two—a relationship that, however, karmically balances out what was established during the time of the subordinate-superior relationship in ancient times at the beginning of the first century B.C. This superior now lives, around the 9th century, in Central Europe within a community whose members have an exceptionally close, family-like relationship with one another. He serves there as a kind of community official, but is actually a servant to all and is treated with extraordinary deference.

[ 12 ] When we examine the whole matter, we come to the conclusion that the members of this somewhat sprawling community are all slaves who were once led and treated in the manner I mentioned, and to whom their work was assigned. Thus, the supervisor has, so to speak, become the servant of all and must witness an extraordinary amount of karmic retribution for what was done to these people—indirectly through the slave overseer—as a result of his brutality.

[ 13 ] His wife, however, is now the reborn slave driver, who—I would say—suffers, in a somewhat quieter, more secluded way of life, from the impressions now coming from her ever-dissatisfied former superior in his reincarnation, and one can certainly follow in detail how karmic destiny is being fulfilled here.

[ 14 ] But on the other hand, we also see that this karma is by no means fulfilled—it is not fulfilled in its entirety. Only a part of this karma has been fulfilled. Only what took place between these two people—the slave driver and his superior—this karmic relationship was essentially exhausted with the medieval incarnation in the 9th century; for there, the woman had in fact worked off what she had experienced in her own soul through the brutality of her former superior, who was now her husband.

[ 15 ] But this woman, the incarnation of the former slave leader, is reborn—and this time in such a way that the majority of those souls who were once slaves and were then united in the expanded community—whose fate this individual has thus experienced twice in earthly life—that this community provides the reborn slave leader with those children whose education he now takes special charge of in his new incarnation. For this reincarnation is that of Pestalozzi. And we see that all that now lives in Pestalozzi in the 18th and 19th centuries—in the form of immense gentleness and educational enthusiasm—is the karmic fulfillment toward the people with whom he was connected twice in the manner described, the karmic fulfillment of what was lived through, endured, and experienced in earlier incarnations.

[ 16 ] What manifests in individual personalities only truly becomes transparent—only presents itself to the soul in its comprehensible concreteness—when one observes how past earthly lives appear against the backdrop of a present earthly life. And sometimes, in a particular earthly life, certain traits of a person emerge that do not merely stem from the previous incarnation, but often from the one before that and even from those further back. This is such that one sees how what has taken shape in the individual incarnations continues to exert an influence with a certain inner spiritual consistency, carrying its existence forward as the human being lives through earthly lives, but also through lives between death and a new birth.

[ 17 ] In this regard, the study of a life on Earth—which I had already presented to those who attended the Easter Conference here in Dornach—is particularly compelling: the life of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer.

[ 18 ] Conrad Ferdinand Meyer certainly presents quite a puzzle to those who reflect deeply on his life and, at the same time, are able to admire his poetry to a high degree. Conrad Ferdinand Meyer’s poetry has a style that is wonderfully harmonious in form, so that one can say: What lives within Conrad Ferdinand Meyer actually always hovers a little above the earthly realm in terms of style, as well as in terms of his entire way of thinking, feeling, and sensibility. And one notices right away, when engaging with Conrad Ferdinand Meyer’s works, how he is immersed in a spiritual-soul realm that is constantly on the verge of breaking free from the physical-bodily realm. One says to oneself, when one lays out and contemplates Conrad Ferdinand Meyer’s finer poetic works—including his prose poems—that there is something creative there that always seeks to transcend its connection to the physical body. — This was indeed manifested in the fact that Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, in his Conrad Ferdinand Meyer incarnation, had to live in pathological states in which the spiritual-soul aspect detached itself from the physical-bodily aspect to a very high degree, resulting in delusional states—or at least states similar to delusions. Yet what is remarkable about this is that among his finest works are precisely those he created during such a detachment of the spiritual-soul aspect from the physical-bodily aspect.

