The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dearly beloved! In many respects it is already extraordinarily difficult today to penetrate with a certain understanding into [the life and work of] figures of the past who are not too far behind us. But the difficulties become especially great when we are to penetrate into the depths of the soul and the workings of such human individuals who, in the very, very distant past – one might say in prehistoric times – placed themselves with their work in culture, in the development of humanity. And such a figure, such an individuality should arise before our spiritual gaze today in the often mentioned figure of the old Persian founder of religion and world view, Zarathustra, or, as it is also said, Zoroaster.

I said that it is relatively difficult for us today to really objectively understand thinking and feeling that is not so far behind us. Nowadays, one has the strong feeling that when one believes to have understood something and regards one's knowledge as the truth, it is in a sense the only true truth and that everything else is wrong, basically nonsense. The fact that truth and human knowledge itself are subject to development, that each epoch is forced to look at the riddles of the world in its own way and solve them to a certain degree, that each epoch must speak a different language, so to speak, about these riddles of the world – this is not well understood today. We can only hope that the descendants of today's human race will not behave towards it as we so easily behave towards our ancestors.

Who would not decree today from his strict, let us say scientific, throne that a mind like Paracelsus', who lived and worked so little time ago, was full of the prejudices of an era long past, with all kinds of judgments that are, of course, long outdated today. It does not occur to one, though it would be natural, that what we today consider to be seemingly irrevocable in relation to our science, will certainly be just as corrected and to a certain extent transformed when so much time has passed after us as between Paracelsus and us, as the Paracelsian views have been transformed by ours. We can only hope that future generations will be fairer than we are, that they will know that truth is in a state of development and that basically every way of expressing the truth is only a form of expression for what we would like to call original truth or original wisdom. In short, what we humans call truth is in a constant state of change, and therefore we must see the human pursuit of truth only as developing. If we imbibe this view and ask ourselves: How did our ancestors think? What about them can make a great impression on our souls today? — then we will also be able to look back without prejudice to minds as far back as the great, the shining Zarathustra.

There has never been any real agreement as to the age in which Zarathustra lived. There are even scholars today who claim that Zarathustra probably only lived six centuries before our era; other scholars point to a period of 1000 years before our era, and still others go back even further. What spiritual science has to say through its research will be mentioned here only briefly, because for us it is less a matter of establishing mere historical facts than of illuminating the soul of this great individuality. Therefore, it should only be briefly mentioned that spiritual science must go back at least five millennia before our era - even into the sixth millennium - if it wants to meet this luminous figure of Zarathustra with a backward glance.

Now, although one may argue about the age in which Zarathustra lived - one should not really argue about it, because the course of human cultural development speaks too clearly, because what is associated with the name Zarathustra and what has emerged from Zarathustra as a cultural movement has exerted the deepest, most significant, and even extraordinarily long-lasting influence on human progress. If we would fathom the soul of Zarathustra, if we would recognize the mission that this unique individuality has fulfilled in the progress of humanity, then we must attempt to understand Zarathustra's task on a larger scale. we must realize that we can only come close to what he was if we assign him a task of the very first order in the development of humanity since the great Atlantic catastrophe, as seen by spiritual science. Much is said about this catastrophe; the religious records, the religious traditions of all the peoples of the earth report about it - the Christian tradition speaks of it as the great flood.

We cannot now go into the details of the time when this catastrophe swept across our earth; but even the external, geological science is today increasingly being driven to recognize that such a great catastrophe once took place and that through this catastrophe the face of the earth was thoroughly changed. If spiritual science is forced by its research to recognize that where the Atlantic Ocean is today was once dry land, where people lived at a time when most of the present-day continents of Asia, Africa and Europe were still under water, it may be said that today, natural science is no longer far from admitting that the fauna and flora in the western regions of Europe and the eastern regions of America do indeed indicate that there was once land between the west of Europe and the east of America that became the bottom of the sea due to subsidence during that great catastrophe. And that our present continents have repeatedly risen and sunk has already become common truth even in geological circles.

For spiritual science, such great catastrophes, such changes in the face of the earth, are connected with significant processes within the development of mankind. Today I can only hint at what I have already explained in more detail to the listeners of my lectures on earlier occasions. I can only hint that the human race that lived on the Atlantic continent in that epoch had a very different state of soul from that of today's people, who are the descendants of those ancient Atlanteans. If we want to give a brief indication of what kind of culture was present in that primeval time of humanity, we can, if we do not misuse the word, call this culture a “clairvoyant culture”. However, the word “clairvoyant” must not be misused in the sense in which it is very, very often misused today. What does this tell us - “clairvoyant culture”?

Yes, if you want to speak from the point of view of spiritual science, then you have to honestly believe in human development, then you have to honestly be convinced of this human development, then you can't just be fascinated by the development that the popular Darwinists talk about today. We look back at an earlier humanity that had a very different kind of knowledge and soul capacity. We can briefly form an idea of this ancient state of mind by remembering what remains, as an inherited residue from that time, in the dream consciousness, where man sees echoes of the day's life in dream images. These dream images no longer have any reality for us today; they are echoes of what was experienced during the day – some pictorial representations of this or that that occurred. Dream consciousness, however, is like an old inheritance, a faded remnant of a prehistoric human consciousness, when people did not see and recognize their environment as directly as today's people, who only recognize everything with their senses and with the mind, which is tied to the brain. The people of that time saw what explained and solved the riddles for them in what, from today's point of view, were abnormal soul states. They saw with a kind of image consciousness, but these images were not phantasms like our dream images. Man did not speculate about the riddles of the world in terms of concepts and ideas, but experienced states – abnormal states by today's standards – in which images appeared that were not dream images, but which depicted the very foundations of existence.

And this humanity, which had such an awareness, also had guides and teachers who had led this awareness to a very special height and who - clairvoyantly - looked very deeply into the spiritual background of existence. I can only mention this today in the introduction. These teachers of old, who had clairvoyant insight into the spiritual world, related to humanity much as those who today, in their normal consciousness, come to ingenious insights, ideas and concepts. Just as these relate to humanity as a whole, so too did the great seers of old, because they had a concept of how to look into the spiritual world, because they had natural clairvoyance. The development of humanity begins with the fact that humanity really did come from spiritual origins. Today, we are no longer very aware of this; this awareness [of the spiritual origin of human beings] has actually been lost, although in the first centuries of the Christian era there was still a clear awareness of an ancient, inherited wisdom that had come from the forefathers of humanity and of which nothing else remained but traditions taken from that old clairvoyant insight into the spiritual world. Plato, for example, speaks of the people of the Kronos realm, saying that they could see into the spiritual world and that they were the keepers of the original world wisdom. Plato was aware that much of that wisdom had simply been handed down from generation to generation. And Plato, the philosopher who had come a long way in what he was able to explore himself, was nevertheless aware that this primal wisdom could penetrate deeper into the very foundations of the world than anything he himself could give his students through the normal powers of human beings. We also find the greatest respect for the primal wisdom of the world in other thinkers. We must seek this primeval wisdom in its original form before the Atlantean catastrophe, which has been characterized above.

The development of humanity consists in the fact that in this post-Atlantean epoch, in which we live today, man has gradually, so to speak, seen this primeval wisdom dwindle, that he has lost the old, elementary because he should develop the sense to judge things by external, sensual perceptions and to penetrate the riddles as far as possible with the mind bound to the brain. Today's short-sighted people will naturally believe that today's knowledge is the sum of all wisdom, that there cannot be any other wisdom. But anyone who takes a broad view of human development knows that even knowledge bound to the intellect, which humanity had to gain in its present era (the previous one was the era of childhood), is only a transitory epoch, only a point of passage in human development.

They know that people will rise again to a future clairvoyance and that they will take with them what they have gained through the knowledge of the physical world. A necessary transition point is this kind of knowledge. And so we can say: What we today, as normal human beings, call our knowledge, and even more so, what we have under the influence of this knowledge in terms of moral and aesthetic ideals, in terms of moral judgments about the world, all this has only just been acquired. Everything that we have recognized as the actual characteristics of today's human being is based on the old clairvoyance that human beings lost for a while. But this present-day realization is so characteristic of our present epoch that we must say: The post-Atlantean time, the time in which the earth has the present physiognomy, is called to develop just this thinking and feeling and to close the door, so to speak, to all clairvoyance for the normal human condition, so that man is forced to fix his gaze on the sensual reality in order to also go through this epoch in his development of knowledge.

There were now two cultural currents in this post-Atlantic epoch, which really had the mission to lead humanity out of the wisdom of the forefathers into the wisdom of understanding and reason, as I have just characterized it. There were two currents. And strangely enough, the originators of these two currents are quite close to each other geographically and in terms of world history. We have to look for the one main current of the post-Atlantic period in the settlements that formed after the Atlantic catastrophe in India, the venerable cultural land. We have to look for the other main current to the north of it, in the area that was fertilized by the great, luminous spirit of Zarathustra. And although these two currents of human spiritual development are so close, although to the outside eye they look so similar that sometimes the words for this or that in the older languages of the two cultural currents are the same, we must, when we look deeper into things, see in these two currents of post-Atlantic cultures quite opposite ways of founding our present culture.

You see, when the spiritual researcher looks back to that ancient culture of time-honored India, which can only be seen with the spiritual eyes – because what is contained in the great, wonderful Vedas is only a late echo of the primeval world wisdom of the Indians . We are then led back to something that preceded all Vedic culture and that is of such sublimity that the human being, who has a sense for the transformation and development of the human spiritual life, stands with the deepest reverence before this ancient-holy culture of India. And there is some truth in what is usually taken only as legend: that this ancient Indian culture goes back to a series of great sages, to the seven Rishis of ancient India. If we examine this ancient Indian culture from a spiritual scientific point of view, how does it appear to us?

We cannot describe it more precisely than to say that it appears to us as a kind of ancient heritage that could be passed down from that wisdom that existed as the common wisdom of humanity before the Atlantic catastrophe. We must only imagine the right way of inheriting an ancient store of world wisdom. Just as it was still present in Atlantean humanity as primeval world wisdom, so this wisdom, based on clairvoyance, could not, of course, be directly transmitted to a humanity whose soul capacities were quite differently constituted. The ancient wisdom was adopted into Indian culture in the same way as a tradition that has to be adapted to a new faculty of the soul. Basically, only a few people were still able to develop something in their souls that could point to the realm that had been seen in ancient times through living clairvoyance behind the world of the senses. Whoever wanted to rise in living inwardness to the vision that was once normal for humanity in a certain way had to become what is called an initiate or an initiate. He had to develop certain abilities of the soul that are not normally present; he had to undergo certain exercises, a certain training of the soul, in order to develop an ability that otherwise slumbers in his soul. Then he was able to learn through his own observation what the great teachers of the Indians, the seven Rishis, had to proclaim. What was he led to then? He was led back, as it were, to an earlier state of development; he was able to see something that humanity in the normal state could no longer see, but which it had been able to see earlier.

This is essentially how we understand this ancient, pre-Vedic Indian culture, which then resonates in the Vedas. This is also the source of the underlying mood in which something is spread out over this ancient and sacred Indian culture, like a wistful look back that says: There was a time when people could see into the spiritual world, when the origin of people was revealed. That time is gone. The senses now have only the ability to see the external, physical reality. And only by developing a special ability can one transport oneself back to those ancient times; then one can again see the spiritual, which is hidden by the human being's sensory capacity for knowledge, by the intellect, which is bound to the brain. Thus did he feel who, in the world-view of the ancient Indian, lived with the realization that man is cut off from the contemplation of his spiritual origin, and he has a longing for this origin. Thus the ancient Indian believed that truth was only to be found beyond what humanity could see at that time. He believed that above and beyond all that humanity could see at that time, the great illusion spread out, “maha aja”, the great deception, “maja”, the great non-being. And behind that lay true being, which people had once seen.

A worldview, such as that of the pre-Vedic Indian, cannot be understood by merely looking at what appears to be dogmas, but only by putting oneself in the shoes of people felt at that time, how they felt cast out of their spiritual home into a world of maya, of illusion, and how they longed to return from this external, sensual-physical reality to that ancient, original world. And it is wonderfully moving, in the highest sense, to place oneself in this ancient Indian soul with its pessimism, which is not as frivolous as it sometimes appears today, but which is a heroic pessimism that does not complain about this great deception, but says: the sense world is simply not reality; reality is found by turning away from this sense world and going back into earlier epochs in one's soul.

What do we actually find when we go back to what the people of old in India were able to see? I have already pointed out that all spiritual science leads us to the fact that the soul that now lives in us between birth and death has often lived on earth and will live many more times. Spiritual science therefore leads us to the realization of repeated lives on earth, so that when we look back into past times, we do not find other souls, so to speak, but our own souls, that is, ourselves in earlier embodiments. And the soul of such an old Indian man could say to himself: As I now live between birth and death, I am bound to the illusion. I am now more entangled in the body of the senses than I was in earlier lives, for example when the primeval wisdom was experienced by myself. Basically, such a member of the ancient Indian culture looked back into his own earlier soul states. His soul used to live in such a way that it could look into the spiritual world itself. It descended into the world of the senses and can no longer see into the spiritual world. If a member of the ancient Indian faith wanted to regain this earlier vision, he basically ascended to his own earlier embodiment; he penetrated completely into himself. This is roughly how we can characterize the mood of ancient India.

In a sense, the exact opposite was offered by the cultural impact that occurred in the north of ancient India, in Bactria, Media, Persia, through Zarathustra. If we can call the ancient Indian wisdom a kind of heritage from ancient times, which also awakened a yearning for that ancient time, we must say that what was given to people through Zarathustra, what was imprinted on human development through him, points just as strongly to the future as the ancient Indian teaching points to primeval wisdom. There is a remarkable contrast between the teachings of Zarathustra and the ancient Indian teachings. If we allow not dogmas, not teachings, on which it actually matters little in human development, but moods, feelings to come before our soul, then we can say: the mood of the ancient Indian world view that has just been characterized is a mood of redemption: out of this body, which can no longer see the truth, into the earlier seeing! That was the mood of the ancient Indian: to be redeemed from a body that is dependent on maya. Therefore, in the best sense of the word, everything that emerged from ancient Indian culture, right up to Buddhism, is a kind of religion of redemption.

In Zarathustra's view, what appears first is not a religion of redemption, a worldview of redemption, but rather a worldview of resurrection, a worldview of awakening. And in this respect, the teaching of the doctrine in the north is the exact opposite of the teaching that arose in the south. Zarathustra was to be the first great leader of humanity to radically point out that it is a necessary point of passage for them to develop the senses for what is spreading before them, and to develop the mind for what is logical thinking, what is reasonable understanding. Only, the great Zarathustra does not stop at the materialistic level of the external sense world. As an initiate, he says in his own way: Certainly, post-Atlantean humanity has the task of sharpening the senses for what presents itself to the eyes, to the ears, to the entire sense-perceiving human being. Post-Atlantean humanity has the task of grasping the phenomena of the sensual world in accordance with reason and intellect, but as we grow together with the sensual world, we must become capable, if we develop certain slumbering powers in our soul, not of stopping at what the senses offer us, but of penetrating through the sensual cover to what lies behind this sensual world.

This is the great contrast between the Indian world-view mood and the Zarathustra world-view mood. The ancient Indian says: If I look at the world that spreads out in color, form and all its sensual qualities, it is not a true world, but Maya. I can only enter the true world by turning away from this external sense world; so I turn away my eyes and ears and the other senses, and I let the mind stand still, insofar as it combines ideas and concepts. I pay no attention to this sensual world if I want to see the truth, but I delve into the human interior, I live myself into that self that was there in previous embodiments; I climb up the ladder of embodiments to acquire the ability to see the truth. In a sense, the basic mood of the ancient Indian was to flee from the world of the senses and to ascend to the truth through strict immersion in one's own inner self, in that which can live in the soul when it disregards its surroundings. It was a mystical immersion in the inner life of the soul, distracted from the outside world, which wants to know nothing of “maha aja”, the great illusion: this is the tendency of ancient India.

Joyful acceptance of the reorganization of our soul-faculties, which shows us the world with all that it can offer to the open eye, what it can offer to all outer human possibilities, and also to the mind bound to the sense world; joyful acceptance of all that spreads out as an outer carpet of the senses before the senses: that was the mood of Zarathustra! If an Indian looked at the plant cover, at animals and clouds and air and mountains and stars, he said to himself: All this is only outer illusion. Dare to look at the one who has exhaled this great Maja, at Brahma, but who can only be found within! And Zarathustra says: Turn your gaze to that which spreads out before your external senses, use the soul capacity that is right for the present age of humanity. But don't stop there; grow together with the sensory world, penetrate it, go through it, and when you go through this sensory world and don't let yourself be held back, then you will find a spiritual world beyond it out there – beyond the stars, beyond the mineral, plant and animal world. Not only when you go into yourselves, no, also when you go out into the world of the senses, then you grow together through your new abilities with a spiritual world.

What expresses the individuality of Zarathustra most beautifully – take it as a comparison for my sake – is when it is said of him: When he was born, the first thing that happened to him as a miracle was that he smiled at the first glance at the world – the Zarathustra smile! One must be able to put oneself in the place of what is said with such a truly magically deep formula for such an individuality. It is suggested that in Zarathustra an individuality is born that looks at the whole carpet of the sensory world, but penetrates it as if clairvoyant and sees the spiritual behind it, and that in the consciousness of man's superiority to that which spreads around him, lets that exultation flow out of itself, for which the smile of Zarathustra is a symbol.

And so we see that in Zarathustrianism there is a completely different mood than in Indianism. Therefore, this Zarathustrianism could point to what the human soul is now to take up, what it is now to unite with itself. The fact that people look out onto the world of sense and normally no longer see in pictures what is not in the world of sense means that they take in something that they will carry over into the future and that will be a new component of the human soul in the future. Through this new component it will experience a resurrection: In the future, the human soul will not only be as it was in the past, but it has taken on this new element that can only be acquired in the sensory world. That is why this deep idea of resurrection lives in the Zarathustra teaching. I cannot today go into this in detail, justifying my views from this or that passage; I will merely characterize them, and everyone can see from the usual communications that what is to be given today as a characteristic of Zarathustrianism is well founded.

Zarathustra said to himself: It is basically not compatible with the right progress of humanity that only old heritage in humanity is praised as the highest. Why should people go back to earlier embodiments and the way they looked at the world then? They should take in what is offered to them as new, they should enrich and expand their world view, give it a greater scope. Thus did Zarathustra say to men: Look into the future, take in the new, look up to that spiritual world which presents itself to you when you sense the world of sense as a transparent covering. That was what he had to say to the world, and in saying it he felt a deep reverence for the spiritual world behind the whole world of sense. He felt that it was like the beginning of a new ascent [into the spiritual world] when we strive to penetrate the sensual world in order to enter the spiritual world, just as the old Indian wanted to enter a spiritual world by descending into his own inner self. He felt that humanity had actually fallen from a higher, spiritual point of view to a lower, physical one, and that it had the added awareness of wanting to longingly return to the old one by holding on to an old, inherited wisdom.

Zarathustra was deeply imbued with the fact that something had been working on the human soul that had led it down and entangled it in the world of the senses. But he was equally clear that this human soul could now be seized by something that would lead it up the path to the spiritual world. That, so to speak, was before Zarathustra's spiritual eyes: the opposition of two powers, one leading humanity down into the world of the senses and the other lifting it up into the spiritual world. This contrast is evident where we read that Zarathustra speaks of the one power that leads man upwards, of Ahura Mazdao, Auramazda, which later became Ormuzd, and opposes this to another power that leads the human soul downwards: Ahriman, Angra Mainyu.

Thus one must first perceive these two powers and how they work: the one leading the human soul down into the sensual world, the other leading it up into the spiritual world. But Zarathustra is completely consistent in the deepest sense, in that he does not accept the external, sensual world in the abstract and say that something spiritual is behind it - as the pantheists say today - but he says: the individual formations of the sensual world differ; one appears in one way and the other in another. One appears as mighty, luminous and effective for the rest of the sensual world, the other as small and insignificant. And everything that appears to our world as a great and mighty power through its external form, Zarathustra sensed, in the sense of the world view also adopted by his people, as a component of the sun - that sun which, every year anew, conjures up the plant world necessary for man, that sun without which there can be no life on earth.

But even with regard to the sun, which he felt to be the most powerful, the most powerful influence on earth, Zarathustra was clear that it too belongs to the external world of the senses, that what external science can fathom about this sun is only the external expression of what lives behind this sun. And he felt it so that he said: Just as plants are magically produced on earth in spring through the power of the sun's rays, so that which lives as the spiritual power behind the sun is that which draws man out of the world of the senses, that which can create the powers for man with which he can penetrate through the world of the senses. Behind the sun, therefore, for Zarathustra lives that mighty spiritual essence which he has just named Ahura Mazdao, Ormuzd. But what is it?

We can only form an idea of the thoughts that lived in Zarathustra if we remember that in spiritual science we do not consider the physical body of the person as the only thing, just as the person stands before us, but that we say: this physical body is the outer expression of his spiritual being. And when the eye becomes clairvoyant, it sees this spiritual essence, and we call that which the clairvoyant eye sees as the content of the spirituality, the aura of the human being. We perceive the physical body as the expression of the human aura, the small aura. Now Zarathustra says: Just as man has his aura, as he has his spiritual behind the physical, so is the sun the outer body of a spiritual being, namely the great aura, the Great Ahura - the word always means the same - the solar aura. - There we have Ahura Mazdao, the great aura, in contrast to the small aura of man.

Thus, Zarathustra pointed people to what lives out there in the universe as a mighty spiritual being and has its body in the sun, just as a human being has a body that is permeated by a spiritual-soul being, the small aura. That is [also] Ormuzd, that is what can unleash all the powers of man that go towards the spiritual. For this spirit that lived in Zarathustra, this Ahura Mazdao, this great aura, was a truth, a reality, before the clairvoyant gaze. And he said to his disciples, to those he could initiate more intimately into his secrets, something like the following: Look here, if you seek that which urges and leads man to the good, then you must raise your gaze to that which stands spiritually behind the sun. Man is indeed called upon to ascend ever higher and higher in the course of his development on earth. Ahura Mazdao will help him to do so. But not always, says Zarathustra, will that which is the spirit of the sun be seen only up there behind the body of the sun, but it will become ever greater and greater, will embrace more and more of the earth and will finally expand to the earth. The spirit of the sun will one day become a spirit active on earth.

If we survey the time [of Zarathustra] and the development of humanity, we see that these are in harmony with each other. What Zarathustra saw behind the physical sun was, for his time, only to be found in the sun in outer space; today, however, it has expanded to such an extent that we find it within the earth aura itself. And the event in which Ahura Mazdao, the great aura, descended to earth, we see, if we stand on the ground of true spiritual science, in what took place through the Christ impulse, which played out on earth in the events of Palestine.

From the standpoint of spiritual science, we can understand what Zarathustra once said to his disciples: “I will speak; now come and listen to me, you who long for it from far and near - now I will speak and no longer shall he who leads men to error with evil will through his tongue be able to poison the development of mankind. I will speak of what in the world God has revealed to me, what He Himself reveals to me - He, the Great Ahura. And anyone who does not want to hear my words, as I mean them, will experience bad things when the circles of earth's development will approach their completion. - When Zarathustra spoke of the spirit of the sun, we, who stand on the ground of modern spiritual science, say: He spoke of the same spirit that in his time could only be found in the vastness of the heavens, and today we find it when we study the mystery of the origin of Christianity in its full truth, as it emerged from the Mosaic religion. Having evolved to the Christian era, Ahura Mazdao descended, as it were, from the sun, and the Christians call him Christ. And he who interferes with the development of the world in order to halt the progress of human evolution, which is brought about by the great power of Ahura Mazdao, is Ahriman.

Zarathustra did not see the development of the world and of humanity in such a one-sided way that he could have asked, as many modern people do: Yes, how can I actually believe in an all-wise, great God when there is so much evil in the world? This is generally said today; one does not want to believe in a wisdom that permeates and lives through the world when one has to notice so much evil. Zarathustra does not speak in this way, and he also guides his disciples not to speak in this way. Zarathustra was clear that what comes from Ahriman, what stands as an opponent in all life, and that it must be allowed by the wisdom of the world, so that people who are to undergo an upward development can strengthen themselves through the resistance and gradually also lead the bad to the good. In this way a higher development is attained than if man had been simply comfortably placed in all that is good and had nothing bad to overcome.

Thus, although Ahriman was felt by Zarathustra and by all those who professed him to be the enemy of Ahura Mazdao, he was felt to be a necessary part of the development of the world. If we wish to understand the inner structure of the Zarathustra teaching, we must draw attention to individual things that may indeed cause great offence among today's clever people, who believe that they are so firmly grounded in the most modern world view. But what good does it do to carefully want to conceal the truth over and over again? We must plunge into Zoroastrian clairvoyance and explain in detail the structure of the system of thought which I have just characterized in superficial terms. Here it must be clearly understood that Zarathustra was one of those thinkers who, although they turned their gaze joyfully to the sensual world, nevertheless sought the truth in the spiritual world and, in essence, saw the essence of all world content in the spiritual. Powers such as Ormuzd and Ahriman are spiritual forces; they confront us in the world as spiritual entities.

But how did such high spirits as Zarathustra think about the outer structure of the world in the face of these spiritual powers? Just as Zarathustra looks up at the sun and says, “This is the outer body of a spiritual power,” so he looked up at the starry sky and at everything that the outer, sensual gaze could grasp, and he and his disciples perceived what was spread out in space as writing, as symbols, as metaphors that expressed the weaving and essence of the spiritual powers. This is extraordinarily important. Not in the way that we are accustomed to today with our materialistic sense, did Zarathustra and his students look at the outer world of the stars and see only spheres moving through space, but they saw in this world of the stars the expression of spiritual entities and spiritual processes, and in the arrangement of the stars they saw the symbols for what the spiritual entities behind them were doing. The starry sky was a starry writing to them, expressing to them the deeds of the spiritual world that took place behind it. Neither in the direction of today's materialistic sense nor in that of today's materialistic astrology, which would like to see the cause of the fate of mankind in the stars themselves, while they are only signs - neither in one nor the other direction did Zarathustra's thinking go. For him, what he could see in the starry writing was something like the meaning of a sentence for us, which we put on paper with characters. For him, the stars were cosmic characters. And what mattered to him were the spiritual entities behind them.

Zarathustra saw the highest spiritual entities in Ormuzd and Ahriman. For him, they belonged together, even though one is the enemy of the other. They originated, so to speak, in a single, great spiritual entity. In the sense of the Persian language, this primal being can be called Zaruana Akarana or, as it is often expressed, “eternity shrouded in glory”. It is difficult for today's human sense to penetrate to the heights where the followers of Zarathustra stood and where they grasped what must be grasped if one wants to see Ormuzd and Ahriman in one. The best way to achieve this is to endeavor to gradually arrive at the idea that if I look back in time, further and further back, I come to that which existed in prehistoric times and where the causes of the present lie. I myself also come from that which has developed out of this past current. But in the opposite direction there is a future current, and if one can rise to the point of seeing that the future is something that comes towards us from the other side, that we go towards, then one gradually comes to a true understanding of what Zarathustra sees as the unity behind Ormuzd and Ahriman.

Imagine a curved line, running forward and backward in such a way that it forms a small circle. If you make the circle larger, the line is less curved; make the circle even larger, and the line approaches more and more a straight line. If you take the diameter of the circle to infinity, then the arc of the circle gradually becomes a straight line that extends to infinity. Thus, we can assume that every straight line, by tracing it backwards and forwards, is a circle of infinite size. And so we can also say: if we go back into the past, we come to a point where the past and the future join together in a circle. This is the eternal current that Zarathustra pointed out – Zaruana Akarana. Past and future have become intertwined in the eternal cycle of the world, and from this the god of the sun, of light, of all that is good - Ormuzd, Ahura Mazdao - and likewise the god, through whose resistance the good forces must develop - Ahriman - both emanate from the snake of eternity: Zaruana Akarana. One must only feel one's way into these conceptions of eternity, then one gets a sense of the mood that prevailed among those who were around Zarathustra, then one feels something of the full magnitude of the feelings that flow from the teaching of Zarathustra, who continues to work in humanity to this day.

And so, for example, Zarathustra said to his disciple: Now you have a mental picture of the closing circle of the world, of one part of the world circle as the higher power of light, Ahura Mazdao, and of the other part as the dark power, Ahriman. What we have just spoken is written in the Star-writing, and in the Star-writing you see this circle, which closes in upon itself as a symbol of Zarana Akarana: the zodiac that closes around the vault of heaven. This is the symbol of the outer circle of the world, and when you stand on the earth and turn your gaze to the zodiac, imagine the sun as the great Ormuzd, passing through this circle. And what the deeds of the circle of light are, that shows itself to you as the realm of creation of Ormuzd, and what lies in the night, what is immersed in darkness for man and stands on the other half of the earth, that is what Ahriman symbolizes. The seven signs of the zodiac in the daytime course of the sun on one side and on the other side the five signs in the nighttime course of the sun: these are the symbols of Ormuzd and Ahriman.

Thus the stars were perceived as writing in the sky for what Ormuzd and Ahriman were. Such entities, which stand behind the sensory world, were imagined to have an effect on human nature, but it was realized that they were not a unified whole, but that there were partial spirits, sub-spirits. And in the individual signs of the zodiac, the symbols for seven or six serving spirits of Ormuzd were now felt. These were sub-spirits, called Amshaspands in the old Persian language. The best translation is the one that Goethe chose in his “Faust” when he said:

But you, the real sons of the gods,
Enjoy the living, rich beauties!

Sons of the gods! Six of them – on the light side of the Zodiac – were connected with Ormuzd, while the other five spirits, opposed by Ahriman, were called Devs. This sounds strange and shows the contrast to Hinduism, to what the Indians worshiped as their highest powers, the Devas. While for Zarathustra the highest spiritual powers are found in the penetration of the sense-covering - these are the Asurian powers that work in the outer world - so for the Indians the highest powers are those that are found by penetrating into the mystical interior of man. The simplest explanation for the fact that ancient India saw the highest in the devas, while the Persian religion, on the other hand, saw something dangerous in them, and that furthermore the Indians saw something in the asuras that they did not want to know anything about, while the Persians revered them, is this: In the Zarathustra sense, one should take leave of that world which relies on the inner alone, which can become seductive for man if he does not want to grasp the outer world of the senses. Therefore, delving into the inner, into the world of the Devas, became somewhat dangerous for the Persians, while for the Indians they were something of the highest.

Thus the five spirits of Ahriman are symbolized by the five dark winter constellations of the zodiac. And so there are twelve spiritual entities: Ormuzd with his servants and Ahriman with his servants. Basically, we have to think of the realms of Ormuzd and Ahriman in such a way that these twelve [spirits] work together in the spiritual world - Zaruana Akarana! How do they work? By communicating to the human being that which, for Zarathustra, is the expression of the goal of the world, by pouring into the human being that which they allow to flow through the universe. Zarathustra felt that man, as a small world, is a confluence of what is spread out as great cosmic forces throughout the universe. Thus he felt. Therefore, it would be only natural to find that Zarathustra did not see what is found today through anatomy, physiology and so on in the dissected human being. The Zarathustra wisdom did not dissect the human being, but there was a clear-sighted insight that showed how the spiritual forces worked into human nature and composed human nature. Zarathustra says: “Through the universe, twelve forces emanate from the twelve spirits of Ormuzd and Ahriman; they compose the human body. Like a seal imprint, the human body expresses in miniature what is spread out in the great world in the Amshaspands, the sons of the gods. In there, it continues to have an effect as currents from outside.

What does the disciple of Zarathustra actually mean by what continues to have an effect in there? What I am about to say is somewhat disturbing for modern science. In its own way, more recent science has rediscovered what flows in as the twelve currents, what makes human beings a being that can strive up into the spiritual world, that can have a brain, an intellect; it has rediscovered it in the twelve main nerves of the head. But that is a nuisance for modern science, almost the height of madness, when one says that these twelve nerves are the crystallized, condensed currents that the twelve Amshaspands, according to Zarathustra, channel into the human organism. And so, in materialistic research, we see a concentrated focus on the human being of what Zarathustra – the luminous, clairvoyant personality – revealed as a spiritual secret. At that time, one saw in spirit what was important. And it is our time's task to see in the material what is, as it were, the condensed spiritual.

Zarathustra continued: Yes, you see, just as today man, through his spirituality, which is bound to the brain, strives up into a higher world, to a higher development, so in earlier times he strove for something else. Just as man is connected with Ahura Mazdao today, he was once bound to lunar development. This is also something that annoys modern science. Nevertheless, it is a spiritual truth. This lunar development expresses itself in a further stage of condensation of spirituality. Lower spirits came into play here. Just as the twelve great Amshaspands worked into man, so before that other spiritual entities had brought about a lower spiritual activity. Today we would say: When a person reflects, it is a higher spiritual activity; when he reflexively chases a mosquito away from his face without thinking, it is a lower activity. We see these lower activities as connected to the nerves, which have their center in the spinal cord. What intruded into the human organization as a lower activity, Zarathustra attributed to an earlier spiritual influx.

He said that the twelve great spirits were opposed by 28 others, whom he called Izeds. These Izeds had an effect on the human body and constituted it. He further said that this implied a certain irregularity in that the lunar government had been replaced by the solar government. In addition to the 28 Izeds, which correspond to the 28 lunar days, there are three more, which are inserted by the [longer] solar cycle - up to three irregularly inserted days. So you can count 28 to 31 Izeds. This brings us close to what newer science has as these Izeds: They are the 28 to 31 nerves in man running to the spinal cord - these are the crystallized izeds. So you see the Zarathustra wisdom crystallized in the human anatomy, so to speak. It would never have occurred to anyone to direct human thinking in such a way that it could have researched and searched in the way it does today if Zarathustra had not provided the impetus for it.

He pointed to higher spiritual powers that radiated into man. And to the extent that these were Amshaspands, they became the twelve brain nerves in the physical organization of man; to the extent that they were Izeds, they became spinal nerves. This is something that seems even more twisted than what I said yesterday about reincarnation. But it is something that people will gradually come to recognize, namely, that humanity started out from a spiritual world view and only then descended into materialism. People will gradually come to see how useful it is to raise our eyes again to those great geniuses who, so to speak, saw it as their mission to give people a spiritual gift that can in turn lead them out of this world of the senses. From what it had previously seen in the spirit, humanity descended to sensual things.

Now, today people are not inclined to find such things anything other than annoying, but only because certain things are easily forgotten. For example, everyone will say: How should we actually imagine the structure of the world after Kepler's laws, other than as a sum of purely mechanical processes? Well, one should just remember that Kepler came to his laws precisely through a spiritual worldview and made the statement: “So I carried the sacred vessels of Egyptian secrets up to the north and translated them into the language of the present.” Those who were truly great cultural mediators knew how to tie in with the time when one could still see into the spiritual world. Thus, in essence, Zarathustra stands before us as the one who, in his spiritual worldview, feels the mission to point out to the human being who has the tool in the physical body for his work in the world, but who still points to it with spiritual means. That is why Zarathustra is so tremendously significant. He is always spoken of in connection with the entire outer life of the people in whom he was incarnated.

It is deeply significant that the legend, told so wonderfully, tells how this people, in whom Zarathustra lived, migrated down from the north. The legend, which is truer than history, tells us the following: This people once lived far to the northwest of the areas they later moved into. Before Zarathustra worked there, it was once able to live in these northwestern lands because the conditions there were favorable. But then strange changes occurred – so the legend goes: Winters came that lasted ten months; the people could no longer stay there, and King Dschemschid led them away [to more southern areas]. He received [from Ahura Mazdao] a golden dagger, which he plunged into the earth at various places. As a result, grain grew in those areas, and the people settled there.

