The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Recently I have become aware of mystics who have attempted to elucidate the nature of the human being in the following way. I will quote the result to which they believe they have arrived. They say something like this: If we look at the human being as he walks on earth, his whole existence is a kind of riddle. His soul-being towers mightily above what he is able to represent in his entire humanity, to reveal himself, as it were, in the living out of the interrelationship with other people. Therefore, one must assume - so such mystics think - that man is actually something quite different in his essence from what he appears to be here in his earthly walk. He must be a comprehensive cosmic being, who, according to his inner nature, is much, much more powerful than what he presents himself as being here on earth; he must have forfeited his place in the great cosmos for some reason and must have been banished into this earthly existence – as for example, a mystic follower of this direction - to learn modesty here, to learn to be modest here, to feel small here for once, while in truth he is a great, powerful cosmic being, but who in some way has made himself unworthy to live out this cosmic being.

I know that there are many people who just laugh at such an idea. But the one who understands life from a deeper point of view knows that even such a mystical idea ultimately arises from the great difficulty of solving the riddle of life, which difficulty imposes itself ever more sharply and sharply on the human soul, precisely the more this human soul seeks to delve into true reality. I do not, of course, want to cite anything in particular in support of this idea of a modern mystical trend, which I have just characterized. I just wanted to cite it as something that has also found a place in human souls as a concept. One could just as easily cite a dozen other, more or less philosophical or mystical solutions to the human riddle in abstracto.

If one then tries to understand the reason why the most diverse people try to understand in such different ways, sometimes in quite unusual ways, what it actually means to be human here on earth, one comes to different conclusions. Above all, it is found that precisely with regard to the great, real questions of existence, people do not want to fulfill one thing for themselves, which they certainly admit on a small scale on every possible daily occasion: on every possible daily occasion, man will admit that one should not obscure the truth with one's desires, that what one desires to be true cannot be decisive for the objectivity of the truth. In ordinary life, in small matters, man will readily admit this; but in the great matters we see, as it were, the impossibility for people to arrive at a realistic world view, precisely because people cannot help asserting their desires when it comes to grasping the truth. And most of the time, it is precisely those desires that play a major role that could be called unconscious desires, which a person does not even admit are desires in his soul. Yet these desires are present in the soul; they remain subconscious or unconscious. And that would be the task of spiritual training: to make one aware of such desires that remain unconscious, in order to rise above the illusory life and penetrate into the sphere of truth.

These unconscious desires play a particularly important role when the highest truths of life are to be asserted within the human being, the truths about the essence of human life itself, let us say now of this ordinary human life as it unfolds in the physical world between birth and death. A real, appropriate, realistic consideration must always look at the whole course of life if life is to be understood. And just imagine that such a realistic consideration of life should yield a result that man, even if only in his subconscious desires, does not desire at all. Then man would do anything to get away from such an inconvenient result by means of apparent logic.

Surely, if we consider only life on earth, there is nothing to suggest that the truth must correspond to human desires, even if these desires are unconscious. It could, after all, be that the truth about human life is also completely unpleasant.

Spiritual science shows that this is truly the case. Of course, a higher point of view can be found from which the matter may appear differently. But for the life that a person would like to lead on this earth, a truthful examination shows that the truth about man is such that most people who are too comfortable in life feel a slight shudder - albeit a subconscious shudder, but you will understand what I mean - a slight unconscious, sometimes very strong subconscious shudder. But then the whole of human life must be considered.

We know that this whole of human life, when considered objectively and in detail, breaks down into distinct periods. You can read about these periods in my little booklet The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science. We know that we can only understand the human being by observing life, first from birth to the change of teeth, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, from sexual maturity to the beginning of the twenties, let us say on average to the age of twenty-one; then again to the age of twenty-eight. We can understand the human being's life in the same way that we seek to understand anything scientifically, by looking at the seven-year cycles of human life.

Significant events occur in human life during each of these periods. From what we mentioned again yesterday, you know that the human being stands in life, integrating himself into the cosmos – I reminded you of the image of the magnetic needle yesterday – so that, for example, the formation of his head points far, far into the distant past, and the formation of his extremities points into the distant future, just as the magnetic needle points with one pole to the north and with the other pole to the south.

But this alignment with the cosmos is different in each of the main human periods. In each of the main human periods, different forces intervene in the organization of humanity. In the first seven years of our lives, something quite different prevails in us than in the second seven years. Everything that comes to expression in the seventh year, in that, one might say, all the growth is dammed up, as at a bank, by the eruption of the permanent teeth, everything that is dammed up in the eruption of the permanent teeth plays out of the forces of the cosmos in the first seven years of life. And again, there is something that the human being takes back in his education. What the human being takes back in his education, by becoming sexually mature, that with which he, I would like to say, tinges himself, it forms in that certain developmental forces, which are thoroughly grounded in the cosmos, develop in the second epoch of life and so on.

Now the thing is that one must say: in the whole human being, the various members do interact. The child, up to the change of teeth, also develops a certain psychic activity; and this psychic activity is extraordinarily important, especially in these first years of life. I am reminded of the truly wise saying of Jean Paul, who said that at the beginning of his life, one undoubtedly learns more for life from one's nurse than from all one's professors in the academic years. There is something very wise and very true in this saying. One must only assess things in the right way. One learns a lot in these first seven years of life, but what is learned remains, so to speak, intellectually and otherwise in the dullness of the soul life, which is still almost a physical life, down below. But if you read my booklet 'The Spiritual Guidance of the Human Being and of Humanity', you will see that this life, which the child develops in the first seven years, can also be evaluated differently from the usual way. In these first seven years, there is truly not much wisdom in the human organism. When the child - as the bourgeois expression goes - has seen “the light of day”, his brain is still quite undifferentiated. It only differentiates over time, and what emerges in terms of brain structures truly corresponds, when studied, to influences of a deeper wisdom than anything we can muster in later life when we construct machines or do anything scientifically. Of course, we cannot do this later in a conscious way, which we do unconsciously when we have just seen the light of the world, as I said. Cosmic reason rules in us, that cosmic reason of which we also had to speak when we mentioned the development of language. Truly, a high cosmic reason rules in the human being in the first seven years of life.

In the second seven years of life, this cosmic reason then focuses on tingeing the human being with what leads to sexual maturity; there it prevails, this cosmic intellectuality, to a small extent already. One might say: that which remains, which is not used inwardly, well, that just rises up into the head. And it affects the head – and usually it is afterwards! But what affects the head is actually something that is spared in the inner being, in the unconscious of the soul life. And then it continues in seven-year periods.

Nowadays, the usual approach is to study the whole of human life, the so-called normal human life; because to study this normal human life, a certain devotion is necessary, first to the real human being, but then also to the great cosmic laws. And however strange it may sound, what takes place in the first seven years of childhood cannot be understood, not as a child, not as a young man or woman, not even when one imagines that one has already grasped the whole of life in one's twenties. One cannot understand it. One can come to some understanding of what takes place in childhood if one seeks this understanding inwardly in the human being, in inner experience, say between the ages of fifty-six and sixty-three. Old age, old age itself, only gives us the opportunity to gain a slight insight into what rules in us during the first seven years of childhood. This is an uncomfortable thing, because today, when a person has barely outgrown the young badger years, he wants to be a full human being. And today it is uncomfortable to admit to oneself that there is something in the world, even in oneself, that can only be understood at the turn of fifty. And again, if it is a matter of understanding, of inner-human understanding, as we can first achieve it as human beings, then we can learn to understand something of what takes place in human nature during the years in which sexual maturity develops, that is, from the seventh to the fourteenth year of life. This takes place between the ages of forty-nine and fifty-six, at the beginning of the fifties.

It would be good if such truths were to be recognized, because through such truths one would learn to understand life, while the other truths that are usually established about human beings are such as one wishes. One just does not realize that unconscious desires are there. And again, what takes place in us from puberty to the age of twenty-one, one gets some inner, experienced insight into that, so that one can have a certain judgment about it between the forty-second and forty-nine, and again, what happens in the twenties up to the twenty-eighth year, about that one can get some information between the thirty-fifth and forty-second year. What I say about these things is based on real observation of life, which one must do by training oneself in spiritual-scientific observation, and not by engaging in the kind of nonsense of self-knowledge that is often called self-knowledge today, but by engaging in real self-knowledge, that is, by engaging in knowledge of human nature. And it is only in the period from about twenty-eight to thirty-five that one can experience something and at the same time understand it by experiencing it; there is a certain balance between understanding and thinking. In the first half of life one can think various things, one can imagine various things; in order to experience with understanding what one can imagine in the first half of life, one must await the second half of life.

It is an uncomfortable truth, but that is how life is. I can even imagine people saying: Yes, if the human being is so circumscribed in his or her entire inner conformity to law, where does that leave the free will of the human being? Where does freedom go? Where is the consciousness of humanity? - Certainly, I can also imagine that someone feels unfree because he cannot be in Europe and America at the same time, that someone feels unfree because he cannot reach down to the moon. But facts do not conform to human desires. Even when it comes to man gaining insight into himself, it is necessary to face the facts. These facts are as follows: We do not live a life that is constantly changing and metamorphosing for no reason. We live this life in such a way that each period of life has its meaning and significance in relation to others. And for that we live, as we say, the normal life, if we are granted such, until the age of sixty — we will also talk about early death from this point of view tomorrow — in a way that only in the second half of life does it become clear to us what prevails in the first half of life. People would be able to orient themselves in the world much more securely and correctly if this knowledge of life were to gain some ground. For then they would build on a true foundation of life, whereas today, because they do not base themselves on objectivity but on desires, they often simply cling to the idea that one must learn something until one's twenties, but after that one is a finished person, then one is ready for anything in life. In this way one completely overlooks the inner coherence of life. To get to know life is really an inner task. And one must not forget, especially when it comes to this intimate task, that desires must remain silent and that objectivity must be taken into account.

Now a certain balance is emerging in the course of human evolution. In earlier times the matter was quite different, as I have already presented: You remember how I spoke of the human development from the Atlantic time until today, of the ever-younger becoming of humanity. A certain equalization has occurred in that in the course of evolution it has been found that one element was related to the other. If that had not occurred, then one would simply have to keep the matter in life so: A person in their twenties would have to believe a forty-year-old when it comes to certain things that relate to truths in a person that can only be grasped as vividly as I have characterized them in the forties. It is not quite like that, but in the course of human development, the concepts themselves, the ideas, have become such that one can have a certain intuitive conviction at one age and at the other. If you are sufficiently devoted to let the forty- and fifty-year-olds tell you about their life experiences, provided, of course, that they have had any, today people usually don't, if you let yourself be told about these life experiences when you are still younger, you are not dependent on mere authority authority, that has already become the case through development; but by thinking – as a young person one can only think – there is more to the way and character that the thoughts have taken than what merely appeals to faith. There is already a certain possibility in it to also understand. Otherwise one would have to say: in youth man thinks, in old age he comprehends. But there is already something in it that can teach one more than a religious belief, a mere authoritative conviction. This gives a certain balance.

But take what I have said as a truth of life. If you take it as a truth of life, it will shed light on the practice of life. Just think, when what I have said is present in life, when it is thought and felt and sensed by people, how it expresses itself in the relationship between people! How it creates, as it were, binding links from soul to soul! A person who is still young looks at the old in a special way when he knows: He can experience something that, in relation to him, who can only think, is an understanding of what is thought. One is interested in a completely different way in the messages that a person in a different age can give, if one understands life in such a way. And one retains one's interest, even when one has reached a higher age, for what abounds as younger people, even as children. They remember how often I have said: The wisest can learn from the little child! Of course, the wisest of all will gladly and lovingly learn from a small child. Even if he does not want to be taught by a small child about morals or other views of life, he would be able to gain an infinite amount of wisdom from the child, especially with regard to cosmic secrets, which are expressed quite differently in a small child than in a later human being. The interest that prevails from soul to soul increases quite substantially when such things are not mere abstract theories, but when such things are wisdoms of life.

Real spiritual science has the peculiarity of strengthening, enhancing, and reinforcing the bonds of love that people have for one another, which must essentially be based on the bonds of mutual interest. Ordinary wisdom can leave people dry, as dry as some scholars are. Spiritual science, truly grasped in its substance, cannot leave people dry, but will, under all circumstances, make people love, wants to strengthen and increase mutual human interest.

I had planned to tell you a small number of such things today, things that are unpleasant for life, but are truths, are facts, because one does not progress spiritually if one does not get used to boldly facing facts, even if they are uncomfortable.

Another fact is this – it is already clear from yesterday's observations – that the intellect, as we can achieve it in the present cycle of humanity, is only suitable for awakening understanding over a certain period of time. I do not envy those people who today set about translating Aeschylus, or even Homer, the Psalms and so on, truly, I do not envy them! That faith can exist in our time, such philistine fibbing as Mr. Wilamowitz' translations of the Greek dramas, which really betray Aeschylus or whatever, that is just a sad sign of the times. You can't observe as soon as something big happens; often you don't even have the patience to observe small things. It would be good to try to observe small things as an exercise. I will give you an example of a very childlike, small thing.

Recently I read an article in one of these international magazines published here in Switzerland, in which the socialist writer Kautsky complained about a Russian socialist who quoted Kautsky in the most terrible way, so that the opposite of what is in Kautsky's books is given as Kautsky's opinion. That there was any intentional distortion of Kautsky's text was, given the nature of the matter and the personalities involved, quite out of the question. I then read the article by the person in question myself, but I also found it curious that what was quoted was presented as Kautsky's opinion. And while I was still reading, I formed an opinion about it, because I was interested in how something like this could be possible at all; but I very soon realized, by reading the essay, what must have happened, and this was also confirmed to me afterwards because the person concerned apologized; but I only saw that later. The person in question had not read Kautsky's book in German, but had read it in Russian translation, and, having written his essay in German, had retranslated it. So that was what had happened: translation from German into Russian and retranslation. In the process, the opposite of what was in the German book came out and was quoted!

All that is needed to turn things upside down is to translate a text from one language into another, honestly and accurately! It is not even necessary to talk about incorrect facts, but basically only about the principles that are commonly applied in translation today. The observation I have made is a small, childish one. But anyone who has the patience to observe such things in life should no longer find it incomprehensible when he is told that it is impossible to understand Homer with what is available to us today; it is only an imagined understanding.

Now, that is the external side of the matter. But there is also an essential internal side to the matter. The state of mind in Homer's time was so essentially different from the state of mind of today's man that today's man is also far removed from the possibility of understanding Homer. For today's state of mind is such that it is essentially tinged with intellectuality. That was not the Homeric state of mind. Man today cannot discard this tinge if he remains in the ordinary everyday state of mind. This state of mind forces man more strongly than he believes, and more strongly than he is aware of, to live in abstract terms, in which Homer did not live at all. But it is difficult for people to reconcile this with their subconscious or unconscious desires, so they say to themselves: Yes, with the understanding that is the normal understanding of the present, one must refrain from understanding something that comes from the time of Homer or even from the time of Aeschylus. This renunciation of man is something that does not correspond at all to the subconscious desires. This is where spiritual science must intervene, which does not remain with the ordinary state of mind, but evokes a comprehensive state of mind so that one can place oneself in states of mind that are different from the normal states of mind of the present. With the means of spiritual science, one can in turn penetrate into that which cannot be reached with the present-day mind, with the present-day state of mind. It would be of immense importance for the modern man to say to himself: Only over a certain stretch of the development of humanity does the understanding that we can have extend. Even with a view to the future, it is not entirely unimportant to keep such things in mind.

No matter how clearly you express yourself today, no matter how clearly you write or speak, record what is spoken, it will not be too long before, in the near future, times will move faster, if I may use the paradoxical expression, than they did in the past, it will be completely impossible to understand what we speak or write today in the same way as we understand it. It is only possible for our understanding to comprehend what we speak and write over a certain period into the future. The historian goes back to documents and wants to rely only on external documents. But it does not depend on whether one understands something or not, whether documents are there or not, but whether the possibility of understanding extends that far. Well, for more distant times, this possibility of understanding does not extend that far. And if one does not have resignation, then Kant-Laplacean theories or the like come out. I have spoken about this often enough. What, after all, is a Kant-Laplacean theory other than the impotent attempt to use the intellect of the present to think about the origin of the world, despite the fact that our understanding, our normal state of mind, has distanced itself so far from this origin of the world that what we think about time with our present understanding of the world, which should coincide with the Kant-Laplacean theory, can no longer resemble it at all.

This knowledge, that it is necessary to resort to other types of knowledge when going beyond a certain period of time and distance, is what spiritual science must also produce. Man cannot recognize anything beyond a certain age if he does not resort to spiritual scientific research, if he does not try to understand existence with senses other than those to which the intellect is bound. Now, if we consider what I have just said, we can see how narrow the horizon of the modern man must be if he does not want to resort to other levels of research, to other levels of knowledge, for those things that ordinary intellectuality, which is actually the prevailing one today, does not suffice to recognize. We know that one can ascend to imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge. These types of knowledge then lead to other paths; only they can supplement what can only be seen as an island of existence if one relies on the present state of the soul.

That which comprises the present state of mind is actually bound to the human ego; you can read about this in my “Theosophy”, “Secret Science in Outline” and so on. But the human being also carries other aspects of their being within them: we know of the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body. But the soul's usual state today does not extend down into the astral body, not into the etheric body, not into the physical body. For what the anatomist recognizes from the outside is, after all, the outside. The inner recognition does not extend beyond the ego, let alone beyond the physical body. One must come to observe the human being from the inside with understanding, and the knowledge of life of which I spoke at the beginning of today's reflections is a beginning of this inner knowledge, and what one can comprehend in the second half of life is a beginning, albeit a weak beginning. When one takes hold of the human being inwardly, one descends from the mere intellect to the sphere of the will. Yesterday I mentioned that the subject of the will, the actual volition in us, preserves the cosmic memory. So one must descend into the human being. What the human being could develop if he had the will to do so, by developing normal wisdom in the second half of life, would be a beginning of this descent. It would not shed much light, but it would shed light on what the human being needs to live. But if he then descends with the developed higher knowledge, then by descending into his own being the memory of the cosmos opens up to him. Then, however, something different emerges than the Kant-Laplacean theory, for example, what we carry within us in our physical being. You know that, according to its nature, it is our oldest, going back to the fourth past incarnation on earth. If you go down there, you learn to recognize what this fourth past incarnation on earth was like in the Saturn era. But one can learn from the ordinary wisdom that opens up in the second half of life what one has to do to penetrate deeper and deeper into the nature of the human being, who is an image of the world, and by learning to recognize this image, to recognize the world.

It is usually subconscious or unconscious desires that dominate a person when he thinks up something with a light heart or in complete comfort, something that he should actually say is not accessible to his thinking, such as the Kant-Laplace theory or something similar. And so we touch again – we must, I would like to say, approach our tasks in circles – that which prevents people of the present from building the bridge between ideality and reality, which is of course of great concern to us now.

People of all ages have tried to find a way beyond these things. But it is difficult to fully understand these things, precisely because it is uncomfortable to approach the real facts. In our time it has become customary, I might say, everywhere to recognize half of the matter, the other half not. Here is a classic example: Karl Marx once said that philosophers had so far only endeavored to interpret the world with their concepts; but what was important was to change the world, one really had to find thoughts that would change the world. The first part is absolutely correct. Philosophers have endeavored, insofar as they are philosophers, to interpret the world, and if they were a little clever, they did not believe that they could do anything other than interpret the world. But the very archetype of all philosophical philistinism, Wilhelm Traugott Krug, who taught in Leipzig from 1809 to 1834 and wrote a great many books on everything from fundamental philosophy to the highest stages of philosophy, demanded that Hegel's philosophers should not only deduce concepts but also the development of the pen – something that infuriated Hegel. But even in this field, resignation is necessary, resignation that says: Of course, we human beings are called upon to change the world as whole human beings, insofar as the world consists of human life. But thinking, the thinking of the present, is simply not capable of bringing about this change. One must have the resignation to say to oneself: This thinking, which the human being of the present has, which is so gloriously sufficient, which is really quite suitable for understanding nature, this thinking is completely unsuitable for achieving something when it comes to the will to act. But that is an uncomfortable truth. Because once you see through this, you no longer say: Philosophers have so far endeavored to interpret the world, but what matters is changing the world – and secretly believe that they can contribute to this through some dialectic; instead, you say to yourself: Philosophers have only been sufficient for interpreting things because philosophers can cite them. With nature, it is enough for us to merely interpret it, because nature is, one might say, thank God, there without us, and we can content ourselves with interpreting it. Social and political life is not there without us, and we cannot be content with merely grasping it with such concepts, which are only suitable for interpreting life and not for shaping it. It is necessary to rise from mere theorizing, which mostly consists of hallucinations, as I explained yesterday, and which is so truly the hobbyhorse of the present, to the life of reality. And the life of reality in the facts demands that one does not take it so straightforwardly, this life, as one is accustomed to taking it. Certainly, ideas that one person conveys to another lead to something; but they do not always lead to the same thing. There are no absolute truths, just as there are no absolute facts, and there are no absolute facts just as there are no absolute truths. Everything is relative. And the effect of something I say is determined not only by whether or not I believe it to be true, but also by the nature of the people in a particular age, and how they react to it, if I may use the expression. I will cite a significant case that is very important to consider.

If you go back to around the 14th century of the Christian era, you could present mysticism to people before that century. In those days, mystical concepts still had the power to educate and inspire people. The Oriental population of Asia, the Indian, Japanese, Chinese, has retained these qualities in many ways, because older qualities are preserved by certain members of humanity in later times. One can still study many things in the present that were also the case with European populations in earlier times; but the whole state of mind of humanity has changed. And anyone who passes on mysticism today, for example, must be aware that we are approaching the age when, by teaching mysticism, real mysticism – Meister Eckhart's, Tauler's, and the like, you teach them by the way they react to it, what Lucifer only coaxes out of man, what brings them to bickering and quarreling. And it may well be that there is no better way to prepare a sect for quarreling and fighting, for disunity, for mutual grumbling, than to give them mystically pious speeches. Now, when understood in a straightforward way, this seems almost impossible; but it is a factual truth. It is a factual truth because it depends not only on the content of what one says, but on the way in which the person reacts to things. And one must know the world. And above all, one must not base one's views on one's desires.

I can always remember the conversation I once had in a southern German town with two Catholic priests who were in my lecture, which I gave at the time on the Bible and wisdom. The two Catholic priests could not really object to anything. The lecture contained precisely the things about which they could not reasonably object. But priests, even if they cannot object, cannot of course accept something like that; so they have to object to something. So they said: Yes, in terms of content, we could indeed say roughly what you said. But what we say, we say in such a way that every person can understand it; you, after all, are only saying it for a certain number of people who have a certain education, and what is said for people must be understandable for everyone. - Then I said to them: Yes, you see, what you believe is understandable to all people, and what I believe about it, that is not the point. What matters is not our theoretical views about what people understand, but the study of reality. And there you can easily do a reality test yourself. I ask you: If you now apply these methods and present this in your church today in the way you believe that all people will understand it – will all people go to your church, or aren't some already staying away today? That some stay away is much more important than you believing that you speak for all people. Because the reality is that some do stay away. That you believe you speak for all people is your belief. And for those who no longer go to church with you, I speak for them, because I believe that one has to submit to reality and that one can also speak to those who no longer go to church but who are still entitled to seek the path to the spiritual worlds. Here, in a trivial example, the difference is illuminated between how one thinks realistically, letting one's views be dictated by reality, and how most people believe they know what they just imagine, think up and wish for, and then swear by it. The reality researcher is even prepared at any time to discard anything he considers right, and when the facts teach him, to come to a different line of thought, because reality is not as straightforward as people wish it to be.

And so it may well be, and will increasingly be the case – this is the trend of the development of human nature – that while you want to teach the most pious mysticism, the most heartfelt mysticism of a sect, the people of that sect become more and more quarrelsome and quarrelsome. But it is just as unwise to teach people one-sided scientific views. To gain scientific knowledge, one needs a great deal of acumen, and you know that I am not at all inclined to be in any way inferior to anyone in fully recognizing scientific truths. But the fact also exists that if one were to teach the world only scientific truths or scientifically-oriented truths, the acumen that is applied to finding scientific truths would contribute significantly to condemning people to a lack of freedom. Just as one-sided mysticism would increasingly lead to quarrels and disputes, one-sided natural science in the sense of today's time would lead people to inner bondage, to inner bondage. So you see, it is fully considered when spiritual science strives neither to be one-sidedly mystical nor one-sidedly scientific, but to do justice to each individual without underestimating or overestimating it, but progressing from duality to trinity. Not the either-or, but the both-and, illumination of the one by the other, that is what spiritual science leads to by itself. For example, a person with a purely scientific mind who rants about mysticism is always going to be in the wrong, because what he says will generally be nonsense. But it is just as wrong, as a rule, for a purely mystical person who knows nothing of scientific knowledge to rant about science. Only a mystic should grumble about mysticism, if I may vary it, and only someone who knows about natural science should grumble about natural science now and then. Then his things will be as he says, because they will be weighed correctly. But it will always be bad if someone who does not understand natural science and perhaps believes himself to be a great mystic passes judgment on it, or if a scientist does not understand mysticism and passes judgment on mysticism. It has often been said in spiritual scientific circles that certain truths must appear paradoxical to people because they so strongly contradict the complacency of ordinary life.

Today I have presented you with a whole series of things that have, so to speak, struck your soul without being resolved. I have presented you with some facts of life that have to be admitted even if one would like things to be different. Many a person who today considers himself a great person, who is capable of much, has no idea of these truths of life. But this is precisely the basis of the catastrophes of our time, that our time so urgently needs to get to know this life and does not want to get to know this life.

Tomorrow we will talk about some of the things that should lead to the resolution of some contradictions that have rightly been brought to your souls today.

This lecture is the first of fifteen lectures in the series entitled, The Polarity of Continuity and Change in Human Life. Another name for this lecture is, The Bridge between the Ideal and the Real, Part 1.

I should like to take some of those subjects we have had here this Summer, which have been brought up in the course of our considerations, and to go more deeply into then. To-day, tomorrow, and the day after, I will therefore bring forward certain historical, and also a few objective facts; and to-day by way of preparation, I should like to point to a few historical facts, and from these, and especially from the revelation of certain historical personalities, we shall then draw conclusions upon which we can base our deeper considerations.

In all ages those who have been initiated into the Mysteries, have always uttered, and correctly, a certain saying. It is this:—“Unless a person knows how to value aright those two streams of world-conceptions which we have mentioned:—Idealism and Materialism,—he either falls through a trap-door into a kind of `cellar' as regards his view of the world, or he enters blindly along the other paths which one traverses to reach a World-Conception.” Now the trapdoor through which one may fall and which may very well escape notice in the “Weltanschaumergaleben,” has been recorded by the Mystery Initiates of all ages as the dualism which cannot find the bridge between the Ideal—one can also call it the “spiritually-coloured Ideal,”—and the Materialistical, that concerned with matter. And the blind alley into which one may stray along the various paths of philosophy if one does not find the balance between Idealism and Materialism, for those same Mystery Initiates this blind alley was Fatalism.

Our recent epoch clearly inclines on the one side to a dualistic outlook, and on the other to a fatalistic philosophy, although these things are not admitted nor even clearly seen.

Now, I should like to-day, to take a personality out of the life of the twilight of the 4th Post Atlantean epoch with reference to the life of philosophy, and give a brief sketch of him, and his outlook! and we can then consider other personalities more characteristic of the World-Conceptions of our own, the Post Atlantean epoch. A very, very characteristic personality in the Western life of thought, St. Augustine, who lived from the year 354 to 430 of our Christian era. We will recall certain thoughts of St. Augustine because, as you will see from the quotes I have quoted, he lived in the twilight of the 4th Post Atlantean epoch which case to an end in the 15th century. We can clearly see the approach of this end, starting from the 3rd-6th Post Xian centuries. Now St. Augustine had to pass through the impressions of the most diverse World-Views. We have often discussed these things. Above all, St. Augustine passed through Manichaeism and Scepticism. He had taken all those impulses into his soul which one gets if on the one hand, he looks at the world and sees everything Ideal, beautiful and good, all that is filled with Wisdom, and then on the other hand, all that is ugly, bad and untrue. Now we know that Manichaeism only “gets on” (this is coarsely expressed hut it can be expressed in this way)—it only gets on with these two streams in the Ordering of the Cosmos, by postulating an eternal, everlasting polarity, an everlasting dualism, between Darkness and Light, Evil and Good; that which is full of Wisdom, and that which is filled with wickedness.

Manichaeism only `gets' on with Dualism, (in its own way quite correctly), by uniting certain old pre-Christian basic concepts with its acceptance of the polarity in World-phenomena, Above all, it unites certain ideas which can only be understood when one knows that in ancient times the Spiritual world was perceived by humanity in atavistic clairvoyance, and perceived in ouch a way that men's visions of the Spiritual world were in their very content, similar to the impressions made by the Sense-world of perception. Now, because Manichaeism took into itself such ideas of a physical appearance, (sinnlichen schein) of the super-sensible, it thereby gives many people the impression of materialising the spirit, as though it presented the spirit in a material form. That, of course, is a mistake which more recent views of the world have made, (as I have explained lately) a mistake even made by modern Theosophy# St. Augustine actually broke with Manichaeism because in the course of his purified life of thought, he could no longer bear this materialisation of the spirit. That was one of the reasons which made him break with Manichaeism,

St. Augustine then also passed through Scepticism, which is a quite justifiable view of the world, in so far as it points man's attention to the fact that through the mere observation of what a person can gain from this Sense-world and his experiences therein, he can learn nothing concerning the super-sensible. And, if one is of opinion that one cannot stand for the super-sensible, as such, one begins to doubt the existence of any knowledge of the truth itself. It was doubt of the knowledge of the Truth through which St. Augustine also passed; and thereby obtained the strongest impulses.

Now if one wishes to see what led St. Augustine to place himself in Western philosophy, one must point to the apex of his perceptions, from which radiated all the light which rules in him, and which was also the apex of the view of the world which he finally developed. That is the point, my dear friends; and it can he characterised in the following ways:—St. Augustine came to acquire that Certainty, the true Certainty subject to absolutely no deception, which can only he acquired by man with reference to what he experiences in his inner soul. Everything else may be uncertain. Whether the things which appear to our eyes, or are audible to our ears, or which make impressions on our other Sense-organs, are really so constructed as they appear to be to the evidence of the senses, that one cannot know. We cannot even know how this world itself appears, when one shuts one's Sense organs to it. That is the way in which persons think of the external perceptible world, who think after the way of St. Augustine. They think this externally perceptible world, as it lies before us, can offer no unconditional certainty, can give no unconditioned truth; that man can gain nothing out of it on which he can stand on a firm substantial point. On the other hand, a men is present in what he experiences in his inner soul; quite regardless as to how he experiences it there, he himself experiences those ideas and feelings in his inner being. He knows himself to be living in his own inner experiences. And so, to such a thinker as St. Augustine, the fact is substantiated by his own inner experiences:—that, with reference to what man experiences in his inner soul as truth, he gives himself over to no possibility of deception. One can believe that everything else the world says is subject to deception, but one cannot possibly doubt that what one experiences in one's inner being, as one's ideas and feelings, is the truth; that is certain. That firm basis for the admittance of an indisputable truth, formed one of the starting-points of the Augustinian philosophy

Again in a striking way, in the 5th Post-Atlantean epoch, Descartes again took up that point; he lived from 1596 to 1650, thus in the dawn of the 5th Post Atlantean epoch. His assertion:—“I think, therefore I exist,” which remains true even if we doubt everything else, that he takes as his starting point, and in this perception he simply takes the standpoint of St. Augustine.

Now my dear friends, the fact is that with reference to any world-conception one must always say: A cum who lives at a particular point of time in human evolution acquires certain views:« only those who come later can see these. One must say that it is always reserved for those who come afterwards to see things in a more radical, true way, than does the person who has to utter them at a certain period of time in human evolution. One cannot get away from this fact; and it would be well, if especially from our Anthroposophical standpoint, as I have often told you, if it were recognised consciously and thoroughly, that even what is said now, even what we acquire as ever such advanced knowledge about Spiritual things, that must not be grasped as a sum of absolute dogmas. We must be quite clear that those who come after us, in future times, will see greater than we ourselves can. On this rests the true Spiritual evolution of mankind, and everything of a hindering nature In the Spiritual progress of mankind rests finally on the fact that human beings will not admit this. They like to have truths presented to them, not as the truths for one definite epoch of time, but as absolute timeless dogmas.

And so, from our point of view, we can look back on St. Augustine and shall have to say« If one stands on St. Augustine's standpoint, one must sharply look to this.—that he assumes uncertainty as to the truths of all external revelations, and true certainty only in the experience of what we carry in our souls. Now, if one gives oneself to such a perception as that, it presupposes that, as a human being, one has a certain courage. One would not perhaps need to mention so decidedly what I am now going to say, unless we had to admit the fact that it is characteristic of the world-view of our present age that it lacks courage, the lack of courage I refer to here is expressed in two directions. The one is this. When a person boldly admits, as did St. Augustine, that you can only find true certainty as regards what you yourself experience in your inner being, then the other pole of this courage should he there which is not there in our present age. One must also have the courage to admit that this true Certainty concerning reality is not to be found in external Sense-Revelation. It requires real inner courage in one's thought to deny external Reality in its utterances that true Certainty, which is held by modern Materialism as absolutely secure. And, on the other hand, it requires courage to admit that true certainty only comes when one is truly conscious of what one experiences inwardly. Certainly such things are said, even in our times, and there are those who demand this two-fold courage of their fellow-man, if they are anxious to create a world-conception, But one has to think differently about these things to-day, if one wishes to think exhaustively. And herein the whole historical position of St. Augustine is revealed for modern mankind, because one has to think differently about these matters. To-day one must know something which neither Augustine nor Descartes took into consideration. I hare spoken of this where I discuss Descartes, in my hook “The Riddles of Man.” To-day we must admit: The belief that one can come to a satisfactory philosophy through a grasp of one's immediate inner Being as man, as it offers itself to-day,—the belief that one can reach a firm standpoint in one's inner being,—is refuted every tine one goes to sleep. Every time a person to-day passes into the unconsciousness of sleep, from him is snatched that absolute certainty of inner experience of which St. Augustine spoke,—the Reality of that inner experience is snatched from him. Every tine you go to sleep until the moment of waking, the reality of real experience forsakes you. And the man of our age to-day, who experiences his inner being in a different way from that of the 4th Post Atlantean age, even from that of the twilight of the age of St. Augustine, has to admit: “No matter how acute a certainty is experienced in one's inner being, yet for man's life after death, there is no certainty at all; for the simple reason that the reality of his experiences sinks into the realm of the unconscious, every time he goes to sleep, and a modern human being does not even know whether it does not pass into Unreality, and so what man apparently experiences securely in his inner being is not made safe from attack. That may not be theoretically refuted perhaps, but the very fact of sleep contradicts it.”

