The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eleventh Lecture

First lecture for the workers following the fire at the Goetheanum on New Year's Eve. As Dr. Steiner entered, the audience all rose from their seats as a sign of their sympathy for the victims of the fire.

[ 1 ] It is difficult to put into words the pain I am feeling. I know, of course, that you are deeply concerned about this matter, so I need not say much more.

[ 2 ] But perhaps it is permissible, isn’t it, to draw attention to the fact on this occasion that as early as January 23, 1921, here in this hall, I was able to read aloud a passage from a pamphlet that described the statement of an opponent—one might even say an enemy—for at that time the statement read: “Intellectual sparks of fire, hissing like lightning after the wooden mousetrap, are thus abundant enough, and it will take some of Steiner’s wisdom to act as a conciliating force, lest one day a real spark of fire bring an inglorious end to the splendor of Dornach.”

[ 3 ] You see, when things are so heated, it’s not particularly surprising that such things happen, and of course it’s also something that was easy to fear given the great hostility that existed. You’ll surely understand that it was easy to fear. But, isn’t it true that even now we can still see how certain circles view the matter?

[ 4 ] One need only consider this hostility; one need only think of the hostility inherent in the fact that newspapers now take pleasure in saying, after the fact: “Didn’t the ‘clairvoyant’ Steiner foresee this fire?” I won’t even get into the fact that such things are, moreover, utter nonsense. But there is such a malicious degree of hostility in it when people now feel it necessary to put such statements out into the world at all! From this, one can see what people are thinking, and how crude things are today. It is crude!

[ 5 ] But you can be certain that I myself will never be deterred from my path, no matter what happens. As long as I live, I will stand up for my cause, and I will do so in the same way that I have done so far. And of course I hope that there will be no interruption of any kind here, so that we can continue to work together here in the same way in the future—at least that will be my aim—as has been the case up to now. For whatever may happen, my view is that the cause must be rebuilt in some form or another. And everything must be done to achieve that, of course. So we must continue in the same way we have been doing. That is simply an inner obligation.

[ 6 ] Today, I'd like to take this opportunity to start by telling you a few things that are still related to what we discussed last time, during a somewhat less painful period.

[ 7 ] At the time, I tried to show you that a true science must indeed strive to recognize once again the spiritual and soul aspects of the human being. But I believe that you do not realize just how strongly this stirs up passions, especially in scientific circles. For these scientific circles—which call themselves that today and are regarded by those who do not look deeply into things as something quite special—are precisely those who, when it comes to taking action against the anthroposophical movement, are ready to join forces with every enemy there is—they join forces! And you see, the hostility toward the anthroposophical movement is truly no small matter. For in the days when this misfortune occurred here, I received, for example, a report about an association that had formed and calls itself: “Association of Non-Anthroposophical Connoisseurs of Anthroposophy.” These are people who, of course, have nothing to do with the current tragedy, but who are part of the broader opposition. This report concludes with the words: “A life-and-death struggle is at hand; the side that allows itself to be guided by the Holy Spirit will prevail.”

[ 8 ] Well, gentlemen, given the idiotic things people have said, it’s clear from the outset that—not to mention the Holy Spirit—there is absolutely no spirit at all among the people who have resolved to wage this life-and-death struggle; this can be clearly inferred from the meeting report. And yet, the rage that is present is expressed in the statement: “It is a fight to the death.” And people are already waging this fight! And the number of opponents is truly not small. Scientific circles—so-called scientific circles—are certainly participating in these matters today, and in a very intense way.

[ 9 ] That is exactly what I have to keep emphasizing, you see, because the authority of science is so powerful today. If anyone wants to know something, they go to a so-called scientific expert, because that’s just the way things are set up. People don’t realize how these so-called “experts” come to be experts, and that you can be the biggest idiot and still be an “expert” with certificates and so on. These are things that need to be properly understood, and that’s why it’s so important to get a clear grasp of how things actually are, starting from the very foundation, from the basics. After all, the very first things that are taught to even small children in school today—not directly, but indirectly—are, when you get right down to it, mostly nonsense! Things that are taken for granted today are, in fact, nonsense.

