The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dr. Steiner: I am sorry I have not been here for so long. Let us take a look at what we need to do today.

A teacher asks if they should turn some of the more difficult children away or if a trial period should be implemented.

Dr. Steiner: That is a question we can decide only when we have analyzed each case.

A teacher: One of the children, B.O., stole something.

Dr. Steiner: Is he just spoiled or is this habitual?

A teacher: The child is really quite spoiled. Our question is whether it would be responsible of us to have that child with the other children.

Dr. Steiner: You would have to see whether the boy is disturbed. I hope I can come by again for a while tomorrow. We have already had some children who had stolen something, and we still have them.

A teacher speaks about H.M.A. and asks if she can be excused from foreign languages.

Dr. Steiner: There is no reason to not have her in the school. It is for just such children that we need a remedial class.

That is something we need to do. Even though they may be disturbed, the children need to learn, and we do not want to turn them away. The situation is somewhat different in B.’s case. We have to admit it is difficult to come to grips with him. If he is disturbed, he would also have to go into the remedial class. The question is not easy to decide. With such children, it is not so easy to turn them away after a time. Accepting them and then rejecting them would lead to a bourgeois tendency in the school. We would all become bourgeois, just like everyone else. We certainly cannot accept children and then turn them away. There are not many children like B. and were we to observe him more closely, the various tricks he plays, we would probably see the meaning of it. For instance, in the case where he said he was someone else, there is certainly some other circumstance that would explain that.

A teacher: He has a bad influence on the others. When he is around, they act differently.

Dr. Steiner: That is true, the danger of infection is high. It will not be easy to find a way to work with him. In any event, before I consider the question, I would first like to meet him.

We have already had some thefts, but we never really considered whether we should keep the children or not. What kind of criteria could we make?

The difficulty is in determining some criteria and then sticking to it. Surely, there must be some way of doing that. How can we set the boundary between those who are servile enough for the Waldorf School and those who do not deserve it? How would you want to determine a tendency for theft? We can take note of the question, but such questions are more easily asked than answered. We are not done with the question yet, and I do not tend to give general answers to such questions. We must answer them case by case.

A teacher: The Independent Anthroposophical Youth has asked the teachers to give a course.

Dr. Steiner: They are mostly those who were down there in the Society branch building. They already had a few small meetings. Why shouldn’t you do that?

A teacher requests some guidelines.

Dr. Steiner: It would be quite a service if you were to do it. But stay more in the area of pedagogy. They are certainly thinking of pedagogy in general and not specific pedagogical methods. They are thinking more of cultural pedagogy. There is certainly a lot more going on in young people since the beginning of the century, or perhaps a few years earlier. There is a great deal going on in their unconscious. That is why the youth movement has a supersensible foundation. We should take this up seriously. I was in Aarau last Friday. It was not really a discussion, but a few people spoke up. One of them was a very curious person. During the first university course, I was put in a difficult position. I had received an unexpected telegram stating that two students had cut class and gone to the course. That is quite dangerous in Switzerland. Dr. Boos lay in wait for them and caught the two rascals. We gave the money back. It was one of those boys who spoke last Friday.

In reality, what happened was that a minister spoke first, a middle- aged man who really had nothing to say other than that we shouldn’t talk only about death; then, a teacher; and then that boy. The boy actually spoke best. He said something that was really quite correct. The whole conversation ended in the minister saying that modern youth does not recognize authority. Then the young man said, “Who should have authority? You should not complain if I state things radically, but if you want authority, then you have to be able to justify it. Don’t older people make compromises? If we see that, how can we look upon them with a feeling of authority?” He spoke very insightfully, and it made a good impression upon me.

We should pay attention to the youth movement. It is a cultural movement of great significance. Nevertheless, we need to avoid narrow-mindedness and pedantry in connection with the youth movement.

The teachers could give lectures on three days around Christmas and New Year’s.

A teacher asks about the behavior of some of the older students toward the girls and about smoking.

Dr. Steiner: Have they been making some advances? Let’s leave the question of smoking to the side, we can discuss that later. These other things we can do now. Has anything occurred that goes beyond reason? Of course, when a number of children get together, certain things happen, at least to an extent. Has anything happened that goes beyond reasonable limits?

A number of teachers speak about the behavior toward the girls.

Dr. Steiner: Well, it could simply be naïveté.

A teacher: It was sharper, more than naïve.

Dr. Steiner: It depends upon their character. If someone is rather coarse, he could still be naïve. It is important since we have looked at this point, that when nothing else can be done, we should somehow step in. On the other hand, we should not go into the situation with the children themselves. That would certainly make them difficult to handle. Take one such instance that occurred. A girl sits upon an older boys’ lap. You can be certain that you should ignore it as long as possible. You need to try to inhibit such actions, but don’t go so far as to put the children off. If you do, you will certainly draw their attention to it. You should handle such things with extreme care. You cannot teach boys and girls together if you do not avoid taking direct action.

Our materialistic age has created horrible prejudices in this regard. It often happens that a mother and father come to me and ask for advice because their children are developing a perverse sexuality. But when I see the child, he is only five years old and supposedly perverse! He doesn’t have any sexuality at all. This is pure stupidity. At the end, they bring out the Freudian theory that says a baby’s sucking on a pacifier is a sexual act.

What is important here is your tact. It can happen on occasion that you must act upon something sharply. However, in this question, you should do things more indirectly, otherwise you will draw the children’s attention to them.

It would be a good idea to report these cases psychologically, at least where a discussion of them is justified. Have you told me of all the instances? That doesn’t seem to be the case?

A teacher: Z.S. has a little circle of admirers around her.

Dr. Steiner: Such things have been cause for great tragedies. We need to handle them indirectly. Suppose a tragedy is playing out there. Because of that tragedy, one of the older girls says something to a teacher, then the girl sees that as a terrible breach of trust, and then the other girl finds out that you have told it further. You told something to another teacher that was told you in confidence, and the girl finds that out. The girl has cried a great deal over that. We really need to take these things in a way so that we can see they are actually an enrichment of life. These are things we cannot handle in a pedantic way. Every person is a different human being, even as a child.

A teacher: In my discussions about The Song of the Niebelungs in the tenth grade, I have come across a number of risqué passages. How should I behave in this regard?

Dr. Steiner: Either you have to pass over them tactfully or handle them seriously. You could try to handle such things in a simple and natural way, without any hint of frivolousness. That would be better than hiding them.

Concerning a restriction on smoking and similar things, it is quite possible that the children feel they are above that.

A teacher: One boy smoked a whole pack. We also find the name “Cigarette School.” It is not good for the school when the students smoke.

Dr. Steiner: In Dornach, the eurythmy ladies smoke much more than the men. The best thing would be to teach them to exercise some reason in regard to smoking.

A teacher: The result was, as they noticed, that they only hurt themselves.

Dr. Steiner: I think you could say what the effect is upon the organism. You could describe the effects of nicotine. That would be best. You may be tempted to do one and not another. This question in particular is a textbook example of when it is better to do one thing, namely, when the children who have such bad habits learn to stop them. In that case, pedagogically you have done fifteen times more than if you only prohibit smoking. A restriction on smoking is easier, but to teach the children so that they understand the problem affects the entirety of their lives. It is very important not to forbid and punish. We should not forbid nor punish, but do something else.

A teacher: Some of the teachers have started a discussion period for the students. We have discussed questions of worldview.

Dr. Steiner: It does not appear that children from the specific religions stay away. In any event, such a discussion period is good. It would be impossible to avoid having the discussion of worldview take on an anthroposophical character. You can barely avoid that in the religion classes, but in such a discussion group it is unavoidable. It is also not necessary to avoid it.

A question is asked about tutoring for foreign languages.

Dr. Steiner: That is a question about the extent to which we can make the foreign language classes independent of the grades, so that a child in one of the lower grades could be in a higher foreign language class.

A teacher: That would be difficult.

Dr. Steiner: It is still a question whether we can solve it or not.

A teacher: It will hardly be possible to teach foreign language in all the classes at the same time. That is why we thought of tutoring as a temporary measure.

Dr. Steiner: We can certainly do what we can in that direction. In the continuation school in Dornach, all the children from eight until eighteen sit together in the various subjects. There is also a forty-five-year-old woman with them. I cannot say that is such a terrible thing since it really isn’t so bad. Yesterday, an “officer of the law” came who wanted to take the children away from us.

We cannot make many classes, but we could do something. However, the teachers would have more work than if we simply tried to get past some of these small problems.

A teacher: Then, it would be good to leave the children there?

Dr. Steiner: That is the ideal. We could give them some extra instruction, but not take them out of the class. That would actually be too strenuous for the children. Otherwise, we would have to form the language classes differently from the other subjects.

A teacher: That is enormously difficult.

Dr. Steiner: We cannot easily increase the number of teachers. There is a discussion about art class in the upper grades and about some drafts for crafts.

Dr. Steiner: In art, you can do different things in many different ways. It is not possible to say that one thing is definitely good and the other is definitely bad. In Dornach, Miss van Blommestein has begun to teach through colors, and they are making good progress. I have seen that it is having a very good influence. We allow the children to work only with the primary colors. We say, for instance, “In the middle of your picture you have a yellow spot. Make it blue. Change the picture so that all of the other colors are changed accordingly.” When the children have to change one color, and then change everything else in accordance with that, the result is a basic insight into color. This can be seen, for instance, when they sew something onto a purse or something else and then do crossstitch on it so that it sits at just the right spot. The things you have told us about all result in essentially the same thing, and that is very good. The only question is when to begin this. You will have the greatest success if you begin in the very low grades, and then develop handwriting from that.

A teacher: Wouldn’t the class teacher contradict the shop teacher then?

Dr. Steiner: The person giving the art class needs to be aware that these children have all done this as small children. Now we could do it like you said; however, later you will need to be aware that the children have already done all that. Today, you first have to get rid of all bad taste. In this connection, people have not had much opportunity to learn very much. When people today do some crossstitch upon something, they could just as easily have done it on something else.

A teacher: I did not agree that the children in my third-grade class should paint in handwork class.

Dr. Steiner: If the children paint in your third grade, they will begin painting in handwork only in the eighth grade.

A teacher: What I meant is, I think the children are too young to do anything artistic.

Dr. Steiner: In your class, there is still not any artistic handwork. There is some discussion about this conflict.

Dr. Steiner: The individual teachers need to communicate with one another. The fact that there is no communication can at best be a question of lack of time, but, in principle, you always need to discuss things with one another.

The shop teacher: I think the children in the ninth and tenth grades should have more opportunity to work in the shop. I have them only every other week.

Dr. Steiner: Only every other week? How did that happen? The shop teacher: I can have only twenty-five at a time.

Dr. Steiner: It is impossible to have more time for that. Rather than dividing the classes, which is pedagogical nonsense, it would be better if you compressed everything into one week, namely, that you had the children every day for a week. That is something really important for life, and the children suffer from having to do without their work for a longer period. This tearing apart is significant. Perhaps we should consider this more according to our principle of concentration of work.

Why do we have to have this class in the afternoons? Is it a question of the class schedule? There must surely be some solution.

A teacher: We only need to know what would have to be dropped.

Dr. Steiner: Well, we certainly cannot affect the main lesson.

A teacher: Then, that would mean that for a week we would have only shop.

Dr. Steiner: We could do it so that only one-third has shop class.

The only class that is suffering less from a lack of concentrated instruction is foreign language. It suffers the least. The main lesson and art class suffer not only from a psychological perspective, there is something in human nature that is actually destroyed by piecemeal teaching.

The children do not need to do handwork, knitting or crochet, for a week at a time. That is something they can do later. We don’t need to be pedantic. I could imagine finding it very intriguing to knit on a sock every Wednesday at noon for a quarter of an hour, so that it would be done in a half year. To work every Wednesday on a sculpture is something else again. But, you can learn to knit socks in that way.

You need to simply find a solution for these things. A handwork teacher: I find it very pleasant to have the children once a week.

Dr. Steiner: If it does not involve crafts, then the pauses are unimportant. However, when it does involve crafts, then we should try to maintain a certain level of concentration. When we have the children learn bookbinding, that certainly requires a concentrated level of work. This is something that is coming. In the tenth grade we already have practical instruction. In such a class, we wouldn’t do any other crafts.

A teacher: …

Dr. Steiner: You should learn stenography in your sleep, that is without any particular concentration. Teaching stenography at all is basically barbaric. It is the epitome of Ahrimanism, and for that reason, the ideal would be to learn stenography as though in sleep. The fact that is not possible makes it significant when it is being done so poorly, as though there was no concentration given to it while learning it. It is simply all nonsense. It is cultural nonsense that people do stenography.

A teacher: Shop was connected with gardening class. Now Miss Michels is here, so how should we divide that?

Dr. Steiner: Miss Michels will take over from Mr. Wolffhügel. The best would be for them to discuss how to work together. They can discuss it.

A teacher reports that the faculty began an extra period for tone eurythmy.

Dr. Steiner: That is possible with tone eurythmy. It is not something that burdens the children. It could, however, open the door to other things. If we have a tutoring period for every regular period, that will be too much. We would have to teach all night long.

A teacher asks about eurythmy for the children in the remedial class.

Dr. Steiner: I hope I will have time to have a look at them. For the children in the remedial class, it would be best to do eurythmy during that period.

A teacher asks about the development of the curriculum.

Dr. Steiner: In the pedagogical lectures, there was a large amount of theoretical material. Now we also have some practical experience.

A teacher: Attempts have been made to create a boarding school.

Dr. Steiner: Under certain circumstances, boarding schools are good, but that is seldom the case these days. They are not a purpose of our Waldorf School. It is not the purpose of our Waldorf School to create special situations. We are not here to create a special social class, but, rather, to bring out the best we can from the existing social classes through our teaching.

If the home is good, we can recommend it for the children.

A teacher: Mrs. Y. had asked if other parents want to participate.

Dr. Steiner: That is possible only if the parents ask the school, and if the school determines that Mrs. Y.’s home is adequate. Then the faculty would recommend it. Right now, we do not know. What we should really work for is the founding of as many Waldorf Schools as possible, so that parents would not have to board the children for them to go to a Waldorf school. Right now, there is only the one Waldorf school, and that is why we could support a boarding home. Actually, it must become possible for children everywhere to go to a Waldorf School, otherwise Stuttgart will remain only as model.

There is a tremendous amount of hubbub. If I look at the letters I have received in just the last three days, people want to create boarding homes everywhere. This sort of thing happens all the time. People want something, but we really need to look at it critically. People are always poking their nose into things as soon as something like the Waldorf School is created. All kinds of uncalled for people appear.

A comment is made about a continuation course that has started.

Dr. Steiner: In principle, there is nothing to say against it. You only need to be careful that some guys don’t come into it who would ruin the whole class.

A question is asked about the biennial report and whether Dr. Steiner would write something for it.

Dr. Steiner: I will write something; now there are a number of things to say.

A question is asked about the reading primer.

Dr. Steiner: I don’t have the primer. I haven’t had it for a long time. I have nothing against it if it is done tastefully. If I am to do the lettering, then I will have to have it again.

One of the subject teachers complains about the disturbances caused by the confirmation class.

Dr. Steiner: Are there really so many? That is an invasion into healthy teaching.

A teacher: The faculty would like a special Sunday Service for teachers only.

Dr. Steiner: We already discussed something like that. I would have to know if there is an extensive need for it.

A teacher: The desire was stated.

Dr. Steiner: Of course, something quite beautiful could come from that. I could easily imagine a unified striving coming from it. It will not be so easy to find the form. Who should do it? Suppose you choose by voting and then rotate. Those are very difficult things. You must have a deeply unified will. Who would do it?

A teacher: It never occurred to me that this could cause an argument. We certainly may not have any ambitions.

Dr. Steiner: If everyone had a different opinion about who could do it well, then it would be difficult. You would all need to be united in your opinion about who could do it. But then, problems arise. That is like the story about Stockerau: Someone asks a man in Vienna if it is far to America, to which he replies, “You’ll soon be in Stockerau and afterward, you’ll find the way.”

A teacher: Should only one person do it?

Dr. Steiner: Then every week you’ll wonder who could do it well.

A teacher proposes Mr. N.

Dr. Steiner: Now we will have to hold a secret ballot.

A teacher: What seems important to me is that we have it.

Dr. Steiner: Of course. This is a difficult thing, like choosing the Pope.

A teacher: Everyone would be fine with me.

Dr. Steiner: Now we would have to think about the form. I would never dare say who should do it.

A teacher: Perhaps one of the three men now doing the children’s service.

Dr. Steiner: Only if it were perfectly clear that that is acceptable. A service is either simply a question of form, in which case you could do it together, or it is a ritual act, and you have to look more seriously at it. In that case, you can have no secret enemies. Another teacher speaks about the question.

Dr. Steiner: Now I am lost. I don’t understand anything anymore. A sacrament is esoteric. It is one of the most esoteric things you can imagine. What you said is connected with the fact that you cannot decide upon a ritual democratically. Of course, once a ritual exists, it can be taken care of by a group. But, the group would have to be united.

A teacher: I thought we shouldn’t demand things of individuals.

Dr. Steiner: That is what I mean. It should be like the ritual we provided for the children. That was not at all the task of the Waldorf School.

The question is whether something that, in a certain sense, requires such careful creation might be too difficult to create out of the faculty and too difficult to care for within the faculty as a whole. Let us assume you all are in agreement. Then, we could only accept new colleagues into the faculty who also agree. We could esoterically unite with only those people who are united in a specific esoteric form. A service is possible in esoteric circles only when it is to be something. Otherwise, we would need to have just a sacrificial mass. You would need that for those who want something non-esoteric, and it would exist in contrast to the esoteric. You cannot have a mass without a priest. In esoteric things, people should be united in the content.

A question is asked about esoteric studies.