If we translate what this legend tells us into the most sober truth, we have to say: This people, into which Zarathustra was introduced, was dependent as a people on cultivating the earth; it was dependent on tackling the real work of life with its hands. Zarathustra's mission for this people is, to begin with, the dissemination of spiritual wisdom, but at the same time it is a guidance to the immediate sensual reality. Hence their turning away from that world view, which wants to know nothing of work that has to be done in the sensual world and which perceives as Maja that towards which the work of the hands should be directed. No, for those who had Zarathustra as their teacher, the soil was not Maya. It was a reality as it was.

And it was a reality that was to be led higher and higher by extracting its fruits from the soil. By working, one connected with what Ormuzd wanted. Work was service to Ormuzd. And everyone felt the Zarathustra mood in their veins when they worked the soil: “I must not abandon myself to the mood that leads me to long for another world; no, here I will be a servant of Ormuzd. By thrusting the spade into the earth, I work as a servant of Ormuzd. And man has to live here on earth in truth. Therefore, in those who were the followers of Zarathustra, there was also the most sublime and beautiful belief in truth and truthfulness, in moral purity. And that is one of the most beautiful impacts associated with the mission of Zarathustra, that the sense of truth and truthfulness developed because of this connection with the outer world, in which one needs a sense of truth.

And so we also see that among all the things that were seen as something bad, as belonging to Ahriman - deception, lies, slander - the worst vices in the teaching of Zarathustra were seen.

Thus the gaze of Zarathustra and his people was directed towards external reality, but in such a way that the spiritual world was sought behind it. In this spiritual world, man hoped to find his resurrection, his future union with Ahura Mazdao, when he had worked his way through the world of sensuality. The religion of resurrection, the first religion of resurrection, is the teaching of Zarathustra. And so it became a world view that looked with kindness, love and goodwill at what further south was regarded only as Maja. Within the Zarathustra religion, that which instincts are for reality, for working on reality and for connection with reality developed. Therefore, in this religion there was not that tendency to chastise the body so that the spirit could emerge from it as easily as possible, but rather it had that instinct that wants to shape the body so that the senses can become as fine as possible and the thinking as sharp as possible. And that had to develop into instinct. And so one sees a wonderful sum of healthy rules of life developing, from such healthy rules to eating, that later Plato stood in admiration before the Zarathustra religion precisely in this respect.

Yes, how long one appreciated the mission of Zarathustra - until the materialistic time made this impossible - we can see from the fact that it was said that Pythagoras learned geometry from the Egyptians, astronomy from the Chaldeans, other sciences from the Greeks, but that he learned the worship of the gods and the wisdom of nature from the magicians of the Zarathustra religion. So they revered those people in the followers of Zarathustra, who are called the Magi, who understood something about how to see through the world of the senses into the spiritual, who knew that one does not come to the spiritual through mere mystical immersion into one's own inner self, but how to make the outer carpet of the senses transparent. In short, those who said of Pythagoras that he had learned the worship of the gods from Zarathustra saw in the followers of the Zarathustra religion – if I may express it thus – “specialists” with the right view of the spiritual world, with the right worship of the gods. This is how people thought of what Zarathustra gave to humanity. But the time will come when people will look up to Zarathustra in veneration again, and that will be when, through spiritual science, they will gain the possibility of understanding such great spirituality as can be found in Zarathustra.

It is useful and significant to turn our gaze back to the starting points of human cultures. When we do that, then among the luminous figures to whom we look back to see how we actually have become and how our present culture has gradually emerged, there will always be the one who was there, the “Goldstar” - Zoroaster, Zarathustra, because one can with some justification translate this honorific name as “Goldstar”. Gold has always been regarded as a symbol of wisdom, and for the followers of Zarathustra, wisdom was something vividly effective, not an abstract, dead science. It is therefore a tremendous aberration for people to believe that the Amshaspands were abstract ideas for Zarathustra and his followers. Anyone who takes even a cursory glance at this cultural movement must realize that living spirits were meant.

Zarathustra's followers sensed that when he spoke of the spirits within himself, for example of “Vahumano”, of the attitude that draws man up to the spiritual world that lies behind the carpet of the world of the senses, the truth of the living spirituality that permeates space lived in him like a seal impression. They understood what Zarathustra had to give to humanity from the source of his soul when they heard him say: “Everything that weaves and lives through the world as a spirit of light, as the power of light and fire, can work in and ignite an inner fire in people. What is spread out in space can gather in a center, so that man feels placed in the macrocosm. And as the disciples of Zarathustra look up to the spirit of the macrocosm, they say: Something in us resounds like an echo of what flows to us as a secret [from the macrocosm]. We feel within us what the power of light - the being clothed in glory - can become in us if we allow to resound within us what flows towards us from all sides. - The students called what they experienced within “Ahuna Vairja”, which later became “the word”, “the logos”. And this was felt like a prayer detaching itself in the soul, humbly flowing back to the secrets of the world - like a living echo that man can send out as a prayer into the universe on all sides like an image of the primal light.

Only when one is able to understand that Zarathustra, the luminous spirit, was able to evoke such sublime feelings in his disciples and through them in a large part of posterity right up to our time, only then does one feel something of the mission of Zarathustra. It cannot be felt if one only points to dogmas and names, but only if one feels the living power of the feelings that ignite in the living interaction between Ahura Mazdao and the space-filling light and the Logos, the holy word that streams out as an echo from the primal light. If one feels this interaction and understands the world-historical mission of Zarathustra, then one looks back in the right way to that being who was embodied in a human body about 5000 years before Christ and who became essential for all humanity.

What Zarathustra was for humanity and what his mission was should be indicated today with a few words. It should be pointed out that Zarathustra is one of the great leaders of humanity, who from epoch to epoch proclaim the old, the present and the future truths that give comfort and security and strength to man in all situations of life. And we can summarize this in the words:

They speak to the human sense
The things in space
They change over time.
The human soul lives
Through space
Unlimited and unharmed through time.
It finds in the spiritual realm
The deepest reason of one's own being.

Dear attendees! If we seek knowledge through spiritual science, then that means that we feel the urge within us to look out into the spiritual world that lies behind our sensual world and in which the solution to the riddle of existence can be better achieved than in our sensual surroundings. If we allow the results of spiritual science to take effect on our soul, then they are not just abstract, theoretical insights, but they are nourishment for our soul and powers that sustain us, that reveal our destiny to us, give us hope and certainty in life and make us realize that we human beings need these spiritual-scientific results in our lives. Through everything that man sees around him and more or less recognizes in his being, he comes to the spirit that is to live into his knowledge.

We stand in relation to the world in a quite different way when we have the task, not only of penetrating the spirit through knowledge, but of drawing the living, real, active spirit out of its hiddenness and onto the surface, or at least of smoothing the way out of its hiddenness and towards its manifestation. In this way we stand in relation to the world and to life when we have before us the spirit of evolution in the developing human being — that indeterminate spirituality with which the human being enters into existence through birth and which at first presents itself to us as indistinct, as if emerging from an impenetrable darkness, in the still indeterminate features of the human face at the beginning of its becoming on earth. We have before us the human spirit, which, as if hidden in the depths, asserts itself from week to week, from month to month, from year to year, permeating the material existence that confronts us from the beginning in the growing child, and which gradually transforms this material existence into an image of itself.

As educators striving for knowledge, we are called upon to seek the spirit that rests in the depths, not only to satisfy our own soul, but precisely as educators we are called upon to translate everything that is still more or less intellectual in the process of knowledge into reality, to lead the spirit itself into life as a real developing force. From this point of view, spiritual science becomes the basis for an immediate practice of life in a completely different sense than if it were only to help us to understand the secrets of existence.

Now, from the lectures that I was privileged to give here earlier, it has already become clear – and this should serve as a prerequisite for us today, since we are dealing with a very specific topic – that, on the basis of spiritual science, we are dealing with an inner spiritual-soul core of the human being, which we now not only follow in his journey between birth and death, but we see him entering physical-sensory existence through birth from another world, a supersensible world, and crossing over again into another world when he passes through the gate of death to live through new stages of development in this other world. Yes, we do not just speak of ascribing to this spiritual-soul core of our being an existence before birth and an existence after death, but we also ascribe to it repeated earthly lives, so that we look back from our present life on many earthly lives that we have gone through before, and look forward to many earthly lives that we will have to go through in the future. In the entire life of a human being, we must therefore distinguish between the times spent in the physical body between birth and death, and the intermediate times, the times between death and a new birth, in which the spiritual-soul essence of the human being has its abode and conditions of existence in purely spiritual-soul worlds. When we look at things in this way, we are also clear about the fact that we must take a different attitude in the physical world towards the developing human being than if we were to see the spiritual-mental in its developmental phases between birth and death as influenced only by the physical-material. When we look at repeated lives on earth and the intermediate stages of human spiritual development, we see something of a sacred enigma in the person who comes into existence through birth. We see how the spiritual element forces its way into existence through the indeterminate nature of the gesture and the physiognomy, through the indeterminate nature of abilities and inclinations, and how it increasingly and more powerfully expresses itself in gestures, physiognomy, talents, movements, and increasingly makes himself master of all the external means of expression and tools of this person, so that we spiritually see in the person — even if we ultimately recognize the unity of his nature — a duality.

We first have what he has inherited in terms of the qualities of his body and soul from his parents and ancestors, in short, from the earlier generations from which he descended. But then we look at the actual spiritual-soul center of the human being, at his spiritual-soul core, which initially has nothing to do with the characteristics and facts that we encounter in our ancestors, but comes from a previous life of the human being and now only acquires the characteristics that are inherited, so to speak envelops itself in them in order to express itself in them. We must therefore distinguish between what a person brings with him from previous lives at the deepest level of his being and what he acquires from the line of inheritance. And we can only gain the right attitude towards the developing human being if we seek this interplay between the forces that pass from one life to another and the forces that are inherited directly from parents and ancestors. If we want to understand this properly, we must first familiarize ourselves with two fundamental characteristics of our soul life, which must come before our spiritual eye in full clarity if we want to grasp the whole essence of the human being.

First of all, we have the important fact that when a person appears before us as a personality in the world, all the powers that he has - the soul abilities, the temperament, the character traits, the will impulses, the affects and so on - interact to form a whole. But alongside this, we must also recognize the other important fact, namely that these fully developed abilities and powers that we encounter in the personality of another person, even when they interact, are nevertheless independent of each other in certain respects in terms of their disposition, so that one is not necessarily the condition of the other.

This becomes immediately clear to us when we look at life and see, for example, how a person has a very special kind of aptitude, perhaps being musical, but not having the slightest talent for mathematics or for practical life. Another person has no musical aptitude at all, but instead a certain aptitude for practical life or for mathematics. This means that people's abilities and aptitudes can arise quite independently of one another, but they can also interact. Now, even to the superficial observer, it is clear that everything a person possesses in the way of abilities, talents, gifts, skills or physical characteristics points to his or her parents and ancestors. And we will soon see the precise way in which a child's characteristics point to their parents and ancestors.

But through birth, something also comes into existence that has nothing to do with inheritance, something that is brought over from previous lives as the human being's actual spiritual-soul core. This essential core, which eludes direct observation, comes to us when we, as true educators, observe the becoming of the human being and see him, as it were, growing out of the indefinite darkness, like a basic coloration, like a fundamental tone of the whole developing personality. We cannot trace back to parents and ancestors alone what comes into existence in such a way that it combines, groups, and plays with a person's abilities, his predispositions, his impulses, and makes a whole out of them. While individual human traits, let us say a predisposition for this or that science or skill, can usually be traced back to these or those traits in the ancestors, we admit right from the start that the way in which these abilities, these various powers of the ancestors are mixed together in the personality, depends on something other than heredity – it depends on the spiritual and soul core of the human being.

We can say, for example, that someone inherits this or that temperament from their father and this or that ability, perhaps the gift of imagination, from their mother. And now they come to us as a person with a particular temperament and the gift of imagination, mixed together in a certain way. We can trace the individual temperament that he has and the gift for imagination back to either the father or the mother. But the way in which these gifts are mixed up, how they are grouped, we have to trace that back to the spiritual and soul core of his being. And now it is evident to us that this spiritual-soul core of our being feels magnetized to a particular pair of parents before birth, so to speak, to take on these qualities from one parent and those from the other, which it needs to get just the right mixture that corresponds to what it brings with it from previous lives. We can indicate very definite laws as to how the spiritual and psychological essence of the human being mixes the inherited traits with each other, how it takes one from the paternal side and the other from the maternal side, and how the mixing ratio is the individual act of the person entering into life.

If we are to point out very definite laws in this direction, then it is necessary to agree that such laws are to be understood in the same way as physical laws. If, for example, a physicist teaches us that a stone thrown through the air falls along a parabola, we can understand this from the corresponding physical conditions. If someone then comes and does not take into account that this general line of throw can change, say, through the friction of the air or other conditions, he could tell us: You have established a false law, because the stone does not fly in a parabola. But it is not important for the physicist to include the external, modifying circumstances in the law, but to find the law from the essential conditions. We must apply the same principle to laws that apply to the spiritual life. We must say to ourselves: the laws that arise in our minds have the same significance as the laws of physics; therefore, they could be refuted just as easily as the laws of physics, but nothing special is achieved by such a refutation.

If now very definite laws of inheritance are developed, then of course a thousand and one circumstances could arise to influence these laws, just as the trajectory of a stone in flight is influenced by the resistance of the air. But these modifying conditions of an incidental nature do not change the validity of the law. And we can only understand the happenings of the world if we can express the essence of things - both in the physical and in the spiritual realm - in laws. Our observation of the spiritual world can be just as faithful as it is to the physical world. You can observe in hundreds and thousands of cases that in the immediate descendants, very specific strengths and talents go back to the paternal line of inheritance and very specific characteristics to the maternal line, that is, that the spiritual-soul essence of the human being takes very specific strengths and talents from the maternal line and very specific characteristics from the paternal line, which then appear mixed in the children.

We can therefore divide the realm of our soul life into two clearly distinguishable parts. In our soul, we first have what we can call the realm of our interest, our attention, our sympathy for this or that. People differ in terms of what their interest, the sympathy of their soul, leads them to. One person is like this, another like that, depending on the basic color of their interest, depending on the basic character traits of their soul. The area of the soul that we have just characterized is clearly distinguished from what we can call the intellectual area, to which we also want to count imagination, which gives us the ability to imagine our environment and human life itself in images. The gift of imagination, the intellectual gift, is the other part.

If we break down the entire soul life of a person in this way, it becomes clear that, in general, the area of interest, the overall character of the personality, goes back to the paternal line of inheritance. This means that the spiritual and mental core of a person's being mainly draws from the paternal line of inheritance what constitutes temperament, affects, and passions. What concerns our intellectuality, namely the mobility of our perceptions, the possibility of bringing the external world into certain images, of visualizing it through ideas, is generally taken from the maternal line of inheritance. The way in which these two areas are mixed up by the spiritual and psychological core of the human being depends on the nature and peculiarity of our personality. But we must not only consider this very general character of inheritance; we must go deeper and more precisely into it. And here it becomes apparent that human traits are not only inherited in a general sense, but that they are transformed in the process of inheritance, that they undergo very specific changes, and essential ones at that. It has been shown – and you can find this proven in hundreds and thousands of cases – that what lives in the mother as intellectuality, as mobility of soul, as the soul's inclination to process ideas, images, concepts and the like, has more of a tendency to pass to the son than to the daughter and usually, in passing to the son, descends, as it were, by one level [into the physical realm]. Thus it happens, for example, that a certain mobility of ideas, a special ability to think up this or that, perhaps to develop it artistically in the field of poetry, is present in the soul of the mother, but it only moves in the narrowest circle of the closest acquaintances and the closest surroundings and does not have or develop the right means to apply these abilities to the outside world. So we can say that the mother does have these qualities, but she does not have the tools tied to the outer body to make full use of what is there and to allow it to have an effect on humanity.

If this is the case with the mother, then these predispositions can be found in the son's personal organ systems, developed to a certain extent and transferred into physical tools. The mother can have this or that psychological predisposition, but not the organ predisposition, that is, the correspondingly developed brain or other organ complexes, in order to actually live out what she is predisposed to to a greater extent and make it visible to the world. In the son, the mother's predisposition moves into the organ system, into the brain and into other organ complexes, so that certain abilities can bear fruit for larger circles of humanity. On the other hand, paternal qualities, which lie more in the outer personality and are rooted in the organ systems, tend to rise to the soul level in the daughters and meet us there in a soul-transformed, soul-transformed way. And so we can express it as a beautiful law of the progression of human generational life: the soul of the mother tends to live on in the personal abilities and skills of the sons, but the predispositions of the father, the whole configuration of the father's personality, ascends and lives on in the soul of the daughters, or at least tends to do so. Thus the father will continue to live in the soul of his daughters, even to the formation of his physical personality in the outer life. The soul life of the mother, who remains in the narrower circle and has little opportunity to live out her soul abilities, will live on in the organ systems of the sons, which come into activity in the outer world.

This law, which is tremendously enlightening for the understanding of life, cannot, of course, be substantiated here in a short hour with hundreds of examples. It can only be explained, as is also done in physics. And I would like to begin by explaining it through the well-known case of Goethe. Who would not know that everything that was present in Goethe as an organ predisposition, that he was able to live out through his brain and other tools of the organism, was traced back by himself to his mother's “desire to tell stories.” In the close circle of the old woman's lively mind, with all her desire to tell stories, she had everything, except for the organ predispositions. But what was living in the soul of the old woman, advice, flowed down and formed the son's organ systems. We can refer not only to Goethe's mother, but also to his father, to the old Frankfurt councilor Caspar Goethe. When we get to know him as an able, ambitious man, we are particularly impressed by his thoroughness, and sometimes also by his quiet resignation. But on the other hand, we must be clear about how all the qualities he had made it possible for him to move up a few rungs on the social ladder, but that they were not nearly enough to give him the influence and scope he sought in Frankfurt, so that in a sense he was condemned to an idle life.

Something of strength and stubbornness lies in the old Goethe's nature, also something of sobriety, but thoroughness in sobriety, even of a certain harmony of these qualities. If we consider these qualities of Goethe's father alongside the qualities of the son, we can easily understand that the two repelled each other in certain respects. They did so, as is well known. But let us imagine this quality of the father “spiritualized” - if we may coin the word - elevated into the soul, let us imagine a certain thoroughness of soul, in turn, with that timidity that the old Goethe had, that did not allow him to achieve anything, coming to life in the soul of his daughter Cornelia: We can easily find in the soul of Cornelia, Goethe's daughter, a certain softness of character, soulfully mixed with a certain stubbornness, a sharp mind mixed with a certain indulgence in feelings, the need to give herself, to nestle up to the world, and yet the inability to really give herself to anyone. The whole situation in the life of old Goethe – who strove to occupy a significant position and yet could not – can arise in the soul of the daughter in such a way that she had the need to nestle to a spouse and yet could not find satisfaction in marriage. We only need to transpose the character traits, which go as far as the organ structure of the old Goethe, into the soul, and we have the soul of Goethe's sister Cornelia. And everything that repelled Goethe, that pushed him back to his father, so to speak, that was what deeply attracted him to his sister, who complemented him so beautifully during their short life together, and whom he loved so much. Everything paternal in this “ensoulment” by his sister had such a beneficial effect on the young Goethe.

Try to look into the same things in Hebbel. Read his diaries. Try to understand from them, which are also a treasure of German literature in themselves, how Hebbel inherited the whole externality of character, that is, the kind of interest in the world, from his father, but that which led him from his earliest youth to strive to be understood points back to the soul of his mother, even if she was only a simple bricklayer's wife. In historical observation we can see everywhere that everything we encounter in the organ-facilities of men can be traced back to their mothers. Look at the mother of Alexander the Great, at the mother of the Maccabees, at the mother of the Gracchi – wherever you want – you see it everywhere. Anyone who has an instinct for really getting to the bottom of human characters will find this confirmed everywhere, just as it is with physical laws.

In spiritual science, we understand such a fact to mean that the spiritual and soul essence of the human being takes on paternal and maternal characteristics, not only mixing them but also transforming them, taking them to a deeper or higher level , that is to say, the qualities that are bound to the organ systems in the father are “soul-like” in the daughters, and the soul qualities that have not yet developed into organ systems in the mothers are transformed into organ systems in the sons. Thus, inheritance does not occur directly, but in such a way that we sometimes see it concealed, covered up, and we only have to discover how the spiritual and soul essence of the human being actually uses the qualities found in the paternal and maternal line in order to shape them plastically according to its individuality and assert them in the world.

Now it could easily be that if someone merely builds their conviction on a few observations of life or on prejudices, it would be very easy to refute individual statements of spiritual science. It must therefore be pointed out that only the full scope of a true observation of life can confirm what is given by spiritual science as a general law of the world for the spiritual life. And here we see in life how this spiritual-soul core of being envelops itself, as it were, with the inherited qualities, which it incorporates and blends. Someone might say: Yes, show us how this spiritual-soul core of being works, how it envelops itself with the inherited traits. The important thing is that we take the right path in such a demonstration. In the individual human being, whom we have before us as a self-contained personality from birth, we see abilities growing. We see a harmonious unity - of course, we do not need to be reminded of this - we see a unity in what gradually develops in this or that ability. And one cannot readily distinguish in the individual human being what and to what extent the spiritual-soul core of his being is at work and what he has acquired from outside as physically inherited tendencies.

But if you broaden the basis of your observations of life, if you look around at life, then you can see how differently people present themselves, depending on the spiritual and psychological core of their being, as it enters into existence through birth , is richer in content, more significant and deeper, or less deep and significant, whether it has a richer content from previous embodiments, through which it is called upon to achieve much for the world in the new embodiment. How will such a core of being fare?

He will have a long way to go before he works his way through all the obstacles that confront him from the outside in the line of inheritance; he will have to carve it out for longer, the external hereditary traits will not immediately fit the core of his being. This is wonderfully confirmed when we see how great minds of humanity, Newton or Humboldt or Leibniz, were actually poor students because their rich spiritual-soul core took a long time to work through, to develop that with which they enveloped themselves and what they incorporated. Therefore, someone who sees life only through prejudiced eyes may consider the greatest people to be dullards or incompetent individuals, because they may even appear stupid at first, for it takes them a long time to carve out the rich spiritual and soul essence. But how someone who does not know life judges it is not what matters; what matters is the truth. In his diaries, Hebbel made the beautiful observation about what it would be like if a teacher were to take on Plato with his students in a high school class, and the re-embodied Plato himself were among the students and could least understand what the high school teacher would present as his correct view and interpretation of Plato, so that the re-embodied Plato would constantly have to repeat it.

Thus we see the spiritual and psychological core of the human being moving into the externally inherited traits; and we see him, especially when he is rich, finding the greatest obstacles through which he has to work his way. Such people sometimes come quite late to properly integrate the externally inherited material. Child prodigies rarely have a rich spiritual-soul core and therefore have less difficulty integrating the externally inherited material. They develop quickly, but we also know that these abilities, which initially appear surprisingly, quickly fade and fade away. If we observe life on a broader basis, we see how what shows itself as a person's entire personality in one person is incorporated into the core of their being in a different way from the inherited traits in another. Yes, we can confirm and test this again with Goethe.

However, I must say something here that could perhaps be misunderstood. But anyone who, like me, has devoted themselves to Goethe intensively and lovingly for over thirty years is entitled to say such a heresy. Our understanding of Goethe and our devotion to Goethe's greatness need not be compromised if we admit to ourselves that Goethe's essential core only very slowly pushed its way into existence through the external physical obstacles. If we want to delve into what Goethe had to accomplish – if we are not afflicted with the prejudices of some Goethe researchers – we can see that his early works are by no means complete; and we can admit with regard to Goethe's first works: This is still the Goethe who is becoming, who has not yet overcome the external obstacles of his essential core; what Goethe was actually to become is still hidden. One does not question the greatness of the first part of the “Faust” work if one points out that this is still the Goethe who is becoming, that his rich essential core is still sitting in the depths and must first work its way out.

Indeed, today it is almost considered a hallmark of truly great minds that they have a certain tendency to favor the youthful works of poets in literature. One finds the tendency: Yes, we must go to the poets in their first period, there we have what gushes directly from the soul, there we have the essential that actually constitutes their greatness. And for Goethe, too, an audience has been found that says: Well, old Goethe has weakened a bit, he's no longer at the top of his game in the second part of Faust, you can't understand him; the first part of Faust, yes, that is of original power. Those who judge in this way certainly do not consider whether it is not perhaps due to themselves, whether they would not do better to endeavor to understand a work of this kind, such as the second part of Faust, which Goethe wrote at the height of his creative powers.

Goethe took a different view of this matter. He pointed to the first part of “Faust” as a youthful work in which his spiritual and intellectual essence had not yet come to the fore. Goethe left behind a few lines in which he expresses himself precisely on this matter, where he says - and he means the first part of “Faust”:

They praise Faust,
And what else
In my writings roars,
In their favor;
The old Mick and Mack,
That pleases them very much;
The pack of ragamuffins thinks,
It would no longer be!

Goethe himself was of this opinion. We see in Goethe how, for almost his entire life, the rich soul core, which we cannot deduce from hereditary traits, fights against the opposing elements of heredity and against external resistance. We can follow year after year how his rich soul core comes out harmoniously, we see how he becomes more and more mature during his Italian journey and how he becomes completely one with the qualities of his spiritual and soul core.

The [character] traits of the human being are expressed in the course of the development of his being in his shells; the abilities, on the other hand, which are mainly bound to the inner being, can indeed emerge strongly in youth. Because there is not much shell yet, the existing talent for music, for mathematics or for poetry must already show itself. But when it comes to skills for practical life, we know that these and everything else needed to cope with the external world must first be acquired in the further course of life. And only at the end comes the real [spiritual] element, mysticism, looking into the spiritual world. It is then important not only to be inflamed for spiritual facts, but to have developed the abilities and trained the organs for spiritual vision, in order to achieve harmony between the knowledge of what is shown on the outside and what the world lives through and trembles through in its innermost being.

One can be a follower of a mystic in mature youth, one can interpret him, but to achieve something in this field is only possible when we have reached middle age. So if one wants to find within oneself the possibility of harmonizing with the universal spirit of the world, one must be about forty years old, since this is not possible earlier. One must give oneself time, one must occupy oneself differently beforehand, and that with the tendency of being a follower of a spiritual world current and thereby creating harmony between one's own inner core and the organs to be developed. He who does not transgress such laws, as they could only be hinted at here, will best find his way into life and increasingly separate himself from the forces that lie in the natural line of inheritance for him, hindering him, and overcome them. On further consideration of the natural conditions of inheritance, we can see that there must be a difference between the children of young spouses and the children from a union that has existed for a longer period of time or has only been entered into at an advanced age. Because a person is in a state of ascending development until a certain point in their life, the consequences of the work that has been done by the inner core of the being become more and more apparent in the gestures, the physiognomy, and thus in the outer personality, as one matures. Around the age of twenty, some of this work has already been done, but you can see that not all of the influence of the spiritual core of being is being exercised, but that part of it is still stuck in the depths. Only gradually does the actual person fully emerge and come to the surface. Only then does he have a stronger power to transfer his inherited traits to his offspring because he has now matured so much. A spiritual-soul core that wants to live as independently as possible out of its own inner strength will therefore feel magnetically attracted to a youthful father who offers less resistance; a weaker individuality, on the other hand, will be attracted to an older father with a fully developed character. Seen from this point of view, some of life's greatest riddles are illuminated. Such relationships can, of course, be most clearly demonstrated in the typical case, although the most diverse variations often occur.

Now we will see how the individual characteristics of the soul can be independent of each other and how they are inherited, but how all the qualities are brought together to form a basic tone and processed by the spiritual-soul core. Thus, for example, arrogance can be inherited from the mother and clumsiness from the father and grouped together by the soul. Soul qualities disregard much of what the parents are able to offer and favor something else. Many a complicated theory of external science is often very illogical. For example, it is claimed that genius can be traced back to its roots in the characteristics of previous generations; what remarkable qualities were already present in the individual ancestors can be seen in the genius that emerged from this line of ancestors, as if collected and intensified in a focal point. This is used to try to demonstrate that there is no such thing as a spiritual-soul core. But it is a mistake to assume that favorable traits can only be accumulated and enhanced through the natural process of inheritance. On the contrary, if there is to be any inheritance in this respect, the circumstances are such that genius stands at the beginning, but not at the end, of a line of inheritance. In its outward personal peculiarities, genius is only colored in its penetration through the physical line of inheritance – just as someone gets wet when they fall into the water.

We can apply all that has been said in practice if we make it the basis of an educational task that confronts us and allow it to become a kind of cognitive problem of life. We have already said that we have to solve a sacred mystery in the human being who strives towards existence, and we must seek to recognize what all that is working its way up holds within itself. We must try to acquire a fine sense of tact in order to observe correctly how the spiritual and soul essence struggles to free itself from dark undercurrents; we must pay careful attention to which qualities of the developing young person relate to the father and which to the mother – in the organ systems, in the soul qualities and in their interaction under the influence of the individuality on the outer shells.

Although individuality is often called for today, all this remains mere rhetoric as long as one cannot go into details and their origin. If one does not do this and, starting from this phrase, wants to judge and state that the child to be educated must now do this or that, one will remain very theoretical. Sometimes the educator will not be equal to the individual core of being that he is to help come into existence. He does not need to be equal to the pupil, but he must be equal to the education. It is necessary to educate the human being in such a way that he can enter life independently and is able to seize everything skillfully. It is not always possible, and depends on the educator, to introduce everything to the pupil bit by bit and always in good time, based on theoretical observations and considerations; often circumstances intervene that arise from within the family itself or from outside in a hindering way. Sometimes the maturing individuality is even better served when this or that is decreed by unavoidable external circumstances, because then – even under such circumstances – the individual riddle is not solved by theoretical education, but everything that comes from the dark depths of the past, from earlier life courses, is guided into harmonious interaction with present circumstances.

In spiritual science, we can find the spiritual not only for our own satisfaction; spiritual science can also be the guide to help the spiritual, which wants to reveal itself in the growing child, to come into existence, so that it can find its way into the living interaction of people. In this way, we can, in our modest way, become saviors of people, that is, of their spiritual essence, which is behind their outer appearance. Thus, spiritual science will become more and more deeply rooted in human life with this approach because it leads to the permeation of life with practical goals. We find this in Goethe, in his steadfastness in standing on a secure, inner foundation of life, in which we perceive a spirit that never remains on what has been achieved, but which also proves to us in the future to be continually effective and creative if we allow his word to have the right effect on us:

If yesterday is clear and open to you,
If you are vigorously free today,
You can also hope for a tomorrow
That may be no less happy.

And we can hope the same for ourselves, but also for the people whose mental content and spiritual health has been entrusted to us as educators.

Dear attendees! When I had the honor of speaking here a few weeks ago about the figure of Zarathustra, the intention was to show the significance that such a leading individuality has for the general spiritual life of humanity. We may say that we can feel this significance to an increased degree in a figure whose effects still extend so strongly into the immediate present, as is the case with the figure of Moses. For who would deny that a large part of our emotional and intellectual life, and a large part of what takes hold of the institutions and conditions of our environment through our thoughts, is still deeply influenced by the after-effects of those deeds in the development of humanity that are associated with the name of Moses. Although we go back almost one and a half millennia before the founding of Christianity, we can say that the after-effects of this act can be felt right to the innermost part of our soul tissue. Therefore, it must be of the greatest interest to us to understand what this mission, this teaching of Moses, means in the evolution of humanity as a whole.

Now it is not that easy to speak about the figure of Moses. On the one hand, it is not like the figure of Zarathustra or Zoroaster, whose historical outlines are blurred for us and of whom we can hardly specify even minor character traits from external documents; rather, the personality of Moses stands sharply outlined and vividly before modern man from the biblical record of the Old Testament. On the other hand, however, it cannot be denied that in the broadest sense, especially among those who deal with so-called critical Bible research, all sorts of doubts are attached to this description of the personality of Moses – doubts that not only challenge what the Bible tells us about the figure of Moses, but doubts that even go so far as to question the existence of Moses himself.

Now, as we have already shown on a number of occasions in other descriptions here, a genuine spiritual scientific approach to the religious documents provides the proof that we cannot so easily dismiss what is written in these documents, because more precise research in particular has often shown that the statements of the old religious documents are much, much more correct than one sometimes believes. But it is precisely when one adheres to the image that is given to us from the Bible of the figure of Moses that it is difficult to work this figure out spiritually – difficult for the reason that one must have insight into the way in which it is spoken in those parts of the Bible in which Moses is mentioned. These descriptions are very peculiar; they are so peculiar that we can characterize them in a few words in the following way.

In the Old Testament portions of the Bible, external physical events, external facts that once took place historically before the eyes of men, are continually interwoven with allegorical descriptions; without our being able to immediately and easily recognize the transition, the historical external facts merge into allegorical descriptions of inner soul processes. In the Bible, for example, a character may be presented as undertaking this or that journey, doing this or that, and then as the story unfolds, it may appear that what is being described are external events, whereas in fact the descriptions of these events are being used to depict inner soul conflicts, inner soul developments, soul stages. The description of external events then serves only to illustrate inner soul processes in certain parts. As I said, in the biblical description the transition from one to the other is not always readily recognizable. Only that measure of understanding that can be gained from spiritual scientific principles enables us to recognize: Here, in a biblical account, the will stops describing purely external, physical processes and a sequence of symbolic actions begins, which suggest to us that the personality, which until then did this or that externally, is now undergoing a soul development; it ascends from stage to stage and acquires this or that in its soul life. But it is not the soul life that is described, but symbols are given.

This has even led to the fact that a great theological-philosophical writer who lived around the time of the founding of Christianity, Philo of Alexandria, based on his opinion, regarded all the events described in the oldest parts of the Old Testament as symbols of soul processes [of the Hebrew people]. Such an opinion, however, goes much too far; it does not take into account that in the biblical account, external events are mixed up with internal soul processes. Today, we will endeavor to present the image of Moses that can be gained from the Bible in such a way that the two different descriptions can actually be distinguished.

To get to know the personality of Moses, one must consider the whole culture from which the deed of Moses has grown. And so it is incumbent upon me to first characterize the ancient Egyptian culture in spiritual scientific terms with a few strokes - that culture from which, after all, in terms of external events, what we can call the mission of Moses has grown. Now, however, one can only understand this ancient Egyptian culture in its development and the outgrowth of the deed of Moses [from this culture] if one knows two important spiritual scientific laws, and these two spiritual scientific laws must be the basis of our consideration. One law has been mentioned here several times. It is the fact that the entire nature and configuration of human consciousness and the human soul's makeup has not always been as it is now, but that it has changed significantly over the millennia of human development. We already know – and here it is only briefly hinted at – that the further back we go in human development, the more we encounter a different state of mind, a different kind of consciousness in people than what is considered normal consciousness today.

Where prehistory merges into history, that is, in those times from which we have historical documents, the old state of mind is already changing into the newer one. That is why people today find it so difficult to imagine that the word 'development', which today, in terms of its outward form, exerts such a magical power on people, must above all be applied to the process of the human soul in its becoming. And the further back we go, the more we find that the way we look at things today, which we perceive through our senses and link through the ordinary mind tied to the physical brain, that this way of viewing things by merely alternating our waking consciousness with our sleeping consciousness, which is interrupted at most only by irregular dreams, was not always present, but that this form of consciousness has only developed gradually.