Now if we turn attention to what has just been said, we recognise how, in reality, St. Augustine with a far greater justification than Descartes later, (who, after all, only merely repeated St. Augustine in another age)—with what right St. Augustine could arrive at his view. Through the entire 4th Post Atlantean epoch, and even through the age of St. Augustine, there still lived in human beings something of an echo of the old atavistic clairvoyance. History to-day unfortunately notices these things far too little and really knows little of them; but numerous were those persons throughout the whole 4th Post Atlantean age who, from their personal experiences knew that there existed a Spiritual life, because they beheld it. And in the 4th Post Atlantean age—it was different in the 3rd or in the 2nd Post Atlantean epochs—in the 4th age they beheld it chiefly because it played into their life of sleep. So that we may says: In the 4th Post Atlantean epoch it was not the case for human beings, (as it became later in the 5th epoch), that their sleep transpired completely unconsciously, Those human beings of the 4th Post Atlantean epoch knew that, from sleeping until waking up, there was a time in which all that they had as ideas, as feelings from waking to sleeping, still continued to work, but in other forms. Their waking life of truth dived down, as it were, into a dim, but conscious life of sleep. In that age one still knew that what was experienced as inner truth, was not only truth but also reality, because one knew those moments of sleeping life in which was revealed, not merely as an abstract life, but as a real concrete life in the spirit, what one had experienced in one's inner being. It is not a question to-day of proving whether St. Augustine himself could say, from his own experience, “I know myself that during the time between going to sleep and waking, there arises an experience which is true, even if not real inwardly.” The fact that one could grasp such a perception, on which one could stand firm, was still absolutely possible in the age of St. Augustine.

Now, you see, If you take what I have just said with reference to the subjective nature of man, and generalise it over the whole Macrocosm, you come to something else. You come to that condition from which subjective nature in an older epoch, and still in the 4th Post Atlantean period, has really proceeded; that from which it really became possible. Let us speak for a moment of the pre-Christian era. You must hear in mind that the Mystery of Golgotha is the dividing line between those ancient atavistic perceptions and the newer ones, which are on only to-day in their beginning. In that pre-Christian age one could still cling to certain living Mystery-Truth. The Mystery Truths to which I am now referring, are those which pertain especially to the great secret of Birth and Death. That is considered by certain Mystery Initiates as a secret which, they think, may not be referred to among the profane. (I have also spoken of this in recent lectures). They consider that those secrets should not be imparted to the world, because the world is not yet ripe to receive then. In that pre-Christian epoch there was in the Mysteries a certain view concerning the connection between Birth and Death in the great Cosmic life into which man with his entire being is inserted. In that pre-Christian age, through those Mysteries, man turned his attention specially to Birth, to all the processes of being born into the world. Anyone who is acquainted with the world-views of ancient times, knows also what emphasis was laid on the process of Birth,—of Arising, Sprouting, Growing;—all those processes, all those ancient views, specially concerned themselves with this. I have often emphasised what a gigantic contrast appeared through the Mystery of Golgotha. I have put it in the following way. Just think how, 600 years before the Mystery of Golgotha, Buddha, who stands ever in the evolution of man as the conclusion of the pre-Christian World-Conception, is led to his conceptions because, amongst other things, he beholds a corpse. “Death is suffering.” It becomes an axiom with the Buddha, that suffering must be overcome, A means must be found to be able to turn away from death. The corpse is that from which Buddha turns, in order to come to something which for him, though spiritualised, can be filled with Sprouting, Growing life.

If we now turn to 600 years after the Mystery of Golgotha, to another part of the world, and other human beings, we see that the vision of the Corpse of Christ on the Cross is not something which man has to turn away from, but to which he has to turn, which is regarded whole-heartedly as the symbol that can solve the riddles of the Cosmos in so far as they refer to man and his development.

There is a wonderful connection within this 1200 years. Six hundred years Before Golgotha, the turning away from a corpse gives an uplift to one's concept of the World; 600 years after Golgotha there la developed a symbol, The Image of the Crucifix, a turning towards death, towards a corpse, in order to create those forces from that Corpse, by which one can reach a concept of the world able to throw light on human evolution. Among the many things which show the mighty transformation which appeared in earthly evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha, there is this Buddha symbol, this turning away from the corpse; and then comes the Christ-symbol, the turning towards the Corpse—the Corpse of that Being Who is regarded as the Highest Being ever seen on the Earth.

It was really the case that in a certain connection the Old Mysteries put the Mystery of Birth in the very centre of their world-conception. But therewith, my dear friends, (since we are talking of Mystery-knowledge and not merely giving forth trivial view) therewith you have before your souls a deep cosmological secret. Your attention is turned to that with which is connected the life of Birth in the world's evolution.

And one does not come to understand this life of Birth in the Cosmos unless one can go back to the Riddle of the Old Moon. We know indeed that the previous incarnation of the Earth before it became Earth was Old Moon, and in many of the phenomena connected with our present Moon, that camp-follower, so to speak of the Old Moon,—(you can read [about] this in my “Outline of Occult Science”)—in various phenomena connected to-day with the present Moon, with this straggler, we simply have the after effects of what occurred in the Moon-Incarnation of the Earth, at the time which preceded our earthly development.

Now there would be no such thing as Birth in all the kingdoms of nature, there would be nothing born on the Earth, were it not that the law of the Old Moon prevailed through this straggler, which is the satellite of our Earth. All birth in the various kingdoms of nature and man, is dependent on the activity of the Moon. With this is also connected the fact that the Initiates of the ancient Hebrews regarded Jehovah as the Moon-God, as a Divine Being who arranged the process of bringing forth; Jehovah was honoured as a Moon-Divinity. It was clearly seen that cosmologically, behind all the processes of birth throughout all the kingdoms, there ruled the laws of the Moon, And so one could, I might say, symbolically utter a deep secret of Cosmology by saying, when the Moonlight falls on the Earth, on what is represented through this light, depends everything connected with all the Sprouting, Growing and `being born' on the Earth. In those pre-Christian ages one did not turn in the highest Mysteries to the life of the Sun, one turned to the reflected sunlight, that is, to the Moon, whenever the secret of Birth was alluded to. And the peculiar “Nuances” which were poured over the depths of those pre-Christian conceptions depended on the fact that the Initiates knew the Mysteries of the Moon.

They regarded the Sun Mysteries as something quite veiled, something hardly bearable for a humanity not fully prepared, because they knew that it is a deception, a maya, to believe that through the rays of the Sun falling on the Earth those things which Sprout and Grow are enchanted out of the various kingdoms of nature. That is a deception, a Maya. It was known that from the life of the Sun did not depend the process of Birth, but, on the contrary, the decaying, decreasing life, the process of Death. These were the secrets of the Mysteries. The Moon causes things to be born, but the Sun causes them to die. And, however highly for other reasons the Sun-life was honoured in those pre-Christian Mysteries, the Sun-life was honoured as the cause of death. The fact that beings had to die was not to be ascribed to the Sun, the 2nd incarnation of the Earth, but has to be ascribed to the present Sun, which appears so magnificently on the horizon.

Well, the decay of life, the opposite of birth, is connected with the Sun-life, but, my dear friends, there was something else, not so important in that pre-Christian age, but very specially important in our post-Christian age, and that is, that all conscious life is connected with Sun-life, and that conscious life through which man has especially to pass in the course of his earthly evolution, that consciousness which shines forth especially in the 5th. Post Atlantean age to which we ourselves belong, that is most intensely connected with the Sun-life. Only we must consider this Sun-life Spiritually, as we have attempted to do in the course of lectures given this Summer. For, if indeed the Sun is the creator of Death, of the decaying life in the Cosmos and also of man, yet the Sun is at the same time the creator of conscious life. The conscious life was not so important in the pre-Christian ages, because it was then replaced by an atavistic clairvoyant life, which will remained as an inheritance of the Moon. For our post-Christian age is has, however, become important, far more important than life. Consciousness has become more important than life, because only through consciousness can the goal of earthly evolution be reached—which is, that this consciousness should be attained in the corresponding way by the humanity on earth. You must receive this consciousness from the giver, the Sun, from which comes the living into Death and not the life of Birth.

Therefore the Mystery of Golgotha appears as that power in earthly development which has now become the most important thing for this evolution,—the Son of the Sun, the Christ, Who passed through the Body of Jesus of Nazareth,—That is connected with the deepest Cosmic secrets. The ancient Mystery Initiates said to their pupils: “Try to recognise through your sleep-life how the Moon-forces are playing into it. (WE know that even waking-man is partially asleep). Try to recognise the MOON-life in your sleep-life, for it plays into your sleep-life, as the Silvery Moon-shine plays into the darkness of night.”

The Christian Initiates on the contrary said to their disciples: “Try to recognise that in your waking-life consciousness shines; for the Sun-Forces pour into your waking-life, just as from morning till evening the Sun shines outside in the life of the Earth.”

You see, this reversal was fulfilled through the Mystery of Golgotha, and, whereas in pre-Christian ages the most important thing was to recognise the origin of Life, it has now become the most important thing to recognise the origin of Consciousness, Only through learning to unite this cosmological wisdom with what man experiences as true certainty in his soul, which means, only by grasping Spiritual Science with one's Inner Being, does man come to see the Spiritual Reality concealed in that which otherwise lacks this reality in his inner being.

Now with those means possessed by St. Augustine, the means possessed by those who stand on an Augustinian basis, one cannot get very far, because every sleep refutes the real certainty of one's inner experiences. Only when its Reality is added to this inner experience does man come to a really firm stand on the basis of his inner experience.

You see, my dear friends, that which we think to-day, that which we feel to-day in our present life on Earth, has not as yet any reality. This is even recognised to-day, by a few scientifically-thinking men. What we think and feel in our inner soul is unreal at present; and that is just the peculiarity—that what we experience most intimately, that which shines indubitably in us as truth, without doubt that at present has no reality. But this is really the fruitful seed for our next earthly life. That of which St. Augustine was speaking, and for which there is no guarantee of its reality, that we may say, is the seed for the next earthly life. We can say:—it is true that the truth shines in our inner being, but it shines simply as a gleam, (Schein). To-day it is still but a gleam, but in our earthly incarnation that which now is gleam, and as such is simply a germ, will become a fruit which animates our next incarnation, as the seed of the plant this year will animate the visible plant of next year. Only when we conquer time can we find in what we now experience inwardly, a reality. Of course we should not be the human being we are and that we should be, if we experienced our inward truth as though it were a reality like the external world. We should never become free. There could be no question of freedom; we should not even be personalities, we should simply be woven into an ordering of Nature, and whatever occurred in us would occur of necessity. We are only personalities, and especially free personalities, because from out of the weaving of natural events there arises as a kind of miracle, the gleam (der Schien) of those things which we experience in our inner soul and which will only become external reality, like that of our environment, in our next earthly incarnation.

It is the deceptive nature of our age to which all fantasy still gives itself, that we do not take into consideration the fact that what springs up inwardly as an unreality is one earthly incarnation, becomes a concrete reality in the next. We shall speak further on this point in the next two lectures.

We see how from the standpoint we have acquired to-day we can look back at the standpoint of St. Augustine, how we can understand him, and to a certain extent can see in him what he himself could not yet see. Thus, St. Augustine stands for us as a specially significant figure in the twilight of the 4th Post-Atlantean age, because with especial sharpness he points to the one stream in world-happiness to the stream of the Ideal; and in this stream he seeks to find a firm point. St. Augustine sought that firm point. To-day we only want to bring forward the historical fact.

There had not yet come to people in his age that tremendous swing of the pendulum which came about with the Mysteries of Birth and of Death, for only out of this Mystery of Death of which we shall speak further tomorrow, can one find a real substantiation of the absolute certainty of what man experiences inwardly as Truth.

We shall now have to make a great jump. Just as we hare characterised what reveals itself in St. Augustine as representative of the twilight of the 4th Post Atlantean age, so we will take certain personalities characteristic of our 5th Post Atlantean age, and study them according to a certain direction. Of these I will select two.

One of these persons in whom a certain tendency was developed which is characteristic for the 5th age, is Count Saint-Simon, who lived from 1766 to 1825. Another is a pupil of Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte. who lived from 1798 to 1857. If we have in St. Augustine a personality who, with all the means which stood at his disposal, sought through his knowledge, to substantiate Christianity, so on the other hand in Saint-Simon as also in Augusts Comte, we see personalities who are led completely astray as regards Christianity, We can best gain a clear idea of what lived in Auguste Comte, as also in a certain sense in Saint-Simon, if we briefly outline the chief thoughts of Auguste Comte.

Auguste Comte is to a great extent representative of a certain World-view in our age; and it is only due to the fact that people trouble so little as to how certain impulses in philosophy incorporate themselves into the life of man, that Auguste Comte is regarded as a kind of rarity, in historical life. These persons do not know how, perhaps not quite everywhere, but still in countless human beings, Augusts Comte exercises a school-masterly influence in the essential directions of their thinking, and one may say that Auguste Comte is representative of a great portion of the philosophical life of the present.

Auguste Comte says that humanity has developed through Three stages, and has now reached the third stage. If one observes the soul-life of man through these three stages, one finds in the first stage that the ideas of man tended mostly towards Demonology. The first stage of evolution in the Comte sense is the demonological stage. Human beings imagined that behind the sensible phenomena of Nature super-sensible Spiritual beings were active and operative; spirits were imagined everywhere in trivial life—demons were threatening everywhere, big demons and little demons. That was the first stage.

Then men passed on, as they developed a little further, from the standpoint of Demonology to that of Metaphysics. Whereas they first thought demons, elementary beings, were behind all phenomena, they then put abstract ideas in their place.—People became Metaphysical when they no longer wanted to be believers in demons. Thus the second stage is that of Metaphysics. They united certain concepts with their own life, and thought that through those ideas they could come to the basis of things.

But man has now gone beyond this stage. He has entered on the third stage, in which Augusts Comte quite in the sense of his master Saint Simon, assumes that man no longer looks on demons, no longer looks to Metaphysical concepts when seeking the basis of the World, but simply to that which results as the Sense-Reality of positivistic science. The third stage is therefore the stage of Positivism, of Positivistic Science. The revelations to be obtained simply through external scientific experience should be regarded by man as leading to a world-conception. He should explain himself in the some way as the metaphysical explanation given about the orderings of space, as physics explain the law of Forces, Chemistry the ordering of Substances, or Biology the ordering of Life. Just as everything can thus be explained by the different Sciences, so Comte tried to present a like harmony in his great work on Positive Philosophy. Everything which can be experienced through the various positive Sciences is considered by Comte as the sole thing worthy of man in the third stage. Christianity itself he still considers as the highest development of the last phase of Demonology, Then appeared Metaphysics,—which gave man a number of abstract concepts. But a concrete reality which alone can give an existence worthy of man on Earth, that can be given by Positive Science alone, according to Comte. And so he even tries to found a Church on the basis of Positive Science, to bring man into such social structures as can be grasped on a basis of Positive Science. It is very extraordinary to see to what things Auguste Comte really came at last. I will only bring forward a few really characteristic features, He occupied himself a great deal with the founding of a Positivistic Church. Now if you just take the various points, you will at once perceive the spirit of it. This Positivistic Church was to bring out a kind of Calendar. A certain number of the days of the year were to be devoted, for instance, to the memory of such people as Newton or Galileo, or Kepler; the bearers of Positivistic Science, These days were to be devoted to their veneration. Other days should then be devoted to the condemnation of such people as Julian the Apostate or Napoleon. All that was to be regulated. Life itself was to be regulated with a great sweep, according to the basic principles of Positivistic Science.

Now anyone who knows life to-day, knows that no great number of human beings would take such ideals as those of Augusts Comte seriously although that is simply cowardice, because in truth people do think as Auguste Comte did. If one studies the image the Positivistic Church of Comte gives, one actually gets the impression that the structure of his Church accords absolutely and entirely with that of the Roman Catholic Church. Only the Christ is lacking in the Positivistic Church of Auguste Comte, and that is the extraordinary thing. That is just what we must place before our souls as characteristic,—Auguste Comte seeks a Catholic Church without the Christ. That is what he came to, when he took those three stages into his soul;—Demonology, Metaphysics and Positivism. And one can say he took over all the “clothing” of Christianity, as it came to him out of history. He considered the clothing very good; but the Christ Himself he wished to banish out of his Church. That is the essential point round which everything revolves in Auguste Comte. A Catholic Church without the Christ.

That, my dear friends, is infinitely characteristic of the dawn of the 5th Post-Atlantean age, because as Auguste Comte thought, so a spirit had to think who had absorbed in his soul the element of Romanism, and thought from out of this element of Romanism, while at the same time he thoughtfully in the sense of the 5th Post Atlantean epoch, with its so absolutely anti-spiritual character. And so Auguste Comte and his teacher Saint-Simon, are in the highest degree characteristic of the dawning of our 5th Post Atlantean age. But in this 5th age many things have yet to be decided, and therefore other shadings appear which are still also possible. I just want to throw a few historical lights before you to-day, on which we can then build further.

An extraordinary contrast to Auguste Comte is Schelling; who lived from 1775 to 1854; and he also is to a certain extent characteristic of the dawn of our 5th Post Atlantean age. Of course I cannot put before you even diagrammatically the world-view of Schelling. We have spoken often of it from this or the other point of view—it is most manifold in itself. I cannot even give you any idea now of its structure, but can only point out various characteristics.

I told you St. Augustine takes his stand in the twilight of the 4th Post Atlantean age with the purpose, so to observe the one stream, the Ideal, that thereby he could get a firm point on which to stand. We now enter on the 5th Post Atlantean age. In its dawn we have such spirits as Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte who, in a purely natural materialistic ordering, seek a firm point in positivistic science. Thus we have two streams—Augustine on the one aide, Auguste Comte on the other. Schelling seeks to get behind what can be seen in the world with the ordinary means of the 5th Post Atlantean age; he seeks first abstractly and philosophically for a bridge between the Ideal and the Real, the Ideal and the Material, He tried with infinite energy to find the bridge, (You can find the essential points of this in my book “Riddles of Man.”) He seeks with infinite energy to bridge over that opposition and he came at first to all kinds of abstract thoughts in the course of this bridge-building. While he first built on the same basis as Johann Gottlieb Fichte, he went a little further, and attempted to grasp something in the world as real Being—something which is both the Ideal and the Real at the same time. Then came a time in Schelling's life in which it appeared impossible to him, with the methods of abstractions brought to him in the course of time out of the 5th Post Atlantean age, to build a bridge between those two. So he said one day: “Human beings have really only acquired on the basis of their modern learning concepts by which they can grasp the external ordering of Nature. But we have no concepts by means of which we can come behind this external Nature to that sphere where one could build a bridge between the Ideal and External Reality,” It is extremely interesting that one day Schelling made the following admission, He said, it appeared to him as though the learned people of the last centuries had concluded a silent contract tending to wipe out everything of a deeper nature,—all that could lead one to a real true life. Therefore he said, “We must turn to the unlearned people.” That was the time when Schelling started studying Jacob Boehme, and found in him that Spiritual deepening which then guided him to his final and theosophical period of life, from which proceeded his wonderful books the “Freedom of Man,” “The Gods of Samathrace,” the Kabiri Divinities; followed by his “Philosophy of Mythology” and the “Philosophy of Revolution.”

Now what Schelling most sought, especially in the last period of his life, was to understand the intervention of the Mystery of Golgotha into the history of mankind. That he sought especially; and while so doing it occurred to him that, with the ideas at the disposal of modern learning, one could never really understand the life which flows from the Mystery of Golgotha; which means that one could never come to understand the true life of man. Thereby Schelling—formed the conclusion, (and that is the tendency which I want to emphasise especially now:—we will build further on this in the next lecture) -, which is in complete contrast to that of his contemporary, Auguste Comte. That is the remarkable thing. We may say that Auguste Comte seeks a Catholicism, or I might better say a Catholic Church, without Christianity; Schelling, with his views, sought a Christianity without a Church. Schelling seeks, as it were, to Christianise the whole of modern life, to permeate it with Christianity; so that everything which human beings can Think and Feel and Will is absolutely saturated by the Christ-Impulse, He does not seek a separate clerical life for Christianity, especially not after the type found in historical evolution, although he studied this life very carefully.

Thus we have those two extremes—Auguste Comte's thought, of a Church without Christ, and Schelling's thought, of a Christ without a Church.

I just wanted to place these historical views before your soul, in order to be able to build further on these things. We have seen one spirit who seeks a firm starting point in Idealism—A spirit, Auguste Comte, who seeks a firm starting point in Realism, and then a personality such as Schelling who seeks to build a bridge between them. Both these tendencies preceded the evolution in which we ourselves are engaged.

We may say the following:—we can now survey those things which have contributed through many centuries to the life of World-Conceptions, and then we can turn our attention to the way in which these ideas have developed in the widest circles of human beings. The study of Auguste Comte gives a very important Apercu, but Comte himself could not attain this, because he stuck so rigidly to his positivistic prejudices. But something which can give us an important starting point for our considerations for the next days results, when we see in an Apercu the connection between St. Augustine, Augusts Comte, and Schelling, I will just put this at the conclusion of these considerations, because I should like it to have a place in your souls. We shall then have to speak of that which is connected in a significant way with just this. Now, as this Apercu results from a consideration of what I have told you, I will simply put aphoristically, without giving the foundations for it in detail, the reason why this, which is not to be found in Auguste Comte, is to be found in others. I have told you that it is important not to consider the life of these World-views individually in the abstract, but one must regard them as incorporated into the entire life of humanity. Only thereby does one reach a standpoint of reality, then one can see the incorporation of these things into the collective life of mankind.

It was clear to Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte that they could only come to their positivism in recent times, that it would have been impossible in an earlier age. Auguste Comte feels it especially strongly! he says approximately: “My mode of thought is only possible in our Age.” That in something which is of infinite importance in our modern Movement, and is connected with that Apercus to which I am referring. If one takes what Augusts Comte considers as a starting point for his threefold division, one can say in his sense, that this threefold division is Theology, Metaphysics, and what he calls Positivistic Science.

It is very characteristic that one can put this questions “Who will most easily be a believer in any one of these directions?” I beg you not to misunderstand what I am saying with reference to this Apercu, not even to grasp it as a one-sided radical dogma to be applied very roughly with absolute certainty to our present age, but to take it as applying to the whole evolution of man, as it must if one will regard what I now say. One can ask: not “Who will be a believer?” but “Who will most easily be a believer in any one of these directions?” From a very careful consideration, contradictory to facts as it may seem» this results:—The one who most easily becomes a believer in Theology (please, not a bearer, not a theologian, nor worker, but simply a believer; I am not speaking of religion but of Theology) is the Soldier. The person who most easily becomes a believer in Metaphysics is the Official, especially the legal Official. And the person who most easily becomes a believer in Positivistic Science is the Industrial.

It is important if one must judge life, not to remain in the abstract, but to look at it quite unprejudiced, and then such questions have to be put.

I just want this quite treated as an Apercu which results when one intimately studies Auguste Comte, because he was conscious that he was only completely comprehensible to the Industrials; and only in an industrial Age could he appear on the scene with his views. That is connected with the fact that the Industrial is most easily a follower of Positivistic Sciences the Soldier most easily a believer not merely of Christian but of any Theology, and the Official most easily a believer, a follower of Metaphysics.

Theology—The Soldier

Metaphysics—The Official

Positive Science—The Industrial

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St. Augustine (354–430)

St. Simon (1766–1825)

Auguste Comte(1798–1857)—A Catholic Church

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1. Demonology

2. Metaphysics

3. Positivistic Science

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Schelling 1775–1854—Christianity without a Church.

This lecture is the second of fifteen lectures in the series entitled, The Polarity of Continuity and Change in Human Life. Another name for this lecture is, The Bridge between the Ideal and the Real, Part 2.

A full insight into those relationships which we are now contacting is not possible unless one looks more closely into the nature of man in the period between going to sleep and waking up; that is, the sleeping condition. Of course, diagrammatically, the sleeping condition is well-known to you. That which we call the astral body and Ego separate from the physical and etheric bodies, But if we wish to go more deeply into the nature of sleep; we must remember that it is just in the sleeping condition that a man experiences the reality of what we discussed in our last lecture, when we said that St Augustine sought in his own inner experience to grasp the real true certainty about the world, I told you in yesterday's lecture that in his waking condition, condition, man does not grasp the full reality of his inner being. We must be quite clear that what is described as the astral body and the ego, do not really come to the consciousness of man by day; in his waking condition there only comes to his consciousness a copy, a mirror-picture of his ego and astral body. If man were conscious in the sleeping condition, that is from going to sleep until waking up, or, let us say, if he became conscious through those exercises which you can find described in my various writings—(which are all at your disposal)—, if man could thus become conscious through his sleeping condition, he would experience not a mirror-image, as by day, but the true form of his Ego and Astral body. But we must quite clearly realise that the true form of the Astral body and Ego appear in such a way to the soul of man when he develops Imaginative Consciousness, that in the inner experiences during the sleep condition, he experience in his Ego end Astral body what we cull the third Hierarchy, the Hierarchy of the Angels, Archangels and Archai.

Although throughout the whole of man's working life he stands in intimate connection with what we must designate as the Angels, Archangels and Archai, he does not experience this consciously during the waking condition; and that constitutes the deception in man's waking condition. He remains aware only of an abstract Ego of those shadowy ideas and concepts which fill man's soul, or perhaps of half-dreamy feelings and willings. This is the essential—that throughout the waking condition man does not progress beyond experiencing this shadowy side of his Ego and Astral body; and that he cannot become conscious that all the time there is working into his Ego those Beings of the third Hierarchy to which I have just referred. But if he were really to wake up in his sleep, if I may use that expression, he would not have external nature around him, but would immediately feel in himself the Beings of the Angels, Archangels and the Time-Spirits.

Now because those Beings work in us, my dear friends we have in the constitution of our soul something which we would not have otherwise have had. For instance, if the Hierarchy of the Angels did not work into our and Astral body, we would never feel ourselves to be individuals. Therefore, just because the Hierarchy of the Angels work into our Spiritual, psychic nature, we can feel ourselves to be free persons.

Because the Hierarchy of the Archangels work into us, we can feel ourselves as members of the whole of humanity. We might also say, that because these Arch-Angelic Beings shine into our psychic, Spiritual nature, inspiring it, therefore we really feel ourselves as men.

And because the Beings of the Archai, the Spirits of Time, pulsate in our nature, filling it with their Intuition, therefore we feel ourselves as earthly human beings—that means members not only of the present humanity, but of the whole of earthly humanity, from the very start of earthly evolution to the very end of Earth-life. In that way we can feel ourselves as members of the entire earthly humanity. Of course, we only feel it dimly, because we can only dimly sense the influence of these Time-Spirits within us.

We cannot say that we behold ourselves as personalities; that we can only do when we attain the Imaginative Consciousness. There remains a kind of reflection of this Imaginative Consciousness when we so experience our thinking that, through the free life of thought we feel ourselves as individual beings. Let us once more make quite clear how it is that we feel ourselves as individuals. We feel ourselves as personalities because we can, of our own free will add one thought to another. You would at once cease to feel yourselves as personal beings if you were compelled to add one thought to another just as in the world of external nature one phenomenon is linked on to another. This experience of inner freedom for the developing of a thought, gives us the certainty of feeling ourselves as personalities. This feeling of inner freedom is what comes clearest of all to man's consciousness by day; and it comes to man by day when he is awake, because, from the moment of sleeping until waking he is permeated by his Angel, that Angelic Being belonging to his own Ego.

In the feeling oneself as a human being as a member of all humanity, we are generally speaking, already far more apathetic, we feel ourselves far less strongly and intensely as members of the whole of mankind; and that is because the Arch-Angels, who bring this about, stand further away from us than do our Angels; and that which inserts itself as Personality into the whole human stream of evolution, (and which comes from the Archai) that remains for most human beings something really quite shadowy. On the basis of Anthroposophy we seek to evoke this very feeling, of belonging to the entire earthly humanity, for it becomes clear to us that in the 5th Post Atlantean epoch man experiences things in a certain way; in the 4th in a different way; in the 3rd in a still different way. One thus sees how the mood of soul has altered in the various epochs of time, alterations brought about by the various Beings of the 3rd Hierarchy, the Archai, the Spirits of Time. It is of this that we seek to create a consciousness on the basis of Spiritual Science. This consciousness can alone give man the possibility of feeling himself an historical Being, of feeling conscious: “I am now living as a Personality, in the 20th Century.” The fact does not enter the consciousness of most human beings, that their personality can only be real as Personality, because it has been placed in a definite point of time. How this permeation of the human soul and spirit-being by the Beings of the third Hierarchy, is something of which men would become aware, if he were intensely enough to attain Imaginative Cognition.

In the ordinary path of human evolution, as you know, Imaginative Cognition is not present. From the moment of going to sleep until waking up, the reality of man's ego and astral body is dumped down; and by day, when man is awake, he loses his connection with the Beings of the third Hierarchy. That comes from the fact that especially in our present cycle of time, man, when he is awoke, is given over to an illusion. As we have seen, when he is asleep, man is subject to the deception that his so and Astral body are not then active; but they are not inactive. They are then in living interchange with the Beings of the third Hierarchy. In the waking condition, the state of affairs at the present cycle of tine is, that our physical and etheric bodies, “unjustly” illegally, as we night say, absorb our Spiritual, Psychic nature. They permeate themselves with our spirit and soul. Normally this should not be the case. It should be normal for a man to-day when awake, to feel himself an Ego and Astral body, and to feel his etheric and physical bodies as a kind of shell into which he crawls, to feel then as something which he carries consciously about with him. But man does not feel that today? he feels as if the physical and etheric bodies were himself. But this they are not. We are that Spiritual, psychic being which makes use of the physical and etheric bodies as an instrument; but we cannot raise ourselves above the deception which belongs to the working of our epoch of time. We are, us it were, compelled to identify ourselves with that which in the normal consciousness should be like a hammer which one takes in ones hand and gives blows with it; so should we regard our physical and etheric bodies. But in this epoch we have to identify ourselves with them,—to give ourselves over to the deception that we are these, that it is we ourselves who thus go in a fleshly way through space. But they are not ourselves. That is only because the consciousness of our ego is absorbed unjustly illegally, by the physical and etheric bodies. That simply rests in the fact that in the present cycle of time the Ahrimanic powers are stronger than they should be in the normal evolution of mankind.

They draw down the etheric and astral bodies into the physical and etheric bodies, so to speak, and they bring about in man the deception that the head which he carries is himself, that his hands and his whole body is himself. Wrongfully the physical body absorbs that consciousness, so that it appears as if the physical body brought about our personality. Anyone who thinks that his physical body brings about his personality is subject to the same deception as a person would be, who standing before a mirror, believes it produces him, because it radiates his reflection. To say that this fleshly form we carry round with us is ourselves, is no cleverer than to hold your hand before a mirror and believe that the mirror is producing your hand. Yet the whole of modern Science is subject to that deception, All modern Science believes that what we as individual persons experiences inwardly, is somehow produced by the physical and etheric bodies; whereas all the physical and etheric bodies do, is to radiate back our astral body and ego, forming the mirror-image which, while we are awake, we recognise to be our ego and our thoughts, in other words, our astral body.

That is the Fundamental Truth which we mast realise. With reference to this Fundamental Truth, modern humanity, by reason of the forces working through our present epoch of time, give themselves over to a deception of consciousness which consists, as I have just told you, in the delusion that all that we think, or experience as our thoughts or our feelings, is produced by our body. Mankind is subject naturally to this delusion to-day. With his present consciousness he cannot transcend that deception, just as the Sun when low on the horizon looks bigger than when high up in the heavens. One knows it is a delusion, yet it does seem to be so. At this point of time man help regarding his flash and blood as himself. That is a delusion of consciousness, my dear friends; but man was not always subject to this deception of consciousness; it is essentially a characteristic quality of the humanity of post-Christian tines, after the Mystery of Golgotha. Before the Mystery of Golgotha this delusion did not exist. Before the Mystery of Golgotha there existed another kind of deception, Before Golgotha man did not believe that his consciousness was united with his physical body. Of course, history tells nothing of this, but it is so. It would have been sheer nonsense for a man of the second or third millennium of the pre-Christian era to suppose that his soul was produced by his physical body; in olden times no man felt himself bound to his physical body as the modern man does. In those pre-Christian times man really had a living consciousness of the Beings of the third Hierarchy, and because he knew:—“My soul is not identical with my body,” he also knew that his soul was not bound up with the bone and muscles of his body, but that it was bound up with the Beings of the third Hierarchy,

He was subject to a different delusion, not in his consciousness but in his life. He believed that his soul was bound up with external nature, together with the Beings of the third Hierarchy, just as modern man believes his soul to be bound up with his physical body. Man to-day gives himself over to a delusion in consciousness, he believes that his soul is united with his body. The reason he cannot see the Beings of the Angels, Archangels and Archai, is because his physical body darkens them for him. The man of old, although he had a consciousness that these Beings were there and that his soul was bound up with them, could not see directly but only dimly into the external, sensible nature. A modern man, in the delusion of his consciousness, believes that his soul is bound up with his body; the man of old believed that the Beings of the third Hierarchy were bound up with the external nature which he perceived with his senses. At that time he confused the Divine Beings of the third Hierarchy with the phenomena of nature, and expressed this in his interpretation of natural phenomena. Man to-day places his soul in his flesh and blood, the man of old placed the Beings of the third Hierarchy in external nature. He had no Natural Science such as we have to-day, but he considered the phenomena of nature as brought about by this or the other demon, more or less Divine Spiritual Beings, concerning whom he gave himself to a life of deception, in that he thought of these Spiritual Beings as operative in the phenomena of Nature. It is an important fact, that this change took place in the development of man in pre-Christian times; he gives himself over to a characteristic delusion of life, and after the Mystery of Golgotha to a delusion in his consciousness. The reality, the effective working of Christ Jesus (and of this we shall speak further in the next lecture) should consist in this—of elevating, of raising that delusion in man's consciousness, elevating it, bringing it home to him that he is deceived; and through the “Christus in mir.” “Christ in me,” man should be brought to feel that what lives as astral body and ego, lives in free Spirituality, and is not bound up with his flesh and blood. Of course, this can only be seen on the path of Spiritual Science, but it can already be felt in the words of St Paul: “Nicht ich, aber das Christus in mich,” “Not I, Christ in me.”

