The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] In seeking to describe the history of the social associations with which the Anthroposophical Society is connected—in a certain context that is, however, often misunderstood today—I had to refer yesterday to the figure of A. P. Blavatsky. I have already attempted to suggest how this figure positioned herself within the spiritual life of the late 19th century. I had to refer to this figure because, after all, it was the works attributed to Blavatsky that provided the impetus at the end of the 19th century for the association of people whom I described the day before yesterday as “homeless souls.”

[ 2 ] Even though Blavatsky’s works really have very little to do with what came to be known as anthroposophy, I would like not only to describe the history of the anthroposophical movement in these lectures, but also to characterize the social aspects that we encounter in the anthroposophical movement today. And for that, precisely the starting points I have chosen over these two days are necessary.

[ 3 ] Now, of course, it is very easy today to dismiss everything that can be said about Blavatsky—if one wishes to criticize such spiritual pursuits as those that emerged, say, in the Theosophical Society; it is, after all, very easy to dismiss a figure like Blavatsky by pointing out how problematic many aspects of her biography are.

[ 4 ] I could list many examples. I need only point out how, within the society that had aligned itself with Blavatsky’s spiritual life, the view arose that certain insights into the spiritual world had come about through physical letters—that is, physical manifestations, or things written down on paper—that had originated from a source outside the physical world. Such documents were called “Master Letters”; people pointed them out, saying they had not been written in the ordinary way, or at least had not arrived at the place where they were produced in the ordinary way. It was quite a sensational story, then, when in that very house where such letters had been presented under the guidance of H.P. Blavatsky, all sorts of fraudulent sliding doors were discovered, through which these letters could simply be slipped—in an ordinary physical, yet fraudulent manner—into the room where they were then found as “magical letters,” and so on.

[ 5 ] It is, of course, extremely easy for contemporaries to point out these things and then find confirmation that a figure such as Blavatsky can simply be dismissed with the claim that she was nothing more than a fraud. Well, we will have more to say about this aspect of the events that took place around Blavatsky. But for now, one can also adopt a different perspective—the perspective of not concerning oneself, for the time being, with all that took place on the surface.

[ 6 ] Certainly, objections will be raised. But let us set those objections aside for now. One pays no attention to all that has transpired externally and simply looks at the works. Then one will arrive at the judgment I have described to you these past few days—the judgment that Blavatsky’s works are, in many cases, amateurish, chaotic stuff, that has been written into them; yet, despite all this, there are elements within them that, when examined with the proper methods, can certainly be understood as renditions—however they came about—of far-reaching insights into the spiritual world or originating from the spiritual world. This simply cannot be denied, despite all the objections that are raised.

[ 7 ] This raises an extraordinarily important and, I believe, profoundly significant question from the perspective of cultural history: What is the underlying reason that, at the end of the 19th century—let us say—manifestations from a spiritual world and revelations about a spiritual world could emerge, initially from a problematic perspective, which, at the very least when used as stimuli to examine their nature, certainly deserve the most thorough attention even from an objective perspective of Spiritual Science; Revelations that say more about the fundamental laws of the world and its fundamental forces than anything that has been brought to light in recent times by philosophy or other ideological currents regarding the mysteries of the world. This must surely strike one as a significant question.

[ 8 ] This is counterbalanced by another cultural-historical phenomenon that must not be overlooked when discussing the conditions of life within an organization such as the Anthroposophical Society, particularly in the context of efforts to find paths to the spiritual world. This cultural-historical phenomenon is that the capacity for judgment—and the persuasive power of judgment—has suffered greatly in our time and has declined overall.

[ 9 ] In this regard, one can be misled by the great strides that have been made. But precisely when one considers this great progress that has been made today in the context of the course of spiritual life—insofar as individual human personalities, as beings capable of judgment, place themselves within this course of spiritual life—then one, I would say, gain a context for the capacity with which our age approaches phenomena that appeal to human judgment in the first place.

[ 10 ] There really are an extraordinary number of things to mention. I would like to single out just a few. For example, I ask those who have studied electrical engineering today—whether as experts or merely as amateurs, so to speak—what the so-called Ohm’s Law means for electrical engineering today? The answer, of course, will be: Ohm’s Law forms one of the foundations for the development of the entire field of electrical engineering. — When Ohm first published the work that laid the groundwork for what would later be known as Ohm’s Law, that work was rejected as useless by a renowned philosophy department at a university. If that philosophy department had had its way, there might be no electrical engineering at all today.