The further back we go, the more we come to another form of human consciousness. Although what we call our present waking and sleeping consciousness has already been prepared in the millennia we are talking about today, in those ancient times, which still reach into the oldest times of Egyptian culture and of which external history does not know much to report, there was a kind of old clairvoyant consciousness, a kind of pictorial consciousness. It was this consciousness that asserted itself as a third state of consciousness, like an intermediate state between waking and sleeping. The waking consciousness, as it is today and on which our present-day view of the world is based, was preparing itself in its beginnings, and our “sleeping unconsciousness” was also essentially already present. But people still had a third form of consciousness that was not permeated by those thoughts, concepts and ideas through which we today enlighten ourselves about our environment. It was filled with images, of which the symbols of today's dream are an atavism. But in these images, which undulated up and down, nothing was arbitrary, but these images could be clearly related to supersensible facts and entities that stand behind our sensual world, so that in this state, man actually of an ancient clairvoyance, he reached into the spiritual, into the supersensible world and, from direct experience, from the ancient, dream-like consciousness of clairvoyance, had knowledge of what takes place in the spiritual world.

The further development of humanity consists in the fact that the power of one soul develops at the expense of another. Our present-day intellectuality, the way in which we connect the external objects given by our senses through our concepts and ideas, could only develop by darkening the clairvoyant consciousness, by descending into an indefinite subconscious of man and transforming itself into the present mental state. This will later combine again with a certain kind of clairvoyant consciousness, but this will then be interspersed with our intellectuality, whereas the intellectual element was precisely lacking in the old clairvoyant consciousness.

Now we have to familiarize ourselves with the fact that this ancient consciousness had to take on the most diverse forms. And for this to be possible, each of the ancient peoples - in accordance with their national character - was called upon to develop this ancient consciousness in a very specific way. One can literally speak of the fact that each nation had the mission to develop consciousness in a very specific way. The Egyptian people, for example, whose ancient, sacred wisdom, on which the ancient Egyptian script is based and which we can still admire today, was the one that received its wisdom in ancient times from its leaders through such clairvoyant awareness, that is, through direct insight into the spiritual worlds. And from the most ancient times the tradition went right down to the later times of the Egyptian people. What we find from these later times as historical accounts is essentially the echo of what the leaders of the Egyptian people saw clairvoyantly in the spiritual worlds in times gone by.

Now, however, we must be clear about the fact - and this is the other fact that is to be presented today from the basis of spiritual science - that for every human soul disposition, for every way of looking at things in the environment, there is a specific epoch for it, and when this has passed, another soul disposition must take the place of the old one. A nation that retains this old state of mind beyond the very specific point in time when an old state of mind should be replaced by a new one must face the decline of its spiritual powers, decadence. And we also see this, because why do nations face decadence? Because, so to speak, they have been inoculated with a certain soul-disposition from their national origin, and now, out of a certain conservative element, they want to keep it. But the world's development says: Up to here [with the old soul-disposition], and now a new one must come in! The nations can keep the old one, but then they will decay, because the time for a new soul-disposition has come.

Now, while the development of Egypt was taking place, a new era was dawning. The clock of the old, clairvoyant culture had run down, and within this culture of the ancient peoples an intellectual culture was to arise, one that was directed towards understanding, towards reason in the ordinary sense, towards the intellectual combination and comprehension of the things of the outer world. This intellectual culture, this kind of state of mind, extends far into our present time. We ourselves have the peculiarity of still bearing in our souls what had to be integrated into the course of Egyptian culture at that time, namely, what we have as our intellectuality, as our way of looking at things. What had to take the place of ancient Egyptian culture in Egypt at that time extends to us. The personality of Moses was destined to bring [man] to an intellectual understanding of the world around him - in contrast to the old, clairvoyant culture. It is therefore no wonder that the deed of Moses reaches to us, sending its offshoots into our souls. Because it has made fruitful precisely that kind of human soul-condition to which we ourselves still belong, we still feel in some way akin to the deed of Moses. Moses was placed in the midst of the Egyptian people, and out of Egyptian culture he was to found the modern culture of the intellect in its very first basis. He founded the New for which the cosmic clock was attuned, and the ancient Egyptian culture was outgrown and fell into decay. He brought what he had to give to the people to whom he had come of his own accord, and led them out of their Egyptian background, in whom the germ of the rational culture of humanity was to develop.

People who are called upon to recognize the course of the world's history are always described to us in such a way that something happens in connection with their birth that has a symbolic significance for the development of their soul. The biblical story describes how Moses was found by the daughter of Pharaoh in the well-known box in which he was placed. Whether or not this is an accurate account need not be discussed further here. We are simply meant to be shown by this description that there were originally predisposed forces in this Moses that were destined to bring something quite new, a completely new kind of soul-disposition into the world. Therefore, it had to be shown symbolically that this soul, in which the germ of something new was, had to remain completely unaffected by its surroundings for a while, closed in on itself, and then placed in that environment from which the new was to be carried out. And now we are presented with facts that belong to the area I have characterized, where biblical history tells us what really happened physically in the outer world - [that area] where one can see [the events] with one's own eyes and follow them historically.

There we are made aware of how Moses, through a certain act he has committed, is led to flee. He flees to Midian to a priest, to the priest Jetro. And in this transition from the purely external events that are presented to us - from the killing of the Egyptian and the escape of Moses - we are gently led to an event that looks like a physical continuation of the facts, but which is nothing other than a symbolic representation of the events that Moses is now experiencing [internally] and that he can only experience by coming into the presence of a priest, a bearer of the most comprehensive cosmic wisdom. This is hinted at and is clear enough for those who understand the images that are used again and again in the same way.

We are told that Moses, when he fled to the priest Jetro, first came upon a well. The well always indicates the source of wisdom - the source of human culture, of spiritual educational elements that someone finds. And then we are led further in a very strange way. We are shown how Moses finds the seven daughters of Jetro, who is also called Reguel by another name. That he was a priest of the deity that was placed above all other gods in those ancient times is indicated to us by the fact that we are told – told by his name – that he belongs to this supreme deity. This is always indicated by the suffix '-el', as in Gabriel, Michael, who 'belong to the highest God'. So Jetro-Reguel was a priest of the highest God. And we are told, by means of symbolic images of the soul processes, that Moses was to come into contact with a priest who could pour the most powerful wisdom into the soul of Moses. It was a wisdom such that his soul became full of light and strength, so that he could fulfill his mission of bringing a new soul state into humanity.

Now, in the old psychology of the soul, things were thought of somewhat differently than they are today, and so we have to realize how ancient psychology actually thought. Today we speak more or less of the human soul as something unified, and for our time we are quite right to do so. We speak of thinking, feeling and willing as forces that live in our soul, and we even know that if these three forces are not in the right harmony in our soul, the health of our soul is affected. And this is based on the fact that our soul has developed from what it used to be into what it is today. In ancient times, the wise said that different areas lived in the human soul, and they listed seven such areas. Just as we list the three areas of thinking, feeling and willing today, they listed seven different areas of the soul, but they did not imagine the soul as a single unit.

We can visualize the ideas of these ancient sages something like this. Let us assume that the human soul today does not feel as a unity, but rather says to itself: Thinking, feeling and willing live in me, but a special kind of spiritual current from the cosmos penetrates into thinking, which is only connected to the thinking of the human being; another current penetrates into feeling and yet another into willing. And these forces would not be held together by the power of the present ego, but by the intervention of divine spiritual beings from without, as it were, who shape our soul life into harmony. Thus it would not be we ourselves who harmoniously unite the members of our soul life with each other, but external powers that reach in from the cosmic expanses. The ancient sages assumed seven such powers, and these seven powers reached into the soul independently, as it were. What was grasped with this wisdom was the outpouring of seven forces that flowed through the world and poured into the seven soul regions of man. And what flowed in as soul forces was imagined in the image of the seven daughters of the bearer of the total wisdom.

This is something that still resonates in all the later mystical ideas, which imagined that which flowed into the soul as wisdom or as soul light or as impulses of will, as female: This also still resonates in Goethe's “Faust”, where it says, “The eternal feminine draws us up,” which must not be interpreted frivolously. And when we are told that Moses met with the seven daughters of Jethro at the well, it means that the seven rays of wisdom emanated from Jethro and poured into the soul of Moses — separate from each other, as was thought everywhere in ancient psychology. In those ancient times, wisdom, the spiritual forces of inspiration in the world, was thought of as personal and concrete, not abstract, as it is today.

In our study of Zarathustra, we saw how that which flows into man is conceived by Zarathustra as concrete world powers, as the Amshaspands and the Izeds or Izards. And here we see the progress in the thinking of mankind: what was presented in living spirituality as having a personal character and flowing into the human soul fades in the Platonic ideas, for example. The seven different powers of inspiration of the soul are presented to us figuratively in the seven daughters of the high priest whom Moses meets at the well. And the fact that he is called to develop one of these powers in order to begin his special mission in humanity is indicated by the fact that he is married to one of Jethro's seven daughters. And we will see which of the seven basic powers falls precisely within the mission of Moses. We can trace these seven soul forces throughout the Middle Ages, for what we encounter in the so-called seven liberal arts as the animators of the human soul are the faded abstractions of the seven ancient spiritual sources.

These seven spiritual sources, which were to flow into the soul of each individual, were conceived in such a way that one was more related to the wise understanding of the world – clairvoyant wisdom, of course – another spiritual power was more related to the loving embrace of facts and entities, a third more to the impulses of the will, a fourth to memory, and so on. It was now intended that Moses should incorporate one of these seven spiritual powers into his special mission and replace what had previously ruled humanity with the wisdom that permeates the world. This spiritual power is intellectuality; it is the kind of understanding and grasp of the world that no longer relies on clairvoyance but on the powers of the external mind.

Now a transition must be created everywhere. The old cannot easily be transformed into the new. Moses was called upon to replace the old clairvoyant wisdom, which was still native to Egypt and had already begun to decline in Moses' time, with the new intellectuality, the rational overview of things. He himself, however, still had to develop the new way out of a certain clairvoyance that he still had through grace. The fact that Moses still saw things in the old way of clairvoyance, but saw them as the new intellectuality should see them, created the bridge, as it were, between the old clairvoyance and the new intellectuality of humanity, free from clairvoyance.

What is this new intellectuality bound to? It is bound to that center of our soul that we designate with the simple word “I”. By consciously ascribing existence to the center of our soul, we enclose the realm of our consciousness as the realm of intellectuality - that realm in which reason and intellect, concept and idea are at work. If one wants to enclose this area, one must be aware that it only holds together because it is held together by the unified ego.

So what was given to Moses [as a task]? Well, an infinitely important deed lay before Moses - one can express it that way if one wants to put Moses' experience into words. Moses could say to himself: The gods have worked through their various powers into the human soul, and when people of ancient times, in their clairvoyance, looked over this or that, when they felt this or that in the outer world, they always spoke of the gods who lived outside in the cosmos. But for intellectuality – for that grasping of the outer world that is bound to the deepest human center – the God must enter into the innermost center of the human being, must connect with this I. And a God must be recognized who is not merely seen in the clouds, in the stars, but of whom it must be said: He works in the clouds, that is the power of the clouds; but when He streams into the soul, He brings about what this human soul experiences in itself.

Not only could this be said of the external gods, but also this: Now such a soul power must develop in humanity, which can only develop through the power of a god who has his being in the I of man. This God, who was to enter into the innermost being of man, into his I, appeared to the clairvoyant consciousness of Moses through the inspiration of the priest. And through clairvoyance, Moses beheld God, that is, through that which could still be kindled in him of clairvoyant power — which is indicated to us by the image of the burning bush. As this is described, everyone who understands these things recognizes that an astral-clairvoyant vision of a reality is present. The new God, who was to have his being in the ego, appeared in the burning bush. And Moses asked this God: If I am now to lead my people in your name, what must I say, who has sent me? You can read it in the Bible yourself – even if the translations of the Bible are otherwise very inadequate, here they are correct. To the question: Who has sent you?, Moses is given the answer: Tell your people that 'I am' has sent you. And that means: That divine power has sent you, which kindles in the innermost human center the possibility that man can speak in this innermost center “I am”, thus attaches his existence to himself, experiences his existence himself: “I am, who I am”!

That was what Moses clairvoyantly pre-experienced: the intellectuality of humanity. With this, he stood at a point where the old culture, in relation to the human soul, was to merge into a completely new culture. This was a transition over an abyss of human culture, as if the world powers had said: In the future, intellectuality must prevail, and those who want to continue the old ways are heading for decline. We must cross over this abyss. Moses might have said this to himself. And so the followers of Moses felt that the transition over a cosmic world abyss had been won. That is why the followers of Moses celebrated the Passover, the festival of the transition over a world abyss, in memory of this act of Moses. Oh, these ancient festivals, which today we are accustomed to celebrating in such a trivial way, relate to great mysteries of the existence of the world. Now when Moses, endowed with the power for thousands of years, came to the court of Pharaoh, it is no wonder that this Pharaoh, who had grown out of the old Hellschic culture of Egypt, could not understand the signs that Moses displayed before him.

We cannot go into the details of the misunderstandings that took place between Moses and Pharaoh. These are all images that are intended to show us that Pharaoh spoke out of an ancient clairvoyant culture and out of a state of mind that also came from this clairvoyant culture. The ancient pictographic script also originated from such a culture. Everything that Egyptians could understand about the course of natural events arose from this. But Moses developed such an understanding of world phenomena, such a combination of facts, as emerged from modern intellectuality. Of course, to those who were still steeped in the old clairvoyant consciousness, this appeared as a miracle, as miraculous events, for just as people today cannot imagine that things happen other than as they imagine them, the ancient cultural people could not imagine that things happen as modern people imagine them. Thus, the concept of miracle has only been reversed.

And we know, of course, as the Bible presents it to us, that Moses really did succeed, through his great strength, which arose from an inspiration of the soul, in leading this people, who were his descendants through blood, as it were, out of Egypt, but in such a way that afterwards, separated from Egyptian culture, they were able to develop an intellectual culture. Therefore, we see that from this mission of Moses everything that we can call thinking, which can be traced back to a unity - to the unity of Yahweh - and can permeate the world with reason, with concepts and ideas, arises from this mission of Moses. That was the mission of the ancient Hebrew people: to infuse human culture with reason, intellectualism, concepts and ideas. And anyone who wants to see things as they are will understand that to this day this peculiar mission of the ancient Hebrew people has been at work and that this peculiar intellectual culture could only emerge from such a source.

How did those for whom Moses was the inspirer relate to those who still came from the old clairvoyant culture? How did the followers of Moses, whom he led out of Egypt, relate to the Egyptians? Here we have to familiarize ourselves with some peculiarities of the state of mind of people who were influenced by the old clairvoyant culture and perhaps still are today. There are always stragglers, and these are the ones whose intellectual development is retarded. To make it clear to us how certain soul powers prevail there, I would like to remind you first of certain things in animals, although I do not want to compare the human with the animal. One speaks of instinctive activity in animals. We will not criticize the word instinct further; everyone knows what is meant by it, namely this elementary, direct action and doing, as we find it in the animal kingdom, which contrasts with [purposeful] human action. In humans, we have considered action; in animals, actions come from instincts. The more we go back to the old clairvoyant state, the more instinctive action becomes for people as well. They are led, driven to their actions; they do not first give account of themselves in concepts and ideas. We also find a certain instinctive action in every old soul condition.

Now I remind you of something that is truer than one might think. You will have heard descriptions that, for example, when eruptions from volcanoes are imminent, the animals move away beforehand and thus do not fall prey to the catastrophe. There is some truth behind these descriptions: just as I follow my instinct when flying, so do animals follow a mysterious urge when volcanoes erupt. Now, people, who have already risen to the level of thinking in terms of concepts and ideas, can no longer act so instinctively; they remain [and succumb] to the disaster. Even though such reports are often exaggerated, But there is some truth in them, because where there is an instinct, there is a more intimate connection between natural events and what is felt in the human soul than there is in such actions, which are based on concepts and ideas. Thus, the state of mind of the ancient peoples also changed; it became different in those who thought intellectually.

And so the followers of Moses now faced the ancient Egyptians: the Egyptians, an ancient people, the followers of Moses, the new people. And this was due to its entire blood composition, intellectually, rationally combining natural phenomena, thinking rationally. Yes, it now comes into consideration that the time for the old instinctive in the state of mind has expired. [And when this time has expired], then the [old] powers come into decline, then they are no longer useful. They were useful in ancient times; then people instinctively sensed the course of natural events and acted accordingly. But this came into decline around the time that Moses was called upon to bring a completely new culture, and there was no longer time for the old instinctive soul powers. And now let us imagine that on the one hand Moses and on the other the ancient Egyptians are confronted with natural events. The ancient Egyptians could not intellectually combine natural phenomena. In ancient times they had felt it instinctively in their souls when the sea level rose again; there was an intimate bond between the soul life and the external natural phenomena. Never would the soul have failed to feel when the sea level receded so that one could cross the dry land. But the ancient times were over. The Egyptians no longer had these ancient, instinctive powers, because the time had come when one should intellectually survey the context of things. Moses was called to do this. He now stood before the sea, and he knew from the course of natural events when to retreat so that he and his people could cross over. Through the newly developed intellectuality, it was possible for him to read this point in time from nature. In ancient times, the Egyptians would have sensed that they could no longer cross, but they were not yet ripe for the new kind of knowledge; they fell prey to the waves because their soul forces had come into decadence, into decay. Thus we see Moses leading his followers across the receding waters by intellectual deduction, and we see the Egyptians falling prey to the floods, because they could only have sensed from their ancient, instinctive strength that the sea was rising again, but they no longer had this instinctive strength.

We are standing at the boundary between the old and the new times, we are standing at the point where the mission of Moses stands out clearly from the mission of the ancient Egyptian people. At such a point, we feel how profound and significant the descriptions of the religious documents are, but one needs spiritual science to understand the religious documents; this wants to be a servant to the understanding of these documents. Today I can only sketch out an outline, but try for yourself to compare everything you find in the Bible or in other documents with what has been said today, and you will see: the more closely you take what spiritual science has to say, the more you will find that what can only be sketched out today with a few lines of charcoal is true, because it corresponds to reality everywhere.

Let us now see further: We see how the special disposition that Moses has to convey to his people as his mission is particularly linked to protecting the purity of the blood. Especially with this people it should not mix, it should keep itself separate from the other peoples, so that the same blood runs down through generations and generations. Why is that so? We can understand that too, if we visualize the changes in the state of mind. Clairvoyance – whether it is the old, pictorial kind or the kind that is often described here, which the modern person can achieve by going through the appropriate exercises – clairvoyance is always tied to the person's spiritual part being able to become independent of their physical body, that they can, in a sense, draw their spiritual part out of their physical body. What the clairvoyant experiences, he experiences only through the tool of the soul, which frees itself, as it were, goes out of physical corporeality. The modern materialist will regard this as foolishness from the outset; he cannot believe that all the activity of his soul is bound to the physical brain. But clairvoyance is not bound to the brain, but takes place in the life of the soul without the brain. Only experience can confirm this, and anyone who does not have this experience can refute it with a thousand seemingly sufficient reasons, much like a blind person can refute the existence of colors. But that is not the point. According to the principles of today's research, one should admit that only experience can decide. So clairvoyance is dependent on the spiritual part of the human being freeing itself from the instruments of the physical body.

We have to look at all ancient cultures in such a way that they were based, in a certain way, on the paths of imagination, inspiration, and intuition, which flowed into the soul. These cultures therefore had something that was independent of the physical body and merely flowed down into the physical world. This is why the remains of ancient cultures are so difficult to interpret, because the moment you become independent of the physical body through consciousness, you can only live in more plastic forms than the physical body. In clairvoyance one does not have such sharply defined contours as in the physical; one has something pictorial that does not refer so directly to the physical world as is otherwise the case with intellectual comprehension; one has something that refers more symbolically to external things. We may say, then, that the clairvoyant cultures - and this includes the Egyptian in all its greatness - must be given to us in such a way in all their traditions that they use images instead of external, sharp conceptual contours. The myths, the old legends, in which the secrets of the world are immersed, are pictorial representations of the secrets of the world; they are echoes of the old pictorial clairvoyance. In a certain sense, the transmission of culture was still bound up with spiritual processes.

But now it was precisely the mission of Moses to give the souls such a constitution and to lay the foundation for culture that was bound to intellectuality, but thus also to the outer instrument of the body. For that is the peculiarity of [intellectual] thought: it conceptualizes things in the same way as our normal, waking consciousness, and this consciousness is entirely bound to the tools of the brain and the rest of the body. Intellectuality is bound to the tools of the physical body. It is no wonder that this special intellectual gift was bound to a special configuration, to special organ predispositions of a people, and had to be transmitted from generation to generation through the physical blood until the mission of the ancient Hebrew people was fulfilled. Thus, the physical instrument for intellectuality had to be bound to the physical peculiarity of this people through the blood flowing from generation to generation, and had to be refined more and more until it was so refined that the physical vehicle for that spiritual power, which then poured in to a much higher degree than the Divine power into the human 'I am' - to a much higher degree than had happened through the old power of Yahweh. And in this respect, the mission of Moses was indeed the preparation for the deed of Christ. But first the outer instruments had to be trained in the appropriate way. And so we also understand that this deed of Moses was bound to a very specific people, whose blood had to be kept pure because this special power, which is bound to the instrument of the outer body, was to flow into human cultural development.

Thus, the act of Moses fits entirely harmoniously and uniformly into the overall development of humanity. We perceive him as the great standard-bearer of intellectuality – in all its peculiarity, which is even expressed in mysticism, that is, in human spiritual activity, which is otherwise the most alien to understanding and reason. Even in mysticism, for example in Hebrew Kabbalah, it is clear to us that this culture has the mission of bringing understanding and reason, combinatory comprehension of external events into human culture.

And when we look back to the Hermes culture of ancient Egypt with its wonderful, old clairvoyant culture, we see how it is called upon to bear the no longer clairvoyant Moses culture in its bosom, but that it itself must perish because the clock of world development is now set to intellectuality. And that is the significance of the Christ event, that with Him and the Mystery of Golgotha, such a powerful spiritual thrust has come into intellectual development – such a powerful spiritual impulse – that little by little, as humanity, having become intellectual, more and more familiarizes itself with the Christ event, the intellectual can also be absorbed by this powerful spiritual impulse, and can be caught by that which in turn leads into the spiritual, into the clairvoyant realm, and carries intellectuality into this realm. We still feel so touched by the significance of the Moses event today because we ourselves are still immersed in the age of intellectual culture and only glimpse a new spirituality and a new mission in the distance.

So, with a few strokes, I was able to draw this picture of Moses for you, my dear audience, as it presents itself to spiritual research in the clairvoyant consciousness, which has an enlightening effect on the external, historical account. This is the only way to distinguish between what is historical and what is a symbolic representation of inner processes in Moses himself. And so Moses stands before our soul as a living being, and we feel how unjustified it is to say that such an impulse should have formed by itself. There are people today who do not understand that effects must also have causes and that effects that point back to the personal also presuppose a personality.

Nevertheless, there are people today who doubt the existence of such a personality as that of Moses. This is certainly a sign of our time. One may say that critical biblical research has a hard time with these things. Those who are familiar with it have a great deal of respect for it, above all because perhaps in no other field of science, not even in the natural sciences, has so much diligence and devotion been expended as in the field of critical biblical research. And yet, in many respects, we see that today it has reached a point where it no longer knows how to help itself in the face of the greatest figures and impulses of humanity, where it only knows how to deny them, just as the historical existence of Jesus is already being denied today. But nevertheless, one must have all respect for the tragedy of this research, which in our materialistic age, out of materialistic ideas, wants to find the inner value of the accounts in the Bible or in other documents. But if one approaches a figure like Moses from a spiritual scientific point of view and shows, based on the secrets of human development, what had to be sunk into the soul of Moses in order for humanity to reach the level we have today, then it seems the most absurd to assume an effect without a cause, that is, a personal creation without personality.

In contrast to this, we can say that it is only through the presentation of spiritual science that the details of the Bible are illuminated in a wonderful way and that the Bible takes on a new value. For now we approach the Bible as a person familiar with mathematical laws approaches a mathematical problem. Those who do not know the mathematical laws see nothing in them but incomprehensible signs, just as they see in problems. Those who do not know the language of the Bible also see only incomprehensible things in it today, perhaps childish images that prehistoric man conjured up. But anyone who gets to know the basics that spiritual science provides and, with its help, deciphers the religious documents, feels something of what has been going on so magnificently through the ages. They feel the language of the nations, of the people in whose souls the spiritual impulses for the progress of humanity are living, that choir of humanity's leading spirits that communicate across the millennia. It is a wonderful phenomenon when the spiritual researcher peers into the spiritual worlds and then looks at the Bible and realizes from the Bible that it tells us something that we can also find through spiritual research ourselves. So we cannot but say: Whoever wrote this must have known what is going on in the spiritual worlds and what is there if such human progress as we now have before us could happen at all.

And so, through spiritual research, we look to Moses as a great leader of humanity. These leaders of humanity become more and more precious to us as we penetrate into the depths of their spirit through spiritual research. And we feel more and more blessed when we look with such sharpened thinking and feeling at these leaders of humanity, of whom it can rightly be said: They illuminate our souls with their spiritual light in order to strengthen our souls with their mighty spiritual power.

Dear attendees! Before I begin my remarks today, please allow me to say a few words by way of introduction. What I will be saying today can be fully justified scientifically. And I will try again and again to establish a relationship with science by showing that anthroposophy is in no way opposed to the justified results and conscientious research methods of the present day. But I have already allowed myself to make the relevant remarks, at least in outline, in the lecture that I was allowed to give here in the same place a few months ago. And since I can assume that a large number of the esteemed audience who were present that day are here again today, a repetition of what was said then could well seem superfluous to them. And so I will leave out what I said then about the relationship between anthroposophy and science.

Dear attendees! When we speak of the spiritual world, fundamental questions and riddles arise for the human soul, questions and riddles that are not merely theoretical, but are connected with the inner peace and joyfulness, with the whole inner destiny of the human soul, and with the ability and efficiency of the human being in life. But the nature of these difficulties that arise for the human being in relation to the spiritual world is not always considered in the right way. That a human being has a spiritual entity to claim for himself cannot really give rise to any mystery or doubt. For man knows in every moment of his waking existence that precisely that in which he feels himself in his true human dignity and in his true human nature is what he describes as his spirit. He is concerned about such riddles that arise in this direction. He is concerned, after all, with the fate of this spirit, which actually constitutes his being. Whether this spirit is something that belongs to the ephemeral, whether we can ascribe a duration to it, whether it is what emerges from material existence like a bubble, whether it is what gives meaning and value to the material. So that is essentially what it is about, not the spirit as such. Even the materialists will not deny the spirit, but only regard it as a result of the material processes of the world.

If a person feels the urge to explore the nature of the spirit, not only for the sake of science but also for the happiness of everyday life, it is because, in the face of this fate, the soul — one might say — from unconscious depths, which are actually only raised into consciousness by a scientific world view, because uncomfortable, worrying moods continually arise from them. And these are connected with a vast number of experiences that flash through our soul. I could mention many of these experiences that cause a person to worry about the spirit, but I will only give two examples, two that are precisely those that a person does not always realize, that do not always enter a person's consciousness. But it is precisely such worries that dwell in the subconscious depths, giving rise to moods and states of mind, bringing happiness or sorrow to the soul, and which intrude into everything that makes a person capable or incapable in life. When we define them, we often describe something that the simple, naive mind does not bring to consciousness, but which is rooted all the more deeply in the soul and is connected with the whole life of feeling and sensation. And from this realm I would like to give two examples.

The first is the feeling that arises at the moment when a person passes from the waking state into the sleeping state, which actually occurs every day in a person's life. The inner spiritual activity in which the human being finds his true being fades away. It becomes completely unconscious, and the human being enters the indefinite. Even if one does not always feel it, there is something in this experience that could be called the powerlessness of ordinary spiritual life. There is something in the world existence that we enter through the state of sleep and that takes away from us the state in which we recognize our human dignity and our human worth, that takes away our spiritual life. This powerlessness in the face of the spirit is the one thing that, more or less, half or wholly unconsciously underlies the riddle questions about the spiritual being.

And on the other hand, it is that which can arise when a person awakens in the morning, perhaps through the transition of the dream state, which he can only see as a sum of chaotic experiences in relation to the reality of waking life, then immersed in his physical being, serving his bodily senses, his organs. But then the human being notices — I would say — the other pole of that which raises questions about the nature of the spirit within him. He notices that, in relation to what he is as a spiritual being, he is claimed in his bodily presence. He lives in the senses, in the nervous system, in the limbs. But if we ask ourselves the simplest question: how do we move the hand, the arm? In our ordinary consciousness, we cannot account for what flows from the intention to carry out the action down into the body, what works and weaves in this bodily existence, so that ultimately raising and lowering the arm comes about. It is as if what we call our spiritual life were plunging into darkness.

Thus, on the one hand, we see the sense of powerlessness of the spiritual life and, on the other, the descent into an undefined darkness that lies within us. And when a person, through experiencing something like this, brings to mind all the soul moods and dispositions that arise from it, then the question somehow urges itself upon him: Yes, what is the truth about this spiritual life? Is there another spiritual life in which this, which seems so powerless and dark to me, is somehow rooted, that guarantees its continued existence? But then two opinions, two enemies of thought and feeling, are placed between man and this spiritual world, which fill man with illusions about the spiritual world and which feed on something in him, in the mood and state of his soul.

The first is superstition. The person who wants to come to an awareness of his connection to a spiritual world does indeed strive inward, seeking, not through his knowledge but out of his will, to surrender to all kinds of illusions, all kinds of clouds to his judgment, things that are supposed to tell him something about the spiritual world. I need only hint at these things for you to feel what sources of illusion lie in what we call the various forms of human superstition. But let us see how the superstitious person must fare in the world.

What he conjures up within himself and what is supposed to visualize his relationship to the spiritual world collides with external reality at every turn. Let us look at the processes and things around us. If we approach them according to their laws, we find that something else is true than what we believe from superstitious ideas. This leads to a certain disorientation. We stagger through life instead of feeling connected to our spirituality, to the real laws of the world. And we also become unfit because we cannot find the strength within ourselves to adapt to the laws of the outside world. A superstitious person must ultimately become an unfit person for themselves and their environment. Now, it is precisely those who, because of a certain will or a certain situation in life, must refuse to deal with the whole scientific life of the present day who fall prey to superstition. Those, then, who are little touched by the significant insights of scientific life, easily fall prey to the disorientation and unfitness in life that I have just described.

Those who truly enter into this scientific life, who conscientiously penetrate with the scientific methods what the senses, what experiment and observation can offer, are exposed to another pole of mental experience. Such people then feel how they must shape the intellect so that it may find its way unclouded and unmolested through all kinds of illusions into the realm of true reality. But then they feel further: with this intellect, which is so well suited for the realm of the [sensual] world, one cannot ascend into the supersensible world. And precisely those who take the scientific life seriously are then thrown into doubt. And these doubts, when they take hold of the serious mind, the serious soul, they descend from the intellect, in which they are initially rooted, deep into the life of feeling and emotion. And it is precisely through anthroposophical research that we recognize how intimately our emotional life is connected with the states of suffering and joy in our physicality. So that in the end what descends from the intellect into the mind as doubt extends into the bodily existence. So that a person — one may use this radical expression in this case — is thrown by doubt into a certain mental wasting disease, then into physical weakness and unfitness. Through doubt, too, he ultimately becomes unfit for life, for himself and for his fellow human beings.

Because these things affect modern man so deeply, those personalities who take the spiritual life seriously seek the most diverse means of information in order to gain a relationship with the spiritual world after all. We see how precisely these latter natures now turn to that which, because of its vagueness and lack of certainty, can never actually form the basis of real knowledge. They turn to the pathology of human nature. Because they doubt what the healthy soul and healthy body can produce in terms of knowledge about the supersensible world, they turn to the abnormal human nature and believe that, in what they can find in deviation from what normal knowledge produces, normal knowledge, can be found that points to things and processes in another world than this one, in which man also feels just as little at home and where he cannot want that the spiritual could sink into indefinite darkness. And so especially doubters from the fields of science often turn today to mediumistic phenomena; they turn to the sick human nature, out of which come all kinds of visions, all kinds of inner views, which are nothing more than hallucinations after all. For we can see, if we look impartially at the facts in this area, how the medium, who in terms of his normal life of cognition is cut off from the environment, how he, out of a morbid physicality (for a healthy nature produces a healthy capacity for knowledge), has all kinds of inner experiences, which he then communicates. It is never possible to examine these experiences with the same accuracy with which, for example, one examines those of a dream. In the case of knowledge, it is important that what is experienced from somewhere can be examined by the healthy human understanding of everyday reality. We can do this with dreams, but not in the same way with mediumistic revelations, because we do not see through them, because they do not live within ourselves. Nor can it be tested in terms of knowledge what arises from a diseased nature as visions and hallucinations. We will always find that something is wrong somewhere when visionary or hallucinatory phenomena arise from the soul life. And one can say: it is only a continuation of the despair at healthy normal knowledge in the face of the supersensible, which expresses itself in such seeking.

On the other hand, there are many natures in the present day that have not yet emerged from what education, from what we are born into, gives, but there are already a good number of natures today that, by despairing of other ways of entering the spiritual world, they now come to what I might say the most naive minds seek out to satisfy their spiritual needs. There it is, time-honored, the result of a development from ancient times up to our own, there it is. One can quite certainly feel how such confessions, and they extend into our present-day philosophy, how they really reveal something of a spiritual world. But one can actually, since they are simply there as results, since they are preserved by tradition and approach man in a certain finished form, yet give nothing but what in the present day is called belief as opposed to actual knowledge.

Those who lack the courage to penetrate to knowledge seek to justify their belief through all possible conceptual constructions. But those who approach the event with deeper insights of the soul and follow it from period to period, who not only follow the external facts of history but also follow the inner life of the soul of humanity in historical life, they find that everything that occurs today in traditions, in worldviews that exist as creeds or as philosophies, to which one then devotes oneself with a certain faith, they all lead back to old forms of knowledge, not to old forms of faith.

Dear attendees, I will certainly not be one of those who recommend such old forms of striving for knowledge for the present day. However, in order to be able to communicate how man, by nature and essence, can come to a knowledge of another world, it is necessary to discuss the way in which man in earlier epochs of humanity and how that which has been revealed as the result of such earlier paths of knowledge, how that, without our having any clarity today about what these paths of knowledge were, how that was then communicated to the course of development of mankind, how it is still there today. People would be amazed if they realized with complete historical accuracy how even the most self-evident philosophies only contain the results of those that are present on the basis of earlier knowledge.

I would like to highlight two examples of the way in which such insights were arrived at in very, very ancient times. I could also cite others, but I will choose two characteristic ones. The results of these paths of knowledge, which can no longer be ours, still live on today in tradition. Many, indeed millions of people, devote themselves to them without knowing it. For that which lives in all creeds and in all world views has once been sought by individuals on their paths of knowledge. In particular, the first path of knowledge that I will indicate is not really characterized correctly at present. For it actually characterizes only that which has remained in the ancient oriental world as old traditions, but which has remained defective and decadent, of that which was a fully justified striving for knowledge.

The first thing I would like to characterize is what is usually known as the so-called yoga path of oriental spiritual seekers. Through this yoga path – without people necessarily knowing it – which is said to deliver the results that many people devote themselves to, what was it that they strove for? This will become clear to us once we have summarized its most important characteristics. One process that the yoga scholar particularly turned to was breathing that was different from ordinary breathing.