From what I have told you, you can already, my dear friends see that there are reasons why man should experience this Duality up to a certain point; experiencing on the one hand the ordering of Nature which consists contains no ideals, which of necessity connects one event with another, an ordering in which merely cause and effect, effect and cause are incorporated, so that one can never think that through what goes on in Nature, any ideal, moral or otherwise, can be realised. On the other hand, man is conscious that he could not develop an existence worthy of man unless he had ideals, unless he could cling to something else than a mere external Ordering of Nature. But with the consciousness accessible to him to-day, he cannot regard his ideals as operative, as effective, in the same way as, let us say, electricity or magnetism or the force of heat,—so, that the ideals are able to enter into Nature, into the ordering of natural phenomena. For that reason the Ordering of Nature and his own ideals appear to him side by side, but he cannot build a bridge from one to the other. He cannot build that bridge my dear friends, because he cannot look into the Cosmos both by day and by night, where the bridge has to be built. If only man could have a normal consciousness by day—that means an Ahriman-free consciousness—so that he could feel: “I as an individual person, am not bound to my physical or etheric bodies any more than when I look into a mirror which reflects me, I am bound to the image before me.” If man could have this consciousness about his ego and astral body, he would regard the ego and astral bodies as reality and not as mere reflected images, and then he could also recognise his ideals as real forces, just as real as electricity and magnetism, only they are not working at the present time, they are acquiring reality in the present incarnation for the next; from this earthly existence they pass over into the next earthly existence.

If man in the waking condition could perceive that his ego and astral body are bound up with the Beings of the third Hierarchy, as I have pointed out,—in other words,—if man could but fully see himself, and not merely feel himself but realise himself as a free personality not bound up with flesh and blood, he would no longer believe that the external nature outside him as presented to his sense-organs is a strong enough reality to oppose the force of his Ideals, He would know that, that which is the Ordering of Nature to-day, will crumble away with all those substances; that there is no such thing as the conservation of matter, but that which in Nature destroys itself, and when that which to-day is Nature no longer exists, then another external sense-reality will appear in its place, and that which to-day constitutes our ideals will become Nature in the next epoch. So we can say, to-day we experience an Ordering of Nature, (see diagram red) we experience an Ordering of our Ideals (yellow). The physicist believes that this Nature is maintained by a conservation of force and a conservation of matter, that the Ordering of Nature persists—, that the same atoms, the same forces play into all future.

[Missing Diagram]

The physicist, if he is sincere, can say none other than this:—“The ideal Ordering was a dream, it must sink and vanish like dreams. At the end of the earth our dream-ideal will no longer be there, it will have been buried.”

Spiritual Science shows that this is a delusion, untrue. We have the Ordering of Nature, (red) but in reality there is no conservation of force or of matter, for that which is the Ordering of matter ceases at a certain definite point of time; and that which to-day constitutes our ideal Order, forms the continuation of the Ordering of Nature.

[A gap in the page ... another missing diagram?]

All that we see round us with our eyes, or that we hear with our ears, all that we perceive around us with all our senses, will, when the earth reaches the Venus-condition, be non-existent; but out of that nothingness the possibility will be given for the Ideals of modern humanity to become the external Ordering of Nature. No conception of the world, my dear friends, which fails to recognise the destruction of what is sensible, can ever have a hope that the Ideal has the power to realise itself, for if what is sensible were eternal, if the conservation of force and matter did exist, them our ideal world would simply be a dream. It is of immense significance that man should at the present time, have this illumination:—that the Ideals of the present constitute the Nature of the future. It is a great delusion to believe that the atoms and forces around us are the eternal. They are not the eternal; they are the temporal. That indeed is the fate of Spiritual Science, it has to contradict and refute a perception held by the present-day universal perception and view of science as an absolute certainty, and which is yet nothing but an Ahrimanic deception.

Now let us go back again to something else, to which I have drawn your attention. Before the Mystery of Golgotha what I have characterised to you as the delusion of man, can be described as a delusion of life; after the Mystery of Golgotha it was a delusion of consciousness. When one knows this, one can understand many things in the development of man. Above all one understands why, before the Mystery of Golgotha, those human beings who had atavistic clairvoyance, could not see things in their true form, but saw the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies as demons. That is why those ancient Mythologies consist essentially in a demonology. The Gods of the ancient Mythologies were seen as Demons, as for the most part they were. And that rests on the fact that a delusion of life was present then. Men had to think of a false Ordering of Nature as a Divine Ordering, just as they have to think to-day of a false Ordering of the body as ordained for mankind.

Then came the Mystery of Golgotha; and man had to take the soul-mood which resulted from the Mystery of Golgotha. Before the Mystery of Golgotha, man in his waking condition stood in a more direct relationship to the Beings of the third Hierarchy than to-day. He saw them. And through their delusion of life they “fantasised” these Beings into Zeus, Apollo, and so on. These are the Beings of the third Hierarchy, but they were poetically altered, as seen under the influence of that delusion of life, as we to-day see everything which refers to man under the influence of our delusion of consciousness.

In spite of all that however, a Divine Spiritual order was spread into humanity. Just think how close man of those ancient epochs felt his human world to be to the Divine Ordering of the Cosmos! There was the human Hierarchy, and then came the Divine Hierarchy. Man did not feel so cut off as to-day, for he continued the world straight up to the Gods! How close the Greek felt his world of the Gods to the world of Man.

Then came the Mystery of Golgotha, and that was then no longer the case! Not through the Mystery of Golgotha, for that was to give compensation for what has been lost. But time itself brought into human evolution that man was to be cut off from this conscious connection with the Divine-Spiritual world of the third Hierarchy; only a memory, an historical memory remained. Then came the time of the first epoch after the Mystery of Golgotha. Men certainly had to think somewhat differently to what they did before the Mystery of Golgotha; but something of that immediate past still worked in them, when men knew that the Divine Spiritual Beings work into the earthly events and arrange and ordain what man does on the Earth. Therefore man of old was convinced that when he founded a State, (if one wishes to use the word “State,” it is incorrect, but we are accustomed to speak like this to-day)—he knew that those social structures were founded under the influence of the third Hierarchy. Man felt that his arrangements on Earth were Divine arrangements. You need merely study Egyptian history, even without clairvoyance to see how fully convinced the Egyptians were that what man does here in his social life was all arranged by the Beings of the third Hierarchy. That was so before the Mystery of Golgotha. After the Mystery of Golgotha the Church established a kind of grade in the clerical dignitaries. Such gradations were arranged; but behind the arrangement of those degrees there was a quite different thought. This can be seen quite clearly in the early Church writers. In Dionysius the Areopagite, you can see it clearly for yourself. There was to be such an arrangement in the administration of the Church that it should be an image of the Divine Ordering! and the relation of the Deacon to the Archdeacon was to be an image of the relation of the Angel to the Archangel, Again the relation of Archdeacon to the Bishop was a copy of the relationship of the Archangel to the Archai. Thus it was endeavoured to make the social structure of the Church a sort of copy of that Theocracy! Above in the Spiritual world there is a sequence of Hierarchies, and down below, in the physical world, there should also stand as a copy of the Spiritual Hierarchies, a sequence in the clerical dignitaries. In the first epoch after the Mystery of Golgotha, that was not conceived juridistically, but theocratically. It was a copy. The clerical Hierarchy was conceived as a copy of the Third Hierarchy, Thus in the first Christian Centuries it was endeavoured to establish such organisations as should cause the position of man on Earth to each other to be a copy of the Hierarchies in the Spiritual world.

Then gradually men lost the consciousness that they still had in their memories. The historic memory of the old theocracy was lost, in which man still knew that the earthly arrangements were a consequence of a copy of the Deeds of the Gods. The consciousness of this was lost, and in the place of the consciousness of the living world of Divine Beings, which were seen by men in olden times, and of which they still knew, there come abstract concepts. And so came the centuries where, in place of the individual Gods,—the Christians called them Angels—they put abstract ideas, a metaphysic of abstract concepts. The Divine Ordering, which should have its copy in the human ordering became theocratic; the application of mere ideas to man's social arrangements produced something which was simply intended to bring some kind of order into human intercourse. As formerly it was thought to create an image of the Divine Cosmos in the human social structure, so in the metaphysical age which followed, it was simply striven to maintain some order by punishing evil and not punishing the good, perhaps even rewarding it,—thus creating an ordering in which the social order could exist. And so, as in the place of living Gods there now appeared abstract, metaphysical concepts, a human Ordering appeared which in a sense so stamped itself on man, that one was preferred before another, not because that was a copy so that order should be maintained on earth; one came to command and the other to obey. Abstractions appeared in the place of the living permeation of the social Ordering.

Essentially the epoch of real metaphysic prevailed throughout the middle ages. The Roman consciousness essentially provided the special element for this metaphysical Ordering, which spread everywhere; one finds memories of this in the very words. For instance the word “Prince” (Fürst), is a memory of the Theocratic Ordering. The Prince, (Fürst), was the first, because some one had to be first, just as in the Divine Hierarchies also, one had to be first. A memory of the metaphysical order of administration is given us in the word Count, “Graf,” which is connected with “grafo;”—to write. In the metaphysical Ordering, everything is registered! the social order was kept by writing documents, by making compacts.

And then came the modern age. This newer age brought disbelief in the abstract concepts, in metaphysics. Men could now only believe in the external sense-phenomena, even in human life. Those traditions which still existed in ancient times of a living consciousness which somehow worked thus into the social structure, was lost. First the Gods, later the metaphysical concepts; these things could no longer exist in modern times; but they must again be won on those paths indicated by Spiritual Science. All consciousness of the Spiritual basis, of a Spiritual structure, was radically obliterated by Industrialism. Therefore Auguste Comte and his teacher Saint-Simon, felt themselves so specially united with the epoch of Industrialism, for they allowed positivistic Science alone to have any value.—That means, only that which can be related to the external sensible natural ordering, permeated by causal necessity.

Therewith, my dear friends, the concept of truth itself has undergone a complete transformation. People to-day have not the right feeling for these things, they do not as yet realise aright the fact, that the very concept of Truth has undergone a history. These modern human beings who knew themselves to be under a theocratic Ordering, had no such idea of Truth as human beings get to-day under the authority of Natural Science. It is extraordinarily difficult to speak of these things. To-day a man may think that, with reference to the world around him, truth consists in the coinciding of an idea with external reality. He gets that thought from Natural Science. Such a concept of Truth simply did not exist in the first Christian Centuries. There was another idea of Truth then, which was essentially connected with the theocratic social order. The concept of truth which lives in all souls to-day really did not exist then. This extraordinary fact, my dear friends, is not realised now. It is more easy to recognise the concept of Truth which lived then, if one approaches the idea of Divine Judgment. Suppose two people are fighting a duel, (I will not touch upon the question of duels, I am simply giving an instance), it cannot be determined from the very start by some calculation that A, will win and B will not,—if that were so the duel would hardly occur; the truth only emerges in the course of the conflict. We ourselves still have this idea of truth at the present day, in the case of war. We should not wage war if we knew from the start, as in an experiment in a chemical laboratory, how the war was going to end. In this the old concept of truth is rooted even to-day, that truth itself can only he revealed in the course of what actually happens, that one can do nothing but watch how the Divine Judgment will fall. That is the old concept of Truth.

Those who think as Auguste Comte or as the Socialists to-day, have completely broken with this idea of Truth. They only recognise a truth as such, where the event in its course can be foreseen. The cry of Auguste Comte: “Know in order to foresee,” is the radical transformation of the concept of Truth in our modern age. But, my dear friends, with the concept which prevails to-day, one can only grasp external nature. Concerning this point, humanity to-day gives way to a colossal delusion. Men believe, for instance, that they can grasp historical life through this idea of Truth, which Auguste Comte and Saint-Simon taught. But it cannot be done, even with the old concept of Truth as divine Judgment, for that stood under the influence of the Delusion of Life. Our modern concept of Truth stands under the influence of our Delusion in Consciousness. There must come the concept of Truth of Anthroposophy; a concept gained in a far more widely embracing way than that in which St Augustine got his concept of Truth; for as I have explained to you, that too was subject to delusion.

This is connected with many things: and a great deal depends on it. It is not enough to speak abstractly on the evolution of the idea of Truth, one must in general, in all its details, know how the Concept of Truth can lead the soul of man along many different paths according to the nature of his idea of Truth. It is an anachronism to speak to-day in the same sense of Nationalism, as was possible in the pre-Christian age; because in the pre-Christian age it was not only a human view—that a Divine Ordering then permeated the human Ordering, it was actually the case. Now, the Divine Ordering no longer permeates it. Hence, wherever to-day man hangs his consciousness on the Ordering of Nature, on that which is merely produced by a sequence of births, on the Principle of nationality, for instance, there he is involved in an anachronism. It is laid on man to-day to find quite other structures of social order than those worked from outside. The man of old could look to his nationality, because he saw it determined by the divine Ordering. But man cannot do this to-day in the same sense without falling into an anachronism, and to-day to honour the Nation itself as something special, is an anachronism, he must consider other social structures. To regard a Nation as something special, would bring about the modern Ahrimanic delusion. “Nations” are relics of the pre-Christian Age, and modern humanity must rise above them through that development which I have indicated. We must see how concretely human beings strive after a special development of the concept of Truth. That is important, even if it is inconvenient to-day, my dear friends. But if we are unprejudiced in trying to grasp reality, we must assimilate many an uncomfortable truth.

You see, man now goes right against what Anthroposophy wills. That world-view which found its special advocate in Auguste Comte, limits itself merely to an external Ordering of Nature. We must press forward again to a Spiritual world, and a bridge must be found between Idealism and Realism. That is what I wont to emphasise in these lectures. But this cannot be done simply by speaking of these things, but by grasping the concrete impulses working in the world. We must look certain facts full in the face, without prejudice. Now there are very curious facts connected with the things we are now considering. Yesterday I spoke of Auguste Comte and Saint-Simon. Both consider positivistic Science as the only thing valid, positivistic Science which simply relates to the sense-life, to a what is in the causal Ordering of Nature. Nevertheless the extraordinary fact is before us, that Auguste Comte turned away from his teacher and guide, Saint-Simon, because gradually Saint-Simon had become too mystical; and the disciples of Auguste Comte gradually turned from him because he himself became altogether mystical in his old age. We are faced with this extraordinary fact,—that Saint-Simon as well as Auguste Comte, on the one side stand directly on the basis of the most Ahrimanic Science, consciously in the epoch of Industrialism, they stand on the soil of this Ahrimanic Science; and yet they become mystics! Extraordinary! That really is an extraordinary fact.

One has to ask the “why” of such a fact, but this can only be explained if without prejudice, one admits that on the other hand man is living towards Spirituality. Unconsciously human beings are striving towards Spirituality. Even such beings as Auguste Comte and Saint-Simon, who only want to grasp external nature, are also striving after Spirituality.

But now in the modern life of man something very peculiar is to be seen. We will take another fact which, without any national Chauvinism (which would not be seemly) we will try to keep in mind. In the views which result as the flower of modern nations, one can find characterised in a certain way what lies under the surface; and, starting from this, I should like to point to another very dominant English philosopher, Bentham, who lived from 1748–1832. Bentham can be taken as characteristic of the thinking of his people, and with a certain justice one must describe the views of Bentham as Utilitarianism even in a deeper sense. A certain basic sentence lies at the bottom of the ideal World-Ordering according to Bentham, This principle is usually called the “maximum of human happiness.” Human happiness consists in this dogma, which Bentham put forward: “The good (that means what should be striven for as an ideal) consists in the greatest happiness of the greatest number of human beings on the Earth.” Let us get that sentence clearly in mind:—“The good consists in the greatest happiness of the greatest number of human beings on the Earth.” That sentence, as a matter of fact, of the maximum of happiness on the Earth, is the root-nerve of the Utilitarian philosophy.

Now one must bear in mind that this sentence was regarded, not by Bentham himself nor by his disciples, but by those who stand on a Spiritual basis, as absolutely Ahrimanic. The occultists of his own Country say: Bentham put forward this purely devilish sentence—they call it devilish because, so say these occultists, if it were correct that good consists in the greatest happiness of the greatest number, evil must then consist in the greatest happiness of the least number.

I am not now saying anything which I myself wish to bring before you as a definition or explanation, but simply quoting what has been said. Thus, on the one hand the English philosophy of Bentham, “The maximum of happiness;” on the other hand that English Spiritualism (Spiritualismus) which says, “Bentham's sentence is purely of the devil, because in that case evil would be the greatest happiness of the least number, and from this there would result that evil and happiness could exist side by side,” to which the Spiritualists would not under any condition agree.

I am only bringing before you here a fact of Spiritual life, significant in the most eminent degree, significant as regards the enormous opposition to be found in a certain sphere of the Earth between Spiritualism and external World-view.

And now again to-day, because I want you to realise that we shall solve these oppositions in tomorrows conditions, I want to put once more at the end, an apercus; you can put three things together:—Goetheism, Comteism, and Benthamism. These three things stand in a certain sense, in a threefold way to the Spiritual striving of man towards the future. The German Goetheism is so fashioned that out of it Spiritualism (Spiritualismus) can result. The French Comteism is so fashioned that Spiritualism can develop alongside it, for in Augusts Comte and Saint-Simon we find an extraordinary mysticism appearing side by side with their positive philosophy. With the English Utilitarianism, as in Bentham, nothing else is possible than the sharpest opposition from the side of Spiritualism against the national philosophy. That is something which lies in the soil of evolution itself. The French nature must so develop that Idealism, Mysticism and Positivism must develop side by side. Whereas in England within the British nature, things must develop more and more so, that, from the side of their Spiritualists, their own “racial nature” must be combated in the sharpest way possible. (That means, of course, what is put forward as the philosophical blossoms of the nation)

With Auguste Comte—I am not giving you theories but simply individual facts—there was such a distinct inclination to Mysticism existing, that, in spite of his application to Positivism and rejection of his teacher Saint-Simon, at the end of his life he very clearly assumes a Trinity. Auguste Comte honours three in his trinity:

1st. The great Fetish.
2nd. The great Medium.
3rd. The great Being.

And he says: the great Fetish is the Mother-bosom of humanity in space. Space itself is the great Medium out of which humanity comes. The great Being, the last person in his trinity, is humanity itself in the abstract, spread out over the Earth. Auguste Comte recognises this Trinity,—which is an extraordinary quickening of Positivism with Mysticism.

Now of this we shall speak further tomorrow.

Those who study the soul-spiritual¹ life of mankind cannot make use of many of the concepts which are commonplace in every-day life and in our current way of thinking. One such idea which cannot be used is that of evolution or development – the idea that one thing, or better said one condition, arises from another. Now I don’t want to be misunderstood, so I should make it quite clear that I do not mean the concept of evolution is useless. Yesterday, for example, we made extensive use of it, when we needed the idea of evolution to speak about how soul-bodily life proceeds between birth and death. But we need quite different concepts if we want to talk about what soul-spiritual life really is.

As you know, our experience of soul-spiritual life within outer sensory reality takes place in thinking, feeling and willing. To understand what is really happening soul-spiritually within the processes of thinking, feeling and willing, we must bear in mind the following: –

If someone feels something and the feeling comes to expression via thinking, or if someone perceives something in the outer world and what is perceived comes to expression via thinking, or if someone does something so that the will is translated into action – in other words whenever someone lives in the soul-spiritual – then this must always be considered as relationships taking place between spiritual beings. Whenever we want to describe the soul-spiritual world within which the human soul exists, then we really can’t avoid speaking about these relationships between spiritual beings.

Suppose that the human being were more of a thinking type, although in reality it is never the case that the activities of thinking, feeling and willing are completely separate. While one is thinking and forming thoughts, the will is at work within the process of thinking, because one actually performs the thinking. And while one is doing something, performing some action, the will is also at work, executing the ‘what-is-wanted’. When we think or contemplate, we do a little more thinking and less willing, and when we act or surrender ourselves to some feeling, we do more willing and less thinking.

But so far everything that I have touched upon is in fact only an outer characteristic of the matter. To grasp the reality of these things we must speak about them quite differently. For example, I might perceive something in the outer world which prompts me to form mental images of it; I don’t do anything, but confine my will to direct my senses towards the outer world so that I can perceive and string thoughts together. I am therefore contemplating, actively perceiving. In reality this means that I shift myself into a spiritual region where ahrimanically inclined beings have the upper hand. Pictorially speaking, in a certain sense I stick my head into a region where ahrimanic beings rule. While on the face of it I say “I am contemplating something”, in reality I should say “I am busy in a spiritual region where certain beings have the upper hand, somewhat subduing other beings, and hold the balance which tends towards the ahrimanic.”

When we describe things this way, at first it all seems rather vague and indefinite, because they take place in the spiritual realm, and our language is made for sensory reality. One can however express them pictorially by removing the human being somewhat from the process and moving it more into the cosmos. For this reason a situation which could be characterised externally by saying “Something stimulates me and I ponder upon it”, would be expressed pictorially by initiation knowledge in something like the following way: –

The human being lives in and orients himself within the cosmos. As I have shown in the last few days, this is like a compass needle that points, cosmically speaking, north-south, its orientation not determined from within, but by the cosmos. This orientation varies so that it can follow the zodiac, alternating amongst Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. (See Figure). There is also at first a fundamental state, taking this orientation of the zodiac as a basis, in which the human being points upwards according to his head-nature and downwards according to his limb-nature. All this can then be viewed as a kind of balance beam which separates what is above from what is below.

Now what becomes of this human cosmic orientation if we were to look at someone who is neither thinking nor acting – I hope you are not doing this – someone who is casually given over to the feeling of being lulled by life, half asleep and half awake, neither active nor passive? Actually rather a lot happens to him, only he doesn’t notice it. And if we want to picture this condition – as I said, one that I hope you are not in right now – then we would say that the balance beam rested horizontally.

But if we want to describe a state of mind which I hope you are now in – contemplative, stimulated and absorbing what I’m talking about – then we must picture the balance beam differently. We would say that all the souls sitting here – or at least some of the souls sitting here – are shifted into a region where certain spiritual beings raise one side of the balance beam. In the physical world, when a beam moves because of an imbalance, we say that it drops, but in the spiritual world we say that the beam rises. When someone is in a state of contemplation, he shifts to a different spiritual region, and ahrimanic beings there raise the beam away from Libra and towards Virgo (see ‘blue’ in Figure).

So when someone is contemplating, it means that he takes advantage of his situation as a human being in the entire cosmos, exploiting those forces within which he oscillates, in order to shift into a spiritual region where a condition of balance once again holds sway. You start to contemplate, and while you are actively doing this, your spiritual space – if I can call it that – shifts to a region where a battle takes place, and then subsides. The beings here on the left fight against the beings on the right, and vice versa. But once you have achieved a state of contemplation, the battle is over, and peace is restored. This peace signifies that certain ahrimanically oriented beings have the upper hand, like when a tilted balance beam comes to rest, no longer oscillating because something is pulling at it. That would be the reality corresponding to contemplation, to thinking actively.

In normal sensory existence, what we call thinking is only maya, an illusion. You have to describe cosmically what thinking really is, asking about the person’s whole situation within the cosmos. And the answer you get about the person’s cosmic situation reveals both what certain spiritual beings are doing and what contemplative thinking is. So you see that it is basically an illusion if we describe thinking as we do in normal life, because in reality we find ourselves in a certain region in which thoughts take place in our ‘thinking space’ through the fact that certain ahrimanically inclined beings have tilted the balance beam to one side. That is what really happens.

Consider another event in human soul-spiritual life; we do something, not charging aimlessly around, but acting intentionally, an action filled with thought. How this is described in ordinary life is also a mere illusion, because when we are acting, we again shift into a specific cosmic region. But in this region there are certain luciferically inclined beings who raise the balance beam from its state of rest in the other direction, which we can picture with this arrow (see ‘red’ in Figure). So when we are acting intentionally, really willing our deeds, we are oriented in a region of the cosmos where the balance beam is held by certain luciferic beings. Now the state of rest is gone because we have shifted to a region where these luciferic beings begin to make the balance beam tremble, and we are transported into a kind of battle that takes place in the cosmos. Within our will the luciferic beings begin to fight against the ahrimanic beings, and this volatile situation expresses itself as the rocking of the balance beam. So what is called will in everyday language is also only maya, and is correctly described by saying that when we will something we are in a region where luciferic beings have raised the balance beam. We find exactly the region where the state of rest begins to change into rhythmical movement, and raising the beam takes place without our involvement.

I have mentioned in the first of my mystery dramas – of course in dramatic form – that when we think or feel soul-spiritually, we should not have the idea that this only happens within us, because cosmic forces are also set in motion. This was expressed pictorially in a scene in which Capesius and Strader do something, and at the same time great cosmic events take place. They do not happen in the sensory world but in the super-sensible, so one can only make them perceivable in the sensory world in the way it is done in the drama. All the same, it is quite clearly expressed in the play that human action as we normally describe it, is only a reflection of reality, and when one thinks or wills the slightest thing in one’s soul, significant events happen in the cosmos. We can never think or will something without shifting ourselves into regions where spiritual battles are taking place, or spiritual battles are subsiding, or spiritual battles have already been fought and we move into the outcome of these struggles, and so on.

What I have just described to you is present in the human soul-spiritual being, only it is hidden in the life we lead between birth and death; but it is the truth in the spiritual world. Recently I have spoken in other contexts about how modern man, behaving intellectually as is the custom today, really lives in hallucinations. Basically, the ideas we form about thinking, feeling and willing are hallucinations, and the reality that lies behind them is what we can illustrate pictorially in the way I have just done.

So what we have just described lies behind our soul-spiritual events, and reveals itself to us as a reflection, appearing as thinking, feeling and willing. And as soon as we consider the human being as he really is soul-spiritually, the concept of development, of evolution, becomes inapplicable.

For example, it would be complete nonsense to say that the human being becomes reasonable at a certain age, prior to which he is given over to a raging will, and that the one develops from the other. In spiritual regions nothing develops in this way; we can only say of the child that he thinks, feels and wills differently from an old man; that the child is shifted into a different spiritual region where the battles between the various beings take place in other ways. In spiritual regions, development, as we described it yesterday, does not take place. There we understand the past as a picture of battles, of relationships, of the changing circumstances of the spiritual beings that we look for behind the higher hierarchies. When we speak about the present there is a different picture of the interplay of the hierarchies, and there is yet another picture when we talk about the future. As we regard the past, present and future, so accordingly do we see different pictures in the relationships between the various beings of the hierarchies. And it would be absurd to suggest that the picture of the future battles develops out the picture of the past battles. These things belonging to the region of the spirit are in a certain relationship of juxtaposition, not one after the other. For this reason we cannot speak of development, only of spiritual perspective, as I have already told you in respect of other matters. What we can say is that when we consider the human being as a soul-spiritual being, then it makes no sense to speak of him first as a child who goes through the change of teeth, then puberty, and so on. So what appears as evolution, as development, in the region of the soul-bodily, cannot be spoken of as evolution when it is to do with the soul-spiritual. Instead it should be understood as transition from one picture to another within the changing relationships of the beings of the higher hierarchies.

If you fail to bring into consideration the connections between what I explained yesterday and today then you will never really understand the relationship between the temporal and the eternal.

I have already explained how the human being, as a soul-bodily being, is placed in temporal development in such a way that he needs to become an old man before he can first begin to understand what happened to him as a child. This has everything to do with the concept of evolution. But as a soul-spiritual being, we must recognize that the human being is not placed within evolution, that the concept of time as we know it in outer sensory life is totally inapplicable there, and that we make a mistake when we speak of the human soul-spiritual being and bring time into the sphere of the higher hierarchies. There, everything is eternal and things do not happen in time, only in perspectives within which we see battles and changing relationships. The concept of time is inapplicable to the changing relationships in the higher hierarchies, and if we do use it, then we are only using it to make an illustration of the essential being of these hierarchies. Hence you can follow in my Outline of Occult Science how carefully I suggest that what appears to be temporal must be presented in picture form. For example, where I speak about the stages of Old Saturn and Old Sun, I draw attention very clearly to the fact that the concept of time is only used pictorially to describe what preceded the Old Sun period and even into the first half of the Old Sun period itself. You can check all this in Occult Science where these apparently minor details in my book about spiritual science are of tremendous importance, because precisely in these details lies the basis for an understanding of the difference between what is temporal transitoriness and what endures eternally.

If you think about what I have just said, then you will see that yesterday I tried to describe the being of man purely in time. The concept of time played a really major role there, because it depends on time whether someone has gained a certain understanding by living through to old age, or not if he is still in childhood. Yesterday when we described what forms the basis of the soul-bodily being of mankind in the light of the spirit, it was based firmly on the concept of time. Today I have described what forms the basis of the soul-spiritual being which can only be portrayed by describing it in the sphere of eternity, in which – and this is rather difficult – the concept of time is completely inapplicable.

In this respect our being is indeed split in two, and insofar as we do develop through our lives, we do so on the one hand, by waiting calmly and patiently until we are mature enough in soul and body to understand something, while on the other hand we remain without development in the sphere of eternity, where to a certain extent we gaze simultaneously at our childhood in one region, and at our dotage in another. Here on earth, mankind lives in such a way that what happens in the sphere of eternity rays down into what happens in the temporal sphere, and vice versa, both being mixed up with each other.

The task of initiation wisdom is to separate what is mixed up, because only by being held apart can it be understood. Initiation wisdom has always called what is in the sphere of eternity – Above, and what is in the sphere of transitoriness – Below. But as the human being lives here on earth, he views a mixture of Above and Below, and can never come to an understanding of his own being when he sees it mixed up in this way. He can only understand himself when he understands how to separate what is mixed up.

So you can appreciate why the point of view that ordinary life provides makes it impossible to grasp in normal consciousness how things are the way I described them yesterday and today. Someone basing things on normal consciousness might say: “Yesterday, you outlined something about mankind that we can’t see, that isn’t reality at all, because people don’t develop the way you described; there are many people who are quite mature in their youth”, and so on. But this is an objection based on a deception, since reality is as I described it, and people today slip into dualism because they do not see what is Below as mobile and fluid in the way I presented it yesterday. The normal view is to look at a person as he stands before us, while the initiate considers the course of events that take place between birth and death and sees the human being in flux, taking the rigidity of what is Below and bringing it into flowing movement.

On the other hand, when an initiate considers the fluidity of thinking, feeling and willing, he brings this movement to a halt, and what is bound to the physical body apparently happening in time, he views in the sphere of eternity, the region of spiritual juxtaposition.

People strive towards initiation wisdom, and openly admit that the perceivable environment is maya, a great deception, an illusion. But when it gets serious, then they don’t accept it, and would rather describe the region Above with the same idea of maya that they use for the region Below. One should make beautiful schematic drawings based on the ideas of maya, and move about the spiritual world with them, up or down, above or below consciousness. People say to me: “Yes, but you’re not describing things so that I can understand”. But behind this lies “You challenge me with ideas and thoughts that are different from the ones in maya; you challenge me to come to grips with ideas which are in the sphere of reality.”

As another objection, someone might say: “Yes, but in the end, what concerns me in all this is what happens here below! If we just use the concept of time seriously in relation to human development, or we gaze out from life into the sphere of eternity, then one can get by quite well, thank you very much”. You could say this if you remained in maya, and if you formed concepts from what is all mixed up; and yes, you can survive, you can of course continue to live albeit asleep by remaining only in the sphere of eternity.

But here my first point is this. If you form concepts like these, which are sharp and which can stand up to modern scholarship, then you can just about live with them, but really only just live. What you cannot do with concepts like these is die. Nobody can die with concepts like these. And as soon as one touches upon this mystery, the full import of spiritual scientific knowledge begins to dawn on one, because concepts which are formed without initiation knowledge lead after death into an unlawful ahrimanic region. And if you spurn forming concepts like those in initiation wisdom, then after death you will not arrive in the region of humanity to which you are really predestined.

In former times higher spiritual beings taught those people with an atavistic clairvoyant predisposition the concepts of initiation in supersensible ways. In those days, and essentially up until the year 333 after the Mystery of Golgotha, there was a kind of supersensible instruction available to people, which made them not only fit for life, but also fit for death. However, since that time the human being has had to prepare his soul, through his own effort here on earth, with concepts so that he can cross the threshold of death in the right way.

For initiation wisdom there is nothing more frivolous than the comment: “Well, we can wait until we enter the region after death, then we’ll see what’s there”. The answer to this is: “Whoever waits, sins against life”, because you would be utterly terrified if, per impossibile, an initiate showed you what deformed creatures you would be if, throughout your life between death and rebirth, you had had the same attitude and said: “I’ll wait until I’m born on earth to see what kind of being is clothed with flesh and blood”. There, higher beings take care of you, and because of their benevolent influence, you cannot avoid preparing for yourself those forces which before your birth protect you from becoming a misbegotten creature. And those beings that teach us say: “This spiritual life between death and new birth is not merely here for our region, it is also here in order for the region Below to be lawfully prepared so that finely formed people can come into being there, and not mis¬begotten creatures.”

Likewise life here on earth is not simply for the earth, but is here so that a person can die in the correct human way. And by adopting concepts from the higher region the human being can prepare his lower nature for this so that he does not enter an inappropriate ahrimanic region. There are of course appropriate ahrimanic regions, but those that are not in accordance with one’s humanity would be inappropriate.

That is the first point. The second point is this. If you disregard the sphere of eternity, you can just about survive as an individual person – although in reality nobody can live in isolation – but you would not be able to live within the human social order which is led and directed by beings of the higher hierarchies. When you enter into even the most trivial relationship with another person – and our whole life consists of inter-personal relationships – and if what streams into this relationship does not flow from a consciousness of what lies in the spiritual sphere of eternity, then you ruin social integrity, and you contribute to catastrophic manifestations of destruction on the planet. In addition, any social or political point of view that does not stem from the spirit, will also work in this destructive way. Only a point of view that reckons with the sphere of eternity, that is alive to what is becoming, can be effective in political, social, and especially in inter-personal life. This is the great serious truth which must increasingly confront humanity through initiation wisdom. And the signs of the times confirm this, that those days up to 333AD are long past, when higher beings supersensibly taught a humanity that did not need to participate consciously, because it could be educated mostly in sleep or in dimmed consciousness. But today people can only receive what they need so much by experiencing it person to person within humanity itself. People must simply put aside that arrogance which lets them say they can always form their own opinions. In the sphere of transitoriness we should recognise that the old have something to say to the young which only the old can tell them. If we understand this, then why should we not also understand that there is an initiation wisdom which we take in inter-personally? This is a kind of leaven of the social life which must develop in the future, so that at any moment – we are speaking of the sphere of time here – if someone cannot recognise what he needs, then he will receive it from others.

Yesterday I told you that our individual development in time makes it unnecessary for us to accept things merely by believing in authority; instead when we form an idea we can have it as a kind of conviction that flows from one’s own inner being. I have emphasized in a number of my books that belief in authority has no place in spiritual science. But it also needs to be clearly understood by all who are really grounded in spiritual science that someone cannot be initiated at any time of life simply by blowing his own trumpet and following his own convictions as is the fashion today. If that were the case people could draw up all manner of programmes that they believed in, that could rule the world, but which could never deliver the kind of wisdom that really flows into the life and workings of the world which increasingly need initiation knowledge.

In past times initiation was a kind of thinking that was given to humanity. But in the future people must use their own willpower to turn towards what comes into the world through initiation, even though this counters many subconscious desires. It is very difficult for people to find the right way to summon up the required degree of seriousness to engage with everything that I have been talking about.