Dr. Steiner: That is very difficult to do. Until now, I have always had to avoid them. As you know, I gave a number of such studies years ago, but I had to stop because people misused them. Esotericism was simply taken out into the world and distorted. In that regard, nothing in our esoteric movement has ever been as damaging as that. All other esoteric study, even in less than honorable situations, was held intimately. That was the practice over a long period of time. Cliques have become part of the Anthroposophical Society and they have set themselves above everything else, unfortunately, also above what is esoteric. Members do not put the anthroposophical movement as such to the fore, but, instead, continually subject it to the interests of cliques. The anthroposophical movement is dividing into a number of factions. To that extent, it is worse than much that exists in the exoteric world. I say that without in any way wanting to express a lack of understanding for the history of it. Think about what you have experienced in the external bourgeois world led by functionaries. When some important government official moves from one city to another, he must, with great equanimity, introduce himself to all the various people with their differing opinions. However, in the Anthroposophical Society, if someone comes to a city that has a number of branches, it might occur to him that, since there are many branches, that is good, and he can go to all of them. But after visiting one, the others turn him away. A naïve person would think he could go to all of them. There are cities in which numerous anthroposophical branches exist, and that is how they treat one another.

Esotericism is a painful chapter in the book of the anthroposophical movement. It isn’t just that people always refer to what has occurred in the past. It is, in fact, the case that when Kully writes his articles in the local newspaper, you can clearly see that he is well informed about the most recent events within the Society, right down to the most unimportant details.

We would first need to find some form.

A teacher: Is it possible to find that form?

Dr. Steiner: We must truly find the form first. You can see that since now there is this wonderful movement that has led to the theological course. It was held very esoterically and contained within it the foundation of the sacraments in the highest sense of the word. There you can see that people were united.

In any event, I would like to think about this, and what can be understood about your needs.

The children’s Sunday service, isn’t it an esoteric activity for the individual human beings who attend it, regardless of whether they are children or not?

Finally, you need to remember that lay people have a priest—Protestantism has no esotericism within it any more—the priest has a deacon, he has a bishop and that goes right on up to the Pope. But even the Pope has a confessor. You can see there how human relationships change. That ironclad recognition of the principle is what is necessary. The confessor is not higher than the Pope, but nevertheless he can, under certain circumstances, give the Pope penance. Of course, the Roman Catholic church also comes into the most terrible situations.

I want to think about this some more.

The Chair was taken by Miss Margaret McMillan, who gave a stirring address, and Dr. Steiner followed on.

My first words must be a reply to the kind greeting given by Miss Beverley to Frau Doctor Steiner and myself, and I can assure you that we deeply appreciate the invitation to give this course of lectures. I shall try to show what Anthroposophy has to say on the subject of education and to describe the attempt already made in the Waldorf School at Stuttgart to apply the educational principles arising out of Anthroposophy. It is a pleasure to come to the North of England to speak on a subject which I consider so important, and it gives me all the greater joy to think that I am speaking not only to those who have actually arranged this course but to many who are listening for the first time to lectures on education in the light of Anthroposophy. I hope, therefore, that more lies behind this Conference than the resolve of those who organized it, for I think it may be taken as evidence that our previous activities are bearing fruit in current world-strivings.

English friends of Anthroposophy were with us at a Conference held at Christmas, last year, when the Goetheanum (at Dornach, Switzerland)—since taken from us by fire—was still standing. The Conference was brought about by Mrs. Mackenzie, the author of a fine book on the educational principles laid down by Hegel, and the sympathetic appreciation expressed there justifies the hope that it is not, after all, so very difficult to find understanding that transcends the limits of nationality. What I myself said about education at the Conference did not, of course, emanate from the more intellectualistic philosophy of Hegel, but from Anthroposophy, the nature of which is wholly spiritual. And indeed Mrs. Mackenzie, too, has seen how, while fully reckoning with Hegel, something yet more fruitful for education can be drawn where intellectuality is led over into the spiritual forces of Anthroposophy.

Then I was able to speak of our educational principles and their practical application a second time last year, in the ancient university of Oxford. And perhaps I am justified in thinking that those lectures, which dealt with the relation of education to social life, may have induced a number of English educationists to visit our Waldorf School at Stuttgart. It was a great joy to welcome them there, and we were delighted to hear that they were impressed with our work and were following it with interest. During the visit the idea of holding this Summer Course on education seems to have arisen. Its roots, therefore, may be said to lie in previous activities and this very fact gives one the right confidence and courage as we embark on the lectures. Courage and confidence are necessary when one has to speak of matters so unfamiliar to the spiritual life of to-day and in face of such strong opposition. More especially are they necessary when one attempts to explain principles that seek to approach, in a creative sense, the greatest artistic achievement of the Cosmos—man himself.

Those who visited us this year at Stuttgart will have realized how essentially Waldorf School education gets to grips with the deepest fibres of modern life. The educational methods applied there can really no longer be described by the word ‘Pedagogy’ a treasured word which the Greeks learnt from Plato and the Platonists who had devoted themselves so sincerely to all educational questions. Pedagogy is, indeed, no longer an apt term to-day, for it is an a priori expression of the one-sidedness of its ideals, and those who visited the Waldorf School will have realized this from the first. It is not, of course, unusual to-day to find boys and girls educated together, in the same classes and taught in the same way, and I merely mention this to show you that in this respect, too, the methods of the Waldorf School are in line with recent developments.

What does the word ‘Pedagogy’ suggest? The ‘Pedagogue’ is a teacher of boys. This shows us at once that in ancient Greece education was very one-sided. One half of humanity was excluded from serious education. To the Greek, the boy alone was man and the girl must stay in the background when it was a question of serious education. The pedagogue was a teacher of boys, concerned only with that sex.

In our time, the presence of girl-pupils in the schools is no longer unusual, although indeed it involved a radical change from customs by no means very ancient. Another feature at the Waldorf School is that in the teaching staff no distinction of sex is made—none, at least, until we come to the very highest classes. Having as our aim a system of education in accord with the needs of the present day, we had first of all to modify much that was included in the old term ‘Pedagogy.’ So far I have only mentioned one of its limitations, but speaking in the broadest sense it must be admitted that for some time now there has been no real knowledge of man in regard to education and teaching. Indeed, many one-sided views have been held in the educational world, not only that of the separation of the sexes.

Can it truly be said that a man could develop in the fullest sense of the term when educated according to the old principles? Certainly not! To-day we must first seek understanding of the human being in his pure, undifferentiated essence. The Waldorf School was founded with this aim in view. The first idea was the education of children whose parents were working in the Waldorf-Astoria Factory, and as the Director was a member of the Anthroposophical Society, he asked me to supervise the undertaking. I myself could only give the principles of education on the basis of Anthroposophy. And so, in the first place, the Waldorf School arose as a general school for the workers' children. It was only ‘anthroposophical’ in the sense that the man who started it happened to be an Anthroposophist. Here then, we have an educational institution arising on a social basis, seeking to found the whole spirit and method of its teaching upon Anthroposophy. It was not a question of founding an ‘anthroposophical’ school. On the contrary, we hold that because Anthroposophy can at all times efface itself, it is able to institute a school on universal-human principles instead of upon the basis of social rank, philosophical conceptions of any other specialised line of thought.

This may well have occurred to those who visited the Waldorf School and it may also have led to the invitation to give these present lectures. And in this introductory lecture, when I am not yet speaking of education, let me cordially thank all those who have arranged this Summer Course. I would also thank them for having arranged performances of Eurhythmy which has already become an integral part of Anthroposophy. At the very beginning let me express this hope: A Summer Course has brought us together. We have assembled in a beautiful spot in the North of England, far away from the busy life of the winter months. You have given up your time of summer recreation to listen to subjects that will play an important part in the life of the future and the time must come when the spirit uniting us now for a fortnight during the summer holidays will inspire all our winter work. I cannot adequately express my gratitude for the fact that you have dedicated your holidays to the study of ideas for the good of the future. Just as sincerely as I thank you for this now, so do I trust that the spirit of our Summer Course may be carried on into the winter months—for only so can this Course bear real fruit.

I should like to proceed from what Miss McMillan said so impressively yesterday in words that bore witness to the great need of our time for moral impulses to be sought after if the progress of civilization is to be advanced through Education.

When we admit the great need that exists to-day for moral and spiritual impulses in educational methods and allow the significance of such impulses to work deeply in our hearts, we are led to the most fundamental problems in modern spiritual life—problems connected with the forms assumed by our culture and civilization in the course of human history. We are living in an age when certain spheres of culture, though standing in a measure side by side, are yet separated from one another. In the first place we have all that man can learn of the world through knowledge—communicated, for the most part, by the intellect alone. Then there is the sphere of art, where man tries to give expression to profound inner experiences, imitating with his human powers, a divine creative activity. Again we have the religious strivings of man, wherein he seeks to unite his own existence with the life of the universe. Lastly, we try to bring forth from our inner being impulses which place us as moral beings in the civilized life of the world. In effect we confront these four branches of culture: knowledge, art, religion, morality. But the course of human evolution has brought it about that these four branches are developing separately and we no longer realize their common origin. It is of no value to criticize these conditions; rather should we learn to understand the necessities of human progress.

To-day, therefore, we will remind ourselves of the beginnings of civilization. There was an ancient period in human evolution when science, art, religion and the moral life were one. It was an age when the intellect had not yet developed its present abstract nature and when man could solve the riddles of existence by a kind of picture-consciousness. Mighty pictures stood there before his soul—pictures which in the traditional forms of myth and saga have since come down to us. Originally they proceeded from actual experience and a knowledge of the spiritual content of the universe. There was indeed an age when in this direct, inner life of imaginative vision man could perceive the spiritual foundations of the world of sense. And what his instinctive imagination thus gleaned from the universe, he made substantial, using earthly matter and evolving architecture, sculpture, painting, music and other arts. He embodied with rapture the fruits of his knowledge in outer material forms. With his human faculties man copied divine creation, giving visible form to all that had first flowed into him as science and knowledge. In short, his art mirrored before the senses all that his forces of knowledge had first assimilated. In weakened form we find this faculty once again in Goethe, when out of inner conviction he spoke these significant words: “Beauty is a manifestation of the secret laws of Nature, without which they would remain for ever hidden.” And again: “He before whom Nature begins to unveil her mysteries is conscious of an irresistible yearning for art—Nature's worthiest expression.”

Such a conception shows that man is fundamentally predisposed to view both science and art as two aspects of one and the same truth. This he could do in primeval ages, when knowledge brought him inner satisfaction as it arose in the forms of ideas before his soul and when the beauty that enchanted him could be made visible to his senses in the arts—for experiences such as these were the essence of earlier civilizations.

What is our position to-day? As a result of all that intellectual abstractions have brought in their train we build up scientific systems of knowledge from which, as far as possible, art is eliminated. It is really almost a crime to introduce the faintest suggestion of art into science, and anyone who is found guilty of this in a scientific book is at once condemned as a dilettante. Our knowledge claims to be strictly dispassionate and objective; art is said to have nothing in common with objectivity and is purely arbitrary. A deep abyss thus opens between knowledge and art, and man no longer finds any means of crossing it. When he applies the science that is valued because of its freedom from art, he is led indeed to a marvellous knowledge of Nature—but of Nature devoid of life. The wonderful achievements of science are fully acknowledged by us, yet science is dumb before the mystery of man. Look where you will in science to-day, you will find wonderful answers to the problems of outer Nature, but no answers to the riddle of man. The laws of science cannot grasp him. Why is this? Heretical as it sounds to modern ears, this is the reason. The moment we draw near to the human being with the laws of Nature, we must pass over into the realm of art. A heresy indeed, for people will certainly say: “That is no longer science. If you try to understand the human being by the artistic sense, you are not following the laws of observation and strict logic to which you must always adhere.” However emphatically it may be held that this approach to man is unscientific because it makes use of the artistic sense—man is none the less an artistic creation of Nature. All kinds of arguments may be advanced to the effect that this way of artistic understanding is thoroughly unscientific, but the fact remains that man cannot be grasped by purely scientific modes of cognition. And so—in spite of all our science—we come to a halt before the human being. Only if we are sufficiently unbiased can we realize that scientific intellectuality must here be allowed to pass over into the domain of art. Science itself must become art if we would approach the secrets of man's being.

Now if we follow this path with all our inner forces of soul, not only observing in an outwardly artistic sense, but taking the true path, we can allow scientific intellectuality to flow over into what I have described as ‘Imaginative Knowledge’ in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment. This ‘Imaginative Knowledge’—to-day an object of such suspicion and opposition—is indeed possible when the kind of thinking that otherwise gives itself up passively, and increasingly so, to the outer world is roused to a living and positive activity. The difficulty of speaking of these things to-day is not that one is either criticizing or upholding scientific habits of thought which are peculiar to our age; rather does the difficulty consist in the fact that fundamentally one must touch upon matters which concern the very roots of our present civilization. There is an increasing tendency to-day to give oneself up to the mere, observation of outer events, to allow thoughts passively to follow their succession, avoiding all conscious inner activity.

This state of things began with the demand for material proofs of spiritual matters. Take the case of a lecture on spiritual subjects. Visible evidence is out of the question, because words are the only available media—one cannot summon the invisible by some magical process. All that can be done is to stimulate and assume that the audience will inwardly energize their thinking into following the indications given by the words. Yet nowadays it will frequently happen that many of the listeners—I do not, of course, refer to those who are sitting in this hall—begin to yawn, because they imagine that thinking ought to be passive, and then they fall asleep because they are not following the subject actively. People like everything to be demonstrated to the eye, illustrated by means of lantern-slides or the like, for then it is not necessary to think at all. Indeed, they cannot think. That was the beginning, and it has gone still further. In a performance of “Hamlet,” for instance, one must follow the plot, and also the spoken word, in order to understand it. But to-day the drama is deserted for the cinema, where one need not exert oneself in any way; the pictures roll off the machine and can be watched quite inertly. And so man's inner activity of thought has gradually waned. But it is precisely this which must be retained. Yet when once the nature of this inner activity is understood, it will be realized that thinking is not merely a matter of stimulus from outside, but a force living in the very being of man.

The kind of thinking current in our modern civilization is only one aspect of this force of thought. If we inwardly observe it, from the outer side as it were, it is revealed as the force that builds up the human being from childhood. Before this can be understood, an inner, plastic force that transforms abstract thought into pictures must come into play. Then, after the necessary efforts have been made, we reach the stage I have Called in my book, the beginning of meditation. At this point we not only begin to lead mere cleverness over into art, but thought is raised into Imagination. We stand in a world of Imagination, knowing that it is not a creation of our own fancy, but an actual, objective world. We are fully conscious that although we do not as yet possess this objective world itself in Imagination, we have indeed a true picture of it. And now the point is to realize that we must get beyond the picture.

Strenuous efforts are necessary if we would master this inner creative thinking that does not merely contain pictures of fantasy, but pictures bearing their own reality within them. Then, however, we must next be able to eliminate the whole of this creative activity and thus accomplish an inwardly moral act. For this indeed constitutes an act of inner morality: when all the efforts described in my book to reach this active thinking in pictures have been made, when all the forces of soul have been applied and the powers of Self strained to their very utmost, we then must be able to eliminate all we have thus attained. In his own being man must have developed the highest fruits of this thinking that has been raised to the level of meditation and then be capable of selflessness. He must be able to eliminate all that has been thus acquired. For to have nothing is not the same as to have gained nothing. If he has made every effort to strengthen the Self by his own will so that finally his consciousness can be emptied-a spiritual world surges into his consciousness and being and he realizes that spiritual forces of cognition are needed for knowledge of the spiritual world. Active picture-thinking may be called Imagination. When the spiritual world pours into the consciousness that has in turn been emptied by dint of tremendous effort, man is approaching the mode of mode of knowledge known as true Inspiration. Having experienced Imagination, we may through an inner denial of self come to comprehend the spiritual world lying behind the two veils of outer Nature and of man.

I will now endeavour to show you how from this point we are led over to the spiritual life of religion.

Let me draw your attention to the following.—Inasmuch as Anthroposophy strives for true Imagination, it leads not only to knowledge or to art that in itself is of the nature of a picture, but to the spiritual reality contained in the picture. Anthroposophy bridges the gulf between knowledge and art in such a way that at a higher level, suited to modern life and the present age, the unity of science and art which humanity has abandoned can enter civilization once again. This unity must be re-attained, for the schism between science and art has disrupted the very being of man. To pass from the state of disruption to unity and inner harmony—it is for this above all that modern man must strive.

Thus far I have spoken of the harmony between science and art. I will now develop the subject further, in connection with religion and morality.

Knowledge that thus draws the creative activity of the universe into itself can flow directly into art, and this same path from knowledge to art can be extended and continued. It was so continued through the powers of the old imaginative knowledge of which I have spoken, which also found the way, without any intervening cleft, into the life of religion. He who applied himself to this kind of knowledge—primitive and instinctive though it was in early humanity—was aware that he acquired it by no external perceptions, for in his thinking and knowing he sensed divine life within him, he felt that spiritual powers were at work in his own creative activity enabling him to raise to greater holiness all that had been impressed into the particular medium of his art. The power born in his soul as he embodied the Divine-Spiritual in outer material substance could then extend into acts wherein he was fully conscious that he, as man, was expressing the will of divine ordnance. He felt himself pervaded by divine creative power, and as the path was found through the fashioning of material substance, art became—by way of ritual—a form of divine worship. Artistic creation was sanctified in the divine office. Art became ritual—the glorification of the Divine—and through the medium of material substance offered sacrifice to the Divine Being in ceremonial and ritual. And as man thus bridged the gulf between Art and Religion there arose a religion in full harmony with knowledge and with art. Albeit primitive and instinctive, this knowledge was none the less a true picture, and as such it could lead human deeds to become, in the acts of ritual, a direct portrayal of the Divine.

In this way the transition from art to religion was made possible. Is it still possible with our present-day mode of knowledge? The ancient clairvoyant perception had revealed to man the spiritual in every creature and process of Nature, and by surrender and devotion to the spirit within the nature-processes, the spiritual laws of the Cosmos passed over and were embodied in ritual and cult.

How do we “know” the world to-day? Once more, to describe is better than criticism, for as the following lectures will show, the development of our present mode of knowledge was a necessity in the history of mankind. To-day I am merely placing certain suggestive thoughts before you. We have gradually lost our spiritual insight into the being and processes of Nature. We take pride in eliminating the spirit in our observation of Nature and finally reach such hypothetical conceptions as attribute the origin of our planet to the movements of a primeval nebula. Mechanical stirrings in this nebula are said to be the origin of all the kingdoms of Nature, even so far as man. And according to these same laws—which govern our whole “objective” mode of thinking, this earth must finally end through a so-called extinction of warmth. All ideas achieved by man, having proceeded from a kind of Fata Morgana, will disappear, until at the end there will remain only the tomb of earthly existence.