Of course, I know, dear audience, that breathing techniques in particular can be quite detrimental to people today. But what is harmful to human nature today can be traced back to forms of paths to knowledge that were once perfectly justified in older, more primitive forms of human nature and that were really paths into the spiritual world from the essence of the human spirit at that time. The yoga scholar tried to bring into a different rhythm what otherwise takes place unconsciously in the human being, what only becomes conscious in pathological states or otherwise in some abnormal cases, what thus essentially takes place unconsciously in the healthy person. He tried to inhale, hold his breath and exhale again in a different way than in ordinary life. What did he hope to achieve in this way? He sought to bring the one element of the human soul life to a knowledge of other worlds than the ordinary ones, the element of thinking. And the yoga scholar noticed that through this abnormal breathing, his thought process was brought into a completely different orientation. Into which orientation? We can make this clear by referring to the physiology of today. When we breathe in, the respiratory current is driven through the spinal canal into the brain. This is an unconscious process for modern man. But that does not make it any less true that through the processes that take place in the body and that are the exterior for the soul-spiritual processes of life, not only everything for which the brain is the tool is drawn through them, but also that which is the refined rhythm of breathing. As we think about the world, the subtle current that arises from breathing vibrates and flows and undulates and weaves continuously in our brain and in our nervous system. By breathing in an abnormal way, the yoga scholar became aware of what remains unconscious in the breathing process during normal breathing. And he was able to follow what now flows into the brain from the breathing process,

And what came about as a result was that thinking became different. In ancient times, thinking was very much alive for humanity. In ancient times, it was the case for humanity that people did not, as we today justifiably see pure colors everywhere through outer eyes and hear pure tones through outer ears, the ancient man saw everywhere that which arose in his soul as a soul-spiritual. In the cloud, in the thunder and lightning, in the spring, in the plant, in the stone, everywhere man saw, except for the sounds that the ear gave, except for the colors that the eye supplied, and so on, everywhere man in older times saw a spiritual-soul. People today say: These were fantasies. They were not figments of the imagination, just as we perceive the blush through our eyes, so the ancients perceived what was spiritual and soulful in wave and wind, in lightning and thunder, in plants, stones and animals, in springs and streams, in sun and moon. This thinking, which was the common property of humanity in those ancient times, was of course also the thinking of the yoga scholar. But by sending the consuming breath through this thinking, this thinking became something else for him. Through the thinking that he developed as a result, he perceived a different world than through his ordinary thinking. He perceived the world that gave him, above all, the certainty of his own being.

And when we read today the wonderfully poetic descriptions given in the Bhagavad Gita, for example, about the nature and workings of the human self, they were gained through the fact that the yoga scholarship pulls itself together into a thinking that was acquired through the self-regulated breathing process. Above all, the old man, by seeing the spiritual in all things and processes of the external world, did not have his inner spiritual. Through the yoga process, he became aware of his spiritual self. And that which often resounds from ancient times, which was only changed on the outside, lives on in worldviews and creeds. And many philosophers and religious believers do not know how what they say about the human soul and the self in connection with the eternal has developed over time from ancient times, when it was the result of the training of ancient yogis. But it can be realized that these are inner exercises that were intended to lead the way up to this way of knowing in the supersensible worlds, so that one should get to know one's relationship to a different world than the one that otherwise surrounds us. On the one hand, in the direction of thinking, this was such a path of knowledge.

Another older path of knowledge was the one that is still recommended today in many cases, which is less harmful than the yoga path when applied to today's nature, but which cannot bring real knowledge today. The yoga path is inappropriate for today's human being. Because by performing a certain breathing process, one makes the organism different from what it otherwise is. The organism becomes fine and sensitive. The lightest breaths of life weave themselves into it, so that the person becomes extremely sensitive to the hard, robust outside world. The yogi therefore likes to withdraw from this. In the old days, when people sought higher knowledge from those who withdrew from life, this was possible. That does not apply to our lives today. Our modern life has come to the point where anyone who wants to give people knowledge should be fully immersed in life. We will say of the one who wants to withdraw into a hermit's life: You cannot reveal anything to us. Only when you live life with us and yet come to certain insights, then we can follow your paths of knowledge. Therefore, we need different paths of knowledge for the modern person than the old ones were. And one such older path of knowledge was that of asceticism. In turn, what was practiced as asceticism in ancient times as a legitimate path had been corrupted, and what can be read and learned about this asceticism today in many cases is not what an ancient humanity once used in its legitimate way to seek knowledge, which in many cases lives on much more than that of the yogis in today's worldviews. So what is this asceticism based on? It is based on a lowering, a relaxation of our physical body. And it was the experience of those who underwent such asceticism when they tuned down their bodily functions, when everything ran more smoothly than in ordinary life, what takes place in the physical body, so that they were filled with the experience of inner strength. The will became purely spiritual as the outer physical existence was tuned down. And such ascetics said to themselves: Yes, those bodily functions are actually nothing more than an obstacle to penetrating into the spiritual worlds. For the ordinary outer world, our body is indeed the right tool. We can only live spiritually and mentally in a world between birth and death if we can devote ourselves to what the external environment triggers in our senses in a purely physical and physiological way. Only when we can use our body normally can we truly live with the outer world. But precisely because this body, according to both the cognitive and the will side, is so well suited for the waking life between birth and death, it proves to be unsuitable for allowing people to experience inner soulfulness in its purity. Therefore, such ascetics sought to tune down the physical, so that the spiritual-soul within them would arise. And they felt bliss when it arose. And in this bliss they felt that which was otherwise incorporated in powerlessness, united with a spirit that never sinks into powerlessness, into darkness. They felt united with the spirituality of the cosmos.

If we tuned our body down, we would become unfit for the outer world. What we humans need to do today, in an age when we are surrounded by magnificent external culture, we could not do. We would become unfit if we wanted to devote ourselves to such asceticism in the old sense. Therefore, for the modern human being, the inner practice must proceed as I have described in principle in the last lecture and as you will find described in detail in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in my “Occult Science” and in other of my writings. There I showed and in these writings I show how the modern human being practices purely in soul and spirit, not by doing breathing exercises with reference to the physical, not by tuning down the physical body but by doing exercises that are to be done purely inwardly, intimately, exercises that consist of concentration and meditation of thought, that consist of the person not devoting himself to another breathing process, but to another way of thinking. This is the difference between the old yoga method and the exercises you will find described in the books mentioned, the exercises that do not turn a person into a hermit and do not degrade his physical body. The old yoga scholar relied on breathing processes that , but which the modern human being must try by concentrating on certain trains of thought, by overcoming abstract thinking, which is otherwise everywhere in ordinary life and in ordinary science, and by doing so, entering into inner mobility.

I would like to say that our exercises are aimed at achieving the opposite of what the ancient yoga scholar wanted to achieve. He had the naive belief, shared by the rest of humanity, that the peculiarity of the time was that his thinking was inwardly alive and that he wanted to calm it. He sought the abstractness of thinking that we already have today, simply because human nature has developed further, and from which we want to escape today in order to gain knowledge of other worlds. It is remarkable that in ancient times, with all one's might, one strove for what we already have today, and that today, by turning directly to thinking, we are taking this thinking in different directions than it is in ordinary life and in ordinary science. That we inwardly enliven today's abstract thinking, which we increasingly perceive as dead thinking, so that we pass from abstract, dead thought to inwardly living thought. That is the secret of today's practice: to enliven the abstract, dead thought that is present in us in ordinary life and in ordinary science. In this way we achieve the goal today of looking into other worlds in our knowledge.

What happens in the process leads us to the characteristics of certain subtle processes. But one must decide to delve into such subtleties. If one does not want to do this, one cannot really understand the path of knowledge into higher worlds. By practicing such exercises – as I said, I will not describe them further today – a person first notices how his thinking gradually comes to life. And I will hint at what that comes to by means of an example that is appropriate for today's culture.

Suppose we look, as one is accustomed to doing if one has had a scientific education, at a - let's say - higher animal. We make ourselves clear, precisely through our abstract thinking, which is the inner conditions of life and relationships, which are the formal designs, in this higher animal. We make all this clear to ourselves as far as it is possible for today's science to gain a correct idea, so that we can visualize the essence of the animal inwardly. What we visualize in this way, we are then accustomed to relating, for example, to the formative development and inner physical essence of the human being. We then visualize how the internal organs are formed, how they function in the human being, and how the external form is developed. We then compare what we can establish about the human being, which we develop into natural laws, with what we gain about the animal. And by comparing the two, we come to form a certain idea, whether in a more or less materialistic or spiritual sense, about the relationship between humans and higher animals.

But now we ask ourselves something else, something that one actually only learns to ask when one devotes oneself to such exercises, which relate purely to thinking and bring thinking to life. Then one asks oneself: Yes, when one turns to the higher animal world with one's ordinary abstract thinking and realizes what one can realize about it, is one then able to ascend from one's idea of the animal to the idea of the human being? Can we, with our inward liveliness, do with the idea what we can do outwardly with the transformation of form that we observe in the outside world, and then compare in its various aspects and relate to one another through logical abstractions? Can we, with our inward liveliness, do with the idea what we can do with the idea of the animal to arrive at the idea of the human being? Does one thus live through in abstract thinking what is presupposed in us out there in nature, as forces of growth and of formation? No, one does not. But if [he] devotes himself to the newer, purely soul-based yoga, if he arrives at bringing this thinking of the human being to life in such a way that, by gains the idea by which he inwardly visualizes this process, then he comes with this idea, in which it is transformed in the way the outer process is to be transformed, over to the very different nature. Then he submerges himself with this living concept into things, while otherwise, if one has only abstract thinking, one stands and does not submerge into them. And so, through this modern system of exercises in relation to thinking, the human being is inwardly completely transformed. His thinking becomes inwardly something completely different and enables him to truly immerse himself in the world to which he belongs, but to immerse himself with that which he inwardly experiences spiritually. And by immersing himself, he becomes certain of this: that which lives in me as a spiritual being, which may appear to be immersed in darkness and powerlessness, is nevertheless grounded in a spiritual world. For by immersing himself in living thought, he makes himself one with the spiritual of the world, he lives together with the eternal, spiritual foundation of existence, and in this way man gets to know his eternal nature in terms of thought.

But then, my dear audience, the doubts really begin. The path is initially like that on one side. However, one should not think that those who seek their path of knowledge in this modern sense will initially live in pure bliss by entering into a completely different state of mind than that of ordinary consciousness. What is at issue here can be gauged from the well-founded objections that can be raised from all sides against it – and I want to say quite categorically – that can be raised with a certain right, the objections that proceed from the fact that one points to a philosophy like that of Schelling or one like that of Oken: ingenious, powerful, ingenious world conceptions, emerging from a kind of living thinking. But if we enter into both with an unprejudiced human sense, in the way that Schelling or Oken formed their thoughts about individual facts, then, in a more imaginative way, these changed so that they fit into something else, so that they can submerge from being into becoming, there is only mere thinking, a mere dwelling in inner imagery. Nothing guarantees existence, reality. This is precisely what one must reproach such thinkers with: although they set thinking in motion, they cannot give it a character whereby it guarantees its reality in the immediate cognitive life of the human being. And here we may point out that whatever in anthroposophical form seeks to penetrate into the supersensible world, can do so whenever a human being endeavors to follow the path of knowledge in the right way by means of the exercises described here. He then comes to such living thoughts. He develops them by using them to try to grasp the world by immersing himself inwardly in it. But just when he has such a living thought in a particular case and wants to grasp something in all seriousness with it, then inwardly he really experiences what can be called the deepest inner soul pain, the deepest inner soul suffering. Such a thought, which can be transformed inwardly, is not without pain, is not without suffering in the soul. That is why anyone who has acquired even a little knowledge will never tell you anything other than this: Yes, what I have experienced externally as happiness, as pleasure, as satisfaction in life, for that I am quite grateful to my destiny; but what I have acquired as a little knowledge, I basically owe to the suffering that life has brought me, most of all to mental suffering. And these mental sufferings, which came over me by themselves, so to speak, also brought me the certainty that the reality of a living thought can only be experienced by inwardly living through its effect, its truth, in suffering and pain, and that real knowledge of the spiritual world cannot be attained without inner tragedy.

This could also be seen through a somewhat unbiased, more subtle way of looking at things. What about our sensory approach? Well, my dear audience, when we indulge in sensory perception, a subtle change first occurs in our sensory organ; even in the wonderfully constructed eye, small changes occur. Today, because we are no longer aware of what early man perceived – these small changes as pain – we are so organized that we experience them with a certain matter-of-fact painlessness, because we are not in them with the whole person. But what the enlivened thought brings about makes us, as a whole human being, aware that the physical human being is permeated by the spiritual. This practice makes us a sense organ, and we must gain the ability to perceive the spiritual world that we acquire through this sense organ by first going through and overcoming pain and suffering. And by overcoming it, not only does the healthy physical body remain, but the soul in us is now able to look directly into the spiritual world. But then, through this seeing, which is conveyed to us by becoming a pure sensory organ after going through the pain, what presents itself to us in this way connects with what presents itself to moving thought. One acquires a consciousness of reality about the spiritual world through the sense organs interacting with animated thinking, just as we otherwise acquire a consciousness of reality about the world of colors and sounds. But in this way, my dear audience, the modern human being also gains the ability to see into another world. In this way, he has a spiritual reality before the eye of his soul, so to speak, as a whole human being becomes the eye of the soul and, in addition to the sensual reality, the spiritual reality lies around him. For example, the human being, as he is physically formed, also appears before our soul in a different way when we have the living thought. He lives in images. And when we look at a person, what is standing there before us as an outer human form — even what is standing there as an outer human form — shows us something that is connected with the purely spiritual soul. We look, so to speak, at a spiritual soul form, just as we look with the physical eye at the bodily form. And by looking at this spiritual-soul aspect, we connect with the physical body what I call, without hesitation — even if it may cause offence — an auric aspect of human nature. We see an auric aspect; we see a spirit-soul organism. And this spirit-soul organism shows through its own nature, just as the physical organism shows when we have an adult human being before us, that it was once a small child. What we see as the auric human being points back to what we were as pure spiritual-soul beings in a spiritual-soul world before we descended into the physical world and united with that which had been prepared in the mother's body for union with the pure spiritual soul from this physical world. And not only are we pointed in this general way to that which we ourselves were when we had prepared ourselves for it, we are also pointed to in a concrete way to what the person was at that time. We gradually get to know the human being as a spiritual-soul being in the spiritual-soul world in the same way that we get to know the physical human being through our eyes and intellect. However, we have to rise to a certain level of contemplation, which consists of saying to ourselves: Yes, we look at the external world that surrounds us with all the abilities that we have in our normal life between birth and death. We see everything around us in the stars, in the clouds, in the realms of nature; but we look least into ourselves. For we know, if we are unbiased, that what we see within us is basically only a pictorial representation of what we experience in the outside world.

Between birth and death, the human being is organized around the external world. An incredible abundance of content is revealed to the human being as he turns his eyes and other senses out into this environment, from the stars to the smallest worm. But the one who is unbiased enough can intuitively see that what he carries within him is formed in an even more wonderful way. Yes, the outer world may be gloriously formed, and through science we may reveal great and powerful laws from it. If we can look into it, not through anatomy, not through what is revealed to external science, which leads to the glories of the outer world, but through inner faculties, then we will say to ourselves at every moment: That which lies within human nature reveals much more than the cosmic outer world. It differs only in external space, but not in abundance. We can only guess at this human interiority in our ordinary consciousness, but it is truly a microcosm, a small world, and however magnificent the external world may be, here within the human being it appears even more magnificent. But between birth and death we only grasp this intuitively. For when we use our senses and will, we descend into darkness. We do not see what builds up our lungs; we do not convince ourselves that what builds up our lungs is greater and more powerful. We look into our heart, but cannot convince ourselves that the inner organization of the heart is a much more powerful one than what we encounter as an organization when we seek out the relationships between the earth and the sun. We can only guess at all this. With the tools of science, however, we cannot look inside. But if we look into the world with supersensible vision — into the world in which we lived as spiritual beings before our birth, or, let us say, conception — then we find that, while here between birth and death the cosmos is our external world, to which we direct our deeds, our spiritual self before conception — the human inner being — is our external world.

We look at this human interior because we have to immerse ourselves actively in it. For example, we have to prepare for the transformation that takes place so wonderfully in the child as the brain develops. We look at what we make of ourselves out of the soul and spirit before we descend into the physical world. We not only see the human inner world, which appears dark to us between birth and death; it is not only our knowledge, it is not only what we admire when we let our sympathy and antipathy play; it is also what we have turned our actions towards before birth or conception. The human being's will nature aims at what he is then able to make of his inner organization. And, ladies and gentlemen, however unconsciously this may take place in ordinary life, it must be achieved. And what the human being experiences in the purely spiritual world through knowledge and activity is what is then, albeit unconsciously, carried out in this physical life on earth. And that is one side of the auric human being.

The other side of the auric man comes before our contemplation when we do not bring the outer form before our eyes, but that which lives in the human being's will impulses, in the human being's deeds. There we indeed learn to look at the world differently, namely at the world of human beings. One says to oneself: What people do appears to one as the world of colors appears to a blind person who has been successfully operated on. He gets to know a completely new world by opening up an external sense. In this way, a sense is opened up for us by transforming ourselves into a sensory organ as a whole human being. With this, however, we look differently at what people experience. Above all, we get to know ourselves with this sense organ, not like the ascetic who downgrades his outer physicality so as to have no obstacle for the spiritual, who caused suffering in order to come to the spiritual through the suffering of the physical; we come to the spiritual through the suffering in the soul. But through this we get to know in ourselves what is spiritual-soul in this earthly life. We learn to recognize what prepares itself as spiritual-soul and, in turn, strives out of the physical as the second auric when we go through the gate of death. We thus become acquainted with our life after death by becoming sensory organs ourselves. We become acquainted with that which passes through the gate of death as the eternal soul nature of man. We become acquainted with the forces that strive within us towards the spiritual world, towards the spiritual in the cosmos, just as we strove with our deeds and our vision before birth.

But we become aware of something else. We learn to recognize, for example, that when one person meets another, the two paths of life converge. Something develops that is of decisive importance for the fate of both. The two go from there together on their path through life. This is usually called coincidence. But if one learns — I would like to say, like the blind man, when he is operated on, learns to see colors —, if one learns to know what a person does in his life with the sense organs that he forms out of himself as a whole human being, then, from early childhood on, one follows what he does, out of sympathies and antipathies — out of sympathies and antipathies that are replaced by others. What becomes his life path always strives out of us, so we can draw the line as if planned to what has become his destiny. We see: what shapes his life comes from within him. We understand more precisely what older people, who have become wise through age, said without bias. Goethe's friend Knebel once said: “When you look back through life, life seems to be thoroughly planned, and you feel drawn to the individual decisive points as if they had emerged from a previously laid out plan for life.” Thus one can see into one's own life and recognize how it is shaped by actions arising out of likes and dislikes, out of instincts and desires. From there, the path leads to the contemplation of the thread of destiny through repeated earthly lives. We learn to recognize how what springs up in sympathies and antipathies goes back to earlier earth lives. It can only be hinted at how, in this way, by becoming completely a sense organ, one gradually gains a view of the repeated earth lives through which the thread of fate runs. One sees into the eternal spiritual through the higher sense.

Now is the time when, in a very modern way, man can find his way to those other worlds with which his soul must feel connected after all, how he can find this path for real knowledge, without becoming alienated from life but by fully engaging with it. Now he can delve into what he acquires in this way as a knower, so that he stimulates his whole being. Now what knowledge is connects with inner religious devotion, now that man finds the way in a modern way, knowledge can in turn lead to religion, now knowledge can lead to true, genuine devotion. Man reaches this goal of knowledge by a path that is full of the inner way. Before that, one had to tune down the body. Now one leaves the body as it is, so that it remains suitable for the outer life, so that one can have the trust of other people. But in the soul, by making the soul work all the harder, one nevertheless undergoes suffering; one produces suffering in an inner way, which used to be produced in an external way. And now, if such anthroposophy, as it is meant here, is understood, it can be understood that the individual can be understood if one listens to him without prejudice. Today, in a sense, every single person can follow certain rules to pave their own way into the spiritual world. But it is not necessary, for one can grasp through one's own common sense what the spiritual researcher can reveal through his vision, and understand it. Just as little as one needs to be a painter to judge the beauty of a picture, so little does one need to be a spiritual researcher oneself to find the truth of what the spiritual researcher says. For through his higher vision, this spiritual researcher is also only led into the higher worlds. He must also recognize the reality of these worlds through his common sense. Just as one checks by means of common sense that a dream does not correspond to external reality, so one must recognize, by means of a more advanced logic, the truth and reality of what the spiritual researcher fathoms in spiritual worlds, in order to fathom the true relationship of human beings to these spiritual worlds in such a way that there is no feeling of powerlessness or darkness. But at the same time, something else arises that we need very much in the present. In the present time, we are completely immersed in a flood of ideas and thoughts. Science and many other aspects of life give us these ideas and thoughts, but these ideas and thoughts are abstract and, in the sense in which they were mentioned today, dead. At most, we have thoughts of the spirit, ideas of the spirit, but the spirit does not live among us. This is what we, as modern people, must confess when we look back at past ages. Certainly, we cannot wish that they would arise again. Many things must appear quite unappealing to us that people once considered right for their way of life. And in terms of this way of life, today's people have an enormous number of hopes and illusions. But if we do not want to bring back the old days, we have to say: they lived in the spirit; for they immersed themselves in the spirit. They did not devote themselves to abstract thoughts. This spiritual life has become life for people, not just thoughts about spirituality. Today we only have thoughts about spirituality. We will again have spiritual liveliness among us. We need this, by developing thoughts about the spiritual, developing them in such a way that the concrete, the living spiritual moves into ourselves, so that we are penetrated to the innermost being not only by thoughts but by the spirit, so that we also know: spiritual beings live around us, with us, in our life of will, in our thoughts. We need the spirit not only in the form of thoughts, we need the living spirit everywhere in our midst. We must know, in turn, that we can conjure up the experience of the thought, of the living will, not just the abstract, but the concrete spiritual. If we know that the spiritual lives in us as a thought, that it lives with us as a companion, can inspire us, can fill us with enthusiasm, can open up our true human existence and human dignity, then, with such a human relationship to the world, elevated into the supersensible, into the spiritual, we can find paths that lead us to demands that are being made today with deep longing and deep tragedy and also with many illusions. But we must seek the spirit as a companion in our endeavors in the present and the future by spiritualizing our thoughts and by bringing dead thoughts to life. That, and nothing else, is the aim of anthroposophical research into the world, of the anthroposophical paths that are supposed to lead from the physical world into the spiritual world for the sake of inner blessing, for a true experience of the all-encompassing reality that is not only physical but also spiritual. And it is only in spiritual reality that man can find the satisfaction for those riddles that I mentioned at the beginning of today's lecture.

then the wonderful words in it:

“She has thought and continues to think; but not as a
human being, but as nature.”

That is to say, Goethe is clear about one thing: spinning a mechanical web of concepts about nature does not provide an understanding of nature. Only such a deeper search in the existence of nature creates knowledge of nature, through which the human soul finds in the depths of this natural existence that which is related to what it can seek out in the depths of its own being when it penetrates into them.

We may now ask: Is such striving, as it can be characterized by Kant, can be characterized by the ideal figure of Goethe's Faust, - is this striving a solitary, a merely individual one, or does it have anything to do with the overall striving of the German national spirit, the German national soul? Even if we consider Kant, the abstract philosopher, who hardly ventured a few miles beyond Königsberg and spent his whole life in abstract thought, we clearly see, especially in the way he worked his way from his earlier world view to his later one, how he, despite his reclusiveness, developed out of everything all that in the German national spirit aspired after certainty, and how, owing to this national spirit, he did not come to a narrowing of the human soul to the sphere of mere human thinking, but was led up to the horizon on which the whole range of ideas and ideals appeared to him, which give man impulses in the course of his human development.

One might say that what was later expressed by the most German of German philosophers, Fichte, already lives in Kant; what has become so dear to the German worldview, especially from the eighteenth century onward, already lives in Kant. This German world view came to value having a view of the world that does not need to be disconcerted by what presents itself to the senses, for the absolute validity of that which is man's duty, love, divine devotion, moral world. overlooks the world and looks at the way in which he is placed in the world, he sees himself surrounded by the field of vision of sensual impressions and what he can divine behind them; but he also sees himself placed in such a way that he world without this second aspect of the world; he sees himself so placed that behind him, in his soul, the divine ideals are at work, which become his duty and deed, and these ideals do not bear the coarse sensual character that the world of external movement and external revelation has. One might say that when the German mind looks at the stiffness and smoothness of natural existence, to speak symbolically, at the mechanical movement in the unfolding of natural processes, it feels the need to recognize: How can we become immersed in that which is so indifferent in nature, that which appears in ideals as a demand, as a duty, as a moral life? How can we become immersed in that which appears as the highest value of life, as a moral ideal? How does the reality of moral ideals relate to the reality of external nature? This is a question that cannot be answered lightly, but which can also be found in tremendous depth, heart-wrenching. And so it was felt in the best German minds at the time when Kant's world view was forming. Sensuality had to be presented in such a way that it was no obstacle to the moral world flowing into the world through human beings. Morality could not be a reality that presents itself indifferently, and against which moral ideas must rebound. When moral ideas from the spiritual world are put into action through human beings, they must not be repelled by the rigid materialistic barrier of the sensory world. This must be taken as a profound insight, then one understands why Kant wants to dethrone ordinary knowledge so that a real source can be thought for the moral idea. Then one understands Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who coined the paradoxical , but which arose from deep German striving: “All sensuality, everything we can see and feel outside and think about the external world, is only the sensualized material of our duty.” The true world is the world of the ruling spirit, which lives itself out as man perceives it in ideas and ideals, and these are the true reality, they are what pulses through the world as a current, what only needs something to which it can apply itself, to illustrate it. Sensuality has no independent existence for Fichte, but is the sensitized material for human fulfillment of duty.

From a philosophy that seeks to validate everything spiritual, that must be sought from a natural disposition towards idealism, such words emerged; and one may find such words one-sided, but that does not matter when such words are made into dogma. But to take them as symptoms of a striving that lives in a people, that is the significant thing; and to recognize that such minds, which create in the sense of such a word, precisely because of the idealistic character of the German national soul, elevate Germanness to the arena of thought. In order to give thought its vitality, human knowledge and striving must go beyond what Cartesius could merely find. And Goethe's Faust, this image of the highest human endeavor, this image that one must first struggle to understand by allowing many German cultural elements to take effect, from what did it emerge? — It is truly not invented, did not come about in such a way that a single person created it out of themselves; rather, it emerged from the legends, from the poetry of the people themselves. Faust lived in the people, and Goethe was still familiar with the “puppet show of Dr. Faust”; and in the simple folk character, he already saw the traits that he only elevated to the arena of thoughts. Nothing is more vivid than Goethe's “Faust” to show how something supreme can emerge from what lives most deeply, most elementarily, most intimately in the simple folk being. One would like to say: not Goethe and Goethe's nature alone created Faust, but that Goethe brought Faust forth like a germ that lay within the German national organism, and gave it its essence, embodied it in such a way that this embodiment corresponds at the same time to the highest striving of the German spirit for the arena of thought. Not the striving of isolated personalities out of their own nature, but precisely when it confronts us in its greatness from the whole nation, it is the result of German idealism.

And how does thought work within this German idealism? One comes to an understanding of how it works precisely by comparing this German idealistic striving of thought with what is also a striving of thought, let us say, for example, in Descartes. In Descartes, thought confines man within the narrowest limits; it works as a mere thought and remains as such confined to the world in which man lives directly with his senses and his mind. Within German idealism, the personality does not merely encounter the thought as it enters the soul, but the thought becomes a mirror image of that which is alive outside the soul, that which vibrates and permeates the universe, that which is spiritual outside of man, that which is above and below the spirit of man, of which nature is the outer revelation and the life of the soul is the inner revelation. Thus, thought becomes an image of the spirit itself; and by rising to the level of thought, the German wants to rise through thought to the living spirit, wants to penetrate into that world that lives behind the veil of nature in such a way that by penetrating this veil, man not only visualizes something, but penetrates with his own life into a life that is related to him. And again, since man is not satisfied with what he can experience in his soul, he seeks to penetrate into what lies behind thinking, feeling and willing, for which these three are outer shells, for which even the thought is only an inner revelation, in which man lives and works, in which he knows himself as in a living being that creates the scene of thoughts within him. And so we can see how, especially in those times when the German mind, seemingly so detached from external reality, from external experience, strove for a world view, this German mind felt itself entirely dominant and weaving within the arena of thought. And there is first of all Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who regards external nature only as an external stimulus to that which he actually wants to seek, to whom, as already mentioned, the whole of the external sense world has become only the sensitized material of our duty; who wants to live only in that which can penetrate from the depths of the world in a mental way and can be directly realized before the human soul. That is the essence of his world view, that only what emerges in a contemplative way from the deepest depths of the soul and announces itself as emerging from the deepest depths of the world is valid for him.

For his successor Schelling, the urge for nature, the Faustian urge, becomes so vivid within him that he considers the knowledge of nature, which only wants to express itself in concepts about nature, as nothing. Only when the human soul comes to regard all of nature as the physiognomy of man, only when nature is regarded in such a way that nature is the physiognomy of the spirit that rules it, only then does one live in true knowledge of nature; but then, by penetrating through the bark, one feels creative in nature. And again, a paradoxical but appropriate word for the essence of Germanness comes from Schelling: To recognize nature is actually to create nature! Admittedly, this is at first a one-sided saying; but a saying that represents a one-sidedness need not remain so; rather, if it is rightly recognized, this creative knowledge of nature will lead the spirit to reflect inwardly, to awaken slumbering powers within itself, which penetrate to the spiritual sources of nature. The source, the germ of that which can be true spiritual science, we can find it precisely within this world picture of German idealism!

In the third of the German idealistic philosophers, in Hegel, who is difficult to understand and who is so far removed from many, this lively character of the scene of the thoughts within German idealism appears in the same way. In our own time, when the abstract is so much decried and mere thought is so little loved, this world-view strikes us as strange. And yet Hegel feels himself closely connected with the Goethean direction of nature towards the spirit. The content of his world-view – what is it if not mere thinking, a progression from one thought to another? With his world-view we are presented with a thought organism; necessity is created for us, so that we stand face to face with a mere thought organism, which we can only create by thinking it, as we would with any other organism through our senses. But behind this presentation of a thought organism there is a consciousness, a certain attitude. This attitude consists in stripping away all sense perceptions, all perceptions of the senses, for a few moments of world-gazing, stripping away everything that one wants and feels as an individual, and surrendering to what as if the thought itself were taking one step after another, — that man then immerses himself in a world that is a thinking world, but no longer his thinking world, so that he no longer says to this world: I think, therefore I am! but: “The spirit of the world thinks in me, and I give myself to the spirit of the world as a theater, so that in what I offer as soul to the all-encompassing spirit of the world, this spirit can develop its thoughts from stage to stage and show me how it bases its thoughts on world-becoming. And the deepest religious impulse is connected with the striving to experience in the soul only what that soul can experience when it surrenders all its own being to the thinking that thinks itself within it. One must also see this Hegelian philosophy, this so idealistic excerpt from the German essence, in such a way that one does not take it as a dogmatics, on which one can swear or not, but as something that, like a symptom of German striving in a certain time, can stand before us. In Hegel's philosophy, the world spirit appears as a mere thinker; but while it is true that much more than mere thinking was needed to shape the world, it is nevertheless true that the path that once led to it, to seek logic, is one which produces in man the attitude towards the living that reigns behind existence and which leads man to the scene not of abstract, intellectual thought, but of living thought, which in the experience of thought has experience of the world.

The three idealists, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, sought to elevate the human spirit to the realm of thought in three different directions: Fichte tried to shine a light into the depths of the human ego and did not say, like Descartes, “I think, therefore I am!” For Fichte, if he had only been able to arrive at Descartes' thought, would have said: “There I find within me a rigid existence, an existence to which I must look. But that is not an ego. I am only an ego if I can secure my own existence myself at any time. Not through the act of thought, not through mere thinking can I arrive at my ego, but through an act of action. That is a continuous creative process. It does not depend on looking at its being; it leaves its previous being; but by having the power to create itself again in the next moment, out of the act of doing, it is constantly being reborn. Fichte does not grasp the thought in its abstract form, but in its immediate life on the scene of the thought itself, where he creates vividly and lives creatively. And Schelling, he tries to recognize nature, and with genuinely German feeling he lives into the secrets of nature, even if, of course, his statements, if you want to take them as dogma, can be presented as fantastic. But he immerses himself in natural processes with his deepest emotions, so that he does not feel merely as a passive observer of nature, as a being that merely looks at nature, but as a being that submerges itself in the plant and creates with the plant in order to understand plant creation. He seeks to rise from created nature to creative nature. He seeks to become as intimate with creative nature as with a human being with whom he is friends. This is an archetypally German trait in the Schellingian nature. Goethe sought to approach nature in a similar way from his point of view, as his Faust expresses it, as to the “bosom of a friend”. There Goethe, to describe how far removed every abstract observer is from a contemplation of nature, there he calls what he, as an external naturalist, is to the earth, his friendship with the earth. So human, so directly alive does the German spirit feel itself in Goethe to the spirit that reigns in nature in the striving to be scientific, in that he wants to raise science itself to the arena of thoughts. And Hegelian logic – abstract, cold, sober thought in Hegel – what becomes of it? When one considers how mere logic often appears to man, and compares this with what prevails in Hegel's idealistic world-view, then one gets the right impression of the world-importance of this Hegelian idealism. In Hegel's work, what appears to be the furthest thing from mysticism, the clear, crystal-clear, one might say, crystal-cold thought itself, is felt and experienced in such a way that although the thought , but that what the soul experiences in terms of thought is direct mystical experience; for what Hegel experiences in terms of thought is a becoming one with the divine world spirit, which itself permeates and lives through the world. Thus, in Hegel, the greatest clarity and conceptual sobriety become the warmest and most vibrant mysticism. This magic is brought about by the way in which the German mind rises from its direct and living idealism to the realm of thought. In doing so, it proves that what matters is not the individual expressions that are arrived at, but the soul foundations from which the human soul seeks a worldview. Hegel is said to be a dry logician. In answer to this it may be said: He who calls Hegel's logic by that name is himself dry and cold. He who is able to approach this logic in the right way can feel how it pulsates out of German idealism; he can feel in the apparently abstract thoughts, which in Hegel's system are so spun out of one another, the most living warmth of soul that is necessary to strip away all individuality and to connect with the divine, so that in Hegel logic and mysticism can no longer be distinguished; that although nothing is nebulous in it, a mystical trait prevails in all its details.

Even in our time, the German mind, even the opponents of German idealism, has endeavored time and again to fathom the fundamental idealism of this German nature in its significance as a riddle. And the best German minds, even those who are opponents of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, if we turn our gaze to them, we still find that the development of Germany consists in absorbing more and more of the basic impulses of this idealism.

How these fundamental impulses can lead to a living experience of the spiritual worlds has often been discussed and will be discussed more often. Attention should only be drawn to how – one might say – German idealism, after it had reached one of its high points in the German world view, then continued to have an effect on German intellectual life as a different impulse. There was a period in this German intellectual life, and it was lived out in minds of the very, very first order until the middle of the 19th century, until the last third of the 19th century, when the view was that such creative work as is expressed, for example, in Goethe's Faust, where thought really takes hold of the imagination directly and can unfold dramatic creativity, was only possible within poetry; but the development of humanity shows that, for example, in the sphere of natural science, the same process of thinking can be observed that is expressed in Goethe's Faust. example, in Goethe's Faust, where thought takes hold of the imagination directly and can unfold dramatic creation, is only possible within poetry; but the development of humanity shows that, for example, music has a different area; that music is, as it were, the field that does not seek to grasp the highest in man by the detour of a work of fiction such as Faust, but that music is the field in which sensuality must be grasped directly. For example, the contrast between the legend of Don Juan and that of Faust has been cited, with a certain amount of justification after the experiences that could be had within the development of humanity, how mistaken it is to legend on the same level as the Faust legend; it has been asserted that what this other legend, which shows man completely absorbed in sensual experience, can be correspondingly portrayed only within music that directly evokes and seizes sensuality. — The way in which the German does not rise to the scene of thought in the abstract, but in a lively way, has also brought the refutation of this view. In Richard Wagner, we have in modern times the spirit that has triumphed over the merely external, emotional element in music, that has sought to deepen the setting of the thoughts so that the thought itself could take hold of the element that was thought to live only in music. To spiritualize music from the standpoint of the spirit, to show that, was also only possible for German idealism. One can say: Richard Wagner showed that in the most demure element for thought there is nothing that could resist or be opposed to the strength of life that dominates the German spirit. If, through his philosophy and his contemplation of nature, the German has tried to present nature to his soul in such a way that the seemingly mechanical, the seemingly external and rigid loses its mechanical aspect and what would otherwise appear in a formal way comes to life and moves as soulfully and vividly as the human soul itself , on the other hand, the element that flows in the immediate sensual sequence of tones has been allowed to seek its connection, its marriage, with that which leads the human soul to the highest heights and depths in the realm of thoughts, in Wagner's music, which has thus effected an elevation of an artistic-sensual element into a directly spiritual atmosphere.