It is becoming really hard to tell modern human beings how much goodwill they must have, because they often think that this goodwill is actually rather heartless. Whoever correctly penetrates the meaning of spiritual science knows that as we move towards the future, there is no alternative to the study of initiation wisdom for forming the soul substance that enables us to pass through the gate of death in the right manner, and which also allows us to stand properly within the social life of humanity. One can live into this, but then comes the contradictory thought: “Here’s someone in whose life there are people whom he loves for one reason or another, but they do not want to know anything about this great requirement of our time to turn towards the spiritual life. When he wishes that these people should also attain salvation, it seems to him heartless if the whole truth is spelled out”.

But whoever really has goodwill towards these things knows that it is not goodwill at all to close one’s eyes and say: “Oh well, although they don’t want to know anything about the spiritual life, they can attain salvation anyway”. Instead one should say: “Every effort should be made to bring the spiritual life to the earth”. It is not about giving in to the thought which is so closely connected with our own wishes for dealing with those who don’t want to know anything about spiritual life. Rather we should positively strive towards dedicating ourselves with goodwill to the spiritual life, attempting to bring it into the world so that people can be – if I might use the expression – brought to blessedness.

Behind what is often called a loving attitude, lies hidden not only superficiality, but also a misjudgment of the whole situation. Today if someone speaks out of initiation wisdom, he does so not to teach people theoretical knowledge, but with a warm heart, out of love of humanity, because he knows how much the signs of the times indicate that the next great task is to bring spiritual life to the soul, and to incorporate it into human life so that the spirit draws near to the soul. But it is also necessary to courageously face up to the challenge of humanity’s development in time. The views from Above and from Below which must be brought into the open today and clearly understood, if at all possible also need to be incorporated in the human soul.

If life is looked at as it is today – in a prejudiced and illusionary way – then one is not speaking about the whole of life but only about a tiny part of it. I tested this in the following way. I know the various biographies of Goethe, which provide information about many of the things that Goethe did, what he was motivated by, considered, and thought about, between his birth and his death. But as soon as Goethe’s soul passed through the gate of death, what is described in these biographies with their illusionary point of view, has not the slightest significance for the region which the soul enters after death, and constitutes another mixing up of the sphere of eternity with the sphere of transitoriness. It is indeed transitory when, through a new birth, the human being again steps into existence,

Everything that is recorded about life between birth and death in an illusionary biography based on an illusionary world view is of no use for the sphere which one enters through the gate of death. What matters is only the question: “How has the soul spoken to the cosmos?” Whatever somebody said to his neighbour, even if it was the most beautiful thing on earth, if it did not flow from spiritual knowledge, then it was not spoken to the cosmos.

However, what Goethe lived through was spoken to the cosmos, when one considers his life described in seven-year periods. How Goethe changed from one seven year period to the next! How remarkable was that great change in his life which happened at the end of a seven-year period when he went to Italy, or at least decided to go there! Whatever happens from one seven-year period to the next, beneath the sphere which forms normal biographies, this is what speaks to the cosmos; and something can be done with this once the human soul has passed through the gate of death. What Goethe said that was influenced by beings of the sphere of eternity, described as I have been doing today, this too has a connection to the sphere that one enters after death. Picture to yourselves Goethe’s life from the point of view of yesterday’s consideration of successive seven-year periods – what he felt when he wrote maxims above particular chapters of his works, such as “What youth desires, age receives in abundance”. Looking at Goethe’s life from the point of view of transitoriness, of evolution, if you run across words like these used as a motto above that one chapter, and you meet these words with knowledge of spiritual science, then to a certain extent you will have encountered the eternal Goethe. And if again with a spiritual scientific attitude, you come across something that Goethe said, resounding with what flows from the sphere of eternity where the hierarchies have their interplay, there too is the eternal Goethe. By accepting initiation wisdom, the task that accrues to humanity from now onwards is to get to know not just what is temporal in the world but also what is eternal; this can only be learned by turning to spiritual science. What in former times was freely offered, must be seen by modern humanity in the light of what approaches us from modern initiation wisdom.

Within the Catholic church today there is something that acts like a red rag to a certain kind of being. When the type of Catholic, who these days might often consider himself to be true-blue, chooses some world-view to twit, it is the doctrine of emanation. Any interpretation of the universe based on emanation is condemned – perhaps for himself personally a little less so – but certainly for those faithful little lambs to whom he is speaking or writing. All that’s needed is to be able to attach the description ‘emanating’ to any philosophy! According to dyed-in-the-wool Catholics, the doctrine of emanation is opposed to creationism, the philosophy of creation out of nothing. So here we have, in a kind of dualistic way, on one side the philosophy of emanation acting like a red rag, and on the other side creationism, the philosophy of creation from nothing. Creationism is accepted and the philosophy of emanation is rejected.

Now the doctrine of emanation became known in Western culture indirectly through the Gnosis. However, the manner in which it became known in the West – the underlying literature has been largely destroyed – means that the doctrine of emanation has become distorted, because within Catholicism only its distortion is known, which gives rise to great misunderstanding. Because what one knows as the doctrine of emanation – the outcome of one eon from another, where the less perfect always stems from the more perfect, which is usually described exoterically as the Gnosis – is in fact already a distortion. It points back to a completely different world view, particularly to ancient times when it was possible for spiritual teachers to instruct mankind directly out of the supersensible. The doctrine of emanation – although a corruption – points back to a wisdom that in its old form referred to the sphere of eternity, to what is Above. As such, one can to a certain extent defend emanation, not in the corrupt form that we know, but in the form where only a perspective within time is described and not from the point of view of true evolution. But if it cannot speak about real evolution, then neither can it speak about creation from nothing, because that too is a kind of evolution, albeit an extreme case. The idea that something stems from something else – as we have discussed today – is inappropriate for describing the sphere of eternity which consists of interrelationships between spiritual beings.

However, if we turn again to the sphere of transitoriness, then we can indeed speak about evolution, even about this extreme case, which basically has been implicit in much of what I have been speaking about these past few days. For when we say that present-day ideals are the seed of the future, and that present-day realities are the fruit of the past, isn’t that a continuous coming into being from what does not exist in the world? Rightly understood, this leads us to true, uncorrupted, creationism. The demand that goes out to humanity today is this: To understand in the correct light what was meant by the doctrine of emanation, and to apply it to the soul- spiritual world; and to rightly understand what is meant by true, uncorrupted, creationism, applying it, not to the creator, but to the created, to the soul-bodily. The salvation and resolution of this philosophy lies not in the nebulous confusion of dualism, but in recognising the duality and seeing through it, and by viewing correctly the spheres of eternity and of transitoriness, and being able to separate them. Then we will be able to say that in beholding reality as it exists before us, we see both a reflection and at the same time an effect; a reflection because it belongs to the sphere of transitoriness and is ruled by evolution, and an effect because it belongs to the sphere of eternity and is ruled by what we acquire when we comprehend the soul-spiritual life as described today. It is not correct to say that creationism is right and emanation is wrong, nor that emanation is right and creationism wrong, but that both are necessary factors for a true understanding of the totality of life. Overcoming dualism cannot be brought about theoretically, only by life itself. If you seek a resolution of what is Above with what is Below, of the sphere of transitoriness with the sphere of eternity, and look for it theoretically in concepts, thoughts, and ideas, then you will never manage it, you will arrive at a confused philosophy, because you would be seeking with the intellect what should really be sought in life itself.

In life one can look for the truth only when one knows that one has to set one’s gaze both in the sphere of eternity, to recognise there what does not otherwise appear in outer reality, and then to consider all human and other beings in the sphere of transitoriness, in a way that actually contradicts outer reality. Armed with both of these, when one comes upon something real, it begins to flow as one experiences reality as alive, as living seeing, arising from the combination of effect in the sphere of eternity and reflection in the sphere of transitoriness. This is the way to grasp reality, if one does not want to hold a theoretical worldview that only lives in concepts and ideas. One can grasp it if one is willing to adopt two worldviews, one for the realm of the soul-spiritual and the other for the realm of the soul-bodily, and in the living interplay of the two, not in a theory, one will have something that nourishes and stimulates life. Only in this way can we escape from dualism.

This is the challenge that faces humanity today. It has nothing to do with founders of religions appearing and teaching humanity about spiritualism; nor does it depend on founders of learned sects appearing and teaching humanity about materialism. But it does depend on us viewing matter as the material of evolution, that spirit is not matter and should be understood spiritually in the sphere of eternity, and that reality should be viewed as both of these. What must flow into a future world view is matter illuminated by the spirit, and the spirit substantiated by matter. It does not depend on philosophers appearing who offer mankind definitions of truth, or who offer definitions that in theory create a so-called monadic consistency, as the academics teach. But it does depend on recognising the duality between truth and knowledge, and actively looking for the relationship between these two in life itself, leading to a living epistemology, not a theoretical one.

It is not truth or knowledge, but truth and knowledge – knowledge borne by the significance of truth, itself illuminated by the light of knowledge – recognising the human being himself as a duality in the world who, in his life and in his becoming, can only surmount what as duality must be surmounted. The future task of humanity is not Kantianism which believes that appearances in the outer world are not the ‘thing-in-itself’, but should be to achieve truth and knowledge in the intellectual sphere too; and that means recognising that what surrounds us is indeed maya; but it is maya because of the way we are placed in the world, and as long as we appear this way, we are a duality. We create maya by our being placed in this way, and we overcome it, not in some idea or theory, but in life itself by bringing our own selves to life.

This is of course contained in my booklet Truth and Knowledge. It also appears in my book The Philosophy of Freedom, which in a few days’ time will appear in a new edition that you can get here. I have made some additions to it, not altering the original text, but considerably enlarging many of the notes.

In conclusion therefore, what is important is to understand the signs of the times, and from them to nurture the spiritual life in the various areas of human endeavour.

• 1. Dr Steiner uses the adjectives geistig-seelisch and seelisch-leiblich on many occasions throughout this lecture. We have chosen to translate them respectively as soul-spiritual and soul-bodily.

I should like to take some of those subjects we have had here this Summer, which have been brought up in the course of our considerations, and to go more deeply into them. To-day, tomorrow, and the day after, I will therefore bring forward certain historical, and also a few objective facts; and to-day by way of preparation, I Should like to point to a few historical facts, and from these, and especially from the revelation of certain historical personalities, we shall then draw conclusions upon which we can base our deeper considerations.

In all ages those who have been initiated into the Mysteries, have always uttered, and correctly, a certain saying. It is this:—“Unless a person knows how to value aright those two streams of world-conceptions which we have mentioned:—Idealism and Materialism,—he either falls through a trap-door into a kind of 'cellar' as regards his view of the world, or he enters blindly along the other paths which one traverses to reach a World Conception.” Now the trap-door through which one may fall and which may very well escape notice in the “Weltanschaumergaleben,” has been regarded by the Mystery Initiates of all as the Dualism which cannot find the bridge between the Ideal—one can also call it the “spiritually-coloured Ideal”—and the Materialistic, that concerned with matter. And the blind alley into which one may stray along the various paths of philosophy if one does not find the balance between Idealism and Materialism, for those same Mystery Initiates this blind alley was Fatalism.

Our recent epoch clearly inclines on the one side to a dualistic outlook, and on the other to a fatalistic philosophy, although these things are not admitted nor even clearly seen.

Now, I should like to-day, to take a personality out of the life of the twilight of the 4th Post-Atlantean epoch with reference to the life of philosophy, and give a brief sketch of him, and his outlook; and we can then consider other personalities more characteristic of the World-Conceptions of our own, the 5th Post-Atlantean epoch. A very, very characteristic personality in the Western life of thought, St. Augustine, who lived from the year 354 to 430 of our Christian era. We will recall certain thoughts of St. Augustine because, as you will see from the dates I have quoted, he lived in the twilight of the 4th Post-Atlantean epoch which came to an end in the 15th century. We can clearly see the approach of this end, starting from the 3rd-6th Post-Xian centuries. Now St. Augustine had to pass through the impressions of the most diverse World-Views. We have often discussed these things. Above all, St. Augustine passed through Manichaeism and Scepticism. He had taken all those impulses into his soul which one gets if on the one hand, he looks at the world and sees everything Ideal, Beautiful and Good, all that is filled with Wisdom, and then on the other hand, ell that is ugly, bad and untrue. Now we know that Manichaeism only “gets on” (this is coarsely expressed, but it can be expressed in this way)—it only gets on with these two streams in the Ordering of the Cosmos, by postulating an eternal, everlasting polarity, an everlasting dualism, between Darkness and Light, Evil and Good; that which is full of Wisdom, and that which is filled with wickedness.

Manichaeism only `gets' on with Dualism, (in its on way quite correctly), by uniting certain old pre-Christian basic concepts with its acceptance of the polarity in World-phenomena. Above all, it unites certain ideas which can only be understood when one knows that in ancient times the Spiritual world was perceived by humanity in atavistic clairvoyance, and perceived in such a way that men's visions of the Spiritual world were in their very content, similar to the impressions made by the Sense-world of perception. Now, because Manichaeism took into itself such ideas of a physical appearance, (sinnlichen schein) of the supersensible, it thereby gives many people the impression of materialising the spirit, as though it presented the spirit in a material form. That, of course, is a mistake which more recent views of the world have made, (as I have explained lately) a mistake even made by modern Theosophy. St. Augustine actually broke with Manichaeism because in the course of his purified life of thought, he could no longer boar this materialisation of the spirit. That was one of the reasons which made him break with Manichaeism.

St. Augustine then also passed through Scepticism, which is a quite justifiable view of the world, in se far as it points man's attention to the feet that through the mere observation of what a person can gain from this Sense-world and his experiences therein, he can learn nothing concerning the supersensible. And, if one is of [the] opinion that one cannot stand for the supersensible, as such, one begins to doubt the existence of any knowledge of the truth itself. It was doubt of the knowledge of the Truth through which St. Augustine also passed; and thereby obtained the strongest impulses.

Now if one wishes to see what led St. Augustine to place himself in western philosophy, one must point to the apex of his perceptions, from which radiated all the light which rules in him, and which was also the apex of the view of the world which he finally developed. That is the point, my dear friends; and it can be characterised in the following ways:—St, Augustine came to acquire that Certainty, the true Certainty subject to absolutely no deception, which can only be acquired by man with reference to what he experiences in his inner soul. Everything else may be uncertain. Whether the things which appear to our eyes, or are audible to our ears, or which make impressions on our other Sense-organs, are really so constructed as they appear to be to the evidence of the senses, that one cannot know. We cannot even know how this itself appears, when one shuts one's Sense organs to it, That is the way in which persons think of the external perceptible world, who think after the way of St. Augustine. They think this externally perceptible world, as it lies before us, can offer no unconditional certainty, can give no unconditioned truth; that man can gain nothing out of it on which he can stand on a firm substantial point. On the other hand, a man is present in what he experiences in his inner soul; quite regardless as to how he experiences it there, he himself experiences those ideas and feelings in his inner being. He knows himself to be living in his own inner experiences. And so, to such a thinker as St. Augustine, the fact is substantiated by his own inner experiences;—that, with reference to what man experiences in his inner sou1 as truth, he gives himself over to no possibility of deception. One can relieve that everything else the world says is subject to deception, but one cannot possibly doubt that what one experiences in one's inner being, as one's ideas and feelings, is the truth; that is certain. That firm basis for the admittance of an indisputable truth, formed one of the starting-points of the Augustinian philosophy.

Again in a striking way, in the 5th Post-Atlantean epoch, Descartes again took up that point; he lived from 1596 to 1650, thus in the dawn of the 5th Post-Atlantean epoch. His assertion:—“I think, therefore I exist,” which remains true even if we doubt everything else, that he takes as his starting point, and in this perception he simply takes the standpoint of St. Augustine.

Now my dear friends, the fact is that with reference to any world-conception one must always say: A man who lives at a particular point of time in human evolution acquires certain views:—only those who come later can see these. One must say that it is always reserved for those who come afterwards to see things in a more radical, true way, than does the person who has to utter them at a certain period of time in human evolution. One cannot get away from this fact; and it would be well, if especially from our Anthroposophical standpoint, as I have often told you, if it were recognised consciously and thoroughly, that even what is said now, even that we acquire as ever such advanced knowledge about Spiritual things, that must not be grasped as a sum of absolute dogmas. We must be quite clear that those who come after us, in future times, will see greater than we ourselves can. On this rests the true Spiritual evolution of mankind, and everything of a hindering nature in the Spiritual progress of mankind rests finally on the fact that human beings will not admit this. They like to have truths presented to them, not as the truths for one definite epoch of time, but as absolute timeless dogmas,

And so, from our point of view, we can look back on St. Augustine and shall have to say: If one stands on St. Augustine's standpoint, one must sharply look to this.—that he assumes uncertainty as to the truths of all external revelations, and true certainty only in the experience of what we carry in our souls. Now, if one gives oneself to such a perception as that, it presupposes that, as a human being, one has a certain courage. One would not perhaps need to mention so decidedly what I am now going to say, unless we had to admit the fact that it is characteristic of the world-view of our present age that it lacks courage, the lack of courage I refer to here is expressed in two directions. The one is this. When a person boldly admits, as did St. Augustine, that you can only find true certainty as regards what you yourself experience in your inner being, then the other pole of this courage should be there which is not there in our present age. One must also have the courage to admit that thin true Certainty concerning reality is not to be found in external Sense-Revelation. It requires real inner courage in one's thought to deny external Reality in its utterances that true Certainty, which is held by modern Materialism as absolutely secure. And, on the other hand, it requires courage to admit that true certainty only comes when one is truly conscious of what one experiences inwardly. Certainly such things are said, even in our times, and there are those who demand this two-fold courage of their fellow-man, if they are anxious to create a world-conception. But one has to things differently about these things to-day, if one wishes to think exhaustively. And herein the whole historical position of St. Augustine is revealed for modern mankind, because one has to think differently about these matters. To-day one must know something which neither Augustine nor Descartes took into consideration. I have spoken of this where I discuss Descartes, in my book “The Riddles of Man.” To-day we must admit: The belief that one can come to a satisfactory philosophy through a grasp of one's immediate inner being as man, as it offers itself to-day,—the belief that one can reach a firm standpoint in one's inner being,—is refuted every time one goes to sleep. Every time a person to-day passes into the unconsciousness of sleep, from him is snatched that absolute certainty of inner experience of which St. Augustine spoke,—the Reality of that inner experience is snatched from him. Every time you go to sleep until the moment of waking, the reality of real experience forsakes you. And the man of our age to-day, who experiences his inner being in a different way from that of the 4th Post-Atlantean age, even from that of the twilight of the age of St. Augustine, has to admit: “No matter how acute a certainty is experienced in one's inner being, yet for man's life after death, there is no certainty at all; for the simple reason that the reality of his experiences sinks into the realm of the unconscious, every time he goes to sleep, and a modern human being does not even know whether it does not pass into Unreality, and so what man apparently experiences securely in his inner being is not made safe from attack. That my not be theoretically refuted perhaps, but the very fact of sleep contradicts it.

Now if we turn attention to whit has just been said, we recognise how, in reality, St. Augustine with a far greeter justification than Descartes later, (who after all only merely repeated St. Augustine in another age) with what right St. Augustine could arrive at his view. Through the entire 4th Post-Atlantean epoch, and even through the age of St. Augustine, there still lived in human beings something of an echo of the old atavistic clairvoyance. History to-day unfortunately notices those things far too little and really knows little of them; but numerous were those persons throughout the whole 4th Post-Atlantean ago who, from their personal experiences knew that there existed a Spiritual life. Because they beheld it. And in the 4th Post-Atlantean age—it was different in the 3rd or in the 2nd Post-Atlantean epochs—in the 4th age they beheld it chiefly because it played into their life of sleep. So that we may say: In the 4th Post-Atlantean epoch it was not the case for human beings, (as it became later in the 5th epoch), that their sleep transpired completely unconsciously. Those human beings of the 4th Post-Atlantean epoch knew that, from sleeping until waking up, there was a time in which all that they had as ideas, as feelings from waking to sleeping, still continued to work, but in other forms. Their waking life of truth dived down, as it were, into a dim, but conscious life of sleep. In that age one still knew that what was experienced as inner truth, was not only truth but also reality, because one knew those moments of sleeping life in which was revealed, not merely as an abstract life but as a real concrete life in the spirit, what one had experienced in one's inner being. It is not a question to-day of proving whether St. Augustine himself could say, from his own experience, “I know myself that during the time between going to sleep and waking, there arises an experience which is true, even if not real inwardly.” The fact that one could grasp ouch a perception, on which one could stand firm, was still absolutely possible in the age of St. Augustine.

Now, you see, if you take what I have just said with reference to the subjective nature of man, and generalise it over the whole Macrocosm, you come to something else. You come to that condition from which subjective nature in an older epoch, and still in the 4th Post-Atlantean period, has really preceded; that from which it really became possible. Let us speak for a moment of the pre-Christian era. You must bear in mind that the Mystery of Golgotha is the dividing line between those ancient atavistic perceptions and the newer ones, which are only to-day in their beginning. In that pre-Christian age one could still cling to certain living Mystery-Truths. The Mystery Truths, to which I am now referring, are those which pertain especially to the great secret of Birth and Death. That is considered by certain Mystery Initiates as a secret which, they think, may not be referred to among the profane. (I have also spoken of this in recent lectures). They consider that those secrete should not be imparted to the world, because the world is not yet ripe to receive them. In that pre-Christian epoch there was in the Mysteries a certain view concerning the connection between Birth and. Death in the great Cosmic Life into which man with his entire being is inserted. In that pre-Christian age, through those Mysteries, man turned his attention specially to Birth, to all the processes of being born into the world. Anyone who is acquainted with the World-views of ancient times, knows also what emphasis was laid on the process of Birth,—of Arising, Sprouting, Growing;—all those processes, all those ancient views, specially concerned themselves with this. I have often emphasised what a gigantic contrast appeared through the Mystery of Golgotha. I have put it in the following way. Just think how, 600 years before the Mystery of Golgotha, Buddha, who stands ever in the evolution of main as the conclusion of the pre-Christian World-Conception, is led to his conceptions because, amongst other things, he beholds a corpse. “Death is suffering.” It becomes an axiom with the Buddha, that suffering must be overcome, A means must be found to be able to turn away from death. The corpse is that from which Buddha turns, in order to come to something which for him, can though spiritualised, can be filled with Sprouting, Growing life.

If we now turn to 600 years after the Mystery of Golgotha, to another part or the world, and other human beings, we see that the vision of the Corpse of Christ on the Cross is not something which man has to turn away from, but to which he has to turn, which is regarded whole-heartedly as the symbol that can solve the riddles of the Cosmos in so far as they refer to man and his development.

There is a wonderful connection within this 1200 years, six hundred years Before Golgotha, the turning away from a corpse gives an uplift to one's concept of the World; 600 years after Golgotha there is developed a symbol, The Image of the Crucifix, a turning towards death, towards a corpse, in order to create those forces from that Corpse, by which one can reach a concept of the world able to throw light on human evolution. Among the many things which show the mighty transformation which appeared in earthly evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha, there is this Buddha symbol, this turning away from the corpse; and then comes the Christ-symbol, the turning towards the Corpse—the Corpse of that Being Who in regarded as the highest Being ever seen on the Earth.

It was really the case that in a certain connection the old Mysteries put the Mystery of Birth in the very centre of their world-conception. But therewith, my dear friends, (since we are talking of Mystery-knowledge and not merely giving forth trivial views) therewith you have before your souls a deep cosmological secret. Your attention is turned to that with which is connected the life of Birth in the World's evolution.

And one does not come to understand this life of Birth in the Cosmos unless one can go beck to the Riddle of the Old Moon. know indeed that the preview: incarnation of the Earth before it became Earth was Old Moon, and in many of the phenomena connected with our present Moon, that camp-follower, so to speak of the Old Moon.—(you can read this up in my “Outline of Occult Science”)—in various phenomena connected to-day with the present Moon, with this straggler, we simply have the after effects of what occurred in the Moon-Incarnation of the Earth, at the time which preceded our earthly development.

Now there would be no such thing as Birth in all the kingdoms of nature, there would be nothing born on the Earth, were it not that the law of the Old Moon prevailed through this straggler, which is the satellite of our Earth. All birth in the various kingdoms of nature and man, is dependent on the activity of the Moon. With this is also connected the fact that the Initiates of the ancient Hebrews regarded Jehovah as the Moon-God, as a Divine Being who arranged the process of bringing forth; Jehovah was honoured as a Moon-Divinity. It was clearly seen that cosmologically, behind all the processes of birth throughout all the kingdoms, there ruled the laws of the Moon. And so one could, I might say, symbolically utter a deep secret of Cosmology by saying: when the Moonlight falls on the Earth, on what is represented through this light, depends everything connected with all the Sprouting, Growing and `being born' on the Earth. In those pre-Christian ages one did not turn in the highest Mysteries to the life of the Sun, one turned to the reflected sunlight, that is, to the Moon, whenever the secret of Birth was alluded to. And the peculiar “Nuances” which were poured over the depths of those pre-Christian conceptions depended on the fact that the initiates knew the Mysteries or the Moon.

They regarded the Sun Mysteries as something quite veiled, something hardly bearable for a humanity not fully prepared, because they knew that it is a deception, a maya, to believe that through the rays of the Sun falling on the Earth those things which Sprout and Grow are enchanted out of the various kingdoms of nature. That is a deception, a maya. It was known that from the life of the Sun did not depend the process of Birth, but, on the contrary, the decaying, decreasing life, the process of Death. These were the secrets of the Mysteries. The Moon causes things to be born, but the Sun causes them to die. And, however highly for other reasons the Sun-life was honoured in those pre-Christian Mysteries, the Sun-life was honoured as the cause of Death. The fact that beings had to die was not to be ascribed to the Sun, the 2nd incarnation of the Earth, but has to be ascribed to the resent Sun, which appears so magnificently on the horizon.

Well, the decay of life, the opposite of birth, is connected with the Sun-life, but, my dear friends, there was something else, not so important in that pre-Christian age, but very specially important in our post-Christian age: and that is, that all conscious life is connected with Sun-life, and that conscious life through which man has especially to pass in the course of his earthly evolution, that consciousness which shines forth especially in the 5th Post-Atlantean age to which we ourselves belong, that is most intensely connected with the Sun-life. Only we must consider this Sun-life Spiritually, as we have attempted to do in the course of lectures given this Summer. For, if indeed the Sun is the creator of Death, of the decaying life in the Cosmos and also of man, yet the Sun is at the same time the creator of conscious life. The conscious life was not so important in the pre-Christian ages, because it was then replaced by an atavistic clairvoyant life, which still remained as an inheritance of the Moon. For our post-Christian age it has however become important, far more important than life. Consciousness has become more important than life, because only through consciousness can the goal of earthly evolution be reached—which is, that this consciousness should be attained in the corresponding way by the humanity on earth. You must receive this consciousness from the giver, the Sun, from which comes the living into Death and not the life of Birth.

Therefore the Mystery of Golgotha appears as that power in earthly development which has now become the most important thing for this evolution:—the Son of the Sun, the Christ, Who passed through the Body of Jesus of Nazareth,—That is connected with the deepest Cosmic secrets. The ancient Mystery Initiates said to their pupils:

“Try to recognise through your sleep-life how the Moon-forces are playing into it. (We know that even waking-man is partially asleep). Try to recognise the MOON-life in your sleep-life, for it plays into your sleep-life, as the Silvery Moon-shine plays into the darkness of night.”

The Christian Initiates on the contrary said to their disciples: “Try to recognise that in your waking-life consciousness shines; for the Sun-Forces pour into your waking-life, just as from morning till evening the Sun shines outside in the life of the Earth.”

You see, this reversal was fulfilled through the Mystery of Golgotha, and, whereas in pre-Christian ages the most important thing was to recognise the origin of Life, it has now become the most important thing to recognise the origin of Consciousness. Only through learning to unite this cosmological wisdom with what man experiences as true certainty in his soul, which means, only by grasping Spiritual Science with one's Inner Being, does man come to see the Spiritual Reality concealed in that which otherwise lacks this reality it his inner being.

Now with those means possessed by St. Augustine, the means possessed by those who stand on an Augustinian basis, one cannot get very far, because every sleep refutes the real certainty of one's inner experiences. Only when its Reality is added to this inner experience does man come to a really firm stand on the basis of his inner experience.

You see, my dear friends, that which we think to-day, that which we feel to-day in our present life on Earth, has not as yet any reality. This is even recognised to-day, by a few scientifically-thinking men. What we think and feel in our inner soul is unreal at present; and that is just the peculiarity—that which we experience most intimately, that which shines indubitably in us as truth, without doubt that at present has no reality. But this is really the fruitful seed for our next earthly life. That of which St. Augustine was speaking, and for which there is no guarantee of its reality, that we may say, is the seed for the next earthly life. We can say:—it is true that the truth shines in our inner being, but it shines simply as a gleam, (Schein). To-day it in still but a gleam, but in our earthly incarnation that which now is gleam, and as such is simply a germ, will become a fruit which animates our next incarnation, as the seed of the plant this year will animate the visible plant of next year. Only when we conquer time can we find in what we now experience inwardly, a reality. Of course we should not be the human being we are and that we should be, if we experienced our inward truth as though it were a reality like the external world. We should never become free. There could be no question of freedom; we should not even be personalities, we should simply be woven into an ordering of Nature, and whatever occurred in us would occur of necessity. We are only personalities and especially free personalities, because from out of the weaving of natural events there arises as a kind of miracle, the gleam (der Schein) of those things which we experience in our inner soul and which will only become external reality, like that of our environment, in our next earthly incarnation.

It is the deceptive nature of our age to which all fantasy still gives itself, that we do not take into consideration the fact that what springs up inwardly as an unreality is one earthly incarnation, becomes a concrete reality in the next. We shall speak further on this point in the next two lectures.

We see hew from the standpoint we have acquired to-day we can look back at the standpoint of St. Augustine, how we can understand him, and to a certain extent can see in him what he himself could not yet see. Thus St. Augustine stands for us as a specially significant figure in the twilight of the 4th Post-Atlantean age, because with especial sharpness he points to the one stream in world-happiness to the stream of the Ideal; and in this stream he seeks to find a firm point. St. Augustine sought that firm point. To-day we only want to bring forward the historical fact.

There had not yet come to people in his age that tremendous swing of the pendulum which came about with the Mysteries of Birth and of Death; for only out of this Mystery of Death of which we shall Speak further tomorrow, can one find a real substantiation of the absolute certainty of what man experiences inwardly as Truth.

We shall now have to make a great jump. Just as we have characterised what reveals itself in St. Augustine as representative of the twilight of the 4th Post-Atlantean age, so we will take certain personalities characteristic of our 5th Post-Atlantean age, and study them according to a certain direction. Of these I will select two.

One of those persons in whom a certain tendency was developed which is characteristic for the 5th age, is Count Saint-Simon, who lived from 1766 to 1825, Another is a pupil of Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte, who lived from 1798 to 1857. If we have in St. Augustine a personality who, with all the means which stood at his disposal, sought through his knowledge, to substantiate Christianity, so an the other hand in Saint-Simon and also in Auguste Comte, we see personalities who are led completely astral [astray?] as regards Christianity. We can best gain a clear idea of what lived in Auguste Comte, as also in a certain sense in Saint-Simon, if we briefly outline the chief thoughts of Auguste Comte.

Auguste Comte is to a great extent representative of a certain world-view in our age; and it is only due to the fact that people trouble so little as to how certain impulses in philosophy incorporate themselves into the life of man, that Auguste Comte is regarded as a kind of rarity, in historical life. These persons do not know how, perhaps not quite everywhere, but still in countless human beings, Auguste Comte exercises a school-masterly influence in the essential directions of their thinking, and one may say that Auguste Comte is representative of a great portion of the philosophical life of the present.

Auguste Comte says that humanity has developed through Three stages, and has now reached the third stage. If one observes the soul-life of men through these three stages, one finds in the first stage that the ideas of man tended mostly towards Demonology. The first stage of evolution in the Comte sense is the demonological stage. Human beings imagined that behind the sensible phenomena of Nature supersensible Spiritual beings were active and operative; spirits were imagined everywhere in trivial life—demons were threatening everywhere, big demons and little demons. That was the first stage.

Then men passed on, as they developed. a little further, from the standpoint of Demonology to that of Metaphysics. Whereas they first thought demons, elementary beings, were behind all phenomena, they then put abstract ideas in their place.—People became Metaphysical when they no longer it wasted to be believers in demons. Thus the second stage is that of Metaphysics. They united certain concepts with their own life, and thought that through those ideas they could come to the basis of things.

But man has now gone beyond this stage. He has entered on the third stage, in which Auguste Comte quite in the sense of his master Saint-Simon, assumes that man no longer looks on demons, no longer looks to metaphysical concepts when seeking the basis of the World, but simply to that which results as the Sense-Reality of positivistic science. The third stage is therefore the stage of Positivism, of Positivistic Science. The revelations to be obtained simply through external scientific experience should be regarded by man as leading to a world-conception. He should explain himself in the same way as the metaphysical explanation given about the orderings of space, as physics explain the law of Forces, Chemistry the ordering of Substances, or Biology the ordering of Life. Just as everything can thus be explained by the different Sciences, so Comte tried to present a like harmony in his great work on Positive Philosophy. Everything which can be experienced through the various positive Sciences is considered by Comte as the sole thing worthy of men in the third stage. Christianity itself he still considers as the highest development of the last phase of Demonology. Then appeared Metaphysics,—which gave man a number of abstract concepts. But a concrete reality which alone can give an existence worthy of man on Earth, that can be given by Positive Science alone, according to Comte. And so he even tries to found a Church on the basis of positive Science, to bring man into such social structures as can be grasped on a basis of Positive Science. It is very extraordinary to see to what things Auguste Comte really came at last. I will only bring forward a few really characteristic features. He occupied himself a great deal with the founding of a Positivistic Church. Now if you just take the various points, you will at once perceive the spirit of it. This Positivistic Church was to bring out a kind of Calendar. A certain number of the days of the year were to be devoted, for instance, to the memory of such people as Newton or Galileo, or Kepler; the bearers of Positivistic Science. These days were to be devoted to their veneration. Other days should then be devoted to the condemnation of such people as Julian the Apostate or Napoleon. All that was to be regulated. Life itself was to be regulated with a great sweep, according to the basic principles of Positivistic Science.

Now anyone who knows life to-day, knows that no great number of human beings would take such ideals as those of Auguste Comte seriously although that Is simply cowardice, because in truth people do think as Auguste Comte did. If one studies the image the Positivistic Church of Comte gives, one actually gets the impression that the structure of his Church accords absolutely and entirely with that of the Roman Catholic Church. Only the Christ is lacking in the Positivistic Church of Auguste Comte, and that is the extraordinary thing. That in just what we must place before our souls as characteristic.—Auguste Comte seeks a Catholic Church without the Christ. That is what he came to, when he took those three stages into his soul;—Demonology, Metaphysics and Positivism. And one can say he took over all the “clothing” of Christianity, as it came to him out of history. He considered the clothing very good; but the Christ Himself he wished to banish out of his Church. That is the essential point round which everything revolves in Auguste Comte. A Catholic Church without the Christ.