If the truth of this line of thought be recognized by science and men are honest and brave enough to face its inevitable consequences, they cannot but admit that all religious and moral life is also a Fata Morgana and must so remain! Yet the human being cannot endure this thought, and so must hold fast to the remnants of olden times, when religion and morality still lived in harmony with knowledge and with art. Religion and morality to-day are not direct creations of man's innermost being. They rest on tradition, and are a heritage from ages when the instinctive life of man was filled with revelation, when God—and the moral world in Him—were alike manifest. Our strivings for knowledge to-day can reveal neither God nor a moral world. Science comes to the end of the animal species and man is cast out. Honest inner thinking can find no bridge over the gulf fixed between knowledge and the religious life.

All true religions have sprung from Inspiration. True, the early form of Inspiration was not so conscious as that to which we must now attain, yet it was there instinctively, and rightly do the religions trace their origin back to it. Such faiths as will no longer recognize living inspiration and revelation from the spirit in the immediate present have to be content with tradition. But such faiths lack all inner vitality, all direct motive-power of religious life. This motive-power and vitality must be re-won, for only so can our social organism be healed.

I have shown how man must regain a knowledge that passes by way of art to Imagination, and thence to Inspiration. If he re-acquires all that flows down from the inspirations of a spiritual world into human consciousness, true religion will once again appear. And then intellectual discussion about the nature of Christ will cease, for through Inspiration it will be known in truth that the Christ was the human bearer of a Divine Being Who had descended from spiritual worlds into earthly existence. Without super-sensible knowledge there can be no understanding of the Christ. If Christianity is again to be deeply rooted in humanity, the path to super-sensible knowledge must be rediscovered. Inspiration must again impart a truly religious life to mankind in order that knowledge—derived no longer merely from the observation of natural laws—may find no abyss dividing it alike from art and religion. Knowledge, art, religion—these three will be in harmony.

Primeval man was convinced of the presence of God in human deeds when he made his˃ art a divine office and when a consciousness of the fire glowing in his heart as Divine Will pervaded the acts of ritual. And when the path from outer objective knowledge to Inspiration is found once again, true religion will flow from Inspiration and modern man will be permeated—as was primeval man—with a God-given morality. In those ancient days man felt: “If I have my divine office, if I share in divine worship, my whole inner being is enriched; God lives not only in the temple but in the whole of my life.”

To make the presence of God imminent in the world—this is true morality. Nature cannot lead man to morality. Only that which lifts him above Nature, filling him with the Divine-Spiritual—this alone can lead man to morality. Through the Intuition which comes to him when he finds his way to the spirit, he can fill his innermost being with a morality that is at once human and divine. The attainment of Inspiration thus rebuilds the bridge once existing instinctively in human civilization between religion and morality. As knowledge leads upwards through art to the heights of super-sensible life, so, through religious worship, spiritual heights are brought down to earthly existence, and we can permeate it with pure, deep-rooted morality—a morality that is an act of conscious experience. Thus will man himself become the individual expression of a moral activity that is an inner motive power. Morality will be a creation of the individual himself, and the last abyss between religion and morality will be bridged. The intuition pervading primitive man as he enacted his ritual will be re-created in a new form, and a morality truly corresponding with modern conditions will arise from the religious life of our day. We need this for the renewal of our civilization. We need it in order that what to-day is mere heritage, mere tradition may spring again into life. This pure, primordial impulse is necessary for our complicated social life that is threatening to spread chaos through the world. We need a harmony between knowledge, art, religion, and morality. The earth-born knowledge which has given us our science of to-day must take on a new form and lead us through Inspiration and the arts to a realization of the super-sensible in the life of religion. Then we shall indeed be able to bring down the super-sensible to the earth again, to experience it in religious life and to transform it into will in social existence. Only when we see the social question as one of morality and religion can we really grapple with it, and this we cannot do until the moral and religious life arises from spiritual knowledge. The revival of spiritual knowledge will enable man to accomplish what he needs—a link between later phases of evolution and its pure, instinctive origin. Then he will know what is needed for the healing of humanity—harmony between science, art, religion, and morality.

[Before the lecture Rudolf Steiner gives Instructions for the Christmas Conference and Reiterates his Proposal Regarding the Future Leadership of the Society. See GA 259]

We will utilise the last lecture before the Course which is to be given here, by bringing together what has been said about the various Mysteries belonging to this or that region of the Earth, and attempting to describe to you, at any rate from one point of view, the very nature and being of the Mysteries, in the form they took in the Middle Ages, approximately from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries.

I do not speak of this epoch because it is particularly complete in itself but because it can be used to show the form human striving was taking during that period in the most civilised parts of the Earth. The spiritual striving of that period is often described under the name of the Mysteries of the Rosicrucians. This designation is in a certain sense quite justifiable, but it must not be confused with the charlatan element we often meet in literature without realising how much charlatanry there is in the things of which we read. The name ‘Rosicrucian’ must direct our attention to that deeply earnest striving for knowledge which existed during these centuries in almost every region of Europe, Central, Western and Southern. We must realise that the figure of Faust as described by Goethe, with all his deep striving of soul, with all his earnest effort, is a later figure, no longer anything like as profound in soul as many a researcher to be found in the mediaeval laboratories. These are individuals of whom nothing reaches us by way of history but who nevertheless laboured earnestly during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. I spoke in the last lecture of the tragic note that predominates in the investigators of this epoch. The outstanding trait in them is the feeling that they must needs strive after the highest knowledge that can be creatively active in man; and yet they felt, not only that they could never reach this highest goal but that from a certain point of view the very striving after it gives ground for serious doubt.

I have said that we do not find among these scientists in their alchemical laboratories a knowledge that is ready-made and theoretical but a knowledge that is intimately connected with the whole human being, with the innermost feelings and deepest longings of the heart; it was indeed a knowledge of the heart.

What was its origin? You will most readily understand it if I try now to give you a picture of this tragic scepticism of the mediaeval investigators. Let me first direct your attention once again to the form taken by human cognition on the Earth in very ancient times.

The most ancient form of human knowledge, intimately bound up as it was with the life of the individual human being, was not of such a nature as to lead man to look up to the planets and perceive the grandeur and sublimity of their mathematical movements, such as men reckon out and devise today. At that time, each planet, as all else spread out in the Heavens, was a living being, and not only a living, but an ensouled being, nay even a being of spirit. Men spoke constantly of the families of the planets, of the families of the heavenly bodies, for they knew that just as there exists a blood-relationship between the members of a human family, similarly there exists an inner relationship between the members of a planetary system. There was an absolute parallel between what is to be found in man and what reveals itself outside in the Cosmos.

Let us take on region of the Earth as an example, and show from that the kind of knowledge man learned to acquire in the most ancient of the Mysteries when he looked up to the Sun. At that time there still existed Mystery-sanctuaries arranged with a specially prepared skylight, so that at certain definite times of day the Sun could be seen in a diminished light. Thus you must imagine the most important chamber in many an ancient Sun Temple with a skylight in the roof and the window filled with some kind of material—not glass in our modern sense but a material through which the orb of the Sun was seen in a dim light as of twilight at a certain time of day. The pupil was prepared in his soul to observe the solar orb with the right mood and feeling. He had to make his feeling receptive and sensitive, he had to quicken the inner perception of his soul, so that when he exposed it, through his eye, to the orb of the Sun, the latter made an impression on him of which he could form a clear idea in consciousness.

Now, of course, many people today look at the Sun through smoked glass, but they are not prepared in their power of feeling to receive the impression in such a way that it remains in their soul as a very special impression. The pupil in those ancient Mysteries, however, received a very definite impression of the dimmed solar orb after he had undergone long exercises beforehand. A man who was able once to have such an impression could truly never forget it.

With this impression the pupil also gained more understanding for certain things around him than he formerly had. Thus after he had been prepared by the majestic impression made upon him by the Sun, the special quality of the substance gold was allowed to work upon him; and through this Sun-preparation, the pupil actually came to a deep understanding of the quality of gold.

When one looks into these things, it is painful to realise the triviality of our modern consciousness, when we find in so many historical works the reason why this or the other ancient philosopher allocated gold to the Sun or gave the same symbol to gold and to the Sun. Man has no longer any idea that what was thus known in those olden times, proceeded from long exercises and preparations. A pupil who looked with his whole soul, who as it were steeped his sight in this dimmed light of the Sun, was thereby prepared to understand the gold of the Earth.

How then did he understand it? His attention awoke to the fact that gold is not receptive for that which constitutes for living organisms the breath of life, namely oxygen. Many, indeed most of the other metals are thoroughly receptive to oxygen, but oxygen does not affect or alter gold. This non-receptivity, this obstinacy of gold in the face of that in which man, as you know, has his very life, made a deep impression on the pupil of the ancient Mysteries. He received the impression that gold cannot directly approach life. Now neither can the Sun approach life directly; and the pupil learned that it is well that neither gold nor the Sun can directly approach life. For then he was gradually led to realise the fact that because gold has no relationship with oxygen, the breath of life, when it is introduced in a certain dose into the human organism, it has a quite special effect. It has no relation to the etheric body, no direct relation to the astral body; but it has a direct relation to what lies in human thinking.

My dear friends, just consider how far thinking is removed from life—especially in our modern age! A man can sit like a block of wood and think quite abstractly. He can even think quite livingly in an abstract way. But on the other hand, he cannot by thinking bring about any change in his organism. Man’s thought has become more and more powerless. But this thinking is set in motion by the Ego-organisation, and gold inserted in the right dose into the human organism, can bring back power to thought. It restores to the life of thought the power to work down into the astral body and even into the etheric body; thus through the working of gold man is quickened in his thinking.

One of the secrets of these ancient Mysteries was the secret of gold in connection with the Sun. This relationship between the substance gold and the cosmic working of the Sun was perceived by the pupil of these ancient Mysteries. In a similar way the pupil was led to experience the working of the opposite pole of gold. Gold is an impulse for the quickening of human thinking, so that human thought can work down as far as into the etheric body. But what would be the opposite pole of that?

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Ego-organisation, astral body, etheric body and physical body are the members of the human organism, and we may say that through gold the Ego-organisation becomes capable of working down into the etheric body. The etheric body can then go further and work upon the physical body, but gold brings it about that one can actually hold the thoughts in all their power as far as the etheric body.

Now what is the opposite pole of this? It is an activity that manifests itself when the breath of life—oxygen—is attracted by something in man or in nature. For as gold is obstinate in the face of oxygen, repels it, will have nothing to do with it, and has therefore no direct influence on the etheric body or on the astral body but only on the thought-world of the Ego-organisation—as gold repels oxygen, so carbon on the other hand has in man a direct affinity with oxygen.

We breathe out carbonic acid gas. We make it by uniting carbon with oxygen. And the plants require carbonic acid for their life. Carbon possesses the exactly opposite property of gold.

Now carbon played a great part in the very ancient Mysteries. They spoke on the one hand of gold as a very specially important substance in the study of man, and on the other hand of carbon. Carbon was called the Philosopher’s Stone. Gold and the Philosopher’s Stone were very important things in olden times.

Carbon appears on Earth in a variety of forms. Diamond is carbon—a hard carbon; graphite is carbon; coal is carbon; anthracite is carbon. Carbon appears to us in most diverse forms. Through the methods which were practised in the ancient Mysteries, men learned however to understand that there exist still other forms of carbon, besides those we find here on Earth. And in this connection the pupil in the Mysteries had to undergo another preparation. For besides the Sun-preparation of which I have spoken, there was also in addition the Moon-preparation.

Along with the ancient sanctuaries of the Sun Mysteries we find too a kind of observatory, wherein a man could open his soul and his physical vision to the forms of the Moon. Whereas in the Sun-training the pupil had to behold the Sun at certain times of day in a diminished light, now for weeks at a time he had to expose his eyes to the different forms which the orb of the Moon assumes by night. Gazing thus with his whole soul, the pupil received a definite inner impression, which gave him a new knowledge. Just as the soul by exposing itself to the Sun became endowed with the power of the Sun, similarly, by exposing itself to the phases of the Moon, the soul became endowed with the power of the Moon. Man now learned what metamorphoses the substance of carbon can undergo. On the Earth, carbon is coal or graphite or diamond or anthracite; but on the Moon that which we find here on the Earth as diamond or anthracite or coal—is silver; and that was the secret possessed in these ancient Mysteries. Carbon is silver on the Moon. Carbon is the Philosopher’s Stone, and on the Moon it is silver.

The knowledge that was impressed so profoundly on the pupil in the ancient Mysteries was this: any substance whatsoever is only what it seems in this one place, at this one time. It was sheer ignorance not to know that carbon is diamond, coal or anthracite only on the Earth. What exists on the Earth as diamond or graphite, on the Moon is silver. If we could at this moment dispatch a piece of ordinary black coal to the Moon, it would there be silver.

A vision of this radical metamorphosis was what the pupil attained in those ancient times. It is the foundation, not of that fraudulent Alchemy of which one hears today, but of the true Alchemy. This ancient Alchemy cannot be acquired by any such abstract means of acquiring knowledge as we have today. We observe things and we think about them. Alchemy could not be attained in that way at all. Today man directs his telescope to a certain star, he determines parallel axes and the like, and reckons and reckons; or if he wants to study a certain substance, he applies the spectroscope and so on. But everything that can be learned in this way is infinitely abstract compared with what could once be learned of the stars; and this ancient wisdom, this true astrology, could only be learned, as I explained in the last lecture, by establishing a real and living intercourse with the Intelligences of the Cosmos. That itself was attainment of knowledge, when man was able to hold converse, in his soul and spirit, with the Intelligences of the Cosmos.

What gold signifies for the human organism is connected with the secret of the Sun; and through exposing his soul to the Sun-existence, man thereby entered into relation with the Intelligences of the Sun. They it was who could tell him of the properties of gold. In like manner he entered into relation with the Intelligences of the Moon.

And man learned to know how the Intelligences of the Moon were themselves once in olden times the great Teachers of Earth-humanity, who taught on Earth the primeval wisdom. They were the same who today let their forces and impulses work from the Moon. They withdrew from the Earth at a certain time in evolution, and there on the Moon they founded, as it were, a colony after the Moon had separated from the Earth.

Thus those Intelligences who once lived on the Earth and are today the Moon-Intelligences have to do with this second secret, the carbon-silver secret. Such was the character of knowledge in ancient times.

Let me quote another example. As the pupil could receive impressions from the Sun or from the Moon, so by means of a still further preparation of soul he could also receive impressions from the other planets; and one of the secrets thus obtained was that relating to Venus. Venus is studied today through the telescope, and is regarded as being like any other star or planet. The human body, on the other hand, is studied by investigating, say, a section of the liver and then a section of the brain, and analysing them according to their cellular structure, just as though brain substance and liver substance were not radically different. And in the very same way a student will direct his telescope to Mercury, Venus, Mars, and so on, believing all of them to be composed of substances of a like nature. But in ancient times it was known that if a man were considering the Moon or the Sun, he was able to come to an idea of them by means of that which has direct relation to the physical Earth: the earthy, the watery, the airy, the fiery. And if he extended his observation in a spiritual way to the Moon, he came to the ether. If, however, he extended his observation to Venus, then he knew that he came into a spiritual world, a purely astral world. What we see as physical Venus is but the external sign for something which lives and has its being in the astral, in the astral light. Physical light is in the case of Venus something quite different from physical Sunlight, for instance. For physical Sunlight still has a relationship with what can live on the Earth as Earth-produced fight; whereas Venus-light—it is childish to think it is simply reflected Sunlight—Venus-light shines forth from the spiritual world. If the pupil exposed his soul to this light, he learned to know the Intelligences connected with Venus.

These were Intelligences who lived in continual opposition to the Intelligences of the Sun; and a great role was played in the ancient Mysteries by this opposition between the Intelligences of Venus and the Intelligences of the Sun. Men spoke, with a certain justification, of a continual conflict between them. There were starting-points of such conflicts, when the Venus Intelligences began to combat the Intelligences of the Sun. There were times of intensified conflicts, there were culminations, catastrophes and crises. And in that which lay between an attack and a catastrophe or crisis, you had, as it were, a section of that great battle of opposition which takes place in the spiritual world, and appears in its external symbol only in the astrological and astronomical relationships between Venus and the Sun. It worked itself out in successive phases. And no one can understand the inner impulses of history on Earth if he does not know of this conflict between Venus and the Sun. For all that takes place here on Earth in the way of conflict, all that happens in the evolution of civilisations, is an earthly picture, an earthly copy, of this conflict of Venus versus Sun.

Such knowledge existed in the ancient Mysteries because there was a relation between the human beings on the Earth and the Intelligences of the Cosmos.

Then came the epoch of which I have spoken, the epoch from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries a.d. The mediaeval investigators in their alchemical laboratories were no longer able to reach up to the Cosmic Intelligences. They could get only as far as the Nature Spirits. They made countless experiments—of which I gave you an instance in the last lecture, when I spoke of the transformation of oxalic acid into formic acid—countless experiments of such a kind as would reveal to them the divine working and weaving in the processes and things of Nature; but they could only do so inasmuch as they had prepared themselves in the right way through that spirit of piety of which I told you; then, through their experiments, the Nature Spirits spoke to them. Now let us realise quite clearly the position of such an investigator at that time.