This aspect of German idealism, which leads to a result that can be characterized as the soul standing on the scene of thought – I wanted to characterize this aspect today with a few strokes. This trait of German idealism, this living comprehension of the otherwise dead thought, is one side, but a remarkable side, of the nature of the German people, and will appear as a remarkable phenomenon to anyone who, I might say, is able to place themselves within the German people in a way that revitalizes thought within themselves. Indeed, the German cannot arrive at the fundamental trait of his people's character other than by penetrating ever deeper into the self-knowledge of the human being. And this the German may, as it seems to me, feel so rightly in our immediate present, where this German essence really has to defend itself in a fight imposed on it, where this German essence must become aware of itself by having to wage a fight, which it feels is due to it from the task that appears to it as a sacred one, entrusted to it by the world forces and world powers themselves. And although today, in a different way than in the times of which we have mainly spoken, the German must fight for his world standing, his world importance, it must still come to life before our soul, for which the German today enters into a world-historical struggle. A future history will have to establish more and more the deeper connection between the German soul, struggling through the course of the world, and the bloody events of the times, which, however, bring us bliss out of pain and suffering. I wanted nothing with today's reflection but to show that the German has no need to speak out of hatred or outrage when he wants to compare his nature with that of other nations. We do not need to point out the nature of the German soul in order to exalt ourselves, but in order to recognize our duties as they have been handed down to us by world history, we may point this out. And we do not need, as unfortunately happens today in the camp of our enemies, to invent all sorts of things that can serve to belittle the opponent, but we can point out the positive that works in the German national substance. We can let the facts speak, and they can tell us that the German does not want to, but must, according to his abilities, which are inspired by the world spirit, his nature, his abilities – without any arrogance – in comparison to the nature of other peoples.

From this point of view, we do not need to fall into what so unfortunately many of our opponents fall into. We look over to the West. We certainly do not need to do as the French do, who, in wanting to characterize German nature in its barbarism, as they think, in its baseness, want to exalt themselves; truly, the French needed, as they believe, a new sophistry to do so. And minds that spoke highly of the German character just before the war, even at famous teaching institutions, can now, as we can see, find the opportunity to advocate the view that, given the nature of his world view, the German cannot help but conquer and , as Boutroux says, to assimilate what is around him; for the German does not want to ascend to the sources of existence in a modest way, as Boutroux thinks, but claims that he is connected to these sources, that he carries the deity within himself and must therefore also carry all other nations within himself. This German world view is certainly profound; but it is not conceived immodestly.

Nor perhaps does the German need what is sought today from the British side when German character is to be characterized. The British, in emphasizing the peculiarities of their own national character, have never taken much interest in penetrating the German national character. When the forties in Germany were passing through a period of development, it seemed to me that the German mind was so fully occupied with the sphere of ideas that the way Hegel's disciples thought was felt by Schelling , who was still alive, and by his students, was felt to be too abstract, too logical, and that on Schelling's side, efforts were made to gain a greater liveliness for the thoughts themselves on the stage of thoughts. Whereas in Hegel one sensed that he allowed one thought to emerge from another through logical rigor, Schelling wanted people to sense the thoughts as active, living things that do not need to be proven in logic, just as what happens from person to person in living interaction cannot be encompassed in logic. He wanted to grasp it in something that is more than logic, wanted to grasp it in a living way, and that is how a great dispute arose on the scene, which the German tries to illuminate with the light he wants to ignite from his living knowledge. The English observed this dispute that arose. A London newspaper wrote what seemed to them a clever article about this dispute, in which it was said: These Germans are actually abstruse visionaries. Many are concerned with the question of who is right: Schelling or Hegel. The truth is only that Hegel is obscure and Schelling even more obscure; and the one who finds this is the one who will most easily come to terms with things—a piece of wisdom that roughly corresponds to the point of view of studying the world not when it is illuminated by the sun but at night, when all cats are black or gray. But anyone who today surveys the British judgment on the necessity of what is happening within the German character will perhaps be reminded of such “deeply understanding” words, especially when these words are used primarily to conceal what is actually taking effect and what one does not want to admit even to oneself. The present-day British really need a new mask to characterize their relationship to the Germans, and the foreign philosophers need a new sophistry to disparage Germany – a new sophistry that they have found since the outbreak of the war.

And the Italians? They also need something to reassure them about their own actions at the present time. Without arrogance, the German may say: it will uplift him within the difficult world situation when he thinks of the duty the world spirit has assigned to him, as he gains self-knowledge and this becomes knowledge of the German essence. What he should do will flow to him as realization from the realization of the German essence. When D'Annunzio spoke his resounding words before the Italian war broke out, he truly did not delve as deeply into Italian national character as he could have. But it is not for us Germans, who have gladly immersed ourselves in what the Roman spirit has created, to believe that d'Annunzio's hollow words really come from the deepest essence of Italian culture; but that they come from the motives that d'Annunzio needs to justify himself. The others needed sophistry, masks, to remove the causes of the war from their own soil, so to speak. The Italian needed something else, a justification that we have already seen emerging in recent years, a strange justification: he needed a new saint, a saint appointed from within the ranks of the profane, “holy egoism”. We see it recurring again and again, and it is to this that we see the representatives of Italian character repeatedly appeal. A new saint was needed to justify what had been done.

Perhaps it will lead the objective, unbiased observer of the German character to a position within today's historical events; because German character does not arise from such sophistry, such masks, nor from the “appointment of a new saint”, but from human nature, from what this human nature allows to be expressed, from what the national spirit of the German people has revealed to the best minds of this people have revealed to this people, but also what these spirits hoped for the people, because that is also a peculiarity of this German nature, which can be described by saying that the German always sought to direct his soul's gaze to what was aroused in him from the scene of thoughts, and from this he also wanted to recognize what hope he could harbor for what his people could achieve.

And today, when we need to develop love, a great deal of love, for what the ancestors of the German character have established within the German national soul and national strength, in order to place ourselves in today's historical events through this love, today, when we need faith in the strength of the present, today when we need confident hope for the success of that which the German character must achieve in the future. Today, we can look at what Germans have always loved, believed, and hoped for in the context of their past, present, and future. And so let us end with the words of a man who is indeed unknown today in the widest circles, but who in lonely thought wanted to fathom the popular and the intellectual of Goethe's Faust in those years of German life in which Germany had not yet produced the German state in its modern form. In those years, which preceded the deeds of the German power, in the sixties, a lonely thinker was concerned with the idea: in imagination, in the life of the soul, in idealism, the German wanted to rise to the highest that can only somehow be sensed by him. He had to develop a strength that must lie in his nature and that gives us hope that this strength will be fruitful, victorious in action. A simple German Faust observer, an observer of poetry that truly shows that German nature holds future forces, is quoted with his words. By pointing to words that Goethe himself, intuitively placing himself in the German future, spoke as a 65-year-old old man, he ties his own words to them and says:

"The earnest style, the high art of the ancients,
the primeval secret of eternal forms,
It is familiar with men and with gods,
It will leaf through rocks as through books.
For what Homer created and the Scipios
will never live in the scholarly hothouse!
They wanted to transplant us into the hothouse;
But the German oak grew to the whole!
A storm of growth has overtaken her,
She has taken the glass from the hothouse with her.
Now grow, O oak, grow to the delight of the world.
I can already see new solar auras flying.
And when my gray eyelashes close,
A mild light will still pour forth,
From whose reflection of those stars
The late grandchildren will learn to see,
To report in prophetically higher visions
Of God and humanity higher things.»

And the Faust viewer from the sixties continues:

"Let us add the wish that the Master's word, which looks down on us from better stars with a mild light, may come true in its people, who are seeking their way to clarity in darkness, confusion and urge, but with God's will, with indestructible strength, and that in those higher accounts of God and humanity, which the poet of Faust expects of the coming centuries, German deed too may no longer be a symbolic shadow, but in beautiful, life-affirming reality, may one day find its place and its glorification alongside German thought and German feeling!

We believe that such hopes, expressed by the best of Germans from the deepest German national sentiment, may be fulfilled in our own day, out of the blood and the creative energy of our courageous and active people. We believe that in these difficult days the German can develop to his strength, over which the atmosphere of hatred spreads, still another: that he can vividly grasp to strengthen his strength the love for what has been handed down in spirit and strength, in the life and work of his fathers as a sacred legacy, because he can be convinced that he, by permeating himself with this love for the past, he will find the strength to believe; because in this faith and this love he may find the hope for those fruits that must blossom for the German people out of blood and suffering, but also out of the blessed deed of the present, which the German performs not out of bellicosity but out of devotion to a necessity imposed on him by history. Thus, in the present difficult times, what may support, uplift and guide the German through the difficult struggle in which he finds himself is integrated into German life, German work, German feeling and sentiment: love for the German past, faith in the German present, confident hope for the German future.

Dear attendees! For many years now, I have had the honor of addressing you from this very spot about subjects related to spiritual science or, as it has become customary to call it, theosophy. Those of you in the audience who have attended several lectures over the past years will have seen that the basis of spiritual science as represented here is such that one can say: Spiritual science or Theosophy should not be considered merely as a dreamy, idle occupation of a few people who are far removed from life, but should rather shine more deeply into the tasks and riddles of life.

On the one hand, it is true that this spiritual-scientific world view is intended to direct our gaze up into the spheres of the spiritual foundations of the world, to convey knowledge of these spiritual foundations of the world; but on the other hand – and it need only be recalled here to the lecture on the education of the child from the point of view of spiritual science, which has been given here — on the other hand, this spiritual-scientific world view has the task of making life understandable, of giving guidelines and guiding stars to action and work in practical life, of providing orientation in the broadest sense precisely about what is going on around us before our eyes and ears, and of giving a deeper understanding of it by drawing precisely this understanding from the deeper, spiritual causes. What we are to deal with today can be considered a contribution in this direction.

What can initially confuse people, what initially causes people all kinds of conflict, is when their world view, when the affairs of life confront them with important personalities, with their opinions, with their thoughts, and when these personalities contradict each other so often. Many of you will have already felt how Theosophy or spiritual science, by broadening one's view, leads precisely to a harmonization of opinions through understanding.

Today we will deal with two contemporary personalities whose work is taking place right among us, whose opinions, so to speak, are going around the world from east to west and from west to east. These are personalities who are so well suited to leading us to the deep contradictions that run through our lives – for perhaps you will not find two personalities who are so opposed in all that they think and feel, in all that they express as being the right thing to do for our needs today – on the one hand we have Tolstoy, the much-mentioned, the effective one, a personality of whom one might say that no term is sufficient to properly encompass what he actually is for the present day; it will hardly suffice to say that Tolstoy is a moralist, if one believes a reformer in certain areas , if one wanted to use the term prophet or the like, but whoever pronounces the name of this personality will always be aware that something very inner to human nature is struck in this, that something lives in this personality that seems to emerge from other depths of the soul than those that move on the surface of existence today – and the other personality that is to be contrasted with it, so to speak, is the American millionaire Carnegie.

Why is Carnegie being contrasted with this personality today? Just as Tolstoy is trying to find a satisfactory solution to life and the riddles of life from the depths of his soul, so Carnegie, in his own way, is also seeking to gain principles of action and direction from the depths of our time, from his practical, one might say, “fundamentally intelligent” view of life. Perhaps one could say – but it sounds almost trivial – that just as idealism and realism have confronted each other in all ages – but with these shades as radically pronounced as possible – so do Tolstoy and Carnegie confront each other.

The great German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte once said: “What one's worldview is depends on what kind of person one is.” He was pointing out how a person's worldview is sometimes more subtly and sometimes more coarsely intertwined with their unique character and temperament, with their entire life. And if we first look at the life, the character traits, and the personality traits of the two people we want to talk about, we already have the greatest possible contrast.

The rich Russian aristocrat, who was born into the opulence of life, so to speak, who is virtually forced by his social position in life not only to get to know all sides of this life down to the most superficial outbursts of our present day, but to live with them and savor them, we see how, oversaturated to these contents of life, which are offered on the surface today, he takes refuge in the highest moral ideals, which seem to fly over life endlessly, and of which most people, even if they admire them, will be convinced today that they may be beautiful, but that they can only realize a little in life.

On the other hand, we see Carnegie, born, one might say, out of need and misery, at least educated out of need and misery, familiar with all kinds of privation, with the necessity of doing the most menial of work, endowed with none of the things that life offered to someone like Tolstoy on the surface of today's social order, endowed with an honest will to work, with an one might say, idealistically colored certain ambition to become a whole human being, he worked his way up; Carnegie works his way up through this sphere to a kind, one might say, of realistic idealism, also to a kind of moralism that counts on what is immediately apparent, what can be directly experienced in practical life.

We see how Tolstoy, in the most radical way, throws down the gauntlet, so to speak, to today's social order, how his criticism becomes not only harsh when he speaks of the current social order, but how it seeks to intervene, so to speak, in a devastating way in current thoughts, feelings and impulses of the will.

Carnegie sees how life has developed historically up to our present time and, for his soul, has the one word, so to speak, that expresses everything in relation to his first, most direct relationship to life: Yes, he says to everything that the present has brought us – a full satisfaction with what is around us! He sees how the gap between rich and poor has grown, how the ways of earning a living have changed, and everywhere he is permeated by the judgment: It does not matter whether we find this good or bad, but that it must be so, that we just have to reckon with it, and yet, working his way through – this is the characteristic feature of this personality – working his way through from a realistic view to a kind of idealism that sets itself the great goal of providing guidelines for a good life within these existing conditions, for a life that serves human progress in the most beautiful way, and for a social order that serves human progress and development.

Our consideration should not take sides with one or the other school of thought; it should be clear from the conditions of human development how such contradictions could have arisen. And if Theosophy has a task in relation to such phenomena as these two personalities present, then it is precisely to understand, from the deep foundations of existence, preferably of spiritual development, where such phenomena come from. It is not my intention to teach anything biographical about either of these personalities, only to say what the souls of both can reveal to us so that we can then penetrate to a deeper understanding of them.

From the outset, Tolstoy is a person who does not have to struggle with the external hardships of life, but is born into wealth and abundance, so to speak. He could easily have done so if he had harbored a superficial soul, as so many thousands and thousands more do, lost in wealth and abundance. But his individuality was not suited to that. From the very beginning, from childhood on, what could have an effect on this soul was always that which touched the deepest questions of the soul, of the world view. At first, he accepts life as it presents itself to him. As a boy, he is not yet able to think critically about what is going on around him; what later emerged in him in a monumental way as a critique of today's way of life is far from that. As a boy, he takes for granted what is around him and going on.

But there is already something in the boy like a lightning strike in his soul. One of his childhood friends once came home from high school with a strange message. He said something like, “Yes, someone – maybe a teacher – has made a new discovery, namely that there is no God.” This was something that struck like lightning into this young soul, which had actually taken for granted not only everything external but also the religious life as it played out around him.

That something like this is possible, that presented itself together with another thing to this youthful mind. You only have to put yourself in a child's shoes for once, and you will be able to know that a child's soul could actually believe that such a discovery could possibly be made. And such events have been incorporated again and again into this soul life. And we could give a long description of how Tolstoy, during his military service, in his dealings with the social classes to which he belongs, gets to know all the misery of today's life, how he becomes weary of it, how he the most diverse thoughts, how he, after he had got to know the misery of war and its social history, the literary life in Petersburg, how he became tired of what life is today in other areas of Europe. We could describe all this – it is well known today – but what can interest us are the questions that arose for Tolstoy.

First of all, the question increasingly and more sharply arises in his soul: What is actually a certain center of life in the face of all the confusing circumstances around us, where can a center be found? Gradually, religion becomes an important question for him, and this question becomes all the more significant for him as he is unable to break away from external customs for a long time. But the religious question becomes something deeply incisive for him. More and more clearly and distinctly he asks himself: What exactly is religion for man? And for a long time he is not really clear about how that connecting bond of the soul with some higher world, with an unknown spiritual source, what that bond looks like, where it goes from the soul, etc. Above all, the people he has met in his circles seem to him to be so detached from the religious mood of the soul, so parched in relation to the living source of life.

Not, as I said, to take sides, but only to describe this mood of the soul as clearly as possible. And then, in my opinion, he sees himself as a soldier in the Caucasus, during the siege of Sevastopol, among the lower classes of the population. He gets to know their souls; he delves into such souls in an intimate way. He finds that there is something original in such souls, that they are even less torn away from the original ground, and the problem arises before his soul as to whether there is not more truth and authenticity in the naivety of the existence of lower, subordinate social classes than in the circles in which he had to live. And lo and behold, here too, one mystery after another presents itself to him and he cannot solve any of them. You only need to read something like his unfinished novel “Morning Hours of a Landowner” to see how he wrestled with the question: Yes, now I have seen the people who have broken away from the original source of existence, who have withered away on the periphery; I have sought a path to religious depth from the soul of primitive people, but an answer to this question fails because today's so-called educated people can never communicate with these primitive original states of the soul. In short, there is no answer to the burning questions that existed for him either.

And so it goes on, and so he comes to see all the contradictions and contradictions in life more and more clearly, and one need only go through his original artistic work: “War and Peace”, his novellas, “Anna Karenina” and so on, and one will see how, although the artistic form is always the most important thing at first glance, these works are permeated by the desire to understand life in all its contradictions, and above all to understand the contradictory nature of human character, because that is what confronts him as contradictory. You feel how true it is, what he says later, when he has already turned to a kind of moral writing: “It has caused me unspeakable torment, and I know that it has caused many of my colleagues in literature just as much torment, to depict an ideally psychologically constructed character that is true to reality. It torments him that there can be such a contradiction between what one must imagine as ideal if there is to be salvation and order in the world, and what presents itself to his spiritual eyes in reality. That always tormented him as long as he was still artistically active.

There was something else. Tolstoy was not just an objective observer during the whole period in which the mental torments took place; he experienced life and took part in everything. He also experienced these things inwardly; he could feel the intimate pangs of conscience, the intimate reproaches that a person must make to himself when he suddenly realizes in a certain respect that he was born into certain circles and must take part in everything that happens there, and yet it seems contradictory to him when he judges it. Those personalities who felt this were driven to the brink of suicide; one need only sense what is going on inside such people. Man learns infinitely more through the opportunities he has to criticize himself than through criticism of his surroundings.

And so Tolstoy's view broadened more and more, until he went from a survey of the immediate circumstances to an overview, so to speak, of the entire developmental history of humanity, and there it became clear to him to what extent great and significant, namely religious impulses of humanity have come into decline. Thus, without any intention of being critical, he was confronted with the depth and intensity of feeling of the great impulse given to the world by Christ Jesus, and alongside it the Roman world, the Roman Caesaranism, which had completely subjugated Christianity to the service of power of things that do not serve the salvation of humanity, as the Christian impulse was to and could do, but which bring humanity into the confusion that presented itself to it, and so his view became more and more a criticism of everything that existed, and it is harsh enough. From his historical perspective, he believed that he had to perceive the contradictions of people as the most difficult. On the one hand, the greatest wealth, on the other, the most terrible poverty, which was particularly evident in the stunted development of the souls, so that people in this stunted development of spiritual matters are not able to find their way out of what they experience to the great spiritual treasures, especially to those that can be found in original Christianity, to which they must penetrate!

Thus, the most comprehensive problem for him was the contrast between the ruling upper class of society, with its power and luxury, and the downtrodden masses, oppressed in mind and body. This presented itself to him in the most comprehensive way. And he became a critic, perhaps in a more comprehensive way than any before him, who never tires of describing more and more the way things are, and who is so skilled at describing that the mere description can sometimes inspire shudder.

It is perhaps quite characteristic if we highlight a symptomatic feature from his view of the world, which will immediately show us how he approached the tasks of life. He once said that he would have liked to write a fairy tale with something like the following content: A woman had learned something very bad about another woman and had developed the deepest antipathy towards her as a result. She wanted to do something to her that could not really be compared to anything in terms of evil. She went to a magician and asked for advice. She stole a child from her enemy. The magician told her that she could satisfy her hatred in the most intense way if she could bring this child, who she had stolen from a woman living in the poorest of circumstances and who would have ended up in need and misery there, to a rich house. And indeed, she succeeds in bringing the child to a rich house. The child is adopted. It is cared for in every way in the manner of the rich – it is pampered, and has it pretty good, so to speak. The woman who had brought the child to the rich woman is furious when she finds out; because that is not how she had imagined the child would fare. She goes to the magician and complains that he has given her such bad advice. He, however, says she should just wait. More and more, the child is embedded in luxury. The woman says: The magician has deceived me. But he replied: Just wait. It is the worst thing you have done to your enemy.

The child continued to develop. It becomes conscious and feels an inner contradiction to the external situation. It says to itself: “Everything I long for must be in an unknown world; but I cannot find it. I know that the way I have been cared for has made me too weak to make the decision to take any reasonable path to the foundations of existence. All this becomes the worst inner torment for the developing human being.

Tolstoy knew well how such psychological experiences appear; he wanted to show how this human being was driven to the brink of suicide by this inner turmoil. You can see symptomatically from such a thing how Tolstoy thinks. Much more than from definitions, we can see from Tolstoy's will about social order how he thought about social order. This was the attitude of one of the two personalities we are dealing with today towards the world.

Now let us add the opposite: Carnegie. He is the child of a master weaver. His father has some work as long as there are no large factories. Carnegie's childhood falls precisely during the boom of big industry in this area. His father no longer receives orders. He has to emigrate from Scotland to America. He can only earn the barest necessities with difficulty. The boy had to work in a factory as a schoolboy. He recounts it himself, and one senses the tone of such a description if one has previously delved into the psychological experiences that we have just explored in Tolstoy. He himself describes what an event it was when he received a wage of one dollar and twenty cents for his work for the first time. He later became one of the richest personalities of the present day, one of those who, as we shall see shortly, actually had to find ways of investing their millions; but he can say, and this is significant: No income later, no matter how large it was – and a lot of money passed through his hands – no income gave me as much joy as that first dollar.

And so it goes on. He works in this way for a long time and contributes to the family's upkeep. There is something in him like a hidden strength that works towards him becoming what, in the circles in which he now moves, is called a “self-made man”. This satisfies him, that as a twelve-year-old boy he had the feeling: Now you will become a man, because he feels that you are a man when you can earn something. That was the thought of his soul. Later he will go to another factory, work in an office, and later become a telegraph operator and earn more.

He recounts: “A telegraph operator in America had the task of knowing all the addresses by heart. I was worried about losing my job.” — He quickly learned all the names of an entire street. So he was a “made man” again. Now he sneaks into the office with other messengers before official duty begins. They practice telegraphing. His highest ideal is to become a telegraphist himself. He actually finds employment as such. Now his greatest joy is to find a patron from whom he can borrow a book every Saturday. He waits longingly for such a book.

Now events occur that are significant for him. A higher-ranking railroad official, who has played a major role, gives him the task of working his way out by taking shares in a certain enterprise. With great effort, he raises the $500 that is necessary; he has been contributing to the family's upkeep in the most arduous way for some time. It is only through the efforts of his mother that he is able to raise the $500 to buy ten shares. And now – again, we have to feel what this means emotionally – there comes a day when he receives the first small dividend corresponding to his shares. It strikes him as a mystery, like the solution to a mystery, which he could not have grasped before: that money can make money. The concept of capital dawns on him. This was now as important to him as any idealistic problem is to some thinker. Before that, he only knew the possibility of getting a wage in return for work. That capital can generate money now dawned on him.

And now it is interesting to see the intensity with which such experiences can be absorbed by such a soul. He is making progress. The right thing dawns on him at the right moment. When the problem of the sleeping car arises, he is ready to take part. Step by step, he advances until he finally knows how to exploit the situation in the right way. When the time came to change from building bridges of wood to bridges of iron, he adjusted himself to the new trend, grew richer and richer, and finally became the steel king, who must seek ways - and now he has a practical sense of morality - how he, in relation to his practical sense of morality, must behave with his wealth.

For him, as I said, there is none of what Tolstoy felt: no criticism of life, but an acceptance of life as a matter of course. What Tolstoy found so contradictory is what Carnegie imagines: If we look back at older phases of human feeling, we see that, in primitive conditions, princes do not differ particularly in terms of their lifestyle from those living around them. There is no luxury, no wealth in today's sense, but also none of the things that bring wealth; there is no contrast between rich and poor. In primitive times, however, as development was, this had to develop, and the contrasts became more and more pronounced. It is good, he says, that there are palaces next to the hut; because there is a lot in it that is supposed to be there, we have to understand its necessity.

But he notices how, in primitive conditions, there is a personal, human relationship between master and servant, how everything becomes impersonal in our relationships, how the employer stands in relation to the employee without knowing him, without knowing anything about the servant's spiritual needs, how hatred and so on must develop as a result; but that's how we have to accept it, that's just how it is. So an absolute yes to all outer life!

And when we consider how he is a thoroughly practical and sober-minded thinker of his kind, how he views this life, how he knows all the different chains that capital takes precisely because he is inside it, how he knows many a healthy things to say when you see that, then you have to say: this man, too, has tried to enlighten himself about life, and there is something complacent in him towards Tolstoy; and his practical morality – I use the word deliberately – it presents him with the question: How should our life be shaped if what has developed as a necessity is to have meaning? He says: Well, old conditions have led to wealth being inherited from ancestors to descendants. Is this still possible in our conditions, where capital shoots from capital in such an eminently necessary way? He asks himself this question vividly. He looks at life with penetrating meaning and says: No, it can't be done that way, and by considering all things, he comes to a peculiar view. He comes to the following conclusion; he says to himself that the only way this whole life of the rich man can make sense is if the rich man regards himself as the steward of wealth for the rest of humanity, that the owner of the wealth says to himself: I should not only acquire the wealth, not only have it and perhaps bequeath it to my family members, but rather, I should use what I have acquired, since I have used mental and other powers to bring it together, since I have poured industriousness into it, I should in turn use this industriousness to administer this wealth for the benefit of humanity.

Thus it actually becomes an ideal for him that man, while acquiescing in the conditions of the time, acquires as much wealth as possible, but leaves no wealth behind, but applies it for the good of mankind. Now he comes to a sentence that is characteristic of this world view; the sentence is: 'Died rich dishonored!' So, the ideal he sets for himself is that one may indeed become rich in order to gain the opportunity through wealth to work with it for the benefit of humanity, but he imagines that one must be done with the work of putting wealth at the service of humanity by the time of one's death. He says: It is honorable to leave nothing behind when one dies. Of course, this “nothing” is not to be taken pedantically; the daughters, for example, are to inherit enough to live on, but in radical terms he says: getting rich is a necessity, dying rich is dishonorable. For him, an honest man is one who, so to speak, comes to terms with life and does not leave to some uncertainty what he has acquired through his own hard work.

And now we have to feel the contrast between two such opposing personalities as Tolstoy and Carnegie are. Carnegie himself feels the contrast and he speaks out: Oh, Count Tolstoy wants to lead us back to Christ, but in a way that no longer fits with our lives. Instead of wanting to lead us back to Christ, it would be better to show what Christ would advise people to do today, under today's conditions. In his sentence: He who dies rich is dishonored, he finds the real expression of the Christian idea and lets it be known that he believes that if Christ were to speak audibly to people today, he would agree with him and not Tolstoy.

At the same time, however, we see that this man, Carnegie, is truly a noble nature, and not, as many are who accept circumstances and do not reflect on them, a lazy one. He has not only said what I have presented as the main point; he has sought the most diverse ways to use his wealth and more. It does seem strange at first when life can confront us with such contradictions, when two personalities arise in the same era who, from what one may call an objective world view, come to such different points of view, and the may be quite difficult for the human being, and it is not at all to be criticized from the outset if someone were to say today: Oh, my whole soul goes to where Tolstoy preaches his great ideals; how sublime this personality appears. But I also have to think about the practical demands of life, and if a person is not an abstract dreamer and idealist, but really goes through the thought processes of such a person with a realistic mind, as Carnegie offers them, then you have to say: that is perfectly justified. But it shows me how, for the person who lets the practical demands of life affect him, it is impossible to truly do justice to the ideals, to truly believe in the fulfillment of the great ideals. And so a new conflict can arise for such a person, as it did for Tolstoy.

And now let us try, I would like to say, to delve a little deeper into these two personalities, now from the perspective of the science of the soul. Tolstoy does indeed succeed in fully defending what he believes to be the original Christian teaching; he tries to criticize in the harshest possible way everything that has become of Christianity, that has emerged here and there, and he seeks to find the great impulses of Christianity. Tolstoy presents these impulses of Christianity in a relatively simple way. He says: When man understands these impulses, it is clear that he has within himself a spark of an eternal divine power that permeates the world. And the second thing that becomes clear to him is that this spark contains the essence of his own immortality and that, if he has understanding, he can no longer do anything other than seek a deeper human being in the ordinary earthly human being. And when he follows this feeling, when he realizes that he has to seek a deeper person in himself, then he cannot help but overcome what lies in his lower nature, and so he becomes a strict demands of the other nature, the development of the higher person in himself, the person who follows the Christ. How would a person - I will not say Carnegie himself, but someone who considers what might follow from Carnegie's view of life - how would such a person relate to Tolstoy's position on Christ? He would say: Oh, it is great and powerful to live in Christ, to let Christ come alive in oneself. But he would say to him: In the external circumstances, this cannot be realized. How should the state's circumstances be shaped if one lives according to this strict Christian demand?

Even if the question has not been asked from a different angle, Tolstoy gives the answer as definitely as possible. He says: “What such a view leads to in the external order, for the state, for external historical events, I do not know, that is beyond my knowledge; but that one must live in the spirit of this Christian faith, that is a certainty for me.” And so for Tolstoy the words: “The kingdom of God is within you!” (Luke 17:21) into a deep and significant view of the kind of certainty that a person can have about the highest things. The view of an inner certainty gradually takes shape in him, and so he seeks to find this foundation stone in the soul, which makes it possible for the soul to become ruthlessly certain about certain things, about this or this soul says to itself: however strange it may seem, what will become of it if only the outer world view is maintained, because this inner certainty is the only one, it must be fulfilled. It eludes my observations what may follow, but they must be good because under certain circumstances they must arise from the eternal good source of all things.

Perhaps in no other contemporary personality is there such a strong reliance on inner certainty and the firm belief that, in this reliance, whatever may come, good must come. Perhaps in no other contemporary personality is this belief as intense as in Tolstoy. Therefore, no other personality with such a personal, individual share, with such inner truth, has professed such a world view.

And here we have another opportunity to illustrate the state of mind of both. Carnegie reflects: How should people behave towards each other, how should the rich behave towards the poor? And then the thought goes through his mind: It is not always good to give something to someone who begs for it; because it is possible that you might make the beggar lazy - says Carnegie; maybe you are not doing any good by doing so. You should look at the people you support. Actually, only those who have the will to work should be supported. And Carnegie implements this in a whole system. He says he understands very well that the man who gives something just to get rid of the beggar does more harm than the miser who gives nothing at all.

We do not want to judge such things, we want to characterize them, but let us look at a similar situation in Tolstoy: He meets a person who becomes his friend. This friend does not form a worldview, but feelings within himself. Tolstoy sees a peculiar behavior in him – many people today cannot believe such things; but they are true nonetheless. His friend is robbed. Thieves steal sacks from him; they leave one behind. What does the friend do? He doesn't chase after the thieves, but carries the one sack to them as well and says: They certainly wouldn't have stolen if they hadn't needed the things. And in other circumstances, Tolstoy sees this friend – and he becomes his admirer, he understands this very clearly. There you have the view of people who are considered parasites, so to speak, on one side and on the other. Life views intervene in life in this way, and the symptoms on the surface can characterize the mood of the soul.

But now we have to say: Tolstoy is not only a harsh critic of life in relation to all that we have mentioned; but by grasping the fundamental source of human certainty, he is also led to a remarkable point in his soul development, and that is where Tolstoy actually appears to us in his full greatness for the first time – for those who can appreciate such greatness. One thing that flows from this view of certainty, which one cannot admire enough, is Tolstoy's position on the value of science, contemporary science, and then a certain world of ideas about life and other important problems and questions flows out. Because he tried so hard to look inside the human being, he was able to see through all the futility in the methods of our worldly sciences. Of course, it is easy to understand what these sciences achieve, to follow the paths they take, but what these sciences – and here I am speaking entirely in the spirit of Tolstoy – can never do is answer the question: How do these various external, chemical-physical processes fit into life? What is life?

And now we come to what must actually be meant here. Tolstoy comes to a peculiar way of exploring a deep, scientific problem, the problem of life. Please, my dear attendees, look around you at our Western science, where life is spoken of, and make only one comparison to that, which Tolstoy uses in relation to this riddle of life. He says: “People who try to solve the riddle of life in the sense of today's science seem to me like people who want to get to know the trees in their uniqueness and do it this way: they are in the middle of the trees, but don't look at them, but take a telescope and point it at distant mountain slopes, where, as they have heard, there should be trees whose essence and nature they want to explore. “That's how people strike me who carry their soul, the source of their life, within themselves, who only need to look within themselves to see through the mystery of life, but what do they do? They make instruments for themselves, build methods for themselves and try to dissect what is around them, and there they see even less what life is. Through such a comparison, a thinker like Tolstoy - an eminent thinker - shows us that he feels what is important in relation to this question. Those who work their way into this side of Tolstoy's worldview know that what his book “On Life” has to say about the exploration and evaluation of life is worth more than entire libraries of Western Europe written from the standpoint of today's science on the problem of life. And then one also learns to feel what it means to have such spiritual experiences as Tolstoy, what it means to think about certainty as he did. One then learns to admire how things that one, when one is, so to speak, in the scientific method of our present time, has to go through with long-folded trains of thought, has to write whole books, as Tolstoy's are completed in five lines. The value of such a book as this one about the life of Tolstoy cannot be overestimated. Today's scientist may find it to be mere feuilleton; but anyone who is able to adapt their way of thinking to the spirit of these discussions will find a solution to the problem of life that is not available elsewhere.

And so we see, as this observation shows more and more, how Tolstoy's spirit becomes something that concentrates more and more, that with a few strokes is able to conjure up and solve great problems not in many words, but with radiant words of power, in contrast to the long discussions of a scientific and philosophical nature that are otherwise common. Here we are confronted with the very depths of Tolstoy's soul, and only when we know him from this point of view can we begin to understand the profound spiritual reasons why a person can become someone like Tolstoy on the one hand or someone like Carnegie on the other, who seems very plausible to us and is an important personality. We shall understand the spiritual foundations that lead to Tolstoy on the one hand and to Carnegie on the other if we now characterize from the point of view of spiritual science how this spiritual development takes place and is expressed in certain personalities.

The spiritual researcher sees something quite different from the ordinary in the course of human development. Just as spiritual science sees a multi-faceted being in the person standing before us, and sees in the physical body only one facet, only the effect of higher spiritual facets, with the etheric, astral and ego bodies behind them, so she also sees in what confronts us in the social order, in human life, what confronts us externally visible as a people, as a tribe, as a family, the physical body, the physical body of the people, the physical body of the tribe, the physical body of the family, a spiritual reality behind it. When one speaks of the spirit of the people, the spirit of the time, in today's science, these are words that do not mean much. What is the person thinking who speaks of the German, French or English national spirit? For the modern thinker, it is really only the sum of so and so many people; they form the reality, and the national spirit is a complete abstraction, something that one forms in one's mind when one seeks the concept from the many details. People have no idea that what appears to us as so many people is just as much the expression of an etheric body, an astral body and an ego as it is of the human body, and that it is truly also the expression of a spiritual. Today we have lost what we used to possess; it is no longer easy to explain how this spiritual reigns behind the sensual.