That, my dear friends, is infinitely characteristic of the dawn of the 5th Post-Atlantean age, because as Auguste Comte thought, so a spirit had to think who had absorbed in his soul the element of Romanism, and thought from out of this element of Romanism, while at the same time he thought fully in the sense of the 5th Post-Atlantean epoch, with its so absolutely anti-spiritual character. And to Auguste Comte and his teacher Saint-Simon, are in the highest degree characteristic of the dawning of our 5th Post-Atlantean age. But in this 5th age many things have yet to be decided, and therefore other shadings appear which are still also possible. I just want to throw a few historical lights before you to-day, on which we can then build further.

An extraordinary contrast to Auguste Comte is Schelling, who lived from 1775 to 1854; and he also is to a certain extent characteristic of the dawn of our 5th Post-Atlantean age. Of course I cannot put before you even diagrammatically the world-view of Schelling. We have spoken often of it from this or the other point of view—it is most manifold in itself. I cannot even give you any idea now of its structure, but can only point out various characteristics.

I told you St. Augustine takes his stand in the twilight of the 4th Post-Atlantean age with the purpose, so to observe the one stream, the Ideal, that thereby he could get a firm point on which to stand. We now enter on the 5th Post-Atlantean Age. In its dawn we have such spirits as Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte who, in a purely natural materialistic ordering, seek a firm point in positivistic science. Thus we have two streams—Augustine on the one side, Auguste Comte on the other. Schelling seeks to get behind what can be seen in the world with the ordinary means of the 5th Post-Atlantean age; he seeks first abstractly and philosophically for a bridge between the Ideal and the Real, the Ideal and the Material. He tried with infinite energy to find the bridge. (You can find the essential points of this in my book “Riddles of Man.”) He seeks with infinite energy to bridge over that opposition and he came at first to all kinds of abstract thoughts in the course of this bridge-building. While he first built on the same basis as Johann Gottlieb Fichte, he went a little further, and attempted to grasp something in the world as real Being—something which is both the Ideal and the Real at the same time. Then came a time in Schelling's life in which it appeared impossible to him, with the methods of abstractions brought to him in the course of time out of the 5th Post-Atlantean age, to build a bridge between those two. So he said one day: “Human beings have really only acquired on the basis of their modern learning concepts by which they can grasp the external ordering of Nature. But we have no concepts by means of which we can come behind this external Nature to that sphere where one could build a bridge between the Ideal and External Reality.” It is extremely interesting that one day Schelling made the following admission. He said, it appeared to him as though the learned people of the last centuries had concluded a silent contract tending to wipe out everything of a deeper nature,—all that could lead one to a real true life. Therefore he said: “We meet turn to the unlearned people.” That was the time when Schelling started studying Jacob Boehme, and found in him that Spiritual deepening which then guided him to his final and theosophical period of life, from which proceeded his wonderful books the “Freedom of Man,” “The Gods of Samathrace,” the Kabiri Divinities; followed by his “Philosophy of Mythology” and the “Philosophy of Revolution.”

Now what Schelling most sought, especially in the last period of his life, was to understand the intervention of the Mystery of Golgotha into the history of mankind. That he sought especially; and while so doing it occurred to him that, with the ideas at the disposal of modern learning, one could never really understand the life which flows from the Mystery of Golgotha; which means that one could never come to understand the true life of man. Thereby Schelling formed the conclusion, (and that is the tendency which I want to emphasise especially now:—we will build further on this in the next lecture)—which is in complete contrast to that of his contemporary, Auguste Comte. That is the remarkable thing. We may say that Auguste Comte seeks a Catholicism, or I might better say a Catholic Church, without Christianity; Schelling, with his views, sought a Christianity without a Church. Schelling seeks, as it were, to Christianise the whole of modern life, to permeate it with Christianity; so that everything which human beings can Think and Feel and Will is absolutely saturated by the Christ-Impulse. He does not seek a separate clerical life for Christianity, especially not after the type found in historical evolution, although he studied this life very carefully.

Thus we have those two extremes—Auguste Comte's thought, of a Church without Christ, and Schelling's thought, of a Christ without a Church.

I just wanted to place these historical views before your soul, in order to be able to build further on these things. We have seen one spirit who seeks a firm starting point in Idealism—A spirit, Auguste Comte, who seeks a firm starting point in Realism, and then a personality such as Schelling who seeks to build a bridge between them. Both these tendencies preceded the evolution in which we ourselves are engaged.

We may say the following:—we can now survey those things which have contributed through many centuries to the life of World-Conceptions, and then we can turn our attention to the way in which these ideas have developed in the widest circles of human beings. The study of Auguste Comte gives a very important Aperçu, but Comte himself could not attain this, because he stuck so rigidly to his positivistic prejudices. But something which can give us an important starting point for our considerations for the next days results, when we see in an Aperçu the connection between St. Augustine, Auguste Comte, and Schelling, I will just put this at the conclusion of these considerations, because I should like it to have a place in your souls. We shall then have to speak of that which is connected in a significant way with just this. Now, as this Aperçu results from a consideration of what I have told you, I will simply put aphoristically, without giving the foundations for it in detail, the reason why this, which is not to be found in Auguste Comte, is to be found in others. I have told you that it is important not to consider the life of these World-views individually in the abstract, but one must regard them as incorporated into the entire life of humanity. Only thereby does one reach a standpoint of reality, when one can see the incorporation of these things into the collective life of mankind.

It was clear to Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte that they could only come to their positivism in recent times, that it would have been impossible in an earlier age. Auguste Comte feels it especially strongly; he says approximately “My mode of thought is only possible in our Age.” That is something which is of infinite importance in our modern Movement, and in connected with that Aperçu to which I am referring. if one takes what Auguste Comte considers as a starting point for his threefold division, one can say in his sense, that this threefold division is Theology, Metaphysics, and what he calls Positivistic Science.

It in very characteristic that one can put this question: “Who will most easily be a believer in any one of these directions?” I beg you not to misunderstand what I am saying with reference to this Aperçu not even to grasp it as a one-sided radical dogma to be applied very roughly with absolute certainty to our present age, but to take it as applying to the whole evolution of man, as it must be if one will regard what I now say. One can ask: not “who will be a believer?” but “Who will most easily be a believer in any one of these directions? From a very careful consideration, contradictory to facts as it may seem, this results:—The one who most easily becomes a believer in Theology (please, not a bearer, not a theologian, nor a worker, but simply a believer; I am not speaking of religion but of Theology) is the Soldier. The person who most easily becomes a believer in Metaphysics is the Official, especially the legal Official. And the person who is most easily becomes a believer in Positivistic Science is the Industrial.

It is important if one must judge life, not to remain in the abstract, but to look at it quite unprejudiced, and then such questions have to be put.

I just want this quite treated as an Aperçu which results when one intimately studies Auguste Comte, because he was conscious that he was only completely comprehensible to the Industrials; and only In an Industrial Age could he appear on the scene with his views. That is connected with the fact that the Industrial is most easily a follower of Positivistic Science; the Soldier most easily a believer not merely of Christian but of any Theology; and the Official most easily a believer, a follower of Metaphysics.

Aperçu

Theology—The Soldier
Metaphysics—The Official
Positive Science—The Industrial

St. Augustine 354–430
St. Simon 1766–1825
Auguste Comte 1798–1857—A Catholic Church

Demonology
Metaphysics
Positivistic Science

Schelling 1775–1854—Christianity without a Church.

A full insight into those relationships which we are now contacting is not possible unless one looks more closely into the nature of man in the period between going to sleep and waking up that is, the sleeping condition. Of course, diagrammatically, the sleeping condition is well-known to you. That which we call the astral body and ego separate from the physical and etheric bodies. But if we wish to go more deeply into the nature of sleep, we must remember that it is just in the sleeping condition that a man experiences the reality of what we discussed in our last lecture, when we said that St. Augustine sought in his own inner experience to grasp the real true certainty about the world. I told you in yesterday's lecture that in his waking condition, man does not grasp the full reality of his inner being. We must be quite clear that what is described as the astral body and the ego, do not really come to the consciousness of man by day: in his waking condition there only comes to his consciousness a copy, a mirror-picture of his ego and astral body. If man were conscious in the sleeping condition, that is from going to sleep until waking up, or, let us say, if he became conscious through those exercises which you can find described in my various writings—(which are all at your disposal)—if man could thus become conscious through his sleeping condition, he would experience not a mirror-image, as by day, but the true form of his Ego and Astral body. But we must quite clearly realise that the true form of the Astral body and Ego appear in such a way to the soul of man when he develops Imaginative Consciousness, that in the inner experiences during the sleep condition, he experiences in his Ego and Astral body what we call the third Hierarchy, the Hierarchy of the Angels, Archangels and Archai.

Although throughout the whole of man's working life he stands in intimate connection with what we must designate as the Angels, Archangels and Archai, he does not experience this consciously during the making condition; and that constitutes the deception in man's waking condition. He remains aware only of an abstract ego of those shadowy ideas and concepts which fill man's soul, or perhaps of half-dreamy feelings and willings. This is the essential—that throughout the waking condition man does not progress beyond experiencing this shadowy side of his Ego and Astral body; and that he cannot become conscious that all the time there in working into his Ego those Beings of the third Hierarchy to which I have just referred. But if he were really to wake up in his sleep, if I may use that expression, he would not have external nature around him, but would immediately feel in himself the Beings of the Angels, Archangels and the Time-Spirits.

Now because those Beings work in us, my dear friends, we have in the constitution of our soul something which we would not have otherwise have had. For instance, if the Hierarchy of the Angels did not work into our Ego and Astral body, we would never feel ourselves to be individuals. Therefore, just because the Hierarchy of the Angels work into our Spiritual, psychic nature wean feel ourselves to be free persons.

Because the Hierarchy of the Archangels work into us, we can feel ourselves as members of the whole of humanity. We might also say, that because these Arch-Angelic Beings shine into our psychic, Spiritual nature, inspiring it, therefore we rea11y feel ourselves as men.

And because the Beings of the Archai, the Spirits of Time, pulsate in our nature, filling it with their Intuition, therefore we feel ourselves as earthly human beings—that means members not only of the present humanity, but of the whole of earthly humanity, from the very start of earthly evolution to the very end of Earth-life. In that way we can feel ourselves as members of the entire earthly humanity. Of course, we only feel it dimly, because we can only dimly sense the influence of these Time-Spirits within us.

We cannot say that we behold ourselves as personalities; that we can only do when we attain the Imaginative Consciousness. There remains a kind of reflection of this Imaginative Consciousness when we so experience our thinking that, through the free life of thought we feel ourselves as individual beings. Let us once more make quite clear how it is that we feel ourselves as individuals. We feel ourselves as personalities because we can, of our own free will, add one thought to another. You would at once cease to feel yourselves as personal beings if you were compelled to add one thought to another just as in the world of external nature one phenomenon is linked on to another. This experience of inner freedom for the developing of a thought, gives us the certainty of feeling ourselves as personalities. his feeling of inner freedom is what comes clearest of all to man's consciousness by day; and it comes to man by day when he is awake, because, from the moment of sleeping until waking he is permeated by his Angel, that Angelic Being belonging to his own Ego.

In the feeling oneself as a human being as a member of all humanity, we are generally speaking, already far more apathetic, we feel ourselves far less strongly and intensely as members of the whole of mankind; and that is because the Arch-Angela, who bring this about, stand further away from us than do our Angels; and that which inserts itself as Personality into the whole human stream of evolution, (and which comes from the Archai) that remains for most human beings something really quite shadowy. On the basis of Anthroposophy we seek to evoke this very feeling, of belonging to the entire earthly humanity, for it becomes clear to us that in the 5th Post-Atlantean epoch man experiences things in a certain way; in the 4th in a different way; in the 3rd in a still different way. One thus sees how the mood of soul has altered in the various epochs of time, alterations brought about by the various beings of the 3rd Hierarchy, the Archai, the Spirits of Time. It is of this that we seek to create a consciousness on the basis of Spiritual Science. This consciousness can alone give man the possibility of feeling himself an historical Being, of feeling conscious: “I am now living as a Personality, in the 20th Century.” The fact does not enter the consciousness of most human beings, that their personality can only be real as Personality, because it has been placed in a definite point of time. How this permeation of the human soul and spirit-being by the Beings of the third Hierarchy, is something of which men would become aware, if he were intensely enough to attain Imaginative Cognition.

In the ordinary path of human evolution, as you know, Imaginative Cognition is not present. From the moment of going to sleep until waking up, the reality of man's ego and astral body is damped down; and by day, when man is awake, he loses his connection with the Beings of the third Hierarchy. What comes from the fact that especially in our present cycle of time, man, when he is awake, is given over to an illusion. As we have seen, when he is asleep, man is subject to the deception that his Ego and Astral body are not then active; but they are not inactive, They are then in living interchange with the Beings of the third Hierarchy. In the waking condition, the state of affairs at the present cycle of time is, that our physical and etheric bodies, “unjustly,” illegally, as we might say, absorb our Spiritual, Psychic nature. They permeate themselves with our spirit and soul. Normally this should not be the case. It should be normal for a man to-day when awake, to feel himself an Ego and Astral body, and to feel his etheric and physical bodies as a kind of shell into which he crawls, to feel them as something which he carries consciously about with him. But man does not feel that to-day; he feels as if the physical and etheric bodies were himself. But this they are not. We are that Spiritual, psychic being which makes use of the physical and etheric bodies as an instrument; but we cannot raise ourselves above the deception which belongs to the working of our epoch of time. We are, as it were, compelled to identify ourselves with that which in the normal consciousness should be like a hammer which one takes in ones hand and gives blows with it; so should we regard our physical and etheric bodies. But in this epoch we have to identify ourselves with them,—to give ourselves over to the deception that we are these, that it is we ourselves who thus go in a fleshly way through space. But they are not ourselves. That is only because the consciousness of our ego is absorbed unjustly, illegally, by the physica1 and etheric bodies. That simply rests in the fact that in the present cycle of time the Ahrimanic powers are stronger than they should be in the normal evolution of mankind. They draw down the etheric and astral bodies into the physical and etheric bodies, so to speak, and they bring about in man the deception that the head which he carries is himself, that his hands and his whole body is himself. Wrongfully the physical body absorbs that consciousness, so that it appears as if the physical body brought about our personality. Anyone who thinks that his physical body brings about his personality is subject to the same deception us a person would be, who standing before a mirror, believes it produces him, because it radiates his reflection. To say that this fleshly form we carry round with us is ourselves, is no cleverer than to hold your hand before a mirror and believe that the mirror is producing your hand. Yet the whole of modern Science is subject to that deception. All modern Science believes that what we as individual persons
experiences inwardly, is somehow produced by the physical and etheric bodies; whereas all the physical and etheric bodies do, is to radiate back our astral body and ego, forming the mirror-image which, while we are awake, we recognise to be our ego and our thoughts, in other words, our astral body.

That is the Fundamental Truth which we mast realise, With reference to this Fundamental Truth, modern humanity, by reason of the forces working through our present epoch of time, give themselves over to a deception of consciousness which consists, as I have just told you, in the delusion that all that we think, or experience as our thoughts or our feelings, is produced by our body. Mankind is subject naturally to this delusion to-day. With his present consciousness he cannot transcend that deception, just as the Sun when low on the horizon looks bigger than when high up in the heavens. One knows it is a delusion, yet it does seem to be so. At this point of time man [needs] help regarding his flesh and blood as himself. That is a delusion of consciousness, my dear friends; but man was not always subject to this deception of consciousness; it is essentially a characteristic quality of the humanity of post-Christian times, after the Mystery of Golgotha. Before the Mystery of Golgotha this delusion did not exist. Before the Mystery of Golgotha there existed another kind of deception. Before Golgotha man did not believe that his consciousness was united with his physical body. Of course, history tells nothing, of this, but it is so. It would have been sheer nonsense for a man of the second or third millennium of the pre-Christian era to suppose that his soul was produced by his physical body; in olden times no man felt himself bound to his physical body as the modern man does. In those pre-Christian times man really had a living consciousness of the Beings of the third Hierarchy, and because he knew:—“My soul is not identical with my body,” he also knew that his soul was not bound up with the bone and muscles of his body, but that it was bound up with the Beings of the third Hierarchy.

Hw was subject to a different delusion, not in his consciousness but in his life. He believed that his soul was bound up with external nature, together with the Beings of the third Hierarchy, just as modern man believes his soul to be bound up with his physical body. Man to-day gives himself over to a delusion in consciousness, he believes that his soul is united with his body. The reason he cannot see the Beings of the Angels, Archangels and Archai, is because his physical body darkens them for him. The man of old, although he had a consciousness that these Beings were there and that his soul was bound up with them, could not see directly but only dimly into the external, sensible nature. Modern man, in the delusion of his consciousness, believes that his soul is bound up with his body; the man of old believed that the Beings of the third Hierarchy were bound up with the external nature which he perceived with his senses. At that time he confused the Divine Beings of the third Hierarchy with the phenomena of nature, and expressed this in his interpretation of natural phenomena. Man to-day places his soul in his flesh and blood, the man of old placed the Beings of the third Hierarchy in external nature. He had no Natural Science such as we have to-day, but he considered the phenomena of nature as brought about by this or the other demon, more or less Divine Spiritual Beings, concerning whom he gave himself to a life of deception, in that he thought of these Spiritual Beings as operative in the phenomena of nature. It is an important fact, that this change took place in the development of man in pre-Christian times; he gives himself over to a characteristic delusion of life, and after the Mystery of Golgotha to a delusion in his consciousness. The reality, the effective working of Christ Jesus (and of this we shall speak further in the next lecture) should consist in this—of elevating, of raising that delusion in man's consciousness, elevating it, bringing it home to him that he is deceived; and through the “Christus in mir,” “Christ in me,” man should be brought to feel that what lives as astral body and ego, lives in free Spirituality, and is not bound up with his flesh and blood. Of course, this can only be seen on the path of Spiritual Science, but it can already be felt in the words of St Paul: “Nicht ich, aber das Christus in mich,” “Not I, Christ in me.”

From what I have told you, you can already, my dear friends see that there are reasons why men should experience this Duality up to a certain point; experiencing on the one hand the ordering of Nature which consists contains no ideals, which of necessity connects one event with another, an ordering in which merely cause and effect, effect and cause are incorporated, so that one can never think that through what goes on in Nature, any ideal, moral or otherwise, can be realised. On the other hand, man is conscious that he could not develop an existence worthy of man unless he had ideals, unless he could cling to something else than a mere external Ordering of Nature. But with the consciousness accessible to him to-day, he cannot regard his ideals as operative, as effective, in the same way as, let us say, electricity or magnetism or the force of heat,—so, that the ideals are able to enter into Nature, into the ordering of natural phenomena. For that reason the Ordering of Nature and his own ideals appear to him side by side, but he cannot build a bridge from one to the other, He cannot build that bridge my dear friends because he cannot look into the Cosmos both by day and by night, where the bridge has to be built. If only man could have a normal consciousness by day—that means an Ahriman-free consciousness—so that he could feel: “I am an individual person, am not bound to my physical or etheric bodies any more than when I look into a mirror which reflects me, I am bound to the image before me.” If man could have this consciousness about his ego and astral body, he would regard the ego and astral bodies as reality and not as mere reflected images, and then he could also recognise his ideals as real forces, just as real as electricity and magnetism, only they are not working at the present time, they are acquiring reality in the present incarnation for the next; from this earthly existence they pass over into the next earthly existence.

If man in the waking condition could perceive that his ego and astral body are bound up with the Beings of the third Hierarchy, as I have pointed out,—in other words,—if man could but fully see himself and not merely feel himself but realise himself as a free personality not bound up with flesh and blood, he would no longer believe that the external nature outside him as presented to his sense-organs in a strong enough reality to oppose the force of his Ideals, He would know that, that which is the Ordering of Nature to-day, will crumble away with all those substances; that there is no such thing as the conservation of matter, but that which in Nature destroys itself and when that which to-day is Nature no longer exists, then another external sense-reality will appear in its place, and that which to-day constitutes our ideals will become Nature in the next epoch. So we can say, to-day we experience an Ordering of Nature, (see diagram red) we experience an Ordering of our Ideals (yellow). The physicist believes that this nature is maintained by a conservation of force and a conservation of matter, that the Ordering of Nature persists—, that the same atoms, the same forces play into all future.

[diagram is missing]

The physicist, if he is sincere, can say none other than this:—“The ideal Ordering was a dream, it must sink and vanish like dreams. At the end of the earth our dream-ideal will no longer be there, it will have been buried.”

Spiritual science knows that this is a delusion, untrue. We have the Ordering of Nature, red) but in reality there is no conservation of force or of matter, for that which is the Ordering of matter ceases at a certain definite point of time; and that which to-day constitutes our ideal Order, forms the continuation of the Ordering of Nature.

[diagram (if any) is missing]

All that we see round us with our eyes, or that we hear with our ears all that we perceive around us with all our senses, will, when the earth reaches the Venus-condition, be non-existent; but out of that Nothingness the possibility will be given for the Ideals of modern humanity to become the external Ordering of Nature. No conception of the world, my dear friends, which fails to recognise the destruction of what is sensible, can ever have a hope that the Ideal has the power to realise itself, for if what is sensible were eternal, if the conservation of force and matter did exist, then our ideal world would simply be a dream. It is of immense significance that man should at the present time, have this illumination:—that the Ideals of the present constitute the Nature of the future. It is a great delusion to believe that the atoms and forces around us are the eternal. They are not the eternal; they are the temporal. That indeed is the fate of Spiritual Science, it has to contradict and refute a perception held by the present-day universal perception and view of science as an absolute certainty, and which is yet nothing but an Ahrimanic deception.

Now let us go back again to something else, to which I have drawn your attention. Before the Mystery of Golgotha what I have characterised to you as the delusion of man, can be described as a delusion of life; after the Mystery of Golgotha it was a delusion of consciousness. When one knows this, one can understand many things in the development of man. Above all one understands why, before the Mystery of Golgotha, those human beings who had atavistic clairvoyance, could not see things in their true form, but saw the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies as demons. That is why those ancient Mythologies consist essentially in a demonology. The Gods of the ancient Mythologies were seen as Demons, as for the most part they were. And that rests on the fact that a delusion of life was present then. Men had to think of a false Ordering of Nature as a Divine Ordering, just as they have to think to-day of a false Ordering of the body as ordained for mankind.

Then came the Mystery of Golgotha; and man had to take the soul-mood which resulted from the Mystery of Golgotha. Before the Mystery of Golgotha, man in his waking condition stood in a more direct relationship to the Beings of the third Hierarchy than to-day. He saw them. And through their delusion of life they `fantasised' these Beings into Zeus, Apollo, and so on. These are the Beings of the third Hierarchy, but they were poetically altered, as seen under the influence of that delusion of life, as we to-day see everything which refers to man under the influence of our delusion of consciousness.

In spite of all that however, a Divine Spiritual order was spread into humanity. Just think how close man of those ancient epochs felt his human world to be to the Divine Ordering of the Cosmos! There was the human Hierarchy, and then came the Divine Hierarchy. Man did not feel so cut off as to-day, for he continued the world straight up to the Gods. How close the Greek felt his world of the Gods to the world of Man.

Then came the Mystery of Golgotha, and that was then no longer the case! Not through the Mystery of Golgotha, for that was to give compensation for what has been lost. But time itself brought into human evolution that man was to be cut off from this conscious connection with the Divine-Spiritual world of the third Hierarchy; only a memory, an historical memory remained. Then came the time of the first epoch after the Mystery of Golgotha. Men certainly had to think somewhat differently to what they did before the Mystery of Golgotha; but something of that immediate past still worked in them, when men know that the Divine Spiritual Beings work into the early events and arrange and ordain what man does on the Earth. Therefore man of old was convinced that when he founded a State, (if one wishes to use the word `State,' it is incorrect, but we are accustomed to speak like this to-day)—he knew that those social structures were founded under the influence of the third Hierarchy. Man felt that his arrangements on Earth were Divine arrangements. You need merely study Egyptian history, even without clairvoyance to see how fully convinced the Egyptians were that what man does here in is social life was all arranged by the Beings of the third Hierarchy. That was so before the Mystery of Golgotha. After the Mystery of Golgotha the Church established a kind of grade in the clerical dignitaries. Such gradations were arranged; but behind the arrangement of those degrees there was a quite different thought. This can be seen quite clearly in the early Church writers. In Dionysius the Areopagite, you can see it clearly for yourself. There was to be such an arrangement in the administration of the Church that it should be an image of the Divine Ordering; and the relation of the Deacon to the Archdeacon was to be an image of the relation of the Angel to the Archangel. Again the relation of Archdeacon to the Bishop was a copy of the relationship of the Archangel to the Archai. Thus it was endeavoured to make the social structure of the Church a sort of copy of that Theocracy! Above in the Spiritual world there is a sequence of Hierarchies, and down below, in the physical world, there should also stand as a copy of the Spiritual Hierarchies, a sequence in the clerical dignitaries. In the first epoch after the Mystery of Golgotha, that was not conceived juridistically, but theocratically. It was a copy. The clerical Hierarchy was conceived as a copy of the Third Hierarchy. Thus in the first Christian Centuries it was endeavoured to establish such organisations as should cause the position of man on Earth to each other to be a copy of the Hierarchies in the Spiritual world.

Then gradually men lost the consciousness that they still had in their memories. The historic memory of the old theocracy was lost, in which man still knew that the earthly arrangements were a consequence of a copy of the Deeds of the Gods. The consciousness of this was lost, and in the place of the consciousness of the living world of Divine Beings, which were seen by men in olden times, and of which they still knew, there came abstract concepts. And so came the centuries where, in place of the individual Gods,—the Christians called them Angels—they put abstract ideas, a metaphysic of abstract concepts. The Divine Ordering, which should have its copy in the human ordering, became theocratic; the application of more ideas to man's social arrangements produced something which was simply intended to bring some kind of order into human intercourse. As formerly it was thought to create an image of the Divine Cosmos in the metaphysical age which followed, it was simply striven to maintain some order by punishing evil and not punishing the good, perhaps even rewarding it,—thus creating an ordering in which the social order could exist. And so, as in the place of living Gods there now appeared abstract, metaphysical concepts, a human Ordering appeared which in a sense so stamped itself on man, that one was preferred before another, not because that was a copy so that order should be maintained on earth; one came to command and the other to obey. Abstractions appeared in the place of the living permeation of the social Ordering.

Essentially the epoch of real metaphysic prevailed throughout the middle ages. The Roman consciousness essentially provided the special element for this metaphysical Ordering, which spread everywhere; one finds memories of this in the very words. For instance the word “Prince” (Fürst), is a memory of the Theocratic Ordering. The Prince, (Fürst), was the first, because some one had to be first, just as in the Divine Hierarchies also, one had to be first. A memory of the metaphysical order of administration is given us in the word Count `Graf,' which is connected with `grafe;'—to write. In the metaphysical Ordering, everything is registered; the social order was kept by writing documents, by making compacts.

And then came the modern age. This newer age brought disbelief in the abstract concepts, in metaphysics. Men could now only believe in the external sense-phenomena, even inhuman life. Those traditions which still existed in ancient times of a living consciousness which somehow worked this into the social structure, was lost. First the Gods, later the metaphysical concepts; these things could no longer exist in modern times; but they must again be won on those paths indicated by Spiritual Science. All consciousness of the Spiritual basis, of a Spiritual structure, was radically obliterated by Industrialism. Therefore Auguste Comte and his teacher Saint-Simon, felt themselves so specially united with the epoch of Industrialism, for they allowed positivistic Science alone to have any value. That means, only that which can be related to the external sensible natural ordering, permeated by causal necessity.

Therewith, my dear friends, the concept of truth itself has undergone a complete transformation. People to-day have not the right feeling for these things, they do not as yet realise aright the fact, that the very concept of Truth has undergone a history. These modern human beings who knew themselves to be under a theocratic Ordering, have no such idea of Truth as human beings get to-day under the authority of Natural Science. It is extraordinarily difficult to speak of these things. To-day a man may think that, with reference to the world around him, truth consists in the coinciding of an idea with external reality. He gets that thought from Natural Science. Such a concept of Truth simply did not exist in the First Christian Centuries. There was another idea of Truth then, which was essentially connected with the theocratic social order. The concept of truth which lives in all souls to-day really did not exist then. This extraordinary fact, my dear friends, is not realised now. It is more easy to recognise the concept of Truth which lived then, if one approaches the idea of Divine Judgment. Suppose two people are fighting a duel, (I will not touch upon the question of duels, I am simply giving an instance), it cannot be determined from the very start by some calculation that A, will win and B will not,—if that were so the duel would hardly occur; the truth only emerges in the course of the conflict. We ourselves still have this idea of truth at the present day, in the case of war. We should not wage war if we know from the start, as in an experiment, in a chemical laboratory, how the war was going to end. In this the old concept of truth is rooted even to-day, that truth itself can only be revealed in the course of what actually happens, that one can do nothing but watch how the Divine Judgment will fall. That is the old concept of Truth.

Those who think as Auguste Comte or as the Socialists to-day, have completely broken with this idea of Truth. They only recognise a truth as such, where the event in its course can be foreseen. The cry of Auguste Comte; “Know in order to foresee,” is the radical transformation of the concept of Truth in our modern age. But, my dear friends, with the concept which prevails to-day, one can only grasp external nature. Concerning this point, humanity to-day gives way to a colossal delusion. Men believe, for instance, that they can grasp historical life through this idea of Truth, which Auguste Comte and Saint-Simon taught. But it cannot be done, even with the old concept of Truth as Divine Judgment, for that stood under the influence of the Delusion of Life. Our modern concept of Truth stands under the influence of our Delusion in Consciousness. There must come the concept of Truth of Anthroposophy; a concept gained in a far more widely embracing way than that in which St Augustine got his concept of Truth,—for as I have explained to you, that too was subject to delusion.

This is connected with many things; and a great deal depends on it. It is not enough to speak abstractly on the evolution of the idea of Truth, one must in general, in all its details know how the concept of Truth can lead the soul of man along many different paths according to the nature of his idea of Truth. It is an anachronism to speak to-day in the same sense of Nationalism, as was possible in the pre-Christian age; because in the pre-Christian age it was not only a human view—that a Divine Ordering then permeated the human Ordering, it was actually the case. Now, the Divine Ordering no longer permeates it. Hence, wherever to-day man hangs his consciousness on the Ordering of Nature, on that which is merely produced by a sequence of births, on the Principle of Nationality, for instance, there he is involved in an anachronism. It is laid on man to-day to find quite other structures of social order than those worked from outside. The man of old could look to his nationality, because he saw it determined by the Divine Ordering. But man cannot do this to-day in the same sense without falling into an anachronism, and to-day to honour the Nation itself as something special, is an anachronism, he must consider other social structures. To regard a Nation as something special, would bring about the modern Ahrimanic delusion. “Nations” are relics of the pre-Christian Age, and modern humanity must rise above them through that development which I have indicated. We must see how concretely human beings strive after a special development of the concept of Truth. That is important, even if it is inconvenient to-day, my dear friends. But if we are unprejudiced in trying to grasp reality, we must assimilate many an uncomfortable truth.

You see, man now goes right against what Anthroposophy wills. That world-view which found its special advocate in Auguste Comte, limits itself merely to an external Ordering of Nature. We must press forward again to a spiritual world and a bridge must be found between idealism and realism. That is what I want to emphasise in these lectures. But this cannot be done simply by speaking of these things, but by grasping the concrete impulses working in the world. We must look certain facts full in the face, without prejudice. Now there are very curious facts connected with the things we are now considering. Yesterday I spoke of Auguste Comte and Saint-Simon. Both consider positivistic Science as the only thing valid, positivistic Science which simply relates to the sense-life, to a what is in the causal Ordering of Nature. Nevertheless the extraordinary fact is before us, that Auguste Comte turned away from his teacher and guide, Saint-Simon, because gradually Saint-Simon had become too mystical; and the disciples of Auguste Comte gradually turned from him because he himself became altogether mystical in his old age. We are faced with this extraordinary fact,—that Saint-Simon as well as Auguste Comte, on the one side stand directly on the basis of the most Ahrimanic Science, consciously in the epoch of Industrialism, they stand on the soil of this Ahrimanic Science; and yet they become mystics! Extraordinary! That really is an extraordinary fact.

One has to ask the `why' of such a fact, but this can only be explained if without prejudice, one admits that on the other hand man is living towards Spirituality. Unconsciously human beings are striving towards Spirituality. Even such beings as Auguste Comte and Saint-Simon, who only want to grasp external nature, are also striving after Spirituality.

But now in the modern life of man something very peculiar is to be seen. We will take another fact which, without any national chauvinism (which would not be seemly) we will try to keep in mind. In the views which result as the flower of modern nations, one can find characterised in a certain way what lies under the surface; and, starting from this, I should like to point to another very dominant English philosopher, Bentham, who lived from 1748-1832. Bentham can be taken as characteristic of the thinking of his people, and with a certain justice one must describe the views of Bentham as Utilitarianism even in a deeper sense. A certain basic sentence lies at the bottom of the Ideal World-Ordering according to Bentham. This principle is usually called the “maximum of human happiness.” Human happiness consists in this dogma, which Bentham put forward: “The good (that means what should be striven for as an ideal) consists in the greatest happiness of the greatest number of human beings on the Earth.” Let us get that sentence clearly in mind:—“The good consists in the greatest happiness of the greatest number of human beings on the Earth.” That sentence, as a matter of fact, of the maximum of happiness on the Earth, is the root-nerve of the Utilitarian philosophy.

Now one must bear in mind that this sentence was regarded, not by Bentham himself nor by his disciples but by those who stand on a Spiritual basis, as absolutely Ahrimanic. The occultists of his own Country say: Bentham put forward this purely devilish sentence—they call it devilish because, to any of these occultists, if it were correct that good consists in the greatest happiness of the greatest number, evil must then consist in the greatest happiness of the least number.

I am not now saying anything which I myself wish to bring before as a definition or explanation, but simply quoting what has been said. Thus, on the one hand the English philosophy of Bentham, “The maximum of happiness;” on the other hand that English Spiritualism (Spiritualismus) which says “Bentham's sentence is purely of the devil, because in that case evil would be the greatest happiness of the least number, and from this there would result that evil and happiness could exist side by side,” to which the Spiritualists would not under any condition agree.

I am only bringing before you here a fact of Spiritual life, significant in the most eminent degree, significant as regards the enormous opposition to be found in a certain sphere of the Earth between Spiritualism and external World-view.

