The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Today I want to bring you something about the transformations around the concept of the Christ from various viewpoints but set in a specific period of time. In a certain sense one can speak about the influence of the Mystery of Golgotha in every cultural sphere and in order to elucidate the correct idea of its influence on the earth's evolution it is necessary, where possible, to examine this impact independently from each cultural area.

Within the evolution of art, it is possible to speak about the important changes brought about as a result of the impact of the Mystery of Golgotha in the general progress of humanity. However, these thoughts will not suffice without the awareness which link to, I might call it, intimate artistic changes in the evolution of individual arts.

When we start looking for the starting point of when people in Europe depicted the Christ figure, it is repeatedly shown that the attempt to depict the Christ figure artistically actually only started from the moment when, within historical development, the concept of the Gospels as a literal perception of Christianity experienced a conclusion to a certain extent, a view of the Mass and Gospel traditions through participation in the church thus rejecting some declarations considered questionable at the time. When the foundation of Gospel literature was completed and also the transition was made to a certain degree in the minds of those looking at the content of the Gospels, a desire started in the West to artistically depict scenes and figures found in the Gospels.

This should not be lost sight of. Before the Gospels were concluded and rounded off in the minds of those calling themselves Christians, they limited their imagination to a depiction as a signature which you can see in this slide of the monogram of Christ:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

710 Christ monogram

See in the centre the Χ and the Ρ, ie. Chi and Rho, which is simultaneously the angled Cross with the Rho.

Or you see it in a similar form, as you see here:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

712 Christ monogram

... or combined with animal figures:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

713 Christ monogram with two doves.

... or the changed form, as we have here:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

711 Christ monogram:

This is what people limited themselves to during that time, during which the mass of the Gospels became unified and gradually penetrated people's minds. This is the reason why actual pictorial representation of the holy history can only be spoken of as originating from the 2nd or 3rd centuries onwards.

In the course of our local art observations which I have emphasized I want to point out another relationship today by referring to what I've highlighted before. I have stressed that the first representations which were created still obeyed the forms of the old, ancient pagan artistic development.

People simply transposed the pagan artistic expression on to the content of the Christian development. This is very important. One can say that before and up to the 3rd Century nothing had been done in the western cultural development to depict images of the Gospel scenes as such, which had not come as a transfer from pagan art. Here we find figures which we connect to Christian representation as similarly depicted to what we usually see in pagan myths. Today we want to limit our observations to the Christ figure Himself. In this regard we find at the start of the first times the Christ is represented, most frequently of all, the image of the Good Shepherd, in the most varied forms in antiquity, presented in the pre-Christian times. This image—chosen from one out of many representations of “The Good Shepherd”:

714 Mosaic of the Good Shepherd, Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ravenna ...

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

... reminds us of the depiction of David amongst the animals. It reminds us of other Greek images.

If we limit ourselves in particular to the Christ figure in this image, as it still stands, you see an absolutely antique expression. We notice the endeavour in this pictorial representation towards the expression of a mild, noble face, generally found in these olden times, beardless, still with tousled hair, youthful, gracious. These were the endeavours which live in all these images. We already see in this representation of the Christ imagery the pagan imagery imposed on it as the basis because in such images everything is still pagan. Now a question about such a statement is created: what precisely characterizes the paganism in this imagery—I'm speaking from an artistic point of view. So much has been written and spoken about art but the essential vigour, if I may call it that, of the pagan artistic expression has not been stressed. When you—as much as it is possible from what is still available—study Greek imagery you will very gradually find the fact that this Greek imagery, studied realistically in the sense we speak of realism today, did not exist. The forms of the human body were not presented by the Greeks as a direct likeness of a portrait of some model, corresponding in any way at all as a mere copy of the human body as it walks the earth because the Greek simply had an ideal body in mind. This ideal body they had in mind, actually incorporated something quite different from what human eyes could actually see in a model. In order to really understand the most important Greek bodily depictions, the artistic physical forms, one has to refrain from considering what the eyes see in the model and its form; one should remember what I already mentioned in previous years: the Greek depiction is according to the inner feelings experienced within the body. A muscle wasn't merely a direct rendering according to what the eye saw but how it was being experienced, how with inner feeling it cooperated with movement, streamlined with muscle contraction. The rendering in artistic matter carried a feeling which was being experienced within the physical itself.

What single factor made this possible? Indeed, it was only possible as a result of the Greek artist, when connecting his thoughts to the physical nature of a person in the majority of his creative images, he relinquished the individual nature of the person. He refrained from including it. When he looked, he saw only the physical expressed in the human form. Pay attention—he looked at the physical nature of mankind as if it represented the outcome of the entire cosmos, as a total spiritual depiction of the cosmos. When you look at a Zeus figure, at a Pallas Athena figure, an Apollo, an Aphrodite figure, you find the soul within it. However, these souls which are within these physical forms are not individual human souls but they are souls that live as results of the entire cosmos: world souls in a human physical form. One could say that what the Greeks searched for as souls in this realm they saw as absolutely beyond the idea that the human is a result of the universe, but that through their thinking they considered the forces cooperating in the universe as striving to produce the crowning glory of its creative forces, the crown of its creative power as a product resulting in the human organism. How focussed and concentrated the creative cosmic forces were, to bring the human form into existence! In such Greek human organisms are the forms I have been telling you about, and here we also find the concentrated expression as seen in laws creating the entire culture, and also through which the entire Spiritual All rules: the creativity of the cosmos condensed in the human being.

One could say the Greeks configured the body in this way. Indeed it seems extraordinary but much more correct if one thinks of what I want to say now. One imagines that when people are asleep, the soul, therefore the `I' and the astral body are outside the physical body and that the sleeping body is ensouled by universal spirituality, absorbed by this spirituality which belongs to the cosmos and through the spiritual aspect being driven out of the human body it has the result of enabling the individual spirituality during earth evolution to enter into humanity and thus one acquires the Greek inspired shaping of human form in such figures, as I have indicated to you. Not that the Greek had no understanding of individual spirituality but he saw the individual soul qualities as not yet penetrating the human form; the human form was for him still something universal. So it happens, which is extraordinary enough, that the individual soul aspect, the specific human soul aspect in Greek art only appears when the Greek does not represent forms which in Greek art, in their higher development, are regarded as typical. When the Greek presents an Apollo or a Zeus, Pallas Athena or Hera or Aphrodite then something typical is presented; when these are not presented, when Satyr or Faun is depicted, then what is presented is pertaining to the individual human aspect, applicable to every soul which is present when it is awake and which leaves the body when it is asleep.

You see this is the curious thing in pagan art development in its highest configuration in Greece. Specific human soul qualities had not penetrated the art forms when the ideal-type aspects were adopted. By contrast all that was working in the soul, the emotions and impulses permeating the soul with the preference of the Satyr and Faun figures, one could say these reminded one of animals. When the Greek presented the god Apoll, then in the god Apoll lived a super human, a super individual soul as an artistic figure of Apollo. Swinging over to the humanistic we first find, in the Greek depiction of a Mercury-type, the Hermes-type. We can find many—you can study the Hermes-type - inspired by the Faun- and Satyr-type. One could say it was the conviction of Greek art that the human soul had not come sufficiently far in its development that it had its own powers to express itself in the human form, when this human form wanted to come out in its full glory.

If we now go even further back in Greek art history we encounter the oriental art form, to discover the total universal cosmic coming into expression. Thus Greek art was the final flowering of universal cosmic expression, the representation having been attempted in the physical human form. It is extremely important that this is looked at.

One can now say that as the Christ became the redeemer in relation to the rest of the powers of evolution in humanity, so He also became the redeemer in relation to this view of art. Imagine an elevated mind posing a question such as this: how can one idealize a representation in order to reach an expression in contemporary art, an expression of something spiritual, something human, how can one idealize something which earlier was merely represented by using the mentioned deviation of an ideal type, namely a Faun-type, a Satyr-type and so on? How can the problem be solved in connection with the specific human form, how can something be idealised which in ancient times did not want to be idealised but that the divine humanistic be kept in contrast to the all-too-human aspect? This question was never stated on the physical plane yet it is answered in the further development of art. It is basically also being answered in the history of humanity.

It will always be part of extraordinary interesting facts that one man in Greece, who so deeply descended into the Greek life that he through his own destiny, to a certain extent, he prepared the redeemer destiny—Socrates traditionally didn't represent and ideal type of Hellenism but more something of a Satyr or Faun.

It is as if world history itself wanted to create the specific human out of the subhuman.

715 Greek sculpture, 4BC, Socrates, scale down copy (London, British Museum)

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Here we see in the continued progress in the shaping of something which had not been achieved in the ideal humanistic form in Greek counter art, in the Satyr- and Faun art, by wanting to achieve a breakthrough as a human form only originating from the cosmos.

The individually human conforms according to spiritual lines and forms obtained only from the cosmos. Oriental forms we must always look for in the cosmic, but western form in the individually human.

So we see, the moment humanity wanted to conquer the pagan, just then the Christ-type entered in order to penetrate the specifically human into the commonly typically cosmic element. Just observe how that penetrates the typical ...

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

715 Socrates (London, British Museum)

Here we have a

716 Catacomb painting of a Christ depiction (Rome, catacomb of Pontianus)

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

...out of a somewhat later time of ancient Christian art, complete with an added beard, while many Christ representations in the first centuries were beardless. We see how there is a continual attempt to not only make the cosmic aspect in the figure a reality, but to show how the cosmic element is at war with the individuality, how the one is working against the other. The cosmic element here still carries more weight, but actually it outweighs only as tradition. What had to be overcome in the oriental-Hellenistic still carried the most weight, and would still outweigh it for a long time. Only gradually the penetration of the specific enters as the individually human element into the form. So we see how gradually this happens.

I have to show you the next image as a result:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

717 Catacomb painting of Christ amidst his apostles.

Here you see—it belongs to the first centuries—how the endeavour existed to maintain the whole arrangement of lines originating from the cosmos, and so on, but as something entering which is specifically human. As a result of this the strange battle started which had particular importance during these ancient centuries, the old battle of how Christ had to be represented; should He correspond more to the Apollo beauty or should He be represented as an individual human soul? The endeavour was to represent Him as an individual man with a soul. Now here is actually the peculiar thing, you see. Here one accomplishes one of those reversals, as we have encountered in other areas during the last days: to represent the human individualism, simply by pulling up again what earlier had been frowned upon. This was developing in the highest degree within Greek trends while in the west, in Latin circles, the continuation was being developed of something which once had been quite oriental—to depict a certain cosmic figure. This was in a time when the unfolding of art in the west dwindled and one could not be sure about the correct explanation any more.

Thus it happened that the depiction of the Christ-form itself triumphed for the eastern, the oriental and Byzantine type of depiction, while the Christ individuality was not included. However, while artistic evolution was on a downwards path one can say that this type degenerated, He no longer retained the lofty dignity which the East wanted to give Him but He was depicted as becoming, one could say, the downward trend of humanity. He became the kind of representation of humanity's characteristics which enter in a degenerative way. His hair was parted, his beard took on particular forms, his expression became such that people saw: the superhuman-cosmic was now being conquered by the human aspect. However people were not yet in the position to really depict this human element as a kind of ideal-type.

We see this exactly when we allow further Christ images to work on us, for example even this very beautiful mosaic in Ravenna:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

718 Mosaic: “Christ with Archangels crowning the Holy Vitalis” (San Vitale in Ravenna) in which we find neither great beauty, nor a cosmic-universal image, but in which we can already see that an attempt was being made to bring in the human element.

Even more clearly we can be impressed by the expressive images in the mosaic of Palermo—the Monreale Dom, in the apse:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

719: Mosaic, 12th Century, Christ, and below Him, Our Lady with the Child.

This is an image which evokes the most immensely impressive thoughts through its wonderful craft of mosaic. However, precisely within these images we see the battle of both streams which we have been speaking about. Exactly as a result of this battle, this image is one of the most interesting regarding what we have ahead.

All of this belongs to the general course of humanity's evolution. We see how in a loop line the individual jumps over the abstract cosmic aspect coming from the East, and lets it go over to the West. I say: the abstracted cosmic element transported over to the West! If you want to understand that then you must above all completely enter into the art of being, into a soul nature which was found in Romanism. Imagine how this Romanism worked. You must free yourself from everything which educated people are so inoculated with today because Romanism has conquered the schools; our entire education is Roman based. However we must not forget the actual content of Romanism when we look at the first blossoming which drew its content for two centuries from Greece, right up the blossoming of Romanism under the Julian Empire. Roughly 150 to 200 years before the Mystery of Golgotha and somewhat later se see how Greek imagery, how Greek culture was conquered by fantasy-deprived Romanism, how this fantasy-less Romanism took over Greek content.

Rome became ever bigger in precisely this peculiar insult of which I have spoken, the transference of abstracted cosmic elements on human affairs. In Rome originated that distinctive talent to launch world domination, the talent for world domination which in ancient times—while the slandering they were initiating had not yet happened, or taken over—the peculiarity was the great oriental empire of the 3rd post-Atlantean cultural epoch—that went over to Romanism. World domination was actually the Roman Empire's ideal. To bring the then total cultural world under Roman rule was the Roman Kaiser's ideal. The content from Hellenism to Romanism was prescribed by the desire to represent the individual. Indeed, one finds in Romanism this Greek yearning to represent individualism, even as ugliness, thus letting Latinism conquer the Greek type. Initially there was resistance to do this because the former desire was for the beautiful type and because of this at first it didn't strike them as beautiful but as ugly. It reminds us of the Latin old Faun- and Satyr-types, which are elevated as the highest human quality. Gradually within the Greek being itself came the cosmic Zeus type, the Apollo, the Pallas Athena, Aphrodite in a state of decadence; out of this came something which had formerly only lived in the area of ugliness and now was being striven for in idolised moral beauty.

From the West, in Romanism, quite a different Christ-type was depicted, it was actually depicted as a consequence of the pagan Apollo-type and this is due to the background of Italian humanity in that century and their sculptural inventions because they didn't have an inventiveness of their own, in fact had none at all, because Romanism in essence was without imagination.

We can now continue. You see, we then find fallow centuries, tendencies towards Hellenism but simultaneously decay in Romanism. A time of hope only started in the time Augustine appeared, but now from Greece conquering Christianity. The same thing appears again: Romanism prepares to snatch spiritual world domination, but suitably turns to the begotten content of Greece. The same phenomenon again.

During this period Hieronymus translated the Bible into Latin. Throughout the following centuries everything developed out of Rome, the striving was to make Rome the earthly human central point of world order. In order to inculcate the cosmic element into this social structure of the world it was turned completely abstract; this was the prevailing teaching. Art—in as far as one can speak of art in this way—was on a parallel path up to the 13th Century with suggestions coming time and again from the East, building up whatever wanted to be developed. So we see the then completed period in art form of the image of Christ Jesus Himself brought nothing new because the Greek-Oriental type was transported over to the West. This is essentially what can be seen as expressed by Cimabue.

Now we want again to hold on to the 13th Century form which the Christ-type had taken on:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

720a-7 Christ on the Cross by Cimabue.

Here with Cimabue we see something, one might say, which has been flowing into souls during all the previous centuries. You see what lives here which came over from the Orient into Hellenism. We see in the image how earth and heaven are linked, how heaven is as active in its essence as the earth too, is active. Even in the depiction of the crucified Christ we can observe the two streams weaving through one another, as I have been speaking about.

Within the world of art itself artistic creativity could not exist, while positive suggestions towards imagination was still being received out of the East.

The next image I want to show is done by Giotto:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

720b-36 Giotto (?) The Crucifixion, Assisi, San Francesco

You nearly see this Giotto painting developing out of the earlier one (720a-7). You can still see the heaven activated by its beings. Still, the complete descent created out of the universality of the world has not taken place and entered into the earthly world. We already see the earthly, which still quite bashfully and shamelessly throbs in the Satyr- and Faun-types, we see rising here, their control spreading, idealizing, enforcing the human being, because what wanted to be expressed here could only show itself when it was permeated by Christ, through and through.

Three things can be distinguished. Firstly those forms which exist in every cosmic soul are found in ancient art. You find then the battle of the human soul in the first depictions of Christian art. We are still in the kind of a battle as we have before us here. The cosmic element is still everywhere—I mean the spiritual cosmic, not the Copernican materialistic cosmic, but the spiritual cosmic—sparkling everywhere, yet at the same time from below the specific human soul is striving to take on the form which the soul gives to the body, wanting it to be revealed. This was the second element I want to present to you where the two battle with one another, where the human-soul opposes the cosmic-soul element. Perhaps this battle is most intensively depicted by Giotto compared to other artists. For this reason it is interesting that this particular battle can always be studied in a Giotto. Giotto strives from this one side quite significantly back to this model. He has a strong naturalistic vein yet in him remains the non-specific, one might say forms originating out of the spiritual world which were not yet so completely mastered by Cimabue. In the following image you see another “crucifixion” of Giotto:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

721a-35 Giotto: Crucifixion (Padua, Arena-Chapel)

The previous painting was not even a real Giotto, perhaps originating from someone else. Here we see Giotto in the most genuine sense. See how the heaven is not only implicated but definitely contributes to the image. Notice something entering here, also with the Redeemer's form—and this is our main focus today—something depicting the soul wretchedness in the way the bodies are constituted. Here we already see the human aspect coming in, which one never could see in an Apollo form.

I ask you now to not consider the fact I'm about to reveal as inappropriate. What I want to say, I say reluctantly now and I hope that you will be mistaken if you want to believe the facts are inappropriate. Research orientated at truth results in something extraordinary. When we delve into an image such as this one by Giotto, we see a new element surface in the old tradition, a Greek orientated idealization which could only appear in the Faun and Satyr, a super-imposed idealisation of the human if we look at a Giotto, and then we may essentially put Giotto as an opponent to his master, Cimabue, who was fructified from the Orient. How does something new happen to be introduced here?—Now we arrive at something which is difficult to say: it spread out from an external point, outer territories of Europe which actually had their origin in Central Europe itself, which we have often seen originating from Central Europe: the very new impulse to configure the individual human element within the soul. Very little Roman blood flow for example in the present day Italians, really very little. A great deal has flowed in—refer to historical studies as far as ancient documents allow—much has flowed into Central European blood: from this comes fructification. The naturalistic, soul principle which lived in Giotto was created by the fructification through Romanism, the unimaginative Romanism plus this emanation from Central Europe. Romanism was actually great only in ideas which pre-occupied themselves, the social structure in the sense of abstract cosmology; what one regards as “State” is really a speciality product of Romanism, originating out of the Roman soul. The state which wanted to spread out over everything is a copy of what sprung in the Roman head where it originated.

We now go to the next image, another Giotto:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

721b-32 Giotto: Christ on the throne (Rome, St Peters)

Here we see a Christ. I have chosen this image because here Giotto was most inspired to represent the old type of depiction as it came from the East. Only, look at the face, how much individuality he has brought into it! Look at each of these fingers lifted in the right hand, how many individual soul qualities have been brought into it, how in the best sense the spiritual-naturalistic lives in it! Here one gradually enters into the southern art in which the oriental essence is linked, with the cosmic-oriental essence; here enters something we have seen in images of Central Europe, something in its purity, without the cosmological essence, merely out of the human soul itself.

The next image is once again a Giotto:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

722a-21 Giotto: The Baptism of Christ. (Padua., Arena Chapel)

Here too you see heaven and earth play into it. Now just look at the Christ figure itself and you will find how Giotto made the effort to allow the soul quality of the divine form to come to expression, not only in the face but in the entire figure, in the main bearing and hand gestures.

Here we have another Giotto, the evening meal:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

722b-34 Giotto: Evening meal (Padua, Arena Chapel)

You see Christ on the left side partly coming to expression as the Greek Christ-type yet the effort to express the individuality of soul is also being made. Everywhere this insertion is apparent and so we see this extraordinary thing streaming forth which in the highest sense is artistic, oriental and still in the old Persian cultural impulse dependant on Central Europe, one could say, having a rendezvous with the inartistic, assessed purely on a State structured unimaginative basis.

Another Giotto:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

723a-40 Giotto: Journey into Jerusalem (Padua, Arena Chapel)

... which I have chosen again to present the same phenomenon to you. Just by taking these images of Christ in various biblical scenes does one see how Giotto endeavours to bring the individual expression into the soul nature.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

723b-33 Giotto: Crowned by Thorns (Padua, Arena chapel)

We want to bring these changes of the Christ depiction itself to you as it took place through these centuries.

Now think of the first tentative efforts we found in the ancient Christian art. Certainly a great deal depends on the material, but that materials were applied, that it was particularly used for these ideas, that is the important aspect which we see here. Now:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

724a-31 Giotto: Resurrection (Padua, Arena Chapel)

Everywhere you'll find the confluence of both streams of which I have spoken, confirmed. Perhaps at the same time you'll notice the intensity which works further with the Greek Christ-ideal type, because in the background, one could say, in the sleeping powers of the artists it was present everywhere.

Now we come a little further. I have now chosen an image from the 14th century, by Orcagna depicting Christ as the World Ruler:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

725 Andrea Orcagna: the Youngest Court (Florence, St Mary, Novella)

It comes out of the church of Saint Mary Novalla in Florence. Here you clearly see the old type as an endeavour for a complete individualisation, the soul gently appearing.

With this we are already in the 14th century. The various developmental streams of human culture move at different speeds. Up to here we don't only see the influence of the Greek Christ type but we also see some of the inspirational powers found in oriental art. I would like to state a fact and not a criticism: in all these images it does not come to be expressed what the Roman worldwide church domination within its full historical rights had initiated itself since the 9th century. The Greek influence actually existed in art with little influence from central Europe.

Understand, this had to be so, from the second half of the 9th century it went well in Rome. Everyone knew, as I expressed it once, this `Eastern Being' had to be kept back. The western world had to be permeated with it out of the basis of the life of the folk striving towards something higher. Out of this we see a sentiment which I have characterised for you, which I identified with the liberated city culture, this free city culture which has its point of origin from central Europe and spread itself over various other territories. These free city cultures had the urge to express the specifically human soul element. Now in the 9th century Rome understood and thus considered this European impetus and carried it into account.

The specific western form of Catholicism which spread through the institutionalised world churches was by contrast being held back in the Orient, and this Catholicism came to a specific expression in those artists and their art as most wonderfully expressed by Fra Angelico:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

724b-65 Fra Angelico: Evening Meal.

Here firstly we see—when we have an understanding for such things—the western Catholic element poured out in art. The differences between the previous (725) and this image (274b-65) as well as the previous Evening Meal (722b-34) and this image (724b-65) are unbelievable, because in these images, as it lives in well loved art, the western catholic sentiment is alive. Look at the forms into which the sacrifice has been brought, woven equally into the composition as a reminder of the Last Supper before the event of Golgotha. You don't only see the Last Supper but you see the continuation of the evening meal within the composition of the catholic sacrifice. Catholic sentiment is poured out over the image of the evening meal and particularly over the figure of the Redeemer. Here, primarily, the Redeemer is shown as a model in art to western priests. In reality He had been there much earlier, in outer reality.

Thus we see the Roman world domination church spread its rule also over art in a totally decisive manner. In addition we can say Giotto created his artistic offering of Francis of Assisi out of a freed individual soul. Here we can see Fra Angelico who paints as well as Messe reads in San Marco in Florence. An aura of Catholicism permeates these images. He isn't an individual sacrifice, but paints the church with it.

No less you see this in the following image of

726a-64 Fra Angelico: Crucifixion

Catholicism paints into the art.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

I ask you please to look closely at the next image and see how the being of the Catholic art actually is alive in the Catholic organization, that even in world domination, one could say, the organisational power of the Catholic Church works right into the realm of supernatural beings.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

726b-68 Fra Angelico: World domination

We find this now increasing with another friar, of which I want to show you the following image:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

727 Friar Bartholemeo: Christ and the Four Evangelists

Here we see the third stage in this interesting process. Look at the interplay of a new freshness as a resurrection out of old Hellenism. This entered now again, the old Greek influence.

So we notice how for a long time the individualized soul concept of the Christ-type, which is of interest to us today, prevailed. Take the entire design as it evolved from the cosmic forces working from the beginning, which are then taken up as the individualised soul through the Greek impulses influencing it ever more, and how through this it became increasingly individualised. How was Christ individualised, my dear friends? Now we see how antiquity so recently intervened just a little but it is already in it. It is again working from the characteristic towards the typically-beautiful. This is notable as being continuous, because this is actually the secret of the Renaissance. These images I want to show you in conclusion are the starting point for the Renaissance artist, we see how the Renaissance artists completely renewed a rise in Hellenism but they didn't enter into that which conquered the form of an individual.

Here you have the Evening Meal of Andrea del Sarto which is in Florence.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

728 of Andrea del Sarto: Evening Meal.

Again there are beautiful forms, with still a touch of cosmic consciousness which the Greeks still had, something of the traditions of a cosmic element brought into the forms but purely out of tradition and no longer from direct observation, with direct feelings as found among the Greeks. We discover it here; this is brought further by Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. We see something developing here which is particular to Leonardo da Vinci, in this image of the baptism by Verrocchio, the teacher of Leonardo.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

729a-92 Verrocchio: Baptism of Christ

The same motive done by Masolino during the same time period:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

729b-50 Masolino: the Baptism of Christ

Yet again I want to include the image “The Baptism” by Giotto:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

722a-21 Giotto: the Baptism of Christ

Look at the Baptism where the battle is still on between the two principles, without the Greek influence, also without the antique Greek impact, without the impact from antiquity, to the new Greek, the Christian impact particularly strong.

Now we bring out the two other images:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

729a-92 Verrocchio: Baptism of Christ

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

729b-50 Masolino: the Baptism of Christ

You see how the Renaissance works. Out of a Verrocchio comes a Leonardo; perhaps Leonardo even worked on these paintings too.

Now I would in closing still show 2 paintings, in which you would be able to see what came over from the North, from Central Europe and how all of this mixed into the others. We have a northern product here, the Man of Sorrows, by Dürer:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

730a-303 Dürer: Man of Sorrows

Here we have the endeavour without a cosmic aspect: the human Christ. Where Fra Angelico poured the Catholic aspects over his artistic creations, here we see the formation against world domination, here we see how the human individual wants to depict His Christ. Here a single human being worked on one image. While Fra Angelico painted in the San Marco Church in Florence, the whole Catholic sentiment painted with him. Here a single person worked on his biblical depiction. This became fixed in this particular time. Later the Renaissance came but moved South, mixing with other influences.

I still have another image which depicts a similar kind of thing:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

730b-311 Dürer: Christ on the Cross.

These things should show us how through the centuries the Christ image changed. I have demonstrated this with these two images from later centuries. I would like in the further progress of these ideas, if it is possible, to show you how these Christ images develop further. A world history can be written since the Mystery of Golgotha by simply describing the changes in the development of the Christ paintings and images. Everything which in reality contributed to it is expressed clearly. One could continue with this right up to the present.

Christ depictions are researched at the present time: years ago I saw a whole collection of Christ images in an exhibition, the one more hideous than the next! Today the attempt is to make reflections of present events thus reflecting the chaos leading up to events in which we live. If we try—without this tendency I've just spoken about in the creation of Christ figures—if we try to introduce what lies within this form in the spiritual world, shaped initially by our first efforts through painting, as good as it gets with limited material, then it does appear as a further progress on this cultural line of the realities of humanity's unfolding.

RUDOLF STEINER

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

731 Painting (Plant colours) in the small cupola of the First Goetheanum, Dornach, detail with the central motif, with part of the architraves.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

732 Painting (Plant colours) in the small cupola of the First Goetheanum, Dornach, Central Motif: The Representative of Man between Lucifer and Ahriman.

732 Painting (Plant colours) in the small cupola of the First Goetheanum, Dornach, Central Motif: The Representative of Man between Lucifer and Ahriman.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

732 Painting (Plant colours) in the small cupola of the First Goetheanum, Dornach, Central Motif: The Representative of Man between Lucifer and Ahriman.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

734 Painting in the small cupola of the First Goetheanum, Dornach. Section: Bust of The Representative of Man.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

735 Visage of The Representative of Man, pencil sketch.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

736 Wood sculptural group: The Representative of Man between Lucifer and Ahriman.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

737 Wood sculptural group: Detail: The Representative of Man.

738 Maquette for the wood sculptural group, a Plaster of Paris cast.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

739 Wood sculptural group, detail: Head of The Representative of Man, side view.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

740 Wood sculptural group, detail: Head of The Representative of Man.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

741 Study of the head of The Representative of Man, plasticine.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

It is really good in the present time to fructify ourselves with such ideas which can be gained from cultural areas of art, and see a bit of the truth, because in the present time gods will be offered to mankind to be worshipped, while mankind will have no talent for seeing the truth.

In our time (1917) it is possible to say that four fifths of the world should ally itself against a fifth, in a time when so much indifference is accepted, it is time for recorded concepts to be taken out of the history of humanity's evolution and to revise them a little.

A recent series of lectures and discussions with workmen and co-workers in Stuttgart has given me deep insight into what takes place in human souls at the present time, into what exists as inner tragedy in mankind's evolution. Now I am again able to spend a few days here in this place which is so closely bound up with the work we must believe will produce the force to guide the present tragedy of humanity into more hopeful channels.