An old friend of mine, a good Aristotelian, tried to make his audience understand how the spiritual can be objectified in the sensual appearance by means of a simple example. Vincent Knauer – that was the man – tried to make it clear that spirit prevails in form, by saying: Let us consider a wolf that eats nothing but lambs for a whole lifetime for my sake; it then consists of nothing but lamb matter; but it has not become a lamb because of that. It does not depend on the matter, but on the fact that there is something in the wolf, which stands behind it as the spiritual, which is the essential, which structures and builds up the matter. This is a very real thing, something that one must know, otherwise all study of the external world moves in the insubstantial. No matter how much you examine in the sensual world, if you do not penetrate to the spiritual, then you do not come to the essential.

But it is the same with terms such as 'popular spirit' or 'zeitgeist'. For the spiritual researcher, a group of people is not just what can be observed in the physical world; there is something spiritual living behind it. And so, for the spiritual researcher, there is a spiritual reality, a real spiritual reality, not a mere, insubstantial abstraction in the Christian development, for example. Besides the Christian, there is a spirit of Christianity, which is a substantial reality. Such a spirit works in a very peculiar way; it works in such a way that we can make it understandable in the briefest way by means of a parable. Imagine that a farmer has brought in some kind of harvest and is now dividing it up. He sells one part, one part goes aside to be consumed, one part he keeps back; this is to form the next sowing. It then comes to light again as something new. It would be bad if nothing were kept back; what lies within would die. This is a comparison that leads us to a real law in human development. Development takes place so rapidly that at a certain point in time certain impulses are given; these must become established and spread. If at a certain point in time a spiritual impulse such as Christianity were given, it would become established in the outer world and take on this or that form, but it would dry up and die in the same way that the outer parts of a tree merge into the bark. These outer forms are destined to gradually wither away, no matter how fruitful the impulse is. However, just as the farmer retains something, something of the spiritual impulses must remain, flowing as it were through underground channels and then reappearing with original strength as a fertilizing influence in the development of mankind. Then personalities appear to us in whom such an impulse, perhaps going through centuries, is embodied. Such personalities appear to us in strong contrast to the environment; they must indeed stand in contrast because the environment is what is withering away. Such personalities are often inclined not to take the environment into account at all. From a spiritual point of view, Tolstoy is such a personality in whom the Christian impulse has been kindled for our time. And things are happening powerfully in the world so that they can achieve far-reaching effects. If we seek them out at their source, they appear radically; for they must radiate. And we will no longer be surprised when we know such a law that such personalities appear to us in this one-sidedness, and on the other hand, not be surprised at personalities who cannot have anything at all in them of these central currents, who are completely within the peripheral effects of the world. One such personality is Carnegie. He can see the whole picture and think out the best way to find one's way in it. Carnegie does not see what is pulsating through humanity as the spiritual. Tolstoy, because he seeks inner certainty so strongly, can seek the kingdom of God within, but because that which has spread as a real current under the surface is embodied in him, he can, to a certain extent, have no heart or mind for what is happening around him as it dies away. And so we see such contradictions that cannot come together. We have an external material aspect, and the observer, who is important to us, does not see the spiritual that prevails in it; we have the spiritual that wells up powerfully from the depths of a personality, and we cannot grasp how this can be realized in the external world. Humanity would increasingly come to such contradictions if another spiritual current did not also arise, a spiritual current that can look equally at underlying spiritual causes and at what these spiritual causes become in external reality. And if we follow theosophy from this point of view, it leads into the deepest depths of spiritual life; it does not seek this merely in such powerful impulses that do not organize themselves into ideas and facts, it seeks to get to know this spiritual life in concreteness. Thus it can see how the spiritual flows into reality; it is able to build the bridge between the most spiritual and the most material, and in this way can bring these points of view together in a higher balance. — We shall see another example of this coming together tomorrow.

Today we want to present such contrasts in two personalities and learn to understand them from the point of view of spiritual life. Thus, Theosophy appears to be called upon not only to preach tolerance in an external way, but to find that inner tolerance that looks with admiration into a soul that gives great impulses from the center of life, which today must seem improbable, impossible, and radical because it contains in a concentrated way what must be spread out over a whole area in the future, and what must then look quite different.

Theosophy can see this; it can also look at reality objectively and do justice to another personality like Carnegie. Life is not a monotonous phenomenon, life is a many-voiced phenomenon, and it is only through the expression of all contrasts that it can develop in its richness. But it would be bad if these did not find their harmonious balance. Man's nature will tend to crystallize one or other of the contradictions, and so it must be, but in order that people may not lose their way in human life, there must also be a central world-view that can, in a sense, identify with all contradictions and thereby gain understanding for what appears to be so contradictory.

If Theosophy works in this sense, harmonizing souls in their contradictions, then it will be able to truly establish what external harmony in the world should be. External harmony can only be the reflection of the inner harmony of the soul. If Theosophy can achieve this – and that is its real goal in relation to cultural life – then it will find the proof it seeks. It does not want theoretical proofs, it does not want to be called crazy; it wants to establish what it has to say, to introduce it into life, and then to see how life becomes harmonious and blissful as a result, as what it has to say becomes established in life as guiding principles. When Theosophy can see in life how what it incorporates is reflected back to it and how it makes life appear in such a way that it becomes harmoniously balanced within despite the contradictions, then it sees this as the proof of its principles, its true evidence.

Dear attendees! When I last had the honor of speaking to you here about the “mission of wrath” and “the mission of truth” for the human soul, I was able to refer to the saying of the great Greek philosopher Heraclitus: “You will never find the limits of the soul, and even if you walk through all the streets, so far are its territories.” And even in those days, the validity of this saying about the vastness of the human soul was proved by the fact that we can only penetrate to some extent into the complicated structure of our own soul if we first bring a little order, so to speak, into our consideration of the soul; that is, if we do not simply look at the soul as it presents itself to us — as a sum of surging sensations, feelings, urges, desires, of perceptions, of ideas, of ideals, and so on, but that we realize how this soul into three separate areas: what can be called the sentient soul within the human being, what can be called the mind or emotional soul, and finally the third, highest soul element, which can be called the consciousness soul. For these three different soul members have three completely different types of developmental conditions. And that which can teach us, so to speak, how one of these soul members develops is not at the same time suited to give us insight into the developmental laws and developmental conditions of the other of the soul members mentioned.

Our sentient soul initially presents itself to us as that which responds within us to external stimuli that confront us from both nature and human life, which first receives impressions from the outside world and then, on the basis of these impressions, develops what we can call the passions for something, the urges to do or want this or that. Everything that confronts us in the way of drives, desires, passions, in the form of an unordered soul life, however it unfolds even in the lowest human soul, we describe as the realm of the sentient soul.

When a person progresses in their development, when they become more inwardly focused, as it were, then what might be called the emergence of the intellectual or mind soul in relation to the sentient soul occurs. As long as a person gives way to anger in response to some external stimulus, as long as he is seized by the affect of fear in response to some external impression, we can only speak of the sentient soul.

But when a person independently processes the feelings and impressions of the external world within themselves, when, in addition to being devoted to the external world, they can also immerse themselves in themselves, combining the impressions of the external world, then they gradually rise above the mere surge of the sentient soul and comes to what can be called the rational control of instincts, desires and passions with ideas, which on the other hand can be described as a soothing, purifying of unbridled instincts and passions by the mind. In short, the mind or soul, which actually form a unity, are what elevates man above the mere sentient soul.

That such an elevation takes place, that man can, as it were, turn away from the outside and process the impressions within himself to a certain perfection, is taught us by the outer life when we consider an example such as the following. There were certainly many people who were contemporaries of the events from 1750 to 1815. Enormous upheavals of life occurred during that time. Let us take a closer look at those who experienced these events. They had an effect on their sentient soul. All those who were able to see them were carried away by the sensations and impressions. But only those who processed these impressions within themselves became wiser and richer in worldly wisdom and experience. They then faced the world in 1815 with a different inner soul life, with a clearer inner soul life than in about 1770. That is the elevation of the intellectual or mind soul out of the sentient soul.

If we only had this intellectual or emotional soul at work within us, then we would, so to speak, become more and more introspective. We would become richer in worldly wisdom and experience, but we would not come to know the world, as we call it, to recognize the great laws that lie behind things. We can only approach this by going out of ourselves again, , that we again permeate the impressions with what we have acquired in the way of life experience and worldly wisdom; and that occurs through the soul of consciousness, which leads the human being out of himself and into the world again. He allows the consciousness soul to prevail at the moment when he, so to speak, not only becomes richer and richer within himself in ideas, but also applies these ideas to into order and to penetrate it in such a way that the laws of existence, the laws of the world, gradually appear to him, so that he, as it were, connects with his consciousness soul to the outside world.

And if we ask ourselves – this too has already been mentioned – what is going on within us to bring these three soul elements into corresponding activity, to work one out of the other, to let one have an effect on the other? That which is at work within us is the actual human I, the actual bearer of human self-awareness.

But it is also this human I that is in a state of perpetual development. As it were, it still rests submerged in the sentient soul. As long as only the sentient soul rules, the I appears as a slave to this sentient soul, devoted to all impressions of the external world, overwhelmed by all the impressions of color, light and warmth, tyrannized by its passions, instincts and desires.

But then this I continues to work, even working to make the person more and more mature. By purifying the intellectual soul from the sentient soul, the I becomes more and more independent, it becomes more and more the master of the drives, desires and passions, and it is increasingly led to determine the direction and goal of life itself. Then the I works its way up to the consciousness soul, so to speak, to penetrate through the skin of the soul, as it were, and to reunite with the things, to live in the things and events of the world.

Thus we see that it is the I that reigns in these three soul members, and we emphasized in the last lectures - this is only briefly repeated today - that something like an affect, like anger, works through its own nature within the sentient soul in order to allow the I to develop in the right way. If a person initially surrenders to external impressions in such a way that he directly follows such an impression in the sense of the sentient soul, so that he erupts in anger, then this anger itself has an effect on his soul. We can experience that anger, because it obscures the I, because it takes away the full, clear, bright consciousness of the I, because it does not allow the I to emerge into completely selfish existence, thereby beneficially moderating this still undeveloped I. It is still entirely a slave to the sentient soul; it would abandon itself entirely to the ruling drives, and it dampens it down to a certain powerlessness, not letting it live itself out completely. By damping it, it actually does a good thing. If anger only led to the expression of the ego, then every time the ego was expressed, it would reinforce the ego in its selfishness, in its self-will.

In this sense, we could see the mission of anger as educating the ego. Anger poisons selfishness, as it were, by pushing the ego down. And we can find this in all affects, that they signify a kind of self-regulation of the soul or the ego.

And then we were able to point out how truth works in the human soul to educate the ego. Since truth is something that a person must fully understand within himself if he really wants to experience it in his own ego, he can only experience it by recognizing it within himself. Thus the I must live entirely within itself if it wants to arrive at a real truth. A million people can vote against the truth 3 x 3 = 9; if the I has grasped this truth within itself, then the I knows that 3 x 3 = 9, that it is true. In this way the I is completely within itself when it penetrates the truth.

But at the same time, truth is something that does not allow any selfishness or egoism to arise, but something that leads this ego out of itself at the same time. Truth is the only thing that must be experienced in the ego completely and that at the same time can make the ego completely unselfish. For once we have arrived with our ego at a truth that must be experienced in itself, then this truth does not belong only to the individual ego, but is a common property for each and every ego.

Thus truth is a powerful educator for the intellectual soul, because it leads the I out of selfishness and at the same time highly encourages the powers of selfhood. For truth can only be experienced in an I that wants to seek this truth in itself. Thus, in a certain sense, affects such as anger, when they are overcome and purified, can be seen as educators of the sentient soul, and truth as a powerful educator of the mind or mind soul.

Likewise, there is now an educator for the consciousness soul, for that in us which leads our I and thus our soul in turn completely out of us and allows us to grow together with the outer world, with that which does not rest in us but is outside of us, and with which we must grow together if we do not want to become desolate within ourselves. And today's meditation is to be devoted to the education of this third soul element.

Just as anger has the mission of dampening selfishness in the sentient soul in a certain respect, and as truth has the mission of guiding the I in the rational soul, both to be within itself and to instinct to express itself, then what we call devotion becomes the educator for the consciousness soul, showing the right way to reconnect with the outer world, with that which lies outside of our ego. Only when we recognize its purpose for this third of the human soul's members can devotion truly reveal itself to us. In order to be able to present the whole mission of devotion for the human soul, we must look a little deeper into the workings of our soul.

Devotion is, after all - already according to the use of the word - what allows man to go out of himself and penetrate into the other, which, above all, is first of all an unknown behind the visible, behind the perceptible. But we can only understand this devotion if we first ask ourselves: how must spiritual science, from whose point of view we are speaking here, understand this whole relationship of man or the human ego to the unknown?

It has been emphasized time and again from this point that spiritual science is called precisely to penetrate through the external world of physical reality to that which is initially unknown and hidden for this external physical reality. And it has been pointed out again and again that man can only penetrate into the unknown spiritual world behind the physical world by awakening the spiritual organs, the spiritual faculties of perception, in his soul itself, which lead beyond the sensual-physical.

And so that we can understand each other, I will only hint at a few words of what you will now find in great detail as a description of the path that the human soul can take into the spiritual world, both in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in the second section of the recently published “Occult Science”. What you will find there in detail is briefly hinted at here.

It will be hinted how man can become a spiritual researcher and make communications from the spiritual world when he cultivates his soul in such a way that the forces and abilities slumbering in it come to external activity. There man must, with his will and consciousness, evoke something that otherwise always occurs in everyday life without his will. The everyday event that takes place with a person without their will is that the surging perceptions, drives, passions, that pleasure and pain, cease to be conscious in the soul when the person finds themselves tired in the evening, and sink into an indeterminate darkness. At this time of falling asleep, external impressions cease. But instead, the human being sinks into the state of unconsciousness, or rather, the subconscious. His soul is empty of external impressions; but he also knows nothing, so to speak, of any world or inner experiences.

The spiritual researcher, the one who wants to live in the spiritual world, must be able to consciously and deliberately evoke that which takes place so spontaneously. He must consciously silence external impressions. He must also command all interests, all sympathies and antipathies with external impressions to stand still and be silent. The spiritual cognizer must voluntarily evoke in himself the same silence and cessation of external stimuli and impressions that occur when he falls asleep at night due to fatigue. But he must be present throughout all of this; he must be able to prevent, through his will and consciousness, that his consciousness passes into unconsciousness when he empties his soul of all external stimuli and impressions. He must, so to speak, be able to be conscious with an empty soul as he is otherwise conscious with a full soul that receives external impressions. So then, the spiritual researcher must have the strength to reject all external impressions, but still be able to consciously remain in the state of the empty soul. That is the first act that the spiritual researcher has to perform.

The second step is to allow a series of images and sensations and volitional impulses, which are described to him, to take effect on his soul. These images and sensations and volitional impulses, which he must now bring to life in his soul through his inner strength, are not there to reflect external impressions, to give an external truth. Anyone who were to look at them from this point of view would be very much mistaken. What must constitute the inner life of spiritual knowledge is an ascent of very definite, or, as I see it, symbolic concepts and ideas, etc., which have such a strong effect in the soul that they might indeed mightily shake up this soul life from within, shake it up more powerfully than all outer impressions and stimuli can shake up the soul life. That is the second act of spiritual knowledge, when the spiritual researcher can stimulate such experiences in himself that powerfully shake up his soul.

But this must not be the end. If the spiritual investigator were to stop at this act, he would not be able to ascend in truth to an insight into the spiritual world; he must add the third act, which consists in his power to would otherwise have an earthquake-like effect on his soul through mere inner contemplation, so that he transforms his entire soul life as if to an inner sea calm, to a complete [inner] calm. Then, when he is able to control and work on his soul inwardly, he will experience that something rises from his inner being, which can only be compared at a higher level to the outer senses at a lower level. Then – this has already been said several times – the spiritual world, which is always around him like color and light around the blind, will flood in as light and color flood into the eye of the blind who has undergone an operation.

In this way, then, can man penetrate into the spiritual world. Then the spiritual unknown, the spiritual facts and spiritual entities that prevail and are active behind the sensual-physical world, open up to him, which are not there for the merely sensual and intellectual perception of reality.

Now the human being is standing in the middle of a world of spiritual life. But at first this spiritual world is closed to the physical gaze and mind. We have to ask ourselves: What are the reasons for this spiritual world being closed to the physical gaze and mind of the human being? There are reasons for this, and these reasons will become clear to us when we ask ourselves: Well, where in ordinary life do we encounter that which stands like a boundary between the physical and the spiritual world?

We encounter it at precisely the moment we described earlier. What does the spiritual researcher actually do when he activates his inner soul powers? He makes the moment that otherwise occurs involuntarily for a person, the moment of falling asleep, into a conscious one, and what otherwise occurs through falling asleep is shaped by the spiritual researcher into a supreme experience. In ordinary consciousness, everything that a person could possibly experience sinks into unconscious darkness when falling asleep. In the world into which the human being plunges every night, and in which he dwells during sleep, he could perceive the spiritual world. For it has been shown here many times that precisely that which we call the 'soul being' lifts itself out of the physical body and out of what is connected with it, out of the etheric or life body, but at the moment when what we call the soul being lifts itself out with sleep, for the person in normal consciousness, consciousness itself ceases, that is to say, the world into which he enters is shrouded in a veil so that he cannot see it. But the person who becomes a spiritual researcher sees into this world!

And how does a person attain consciousness of the external world? He attains consciousness of the external world when he submerges himself in his physical body in the morning and makes use of his physical organs and the physical mind that is connected to the brain. But in doing so, he is bound to the limits of the physical organs. The spiritual researcher, on the other hand, once he has achieved what has just been outlined, when he has acquired these inner abilities, he in turn returns to his physical body, so that he no longer needs to perceive only through the physical senses, but can perceive his environment directly with the inner organs of the soul. In this way he sees behind that which extends in the outer world like a boundary and obscures the actual spiritual world. The spiritual researcher learns to see behind every color into that which the color presents to us; the spiritual researcher hears behind every sound that which stands behind it as a spiritual being. He sees behind every perceptible impression. The world becomes crystal clear to him. And when he sees through the carpet of the external world, spiritual beings and realities are revealed to him.

When the spiritual researcher penetrates into the spiritual world, there is no way for him to avoid – without running the risk of being shipwrecked – but to undergo two important experiences in the course of his initiation or development in spiritual research. These two important experiences are also described in more detail in the two books mentioned earlier. These are the ones who are called the guardians of the threshold.

It is the case that before a person's inner soul abilities awaken in the right way, before he is able to dive down into that darkness in sleep, before he perceives the reality behind it, he must meet with what is called the little guardian of the threshold. This is the perception through which the human being's own being clearly and distinctly comes before the soul in real self-knowledge. Through this, the human being learns to understand what he actually is. Above all, he comes to know what can be called real individual knowledge of karma and reincarnation. The human being learns to recognize how he has gone from life to life before entering this life, and learns to recognize how he has inscribed this or that in his soul in past lives as his karma by living in one way or another, true or laden with error, surrendering to beautiful or ugly impressions, performing good or evil deeds in past lives. Depending on how he has lived, he learns to recognize what his soul has inscribed in itself and what it still has to go through in order to eliminate all error, all that which would prevent the soul from reaching a certain level of perfection. Everything that the soul has of imperfections within itself, the person gets to know there as a kind of second self, as something that he has to overcome, as a kind of doppelganger, of which he knows exactly: you have to overcome that, otherwise you will never reach the goal of the human life path.

This encounter with one's own double would be a harrowing, terrible event for a person if they were not sufficiently prepared. Spiritual science ensures that a person only comes to see this Guardian of the Threshold in his true form when they are sufficiently prepared. And one should not enter into one's own human soul life before one has made this experience, how imperfect one must be through one's whole past life. Through this, that is developed in us which enables us to enter into the own powers of the soul without danger.

What would happen if we were to enter the underworld of the soul without this encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold? Something would happen that would be very destructive for the human being. Let us assume that, through some event, a person enters into the supersensible spiritual abilities of his soul without having met the little guardian of the threshold. In that case, however, this entering would not be able to undergo all that attenuation, all that purification, which is only possible if we have a double of ourselves in our entire imperfection. Then the good qualities of our soul would not emerge to mitigate, so to speak, all that which rules in our ego and is woven from selfish impulses and drives that only take our ego into account. If a person were to descend into his ego without first becoming acquainted with the Guardian of the Threshold, it would mean that all the evil aspects of his nature would be stirred up in him. All the evil impulses of his nature that he is capable of would be awakened in him. All the arrogance, vanity and mendacity rooted in his soul would assert themselves with a mighty force. And man would become, to the highest degree, a being that consumes and burns itself through its own selfishness; man would perish in his own selfishness; he would bring himself into such a conflict with the world that he would first consume himself in his own selfishness. This is what can characterize us, as if man enjoys a certain benefit in his life in that his consciousness is darkened when he falls asleep. If he did not dwell unconsciously in sleep, he would draw from the world, in which he would then be conscious, a continuous increase of his egoism and his untruthfulness.

Now, for all the things that have to occur, so to speak, at a higher level of human development, there are weak imprints in ordinary life, something like preparations. We can say that even if a person in this embodiment has no inclination to go beyond the ordinary life to a higher level of consciousness, he can still always prepare for it, even in this life. And a preparation for this descent into one's own soul, a preparation that works in such a way that it protects the normal outer soul, so to speak, from sinking into complete selfishness and untruthfulness, is everything that we take into our sentient soul in the way of feelings and emotions of humility.

Humility is an effective means of self-education in that, when we let it prevail in our conscious daily life, when we let humility permeate our soul, it imbues our soul life with a soul substance that prevents the soul from drawing all the forces of selfishness out of the ego when it descends into the spiritual world. That is why humility is so highly recommended as a preparatory quality for all those who want to prepare themselves in their ordinary waking lives to gradually enable their soul to become selfless even in places where it might otherwise become selfish.

Through everything that we pour into our soul as humility, we also make our encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold easier for ourselves. We make it easier for ourselves by becoming aware of our imperfection while we are still awake, and so we do not find the Guardian standing before us in such a terribly repulsive form. We, so to speak, strip away his horror.

Thus humility is a good educational tool for descending into our own soul, into its depths, which otherwise remain closed to us for our own good. As long as we are immature, they must remain closed if we do not want to suffer shipwreck in life. This is, as it were, a kind of boundary downwards, towards that 'below' which we have to describe as that which lies in the depths of our soul life, which is hidden from ourselves when we are asleep.

But there is another boundary; and this comes to our mind when we once again familiarize ourselves with what has just been outlined. It was said that the spiritual researcher is not dependent on mere physical perception, on mere thinking with the mind, when he returns to the physical body, but that he is able to bring out soul abilities, inner abilities, through which he can see through to the spiritual foundations, to the spiritual entities and facts of the world. These now also close themselves to the outer gaze of people in the normal state of consciousness. Why is this so? They close themselves for the reason that if man were to stand unprepared before that which exists behind the sense world as its primal foundations, he would be blinded, as if destroyed.

The path that shows us, so to speak, in the mildest form, how man steps out of his ordinary physical abilities, as it were, and faces the outside world spiritually, is the path of what is called ecstasy. This is not really good. It does, however, lead a person to rise in a certain way above his physical seeing and hearing and grasping and understanding to a kind of spiritual vision of the external world, but this ecstasy, as it is so often described, obscures the direct consciousness of the self. The person is then out of himself; he does not carry his self into the world of spiritual experiences. Just as sleep spreads a veil over what we would experience to our detriment, because we would have to become selfish as a result, so the veil of external reality spreads over the spiritual world behind it, and this also occurs as a beneficial effect for the person who wanted to approach this spiritual world unprepared.

But anyone who wants to enter into this spiritual realm as a true spiritual researcher will have a different encounter. It is the encounter with the so-called great or greater guardian of the threshold. This is what shows us, at the moment when we break through, so to speak, the ordinary looking and ordinary understanding, how far we are from a complete understanding of the world. Then we encounter the great guardian of the threshold. And he clearly instructs us that we should no longer ask all those questions about the ultimate reasons so easily, that we should no longer curiously enter behind the veil of existence without first carefully and slowly weaving and working from step to step on the abilities that lead us up, in order to slowly gain insights from world to world. Then we learn through this Great Guardian of the Threshold — he shall be characterized here only from this point of view — what abilities we still lack to penetrate into the spiritual world. At the same time we receive instructions on how to develop what we do not yet have. The self-perfection to which we must submit presents itself to us with all clarity through what is called the greater guardian of the threshold.

Now, however, man can also prepare himself for this degree of higher experience, for this degree of penetration into all the spiritual undercurrents, into the great unknown beings, in his ordinary, so-to-speak normal consciousness. And because everything in humanity is geared towards development, our ordinary life also contains that through which we may approach the secrets of existence, the unknown worlds that lie behind the realities of the senses. This is contained within us like a teacher who can gradually lead us to soften the impression of the greater Dweller of the Threshold. Just as we, when we are led as a humble one to the lesser guardian of the threshold, can soften this encounter, who then does not appear to us in his gruesome form, in which he would otherwise crudely present us with the doppelganger of our imperfections, so we can soften that other encounter with the greater guardian of the threshold, whom every human being must meet in the course of his development. We can also soften the impression of that great, powerful figure, which shows us through its glory, through the way it confronts us when it tells us: “This is how you must become” — which shows us precisely through its majesty what we still have to develop. We will not be repelled with fear and terror as before a cherubim with a fiery sword if we are properly prepared. And unconsciously, people who are on the right path in life, on the path of true inner morality, are always preparing for this great moment.

And what prepares us in our consciousness soul to emerge in the right way in this consciousness soul with the I, not only into physical reality, but into spiritual reality, in order to be allowed to acquire spiritual knowledge, that is what is meant by the word 'devotion'. Devotion is the stirring of inner impulses in the soul for the unknown, for us insofar as we cannot yet understand it. If we had nothing within us that pointed us to what we cannot yet understand, then the urge and the longing could not awaken to come to the unknown. Everything that we want to understand one day and can only understand when we have entered into it must first work in us in a dark way, like a yearning. That which draws us to that which we are not yet equal to, beneath which we still stand, outside of which we find ourselves, that is devotion. We can be truly devoted precisely to that which we know: we do not yet penetrate it with our soul powers, with our knowledge. But then this devotion is something that brings us precisely in the right way to the subject, so that we enter it in a dignified way, so that we can gain true, non-trivial knowledge from it.

It is understandable from the outset that all knowledge must be preceded by something like such a feeling. A person need only consider that, while man must understand everything through logic, that is, one must approach everything through logical thinking, that logic is what can prove everything in existence to us. But what does logic itself prove to us? If we are not to arrive at the self-contradiction that logic proves itself, then we must assume that there is something in the human soul other than mere logic, which in turn is proved by logic. Logic can only be proved by something that itself has nothing to do with logic. And that is in man that which can be called his original, healthy sense of truth. Thus, the logical ultimately leads us back to feeling. All understanding leads us back to feeling.

If we are sincere, we cannot get beyond this. Therefore, it should not surprise us if the first thing that occurs to us when we have the highest knowledge of an unknown behind things is that devotional feeling that we call devotion. And when this devotion, which rules and works in us and moves our soul, before we have recognized something that we reverently worship, when this feeling itself is what leads us up, so to speak, up the mountain to what then yields to our recognition – that is devotion in the highest sense of the word.

But everything that confronts us in the highest style also confronts us in the first outward form. And so devotion in its highest perfection is indeed that which lives in us as a yearning devotion to an unknown, so that it may one day reveal itself to us when we are ready for it, but it is present to a lesser degree in relation to everything that we have not yet recognized, even in the ordinary external world.

When, for example, a younger person looks up to an older, more experienced one, he cannot, of course, see beyond him; for it is vanity, if we believe, sometimes even very much out of today's consciousness of time, to be able to judge everything at any level of existence. For anyone who has a concept of knowledge, it seems strange when someone, for example, believes that they can describe a comprehensive personality like Goethe biographically, because the point is that we can basically only understand someone to whom we have already made ourselves equal. If we were unable to develop a relationship with someone to whom we have not yet made ourselves equal, then we would not be able to understand them at all.

But the human soul is so constituted: if it retains its healthy feelings, then it can long revere a thing, devote itself to it devoutly, before it recognizes the same. And so it is with all maturing of the human soul. And those who look at life in its even most external depths will find this confirmed, which has been emphasized here many times: that in later life one always remembers again and again with such gratitude the hours and moments of childhood in which one could so reverently worship this or that human being, this or that personality.

It will always be a great moment when a person is able to experience in the circle of his family the veneration of this or that personality with whom one is acquainted. The child may not yet have seen this personality, so has not even enjoyed the external impression; it looks up, so to speak, from the stories about what one can see, as if to a complete stranger. Then it experiences the day in such a way that it first gains an impression of the previously revered personality in the external experience. Then it may stand with shy reverence at the door handle that is to give it access to the personality it has learned to revere. When the child has had these feelings, it also approaches the external impression in a completely different way, then something of the wonderful radiance that our soul can radiate is present where it first develops devotion and worship before approaching the object.

Devotion and reverence are something wonderfully luminous that can cast a wonderful radiance [on that] which we encounter only later. One remembers – as I just said – back to the greatest moments of one's childhood, to just such moments when one has truly learned to revere even in the face of what one may encounter in the outside world. And so, in these seeds of devotion, we have a small reflection of what that all-encompassing devotion can give, which builds up to that which must remain more or less unknown to us. Even if it has already opened up to us to a certain extent as knowledge of the spiritual world, something still remains unknown to us; for behind every known thing there is again an unknown. Even the ordinary devotions are a reflection of this comprehensive devotion, with which our soul strives towards the unknown before it can fully penetrate into this unknown.

Thus, in devotion, we have a power that enables us to take the path to the unknown. And since it is true that the spiritual and the unknown give rise to powers and abilities that are known and evident in the outer human senses, it is also the case that our own powers, which flow to us from the spiritual world, can only flow to us if we seek the right path to this spiritual world ourselves, the path through devotion. Even in the ordinary life, as it presents itself to us between birth and death, we can find the healing power of devotion.

If we look at life in this way, we have to say that, alongside all the other moods that can be developed for the world, alongside the moods of joy and pleasure, alongside the moods of exultation and enthusiasm, it is also possible to develop the mood of devotion in the face of the phenomena of existence, whether familiar or unfamiliar. We encounter this, for example, in poetry, in the fact that alongside the song of jubilation, alongside joy and delight, there are also hymns and odes. It confronts us in all the arts, and we may say: just as there are works of art that affirm us, as it were, in how we are the same and akin to the things of existence, so there are also works of art that evoke in us an inkling of how we can strive for the highest, that draw us, as it were, towards a highest.

Thus, we encounter sufficient occasions for devotion throughout life; and we should observe this in life; above all, we should not ignore it in a true life pedagogy, because it is important that we absorb into our life destiny in our childhood that which devotion can give us.

If we observe life between birth and death, we can find what is called karma, the great law of fate, which presents itself to us as a chain of spiritual causes and effects; but it presents itself in a very peculiar way. For example, certain things that are laid down as causes in early youth present themselves in later life as effects. What we may absorb in childhood through this or that only emerges as an effect in old age. And the effects are not the same, but such that we must first understand the connection between cause and effect.

The young person who grows up, educated in the right way and without what is distorted into some dark side of devotion, who grows up in the right devotion, will notice that this is transformed into something else in his soul. We can see this in a more intimate knowledge of life, here or there, that this or that person enters into a group of other people – perhaps he says little or nothing – but his presence already pours out what can be called a beneficent element. The presence of such a person blesses and delights those around him. What radiates from him spiritually has come into him.

But this power of blessing does not come into a person's later life if it is not rooted in what we have developed in our youth as the mood of devotion. Devotion in youth transforms itself throughout life into the power to bless in old age. This is a karmic connection that we encounter between birth and death. We do not need to know this only from spiritual science; anyone who knows life can see it everywhere. We could put it in symbolic words: Those who have not been able to worship devoutly with bowed knees and clasped hands in their youth will never be able to stretch out their hands to bless. The bowed knees and clasped hands of youth are the cause that, in old age, transform into blessing hands. This is one of our wisdoms of life. There we see one of those forces that come to us from the spiritual world, even if we are not yet able to see into it. Devotion first leads us up into the spiritual world, which is still closed to our vision because the greater guardian of the threshold is not allowed to show himself to us. It closes itself to us, but sends us out of itself the forces that, in their all-pervasive effects, emerge from our actions themselves.

In this way we can develop within us a mood of devotion towards an unknown world. Perhaps we will not yet be able to penetrate to an understanding of it, but it pours out forces from itself, which are transformed in our soul and become impulses for our outer life. Just as when we fall asleep tired in the evening and wake up refreshed in the morning, just as the night brings us refreshment, just as what comes out of us makes our tired arms able to work again, so it is in our outer life when we know how to relate to the unknown worlds — which we are not yet able to see into, which stand behind the reality of the senses — when we approach them devoutly. Thus they may, like a gentle sleep, veil their powers from our consciousness; but they give us their powers. And it is through devotion that we can make our way to unknown worlds and that opens up the powers of these unknown worlds to us, thereby bringing us out of ourselves with our ego and making us capable of being effective in the outer world. Thus we approach the unknown worlds with our devout ego. Our I is enriched by them with that which can bring us together with the world again. We become more powerful, stronger, more vigorous through what devotion gives us.

This is the mission of devotion for the soul element that we call the consciousness soul and through which we in turn step out of ourselves and pour our ego into the outside world, as it were. We owe everything that makes us fruitful for the outside world to our devotional moods towards that which is worthy of worship. And the person who cannot be devout will not be able to intervene [in life]. There will be people who will come and say: Yes, I don't succeed at anything, people don't believe in me, people don't want to understand me. Then one falls back on appearances, which prove themselves, but not on the reasons. The reasons lie in the fact that such people, who feel compelled to feel misunderstood, have never been able to find the mood of devotion within themselves. This is the mission of devotion for the education of our ego to grow together with the world.

Thus we first grow unconsciously into the world through the forces that devotion gives us, in order to gradually approach the spiritual world itself, when we have matured through what devotion produces in us. But we must also be clear about the fact that devotion in a certain sense leads the ego out of itself, and that a person who wants to follow the right paths in the world must never divest himself of his ego in the present period of development, because the ego gives him the ability to judge, the right power of deduction, and the possibility to place himself in the world without confusion. Therefore, anyone who has an inclination to indulge in devotional moods must bear in mind that, while they may go as far as possible in the devotional mood, they must never lose themselves in devotion.

We can describe the two elements of devotion that are revealed to us in it as devotion, on the one hand, and love, on the other. When our soul is permeated and warmed by love for a being, that love is the one element that leads us to devotion; the devotion of the will is the other element that leads to devotion. And wherever love and devotion arise, they must also arise [as love and devotion] to the unknown; for there is an intimate connection between all beings, even between the lower beings and ourselves. What is in our soul consists of love and devotion, which can then be lived out as devotion. But we must not lose ourselves in devotion; we must enter into the mood of devotion while preserving our ego. If we do not do this, then we paralyze our will, then a weakening occurs instead of a strengthening of our will. If we approach things with a blind love that is not permeated with the soul, then this love becomes blind, then instead of knowledge we will come to a form of superstition, blind faith. And above all, if our love is not permeated and purified by intellect and mind, we will end up with what we can call unguided, unadvised love. But that is enthusiasm. It is the kind of thing that can ultimately escalate into delusion in the face of the unknown. Just as we are gradually condemned to spiritual powerlessness through a devotion or surrender in which we lose our ego, so we are seduced into erring in the world through our love, which is not illuminated by the deeds of the guide who is there for all our orientation: the soul of mind or soul of feeling.