[ 19 ] Now, when it comes to Conrad Ferdinand Meyer in particular, if one tries to explore the karmic connections throughout his earthly lives, one is led into a kind of confusion. One does not immediately find one’s bearings when attempting to trace the thread from the Conrad Ferdinand Meyer incarnation to his earlier incarnations. One is first transported to the 6th century A.D., but then thrown back again to the 19th century, to the Conrad Ferdinand Meyer incarnation, because even the subject matter itself, when observed, leads one astray and seduces one into error. You need only imagine just how extraordinarily difficult a genuine struggle for knowledge in this field truly is. Those who are content with fantasy, of course, have it easy; they can somehow concoct something for themselves. But anyone who, in this field, does not content themselves with fantasy, but actually advances in their research to the point where they reliably discern the structure of their soul, actually has a hard time when pursuing such matters—especially in the case of such a complex individuality as that embodied by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. And when examining karmic connections across a number of earthly lives, it is of little help to focus on the particularly significant things. What stands out most about a person—what one perceives when encountering them or learning about them through history—is, in most cases, derived from their earthly environment. As human beings, we are, in fact, much more a product of our earthly environment than we realize. Through our upbringing, we absorb what is alive in our earthly environment. Only the finer, more intimate traits of a person—taken in a very concrete sense—lead, through the life between death and rebirth, back to previous earthly lives.

[ 20 ] And for such an analysis, it may be more important to observe the way a person makes gestures, or the way a person habitually holds something, than to consider what that person—perhaps a famous figure—accomplishes. The way someone holds something, or how they habitually respond to things—not what they say, but how they respond—for example, that they always reject something at first and only admit it when they have no other choice, or that they praise something in all good-naturedness, and so on—such traits are what matter, and when one looks at them in particular, they take center stage in one’s observations, and much grows out of them. One observes the way someone approaches something, visualizes it very concretely, and elaborates on it artistically; then it does not remain merely an observation of the gesture, but the figure of another human being takes shape around that gesture.

[ 21 ] The following can certainly happen. There are people who have little habits—let’s say the habit of moving their arms in a certain way before they start doing anything. I have met people who could not do any work without first folding their arms. If one visualizes such a gesture quite concretely, yet with an inner artistic sense, so that it stands out vividly before one’s eyes, then one diverts one’s attention from the person to whom this gesture belongs. But this gesture does not remain on its own. It develops into another form. And when one approaches this form, it is something that at least points to something in the previous incarnation or the one before that. It may well be that this gesture is applied to something that did not yet exist in the previous incarnation—let’s say, picking up a book or the like. But it must actually be this kind of gesture or this kind of habit of life that one must have an affinity for in order to return.

[ 22 ] Well, in the case of someone as unique as Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, what is significant is precisely that he creates with a certain tendency—to put it precisely—toward a loosening of the spiritual-psychic from the physical-bodily. This is a point of reference, but on the other hand, it is also a moment of slight deviation.

[ 23 ] So now we are drawn back to the 6th century. At first, one has the feeling: that must be where he is. We also encounter a figure who lived in Italy, who experienced various fates there during that incarnation, and who lived there with a kind of dual nature: on the one hand, devoted with extraordinary enthusiasm to that which has been largely lost to us later generations in the outer world, but which existed in magnificent artistic expression and which we can now only see in the art of mosaics. This individuality, whom one first encounters, lived within this artistic flowering of Italy at the end of the 5th and beginning of the 6th centuries. That is how it presents itself at first.

[ 24 ] But now this entire picture darkens once again, and one is thrown back to Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. And the darkness that one has perceived in the figure from the 6th century now overshadows the image of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer in the 19th century. And one is compelled to look once more at what Conrad Ferdinand Meyer is doing in the 19th century.

[ 25 ] One’s attention is drawn to the fact that, in his story “The Saint,” he dealt with Thomas Becket, the chancellor of Henry II of England. One gets the feeling that this is extraordinarily important. One also has the feeling that one has been drawn, through the sense of this earlier incarnation, precisely to this work by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. But now one is thrust back again into the 6th century, and there this fact offers no clarification. And so one is often tossed back and forth between these two incarnations—the questionable incarnation, initially in the 6th century, and the Conrad Ferdinand Meyer incarnation—until one realizes that, in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer’s case, the story of Thomas Becket simply arose from history because the entire story bears some resemblance to what he himself experienced in the 6th century, when, as a member of a Catholic mission sent by Pope Gregory from Italy to England, he too traveled from Italy to England. Therein lies the second aspect of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer’s dual nature in his previous incarnation. On the one hand, in his previous incarnation in the 6th century, he was an enthusiastic admirer of everything related to the art that later evolved into mosaic art—hence his all-encompassing talent for form. On the other hand, however, he was also an enthusiastic advocate of Catholicism, which is why he joined this mission. The members of this mission founded Canterbury, the place where the Diocese of Canterbury later arose.