At no time perhaps has there been less inclination than now to raise the soul to the spiritual worlds in true fashion, and it is especially necessary now to do so.¹ Only from these spiritual worlds can come the strength modern humanity requires if it is to go forward in its full humanness. Today there is the most widespread belief that the problems and tasks of the present can be resolved by the thoughts and impulses derived from knowledge based on the external world. How long it will take until a sufficiently large part of humanity will be convinced that real salvation is only attainable on the spiritual path, is extremely difficult to say, for the very reason that reflecting on this question is not fruitful. It is certain, however, that progress can only be made if sufficiently large numbers of people are permeated by the conviction that salvation can come only from the spiritual worlds.

What occupies people's minds today, in the widest circles, are the social problems. However, they lack the intellectual strength to earnestly study these problems, because in the present age the intellectual power of a great part of mankind is as though paralyzed. The belief prevails that the social problems can be mastered by what is called knowledge, but they can never be mastered if they are not tackled from the viewpoint of spiritual knowledge.

We have just passed through a long war. This will be followed by prolonged, perhaps very prolonged fighting by mankind in general. Many people have said that this war, which has been experienced throughout the civilized world, was the most terrible experience of its kind since the beginning of history. We cannot say that this judgment is wrong. The battle which will have to be fought by this or that means, and which will follow this war—the battle between Orient and Occident, between Asia, Europe and America—will be the greatest spiritual battle ever waged by mankind. Everything that has flowed through the Christian world into humanity as impulses and forces will pour over civilization in tremendous, elemental waves of warfare.

It is possible to state today in a simple formula the great contrast between the Orient and Occident. But this simple formula—do not take it as simple. It contains an enormous quantity of human impulses. You know that in my book The Threefold Social Order I drew attention to the fact that for extensive circles of present-day humanity spiritual life has become an “ideology”; that what constitutes men's spiritual properties—rights, customs, science, art, religion, and so on—is looked upon as merely a vapor rising from the only true reality, from the economic means of production, the economic foundation. I spoke to you about these matters when I took leave of you here several months ago.

“Ideology.” That is the answer many people give today when spiritual life is spoken of. It is all something that is mirrored in the human soul from the only reality, the economic reality; it is mere “ideology.” There is much reason to reflect on the real meaning of this word “ideology” in world culture for it means a great deal. One can connect this word with no other word more closely than with the word “maya” of oriental wisdom. “Maya”—“illusion”—properly translated into occidental language means “ideology.” Every other translation of this word is less exact. Thus, we may say: The same concept that the Oriental connects with the word maya is connected by a great part of western humanity with the word ideology. But what a tremendous difference! What does the Oriental think when he uses the word maya? He thinks that the external world is maya; everything that confronts our senses and the intellect bound up with them is maya, the great illusion, and the only reality is what arises in the soul. What a human being achieves in the sphere of soul and spirit, that constitutes reality. What arises and pours forth from man's inner life is reality. What presents itself externally to the senses is maya, illusion, ideology.

The opposite conviction, that the only reality is what presents itself to the outer senses, is spread over a great part of Western humanity. Precisely what the Oriental calls maya constitutes reality for a great part of Western mankind; and what the Oriental calls reality, that which blossoms and wells up in the soul, constitutes ideology, illusion, for a large segment of Europe and America.

You see here a great contrast. This makes deep inroads into men's souls; it shapes them across the earth into two quite distinct kinds of beings. If you survey what has happened in the civilized world in recent years you will say—I hope: Fundamentally speaking, everything that is said about the reasons for this world catastrophe is just skimming the surface, is merely superficial opinion. What has expressed itself in this terrible fighting has arisen with elemental power from unconscious depths. It can be clearly seen today that people participated in this fighting without knowing the reason for it. It is the expression of what this contrast, which will not be resolved for a long time, has brought to the surface as elemental forces. The anti-social element at present is so strong that it has split mankind into these two essentially different parts.

If you connect what I have just stated with other things I have explained to you, you will find that the striving of the West is for freedom. No matter whether this freedom is understood or misunderstood, the longing for freedom wells up as if from dark foundations of the human soul. Turn your gaze to the East. What is called freedom in the West has no real meaning for the East; no concepts or feelings are connected with it. We do not think about what we experience most intensely. Just consider how little attention people give to the phenomena of nature surrounding them every day. They do not think about their immediate experiences. The Oriental, in pursuing the reality natural to him, the inner reality, lives in the freedom he derives from the peculiarities of his race, his folk, and his tribe. He does not think about it. The further we look toward the West the more we become aware of the fact that freedom has been lost in the course of the historical evolution of mankind. Because the Western peoples do not have it they have to strive for it.

We could cite many more instances; in every one of them we would find this fundamental difference between West and East. There is already a first indication of what perhaps will occur in the next few years. At the moment this manifests in outer symptoms taking place in Asia and about which Europe is still silent today—silent for well-known reasons. The fact, for instance, that more than half the population of India is near starvation will bring to birth, out of the spirituality of the Indian nation, something that will be very different from what has happened in Europe. These are outer symptoms. But also, in regard to these outer symptoms mankind is divided today into two essentially different parts. For the Indian hunger signifies something totally different from what it means to the European, because the Indian has behind him a soul development throughout millennia which is quite different from that of the European. These facts have to be sharply focused by anyone who wants to comprehend the course of mankind's evolution. Today we must be clear that what is usually called the social question is something much more complicated than is ordinarily imagined. This social question is an accompanying phenomenon of the culture that arose after the middle of the fifteenth century. I have repeatedly spoken to you about this significant incision in the history of civilized mankind in the middle of the fifteenth century. Since that time natural science has gradually arisen in its modern coloring. During that period, however, industrialism also has arisen in its modern coloring. Natural science and industrialism have been poured over modern humanity and have given it its particular spiritual trend.

I have spoken to you about the special nature of this natural science and have told you that intelligent people, who today reflect on what natural science has to offer, say: What it offers is not the world, it is rather a specter of the world. Everything scientists have thought out and that has become popular education, all this—much more so than is ordinarily imagined—is belief in a spectral world; actually superstition. And along with this world of specters there exists the spiritual effect modern industrialism has had upon men.

We must give attention now to the spiritual significance of this industrialism. Consider what primarily controls it—the machine. A machine is different from everything else man makes use of in outer life. Just consider the animal. If you turn your scientific or other thoughts to an animal—I will not speak today of man in this connection—you can carry on any amount of research concerning an animal, but something always remains, something of a deep and divine essence. You cannot fathom an animal; you cannot discover its secrets. There is always something behind your thoughts about an animal that remains unknown. This is no less the case with a plant. Take even a crystal, the wonderful forms of the crystal world. You will have to say: Certainly we can grasp the external nature of the crystal world, its forms and so on, if we are trained in this respect, but much remains that man can revere and to which his ordinary, non-clairvoyant intellect does not penetrate.

Now consider a machine. It is entirely transparent to our thinking. We know how its power is produced, know the position of its pistons, the magnitude of friction. We can calculate its efficiency if we know the various factors; there is nothing behind the machine which would lead us to say that it cannot be penetrated by the ordinary, non-clairvoyant intellect. This is of great significance for the mutuality of man and machine. And when one has stood once again before many thousands of people who have to do with machines, one knows what it is that drips into these souls from the spiritually transparent machine. For the machine has nothing behind it that can only be divined, something not surveyable by man's non-clairvoyant intellect. That fact that a machine is soul-spiritually so completely transparent that its power and power-relationships lie clearly open before the human senses and intellect—this fact makes contact with machines so disastrous for mankind. That is what sucks out the human heart and soul, making man dry and inhuman.

Natural science together with the machine threatens civilized humanity with a terrible threefold destruction. Now what is this danger threatening modern man if he does not make up his mind to look to the supersensible? In regard to knowledge, that ideal presses to gain control which the scientists describe as follows: One endeavors to arrive at an astronomical way of thinking about nature; that is, thinking fashioned after the pattern of astronomy. When the modern chemist thinks about the content of a molecule he thinks of the atoms within the molecule as being in a certain force relationship. He conceives of it in the form of a small planetary and solar system. To explain the whole world astronomically becomes an ideal. And astronomy itself, what is its ideal? To conceive of the whole world-structure as a machine! Now add to this the work people do by machine!

These are the influences that have become increasingly strong since the middle of the fifteenth century and rob men of their humanness. If they were to continue thinking in the way they think about machine-like astronomy and about the industrialism in which they work, human spirits would become mechanized; human souls vegetized, sleepy; and human bodies animalized.

Look toward America, the climax of the mechanization of the human spirit! Look toward the European East, toward Russia, the wild and frightful impulses and instincts that run riot there—the animalization of the body. In the middle, in Europe, the sleepiness of the soul. Mechanization of the spirit, vegetizing of the soul, animalization of the body—this is what we have to face without deceiving ourselves.

It is characteristic of humanity's path since the middle of the fifteenth century that not only two life-elements have been lost but also a third. Today a powerful party puts forward “social democracy.” In other words, it welds together socialism and democracy although they are the opposite of each other. This party welds them together and leaves out the spirit. For socialism can only refer to economic life, democracy only to the sphere of civil rights, and individualism would refer to spiritual life. Freedom has been omitted from the phrase “social democracy,” otherwise it would have to be called “individualistic social democracy.” Then all three aspects of human concern would come to expression in such a title. But it is characteristic of the modern age that the third element has been omitted; that the spirit has really become maya, the great illusion for civilized humanity of the West, for Europe and its colonial outgrowth, America. This is what we have to bear in mind when we consider spiritual science in the sense of a great cultural question. What lives in the demands of the present cannot in reality be a subject for discussion. These are historical demands. Socialism is an historical demand. But liberalism, freedom, individualism, these also are an historical demand, although they have been little noticed by modern men. People will no longer have anything to say unless they establish the social organism in the sense of the threefold order: socialism for economic life, democracy for the life of rights, and individualism for spiritual life.

This will have to be looked upon as the real, the only salvation of mankind. But we must not delude ourselves about the fact that precisely these intensive, unyielding historical demands of the present age create other demands for one who has deeper insight into these matters. Adults will have to live in a social organism which, in regard to the economic aspect, will be social; in regard to government, democratic; and from the spiritual aspect, liberal, free. The great problem of the future will be that of education. How will we have to deal with children so that they, as adults, can grow into the social, democratic, and spiritually free areas of living in the most comprehensive way? Spiritual science has pointed to this problem of education as present-day humanity will have to understand it if it wishes to advance. Social demands will remain chaotic if it is not seen that at their base lies the most urgent problem of the present time: the problem of education. If you wish to acquaint yourselves with the broad guide-lines concerning this problem of education you only need to study my little book, Education of The Child From The Point Of View Of Spiritual Science. Here one of the most important questions of the present time has been brought to the surface, namely, the social question of education. The widest circles of modern humanity will have to learn what spiritual science has to offer in regard to the three epochs of man's youth and their development.

In this book it has been pointed out that between birth and the seventh year, which is the year when the change of teeth occurs, a child is an imitative being, he does what he sees in his surroundings. If you observe him with real understanding you will find that he is an imitative being who does what the grownups do. It is of utmost importance for a child that the people in his surroundings do only what he may imitate; indeed, that they think and feel only what is wholesome for him to imitate. When a child enters physical existence he only continues the experiences he had in the spiritual world prior to conception. There we live, as human beings, within the beings of the higher hierarchies; we do what originates as impulses from the nature of the higher hierarchies. There we are imitators to a much higher degree because we are united with the beings we imitate. Then we are placed into the physical world. In it we continue our habit of being one with our surroundings. This habit then extends to being one with, imitating, the people around us who have to take care of a child's education by doing, thinking, and feeling only what he may imitate. Benefit for a child is all the greater the more he is able to live not in his own soul but in those within his environment.

In the past when man's life was more instinctive he could also rely instinctively on this imitation. This will not be the case in future. Then care will have to be taken that a child be an imitator. In education the question will have to be answered: How can we best shape the life of a child so that he may imitate his surroundings in the best possible way? What has happened in the past in regard to this imitation will have to become increasingly intensive and conscious in the future. For men will have to make clear to themselves that when children are grown to adulthood in the social organism they will have to be free human beings, and one can become free only if as a child one has been a most intensive imitator. This natural power of a child must be strongly developed precisely for the time when socialism will break in upon us. People will not become free beings, in spite of all declaiming and political wailing about freedom, if the power of imitation is not implanted in them in the age of childhood. Only if this is done will they as adults have the basis for social freedom.

From the seventh year of life until puberty, until the fourteenth and fifteenth year, there lives in a child what may be called action based on authority. When a child undertakes what he does because a revered personality in his surroundings says to him, “This is right, this should be done,” then it is the greatest blessing that could happen to him. Nothing is worse than for a child to get accustomed to making his so-called own judgments too early, prior to puberty. A feeling for authority between the ages of seven and fourteen will in future have to be developed more intensively than has been done in the past. All education in this period of life will have to be consciously directed toward awaking in a child a pure, beautiful feeling for authority; for what is to be implanted in him during these years is to form the foundation for what the adult is to experience in the social organism as the equal rights of men. Equal rights among men will not come into existence in any other way, because people will never become ripe for these equal rights if in childhood regard for authority has not been implanted in them. In the past a lesser degree of feeling for authority might have sufficed; in future it will not be so. This feeling will have to be strongly implanted in a child in order to let him mature for that which is not open to argument but arises as an historical demand.

All primary school education in our time must be organized in a way to let people attain this view of the situation. Now I ask you: How far are people today, how far is modern teacher-training from an insight into these things? How must we work if this insight is to be gained? And it must be gained, because only if this is firmly achieved can salvation come.

If today one visits those countries which have the first revolution already behind them, what does one experience in regard to their programs for so-called “consolidated schools”? What are their programs? To the person who has insight into the relationships existing in human nature, their socialistic educational programs are the most terrifying imaginable. The most awful, frightening things to be thought out and placed before mankind today are the school programs, the curricula, the organized education connected with the name Lunatscharski, the Russian Minister of Education. The educational program developed in Russia murders all true socialism. But also in other regions of Europe the educational programs are actually cancerous evils, particularly the socialist programs of education, because they proceed from the almost unbelievable principle that schools must be established after the pattern of adult life in the social organism. I have read school programs whose first principle is the abolition of head-masters; the teachers should stand in a relationship of absolute equality with the students, the entire school should be built up on comradeship. If one speaks against such a principle today, let us say in South Germany where matters have not advanced as far as other regions in this respect, then one is branded as a person who does not understand anything about social life.

Those people, however, who are in earnest in regard to the creation of a truly social organism, must above everything else be clear about the fact that such an organism can never arise with the socialistic programs for education. Because, if socialism is introduced into schools it cannot exist in life. People become mature for a socially just life together only if during their school years their life has been built upon true authority. We must realize today how far removed from any sense of reality is what people do and think.

After puberty, between the fourteenth and twenty-first years, not only the life of sexual love develops in man; this develops merely as a special manifestation of universal human love. This power of universal human love should be specially fostered when children leave the primary school and go to trade schools or other institutions. For the configuration of economic life, which is a demand of history, will never be warmed through as it should be by brotherly love—that is, universal human love—if this is not developed during the years between fourteen and twenty-one.

Brotherliness, fraternity, in economic life as it has to be striven for in future, can only arise in human souls if education after the fifteenth year works consciously toward universal human love. That is, if all concepts regarding the world and education itself are based on human love, love toward the outer world.

Upon this threefold educational basis must be erected what is to flourish for mankind's future. If we do not know that the physical body must become an imitator in the right way we shall merely implant animal instincts in this body. If we are not aware that between the seventh and fourteenth year the ether body passes through a special development that must be based on authority, there will develop in man merely a universal, cultural drowsiness, and the force needed for the rights organism will not be present. If from the fifteenth year onward we do not infuse all education in a sensible way with the power of love that is bound to the astral body, men will never be able to develop their astral bodies into independent beings. These things intertwine. Therefore, I must say:

Proper imitation develops freedom;

Authority develops the rights life;

Brotherliness, love, develops the economic life.

But turned about it is also true. When love is not developed in the right way, freedom is lacking; and when imitation is not developed in the right way, animal instincts grow rampant.

Thus, in dealing with this problem you see that spiritual science is the proper basis for what must become the content of culture precisely because of the great historical demands that arise today for mankind. Without this content of culture, which can flow only from spiritual science, we cannot make any progress. That is to say, the questions confronting us must be brought into a spiritual atmosphere; this, as a conviction, must enter human souls. I should like to emphasize once more that the length of time it will take for such a conviction to take root may be debated, but in any case, what people unconsciously strive for can in no way be reached unless this conviction lays hold of them. I believe you can see from this the connection between what has been carried on in various fields through our spiritual science and what arises from the distress of the age as the great historical necessities for mankind in the present and immediate future. This was the reason for my statement that spiritual science must be considered in its relationship to the great historical tasks of the present. Of course, people are far, far from judging matters in the way I have characterized. There must first arise in them a tension of dissatisfaction, so that out of the very opposite, purely materialistic striving there may arise the striving for spirituality. Otherwise, how are people to tackle the problem that has led them to use the expressions maya, and ideology, so adversely?

What has resulted from this? You will realize that the impulses behind Oriental and Occidental thinking are very different; but the peculiar thing is that they have produced the same feeling throughout both. This soul orientation has to be considered. That the people of the East described the outer world as maya is of ancient origin. This mystical concept of the world had its great significance then, but it is not significant at present. Because in a sense it has become outmoded the Orient has been overtaken by a certain passive surrender to it; by a false fatalism which, through the Turkish element, has influenced Europe in the crudest manner. Fatalism, an attitude of let-happen-what-may, signifies the passivity of the human will.

In the most precise way the Occidental concept of ideology arose in the same sphere of fatalism through Marx and Engels. This concept is the modern socialistic doctrine that everything of a soul-spirit nature originates in the one and only reality, the economic process, and so is maya, ideology.

How did this doctrine arise? By bringing something fatalistic into the world. Up to the catastrophe of the World War what then was the outer expression of the socialistic doctrine? It was: Capital accumulates, concentrates; bigger and bigger groups of capitalists arise, trusts, monopolies, etc. The economic process of increased concentration of capitalistic groups will run its course quite by itself until the moment arrives when, of itself, the control of capital passes to the proletariat. Nothing has to be done to bring it about, it is an objective, purely economic process. Fatalism.

The Orient arrived at fatalism: the Occident proceeds from fatalism, the majority of the people supporting it. Most of the people are fatalistic. To submit to what the world process is to bring has become the principle of the Orient. It is also the principle of the Occident. For the Orient, however, it is submission to something spiritual; for the Occident it is submission to the material, economic process. In both cases human evolution is seen in a one-sided way. But if we survey evolution as it is today, resulting from former conditions, we find in it a spiritual element that has become ideology, as I have described. This spiritual element is based on Greek culture. The deepest impulse of our souls has a Greek character. Therefore, we have the classical school (Gymnasium), which is an imitation of the Greek soul structure in education. In Greece this soul structure was natural to the growing child up to puberty, for the great mass of the people were the poor people, the slaves, the helots, who were excluded from such education. The conquerors were of different blood. They were the bearers of spiritual life, justifiably so. You can see this expressed in Greek sculpture. Look at a Mercury head (I have often mentioned this) with the special position of the ears, nose, and eyes. In this head the Greeks pointed to that part of the population they had conquered and to whose care they left the outer life of trade, the economy. The spirit had been bestowed by cosmic powers upon the Aryan, characterized by the head of Zeus, of Hera, of Athene.

Do not believe that the Greek soul structure comes only to expression in the general soul constitution. It also expresses itself in the formation of word and sentence in the Greek language. This rests upon an aristocratic soul structure. We have this still in our spiritual life. When the middle of the fifteenth century approached, we did not experience a renewal of spiritual life but only a Renaissance or a Reformation, a refurbishing of the old.

We educate our youth in the classical schools estranged from life. It was self-evident for the Greeks to educate their youth as we do in our Gymnasium, because that was their life. They educated their children and their youth in accordance with their life; we educate youth in our classical schools according to Greek life. For that reason our spiritual life has become world-estranged and is considered to be ideology. Its thoughts are too short-sighted to take hold of life, and, above everything else, to intervene actively in life through deeds.

Beside this element of spiritual education there lives in us a strange education in the field of law. It can be shown in all spheres of life that the middle of the fifteenth century constitutes a mighty incision in humanity's evolution. Grain is expensive today, and everything produced from grain is expensive. It is excessively expensive! If one investigates when it was excessively cheap in European countries one comes to the ninth and tenth centuries. At that time, it was just as much too cheap as today it is too expensive. But in the middle of the fifteenth century it had a normal price.

It is interesting to see how, right down to the price of grain, the fifteenth century shows this great incision in history. At that time when the price of grain was fair over a great part of Europe, the ancient serfdom gradually ceased to exist. But then, in order to destroy this beginning of freedom, Roman law started to become dominant. Today, in the sphere of politics, of rights, we are permeated by Roman law, just as we are permeated in the sphere of spiritual life by the spirit and soul structure of the Greeks. In the sphere of rights, we have been unable to produce anything but a renaissance of Roman law. So, in our social organism we have the Greek spiritual structure and the Roman State structure.

Economic life cannot be shaped as a renaissance. Of course, it is possible to live according to Roman law, and we can educate our children according to the spiritual structure of the Greeks; but we cannot eat what the Greeks ate because this would not satisfy our hunger. Economic life must arise as a part of the present time. Thus, we have the European life of economics as the third element. Since these three areas of living are chaotically intermingled, it is necessary that we bring order into them. This can only be done through the threefold social organism.

In a most one-sided manner people like Marx and Engels have realized that, for they recognized that it will no longer do to govern with a spiritual life that originates in ancient Greece; nor will it do to live with a government that has been derived from Roman law. Nothing remains but economic life, they said, so they concentrated exclusively upon that. Engels said: In future only commodities and the processes of production must be administered and directed; human beings must no longer be governed. This is just as one-sided as it is correct; correct, but terribly one-sided.

Economic life must rest on its own basis. Within the economic member of the social organism only goods—commodities—must be managed and the processes of production directed. This must become independent. But if one eliminates from the social organism the life of rights and the spiritual life in their old form, one must establish them in a new form. That is to say, alongside economic life, which manages goods and directs the processes of production, we need the democratic life of the state, which is based on the equality of men. We need not a mere renaissance of Roman law but a new birth of the life of the state on the basis of the equality of men. We need no mere renaissance of spiritual life as it existed at the beginning of the modern era. We need a new form, a new creation of spiritual life. We must become conscious of the fact that we are really confronted now with the task of creating spiritual life anew.

What has been stated by the demand for the threefold order of the social organism is connected with that which in the deepest sense lives in the development of modern humanity. This idea is not the result of a brainstorm, it is something born of the deepest needs of our age, something that corresponds in the highest degree to our present time. There are many people who say they do not understand this, that it is very difficult. In Germany, when people said over and over that these things are difficult to understand, I said to them that I certainly do make a distinction between these ideas and what one has become accustomed to understand during the last four or five years. There one thought it easy to understand things I could not understand—so I said—things that merely had to be commanded to be understood. The Supreme Headquarters or another place of authority commanded that matters had to be understood, then they certainly were crammed into one's head. They were understood because one was commanded to understand. What is of importance now is to understand something out of one's free human soul. To that end it is necessary for people to wake up. For this, however, there is very little inclination, yet events will depend upon it. Difficulties do not arise from a subject being incomprehensible, but from a lack of will. It is courage that is lacking, courage to look into this reality. It is self-evident that what must speak in a new tone to humanity must be formulated in sentences different from those which men have been accustomed to thus far. For we have been taken hold of by three things that are different from what this threefold order of the social organism requires.

In this threefold order a renewal of spiritual life is demanded in a way that lets people feel a vital connection of their soul with objective spiritual life. They do not now have this connection. When people speak today they speak in hollow phrases. They do this because they have no relationship to what these hollow phrases are supposed to express. Men have lost their connection with the life of the spirit, therefore their words have become empty talk.

Much has been said about rights in recent years, about the establishment of rights among civilized mankind. The events of the present time demonstrate sufficiently how far removed from reality men are today in regard to human rights. They have not fought for rights, only for power, but they have talked about rights.

Now how is it with economic life? There have been no thoughts that would have encompassed economic life, therefore events have taken place of themselves. The characteristic factor in economic life has been continuous production, as I described it in Vienna in the spring of 1914 when I called this continuous producing of goods a social cancer. Commodities were produced and thrown on the market at random; the whole economic process was to take place of itself, not thoughtfully directed. A chaotic economic life without direction; a life of rights become a mere striving for power; a spiritual life degraded to hollow phrases: this is the threefold character of social life we have had and of which we must rid ourselves. We can only get rid of it if we know how to take seriously what is meant by the threefold order of the social organism.

But this can only be understood if we relate it back to anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. People were annoyed when in a public lecture some weeks ago I made a statement which, however, is a fundamental truth. I said: The leading circles of the present time must no longer rely on their brain, which has become decadent. They must rise to a comprehension that does not need the brain, but the ether body. For the thoughts that must be laid hold of in our spiritual science do not need the brain. The leading circles, the middle class of today, the bourgeoisie, just because of their physiological development, must submit to the development of spiritual knowledge that can be fostered even with decadent brains.

The proletariat, the working class, strives upward. It still has unused brains. The lemon hasn't yet been completely squeezed dry; something of an atavistic character still comes out of the brain. Therefore, the proletariat still understands what is said in the sense of the new order of things. The situation today is such that the entire proletariat would be receptive to these things, but not their leaders, for they have become bourgeois. They have become greater philistines than the real philistines. They have taken over philistinism and have developed it into a high culture. But on the other hand there exists a terrible penchant for obedience. This obedience will first have to be broken, otherwise there will be no salvation here either.

You see, matters are more complicated in the present age than we ordinarily imagine, and only the science of initiation can lead to a real taking hold of the social problems of our time. There are three concepts you may also find in my book, The Threefold Social Order, which I have written not only for anthroposophists but for the general public. You will find three important concepts in present-day social life: (1) the concept of commodity, the product, the goods in economic life; (2) the concept of labor; (3) the concept of capital. The social thinking of the present adheres to these three concepts.

How much has been proclaimed in social science in order to comprehend these three concepts! Whoever knows what has arisen in the second half of the nineteenth century on the subject of a scientific national economy, trying to penetrate these concepts of commodity, labor, and capital, knows the impossible science the economists have achieved. It is totally inadequate. I have recently quoted a neat example of this. The famous Professor Lujo Brentano, the luminary of national economic science in middle Europe at the present time, has recently written an article entitled, The Entrepreneur, in which he develops three marks of distinction for the enterpriser. I shall only mention the third one, the use of the means of production at one's own risk. The enterpriser is the owner of the means of production and undertakes production for the market at his own risk. Now, Brentano so formulates his concept in that article that he is able to designate a further enterpriser beside the manufacturer and industrialist, namely, the modern laborer. The workman is an enterpriser because he has the means of production, that is, his own labor-force, and this he offers on the market at his own risk. Mr. Brentano's concept of the enterpriser is crystal clear as it includes the laborer among the enterprisers. This shows how clever modern economic science is! It is ridiculous. But people are not willing to ridicule such matters because the universities still take the leading positions in spiritual life. Yet this is what universities produce in the field of national economy. People do not have the courage to confess that what is produced in this field is ridiculous. Matters are really dreadful.

Our attention, however, must be focused upon such things, therefore we must ask: Why is it that precisely in regard to social concepts, which at present become burning questions of the day, all science is inadequate? It would give me great satisfaction if I could speak to you more in detail about this question during my present stay here. Today I shall only give a short report.

Although the concept “commodity” is merely economic it can never be formulated with ordinary science. You will not arrive at the concept of “commodity” if you do not base it upon imaginative knowledge. You cannot grasp “labor” in the social, economic life if you do not base it upon inspired Knowledge. And you cannot define “capital” if you do not base it upon intuitive knowledge.

The concept of commodity demands imagination;

The concept of labor demands inspiration;

The concept of capital demands intuition.

If you do not form these concepts in this manner only confusion results.

You can see in detail why such confusion must result. Why does Brentano define the concept of “capital,” which coincides with the concept “enterpriser,” in a way to designate the laborer a capitalist? Because he is a very clever man of the present day but has no idea that, in order to gain a real concept of capital, intuitive knowledge is needed!

In a certain roundabout way, the Bible points to this when it speaks of capitalism as “mammonism.” It connects capital with a certain kind of spirituality, but spirituality can only be recognized by intuition. If we wish to recognize the spirituality active in capitalism—mammonism—we need intuition. We find this already in the Bible. But today we need a world conception that raises this to the modern level.

These matters, which today may still be considered queer, must be penetrated by expert knowledge. Real, expert knowledge in this sphere will result in the demand for a penetration of social concepts by genuine, true, spiritual science. This forces itself today upon the unbiased observer of life. If you were present, you will remember the memorable question that was asked at the end of my lecture at the Bernoullianum in Basel, delivered before my journey. In the following discussion a man asked: “How can it be brought about that Lenin become the ruler of the world?” For, in that man's opinion there is no hope unless Lenin rules the world.