He stood in his laboratory, and he could say: ‘I bring to my laboratory the substances, the retorts, the heating ovens, and I make various experiments. I put certain questions to Nature. And when I do this the Nature spirits enter my laboratory with their revelations. I can perceive them.’ This went on even as late as the fifteenth century. The Nature Spirits could still approach the Rosicrucian investigators who were prepared in the right way. But the Rosicrucian investigators knew that in ancient times investigators had not merely been able to reach the Nature Spirits, but could come in touch with the higher Cosmic Intelligences who spoke to them of the gold-secret connected with the Sun, of the silver-secret and the carbon-secret connected with the Moon, and of the important secrets of history connected with Venus, and so on. It is true they had records preserved from still older traditions, records that told them how there had once been this knowledge, but the records were not specially important for them; if one has once been touched by the spiritual, then historical documents are not so terribly important as they are for our modern materialistic age. It is really astounding to see how infinitely important it is to many people when some discovery is made such as the recent case when the skeleton of a dinosaurus was found in the Gobi desert. Of course it is an important find, but such discoveries are never anything but isolated, broken fragments; whereas in a spiritual way we can really enter into the secrets of the Cosmos. Historical documents were certainly not likely to impress those mediaeval investigators. It was in another way that the mediaeval alchemist acquired a knowledge of how man had once been able to attain this cosmic knowledge but that he could now reach only the Nature Spirits, the Spirits behind the Elements. It happened in this way. In moments when certain observations of Nature were made, or certain experiments performed, when these investigators were thus approaching the sphere of the Nature Spirits, then certain Nature Spirits were there present and told how there had once been human beings who stood in connection with the Cosmic Intelligences. That was the pain that gnawed at the heart of these mediaeval investigators! The Nature Spirits spoke to them of a former age when man had been able to come into connection with the Intelligences of the Cosmos. And the investigators had to say: ‘These Nature Spirits tell us of a past age now vanished into the abyss of human knowledge and human existence.’ Thus this gift of the mediaeval alchemist, his gift of access to the Nature Spirits, was really a doubtful one. On the one hand he approached the spiritual of Nature, the spiritual of air, and of water—he approached Gnomes, Sylphs and Undines in all their living reality. On the other hand, there were some amongst these beings who told him of things that overwhelmed him with despair, telling him how humanity had once been in connection not only with the Nature Spirits but with the Intelligences of the Cosmos, with whom the Nature Spirits themselves were still connected but whom man could no longer reach. That was the feeling of these mediaeval alchemists and it often came to expression in a far more sublime, a far more grandly tragic manner than we find in Goethe’s Faust, beautiful and powerful though it is!

The utterance which Faust addresses to the Moon, to the silver shining light of the Moon in which he would fain bathe, would have been made with much greater depth by the investigators of the Middle Ages when the Nature Spirits told them about the secret of carbon and silver, a secret which again is closely and intimately bound up with man. For what was it that man experienced in ancient times in this connection? He experienced not merely how gold is connected with the Sun, but how gold works in man, how silver and carbon work in man, and similarly how other metals related to the other planets work in man. In olden times man experienced these things in the circulation of the blood in his body. He experienced them in a conscious way. He felt the blood streaming and pulsing through his head, and at the same time he felt it as a picture of the whole Earth, this streaming of the blood through the head. And in that sphere where the head is not enclosed by bone, where it opens downwards towards the heart and the breast, he felt a copy in miniature of the rising up of the atmosphere from the Earth. Thus in what man learned from the Cosmos he recognised the metamorphoses that went on in his own organism; he could follow the planets as he passed through the various organs of the body. We find here a confirmation of the penetrating words of Mephistopheles, where he says, ‘Blood is a very special fluid’. For in its metamorphosis our blood reflects the magnificent metamorphosis from carbon to silver. It all lives in man’s blood.

Thus did the mediaeval investigator regard man’s loss of the knowledge of the Cosmic Intelligences as a loss of his own humanity. And it is in reality but a faint reflection of this experience that we find in Faust when he opens the Book of the Macrocosm and wants to rise to the Cosmic Intelligences, then shuts the Book again because he cannot do it, and contents himself with the Spirit of the Earth. We have here only a faint echo of the tragic mood we find in these mediaeval investigators, whose names even have not come down to us. They had to hear from the Nature Spirits, whose sphere they entered through their alchemical investigations, how there had once been a connection between man and the Cosmic Intelligences.

Now all this is very deeply linked with what had to develop in ancient Greece when it became necessary for the Mysteries of Samothrace, the Mysteries of the Kabiri, to be diluted and weakened down into the philosophy of Aristotle, which then played such an important role in the Middle Ages. All the time, below the surface of what we know as Aristotelianism, there continued to work powerfully, although tragically, right on into the fifteenth century what I have been able to sketch for you in this fragment out of those times.

Behind the Macedonian epoch lie two kinds of Mysteries. There lie the Mysteries that saw deeply into the secrets of the cosmic substances and their connections with the Cosmic Intelligences; and there lie, too, the Mysteries with which man began to descend from the Cosmic Intelligences to the Nature Spirits. Man’s vision was closed to those Cosmic Intelligences, but it was turned for that very reason to the Nature Spirits. That was the crisis which came to fulfilment at the time of Alexander and Aristotle. In all that happened at that time we can still see how the abstractions of Aristotle are rooted in the ancient Mysteries. Anyone who knows about the carbon-silver secret, and then reads the observations of Aristotle that have come down to posterity—his most important writings have not come down to us—but anyone who reads what is written there relating to the secret of the Moon, will at once understand the connection with those olden times.

These are things which will be illuminated in the lectures ² I now intend to give on the historical development of humanity from the standpoint of Anthroposophy.

• 2. Eight lectures given in Dornach, 24th to 31st December, 1923. English translation published with the title: World History in the light of Anthroposophy. (Rudolf Steiner Press.)

I spoke to you yesterday of the special form in which the results of research in the realm of spiritual knowledge were communicated in the Middle Ages. This form was, so to speak, the last Act before a door was shut for the evolution of the spirit of man, a door that had been open for many centuries and given entrance by way of natural gift and faculty into the spiritual world. The door was shut when the time came for man, so far as his instinctive faculties were concerned, to be placed out-side the kingdom of the divine-spiritual Will that ruled over him. From that time forward he had to find in his own inmost being, in his own will, the possibility to evolve conscious freedom in the soul.

All the great moves of evolution, however, take place slowly, gradually, step by step. And the experience that had been attained by the pupil when the teacher led him up into the Ether-heights and down into the deep clefts of the Earth—even in those times it was no longer possible in the form it had taken in the ancient Mysteries—this experience was now, in later times, directly connected with an experience of Nature (though not with Nature on the Earth's surface itself) which came to man in a more unconscious form.

Think for a moment how it was with those persons who strove after knowledge about the year 1200 and on through the following century. They heard tell how, only a short time before, pupils were still able to find teachers, like the one of whom I told you yesterday; but they themselves were directed to human thinking as the means of attaining knowledge.

In the succeeding time of the Middle Ages we can see this human thinking developing and spreading, asserting itself in an impressive manner. It sets out on new paths with inner zeal, with sincere and whole-hearted devotion, and these paths are followed by large circles of knowledge-seekers. What we may truly call the knowledge of the Spiritual, that too continued its way. And after a few centuries we come to the time when Rosicrucianism proper was founded. Rosicrucianism is connected with a change that took place in the whole spiritual world in respect of man. I shall best describe the change by giving you once again a picture.

Mysteries in the old sense of the word were no longer possible in the time of which I have been speaking. There were however men who yearned for knowledge in the sense of the ancient Mysteries, and who experienced hard and heavy conflicts of soul when they heard how in the past men had been led up to the mountain and down to the clefts of the Earth, and had thus found knowledge. They developed all possible inner methods, they made all possible inner efforts in order to rouse the soul within them, that it might after all yet find the way. And he who is able to see such things can find in those times, as we said just now, not places of the Mysteries, but gatherings of knowledge-seekers who met together in an atmosphere warmed through and through with the glow of piety. What appears later as Rosicrucianism, sound and genuine Rosicrucianism, as well as the debased and charlatan kinds, comes in reality from men who gathered together in this simple way and sought so to temper their souls that genuine spiritual knowledge might yet be able to arise for them. In such a gathering, that took place in most unpretentious surroundings, the simple living-room of a kind of manor house, a few persons were once met, who, through certain exercises half thoughtful and meditative in character, half of the nature of prayer, done in common by them all, had developed a mystical mood in which all shared. It was the same mystical mood of soul that was cultivated in later times by the so-called “Brothers of the Common Life,” and later still by the followers of Comenius and by many other Brotherhoods. In this small circle, however, it showed itself with a peculiar intensity, and whilst these few men were there gathered together, making devotion, so to say, of their ordinary consciousness, of their whole intellect, in this intense mystical atmosphere of soul, it happened that a being came to them, not a being of flesh and blood like the teacher whom the pupil met and who led him to the mountains and to the clefts of the Earth, but a being who was only able to appear in an etheric body in this little company of men. This being revealed himself as the same who had guided the pupil about the year 1200. He was now in the after-death state. He had descended to these men from the spiritual world; they had drawn him thither by the mood of soul that prevailed in them—mystical, meditative, pious.

My dear friends, in order that no misunderstanding may arise, let me expressly emphasise that there is there no question of any mediumistic power. The little company who were gathered there would have looked upon any use—or any sanctioning—of mediumistic powers, as deeply sinful; they would have been led to do so by certain ideas belonging to old and honoured tradition. Just in those very communities of which I am telling you, mediumship and all that is related to it was regarded not merely as harmful but as sinful—and for the following reason. These persons knew that mediumship goes together with a peculiar constitution of the physical body; they knew that it is the physical body that gives the medium his spiritual powers. But the physical body they looked upon as “fallen,” and information that came by the help of mediumship they could not but regard under all circumstances as acquired by the help of Ahrimanic or Luciferic powers.

In those times, things like this were still clearly and exactly known. And so we have not to think of anything mediumistic in this connection. There was the mood of mysticism and meditation, and that alone. And it was the enhancing and strengthening of this mood through fellowship of soul, that, so to speak, enchanted into the circle, but of his own free-will, that disembodied human being, purely spiritual, and yet at the same time human.

The being spoke to them thus, in a deeply solemn manner:—“You are not altogether prepared for my appearance but I am among you discarnate, without physical body, forasmuch as a time has come when for a short period of Earth existence the Initiate of olden times is unable to appear in a physical body. The time will come again when he can do so, when the Michael period begins. But I am come to reveal to you that the inner being of man nevertheless remains unchanged, that the inner being of man, if it holds itself aright, can yet find the way to the divine-spiritual existence. For a period of time, however, the human intellect and understanding will be so constituted that it will have to be suppressed in order for that which is of the Spirit to be able to speak to the human soul. Therefore remain in your mystic and pious mood of soul ... You have received from me, all of you together, the picture, the imagination. I have, however, been able to give you no more than a mere indication of that which will come to fulfilment within you; you will go on further and find a continuation of what you have here experienced!”

And now, three from the number gathered there together, were chosen, to the end that they might establish a special union with the spiritual world, once more not at all through any kind of mediumistic powers but through a development of that mystic, meditative, pious mood of soul. These three, who were guarded and protected by the rest of the circle, closely and intimately cared for by the others, experienced from time to time a kind of absence of mind. They were at these times, in their external bodily nature, wonderfully lovely and beautiful, they acquired a sort of shining countenance, shining like the sun, and they wrote down, in symbols, revelations which they received from the spiritual world. These symbolic revelations were the first pictures by which the Rosicrucians were shown when it behoved them to know of the spiritual world. The revelations contained a kind of philosophy, a kind of theology and also a kind of medicine.

And the remarkable thing was that the others (it seems to me as though the others were four in number, so that the whole was a company of seven), after the experience they had with their brothers, beholding how their eyes shone like the sun and how their countenances were bright and radiant—these other four were able to give again in ordinary language what was conveyed in the symbols. The brothers whose destiny it was to bring the symbols from the spiritual world, could only write down the symbols, they could only say, when they returned again into their ordinary consciousness: “We have been among the stars, and have found the old teachers of the secret knowledge.” They could not themselves turn the symbolic pictures that they drew, into ordinary human speech. The others could and did. And this is the source of a great deal of knowledge that passed over into the literature of theology, more particularly such as was philosophical in character (not the theology of the Church but rather of the laity) and into the literature of medicine. And what was thus received from the spiritual world in symbols was afterwards communicated to small groups that were organised by the first Rosicrucians.

Again and again, in the time from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, there was still the possibility in certain very small groups for experiences of this nature. Revelations came frequently to men from the spiritual world in this or some similar way. But those who had to translate what was thus revealed in pictures were not always capable of doing it quite faithfully. Hence the want of clarity in the philosophy of this period. One has to discover for oneself what it really means, by seeking for it again in the world of the Spirit. For those however who have had knowledge of this kind of revelation received from the spiritual world, it has always been possible to link on to such revelations.

But picture to yourselves, my dear friends, what strange feelings must gradually have come over these men, who had to receive the very highest knowledge—for what was given to them was so accounted—from a direction that was growing more and more foreign, almost uncanny, to them; for they could no longer see into the world out of which the secrets came to them; ordinary consciousness could not reach so far. It can readily be understood that such things easily led to charlatanism and even to fraud. Indeed at no time of human evolution have charlatanism and the highest and purest of revelation stood so close to one another as in this period. It is difficult to distinguish the true from the false—so much so that many regard the whole of Rosicrucianism as charlatan. One can understand this, for the true Rosicrucians are extra-ordinarily hard to find among the charlatans, and the whole matter is all the more difficult and problematic for the reason that one has always to bear in mind that the spiritual revelation comes from sources which in their real quality and nature remain hidden.

The small circles gathered by the first Rosicrucians grew to a larger brotherhood, who always went about unrecognised, appearing here and there in the world, generally with the calling of a physician, healing the sick, and at the same time spreading knowledge as they went. And it was so that in regard to very much of this knowledge, the spreading of it was not without a certain embarrassment, inasmuch as the men who carried it on were not able to speak of the connection in which they stood to the spiritual world.

But now something else was developed in this pursuit of spiritual knowledge and spiritual research, something that is of very great beauty. There were the three brethren and the four. The three are only able to attain their goal when the four work together with them. The two groups are absolutely interdependent. The three receive the revelations from the spiritual world, the four are able to translate them into ordinary human language. What the three give would be nothing but quite unintelligible pictures, if the four were not able to translate them. And again, the four would have nothing to translate, if the three did not receive their revelations, in picture form, from the spiritual world. This gave rise to the development within such communities of an inner brotherhood of soul, a brotherhood in knowledge and in spiritual life, which in some circles of those times was held to be among the very highest of human attributes. Such small groups of men did indeed learn to know through their striving the true worth of brotherhood. And gradually they came more and more to feel how the evolution of humanity towards freedom is such that the bond between men and Gods would be completely severed were it not kept whole by such brotherhood, where the one looks to the other, where the one is in very truth dependent on the other.

We have here a picture of something in the soul which is wonderfully beautiful. And much that was written in those days possesses a certain charm which we only understand when we know how this atmosphere of brotherhood which permeated the spiritual life of many circles in Europe in those times, shed its radiant light into the writings.

There is however another mood that we find in those who are striving for knowledge, and this mood began gradually to pervade their whole endeavours and made people anxious. If in those times one did not approach the sources of spiritual revelation, ultimately it was so that one could no longer know whether these revelations were good or evil. And a certain anxiety began to be felt in regard to some of the influences. The anxiety spread later over large circles of people, who came to have fear, intense fear of all knowledge.

The development of the mood of which I speak may be particularly well studied in the examples of two men. One is Raimund of Sabunda, who lived in the fifteenth century, being born about 1430. Raimund of Sabunda is a remarkable man. If you study carefully what remains to us of his thought, then you will have the feeling: This is surely almost the very same revelation that was communicated in full consciousness about the year 1200 by the teacher who took his pupil to the mountain tops and to the chasms of the Earth! Only in Raimund of Sabunda of the fifteenth century, it is all given in a vague, impersonal style, philosophical in character, theological too and medical. The truth is that Raimund of Sabunda had also received his revelations by way of the genuine Rosicrucians, that is to say, by the path that had been opened by the great Initiate of the twelfth century, whose work and influence I described to you yesterday, and who continued to inspire men from out of the spiritual world, as I have been relating to you today. For the revelation that afterwards came through Rosicrucianism, as I have often described to you, came originally from this great Initiate and those who were with him in the spiritual world; the mood and feeling of the whole teaching was set by him. Anxiety, however, was at this time beginning to take hold of men. Now Raimund of Sabunda was a bold, brave spirit, he was one of those men who can value ideas, who understand how to live in ideas. And so, although we notice in him a certain vagueness due to the fact that the revelations have their source after all in the spiritual world, yet in him we find no trace of anxiety or fear in regard to knowledge.

All the more striking is another and very characteristic example of that spiritual stream: Pico della Mirandola, who also belongs to the fifteenth century.

The short-lived Pico della Mirandola is a very remarkable figure. If you study deeply the fruits of his thought and contemplation, you will see how the same initiative I have just described is everywhere active in them, due to the continuation of the wisdom of that old Initiate by way of the Rosicrucian stream. But in Pico della Mirandola you will observe a kind of shrinking back before this knowledge. Let me give you an instance. He established how everything that happens on Earth—stones and rock coming into being, plants living and growing and bearing fruit, animals living their life—how all this cannot be attributed to the forces of the Earth. If anyone were to think: There is the Earth, and the forces of the Earth produce that which is on the Earth, he would have quite a wrong notion of the matter. The true view, according to Pico della Mirandola, is that up there are the Stars and what happens in the Earth is dependent on the Stars. One must look up to the Heavens, if one wants to understand what happens on Earth. Speaking in the sense of Pico della Mirandola we should have to say: You give me your hand, my brother man, but it is not your feeling alone that is the cause why you give me your hand, it is the star standing over you that gives you the impulse to hold out your hand to me. Ultimately everything that is brought about has its source in the Heavens, in the Cosmos; what happens on Earth is but the reflection of what happens in the Heavens.

Pico della Mirandola gives expression to this as his firm conviction, and yet at the same time he says: But it is not for man to look up to these causes in the stars, he has only to take account of the immediate cause on Earth.

From this point of view Pico della Mirandola combats—and it is most characteristic that he does so—the Astrology that he finds prevalent. He knows well that the old, real, and genuine Astrology expresses itself in the destinies of men. He knows that; it is for him a truth. And yet he says: one should not pursue Astrology, one should look only for the immediate causes.

Note well what it is we have before us here. For the first time we are confronted with the idea of “boundaries” to knowledge. The idea shows itself in a significant manner, it is still, shall we say, human in character. Later, in Kant, in du Bois-Reymond, you will find expressed in them: “Man cannot cross the boundaries of knowledge.” The idea is said to rest on an inner necessity. That is not the case with Pico della Mirandola in the fifteenth century. He says: “What is on Earth has undoubtedly come about through cosmic causes. But man is called upon to forgo the attainment of a knowledge of these cosmic causes; he has to limit himself to the Earth.” Thus we have in the fifteenth century, in such a markedly characteristic person as Pico della Mirandola, voluntary renunciation of the highest knowledge.