[ 26 ] The individual who later lived as Conrad Ferdinand Meyer in the 19th century was murdered at that time by an Anglo-Saxon chieftain, under circumstances that are extraordinarily interesting. There was something legally defamatory and sophistical—albeit in a crude manner—in what transpired at the time of this individual’s murder.

[ 27 ] Well, you know, my dear friends, that even in ordinary earthly life, when something comes into our field of vision that, I would say, particularly evokes a certain tone—I once heard a name, though I may not have paid it much attention—a whole host of associated ideas can later arise in connection with that name. But because of the special circumstances—namely, how this member of a Catholic mission in England was connected to what later became the Archdiocese of Canterbury, since the city of Canterbury was founded by this mission—all of that lived on, continuing to live, in fact, in the resonance of the name “Canterbury.” And so the inner resonance of the name “Canterbury” was revived in the incarnation of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer.

[ 28 ] This led Conrad Ferdinand Meyer to draw a parallel with Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who served as chancellor to Henry II of the House of Plantagenet and was murdered in a particularly devious manner. Although he was initially a favorite, he was later murdered by Henry II because he refused to comply with certain demands made by the king. These similar yet dissimilar fates led Conrad Ferdinand Meyer to recount, through the lens of history and through entirely different characters, what he himself had experienced firsthand in a previous incarnation in the 6th century, far from his homeland at that time.

[ 29 ] But just think how interesting that is! Once you have it, you’re no longer tossed back and forth. But then one sees how, precisely because a kind of dual nature lives within Conrad Ferdinand Meyer even in the 19th century, his spiritual-psychic aspect easily detaches itself from the physical-bodily. Because a kind of dual nature lives within him, what was experienced in reality is replaced by something else that is only similar to it, just as images often change in a person’s imagination. In the ordinary imagination of a human being over the course of an earthly life, the images in the imagination change in such a way that the imagination creates freely. Over the course of earthly lives, the situation changes such that another historical event—which is related to the event in question only in terms of its imagery—takes the place of the true event.

[ 30 ] Now this individuality, which experienced this and remained at that point, continues to act through two lives between death and rebirth, which then came to light in the story “The Saint,” this individuality is later reborn—during the Thirty Years’ War—this time as a woman. We need only recall the chaotic conditions that prevailed throughout Central Europe during the Thirty Years’ War to allow our souls to grasp what might have been going on in the mind of a highly sensitive woman who, while witnessing the chaos of the Thirty Years’ War, married a philistine, pedantic, narrow-minded man—who, unable to endure life in later-era Germany, emigrated and found a home in Graubünden, Switzerland. There, he essentially left the management of the household to his wife. He himself was more preoccupied with a rather reckless, aimless wandering. But the woman had the opportunity to observe a great deal; both broader historical contexts and the peculiar conditions in Graubünden had an impact on her soul. And what actually unfolded in this woman’s soul—colored and nuanced by her experiences with her philistine, narrow-minded husband—now sinks into the depths of individuality and lives on through a life between death and new birth. We are dealing with the incarnation—in the 6th century—of the one who later became Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, who lived as a woman during the Thirty Years’ War. This individuality was reborn in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. And what was experienced by that woman at that time is imaginatively reworked in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer’s story “Jürg Jenatsch.”

[ 31 ] Thus, in the spiritual realm, we find in the very personality of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer a continuing influence that we piece together from details of his previous incarnations. But what appears as such a self-contained individuality—as Conrad Ferdinand Meyer does in literary analysis—for there he appears precisely in fixed forms, as an artist whom one can characterize very sharply precisely because he possesses these fixed forms—it is precisely this that confuses us, because these fixed forms immediately draw our attention to his unstable, dual-natured humanity.