And now again to-day, because I want you to realise that we shall solve these oppositions in tomorrows conditions, I want to put once more at the end, an apercus; you can put three things together: Geotheism, Comteism, and Benthamism. These three things stand in a certain sense, in a three fold way to the Spiritual striving of man toward the future. The German Goetheism is so fashioned that out of it Spiritualism (Spiritualismus) can result. The French Comteism is so fashioned that Spiritualism can develop alongside it, for in Auguste Comte and Saint-Simon we find an extraordinary mysticism appearing side by side with their positive philosophy. With the English Utilitarianism, as in Bentham, nothing else is possible than the sharpest opposition from the side of Spiritualism against the national philosophy. That is something which lies in the soil of evolution itself. The French nature must so develop that Idealism, Mysticism and Positivism must develop side by side. Whereas in England within the British nature, things must develop more and more so, that, from the side of their Spiritualists, their own “racial nature” must be combated in the sharpest way possible. (That means, of course, what is put forward as the philosophical blossoms of the nation.)

With Auguste Comte—I am not giving you theories but simply individual facts—there was such a distinct inclination to Mysticism existing, that, in spite of his application to Positivism and rejection of his teacher St Simon, at the end of his life he very clearly assumes a Trinity. Auguste Comte honours three in his trinity:

1st. The great Fetish.
2nd. The great Medium.
3rd. The great Being.

And he says: the great Fetish is the Mother-bosom of humanity in space. Space itself is the great Medium out of which humanity comes. The great Being, the last person in his trinity, is humanity itself in the abstract, spread out over the Earth. Auguste Comte recognises this Trinity,—which is an extraordinary quickening of Positivism with Mysticism.

Now of this we shall speak further tomorrow. [The lecture of 8th September 1918, remains untranslated. – e.Ed]

I have often spoken to you of how the human soul has altered in the course of mankind's development, how short-sighted it is to believe that the constitution of the modern soul can be understood if one will not look back to the different changes it has passed through. We look back—I do not need to recapitulate it—to the most varied epochs of earthly evolution; we have in particular often characterised the post-Atlantean epochs in order to show how the constitution of man's soul continually altered. In speaking of such things one must advance from the abstract to the concrete. One must try to give as clear an answer as possible to the question: What was the nature of the human soul in the ages of antiquity? We look back to a far-off age in which—and this may be stated in more than a figurative sense—divine teachers themselves instructed men about the sacred mysteries of existence. We know that from this ancient epoch onwards men have come to learn of these mysteries of existence in most manifold ways. From epoch to epoch the conceptions of the human soul have actually become more and more different. The concepts and ideas which we have today, which live in us and which we put every moment into words, these lived too in earlier conditions of our soul but in an utterly different way. Many of our most ordinary ideas lived quite differently. Today I will speak of what are apparently the most ordinary concepts, two concepts living in man's soul. People denote them at every moment from their word-store, but they lived in the human soul in earlier times in an entirely different way. I will speak of the two concepts: Space and Time.

Space for modern man is the most abstract thing conceivable. What do men mostly picture as space? Three dimensions standing at right angles to each other—or if one reads philosophical text books: the state of extension of physical objects—or there are still other definitions of space. But all that—think how prosaic, cold, abstract, that all is! Three dimensions standing at right angles to one another, or even all that geometry has to say about space,—how frightfully abstract, how prosaic and poverty-stricken, so poverty-stricken that the whole of space—with time as well—has become for Kant subjective shadow, merely a form of conceiving sense-phenomena. This abstraction, space, of which modern man knows little more than that it has length, breadth and height, this abstraction, space, was a very different conception in the far past, of which, however, something still exists today for especially sensitive people—though indeed it is only a trace. One need not go back so extremely far; in the 6th, 7th, 8th pre-Christian centuries one may definitely say that space, as it was then experienced, was very different for the human soul from the prosaic abstraction that it is for man today. Even in the early Greek ages when the soul experienced space, it felt it to be something with which it was livingly united. It felt itself placed into a living Something, in feeling itself placed into space.

Today man has at most a vestige of the sense of standing with his personality, his human self within space. But the man of antiquity expressed a significant relation of himself to the universe, if he distinguished above and below, right and left, in front and behind. The living feeling that one expressed when in ancient times one spoke of above and below, of right and left, of before and behind, has terribly little to do with our abstract three dimensions, which have no other occupation at all than standing at right angles to each other. What a very monotonous occupation it would be through eternity, if one did nothing else at all but stand at right angles to one another like the three dimensions of geometry.

Above and below: it was something living when in ancient times man still experienced how he was first a little child and raised himself from below upwards, when he felt how the course of life consists in an unfolding in the direction of above and below. The course of life consisted in the experience of the direction of above and below. One only travels a tiny distance from the earth (unless one lives in the Ahrimanic age of aeroplanes, or in the Atlantean age but there it was not very high above the earth—you know of this from my description of Atlantis), only a very little distance in normal life does one travel upwards from the earth in growing, and thus experience the above and below, the opposition of above and below. But this opposition was felt in antiquity as the contrast of the world of consciousness and the objective world,—of the conscious and the unconscious world. How subject is related to object—that was a deep experience when one felt above and below. Above, and ever farther and farther upwards come the divine worlds, downwards the worlds which are opposed to the Gods, and the human being is placed within the Above and Below.

As late as to such men as Goethe (you only need study his “Faust”) you still find remains of the consciousness of above and below. In addition to the above and below men felt the right, and left. Today we must use abstractions if we speak of right and left. To the man of antiquity a living in right and left was an actual experience, one might say a genuine world of observation. The Above and Below is the line from infinity to infinity or from the conscious to the unconscious. Right and left: in experiencing right and left one experienced the connection in the world between mind and figure, between wisdom and form. You only need draw a symmetry-axis, what is left and right of it gives together the form and you cannot combine the right and the left without doing it purposefully, without relating the one to the other.

If above and below is pointing to man's mysterious relation to the spiritual and material worlds, then the experience of right and left is his relation to the worlds spreading out in form. And by relating the form in the right and left to one another, by letting wisdom prevail in the forms arranged symmetrically right and left, he experiences himself in the second element of space. This experience of sense in the shape, of wisdom in the form in all possible variations, this feeling of oneself within this harmony of sense and shape, of wisdom and form, was experienced by the man of old as what today is the abstract second dimension. The above and below, the right and left belonged to the flat plane, to the surface which can have no existence for the senses, which requires thickness, needs before and behind if it is to exist in the element of the sense-perceptible.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

And in this third, in the before and behind, ancient mankind felt the entrance of the material into the spiritual. (See diagram) Above and below, left and right he experienced as something still spiritual. It can have no material existence if something is merely above and below, and right and left—it is pure picture, must be pure picture in space; it becomes material only through thickness. In ancient times man felt vividly that in growing he made a few steps upwards from the earths surface in the direction of the above and below. He felt that in walking, he could move freely that he was in the element of his will: before and behind. In between stood the completely free self-movement to right and left while standing still.

Ancient man experienced in his being this threefold contrast as placed into the All; the remaining still with regard to right and left, the striding into the world with regard to before and behind, the gradual movement from below upwards in the direction of the above-below. This was the experience of the man of old. In experiencing the above and below he felt weaving in the universe all that today we call the intelligence, the reasoning of the universe. All that rules in the universe as intelligence was interwoven in space with his idea of the above and below, end since he could share in this intelligence of the world through his growth from below upwards, man felt himself to be intelligent. The participation in the above and below was at the same time a participation in cosmic intelligence. And participation in the right and left, in the interweaving of sense and shape, of wisdom and form, was for him the feeling that weaves through the world. And his restful remaining still, surveying the world, was to him a uniting of his own feeling with the universal feeling. His striding through space in the direction of forwards or back was the unfolding of his will, the placing of himself, with his own will, into the universe, the universal will, He felt his own life to be interwoven with the above and below, the right and left, the before and behind. The conscious and the unconscious: above and below; wisdom and form: right and left; spirit and matter: in front and behind. Such was the experience of the man of antiquity.

At the same time, however, he experienced the indefinite—if I put it crudely—when one stands on one's head then the under is above and the above under. So too is it for the antipodes, and if one counts oneself in with the earth, the below is above and the above underneath. One can imagine too through some circumstance or other that what is normally right is in front, what is normally left is behind. These directions are just as living and weaving in space as in a certain respect they are indistinguishable, weaving into one another. Ancient man felt as he thus experienced himself in the three-divisioned space that the Divinity ruled in the threefoldness. The divine ruling in space directed man then to the divine in duration.

He experienced—and what I am saying now was actually experienced—he experienced in space the divine manifestation, ruling in threefold manner. It was the image in him of the threefold God: Father, Son and Spirit or by what other terms the three-membered God was known. Threefoldness is truly not thought out in the mind, is not an invention. The threefoldness with all its qualities was experienced in its reflection when ancient man experienced livingly the three dimensions of space.

And just as in a certain respect want of clearness can prevail about the above and below, just as right and left can also be before and behind, so in certain circumstances an uncertainty can also enter into the reciprocal relationships of God, Son, Spirit. In the sphere of the transitory, the sphere of space, man experienced the three dimensions concretely, not abstractly or geometrically as we do. And as he experienced concretely how the divine expressed itself in space, in the transitory, he therefore related the transitory to the element of duration; the three-dimensioned space became for him the reflected image of the three-dimensioned spirituality.

The idea of ancient man was approximately: If I live here below on earth I live in the threefoldness of space, but this is to me the reflected proof of the threefold nature of the divine origin of the world.

Today space has become an abstraction and only a few people perceive the depth-dimension, the thickness-dimension, that is, the above and below, the in front and behind, or the plane-dimension of right and left. Even among philosophers little of this experience is to be found. But yet some few who reflect on things and are not entirely asleep come to realise that the depth-dimension really arises in the unconscious observation lying not so very far below the consciousness. Men still feel the depth, but that is the last shadowy relic of space-experience. In the evolved religions an understanding for the Oneness of God has taken precedence of the real understanding of the threefoldness. The understanding for the unity of God has an origin similar to that for the threefold nature of God through space.

My dear friends, spiritual science seeks its information out of the divine facts themselves. Simple-minded people that come and say that no external proof for this or that is given. Well, we have gone into a great deal. I could still relate many things, but it shall not occupy our time today. I will only point out that it is largely the unscientific nature of modern science, so-called, if the verification cannot be found. Just this one thing I will say, and it is as it were an external proof of the fact that the man of antiquity felt in the same way I have described today. Why have the ancient Rabbis called God also Space? Because in earlier time, even in Judaism, they felt what I have shown you today concerning mankind. If science could really think in different domains it would find countless riddles which at the same time, however, are true proof, external proof of what spiritual science has at any rate to find out of the spiritual facts. One of the names for God among the Rabbis is Space; Space and God denote the same.

The unity of the divine has an origin similar to that of the threefoldness of the divine. It is connected with the living experience of Time. Time too was not the abstraction to the man of old that it is to us today. But the concrete experience of time was lost still earlier than the concrete experience of space. If one reads Plato or Aristotle today with a real understanding, and not in the way many schoolmasters read—well, I have often quoted the note written by Hebbel in his diary where the reincarnated Plato sits before the schoolmaster as a pupil, and the teacher reads a dialogue of Plato's with his class and the reincarnated Plato is given very poor marks. Hebbel noted this in his diary. One who reads Plato and Aristotle today, not as is often done by a schoolmaster, but with really deep understanding, finds that this feeling for space was still fully in existence in the 6th, 7th, 8th pre-Christian centuries. It was however already shadowy in Plato and Aristotle, and the living experience of time was lost still earlier than those pre-Christian centuries. It was strongly alive in the second post-Atlantean epoch the ancient Persian, where a cold shiver would have been produced among, for instance, the pupils of Zarathustra, if one had spoken to them of time as a line running from the past to the future. It runs quite uniformly, but does nothing else than run its course from the past to the future.

Again in the Gnosis there existed a more shadowy feeling—but scarcely still to be recognised—for the living nature of time. They did not speak of a line running from past to future but they spoke of Aeons, the creators who were there earlier and from whom the later proceeded, where one Aeon always passed on the impulse of creation to others. Time was so imagined pictorially that in the hierarchical succession the preceding Being always gave the impulse to the one following; the following was ever, as it were, brought forth by the preceding, the preceding Being enclosed the next following. One looked up to the preceding Being, as more divine than the one succeeding. “Later” one experienced as more non-divine, “earlier” one experienced as more divine. This looking towards the change in evolution from the divine to the non-divine was contained in the living experience of time. Everything would fall apart if one were not to weave the divine and the non-divine to a unity. That is identical with our modern abstractions of past and future.

But in this picture of time, looking right back to the “Ancient of Days”, and encompassing the ever more and more encompassing, one experienced the image of God as Unity. Just as the three-divisioned, threefold Space was experienced as the image of the threefoldness of God, so was Time experienced as the image of the oneness of God. The basis of monotheism lies in the ancient time-experience, the basis for perceiving the Trinity lies in the ancient space-experience. Thus has the constitution of man's soul changed, thus has what was once alive became abstract and dry. However paradoxical this may sound: modern man most certainly has an abstract picture when he speaks of space, and he pictures or so I believe—a living relationship when he speaks of a friend. But that concreteness, that elementary experience, which today speaks from friend to friend, that is still abstract in comparison with the intensive experience of the universe which ancient man had when he experienced space and time, which to him were the images of the Unity and Trinity of the Divine.

Thus have we become dry and abstract in respect of space and time, and something else must take their place, something that we must again experience, that must be more and more inwardly realised. We must learn to feel that duality, that contrast in the world of which I have spoken during recent weeks. My dear friends, think for once that someone were to see only the rippled surface of water. This crinkly, rippled water-surface is in fact an abstract line. What is the concrete? There below, the water; there above, the air. And out of the duality air and water, in the co-operation of their forces, there arises the maya, the rippled surface. But so is our world the rippled surface, so too are we as men if we behold ourselves only as we look within maya; if we behold ourselves in reality then here too we must see: below, the water; above, the air.

Below the water—we see it if we observe transitory evolution, as I have brought it before you recently, where man develops in such a way that what he can conceive as a child he would grasp only as an old man. What he conceives in the age of puberty, he knows somewhat earlier, but still only towards old age. I depicted the course of human life, where it is only in old age that one grasps in oneself what one has been in childhood and youth. Life runs thus not apparently, but in reality on the surface, I have said that perhaps one does not need such a perspective today for life on the surfaces but for dying one needs it.—That the conception of the below; and belonging to it, the conception of the real above the region of duration. I spoke of this region in a recent lecture,¹ where man does not evolve, but has that which belongs to duration his whole life through from birth to death. But we cannot consider today how the below and the above interweave, if we do not realise the below, there where it threatens to become fixed, where it threatens to harden; and if we do not realise the above there where it threatens to dissolve, to spiritualise itself—if we do not develop the feeling for the contrast: the Divine—the Luciferic the Ahrimanic. Man of old had something alive in his soul when he spoke of his space-experience, his time-experience; the man of the Earth-future must develop inner concepts, inner impulses representing: Divine—Ahrimanic Luciferic.

• 1. 15th September 1918

In the lectures of last week I pointed out how with the aid of the science of initiation one must strive to press forward from the apparent reality, that is actually around us continually, to the true reality. And I pointed out that the effort which is agreeable to most people, the effort to find a single rational theory of the universe precisely diverts from reality, leads precisely to delusion. I said that much rather must one strive to distinguish two currents of reality, in regard to human knowledge as well, and then in a living manner unite with each other what can be found in these two currents.

Let us briefly recapitulate what we have realised with regard to these two currents in human knowledge and let us then seek to create the necessary requirements for a conception of reality on this foundation. You will remember that I said: The course of human life is actually one in which man can only comprehend in the second half of life what he has thought, what his soul on the whole has gone through in the first half. I said that natural intelligence is active in us from birth to the change of teeth, the intelligent element prevails. What prevails as intelligence and also what we learn in these first years of life, is not yet grasped through our own human forces if we look only at the one current of which we have to speak. If man were simply thrown on his own resources as earthly man, then only in later life at the end of the fifties, the beginning of the sixties, would be able to understand what he thought, felt and willed as a child up to the change of teeth. Thus it is only in later years that one becomes mature, as it were, to self-knowledge of the intimate life of childhood. The forces in man that can grasp what one went through intelligently in the first years of childhood are in fact only born as late as that in human life.

Then we have a second life-period that dates from the change of teeth to puberty. Only think (it is shown in the booklet Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy what the child goes through in thought, feeling, willing, up to puberty, Through his own human earthly forces man would be able to grasp what he goes through then only at the end of the forties, the beginning of, the fifties

And again what we live through from puberty into the twenties: we should only grasp this through our own human forces at the end of our thirties and beginning of our forties. What we devise and develop as ideals we should only grasp in its importance, its value to life, in our thirties if we were left to our human life forces. Only what we experience between the ages of 28 and 35 stands for itself and can be approximately grasped at the time. This middle member of man's lifetime has a certain equilibrium, there we can at the same time develop our thought and comprehend it, but not in the other years of life.

You get a grasp of man's development in a lifetime if you reflect upon what has been brought forward, you see how man evolves as earthly man in time. In so far as we are bound to time, self-knowledge would only be possible if we waited until the right time of life arrived for a comprehension of what we had thought in an earlier period of life. The total human life is interconnected. If we were only earthly man in time we should, as personality, know nothing at all of ourselves, if we did not in age look back to what developed in us in youth.

Now that is the one aspect of man, the one current of human life. As regards this stream man is entirely subjected to time, he can do nothing but wait till the time is ripe. But I have already pointed out to you that the way life is lived through in our maya-existence, is not the true face of human life, it is merely its appearance when we regard it as taking place in time. Yet what one specifies in this way about the time-course of human life is entirely real. For what we normally experience between birth and death—with this, as I have said, we can if necessary, and if one is content to stay on the surface, live, but with it one cannot die. For all our normal knowledge, what we learn from the instruction of others, what one learns from the store acquired through the course of history, in short, what as temporal man one learns in any other way than by looking back in age at youth—that perishes at death, that we do not carry from the one current through the gate of death. Only what we have acquired in conformity with this correspondence do we carry through the portal of death. And do not imagine that you don't do what I have described! Each of you who has come to a later age of life looks back in his subconsciousness to the earlier years of his life. What I have described most definitely takes place, even if it takes place subconsciously. And you would carry nothing from the external temporal course of life through death if it did not so take place. In the age of materialism, however, men pay little heed to this, yet all that the materialistic age can bring to man cannot be taken with him through the gate of death. That alone has significance for the world which you pass through in the sense that you grasp in age what has taken Place in your whole nature in youth. That is the one stream.

The other stream arises through the fact that man is not merely soul and body. As a being of soul and body his existence takes its course in time as we have again shown. But man is also a being of spirit and soul. And through his soul-spirit nature he is not merely in the realm of time which has just been characterised but in the realm of duration. And there again he is very different from what he thinks. There he goes through no development, he is the same being from birth to death, but his thinking, feeling and willing are something very different from how they appear to him. His thinking and also a part of his feeling is a transposing of himself into cosmic regions where the conflict of gods takes place (I described this in a recent lecture [ 15th September 1918 (not translated). ]), and again willing and a part of feeling is the transposing of oneself into another region of the cosmos where the conflict of gods takes place I said to you that to reflect and ponder means transposing oneself into a certain region of spirituality and taking part in certain conflicts of one order of spirits with another; similarly willing means taking part in certain conflicts—even though in one or another case these conflicts may have come to a standstill. It is a profound truth presented in one of the Mystery Dramas, The Portal of Initiation, that while processes of soul and spirit are enacted in us great cosmic events are happening Just as man in the age of materialism will have no notion of his soul-body nature that runs its course in time, so will man know nothing of this spirit-soul element that acts in the realm of duration, but appears quite different from his thinking, feeling, willing in ordinary life and seen in ito reality, takes place as spirit-conflicts, However paradoxical it may sound to the materialistic thinker, when you form a thought it is very different from what it appears to you in maya. Let us suppose that you form a thought, let us say a thought on what we considered in the last lecture—a thought on space. The moment you think about space, even in the abstractness of the modern concept of space, the moment your spirit fills itself with the space-thought, you transpose your soul into a spiritual region where Ahriman is engaged in a mighty fight against hierarchies of a different nature. You could not have the thought of space without living in a region where Ahriman fights against other hierarchies. And when you develop a desire, if you say, for instance, I will go for a walk, even when it is such an insignificant determination as this, as soon as you set this will in action, you place yourself spiritually in a region where the Luciferic spirits fight against spirits of other hierarchies. Seen from the aspect of initiation-science, what takes place in the world is essentially different from its shadowy reflection, which we know in our maya-existence, between birth and death. For, my dear friends, what we perceive thus as maya is nothing more than something that can be compared with the wave-ripples on the surface of the sea. I put the picture before you in the last lecture: the ripples of the waves on the surface of the sea would not be there without the sea beneath and the air above. The forces that produce the ripples of the waves are in the sea, in the air, and the rippled waves are only the image of the forces striking together from above and below, So is our life in maya between birth and death nothing else than a striking together of two forces. On the one hand the spiritual conflicts which in truth take place in the realm of duration when we think, feel, will; on the other hand the course of evolution in time which consists in our comprehending only in later years the thinking life of youth. Our life in fact is a nothingness if we do not look on it from the confluence and conjunction of these two true realities. Behind our life are these two true realties.

Now behind our life there is not only on the one hand the time-course which would cause us to wait and wait in order to grasp something that we conceived formerly, nor is there only the processes in duration that take place our whole life through in a similar way between birth and death but we ourselves stand within this reality, and this too appears to us only in its reflected image. Our whole relation to the world appears to us only in its reflection. To know the truth always demands our strengthening ourselves to know it; truth does not come to us if we want merely to remain passive. To know the truth means that one knows oneself to be standing in the two currents that I have indicated, in the realm of time and the realm of duration. And while we stand within these two realms, and a life goes on which has no other significance with regard to the true forces than has the rippled sea with regard to the storming air and the flood beneath surging up and down, we pass our life between death and birth and then again also between birth, and death. The forces and powers occupy themselves with us while we so pass our life. For mighty forces are ever at hand which endeavour to tear us away from the ordinary earthly life as it takes its course in maya, and similarly other forces are there which are at pains to tear us away from the realm of duration. On the one hand (let us hold fast to this) we have our course of life in time, where we only become mature at a late period to grasp what goes on in us in the future; there are forces and powers which would confine us to what we are as man, which would like to mould us as human beings so that this takes place. That means, however: there are forces and powers that want our earthly life to run its course in maya, so that we experience this or that in childhood, but grasp nothing of it, lead a sort of sleep-life up to the age of 28, then begin somewhat to comprehend the present, and then after the age of 35 begin to comprehend the earlier. There are forces and powers which would like to make us mere temporal beings, beings who for the first half of life would lead more or less a sleeping plant-life and in the second half would look back and understand what took place during this sleep. There are forces and powers which would like to make man for the first half of his life, a dreamer, and in the second half a being who remembers these dreams and thus comes to self-consciousness. If these forces and powers should alone work upon us it would practically mean that our soul would not be born till the beginning of our thirties, or at earliest in our twenty-eighth year. Before that we should go about on earth drunken with sleep.

If that were so, we should become torn free from our whole cosmic past. Our present existence rests upon the fact that we have gone through a cosmic past, through the Saturn, Sun, Moon evolution, as I have shown it in Occult Science. During the passage through the Saturn, Sun, Moon periods, Beings of the higher Hierarchies who have a special interest that human beings should arise in the cosmos. Beings who are the creators of mankind, developed us and established us in earthly existence. In earth-existence we are now such men according to the one stream as I have described. Forces and powers are present which would shape us only as such earthmen; should they conquer, they would tear us away from our Saturn, Sun, Moon past. They would conserve us in earth-life, make us purely men of earth. That is what certain powers are striving for; they are the Ahrimanic powers. Ahriman strives to make us purely temporal men, to loosen our earth-life from our cosmic past. He strives to make the earth utterly and entirely a self-contained entity, to make us entirely telluric, earthly with the earth.

There are other forces and powers which strive for the exact opposite, to tear us from this time-life, to endow us with a thinking, feeling and willing that trickles in, as it were, solely from the region of duration. These beings strive to fill us from childhood on, and with no effort of our own, with a certain quantum of thinking, feeling and willing and then to conserve it for us throughout the whole course of life. Should they conquer, our whole temporal life would dry up. We should finally,—indeed quite soon, it would have happened long ago if these beings had conquered,—lay aside the physical corporeality, the bodily spirit-being, and become pure spirits. But our task, in so far as it comes from our earth-existence, would not have been fulfilled. We should be drawn away from earth-existence. To these beings the earth is too evil, they hate the earth, they would like to get rid of it. They would like to lift man from the earth and give him an existence purely in the realm of duration; they would like him to discard all that takes its course in time in the way I have described. These are the Luciferic beings. They strive for just the opposite of what the Ahrimanic beings desire. The Ahrimanic beings seek to free man together with the whole of earth-existence from the cosmic past and to conserve the earthly. The Luciferic beings strive to thrust away the earth, thrust away from man everything earthly and spiritualize him entirely, so that the forces of the earth cannot work upon him. They would like man to be purely a cosmic being, and would like the earth to fall away from evolution and be cast out into the universe. Whereas Ahriman wants the earth to become an independent entity and man's whole world, the Luciferic beings strive towards the opposite goal. They want the earth to be thrust away from humanity and humanity to be lifted into that realm where they themselves have their existence, the pure world of duration. In order to attain this object the Luciferic beings seek perpetually to make the human intelligence automatic, they endeavour to crush down man's free will. Should intelligence become purely automatic and the free will crushed, then with automatic intelligence and not with our own will, but the will of the gods, we should be able to accomplish what it fell to us to perform. We should become entirely cosmic beings. That is the goal towards which the Luciferic beings strive. They endeavour to make us pure spirits, such as have cosmic intelligence in place of their own, spirits who have no free will, and whose thinking and acting run their course automatically, as among the Hierarchy of the Angels and to a great extent in the hierarchy of the Luciferic beings—but here in another respect. They wish to make us pure spirits and to cast away the earthly impulse. Moreover they want to create an intelligence for us which is entirely uninfluenced by any kind of brain and absolutely untouched by the interweaving of free will.

The beings who flock round Ahriman, the Ahrimanic beings, want on the contrary to cultivate most specially human intellect, to cultivate it to the extent of being increasingly dependent on the whole earth-existence. They want, moreover, to develop intensively man's individual will—that is, precisely all that the Luciferic beings wish to repress. The Ahrimanic beings, or, expressed better, the spirits serving Ahriman, want to develop fully precisely this—we must take that definitely into account. The human being in this way would come to a sort of self-sufficiency. He would, it is true, be a dreamer in his youth, and in later years be extremely clever and understand many things through his own practical experience, yet he would receive nothing as a revelation from the spiritual worlds. Do not let us deceive ourselves about that. Everything through which one is clever in youth has arisen only from revelation, one's own experience enters only in later years. The Ahrimanic beings want to limit us to this personal experience. We should be beings of independent will, but as beings of soul and spirit we should have at most to be born in our 28th year. Just consider: we as human beings, are actually standing in between these two conflicting aims of the spiritual worlds. And in a certain sense we have the task as man so to live our life in the world that we follow neither Ahriman nor Lucifer but find an equilibrium between the two currents.

One can imagine that it is gruesome even to our materialistic age for men to hear what actually takes place at the foundation of human nature. Because it is gruesome it was so arranged in the world-order that in ancient times divine teachers imparted to men a supersensible knowledge, so that they did not themselves need to face this spirit-conflict. The initiates could be silent about the spirit-conflict to the outer world. There have always been men who know, knew, of this spirit-conflict which is enacted in every human being behind the scenes of life. There were always men who had convinced themselves that life is a struggle through a conflict, that it encloses a danger in itself. But the principle also existed not to lead men to the threshold of the spiritual world, not to lead them to the Guardian of the Threshold, so that (forgive the expression but it fits)—so that they did not get the horrors. But the times have passed in which that is possible. For the time will come in future earthly evolution when the separation must take place between the children of Lucifer and the children of Ahriman, either the one or the other. But to know that one stands within it, and in this standing within one must guide one's life with knowledge, that must be said today as a necessity of life for man's future, and it must be understood. There can be no mere science of silence for the future.

Anyone who wishes to get a true knowledge of life must develop cosmic sensitivity. What does that mean? It means that he must learn to look at the world somewhat differently from the customary way of seeing it from the standpoint of maya. When one goes through the world with the science of initiation then feelings arise which are not there as long as one remains merely in the knowledge of maya. Feelings arise which the ordinary person looks on not merely as paradoxical, but as foolish and fantastic, yet which have every possible justification as regards true reality. One who possesses the science of initiation and meets with a human being hovers to and fro between two perceptions. You man (he thinks to himself), you oscillate between two possibilities. Either you fall a prey entirely to the temporal, you become mineralised and stiffened inasmuch as you become solely earth-man and lose your past, or else you evaporate in the spirit to a spiritual automaton, you do not reach your goal as human being in spite of being spirit.—It might be said that in confronting a man there really always come towards one two men, the one who is in danger of petrifying in his form, becoming dense and rigid and growing together with the earth; and the other who is in danger of thrusting out all that tends to the mineralising and the hardening process, and is in danger of becoming quite soft, jelly-like, and finally of dissolving as spiritual automaton in the All. These two beings actually meet those who observe a man through the means furnished by the science of initiation. One always feels anxiety, so to say (one must choose such words as language provides, thus many things sound a paradox when one points to the realm of reality)—one has ever anxiety lest the men who confront one suddenly all become like those remarkable figures sometimes seen on the face of a rocky cliff: a knight on horseback, or other figures in the mountains, sleeping maidens, and so on. Men could become something like this and unite with the rock of the earth and only live on as mineralised form. On the other hand, however, they could thrust out all that leads them to mineralisation and could become jelly-like: those organs that have contracted could swell out the ears, could become gigantic and include the throat, wing-like organs could grow out of the shoulders combined with all this; all as soft as a jellyfish but dissolving as if out of its own surging wave formation.

And such perception, such cosmic sensitivity, so to say, arises not only when one confronts a human being with initiation knowledge, but ultimately one carries over to everything what one receives through this cosmic sensitivity. You have assuredly remarked that the tendency to rigidify, to become rock-like; comes from Ahriman; the tendency to volatilize, become first jelly-like, then dissolving: comes from Lucifer. But this is not confined to man himself, it extends over all the abstraction that one meets. One learns to perceive all straight lines as Ahrimanic; all curved lines as Luciferic. The circle is the symbol of Lucifer; the straight line the symbol of Ahriman. The human head with its tendency (one can see it in the skeleton) to petrify, to ossify in the form given it by the earth and to remain hard, is Ahrimanic formation. If forces that work in the human head were active in the whole man he would acquire the figure of Ahriman as you have him over there in our Group. He would be entirely permeated by headness—so to say he would be entirely his own intelligence; but egotistic intelligence; and entirely his own will so that the will comes to expression in the form itself.

If we look at the rest of man, not the head-man, but the extremities, man in the broader sense; we have the idea: If the forces working in the rest of man worked through man as a whole he would then be formed like the figure of Lucifer in the Group. And wherever we look; whether in the life of nature or in social life, we can look into the Ahrimanic or the Luciferic if we are equipped with the science of initiation. We must only perceive it and to develop this sensitive perception is a necessity in man's future evolution. Man must learn to feel that the Lucifer character prevails throughout the world, it prevails too through man's social life. It wants above all to get rid of everything that pertains to rule and order in the world and the laws that men have established. In man's social life there is nothing, so much hated by Lucifer as anything that smells at all of law.

Ahriman would like to have laws; inscribe laws everywhere. And again human community-life is interwoven with the hatred of Lucifer against law and Ahriman's sympathy for it—and one does not understand life if one does not understand it as a dualism. Ahriman likes all that is outer form, that can stiffen; Lucifer likes—the Luciferic beings like—all that is formless, that dissolves form, becomes fluid and flexible. By life itself one must learn to create the balance between the wanting to stiffen and the becoming fluid.

Look at the forms of our Bau [ The first Goetheanum, destroyed by fire December 31, 1922. ], the straight line led over everywhere into the curved, equilibrium sought; everywhere an endeavour to dissolve the fixed again in the fluid, everywhere rest produced in the movement, but the rest transposed again into movement. That is the whole spiritual element in our Bau. As men of the future we must try to shape something in art and life knowing that there below is Ahriman who would let everything grow rigid, there above is Lucifer who wishes to spiritualize everything; both, however, must remain invisible, for in the world of maya only the wave-ripples may appear. Woe if Ahriman or Lucifer should themselves press into what desires to be life! And so our Bau has become what it is: a state of balance in the universe which is wrested, lifted out, of the realm of Ahriman and the realm of Lucifer. Everything culminates in the central figure of our Group, in this Representative of mankind, in whom the whole Luciferic and Ahrimanic element is to be blotted out. And the fact that this is so, that all is lifted out of what is to remain purely spiritual, comes to expression in the Group, where the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements are set visibly in balance to each other so that men learn to understand it.

That is the perspective which one must place before men today, so that they may learn to grasp how they must find the state of equilibrium between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic. The Ahrimanic regulates us always—even in soul and spirit—rectilinearly; the Luciferic brings us always into curving or circular movement and diversifies us. If we have a one-sided tendency to monotheism, if we strive to the whole world as a unity, then Ahriman tugs us by one ear; if we become monadists, one-sided monadists, explaining the world out of many, many atoms or monads only, without unity, then Lucifer is tugging us by the other ear.—In fact, to one who has insight things are like this: when monists dispute with pluralists, monadists, then the man who is actually disputing is generally quite guiltless, for behind him, if he is a monist. Ahriman is pulling him by the ear and whispering all the fine reasons the self-believed logic which he presents for his monism; and if he is a follower of Leibniz or some other monadist,—Lucifer is there and whispers all the fine reasons for the manifoldness of spiritual beings. What must be sought is the state of equilibrium, unity in multiplicity, multiplicity in unity. However, that is less easy and convenient than to seek either the unity or the multiplicity; as it is altogether less comfortable to seek a state of equilibrium than something where one can just rest in laziness. Men become either sceptics or mystics, The sceptics feel that they have fine minds that can doubt everything, the mystics feel that they are permeated by the divine and that with love and knowledge they can embrace all things in their own inner being. The Sceptics are in fact but pupils of Ahriman and the mystics but pupils of Lucifer. For what mankind must strive towards is the state of balance; mystic experience in scepticism, scepticism in mystic experience. It is not the point whether one is Montaigne or Augustine, the point is that what Montaigne represents is illumined through Augustine and what Augustine represents is illumined through Montaigne. One-sidednesses mislead men in the direction of the one or the other stream. What is actually the meaning of “towards the Luciferic”? The Luciferic is really there to make us headless, to take away our own intelligence and free-will. The Luciferic spirits (it is better to say “Luciferic spirits” and to say “Ahriman”, for although there are hosts in the following of Ahriman, Ahriman stands out as a unity, because he strives for unity, and the Luciferic element shows itself as plurality, because it strives for plurality—therefore one expresses it as I have already done in the course of today's lecture)—the Luciferic element really wants us to die at 28, it does not want us to grow old. And if things went entirely according to this Luciferic element we should become children, young men and women, would receive good knowledge trickled in from duration, but at approximately the age of 28 we should get sclerosis and rapidly become cretins. Thus what we could develop as human comprehension would be thrust out just as sclerosis would be thrust out and what we receive in youth could be made automatic and spiritualised. The Luciferic spirits would like to take us at once and not let us first go through the Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan evolution in order then only to become cosmic beings. They do not consider that necessary but strive to take man away from the earth with what he has already evolved through the Saturn, Sun, Moon existence. That is the one stream which wants to hurry on with man as quickly as possible, it is a premature stream. The Luciferic spirits would like to storm in and lead us as quickly as possible into cosmic reality. The Ahrimanic spirits would like to root out our past and make the earth our starting point; they would like to wipe out our past, conserve us on the earth and then set us back to where we were as Saturn-beings. It is a retrograde, retarding movement. Life is ultimately compounded out of a premature and a retrograde movement and the state of equilibrium between them must be found.