Just consider the confusion! Those men who today behave most radically are the most reactionary. They want socialism. Above everything else one ought to begin by socializing rulership, but they start their socialism with the universal economic monarchy of Lenin! Not even a beginning is made to socialize the relationships of rulership. This is how grotesque things are today. The real situation should be kept in mind if someone says to you that Lenin ought to become world ruler. Those who believe they have the most enlightened concepts have the most perverted ones, and clarity in this sphere cannot be attained if there is no will to seek this clarity in the science of the spirit.

• 1. See Rudolf Steiner's Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment for what he means by “spiritual worlds.”

If we wish to understand the task of the anthroposophical science of the spirit in the present and immediate future we must consider the character of mankind's evolution since the middle of the fifteenth century. Everything that happens now depends on the fact that since that time there lives in mankind the impulse for each single individuality to attain the pinnacle of personality, to become a whole personality. This was not possible, nor was it the task of mankind in earlier epochs of our post-Atlantean evolution. If we want to understand this great change in the middle of which we find ourselves, we must focus our attention still more precisely upon such matters as I characterized yesterday.

I said that in our spiritual life we still have a Greek constitution of soul. The way we form our thoughts, the manner in which we are accustomed to think about the world, is an echo of the Greek soul. And the way we are accustomed to look at civic rights and everything connected with them is an echo of the soul-constitution of the Roman. In the State we still see the structure as it existed in the Roman Empire. Only if people will realize that the impulse of the threefold social order must enter our chaotic present will there be clarity in thinking and willing.

The soul-nature of the Greek was chiefly determined by the fact that in Greece there existed in the highest degree what were the leading characteristics of historical development right up to the middle of the fifteenth century. Across the Greek territory there were spread a subject population and their conquerors. These latter claimed the land for themselves; but also, through their blood inheritance, they determined the spirituality of ancient Greece. We cannot grasp the soul-nature of the ancient Greeks unless we keep in mind that it was considered justified to think about human relationships in the way that resulted from the blood characteristics of the Aryan conqueror population. Naturally, modern man has outgrown what thus lay at the basis of Greek culture. With the Greeks it was self-evident that there were two kinds of people: those who had to worship Mercury, and those who had to worship Zeus. These two classes were strictly separated. But, people thought about the world and the Gods in the way the conqueror population had to think because of its blood characteristics. Everything resulted from the clash of a conquered and conquering people. One who looks more closely into what lives socially among men of our time will recognize that in our feelings and our subconscious soul-life we no longer have this aristocratic attitude in viewing our world. Yet it still lives in our ideas and concepts, especially if we are educated in the schools of higher learning. These schools, especially the classical schools, shape their instruction in a way that represents a renaissance, and echo of Hellenism. And this is even more the case with our universities, with the exception of the technical and agricultural colleges which have sprung from modern life. Even they imitate in their outer form the structure of universities derived from Hellenism. Through the very fact that we have a high esteem for Hellenism in its time, and for its time, we must also be quite clear about the necessity for our age of a renewal of spiritual life. It will become more and more unbearable for humanity to be led by souls who have acquired the form of their concepts in our classical schools. And today, in almost all leading positions, you find people who did receive the forming of their ideas in the classical schools. It has become necessary today to realize that the time of “settling accounts,” not minor but major accounts, is at hand, and that we must think about such matters factually and stop clinging to old habits of thought.

You know that what was formed out of the blood in Hellenism became abstract in Romanism. I have mentioned this here before. The Greek social organism, which cannot be called a State organism, shaped itself out of forces descending through the blood. But this did not pass over to Romanism. What did pass over was the urge to organize as the Greeks had organized, but the cause of this organizing was no longer felt to be in the blood. While it would never have occurred to an ancient Greek to doubt that there are people of a “lower sort,” those in a conquered people, and others being of a “higher sort,” the Aryans, this was not the case with the Romans. Within the Roman Empire there was the strong consciousness that the order of the social organism had been arrived at through power, through might. You need only remind yourselves that the Romans trace their origin to that assembly of robbers in the neighborhood of Rome that had been called together in order, as a robber band, to found Rome; and that the founder of Rome was not suckled with delicate mother's milk but, as you know, was suckled in the forest by an animal, a wolf.

These are the influences that were taken up into the Roman nature and led to the formation of the social order in Rome largely out of abstract concepts. What has remained as our heritage in regard to the concepts of rights and the State has thus come from the Roman constitution of soul.

In this connection I am always reminded of an old friend of mine. I met him when he was already quite advanced in years. In his youth, at the age of eighteen, he had fallen in love with a girl and they had secretly become engaged. But they were too poor to marry, so they waited and remained faithful to each other. When he finally could consider marriage, he was sixty-four years old, for only then had he acquired enough means to risk taking such a step. So, he went to his home town near Salzburg ready to marry his chosen one of so long ago. But alas, the church and the rectory had burned down, and he could not get his baptismal certificate. There was no record of his baptism anywhere, so there was no proof that he had been born. I remember vividly the day his letter arrived. It stated, “Well, I believe it is quite evident that I was born, for after all I exist. But these people do not believe I was born because there is no baptismal certificate to prove it.”

I once had a conversation with a lawyer who said, “In a lawsuit it is not so important whether or not a man is present; all we need is his birth certificate.”

Continually one meets such grotesque incidents. The mood living in them shows that our entire public life has been built to a greater or lesser degree on Romanism. We are citizens of the world not through the fact we have become and exist as human beings but because we are recorded and recognized in a certain office. These things all lead back to Romanism. The descent by blood has passed over into registration.

Today the situation is such that many men no longer consider their value determined by what they are as human beings but by the rank they have reached in the hierarchy of officialdom. One prefers to be something impersonal, out of Roman rights-concepts, rather than a personality. Since the fifteenth century, however, there exists in mankind the subconscious striving to base everything on the pinnacle of personality. This shows us that in regard to spiritual life and the life of rights the times have changed, and we need a renewal of both, a real renewal. This is connected with many deeper impulses of mankind's evolution.

Just consider the fact that since the middle of the fifteenth century the evolution of modern man has been filled with the natural-scientific mode of thought which is based on abstract laws of nature, upon sense perception and the thoughts developed around it. Only what is derived from sense perception is considered valid. Yesterday I drew your attention to the fact that today there are quite a number of people who are convinced, justifiably so, that a view of nature acquired in this way can only lead to a ghost-like image of nature. A picture of the world formed by a student of nature is a specter of the world, not the real world. So, we have to say that humanity finds itself in the position of developing a specter-image of the world in regard to one half of it. For the science of initiation something profound is concealed behind this, and what this is we must now consider.

Sense perception as such cannot be altered; whether we consider it to be maya or something else is of no concern to a deeper world view. A red flower is a red flower whether or not we think it maya or reality. It is what it is. Likewise, all sense perception is what it is. Discussion starts only when we begin to form thoughts about it, when we consider it to be this or that, when we interpret it. Only then the difficulty begins. It begins because the concepts we as men have to form since the fifteenth century are different from those of earlier mankind. No attention is paid to this in modern history, which is a fable convenue, as I have often stated. Whoever is able to understand the concepts of mankind prior to the middle of the fifteenth century knows that they were full of imagery, that they actually were imaginations. The present abstraction of concepts exists only since that time.

Now why has our human nature so developed that we have these abstract concepts we are so proud of today and that we constantly employ? They have the peculiar character that, although we make use of them in the sense world they are not suited to this sense world. They are worthless there. In my book, Riddles of Philosophy, I have expressed this by saying that the way man forms his concepts regarding the external world constitutes a side-stream of his soul development. Think of a seed in the earth; it is destined by nature to become a plant. But we take many seeds and grind them into flour and eat them as bread. This, however, is not what the seed is meant for; it is a lateral development. If we ask, doesn't the seed contain those chemical elements we need for building up our body? we must say that it does not lie in the nature of the grain of wheat or rye to nourish us but to bring forth new grain. Likewise, it does not lie in our nature to grasp the outer world through the concepts we have acquired since the fifteenth century. We shall reap something different from those concepts if we enter into their nature properly. These modern concepts are the shadow images of what we have experienced in the spiritual world before birth—more exactly, before conception. Our concepts, the forces in them, are the echoes of what we have experienced before birth. We misuse our system of concepts in applying it to the outer sense world.

This is the basis of Goethe's concept of nature. He does not want to express the laws of nature by means of concepts; he strives for the primal phenomena. That is to say, he strives for the assembled outer perceptions, because he feels that our conceptual ability cannot be applied to external nature. We have to develop our conceptual ability as pure thinking. If we do so, it points us toward our spiritual existence prior to birth. Our modern thinking has been bestowed upon us so that we may reach with this pure thinking our spiritual nature as it existed before we were clothed with a physical body. If mankind does not comprehend the fact that it possesses thinking in order to apprehend itself as spirit, it does not take hold of the task of the fifth post-Atlantean period. Our natural science was inserted, so to say, into mankind's destiny so that we might remain with pure nature and not speculate about it. We were to employ our concepts to perceive it in the right way, and then develop our concepts in order to behold ourselves as we existed in spirit before we descended into the physical body. Men still believe today that they should only employ their conceptual ability for classifying external sense perceptions, and so on. However, they will only act correctly if they employ the thoughts they have had since the middle of the fifteenth century for perceiving the spiritual world in which they existed before they acquired a physical body.

In this way man of the fifth post-Atlantean era is forced toward the spiritual, toward the existence before birth. And still another factor places him in a peculiar situation which he must develop. Parallel to the specter-concepts of natural science runs industrialism, as I mentioned yesterday. Its chief characteristic is the fact that the machine, the bearer of industrialism, is spiritually transparent. Nothing of it remains incomprehensible. As a consequence, the human will directed toward the machine is, in truth, not directed toward a reality. In terms of comprehensive world-reality the machine is a chimera. Industrialism introduces something into our lives which in a higher sense makes man's will meaningless. There will be a significant impact on social life when modern men become convinced that the machine and everything resulting from it, such as industrialism, makes the human will meaningless. We have already reached the pinnacle of machine activity. Today a quarter of all production on earth is not being produced by human will but by machine power.¹ This signifies something extraordinary. Human will is no longer meaningful on earth.

If you read, for instance, the speeches of Rabindranath Tagore, you ought to sense something in them that remains incomprehensible to the European who employs his ordinary intellect. There is a different tone in what an educated Asiatic has to say today, because in him this adaptation of the European spirit to the machine is completely incomprehensible. To the Oriental the activity of working by means of machines, by means of industrialism, has no meaning. The European may believe it or not, but European politics born in the machine age is also just as senseless to the Oriental. In the educated Oriental's statements there is clearly expressed that this one-fourth of human labor in the present age is felt by him as senseless work—this quarter which is not carried out by the educated Orientals but only by Occidentals and their imitators, the Japanese. The Oriental feels so because, as he still possesses much clairvoyant vision, he knows that labor performed by machines has a definite peculiarity. When a man plows his field with his horse—man and beast straining themselves in labor—this work in which natural forces are involved has a meaning beyond the immediate present; it has cosmic meaning. When a man kindles fire by using a flint, making the sparks ignite the tinder, he is connected with nature. When the wasp builds its house this natural activity too has cosmic meaning. Through modern industrialism we have abandoned cosmic value. In our kindling of electric flames there no longer lives any cosmic significance. It has been driven out. A completely mechanized factory is a hole in the cosmos, it has no meaning for cosmic evolution. If you go into the woods and collect firewood this has cosmic meaning beyond earth evolution; but a modern factory and everything it contains has no significance beyond earth development. The human will is inserted in it without its having any cosmic value. Just consider what this means. It means that since the middle of the fifteenth century we have developed a knowledge that is specter-like and does not touch reality. More and more we employ machines and carry out an industrial activity, and the will inserted into this activity is senseless for world evolution.

The great question now confronts us: Is there nevertheless a meaning for mankind's evolution as a whole in the fact that our knowledge is ghost-like, and our will to a great extent senseless? Indeed, there is meaning in it, significant meaning. Mankind thereby is to be urged to penetrate beyond ghost-like thinking to a knowledge of reality that does not stop with the perception of nature but enters into the spiritual behind nature. So long as men received the spirit simultaneously with their concepts they did not need to make efforts to gain the spirit. Since in the modern age men have only retained concepts devoid of spirit, but that also contain the possibility of working one's way up to the spirit as I have stated, there is present in man the impulse to proceed from abstract knowledge and to penetrate into genuine spiritual knowledge. Therefore, since we have industrialism with its senselessness we must seek another meaning for human will. This we can only do if we arouse ourselves to a world view that brings sense into what is senseless—let us call it industrialism—by deriving meaning from the spiritual, saying: We seek tasks that stem from the spirit. Formerly, when willing could derive its impulses from the spirit instinctively, we did not need to arouse ourselves especially in order to will from out the spirit. Today it is necessary that we make a special effort to do this. The senseless industrial willing has to be confronted with a meaningful willing-out-of-the-spirit.

Yesterday I gave you an example of the way we ought to educate. We should recognize that up to the seventh year man is an imitator since he develops chiefly his physical body during this period. Imitation, therefore, ought to become the basis for that period of education. We should know that from the seventh to the fourteenth year we have to develop man by the principle of authority. This spiritual knowledge, which we gain by knowing how the etheric body develops during that time, must be made the impulse of education then. We should know also how the astral body develops from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year, and that this knowledge must lie behind education for that, period. Then, only then, do we will out of the spirit.

Up to the middle of the fifteenth century man willed instinctively out of the spirit. In external life we tend to immerse ourselves in machines, in mechanism; this is so even in politics, which gradually has turned governments into machines. We must strive for a spirit-ensouled willing. To that end we must accept the idea of a science of the spirit. We must, for instance, base education on what we know out of spiritual facts, out of what we learn from anthroposophical spiritual science. Through the stronger, more conscious emphasizing of willing out of the spirit we establish a counter-image to the senseless willing of industrialism.

Thus, industrialism with all its devastation of the human soul, is given us in order that in this devastation we may rouse ourselves to will out of the spirit. Our thinking has to be changed in many ways in our modern age. This requires a careful, intimately developed feeling for truth. We must become conscious that the feeling for truth has to be gradually applied in places where we are not yet accustomed to apply it. I believe many a person will be astonished today if he is told: You are right if you venerate Raphael highly because of his pictures, but if you demand that people paint the way Raphael painted then, you are mistaken. Only he has a right to admire Raphael who knows that whoever paints today the way he painted is a bad painter, because he does not paint as the impulses of our time demand. One does not feel with the times if one does not deeply sense the tasks of a given age. It is necessary that we acquire in our time an intimate feeling for truth in this regard. But here also modern humanity is caught up in what is the very opposite. One gets the impression that the feeling for truth has everywhere sprung a leak and does not function. People are shying away from calling right what is right, and wrong what is wrong; they recoil from designating a lie a lie. We experience today the most abominable things, and people are indifferent to them. The point is that we should have such a feeling for truth that we know, for example, that Raphael's painting no longer fits our present age; that it must be considered as something of the past and admired as such. It is particularly necessary now to pay attention to such things when out of the depths of the soul the impulse for truth comes over us. I am often reminded of a beautiful passage in Herman Grimm's biography of Michelangelo in which he speaks of his Last Judgment. He says that many such Last Judgment pictures were painted at that time and that the people experienced in full reality the truth of what was painted on the walls. They lived in the truth of those pictures. Today we should not look at such a picture as Michelangelo's Last Judgment without being aware that we do not feel as those people did for whom the artist painted it; that we have lost their feeling and at best can say: This is the picture of something we no longer believe in as an immediate reality.

Just consider how differently man confronts such a picture with his modern consciousness. He no longer thinks that angels really descend, or that the devils carry on as they do in Michelangelo's picture. If, however, one is aware that what modern man feels when looking at this picture is something gray and abstract, then one is called upon inwardly to experience the whole living movement in these pictures on the wall of the Sistine Chapel. One is stirred to asking how it was possible for the people of Michelangelo's time (although he painted after the decline of the fourth post-Atlantean period his paintings originated in the spirit of that period since he stood at the boundary of the fourth and fifth periods)—how was it possible for people like him and his contemporaries to experience such tremendous imaginations, such mighty pictures? This question confronts us in all its magnitude if one is conscious of how drab and lifeless is what man feels today in front of such a picture by Michelangelo. We must ask: What caused human souls of that time to conceive of the earth's end in such a way? Whence came the structure of these pictures?

The reason lies in the following: Since the time when the Mystery of Golgotha entered earth evolution and had given it its meaning, certain things that existed in the ancient manner had to recede into the background and were destined to be regained by mankind later on. One of these was the idea of repeated earth lives. The totality of human life takes its course through earth life, then life in the spiritual world, then earth life again, and so on. This course of the total life of man was the content of the atavistic, instinctive world-view in ancient times. Christianity had to arouse in man concepts different from those of ancient wisdom. By what means, above all, has Christianity accomplished this? It directed human consciousness only to a certain point in time, namely, to the beginning of one's life on earth. It did not consider man as an individuality prior to birth or conception but merely as a thought of the Godhead. Before earth-life man proceeds out of the spiritual world as a thought of the Godhead, only at birth did he begin to be a real human being. Then, after his life on earth, the life after death. In the first period of the development of Christianity the experience of repeated earth lives was, so to say, misplaced. Human experience was limited to looking into the origin of man and the life after death. This, however, supplied the equilibrium out of which the pictures of the Last Judgment were created. Through the fact that Christianity first eradicated from human feeling the teaching of pre-existence, the pictures of the Last Judgment could arise. Today there wells up again out of the deep recesses of the human soul the longing for a recognition of repeated earth lives. Therefore, those pictures fade away which only focus their attention upon the one earth life and a vague spiritual world before and after it. Now there exists the most intense longing to enlarge the Christian world-view of the early ages. The Mystery of Golgotha is not merely effective for those who believe only in one earth life, it is also valid for those who know of repeated earth lives. The present age is in need of this enlargement. Therefore, we should see clearly that we live in a period when we must use the ghost-like nature of ordinary conceptual knowledge, and the senselessness of willing released by industrialism, in order to rise to spiritual knowledge and spirit-permeated willing, as I have described it; and also, in order to enlarge religious consciousness so as to include repeated earth lives.

The great and full importance of this enlargement of human consciousness in the present time should be deeply inscribed in the soul of modern men, for upon this depends whether they really understand how to live in the present, and how to prepare the future in the right sense. Everyone, in the situation in which life has placed him, can make use of this enlarged consciousness. Even the external knowledge people gain will cause him to demand something that today plays a large role in the subconscious depths of soul life but that has difficulty in rising and sounding out into full consciousness. Truly, the most striking fact of modern life is that there are so many torn human souls; souls full of problems who do not know what to do with life, who ask again and again, “What precisely is my task? What does life mean to do specifically with me?” They start this or that and yet are never satisfied. The number of these problematic natures increases steadily. What is the reason for it? It comes from a lack in our educational system. Today we educate our children in a way which does not awaken in them the forces that make man strong for life. Man becomes strong through being an imitator up to his seventh year; through following a worthy authority up to the fourteenth year; and through the fact that his capacity for love is developed in the right way up to the twenty-first year. Later on this strength cannot be developed. What a person lacks because the forces were not awakened which should have been awakened in definite periods of his youth—this is what makes him a problem-filled nature. This fact must be made known!

For this reason, I had to say yesterday that if we will to bring about a true form of society in future it must be prepared through people's education. To this end we must not proceed in a small way but on a large scale; for our educational system has gradually taken on a character that leads directly to what I described yesterday as mechanization of the spirit, vegetizing of the soul, and animalization of the body.

We must not follow this direction. We must strongly develop the forces that can be developed in a child's soul, so that later on he can harvest the fruits of his childhood learning. Today he looks back and feels what his childhood was and cannot gather anything from it because nothing was developed there. Our educational principles must be fundamentally changed if we want to do the right thing for children. Above everything we must listen very carefully to much that at present is highly praised and considered especially wholesome.

So, it is necessary that, without undue strain and exertion but through an economy of educational effort, children acquire concentration. This can be achieved, in the way modern man needs it, only by abolishing what is so greatly favored today, namely, the cursed curriculum of the schools; this instrument of murder for the real development of human forces. Just consider what it means: From 7 to 8 A.M. arithmetic, from 8 to 9 grammar, from 9 to 10 geography, from 10 to 11 history. Everything that has moved through the soul from 7 to 8 is extinguished from 8 to 9, and so on. Now here it is necessary to get down to the bottom of things. We must no longer think that subjects exist in order to be taught as subjects. On the contrary, we must have clearly in mind that in children from the seventh to fourteenth year, thinking, feeling, and willing have to be developed in the right way. Geography, arithmetic, everything must be employed so that these faculties can be properly developed.

Much is said in modern pedagogy about the need of developing individualities, of paying attention to a child's nature in order to know which faculties should be developed. This is empty talk. These questions take on meaning only when they are discussed from the point of view of spiritual science, otherwise they are mere phrases. In the future it will be necessary to say that for a certain age group we must impart a certain amount of arithmetic. Two or three months are to be devoted to teaching arithmetic in the forenoon. Not a plan of study that contains everything jumbled up but arithmetic for an extended time, then on to another subject. Arrange things as they are indicated by human nature itself for definite points in time.

You see the tasks that arise for a pedagogy which works toward the future. Here lie the positive problems for those who seriously think about the social future. As yet there is little understanding for these problems. In Stuttgart, connected with our previous activities, a school is to be built up as far as possible within the present school system. Mr. Molt has decided to found such a school for the children of his employees in the Waldorf-Astoria Cigarette Factory.² Other children will be able to come, but at first of course only in limited numbers. Naturally, we will have to take into account the educational goals of the State. The children will have to achieve this and that by the end of a year, and we will have to make certain compromises. But we will be able to intermix something with what the State requires, because, according to socialistic ideas, the State is the especially clever idol. So, we shall have to intermix with what it demands that which is required by the real nature of man. This has to be recognized. But who today thinks of the fact that the prevailing plan of study is the murderer of truly human education? There are people whose thoughts in this direction are such that one is inclined to say: The world stands on its head, one has to turn it back on its legs. For many would shorten the lessons and change the subjects every half hour. This today is considered ideal. Just imagine: Religion, arithmetic, geography, drawing, singing, one after the other. In our heads they tumble through each other like the stones of a kaleidoscope. Only the outer world says, “Now that's something like it!”—because there is not the slightest interrelating between these subjects.

Few believe it is necessary now to think on a large scale; not to think petty thoughts but to have great, comprehensive views. We experience again and again that people finally have become accustomed to saying, “Indeed, revolution is necessary!” Even a large part of the bourgeoisie believes today in revolution. I do not know if that is the case here, but there are large areas where a majority of the bourgeoisie believes revolution to be necessary. But if we offer them such things as are stated in my book, The Threefold Social Order, they say: “We do not understand this. It is too complicated.” Lichtenberg once said, “If a head and a book strike together and a hollow sound results it is not necessarily the fault of the book.” But people do not believe this, because—it is not self-knowledge that is chiefly produced in men's souls. One can experience that throughout extensive regions the philistines believe in revolution, yet they say, “O no, we cannot enter into such deep questions, such comprehensive thoughts; you must tell us how shoe production can be socialized, how the pharmacies are to be socialized,” and so on. “You must tell us how, in the revolutionized State, I can sell my spices.”

One gradually discovers then what these people really mean. They mean that they agree there must be a revolution, but everything should remain as it has been, nothing should be changed by it. Many a person asks, how can we make the world over?—but so that nothing is changed! The most remarkable ones in this respect are the so-called intellectuals. With them one can have the most extraordinary experiences. One heard it repeatedly stated, “Very well, three members—autonomous universities, a spiritual life that governs itself—but then, how shall we live? Who will pay our salaries if the State no longer pays us?”

Today we really have to confront these things. It is necessary that we stop turning away from these questions again and again. Precisely in the sphere of the spiritual life a change must be brought about.

• 1. By 1969 this amount, of course, has been greatly increased.—Tr.
• 2. In the course of the next ten years this “Waldorf School” became the largest private school in Germany, with a waiting list of applicants from several European countries and the United States.

What I have to say today will be a kind of interlude. I should like to speak briefly about three concepts which, if they are fully understood, can bring about an understanding of outer social life. I say expressly outer social life because these three concepts originate from people's cooperation in outer affairs. I refer to the concepts commodity, labor, capital. I have already told you that modern political economy in all its shadings endeavors in vain to arrive at complete clarity about these concepts. That was not possible after men began to think consciously in a political-economic fashion. Prior to the middle of the fifteenth century there can be no question of people consciously comprehending their mutual social relationships. Life took its course more or less unconsciously, instinctively, in regard to the social forces playing between man and man. Since then, however, in the age when the consciousness-soul is being developed, people have had to think more and more consciously about social relationships. And so, every kind of idea and direction in the life of human society has arisen. This begins with the school of the Mercantilists, then the school of the Physiocrats, Adam Smith, the various Utopian streams, Proudhon, Fourrier, and so on, right up to modern social-democracy on one side and modern academic political economy on the other.

It is interesting to compare the modern social-democratic theory based on Marx and Engels, with modern academic political economy, which is completely unproductive. It produces no concepts capable of permeating the social will. Nothing results from the confused, chaotic concepts of modern academic political economy if we pose the question of what is to happen in social life, because this academic economy is infected by the concepts of modern science. You know that in spite of the great and admirable progress of natural science, which is not denied by spiritual science, this modern science in the schools and universities completely rejects all that springs from the spirit. As a result, political economy wants only to observe what happens in economic life. But this has become almost impossible in recent times because the more people have evolved in the modern age the less have they had thoughts that could cope with economic facts. Economic facts took their own course mechanically, as if by themselves; they were not accompanied by human thinking. Therefore, observing these thought-bereft facts of the world market cannot lead to laws, and has not done so, because our political economy is practice without theory, without ideas, and our social-democratic endeavors are theory without practice. The socialistic theory can never be put into practice, for it is a theory without insight into practical life. We suffer in modern times from the fact that we have an economic life that is practice without ideas, and with it the mere theory of the social democrats without the possibility of introducing this theory into economic life. Thus, we have reached a turning point in the historical evolution of mankind.

Since social life has to be founded upon the relation of man to man it will be easy for you to realize that a certain attitude has to underlie all human endeavor to found a socially just life. That is what is so important in the threefold membering of the social organism, namely, that this certain attitude, this feeling, be generated in the interrelated spheres of social action. Without this mood of soul among men social life cannot flourish. This soul quality will definitely be taken into account by the threefold social organism. I should therefore like to point today to certain aspects of this matter.

If you think of social life as an organism you will have to imagine that something of a soul-spiritual nature streams through it. Just as in the human and animal organism the blood is the bearer of the air that is inhaled and exhaled, so something must breathe through, must circulate through the entire social organism.

Here we come to a chapter that is hard for modern man to comprehend because he is so little prepared for it; but it must be comprehended if there is to be any question at all of a social reformation. The fact that in the social life of the future the content of human conversation will be of special significance, is something that must be understood. Results will depend upon what people take seriously when they exchange their ideas, their sensations, their feelings. The views that hold sway among men are not insignificant if they wish to become social beings. It is necessary for the future that general education be governed not merely by concepts derived from science or industry, but by concepts that can be the basis for imaginations. Improbable as it may seem to modern man, nevertheless it will not be possible to develop a social life if people are not given imaginative concepts; that is to say, concepts which shape the human mind quite differently from the merely abstract concepts of cause and effect, energy and matter, and so forth, that are derived from natural science. These concepts derived from science which govern everything today, even art, will be of no avail in the social life of the future. For that we must make it possible again to comprehend the world in pictures.

What is meant by that I have repeatedly indicated, also in regard to the question of education. I have said: If we intimately occupy ourselves with children it is easy to impart to them, let us say, the idea of immortality by showing them the chrysalis of a butterfly, how it opens and the butterfly emerges and flies away. We then can make clear to the child, “Your body is like the chrysalis, and in it there lives something like the butterfly, but it is invisible. When you come to die, with you too the butterfly emerges and flies into the spiritual world.” Through such comparisons we bring about an imaginative effect. But we must not merely think out such a comparison; this would only be acting in the manner of the scientific view. What is the attitude of people with present-day education as they hear such a comparison? Modern men, even when they are barely grown up, are very clever, exceedingly clever. They do not consider at all that one might be clever differently from the way they, in their abstract concepts, deem themselves clever. Men are very peculiar in regard to their modern cleverness!

A few weeks ago, I gave a lecture in a certain city. It was followed by a meeting of a political science association in which a university professor—a clever man of our time, of course—spoke about my lecture and what was connected with it. He was of the opinion that not only the views I had advanced but also those to be found in my books, are infantile. Well, I understand such a judgment. I understand it especially well when the man is a university professor. I understand it for the reason that science, which he represents, has quite lost all imaginative life and considers infantile what it does not comprehend. It is characteristic of modern men in their cleverness that they say: If we are to employ such an image, which compares the immortal soul with the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis, we, the clever ones, know that it is an image we have made; we have passed beyond the content of such an image. But the child is childlike, so we compare what we know in our concepts with this image, yet we ourselves do not believe in it. The secret of the matter is, however, that in that case the child does not believe in it either. The child is only taken hold of by the picture if we ourselves believe in it. The genuine spiritual-scientific attitude is to restore in us the faculty of seeing in nature not the ghost-like things of which science speaks, but the pictorial, the imaginative. What emerges from the chrysalis and is present in the butterfly is really an image for the immortality of the soul placed into the order of nature by the divine world order. If there were no immortal soul there would be no butterfly emerging from the chrysalis. There can be no real image if truth is not the basis for it. So it is with all of nature. What natural science offers is a ghost. We can comprehend nature only if we know that it is an image for something else.