My dear friends, we have here a spiritual event in the history of culture of the greatest imaginable importance. Men made the resolve: We will renounce knowledge! And that which comes to pass externally in such a person as Pico della Mirandola has once more, in very deed and fact, its counterpart in the Spiritual.

It was again in one of those simple gatherings of Rosicrucians that in the second half of the fifteenth century, on the occasion of a ritual arranged for this very purpose, man's Star-knowledge was in deeply solemn manner offered up in sacrifice. What took place in that ritual, which was enacted in all the solemnity proper to such a festival, may be expressed as follows.—Men stood before a kind of altar and said: “We resolve now to feel ourselves responsible not for ourselves alone nor our community, nor our nation, nor even only for the men of our time; we resolve to feel ourselves responsible for all men who have ever lived on Earth, to feel that we belong to the whole of mankind. And we feel that mankind has deserted the rank of the Fourth Hierarchy and has descended too deeply into matter” (for the Fall into Sin was understood in this sense) “and in order that man may be able to return to the rank of the Fourth Hierarchy, may be able to find for himself in freedom of will what in earlier times Gods have tried to find for him and with him, let now the higher knowledge be offered up for a season!”

And certain Beings of the spiritual world, who are not of human kind, who do not come to Earth in human incarnation, accepted the sacrifice in order to fulfil therewith certain purposes in the spiritual world. It would take us too far to speak of these here; we will do so another time. But the impulse to freedom was thereby made possible for man from out of the spiritual world.

I tell you of this ritual in order to show you how everything that takes place in the external life of the physical senses has its spiritual counterpart; we have only to look for it in the right place. For it can happen that such a celebration, enacted—I will not say in this instance, with full knowledge, but enacted by persons who stand in connection with the spiritual world—may have very deep meaning; from it can radiate impulses for a whole culture or a whole stream of civilisation. Whoever wants to know the fundamental colouring and tone of a particular epoch of time must look for that source in the Spiritual whence spring the forces that stream through this epoch of time.

In the years that followed, whatever came into being of a truly spiritual nature, was an echo of this creative working from out of the unknown spiritual worlds. And side by side with the external materialism that developed in the succeeding centuries, we can always find individual spirits who lived under the influence of that renunciation of the higher knowledge.

I should like to give you a brief description of a type of man who might be met with from the fifteenth century onwards through the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. You might find him in some country village as a herb-gatherer for an apothecary, or in some other simple calling. If one takes an interest in special forms and manifestations of the being of man as they show themselves in this or that individuality, then one may meet and recognise such a person. At first he is extraordinarily reserved, speaks but little, perhaps even turns away your attention from what you are trying to find in him by talking in a trivial manner, on purpose to make you think it is not worth while to converse with him. If, however, you know better than to look merely at the content of the words a man says, if you know how to hear the ring of the words, how to listen to the way the words come out of a man, then you will go on listening to such a one, despite all discouragement. And if out of some karmic connection he receives the impression that he really should speak to you, then he will begin to speak, carefully and guardedly. And you will make the discovery that he is a kind of wise man. But what he says is not earthly wisdom. Neither is there contained in it much of what we now call spiritual science. But they are warm words of the heart, far-reaching moral teachings; nor is there anything sentimental about his way of uttering them, he speaks them rather as proverbs.

He might say something like this. “Let us go over to yonder fir-tree. My soul can creep into the needles and cones, for my soul is everywhere. From the cones and needles of the fir-tree, my soul sees through them, looks out into the deeps and distances of the worlds beyond; and then I become one with the whole world. That is the true piety, to become one with the whole world. Where is God? God is in every fir-cone. And he who does not recognise God in every fir-cone, he who sees God somewhere else than in every fir-cone—he does not know the true God.”

I want only to describe to you how these men spoke, men that you might find in the way I have described. Such was their manner of speaking. And they might go on to say more. “Yes, and when one creeps into the fir-cones and into the needles of the fir-tree, then one finds how the God rejoices over the human beings in the world. And when one descends deep down into one's own heart, into the abysses of the innermost of man's nature, there also one finds the God; but then one learns to know how He is made sad through the sinfulness of men.”

In such wise spake these simple sages. A great number of them possessed—to speak in modern language—“editions” of the geometrical figures of the old Rosicrucians. These they would show to those who approached them in the right way. When however they spoke about these figures—which were no more than quite simple, even poor, impressions—then the conversation would unfold in a strange manner. There were many people who, although they took interest in the unpretentious wise man before them, were at the same time overcome with curiosity as to what these strange Rosicrucian pictures really meant, and asked about them. But they received from these wise men, who were often regarded as eccentric, no clear and exact answer; they received only the advice: If one attains the right deepening of soul, then one can see through these figures, as through a window, into the spiritual world. The wise men would give as it were a description of what they themselves had been able to feel and experience from the figures rather than any explanation or interpretation of them. And often it was so, that when one had heard these expressions of feeling in connection with the figures, one could not put them into thought at all; for these simple sages did not give thoughts. What they gave, however, had an after-working that was of immense significance. One left these men, not only with warmth in one's soul, but with the feeling: I have received a knowledge that lives in me, a knowledge I can by no means enclose in thoughts and concepts.

That was one of the ways in which, during this period from the fourteenth, fifteenth to the end of the eighteenth century, the nature of the Divine and the nature of the Human, what God is and what Man is, was taught and made known to man through feeling. We cannot quite say, without words, but we can say, without ideas, although not on that account without content.

In this period much intercourse went on among men by means of a silencing of thought. No one can arrive at a true conception of the character of this period who does not know how much was brought to pass in those days through this silencing of thought, when men interchanged not mere words but their very souls.

I have given you, my dear friends, a picture of one of the features of that time of transition when freedom was first beginning to flourish among men. I shall have more to say on this from many aspects. For the moment, taking my start from all that took place at the Christmas Foundation Meeting, I wanted here to add something further to what was given then.

We have seen how the old knowledge that was once acquired by means of instinctive clairvoyance gradually faded into a kind of evening twilight. It is difficult to find any trace of that old wisdom in modern times, particularly after the eighteenth century, for what I have told you is really true, namely that in recent times what has persisted—or rather, to put it more correctly, what has only recently made its appearance, is the external observation of Nature, Logic, the sequence of abstract thoughts. But neither with external observation of Nature nor with the mere sequence of abstract logical thoughts can a bridge be built for man whereby he may attain to reality. Much of the ancient wisdom has nevertheless maintained a sort of existence in traditional form and may be found even as late as the middle of the nineteenth century. And in order that we may orientate ourselves rightly to the important subjects with which we shall have to deal, I should like today to speak further about some of the ideas that were still to be found in the first half of the nineteenth century and are really survivals of the ancient wisdom.

I relate these things to you in order that you may see how in a time that does not lie so very far back, the whole manner of thinking was nevertheless entirely different from what it is today. As I said before, it is exceedingly difficult to arrive at these things, for it is single individuals—living all alone, or having around them at the most a small circle of pupils—who carried on the ancient wisdom, preserving it in secret, often without themselves understanding its wonderfully deep foundation. A similar picture has really to be made of the conditions as they were in still earlier times, for it is quite certain that the two characters who are familiar to you under the names of Faust and Paracelsus encountered in the course of their wanderings such lonely individuals—cave-dwellers of the soul we may call them—and learned a great deal from them; learned from them what they themselves afterwards developed and elaborated through an inner faculty of their own, a faculty that was in their cases, too, of a rather instinctive nature.

What I am now going to relate to you was however much later, it was in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Once more we find a small group—call it a school if you will—a lonely school of Central Europe. There, in this little circle, was to be found a deep and penetrating teaching concerning Man. A long time ago, on a spiritual path, I became aware that at a certain place in Central Europe there existed such a small company of men who had knowledge. As I have said, I learned to know of it on a spiritual path; I was not able at that time to make observations in the physical world, since I was not then in the physical world, but in a spiritual way it became known to me that a little company of this kind existed.

I should, however, not speak of what was taught within this little company, had not the essence of what was hidden in it subsequently again disclosed itself to research made independently through Spiritual Science; I should not speak of it, had I not myself, so to speak, found the things anew. For it is just in the refinding that one obtains the right orientation to the wisdom that has survived from olden times, and that is truly overpowering in its greatness. From this little company of which I speak, a tradition goes right back in history, back through the whole of the Middle Ages into the times of antiquity that I described to you in the lectures given at the Christmas Meeting, the times, that is to say, of Aristotle. The tradition does not, however, come directly from Greece; it comes from Asia, by way of what was brought over to Asia from Macedonia by Alexander.

Within this little company is known and taught in all exactness a deep and penetrating teaching concerning Man, in respect especially of two human faculties. We may see there a spiritual scientist—he may truly be so called—who is a fully developed Master, instructing his pupils. The symbols by which he teaches them consist in certain geometrical forms, let us say for example a form such as this—(Two intersecting triangles)—and at the points are generally to be found some words in Hebrew. It was impossible to find any direct connection with such symbols, one could do nothing with them directly. And the pupils of this master knew through the instructions they received that what, for example, Eliphas Levi gives later on, is in reality nothing more than a talking around the subject, for the pupils were at that time still able to learn how the true meaning of such symbols is only arrived at when these symbols are rediscovered in the nature and being of the human organisation itself.

We find in particular one symbol that played a great part for this little company of men. You get the symbol when you draw apart this “Solomon's Key,” so that the one triangle comes down and the other is raised up. The symbol thus obtained played, as I said, a significant part even as late as the nineteenth century, within this little community or school.

The Master then made the members of his little circle of pupils take up a certain attitude with their bodies. They had to assume such a position that the body itself as it were inscribed this symbol. He made them stand with their legs far apart, and their arms stretched out above. Then by lengthening the lines of the arms downwards, and the lines of the legs upwards, these four lines came to view in the human organism itself. A line was then drawn to unite the feet, and another line to unite the hands above. These two joining lines were felt as lines of force; the pupil became conscious that they do really exist. It became clear to him that currents pass, like electro-magnetic currents, from the left fingertips to the right fingertips, and again from the left foot to the right foot. So that in actual fact the human organism itself writes into space these two intersecting triangles.

The next step was for the pupil to learn to feel what lies in the words: “Light streams upwards, Weight bears downwards.” The pupil had to experience this in deep meditation, standing in the attitude I have described. Thereby he gradually came to the point where the teacher was able to say to him: “Now you are about to experience something that was practised over and over again in the ancient Mysteries.” And the pupil attained then in very truth to this further experience, namely that he experienced and felt the very marrow within his bones.

You will be able to obtain some feeling for these things if you will bring what I am saying into connection with something I said to you only yesterday. I told you then, in another connection, that if men continue only to think so abstractly as has become the custom in the course of time, then this living in abstract thoughts remains something external; man as it were externalises himself. It is the exact opposite that occurs when, in this way, a consciousness of the bones from inside is attained.

But now there is something else that will help you to come to an understanding of the matter. Paradoxical as it may sound, it is yet true that such a book as my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity cannot be grasped by mere Logic, it must be understood by the whole human being. And in point of fact you will not understand what is said in that book concerning Thinking, unless you know that in reality man experiences Thought by means of the inner knowledge and feeling of his skeleton. A man does not really think with the brain, he thinks with his skeleton, when he thinks in sharply defined thoughts. And when thought becomes concrete, as is the case in the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, then it passes over into the whole human being.

But now the pupils of this Master went further still; they learned to feel the inside, the inner nature, of the bones. Therewith they were able to experience a last example of what was practised in manifold ways in the ancient Mystery Schools, they learned to experience symbols by making their own organism into these symbols; for only so can symbols be really and truly experienced. Explanation and interpretation of symbols is really nonsense; so too is all theorising about symbols. The true attitude to symbols is to make them and actually experience them. It is the same as with fables and legends and fairy tales.—These should never be received merely abstractly, one must identify oneself with them. There is always something in man whereby he can enter into all the figures of the fairy tale, whereby he can make himself one with the fairy tale. And so it is with these true symbols of olden times, which come originally from spiritual knowledge; I have expressed it by writing these words in your own language.

In modern times there is little sense if Hebrew words are written, words that are no longer fully understood; for then the man who reads them is not inwardly quickened to life, he has not an inward experience of the symbol, rather he is cramped by it. It is as though his bones were broken. And that is what really happens—spiritually of course—when one studies seriously such writings as those of Eliphas Levi.

Thus, then, did these pupils learn to experience the inside of their bones. But, my dear friends, when you begin to experience the inside of the bones, you are really no longer in your body. If you hold something in your finger a few inches in front of your nose, the object you are holding is not in you; just as little is what you experience within your bones really in you. You go inwards, it is true, but nevertheless you go out of yourself. And this going out of oneself, this going to the Gods, this going into the spiritual world, is what the pupils of that lonely school learned to grasp and understand. For they learned to know the lines which from the side of the Gods were drawn into the world, the lines that were drawn by the Gods to establish and found the world. They found in one direction, namely through Man, the path to the Gods.

And then the teacher put into words what the pupil was experiencing.—He expressed it in a sentence that will naturally appear ludicrous and paradoxical to many people today but that holds nevertheless, as You will be able to recognise, a deep truth:—

Behold the man of bone,
And thou beholdest Death.
Look within the bones
And thou beholdest the Awakener—

Now in the time of which we are speaking, not very much could be attained on this path; something however could be attained. Something of the teaching concerning the evolution of the Earth through different metamorphoses became clear to the pupils. Through being able to place themselves into the Spirit-being of Man, they learned to look back into Atlantean times and even farther. As a matter of fact very many things that were not in those times written down or printed but were related by word of mouth concerning the evolution of the Earth, had their origin in a knowledge and insight that came about in this way.

Such was one of the teachings given in this school.

Another teaching is also very interesting. This teaching brought to light in a practical manner the higher position of Man in respect to the animals. Facts that we put to practical use in various ways and that are of great value to us, were known and understood even as late as the nineteenth century by men who based their knowledge on good old traditions of knowledge and insight. We are proud today that we have police-dogs who are able to track out all kinds of wrongdoing in life. This practical use had not been thought of in olden times. But the faculty of dogs, for example, in this direction was even better known than it is today. Man had insight to perceive around the human being, a very fine substance, finer than anything that can be seen or smelt or sensed in any way. And it was known that there is a fine fluid belonging also to the world as a whole. It was recognised as a special differentiation of warmth-currents, in union with all manner of other currents, which were looked upon as electro-magnetic; and the scent of the dog was connected with these currents of warmth and electro-magnetism. The pupils of that little school of which I have been telling you, had their attention drawn to the same kind of faculty in other animals too. It was shown to them how this sense for a fine fluid flowing through the world was present in a very great many animals. And then it was pointed out to them how that which in the case of the animal develops downwards in the direction of the coarse and material, develops in man upwards into a quality of soul. And now we come to something taught in this school that is of the very greatest interest. It was taught by reference to facts of external anatomy, but a deeply spiritual truth was indicated. It was said to the pupil: “Behold, Man is a Microcosm; he imitates in his organism what takes place in the great structure of the Universe.” Nor was Man regarded as a microcosm, as a little world, only in respect of the processes that go on within him. What shows itself plastically in man, in plastic forms and structures—this too was referred back to processes in the external world.

Thus, profound and solemn attention was given in this school to the passage of the Moon through First Quarter, Full Moon, Last Quarter, New Moon; they learned to watch how the Moon in this way goes through twenty-eight to thirty phases. They watched out in the Cosmos the passage of the Moon through her phases. They watched the Moon as she moves within her orbit. They saw how she describes her twenty-eight to thirty curves or turns and they understood how Man has in his spinal column these twenty-eight to thirty vertebrae and how the development of the spinal column in the embryo corresponds with the movements and forces of the Moon. They saw in the form and shape of the human spinal column the copy of the monthly movement of the Moon. And in the twenty-eight to thirty nerves that go out from the spinal column into the whole organism, they saw a copy of the streams that the Moon sends down continually upon the Earth, sending them down at the various stages of her path in the heavens. Actually and literally, in these continuations of the vertebrae they saw a reflection of the inpouring of the Moon-streams. In short, in what the human being bears within him in the nerves of the spinal marrow together with the spinal marrow itself, they saw something that unites him with the Cosmos, that brings him into living connection with the Cosmos.

All this that I have indicated to you was presented to the pupil. And he was then made to observe something else. It was said to him: “Look at the optic nerve: watch how it goes from the brain across into the eye. You will see that in the course of its passage into the eye it is divided into very fine threads. How many threads? The threads that go from the optic nerve into the inside of the eye are exactly as many in number as the nerves that go out from the spinal marrow; there are twenty-eight to thirty of them. So that we may say, a spinal marrow system in miniature goes from the brain through the optic nerve into the eye.”

Thus has Man—so said the teacher to his pupils—thus has man received this thirty-membered system of nerves and spinal marrow from the Gods, who in primeval antiquity formed and shaped his existence; but Man himself has fashioned, in his eye, in his sense-world-beholding eye, a copy of the same; there, in the front of the head-organism he has fashioned for himself a copy of what the Gods have made of him.

After this, the pupil's attention was directed to the following. The organisation of the spinal marrow stands, as we have seen, in connection with the Moon. But on the other hand, through the special relationship that the Moon has to the Sun, we have a year of twelve months; and from the human brain twelve nerves go out to the various parts of the organism, the twelve chief nerves of the brain. In this respect, Man, in his head organisation, is a microcosm, in respect, namely, of the relationship between Sun and Moon. In the whole form and figure of Man is expressed an imitation of the processes out yonder in the Cosmos.

Again, the pupil was taught to observe something more. He has seen how in the optic nerve, through the way the optic nerve is split up into thirty divisions, Man imitates the Moon system of the spine. And he has seen how twelve nerves go out from the brain. But now again, when the particular part of the brain that sends the olfactory nerve into the nose is examined the fact is disclosed that, there, in that little portion of the brain the whole big brain is imitated. Just as in the eye the system of nerves and spinal marrow is imitated, so in the organ of smell the whole brain is imitated, inasmuch as the olfactory nerve enters the nose in twelve divisions, in twelve strands. So that Man has an actual, miniature human being in front, here, in his head. And then the pupil was made to observe that anatomically this miniature human being is no more than a mere indication. Things grow different; only the most minute anatomical investigation could avail here; although on the other hand, as it were in compensation, they express themselves especially strongly in the astral body. Having however only bare indications of them, they cannot be made use of in ordinary life. Yet we can learn to do so. And even as the pupil was shown how to experience the inside of his bones, so was he shown how to experience, in a really living way, this particular part of his being.