We must not lose our will or our feelings, advised by reason, if the favorable effects of devotion are to occur, as described.

At the same time, it will be readily apparent that education in devotion, like devotion itself, necessitates something that is far removed from mere intellectualism. When a correct middle course must be found between good and evil, then what one might call the tact and sense of life always comes into play. Therefore, one will not be able to lead someone into devotion in the right way through abstract ideas, but only by pouring out one's whole soul, which in turn comes from a properly guided devotion. That is why, especially in the education of devotion, looking at the other devout person can have such a powerful effect, and why example must play such a great role here.

This is why devotion, where it should be cultivated, relies so heavily on being cultivated in community; this is also why a person walking alone through the world can find little opportunity for devotion. And just as devotion can easily develop in the contemplation of others, so it is also that which leads us out of ourselves and brings us together with other people, for nothing ignites our devotion more powerfully than when we can share it with others who are looking up to the same thing. In this way, devotion also leads our soul upwards to the heights, where it steps out of itself as the consciousness soul, where it enters into communion with the environment. In devotion, man has something that leads man out of himself, that frees him from mere selfish feeling, willing and thinking, that instructs him to have something in common with others in his ego, to which he can look up. This is the mission of devotion in human society. It leads from I to I, and, when it is fostered and cultivated in the right way, it pours a wonderful mood and atmosphere over a community.

Thus devotion plays the greatest conceivable role for man in both his ordinary and elevated life. And devotion also leads him up to the heights of life. This is what all those strive for who want to break through the outer sensual cover and enter the spiritual world. That is what they strive for through the longing and urge of devotion: to penetrate to that which they thus devoutly venerate, to be able to live with that which they first devoutly venerate; to be able to unite with that which one first devoutly venerates, to be able to stand in that which one first strives for from below. This has always been called mystica, spiritual union with the spiritual world, from which man comes, but with which he can consciously unite when he has gradually matured to do so. Mystical union was the lofty ideal of all spiritual aspirants. To all spiritual aspirants, that which lives and works in the human soul appeared as a feminine force that draws up in a devout mood to that which permeates and interweaves the world and can fertilize the soul as a masculine force. This is also what Goethe felt, based on his good knowledge of the mystical mood of human development, when he wrote the “Chorus mysticus” at the end of his life's work. There he wrote the words that, as if from unknown spiritual depths, resonate in our soul and present the riddle of our soul's striving and development to our mind's eye, telling us that everything we encounter in the external world is a parable for something eternal, that what is insufficient for sensual striving can be achieved through spiritual striving. What we cannot describe with words of the physical world is done when we come together with that which inspires us from the spiritual world. And then they fade away, these words, into that wonderful dictum that tells us: The soul is like an eternal feminine that allows itself to be fertilized by what lives as a masculine in the secrets of the world, behind sensual existence. Thus, Goethe's “Chorus mysticus” sounds to our ears like the great riddle of human development:

All that is
transient is but a parable,
the inadequate
here becomes an event,
the indescribable
here is done,
the eternal feminine
draws us on.

But when we learn from the understanding of the mission of devotion to grasp our own soul as it draws us as the eternal feminine towards the eternal masculine, which is to flow into us as world wisdom, then we also gain from this understanding of the mission of devotion this higher understanding of the real union with the eternal masculine in the world. And we feel certain, in the face of what unfolds as a world secret, that we can achieve this unio mystica through our spiritual striving and that we are approaching this unio mystica more and more through the mood of devotion, in order to experience it in the end.

And so, on the one hand, we hear Goethe's words when we contemplate the human soul:

The eternal feminine
Draws us up!

And so another saying rings true to us as the expression of the truth that flows from the unio mystica, which must impose itself on us when we receive the certainty that we can unite with the eternal masculine. As if in amplification of Goethe's saying, “The Eternal Feminine draws us upward,” he who is certain of the former attainment of the unio mystica will say, looking up to the mysteries of existence: The Eternal Masculine leads us upward!

For many years it has been my duty to give lectures upon Spiritual Science, or Anthroposophy.

Those present at the lectures cannot but acknowledge that the foundation of Spiritual Science as presented is not a dreamy, idle pursuit for the few who have withdrawn from the common paths of life; it illumines the deepest problems and mysteries of existence.

Spiritual Science will lead the mind towards spiritual origins. It is destined to give out to man-kind knowledge of the spiritual worlds. At the same time its mission is to make life intelligible, to be a guiding star in work and action, giving us a broader and deeper understanding of what happens in our environment, through a comprehension of the underlying spiritual causes.

The confusion that exists in the average mind and the consequent spirit of dissension, are due to the endless contradictions found in the opinions of famous authorities regarding the problems of human life. Many people have, however, already felt how Anthroposophy widens the vision, and therefore leads to a wise adjustment of opinions.

Two famous modern contemporaries, whose influences are far-reaching, will be brought before us to-day; individualities well suited to present to us the vital contrasts existing in our time. It would be difficult to find two personalities in greater contrast in their thought and feeling and in their standard of right and wrong. On the one hand is the famous, the influential Tolstoy—so strong a personality that no appellation seems adequate to describe his significance for his day and generation. It is difficult to describe him as moralist, prophet, or reformer. But it is evident that in speaking of him something deeply rooted in the innermost depths of human nature is touched; that in his personality something lives which rises from the depths of the human soul—something that cannot be felt in those whose work is merely superficial. The other personality, in so marked a contrast to Tolstoy, is the American millionaire, Carnegie. Why should Carnegie be mentioned in connection with Tolstoy? Just as Tolstoy, out of the depths of his soul, strives to solve the problems of life satisfactorily, even so Carnegie, in his own way, endeavours with a practical and intelligent outlook upon life, to reach guiding principles.

Perhaps it might be said that just as Idealism and Realism are diametrically opposed, so are Tolstoy and Carnegie in relation to each other. As Fichte says, “Your opinion of life depends upon the kind of man you are,” and a man’s point of view is always connected b, finer or coarser threads with his peculiar character and temperament. Between these two personalities we find the greatest possible contrast. There is the wealthy Russian aristocrat, born in the lap of luxury, who through his social position was not only bound to know the external aspect of that life, but obliged to live with and to taste it. He is satiated with the modern way of thinking, which offers only the superficial. He looks up and beyond at the great outspread wings of moral ideals which the majority of mankind, even though admiring and willingly admitting as beautiful, still believe unattainable.

On the other hand we have Carnegie, who was born in simple surroundings, knowing necessity and sacrifice, not equipped with the advantages enjoyed by Tolstoy, but with a will to work with the endless, one may say, ideally-coloured ambition of becoming a man in the broadest sense of the word. Through this attitude towards life Carnegie evolves a kind of realistic idealism, a moral standpoint which reckons from what is seen with physical eyes of the turmoil of experiences in practical life.

Tolstoy, in his radical way, throws down the gauntlet to the modern order of things. His criticism becomes hard as it endeavours to combat modern thought, feeling, and selfish impulses. Carnegie sees life as it has developed historically. The word his soul uses to express his connection with life is “Satisfaction”—satisfaction with the existing order of things. He sees how the differences between rich and poor have arisen and how the differentiation of service has come into being. And everywhere this is his penetrating judgment: It is immaterial whether we find good or evil. Both exist, must exist. They are there and must be reckoned with. Let us work it out. From a realistic conception of things as they are, let us work out an idealism that aims at the great goal of pointing out the right way, within existing conditions, towards such an order of things as will further human progress and development.

This lecture does not “take sides” with either of these lives; but the conditions of their development must be understood in order to explain the contrasts: and if Spiritual Science has any task in regard to these men it must be that of understanding and explaining how these differences are evolved from the underlying principles of existence. It cannot be my task to offer biographical information. Only that will be said which will so illumine the souls of both men that we can enter into a deeper understanding of their personalities.

Tolstoy was from the first a man who did not have to fight for the material necessities of life, but was born in the midst of over-abundant wealth, and could easily have vanished like the many thousands who live within the realm of luxury. For this, however, he possessed too strong an individuality. From childhood only that which touched upon the deepest questions of the soul, and of life, seemed to influence him, though as a boy he did not regard critically the happenings around him but accepted them all as a matter of course. How different his attitude was later in life, when he became a censor of his surroundings.

A long account could be given of how Tolstoy became acquainted with the dark and miserable side of modern social life, especially during his period of army service; how, having learned the misery of war, and the superficiality of the social and literary life of St. Petersburg, he became disgusted with the ethics of the ruling classes. All this is well known. But what interests us more are the great questions which shone out before Tolstoy. Forcing itself more and more into his being, was the question, “What is the centre of life amidst all these conflicting conditions surrounding us? Where is the middle ground to be found?” Religion became for him the great and vital question. He could not at first tear himself from the conventional forms, and though religious considerations grew in importance as he asked himself, over and over again, “What is religion? What does it signify to humanity?” he could not recognize the connecting link between the soul and an unknown spiritual source. It seemed to him that all he had learned of true religion from the men of his own class, had been torn away from its source and had hardened and withered away.

At this time he became interested in the lower classes. As a soldier in the Caucasus he learned to know their inner life and found in them something of the primeval, that had not been torn away from the first cause. His eyes opened to the fact that in the naive existence of these lower, inferior people of the soil, truth and reality must abide more than in the artificialities of the class to which he belonged.

Problem after problem confronted him, none of which he could solve. “Yes; now I have seen those who have departed from the truth, and have become hardened in the periphery. And I have sought a way to religious depths through the souls of primitive people: But the answer to my question founders on the fact that the so-called educated can never be understood nor be in harmony with this primitive state of the soul.” No answer could be found to the burning question. So on and on until the contrasts and contradictions in life become plain. By reading his War and Peace, and Anna Karenina it can be seen how everywhere, even though the artistic form is paramount, the longing to understand life in its contrasts, and most of all the contradictions of the human character, permeate these works.

In later life, after he had become the great moral writer, he said: “The endeavour to portray a character ideally and soulfully created, yet in harmony with reality, has cost me untold misery, and I know that many of my contemporaries have had the same experience.”

It troubled him that such contradictions exist between that which one recognizes as the ideal and that which actually appears; for order and peace should reign in the world. This disturbed him as long as he was artistically active.

Tolstoy was not simply the objective onlooker all this time. He had been in the midst of life. He had experienced all these things, and could feel the intimate pricks of conscience, the inner reproaches that come to all who suddenly realize themselves to have been born into a certain class, and consequently under an obligation to conform to existing customs. It seemed inconsistent to criticize them. Such personalities are often driven to the verge of suicide by the turmoil in their minds.

Infinitely more can be learnt by introspection than by criticism of externalities. As from within outwards the horizon of Tolstoy broadened, until from the keen observation of his nearest surroundings he reached the broad plain where he overlooked the whole evolution of mankind, he saw to how wide and universal an extent the great and pure religious impulses of humanity had degenerated.

Then in all its depth, and in all its strength, the great impulse which was given to the world through Jesus Christ appeared to Tolstoy. But at its side also appeared the great Roman world of the Caesars which made Christianity subservient to power, representing only the outward form which had failed to save humanity and had become a mystery to men. And so his criticisms and his opinions became harsh and warped—and they are surely harsh enough.

It was most difficult for him to understand the contradictions in humanity. On the one side tremendous wealth; on the other dire poverty which resulted in the deplorable stunting of the soul’s life, so that humanity, through restriction of spiritual opportunities, could not find its way to spiritual wisdom specially to that which can be found in the original Christian teaching to which it must eventually penetrate.

Thus this comprehensive problem confronted him, this contrast between the luxury of the ruling classes and the spiritual and mental oppression of the masses. Experience of this problem ripened into a conviction, and he developed into a critic more penetrating perhaps than any before him—a critic who does not tire of describing things as they are, and of doing so in such a way as to impress us with their horror. It is natural to judge his attitude towards life from the trend of his contemplations. He said he would have liked to write a fairy tale with the following contents:

“One woman, having had a very bad encounter with another woman, disliked her intensely and wished to do her the most atrocious wrong. Accordingly she consulted a sorcerer, and acting upon his advice stole a child from her enemy. The sorcerer assured her that if she could take the child, who was born in great poverty, and place it in a home of wealth she could thus fully accomplish her revenge. This she was successful in doing. The child was adopted. It was taken care of according to the manner of the rich—spoiled and pampered. The woman had not expected this development, and was very angry. She went back to the seer to complain that he had given her wrong advice, and had betrayed her. ‘Wait,’ he said, ‘you have done the worst one could do to an enemy. When this child develops further and his conscience is awakened to an inner contrast with the outer world, he will know that all he longs for must be in another world: but he will not be able to find it. He will say, “The manner in which I have been brought up has robbed me of the ambition and determination to seek and follow the way which leads to the underlying causes of existence.”’

This results in intense suffering for the developing man. Tolstoy understands the soul torture of such an experience, and appreciates the temptation to suicide created by this inward unrest and uncertainty. This illustration reveals his attitude toward the social order of things.

Now to consider Carnegie, who was the child of a master-weaver. So long as the big factories did not exist the father was able to find work. In the midst of this prosperity Carnegie spent his infancy. Then through the growth of the large factory his father found himself out of work, and was obliged to emigrate from Scotland to America. Only through the most strenuous efforts was he able to provide the absolute necessities of life. The boy was obliged to work in a factory, and as he relates his experiences we recognize in the description the same groundwork, the same depths, that are to be found in the soul experiences of Tolstoy. Carnegie describes what an event it was, his first-earned dollar. He has since become one of the richest men of the day, one who is actually obliged to seek ways and means of using his millions; and he is wont to say, with characteristic frankness: “None of my income has ever given me such a keen satisfaction as those first dollars.”

He worked in the same way for some time to support his family; but something lived within him like a hidden power, shaping his life so that he became a “self-made” man. This brought him supreme satisfaction. Even as a boy of twelve he felt himself fast becoming a man, for he who can earn his own living is a man. This was the thought of his soul. Then he went on to another factory, where he was employed in the office, and later became telegraph boy and earned more. He tells us: “A telegraph boy was obliged to memorise all addresses. I was afraid of losing my position, so I learned every name on the streets.” So once more his position was self-made. Then he stole into the office before hours, with other messenger boys, to practice telegraphy.

There his highest ideal was to become an operator, and he soon achieved it. Then his happiness was increased by finding a friend who lent him a book every Saturday. How eagerly he looked for each new book! Soon followed events of vital importance to him. A high official advised him to take shares in a certain company and thus advance his prospects. By sacrifice and thrift he accumulated the necessary five hundred dollars. Previous to this time had had used all his energy to support those dependent upon him, and he found it possible to make this investment largely through the economies of his mother.

This purchase of ten shares of stock was an event of the greatest importance, for upon the receipt of the first dividends it seemed to come to him, as the solution of a problem, that money makes money. The meaning of capital became clear to him, and this understanding meant the same to him as the working out of any difficult problem to a deep thinker. Before this time money had seemed only the compensation for hard work. Here it is most interesting to observe the result of such an experience upon such a character. From that time he was alert to every opportunity for making money. With the invention of the sleeping-coach Carnegie immediately became interested in it. Thus step by step he seemed to learn to understand and profit by the signs of the times.

The old custom of building bridges of wood was abandoned in favour of iron and steel construction. Of the opportunity offered by this change Carnegie took advantage, becoming richer and richer, until he was known as the “Steel King.” Then moral obligation faced him, and with it the questions, “What is my duty? How shall I distribute this wealth so that it may best fulfil its mission?”

That which Tolstoy experienced does not exist for Carnegie—there is no criticism of life, but instead an acceptance of life’s conditions as they are. What appeared to Tolstoy as utterly in-consistent, Carnegie regarded as natural. Looking back far into ancient times, we find princes living in the most primitive conditions, differing very little from their subjects in their mode of life. No luxury, no poverty, in our acceptance of those terms. Therefore we feel they did not know the things wealth brings, and there was no difference between rich and poor. From this primitive life everything has developed. Stronger and stronger become the contrasts. “It is well,” Carnegie says, “that beside the hut stands the palace, for there is much they should hold in common.”

We must understand his limitations. What struck him forcibly was the personal, brotherly feeling between master and servant under earlier conditions. Our relations have now become impersonal. The employer stands face to face with the employee without recognizing him, without knowing any of his needs. In this way hatred develops. But as it is so, it must be accepted. Carnegie’s view is an absolute endorsement of our outward daily life.

Penetrating more deeply we see that Carnegie is a keen, sharp, practical thinker of his kind, and that he stands in the centre of industrial life knowing all the different channels into which capital flows: therefore he has developed a wise and a sound judgment. It cannot be denied that this man has endeavoured to solve the problem of right living, and there is something in him which persuades us that he experiences a satisfaction with life impossible to Tolstoy.

His practical morality brings up this question: “How must this life be shaped so that that which has arisen of necessity shall have meaning and sense? Old conditions have brought about the custom of inherited wealth. Is this still possible under our present conditions, when capital of necessity produces capital?” he asks himself sharply. He studies life with keen interest and says, “No; it cannot go on in this way.” After considering all sides carefully, he comes to the peculiar and characteristic conclusion that when the rich man regards himself as the distributor of accumulated wealth, for the benefit of humanity, then and then only has his life any significance. He says to himself: “I must not only earn money, not only support my family and relatives, but in so far as I have used my mental powers and forces to bring it together, pouring into my work all my capabilities, this must be turned to the benefit of mankind.” This then is his code, that man, while adapting his powers to the conditions of this age, should earn as much money as possible, but not leave any; he should use it all for the improvement of humanity.

Therefore, “to die rich, dishonours,” is characteristic of Carnegie’s view of life. He says it is honourable at one’s death to leave nothing. Naturally this is not meant pedantically, because the daughter must inherit enough to live upon; but, radically expressed, “to become rich is fate, but to die rich is dishonour.” An honourable man to Carnegie is the one who “makes an end,” completes a life, leaving no uncertainty concerning that which his ability has brought together.

We must recognise the difference between these two characters—Tolstoy and Carnegie. The latter himself feels it and has commented on it in this manner: “Count Tolstoy wishes to carry us back again to Christ; but it is in a way that does not fit in with our present manner of living. Instead of leading us back to Christ, he should demonstrate what Christ would advise man to do under present conditions.’ In the sentence before quoted, “To die rich, dishonours,” Carnegie finds the true stamp of Christian thought. And it is evident that he believes Christ would say that he, not Tolstoy, is right.

We see in all this that Carnegie is a noble man, with a progressive, not an indolent, nature, unlike the many who, with little thought, accept things as they find them. He has sought, in many ways, to solve the problem of the distribution of wealth.

Is it not wonderful that life presents such marked contrasts as those afforded by these two strong personalities who, with the same objective point, pursue such very different courses? To understand this is truly most difficult for some minds. It is not at all marvellous that, on hearing Tolstoy preaching his lofty ideals, some will feel, “Oh, my soul responds to that!” and will sense the uplifting influence. It must be remembered, however, that life has a practical side, and he who is not an abstract dreamer, but in a truly realistic and earnest spirit tries to follow Carnegie’s train of thought, must admit that he is right too.

This shows, too, how impossible it is for the man who gives himself up to the practical side of life to acknowledge the greatest ideal, or to believe in its fulfilment.

Tolstoy succeeds in making what he believes is an absolute defence of the original Christian religion. He criticizes all that has appeared from time to time in the guise of Christianity; he has hoped to find the great impulse, or foundation, of real Christianity. In the simplest way he puts before us this impulse as it appears to him. And when a man understands this impulse, it is clear that he has within himself a spark of the Infinite, the eternal world-illuminating spirit of God. Another conviction is that in this spark is the germ of man’s immortality, and that with this understanding he cannot fail to seek for the higher and deeper nature throughout the whole of humanity. From this comprehension he knows that within himself is the real man, who cannot fail to overcome all that is base and unworthy within his nature. He devotes himself to the cultivation of the spiritual or higher self which lives eternally, the Christ.

How would a man, I will not say Carnegie, but one who considers things from his point of view, regard the philosophy of Tolstoy’s Christianity? He would say: “Oh, it is grand, magnificent, to live in Christ. The Christ within is one’s Self; but under our present conditions such a thing is impossible. How could civic affairs be conducted in accordance with these strict Christian requirements?”

Although the question is not put before the other side in a corresponding way, Tolstoy gives as definite an answer as possible, saying, “What will happen to the outward order of things pertaining to state and historical events is beyond my knowledge; but I am positive that humanity must live in accordance with the true Christian doctrine.” So, for him, the words, “The kingdom of God is within you,” expand into a deep, significant certainty that man may reach the heights, that he may know the Holy of Holies. This certainty, that the soul can know the truth about this or that, is to him a fact. We see in no other character of our time such a strong faith in the inner man, and such a firm belief that through this faith the outward results must eventually be good. For this reason scarcely any one else has professed such a view of the world with such personal, individual sympathy and such conviction as Tolstoy.

Carnegie reasons: “What relations must men sustain one to another?” And: ‘It is not good to give to beggars promiscuously, because it is apt to foster laziness. It is necessary to know the exact needs of those whom one helps. Really, one should help only those who are willing to work.” This is the basis of his philanthropy. He says he knows very well that the man who gives simply to rid himself of the beggar causes more havoc than the miser who gives nothing. We shall not judge in this matter; we are only characterizing.

On the other hand, let us consider Tolstoy. He meets a friend. This man has a great affection for his fellow men, and Tolstoy sees in him a wonderful new birth. Some one robs this friend; sacks of things are stolen, but one sack is left behind. What does the friend do? He does not prosecute the robbers, but carries them the remaining sack, saying, “You certainly would not have taken them had you not needed them.” This Tolstoy understands perfectly, and he be-comes his friend’s admirer. So much for the different ways of looking upon the parasites of society. These men are human brothers. The differences of opinion are the results of the different attitudes of soul. It must be admitted that Tolstoy is not only a hard critic, but having grasped the source of human certainty he has reached a remarkable point in the development of his soul. Herein begins what is foremost in his greatness, shining out for all who can appreciate it.

One result of his strong convictions, that calls forth admiration, is his attitude towards the value of science to the present generation. Because of his ability to look into the souls of men he could see through the vain endeavours and methods of our worldly sciences. Certainly it is easy to understand the teachings of physical and material sciences, and to follow and to realize all that they demonstrate. But what so-called science cannot do is to answer the questions: “How are these different physical and chemical processes united to life?” and “What is life?” So we face the deep scientific problem, the problem of life, and attempt to understand and to solve it.

It is significant to note Tolstoy’s remarks on the attitude of our western science in regard to the riddle of life. “People, who in the name of modern science endeavour to solve this riddle, seem to me like men trying to recognize the different species and habits of trees in this manner. Standing in the midst of the trees they do not even look at them, but taking a glass they gaze at a distant hill, upon which they agree should grow the kind of tree they are endeavouring to understand. So appear to me those who, instead of seeking in their own souls the solution of this problem of life, make instruments, create methods, and try to analyze that which exists in nature around them; more than ever they fail to see what life is.”

Through this comparison Tolstoy reveals what he understands and feels upon these questions. A careful study of his point of view shows that what he has written on the problem of life is of more value than whole libraries of western Europe which treat it from the modern scientific standpoint.

It is good to realize the value of such soul-experiences as Tolstoy’s, and his experience of the certitude of the Spirit is of great importance. We can admire Tolstoy’s way of solving in five lines that which our modern scientific methods fail to solve with long, complicated processes of thought, in whole books. Tolstoy shows great concentration in this power of expressing these great solutions in a few magical strokes, and making great problems intelligible in a few words rather than in the prolix, so-called scientific, philosophical treatises of many modern writers.

Tolstoy stands unique in the depth of his soul-character, and only when this is realised can we comprehend the spiritual reasons for the coming of such a man as he on one side, and on the other such a man as Carnegie—for the latter in his way is as important for his generation. To understand more fully the spiritual sources which lead on the one hand to Tolstoy and on the other to Carnegie, we should regard them from the standpoint of Spiritual Science.

The spiritual discoverer sees in the progress of humanity something quite different from that seen by the ordinary man. As the Spiritual Scientist sees in the man standing before him a being of four parts—sees in the physical body the instrument of higher spiritual forces, and behind this the etheric body, the astral body, and the I, or ego—so he sees behind what appears as social order in human life as folk or race or family, the spiritual reality. To-day the “spirit of the people” or the “spirit of the times” has no real meaning. What does he think who speaks of an English, German, French or American “spirit of the people”? Truly, as a rule, only the sum-ming up of so many human beings. To the average mind they are the reality, but the spirit of the people is an abstraction.

There is little realisation that that which appears outwardly as so many human beings is the expression of a spiritual reality, exactly as the human body is the expression of an etheric body, an astral body, and the ego. Humanity has lost what it once possessed—the faculty of being able to see such realities. An old friend of mine, a good apostle of Aristotle, tried to make clear to his class how the spirit can be made manifest in the sense-perceptible. By a simple example Knauer—for it was he—made it clear how spirit exists in matter by saying: “Look at a wolf. He eats, we will say, during his whole life nothing but lambs, and then consists of lamb’s material. However, he does not become a lamb. It is not the nature of the food that is significant, but the fact that in the wolf is living something spiritual which builds and holds together its material form. This is the Real—something which must be recognized or else all study of the outer world is vain.

Examine as man may the outward, material world, if he does not probe to the spiritual he does not come to the source of all life. So it is with the terms “spirit of the people” or “spirit of the times.” For the spiritual discoverer, in the development of Christianity there lives the spiritual reality, not simply an abstract condition. For the spiritual discoverer the sum of humanity is not only that which can be observed in the physical world; behind this lives something spiritual. And for him there is a spirituality, not a bare, unsubstantial abstraction, in the development of Christianity. Beside the Christ is the spirit of Christianity, which is real. This spiritual reality works in a wonderful and subtle way, well illustrated by the following. A peasant once lived who divided his crop. One part he used, and the other he saved as seed, which bore a new crop. This is an illustration which leads us to a law ruling human development; and which proceeds in this way. At certain times are born great impulses which must be sown broadcast. A spiritual impulse, as that of Christianity, given at a certain time, then finds its way to the outer world, taking on this or that form; but perhaps as the outer part of a tree dries up and forms the bark, so the form becomes dry and dies away. These outer forms are bound to die out. And be the impulse ever so strong and fruitful, as surely as it penetrates into the outer world it must disappear like the seed that was used.

Now just as the peasant held something back, so must some part of the spiritual impulse remain, as if flowing along underground channels. Suddenly with primal force this reappears, bringing a fresh impetus to the development of mankind. It is then that a personality appears in whom the impulse, which has been ripening for centuries, is manifested. Such individualities always appear in direct contrast to their surroundings. They must be in great contrast because the surrounding world has become hardened. They are usually inclined to disregard their environment entirely. Seen from a spiritual standpoint, Tolstoy is such a personality; one in whom the Christian impulse is manifest.

These things happen in a forceful way, to break through the shell, and exert a far-reaching influence. Their origin appears wholly radical, and their effects illuminate the world. Such is the law which gives us such seemingly one-sided personalities as Tolstoy. On the other hand, we must expect the contrasting personalities who are not connected with the central stream but wholly absorbed within the peripheral working of the world. Such a person is Carnegie.

Carnegie can look out and over the circle, can think out the best way for humanity; but he does not see that which as spirit pulsates through human life. Tolstoy does, because he seeks so earnestly the inner certainty, the Kingdom of God, in the individual soul. He can do so because in him is personified that true stream which is below the surface bearing itself onwards and unconnected with such material things as may be inherited.

We have physical manifestations but the onlooker does not realize the spiritual within them. We have the spiritual that springs with great strength out of the innermost being of a person, but the onlooker does not understand how this can make itself felt in the world. More and more will humanity find these contrasts and, if another spiritual stream did not appear to reflect again the deep, underlying, spiritual sources making them manifest in the material world, we could not follow Anthroposophy. Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science leads us into the very depths of spiritual life. It not only traces spiritual life in those powerful impulses which do not unite with deed and fact, it also seeks for it in the concrete, and therefore understands how the spiritual flows into the material. It thus bridges the apparent chasm between the spiritual and material, finding in this way the point of view which brings contrasts into harmony.

Today we wish to learn to understand, from a spiritual point of view, two contrasting personal-ities. Spiritual Science is not only called upon to preach outward tolerance, but also to find that inner light which can penetrate with admiration into the soul of one demonstrating the great Im-pulse that emanates from the spiritual consciousness. This to-day seems improbable if not im-possible and on the whole radical, because it crowds into so small a space that which in the future will be spread far and wide, and which will then present a very different aspect. This Anthroposophy can realize. It can look also with objective eyes upon the present, and the personality of Carnegie, and appreciate him. Life is not a one-sided affair. Life is many sided, and can be appreciated in all its richness only when the great contrasts are fully understood. Bad indeed it would be if the various colours and tones could not be seen as parts of an artistic whole.

Human evolution demands the crystalization of one or the other of these opposites, and so it must be; but with this hope, that mankind may not be lost in the midst of life. There must be a central religion, or Welt-Anschauung, which must solve the many complex problems which now appear so full of contradictions. When Anthroposophy works with this aim in view it will evolve full harmony. Outward harmony can only be the reflection of the inner or soul harmony. And when Anthroposophy shall have accomplished this aim, her true place in modern culture, she will have found that which she is seeking to establish. Anthroposophy desires no theoretical proofs, no speculation; her aim is to prove and demonstrate the truth of her statements in life itself. When she will see the light which she has shed upon life reflected back to her in inner harmony in spite of all contradictions, then she will realize the establishment of her fundamental principles.

{This follows immediately after the lecture.}

TOLSTOY AND THE FUTURE

In Rudolf Steiner’s lectures on the Apocalypse of John, given at Nuremberg in June 1908, he spoke in Lecture 7 of the sixth post-Atlantean epoch, which follows our own, and took Tolstoy as an example of a man in whom the culture of the future age can already be seen.

These lectures, which are intended to be objective, are far, far removed from any party spirit. But you may compare objectively what is attained as science and philosophy in the European West with what appeared in the East, let us say in Tolstoy. One does not need to be a follower of Tolstoy, but one thing is true; in a book such as Tolstoy’s On Life you may read one page, if you understand how to read it, and compare it with whole libraries in Western Europe. And you may then say the following: In Western Europe one makes spiritual culture with the intellect; one chisels out certain details and puts them together to form something that is supposed to make the world comprehensible, and the achievements of Western Europe civilization in this respect will never be surpassed. But if you understand such a book as Tolstoy’s On Life, you will often find condensed into ten lines what in these Western European libraries it takes thirty volumes to say. Tolstoy says something with elemental force, and in a few lines of his there is the same amount of energy as is assembled in thirty such volumes. Here one must be able to judge what comes forth from the depths of the spirit, what has a spiritual foundation and what has not. Just as over-ripe cultures contain something that is drying up and withering, so do rising cultures contain within them fresh life and new energy. Tolstoy is a premature flower of such a culture, one that came far too soon to be fully developed. Hence he has all the faults of an untimely birth. His grotesque and unfounded presentations of many Western European things, all that he brings forward in the way of foolish judgment, show that great personalities have the faults of their virtues and that great cleverness has the folly of its wisdom.

Spiritual science must become an instrument of mutual understanding, whereby we learn to understand each other, as it were, across all of humanity and into the soul. And this learning to understand each other, even into the soul, must permeate us as an anthroposophical attitude, so to speak, and live in us, otherwise the occult truths that flow into humanity through spiritual science will not be easily understood by us either. In this respect, spiritual science can, because it is, so to speak, the key to understanding the innermost, bring about peace and harmony across the earth. How can it do that?

Let us illustrate this with a concrete example. Take, for example, the relationship between two people who have different religious beliefs across the earth, let us say Christianity and Buddhism. What we can say with reference to Christians and Buddhists, who provide us only with classical examples, we could of course also say for the world views of two people living side by side in Europe; for what applies on a large scale will also apply on a small scale through spiritual knowledge. If we take the Christian and the Buddhist as they are in the traditional orthodox creeds, how do they relate to each other? Well, in such a way that the Christian actually believes that the Buddhist can only be saved if he accepts Christianity in the form that he has. And so we see the missionary activities of Christians among Buddhists; they take their particular confession there. And the orthodox Buddhist behaves in a very similar way. Suppose both became anthroposophists. How would a Christian, as an anthroposophical Christian, relate to a Buddhist? Well, let us say that he hears what is one of the most important things in Buddhism and what, basically, is only properly understood by someone who lives within Buddhism itself. Today, there are two ways of learning about the content of the various religious beliefs: from people who study comparative religion and from those who learn about the content of the various religious beliefs in a spiritual-scientific way. If we consider those who practice comparative religion, we must say that they are extraordinarily hardworking and active people who endeavor to cultivate the scholarly comparison of different religious beliefs. But when they compare these religious beliefs, something very special comes to light; then what they are looking for, even if they do not admit it, is actually only the untruthfulness of the various religious beliefs. These people are looking for what is not true, what was accepted by the various religious beliefs in childlike times; that is, they are looking for untruth. The person who studies this as a spiritual scientist seeks the main core in the individual religious beliefs; he seeks what is contained in a single nuance, but still as a perceptional nuance, in this or that religious belief. He seeks, therefore, what is true in the individual religious beliefs, not what is false.

In this respect, things can go strangely. Isn't it true that no one who knows the facts will have anything but the greatest respect for Max Müller, perhaps the greatest scholar of comparative religion or the greatest authority on religious studies. He, too, did not give much more than what one might call: the untruth of the oriental creeds. But he believed that he was giving everything with it. And then H. P. Blavatsky appeared and spoke quite differently. She spoke in such a way that one saw in her: she knows the main core of the oriental creeds.

What did Max Müller say? His judgment is somewhat grotesque and shows that a scholar does not necessarily need to be well-versed in logic. He thought that people follow Blavatsky, who only gives them a completely false representation of oriental religions, while she does not take into account the true representation of them, which, for example, he, Max Müller, gives. And he used the following comparison: Yes, when people are walking down the street and see a real pig grunting, they are not particularly surprised, but when they see a person grunting like a pig, it causes a stir. He wanted to compare what is naturally given in the oriental religious systems, namely his kind of religious comparison, with the pig that grunts naturally – I am not making the comparison! - and wanted to compare what H. P. Blavatsky has given with a person who grunts like that. Well, I won't even talk about the tastelessness of the comparison; because it doesn't seem very logical to me: I would be a little surprised if I met a person who could grunt deceptively. But I would not, really not, use the other comparison of comparative religious studies with the said animal, and it is strange that Max Müller himself used it.

Spiritual science introduces us to the truth of different religions. Take a key point in Buddhism: the Buddhist knows, when he has understood the basic tenet of his faith, that there are bodhisattvas, and he knows that these bodhisattvas, once beginning as an individuality, undergo a more rapid development than the other human individualities and then ascend to the Buddha. Buddha is a general name for all those who, in a human, carnal incarnation, ascend from the bodhisattva to the Buddha. And one of those who are especially honored with the name Buddha is precisely the son of Shuddhodana: Gautama Buddha. And with regard to him, it must be recognized, as with every Buddha, that when he attained the dignity of Buddha at the age of twenty-nine, the incarnation in which this occurred was his last incarnation, and that he would not need to descend again to a carnal incarnation on earth. This is regarded as a truth by Buddhists. A comparative religion scholar would regard it as a childish notion. But the anthroposophist, who familiarizes himself with the secrets of religions in all fields, does not approach the Buddha in this way, but he knows that such a thing is a truth. And so, just like any devout Buddhist, the anthroposophist faces Buddhism and says: Yes, I know that there are such things as bodhisattvas who ascend to the Buddha, who do not need to reincarnate again. That is one of the sentences of your religious community that I recognize, just as you do, and by acknowledging it, I can look up to your Buddha with reverence, just as you do. That is to say, the anthroposophical Christian begins to fully understand what the Buddhist says, and he has the same feelings and perceptions with him, he shares them with him, and they understand each other from the one side at first.