[ 11 ] Now, here’s something that might be even more tangible to you: You all know what the telephone means in our cultural life today. When Reis—who stood outside the realm of official science—first wrote down the idea of the telephone and submitted the manuscript to one of the most famous journals of the time, the Poggendorff Annals, the work was rejected as useless. You see, that is how great the impact of judgment is—the kind that resides within people—and one could multiply these examples ad infinitum. Yes, that is how powerful judgment is in our time! One must simply face these matters with complete objectivity.

[ 12 ] One need only pick out something—I would say—from the pinnacle of our culture, and one will find something similar everywhere. Or if one ventures further into the hidden corners, one sometimes finds charming examples that characterize the judgment of those who set the tone today with regard to, let’s say, the administration of intellectual life. And the public, in turn—the general public, the masses walking the broad highway—as I spoke of the day before yesterday—is entirely under the influence of what is recognized in this way today. Well, culture belongs to all countries; it is neither better nor worse in any one country.

[ 13 ] Take this example: Adalbert Stifter is a very significant poet, but I don’t want to discuss his significance as a poet right now; instead, I’d like to share something about his life. He completed his high school studies—with excellent grades, in fact—then studied the natural sciences and wanted to become a high school teacher. However, he was deemed completely unsuitable to be a high school teacher; he was considered not talented enough for the position. The authorities felt he lacked the necessary talent to be a high school teacher. Now, a curious turn of events occurred: a certain Baroness Mink—who had absolutely no authority to judge the abilities of high school teachers—heard about the poet Adalbert Stifter, had him read aloud the poems he had already written at that time (which he himself did not particularly value), and practically forced him to publish them. This immediately caused quite a stir. The authorities then said: “We certainly can’t find anyone better to serve as school inspector for the entire state.” And so the man who, just a short time before, had been considered unfit to become a teacher, was appointed chief inspector for all these teachers!

[ 14 ] It would be extraordinarily interesting to describe these things in context across the most diverse areas of intellectual life, starting with a phenomenon such as the one I have just described in connection with Adalbert Stifter, and extending, well, perhaps even to a phenomenon such as that of Julius Robert Mayer. As you know, I must even challenge the law of conservation of energy—which is associated with his name—in certain fields. But contemporary physics does not challenge it; rather, it defends it in every chapter and is entirely built upon this law of conservation of energy. Julius Robert Mayer, who is regarded as a hero today—I have already mentioned others to you, such as Gregor Mendel, who experienced a similar fate— Julius Robert Mayer, who was born in Heilbronn am Neckar, was always at the bottom of his class and was even advised one fine day by the university he eventually attended—it was in Tübingen—to leave the university because of his conduct. It is by no means to the university’s credit that he made his discoveries, for they wanted to expel him before he had taken his exams and could become a doctor. Starting with such events and extending to the immense tragedy associated with the name Semmelweis—that figure who deserves immense credit for reducing puerperal fever to a minimum today, a disease that, before Semmelweis’s time, was simply mowing people down—and up to this immense tragedy surrounding Semmelweis, which ultimately led to just as in the case of Julius Robert Mayer, that Semmelweis ended up in an insane asylum, even though he is one of humanity’s greatest benefactors—it would be interesting to describe these things in context. If one were to summarize all of this, one would arrive at an extraordinarily important element in recent cultural history, from which one could see how little impact this era of outward progress had on the ability to judge intellectual phenomena, and how little inclination there actually was to engage with what was appearing on the horizon of intellectual life.

[ 15 ] Such factors must certainly be taken into account if one is to properly assess the hostile forces opposing the influence of a spiritual movement. One will then need to know what capacity for judgment actually exists in our present age, which is so arrogant precisely because of its lack of judgment.

[ 16 ] It is indeed a truly extraordinary phenomenon that much of what had otherwise been preserved only through tradition within all manner of secret societies—which were determined not to let it reach the public—suddenly appears, published in a book by a woman, Blavatsky, in the book titled *Isis Unveiled*. Naturally, all those who said to themselves, “This book contains a whole host of what we have always kept under lock and key,” were alarmed. — And these societies were, I might say, more careful about their locks and keys than, say, our present-day Anthroposophical Society.