[ 10 ] So today, the whole world is against you if you say: It is nonsense that the brain thinks. — For everywhere the principle holds that the brain thinks; and where there is no brain, thinking is not possible; there are no thoughts where there is no brain. Well, as you will have seen from my lectures, the brain naturally plays its part in thinking and is significant for thinking. But when people who truly make little use of their brains claim that the brain is a kind of apparatus used for thinking, that is mere thoughtlessness. If someone who is merely an ordinary person believes this, it is no surprise, for they cannot overlook the facts and believe it simply because the authority behind it is so great. But there is no logic, no real thinking, in the statement that “the brain thinks,” and today I want to give you a few proofs of that.

[ 11 ] You’ll see right away if you look at a small beetle—it also has a terribly small head. If, for example, you take a beetle like the burying beetle and tear off its head and look inside, you’ll find anything but the kind of brain that is supposedly the organ of thought. Such a small beetle, of course—in the sense that people always claim that the human brain thinks—has no brain at all, but rather very small nodules, nerve nodules; it lacks even the slightest hint of a fully developed brain of any kind.

[ 12 ] Now I’d like to tell you about a scene, for example. But first I must tell you that these burying beetles have a behavioral pattern that they always follow. These burying beetles lay their eggs, and worm-like, maggot-like creatures first emerge from the eggs, which then transform into beetles. When these little maggots emerge, they immediately need meat to eat. They couldn’t survive without meat. So what do the burying beetles do?

[ 13 ] These burying beetles look for a spot somewhere in the field where a dead mouse, bird, or mole is lying. Then, when a single burying beetle has found, say, a dead mouse, it first runs away again; then it comes back, but not alone—it returns with a whole group of other beetles. And these beetles, with which it has now returned, first scour the entire area around the mouse.

[ 14 ] So imagine there’s a mouse lying there (a drawing is made). The beetle has tracked it down; it’s found it. Now it runs away. Then it comes back—this burying beetle—with a whole bunch of other burying beetles like it. You can see them running around there. And sometimes you see them running off again; you notice that when it happens, when they run off again. But sometimes you also see this: the beetles come, run around the dead mouse, and then they start digging, digging so that they first dig out the soil beneath the mouse and all around it. The mouse sinks deeper and deeper into the ground. They keep digging until the mouse has fallen into the ground. Then they bring the females, and they lay their eggs inside. And then they cover it up with soil again, so that if a person walks over it, they won’t see a thing.

[ 15 ] Now, I told you that sometimes the beetles run away again. When you look into this, it turns out that whenever the beetles ran away, the soil was hard. The beetles must have thought to themselves, “There’s nothing we can do here.” In any case, when they stay and carry out the procedure, the soil is soft.

[ 16 ] The strangest thing of all—which is unbelievable but true—is that when you think about why, with a beetle like this that has run away, only ten or twelve, and not forty or fifty, gravedigger beetles come back. You see, once one has run away, no more beetles ever return than are needed for the job. He doesn’t bring any more than he needs. But he doesn’t bring any fewer, either. He returns with exactly the number of beetles needed to get the job done.