Likewise, people must accustom themselves to considering the human head as an image of a heavenly body. The human head is not round in order to resemble a head of cabbage, but rather to resemble the form of a celestial body. The whole of nature is pictorial and we must find our way into this imagery. Then there will radiate into the hearts, the souls and minds, even into the heads—and this is most difficult—what can permeate man if he takes in pictures. In the social organism we will have to speak with each other about things that are expressed in pictures. And people will have to believe in these pictures. Then there will come from scientific circles persons able to speak about the real place of commodities in life, because the commodity produced corresponds to a human need. No abstract concepts can grasp this human need in its social value. Only that person can know something about it whose soul has been permeated by the discernment that springs from imaginative thinking. Otherwise there will be no socialization. You may employ in the social organism those who rightly ascertain what is needed, but if at the same time imaginative thinking is not incorporated in the social organism through education it is impossible to arrive at an organic social structure. That means, we must speak in images. However strange it may sound to the socialistic thinker of today, it is necessary that in order to arrive at a true socializing we must speak from man to man in pictures, which induce imaginations. This indeed is how it must happen. What is a commodity will be feelingly understood by a science that gains understanding through pictures, and by no other science.

In the society of the future a proper understanding of labor will have to be a dominating element. What men say today about labor is sheer nonsense, for human labor is not primarily concerned with the production of goods. Karl Marx calls commodities crystallized labor power. This is nonsense, nothing else; because what takes place when a man works is that he uses himself up in a certain sense. You can bring about this self-consumption in one way or another. If you happen to have enough money in the bank or in your purse you can exert yourself in sports and use your working power in this way. You also might chop wood or do some other chore. The work may be the same whether you chop wood or engage in a sport. The important thing is not how much work-power you exert, but for what purpose you use it in social life. Labor as such has nothing to do with social life insofar as this social life is to produce goods or commodities. In the threefold social organism, therefore, an incitement to labor will be needed which is completely different from the one that produces goods. Goods will be produced by labor because labor has to be used for something. But that which must be the basis for a man's work is the joy and love for work itself. We shall only achieve a social structure for society if we find the methods for inducing men to want to work, so that it becomes natural for them, a matter of course, that they work.

This can only happen in a society in which one speaks of inspired concepts. In future, men will never be warmed through by joy and love for work—as was the case in the past when things were instinctive and atavistic—if society is not permeated by such ideas and feelings as enter the world through the inspiration of initiates. These ideas must carry people along in such a way that they know: We have the social organism before us and we must devote ourselves to it. That is to say, work itself takes hold of their souls because they have an understanding for the social organism. Only those people will have such understanding who have heard and taken in those inspired concepts; that is to say, those imparted by spiritual science. In order that a love for work be re-born throughout mankind we cannot use those hollow concepts proclaimed today. We need spiritualized sciences which can permeate hearts and souls; permeate them in such a way that men will have joy and love for work. Labor will be placed alongside commodities in a society that not only hears about pictures through the educators of society, but also hears of inspirations and such concepts as are necessary to provide the means of production in our complicated society, and the necessary foundation upon which men can exist.

For this we further need to circulate intuitive concepts in society. The concepts about capital that you find in my book, The Threefold Social Order, will only flourish in a society which is receptive to intuitive concepts. That means: Capital will find its rightful place when men will acknowledge that intuition must live in them; commodity will find its rightful place when the necessity for imagination is acknowledged; and labor will find its rightful place when the necessity of inspiration is acknowledged.

If you take the above diagram and do not write the three concepts one below the other but in the way I have done here, then you can learn a lot from it if you permeate it with all the concepts to be found in my book about the threefold membering of the social organism. There are connections, back and forth, between labor and commodities; between commodities and capital, inasmuch as capital buys commodities; connections between labor and capital, and so on. Only, these three concepts must be arranged as shown.

Above everything, we must understand it is correct to say that in future the social order must become humanized. But it is necessary also to understand that the social order must be brought into being by men themselves; that they be willing to make up their minds to listen to the science of the initiates about imaginations, inspirations, and intuitions. This is a serious matter, for I am herewith stating nothing less than the fact that without the science of the spirit there will not take place in future any social transformation. That is the truth. It will never be possible to arouse in men the understanding necessary for matters like intuition, inspiration, imagination, if you abandon the schools to the State. For what does the State make out of schools?

Just think of something which has eminently to do with both the school and the State. I must confess I think it is something terrible, but people do not notice it. Think of civil rights, for example.¹ These rights are supposed to arise in the sense of those practices people today consider the proper thing. Parliaments decide about civil rights (I am speaking of democracy, not at all of monarchy). Civil rights are established through the representatives of everyone who has come of age. They are then incorporated in the body of law. Then the professor comes along and studies the law. Then he lectures on what he finds there as the declared civil rights. That is to say, the State at this point takes science in tow in the most decided way. The professor of civil rights may not lecture on anything but what is declared as rights in the State. Actually, the professor is not even needed, because one could record the State's laws for a phonograph and place this on the speaker's desk and let it run. This then is science.

I am citing an extreme case. You will scarcely assert that the majority decisions of parliaments today are inspired. The situation will have to be reversed. In spiritual life, in the universities, civil rights must come into existence as a science purely out of man's spiritual comprehension. The State can only attain its proper function if this is given to it by people. Some believe that the threefold membering of the social organism wants to turn the world upside down. Oh, no! The world is already upside down; the threefold order wishes to put it right-side up. This is what is important.

We have to find our way into such concepts or we move toward mechanizing the spirit, falling asleep and vegetizing the soul, and animalizing the body.

It is very important that we permeate ourselves with the conviction that we have to think thus radically if there is to be hope for the future. Above everything it is necessary for people to realize that they will have to build the social organism upon its three healthy members. They will only learn the significance of imagination in connection with commodities if economic life is developed in its pure form, and men are dependent upon conducting it out of brotherliness. The significance of inspiration for labor, producing joy and love for work, will only be realized if one person joins another as equals in parliaments, if real equality governs; that is, if every individual be permitted to contribute whatever of value lives in him. This will be different with each person. Then the life of rights will be governed by equality and will have to be inspired, not decided upon by the narrow-minded philistines as has been more and more the trend in ordinary democracy.

Capital can only be properly employed in the social organism if intuition will rise to freedom, and freedom will blossom from out the independently developing life of the spirit. Then there will stream out of spiritual life into labor what has to stream into it. I shall indicate the streams by arrows (Figure 2). When so organized these three spheres will permeate one another in the right way.

One of the first objections I met with in Germany was that people said: “Now he even wants to `three-member' the social organism! But the social organism must be a unity!” Men are simply hypnotized by this idea of unity, because they have always considered the State as something uniform. They are accustomed to this concept. A man who speaks of this unity appears to me like a man who says, “Now he even wants to have a horse that stands on four legs; a horse must be a unity, it cannot be membered into four legs.” Nobody will demand such a thing, of course, nor do I wish to put the “horse” State, the social organism, on one leg but upon its healthy three legs. Just as the horse-unit does not lose its unity by standing on four legs, likewise the social organism does not lose its unity by placing it upon its healthy three members. On the contrary, it acquires its unity just by placing it upon its healthy three members. Men today are entirely unable to free themselves from their accustomed concepts. But it is most important that we do not merely believe that single external establishments have to be transformed, but that it is our ideas, our concepts, our feelings that have to be transformed. Indeed, we may say that we need different heads on our shoulders if we wish to approach the future in a beneficial way. This is what is necessary and what is so hard for men to get accustomed to, because our old heads are so dear to us, these old heads that are only accustomed to thinking what they have thought for ages. Today we have consciously to transform what lives in our souls.

Now do not think this is an easy task. Many people believe today that they have already transformed their thoughts; they do not notice that they have remained the same old ones, especially in the field of education. Here you can have strange experiences. We tell people of the concepts spiritual science produces in the field of education. You may talk today to very advanced teachers, directors, and superintendents of schools; they listen to you and say, “Well, I thought that a long time ago; indeed, I am of exactly the same opinion.” In reality, however, they hold the very opposite opinion to what you tell them. They express the opposite opinion with the same words. In this way people pass each other by today. Words have lost connection with spirituality. It has to be found again or we cannot progress.

Social tasks, therefore, lie much more in the sphere of the soul than we ordinarily realize.

• 1. Translators' note: It must be emphasized that in Rudolf Steiner's social thinking these rights are only those which apply to everyone equally. It rules out the special connotations the expression has acquired in recent years, particularly in the United States of America.

From the various matters we have considered here you will have gathered that among the many problems under discussion today that of education is the most important. We had to emphasize that the entire social question contains as its chief factor, education. From what I indicated a week ago about the transformation of education it will have become clear to you that within the whole complex of this subject the training of teachers is the most important auxiliary question. When we consider the character of the epoch that has run its course since the middle of the fifteenth century it becomes evident that during this period there passed through mankind's evolution a wave of materialistic trials. In the present time it is necessary that we work our way out of this materialistic wave and find again the path to the spirit. This path was known to humanity in ancient cultural epochs, but it was followed more or less instinctively, unconsciously. Finally, it was lost in order that men might seek it out of their own impulse, their own freedom. This path must now be sought in its full consciousness.

The transition through which mankind had to pass after the middle of the fifteenth century is what might be called the materialistic test of mankind. If we observe the character of this materialistic period and the development of culture of the last three or four centuries right up to our time, we shall see that this materialistic wave has most intensively and quite particularly taken hold of teacher training. Nothing could have such a lasting effect as the permeation of educational philosophy by materialism. We only need to look at certain details in present-day education to appreciate the great difficulties in the way of progress. Those who today consider themselves well-versed in the problems of education say again and again that all instruction, even in the lowest grades, must be in the form of object lessons. In the teaching of arithmetic, for instance, mechanical aids to calculating are introduced. The greatest value is placed upon having the child see everything first, and then form his own inner concepts about it. To be sure, the urge for such objectivity in education is in many respects fully justified. Nevertheless, it raises the question, what becomes of a child if he only receives object lessons? He becomes psychically dried up; the inner dynamic forces of his soul gradually die out. His whole being unites with the objective surroundings, and what should sprout from his inmost soul is gradually deadened. The way material is presented in much of our education today is connected with this deadening of the soul. People do not realize that one kills the soul, but it really happens. And the consequence is what we experience with people today. How many are problem-laden personalities! How many are unable in their later years to produce out of their own inner resources that which could give them consolation and hope in difficult times and enable them to cope with the vicissitudes of life! We see at present many shattered natures. At important moments we ourselves are doubtful as to the direction we should take.

All this is connected with the deficiencies in our educational system, particularly in teacher training. What then do we have to strive for in order to have the right teacher training in future? The fact that a teacher knows the answers to what is asked in his examinations is a secondary matter, for he is mostly asked questions for which he could prepare himself by looking them up in a handbook. The examiners pay no attention to the general soul-attitude of the teacher, and that is what constantly has to pass from him to his students. There is a great difference between teachers as they enter a classroom. When one steps through the door the students feel a certain soul-relationship with him; when another enters they often feel no such relationship at all, but, on the contrary, they feel a chasm between them and are indifferent to him. This expresses itself in a variety of ways, even to ridiculing and sneering at him. All these nuances frequently lead to ruining any real instruction and education.

The burning question, therefore, is, how can teacher training be transformed in future? It can be transformed in only one way, and that is, that the teacher himself absorb what can come from spiritual science as knowledge of man's true nature. The teacher must be permeated by the reality of man's connection with the supersensible worlds. He must be in the position to see in the growing child evidence that he has descended from the supersensible world through conception and birth, has clothed himself with a body, and wishes to acquire here in the physical world what he cannot acquire in the life between death and a new birth, and in which the teacher has to help.

Every child should stand before the soul of the teacher as a question posed by the supersensible world to the sense world. This question cannot be asked in a definite and comprehensive way in regard to every individual child unless one employs the knowledge that comes from spiritual science concerning the nature of man. In the course of the last three or four centuries we gradually acquired the habit of observing man only in regard to his outer, bodily constitution, physiologically. This concept is detrimental, most of all for the educator. It will, therefore, be necessary above everything else for an anthropology resulting from anthroposophy to become the basis for education in the future. This, however, can only happen if man is considered from the points of view we have frequently touched upon here, that characterize him in many respects as a threefold being. But one must make up one's mind to grasp this three-foldness with penetrating insight. From various aspects I have drawn your attention to the fact that man as he confronts us is, first, a man of nerves and senses; popularly expressed he is a head-man. As a second member we have seen, externally, that part in which the rhythmical processes take place, the chest-man; and thirdly, connected with the entire metabolism is the limb-man, metabolic man. What man is as an active being is externally brought to completion in the physical configuration of these three members of his whole organism:

Head-man, or nerve-sense man;

Chest-man, or rhythmical man;

Limb-man, or metabolic man.

It is important to understand the differences between these three members, but this is very uncomfortable for people today because they love diagrams. If one says that man consists of head-man, chest-man, limb-man, he would like to make a line here at the neck, and what is above it is headman. Likewise, he would like to draw a line in order to limit the chest-man, and so he would have the three members neatly arranged, side by side. Whatever cannot be arranged in such a scheme is just of no interest to modern man.

But this does not correspond to reality. Reality does not make such outlines. To be sure, man above the shoulders is chiefly head-man, nerve-sense man, but he is not only that. The sense of touch and the sense of warmth, for instance, are spread over the whole body, so that the head-system permeates the entire organism. Thus, one can say, the human head is chiefly head. The chest is less head but still somewhat head. The limbs and everything belonging to the metabolic system are still less head, but nevertheless head. One really has to say that the whole human being is head, but only the head is chiefly head. The chest-man is not only in the chest; he is chiefly expressed, of course, in those organs where the rhythms of the heart and breathing are most definitely shown. But breathing also extends into the head; and the blood circulation in its rhythm continues on into the head and limbs.

So, we can say that our way of thinking is inclined to place these things side by side, and in this we see how little our concepts are geared to outer reality. For here things merge; and we have to realize that if we separate head, chest, and metabolic man we must think them together again. We must never think them as separated but always think them together again. A person who wishes only to think things separated resembles a man who wishes only to inhale, never to exhale.

Here you have something that teachers in future will have to do; they must quite specially acquire for themselves this inwardly mobile thinking, this unschematic thinking. For only by doing so can their soul forces approach reality. A person will not come near to reality if he is unable to conceive of approaching it from a larger point of view, as a phenomenon of the age. One has to overcome the tendency to be content with investigating life in its details, a tendency that has been growing in scientific studies. Instead one must see these details in connection with the great questions of life.

One question will become important for the entire evolution of spiritual culture in future, namely, the question of immortality. We must become clear about the way a great part of humanity conceives of immortality, particularly since the time when many have come to a complete denial of it. What lives in most people today who, still on the basis of customary religion, want to be informed about immortality? In these people there lives the urge to know something about what becomes of the soul when it has passed through the portal of death.

If we ask about the interest men take in the question of the eternity of man's essential being, we come to no other answer than this, that the main interest they have is connected with man's concern about what happens to him when he passes through death. Man is conscious of being an ego. In this ego his thinking, feeling, and willing live. The idea that this ego might be annihilated is unbearable to him. Above all then he is interested in the possibility of carrying the ego through death, and in what happens to it afterward. Most religious systems, in speaking about immortality, chiefly bear in mind this same question: What becomes of the human soul when man passes through death?

Now you must feel that the question of immortality, put in this manner, takes on an extraordinarily egotistical character. Basically, it is an egotistical urge that arouses man's interest in knowing what happens to him when he passes through death. If men of the present age would practice more self-knowledge, take counsel with themselves, and not surrender to illusions as they do now, they would realize the strong part egotism plays in the interest they have in knowing something about the destiny of the soul after death.

This kind of feeling has become especially strong in the last three to four centuries when the trials of materialism have come upon us. What has thus taken hold of human souls as a habit of thought and feeling cannot be overcome through abstract theories or doctrines. But must it remain so? Is it necessary that only the egotist in human nature speak when the question of the eternal core of man's being is raised?

When we consider everything connected with this problem we must say: The fact that man's soul-mood has developed as we have just indicated stems from the way religions have neglected to observe man as he is born, as he grows into the world from his first cry, as his soul in such miraculous fashion permeates the body more and more; their neglect to observe how in man there gradually develops that part of him which has lived in the spiritual world before birth. How little do people ask today: When man is born, what is it that continues on from the spiritual world into man as a physical being?

In future primary attention will have to be paid to this. We must learn to listen to the revelation of spirit and soul in the growing child as they existed before birth. We must learn to see in him the continuation of his sojourn in the spiritual world. Then our relationship to the eternal core of man's being will become less and less egotistical. For if we are not interested in what continues in physical life from out the spiritual world, if we are only interested in what continues after death, then we are egotistical. But to behold what continues out of the spiritual into physical existence in a certain way lays the basis for an unegotistical mood of soul.

Egotism does not ask about this continuation because it is certain that man exists, and one is satisfied with that fact. But he is uncertain whether he still exists after death, therefore he would like to have this proved. Egotism urges him on to this. But true knowledge does not accrue to man out of egotism, not even out of the sublimated egotism that is interested in the soul's continuation after death. Can one deny that the religions strongly reckon with such egotism? This must be overcome. He who is able to look into the spiritual world knows that from this conquest not only knowledge will result but an entirely different attitude toward one's human environment. We will confront the growing child with completely different feelings when we are aware that here we have the continuation of what could not tarry any longer in the spiritual world.

From this point of view just consider how the following takes on a different aspect. One could say that man was in the spiritual world before he descended into the physical world. Up there he must no longer have been able to find his goal. The spiritual world must have been unable to give to the soul what it strives for. There the urge must have arisen to descend into the physical world, to clothe oneself with a body in order to search in that world for what no longer could be found in the spiritual world as the time of birth approached.

It is a tremendous deepening of life if we adopt such a point of view in our feelings. Whereas the egotistical point of view makes man more and more abstract, theoretical, and inclines him toward head-thinking, the unegotistical point of view urges him to understand the world with love, to lay hold of it through love. This is one of the elements which must be taken up in teacher training; to look at prenatal man, and not only feel the riddle of death but also the riddle of birth.

Then, however, we must learn to raise anthropology to the higher level of anthroposophy, by acquiring a feeling for the forms that express themselves in three-membered man. I said recently that the head in its spherical form is, so to say, merely placed on top of the rest of the organism. And the chest-man, he appears as if we could take a piece of the head, enlarge it, and we would have the spine. While the head bears its center within itself, the chest-man has its center at a great distance from itself. If you were to imagine this as a large head, this head then would belong to a man lying on his back. Thus, if we were to consider this spine as an imperfect head we would have a man lying horizontally, and a man standing vertically.

If we consider metabolic man, matters become still more complicated, and it is not possible to draw this in two dimensions. In short, the three members of the human organism, observed as to their plastic form, appear very different from one another. The head, we may say, is a totality; the chest-man is not a totality but a fragment; and metabolic man is much more so.

Now why is it that the human head appears self-enclosed? It is because this head, of all the members of man's organism, is to the greatest degree adapted to the physical world. This may appear strange to you because you are accustomed to consider the human head as the noblest member of man. Yet it is true that this head is to the greatest degree adapted to physical existence. It expresses physical existence in the highest degree. Thus, we may say, if we wish to characterize the physical body in its main aspects we must look toward the head. In regard to the head, man is mostly physical body. In regard to the chest organs, the organs of rhythm, man is mostly ether body. In regard to the metabolic organs, he is mostly astral body. The ego has no distinct expression in the physical world as yet.

Here we have arrived at a point of view which is very important to consider. We must say to ourselves, if we look at the human head we see the chief part of the physical body. The head expresses to the highest degree what is manifest in man. In the chest-man the ether body is more active; therefore, physically, the chest of man is less perfect than the head. And metabolic man is still less perfect, because in it the ether body is but little active and the astral body is most active. I have often emphasized that the ego is the baby; as yet it has practically no physical correlate.

So, you see we may also describe man in the following way: He consists of the physical body, characterized mostly by the sphere-form of the head; he consists of the ether body, characterized mostly by the chest section; he consists of the astral body, characterized mostly by metabolic man. We can hardly indicate anything for the ego in physical man. Thus, each of the three members—the nerve-sense system, the rhythmic system, the metabolic system—becomes an image of something standing behind it: The head the image for the physical body; the chest for the ether body; metabolism for the astral body. We must learn to observe this, not in the manner of research clinics where a corpse is investigated, and no attention is paid to the question of whether a piece of tissue belongs to the chest or the head. We must learn to realize that head, chest, and metabolic man have different relationships to the cosmos and express in picture form different principles standing behind them. This will extend the present anthropological mode of observation into the anthropomorphic one. Observed purely physically, chest and head organs have equal value. Whether you dissect the lung or the brain, from the physical aspect both are matter. From the spiritual aspect, however, this is by no means the case. If you dissect the brain you have it quite distinctly before you. If you dissect the chest, let us say the lungs, you have them quite indistinctly before you, because the ether body plays its important role in the chest while man is asleep.

What I have just discussed has its spiritual counter-image. One who has advanced through meditation, through the exercises described in our literature, gradually comes to the point where he really experiences man in his three members. You know that I speak of this threefold membering from a certain point of view in the chapter of my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, where I indicate the Guardian of the Threshold. But one can also bring about a picture of this three-membering through strong concentration upon one's self, by separating head-man, chest-man, and metabolic-man. Then one will notice what it is that makes the head into this head we have. If through inner concentration we withdraw the head from its appendage, the rest of the organism, and have it before us without the influence of the other members, the head is dead; it is no longer alive. It is impossible, clairvoyantly, to separate the head from the rest of the organism without perceiving it as a corpse. With the chest-system this is possible; it remains alive. And if you separate the astral body by separating the metabolic system, it runs away from you. The astral body does not remain in its place, it follows the cosmic movements.

Now imagine you stand before a child with the knowledge I have just developed for you, and you look at him in an unbiased way. You observe his head, how it carries death in itself. You look at the influence of the chest upon the head; it comes alive. You see the child as he starts to walk. You notice that it is the astral body that is active in walking. Now the child becomes something inwardly transparent to you. The head—a corpse; the outspreading life in him when he stands still, is quiet. The moment he begins to walk you notice that it is the astral body that walks. Man can walk because this astral body uses up substances in moving, metabolism is active in a certain way. How can we observe the ego?—for everything now has been exhausted, so to say. You observe the head-man, the life-giving element of the chest-man, the walking. What remains by which we might observe the ego externally? I have already stated that the ego hardly has an external correlate. You can see the ego only if you observe a child in his increasing growth. At one year he is very little; at two he is bigger, and so on. As you connect your impressions of him year after year, then join in your mind what he is in the successive years, you see the ego physically. You never see the ego in a child if you merely confront him, but only when you see him grow. If men would not surrender to illusions but see reality they would be aware of the fact that when they meet a person they cannot physically perceive his ego, only when they observe him in the various periods of his life. If you meet a man again after twenty years you will perceive his ego vividly in the change that has taken place in him; especially if twenty years ago you saw him as a child.

Now I beg you not to ponder just theoretically what I have said. I ask you to enliven your thoughts and consider this when you observe man: Head—corpse; chest—vitalization; the astral body in walking; the ego through growing. Thus, the whole man comes alive who previously confronted you like a wax doll. For what is it that we ordinarily see of man with our physical eyes and our intellect? A wax doll! It comes alive if you add what I have just described.

In order to do this, you need to have your perception permeated by what spiritual science can pour into your feelings, into your relationship to the world. A walking child discloses to you the astral body. The gesture of his walking—every child walks differently—stems from the configuration of his astral body. Growth expresses something of the ego.

Here karma works strongly in man. As an example, somewhat removed from our present age, take Johann Gottlieb Fichte. I have characterized him for you from various aspects, as a great philosopher, as a Bolshevist, and so on. Now let us look at him from another point of view, imagining him as he passed us by on the street and we watched him as he went. We would see a man, stocky, not very tall. What does the manner in which he has grown, disclose? He is stunted. He puts his feet, heels first, firmly on the ground. The whole Fichte-ego expresses itself in this. Not a detail of the man do we miss when we observe him so—his growth stunted by hunger in his youth, stocky, putting his heels down firmly. We could hear the manner of his speech by observing him in this way from behind.

You see, a spiritual element can enter into the externalities of life, but this does not occur unless men change their attitude. For people today, such observation of their fellowmen might be an evil indiscretion, and it would not be very desirable if this were to spread. People have been so influenced by ever-growing materialism that they, for instance, refrain from opening letters that do not belong to them only because it is prohibited; otherwise they would do it. With such an attitude, things cannot change. But the more we grow toward the future the more must we learn to take in spiritually what surrounds us in the sense world. The start must be made with the pedagogical activity of the teacher in regard to the growing child. Physiognomic pedagogy; the will to solve the greatest riddle, MAN, in every single individual, through education.

Now you can feel how strong is the test for mankind in our times. What I have discussed here really presses forward toward individualization, toward the consideration of every human being as an entity in himself. As a great ideal the thought must hover before us that no one person duplicates another; every single individual is a being in himself. Unless we learn to acknowledge that everyone is an entity in himself mankind will not attain its goal on earth. But how far removed we are today from the attitude that strives for this goal! We level human beings down. We do not test them in regard to their individual qualities. Hermann Bahr, of whom I have often spoken to you, disclosed once how the education of our times tends to do away with individualization. He participated in the social life of the 1890's in Berlin, and one evening at a dinner party he was seated of course with one lady at his right, another at his left. The next evening he sat again between two ladies, but only from the place cards could he gather that they were two different ladies. He did not look at them very attentively because, after all, the lady of yesterday and the lady of today did not look any different. What he saw in them was exactly the same. The culture of society, and especially of industry, makes every human being appear the same, externally, not permitting the individuality to emerge. Thus, present-day man strives for leveling, whereas the inmost goal of man must be his striving for individualization. We cover up individuality, whereas it is most important to seek it.

In his instruction the teacher must begin to direct his insight toward the individuality. Teacher training has to be permeated by an attitude which strives to find the individuality in men. This can only come about through an enlivening of our thoughts about man as I have described it. We must really become conscious of the fact that it is not a mechanism that moves one forward, but the astral body; it pulls the physical body along. Compare what thus can arise in your souls as an inwardly enlivened and mobile image of the whole human being, with what ordinary science offers today—a homunculus, a veritable homunculus! Science says nothing about man, it preaches the homunculus. The real human being above everything else must come into pedagogy, for now he is completely outside of it.

The question of education is a question of teacher training, and as long as this fact is not recognized nothing fruitful can come into education. You see, from a higher point of view things so belong together that one can make a true connection between them. Today one strives to develop man's activities as subjects side by side. A student learns anthropology, he learns about religion; the subjects have nothing to do with each other. In fact, as you have seen, what one observes about man borders on the question of immortality, of the eternal essence of human nature. We had to link this question to one's immediate perception of man. It is this mobility of soul experience which must enter education. Then, inner faculties quite different from those developed today in teacher training schools will come into being. This is of great importance.

Today I wished to put before you the fact that the science of the spirit must permeate everything, and that without it the great social problems of the present time cannot be solved.

In the observations we are making here we have to enter more and more into the history of the age and see how cosmic forces work into the evolution of the present time and form the foundations of our human life. You have seen from our discussions yesterday that it becomes increasingly necessary to transform the rigid, abstract concepts one is accustomed to at present into flowing, mobile, living concepts if mankind is to progress. A special light is thrown upon all the facts in question by that soul force we call intelligence. The man of the present is particularly proud of his intelligence. He considers the gradual acquisition of intelligence a special mark of distinction.

If man today looks back into earlier epochs when people had pictorial thoughts, he considers their constitution of spirit and soul in that time childlike. He believes that only through his intelligence and his science can one acquire a correct knowledge of what people in earlier periods of evolution tried to comprehend through myths and legends. He looks back to those childlike stages of evolution and is very proud of having come so far, especially in the development of intelligence. Now let us consider the special characteristics of human intelligence, that soul force in which modern man takes such pride. If we speak today of intelligence we refer to a soul force of which we have a definite concept and cannot imagine it to be different. People of former epochs, however, also had intelligence, but of a different sort. If we wish to become fully acquainted with the significance of so-called intelligence for modern man, we must ask: What was the nature of former intelligence, and how did it gradually change into the intelligence of our time?

Today we shall not go back further than the third post Atlantean period, the Egypto-Chaldean, followed by the Greco-Latin, which in turn was followed by our own. We shall consider the peculiarity of the intelligence of these ancient peoples and then pass over to the special kind of intelligence that we of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch possess. You see from this that I assume it is not correct to think intelligence is intelligence, that only one kind is possible; that whoever has our intelligence is intelligent, and whoever does not have it is un-intelligent. This is not correct. Intelligence passes through metamorphoses and transforms itself. In the Egypto-Chaldean period it was different from today. This can best be described by saying, those people felt and comprehended instinctively, through their intelligence, their relationship to the entire cosmos. The Egyptians and Chaldeans thought very little, or not at all, about what modern man thinks by means of his intelligence. When they brought their intelligence into play their connection with the cosmos lived in it. They knew their relationship to this or that zodiacal constellation; they knew what kind of influence moon, sun, and planets had upon man's soul and bodily constitutions. They knew the influence of the course of the seasons upon him. All this they grasped through their intelligence. They acquired an entirely inward picture of their relationship with the cosmos.