[ 32 ] Anyone who looks only at the poet Conrad Ferdinand Meyer—at the famous personality who created these works—will certainly never come to know anything about this personality’s earlier incarnations. One must look beyond his poetic work to the human being; then, against the background of the picture, what represents the forms of his previous incarnations will appear.

[ 33 ] Well, you see, as paradoxical as it may still seem to people today, human life can only be deepened if one approaches it in such a way that one directs the historical—this outwardly historical aspect, which is often called “history” today—toward a contemplation of the human being within history. But the human being cannot be viewed as belonging merely to a single era, as living merely in a single earthly life; rather, the human being can only be viewed by observing how the individuality passes from one earthly life to the next, and how, in the meantime, the life between death and new birth works to transform precisely that which takes place more in the subconscious of earthly life, yet is intimately connected with the actual shaping of a person’s destiny. For this shaping of a person’s destiny does not take place in what is clear in the intellectual realm, but rather in what weaves and unfolds in the subconscious.

[ 34 ] I would like to point out another example of such an influence in history exerted by individual human beings. In the first century—or about a hundred years after the emergence of Christianity—we find an extraordinarily significant Roman writer in Tacitus.

[ 35 ] Tacitus has demonstrated—not only in his other works but especially in his Germania—how he mastered an extraordinarily precise, concise style, and how he crafted historical facts and geographical descriptions into wonderfully rounded sentences that have an epigrammatic effect—a truly epigrammatic effect. We may also be reminded here that he—that great man of the world, who knew virtually everything considered worth knowing at the time, and who lived a century after the founding of Christianity—mentions Christ only very briefly as someone whom the Jews crucified, a fact that actually holds no particular significance. And yet Tacitus is indeed one of the greatest Romans.

[ 36 ] Now, Tacitus was friends with the figure known to history as Pliny the Younger, who wrote many letters and was a great admirer of Tacitus’s style, so much so that Pliny the Younger—who was a writer himself—was completely absorbed in his admiration for Tacitus.

[ 37 ] Well, let us first consider this Pliny the Younger. This Pliny the Younger, of course, passes through the gate of death, journeys through life between death and rebirth, and he is reborn in the 11th century A.D. as a princess of Tuscany in Italy, who marries a Central European prince who has been stripped of his lands by Henry the Black of the Frankish-Salian imperial dynasty and who wishes to regain a firm foothold in Italy. This Beatrice owned Canossa Castle, where Henry IV—the successor to Henry III “the Black”—was later compelled to perform his famous Penance of Canossa before Pope Gregory.

[ 38 ] Well, this Margravine Beatrix is an extraordinarily energetic person, interested in all the events unfolding there. And she has to take an interest in everything, because her husband, Gottfried—who, before they were married, was driven out of Alsace by Henry the Black and fled to Italy, where he then married Beatrix—is being pursued by Henry III, the Black. Henry is, in fact, a very energetic man who simply deposes his princes and the chieftains of his neighborhood one after another; he does whatever he wants to a great extent; he is not content with having driven someone out just once, but does so a second time if the other person settles down somewhere again. So, as I said, he is a very energetic man, a man of great stature in the Middle Ages. And when Gottfried settled in Tuscany, he first drove him out, but then also took the Margravine back to Germany with him.

[ 39 ] As a result, a subtle analysis of Italian conditions, combined with German conditions, took shape in her mind. Thus, in this figure alone, we have a highly representative personality of that era—a keenly observant, extraordinarily lively, and energetic woman who, at the same time, possessed a thoroughly generous spirit and a broad perspective.

[ 40 ] Just as Henry IV was about to set out on his penitential journey to Canossa, Beatrix’s daughter, Matilda, was the owner of Canossa; and she, who was on very good terms with her mother—indeed, she had inherited all her mother’s qualities and was, in fact, an even more remarkable woman. These are two exceptionally likable women who have become deeply interested in history precisely because of everything that took place during the reigns of Henry III and Henry IV.

[ 41 ] If one delves deeper into this, one discovers something curious: Margravine Beatrix is the reincarnation of Pliny the Younger, and her daughter Mathilde is the reincarnation of Tacitus. So we find Tacitus, who wrote history in ancient times; we find him—and this is, after all, so characteristic of women when they are great—as a grand observer of history, as a participant, as a direct participant in history; for Mathilde is, in fact, the owner of Canossa, and that is where the entire scene takes place—an event that determined an immense amount in the Middle Ages. We find him as an observer of history.