[ 17 ] This may sound unbelievable, but what I’m telling you is no fairy tale. People have been able to confirm this through all sorts of experiments. It is an absolute truth. And it wasn’t just some superstitious person, but a man of sound judgment who otherwise conducted only scientific investigations at a time when the natural sciences were even more advanced—a friend of the botanist Gleditsch, who was a naturalist in the second half of the 18th century and who once conducted experiments with toads, real toads. The experiments were intended for something entirely different—as you know, electricity was first discovered through a frog’s leg.—So he brought a dead toad home to dry. What did the naturalist do? He went into the garden and picked up a small piece of wood, onto which he placed the dead toad so that it would dry quickly in the sun. After a while, he went back and found a number of burying beetles working diligently all around it. He didn’t remove the thing, but thought to himself: I’d rather watch what they’re doing there, see what comes of it, and let these guys—the burying beetles—get on with their work. And what did they do? They kept digging until the stick fell over and the toad had enough space here in the soil, in the hole. Then they let the females lay their eggs, and they didn’t just leave the log lying there—they buried it and then covered the toad with soil. If a human did that, people would say: he’s burying the log so that every trace is erased when someone walks over it. The burying beetles do exactly as sensible people would do; for I am convinced that quite a number of foolish people would not even manage to do it that sensibly. So you can see from this that what is called intelligence or reason simply exists, even though the burying beetles do not possess it.

[ 18 ] Now, someone might still say: No, that’s nonsense; it doesn’t have to be reason. It’s really silly when someone says that’s reason—it’s just instinct. — I do, however, consider someone foolish who uses the word “instinct” in this case, who wants to derail the discussion in this way. People just want a word. They use the word “instinct” for everything so they don’t have to create any mental images at all. I’m supposed to get to know the thing—it doesn’t matter at all what I call it—I’m supposed to get to know the thing. But at least one can still say: Well, it’s still nonsense when he tells us that; it’s simply innate in the beetle, they pass it down, so there’s no need to think about intelligence. It’s simply part of their physical nature, and there’s no need to think that these beetles have a mind.

[ 19 ] But now I want to tell another story—one told by a perfectly upright person, no less—namely, the story that others have also observed, but above all one that a perfectly upright person, namely Darwin—people swear by Darwin, don’t they?—experienced, not with a beetle, but with a wasp. Wasps, after all, don’t have any bigger brains than beetles. You see, even these wasps need meat right away for their larvae—for their maggots—that hatch from the eggs. And these wasps are weaker than these beetles, even when they’re together. And on top of that, they can’t make do with moles or dead toads; rather, they need even smaller animals that only one of them can handle—it doesn’t help much if several go off to get them. That is why such animals—such wasps—collect other small animals, such as flies and the like, for their larvae.

[ 20 ] Now Darwin, who is always cited as the greatest naturalist of the 19th century, observed the following: A wasp that needs such an animal so that the female, which is laden with eggs, can lay them, finds a fly—a dead fly—by the side of the path. The wasp wants to fly away with the fly. But now it’s too heavy for her. What does the wasp do? The wasp bites off the head and the abdomen and flies away with the thorax and the wings. She can manage that—the thorax and the wings. Now the wasp flies away without the fly’s head and abdomen. But now there’s a strong wind, and the wasp can’t move forward. She struggles forward—as I said, Darwin observed all of this—but she can’t really make headway because the wind keeps catching in the two wings. The wind buffets those two wings, and she can’t move forward. What does the wasp, laden with the fly, do then? It flies down to the ground, bites off the two wings, and flies on with the fly without the wings.

[ 21 ] Well, it’s impossible to say anything other than that it’s still a matter of speculation; after all, the wasp did orient itself according to the wind. It can’t possibly be innate for it to bite off its wings when the wind blows. One must surely start from what is called reason and say to oneself: If I don’t have wings, then the wind won’t catch them. That can’t be innate! It’s impossible for something like that to be innate! What is at work here is what is called deliberation. And the consequence of this is that one must say: reason is truly at work here. Reason is at work.

[ 22 ] From this you can see how 19th-century natural science operated. I deliberately cited Darwin, who recognized this. But what did Darwin say? Darwin said: Everything we observe in animals occurs solely through heredity and natural selection, and so on.