This intelligence had become transformed by the time the Egypto-Chaldean period came to an end in the eighth century B.C. The connection with the cosmos was no longer the vital experience it had been prior to this time. It lived like an echo, a kind of memory in human souls. In its place there entered into the Greek intelligence man's reflecting on himself as an earth dweller, how he is related to the cosmos. But the Greek had a certain feeling in using his intelligence. He understood everything of the earthly world that is subject to death. He knew that if he wanted to comprehend the supersensible he had to turn to that power of perception which still existed atavistically in the pre-Christian era. Through reflection, through intelligence, he learned to know the laws which underlie all that dies on earth. Said the pupils of Plato: “If I want to understand the living I must see; by merely thinking I only grasp what is dead.”

In the Greek mystery schools something quite definite in this connection was explained. It was about like this: Everything is spiritual; spiritual processes and laws also underlie what seems to be material. There are spiritual laws that concern you in so far as you have a body. When you pass through the portal of death your body is delivered to the material powers and substances of the earth. But these powers and substances are only apparently material. They too are spiritual, but they are permeated by that spiritual force which appears to you as death. If with your intelligence you grasp any kind of laws, you see that these are the laws of death. They are the laws that are active in graves, in corpses. If you want to know the nature of the spiritual powers in which you live here on earth, or in the body-free state between death and a new birth—thus spoke the mystery teacher to his pupils—then you must be convinced of that which you see. If you are not so convinced, concepts and ideas developed only through your intelligence will merely grasp the spirit in matter, in your physical body.

Whereas the Egypto-Chaldean felt and perceived in his intelligence his relationship to the entire cosmos, the Greek perceived through his intelligence what governs the tomb. We, too, only perceive through our intelligence what governs the tomb; however, we are not conscious of it. So, we go to the dissecting laboratories, investigate the corpse, and consider the laws of the corpse that we grasp through our intelligence to be the laws of man. Yet, they are only the laws of the grave.

But again, since the middle of the fifteenth century, a gradual transformation of intelligence is taking place. Although it is still very much like that of the Greeks it is undergoing a transformation, and we are in the beginning of it. In the coming centuries and millennia this intelligence will become something very, very different. Even today it shows a tendency toward what will come in future, a tendency merely to grasp what is error, untruth, deception; a tendency to ponder only what is evil.

The mystery pupils and especially the initiates had known for some time that human intelligence approaches its development toward evil, and that it becomes more and more impossible to recognize the good through mere intelligence. Mankind finds itself today within this transition. We may say, it is still barely possible, if men exert their intelligence and do not bear especially wild instincts in themselves, to look toward the light of what is good. But human intelligence will more and more develop the inclination to plan evil, to bring error into knowledge, and insert evil into man's moral life.

This is one of the reasons initiates called themselves men of anxiety. Indeed, if one observes the evolution of mankind from this aspect as I have just done, it causes anxiety, precisely because of the way intelligence is developing. It is not for nothing that it fills modern man with pride and haughtiness. This is the pre-taste of intelligence becoming evil in the fifth post-Atlantean age, which is beginning now. If man were not to develop anything else but intelligence he would become an evil being on earth. If we want to think of a wholesome future for mankind, we must not count on the one-sided development of intelligence. In Egypt and Chaldea, it was good; later it entered into a relationship with the forces of death; and it will enter into a relationship with the forces of error, deception, and evil.

This is something about which mankind should have no illusions. In an unbiased fashion humanity should reckon with the fact that it has to protect itself against this one-sided development of intelligence. It is not in vain that precisely through the anthroposophically oriented science of the spirit another element will be added by taking in what can be gained through a renewed perception of the spiritual world. This cannot be grasped by intelligence, but only if we take into ourselves what the science of initiation brings down from the spiritual world through vision.

But something quite objective is necessary here. At this point we confront a deep secret of Christian-esoteric development. If the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place in the course of earth evolution human beings could not avoid gradually becoming evil through their intelligence; inevitably they would fall prey to error. You know that with the Mystery of Golgotha there flowed into mankind's evolution not merely a doctrine, a theory, a world view, a religion, but a real fact. In the man Jesus of Nazareth there lived the extraterrestrial being, the Christ. Through the fact that the Christ dwelt in Jesus of Nazareth, when Jesus died the Christ-being passed over into earthly evolution. He is within it. We must only be conscious that this is an objective fact which has nothing to do with what we know or feel subjectively. We must know it for the sake of knowledge; we must take it up into our ethical culture for the sake of our morality. The Christ-being has flowed into mankind's evolution. He is within it since the resurrection. He dwells especially in our soul forces. Take this fact in its full depth!

Look at the difference between men who lived before the Mystery of Golgotha and those who lived after it. Certainly they are the same people, because souls pass through repeated earth lives. But we must differentiate between those who lived before this Mystery and those who lived after it. A general concept of God is not the Christ concept. We can arrive at a general concept of God if we observe nature in her phenomena, if we observe physical man, externally. The Christ-being is of such a nature that we can only come near it if, in the course of earthly life, we uncover something in ourselves. We can find the general concept of God by simply saying: We have come into existence out of the forces of the world. The Christ concept we must find in ourselves by advancing beyond the phenomena in nature. If, living in the world, we do not find the concept of God, this is a kind of sickness. A healthy human being is never really atheistic. If he is, he must be bodily or psychically sick in some way, and the illness expresses itself in atheism.

To be unable to recognize the Christ is not an illness but a misfortune, the neglecting of an opportunity offered by life. By reflecting upon our having been born out of nature and its forces, and pursuing this thought with a healthy soul, we may arrive at a concept of God. By experiencing in the course of our life something like a re-birth we may arrive at a concept of Christ. Birth leads to God; re-birth to Christ. This re-birth, through which Christ as a Being may be found in man, could not be attained prior to the Mystery of Golgotha. This is the difference upon which I wish you to focus your attention. Prior to the Mystery of Golgotha man could not yet experience this re-birth, could not yet recognize that Christ lives in him, because the Christ being had not yet flowed into mankind. After the Mystery of Golgotha man can recognize Him. He can find the spark of Christ in himself if he exerts himself in the way he lives.

In this re-birth, this finding of the Christ-spark in oneself, in being able to say sincerely and honestly to oneself, “Not I but the Christ in me,” lies the possibility of preventing the intellect from falling prey to deception and evil. And this, in the esoteric Christian sense, is the higher concept of redemption. We must develop our intelligence, for we must not become un-intelligent; but in striving to develop it we are faced with the temptation to fall into error and evil. We can escape this temptation only if we acquire a feeling for what the Mystery of Golgotha has brought into mankind's evolution.

It is already so, that man in his consciousness of Christ, in his union with Christ, can find the possibility of escaping evil and error. The man of Egypt and Chaldea did not need re-birth in Christ because he still felt his relationship with the cosmos through his natural intelligence. The Greek faced the seriousness of death when he surrendered to his intelligence. Now mankind lives at the beginning of an age in which intelligence would become evil if human souls would not let themselves be permeated by the Christ-power. This is a very serious matter. It shows how certain things that proclaim themselves in our time have to be taken; how we have to be aware that in our age men acquire the aptitude for evil precisely because they approach a higher development of their intelligence. It would of course be entirely wrong to believe that we should suppress intelligence. It must not be suppressed. But for the person with insight a certain courage will be needed in future in surrendering to intelligence, because it tempts one to evil and error; and because, in the permeation of intelligence with the Christ-principle, we must find the possibility of transforming intelligence. It would become completely Ahrimanic if the Christ-principle were not to permeate human souls.

You see how much of what I have just characterized is already coming to light, which is perceptible to a person with insight. As you think about it, just notice how many cruelties permeate our culture, cruelties with which the cruelties of barbarian times cannot be compared. If you consider this you will hardly doubt that the dawn of the decline in intelligence is proclaiming itself. One should not look superficially at the so-called cultural phenomena of our age. Nor should one doubt that modern men have to arouse themselves to a real comprehension of the Christ-impulse if evolution is to go forward in a healthy way. Two evidences of this can be definitely seen today: People who are very intelligent and have a decided inclination toward evil; and many others who subconsciously suppress but do not fight this inclination toward evil, merely letting their intelligence sleep. Drowsiness of the soul; or, with wakeful souls, a strong inclination toward evil and error—this may be observed at present.

Now remember what I said to you here one evening before my last journey, how different children are who were born within the last five to eight years, from those born some decades earlier. They have a trace of melancholy in their faces which is clearly discernible. This comes from the fact that souls today do not gladly descend into this world so filled with materialism. One might say that the souls have a certain fear and reluctance to enter the world in which intelligence is inclined toward evil and is in a declining development.

This also is something future educators and teachers must take into their consciousness. Children today are different from those of some decades ago. Even superficial observation shows this clearly. One has to educate and teach them differently from previous times. One must teach out of awareness that one has to bring about a salvation in the case of every individual child; that one has to steer him toward finding the Christ-impulse in the course of his life, toward finding a re-birth within himself.

Such things must not live in the teacher as mere theory; they can be introduced into one's teaching only if one is strongly taken hold of by them in one's own soul. It must be demanded of teachers especially that their souls be strongly gripped by the anxiety that arises in confronting the temptation the intellect offers. The pride that man takes today in his intellect might indeed take its revenge if it were not checked by his being consciously able to say, strongly and energetically, “The best in me as a human being of this and following incarnations is what I find in myself as the Christ-impulse.”

We must, however, be clear that this Christ-impulse must not be the dogmatism of some religious body. Since the middle of the fifteenth century religious communities, instead of bringing the Christ-impulse close to mankind, have contributed to its alienation. The religious bodies pretend this or that, but in doing so they do not bring the Christ-impulse near to man. It is necessary for a person to feel that everything in relation to the Mystery of Golgotha which can reveal itself to his inmost being is connected with what has come into the earth through that Mystery. If we experience the true meaning of the earth as inherent in that Mystery, then we must bring ourselves to say: The evolution of the earth would be meaningless if man were to fall prey through his intelligence to evil and error. Thus, if we feel wherein the real meaning of earth evolution actually lies, we also feel that this evolution would be senseless without the Mystery of Golgotha.

We must permeate ourselves through and through with this conviction if, today and in future, we wish to do something toward man's education and instruction. We require these comprehensive points of view. But you know how far people are today from such views. Therefore, nothing is more necessary than to point again and again not only to the importance of spiritual scientific teaching, but to the seriousness that must take hold of our souls through our learning to know through spiritual science the pertinent facts in the evolution of mankind. For not only our knowledge but our whole life is to receive an impulse through spiritual science. Without our feeling this seriousness we are not true scientists of the spirit.

I beg you to pay close attention to this particular revelation out of spiritual science: That human intelligence, left to itself, travels on the path toward the Ahrimanic; that it can become active for the good only through taking in the true Christ-impulse. I believe that whoever takes the full seriousness of this truth into himself will also carry the same seriousness into the relationship he forms to the various world concepts and movements of the present time. Here there is much to be done.

People who have recently come from the East of Europe tell with great horror of a fact that indeed does not testify to an advance on the path toward civilization. I refer to the coming into existence of the so-called “gun-women.” This is a special class of people, women of the East-European population, who are being used in the present revolutionary movements. In certain regions of the East young women are chosen and equipped with guns left over from the war, and their task is to shoot those people who are opposing the government in power. These female gunmen are dressed up in stolen finery and take their pleasure in carrying guns and shooting people. They consider it to be in tune with modern attitudes to brag about the fine feeling they have gradually acquired for the way the blood of young people spurts out, and how the blood of older people looks. In truth, we have arrived at a quite special configuration of our modern civilization! For the institution of gun-women is a development of the present age.

We have to point to such phenomena. They make us see the counterpart of the seriousness of our age. Of course, we need not know of these abominable excesses in our so-called progressive culture in order really to feel this seriousness which calls upon us for devoted attention to it at the present time. Such seriousness arises in us out of knowing the evolution of mankind itself. One could wish that the sleep which has taken hold of modern man may pass over into an awakening. The most worthy awakening can only consist in being gripped by the earnestness of the task given to humanity, and by seeing the danger of the intellect being one-sidedly left to itself and moving in an Ahrimanic direction. This should be the force permeating us with such earnestness.

What I said yesterday about the path of the human intellect toward the future, rests upon definite facts that can be brought to light through spiritual-scientific knowledge. Today we shall deal with some of these facts. You must be conscious in a practical way, I might say, of the following.

When a man confronts you, he is that being we speak about in spiritual science. That is to say, above everything we must always be aware that he is a four-membered being, as you know from my book Theosophy. We have before us the ego, the astral body, ether body, and physical body. The fact that every time a person stands before us we are confronted by these four members of the human entity, brings it about that ordinary human perception does not know what it faces in man. Ordinarily one thinks: “What I see before me, filling space, is the physical body.” But what is physical in it we would not see as we usually see it if it were to confront us merely as physical body. We see it as it usually is today only because it is permeated by the ether body, the astral body, and ego. Strange as it may sound, that which is the physical body proper is a corpse, even during our lifetime. When we are confronted by a human corpse we are actually confronted by the physical body. In the corpse we have physical man not permeated by ether and astral body and ego. It is forsaken by them and shows its true nature. You do not visualize yourself properly if you believe you carry what you consider to be the physical body of man with you through space. A more correct view would be if you thought of yourself as a corpse with your ego, astral and etheric bodies carrying this corpse through space.

A consciousness of the true nature of man's being becomes more and more important for our age. For the conditions existing in the present cycle of mankind's evolution were not the same in earlier periods. What I am now relating cannot be ascertained by outer physical science, but spiritual-scientific cognition does observe these facts. As you know, the fourth post Atlantean age begins in the eighth century B.C.; further back we come to the Egypto-Chaldean period. At that time human bodies had a constitution different from that of today. Those you find now in the museum as mummies had a much more delicate constitution than present-day human bodies. They were much more permeated by the plant element; they were not so completely corpse as is the modern human body. As physical bodies they were akin to plant nature, whereas the present-day physical body, since the Greco-Latin age, is akin to the mineral world. If through some cosmic miracle the bodies of that ancient population were to be bestowed upon us, we would all be ill. We would carry proliferating growths in our body. Many a disease consists in the fact that the human body atavistically returns to conditions that were the normal ones in the Egypto-Chaldean age. Today we find tumorous formations in the body which are caused by the fact that a part of this or that person's body develops the tendency to become what the whole body was for the ancient Egypto-Chaldean population.

This is closely connected with human evolution. We as modern men carry a corpse in our body. The ancient Egyptian carried as his body something of a plant-like nature. The result was that his knowledge was different from ours, his intelligence acted differently. What do we know through our science that we are so proud of? Only that which is dead. Science shows that life cannot be grasped with ordinary intelligence. To be sure, certain research scientists believe that if they continue with their chemical experiments the moment will come when they will be able, through complicated combinations of atoms, molecules, and their interactions, to know the processes of life. This moment will never come. On the chemico-physical path one will only be able to grasp the minerally dead; that is to say, one will only grasp that aspect of the living which is a corpse.

Yet, what in man is intelligent and gains knowledge is nevertheless this physical body, this corpse. What then does this corpse do as we carry it about? It achieves most in a knowledge of mathematics and geometry. Everything is transparent there. The further we move from the mathematical-geometrical the more un-transparent do matters become. The reason for this is that the human corpse is the real knower today; the dead can only recognize the dead. Today what the ether body is, the astral body, the ego, does not think in man; it remains in obscurity. If the ether body would be able to know in the same way that the physical body knows the dead, it would know the life of the plant world. This was the peculiar thing with the Egyptian, that with his plant-like, living body he had knowledge of the plant world in a way quite different from ours. Much instinctive knowledge of the plant world can be traced back to what was embodied in Egyptian culture through their instinctively knowing consciousness. Even what is known today in botany about substances for medicinal use comes often from traditions originating in ancient Egyptian wisdom. You know how a number of so-called lodges, not founded on genuine fundamentals, call themselves Egyptian lodges. That is because they refer back to Egypt if they want to impart certain knowledge—which, however, is no longer very valuable. In these circles there still live certain traditions stemming from the wisdom which could be had through the Egyptian body. One can say, as humanity gradually progresses into the Greco-Latin period the living, human plant-body gradually died out. We carry an extremely dead body in us; especially is this true for the head. The science of the initiates perceives the human head as a corpse, as something continually dying. More and more will humanity become conscious of the fact that its vehicle for knowledge is a corpse; that it therefore knows only what is dead.

For this reason, the further we go into the future the more intensively will we feel a longing to know what is living. But the living will not be known through ordinary intelligence bound to the corpse. Much will be needed to make it possible for man again to penetrate the world in a living way. We must know today what it is that man has lost. When he passed over from the Atlantean to the post Atlantean age there was much he could not do that he can do today. Since a certain time in your childhood you are able to say “I” in referring to yourself. You may say it without any great respect. But in former ages of mankind's evolution this “I” was not referred to with so little respect. There were times, prior to the Egyptian age, when a name for “I” was used which, when pronounced, stupefied a person. Pronouncing it, therefore, was avoided. If people right after the Atlantean epoch had experienced the pronouncing of the name for “I”—at that time it was only known to the initiates—the whole congregation would have fainted, so powerful was the effect of uttering this name for “I.” An echo of this fact lingered with the ancient Hebrews who spoke of the unutterable name of the Deity in the soul; a word which only the initiates were permitted to speak, or that was expressed before the congregation in a kind of eurythmy.

The ineffable name of God had its origin in what I have just told you. Gradually this fact was lost, and the deep effect of such practices diminished. In the first post-Atlantean epoch a deep effect in the ego; in the second epoch a deep effect in the astral body; in the third epoch a deep effect in the ether body, but the effect was bearable—an effect which, as I stated yesterday, brought men into connection with the cosmos. Today we can say “I”—we can say anything—without its having a deep effect upon us, because we grasp the world with our corpse. That is to say, we grasp what is dead, what is mineral in the world. But we must arouse ourselves to rise again to those regions in which we can take hold of the living. Whereas the Greco-Latin period created more and more dead knowledge for the corpse, in our time intelligence follows the path I mentioned yesterday. We must, therefore, resist mere intelligence; we must add something to it. It is in the nature of our time that we have to retrace the path of development, so that in the fifth post-Atlantean period we learn to know the plant, in the sixth period the animal, and in the seventh the truly human. Thus, it will be our present task to pass beyond a knowledge of the mineral and learn to know the plant element.

Now after realizing this, ask yourself who is the person who exemplifies this search for plant knowledge. It is Goethe. Contrary to the preoccupation of all outer science with what is dead, he occupied himself with the life, the growth, the metamorphosis of plants. Thus, he was the man of the fifth post-Atlantean period in its elementary beginnings. In his small treatise of the year 1790, An Attempt to Explain the Metamorphosis of Plants, you will see how Goethe tries to comprehend the plant from leaf to leaf as something developing, unfolding, not as something completed, dead. That is the beginning of the knowledge that should be sought in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.

In Goetheanism we have the keynote for this. Science will have to wake up in the Goethean sense, will have to pass from the dead to the living. This is what is meant when I say again and again that we must acquire the ability to leave behind the dead, abstract concepts and arrive at those that are living and concrete. What I said two days ago and yesterday is basically the way to these living, concrete concepts.

It will not be possible to enter into these concepts and ideas if we are not ready to develop our general world view and concept of life as a unity. Through the special con-figuration of our culture we are forced to let the various currents of our world view run side by side in a disorganized fashion. Just think how man's religious view of the world and his scientific view often run parallel, completely disconnected. He builds no bridge between the two; in-deed, he is afraid of doing so. We must make it clear that this state of affairs cannot continue.

I have drawn your attention to the egotistical way man forms his world view at the present time. I have described how men today are chiefly interested in the life of the soul after death. This interest springs from pure egotism. I have said we must pass on to interest in the life of the soul from birth onward, seeing it as a continuation of the life prior to birth. If we were to observe the child's growth into the world as a continuation of his pre-natal existence, with the same concern we feel for his soul after death, our thinking about the world would be much less egotistical than it is today. But this egotism in our world view is connected with many other things.

Here I come to a point where men today must become ever more clear about underlying facts. In the period of time culminating in our age the egotistic element was chiefly developed. The ego has permeated man's viewing of the world; it has also permeated his will. We must not deceive ourselves about that. The religious denominations in particular have become egotistical. This you can see even in externalities. Just consider how modern preachers have to reckon with people's egotism. The more they make promises concerning the life of the soul after death the more they reach their goal. People today have little interest in other spiritual questions; in, for instance, that creative flow of life which shows itself so wonderfully after birth in the soul that previously was in the spiritual world.

A result of this lack of interest is the way man thinks about the Divine in the various religious denominations. The fact that we visualize a God as The Highest has no special meaning. Here it is essential that we free ourselves from deception. What do most people mean today if they say “God?“ What kind of being do people refer to when they speak of God? It is an Angel; nothing else but their own Angel whom they call God. People have just a bare intimation that a protective spirit guides their life; they look up to him and call him their God. This is the egotism of the churches, that they do not pass beyond the Angel with their concept of God. A narrowing of interests is caused by egotism; and this narrowing of interests is to be clearly seen in public life.

Do people today ask about the general destiny of man-kind? Oh! it is often very sad if one wants to speak to people about human destiny. No one has any idea of the degree of change that has taken place in this respect in a comparatively short time. Today we may say to people: The military conflict that has spread over the earth during the last four or five years will be followed by the mightiest spiritual battle, which will cover the earth in a form never experienced before. Its origin lies in the fact of the Occident naming as illusion or ideology what the Orient calls reality, and the Orient feeling as reality what the Occident calls ideology. We may draw people's attention to this weighty matter and it does not even dawn on them that if something similar had been said only a hundred years ago it would have so taken hold of people's souls that they would never have gotten over it.

This change in humanity, this growing indifference to the great questions of destiny, is the most striking phenomenon. Everything bounces off mankind, so to say. The most comprehensive, incisive facts are accepted like a sensation. People are not deeply shaken by them. The reason for this is the clever, ever increasing egotism that constricts men's interests. We may have whatever fine democracies where men meet in parliaments, but concern for the fate of man-kind does not permeate them, because the people who are elected to these parliaments do not feel the urgency to know mankind's destiny. Egotistical interests hold sway. Every-one has his own egotistical interest. Similarities in outer interests such as often arise from one's profession, lead people to form groups. When the groups are large enough, majorities arise. In this way a concern not for human destinies but only for egotism, multiplied by the number of persons involved, becomes active in parliaments and men's proposals.

Because of the way egotism lives in people now, even their religious professions are under its influence. They will have their necessary renewal if people's interests broaden; that is, if men will again look beyond their personal destiny to the destiny of mankind; if they will be deeply moved when one tells them that in the West a culture develops that is different from that of the East, and that the culture of the Middle is again different from that of both East and West. Or if one tells them that in the West the great goals of mankind are sought, when they are sought, through the use of mediums who are put into a trance and are thereby consciously brought into a sub-earthly relationship to the spiritual worlds, out of which they speak of great historical aims. We could tell this repeatedly to Europeans, yet they will not believe that in English-American countries there really exist societies in which the attempt is made to find out through questions cleverly put to mediums what the great goals of mankind are. People likewise do not believe that the Oriental obtains knowledge about the destiny of mankind not through mediums but on the mystical path. In the beautiful speeches of Rabindranath Tagore, easily available today, you can read what the Oriental thinks on a grand scale about the goals of mankind. These speeches are read as one reads the feature articles of any hack journalist; because today people distinguish little between a journalistic hack and persons of great spirituality like Rabindranath Tagore. They are not aware, I might say, that different racial substances can live side by side. What is valid for Middle Europe I have put forward in public lectures for many years. It was not received as it should have been.

With this I only wish to point out that one may become aware of something that reaches beyond the egotistical fate of a man and is connected with the destiny of groups of men, so that we can make specific differentiations across the face of the earth. If one lifts his view toward comprehending human destiny in mankind as a whole, if one concerns himself intensely with what thus passes beyond personal destiny, then one tunes his soul to comprehending a higher reality than the Angel; actually, that of the Archangel. Thoughts concerning the significance of an Archangel do not arise in one's soul if one remains in the regions concerned with egotistical man. Preachers may talk ever so much about the Divine; if they only preach within the confines of egotistical man they speak merely of the Angel. Calling it by a different name is just an untruth; it does not put the matter straight. Only if one begins to be interested in man's destiny as a unity over the whole earth does his soul begin to elevate itself to the Archangel.

Now let us pass on to something else. Let us feel what I have indicated in these lectures about the successive impulses of mankind's evolution. You will find that most of our leading citizens were educated in the classical schools—Gymnasium—during the years when the soul is pliable and flexible. These classical schools were not born out of the culture of our age but of the Greco-Latin age. If those Greeks and Romans had done what we did, they would have established Egypto-Chaldean classical schools. They didn't do that; they took the subjects for their teaching from immediate life. We take them from the previous period and educate people accordingly. This is very significant, but we haven't recognized it. Had we done so a note would have sounded within the feminist movement that did not resound, and that is: Men, if their intelligence is to be specially trained, are sent into antiquated schools. There their brains become hardened. Women have the good fortune of not being admitted into the classical schools. We want to develop our intelligence in an original way; we want to show what can be developed in the present age if we are not made dull in our youth by Greco-Latin classical education.

These words did not resound, but in their place: Men have crept into and hidden under the Greco-Latin classical education, let us women do the same. Let us also become students of the classical schools.

So little has understanding spread for what is necessary! We must realize that in our present time we are not educated for our age but for the Greco-Latin culture. This is inserted into our lives. We must sense it. We must sense what, as Greco-Latin culture, acts in the leading people of today, in the so-called intellectuals. This is one aspect of what we carry within us in our spiritual education. We read no newspaper that does not contain Greco-Latin education; because, although writing in our national idiom, we actually write in the Greco-Latin form.

And in regard to our concept of rights we live in Romanism, again something antiquated. To be sure, the old national rights battle at times against Roman law, but they do not prevail. We must feel how a time that has passed lives in what man calls right and wrong in public life.

Only in economic life do we live in the present. This is a significant statement. Perhaps I may say in passing that many women use the concepts of the present in their cooking, in managing their households. In doing so they actually are the people of the present age; everything else that is carried into the present is antiquated. I do not present this matter of their cooking as something particularly desirable, but the other aspect is much less desirable, namely, that the souls of women also want to go back from the present to antiquated cultures. In looking upon our cultural surroundings we have not only what acts in space but also the effects of bygone eras. If we acquire a feeling for this, not only the past affects us but the future as well. It is our task to let the future work into us. Because, if there did not live in every person, however slightly aware of it, a kind of rebellion against the Hellenism of education and the Romanism of rights, if the future were not to ray in upon us, we would be pathetic creatures, really very pathetic creatures.

Besides space we must also consider time in our culture; that is to say, what as history reaches over into our present from the past and from the future. We, as people of the present, must realize that past and future play into our souls. Just as America, England, Asia, China, India—the East and the West as two opposites—have their effect upon us as Europeans, so do we carry Greece, Rome, and the future in us. If we are willing to focus our attention on the future by becoming aware of how what is past and what is coming into being live in our souls, then another attitude arises in us concerning human destiny, an attitude that transcends egotism and is different from what is aroused by a merely spatial consideration. Only if we develop this soul attitude is it possible for us to form concepts about the sphere of the Time Spirits, the Archai. That is to say, we come to the third rank of divine beings in the order of the Hierarchies.

It is good if man by such means places before himself these three Hierarchies in concepts and ideas, because the Spirits of Form who come next are much harder to comprehend. But it suffices for modern man if he attempts to penetrate beyond egotism into the sphere of the unegotistic, doing this repeatedly, and occupying himself with what I have just explained. I must emphasize again, that especially the training of teachers should make use of these facts. A teacher should not be permitted to instruct and educate without having acquired an idea of the egotism that strives toward the closest God, the Angel; without also having acquired a concept of the unegotistic, destiny-determining powers who are side by side in space above the earth, the Archangel beings; and without having acquired a concept of how past and future reach over into our culture, the Roman life of rights, the Greek spiritual substance, and the undefined rebel of the future, which saves us.

Mankind at present has little inclination to enter into these matters. Some time ago I repeatedly emphasized that it is one of our social tasks to derive from the present our educational subjects to be used during the time spent today in classical schools. To do as the Greeks themselves did, namely, take the subjects for education from present-day life.

Shortly after the time, and in the same place where I had spoken about the social importance of this problem (I do not wish to imply a causal connection, but the matter has symptomatic meaning) there appeared in all the news-papers in that place a number of advertisements propagandizing the modern classical schools. I had delivered lectures characterizing classical education in the way I have done here. The advertisements declared what the German nation owes to the classical education of its youth, for “strengthening the national consciousness,” “the national power,” and so on. This was a few weeks before the Treaty of Versailles. These advertisements were signed by a variety of local figures from the schools and the department of education. What has to be brought out today as to the factual basis of mankind's evolution, is rejected. People let it bounce off; it does not touch the depths of the soul. For this reason, it is so difficult to be active in the social sphere. One will never be able to take hold of the social question with the superficialities employed today. It is a deeply significant question that cannot be grasped if one will not look deeply into the nature of man and the world. Because this is so it should be evident how important are certain proposals offered by the threefold social order.