Now let us take the opposite case, where the Buddhist has also become an anthroposophist and is learning to recognize what the Christian, who has raised himself above the narrow-mindedness of the confessional orthodox point of view, knows about Christianity. Let us assume that the Buddhist Buddhist hears what a Christian can say about the Christ Impulse itself. He hears that within Christianity, within Christian esotericism, it has been recognized that at one point in the course of evolution, a being called Lucifer approached man in his development; he then hears that as a result, this human being descended lower than would have been the case had there been no Luciferic influence. And he then hears that it is actually something that we look up to as if it were a matter for the gods when we consider the rebellion and revolt of Lucifer against the progressive powers of the gods. So we are looking into a matter for the gods. And then we hear from the Christian who really understands his Christianity that the settlement of this matter between the advancing gods and Lucifer had to become what we call the Mystery of Golgotha. And why?

Well, in its present form, death and everything associated with death has really come about through the influence of Lucifer. But death is something that can only be found in the physical world. There is no death in a supersensible world, insofar as supersensible worlds are accessible to man with his clairvoyant consciousness. Not even the group souls of animals die; they only transform. There is metamorphosis, but not what is called death. The disintegration, the falling apart of a part of a particular entity, death, only exists in the physical world. Now, as a compensation, it had to be chosen - this can only be hinted at - by supernatural beings to suffer death in order to have a common cause with men, something that could be a compensation for the Luciferian rebellion. To conquer Lucifer, the Divine had to go through death; to do so, it had to descend to earth.

So what happened through the Mystery of Golgotha is a divine matter through which a compensation was created for the Lucifer matter. It is the only divine matter that has taken place before the eyes of men. This unique impulse, which cannot be imagined as anything other than the passing through of the Divine through death on the physical plane and the emanation of the Christ impulse into the spiritual atmosphere of the earth from that point on. This is now regarded by anyone who knows Christianity as the primary essence of that Christianity. In this way, Christianity, understood in a deeper sense, differs from all other religions in that the other religions see the main thing about their origin in some religious founder, in a personality; but that Christianity does not see the essential in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, but sees in this personal founder only the bearer of the Christ impulse, that Christianity sees the essential in a fact. This must be grasped with all possible intensity: in a fact that had to take place as such at some point in the evolution of the earth: in the passing through of the divine through death. That is the special truth of Christianity: that it is not an individuality but a fact, an event, an experience that is placed at the starting point. Of course, it does not matter if someone says to us, “Yes, look, Jesus of Nazareth still has all kinds of passions, all kinds of qualities that a, let us say, according to oriental views, somehow advanced man should no longer have.” That does not matter at all. That is not the point at all. Anyone who allows themselves to be misled by this has no understanding of Christianity, because Christianity is not about Jesus of Nazareth at all, but about the event of Golgotha, about that fact. Let other founders of religions have personal qualities that other peoples like better than those of Jesus of Nazareth! But those who become Buddhists or anthroposophists will realize that in Christianity it is the event of Golgotha that matters, and they will give the Christian back what he has given them. They will say: Just as you yourself admit that there are bodhisattvas who develop as individualities, ascend to the Buddha and then do not need to incarnate again, so we admit that once in the development of man such a passing through of the divine through death has occurred. You admit that there is a shade of truth in our religion, and we admit that there is a shade of truth in yours. — Thus both sides understand each other. They would not understand each other, for example, and discord would be created if Christians came who thought they had become Anthroposophists and said: I don't believe you that a Buddha can no longer appear in a physical body, but I assume that in a certain time the Buddha will appear again in a physical body. - That would be an impossibility for someone who recognizes the essence of Buddhism. It would be impossible to expect the Buddhist to believe that his Buddha could appear in the flesh again. The Buddhist would say: “You do not understand Buddhism.” And it is quite natural and should not be a matter for discussion that just as the person who claims that a Buddha will come again in the flesh does not know Buddhism, so the person who claims that a Christ can come flesh again, who therefore does not realize that it concerns here a unique life of a divine entity on Earth, precisely for the purpose of passing through death on the physical plane, and not something else. So it concerns mutual understanding across the whole Earth, to really grasp each other and thereby establish peace. Discord would be caused if one were to claim to a Buddhist that Buddha would reappear in the flesh; and discord would be caused if one were to claim that the Christ could come again in the flesh. Such things would have to take a deep revenge, for they are impossibilities in view of what really lives in the evolution of mankind. It would be grotesque if anyone were to claim that the Christ had to come again and that people should understand him better now than they did then and should prepare themselves better for him and not kill him: such a person would not know that the killing was crucial and that without it there would be no Christianity at all! The good will to understand really does lead to mutual understanding, and we see how spiritual science can be an instrument for seeking the main core in the individual religious denominations everywhere. If you really want to, you will find it. That is why it is the message of peace for the world. Spiritual science will have to create a cultural soul for the whole world, just as it has given rise to the material cultural body that now extends across the whole earth in industry and commerce. It is precisely by recognizing the diversity that has been given to humanity in the various religious beliefs, and then in turn relating to that which appears to us as the core of truth through spiritual science, that we achieve a kind of synthesis, a unification of the various world views in our time. This should be emphasized with regard to one point.

The aim of the anthroposophically oriented movement that we are pursuing here has never been to present the differences between religious denominations in such a way as to ascribe advantages to one religious denomination and disadvantages to the other. How often has it been said: The spiritual height that was there immediately after the Atlantic catastrophe in the culture of the ancient Indian Rishis has not been reached at all today. It has therefore not been reached by Christianity as it exists today either. We do not indicate advantages and disadvantages, but present the individual religions in their essence. So we also only present when we draw attention to other differences. If we follow the more oriental way of thinking, namely the one that has the most followers, the Buddhist one, you will see one thing: there the main interest of the people is taken up by what is called the passage through the various incarnations. They speak there of a bodhisattva; but a bodhisattva is not one who lives only from the year of birth to the year of death, but one who comes back again and again and then becomes a Buddha; and one speaks of bodhisattvas as if they appeared in various numbers within the development of humanity. One generalizes more, one grasps more the individualities that remain. But how has it been done so far in the Western view? The exact opposite was the case. When people spoke of Socrates, Plato, Raphael, Michelangelo, they were referring to personalities, and here the Western view presents the limited entities as the essential being. This had its good side, because thereby a special education was achieved to chisel out and work out the individual human personalities. This was essentially the case with those views that H. P. Blavatsky, for example, did not understand: the ancient Hebrew and the New Testament views.

One looked, for example, to Elijah. The occult researches about him have something surprising. I need only say that we notice the uniqueness of which makes him a forerunner of what should have happened through the Christ Impulse. He still understands the matter in such a way that the Divine Being is expressed in the National Ego; but he already points out that the most worthy means of recognition lies in the Ego itself. In this respect, Elijah can be seen as a kind of herald of Christianity, and none of the other prophets seems to me to be a herald in the same way as Elijah. There is still a hint of Jehovah in his words, but with him we find Jehovah as close to the human ego as possible. Then we turn our attention to another figure, again as an individual personality, to John the Baptist. We find how he precedes the Christ Impulse, how John the Baptist really presents himself as the one who characterizes the Christ Impulse in words. He says: Change your mind, no longer look to the times of ancient clairvoyance, but seek the Kingdoms of Heaven within your own humanity! — That which the Christ Impulse is in reality: John the Baptist characterizes it. He is a herald of Christianity in a most wonderful way. What lives in the heart of John the Baptist appears to us as a kind of further development, an inner spiritual further development, compared to what lived in Elijah.

We then turn to Raphael and look at him as seemingly a very different figure from John the Baptist; but by looking at Raphael - yes, we just need to immerse ourselves in him a little in a truly human way, and we find in him a herald of Christianity.

Take the following. We turn to a passage from the Acts of the Apostles, the passage where it says: “And Paul came to Athens, and the Athenians gathered around him, and Paul stood before them and said: You women and men of Athens, you have so far worshiped your gods in all kinds of signs; but the Godhead does not live in external signs in reality. You also have an altar, however, on which it says: “To the unknown God!” But I say to you that the unknown God is the one who cannot be indicated by external signs in his true form, but who underlies all that is alive and all that exists. He is the one who lived on earth and was resurrected, the one who, through resurrection, will lead man himself to resurrection.” And further on, the Acts of the Apostles tell us – and we can almost see Paul standing before the Athenians – how some Athenians believed and others did not. Among the former was Dionysius, the Areopagite. Then we look at the painting that hangs in the Camera della Signatura in Rome and was painted by Raphael, and which is called “The School of Athens”. Now let us assume – as was quite natural at the time – Raphael had before him the passage from the Acts of the Apostles that we have just been discussing. It came to life in him. And now we look at the various Athenians, to whom he gave the faces, and except for the hand movement, we see stepping forward – stepping forward among the Athenians – a figure whom we recognize if we just consider Paul in the Acts of the Apostles.

And so we could go through the most diverse things with Raphael. If we focus on his various Madonnas, we must ask ourselves, however: Isn't one thing strange about Raphael, he is great when he paints the scenes that show the becoming, the growing in the emergence of Christianity, the little Jesus as something that contains the whole of Christianity becoming in the germ. But we do not find Raphael's painting of Judas betraying Christ, nor does he actually paint Christ carrying the cross, because his Christ carrying the cross seems to us to be forced, not at all like Raphael's other works. Instead, we find the Annunciation, the Ascension, that is, the things that point precisely to the emergence of Christianity.

And how did these things speak to people? Yes, they spoke most peculiarly. You know that one of Raphael's most magnificent works is in Dresden: the Sistine Madonna. People who think superficially might think that this is a work of art that was paraded through Germany like a victor. It made no impression on Goethe at all because he had heard how people generally thought about this work. As a young man, Goethe was not yet as sure in his judgment as he was in his old age and was still receptive to what people said. What did the museum officials in Dresden tell him? Well, that the child was ugly in its entirety, that the Madonna had been painted over by an amateur, that the little putti below had been added by some kind of handyman. That was still the attitude towards the Sistine Madonna when Goethe came to Dresden as a young man. But let us see how it is now. Let us consider what Raphael actually has become for people! Raphael worked in Rome at a time when there was much dispute about religious dogmas. The way in which Raphael paints the Christian mysteries is interdenominational. If we take the later great Italian painters, we see the religious mysteries painted in such a way that we recognize: this is the Christianity of the Latin race. Raphael paints in such a way that we are dealing with universal renderings of Christian mysteries that transcend nations. That is why we see how, in a short time, the Sistine Madonna finds its way into the souls even in Protestant areas. And if anthroposophy is to work for the understanding of the Christian mysteries, it will find its way best into those souls in which the feelings live that are won by images like the Sistine Madonna, into those souls that are prepared in this way. And when we say today that Christianity is only at the beginning of its development, that it will only receive its true form through the spiritual key that anthroposophy is able to give, then we know that Raphael stands as a herald for this Christianity.

And again we turn our gaze to yet another figure, taking only what is Western in outlook: we turn to the figure of the German poet Novalis. If we turn to Novalis, we find traces of the purest anthroposophical teaching in every detail; one need only unravel them, so to speak. Thus we see how Novalis is imbued with an anthroposophical Christianity.

We have thus presented four figures as personalities. That was the Western view. Now comes the spiritual-scientific deepening. Through this, people will already experience why, for example, Raphael feels that magnetic attraction to be incarnated into the earth on a Good Friday, in order to outwardly suggest through the birth on Good Friday that he has something to do with the Easter mystery. These things can only be hinted at today; in a few decades people will understand the things that are being asserted in this way, just as they understand scientific facts today: that it is the same individuality that lived in Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael and Novalis. First they will recognize the personalities, then the individuality as it has passed through them. And now we understand the fourfold heraldry and the ascent in this fourfold heraldry. Now we stand by such a thing quite differently than we used to. Today we already know that the original form of the Stanze in Rome can no longer be seen; they have been spoiled, are no longer as they were painted by Raphael's hand, and only centuries need pass for these things to disappear. Even if the replicas will have a longer life, what created the individuality is dissolved into its atoms. But even if Raphael's physical works are pulverized by the passage of time, we know that the same individuality that created those works was present again in Novalis and brought about, in a different way, what was in him.

Thus we see how today, in addition to what the Western way of looking at things has achieved, the limited vision of personalities is added to individuality; how, in other words, the best that the Western world view has achieved is combined with the best that the Eastern way of looking at things has. This is how time progresses. As humanity progresses and realizes these things, the spiritual world will not remain silent, but will speak to humanity in even the most mundane of phenomena. And so, people will not only have to rise to the spiritual world through a kind of knowledge, but more and more this knowledge will be transformed into a kind of, one might say, experience. But for this to happen, a real spiritual movement is needed today. That such a movement is necessary is evident simply from the fact that people no longer judge even the simplest things in the right way.

Let us single out one detail today. A person who leads a healthy life goes through waking and sleeping in the course of twenty-four hours. We know that when he falls asleep, the physical and etheric bodies remain in bed and the astral and I go out. What then happens to what remains in bed? When the clairvoyant looks back from his astral body at what is happening in the etheric and physical bodies, he sees how a more vegetative life begins, a life that has actually been destroyed by daytime consciousness. Fatigue is compensated for; that is, the etheric body and the physical body now flourish and sprout, and the astral body and the I have been withdrawn. When they submerge again into the physical body and etheric body in the morning, they have to make them tired again; they graze, let wither what has sprouted during the night.

Everything that is in the microcosm is also present in the macrocosm. When we see in spring how the earth lets its greenery shoot out in the plants, how flowers and leaves sprout and how the plants prepare to bear fruit, what do we have there? The one who compares externally will say that the waking up in the morning can be compared to the waking up of nature in spring. But the opposite is true! We have to compare the blossoming in spring with falling asleep. We have to compare the emergence and growth of plants in spring with what happens in the etheric and physical body of a person when they fall asleep. Then, as summer approaches, it becomes more and more alive, as in the human physical and etheric bodies in the middle of the sleep period. And in autumn it becomes as if the human being descends into the physical and etheric body in the morning, in autumn, which causes withering of what has sprouted during spring and summer. One must correctly put together what happens outside and inside; one must not seek external allegories and compare spring with waking up and autumn with falling asleep, but the other way around.

So that we can say: That which is the spirit of the earth goes to sleep in spring and wakes up as earth spirits in autumn and winter. In winter, they are connected to the earth as earth spirits, in order to rise again in spring and summer to the heights of heaven, to the astral heights and to the other side of the earth. When spring comes again, they go back to sleep.

It does not contradict that the earth sleeps once on one half and the other time on the other half. Something similar is also the case with man in a certain respect. The person who follows the processes clairvoyantly sees that in spring it is the same as when a person falls asleep, where the individual spirit withdraws into the astral world; he sees that in spring what we call the earth spirits withdraw into the astral world, and vice versa. Yes, today's humanity – except for those sitting here, who would probably burst out laughing if one were to speak of the falling asleep and waking up of the earth spirits. One believes this humanity; it does everything to prove that it has no idea of the real processes of the world. But it was not always so, not at all, but it was different in the past! There was an old human clairvoyance, and that saw these facts correctly. It was seen that the earth spirits withdraw in spring to go up, so to speak, into cosmic heights. In autumn these spirits descend again. This was recognized in ancient times. It was natural to point out that in the middle of summer there is something like an absence of the actual earth spirit from the earth. Instead, there is an upsurge of the elemental nature spirits, as in a paroxysm, and a lagging behind of what is earthly-bodily on the earth, which thus emerges through the senses. If one wanted to make this clear, one could not do better than to move the Feast of St. John to this time, in order to point out how the sprouting nature spirits and the actual spirits of the earth, which are the I and the astral body of the earth, work.

But what about when winter approaches? Then the earth wakes up, and the astral body and the ego are connected with the earth. That is when we have to move the festivals that primarily relate to the spiritual part of the human being. That is where Christmas has been moved to. And then, when the spirit of the earth moves upwards, which is indicated by Easter, this movement away from the earth, this movement into the astral, was related to the relationship between the sun and the moon.

All these things that we are looking into connect us in a wonderful way with ancient clairvoyance, showing us how, in what has been handed down from ancient times, we have to see something that has to do with ancient human clairvoyance. It is quite natural for the materialistic world view to say that it has only the body to educate, that it says: It is inconvenient for us, especially with regard to cheque transactions and similar things, to have Easter early one year and late the next, and this must be remedied so that trade and industry can get away with it as comfortably as possible. Easter should always be celebrated on the first Sunday in April! — This is only appropriate for the materialistic age, which has no connection with the spiritual world. Just as it is appropriate for materialism to entertain such ideas, it is equally true that a spiritual movement must maintain the connection with humanity's ancient festivals. And we will not hold back in doing what is appropriate for a spiritual worldview, especially with regard to practical activity.

And this should be expressed in what is presented to you in our calendar, which of course appears ridiculous to the outside world, but we do not want to withhold it from them, even if they think we are fools because of it. It is expressed through this calendar that we must maintain the connection with ancient times. In the illustrations for the calendar, which were created by a dear and beloved member of our group, you have a renewal of that which has already become dry and barren: the imaginations that relate to the constellations of the sun and moon and the signs of the zodiac, renewed for the soul of today, given in such a way that you really benefit from it when you look at the sequence of weeks and days. If you ask how you can gain access to such things yourself, then take a look at the Soul Calendar: these meditations are the result of many years of occult research and experience. If you make them effective in the soul, you will see that what is forming in the soul is the connection between the effectiveness of spiritual

worlds in the succession of time. And what we call the Mystery of Golgotha, we have made outwardly, exoterically, so that it does not shock at first glance. We have drawn a circle around it, on which 1912/13 is written, but inwardly the calendar is calculated in such a way that the beginning is marked by the birth of human ego-consciousness, that is, with the Mystery of Golgotha. And besides, the years are counted from Easter to Easter, which is bound to prove rather inconvenient for commercial life, but is necessary for spiritual life.

Thus something is provided that has grown out of our way of thinking and that can be used by everyone, so that by using it they can take a step closer to the spiritual path than can be achieved by any other means.

It will become more and more apparent how the things we undertake within our anthroposophical movement are actually conceived from a unified basic principle and impulse, and how the individual does not owe his existence to a whim, but is placed in such a way that he really fits into our work as a whole as a single building block. For this, of course, it is necessary that more and more individual members also develop an understanding of this collaboration and that we move beyond special interests and special aspirations and focus more on what unites us. Of course, it is understandable that many individual members have special aspirations and special requests, that some would like to bring this or that into the anthroposophical movement. But especially here in this place, where truly selfless cooperation will be necessary if we really want to achieve what we have planned, it must be deeply, deeply rooted in our hearts that we will only have a beneficial effect if we do not assert our special aspirations, but rather what can be integrated into the whole, what is being striven for, as a building block. Otherwise it cannot become a whole. This is so extraordinarily important, and in this respect I believe that the realization of what should have happened there is the basis for studying how the anthroposophical movement should develop.

So today I have tried to present to you some of our anthroposophically oriented views, and we have thus created a kind of substitute for what should have been this time, but could not be because not all the official approvals have been obtained: namely, the laying of the foundation stone of our Johannesbau. But we hope that in the not too distant future we will be able to make up for this. For perhaps in doing so we will also lay the foundation stone for a revival of the anthroposophical movement as we understand it in the West. And if we succeed in doing the right thing in this field, then we will already have provided the proof that we, in all loyalty to the truth, without any inclination towards sensationalism, are making those occult efforts our own which present-day humanity needs for its further development.

Today let us try to add something to what is already familiar to us. What I have to say may be useful to some of you in that it will lead to a more exact idea of the nature of man and his relationship to the cosmos.

Anthroposophists often hear objections to spiritual science from outsiders. Scholars and laymen alike criticize the division of man into the four members of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego.¹ These skeptics often say that perhaps one who has developed hidden soul forces may be able to see these things but there is no reason why one who has not should concern himself with such ideas. It should be emphasized, however, that life itself, if one is attentive to it, confirms what spiritual science has to say. Furthermore, the things anthroposophy has to teach can be extremely useful in everyday life. This usefulness, which is not meant to be taken pragmatically, gradually comes to carry conviction even for those who are not particularly inclined to concern themselves with clairvoyant perception.

Now let's consider nervousness. It is well-known today that there are many people who complain of nervousness and all that this implies, and we are hardly surprised when the statement is made that there is none who is not afflicted. Considering present social conditions to which all this nervousness can be attributed, such a statement can be readily understood.

Nervousness becomes manifest in a variety of ways, most obviously perhaps when a person becomes an emotional fidgety-gibbet, that is to say, someone who constantly jumps from one thought to another and is unable to hold a single thought in his head, let alone carry it through to a conclusion. Such constant scurrying in the inner life is the most common form of nervousness. Another is one in which people do not know what to do with themselves and are unable to make anything of themselves. When called upon to make a decision in a given situation, they are at a loss for an answer. This condition can lead to more serious symptoms that may finally be expressed in various forms of disease that simulate organic illnesses in a most deceptive way. Gastric disturbances are an example. Many other conditions might be mentioned, but who in our time does not know of them? We need only mention the “political alcoholism” that has pervaded the important events of public life. This expression was coined because of the way political affairs in Europe have been conducted during recent months. There has been no little talk about it since people began to notice how unpleasantly the prevailing nervousness is making itself felt.

If people remain as they are, we need not doubt but that there will be no improvement in the near future. The prospects of change are by no means hopeful. There are many harmful factors strongly influencing our lives that pass like an epidemic from person to person and thus those who are weak also become infected.

It is extremely harmful for our time that many of the men who hold high and responsible positions in public life have had to study as one does today. There are whole branches of learning that are taught in such a way that throughout the entire school year the student will be unable to spend his time and energy really thinking through what he has heard from his professors. As a result, when he is faced with an exam, he is forced to cram for it. This cramming, however, is dreadful because it provides no real connection of interest of the soul with the subject matter that the student is to be examined in. No wonder the prevailing opinion of the student often is one of wanting to forget as soon as possible what he has just had to learn!

What are the consequences of these educational methods? In some respects, men are no doubt receiving the training needed to take part in public life. But, as a result of their schooling, they are not inwardly united with their work. They feel remote from it. Now there is nothing worse than to feel remote in your heart from the things you have to do with your head. It is not only repugnant to sensitive people, but it also acts most adversely on the strength of the etheric body. Thus, because of the tenuous interest that may exist in the core of a person's soul for his professional pursuits, his etheric body is gradually weakened. Precisely the opposite effects are obtained, however, when anthroposophy is taken up in a healthy way. A man will not merely learn that he consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. He will also come to behave in such a way that these members unfold strongly and harmoniously in him.

Often in anthroposophy, even a simple experiment repeated with diligence can work wonders. Let me speak in detail, for example, of forgetfulness, so common and such a nuisance, but also so significant in our lives. Strange as it may seem, anthroposophy shows it to be harmful to health, and that many upsets bordering on severe illness can be avoided if people would only be less forgetful. And who can claim to be exempt, since there is no one who is not forgetful to some degree. Just consider the numerous cases in which people can never find where they put things. One has lost his pencil, another cannot find his cufflinks, etc., etc., all of which seems trivial but such things do, after all, occur often enough in life.

There is a good exercise for gradually curing such forgetfulness. Suppose, for example, a lady is forever putting her brooch down when she takes it off in the evening, and then cannot find it in the morning. You might think the best cure for her forgetfulness would be to remember to put it always in the same place. There is, however, a far more effective means of remembering where it is. This does not, of course, apply to all objects but in this case the lady should say to herself, “I will put my brooch in a different place each evening, but as I do so I will hold the thought in mind that I have put it in a particular spot. Then I will form a clear picture in my mind of all the surroundings. Having done this, I will go quietly away. I realize that if I only do this once, I probably will not succeed, but if I make a habit of it, I will find that my forgetfulness gradually disappears.”

This exercise is based on the fact that the person's ego is brought consciously into connection with the deed he does, and also that he forms a picture of it. Connecting the ego, that is, the spiritual kernel of man's being, in this way with a pictorial image, sharpens memory. Such an exercise can be quite useful in helping us to become less forgetful.

Further results can also be attained from such an exercise. When it becomes habit to hold such thoughts when things are put aside, it represents a strengthening of the etheric body, which, as we know, is the bearer of memory. But now assume you have advised someone to do this exercise not because he is forgetful but because he is nervous. It will prove to be an excellent cure. His etheric body will be strengthened and the nervous tendencies will disappear. In such cases, life itself demonstrates that what spiritual science teaches is correct.

Here is another example that may also appear trivial on the surface. You know that the physical and etheric bodies are intimately connected. Now anyone with a healthy soul will be moved to compassion for clerical workers and others whose professions demand a great deal of writing. Perhaps you have noticed the strange movements they make in the air whenever they are about to write. Actually, with some of them the movements are not so extreme and they may only give a kind of jerk when they write, a jerk repeated for every up and down stroke. You can see the jerking in the writing. This condition is easily understood through spiritual science. In a healthy human being the etheric body, guided by the astral body, is always able to permeate the physical body. Thus, the physical body is normally the servant of the etheric body. When, undirected by the astral body, the physical body executes movements on its own, it is symptomatic of an unhealthy condition. These jerks represent the subordination of the etheric to the physical body, and denote that the weak etheric body is no longer fully able to direct the physical. Such a relationship between the physical and etheric bodies lies at the occult foundation of every form of cramp or convulsion. Here the physical body has become dominant and makes movements on its own, whereas in a healthy man all his movements are subordinated to the will of the astral body working through the etheric.

Again, there is a way of helping a person with such symptoms, provided the condition has not progressed too far, if one takes into account the occult facts. In this case we must recognize the existence and efficacy of the etheric body and try to strengthen it. Imagine someone so dissipated that his fingers get to shaking and jerking when he tries to write. You certainly would do well to advise him to write less and take a good vacation, but better still you might also recommend that he try to acquire a different handwriting. Tell him to stop writing automatically and try practicing for fifteen minutes a day to pay attention to the way he forms the letters he writes. Tell him to try to shape his handwriting differently and to cultivate the habit of drawing the letters. The point here is that when a man consciously changes his handwriting, he is obliged to pay attention to, and to bring the innermost core of his being into connection with what he is doing. The etheric body is strengthened in this way and the person is made healthier.

It would not be a bad idea to introduce such exercises systematically into the classroom to strengthen the etheric body even in childhood. But, even though anthroposophy can give such pedagogical advice, it will doubtless be a long time before leading educators will consider it anything but foolish. Nevertheless, suppose that children were first taught to write a particular style of penmanship and after a few years were expected to acquire an entirely different character in their handwriting. The change, and the conscious attention it would involve, would result in a remarkable strengthening of the etheric body.

So you see, something can be done to strengthen the etheric body. This is of immense importance because in our time weakness of the etheric body leads to many unhealthy conditions. What has been indicated here represents a definite way of working upon the etheric body. When these exercises are practiced, an actual force is applied to the etheric body that certainly could not be applied if the existence of this body were denied. Surely, however, the effects of the force, when they become apparent, demonstrate the existence of the etheric body.

The etheric body can be strengthened by performing another exercise, in this case, for the improvement of memory. By thinking through events, not only in the way they occurred but also in reverse sequence, that is, by starting at the end of an event and pursuing it through to the beginning, will help to make the etheric body stronger. Historical events, for example, which are usually learned in chronological sequence, can be followed backwards. Or a play or story can be thought through in reverse from end to beginning. Such exercises when done thoroughly are highly effective in consolidating and strengthening the etheric body.

When you come to think of it, it soon becomes apparent that people do not do the things that would contribute to the strengthening of the etheric body. The restless daily bustle of modern life does not allow them the opportunity to come to that inner quiet required for such exercises, and in the evening after the day's work they are generally too tired to be bothered. Should spiritual science begin to penetrate their souls, however, people would soon see how many things done in the bustle of modern life could be dispensed with, and they would find the time to practice such exercises. They also would become aware of the positive results that could be achieved if such exercises were carefully applied in education.

Another little exercise may be mentioned here. If it has not been cultivated from early youth, it is, perhaps, not quite so useful in later life. Nevertheless, it is still a good exercise to practice in later years. With certain things we do, no matter whether or not they are of enduring importance, it is good practice to look carefully at what is being done. This is comparatively easy in writing and I am quite sure many people would soon correct their hideous handwriting if they really looked at the letters.

In still another exercise a person should endeavor to watch himself the way he walks, moves his head, laughs, etc. In short, he should try to form a clear picture of his movements and gestures. Few people actually know what they look like when they are walking, for instance. While it is good to make this experiment, it should not be prolonged because it would quickly lead to vanity. Quite apart from the fact that it can be corrective of undesirable habits, this exercise also tends to consolidate the etheric body. When a man cultivates an awareness of his gestures and involuntary actions, the control of the astral becomes increasingly stronger over the etheric. Thus, he also becomes able, if necessary, to suppress certain actions or movements out of his free will.

It is an excellent accomplishment to be able to do quite differently the things we do out of habit. Nowadays, people only alter their handwriting for unlawful purposes, but I am not advocating a school of forgery when I suggest that if one changes one's handwriting honestly, it will help to consolidate one's etheric body. The point is that it is good to be able to do quite differently on occasion the things we do habitually. This does not mean that we need become fanatical about the indifferent use of our right and left hands. If a man, however, is occasionally able to do with his left hand what he commonly does with the right, he will strengthen the control of his astral over his etheric body.

The cultivation of the will, as we may call it, is most important. I have already mentioned how nervousness often makes it impossible for people to know what they should do. They do not know their desires, or even what they should desire. This may be regarded as a weakness of the will that is due to an insufficient control of the ego over the astral body. Some people do not know what they want and, if they do, they never manage to carry it out. Others, still, cannot bring themselves to will firmly what they should.

The way to strengthen one's will is not necessarily to carry out something one wishes, provided, of course, it will do no harm to leave the wish unfulfilled. Just examine your life and you will find countless desires it would no doubt be nice to satisfy, but equally possible to leave unsatisfied. Fulfillment of them would give you pleasure, but you can quite well do without. If you set out to examine yourself systematically in this way, every restraint will signify additional strength of the will, that is, strength of the ego over the astral body. If we subject ourselves to this procedure in later life, it becomes possible to make good much that has been neglected in our earlier education.

Let me emphasize that it is not easy to apply what has just been described in the education of the child. If a father, for example, denies a wish of his son that he could fulfill, he is apt to awaken the boy's antipathy. Since it is thus possible to arouse antipathy, you might say that the non- fulfillment of wishes in education is a doubtfully correct principle. What, then, is to be done? The answer is for the person guiding the child or pupil to deny himself the wishes in such a way that the child becomes aware of the denial. There is a strong imitative impulse at work here in the child, especially during the first seven years, and it will soon become evident that he will follow the example of his elders and also deny himself wishes. What is hereby achieved is of untold importance. When, through our interest in anthroposophy, our thoughts are directed in the right way, we come to know spiritual science not only as theory but as a wisdom of life that sustains and carries us forward.

A most important means of strengthening the control of the ego over the astral body was presented here in two recent lectures.² In them I discussed the importance of being flexible enough to consider what is said not only for, but also against, an issue to be able, as it were, to see both sides of a problem. Generally, people see only one side, but there is really no problem in life that should be treated this way. Pros and cons are never lacking. We would do well to acquire the habit of always adducing the pros as well as the cons in a case. Being what they are, human vanity and egoism usually favor what one wants to do. Therefore, it is also good to list the reasons against.

The fact is that man would so much like to be “good” that he is often convinced he will be if he does the things there are so many reasons in favor of doing, and disregards the things there are so many reasons against. It is an uncomfortable fact to have to realize, but there are always many possible objections to practically everything we do. People are not nearly as good as they think. That is a universal truth, a truism, but it can become an effective truth when it is made a practice in everything that is done to consider also what might be left undone.

The results to be attained by these means can be clarified by an example. No doubt you have met people so weak-willed that they would rather let others take care of their affairs. They would rather sit around asking themselves what they should do than find reasons in themselves to act. What I am now going to say must also be conceived as having many cons as well as pros. Assume that one of these weak-willed people is confronted by two others. One of them says, “Do this.” The other says, “Don't.” The one whose will exerts the stronger influence on the weak-willed person will be the victor. This is a most significant phenomenon because the decision of “yes” or “no” made by the weak-willed person will have been brought about by the adviser whose strength of will was the greater.

In contrast, however, suppose that I stand alone and quite independently face in my own heart the necessity of making a “yes” or “no” decision. Then, having answered “yes,” suppose I go forth and do what must be done. This “yes” will have released a strong force within me. When you thus place yourself in consciousness before a choice of alternatives, you allow strength to prevail over weakness simply from the manner in which your decision is made. This is important because in this way the control of the ego over the astral body is greatly strengthened. Try to carry out what I have just described and you will find it will do much to strengthen your will.

This problem, however, also has its darker side. You will not strengthen but only weaken your will if, instead of acting under the influence of what speaks for one course as opposed to another, you were out of slackness to do nothing. Seemingly you will have followed the “no” direction, but in reality you will have been merely lax and easy going. If you feel limp and weary, it would be better not to attempt to make a choice until you are inwardly strong and know that you can really follow through with the eventual pros and cons you place before your soul. It is obvious that such things must be brought before the soul at the right time.

The control of the ego over the astral body is also strengthened when we witness from our souls everything that creates a barrier between us and the surrounding world. The anthroposophist, however, should not feel that he should repress justified criticism if it is objective. On the contrary, it would represent a weakness to advocate the bad in place of the good, and one need not do this. But we must be able to distinguish something that is to be criticized objectively from something that we find exasperating simply because of its effect on ourselves. The more we make ourselves independent of what confronts us, the better. Thus it is good to practice self-denial in not considering bad in our fellow-men the things we consider bad only because they are bad for us. In other words, we should not apply our judgment only where we ourselves are not involved. This is really difficult to apply in life. When a man has lied to you, for instance, it is not easy to restrain your antipathy, but having caught him in it you should not immediately jump to conclusions. There is another way. We can observe from day to day how he acts and speaks and let this, rather than what he has done to us, form a basis for our judgment. Then you are taking into consideration what there is in the man himself and are not basing your judgment on the effect his conduct has made on you. Your personal relationship with him should be disregarded in order that you may view him quite objectively.

It is advisable for the strengthening of the ego to reflect on the fact that in all cases we might well refrain from a considerable portion of the judgments we pronounce. It would be more than enough if but a tenth of them were experienced in our souls. Our lives would by no means be impoverished thereby.

These may seem like small details I have given here, but it must also be our task now and again to consider such problems. Then, in order to lead purposeful, healthy lives, we see how differently life must be grasped than is ordinarily the case. It is not always right to send to the drug store for medicine when a man is ill. What is important is to order life in such a way that people become less susceptible to illnesses and that they have a less oppressive effect. They will become less oppressive when we strengthen the influence of the ego over the astral body, the astral body over the etheric, and the etheric body over the physical. Self-education and an influence upon the education of children can follow from our fundamental anthroposophical convictions.

• 1. Spritual science views man as a fourfold being:
  
  The physical-mineral body man has in common with the mineral kingdom.
  
  The etheric or life body is the carrier of all life and growth forces. It is the element man has in common with the plant kingdom. Plants have physical and etheric bodies.
  
  The astral body is the carrier of feelings, instincts, etc., that man has in common with the animals, which possess a physical, etheric, and astral body.
  
  The ego, unique spark of divinity in man. It makes possible self-awareness and enables man to become a free being capable of choice between good and evil.
  
  —Translator
  
  
• 2. How to Disprove Theosophy, January 8, 1912; How to prove Theosophy, January 10, 1912. These lectures have not yet been published in English.