[ 17 ] It was by no means the intention of the Anthroposophical Society to keep the contents of the cycles entirely confidential; rather, at a certain point in time, I was asked to make the material—which I would otherwise discuss orally—accessible to a wider audience. And since there was no time to edit these materials, they were simply printed as manuscripts in a form in which they would not normally be published—not because there was any desire to withhold the material, but because it was not intended to be published in that form, and because, ultimately, the aim was to ensure that these texts be read only by those who were prepared for them, since otherwise they would inevitably be misunderstood. Nevertheless, anyone can obtain any of the cycles today if they wish to oppose them. The societies I am speaking of here—which have kept a certain body of spiritual knowledge under lock and key, taking an oath of silence from their members so they would reveal nothing—knew how to guard these things better. They knew that there must be something very special behind it when a book suddenly appeared that truly offered something of significance in the sense implied. As for things that have no significance—well, you need only walk down a side street in Paris to find baskets full of the writings of secret societies for sale. But the publication of these writings will cause no alarm for those who have preserved traditional knowledge within the secret societies, for what is published there is, as a rule, of very little value.

[ 18 ] But *The Unveiled Isis* was by no means worthless. *The Unveiled Isis* did indeed draw upon a certain substance, so that the knowledge it conveyed appeared to be something primordial—that which had been carefully guarded by ancient wisdom up to that point.

[ 19 ] As I said, those who were alarmed by this had to create a mental image of what was behind it… that there was something special there, some kind of betrayal on someone’s part. In these lectures, I do not wish to emphasize the inner workings of the matter so strongly—that is, the facts behind the scenes—since I have discussed this repeatedly in the past in other lectures from various perspectives; rather, I would like to focus more on the external aspects, to characterize the world’s judgment, because this is particularly important for the history of the movement. People could well have known that there was someone who was initiated into these matters, who had inherited traditional knowledge, and who, for whatever reason—which need not have been a particularly good one—had given Blavatsky inspiration. It was very easy to come to that conclusion. It would not be far from the truth to say that a betrayal occurred somewhere within a secret society—or a group of secret societies—and that this was then made public specifically through Blavatsky. But there would have been other ways to bring such matters to the public’s attention than to use a lady like Blavatsky for this publication.

[ 20 ] However, there was a reason—which I will characterize solely from its external perspective—to make use of this particular lady. And here I come to a chapter in our intellectual history that is truly a very curious one. Back when Blavatsky appeared with her books, very, very little was said about what is on so many people’s lips today: psychoanalysis. But those who were moved—with the capacity to judge—by the peculiar fact described truly experienced something vividly, precisely through Blavatsky’s appearance; whereas everything that has been written so far by the various luminaries of psychoanalysis—as I recently expressed in another context—is truly dilettantism squared. For what does psychoanalysis actually set out to demonstrate?

[ 21 ] Where she is, in a certain sense, correct, she shows that there is something in the depths of the human being which—whatever it may be down there—can be brought up into consciousness and then transcends what a person initially has in their consciousness. So one might say, as far as I am concerned: There is something within the body that, when brought up into consciousness, manifests as something spiritual. The body is permeated by the spiritual. It is, of course, the most primitive approach for a psychiatrist to bring up remnants of experiences in this way from the depths of the human being—that is, remnants of experiences that, according to the emotional needs of the person in question, were not lived through with sufficient intensity, that have, so to speak, settled to the bottom, forming a sediment within the person, thereby bringing them into an unstable equilibrium—not a stable one—and that what has occurred during a person’s life is then, is brought to the surface even though it is churning away in the unconscious, and when it is brought into consciousness, it proves to be something spiritual that, so to speak, does not quite fit into this human being and therefore churns in the wrong way; but when it becomes conscious, it can be worked through, and thereby the person is liberated from that wrong kind of churning.

[ 22 ] But now it is indeed interesting to see what such amateur psychoanalytic research has already achieved today. This is particularly interesting in Jung’s work. He concludes that the human being down there—of course, one cannot really describe what is down there, it’s just somewhere down there, an indeterminate being—somewhere within his being contains what he has experienced as unprocessed events since his birth; that down there, within his human being, he possesses all sorts of things that trace back to the forefathers—indeed, can be traced all the way back through the experiences of the races and even further. So today it no longer seems impossible to the psychiatrist that, for example, what was experienced in Greece as, let’s say, the Oedipus complex, made an impression on people. Then this was passed down further, further and further. And today, such a wretch comes into the psychiatrist’s clinic; the psychiatrist psychoanalyzes him and uncovers something so deeply rooted in the patient that it does not stem from his present life, but from his father, forefather, great-forefather, and so on all the way back to the ancient Greeks who experienced the Oedipus complex. Thus it has run through all the bloodlines and can be psychoanalyzed today. The Oedipal feelings rumble within the person and can be brought to light through psychoanalysis. One then believes one can even uncover very interesting connections by psychoanalyzing what can be traced back a long way in terms of race.