We must acquire an organ for what is necessary for our age, and it is difficult to acquire this organ in the spiritual sphere. For an education that has gradually been taken over by the State has deprived man of active striving; it has made him into a devoted member of the State structure. How do the majority of people live? Up to the sixth year of age man may live unhindered because the State does not yet consider him sanitary enough. The State would not like to devote itself to the tasks that have to be carried out in the first childhood years. Man is still left to the powers outside the State. But then it lays claim to him and he is trained to fit the pattern of the State; he ceases to be a person and bears the stamp of the State. He strives to fit this pattern because it is instilled in him. He not only gets his keep from the State while he works but beyond the working age up to his death, in the form of a pension. It is the ideal of many people today to have a position that entitles them to a pension. The soul too becomes entitled to a pension, even beyond death, without any effort on its part, because it receives eternal bliss through the activity of the church. The church sees to that. Now it is very uncomfortable to hear that salvation lies in free spiritual striving which must be independent of the State. The State must only serve civil rights, where there will be no claim to a pension. This is reason enough for many to reject it, as we have occasion to notice again and again.

Concerning the most intimate spiritual life, the religious life, the world of the future will demand of man that he work for his immortality; that he let his soul be active so that it may receive into itself, through activity, the Divine, the Christ-impulse.

In the course of my life I have received many letters from church people who state that anthroposophy is fundamentally a fine thing, but it contradicts the simple Christian faith; that Christ has redeemed the soul, that one can attain salvation in Christ without any effort on one's part. People cannot let go of the “simple belief in the attainment of salvation through Christ.” They believe themselves to be especially pious if they say or write something like that. But they are egotistical, extremely egotistical. They want to be passive in their souls and let it be the concern of the Divine to transport the soul, nicely pensioned, through the portal of death.

Matters are not so easy in that world conception in which, in future, the religious element must be created. Here one must understand that the presence of the Divine in the soul must be worked for. One will no longer be able just to surrender passively to the churches, which promise to carry the souls into the beyond. (The involvement of money for such service, a scandal in the past, has now fallen into disuse, but secretly it still plays a role in this process, also in obtaining special blessings.) But the transition to inner activity is what is needed for mankind, something it doesn't yet cherish very much.

In order to gain a feeling for what is necessary in this regard we must keep in mind, first, the metamorphosis of humanity since the time of ancient Egypt when the body was more of a plant-like nature. Should there be a relapse into that state in the present age, man would become sick and develop tumors and such things. Secondly, the fact that we carry our body as a corpse which can think, can under-stand. In this way we gain a feeling for what mankind needs, which is, to advance in the solving of social problems in the way this has to be done in the present time. We must no longer allow ourselves to consider such a matter as the social question as being utterly simple.

You see, this is what is so difficult at present: That people would like to be enlightened on the most important aspects of life by a few abstract statements. If a book like The Threefold Social Order contains more than a few abstract statements, if it contains the results of an observation of life, then people say they do not understand it. They consider it confusing. But this is the misfortune at present, that people do not wish to enter into what precisely they ought to enter into. For abstract sentences, completely lucid, refer to what is dead; the social element, however, ought to be alive. Here we must employ flexible ideas, flexible sentences, flexible forms. Therefore, it is necessary that we not only reflect upon the transformation of single institutions, but that we really adjust ourselves to a genuine transformation in our thinking and learning, down to their innermost structure.

This is what I would like to leave with you today when I have to leave again for a few weeks. We must feel ourselves influenced by the working together of our anthroposophical and our social movement. I should like you to comprehend more and more why it is that the anthroposophically oriented science of the spirit must flow into the souls of men if anything is to be achieved in the social field. And I would bring close to your hearts what I have said repeatedly in various ways: It is of utmost importance to acknowledge that what we can acquire of anthroposophical knowledge is the true guide-line now for all action and striving; that we must have the courage to will to prevail with anthroposophy. The worst thing is that people in these days have so little courage for willing to prevail with what is needed. They permit their best will-forces to break down; though it is so necessary they do not will to carry through.

Learn to represent anthroposophy with courage. Receive graciously the people who show an interest in looking at this building which represents our spiritual striving. Rejoice in every single individual who shows even a little understanding. Meet with him. But do not take it to heart if your efforts are fruitless, and people meet our activities with evil intention, or, what is more frequent, with lack of understanding. Just resist it suitably. It is courage that is needed to bring our efforts through to good results. Let us think of ourselves as the handful of people whose destiny it is to know and to communicate to the world what it so sorely needs today. Let the people ridicule us and say that it is presumption to believe all this. It is true nevertheless. Saying to oneself, “It is true nevertheless,”—saying it so earnestly that it fills one's whole soul, this needs the inner courage we must have. May it permeate us as anthroposophical substance. Then we shall do what we have to do, everyone at the place where he is. This I wanted to say to you today.

We are longing for the day when our activity through this building brings us closer to the outside world; our activity which in any case is very difficult. This building is the only one that takes into account the great destinies of mankind even in its forms, and it is very gratifying to see that attention is being paid to it. Something else, however, is necessary for favorable progress in social problems, and that is, that this building through its very forms, which are stronger than other modern architectural forms, should aid in the strengthening of humanity's spiritual powers; making men more amenable to what one wishes them to know, so that they may rise not only to the nature of the Angel, but to the Archangel, and to the Spirit of the Time.

With these words I take leave of you for a few weeks. I hope to be able then to continue these considerations, and that during this time we shall come into an intensive activity for our building itself. Because, my dear friends, we are justified in emphasizing on every hand that readiness for work, that joy in work is needed for all men. This will not come if people are not moved by great purposes. I believe that if people can be convinced that through the three-folding of the social organism they can attain an existence worthy of man, they will begin to work again. Otherwise they will continue to strike. For in the field of physical labor people need an impulse that takes hold of them in their inmost souls.

But we must show that our work has been fruitful in attaining at least one objective, and this radiates into the world. Only then can we give the impulse to mankind to overcome spiritually what is dead in our time. Let us think this over, my dear friends, until the time when we are together again and can speak further about these questions.

The explanations which I gave you yesterday on the path which the human intellect will take in future, are based upon quite definite facts, which come to light through spiritual-scientific knowledge. Let me indicate some of these facts today. You should realize that practically when the human being stands before you, he is that being described in Anthroposophy. That is to say, we first have before us (you know this from my THEOSOPHY) a fourfold being. We have before us the Ego, the so-called astral body, the etheric body and the physical body. The fact that whenever we face a human being we always have before us these four members, implies that the ordinary way of looking at the world today does not really enable us to know the true essence of the person who stands before us. We really do not know it. We think that the person we see before us fills out space with his physical body and that we see his physical body. Yet we could not see this physical part as we generally see it with our ordinary power of vision, if it only stood before us as a physical body. We see the physical body with our ordinary eyes, as it generally appears to us, only because it is permeated by the etheric body, by the astral body and by the Ego. It may sound strange to you if I tell you that our physical body is a corpse, even during the existence between birth and death. When we see a human corpse, we really have before us man's physical body. The corpse is the physical body which is not permeated by the etheric body, by the astral body and by the Ego. It is abandoned by these bodies and then reveals, as it were, its true being. You do not have a true conception of yourself if you think that you are carrying through space what you imagine to be your physical body. You would have a far better conception of yourself, if you were to think of yourself as a corpse, carried through space by your Ego, your astral body and your etheric body.

If we go back as far as the 8th Century, B.C., which is as you know, the beginning of the 4th post-Atlantean Epoch, we come, as you also know, to the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch of the earth's development. There, human bodies had a different constitution from that of today. The human bodies of olden times, the mummies which you can now see in museums, were not constituted, in their finer essence, as human bodies are now constituted. They were filled to a far greater extent with vegetative life, they were not so lifeless, not so corpse-like as the human bodies of today. These physical bodies were, so to speak, far more similar to the plant nature, whereas the physical body of modern man—and this is already the case from the Graeco-Latin epoch onward—has a greater resemblance with the mineral world. If through some cosmic miracle we would now be endowed with the bodies of the Egyptian-Chaldean peoples, we would all be ill. They would bring us illness. We would bear within our body tissues which tend towards an over-exuberant growth. Many an illness simply consists in the fact that the human body in part goes back to conditions which were normal in the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch. In the present time we find ulcerous growths in the human body, which are simply due to the fact that in the one or in the other person a piece of the body tends to become something resembling the whole body among the Egyptian-Chaldean population.

What I told you now, essentially depends on the development of humanity. We modern people therefore carry about with us a corpse. This was not the case with the Egyptian: his knowledge was different from ours, his intelligence worked differently from our intelligence.

Now consider carefully the following question: What does the human being recognize with the aid of that knowledge which he designates as modern science and in which he takes so great a pride? Only lifeless things! Science constantly emphasizes that the ordinary intelligence cannot grasp life. To be sure, some investigators believe that if they continue experimenting, they will one day be able to understand the alternating play of life through complicated combinations of atoms, molecules and their alternating forces. This will never arise. Along the chemical-physical path, they will only be able to understand the mineral, lifeless substance; that is to say, they will only be able to grasp that part of living matter which is now a corpse.

But that part in man which is intelligent and exercises cognizant forces, is nevertheless the physical body; that is, the corpse. What is really done by the corpse which we carry about with us? It goes furthest of all along the path of mathematical-geometrical knowledge. There, everything is transparent; but the further away we go from the mathematical-geometrical sphere, the less transparent things become. This is because the human corpse is, today, the true instrument of cognition, and because a lifeless instrument can only be used to recognize lifeless things. The etheric body, the astral body and the Ego in man are not instruments of cognition, but they remain, as it were, standing in the dark. If the etheric body were able to cognize, in the same way in which the physical body recognizes lifeless things, it would first of all recognize the living essence of the vegetable world.

With their living, plant-like body, the Egyptians perceived the plant world quite differently from the way in which we perceive it now. Many an instinctive knowledge concerning the plant world can be traced back to Egyptian insight, to what became embodied with the Egyptian culture through an instinctive form of cognition. Even certain botanical facts in the medical sphere are, in many respects, based on the traditions of ancient Egyptian wisdom. Indeed, to the lay judgment it may often appear amateurish to draw in Egyptian sources, when certain truths are transmitted which do not seem to be of great value. You know that many so-called lodges, which have not a right foundation, call themselves “Egyptian Lodges.” This is only because in these circles there still exist traditions of the wisdom which could be obtained through an Egyptian body.

We can say that with the gradual transition from the Egyptian into the Graeco-Latin epoch, man's living plant-like body died; already in ancient Greece this living, plant-like body had more or less died, or was at least dying off slowly. Now we already have a physical body which is dead to a high degree, and this lifeless condition particularly applies to the human head. I already explained to you that an initiated spiritual scientist can perceive the human head as something lifeless, as something which is constantly dying. Humanity will grow more and more conscious of the fact that it is the corpse which we use as an instrument of cognition, and that this corpse can only grasp lifeless things.

The more we advance into the future, the more intensive will be the longing to recognize only that which is living. But the ordinary intelligence, which is bound up with the lifeless body, cannot perceive what is alive. Many things will be needed in order that man, who has lost the possibility to penetrate into the world in a living way, may once more attain to this. We should bear I mind all that we have lost.

When the human being passed over from the Atlantean to the post-Atlantean age, he was as yet unable to do many of the things which he does now. You see, each one of you, from a certain time of your childhood upward, can say “I” when referring to yourself. You pronounce this word “I” very carelessly. But in the course of human development this word was not always uttered so carelessly. There were older times in the evolution of humanity—though even in ancient Egypt these olden times had to a great extent already waned—there were older times in which the Ego was designated by a name, and if this name was uttered, it dazed people. One therefore avoided pronouncing it. If the name applicable to the Ego, which was only known to the initiates, had been pronounced in the presence of people in the times immediately following the Atlantean catastrophe, the sound of this name would have dazed the whole congregation; all the people would have fallen to the ground, so strong would have been the effect of the name applicable to the Ego.

An echo of this may still be found among the ancient Hebrews, where one spoke of the unutterable name of God in the soul, a name which could only be pronounced by the initiates, or shown to the congregation in eurhythmic gestures. The origin of God's unutterable name may therefore be seen in the facts explained to you just now.

But little by little this name was lost. And with it was lost the deep effect which radiates from such things.

During the first post-Atlantean epoch we have a deep influence proceeding from the Ego; during the second post-Atlantean epoch, a deep influence proceeding form the astral body; during the third post-Atlantean epoch, a deep influence going out from the etheric body, but one which people could bear, for, as I explained to you yesterday, it brought them in connection with the universe, made them feel their relationship with the universe. In the present time, we may pronounce the word “I,” we may pronounce all manner of things, but they do not make any effect upon us, because we now grasp the world through our lifeless body. That is to say, we only take hold of the lifeless, mineral essence of the world. But we must again ascend and return to the regions enabling us to grasp life. Whereas from the Graeco-Latin epoch, beginning in the 8th Century, B.C., up to the middle of the 15th Century A.D., the greatest value was attributed to an ever larger acquisition of knowledge through the lifeless body, our intelligence now follows the path described to you yesterday. But we must resist mere intelligence. We must add something to our intelligence.

A characteristic which we should bear in mind is that we must now retrace the path in a right way; in the present time, in the 5th post-Atlantean epoch, we must in a certain way learn to know the vegetable world; during the 6th epoch we must learn to know the animal kingdom, and only during the 7th epoch the real kingdom of man. Thus it is one of the tasks of humanity to transcend the mere knowledge of the mineral world and ascend to the knowledge of the vegetable world.

Now that you are able to understand this upon a deeper foundation, consider who is the person whose chief characteristic is this search for a knowledge of the plant world. This man is Goethe. By approaching life from the basis of lifeless things and by reaching, in opposition to the science of his days, the law of metamorphosis, the living process of plants, Goethe appears to us as the representative of the 5th post-Atlantean age, in its first beginnings. Read Goethe's small pamphlet, written in 1790, entitled: “An ATTEMPT to explain the metamorphosis of plants,” and you will find in it that Goethe incessantly tried to grasp the plant in its process of growth, not as something dead and finished, but as something in a constant process of growth, passing from leaf to leaf. Here you may find the beginning of the knowledge which should be sought in the 5th post-Atlantean age.

Goetheanism therefore strikes the fundamental note for what we should seek during the 5th post-Atlantean epoch. Science should, as it were, wake up to the meaning of Goethe and proceed from the study of lifeless things to that of living things. This is what I mean when I continually emphasize that we should acquire the capacity to abandon dead, abstract concepts and to penetrate into living, concrete concepts. The explanations which I gave you yesterday and the day before yesterday really constitute the path leading into these living, concrete regions of thought.

But it will not be possible to penetrate into such thoughts and concepts unless we take the trouble to unite the elements which form our world conception and our views on life. Through the special configuration of modern civilization, the different currents of our world conception are allowed, as it were, to run inorganically side by side. Consider how inorganic and disunited are in many cases a person's religious and natural-scientific views! Many people have both religious and scientific concepts, yet they do not throw a bridge from the one to the other. Indeed, they have a certain reluctance, a certain fear in doing this. Yet we should clearly realize that things cannot remain as they are.

During my present visit, I pointed out to you how selfishly modern people develop their world conception. I drew attention to the fact that today people are chiefly interested in the soul's life after death. Out of pure egoism they take an interest in the life of the soul after death. I have also told you that it is now necessary to take an interest in the life of the soul from birth onwards insofar as this life is a continuation of the life before birth or conception. Our world conception would become far less selfish than it is today, if we were to observe a child's development, the way in which it grows as a continuation of its pre-natal, soul-spiritual existence, with the same longing and the same interest with which we think of the life after death.

This egoistic character of our modern world conception depends on many other things besides. Now I come to a point which clearly shows that modern people must become more and more conscious of the real facts lying at the foundation of these things. During the epoch leading up to the present time, the egoistic element chiefly developed in man; the Ego has permeated our world conception and the Ego has also permeated the human will. Let us not fall a prey to any illusion in regard to this.

Most egoistic of all have become religions, religious creeds. Even superficial facts can show you that religious beliefs have become egoistic. Consider how much a modern priest must reckon with people's egoism. The more he takes into account human egoism, the more promises he makes for the soul's life after death, the more easily he reaches his aims. Among modern people we do not really find much interest for any other thing, for they do not care much for that weaving spiritual life of the soul which manifests itself so wonderfully after birth; i.e., after conception.

One result of this egoistic interest in the life after death is the way in which modern people think about God in the different religions. To think of God as the highest Being, does not imply anything special. In this connection it is necessary to eliminate every delusion. What do most people imply when they speak of “God”? I have already mentioned this before. What kind of Being do they mean, when they speak of God? It is an Angel, an Angelos—their own Angel whom they call God! It is nothing else, my dear friends! People still have some inkling of the fact that a guiding spirit accompanies them in life; to this guiding spirit they look up, and it is this Angel-being whom they call God. Though they do not speak of it as an Angel, though they name it “God,” they nevertheless only mean their Angel. The selfish note of religious faiths is that their idea of God does not go beyond the Angel. As a consequence, human interests have grown narrower, a trait which may be clearly seen today in public life.

What are the questions which people ask today? Do they inquire after the general destinies of humanity? Oh, in a certain sense it is very painful today to speak to people of general human destinies! People also have no idea how many changes have taken place in this connection, even in a comparatively short space of time. You see, today we may tell people that the war which has been waged on earth during the past four or five years will be followed by the mightiest spiritual battle ever waged, a battle which will spread over the whole world, which never existed before in this form, a battle which is a consequence of the fact that the Occident designates as a Maya or as an ideology what the Orient designates as reality, and that the Orient designates the ideology of the Occident as a reality. Today we may draw attention to this important, weighty fact, yet people do not even realize that if this same thing had been said only a hundred years ago, it would have stirred the souls so much that they would have had no peace!

The most striking fact of all is this change in humanity, this indifference in regard to the great destinies of human existence. Today nothing penetrates into the human souls, but rebounds, as it were. The most encompassing, the most important and intensive facts are now taken as sensational facts. They do not shake the human souls enough. This is only dependent on the fact that the constantly increasing, intelligent egoism restricts human interests.

People may now have democracies or parliaments—they may come together in parliaments, but the destinies of humanity do not breathe through these parliaments, for the men who are elected into parliament are not filled with the breath of mankind's destinies. They are filled with the breath of egoistic interests. Each person has his own egoistic interest. External schematic similarities in these interests, often due to a common profession, induce people to form groups. And if these groups are sufficiently large, they become majorities. In that case it is not human destinies which pass through parliament, or through these representative groups of people, but only human egoism, multiplied by so and so many persons.

Even religious faiths have been transferred to the sphere of egoism, because the human souls are only filled by interests which appeal to their egoism. Religious faiths will pass through the renewal which they need, when human interests have grown wider, when they have acquired a form which transcends the purely personal destiny and ascends to the destiny of mankind as such, when people will once more be stirred, deeply stirred on hearing that in the West there is a civilization which differs from that of the East, and that in the Centre there is a civilization differing from that of the two poles of East and West; a religious renewal will come when human souls will be stirred to hear that in the West the great goals of humanity are sought (if they are sought at all!) by turning to mediumistic people, who in a trance condition are, as it were, consciously brought into a sub-earthly connection with the spiritual worlds so that they reveal, mediumistically, something about the great historical aims.

In Europe, one could so frequently explain, though people will not believe it, that there really exist societies in Anglo-American countries where people with mediumistic faculties are brought into a kind of trance, in order to discover from them, by cleverly formulated questions, something about the great destiny-goals of humanity.

People also do not believe that the Orientals, too, obtain information concerning the great destiny aims of humanity, not mediumistically, but mystically. This is almost palpably evident today, for one can everywhere buy Rabindranath Tagore's beautiful speeches, revealing on a large scale how an Oriental thinks about the goals of humanity. People read his poems, as if they were the feuilletons of some cheap writer, for today they do not distinguish cheap writers from men endowed with great spirituality such as Rabindranath Tagore. They do not realize that today the most varied racial substances live, as it were, side by side. I already explained to you, in many lectures, the standpoints which should be applied to Central Europe, but these explanations were not taken as they should have been taken.

With these words, my dear friends, I only wish to prove that it is possible to grow conscious of something which transcends egoistic human destinies, something which is connected with the destiny of whole groups of man, so that differentiations can be made throughout the world. If we raise our soul's eye with understanding to these destinies of mankind in the whole world, if we take a deep interest in this element transcending the personal destinies, we attune our soul for the comprehension of something higher and more real than the Angel; namely, the Archangel. Thoughts revealing the true nature of the Archangel cannot come to us if we only move in spheres pertaining to purely egoistic, personal human interests. If preachers only move in the regions of human egoism, their sermons may be full of words dealing with the Divine, yet they will only preach of the Angel. The fact that they give it another name constitutes an untruth, and does not change it. Only if we begin to take an interest in human destiny extending over wide spaces do we attune our soul for the comprehension of the Archangel.

Let us now pass over to something else. Let us try to develop a feeling of the successive impulses in the evolution of humanity, indicated in recent lectures. Consider the fact that a great number of our leading men are given a classical education during the years in which the human soul can still be shaped and molded; they are taught in schools which are not the product of modern civilization, but of a past culture, of the Graeco-Latin epoch. You see, if the Greeks and Romans had done the same thing which we are doing now, they would have established Egyptian-Chaldean schools. But they avoided this. They took their subject of instruction from life itself. We take it from the preceding epoch and train the human beings accordingly. This has a great significance in human life, but we have not recognized it. Had we recognized the importance of this fact, the feminist movement would have struck a different note, voicing the following truth; Men who are to learn how to use their intellectual powers are now being trained in antiquated schools. This hardens their brain. Women fortunately were not admitted to these schools (the “gymnasiums” of the Continent). Let us therefore develop our intellectual powers more originally; let us show how they can unfold in the present time, if they are not dulled in youthful years by a Graeco-Latin schooling.

But the feminist movement did not strike this note. On the contrary, it often advanced the following claim: Men have crept under the Graeco-Latin schooling, let us women also creep into it. Let us also have a gymnasium training.

You can therefore see, my dear friends, how the understanding of the things which were really needed, did not exist. We should know that in the present time we are not being educated in keeping with modern requirements, but in accordance with standards pertaining to the Graeco-Latin culture. Consequently this Graeco-Latin culture fills modern life. We should be aware of this. We should feel the Graeco-Latin ingredients of culture in the leading personalities of our days, in the so-called intelligentsia, among the intellectuals; this is one stratum which exists in the present time. Our whole spiritual culture is permeated by it. We do not read any newspaper which does not contain traces of Graeco-Latin culture, for we write in a Graeco-Latin style, even though we write in our own language.

As already explained to you, our juridical views are steeped in Roman thought—which is again something obsolete and antiquated. Roman life fills modern law. Sometimes the old native law comes into conflict with Roman law, but it cannot assert itself. This, too, should be felt: That what we call justice or injustice in public life is steeped in the impulses of a past epoch.

In the economic sphere alone we really live in the present. It is a significant fact that we only live in the present in the economic sphere. Some things will therefore have to be modified. Let me say in parenthesis that many women collect modern concepts only in regard to cooking; i.e., in domestic economy, so that there they are truly modern; but everything else is antiquated; it is something which we graft into the present. I do not say that this is a specially desirable thing—in any case, the other thing is not at all desirable; namely, that in the present time even the souls of women turn back to antiquated cultures.

When we survey our cultural environment, we do not find in it only that which is active in space, but also the impulses which come from very remote times. And if we acquire a feeling for such things, we discover not only the influence of the past, but also that of the future. In fact, it is our task to introduce into the present these impulses of the future. For, my dear friends, if a kind of rebel against the past would not live in each one of us, opposing the Greek character of our culture and the Roman character of modern legislation, if the future were not to shed its light into these spheres, our fate would be a sorry one.

In regard to modern culture, we should therefore consider, in addition to space, also time; that which penetrates into the present, into the history of our times, from a remote past and from the future. As modern people we should realize that in the same way in which America, England, Asia, China and India exist in the present time, so the past and the present exist in the human soul and send their influences into it, insofar as we are Europeans, for past and present represent the two poles of East and West. We thus have within us ancient Greece and ancient Rome and the future. And if we take the trouble to envisage this fact, if we realize that past and future, or things to come, live in our soul, we are filled by a new feeling, which can transcend egoism in human destiny; it is a feeling which differs from that of a mere spatial contemplation of life.

Only if we develop this mood in our soul, will we acquire the possibility to develop thoughts concerning the sphere of the Spirits of Time, or the Archai. That is to say, we come to the third Divine element in the hierarchic order. It is good to envisage these three Hierarchies in thoughts and concepts, with the aid of the means just explained. For the Spirits of Form, which come after the Archai, are far more difficult to understand. But for modern people it suffices to make the attempt to transcend egoism and to penetrate into the unegoistic sphere; they should repeat this attempt again and again and occupy their minds with the things just characterized!

This should particularly be the case with teachers (let me emphasize this). What I explained to you just now should be borne in mind particularly in the training of teachers. Teachers should not have the right to educate and train children unless they acquire a concept of that egoism which only reaches up to the nearest Divinity; i.e., the Angel, and unless they acquire a concept of the unegoistic powers which determine destiny and which exist spatially side by side here on earth; i.e., the Archangels. And they should also acquire a concept of the influences of past and future in modern culture—the Roman character of law, the Greek spiritual substance—and of the undefined rebel of the future in man, who can rescue him.

At the present time, however, people are not much inclined to penetrate into such things. A short time ago, I emphasized again and again in my lectures that one of the social tasks of the present time is to extract our educational substance for the years which young people now pass in schools, from the present, to do the same thing which the ancient Greeks also did: to extract our educational substance from the present.

At the same place where I repeatedly spoke of this matter as one of the most important social problems, there appeared a short time after my lectures—I do not wish to construct a casual connection; this is indifferent, but it is symptomatic!—a large number of advertisements in all the local newspapers making propaganda for the local “gymnasium.” I gave lectures in which I characterized, as I have now done, the classical gymnasium education and at the same time advertisements appeared in praise of a gymnasium education, stating all that the youth of Germany owes to its gymnasiums for the “strengthening of national consciousness” of “national strength”, etc., etc. And this, a few weeks before the Peace of Versailles! These advertisements were signed by the local school celebrities, etc. What one has to say today from a truly objective foundation of human evolution always rebounds, flies back again. People reject it—it does not touch the depths of their souls.

This explains the difficulty of acting in regard to the social question. For the superficial attitude with which people approach the social question will never be of any use. The social question is a deeply significant one; it is a problem which cannot be solved unless one is willing to look into the depths of man's being and of the universe. This very fact should be able to show us how necessary it is to set up certain truths contained in the threefold structure of the social organism.

But we must acquire an organ capable of grasping what our present time really needs. It will be difficult to acquire this organ in the spiritual sphere, for the spiritual substance in education, which has gradually been assimilated by the ruling body, the state, drew out of the human being every active force, every true striving, thus transforming him into a “resigned” member within the structure of the state. I have already spoken to you here, I think, of the question: How does the great majority of the people really live? (Exceptions are, of course, always borne in mind). Up to the sixth year of his life a human being is allowed to live unhampered, for he is still too grubby for the state! The state would not like to take over the tasks entailed by the care of young children; the state therefore leaves the human being in the care of powers outside its own sphere. But then it lays claim on the human being, the state then trains him so that he may fit into the state economy, into the stereotyped model; he ceases to be a real human being and becomes something which bears the imprint of the state. In that case he can be “of use” to the state. He strives after this, for it is inculcated into him; in that case, the state does not only look after him while he is working, but also when he ceases to work, by according him a pension until he dies. To many people a position entailing the right of a pension is a great “ideal”! And the religions speak of a kind of pension for the time after death! The soul obtains a pension; without any effort on its own part it obtains eternal life through the church itself. The church sees to this! It is uncomfortable to hear that salvation can only be attained by a free spiritual striving, independently of the state, and that the state should limit itself to the juridical sphere. The right of having a pension will NOT exist in a juridical state! This alone is for many people one reason ... for rejecting it! One can see this again and again.

And in regard to the most intimate life of the spirit, we must say that religious life will, to be sure, require a world conception valid for the future; it must demand from man that he should work for his immortality, that he should be active in his soul, so that he may take up the divine impulse, the Christ Impulse, through his own activity.

During my life I received innumerable letters from church people stating that Anthroposophy is a fine thing, but that it contradicts the “simple”, “plain Christian faith” of the soul's salvation through Christ, of eternal life attained through Christ, without having to do anything for it. “Faith in the salvation through Christ” is something which they cannot abandon. When people write or say such things, they think that they are especially pious. But they are simply selfish, thoroughly selfish and egoistic, for they do not wish to make any effort in their soul, they wish to leave everything to God, who will carry their soul safely through the portal of death and pension it off.