[ 23 ] Yes, people do indeed gloss over what they themselves know in order to come up with theories! That is precisely the main point: that people simply gloss over what they themselves know in order to come up with convenient theories that have absolutely no basis in any science, but are used to pull the wool over people’s eyes. Certainly, Darwin was a great man, and no one has acknowledged his positive achievements more warmly than I myself. I have written all sorts of things in support of Darwin. But one must be clear that even those who have already accomplished something—and this is precisely the strange thing—even those who have achieved something great, suffered from the affliction of having completely lost sight of the facts. Despite its great triumphs in the external world, the nineteenth century is characterized precisely by the fact that people completely lost their sense of facts and simply ignored them.

[ 24 ] Now let’s move on. Let’s consider other insects. It is precisely with insects that one must observe this phenomenon, because with insects one can know for certain: they cannot be intelligent simply because they have a large brain, for they most certainly do not have one. That is why one must observe this phenomenon specifically in insects. Yes, gentlemen, with insects, it is the case that they not only perform the things I have described to you, but also quite different things. Insects all lay their eggs, and the animal does not emerge immediately; instead, a larva always emerges first, which must first undergo a transformation—with butterflies, which are also insects, it is even more complicated. First a larva emerges—a caterpillar; it forms a chrysalis, and only then does the butterfly emerge from the chrysalis. There is indeed a transformation taking place. But this transformation actually occurs in all insects. Now, you see, there are insects that, once fully grown, are vegetarians—they eat only plants. Gentlemen, I’m not advocating for a vegetarian lifestyle—you know that—but these insects are, in fact, vegetarians. They eat only plants. But the peculiar thing is that their larvae, their maggots, when they hatch from the eggs, still need meat. So these insects have the remarkable characteristic that they are initially born with something entirely different. They only switch to a plant-based diet once they are fully grown. When they are still young and look completely different—like maggots or worms—they eat meat.

[ 25 ] So, what do these animals do? These animals, in turn, seek out other insects—mostly caterpillars—and lay their eggs inside the caterpillar’s body. They themselves no longer have any appetite for meat or animal food, but they know that maggots will hatch from the eggs and that the maggots need meat—so they lay their eggs inside the body of such a caterpillar or another insect.

[ 26 ] But that’s still not all that much; there’s something else entirely. You could say, in fact, that these crawling maggots are actually incredibly clever. Just think about it: there are some that depend on live animal food. So when the eggs are laid, the insect—which has a stinger—stings another living insect that is larger, and sometimes a great many eggs are laid inside it. So that sometimes, inside such a caterpillar—which has stings all over it—there are masses of eggs, from which these maggots then crawl out. They are then inside the body of this other insect. But these eggs are laid only in living insects, because the moment the animal into which these eggs are laid were to die, all these eggs would also be doomed to die. The maggots can only survive by feeding on the living animal. So consider this: if even a single maggot that hatches were to destroy an organ in the animal in which the eggs were laid—an act that would kill the host animal—then all the maggots hatching from the laid eggs would perish. Now, these insects are so clever that they never consume anything inside a living caterpillar other than what is not essential to the caterpillar’s survival—in other words, they consume only what will not kill the caterpillar. Thus, the vital organs are spared. No matter how many eggs are present, only that which is inside and still allows the animal to continue living is consumed.

[ 27 ] You see, these are things that people simply know but choose to ignore. People know this, but they ignore it. Of course, it makes them uncomfortable when someone else says it, because it reveals not only the incompetence of science, but also its outright dishonesty and lack of integrity.

[ 28 ] From this, however, you can see that when it comes to animals such as insects, one can say: They certainly have no intellect, for they lack the organ necessary for intellect—the brain is missing—but what they do is the work of the intellect. One must say this: the intellect is there. Animals don’t think this through, of course. To think, you need a brain. Animals don’t think this through, but what happens is an act of reason.