Do not say, my dear friends, that these things are difficult, for that is not at all the point. I spoke yesterday of how in early times men had the experience of space and time, of how they experienced them concretely, while we experience them so abstractly. We must learn so to look at our environment that everywhere we experience in balance this interplay of stiffening and evaporating, of deserting and thrusting back, of straight line and curve line. One can sleep with what simply looks at the world. If one looks at it awake, then it threatens to rigidify or evaporate in its whole nature as soon as it comes out of the state of equilibrium. We must develop this feeling and it must become as alive in the men of the future as was the ancient feeling for space and time in the men of the past.

One can have a sensitive perception concerning much in our Group. One can feel in the centre the Representative of humanity with its lines and planes and forms, where everything Luciferic and Ahrimanic is obliterated. The forms are there, but as far as it allows in the human figure the Luciferic and Ahrimanic is rooted out. One can find Lucifer and Ahriman held fast in their forms; one can feel the contrast between the central human being and Lucifer and Ahriman, and can go through the world with this feeling and find its correspondence everywhere. One who is able to assimilate what lives in the feelings that are brought forth by this trinity will absorb much for a certain autopsy of life. Much will be revealed by the world when one contemplates it with the feelings resulting out of the trinity: the central human being or Representative of mankind, Ahriman, Lucifer, And as to the ancient space-feeling the three-foldness was revealed, and to the ancient time-feeling the oneness of the Divine, so must one of the loftiest world-mysteries be revealed to the humanity of the future, in that it is in the position to grasp concretely the stiffening, the evaporating, the deserting, the thrusting back, the straight-lined, the curve, the law-loving, the law-hating, and so on. The recognition of the state of oscillation everywhere in life—that is what matters. For life is not possible unless there is such a state of oscillation, If you have a clock with a pendulum you can of course want to avoid the swinging to and fro and make the pendulum stand still, but the clock will be of no use to you, the pendulum must swing. In life there must be this pendulum condition. That must be noted everywhere.

If we bring to mind what we have gathered from our recent lectures, including yesterday's lecture, and not from their various details but from their whole trend and meaning, then we can say it is the following: It is demanded of the civilisation that must replace ours towards the future in an energetic way, that it should look deeper into true reality, that above all such high-sounding phrases, or rather, such high-sounding theories as those of Monism, Idealism, Realism, and so on, come to an end, and that men realise that the maya-reality, the reality of the surrounding external phenomena, is actually a confluence of two worlds, of two worlds, in fact, in conflict with one another. To look at reality means something very different from merely following up theoretically all that exists in the world of appearances around us, which is the way of modern natural science.

In order to discuss this theme practically, we will first go into a concrete example. Who would not suppose that the materialistic concept of the world which has spread among civilised nations since the 60's, 70's of last century, and the materialistic mode of living which indeed results from this concept, must necessarily have the effect of making men more materialistic? If one looks at the world merely from appearances one naturally supposes that there arises a sort of external manifestation of the ideas which men have had in their heads; but that is not the case. As soon as one turns one's mind to the conditions that in reality follow one another then that does not accord at all, it is not true that the world is somehow or other organised according to the ideas men set in their heads. One only understands that this cannot be the reality if one realises that the human being is of a double nature, as we have explained, that in him the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic forces are working through each other continually. Only because that is so is the following concrete phenomenon possible. Let us assume that an age would give itself up to materialistic ideas for a sufficiently long time, as our age has done. Misled by these ideas it would also in conscious will develop a kind of materialistic mode of life. The results will not enter the part of human nature that is the bearer of the conscious life. To begin with, the bearer of the conscious life has not that thoroughgoing influence on human life that a superficial observation is inclined to attribute to it; the results enter the unconscious. You can picture this schematically: in man's conscious head-nature lives materialism; in his subconscious nature, which goes through a metamorphosis after we have passed through the gate of death and live over into the next earth-incarnation, but which we carry in us now as an incomplete formation—this, let us say, lower nature of man is the bearer of the unconscious soul-life and in a remarkable way this unconscious soul-life becomes under the influence of materialism more and more spiritual. So that the actual result of materialistic ideas and of the materialistic way of life is that the lower nature of man becomes increasingly spiritual. You must therefore imagine the following. If you are completely immersed in concepts of matter and energy and believe solely in these, and order your life on the lines of “eat and drink and then the nothingness of death”—then, carrying out all your actions on this basis, materialism really enters your mode of living, and the lower nature gets increasingly spiritual.

The lower nature, however, which is becoming more and more spiritual, needs something to work on it; it cannot make its necessary way through evolution alone. Now since in the head, in man's upper nature, there are only materialistic ideas and sympathies, this upper nature is unable to work on man's lower nature, and in consequence of this deprivation, the lower nature is exposed to the working of the Luciferic principle. The Luciferic principle, as I said in the last lecture, does not manifest in sense-perceptible reality: the Luciferic beings are spiritual beings. They enter man's lower nature when it becomes so spiritual under the influence of materialism, and when this very materialism prevents anything from man himself flowing into the lower nature. The paradoxical truth appears before our soul that a materialistic age actually prepares a spiritual culture, but a Luciferic one.

Conversely, taking the reverse case, let us suppose that an ecclesiastical truth, not imbued with spirituality, but supported purely by tradition, takes hold of man, or works towards taking hold of him. And related to such an ecclesiastical truth is abstract idealism which believes only in abstract ideals, in morality and has no knowledge of how these abstract ideals arise—however fine and beautiful they may be, they are of no use if one has no feeling for the way in which such forces can come about. Purely religious and purely idealistic ideas have again the consequence that the lower nature of man becomes more material. Whereas materialistic ideas promote spirituality in man's lower nature, purely clerical concepts built on tradition without spiritual influence, as well as abstract idealism, promote an increasing growth of materialism in man's lower nature. Speaking crudely, one might say that the type of this increasing materialism of the lower nature through the traditional abstract churchy element is the corpulent parson; he devotes himself to traditional church conceptions and in this way fattens up his little stomach. This is only a comparison, it is no fact and no law—I merely want to make things clear, yet it corresponds to a fundamental reality. But now again the increasing materialism of mans lower nature has no nourishment if the head harbours none but traditional and abstract traditional ideas. Hence a humanity which founds such a culture is pre-eminently exposed not to their own head-nature but to Ahrimanic influences. And so we must say that the abstractly religious the abstractly idealistic, promotes in fact an Ahrimanic materialism, while, conversely, materialistic thinking promotes a Luciferic spiritualism.

All these things rest fundamentally on the fact that true reality is of a totally different nature from external apparent reality. But it is now required of man that he should get to know true reality according to its law and being. Social science, the science of human community-life and man's historical life must in particular always be permeated by a spiritual science that, as these lectures have shown, can really build the bridge between the nature-order and the spirit-order, real bridges, not those abstract ones built by monism. It will be necessary, however, for certain laws which are held back from the general consciousness of mankind by certain initiation quarters whose thinking is incorrect for the present time—for certain laws concerning true reality to become increasingly known.

One such law can be set before the soul in the following way, If you give real study to my Outline of Occult Science you know the point of time in the earthly sense when present-day humanity actually appeared on earth. We showed in the last lecture how this humanity has also a cosmic pre-history, a Saturn, Sun, Moon history, but Earth history was, to begin with, a recapitulation, and earthly humanity appeared at quite a definite time. And if you consult my Occult Science you will find that this human state appeared at the same time as clearly and distinctly there arose on earth the origin of the mineral kingdom. For we know that what we now call the mineral kingdom did not exist in the same way in the Saturn, Sun, Moon evolutions, There existed then the three elementary kingdoms which preceded the mineral kingdom. The mineral kingdom entered earthly evolution and simultaneously with this macrocosmic fact of the entry of the mineral kingdom into earthly evolution, man entered earthly evolution in his present form, in the form of his present bodily formation. Although this bodily formation has only later in the course of time come to its full completion, yet the rudiments of the present human body appeared in earthly evolution at the same time as the entry of the mineral kingdom. In a certain sense therefore man, has formed a link as earth-man between the fourth member of his being, which then developed to the ego, and the mineral kingdom. One could also say that in the human microcosm the ego corresponds to the macrocosmic mineral kingdom;

Now we know—and even a simple superficial knowledge of nature tells us—that the cosmic mineral kingdom has a crystal-formation. In school our children must learn the different forms in which the various minerals crystalise. They must first learn them according to the laws of geometry, how they can be represented through these laws, and then how they appear in reality, in the mineral kingdom—octahedron, cube, and so on. When we see these forms of the mineral kingdom which may be expressed in geometry we have before us the original form proper to the minerals. These crystalisations, or rather, these crystal-forms, are in a certain sense the inborn, archetypal characteristic of the mineral kingdom. And the earth, when this kingdom was incorporated into its cosmic evolution, received at the same time the tendency to crystalise its mineral substances in the forms in which the mineral kingdom crystalises.

Now there is a counterpole, a polar opposite, to the form of the mineral kingdom, and I ask you to come to an understanding through the following picture. We will approach an important fact in life through a picture. The dissolving of any kind of substance is a very well-known phenomenon, You know that if you throw a certain amount of salt into a certain amount of water, the water is able to dissolve the salt completely, so that it is no longer there in its solid form. You also know that for certain purposes of practical life the solid salt will not do and it has to be dissolved. Now the tendency in earthly evolution to the crystalisation form of the minerals must not be allowed to remain united with the earth any more than for certain practical purposes the salt may retain its solid form. The cook must be able to change the solid form by dissolving it—she must use methods of dissolving, otherwise the salt will be of no use. So too in the cosmos the earth's tendency to crystalise the mineral must be dissolved. This means that a polar counter-tendency must exist which will bring, it about that when the Earth has reached the goal of its evolution and is ready to pass over to the next form, the Jupiter-form, this crystalising tendency is no longer there—has been dissolved, has disappeared. Jupiter must not possess the inclination to crystalise mineral substances. This particular tendency must be reserved solely for the Earth, and it must cease when the Earth has reached the goal of its earthly evolution.

Now the polar opposite to the tendency of crystalising is that other tendency which is imprinted into the human form—not the animal form. Every corpse which we give over to the earth-planet, whether by burial, fire, or in any other way, every corpse deserted by its spirit and soul and in which still works the human form as purely mineralogical form, works in opposition to the crystalising tendency, precisely as negative electricity, works in opposition to positive electricity, or as darkness to light, And at the end of earthly evolution the totality of human forms given over to the earth in the course of this evolution—I repeat: human forms, for in the form of man lies the force-tendency and it is matter of force not substance—these human forms will have cosmically dissolved the mineralising tendency, the crystalisation-tendency in mineralising.

You see how here again we have a point where a bridge is built between two world-currents which natural science cannot build. For natural science investigates what happens to the human form after death solely on the lines of mineralogy and its laws, it looks out for what lies in the earth's tendency to crystalise and deals with the corpse in that way. It can never arrive therefore at what a significant role in the household of the whole being of the earth is played by men, by the dead bodies, the form, of men. The earth has essentially altered since the middle of the Lemurian alter since mineralisation entered and with it the tendency to crystalise. What is less mineral today in the earth less inclined to the crystalisation-tendency than in the middle of the Lemurian age is due to the dissolving forms of human bodies. And when the Earth has reached its goal there will no longer remain any tendency at all to crystalisation. The totality of human forms given over to the earth will have worked as the solar opposite and dissolved crystalisation.

Here we have the event of human death placed into the whole household of world-order as a purely physical phenomenon. Here we have a bridge thrown between two phenomena which otherwise, as the phenomenon of death, remain quite incomprehensible in the household of the world and the phenomena which modern natural science describes. It is important to develop increasingly such concepts as alone give to the natural science world-conception its true, genuine character. What I have described to you here is just as much a fact of natural science as other facts are that are discovered by the natural science of today. But it is a fact which natural science with its present methods cannot discover. It therefore remains of necessity incomplete and cannot grasp the whole of life's phenomena: it must find its completion through spiritual science. And when such laws as this are known—that through the human forms given to the earth-planet the crystalising tendency of the earth is dissolved, then such laws will also make the human spirit ready to enter more deeply into the reality of spiritual evolution.

Those who think and make research only along the lines of modern natural science cannot build the bridge from natural science to social and political science. Those alone who know the great laws resulting from spiritual science which relate to the greatness of nature in the way I have just explained, are able then to lead across the bridge from natural science to the science of man, above all to the historical and political life of mankind. The natural scientist does not hesitate in the least to speak of polarity in nature. He will distinguish two magnetisms, the North and the South, he will distinguish two electricities, the positive and the negative. And if some day natural science is guided more into the right path of Goethe's world-conception, then natural science too will be still more Goetheanism than it can be today, when it is hardly so at all. Then the law of polarity in the whole of nature will be recognised as the fundamental law, as it has indeed already figured in the ancient Mysteries from atavistic clairvoyance. In the ancient Mysteries everything was founded on the knowledge of polarity in the world. In natural science itself, that is, in the knowledge of natural order the scientist of today is not disturbed by recognising polarity, but he will not approach polarity in the human order and spiritual order. Nevertheless, what we call the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic fully correspond as regards the spirit and its ordering, in which man too is placed, with what is recognised in natural science, for instance, as North and South magnetism or as positive and negative electricity. The creation of real harmony between spirit and nature will never be reached unless men find the reality of the concrete polarity of the Ahrimanic and the luciferic in the spirit-ordering. For true reality cannot be found in the abstract ideas which are simply transferred from nature to the spirit, but solely through being able to deepen oneself in the spirit itself and there find the polarities corresponding to the spirit.

And so it must be too with the other natural facts. One cannot simply study natural facts and then say that one should found a spiritual order, a spiritual world-conception on these natural science facts. That leads nowhere. If the spiritual life is to be studied in its reality, if the phenomena of life into which the spirit plays are also to be grasped, then one must decide to study the spirit-orderings themselves. Moreover what has taken place at some period of time or other through human souls or human organisations cannot be explained by natural science, it can only be understood in reality if it is explained through spiritual science.

If, for instance, we look at certain phenomena of present-day culture we must consider to what degree the Luciferic influence is there and to what degree the Ahrimanic. I made this attempt in 1914 before the outbreak of our present catastrophic war, in the lectures I held in Vienna: The Inner Nature of Man and Life Between Death and Rebirth. And I should therefore like to refer you to the decisive passage in which is set forth the whole essence of what is taking place today. I said then: The reason why spiritual science is now here in the world is because the evolution of humanity requires that this realisation of the spiritual worlds and the conditions of existence in them shall become more and more alive in human souls, instinctively at first, then consciously. Let me draw your attention to a purely external phenomenon, but one of immense significance, showing that a grasp of the laws of spiritual existence will become increasingly essential for any true judgment of life on the physical plane.

When we contemplate nature we observe the remarkable fact that in every case a small number only of seeds, of germinating entities, are used in the production of the same species of life, while myriads of seeds come to nothing. Of the myriads of fish-spawn in the sea, only a few become fish; the rest perish. Looking out over the fields we see vast multitudes of grains of corn, only a few of which become plants; as grains of corn the rest perish, being used as food-stuffs and for other purposes. In nature a great deal more has to be produced than actually comes to fruit and again seed in the on-flowing stream of existence. This is a wise provision; for in nature the rule is that what thus deviates from its own inherent stream of existence and fruiting is used in such a way as to serve the other stream of existence. Beings would not be able to live if all seeds actually became fruit and achieved the development possible to them. Seeds must be there to form the soil, as it were, out of which beings can grow. It is only apparently, only in maya, that anything is lost; in reality nothing is lost in nature's creative work. Spirit holds sway in nature, and the fact that something is apparently lost from the on-flowing stream of evolution is founded in the wisdom of the spirit; it is a spiritual law, and these things must be viewed from the standpoint of the spirit. Then we soon perceive that what seems to be diverted from the straightforward stream of world-processes has its well-justified place in existence. This provision is founded in the spirit; hence it can also take effect on the physical plane, to the extent that we had a spiritual life there.

My dear friends, take a concrete case which concerns us very closely. Public lectures have to be given on spiritual science. They are given to audiences brought together simply through the announcements. There is a similarity here to what happens with the grains of corn, only a part of which are used in the direct stream of existence One must not be put off by the fact that the streams of spiritual life have to be brought, apparently without choice, to many, many people, and that then only a few separate out and really enter into this spiritual life, become anthroposophists and join in the on-flowing stream. In this domain it still happens that these scattered seeds find their way to many who, after a public lecture, for example, go away saying: What crazy nonsense the fellow talked! Seen in direct relation to external life, this is life—shall we say—the spawn of fish that come to nothing in the sea. But from the standpoint of deeper investigation it is not so. The souls who through their karma came to a lecture and who then went away saying: What crazy nonsense the fellow talked!—these souls were not yet ready to receive the truth of the spirit, but it is necessary for their souls in the present incarnation to feel the approach of the force inherent in spiritual science. However much they may protest; this force remains in their souls for their next incarnation, and then the seeds have not been lost; they find their ways. With respect to the spiritual, existence is subject to the same laws, no matter whether we are following the working of the spirit in nature or in the case we could quote as our own.

But let us suppose that we wanted to refer this principle also to external, material life, and were to say: Well, people are doing the same thing in external life. Yes, my dear friends, that is just it. What I am now going to describe is happening, and we are living towards a future when it will happen to an ever-increasing extent. Production steadily increases, factories are built without asking: How much is needed?—as used to be the case when the village tailor made a suit only when it was ordered. There it was consumption which indicated how much should be produced, but now production is for the market; the goods are piled up in as large quantities as possible. Production goes on entirely in line with nature's principle. Nature is carried over into the social order. This tendency will, to begin with, more and more gain the upper hand. But here we are in the realm of the material. The spiritual law has no application to external life, precisely because it is valid for the spiritual world;—and something very remarkable results from this. As we are speaking among ourselves, these things can be said; the world today would certainly not understand us.

Goods are now produced for the market without regard to consumption, not according to the principle indicated in my essays on anthroposophy and the Social Questions. What is produced is piled up in warehouses, priced according to the money market, and then the producers wait to see how much is bought. This tendency will steadily increase until—and you will discover why I say the following—until its own nature it destroys itself.

(In this sentence is contained the most important of the present so-called causes of the War; but it is to be derived from spiritual life.)

One who observes social life with spiritual vision sees terrible tendencies to social ulcers springing up everywhere. That is the great anxiety for civilisation which arises in those who see to the roots of existence; that is the terrible fact which weighs so heavily and which—even if one could suppress all other enthusiasm for spiritual science and the impulse which makes one long to proclaim it—makes one long to cry out to the world the remedy for what is already so strongly under way and will gain increasing momentum. In the spreading of spiritual truths there is an element which of its own ground must work as nature works, but this way of working becomes a cancer when it enters into civilisation in the way described.

It was put before you previously in that lecture all that throws light on the Ahrimanic and Luciferic tendencies. But you can clearly see from it that one only arrives at real knowledge of the social cancer or carcinoma-formation if one can find the Ahrimanic and Luciferic tendencies at work in the modern social order, find on the path of reality, not by simply comparing the social life with natural facts. What occurs in the social order must be sought on the spiritual path. And if it is sought on the materialistic path it can amount to no more than at most a comparison, an analogy of social occurrences with abstract facts of nature.

My dear friends, the fact that a number of cancerous tumours exist in modern society was expressed at that time in those lectures of 9th to 14th April 1914 But the expression was in fact a gathering together of what I had stated in various forms throughout our whole anthroposophical development, in order to prepare men for the point of time when the social cancer would reach its special crisis—1914!

There now appears a book which in itself is fairly worthless and stupid. It is by a C. H. Meray, entitled World Mutation, and published by Max Rasoher in Zurich in 1918. I will read you a few paragraphs of this book, the author of which has a merely intellectual grasp of industrial facts. And so just as the lectures on the inner nature of man are able to further reality the author by means of this book furthers the deviation from true reality, the misleading to false thinking. But I will let you hear a few of the sentences. There is an attempt to grasp the development of European and American civilisation merely through analogies, comparisons with facts in nature. Whereas in my lectures of 1914 you have reality, here you have abstract monistic comparisons, analogies which actually say nothing, because when one merely talks of natural facts and then points out that something similar exists in the social order these mere analogies rather darken understanding than shed light But what does this amount to? It is shown how seeds of disintegration have gradually entered western civilisation ever since ancient times aid how civilisation has been eaten into inwardly. Such an apercu is then summarised in words like:

“These unhealthy changes began in the fresh and flourishing early Renaissance cities, in the still purely production City-Republics of the striving citizens, as they had to nourish their giant cancer cells, prepared themselves for it and had to change themselves into an instrument for nourishing a cancerous growth.”

“The formation of this organisation out of which the structure of the modern State emerged, advanced side by side with the metamorphosis of the productive tissue which is definitely not to be regarded as belonging to its own life.”

(He calls regulated civilisation a productive tissue, that is, he picks up only a tissue of natural facts, not the real facts of the spirit.)

“For foreign elements in the body cannot normally come in contact with each other without producing inflammation—as in fact in the beginning such inflammations were produced when the soldiers of the Count of the city came in contact with the citizens (let us remember the bell, signalling the latter to form into bands!). Normally only the complete excision of the poisonous growth would have happened, such an effort was made to begin with and was also followed up later. The moment however the two elements, the cancerous growth and the working tissue, could carry on without inflammation, there arose an abnormality which could only preserve itself under pathological conditions

“Such abnormalities are everywhere to be found in organisms where tumours, ulcers, discharges, in short, foreign elements, are surrounded with a web that no more inflammation arises. The web or tissue which is formed there is a deformity and after the cure can be used for nothing further for the organism. Yet during the illness it serves as a protection for the organism; it forms a structure that renders the poison of the disease harmless to the body, although this formation meanwhile develops immeasurably and can itself become a serious phenomenon of disease.

“Thus the modern State also arose as a deformity of the completely uprooted working life; as it arose , however, the whole tissue had to co-operate for its own protection in order to paralyse the evil in it and remove the disintegrating poison-effects. Accordingly the State arose as a separate structure, interwoven it is true by the productive life, though it never became itself an apparatus of productivity. The whole system of modern political economy developed separately side by side with the State.”

“The wealthiest have the most direct connections with the poisonous growths, as they need an extensive protection for the sale of their goods. Hence they are more eager, and as being rich, also more capable of giving to the Governor a higher nourishment; he needs money, they as the ones who procure it for him; if he wants to accomplish something within the city he turns to the patricians. It lies in the interest of these patricians to strengthen the City-Prince, whereas those whose material business-circle does not extend beyond the walls feel a perpetual natural grudge against the Governor. (Physiologically: a negative chemico-tactic effect). They put up with him really only on account of the protecting of the wall-ring. The toxic effect, however, no longer changes the individuality of the patricians—or only seldom, they seldom become themselves warlike nobles—they belong already far too much to the antitoxic, working tissue. Their wealth has arisen from it and is bound up with it; a toxic effect is certainly shown – not on the individual but on the protoplasm, in the wealth.” (And protoplasm is now the wealth!)

“Whereas formerly wealth was not employed as yet to function as capital, but merely formed the reserves of life and well-being, its rôle now alters: wealth begins to annex to itself processes of work."

In connection with this passage I beg you to remember how in my lectures at Nuremberg in 1908 (on The Apocalypse) I pointed out that direct personal influence had withdrawn from modern industry and that money, that is, capital as such was beginning to work. I spoke of how the modern social order uses such exertion under Ahrimanic influence that someone is now below, now above. Personality no longer counts; it is a matter of the money itself doing business, now throwing someone up, now down again. Funds, accumulation of capital, and its counterpole, credit, this a-personal and anti-personal element is what is to evolve as the Ahrimanic counter-image of Spirit-Self for the future of the social order.

All of this is expressed here in this book in a purely Ahrimanic manner. But, my dear friends, there is a danger that something of this sort gains immense respect, since on every page it makes extensive quotations from natural science. Years after the reality has been pointed out through the researches of spiritual science, this Ahrimanic caricature of spiritual science appears, even with the same words for the same phenomena. This will impress people in spite of misleading and alluring them, because they will never understand reality unless they build the bridge between the purely external facts of natural science which are employed in this book and the purely spiritual-scientific processes which indeed can only be discovered through spiritual science. But it will certainly be accepted as genuine science—just as other similar things which have appeared and which I have spoken about in the course of our lectures—whereas in the near future the scientific nature of spiritual science will most certainly be attacked in a terrible way, in a way which you are not at all willing today to picture in its intensity!

These things, my dear friends, must be thoroughly realised, They must be seen through all the more as they touch upon facts which lie under the semblance of external reality. To possess insight into these facts requires the goodwill to pursue seriously and intelligently with sound human understanding the researches of spiritual science.

Opposite currents, polarities, must be held in balance, That can only be done if continually new influxes come directly from the spiritual world into what happens on earth, that is, if new facts which concern the world are continually revealed out of the spirit.

When once in Rome someone brought a Jesuit up to me, I had a conversation with him about just such things, I knew that it availed nothing and was actually a labour of love quite lost, but there were other reasons for it: there too it is necessary to lock at the true reality and not the outer semblance, I sought to make it clear to the Jesuit that, first, he must himself admit a revelation out of the supersensible in the course of the Mystery of Golgotha and what is written about it through the inspired Evangelists; that, moreover, the Catholic Church in which as a Jesuit he would believe accepts a continued evolution of the spiritual life through its saints. He replied, as was only to be expected: “Yes, that is all true, but that's done with; one must not bring that about of oneself. To work oneself through to spiritual life today is to begin to deal with the devil. One may study the Mystery of Golgotha, study the Gospels, the life of the saints, but unless one wants to fall a prey to demonic powers. one may not try in any way to come into direct relation with the spiritual world.” It is obvious that that would be said from such a quarter, and I could give you many similar examples.

There is the strongest opposition from certain quarters to the flowing in of new and ever newer spiritual truths. The Roman Catholic Church, for instance, is even terribly afraid of spiritism, which of course is not sympathetic to us, because they live in the dread of something coming through a medium from the spiritual world which the Church, living solely in its old traditions, cannot accept. And it fears spiritism because it has materialist foundations and because—so it has believed for decades—it can easily gain followers through the fact that one could find something trickling in on a bypath out of the spiritual world into the world which the Roman Catholic Church wishes to rule.

Now you know, my dear friends, in the 1870s, in 1879, the possibility arose of a powerful, deeply-penetrating flowing-in from the spiritual world. I have often spoken of it, how a conflict that had taken place earlier in the spiritual worlds flowed into the earthly order, in the Michael-order. Since that time special opportunities have been given for men who so wish it to receive spiritual knowledge. Please do not imagine that the initiates of the Roman Catholic Church are not aware of such things! They are of course aware of them, but they construct their protective dams. And precisely in connection with the fact that spiritual life was particularly furthered by the spiritual worlds from the year 1879 on the Roman Catholic Church in a far-seeing way established the Infallibility-dogma in order through this to build a dam against any influx of any sort of new spiritual truths. It is obvious that if people are only allowed to frame their views in accordance with what is announced ex cathedra from Rome in the light of the dogma of Infallibility, then a powerful dam is erected against the inflow of spiritual truths from the spiritual world itself. That is the one thing, the Romish element, which had its natural stipulations in earlier times and brought over from these the rigidity in tradition, the rigidity in excluding the spiritual substance which could flow into the human soul out of the spiritual worlds.

Another stream is to be sought in that Centre which in a high degree—approximately at the time when Rome prepared the Infallibility-dogma—must be assigned to the English and American, the English-speaking peoples. We have already referred here to this occult Centre, in many connections. Just as the traditional element and false idealism in the head brings about the Ahrimanic element in the lower man, so, as you have seen, does materialism bring about the development of the spiritual in the lower man. And when this is not nourished from the head by new spiritual truths which are revealed to the world from time to time it will naturally be seized upon by Luciferic forces, the Luciferic principle. The Centre that has great influence on the English-American peoples (that is the best expression) prefers to reckon with the other pole. The occult Masonry which is anchored in that Centre and from there strongly influences the course of the outer culture of the whole civilised world, just as much promotes materialism—realising things of course—as Rome has promoted it through the papal Infallibility. Through the Infallibility-dogma Rome has intended to erect a dam against the influx of spiritual truths from the spiritual worlds; this Centre consciously promotes the spread of materialism in the modern civilised world, the spread of materialistic ideas in a more or less materialistic mode of life. And the strange thing is that when the Anglo-American initiates speak about Rome as a rule what they say is correct, and however much they inveigh against Rome they say what is right. They too, however, know that there is a spiritual life and that a continuous influx is possible, but they keep that secret and let it flow into civilisation only through unknown channels. And the non-English-speaking peoples in the civilised world have in the last decades, or last half-century, accepted an immense amount of what has flowed in there through this Centre; For these other civilisations in their present structure are in no way individualised, they are largely nourished by the materialistic tendency originating in his Centre.

And again, when Rome speaks about that occult Freemasonry, the Orders, it speaks correctly. One can therefore say that what Rome says is right, what the Freemasons of the West say is also right. That in fact is just the difficulty; these things in the most outstanding sense can be thrusting human nature towards the Luciferic or the Ahrimanic, and yet in what they say they cannot possibly be seized upon because what they say is right; when they speak of each other it is correct.

That is a factor that must be borne in mind very fundamentally in the present cultural tendencies. People nowadays are not inclined to consider what grows out of some affair or other, but merely look at what is expressed verbally in propaganda. But it is not at all a matter of the sounds and words of a propaganda, it is really a matter of making thane lower nature materialistic through materialism in the world of ideas—it becomes, however, spiritualised. And it is supposed to be a matter of making man more moral through an abstract idealism and discussion of every kind of fine ideal—yet one makes him—I speak figuratively of course—obese, materialistic in his lower nature, one makes him heavy and sleepy. And whereas on the one hand a strong tendency exists to scleroticise man Ahrimanically, which is particularly a Jesuit-tendency, there exists on the other hand a definite tendency to place the Luciferic beings in the service of the materialistic world-order, whereby precisely through materialism a spirituality may arise which is however a Luciferic spirituality. It is indeed not enough merely to look in its literal sense at what plays on the surface; one must go into the actual reality, which as is shown precisely by our instances today—however paradoxical they appear, often have an exactly opposite purpose to what one is led to believe through a superficial maya-observation. Things are being done in the world today from many different quarters on the principles of the occult Orders, though they are kept secret. Rome works just as much in accord with occult precepts as that other Centre does. Power lies just in the fact that men are kept in the dark and are not told what is actually going on. Hence arise the hatred and enmity against those who make their appearance and say what is taking place.—Naiveté moreover is especially harmful, the sort of naiveté which men show when they persist in believing that one attains something with these two streams if one tells them that spiritual science can give a beautiful understanding of Christ-Jesus, or something like that, or tells them how the deeper truths of spiritual science are to be found in true Christianity. It is a naiveté to suppose one can win over certain circles by showing them one has a truth which they really must recognise according to their whole hypotheses. That simply calls out hostility. The more we show in certain circles that we have the truth, the greater the hostility, and the more this truth proves effective all the more intense will the enmity appear. In recent times one has only waited to see if the moment would come when anthroposophical books would need larger editions, when thousands and thousands would listen to anthroposophy, in order from certain quarters not because they think anthroposophy says untruth, but because they fear it will say the true—in order to lay hold of this anthroposophy. That is what should be borne in mind. No naiveté should prevail among us, but penetrating knowledge, unbiased, unprejudiced observation of what happens.

It would please me much if you took away a feeling of this from this lecture; for once again let it be recapitulated what I said at the beginning of today's lecture: It is not so much a matter of the details, but of our receiving a firm impression of what lies in the whole spirit of these lectures. And then we must make ourselves more and more capable of taking such a place in the cultural life of today as befits a man of the present who is thoroughly awake and not sleeping.

In the course of these lectures I propose to make some important additions to the enquiry which I undertook here last week.^T1 Our earlier investigation gave us a certain insight into the impulses which determine the recent evolution of mankind. What I now propose to add will emerge from a study of the various turning points in modern history. We will endeavour to study this recent history up to the moment when we shall see how the human soul at the present day is related to the universe, in respect of its evolution within the cosmos and of its inner development in relation to the divine and its ego development in relation to the Spirit. I should like to show the connection between these things and the more or less everyday occurrences which are familiar to you. Therefore I will first take as my point of departure today—and the reasons for this will be apparent tomorrow and the day after tomorrow—the historical survey of the recent evolution of mankind which was to some extent the background to the observations on modern history, observations which I suggested in my public lecture in Zürich yesterday.^T2

From my earlier lectures in which I discussed analogous themes you already know that from the standpoint of spiritual science what is usually called history must be seen as a complex of symptoms. From this point of view what is usually taught as history, the substance of what is called history in the scholastic world, does not touch upon the really vital questions in the evolutionary history of mankind; it deals only with superficial symptoms. We must penetrate beneath the surface phenomena and uncover the deeper layer of meaning in events and then the true reality behind the evolution of mankind will be revealed. Whilst history usually studies historical events in isolation, we shall here consider them as concealing a deeper underlying reality which is revealed when they are studied in their true light.

A little reflection will show how absurd, for example, is the oft repeated assertion that modern man is the product of the past, and this remark invites us to study the history of this past. Recall for a moment the events of history as presented to you at school and ask yourself what influence they may have had, as history claims to show, upon your own sentient life, upon the constitution of your soul! But the study of the constitution of the soul in its present state of development is essential to the knowledge of man, to the knowledge of oneself. But history as usually presented does not favour this self knowledge. A limited self knowledge however is sometimes brought about indirectly. Yesterday, for example, a gentleman told me that he had been given three hours detention because in class one day he had forgotten the date of the battle of Marathon. Clearly such an experience works upon the soul and so might contribute indirectly to a better understanding of the impulses which lead to self knowledge! But the way in which history treats of the battle of Marathon adds little to man's real understanding of himself. None the less, a symptomatology of history must take into account external facts, for the simple reason that by the study and evaluation of these external facts we can gain insight into what really takes place.