[ 23 ] But, you see, these are, after all, quite amateurish research methods. For if you are even slightly familiar with anthroposophy, you know that all sorts of things can be drawn from the depths of the human being: first, prenatal life, pre-earthly life—that which a person experienced before descending into the physical world—and then what they experienced in earlier earthly lives. That is where one moves from amateurism into reality!

[ 24 ] But then one also comes to realize how the entire mystery of the world is, in a sense, contained within the human being, as if rolled up within it. After all, this was also the view held in earlier times: that the mystery of the world unfolds when a person brings forth from within everything that is hidden there. That is why human beings have been called a microcosm—not because of the frivolous nonsense so often bandied about today, but because there was indeed empirical evidence: from the depths of the human being, all manner of things can be brought to the surface that lie as mysteries in the vastness of the cosmos.

[ 25 ] What passes for psychoanalysis today is truly the most primitive form of amateurism. For, first of all, it is psychological amateurism: one does not realize that, at certain deeper levels, physical and mental life are one; instead, one views the life of the soul—which floats on the surface—in abstract terms, failing to reach those deeper levels where this life of the soul lives, creating, weaving, and surging in the blood and in the breath—that is, where it is one with what is called material activity. One views the life of the soul in an amateurish manner. Secondly, however, one also views physical life in an amateurish manner by considering it solely in terms of outward sensory appearances and failing to realize that the spiritual is present everywhere in sensory life, above all in the human organism. And when two forms of amateurism are interwoven in such a way that one is meant to shed light on the other—as psychoanalysis does—then the amateurisms do not merely add up; rather, they multiply each other: the result is amateurism squared.

[ 26 ] Well, what has just come to light as a kind of amateurish squaring of the circle could certainly be seen, in a sense, in the psychological problem of Blavatsky. Perhaps a stimulus came from some quarter through some kind of betrayal. This stimulus truly had the effect as if—but now a wise, invisible psychiatrist had, through a kind of impetus, drawn out of Blavatsky a vast amount of knowledge that had now emerged from within the human being herself, not from ancient writings handed down traditionally from times past. Something had come to light from within the human being herself—I would say, through the invisible psychiatrist. For if there was a traitor involved, he was certainly not the psychiatrist; he merely provided the impetus. But it was the circumstances that provided the impetus! What circumstances?

[ 27 ] If you look at the course of history up to about the 15th century, you will find that it was indeed still quite common for people, when inspired by something—it need only have been a particularly distinctive external appearance—to experience a revelation of the world’s mysteries rising up from within them. Later on, this became something of a legendary mystery. The story told about Jakob Böhme—that he had a magnificent revelation upon seeing a pewter bowl— is admired precisely because people do not realize that in earlier times, right up into the 15th century, it was indeed the case that a relatively seemingly trivial stimulus could elicit immense revelations about the mysteries of the world from a person, which were then perceived by that person.

[ 28 ] But the ability of people to experience inner revelations in response to such stimuli has been steadily declining. This stems from the rise of intellectualism. Intellectualism is, after all, linked to a very specific type of brain development. The brain—even if this cannot, of course, be proven externally in anatomical or physiological terms—can nevertheless be shown, spiritually speaking, to have become, so to speak, calcified and stiffer. And in fact, the brains of civilized people have become significantly stiffer since the 15th century. This stiff brain simply does not allow a person’s inner revelations to rise to the surface of consciousness.

[ 29 ] Now I must say something extraordinarily paradoxical, but it is nonetheless true: Greater rigidity of the mind—of course, always taking exceptions on both sides into account—was found among men, though I am not saying this to make this or that female mind particularly happy, for by the time the latter half of the 19th century rolled around, women’s minds had also become sufficiently rigid. But men did, after all, have the edge in terms of intellectual capacity and the rigidity of the brain. And this is linked to the decline in judgment.