[ 29 ] Yes, it’s even the case that animals have something similar to memory. They don’t have memory, but something similar. You can observe this if, say, you’re a beekeeper. Everything has been set up. Here is a beehive. The bees crawl out. Anyone who wants to test this can now move the beehive a little farther away. The bees return, but at first they fly toward this spot. Well, of course, that’s “instinct”; there’s no need to be surprised by that—they fly back in the same direction they flew away. But now they start searching. They fly on, looking everywhere. Now they’re coming back. But they don’t just go right in; instead, you see them flying around outside for quite a while, and you can deduce quite clearly from this: they first examine the beehive to see if it’s their own, just as the burying beetle first examines whether the soil is soft or hard! So this shows that, while they don’t have memory, they do have something similar to memory—namely, they have to determine whether it’s the same beehive. We do this with our memory when we want to determine whether something is the same. The bees do something similar.

[ 30 ] As you can see: everywhere, what takes place in the human mind affects the intellect. Intellect is at work everywhere—even in insects, a marvelous intellect. Just imagine for a moment what a marvelous intellect it must be that the insect larvae, as they crawl out, do not immediately bite into the animal’s stomach. If they were to bite into the stomach, everything would be ruined right away.

[ 31 ] When you consider this tactic, which humans sometimes employ in war, you can’t help but feel a certain respect for the intelligence at work inside the insect—in contrast to the lack of intelligence among humans! From this perspective, humans have no reason at all to say, “We alone possess intelligence.”

[ 32 ] Now I’d like to tell you something else. You’re all familiar with paper. You know that people invented the kind of paper we use today only four or five centuries ago. In the past, people used all sorts of other materials—parchment and so on—for writing. But so-called “rag paper”—that’s something civilized humanity only discovered four to five centuries ago. Before that, people could write on leather and such. How was this discovered? It could only be discovered by mixing certain substances together in a specific way. Perhaps one of you has visited a paper mill. The paper starts out as a liquid, then solidifies, and so on. So it’s produced in a purely artificial way, through all sorts of chemical and mechanical processes.

[ 33 ] You may have seen not only paper, but also the occasional wasp nest. A wasp nest is structured something like this (illustration follows): It’s built up somewhere, then it’s shaped so that the wasps can fly inside. It’s gray—not white, but gray—but then again, there is such a thing as gray paper. This wasp nest is real paper! If you ask, “What is the chemical composition of a wasp nest?”—well, in terms of its chemical composition, it’s exactly the same as paper. It’s real paper.

[ 34 ] Well, wasps haven’t just been building their nests for the past four or five centuries—they’ve actually been doing it for millennia! From this, you can see that wasps were making paper long before humans did. That’s simply a fact. A wasp nest is simply made of paper. If people had had the clever idea millennia ago—say, “Let’s take a look at what wasp nests are made of”—they would have discovered paper long ago. But the science wasn’t advanced enough back then. Nor was writing quite there yet. Writing has brought about many things that do not exactly serve the good of humanity. But in any case, it is true that wasps have been making paper for an immeasurably longer time than humans have.

[ 35 ] Of course, I couldn’t talk to you for hours—but rather for days—about how the mind is spread out everywhere. You find it everywhere. And with human beings, it is simply the case that they gather together the intellect that is spread out everywhere and then make use of it. And because they have a developed brain, they are able to make use of what is spread out throughout the world. So, thanks to their brain, human beings are able to make use of the intellect that is present in all things.

[ 36 ] So that’s not what our brains are for—to produce reason. It’s utter nonsense to believe that we produce reason. If we believe that we produce reason, that is just as silly as if someone were to go with a watering can and scoop water from a pond, then come back with the watering can and say: Look at that, there’s water in there now; you saw that a minute ago there wasn’t any: the water grew out of the can! Everyone would say: That’s nonsense! He was just at the pond and got some water; it didn’t grow out of the jug! — But the scholars point to the brain, which simply gathers the mind together because it is everywhere, like water, and they claim that the mind grows out from within! That’s just as silly as saying water grows out of the pitcher, because reason is also present where there is no brain. Likewise, the pond isn’t dependent on the pitcher. Reason is everywhere. Human beings can draw upon it—reason. And just as one can use the water in the pitcher, so too can human beings, when they gather up reason—which is everywhere in the world, like water—use their brains. To this day, they have not yet done so in a very exemplary manner.