I will begin by tracing the main features of contemporary history. The history which we study at school usually begins with the discovery of America and the invention of gunpowder and opens, as you know, with the statement that the Middle Ages have drawn to a close and that we now stand on the threshold of the modern era. Now if such a study is to be fruitful, it is important to turn our attention especially to the real and fundamental changes in human evolution, to those decisive turning-points in history when the life of the soul passes from one stage of development to another stage. These moments of transition usually pass unnoticed because they are overlooked amid the tangled skein of events. Now we know from the purely anthroposophical point of view that the last great turning point in the history of civilization occurred in the early years of the fifteenth century, when the fifth post-Atlantean epoch began. The Greco-Latin epoch opened in 747 B.C. and lasted until the beginning of the fifteenth century which ushered in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Because people only take a superficial view of things they usually fail to recognize that, during this period, the whole of man's soul-life underwent modification. It is manifestly absurd to regard the sixteenth century simply as a continuation of the eleventh or twelfth centuries. People overlook the radical change that occurred towards the beginning of the fifteenth century and persisted in the subsequent years. This point in time is of course only approximate; but what is not approximate in life? Whenever one stage of evolution which is to some extent complete in itself passes over into another stage we must always speak of approximation. It is impossible to determine the precise moment when an individual arrives at puberty; the onset is gradual and then runs its course to full physical maturity. And the same applies, of course, to the year 1413 which marks the birth of the Consciousness Soul. The new consciousness develops gradually and does not immediately manifest itself everywhere in full maturity and with maximum vigour. We completely fail to understand historical change unless we give due consideration to the moment when events take on a new orientation.

When, looking back to the period before the fifteenth century, we wish to enquire into and compare the predominant condition of the human soul at that time with the progressive transformation of this psychic condition after the beginning of the fifteenth century, we cannot help turning our attention to the real situation which existed in civilised Europe throughout the whole of the Middle Ages and which was still intimately related to the whole psychic condition of the Greco-Latin epoch. I am referring to the form which Catholicism that was subject to the Papacy had gradually developed over the centuries out of the Roman Empire. We cannot understand Catholicism before the great turning point which marks the birth of modern times unless we bear in mind that it was a universalist impulse and that, as such, it spread far and wide. Now mediaeval society was hierarchically ordered; men were grouped according to social status, family connections; they were organized in craft and merchant guilds, etcetera. But all these social stratifications were indoctrinated with Catholicism, and in the form that Christianity had assumed under the impact of various impulses of which we shall learn more in the following lectures (and under the impact of those impulses which I mentioned in earlier lectures). The expansion of Catholicism was characterized by the form of Christianity which was decisively influenced by Rome in the way I have indicated.

The Catholicism which emanated from Rome and developed after its own fashion through the centuries was a universalist impulse, the most powerful force animating European civilization. But it counted upon a certain unconsciousness of the human soul, a susceptibility of the human soul to suggestionism. It counted upon those forces with which the human soul had been endowed for centuries when it was not yet fully conscious—(it has only become fully conscious in our present epoch). It counted upon those who were only at the stage of the Rational or Intellectual Soul and calculated that by its power of suggestion it could slowly implant into their affective life what it deemed to be useful. And amongst the educated classes—which consisted of the clergy for the most part—it counted upon a keen and critical intelligence which had not yet arrived at the stage of the Consciousness Soul. The development of theology as late as the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries showed that it relied upon a razor-sharp intelligence. But if you take the intelligence of today as the measure of man's intelligence you will never really understand what was meant by intelligence up to the fifteenth century. Up to that time intelligence was to some extent instinctive, it had not yet been impregnated with the Consciousness Soul. Mankind did not yet possess the capacity for independent reflection which came only with the development of the Consciousness Soul. None the less men displayed on occasions astonishing acumen to which many of the mediaeval disputations bear witness, for many of these disputations were debated with greater intelligence than the doctrinal disputes of later theology. But this was not the intelligence that was an expression of the Consciousness Soul, it was the intelligence which, in popular parlance, came from ‘on high’; esoterically speaking it was a manifestation of the Angelos, a faculty not yet under man's control. Independent thinking became possible only when he achieved self dependence through the Consciousness Soul. When a universalist impulse is diffused in this way through the power of suggestion, as was the case with the Roman Papacy and everything associated with it in the structure of the Church, then it is much more the community, the Group Soul element, everything that is related to the Group Soul that is affected. And this spirit of self-dependence also affected Catholicism, with the result that under the influence of certain impulses of contemporary history this universalist impulse of expanding Catholicism found in the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation its battering ram. We will discuss these matters from another standpoint later on. We see how the expansion of universal Roman Catholicism was prosecuted amid continuous conflict and contention with the Roman Empire. One need only refer to the period of the Carolingians and the Hohenstaufens¹ in the standard history books to find that the fundamental issue was the incorporation of Europe into a universal Christian church of Roman Catholic persuasion.

If we wish to have a clear understanding of these matters from the point of view of the dawning Consciousness Soul we must consider an important turning point which, symptomatically, reveals the waning of Catholic power which had dominated the Middle Ages. And this turning point in modern history is the transference of the Pope to Avignon in 1309.² Such a challenge to the papacy would formerly have been impossible and shows that mankind which formerly had been dominated by a universalist impulse now begins to undergo a transformation. That a king or an emperor could have entertained the idea of transferring the residence of the Pope from Rome to some other city would have been inconceivable in earlier times. In 1309 the matter was quickly dealt with—the Pope was transferred to Avignon and the next decades witnessed the endless quarrels between popes and anti-popes associated with this transference of the papal court. And a victim of this conflict within the Church was the Order of the Templars,³ which had been loosely associated with the Papacy, though of course its relationship to Christianity was totally different. The Order was suppressed in 1312 shortly after the removal of the Pope to Avignon. This is a turning point in modern history and we must consider this turning point not only in respect of its factual content, but as a symptom, if we wish gradually to discover the reality concealed behind it.

Let us now turn our attention to other symptoms of a similar kind at the time of this turning point in history. As we survey the continent of Europe we are struck by the fact that its life, largely in the Eastern areas, is profoundly influenced by those events which operate in the course of history after the fashion of natural phenomena. I am referring to the continuous migrations, beginning with the Mongol invasions⁴ in the not far distant past, which poured in from Asia and introduced an Asiatic element into Europe. When we link an event such as the transference of the Papacy to Avignon with these invasions from the East we establish important criteria for a symptomatology of history. Consider the following: in order to understand not the inward and spiritual, but the external and human tendencies and influences which were connected with the event of Avignon and prepare the ground for it, you need not look beyond a coherent complex of human acts and decisions. But you will find no such coherent pattern of events when you consider the time between the Mongol invasions and the later penetration of the Turks into Europe. But when studying any historical event, a complex of facts of this kind, you must consider the following if you really wish to arrive at a symptomatology of history.

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Let us assume for the moment that here is Europe and here is Asia. The columns of the invading armies are advancing towards Europe. One of these columns, let us assume, has penetrated as far as this frontier. On the one side are the Mongols and later the Turks; on the other side the Europeans. When considering the event of Avignon you find a complex of acts and decisions taken by men. There is no such complex across the frontier. You have to consider two aspects, the one on this side of the frontier, the other on the other side. For the Europeans the Mongolian wave that sweeps across the frontier resembles a natural phenomenon of which one sees only the external effects. The invaders pour across the frontier, invade the neighbouring territory and harass the inhabitants; behind them lies a whole culture of the soul of which they are the vehicle. Their own inner life lies behind the frontier. But this psychic life does not reach beyond the frontier which acts as a kind of sieve through which passes only energies akin to the elemental forces of nature. These two aspects—the inner aspect which is found amongst those who live behind this frontier and the aspect which shows only its external face to the Europeans—these are not to be found, of course, in the episode of Avignon, where everything forms a single complex, a composite whole. Now an occurrence such as these Asiatic invasions closely resembles what one sees in nature. Imagine you are looking at the world of nature ... You see the colours, you hear the sounds—but these are external trappings. Behind lies the spirit, behind are the elemental beings which are active up to the point where the frontier begins. (See diagram.) You see with your eyes, hear with your ears, you experience by touch—and behind lies the spirit which does not cross the frontier, does not manifest itself. Such is the situation in nature, but in history it is not quite the same, though somewhat similar. The psychic element behind history does not manifest itself, we see only its external appearance.

It is most important to bear in mind this strange intermediate zone, this no man's land, where peoples or races clash, revealing to each other only their external aspects—this strange intermediate zone (which must also be reckoned among the symptoms) between actual universal experience of the human soul such as we see in the event of Avignon and the genuine impressions of nature. All the historical twaddle which has come to the fore recently, and which has no idea of the operation of this intermediate zone, cannot arrive at a true history of civilization. For this reason, neither Buckle nor Ratzel⁵ (I mention two historians of widely divergent outlook), could arrive at a true history of civilization because they started from the preconceived idea: of two events, if one follows from the other, then the later event must be considered as the effect and the earlier event the cause—the common sense view that is generally accepted.

When we consider this event as a symptomatic event in the recent evolution of mankind, then, as we shall see in later lectures, it will provide a bridge from the symptoms to reality.

Now from the complex of facts we see emerging in the West of Europe a more or less homogeneous configuration at first, which later gives birth to France and England. Leaving aside for the moment the external elements such as the channel, which is simply a geographical factor separating the two countries, it is difficult at first to distinguish between them. In the period when modern history begins French culture was widespread in England. English kings extended their dominion to French territory, and members of the respective dynasties each laid claim to the throne of the other country. But at the same time we see emerging one thing, which throughout the Middle Ages was also associated with what the universalist impulse of Catholicism had to some extent relegated to the background. I mentioned a moment ago that at this time communities were already in existence; families were cemented by the blood-tie to which they clung tenaciously; men were organized in craft guilds or corporations, etcetera. All these organizations were permeated by the powerful and authoritative universalist Catholic impulse moulded by Rome which dominated them and set its seal upon them. And just as this Roman Catholic impulse had relegated the guilds and other corporate bodies to a subordinate role, so too national identity suffered the same fate. At the time when Roman Catholicism exercised its greatest dynamic power national identity was not regarded as the most important factor in the structure of the human soul. Consciousness of nationality now began to be looked upon as something vastly more important than it had been when Catholicism was all powerful. And significantly it manifested itself in those countries I have just mentioned. But whilst the general idea of nationhood was emerging in France and England an extremely significant differentiation was taking place at the same time. Whilst for centuries these countries had shared a common purpose, differences began to emerge in the fifteenth century. The first indications are seen in the appearance of Joan of Arc in 1429, a most important turning point in modern history. It was this appearance of Joan of Arc which gave the impetus and if you consult the manuals of history you will see how important, powerful and continuous this impetus was—which led to the differentiation between the French and the English character.

Thus we see the emergence of nationalism as the architect of the community and at the same time this differentiation which is so significant for the evolution of modern mankind. This turning point is marked by the appearance of Joan of Arc in 1429. At the moment when the impulse of the Papacy is compelled to release from its clutches the population of Western Europe, at that moment the consciousness of nationality gathers momentum in the West and shapes its future. Do not allow yourselves to be misled in this matter. As history is presented today you can, of course, find in the past of every people or nation a consciousness of nationality. But you do not attach any importance to the potent influence of this force. Take, for example, the Slav peoples: under the influence of modern ideas and currents of thought they will of course trace back as far as possible the origin of their national sentiments and forces. But in the period of which we are speaking the national impulses were particularly active so that, in the territories I have just mentioned, there was an epoch when these impulses underwent a profound modification. And this is what matters. If we wish to apprehend reality we must make strenuous efforts to achieve objectivity. Another symptomatic fact which also reveals the emergence of the Consciousness Soul—like the one I have just mentioned—is the strange fashion in which the Italian national consciousness developed out of the levelling influence of the Papacy which, as we have seen, relegated the national impulse to a subordinate role, an influence which had hitherto pervaded the whole of Italy. Fundamentally it was the national impulse which emancipated the people of Italy from papal sovereignty at this time. All these facts are symptoms which are inherent in the epoch when, in Europe, the civilization of the Consciousness Soul seeks to emerge from the civilization of the Rational and Intellectual Soul.

At the same time—we are anticipating of course—we see the beginning of the conflict between Central and Eastern Europe. What emerged from what I described as the ‘battering ram’ of the Papacy, from the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, came into conflict with Slav expansionism.

The most diverse historical symptoms bear witness to this interaction between Central and Eastern Europe. In history one must not attach so much importance to princely families or personages as modern historians are wont to do. After all only a Wildenbruch⁶ could throw dust in people's eyes by pretending that the farce played out between Louis the Pious and his sons had historical significance. Only a Wildenbruch could present these family feuds in his dramas as historically important. They have no more significance than any other domestic gossip; they have nothing to do with the evolution of mankind. It is only when we study the symptomatology of history that we develop a feeling for what is really important and what is relatively unimportant in the evolution of mankind. In modern times the conflict between Central and Eastern Europe has important implications. But in reality Ottokar's conflict with Rudolf⁷ is only an indication; it is a pointer to what actually happened. On the other hand it is most important not to take a narrow view of this conflict. We must realize that, during this continuous confrontation, a colonizing activity began which carried the peasants from Central to Eastern Europe and in later years from the Rhine to Siebenbürgen. These peasant migrations, through the mingling of Central and Eastern European elements, had a profound influence upon the later development of life in these areas. Thus the Slavs whose expansionist policy came into conflict with what had developed in Central Europe out of the Holy Roman Empire were continuously infiltrated by Central European colonists moving eastwards. And from this strange process emerged that which later became the Hapsburg power. But another consequence of this ferment in Europe was the formation of certain centres which developed a particular cast of mind within the urban communities. The main period when the towns throughout Europe developed their specifically urban outlook lies between the thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries. What I have described in a previous lecture^T3 penetrated into these towns; in these towns men were able to develop their individual characteristics.

Now it is a remarkable and significant phenomenon that after the separate development of France and England, there emerged in England at this time, after slow and careful preparation, that which later became the system of parliamentary government in Europe. As a result of the long civil wars which lasted from 1452–1480, we see developing, amongst manifold external symptoms, the historical symptom of embryonic parliamentary government. When the era of the Consciousness Soul opened in the early fifteenth century people wanted to take their affairs into their own hands. They wanted to debate, to discuss, to have a say in future policies and to shape external events accordingly—or at least liked to imagine that they shaped events. This spirit of independence—as a result of the disastrous civil wars in the fifteenth century—developed in England out of that configuration which was markedly different from what had also arisen in France under the influence of the national impulse. Parliamentary Government in England developed out of the national impulse. We must clearly recognize that, through the birth of parliamentary government as a consequence of the English civil wars in the fifteenth century, we see the interplay, or, if you like, the interpenetration, the interfusion of the emergent national idea on the one hand, and on the other hand an impulse clearly orientated towards that which the Consciousness Soul seeks to realize. And for reasons that we shall see later, it is precisely because of these events that the impulse of the Consciousness Soul breaks through in England and assumes the character of that national impulse; hence its peculiarly English flavour or nuance. We have now considered many of the factors which shaped Europe at the beginning of the age of the Consciousness Soul.

Behind all this, concealed as it were in the background, a virtual enigma to Europe, we see developing the later configuration of Russia, rightly regarded as an unknown quantity because it bears within it the seeds of the future. But first of all it is born of tradition, or, at least, of that which does not come from the Consciousness Soul and certainly not from the human soul. ... None of the three elements which helped to fashion the configuration of Russia originated in the Russian soul. The first was the heritage of Byzantium, of Byzantine Catholicism; the second was that which had streamed in through the mingling of Nordic and Slav blood; the third was that which was transmitted by Asia. None of these three elements was the creation of the Russian soul; but it was these elements which moulded that strange, enigmatic structure which developed in the East and was concealed from the happenings in Europe.

Let us now try to find the common characteristic of all these things, of all these symptoms. They have one common characteristic which is very striking. We need only compare the real driving forces in human evolution today with those of former times and we perceive a significant difference which will indicate to us the quintessential character of the culture of the Consciousness Soul and that of the Rational and Intellectual Soul.

In order to see this situation in clearer perspective we can compare it with the impulse of Christianity which in every man must spring from the inmost depths of his being, an impulse which passes over into the events of history, but which springs from man's inner life. In the evolution of the earth Christianity is the most powerful impulse of this nature. We can, of course, consider impulses of lesser import, for example, those which influenced Roman civilization throughout the Augustan age, or we need only glance at the rich efflorescence of the Greek soul. We see everywhere new creative impulses entering into the evolution of mankind. In this respect, however, our present epoch brings to birth nothing new; at best we can speak of a rebirth, a revival of the past, for all the impulses which are operative here no longer spring from the human soul. The first thing that strikes us is the national idea, as it is often called—more correctly one should speak of the national impulse. It is not a creation of the individual soul, but is rooted in what we have received from inheritance, in what is already established. What emerges from the manifold spiritual impulses of Hellenism is something totally different. This national impulse is a rightful claim to something which is already present like a product of nature. As member of a national group man creates nothing of himself; he merely underlines the fact that, in a certain sense, he has developed naturally like a plant, like a member of the natural order. I intentionally called your attention earlier on to the fact that Asia's contribution to Europe (and only its external aspect was perceptible to European culture) was something natural and spontaneous. The irruption of the Mongols, and later of the Osmanlis⁸ into Europe, though their influence was considerable, did not lead to any creative impulse in Europe. Russia too produced no creative impulse, nothing that was particularly characteristic of the Russian soul. This was the work solely of the Byzantine and Asiatic element, this mixture of Nordic and Slav blood. In these peoples it is given facts, facts of nature which determine the lives of men—nothing in reality is created by the human soul. Let us bear this in mind, for it will serve as a point of departure for what is to follow. From the fifteenth century on the demands of mankind are of a totally different character.

Hitherto we have considered the external facts of history; let us now turn to the more inward happenings which are related more to the impulse of the Consciousness Soul which is breaking through the shell of the human soul. Let us consider, for example, the Council of Constance⁹ and the burning of Hus. In Hus we see a personality who stands out, so to speak, like a human volcano. The Council of Constance which passed sentence on him opened in 1414, in the early years of the fifteenth century which marked the birth of the Consciousness Soul. Now in the annals of modern history Hus stands out as a symbol of protest against the suggestionism of the universalist impulse of Catholicism. In Jan Hus the Consciousness Soul itself rebels against all that the Rational or Intellectual soul had received from this universalist Catholic impulse. And this was not an isolated phenomenon—we could show how this ground had already been prepared by the struggle of the Albigenses against Catholic domination. In Savanarola in Italy and in others we see the revolt of the autonomous personality who wishes to arrive at his religious faith by relying upon his own judgement and rejects the suggestionism of papal Catholicism. And this same spirit of independence persists in Luther, in the emancipation of the Anglican Church from Rome (an extremely interesting and significant phenomenon), and in the Calvinist influence in certain regions of Europe. It is like a wave that sweeps over the whole of civilized Europe; it is an expression of the inner life, something more inward than the other influences, something which is already more closely linked with the soul of man, but in a different way from before.

After all, what do we admire in Calvin, in Luther when we consider them as historical figures? What do we admire in those who liberated the Anglican Church from Roman Catholic tutelage?—Not new creative ideas, not fresh spiritual insights, but the energy with which they endeavoured to pour traditional ideas into a new mould. Whereas these traditional ideas had formerly been accepted by the Rational or Intellectual Soul which was more instinctive or less conscious, they had now to be accepted by the Consciousness Soul which is autonomous. But this did not lead to the birth of new ideas, a new confession of faith. Time-honoured ideas are called in question, but no new symbol is found to replace them. The further we look back into the past—just think of the wealth of symbols created by man! Truly, a symbol such as the symbol of the Eucharist had to be created one day by the soul of man. In the age of Luther and Calvin there were endless disputes over the Eucharist as to whether it should be administered in both kinds or in one kind! But an autonomous impulse, an individual creation of the human soul was nowhere to be found. The dawning of the Consciousness Soul signifies a new relationship to these problems but does not herald the birth of new impulses.

When this new epoch dawns the budding Consciousness Soul is operative in it and manifests itself in historical symptoms. On the one hand we see the national impulses at work, on the other hand we see, striking at the very roots of religious faith, the revolt of the personality that strives for autonomy because the Consciousness Soul seeks to burst its bonds. And we must study the effects of these two forces when we consider the further development of the two representative national states, France and England. These forces gather strength, but are clearly differentiated and show how the two impulses, that of nationalism and that of personality, react upon each other differently in France and England. They create nothing new, but show the traditional past under new forms as the basis for the historical structure of Europe. This reinforcement of the national impulse is particularly evident in England where the personal element that in Hus, for example, assumed the form of religious pathos, unites with the national element, and the impulse of personality, of the Consciousness Soul, increasingly paves the way for parliamentary government, so that in England everything takes on a political aspect. In France—by contrast—despite the national element that exercises a powerful influence by reason of the native temperament and other things—the independence, the autonomy of the personality predominates and gives another nuance. Whilst England lays greater emphasis upon the national element, in France the active tendency is visibly more towards the element of personality. One must make a close study of these things.

That these forces act objectively—they are in no way connected with the arbitrary actions of man—can be seen in the case where the one impulse is operative, but bears no fruit; it remains sterile because it finds no external support and because the counter-impulse is still sufficiently powerful to neutralize it. In France the national impulse had such a powerful impact that it was able to liberate the French people from the authority of the Pope and this explains why it was France that compelled the Pope to reside at Avignon and why in France the ground was prepared for the emancipation of the personality. In England too the national impulse exercised a powerful influence, but at the same time, as a natural inheritance, the impulse of personality was equally strong. In the field of culture the whole nation was to a large extent free from Roman influence and developed its own doctrinal structure. In Spain the same impulse was at work but could neither penetrate the existing national element, nor, like the personality, overcome the power of suggestionism. Here everything remained in an embryonic state and became decadent before it had time to develop.

External events, what are usually called historical facts, are in reality only symptoms. This is obvious after a moment's reflection. In 1476 an important battle was fought on Swiss soil. The defeat of Charles the Bold in the battle of Murten was an extremely significant symptom, for it gave the death blow to chivalry that was closely associated with the Papacy. In the battle of Murten we see a trend that was already spreading through the whole of civilized Europe at that time, a trend that to some extent only came to light in a typically representative phenomenon (i.e. the battle of Murten).

When a phenomenon of this nature emerges on the surface it meets with counter-pressure from the past. The normal course of evolution, as you know, is always accompanied by Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces which derive from backward impulses and seek to assert themselves. Every normal impulse entering into mankind must fight against the subtle invasion of Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces. Thus the impulse that was clearly manifest in Hus, Luther, Calvin and Wyclif had to battle with these forces. A symptom of this struggle is seen in the revolt of the United Netherlands and in the Luciferic-Ahrimanic personality of Philip of Spain. And one of the most significant turning points of modern times was the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. With this defeat those forces which, emanating from Spain, had offered the strongest resistance to the emancipation of the personality were finally eliminated. The Dutch wars of independence and the defeat of the Armada are external symptoms and nothing more. In order to arrive at the underlying reality we must be prepared to probe beneath the surface, for when these ‘waves’ are thrown up we are the better able to see the inner reality of events. The wave of 1588, when the Armada was defeated, illustrates how the personality which, in the process of emancipation, seeks to develop within itself the Consciousness Soul, rose in revolt against the petrified forms inherited from the Rational or Intellectual soul.

It is absurd to regard historical evolution as a temporal series of causes and effects, the present as the consequence of the past, cause—effect, cause—effect, etcetera. That is extremely convenient, especially when one takes the academic approach to historical research. It is so very convenient—simply to stagger along step by step from one historical fact to the next. But if one is not blind or asleep, if one looks at things with an open mind, the historical symptoms themselves show how absurd such an approach is.

Let us take an historical symptom which is most illuminating from a certain point of view. All the new developments from the fifteenth century onwards which are characterized by the impulses I have already indicated—the rise of nationalism, the awakening of personality—all this evoked conflicts and antagonisms which led to the Thirty Years' War. The account of this war as presented by history is seldom dealt with from the standpoint of symptomatology. It can hardly be treated after the fashion of café chatter. After all it was of little importance for the destiny of Europe that Martinitz, Slavata and Fabricius¹⁰ were thrown out of the window of the royal palace in Prague and would have been killed had there not been a dungheap beneath the window which saved the lives of the emperor's emissaries. In reality the dungheap is supposed to have consisted of scraps of paper that the servants of the Hradschin had thrown out of the window and had left lying there until they finally formed a pile of rubbish. This anecdote provides a pleasant topic for cafe chatter, but one cannot pretend that it has any bearing on the evolution of mankind!

When we begin to study the Thirty Years' War—I need hardly remind you that it began in 1618—it is important to bear in mind that the cause of the war lies solely in confessional differences, in what had developed in opposition to the old Catholicism, to the old Catholic impulses. Everywhere serious conflicts had arisen through this antagonism between the recent development of personality and the suggestionism of the old Catholicism. When the conflict was brought to an end by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648¹¹ we ask ourselves the question: how did matters stand in 1648 in respect of this conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism? What had come of it? What changes had taken place in the course of thirty years? Nothing strikes us more forcibly than the fact that in this conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism and in everything connected with it the situation in 1648 was exactly the same as it had been in 1618. Though, meanwhile, certain issues which had been the source of discord had been modified somewhat, the situation in Central Europe had remained unchanged since the outbreak of hostilities. But the intervention of foreign powers which was in no way connected with the causes of the conflict of 1618, this intervention, after the powers had found scope for their activity, gave a totally different complexion to the political forces in Europe. The political horizon of those who had been involved in the war was completely transformed. But the results of the peace of Westphalia, the changed situation in relation to the past, this had nothing whatsoever to do with the causes of the conflict in 1618.

This fact is extremely important, especially in the case of the Thirty Years' War, and illustrates how absurd it is to consider history, as is the usual practice, in terms of cause and effect. However, the consequence of these developments was that England and France owed their leading position in Europe to the outcome of this war. But their supremacy was in no way connected with the causes which provoked the war. And a most important factor in the march of modern history is this: following upon the Thirty Years' War the national impulses, in conjunction with the other impulses which I have described elsewhere, develop in such a way that France and England become the representative national states. There is much talk at the present time of the national principle in the East; but we must not forget that this principle passed from the West to the East. Like the trade winds, the national impulse flowed from West to East and we must bear this clearly in mind.

Now it is interesting to see how the same impulse—the national impulse in conjunction with the emancipation of the personality—assumes a totally different form in the two countries, where, as we saw, they began to be clearly differentiated in 1429. In France the emancipation of the personality within the national group develops in such a way that it turns inward. That is to say, if the national element is represented by the red line in the diagram below and on the one side of the line is the individual human being, and on the other side mankind, then in France the development of the national impulse is orientated towards man, towards the individual, in England towards mankind. France modifies the national element within the nation state in such a way that the national element tends to transform the inner being of man, to make him other than he is. In England the personal element transcends nationalism and seeks to embrace the whole world and to promote everywhere the development of the personality. The Frenchman wishes rather to develop the personal element in the soul, the Englishman to extend the principle of personality to the whole of mankind. Here we see two entirely different trends—in both cases the basis is the national element. In the one case the national impulse turns inwards, towards the individual soul; in the other it is directed outwards, towards the soul of mankind. In England and France therefore we have two parallel streams with two sharply contrasting tendencies. Only in France therefore, where the inner life of the personality was deeply influenced, could the political and social configuration which developed as I have described lead to the Revolution—via Louis XIV, etcetera. In England the national impulse led to a sober liberalism, because here it expressed itself externally, whilst in France it expressed itself inwardly, in the inner life of man.

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This phenomenon, strangely enough, manifests itself also geographically, especially when we consider another turning point in modern history as symptom—the defeat of Napoleon, who was a product of the French Revolution, by the English at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805. What is revealed to us here? Napoleon, a strange representative it is true, but nonetheless a representative of the French makeup, signifies the withdrawal inwards—and geographically too, the withdrawal to the continent of Europe. If the following diagram represents Europe—Napoleon, precisely as a consequence of the battle of Trafalgar, is thrust back towards Europe (see arrow) and England is thrust outwards towards the whole world in the opposite direction. At the same time let us not forget that these two tendencies have need of conflict, they must try conclusions with each other. And this is what happened in the struggle for supremacy in North America, which in some respects is a consequence of this turning point in 1805. Looking back a few decades before this date we see how the specifically French nuance, Romanism, is ousted in the interests of the world by the Anglo-Saxon element in North America.

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Thus you can sense, if you really wish to, the forces which are at work here; like the magician's apprentice the impulse of the Consciousness Soul conjures up national impulses which implant themselves in mankind in divers forms and with different nuances. We can only understand these things if we study the impulse of the Consciousness Soul in all its aspects, avoiding all prejudice and keeping our eyes open for what is important and what is unimportant and also for what is more or less characteristic so that from our observation of external symptoms we can then penetrate to the inner pattern of reality. For external appearances often belie the inner impulse of the personality, especially in an epoch when the personality is self-dependent. And this, too, becomes apparent when we study symptomatically the development of modern history. What is taught as history in our schools is quite unreal. The real facts are as follows: here is the surface movement of the water, here is the current (shaded red in the diagram.)

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Now there are times when there breaks through into historical events—like the waves thrown up here, sometimes with the violence of a volcanic eruption—what lies beneath the surface. At other times, events emerge on the surface, and isolated historical events betray what lies beneath the surface. As symptoms they are especially characteristic. But sometimes there are symptoms where one must totally ignore external appearances when looking at the symptomatic fact.

Now there is a personality who is especially characteristic of the emergence of the impulse of the Consciousness Soul in Western Europe, both on account of his personal development and on account of the place he occupies in contemporary history. At the beginning of the seventeenth century he was involved in this differentiation between the French impulse and the English impulse, a differentiation that had exercised a widespread influence upon the rest of Europe. In the seventeenth century this differentiation had been effective for some time and had become more pronounced. The personality who appeared on the stage of history at this time was a strange individual, whom we can depict in the following way: one could say that he was extremely generous, filled with deep and genuine gratitude for the knowledge imparted to him, infinitely grateful, in fact a model of gratitude for the kindness men showed towards him. He was a scholar who combined in his person almost the entire erudition of his day, a personality who was extremely peace-loving, a sovereign indifferent to the intrigues of the world, wholly devoted to the ideal of universal peace, extremely prudent in decisions and resolutions, and most kindly disposed towards his fellow men. Such is the portrait that one could sketch of this personality. If one takes a partial view, it is possible to portray him in this way and this is the external view that history presents.

It is also possible to portray him from another angle which is equally partial. One could say that he was an outrageous spendthrift without the slightest notion of his financial resources, a pedant, a typical professor whose erudition was shot through with abstractions and pedantry. Or one could say that he was timid and irresolute, and whenever called upon to defend some principle he would evade the issue out of pusillanimity, preferring peace at any price. It could also be said of him that he was shrewd or crafty and wormed his way through life by artfully choosing the path that always guaranteed success. Or that he endeavoured to establish relationships with others as children are wont to do. His friendships betrayed a frankly childish element which, in his veneration for others and in the adulation others accorded him, was transformed into romantic infatuation. One can adopt either of these points of view. And in fact there were some who described him from the one angle, others from the other angle, and many from both angles. Such was the historical personality of James I¹² who reigned from 1603 to 1625. Whichever point of view we take, in both cases the cap fits perfectly. In neither case do we know what he really felt or thought as a typical representative of contemporary evolution. And yet, precisely in the epoch when James I was King of England a hidden current rises to the surface and the symptoms manifested at that time are characteristic of the underlying reality. We will speak more of this tomorrow.

• T1. Das Geschichtsleben der Menschheit, Dornach, October, 1918. Lectures included in Die Polarität von Dauer und Entwickelung im Menschenleben (Bibl. Nr. 184).
• T2. Die Geschichte der Neuzeit im Lichte der Geisteswissenschaftlicher Forschung 17th October, 1918 (included in Bibl. Nr. 73).
• 1 . Carolingian and Hohenstaufen dynasties marked by the struggle between Empire and Papacy.
• 2 . A French bishop, Clement V, is elected to the papal throne. The papal court transferred to Avignon 1309. Beginning of the ‘Babylonian Captivity’.
• 3 . Knights Templar. Founded 1118 by Hugues de Payen to protect pilgrims on their way to the Holy Sepulchre. After their defeat at Acre 1291 they took refuge in Cyprus. The order was denounced 1307 by the Inquisition; their property was sequestrated. The Templars were arrested and most, including the leader, Jacques Molay, tortured and burnt. Papal Bull 1312 suppressed the Order.
• 4 . Mongol invasions. After destroying the power of China and Islam in Central Asia, the armies of Chingis Khan (1167–1227) advanced through Georgia, overran the Ukraine and the Crimea and destroyed three Russian armies (1222–3). A renewed invasion of Russia began in 1237 under Ögödei. The Mongols captured Moscow, Rostov, Yaroslavl and destroyed the army of the Grand Duke. In 1240 they advanced towards Poland and Hungary and reached Pesth. Another army overran Lithuania and East Prussia. Archduke Henry of Silesia was defeated at Liegnitz by a force under Kaidu and in 1241 all Hungary fell to the Mongols. The death of Ögödei in 1241 saved Western Europe from further invasion. A full account will be found in The Mongols by E. D. Phillips, Thames & Hudson, 1969. Also, The Mongols and Russia by G. Vernadsky, Yale, 1959.
• 5 . H. T. Buckle (1822–62) English historian. His chief work was the History of Civilisation in England (1857–61). He saw in the law of causality the determining factor in history. Freidrich Ratzel (1844–1904). Geographer and professor in Munich and Leipzig.
• 6 . Ernst von Wildenbruch (1845–1909). Author of historical dramas Die Karolinger 1881, Die Quitzows 1888, etcetera. Filled with a sense of priestly mission. His plays are patriotic, rhetorical and rely upon stage effects. ‘He was capable of raising a storm to put out a night light!’
• 7 . Ottokar II (1253–78), King of Bohemia, was compelled to surrender Austria, Styria and Carinthia to Rudolf of Hapsburg. He refused to recognize the validity of Rudolf's election as emperor and was defeated and mortally wounded at the battle of Marchfeld 1278.
• T3. Die Geschichte des Mittelalters bis zu den grossen Erfindungen und Entdeckungen, Berlin, October—December, 1904.
• 8 . Osmanlis or Ottomans, a western Turkish race named after their leader Osman I or Ottoman (d. 1326) who founded the Turkish empire by conquering western Asia Minor. A nomadic people.
• 9 . Council of Constance (1414–18). John Hus was summoned to defend himself before the Church authorities against the charge of heresy. Refused to recant and was convicted and burnt.
• 10. Defenestration of Prague 1618. Protestant meetings prohibited by Imperial decree. Calvinists invaded the Hradschin Palace in Prague and threw the Imperial regents, Martinitz and Slavata, together with their secretary, Fabricius, out of the window on to the courtyard fifty feet below. A Bohemian rebellion now became inevitable.
• 11. Peace of Westphalia 1648. Religious clauses a return to the Peace of Augsburg 1565—‘cujus regio, ejus religio’. Territorial and political implications of the treaty of great significance in European history.
• 12. James I of England or James VI of Scotland aptly described by Henry IV of Navarre and Sully as the ‘wisest fool in Christendom.’