[ 42 ] These two figures—mother and daughter—are deeply intertwined, and their long-standing literary work enables them, on a subconscious level, to grasp historical events with great intensity and thereby become instinctively and deeply connected to the course of the world, both in nature and in historical life.

[ 43 ] Now, the following takes place in later times. We see how the younger Pliny—who in the Middle Ages was Margravine Beatrix—is reborn in the 19th century into a Romantic milieu, in a Romantic setting, embracing everything Romantic with great, one cannot quite call enthusiasm, but with great aesthetic pleasure; he initially finds his way into everything Romantic, possessing, on the one hand, this very Romanticism, and on the other, through his family background, a somewhat scholarly style. He immerses himself in a scholarly style—a scholarly writing style, I mean, not a lifestyle—but it does not suit his nature. He always wants to break free, always wants to cast off this style.

[ 44 ] This person—who is, in fact, the reincarnated Younger Pliny and the reincarnated Margravine Beatrix, Beatrice—is, as fate would have it, visiting someone one day, leafing through a book written in English lying on the table, and is immensely captivated by the style; at that very moment, she gets the impression: “The other style, which I acquired from my physical relatives, does not suit me. This is my style, the style I need; I must admire this, I must make it my own!”

[ 45 ] He becomes a writer, an imitator of this style—an artistic imitator, of course, not a pedantic one—in the very best sense, in the aesthetic and artistic sense, an imitator of this style.

[ 46 ] And you see, the book that was lying open there—the one that then prompted him to read everything he could get his hands on by that author as quickly as possible—that book was Emerson’s Representative Men. And the person in question adopted the style from it, immediately translated two passages from it, became a tremendous admirer of Emerson, and did not give up until he was able to meet this figure in person.

[ 47 ] And we are dealing here with a figure who, through his admiration for another figure, ultimately found himself and his own style; in the reincarnation of the younger Pliny and Margravine Beatrix, we are dealing with Herman Grimm, and in Emerson, we are dealing with the reincarnated Tacitus and the reincarnated Margravine Mathilde.

[ 48 ] And again: In his admiration for the writer Emerson and in the entire way Herman Grimm approaches Emerson, we find a reflection of the relationship between Pliny the Younger and Tacitus. I would say that in every sentence Herman Grimm writes, we can see this old relationship between Pliny the Younger and Tacitus reemerge. And we see the admiration that Pliny the Younger had for Tacitus reappear—one might say, in complete harmony—in the admiration that Herman Grimm has for Emerson.

[ 49 ] And only now will one begin to understand what Emerson’s grand style is based on—how Emerson, in his own unique way, brings to life what Tacitus brought to life in his own way. How does Emerson work? Those who visited Emerson discovered just how he worked. There he was in a room, with many chairs and several tables. Open books lay scattered everywhere, and Emerson would walk among them. He would sometimes read a sentence, take it in—and from that he would then form his own, one might say, grand, sweeping, epigrammatic sentences; from that he would then compose his books. And the painting captures exactly what Tacitus experienced in life: what Tacitus experienced in life—how he traveled everywhere—Emerson, in turn, contemplated through books. It all comes to life again.

[ 50 ] And we see this unstoppable urge in Herman Grimm to emulate Emerson. Fate leads him to Representative Men. He immediately recognizes in it: This is how you must write; this is your style. — As I said, he had a scholarly style inherited from his uncle Jakob Grimm and his father Wilhelm Grimm. He abandons that style. Fate propels him into a completely different style.

[ 51 ] And we finally see the historical interests of Herman Grimm—who combines a certain inner, emotional connection to Germany with a deep interest in Italy—emerge in the content of his works.