[ 37 ] But you see that it all comes down to thinking correctly. However, those who claim that the mind is produced by the brain will never think correctly—for they demonstrate that they are incapable of thinking correctly. They’re really spouting the same nonsense as someone who claims that water is produced by the metal of a water pitcher. And this nonsense is considered science today. And the facts are actually quite obvious, gentlemen. It’s simply a matter of recognizing that the mind must first be gathered.

[ 38 ] Well, you can take the brain and try to gather understanding somewhere. But that gathers just as little understanding as if you were to set down a watering can, walk away, and then be surprised that there’s no water in it! The watering can doesn’t gather water on its own. Nor does the brain gather understanding on its own. What, then, must be present for the brain to gather intelligence? You cannot leave the brain to itself, just as you cannot leave the water jug to itself. If you believe you consist only of blood, nerves, and brain—all of that is the water jug; there must be something present that gathers, that the brain uses to bring intelligence together. And that is the spiritual-soul aspect, which gathers in this way, which enters the human being—as I said the other day—already existing beforehand in the spiritual-soul world and merely making use of the physical. So if one does not ignore the facts, if one truly comes to realize that the intellect is everywhere, like water, and that it must be gathered together in the brain, just as water is gathered in a pitcher, then one must also seek out the gatherer if one wishes to be a serious scientist and not a charlatan. This is simply what the use of clear reason leads to. It is not true that anthroposophical Spiritual Science is less scientific than other sciences; on the contrary, it is much more scientific—much more scientific.

[ 39 ] Just how logical people are—we saw that the day before yesterday. You know that a course on the natural sciences was just held here. I’ve already told you that we conducted experiments in Stuttgart on the function of the spleen, and we confirmed that the spleen serves as a kind of regulator of the eating rhythm. That is to say, the blood in humans follows a certain rhythm—the pulse, right? Seventy-two beats per minute—those have to be there. But they’re connected to food intake. People do pay a little attention to the fact that their food intake also follows a rhythm. But they’re not very good at it; one moment someone eats here, the next there. And only when you look at the substances themselves do you see that one person eats what is useful and what is useless. There’s no regularity there, as there is in the blood. If, for example, I’ve eaten at two o’clock instead of one, there’s an irregularity. Because the blood doesn’t adjust to that—it doesn’t change its pulse rate; it wants the food at the same time. That’s where the spleen comes in—it compensates for that. We’re trying to prove this through experiments, and we’ve succeeded—at least to a certain extent; further experiments must be conducted, and they must be done soon—but we’ve managed, to a certain extent, to demonstrate that the spleen is a regulator that simply ensures that, even if we eat irregularly, the food remains in the intestines for as long as the blood needs it. And if we do not go too long without eating—if we go too long without eating, then the spleen can no longer do anything—then the spleen causes fat to be drawn from our own body and used to supply the blood.

[ 40 ] You see, because we were completely honest, Ms. Kolisko wrote honestly in her book that I had stated in a medical course that the spleen had this function, and that she then conducted the experiments that confirmed this. And then a professor from Munich said: “Well, that’s certainly easy.” You get the information from anthroposophy; you already have it in your pocket. — If you then conduct tests and experiments on it, that is, as people say, not unbiased science, because you start out with the information already established and conduct your experiments afterward. So he says: This is not unbiased science.

[ 41 ] Why does he say that? Because these guys don’t want to work based on any kind of idea at all; instead, they want as much material as possible delivered to their labs, and then they start experimenting—experimenting blindly—until something comes out of it. And they call that “science without preconditions.” There are absolutely no premises there. That great things are sometimes discovered by chance—well, even a blind chicken sometimes finds a grain of corn! But how would we make any progress if we weren’t supposed to work according to these ideas in our laboratories?