And here we come to something that is in truth more akin to the whole Western outlook than are many other things that come over to us from the East. For the East too speaks of this concentration on the root of the nose, this concentration on the point between the eyebrows. (This is how the exact spot is defined.) But in truth this concentration is a concentration on the miniature man that is situated in this spot and can be grasped astrally. A meditation can actually be so formed as to enable one to apprehend something in the region like a miniature man in embryonic development. The pupil in that school received this guidance: he learned to apprehend, in intensely concentrated thought, a kind of embryonic development of a miniature human being.

By this means did the pupils who had the faculties for it, develop the two-petaled lotus-flower. [Footnote: see Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment by Rudolf Steiner] And then it was said to them: The animal develops this faculty downwards, to the fluid of warmth and of electro-magnetism. Man on the other hand develops into the astral what has its place here in the head and nose. At first sight it appears to be merely a sense of smell, but the faculty, the activity of the eye plays over into it. Man develops this into the astral. He acquires the faculty whereby he is able, not merely to follow that fluid as do the animals, but to evoke continual interchange with the astral light, and to perceive by means of the two-petaled lotus-flower what he is continually writing into the astral light his whole life long. The dog scents only that which has remained, that which is there present. Man has a different experience. Inasmuch as he moves with his two-petaled lotus-flower, even when he cannot perceive with it, he is forever writing everything that is in his thoughts into the astral light; and now he acquires the faculty that enables him to follow what he has written; and to perceive at the same time something else, namely, the true difference between Good and Evil.

In this manner echoes of ancient primeval treasures of wisdom were still present, of which the rudiments were still taught in later days, even practically. And we can see how very much has been lost under the influence of the materialistic streams that began to work so forcibly about the middle of the nineteenth century. For such things as I have been indicating to you were still, to a certain degree at least, experienced and known in certain circles, isolated and hermit-like though they were. And in the most varied domains of life knowledge was still derived from such hidden sources, knowledge that was later entirely disregarded, and that many today long to find again. But on account of the crude methods that prevail in our time, external cognition cannot regain it.

Now together with all else that was taught to the pupils of that little circle, there was one special and definite teaching. It was shown to the pupil how when he makes use of the organ that is really an organ of smell raised up into the astral light, then he learns to know the true substance of all things, he learns to know Matter. And when he comes to a knowledge of the inside of his bony system, and thereby learns to know the true and authentic World Geometry, to know the way in which the forces have been inscribed into the world by the Gods, then he learns to understand the Forms that work in the things of the world. Thus if you would learn to know Quartz in its substance—so it was said to the pupil—then look at it in the two-petaled lotus-flower. If you would learn to know its crystal form, how the substance is given shape and form, then you must apprehend this form out of the Cosmos with the power of apprehension that you can gain by living experience of the inside of the bony system.

Or again, the pupil was taught as follows.—If you use your head-organ, then you learn to know how a plant is fashioned in respect of Substance. If You learn to experience the inside of your bony system, then you learn to know how a certain plant grows, why it has this or that form of leaf, this or that arrangement of its leaves, why it unfolds its blossoms in this or that manner.

Everything that is Form had to be understood in the one way, everything that is Substance in the other way. And it is really interesting to find, when we go back to Aristotle, how he makes this distinction in respect of everything that exists, the distinction between Form and Substance. In later times, of course, it was taught in a merely abstract way.

In the stream that came from Greece to Europe the abstractness with which these things were set forth in books was enough to drive one to despair; this went on throughout the Middle Ages, and in still more recent times has gone from bad to worse. But if you go back to Aristotle, you find that, with him, Forms really lead back to the experience I described, you find with him the true insight into things that is able to see in every head that which he calls the Matter or Substance in the things. This insight possessed by Aristotle was the aspect of his teaching that was carried into Asia.

But now the inner knowledge—that is to say, the knowledge that is in accord with the Akashic Records—the inner knowledge of the philosophy taught in Greece, points us to something of which I could naturally only give quite an external indication in my Riddles of Philosophy, where I showed how Aristotle held the view that in Man, Form and Matter flow into one another; in Man, Matter is Form and Form Matter. You will find this where I am speaking of Spirit in Riddles of Philosophy.

Aristotle himself, however, taught it in quite a different way. Aristotle taught that when you approach the minerals, you experience in the first place their Form by means of the inside of the bones of the lower leg, and you experience their Substance in the organ of the head. The two are far apart. Man holds them apart, Form and Substance; in the mineral kingdom itself they come together in crystallisation. When man comes to an understanding of the plant, then he experiences its Form by means of his experience of the inside of the thigh-bone, its Substance once more by means of the organ of the head, the two-petaled lotus-flower. The two experiences have already come a little nearer. And when man experiences the animal, then he feels the animal in its Form through the experience he has of the inside of the bones of the lower arm, and again he feels its Substance through the organ of the head—this time the two are very near together. And if now man experiences Man himself, then he experiences the Form of Man through the inside of the upper arm that is connected with the brain by way of the speech formation. I have often spoken of this in my introductory words on Eurhythmy. There the two-petaled lotus-flower unites with what goes from the inside of the upper arm to the brain. And particularly in speech we experience our fellow human being no longer divided as to Form and Content, but as one in Form and Content.

This teaching still survived in all its concreteness in the time of Aristotle. And as we have said, a trace of it can still be found as late as the nineteenth century. But there we come to an abyss. In the ‘forties of the nineteenth century these things were utterly and completely lost. And the abyss lasted until the end of the nineteenth century when the coming of the Michael Age gives the possibility for these truths to be found again. When, however, men step over this abyss, they are really stepping over a threshold. And at the threshold stands a Guardian. Men were not able to see this Guardian when they went past him between the years 1842 and 1879. But now they must, for their own good, look back and take note of him. For to continue not heeding him and to live on into the following centuries without heeding him would bring terrible trouble upon mankind.

Easter is felt by large numbers of human beings as a festival connected on the one hand with the deepest and most intimate feelings of the human soul, and on the other hand with cosmic mysteries and cosmic riddles of existence. Indeed we cannot but observe the connection of Easter with the secrets and riddles of the Universe when we bear in mind the fact that Easter is a movable festival, the date of which has to be reckoned year by year from that constellation of the stars which we shall shortly consider more in detail. At the same time we must observe how many customs and sacred ceremonies have been associated with the Easter Festival for centuries—customs and ceremonies which lie very near to the heart of large numbers of humanity. These things will show us the immense values which mankind has gradually laid into the Easter Festival in the course of historic evolution.

In the first centuries of Christianity—not at its immediate foundation but in the course of the first centuries—Easter became a most important festival connected with the fundamental thought and impulse of Christianity, I mean, with that impulse which arises for the true Christian from the fact of the Resurrection of Christ.

Easter is the festival of the Resurrection. Yet at the same time it leads us back into pre-Christian times. It leads us to the festivals which were held about the time of the Spring Equinox (which still plays a part in our calculation, at least, of the date of Easter). It points to those old festivals which were connected with the reawakening of Nature—with the springing of life that grows forth once more from the Earth.

Here we already find ourselves within the very subject of these lectures; for here already we must touch upon the connection of Easter with the evolution of the Mysteries in the history of mankind.

Easter as a Christian festival is a festival of Resurrection. The corresponding Heathen festival, taking place about the same time of the year as our Easter, was a kind of Resurrection festival of Nature—the coming forth again of what was asleep in Nature throughout the winter time. But we must emphasise most strongly at this point that the Christian Easter is by no means coincident as to its inner essence and meaning with the Heathen festivals of the Spring Equinox. On the contrary, if we do want to relate it to the old Pagan times, we must connect the Christian Easter with certain festivals which, proceeding from the ancient Mysteries, were enacted at the Autumn season. This is a remarkable fact in the determination of the Easter Festival, which by its very content is obviously connected with certain of the ancient Mysteries. Easter above all can remind us of the deep and radical misunderstandings that have arisen, in the course of evolution, in the world-conceptions of mankind with regard to matters of the greatest significance. Nothing less has happened than that the Easter Festival has been confused with an altogether different one, and has thus been removed from Autumn and turned into a festival of Springtime.

We have here touched something of infinite significance in human evolution. Consider the content of this Easter Festival. What is it in its essence? It is this: Christ Jesus, the Being who stands at the centre of the Christian consciousness, passes through death. Good Friday is held in memory of this fact. Christ Jesus lies in the grave. It is a time that takes its course in three days, representing the union of Christ with Earth-existence. This time is celebrated in Christendom as a festival of mourning—the time between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Easter Sunday is the day when the central Being of Christianity rises out of the grave; it is the day of remembrance of this. Such is the essential content of the Easter Festival: the Death, the lying in the Grave and the Resurrection of Christ Jesus.

Now let us look at the corresponding ancient Heathen festival in any one of its forms. Only then shall we be able to penetrate into the connection between the Easter Festival and the Mysteries. In many places and among many people, we come across ancient Heathen festivals whose external structure—and the structure of the ceremonies which were enacted in them—is decidedly similar to the Easter-content of Christianity.

From the manifold festivals of ancient time, we may select for an example the Adonis festival. Through long, long periods of pre-Christian antiquity this festival was celebrated among certain peoples of Asia Minor. A sacred image was the central point of the festival. It was an image of Adonis—Adonis as the spiritual representative of all that is the springing and thriving force of youth in man, of all that appears as beauty in the human being.

True it is that in many respects the ancient peoples confused the substance of the image with what the image represented. The ancient religions often thus present the character of fetish worship. Many human beings saw in the image the actual and present God—the God of beauty, of the youthful strength of man, of the unfolding germinating forces which reveal in outward glory all the inner worth and inner greatness that man contains, or can contain, within him.

With songs and acts of ritual representing the deepest human grief and mourning, this image of the God was lowered into the waves of the sea, where it had to remain for three days. Or if the sea were not near it was lowered into a lake. Or again, an artificial pond was constructed near the sacred place of the Mysteries, so that the image of the God could be submerged and left for three days. During the three days the whole community associated with this cult remained in an atmosphere of deepest earnestness and stillness. After three days the image was withdrawn from the water. The songs of grief and mourning were transformed into songs of joy, hymns to the resurrected God, to the God who had come to life once more.

This was an outward ceremony which deeply stirred the hearts of large circles of mankind. And this ceremony indicated, in an outward act of ritual, what took place in the Holy of Holies of the Mysteries with every human being who was about to reach initiation. For within the Mysteries in those ancient times every human being who was to receive initiation was led into a special chamber. The walls were black, the whole space was dark and gloomy, empty save for a coffin, or something not unlike a coffin. Beside the coffin those who accompanied the candidate for Initiation broke forth into songs of mourning, songs of death. The candidate was treated like one who is about to die. He was given to understand that when he was now laid in the coffin, he would have to undergo what the human being undergoes in the first three days after death.

On the third day there appeared at a certain place, within sight of the one who lay in the coffin, a twig or a branch to represent springing, thriving life. And now the songs of mourning were transferred into hymns of joy and praise. With consciousness transformed, the man arose out of his grave. A new language, a new writing, was communicated to him; it was the language and writing of spiritual Beings. Henceforth he was allowed to see the world—for now indeed he could see it—from the standpoint of the Spirit.

What was thus enacted in the hidden depths of the Mysteries with the candidates for Initiation was comparable to the sacred cults or rituals enacted in the outer world. The content of the sacred ritual, pictorial as it was, was none the less similar in structure to what took place with chosen human beings in the Mysteries. Indeed the cult—and we may take the special cult of Adonis as representative—the cult was explained at the proper season to all those who partook in it. It was enacted in the Autumn, and those who took part in it were instructed somewhat as follows: “Behold, it is the Autumn season! The Earth is losing her adornment of plants and green foliage. All things are fading and falling. In place of the green and springing life that began to cover the Earth in Springtime, snow will soon come to envelop, or drought to lay waste, the Earth. Nature is dying, but while all things are dying around you, you are to experience that in the human being which is only half like the death you see around you in all Nature. Man also has to die. For him, too, there comes the Autumn season. And when man's life draws to a close, it is right for the hearts and minds of those who remain behind to be filled with sorrow and deep mourning. And that the full earnestness of the passage through death may come before your souls, that you may not experience it only when death approaches you yourselves, but may be mindful of it ever and again—it is enacted before you Autumn by Autumn how the divine Being who is the representative of the beauty, youth and greatness of man, dies and undertakes the same journey as all the things of Nature. Nevertheless, just when Nature is laid waste and bare, when all things in Nature are on the way to death, you also are to remember another thing. Remember how man passes through the gate of death! All that he experienced here in this earthly life was like the things that die in Autumn-time. For in this earthly realm he experiences only what is transient. But when he has passed from the Earth and lives on out into the far spaces of the Cosmic Ether, then will he behold himself growing ever greater and greater, till the whole Universe becomes his own. For three days he will live outward and outward into the wide spaces of the Universe. And then, while here on Earth the earthly eye is turned to the image of death—for the earthly eye is turned to all that dies, to all things transient—yonder in the Spirit after three days the immortal soul of man awakens. Yonder the soul arises, arises to be born again for Spirit-land, three days after passing through the gate of death.”

Deep and penetrating was the inner transformation when these things were enacted in the candidate's own person during the Initiation ceremony, in the hidden depths of the Mysteries. The profound impression, the immense and sudden jerk which the life of a man underwent in this ancient form of initiation, awakened inner forces of the soul within him. (As we shall presently see, in modern times it cannot be done in this way but must be done in quite another way.) The inner forces of the soul, the powers of seership were awakened in him. He knew that he stood henceforward no longer in the world of the senses but in the spiritual world.

I may perhaps sum up in the following words the instruction that was given, once more at the right and proper time, to the pupils in the ancient Mysteries. They were told: That which is enacted in the Mysteries is an image of what takes place in spiritual worlds, in the Cosmos. Sacred cult is itself an image of what is enacted in the sacred Mysteries. For everyone who was admitted to the Mysteries was fully clear that events which the Mysteries concealed within the earthly realm—events enacted there upon the human being—were true images of what man experiences in the wide spaces of the astral-spiritual Cosmos in other forms of existence than in this earthly life. And those who in ancient times were not admitted to the Mysteries—since according to their stage in life they could not yet be chosen to receive the vision of the spiritual world directly—were instructed in the corresponding truths through the sacred cult or ritual, that is to say, through a picture of what was enacted in the Mysteries.

Such, then, was the purport of the Mystery which we have learned to know in this example of the Adonis festival. Autumn, when earthly things were fading away, becoming waste and bare, Autumn, expressing so radically the transitory nature of all earthly things, the dying process and the fact of death—this Autumn time was to call forth in man the certainty, or at least the pictured vision, of how the death that overcomes all Nature in the Autumn, overcomes man too, nay even overcomes the representative of all beauty, youthfulness and greatness in the human soul, portrayed in the God Adonis. Even the God Adonis dies, and is dissolved in the earthly prototype of the cosmic Ether—in the Water. But even as he rises again out of the Water, even as he can be drawn forth from the Water, so is the soul of man drawn forth from the Waters of the world, that is to say, from the cosmic Ether, approximately three days after the human being here upon Earth passes through the gate of death.

It was the secret of death itself which those ancient Mysteries sought to represent in the corresponding Autumn festival. They made it visible in picture form, in that the first half of the sacred ritual coincided with the dying and the death in Nature, while on the other hand the very opposite was shown to be the essential truth for man himself. Such was the meaning and intention of the Mysteries: the human being shall turn his gaze to the death of Nature, in order to become aware how he himself dies in the outward semblance, while in his inner being he is resurrected—resurrected, to begin with, for the spiritual world. To unveil the truth about death was the meaning and purpose of this ancient Pagan festival which was connected so closely with the Mysteries.

Then in the further course of human evolution the great Event took place. What had been undergone at a certain level by the candidate for initiation in the Mysteries—the Death and Resurrection of the soul—took place even as to the body with Christ Jesus. For how does the Mystery of Golgotha appear to one who is acquainted with the Mysteries! He gazes back into the ancient Mysteries. He sees how the candidate for Initiation was led, in his soul, through death to the Resurrection of the soul; that is to say, to the awakening of a higher consciousness in the soul. The soul died, to rise again in a higher consciousness. We must above all hold fast to this, that the body did not die, but the soul died, in order to be awakened to a higher consciousness.

What the soul of every candidate for Initiation underwent, Christ Jesus underwent even in the body. That is to say, He underwent it on a different level. For Christ was no earthly man. He was a Sun-Being dwelling in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Hence what the candidate for Initiation in the ancient Mysteries had undergone in his soul, could be undergone in the entire human nature by Christ Jesus upon Golgotha.

Those who still had knowledge of the ancient Mysteries and of the above Initiation-rite—it was they who understood most deeply what had happened upon Golgotha. Indeed to this day, it is they who understood it most deeply. For they could say to themselves: For thousands and thousands of years, human beings have been led through the death and resurrection of their souls into the secrets of the spiritual world. The soul was kept separate from the body during the act of Initiation. The soul was led through death, to life eternal. What was thus experienced in the soul by a number of chosen human beings, was undergone even in the body by a Being who descended from the Sun at the Baptism by John in Jordan, and took possession of the body of Jesus of Nazareth. The act of Initiation that had been repeated again and again through long, long years, now became a historic fact.

The essential thing was that man should know: because it was a Sun-Being who took possession of the body of Jesus of Nazareth, therefore what was accomplished for the Initiates only with respect to the soul and the soul's experience, could be accomplished now even into the bodily existence by this Being. In spite of the death of the body, in spite of the dissolving of the body of Jesus of Nazareth in the mortal Earth, there could be a Resurrection of the Christ. For the Christ rises higher than the soul of the initiate could rise. The candidate for Initiation could not carry the body into those deep regions of the sub-sensible into which Christ Jesus carried it. Hence, too, the candidate for Initiation could not rise so high in resurrection as the Christ. Yet it remains true that but for this difference in respect of cosmic greatness, the ancient rite of Initiation appeared as a historic fact at the sacred place of Golgotha.