Matters will not be so comfortable in the world conception which will in future create the religious substance. We will have to grasp that the divine essence within us must be developed within the soul. It will then no longer be possible to submit passively to churches who promise to carry the human souls safely through death ... one objectionable custom at least has now ceased; namely, to do this in exchange FOR MONEY, but secretly this still plays a certain role, even in regard to the attainment of eternal life. This transition to a stage of inner activity, so that we look up to a world to which we belong, is an urgent requirement, yet it does not attract mankind greatly.

In order to acquire a feeling for the requirements in this sphere, we must envisage the facts explained today—the metamorphosis of humanity since the times of ancient Egypt, where even the body had a more plant-like character. But if it were now to fall back into this plant-like condition, it would grow ill—ulcerous growths, etc. would appear—and then the fact that we really carry a corpse about with us, which is the true instrument of cognition. These truths enable us to gain a feeling for the requirements of humanity, showing us how to progress in the right direction, how progress can now be made in regard to the social question. We should no longer be content to regard an important matter such as the social question in as simple a way as possible.

You see, this is the extraordinary difficulty of the present time, and you should bear in mind the fact that modern people like to hear explanations on the most important facts of life in a few abstract sentences. When a book like the “Fundamental Points of the Social Question” contains more than a few abstract sentences, when such a book contains the results of an observation of life itself, then people say that they cannot understand it, and that it seems confused to them. But it is the misfortune of the present time that people do not like to penetrate into the very things into which they should penetrate. For abstract sentences which are quite transparent, only deal with lifeless things; but the social sphere is a living sphere. Here we must apply elastic conceptions, elastic sentences, elastic forms. It is therefore necessary, as I frequently explained to you, to consider not only the transformation of single things, but we must also learn to think differently in regard to the innermost structure of our thoughts and reflections.

On taking leave from you again for a couple of weeks, my dear friends, I wished to speak of these things, for now we must feel that we are standing under the sign of cooperation in our anthroposophical or social movement. I would like you to be filled more and more with the understanding that if anything is to be attained in the social sphere, the spiritual science of Anthroposophy must flow into human souls. Let me recommend one thing to you, although I repeated it again and again—it really is essential that the anthroposophical truths which we are able to gain for ourselves should be recognized as the true rule of conduct for our activities and for our striving in the present time; we should have the courage and the will to push through with anthroposophical truths. The worst thing of all is that modern people lack the courage to push through with something which is really needed. They allow the best forces of their will to be broken; they are not willing to carry them through, although this is so sorely needed.

You see, my dear friends, learn to stand courageously by the fact that the people who take an interest in the representative edifice of our spiritual efforts, in the Goetheanum, are well accepted by you; be glad for each person who shows but a grain of understanding, and go towards him, but do not set store on the fact that people bring bad will, or what is more frequent today, lack of understanding towards Anthroposophy—limit yourselves to reject this in a corresponding way. The essential thing is the courage to push through with these things. Let us consider ourselves as that small group of men whose destiny it is to know and to communicate to the world the very things which it needs most of all. Let the people mock at us, let them say that it is conceit to think this; it is nevertheless true. To say to ourselves that “it is nevertheless true,” to say this earnestly, so that our whole soul is filled by it, calls for an inner courage which we must have. Let this courage fill our soul with anthroposophical substance. This will enable us to do what must be done by each one in the place where he is standing. This is what I wish to tell you today.

We can really say that we are welcoming each day which brings us nearer to the goal (which now encounters the greatest obstacles) of working in the world through our Building. For this Building is, after all, the only thing which takes into account even in its architectural forms, the great destinies of humanity. And it is good that people already begin to take notice of the Goetheanum. But another thing is needed for a progressive activity in regard to the social question; namely, that through a means such as the Goetheanum, with its forms which are stronger than any other architectonic forms of the present, an influence should be exercised on the spiritual improvement of the human forces; people should once more become accessible to truths which must be known, so that they may rise up not only to the sphere of the Angel world, but also to the sphere of the Archangel world and that of the Time Spirit.

First of all, I would like to express my warmest greetings to you, who have come here as the teachers from our immediate neighborhood. I am convinced that those who take an active interest in our Goetheanum and everything , will join me in wholeheartedly welcoming you on behalf of this Goetheanum and its workers and in expressing our great joy at having you here as our guests.

It has been suggested that I should discuss a few things that have emerged, and in some cases already been put into practice, in the wake of our spiritual scientific endeavors for the pedagogical arts and for the school system, before our eurythmic performance.

But before that, let me make a more general comment.

You see, what is to emerge from our anthroposophically intended spiritual science in pedagogical and didactic terms still has, in principle, few truly understanding representatives in the world today; it has all the more uncomprehending opponents and just as many people who, due to the general state of mental sleep of humanity today, are indifferent to such endeavors. But just in the very last days, things have happened that may be considered as, I would say, a sign, as on the one hand, so to speak, through lonely personalities from the whole breadth of our civilized life, the outlook is opened up to what is to happen from this Goetheanum building in Dornach. I must describe it as an important fact, even if only as a symptom, that the old professor Spitta in Tübingen, who is so well known to us, and who has concluded his teaching activities in these days, has given his last lecture in such a way that it culminated in a discussion of the most eminent spiritual-scientific truth: the truth of repeated earth lives. But not so much that this university teacher, at the solemn moment of the conclusion of his university career, once again professed what he had actually held all his life – that does not even seem as significant to me as the other thing, that he said at this lecture: Gentlemen, just imagine what it would mean for human knowledge and, above all, for human action in the future if this view were to become more widespread. It is a significant mark of a man who has grown old in science and in the philosophy of the present day when he concludes his teaching career with such a confession! For one can well imagine that the terrible events of the time have made a very deep impression on such a personality and that precisely such a personality, in lonely thought, feels the need to say what could help today's declining humanity from the spirit, from the soul, which in turn could lead to a revival.

You see, that is what I would like to say from one side: wherever there are discerning, feeling souls, the views that are represented here in a scientific context and that are also expected here to flow into all civilizational life of our time, can be seen at least as intuitions, which from here want to be represented in a scientific context and which are also expected here to be able to counteract the decline with a new dawn.

But these are flashes of light that arise in isolated places. Those who observe them will perceive them as rare flashes of light, but they will recognize from them the striving, especially among the best of our time, for a renewal of spiritual life from very, very deep sources of the soul. This is, however, opposed by what arises today out of a certain not only drowsiness, but, to put it mildly, out of an enormous superficiality of our time; which arises out of a superficiality that often leads to frivolity, especially in circles that are publicly active in journalism, with regard to the great questions of existence and human life. And after I have shown you a flash of light, I would also like to show you, so to speak, some of the shadows, which, however, do not occur in isolation, but are widespread. I could cite hundreds of facts in support of the last assertion; but I will now present only one particularly characteristic one.

One of our English friends has endeavored to arouse interest in London for what is to take place here in Dornach. He tried to place a very truthful and objective little article in what appears to be a respected journal – there are many such journals and newspapers at present. The journalist, who listened to the matter, with whom the gentleman in question was, a journalist from London, was very friendly and extremely accommodating. He promised to advocate the matter in such a way that a visit from about as many people as are here today to give us the pleasure of being here should be arranged from London. The journalist in question then said something about how transformative what he had been told was. I would like to read you something about this transformation as a document of the frivolity with which people speak today of that which they do not know — for the journalist naturally had no idea of what is going on here in Dornach. Something like this shows how little people today are inclined to respond at all when something wants to assert itself from a source that honestly believes it can counter decline with an ascent. So the following appears in a London magazine as the result of this interview, which the journalist conducted favorably:

Remarks and comments

A School of Spiritual Science

A School of Spiritual Science has been established at the Goetheanum in Dornach, near Basel, Switzerland. The building itself exemplifies a new concept of art initiated by Dr. Rudolf Steiner. It is planned to organize a trip to Basel to visit it, and Dr. Steiner has promised to personally instruct the participants during the ten-day visit, which is to take place in August. Assuming that the trip takes four days, it will be possible for the participants to recover from the shock of the first sight of Dr. Steiner's creation during the remaining six days. Assuming that no one who can make the journey wants to miss out on what we expect will be an interesting experience, we will provide an illustration of what awaits participants at the end of their pilgrimage, and if any of our readers are going to travel, we hope that they will do us the favor of sharing their impressions with us upon their return.” [«The Architect», No. 34, London July 16, 1920]

So you see, this is how you treat something you don't know. This is the mood of the world today, these are the difficulties we have to fight against.

Now, my dear attendees, spiritual science is there for many and it should – this will be shown above all in our autumn course, which is to open on 26 September – exert a fruitful influence on all possible branches of spiritual life. In spring, a more limited course here already showed how the medical-therapeutic field can be enriched by spiritual science. And it is the same for the most diverse fields. The outer form of the building itself is intended to bear witness to what can be artistically attempted through spiritual science that can be absorbed into our perceptions. But today I want to speak to you about the consequences that spiritual science can have in the field of education and teaching. I am not speaking to you about some kind of program that we would not give a damn about, nor am I speaking to you about some kind of theoretical pedagogical discussion. I am speaking to you about something that has already been put into practice during the school year at our “Freie Waldorfschule” in Stuttgart. This Free Waldorf School in Stuttgart was founded by Emil Molt. Its initial aim was to bring to life in practice what can arise from a development of what can be found in our spiritual science, above all, for a real understanding of man and thus also of the child.

You see, it is particularly important to me that we already have a year of real school practice behind us. I attach particular importance to this because all of this spiritual science, as it is to be brought into the world from the Goetheanum in Dornach, would basically be nothing more than just another sectarian movement or some worldview theory or the like — there are already many such beautiful things in the world — if something else were not there; if this spiritual science, in particular, did not want something completely different from everything that comes into the world in this way. This spiritual science does not want to produce ideas for a new world view; this spiritual science does not want to be some kind of theory or even a new religious confession, as it has been slanderously accused of — the latter least of all. What it wants to be was not originally conceived with reference to any religious confession, but rather it was conceived with the scientific way of thinking and attitude of our time in mind. It was conceived as that which can be brought forth by the human spirit and soul in the form of knowledge, just as natural science, which has been so fruitful for our time, has been brought forth as knowledge for physical life. And this spiritual science is based on the fact that if one applies the right methods, which I have described in my books “The Secret Science in the Outline” and “How to Obtain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?”, one is able to gain just as certain knowledge, so enclosed, contoured knowledge about soul and spirit, as one can gain through the scientific methods of the present for the physical world.

However, the work that needs to be done to arrive at spiritual scientific knowledge in a truly methodical way is no more comfortable or easier than the work that needs to be done in a chemistry or physics laboratory, at an observatory, or in a clinic. Just because people imagine that anthroposophical researchers are people who conjure up all kinds of ideas that can be had quickly, that are quickly drawn from the imagination - just because people imagine this, that is why they misunderstand the paths that are to be taken from anthroposophy into the spiritual world. If one familiarizes oneself with the way in which man, in a self-education of his entire being, can alone come to open up within himself views of the spiritual world that are just as exact and certain as the results of natural science; only if one informs oneself about how long it takes to research relatively small, insignificant truths that are added to external-physical knowledge - let us say, for example, for the doctrine of human sense, for human anatomy or the like; only if one realizes how decades of research are often necessary for the most trivial little things in the field of spiritual science: then one will learn to understand that research in this field is by no means more convenient and easier than research in the clinical field, in the observatory, in the physics or chemistry laboratory. But today one does not yet have the will to accept that there can be such research into the mind and soul.

The intentions that have emerged over the last three to four centuries, and particularly in the 19th century, for scientific knowledge have been great and powerful. And I do not need to tell you what this scientific knowledge has brought to the world. But there is one thing I would like to mention: that anyone who stands firmly on the ground of our anthroposophically-based spiritual science will be the very last to disparage anything legitimate in scientific research. Because that is the first thing to be considered: that only those who are not dabbling or even lay in the scientific work of today can stand firm in the field of our spiritual science. Only when one has acquired scientific conscientiousness and scientifically rigorous research methods in the laboratory, in the observatory and so on, when one has educated oneself to the exactitude of research, only then has one awakened in oneself the inner moral world-view that is necessary to become a spiritual researcher. In the outer world, as one says, one always has the rough reality before one, which corrects one. If I am a bad bridge builder in theory and calculate a bridge badly, then the falling train will teach me that I have built my bridge badly. And so the correction is always there if one wants to apply the laws seen by the spirit in the outer physical reality. However, the further we ascend from the lower foundations of physical reality and approach the actual research of mind and soul, the more precarious its exploration of reality becomes. And if you were as strict in judging a doctor who has to rebuild destroyed health as you are in judging nature when it corrects a bad mechanic by means of a crashing train, you would not be able to proceed in the same way according to today's view. Because as a mechanic you can be checked by nature. Whether someone has died despite or even because of medicine - that's where things get a little shakier! And when one reaches the spiritual and psychic spheres, one must bring with one's inner conscientiousness and, above all, the most earnest and strict sense of truth if one wants to conduct supersensible research, for then it is easy to mistake fantasy for reality.

But something very special happens when one acquires the method for spiritual research in this way through inner soul education and soul training. What happens is that one comes closer to the things of the world than one does as an external naturalist. For you see, that is precisely the remarkable thing about the more materialistic natural science of modern times: on the one hand, it places itself before the world of facts of the outer senses, but, by creating ideas for itself in natural laws, this outer sense world, it has increasingly become more and more intellectualized, theoretical, and divorced from reality, so that the newer researchers of worldviews no longer know how to connect the ideas they concoct with reality. They often research whether the ideas that man carries in his soul still have anything to do with external reality. This is the tragedy of the modern, scientifically oriented worldview: people may profess this worldview; they want to deal with reality, with mere external reality, and they come away from this external reality precisely through their ideas. They no longer have the living connection, the connection of the whole human being with living reality. They want to go for reality and grow out of reality. One arrives at abstract intellectualized soul content. And so it happens that the more man grows into materialism, the more he grows out of reality.

If one now sets out on the path of spiritual research, one immediately has the inner experience: you immerse yourself in reality; you do not just stand there looking at your object, but you immerse yourself in this reality with your entire soul life; you become one with reality. That is why spiritual science, as it is meant here, can never exist without one beginning to love and loving more and more the thing one wants to know. Spiritual science is at the same time something that, when it asserts itself in our soul, permeates us with love for the world; which cannot be at all, even though it strives for mathematical clarity in the formulation and shaping of ideas, without seizing the whole human being, the feeling and the will. Therefore, I may say: the practical testing of what follows pedagogically and didactically from spiritual science is actually the only thing that can be valuable to us. Because talking about something, no matter how beautiful the theories are, when you are alienated from what you are talking about: that is basically easy and is the task that numerous world-view people and confession founders set themselves today. What is wanted here has nothing to do with that. Rather, it is precisely this immersion in reality and especially human reality that arises quite naturally in the wake of this spiritual science through nature, through the essence of this spiritual science.

And so it comes about that, above all, what arises through this spiritual science is a more intimate knowledge of the human being itself. Such a recognition of the human being that the one who now stands before the developing human being, the child - before this wonderful world riddle that is born, that in the first days of its external existence shows us the wonderful construction of a physical organism out of the spiritual and soul in every moment , and then, as it grows up, shows us how everything is formed out of the inner being, out of the soul and spirit, that the person who is now confronted with this living mystery of the world, this developing human being, as a teacher or educator, grows together with his task in such a way that one can truly say: Spiritual science is then the fire through which love for education and teaching is directly awakened. That is the goal of all our striving here: to get to know the human being.

But we cannot get to know the human being without getting to know him as he is becoming. And if we really want to get to know the human being as he is becoming, then we even have to enrich our language with a new word. For those who look a little deeper into the reality of life, all the languages of European civilization have only one word for the fundamental fact of life, and there should be two! They have one word. Now, if we go back to primeval times, to those times of human life that only old documents speak of in a mythical way, then we find something similar to what we need again: when we speak of the eternal, of the indestructible in the human being, as opposed to the destructible, perishable body. We need another word to accompany our word 'immortality', which points to the physical end of life; we need the word 'unborn'. For just as we pass through the gate of death with our eternal, spiritual part and live on in the spiritual world – a different life that can be seen through by spiritual research – we also step out of the spiritual world before we are born or conceived here, down to this physical embodiment on earth. We not only pass through the gate of death as immortals, but also come through the gate of birth as the unborn. We need the word 'unborn' in addition to the word 'immortal' if we want to fully grasp the human being in his essence.

What I am hinting at here can be found in my writings, explained from all sides. I can only give you the main features, so to speak, because I want to show you what becomes of human life and human feeling if we want to make such a view fruitful.

Imagine a teacher who, like our Waldorf teachers in Stuttgart, has gone through everything that can be experienced when spiritual science is allowed to take effect on the soul. Imagine him standing before the developing human being, the child. He has not only a gray theory, he has this as a living purpose in life: he says to himself, “The souls have descended from spiritual worlds, these souls on which I now have to work.” And now, from the pedagogy and didactics that follow from spiritual science, knowledge is imparted to him about how these souls can be treated from year to year, from month to month. And I may perhaps give you an idea, since you are all educators of young people, based on a small detail, which in my case is the result of more than three decades of research. This idea, if it does not remain an idea, does not remain a thought, but when it becomes a living activity in the educator and teacher, it evokes a remarkably stimulating relationship between the teacher and the pupil, between the educator and the child to be educated. You see, today in psychology there is much talk about the relationship between the physical and the spiritual. And there are theories that say how soul and body are to interact. But these things are not studied. We do not have the method of spiritual science by which one can study these things. Because one has to study them in detail. You cannot talk about the relationship between the human soul and the body by rambling in generalities, but you have to know all the details. Details of the soul affect details of the human body. I will only hint at which of the individual ideas around which the matter revolves I actually mean.

We first observe the child before they start school. We know that they initially have what are known as milk teeth. From the age of six to eight, they then produce their permanent teeth. This is an extraordinarily important period in the life of someone who does not just observe the outer human being, but observes the whole human being through spiritual science. It is no coincidence that this period coincides with the one in which the child is handed over to the primary school. For what finally pushes through as teeth comes from forces that are present in the whole human being and are active in the whole human being; and that is, so to speak, the final point; when these second teeth appear, an end is put to something that has been active in the human organism until then. That which was active there has gone as far as the emergence of the teeth.

Now, anyone who observes human life more deeply will find that, from a certain stage of human life onwards, memory, and in particular the ability to combine and to imagine, takes on a very specific structure. What later becomes intellectual life particularly emerges from this stage of life onwards. And if we now follow what takes place in the soul and spirit of the child up to the point in time when the second teeth mainly shoot out, if we follow this quite appropriately, as one follows a natural object under the microscope, what becomes of the soul when the teeth are out? then you discover that it is the same power that first flooded and permeated the organism and then emancipated itself from the organism and became free in the soul to become the intellectual faculty.

You observe the child from the age of seven or nine, his life of soul and mind, and you say to yourself: What now emerges as mind has previously, when it was still in the subconscious, worked in the organism. That was active as soul in the body.

I will now summarize something for you that, as I said, is the result of more than three decades of research. You have observed in a very concrete way how the soul works in the body, although it does not appear in its original, natural form until the first seven years. This is how it is everywhere with our spiritual science. Based on strict research principles, it talks about the relationship between soul and body, not philosophically and rambling, but according to concrete results, how the individual soul, in this case the mind, first worked on the body. We follow how the mind works inside the body and gradually organizes the body until the teeth have erupted.

And so it can be done over and over again, and one can come to an understanding of the whole human body from the spiritual-soul realm. Here, theories are not constructed about the interaction of soul and body. Here, not only the human being present in a particular period of time is observed, but the whole human being is followed. One cannot ask: How do soul and body interact from birth to the change of teeth? For that which has been working there only appears externally from the seventh to the fourteenth year of life. Then a new epoch begins. And so, step by step, spiritual science is used to study what this human being actually is. This does not result in the abstract, grey theory of man that we are accustomed to finding in the usual textbooks and manuals; it gives us something that fills us with the realization of how we are filled with something in an individual, personal relationship with what we encounter in life and what interests us directly from life.

This opens our eyes to the development of the human being, the child: how the soul of the child develops more and more in the outer body. And this ignites the will to approach this developing child in the pedagogically correct way. Then one acquires the ability to say how the developing child actually stands in relation to what is to be offered to him.

You see, we teach our children to read and write. If we disregard certain primeval times of humanity, when reading and writing was still very close to human perception – I am only thinking of the old pictographic scripts – and look at our times, at our times of civilization – and we must, after all, live in them and educate ourselves in them – yes, what are our characters, what are our letters, if not something that is very far removed from the original, elementary, childlike experience! The child is actually introduced to a world that is quite foreign to him if he is to learn to read and write. It is not the same with arithmetic, because that is more human. Counting is much more closely related to the original and elementary human soul than reading and writing. Writing has developed further, and pictures have become signs through which one enters a foreign world.

Now, based on our essential insights into human nature, we have planned for our Waldorf curriculum that the child, by being educated and taught in the primary school in the beginning, learns to write from the artistic comprehension of writing and then learns to read from writing. So we do not introduce the child to foreign characters, but we seek out the way from the child's nature – which gives us spiritual scientific guidance to recognize it more precisely: How does the hand want to move? What does the hand experience when it makes a stroke, an action? We let the child draw. We let the child develop what is connected with its elementary nature; and only from that do we develop the written characters. So we start from life and lead to the abstract. We avoid bringing the intellectual element to the fore in any way. We start from life.

And we also start from life in such a way that, for example, we do not bring into the curriculum the kind of alternation that some people find so beneficial, where something different is done in every lesson. Instead, we work on a particular subject in the main lessons until the child has mastered it, until the child has understood it. Therefore, we do not have a curriculum of lessons, but for the main school subjects we have a curriculum that remains the same for about three months. Of course, this excludes languages and so on.

And then we try to fit everything that needs to be learned into the time when the child can develop the subject of its own accord. For example, we try to study everything that follows from the fact that what has been working in the organism at first, then stops working when the teeth change, coming to fruition from year to year in the eighth, ninth, tenth year. We observe what we can teach the child in a particular year, starting from the very first rudiments of observation of nature and historical life. We try to put into practice what is often said today, but which must remain abstract. The pedagogy that we have today is not to be criticized. I have the highest regard for what is available in the way of theoretical education and pedagogical instructions. I do not believe that we can add anything essential to that. But in what we can add from spiritual science because it is a living thing, that is in awakening the pedagogical approach, the didactic, in the utilization of precise human knowledge in the child. Thus, if guided by the insights of spiritual science, one can carefully study how around the age of nine a very important phase takes place in the child's soul. Until then, the child is actually always in such a state that it does not differ significantly from the environment. Around the age of nine, the child begins to differ from the environment to such an extent that from then on we begin to talk about plants and animals quite differently than before. And history lessons should only be taught in a fairy-tale or legendary way, in a pictorial way. They should only be taught at all – even in the very early stages – after the child has learned to distinguish itself from its environment, so around the age of nine.

Thus, through spiritual science, we strive to understand the human being in principle – not only in general pedagogical and didactic terms – and this shows us what we have to accomplish for the developing human being day after day. But all this still has something of thinking, of the conceptual, about it. Something much more important is the other.

Just think about what it means for education if you take the view that we have before us in man only the highest being in the animal series, and we have to develop in him what he receives through physical birth. Through spiritual science, on the other hand, the teacher starts from the basis that A spiritual being has descended from the spiritual world; it has embodied itself in a physical human being. It has brought spiritual substance from the spiritual world and combined it with what comes from the hereditary stream. We have this whole living human puzzle before us and have to work on its development. — How one is overcome by a tremendous reverence for the developing human being! For awe-inspiring stands before us, what the gods have sent down to us from heaven to earth.

And the second feeling that creeps up on us when we face the child is an enormous sense of responsibility; but a sense of responsibility that carries us, that really gives us strength and will to educate and teach. It is therefore something that can enter a person alive. I do not want to be misunderstood. What I mean is that what enters the human being as life – not as theory, not as theoretical pedagogy, not as doctrinaire pedagogy – that is what comes to us through spiritual science. For spiritual science does not just want to reflect the general life of the world in ideas; it wants to enable human beings to partake in this general life of the world. That is why things that arise from spiritual science play a role in educational activities that are based on it, and that we only really notice when we engage with this spiritual science.

We often find ourselves in a position where we have to say something to children that initially goes beyond their understanding when we teach it to them in concepts. Let us assume that we want to teach a child about the nature of the immortal human soul. Those who have experience know how difficult this is if we want to take the matter responsibly and reverently. Let us assume – I want to start from a comparison – we look at a butterfly pupa. We say to the child: Look, the butterfly will fly out of this chrysalis; you will see the butterfly when it comes out of the chrysalis. It is the same with the human soul; the human soul leaves the chrysalis of the body at the moment of death. You just cannot see this soul. An image presents itself to the children.

People often think that if someone does something in this way, it is the same as if someone else does it. Spiritual science shows us that this is not the case. If I have to think about it first to realize that the butterfly pupa with the butterfly flying out is an image for the immortal human soul, if I, because the child is more stupid than I am, I cobble together the image and bring it to him so that he can understand immortality – if you approach the child with this attitude, you are not teaching the child. Only if you believe in the image yourself, you are teaching the child the right thing. And I will be quite honest with you: for me, based on spiritual science, this is not a pieced-together image, but a fact; the human soul goes through what the butterfly shows in the image. And it is not my intellect that has found in this butterfly the image for immortality, but rather: at a lower level of nature, the same process is present. The image is made by nature, by the spirit of nature itself. I do not create the image, but I believe that in the butterfly emerging, nature's creative powers represent the same as the human soul leaving the body. I do not believe that the child is stupid and I am clever, but I place myself on the same level because I have honestly gained what I say to the child in consciousness. I must believe it to the same extent and in the same way that I want to teach it to the child. Then there is something imponderable, then it is really my soul and the child's soul, which at that moment are still connected by quite different forces than by the words that live in concepts and thoughts and theories. This connection with the developing child's soul through such things is often what matters.

And again we see how, in recent times, many things have been misunderstood in a one-sided way. People have striven more and more to teach children only what they can understand. But in so doing they descend more and more into the most dreadful triviality. Just think how banal and ordinary things would have to be presented in order for a child to understand them! And when you look at the method books that describe how to teach children, you will be horrified at the banalities you are supposed to inflict on children.

There is one thing that is so important and meaningful for human life that we simply do not know. When we get to know human life, it is like this: sometimes, perhaps at the age of thirty-five, we remember something we may have learned in the eighth year. If we have learned it correctly, from the right spirit, we know it as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. You also remember: You did not understand that, you accepted that on authority. — You felt that: I am younger, the teacher is older, he understands it, I do not understand it. Now, at thirty-five, the whole thing comes up again. Now you understand it because you have matured. Once people appreciate what it means when, in later life, you feel empowered by your own maturity to understand something that you used to believe only because you respected the person who told you, because he was an authority — if people would only grasp this, then they would also be able to appreciate what it means when spiritual science says: you have to look at the child as it develops up to about the age of seven, and you will find that the child is above all an imitator. It does everything that those around it do. This is a basic law of human nature developing during these years. You cannot educate by admonishment, but only by example, right down to the thoughts. Those who have impure thoughts in their childhood have a bad effect on children. For the souls have a subconscious connection. So, right down to the thoughts, everything is experienced by the child up to the change of teeth in an imitative way and is incorporated into the whole human being by imitation.

But then, with the change of teeth, with the entry of the intellectual part of the soul, begins what the human soul wants until sexual maturity: devotion to an honored authority. This should be said especially to our time, that it corresponds to a human law of development. The child can absorb truths during this time because it sees that the honored authority depends on these truths. Those who have not experienced absorbing truths out of a sense of authority, roughly from the ages of seven to fourteen, can hardly stand on their own two feet in life as independent and free human beings, for they have not developed the right relationship between people in their humanity!

Therefore, our educational philosophy is based on the fundamental principle that up to the age of seven, education and teaching should be based on imitation. The teacher in the primary school up to the age of fourteen then finds himself so isolated that he is the only authority. It has an enormous significance for life if one can later remember: Through your own maturity, you have now achieved something that was instilled during your school days. This gives a special strength. In this way, schooling and education have an effect on later life, when the teacher, through the authority that is taken for granted, teaches the child what he will only understand later. In general, it is easy and plausible for superficial observation: one only wants to teach the child what he understands. But then one makes people old early. One destroys life. One does not give the human being the right earthly substance for later life.

With these truths, I only wanted to make it clear how, not from theoretical pedagogy, but through what a person can become by permeating themselves with spiritual science, in the human relationship, that is achieved for the child, which we would like to add to what the pedagogy of the 19th century has produced in terms of the magnificent, in terms of very magnificent principles. Spiritual science wants to fertilize life out of the need of our time, because it is a recognition that permeates the human being completely in his innermost being. Therefore, this must be carried out in every detail. Our teachers and educationalists should work from the direct knowledge of the human being. Therefore, anyone who says that we want to introduce a new confession, a world view, into the school is judging us badly.