[ 30 ] Well, that was precisely the time when secrecy surrounding the ancient knowledge was still strictly observed. It then turned out that this knowledge did not affect the men much, for they learned it by heart, step by step. It did not affect them much, and they kept it under lock and key. But if someone wanted to bring this ancient knowledge to a special flowering once again in any way, then he could carry out a special experiment: taking this knowledge—which he perhaps did not even need to understand himself— now, in a small dose, to a woman whose brain was perhaps still particularly well-prepared—for the Blavatsky brain was, after all, somewhat different from other women’s brains of the 19th century—. Then, through the contrast with everything else that was part of the culture of the time—precisely in these women’s brains—what was otherwise dried-up, ancient knowledge could, I might say, catch fire; just as a psychiatrist stimulates the whole person through this or that approach, so too could Blavatsky’s personality be stimulated. Through this stimulation, she then discovered within herself that which had been completely forgotten by all of humanity not belonging to secret societies—and which had been carefully kept under lock and key by those who were members of secret societies, and for the most part simply not understood. In this way, I would say, it was able to emerge as if through a cultural valve.

[ 31 ] But at the same time, there was simply no foundation upon which this could have been processed in a reasonable manner. For Madame Blavatsky was certainly no logician. She was exceptionally weak in logic. While she was indeed able to reveal the mysteries of the universe from the depths of her entire being, she was simply unable to present these things in a form that could stand up to the scientific scrutiny of modern times.

[ 32 ] Now just imagine: Given the superficiality of the judgment with which these mental phenomena were initially met, how could proper account have been taken of what—one might say—only twenty years later reemerged, at best, in a very primitive and amateurish form in psychoanalysis, and even then only in an extraordinarily narrow field? How could proper account be taken of what could become an experience of gigantic proportions—one that psychoanalysis, once it has been purified and clarified, once it has been placed on a rational foundation and is truly practiced as a science, will only then be able to attain; when we no longer psychoanalyze from the blood that flows through the veins of people who witnessed the Oedipus complex, all the way down to our generation, but when we truly understand the interconnections of the world. How could one adequately address this experience—which presents, I would say, a magnificent, gigantic counter-image to today’s degenerate psychoanalytic research, one free from all caricature—in a time when the capacity for judgment was such as I have described to you, and reach a sufficiently broad audience? In this regard, one could indeed encounter all sorts of reactions regarding the views one faced in our time, simply by attempting to appeal to a somewhat broader judgment.

[ 33 ] To illustrate this—these things are necessary; you will see from the rest of these lectures just how necessary it is for me to address even these seemingly very personal matters—I would like to give you an example of how difficult it is in these modern times to make oneself understood at all when one wishes to appeal to a broader, more generous judgment.

[ 34 ] There was a time around the turn of the century when, in Berlin—where I lived at the time—Giordano Bruno societies were founded, including a “Giordano Bruno League.” There were also other Giordano Bruno societies, but a “Giordano Bruno Federation” was founded. It included truly outstanding individuals in the spirit and style of that era—people who already had a deep interest in whatever could arouse interest at the time, and to which one could devote the entire scope of one’s world of mental images, feeling, and will. And even in that abstract way in which this also occurs in more recent times, attention was drawn to the spirit even within this Giordano Bruno League. A well-known figure in this Giordano Bruno League opened its founding with a lecture titled: “Matter Never Without Spirit.” — But all of that was so futile, for this “spirit” and what was being cultivated there was, at its core, something entirely abstract that could not even come close to the reality of the world. The way of thinking was terribly abstract. In particular, however, it struck me as very annoying that the people there brought up the word “monism” at every opportunity, whenever it was at all possible. One must pay homage to the only reasonable, humane monism, and dualism, they said, was something to be discarded. Then, in particular, they always pointed out how, in more recent times, people had extricated themselves from medieval dualism.