[ 52 ] These are the things that show you how such matters unfold. And what leads to such things? Well, you see, it was a matter of forming an impression around which the whole thing crystallizes. First, the image of this Herman Grimm took shape—the one who opens Emerson’s Representative Men. Well, Herman Grimm read in a peculiar way. Herman Grimm read and immediately stepped back from what he had read. He certainly did that back then as well, for this gesture arises as if he were swallowing what he read sentence by sentence. This inner gesture of swallowing sentence by sentence—that is what could lead from Herman Grimm to his earlier incarnations. And the way he paced back and forth in front of the open books, along with the somewhat stiff Roman bearing in which one first encounters Herman Grimm when they meet in Italy—that is what, in turn, leads from Emerson back to Tacitus. One must have a vivid imagination to follow these things,

[ 53 ] And you see, my dear friends, this should once again illustrate to you, by way of an example, how historical reflections must be deepened. And such deepening must indeed take place among us. For these things must be the result of that impulse that must enter our Anthroposophical Society through the Christmas Conference. In the future, we must courageously and boldly pursue the contemplation of the great spiritual conditions; we must place ourselves where spiritual connections are truly considered. To do this, we need, above all, seriousness—seriousness in our shared commitment to the anthroposophical cause.

[ 54 ] And this seriousness will take hold in the Anthroposophical Society when those who wish to be active within it take more and more into account what is now being distributed every week to all our anthroposophists—namely, the “Mitteilungen” included with the “Goetheanum.” These describe how, in the spirit of the Christmas Conference, we would like to envision work, teaching, and activity taking place in the branches and at the members’ meetings, and they also present what is actually happening. They are titled: “What Is Happening in the Anthroposophical Society.” And these bulletins aim to foster a shared way of thinking throughout the entire Anthroposophical Society, to create a shared atmosphere among the thousands of anthroposophists. When we live in such a shared atmosphere, when we understand what it means for the “Guiding Principles” to serve as catalysts for thought, and when we understand that, through this, the Goetheanum is in fact to be placed at the center— concretely placed at the center through the initiative of the Esoteric Executive Council—I must emphasize this again and again: that we are now dealing with an Executive Council that regards its work as the inauguration of the esoteric—if we understand this correctly, then what is now meant to flow through the anthroposophical movement will be carried forward by it in the right way. For the anthroposophical movement and the Anthroposophical Society must become one. The Anthroposophical Society must make the anthroposophical cause its own in every respect.

[ 55 ] And one can certainly say: If this sense of community is to exist—one that functions as a shared way of thinking—then it may well be capable of fostering insights that are truly spiritually comprehensive and all-encompassing. But then a force will be at work within the Anthroposophical Society—a force that ought to be at work there anyway—because the recent development of civilization, if it is not to fall completely into decline, needs a powerful upswing.

[ 56 ] However paradoxical it may seem, what must be said about successive earthly lives—anyone who looks more closely who looks closely even at the steps taken by the people of whom such repeated earthly lives are spoken—will see just how firmly grounded in reality what is put forward in this regard is, and how one can gain insight into the reality of the life and workings of gods and humans when one attempts to encompass the spiritual forces in this way with a spiritual gaze.

[ 57 ] That, my dear friends, is what I would like to place upon your souls, to sink into your hearts, and I hope you will take it with you as a feeling from this Easter conference as well. Then this Easter Conference will become something like a renewal of the Christmas Conference. If this Christmas Conference is to have the proper effect, it must be continually renewed—as if it were happening right now—through everything that develops from it.

[ 58 ] May much of what emerged from this Christmas Conference continue to develop through ever-increasing renewal. And may it develop, above all, through true, wholehearted, courageous souls—courageous anthroposophical souls—who stand firm in their commitment to the anthroposophical cause in their daily lives. If, through our events, courage continues to grow more and more in the souls and hearts of our anthroposophical friends, then what is needed in the Anthroposophical Society—as the body—for the anthroposophical soul will finally grow as well: a courageous bringing into the world of that which, from the revelations of the Spirit in the dawning age of light following the end of the Kali Yuga, is necessary for the further development of humanity. If one feels oneself in this consciousness, one will also act courageously from within it. And may each of our events serve to energize such courage. May it be so by our truly and earnestly grasping what appears paradoxical and foolish to those who, in many cases, still set the tone today. But what set the tone in one era was often soon replaced by what had been suppressed. May a recognition of history, combined with the continuing influence of human lives, give rise to the very courage of anthroposophical work that is necessary for the further progress of human civilization.