At our Freie Waldorf School in Stuttgart, whose top management I am in charge of and which I have to inspect from time to time, I said from the outset: It is impossible for us to bring the content of a world view into the school. Protestant children are taught their faith by Protestant pastors, Catholic children by Catholic pastors. Dissident children can remain dissident children. When a whole number of these children or their parents came to us and said: Yes, what you teach the children awakens in them the feeling that they should also receive a religious impulse - so the dissident parents came, not just those who belong to any confession; the present confessions do not manage to create such a strong religious need. We were forced to set up general religious education classes because the children educated in the anthroposophical tradition had a religious need arising from the spirit of our teaching and because the children of dissident parents did not want to send their children to religious education classes within a confessional framework. The children who receive these classes would otherwise have received no classes at all. And as I said, Catholic children receive Catholic religious education and Protestant children receive Protestant religious education. We can, because we do not want to bring a particular worldview into the school, be tolerant in the true, genuine sense in this regard. And this tolerance truly bears good fruit in practice. For what we are seeking is not to bring a worldview or confession into the school, but a practical pedagogy and didactics that can come from spiritual science and only from spiritual science. We have a purely objective educational interest in setting up our school and not in promoting any particular worldview. And anyone who claims that we promote a worldview out of our spiritual science, anyone who claims that, is lying. Only someone who knows how we want to serve nothing but practical life through that which, in the face of this life, does not stand in unworldly distances, but precisely through this knowledge, as I have just described to you, is connected with practical life, judges what we want correctly.

That is why we have included eurythmy in the curriculum as a compulsory subject. You will not think me so foolish as to object to the beneficial effects of gymnastics, which were rightly emphasized in the 19th century. But the time will come when people will think more objectively about these things. Then it will be found that gymnastics does correspond to human physiology; it introduces those physical movements into the child, into the human being, that correspond to the study of the human body. But we do not add to this, by contesting gymnastics – our eurythmy.

What is this eurhythmy? It is, first of all, an art, as presented here in public performances. But in addition, it also has a hygienic-therapeutic element and, furthermore, a strong pedagogical-didactic element. It is not based on some invented gestures - through random connections between external gestures or facial expressions and what is going on in the soul - but on what can be gained through careful study by what I would like to call, in the spirit of Goethe, “sensual-supersensory observation”. If we study the human speech organ more from within and see with our senses what takes place, not in movements or modulations, but in the potential for movement, then we can apply this to the whole human being, entirely in keeping with the principle of Goethe's theory of metamorphosis. Goethe sees the whole plant only as a more complicated leaf. What Goethe explained with regard to forms in his morphology and what will only be appreciated later, we try to apply functionally in human activity in an artistic way. We move the whole human organism or groups of people in such a way that it is derived from spoken language. That is, we make hands, legs and heads perform movements that correspond to the movement tendencies of the larynx and its neighboring organs. We make the whole human being into a larynx, so to speak, and thus create a soundless but visible language – not a sign language that comes from the arbitrariness of the imagination. We create a language that we transfer to the human being and his movements. It is formed just as lawfully – only formed through study – as it is formed by nature, which is carried out by the larynx and neighboring organs.

And when we have a short demonstration by children after a short break, so that the pedagogical-didactic element is also expressed, you will see that this eurythmy is not only an art but also, at the same time, soul-filled movement. Every movement is not performed out of physiological insight, but out of an understanding of the connection between body and soul. Every movement is inspired, as the sound is inspired. The whole human being becomes a speech organ. That is why it also reveals what can be artistically shaped in poetry. Today people have no idea that the content of prose is not the main thing in poetry. Ninety-nine percent of poetry today is superfluous! What poetry is based on either the shaping of language in the Goethean manner or on the rhythm of language – one need only refer to Schiller; many other examples could be cited. Schiller said that poems such as 'The Diver' or 'The Walk', for example, did not first live in his soul in prose, but rather something like music, something like a picture, something visionary lived in him. And it was only from this wordless-melodious, from the wordless-pictorial that Schiller and also Goethe formed the words, added them, as it were, to the wordless or musical or inwardly plastic. And so we are also compelled, when recitation is required, for example, to fall back on the rhythm of ordinary speech. For you will hear that the eurythmic presentation — as I said, the human being as a living larynx on the stage before you, moving — will be accompanied on the one hand by recitation and on the other by music. It can also be accompanied by what is not expressed with the poetry. But then it must not be recited in the way that reciting is done in our unartistic age, when the content of the poetry is simply taken from the depths of the soul. Rather, it is precisely the beat and rhythm and the connections that are formed in rhyme, that is, the actual artistic element, that must be expressed in the recitation. For eurhythmics could not be accompanied by the usual unartistic reciting of today. Therefore, eurhythmics will also have a healing effect on what is declining in our other arts.

Above all, you will be interested to know that eurythmy has an educational and didactic element. Gymnastics are excellent for people, but they only develop the outer, physical organism. As a compulsory subject in schools, eurythmy has an effect above all on what I would call the initiative of the will, the independence of the human soul. And this is what we actually need for the next age of humanity. Anyone who looks into the chaos of our social conditions today knows that, above all, people lack this soul initiative.

I have already said that the teacher and the educator cannot manage without the consciousness that can fill them with reverence, but also with responsibility: that they have to work on the souls that come from the spiritual world, but in such a way that the next generation enters the world in the right way. Anyone who looks at the world today already feels how important it is what we, as the next generation, bring into the world. And that is why one has such inner satisfaction when one can see how, without bringing a worldview into the school, our teachers, for example, treat anthropology in the fifth grade: not in a dry sense, not anthropological-theoretical knowledge, but in such a way that what one brings to the children as a first anthropology is permeated and warmed by the spirit. If you teach the children in this way, they begin to be present in a completely different way during the lessons; they establish something in themselves that will remain with them for the rest of their lives.

Likewise, I had the deepest satisfaction when our seventh-grade teacher developed history in this spiritual-scientific way in front of the children – but as I said, not spiritual science, but history treated in a spiritual-scientific-methodical way. In this way, what would otherwise remain more or less foreign to the children is transformed into something that the child knows directly related to its own being. And in this way a bridge can be built everywhere between what the child experiences from the developmental process of humanity and what can inspire the child to become a useful member of the future of humanity.

I wanted to begin with these few words before the eurythmy performances. And now, at the end, I would like to say once more: when I look at people like Spitta, at what can flow from a renewal of spiritual life, when I look at this and am moved to express a value judgment about spiritual science, let me express my joy. This joy is certainly shared by those here at the Goetheanum and those working from the Goetheanum who have set themselves spiritual-scientific, anthroposophical tasks. And I do not hope that it could be absolutely the only right thing to wish you, after you have had the kindness to listen to me for five quarters of an hour and after you will still have the kindness to watch the eurythmic performance and listening to what is played and recited — after that you will still need to recover from the “shock” you have suffered, according to the words of the English journalist, in a period of six days!

at the first Anthroposophical College Course at the Goetheanum

Question: How can we recognize the different temperaments in children and in ourselves?

Rudolf Steiner: I would like to say a few words about temperament, more to point out how, under the influence of the pedagogy that we want to cultivate in Waldorf schools, intellectualism and the other soul qualities gradually become an art of education. What is important is that it should not be a matter of mere skill or of pure science in education, but that it should be an art. This presupposes that one is able to observe the human being from all sides, that one has made a great effort to grasp the nuances of the soul life as revealed in the different temperaments. First more theoretically, then, as soon as one has grasped what you find in our anthroposophical literature in various descriptions of the temperaments, by applying it to life. In many cases, this is a method of convincing oneself of the truth that anthroposophy can help when it is seen in the spirit; it is a method of having life confirm it. Life's experiences will present themselves to us at every turn, showing how what is seen in the spirit - or even just appropriated by learning what the seer has seen - must then be transferred into life.

So it should be a more or less long path of one's own study of the human being, and I would like to say about the whole human being. When this has been passed on to the teacher, then what comes out at the end is something like a rounded handling of life. Let us assume that a teacher has been trained in the way I have only been able to sketch it out, in that he has looked into the being of the developing human being with certain glances, and he comes to teach after such preparation. Then the following can happen: he speaks with a child in class. This child, to whom he asks a question, will prepare to answer with a certain ease and indifference. The teacher has a certain idea of how the answer should be. The child easily decides to give the answer, gives an answer without showing that the decision is difficult for him. In the end, one has the feeling that —- one acquires a certain certainty in this feeling only by allowing what I have described to happen: Yes, that is an answer, it is approximately correct, but this answer came about because this child has forgotten much of what I have already taught. The answer is such that much more could be added to it. And I may be led to add much more. The child accepts this and sits down again. I am dealing with a sanguine child.

I ask a question of a second child. The child shows me as I get up that it takes a certain resolve to approach the question. So it allows the question to approach it, not moving its face back and forth, but looking at me quite rigidly. It allows the question to approach it. Now, after it has heard the question, it is silent for a while. It will take a special art to observe and evaluate such reactions in the right way when teaching in a game of questions and answers. Only after a certain pause, which is, so to speak, completely neutral, can you see an effort in the child to come to a decision, to formulate the answer. One will find that the answer is difficult for him, that the child has to struggle to formulate the answer. For such things one must be able to acquire the necessary sense of tact. And one will generally find that this child brings everything he can muster to give the answer. And one will notice from the child's whole bearing – especially from the fact that he probably lowers his face a little – that he is not entirely satisfied with his answer. One will therefore be able to notice anticipation and retrospective feeling, anticipation and empathy before and after the answer: one is dealing with a melancholy child.

You ask a third child a question. You may need to ask the question a second time, because you realize that the child has not fully understood it. The child barely takes in the question completely, you may have to make an effort to formulate the question again forcefully, and so on. Then the child does not make the gesture with his hand, but in his soul [Rudolf Steiner demonstrates the gesture]. It says something to you; there is then something in the words - you have to have a feeling for this - sometimes something that does not correspond to the question: you are dealing with a phlegmatic child.

Then a fourth child. It has long been noticed that this child is eager to answer and wants to be asked questions. You ask it a question and you can hear how the answer bubbles up. How it says something in some way beyond the answer that one expected. This has nothing to do with the method, or that the answer may not be given correctly, but it is a matter of the habitus, how the child behaves, namely that it pushes itself to do so. One must develop a feeling for what is going on in the sphere of temperament – because it is not at all the case that the child who pushes to answer and wants to be asked is much more knowledgeable than the other. Perhaps it does not even know as much as the phlegmatic child. It is not a matter of the method or something learned, but of the feeling habitus, the sentience habitus. There may be a very poor answer. Nevertheless, you can recognize the choleric child by the way he behaves. And so, if you observe the essence of the human being in the right, lively way – if you stand in front of the children in the first lesson, you can tell from their corresponding expression – if you are only able to assess them correctly – what temperament you are dealing with.

Of course, this is just one example. It can also be observed in other ways. What matters is that the educational theory gained from anthroposophy becomes an art of education, so that, just as the artist nuances in color, sees something in color that the other person cannot see, so one sees something in the child that the other person does not see and perceive, and so one must first become acquainted with the nature of the child.

Question: How can we influence the temperaments through colors?

Rudolf Steiner: I refer you to the booklet “The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy”, which was published many years ago. I will try to explain some of it to you.

Let us assume, then, that a child faces you at an early age as a choleric child. It will not take a game of questions and answers to figure it out, but it may show itself by kicking terribly at every opportunity, by throwing itself on the floor and beating itself. All these expressions are the corresponding ones in the choleric child.

Now, if you are a layperson, you will probably believe that you can tame such a child by placing it in a calming, colorful environment if possible. But that is not true. If you surround the choleric child with blue or dress him in blue clothes, then precisely because he has the disposition for it, when he is surrounded by this calming blue color, which he does not reject, he will act out his choleric temperament. He will become even more “z'widerer,” more rumbling. On the other hand, if the child is surrounded by red, the exciting red color, you know from other lectures that the complementary color is green, the green-bluish complementary color is evoked. The child, when constantly surrounded by red, has to make an effort internally to experience the complementary color internally and is not externally excited. So the same thing, that is what has a calming effect on an excited child.

On the other hand, you will have a good effect on a melancholy child if you get him to come out of himself by bringing him into a blue, greenish-blue environment; so don't be afraid that if you give him a calming, adoring environment, you will make him even more melancholy.

The point here is to really understand how it follows from the essence of man that you fight fire with fire. You see, it is always a matter of starting from the essence of man and using the knowledge you gain to approach life. But I would like to make it quite clear that a mechanistic view must be avoided when considering education as an art. And when we ask how we can influence temperaments by means of colors and such things, we must not fall into the trap of intellectual systematization. If education becomes an art, then one does not arrive at such intellectual schematizing. When dealing with color, one does not look at the temperaments, but in general one is more concerned with whether the child is an excited or an unexcited child. It may also happen, for example, that a phlegmatic child may have to be treated in the same way with colors as a melancholic child, and so on. In short, the aim is to develop a living art of education from a living science of education.

Question: Is it beneficial for children to look back as early as five or six years of age?

Rudolf Steiner: I do not know what prompted the question about children looking back. I also do not know if the question arises from experience. It seems so, because it is written here. I am actually surprised that this question has been asked, because I would have thought that such nonsense, having five- to six-year-old children look back, would not actually occur. As you know from my writings, looking back is practiced, in particular, from “How to Know Higher Worlds” in order to advance spiritually and to gradually arrive at a real spiritual view. And you can easily imagine what a profound effect it has on a person when such a review is practiced, when you consider that the other thinking, the one that runs along in the course of natural phenomena, is the thinking of ordinary consciousness. When we now, through a certain inner effort, try to formulate a review in such a way that we, as it were, go through the events of the day backwards from evening to morning, we snatch ourselves away from precisely this ordinary thinking and imagining and experiencing of things. We break free. And by doing this radically, in such a contrary way, we gradually achieve an inner emancipation of the soul and spirit element in the human being. Such practice provides a support for spiritual progress.

Now it could be meant – it is not clearly expressed in the question – that a review would be adapted for children to such an exercise, which is appropriate for spiritual progress in later life. That would simply be nonsense for the reason that one would introduce an absolute disorder into the relationship between the spiritual-mental and the bodily-etheric of the child. It would be plain to see that one was causing terrible damage. To allow such practices with children would mean that one would tear apart at a very early stage that which corresponds to the imagination, to feeling, to the will; that one would bring such disorder into the whole soul-spiritual-physical organization of the child that one would virtually develop the child, deliberately develop it into childish mental deficiency, into a kind of dementia praecox. If one hears about such things at all, if one becomes familiar with such things, it is important to know that they should not be used in a novelistic way, and especially that they are not only not intended for children aged five to six, but that it is nonsense to use them at all in people before sexual maturity. If the intention is to look back in such a way that the child is allowed to remember the events of the day, then such a thing must at least not be taken to any extreme. It may sometimes be necessary for the child to remember some kind of misbehavior or for them to remember a joy they have experienced for this or that reason, but to is something that is basically also a kind of mischief, albeit a small mischief, compared to when, for example, it is meant to suggest that the child should be doing spiritual exercises.

A question about a 23-year-old person with an intellectual disability: Is the disability connected to a past life and how should the person in question be educated?

Rudolf Steiner: In such matters, each case is truly an individual one and nothing can be said from the few details given on this note, least of all how the mental deficiency in question is connected with any previous life on earth. As for how to treat him educationally, that really depends entirely on what the person was like before. Above all, the person should be followed up in terms of education: What was done with the person before? Was no attention paid to the fact that there were abnormalities in the past? The real issue is that it is not possible for a young person of twenty-three to become feeble-minded unless it is due to an external necessity. Rather, the issue is that the things that preceded it should have been dealt with in the appropriate way. But to answer the question of what to do after he turns twenty-three, you would have to know the person very well.

Perhaps I may take this opportunity to come back to a few other things that have caught my eye during the course of the evening. First of all, the matter of the age of nine. It is indeed the case that the main epoch of the developing human being's life is from birth to the change of teeth, then again from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, but that between the ages of nine and ten there is something that intervenes in the child's life in an extraordinarily significant way. You know that the sense of self first arises in the form of a sense of self. This sense of self only emerges in the second, third, sometimes even the fourth year of life. It is not yet an actual sense of self, and this sense of self is not actually present in a transparently clear way even at the change of teeth. So you don't give the child something that is in line with his development when you introduce things that sharply challenge the child to separate himself from his surroundings, to have a strong sense of self. Everything that is perceived when one strongly separates oneself from one's surroundings, when one perceives another being as another, one should bring up as little as possible to the child up to the age of nine, but should guide the child in such a way that it perceives the outside world only as a continuation of its own being, so to speak. One should cultivate precisely this feeling, which does not separate from the outside world. One should educate the child in such a way that it can feel and sense what is outside, as if it were continuing into its own organization and vice versa. And only around the age of nine does a clear and distinct sense of self actually awaken. It is this sense of self that Jean Paul says is actually in the innermost sanctum of the human being and that only this sense of self actually allows one to feel the human being as such, the human existence inwardly. This sense of self awakens in the ninth year. And in this year, between the ninth and tenth year – these things are, of course, only approximations – the world also enters, the outer world; the child differentiates itself from the outer world, is allowed to differentiate itself of its own accord. It is then possible to approach the child with the simplest ideas and observations from the plant and animal kingdoms, no longer to bring things to the child merely in the form of fairy tales, legends or stories, but to really bring them in such a way that the child acquires possible ideas - I do not mean systematically as in science. That is what needs to be observed.

What cannot be emphasized strongly enough for the art of education is that one must not follow the mischief of introducing scientific categories into school life. Unfortunately, even the schoolbooks for the lower grades are often put together in such a way that their content is taken out of scientific books in its structure and direction. But botany, zoology and so on should not be taught to the child as if one wanted to believe that he should become a botanist or zoologist; rather, precisely because one assumes that he should certainly not become a botanist or zoologist, not in such a way that one presents him with all the raisins, but in such a way that one uses the aptitudes that the child has at that particular moment, and then helps them to break through. This is the result of a natural art of education, as applied in Waldorf schools: people are not trained according to a certain specialization, but they are made human beings. And if they then develop in one direction or another, it is because their original abilities have not been suppressed and can now develop in a certain sense. That is what makes a human being human.

Regarding the lecture by Rudolf Meyer, Berlin:

It would certainly be interesting to pursue the considerations that Mr. Meyer so beautifully presented in his lecture on the relationship between Fichte, Pestalozzi and Herbart from a psychological point of view. But let me just express a few thoughts about it.

It is extremely interesting that from the consideration of Pestalozzi one gets the idea that the successes that he had with his art of education are essentially based on the fact that he was, as it seems, an infinitely amiable personality, especially towards children, and that out of a certain childlike love he instinctively applied a highly perfect art of education.

It is a different matter when we look at what was happening around Pestalozzi. Here we do not get the impression that Pestalozzi would have been able to transfer to others the educational skills that he possessed through the inherent kindness of his personality. And if you look at the actual pedagogical principles, the more fundamental aspects, and not just at the extraordinarily charming descriptions that Pestalozzi gave of life with children – which can be extremely inspiring, especially for educators – but if you ask other people about the instructions he gave, you can see that he was not in a position to become aware of what instinctively worked in him as an educational art in a lovable way, so that he could have transferred it to others. Therefore, the love that Pestalozzi is shown is actually based more on the fact that this amiable personality speaks from all his writings, and what one feels when reading these writings triggers many educational impulses from within the human being. While - I only need to recall the instructions that Pestalozzi gives, one must teach very young children the parts of the human body in a way that is not at all natural. If you look at Pestalozzi's formulations in his art of education, you have to say: that is not suitable for inspiring other educators.

But something else is becoming blatantly obvious. It may well be that Pestalozzi also proceeded with young children as he describes it, and had great success; while another - even a direct student of Pestalozzi, we can prove that it was so - who followed the same instructions, now achieved absolutely nothing. The fact is that the important personality of Pestalozzi was not behind it. In the final analysis, it is not the content that is important in a pedagogical system that aspires to become an art of education. The pedagogy cultivated in Waldorf school lessons is actually about the fact that, under certain circumstances, even if the content of what is taught is based on false premises – it does not have to be so, but it can be so – it can nevertheless have an effect on the child in an appropriate way through the way the art of education is applied. One might say that in Waldorf education it is not so much the content of the teaching that is important as the way it is handled. This is because spiritual science is fundamentally not something that merely — that is not even the most important thing, in fact — but spiritual science essentially consists in the fact that it gives a living world view, that it allows what it gives as a world view to be truly experienced. That is why spiritual science is so poorly understood. Because, you see, in the sense of our spiritual science here – and I am saying this precisely with regard to spiritual science as the basis of a pedagogical art – it is certainly a mistake for someone to be a pure materialist, for someone to have materialistic theories; but one can also formulate materialistic theories very wittily. One can have spirit and be a materialist. And conversely, one can also be a spiritualist, a theosophist, an anthroposophist, who can reel off theories from spiritualism, theosophy or anthroposophy and be terribly spiritless in the process. Then it is a matter of the spirit of materialism, which, however, prevails, having to be valued more highly in the sense of a real anthroposophy than the spiritlessness of the anthroposophist, who schematically recounts everything that is theory or inanimate outlook on life. So that one can say: anthroposophy is directed towards the real life of the spirit. And this real life of the spirit really does enter the whole human being. In a sense, the spirit should be banished into what the human being does. And that is what makes the teacher, from the most profound level of his spiritual science, skilled in the art of education, which enables him to truly transform education.

This is what Rudolf Meyer presented so beautifully in his lecture and by which he measured the intellectualism of Herbart, who played such a great role in the education that we will hopefully soon have behind us and that we will very soon replace with a different one.

Today, you have also been presented with a very nice illustration of how Herbart's views were shaped by his inheritance. But there is something else that matters in the assessment of Herbart, namely how the selection has worked. For the culturally and historically important phenomenon is that one looks at this Herbart, who was purely intellectualistic, but who founded a comprehensive pedagogical school that then had an enormous influence on pedagogical work. It must be said that the fact that, of all the philosophers and other world-view thinkers, it was this intellectualist Herbart who was chosen by the fate of Central Europe to be the educational source of inspiration can be traced back to the entirely intellectualist tendency that the intellectual life of the 19th century took.

This can be made particularly clear with regard to Herbart by the following: one could point out, for example, as Rudolf Meyer has done very nicely, and one can also do so with other personalities, that Schiller's “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man” are also a kind of pedagogical impulse. Schiller, who so magnificently portrays how, on the one hand, man tends towards intellectualism and, on the other, towards mere sensual-physical instincts, points out how man follows the necessity of reason in logic, in the intellectual, and how he follows the necessity of the senses in ordinary life. And then Schiller presents beauty, which is the balance between the two, which one achieves by being able to follow the spiritual not only logically in the intellect, but to already have it in sensual perception, so that one may also feel the pleasant as thoroughly beautiful. On the other hand, he demands that what one experiences sensually should already be spiritualized, so that it is elevated, that one experiences it as spiritual. Schiller therefore actually wants to create a balance in beauty between the intellectual and the sensual-illustrative or instinctive will. And basically he wants to permeate all of life with what emerges from people when they are educated for such a balance. In Schiller, we see how he wants to bring people to action through the spirit, how he works towards this balance between intellectualism and between the instinctive, that is, the dull-willed element, but one that is to be spiritualized, how he points out that the whole human being is to be placed in the world.

This is then contrasted with Herbartianism – yes, one can tell a whole story about it if one has experienced Herbartianism as strongly as it was experienced by people who spent their youth in Austria in the second half of the 19th century, where Herbartianism was proclaimed as philosophy from all the lecterns. It was only Brentano who introduced a change in this respect, but he was an isolated case. Herbartianism continued to be preached until the turn of the century, or at least until the 1890s, and everything that was achieved in the field of education, as you can see, is based on Herbart.

One of these 'Herbartians' was Robert Zimmermann, a very brilliant man, an important man and also a morally superior personality; but he was a Herbartian through and through. And he wrote a 'Philosophical Propaedeutic' for grammar school students. This “Philosophical Propaedeutic” also contained a psychology. In this psychology, there is the following sentence: Man experiences hunger or satiation through food not through something else, but through the ideas he has about it. So it is quite broadly argued that it does not depend on the real process behind the phenomenon of how hunger is transformed into satiation, but it depends - and now I quote almost word for word: if you have the idea of hunger at a certain moment of the day, this idea of hunger would be pushed below the threshold of consciousness by the opposite idea of satiation.

This replacement of nutrition with a purely intellectual process is something that has actually been included in high school psychology textbooks, and one can imagine how the minds of those who absorbed such psychology without knowing it had to be colored.

But I would like to draw attention to something else. Very briefly, I will touch on how Herbartian aesthetics stands in contrast to basically all other aesthetic worldviews that have emerged in Central Europe. When one speaks of aesthetics, then it depends on whether one speaks – I will say it now in general – of what speaks to you as beauty or what repels you as ugliness, that you essentially remain in the realm of taste judgment. Then one differentiates from this aesthetics – and this is what otherwise distinguishes aesthetics from the ethics found within Central Europe – that which, as will, impulsates the moral act or that which is sick in the will in the immoral act. What other people in Central Europe developed as aesthetics, what they selected from the direct impulse of the will, does not exist for Herbart's philosophical considerations. For ethics is only a special chapter of aesthetics. And just as in art, when two forms have something in common, for example, this is the summarizing, the harmonious element, so it is for Herbart in relation to moral judgment. He speaks of five forms: the relationship of action to action or action to thought, and the like, and he says: a strong action pleases next to a weak one. He looks at the aesthetic impression, not at the volitional impulse, and gives his judgment of favor the term “perfection.” So that in the case of perfection, it is not the volitional element that is effectively present in the human being as a volitional impulse, but rather he says: If I will more strongly one time and more weakly the other, I gain the aesthetic impression that the strong is more pleasing than the weak. Therefore it is predominant.

You see, what should be a powerful driving force is reduced to a judgment of liking or disliking. You then have the idea of wanting, of moral freedom, of right and of retribution. These five ethical ideas are therefore considered by Herbart, not by taking them out of the nature of the will, of ethos, but by observing, as it were, how man's action pleases or displeases when it is looked at. So you have here the task of at least guiding ethics, which should essentially arise from the will, on the way to the intellectual. I said that one must look at the selection process to see why Herbart was chosen by the fate of Central Europe. This is based on the fact that the age as such had to go through intellectualism, that the age as such demanded intellectualism.

Now, we have indeed gained a great deal through intellectualism. In Herbart's work, some dark sides and some light sides of this intellectualism can be seen. As Mr. Rudolf Meyer just mentioned, Herbart's ideas only found their way into elementary school pedagogy indirectly, not exactly directly, but all the more so into grammar school pedagogy. The only problem is that in the latter case, it remained an intellectual exercise and did not lead to a true art of education or to the proper practice of pedagogy. For what was this grammar school education? As you know, as a rule the philosopher in the philosophy faculty had to teach it as a subsidiary subject, not out of any great sympathy for it. And as for how it was practised – well, we would rather not talk about how education was practised at grammar schools. It was simply not possible to bring into the art of education that which draws from mere intellectual sources. On the other hand, we must not forget or overlook the fact that Herbart, who had such a broad impact and was so widely disseminated, had an enormously disciplining effect on thinking, that the inner weaving of thoughts does not follow pure arbitrariness but certain underlying laws, which is of course also true. And in this respect it did not really improve until Herbartianism gradually declined more or less only towards the end of the nineteenth century; on the contrary, it must be said that there was something disciplining in Herbart's philosophy , something that, even if it easily led thoughts into an even greater pedantry, nevertheless made this pedantry less unbearable than when the pedantry runs without an inner conformity to the laws of thinking. On the whole, it must be said that, in the 19th century, humanity's urge to discipline thinking inwardly came about, which then also had an effect on natural science until very recently and which has a certain significance. It must be said that in this respect Herbart certainly had a disciplining effect. But today we are faced with a challenge of the world, in the face of which we have to say: We will not get anywhere with such intellectualism. We can no longer, so to speak, substitute the idea of hunger and satiation – apparently it can only be one or the other – for the real process and thereby entrench ourselves entirely in our heads as in a fortress. We have to engage the whole person through what we do. In the course of this discussion about Herbart's intellectualism, I was constantly reminded of how the entire 19th century, especially in Central Europe, was dominated by intellectualism. This became very vividly clear to me many years ago in a conversation I had with the long-deceased Austrian poet Hermann Rollett. He was a remarkable personality. He was completely immersed in intellectualism. He could not imagine the world differently. He said that everything else was simply not proper, had no discipline of thought, one had to think intellectually, think atomistically, and so on. But he was terribly pessimistic, and he once said to me: “For our development as a civilization, as civilized people of the world, we have the prospect of ultimately wasting away in all our limbs and being only heads, being only a ball!” This was Rollett's world, and it was what led him to despair of the progress of humanity, because he believed that the limbs would atrophy more and more, that man would only roll along as a head ball, and that there would be such small bits of arms and feet sticking out. He painted this vividly as a picture.

But it is necessary, at least in a spiritual and psychological sense, to do everything from now on to prevent man from developing into a mere head person in the future. It must be understood that the spirit is not only talked about to him, but that it is banished from human life. But when the spirit takes hold of the whole human being in such a way that this whole human being also radiates the spirit into the social existence, then this is what the time demands of us with all our energy and what we must fulfill: the education of the human being not only as a head human being and towards some one-sidedness, but the education of the whole human being through spiritual science.