[ 35 ] These were things that I found extremely annoying back then. I found this rambling about monism and this amateurish rejection of dualism annoying; I found the talk about the spirit in such general, pantheistic terms—that, well, that the spirit is simply everywhere—annoying. In the end, nothing remained but the word “spirit.” I found all of that quite annoying. Actually, right after the first lecture on “Matter Is Never Without Spirit” had been given, I got into an argument with the person who gave the lecture, which was taken extremely badly by others at the time. But then all this monistic fuss continued and became increasingly annoying to me—interesting, but annoying—and so I decided to take people to task, in the hope that I might at least stir their powers of judgment into some action. And since a whole series of lectures had already been devoted to tirades against the dark Middle Ages and the dreadful dualistic scholasticism, I decided—it was during the period when people are now saying that I was supposedly a rabid Haeckelian—to do something that would have shaken up their judgment a bit. So I gave a lecture on Thomas Aquinas and said—summarizing in a few sentences what I had explained at length back then—roughly the following: There is absolutely no justification for speaking, with regard to the ideas of past intellectual life, of the “dark Middle Ages,” particularly of the dualism of Thomism and Scholasticism. For if one constantly uses the buzzword “monism,” I wanted to prove that Thomas Aquinas was a true monist. However, one must not merely call that which is currently understood as materialistic monism “monism”; rather, one must call a monist anyone who sees the principle of the world in a “monon,” in a unity. So I said: Thomas Aquinas certainly did this, for he naturally saw in the unified Divine the “monon” that underlies everything that exists in the world as creation. Therein, I said, lies the purest monism. However, in keeping with the spirit of his time, he distinguished between the two: one half could be grasped through ordinary human sensory perception and intellectual understanding, while the other could be grasped through a kind of knowledge that was called “faith” in those days. But what Scholasticism still understood as “faith,” modern humanity does not understand at all. Thus, I said, one must be clear that while Thomas Aquinas intended, on the one hand, to approach the world through sensory investigation and intellectual understanding, he also intended, on the other hand, to supplement this intellectual understanding with the truths of revelation. But in doing so, he sought precisely to penetrate to the monon of the world. He simply wished to proceed along two paths. The problem for the present day, I said, is that the present lacks sufficiently broad-minded concepts to gain any real understanding of history.

[ 36 ] In short, I wanted to help those parched minds find some refreshment. But it was in vain. For it had an extraordinarily strange effect. At first, people didn’t know what to make of the whole thing. They were all Evangelical Protestants, and they thought: “Now they’re trying to sneak Catholicism in!” They thought Catholicism—with its terrible dualism—was being defended. “It’s dreadful,” they said, “we’re doing everything we can to deal the final blow to Catholicism, and now a member of that very same Giordano Bruno League comes along and defends Catholicism!”

[ 37 ] Honestly, people back then didn’t know whether I had gone mad overnight when I gave that lecture. They didn’t know what to make of it at all. And they were actually the most enlightened minds of the time. In fact, there was only one person who then stepped forward as a sort of apologist. That was the poet Wolfgang Kirchbach. He was the only one who then devised the formula under which the lecture could find a home within the Giordano Bruno Society. And he had devised this formula in the following way. He said: “Yes, Steiner didn’t want to sneak Catholicism in; rather, he wanted to show that within that old scholastic wisdom of Catholicism lies something far more significant than what we ourselves today regard as our superficial concepts.” That is what he wanted to show. He wanted to show us that Catholicism is such a powerful enemy precisely because we are such weak opponents, and that we should acquire stronger weapons. That is what he wanted to demonstrate with his lecture. — That was the only formulation under which this lecture then found enough acceptance among a third of the group—the minority—that I, at least, was not expelled from the Giordano Bruno Society. But in the eyes of the majority, I was regarded as someone who had been led astray by Catholicism.

[ 38 ] Now you see, that is one of those episodes from that time when people now say that I was a rabid Haeckelian. But through such things, one gained insight into the capacity for judgment—namely, into the generosity of judgment—that was shown toward that which, above all, did not rely on theoretical formulas, but rather sought to truly embark on the path to the spiritual, to truly enter into the spiritual world.

[ 39 ] For this entry into the spiritual world does not depend on whether one holds this or that theory about spirit or matter, but rather on whether one is able to bring about a genuine experience of the spiritual world. I have often emphasized this: Spiritualists are absolutely convinced that they are directing everything toward the spirit, yet their theories are so devoid of spirit. They certainly do not lead people toward the spirit. One can even be a materialist and possess a great deal of spirit. That, too, is real spirit, even if it is caught up in error. Of course, one need not present the erring spirit as something of value, but the erring spirit—the spirit that deceives itself by regarding matter as the only reality—can still be more spiritual than that lack of spirit which seeks the spirit in a material way because it cannot find any spirit within itself at all.