[ 42 ] So what did the professor from Munich say? This isn’t science without any assumptions; rather, it’s based on existing data. Now suppose that experiments had already been conducted somewhere that established that this is how the spleen behaves, but the descriptions were destroyed in a fire; then one would have known only the result—what came out of it. Couldn’t someone have come along afterward and said, “Now I’ll conduct these experiments a second time!”—That person would have had nothing else to go on but this data. Then a professor would have to come along who sees this and say: “Yes, he already has the data in his pocket; this isn’t science without presuppositions.” - That would be utter nonsense. The difference is simply that I derived the data from a spiritual exploration of the matter, but in such a way that it is entirely verifiable anatomically according to science, whereas the other person needs confirmation through the experiments he conducts for what was precisely stated. So all that’s needed is to provide proper physical proof of what I have said. There is therefore no logical difference whatsoever between my stating this based on my insight—which was arrived at through Spiritual Science—and someone else having already arrived at the same conclusion earlier through experiments.

[ 43 ] So if someone says, “This is science without presuppositions”—and he would say that if it had been discovered through physical means and the descriptions of the experiments had been burned—he would accept that; but when anthroposophy does it, then it’s not science without presuppositions—yes, gentlemen, what does that mean? It means that people aren’t being honest, but are simply condemning everything that comes from anthroposophy from the outset. These people aren’t concerned with science without presuppositions; they’re just saying that. They are so foolish that they do not realize this is logical nonsense. But they say, “This is not unbiased science,” not because that would be logical, but because it comes from anthroposophy, and people are simply too foolish to comprehend what comes from anthroposophy. Of course they are angry because they cannot understand it, and that is why they denounce it. So the whole matter boils down to the fact that anthroposophy is denounced because these people, who practice so-called science everywhere, do not think and cannot understand anthroposophy. This is inherent in our entire civilization. Today, one can be a great scientist, a scholar, without really being able to think. What must happen is that we honestly cultivate a sense of honesty that takes all facts into account—not just those that are convenient for establishing some theory with which to pull the wool over people’s eyes.

[ 44 ] You see, a large part of the anger directed at anthroposophy stems simply from the fact that anthroposophy is honest, and people do not want to allow it to be so. And if people were more attuned to the truth, they would probably often put down their pens as early as the second sentence. But because the entire structure they have to erect as an opposing argument crumbles when one truly takes a close look at anthroposophy, they invent all sorts of things about it. And the people who invent all sorts of things about anthroposophy—they’re not concerned with the truth, after all. And people who start by telling a lie tend to go even further. That is why there are such serious slanders against anthroposophy. And what is the result? That, of course, anyone who cannot see through this believes that anthroposophists are all kinds of devils. Anyone who cannot see through this naturally believes the authorities who speak untruths. This is what anthroposophy suffers from most of all—that untruths are spread about it everywhere, while it is simply concerned with correctly grasping the facts and is true science.

[ 45 ] That is why, when something as terribly painful as what has just happened here occurs, one must also take a closer look at how things actually are, how they really are, and how people are actually being incited—incited purely out of dishonesty.

[ 46 ] I myself am absolutely opposed to any kind of incitement coming from our side. Of course, I can’t prevent everything. But isn’t it true that when I speak to you, I’m simply pointing out the hard facts? For what I’ve told you today are precisely those hard facts, and I’ve drawn from them only a general characterization of scientific life. You will have to ask yourselves: Where such facts are not taken into account, there is simply no will to create true science; rather, there is a will to pull the wool over people’s eyes, even if in a rather unconscious way. People would have to be much smarter than they are.

[ 47 ] We’ll talk more about this next Monday. If you have any questions, I want you to speak from the bottom of your heart. Otherwise, though, I don’t want to let myself be swayed by the great misfortune that has occurred. That’s why I didn’t want to spend the whole time complaining to you, but rather wanted to tell you something useful.