Yet even in the first centuries of Christianity there were only few who knew that a Being of the Sun, a cosmic Being, had lived in Jesus of Nazareth, that the Earth had really been fertilised by the descent from the Sun of a Being whom until then man upon Earth had only been able to behold within the Sun, by the methods cultivated at the places of Initiation. This was the essential point in Christianity, inasmuch as it was also accepted by those who had real knowledge of the ancient Mysteries. They could say: The Christ to whom we lifted ourselves up through our initiation, the Christ whom we could reach by our ascent to the Sun in the ancient Mysteries, has descended into a mortal body, into the body of Jesus of Nazareth. He has come down to Earth.

It was indeed a festival mood, nay, a mood of sublime holiness which filled the hearts and souls of those who, living in the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, had some understanding of this Mystery. Gradually, and by processes which we shall yet have to trace, what had thus been an immediate and living content of their consciousness became a memory, a festival in memory of the historic event on Golgotha. But while this “memory” was taking shape, the consciousness of who the Christ was as a Being of the Sun, became lost ever more and more. Those who had knowledge of the ancient Mysteries could not fail to know about the Being of the Christ. For they knew that the real Initiates, being made independent of the physical body and passing in their souls through death, rising into the Sun-sphere and there visiting the Christ, had received from Him—from Christ within the Sun—the impulse for the resurrection of their souls. They knew the nature of the Christ because they had raised themselves to Him. With their knowledge of this Initiation rite, the ancient Initiates knew from what took place on Golgotha that the same Being who formerly had to be sought for in the Sun, had now visited mankind on Earth. Why was it so? The sacred rite that had been enacted with the candidates for Initiation in the ancient Mysteries in order that they might reach up to the Christ within the Sun, could no longer be enacted in this way. For in the course of time, human nature had undergone a change. By the very evolution of the human being, the ancient ceremony of Initiation had become impossible. It would no longer have been possible through that ancient Initiation ceremony to visit the Christ in the Sun. It was then that He descended to enact on Earth a sacred deed to which human beings might henceforth turn their gaze.

What is contained within this secret is one of the very holiest things that can possibly be uttered on this Earth.

For how did it really appear to the human beings in the centuries following the Mystery of Golgotha?

From an ancient Initiation sanctuary man upon Earth looked upward to the Sun-existence and became aware, through his Initiation, of Christ within the Sun. Man looked out into Space in order to approach the Christ. And how did the evolution of mankind go forward in the succeeding periods? I must now represent Time itself: the Earth in one year, the Earth in a second year, in a third year, and so on in the course of Time. Spatially, the Earth is of course always present but here I have represented the course of Time. The Mystery of Golgotha has taken place. A human being living, let us say, in the eighth century A.D., instead of looking upward to the Sun from a sacred place of the Mysteries so as to reach the Christ, looks backward through the course of Time—back to the Mystery of Golgotha. At the turning-point of Time—at the beginning of the Christian era—he beholds the Mystery of Golgotha. Thus he can find the Christ within an earthly action, within an event on Earth. He finds the Christ within the Mystery of Golgotha.

Through the Mystery of Golgotha, what had formerly been a vision in Space, became henceforward a vision in Time. That was the significance of what had taken place.

We must however especially contemplate what took place during Initiation in the ancient Mysteries. It was a picture of the death of man and of his resurrection in the life beyond. Then we must consider the structure of the sacred cults, the festival of Adonis, for instance. For this in turn was a picture of what took place within the Mysteries. When we contemplate all this, these things—the three united into one—come before us in a sublime and transcendent aspect concentrated in the one historic action upon Golgotha.

Outwardly upon the scene of history there appears what was hitherto accomplished in the deep and inner Holy of Holies of the Mysteries. For all human beings there now exists what existed hitherto only for the Initiates. Men no longer need an image that is immersed and symbolically resurrected from the sea. Henceforth they shall have the thought—the memory—of what took place in all reality on Golgotha. The outward symbol, relating to a process that was experienced in Space, is now to be replaced by the inward thought and memory, without any picture to the senses—the memory of the historic event of Golgotha, experienced purely in the soul.

Strange is the course of human evolution as we perceive it in the succeeding centuries. Man's penetration into spiritual things becomes ever less and less. The spiritual content of the Mystery of Golgotha cannot find its way into the minds of men. Evolution tends now to develop the sense for material things. Men lose the inner understanding of the heart, which once told them that just where outer Nature reveals her transitoriness and appears as a dying existence, the life of the Spirit can be seen, and with it they lose their understanding for that outer festival which can most truly be felt when Autumn comes with its fading, dying process, inasmuch as the death of the Earthly and Natural corresponds to the Resurrection of the Spiritual.

Thus it becomes possible no longer for Autumn to be the time of the Resurrection Festival. Autumn loses its power to turn man's thought from the transitoriness of Nature to the eternity of the Spirit. Man now needs the support of material things, needs the support of what does not die in Nature, but springs forth again in Nature. He needs to connect his Resurrection Festival with that which is resurrected in outer Nature—the force of the seed which was laid into the Earth in Autumn-time. He takes the material as a symbol for the Spiritual because he is no longer able to receive inspiration for a true perception of the Spiritual itself. Autumn no longer has the power to make manifest through the inner power of the human soul the Eternity of the Spirit, over against what is transient in the world of Nature. Man needs the support of external Nature, of the external Resurrection in Nature. He needs to see how the plants spring out of the Earth, how the Sun increases in strength, how light and warmth increase in strength once more. He needs the Resurrection in Nature in order to celebrate the thought of the Resurrection.

At the same time he loses that immediate inner relationship which he had with the Adonis Festival, and which he can also have with the Mystery of Golgotha. The inner experience which could arise at the earthly death of man, loses its power. In that inner experience the human soul was aware how the man who in the earthly sense passes through the gate of death, undergoes in three days what can indeed fill the soul with solemnity and earnestness. Then, however, the soul must become inwardly joyful, inasmuch as out of this very death the human soul arises after three days to spiritual immortality.

The power that lay in the Adonis Festival was lost. To begin with, it was intended for humanity that this power should arise with still greater intensity. Man had gazed upon the death of the God, the death of all that is beautiful in mankind—of all that is great and filled with the strength of youth. This God was immersed in the ocean on the day of Mourning, on the day of Chara (Charfreitag is Good Friday; Chara means mourning). They fell into a solemn, earnest mood. This was the feeling they first wanted to unfold in view of the transitoriness of Nature. But then this very feeling of the transitoriness of Nature had to be transformed by the soul into a feeling of the super-sensible resurrection of the human soul after three days. When the God—or image of the God—was lifted out again, the true believer beheld the image of the human soul a few days after death. “What happens to the dead man in the Spirit, behold! it stands before thy soul in the image of the resurrected God of youthful strength and beauty!”

This truth, deeply united with the whole destiny of man, was really awakened in the human spirit year by year in the Autumn season. In that ancient time men could not have thought it possible to take their start from external Nature. That which was perceptible in the Spirit was represented in the symbolic action of the sacred cult. But the time came when this picture of ancient times had to be blotted out in order that the memory, unassisted by any image—the inward memory, experienced purely within the soul, the memory of the Mystery of Golgotha in which the same truth is contained—should take the place of the picture. To begin with, humanity had not the power for it to be so. For the Spirit descended into the very depths of the soul of man. To this day it has remained so; man needs the support of external Nature. But external Nature provides no symbol—no perfect symbol—of the destinies of man in death. Thus the thought of death itself was able to live on, but the thought of the Resurrection disappeared more and more. Though the Resurrection is still referred to as an article of faith, the fact of the Resurrection is not a really living experience in the humanity of modern times. It must become alive again through the anthroposophical conception reawakening the sense of man to the true Resurrection thought.

The Michael thought, as was said at the proper season, must lie near to the anthroposophical heart and mind as the thought of the Herald of Christ. The Christmas thought too, must be made ever deeper in the heart of the anthroposophist. And the Easter thought must become especially sacred and joyful. For Anthroposophy has to add to the thought of Death, the thought of the Resurrection. Anthroposophy itself must become like an inner festival of Resurrection for the human soul. It must bring an Easter mood into man's world-conception. This will indeed be possible if it is understood how the thought of the ancient Mysteries can live on in the true Easter thought. And this will still be possible if there arises a true conception of the body, soul and spirit of man, and of the destinies of body, soul and spirit, in the physical world, the soul-world and the spiritual world of Heaven.

In attempting to give a kind of introduction to Anthroposophy I shall try to indicate, as far as possible, the way it can be presented to the world today. Let me begin, however, with some preliminary remarks. We have usually not sufficient regard for the Spiritual as a living reality; and a living reality must be grasped in the fulness of life. Feeling ourselves members of the Anthroposophical Society and the bearers of the Movement, we ought not to act each day on the assumption that the Anthroposophical Movement has just begun. It has, in fact, existed for more than two decades, and the world has taken an attitude towards it. Therefore, in whatever way you come before the world as Anthroposophists, you must bear this in mind. The feeling that the world has already taken up an attitude towards Anthroposophy must be there in the background. If you have not this feeling and think you can simply present the subject in an absolute sense—as one might have done twenty years ago—you will find yourselves more and more presenting Anthroposophy in a false light. This has been done often enough, and it is time it stopped. Our Christmas meeting should mark a beginning in the opposite direction; it must not remain ineffective, as I have already indicated in many different directions.

Of course, we cannot expect every member of the Society to develop, in some way or other, fresh initiative, if he is not so constituted. I might put it this way: Everyone has the right to continue to be a passively interested member, content to receive what is given. But whoever would share, in any way, in putting Anthroposophy before the world, cannot ignore what I have just explained. From now on complete truth must rule in word and deed.

No doubt I shall often repeat such preliminary remarks. We shall now begin a kind of introduction to the anthroposophical view of the world.

Whoever decides to speak about Anthroposophy must assume, to begin with, that what he wants to say is really just what the heart of his listener is itself saying. Indeed, no science based on initiation has ever intended to utter anything except that which was really being spoken by the hearts of those who wished to hear. To meet the deepest needs of the hearts of those requiring Anthroposophy must be, in the fullest sense, the fundamental note of every presentation of it.

If we observe today those who get beyond the superficial aspect of life, we find that ancient feelings, present in every human soul from age to age, have revived. In their subconscious life the men and women of today harbour earnest questions. They cannot even express these in clear thoughts, much less find answers in what the civilised world can offer; but these questions are there, and a large number of people feel them deeply. In fact, these questions are present today in all who really think. But when we formulate them in words they appear, at first, far-fetched. Yet they are so near, so intimately near to the soul of every thinking man.

We can start with two questions chosen from all the riddles oppressing man today. The first presents itself to man's soul when he contemplates the world around him and his own human existence. He sees human beings enter earthly life through birth; he sees life running its course between birth (or conception) and physical death, and subject to the most manifold experiences, inner and outer; and he sees external nature with all the fullness of impressions that confront man and gradually fill his soul.

There is the human soul in a human body. It sees one thing before all others: that Nature receives into herself all the human soul perceives of physical, earthly existence. When man has passed through the gate of death, Nature receives the human body through one element or another (it makes little difference whether through burial or cremation). And what does Nature do with this physical body? She destroys it. We do not usually study the paths taken by the individual substances of the body. But if we make observations at places where a peculiar kind of burial has been practised, we deepen this impression made by a study of what Nature does with the physical, sensible part of man, when he has passed through the gate of death. You know there are subterranean vaults where human remains are kept isolated, but not from the air. They dry up. And what remains after a certain time? A distorted human form consisting of carbonate of lime, itself inwardly disintegrated. This mass of carbonate of lime still resembles, in a distorted form, the human body, but if you only shake it a little, it falls to dust.

This helps us to realise vividly the experience of the soul on seeing what happens to the physical instrument with which man does all things between birth and death. We then turn to Nature, to whom we owe all our knowledge and insight, and say: Nature, who produces from her womb the most wonderful crystal forms, who conjures forth each spring the sprouting, budding plants, who maintains for decades the trees with their bark, and covers the earth with animal species of the most diverse kinds, from the largest beasts to the tiniest bacilli, who lifts her waters to the clouds and upon whom the stars send down their mysterious rays—how is this realm of Nature related to what man, as part of her, carries with him between birth and death? She destroys it, reduces it to formless dust. For man, Nature with her laws is the destroyer. Here, on the one hand, is the human form; we study it in all its wonder. It is, indeed, wonderful, for it is more perfect than any other form. to be found on earth. There, on the other hand, is Nature with her stones, plants, animals, clouds, rivers and mountains, with all that rays down from the sea of stars, with all that streams down, as light and warmth, from the sun to the earth. Yet this Realm of Nature cannot suffer the human form within her own system of laws.¹ The human being before us is reduced to dust when given to her charge. We see all this. We do not form ideas about it, but it is deeply rooted in our feeling life. Whenever we stand in the presence of death, this feeling takes firm root in mind and heart. It is not from a merely selfish feeling nor from a merely superficial hope of survival, that a subconscious question takes shape in mind and heart—a question of infinite significance for the soul, determining its happiness and unhappiness, even when not expressed in words. All that makes, for our conscious life, the happiness or unhappiness of our earthly destiny, is trivial in comparison with the uncertainty of feeling engendered by the sight of death. For then the question takes shape: Whence comes this human form? I look at the wonderfully formed crystal, at the forms of plants and animals. I see the rivers winding their way over the earth, I see the mountains, and all that the clouds reveal and the stars send down to earth. I see all this—man says to himself—but the human form can come from none of these. These have only destructive forces for the human form, forces that turn it to dust.

In this way the anxious question presents itself to the human mind and heart: Where, then, is the world from which the human form comes? And at the sight of death, too, the anxious question arises: Where is the world, that other world, from which the human form comes?

Do not say, my dear friends, that you have not yet heard this question formulated in this way. If you only listen to what people put into words out of the consciousness of their heads, you will not hear it. But if you approach people and they put before you the complaints of their hearts, you can, if you understand the heart's language, hear it asking from its unconscious life: Where is the other world from which the human form comes?—for man, with his form, does not belong to this. People often reveal the complaints of their hearts by seizing on some triviality of life, considering it from various points of view and allowing such considerations to colour the whole question of their destiny.

Thus man is confronted by the world he sees, senses and studies, and about which he constructs his science. It provides him with the basis for his artistic activities and the grounds for his religious worship. It confronts him; and he stands on the earth, feeling in the depths of his soul: I do not belong to this world; there must be another from whose magic womb I have sprung in my present form. To what world do I belong? This sounds in men's hearts today. It is a comprehensive question; and if men are not satisfied with what the sciences give them, it is because this question is there and the sciences are far from touching it. Where is the world to which man really belongs?—for it is not the visible world.

My dear friends, I know quite well it is not I who have spoken these words. I have only formulated what human hearts are saying. That is the point. It is not a matter of bringing men something unknown to their own souls. A person who does this may work sensationally; but for us it can only be a matter of putting into words what human souls themselves are saying. What we perceive of our own bodies, or of another's, in so far as it is visible, has no proper place in the rest of the visible world. We might say: No finger of my body really belongs to the visible world, for this contains only destructive forces for every finger.

So, to begin with, man stands before the great Unknown, but must regard himself as a part of it. In respect of all that is not man, there is—spiritually—light around him; the moment he looks back upon himself, the whole world grows dark, and he gropes in the darkness, bearing with him the riddle of his own being. And it is the same when man regards himself from outside, finding himself an external being within Nature; he cannot, as a human being, contact this world.

Further: not our heads but the depths of our subconscious life put questions subsidiary to the general question I have just discussed. In contemplating his life in the physical world, which is his instrument between birth and death, man realises he could not live at all without borrowing continually from this visible world. Every bit of food I put into my mouth, every sip of water comes from the visible world to which I do not belong at all. I cannot live without this world; and yet, if I have just eaten a morsel of some substance (which must, of course, be a part of the visible world) and pass immediately afterwards through the gate of death, this morsel becomes at once part of the destructive forces of the visible world. It does not do so within me while I live; hence my own being must be preserving it therefrom. Yet my own being is nowhere to be found outside, in the visible world. What, then, do I do with the morsel of food, the drink of water, I take into my mouth? Who am I who receive the substances of Nature and transform them? Who am I? This is the second question and it arises from the first.

When I enter into relationship with the visible world I not only walk in darkness, I act in the dark without knowing who is acting, or who the being is that I designate as myself. I surrender to the visible world, yet I do not belong to it.

All this lifts man out of the visible world, letting him appear to himself as a member of a quite different one. But the great riddle, the anxious doubt confronts him: Where is the world to which I belong? The more human civilisation has advanced and men have learnt to think intensively, the more anxiously have they felt this question. It is deep-seated in men's hearts today, and divides the civilised world into two classes. There are those who repress this question, smother it, do not bring it to clarity within them. But they suffer from it nevertheless, as from a terrible longing to solve this riddle of man. Others deaden themselves in face of this question, doping themselves with all sorts of things in outer life. But in so deadening themselves they kill within them the secure feeling of their own being. Emptiness comes over their souls. This feeling of emptiness is present in the subconsciousness of countless human beings today.

This is one side—the one great question with the subsidiary question mentioned. It presents itself when man looks at himself from outside, and only dimly, subconsciously, perceives his relation, as a human being between birth and death, to the world.

The other question presents itself when man looks into his own inner being. Here is the other pole of human life. Thoughts are here, copying external Nature which man represents to himself through them. He develops sensations and feelings about the outer world and acts upon it through his will. In the first place, he looks back upon this inner being of his, and the surging waves of thinking, feeling and willing confront him. So he stands with his soul in the present. But, in addition, there are the memories of experiences undergone, memories of what he has seen earlier in his present life. All these fill his soul. But what are they? Well, man does not usually form clear ideas of what he thus retains within him, but his subconsciousness does form such ideas.

Now a single attack of migraine that dispels his thoughts, makes his inner being at once a riddle. His condition every time he sleeps, lying motionless and unable to relate himself, through his senses, to the outer world, makes his inner being a riddle again. Man feels his physical body must be active and then thoughts, feelings and impulses of will arise in his soul. I turn from the stone I have just been observing and which has, perhaps, this or that crystalline form; after a little time I turn to it again. It remains as it was. My thought, however, arises, appears as an image in my soul, and fades away. I feel it to be infinitely more valuable than the muscles or bones I bear in my body. Yet it is a mere fleeting image; nay, it is less than the picture on my wall, for this will persist for a time until its substance crumbles away My thought, however, flits past—a picture that continually comes and goes, content to be merely a picture. And when I look into the inner being of my soul, I find nothing but these pictures (or mental presentations). I must admit that my soul life consists of them.