[ 40 ] So, when looking back at those starting points—which must be properly grasped if one is to understand the full meaning and the conditions of life of the movement—one must, on the one hand, recognize how extraordinarily problematic it was at first, if I may use that expression, in the last third of the 19th century, revelations from the spiritual world entered the earthly realm, and how unprepared public opinion was to receive these spiritual revelations, and above all, how strong the determination was among certain circles to ensure that nothing that truly leads to the spirit would reach the people. There is no doubt that for a great many people who were to be taken seriously, Blavatsky’s appearance must have had a stimulating effect. And indeed, that is what it did at first. Those who had retained some sense of judgment found themselves saying: “There is certainly something here that speaks for itself.” It is remarkable how it came into the world at this very moment, but it is something that speaks for itself. One need only apply common sense, and then it speaks for itself. But there were many people who had an interest in ensuring that precisely such things would not be allowed to flow into the world as sources of inspiration.

[ 41 ] Now it was there, present in a figure like Blavatsky, who, in a certain sense, was once again naive and helpless in the face of her own inner revelation. The style of her works alone makes this clear. So there it was; that was her own attitude—naive and helpless in a certain way, and devoted to much of what occurred in her surroundings. Yes, do you really think it was particularly difficult—especially in H.P. Blavatsky’s case, it wasn’t very difficult—for people who wanted to condition the world in such a way that it would absolutely reject any form of spirituality to approach Blavatsky and shape her environment? Because she was so naive and helpless in the face of her own inner revelations, she was, in a certain sense, gullible. Take, for example, the incident with the sliding door through which the so-called “Master Letters” had been slipped in—but which had actually been written and slipped in from the outside by someone, such as the... or someone else—to be based at all on the fact that H.P. Blavatsky had first told the person… “Slide such letters in here”—but she was, in a certain sense, naive once again, believing in such letters herself. The one who slid them in deceived Blavatsky and the world. Then, of course, it was very easy to tell the world: “She’s a fraud.” But don’t you understand, my dear friends, that Blavatsky herself might have been deceived? For she possessed a certain extraordinary credulity precisely because of the particular—I would say—lack of mental hardening in her mind. So the problem is extraordinarily complex and, like everything that enters the world in our time as true spirituality, requires discernment—indeed, it demands common sense. It is not exactly common sense to initially consider Adalbert Stifter incapable of becoming a teacher, and then—in this case, it was also a woman, probably one with an even more malleable mind than all those officials in the ministries or on the school boards—when a hint came from that quarter: then they deemed him suitable to inspect all those among whom he was not even allowed to be one of.

[ 42 ] To see what is right in this regard, too, requires nothing less than common sense. But there are peculiar judgments about this common sense. When I gave a major lecture series in Germany last year, I often used the term “common sense” and said that what anthroposophy has to say from the spiritual world can be tested using common sense. One of the critics—who wasn’t even the worst one—actually picked up on this and came to the following conclusion. He said, almost word for word: “Yes, talking about common sense is a kind of trap: for anyone who is scientifically educated today knows that common sense, when it is sound, perceives almost nothing, and anyone who believes they perceive something is not of sound mind.” — That was the gist of a critical judgment that was actually written with some wit.

[ 43 ] So, to put it in more accessible terms: If someone today—after humanity has made such significant progress—is wise, they know that one cannot know anything; if they believe they know something, they are mad. We have, in fact, already arrived at this way of receiving the spiritual.

[ 44 ] By presenting you with a number of examples from the period before the beginning of the anthroposophical movement regarding the capacity to comprehend a spiritual revelation, and by now presenting you with the judgment of a critic—who is, after all, an authoritative figure—from just last year, you can see, more or less, how this prevailing spirit of the times has dogged the entire movement. For, in fact, given such a prevailing atmosphere of the times—especially since a figure as difficult to comprehend as Blavatsky was still around, to whom one could point—the judgment that is essentially repeated today in a wide variety of variations was bound to arise, except that one person says it one way and another says it another: Anyone today who is sensible and possesses common sense says “Ignorabimus”; anyone who does not say “Ignorabimus” is either crazy or a charlatan.

[ 45 ] This should not be understood merely as something malicious. In order to truly place oneself within the context of the times, in order to gain insight into some of the conditions of life within the anthroposophical movement, one must not merely recognize this as the malice of individuals, but must view it as something that is part of the spirit of the times in all countries, among all of humanity today. One must see through it as such. Then one will indeed be able to incorporate into the entire stance one takes—a stance one should adopt with strength and courage—that which, when speaking of the times from an anthroposophical perspective, must nevertheless be present in all the opponents’ rejections, no matter how sharp—even spiritually sharp—they may be: compassion. One must nevertheless have compassion, because the judgment of the times is clouded.

[ 46 ] We will continue tomorrow to discuss how things have been and inevitably had to be for the anthroposophical movement, given the way things are.