I look at the stone again. It is out there in space; it persists. I picture it to myself now, in an hour's time, in two hours' time. In the meantime the thought disappears and must always be renewed. The stone, however, remains outside. What sustains the stone from hour to hour? What lets the thought of it fluctuate from hour to hour? What maintains the stone from hour to hour? What annihilates the thought again and again so that it must be kindled anew by outer perception? We say the stone ‘exists’; existence is to be ascribed to it. Existence, however, cannot be ascribed to the thought. Thought can grasp the colour and the form of the stone, but not that whereby the stone exists as a stone. That remains external to us, only the mere picture entering the soul.

It is the same with every single thing of external Nature in relation to the human soul. In his soul, which man can regard as his own inner being, the whole of Nature is reflected. Yet he has only fleeting pictures—skimmed off, as it were, from the surfaces of things; into these pictures the inner being of things does not enter. With my mental pictures (or presentations) I pass through the world, skimming everywhere the surfaces of things. What the things are, however, remains outside. The external world does not contact what is within me.

Now, when man, in the sight of death, confronts the world around him in this way he must say: My being does not belong to this world, for I cannot contact it as long as I live in a physical body. Moreover, when my body contacts this outer world after death, every step it takes means destruction. There, outside, is the world. If man enters it fully, he is destroyed; it does not suffer his inner being within it. Nor can the outer world enter man's soul. Thoughts are images and remain outside the real existence of things. The being of stones, the being of plants, of animals, stars and clouds—these do not enter the human soul Man is surrounded by a world which cannot enter his soul but remains outside.

On the one hand, man remains outside Nature. This becomes clear to him at the sight of death. On the other hand, Nature remains external to his soul.

Regarding himself as an object, man is confronted by the anxious question about another world. Contemplating what is most intimate in his own inner being—his thoughts, mental images, sensations, feelings and impulses of will—he sees that Nature, in whom he lives, remains external to them all. He does not possess her.

Here is the sharp boundary between Man and Nature. Man cannot approach Nature without being destroyed; Nature cannot enter the inner being of man without becoming a mere semblance. When man projects himself in thought into Nature, he is compelled to picture his own destruction; and when he looks into himself, asking: How is Nature related to my soul? he finds only the empty semblance of Nature.

Nevertheless, while man bears within him this semblance of the minerals, plants, animals, stars, suns, clouds, mountains and rivers, while he bears within his memory the semblance of the experiences he has undergone with these kingdoms of Nature, experiencing all this in his fluctuating inner world, his own sense of being emerges amid it all.

How is this? How does man experience this sense of his own existence? He experiences it somewhat as follows. Perhaps it can only be expressed in a picture:

Imagine we are looking at a wide ocean. The waves rise and fall. There is a wave here, a wave there; there are waves everywhere, due to the heaving water. One particular wave, however, holds our attention, for we see that something is living in it, that it is not merely surging water. Yet water surrounds this living something on all sides. We only know that something is living in this wave, though even here we can only see the enveloping water. This wave looks like the others; but the strength of its surging, the force with which it rises, gives an impression of something special living within. This wave disappears and reappears at another place; again the water conceals what is animating it from within. So it is with the soul life of man. Images, thoughts, feelings and impulses of will surge up; waves everywhere. One of the waves emerges in a thought, in a feeling, in an act of volition. The ego is within, but concealed by the thoughts, or feelings, or impulses of will, as the water conceals what is living in the wave. At the place where man can only say: ‘There my own self surges up,’ he is confronted by mere semblance; he does not know what he himself is. His true being is certainly there and is inwardly felt and experienced, but this ‘semblance’ in the soul conceals it, as the water of the wave the unknown living thing from the depths of the sea. Man feels his own true being hidden by the unreal images of his own soul. Moreover, it is as if he wanted continually to hold fast to his own existence, as if he would lay hold of it at some point, for he knows it is there. Yet, at the very moment when he would grasp it, it eludes him. Man is not able, within the fluctuating life of his soul, to grasp the real being he knows himself to be. And when he discovers that this surging, unreal life of his soul has something to do with that other world presented by nature, he is more than ever perplexed. The riddle of nature is, at least, one that is present in experience; the riddle of man's own soul is not present in experience because it is itself alive. It is, so to speak, a living riddle, for it answers man's constant question: ‘What am I?’ by putting a mere semblance before him.

On looking into his own inner being man receives the continual answer: I only show you a semblance of yourself; and if you ascribe a spiritual origin to yourself, I only show you a semblance of this spiritual existence within your soul life.

Thus, from two directions, searching questions confront man today. One of these questions arises when he becomes aware that:

Nature exists, but man can only approach her by letting her destroy him;

the other when he sees:

The human soul exists, but Nature can only approach this human soul by becoming mere semblance.

These two truths live in the subconsciousness of man today. On the one hand, we have the unknown world of Nature, the destroyer of man; on the other, the unreal image of the human soul which Nature cannot approach although man can only complete his physical existence by co-operating with her. Man stands, so to speak, in double darkness, and the question arises:

Where is the other world to which I belong?

Man turns, now, to historical tradition, to what has been handed down from ancient times and lives on. He learns that there was once a science that spoke of this unknown world. He looks to ancient times and feels deep reverence for what they tried to teach about the other world within the world of Nature. If one only knows how to deal with Nature in the right way, this other world is revealed to human gaze.

But modern consciousness has discarded this ancient knowledge. It is no longer regarded as valid. It has been handed down to us, but is no longer believed. Man can no longer feel sure that the knowledge acquired by the men of an ancient epoch as their science can answer today his own anxious question arising from the above subconscious facts.

So we turn to Art.

But here again we find something significant. The artistic treatment of physical material—spiritualisation of physical matter—comes down to us from ancient times. Much of this treatment has been retained and can be learnt from tradition. Nevertheless, it is just the man with a really artistic subconscious nature who feels most dissatisfied today; for he can no longer realise what Raphael could still conjure into the human earthly form—the reflection of another world to which man truly belongs. Where is the artist today who can handle earthly, physical substance in such an artistic way?

Thirdly, there is Religion. This, too, has been handed down through tradition from olden times. It directs man's feeling and devotion to that other world. It arose in a past age through man receiving the revelations of the realm of Nature which is really so foreign to him. For, if we turn our spiritual gaze backwards over thousands of years, we find human beings who also felt: Nature exists, but man can only approach her by letting her destroy him. Indeed, the men who lived thousands of years ago felt this in the depths of their souls. They looked at the corpse passing over into external Nature as into a vast Moloch, and saw it destroyed. But they also saw the human soul passing through the same portal beyond which the body is destroyed. Even the Egyptians saw this, or they would never have embalmed their dead. They saw the soul go further still. These men of ancient times felt that the soul grows greater and greater, and passes into the cosmos. And then they saw the soul, which had disappeared into the elements, return again from the cosmic spaces, from the stars. They saw the human soul vanish at death—at first through the gate of death, then on the way to the other world, then returning from the stars. Such was the ancient religion: a cosmic revelation—cosmic revelation from the hour of death, cosmic revelation from the hour of birth. The words have been retained; the belief has been retained, but has its content still any relation to the cosmos? It is preserved in religious literature, in religious tradition foreign to the world.

The man of our present civilisation can no longer see any relation between what religious tradition has handed down to him and the anxious question confronting him today. He looks at Nature and only sees the human physical body passing through the gate of death and falling a prey to destruction. He sees, more-over, the human form enter through the gate of birth, and is compelled to ask whence it comes. Wherever he looks, he cannot find the answer. He no longer sees it coming from the stars, as he is no longer able to see it after death. So religion has become an empty word.

Thus, in his civilisation, man has around him what ancient times possessed as science, art and religion. But the science of the ancients has been discarded, their art is no longer felt in its inwardness, and what takes its place today is something man is not able to lift above physical matter, making this a vehicle for the radiant expression of the spiritual.

The religious element has remained from olden times. It has, however, no point of contact with the world, for, in spite of it the above riddle of the relation of the world to man remains. Man looks into his inner being, and hears the voice of conscience; but in olden times this was the voice of that God who guided the soul through those regions in which the body is destroyed, and led it again to earthly life, giving it its appropriate form. It was this God who spoke in the soul as the voice of conscience. Today even the voice of conscience has become external, and moral laws are no longer traceable to divine impulses. Man surveys history, to begin with; he studies what has come down from olden times, and—at most—can dimly feel: The ancients experienced the two great riddles of existence differently from the way I feel them today. For this reason they could answer them in a certain way. I can no longer answer them. They hover before me and oppress my soul, for they only show me my destruction after death and the semblance of reality during life.

It is thus that man confronts the world today. From this mood of soul arise the questions Anthroposophy has to answer. Human hearts are speaking in the way we have described and asking where they can find that knowledge of the world which meets their needs.

Anthroposophy comes forward as such knowledge, and would speak about the world and man so that such knowledge may arise again—knowledge that can be understood by modern consciousness, as ancient science, art and religion were understood by ancient consciousness. Anthroposophy receives Its mighty task from the voice of the human heart itself, and is no more than what humanity is longing for today. Because of this, Anthroposophy will have to live. It answers to what man most fervidly longs for, both for his outer and inner life. ‘Can there be such a world-conception today?’ one may ask. The Anthroposophical Society has to supply the answer. It must find the way to let the hearts of men speak from out of their deepest longings; then they will experience the deepest longing for the answers.

• 1. This sentence and the rest of the paragraph in which it occurs must of course be read in the context of the lecture as a whole. Taken by itself it may well arouse the objection: ‘The human form is as much within Nature's system of laws as those of the plants and animals. Certainly Nature destroys it after death; but does she not also bring it to birth?’ It may help to remind the reader that Dr. Steiner is at this stage merely putting into words a feeling, which, he expressly says, arises when we stand in the presence of death. Later on in the book, when he deals with the relation in which the human body stands to the world of nature, he shows how the human form in fact has an origin quite different from those of other living creatures. Editor.

The subject about which I shall have to speak today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, and which was already referred to some time ago,¹ is the special way in which, in the first half of the twentieth century, a kind of renewed manifestation of the Christ-Event is to take place. This will need a certain amount of preparation, and today, to begin with, I shall try to characterize again from a certain point of view the spiritual complexion of the civilized world and, from this point of view, draw attention to the challenges that are placed before us with regard to the evolution of humanity—the education of humanity as a whole in the near future-by the facts of this human evolution itself.

We know that a new age in the development of civilized humanity began around the beginning of the fifteenth century. People today no longer form an exact idea of what the constitution of soul was like in the people who lived before this great turning-point of modern history. People do not consider this. But one could easily imagine how different the soul-constitution in Europe must have been which, over large areas, inclined people to undertake the Crusades to Asia, to the Orient; especially when one bears in mind how impossible an event like this, resting as it did on an idealistic spiritual background, has become since the beginning of the fifteenth century. People do not consider the completely different nature of humanity's interests before this historical turning-point, nor the interests which, since that time, have become particularly important. But if, from the many characteristics which can be attributed to this more recent time, one wishes to single out the most significant one, then this must be the increasing ascendancy, the increasing intensity of the human power of intellect.

But in the depths of the human soul there is always another force, whether as a sense of longing or as a more or less clear facet of consciousness. It is the longing for knowledge. Now, when one looks back into former times, even into the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries of European development, it is possible to speak of a definite longing for knowledge in as much as the human being at that time had faculties in his soul which enabled him to achieve a relationship to nature—a relationship to what was revealed in nature as spirit—and thereby also to achieve a relationship to the spirit world itself. Certainly, longing for knowledge has been spoken about a good deal since then; but it is impossible, when one looks completely without prejudice at the development of humanity, to compare the longing for knowledge which holds sway today with the intensity of the longing for knowledge that held sway before the middle of the fifteenth century. Striving for knowledge was an intense affair of the human soul; for knowledge that had an inner glow, an inner warmth, for the human being, and which was also significant for the human being when it came to what moved him to perform his work in the world, and so on. Everything that lived there as a longing for knowledge has become less and less comparable with what has been emerging since the middle of the fifteenth century. And even when we consider the great philosophers of the first half of the nineteenth century, we are presented with ingenious elaborations of the human system of ideas; but only, if I can put it so, artistic elaborations of it. In neither Fichte, nor Schelling, nor Hegel—particularly not in Hegel—do we find a proper idea of what had previously existed as a longing for knowledge.

Then, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the striving for knowledge, even though pursued in isolation as was still the custom, enters more and more into the service of outer life. It enters into the service of technological science and thus also takes on the configuration of this technology. What then is the cause of this? It comes from the fact that it is just in this time that we find the particular development and elaboration of the intellect. This, of course, did not happen all at once. The intellect was gradually prepared for. The last traces of the old clairvoyance had long since become extremely dim. But one can nevertheless say that, to a certain degree, the last effects of the old clairvoyance—though not the old clairvoyance itself—were still present even in the fifteenth century. All human beings, or at least those who strove for knowledge, had some idea of the faculties rising up out of the human soul that are higher than the faculties concerned with daily life. Although in olden times these faculties arose from the soul in a dreamlike way, they were nevertheless faculties different from those of everyday life and it was by means of these other [higher] faculties that people tried to probe to the depths of the world-being—and did, in fact, penetrate to its spirituality. Thus was knowledge attained. People experienced it as knowing when, from the phenomena of nature, from the being of nature, they sensed, they perceived, how spiritual elemental beings worked in the individual phenomena of nature; how the divine spiritual being as a whole worked through the totality of nature. People felt themselves to be in the realm of knowledge when gods spoke through the phenomena of nature; when gods spoke through the appearance and movements of the stars. This is what people understood as knowledge.

The moment humanity renounced perception of the spiritual in the manifestations of nature, the concept of knowledge itself also fell more or less into a deterioration. And it is this decline of real intensity in the pursuit of knowledge that marks the latest period of human evolution.

What then is needed here? It is that which exists at present only in the small circle of anthroposophically-striving human beings but which must become more and more general. Nature's manifestations spoke to ancient human beings in such a way that they revealed the spirit to them. The spiritual spoke out of every spring, every cloud, every plant. In the way people came to know the manifestations and beings of nature they also came to know the spiritual. This is no longer the case. But the condition of intellectualism is only a transitional condition. For what is the deepest characteristic of this intellect? It is that it is impossible to grasp and know anything at all with the pure intellect. The intellect is not just there for knowing. This is the greatest error to which the human being can give himself: the belief that the intellect is there for gaining knowledge. People will attain to true knowledge again only when they concern themselves with what lies at the basis of spiritual-scientific research; which, at the least, can be given by Imagination. People will only know truly again when they say: In ancient times divine-spiritual beings spoke from the manifestations of nature. For the intellect they are silent. For higher, super-sensible knowledge it will not be the phenomena of nature that will speak directly—for nature, as such, works silently. But beings will speak to the human being—beings who will appeal, to him in Imaginations, will inspire him, with whom he will become united intuitively and whom he will then be able to relate again to the phenomena of nature. Thus one can say: In ancient times the spiritual appeared to the human being through nature. In our transitional condition we have the intellect. Nature remains spiritless. The human being will lift himself up to a condition where he can again truly know; where, indeed, nature will no longer speak to him of divine-spiritual beings but where he will o take hold of the divine-spiritual in supersensible knowledge and will, in turn, be able to relate this to nature.

It was a particular characteristic of oriental spiritual life, of oriental knowledge—which, as we know, lived on as a heritage in occidental civilization—that the orientals, at the time of the blossoming of the knowledge of their culture, perceived a spiritual element in all the manifestations of nature; that the divine-spiritual spoke through nature, whether through the lower elemental beings in individual things and phenomena or in the whole of nature, as the all-encompassing divine-spiritual. Later on there developed in the central regions of the earth that which came under the dialectical-legal spirit. It is out of this that intellectuality was born. Spiritual culture was retained as a heritage from the ancient Orient. And when people still had this last longing to experience something from the Orient—people did experience something of this in the Crusades and brought it back to Europe—and after they had stilled this longing through the Crusades, the Orient became effectively closed off. On the one hand, by what was established by Peter the Great who destroyed the remains of the oriental constitution of soul on the European side and, on the other hand, by the blockade set up by the Turks who, just at the beginning of this age which we call the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, established their rule in Europe. European thought and culture was, as it were, closed off from access to the Orient. But it had to develop further and could only do so under the influence of the dialectical-legal life, under the influence of the economic life arising from the West, and in the decadent continuation of the spiritual life which had been received from the Orient, to which the doors were now closed as I described. The condition was thereby prepared in which we are now living, where it is up to us, out of ourselves, to open the doors again to the spiritual world; to come to a perception of it through Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition.

This is all connected with the fact that, in those ancient times in which the oriental rose to the attainment of wisdom, what was of particular importance were the abilities, the forces, brought by the human being into physical existence through birth. In the time of oriental wisdom, everything—despite the civilization which took its course there and was shone through with wisdom—everything, fundamentally, depended on the blood. But, at the same time, what was in the blood was also spiritually recognized. It was determined by the Mysteries as to who, through his line of blood, was called by destiny to the leadership of the people. There could be no questioning this: whoever was called to the leadership of the people by the Mysteries was brought to this position because his bloodline, his descent, was. the outer sign that this was how it should be. There could be no question of any kind of legal proof as to whether anyone was rightly in this position or not because, against the verdict of the gods, according to which people were allotted their place, there could be no contradiction. Jurisprudence was unknown in the mission here in the world of the senses was given by Orient. One knew theocracy, the 'rule of cosmic order', One's mission here in the world of the senses was given by the spiritual world above. The feeling that said that someone was in the in the right place because the gods had directed his bloodline in such a way that he could be brought to this place was replaced with another in a dialectical-legal dress, on the basis of which one that he could dispute on legal grounds whether someone was entitled to his position, or to do this or that, and so on.

The nature of the soul-constitution, prepared already in Greece but then particularly also in Rome, by which Central Europeans were beginning to use concepts, dialectics, to decide what justice was, was quite unknown and alien to the Orient. I have described this from different aspects. In the Orient it was a matter of fathoming the will of the gods. And there were no dialectics for deciding what the gods willed.

But we are again at a turning-point. It is becoming necessary now for humanity to also take a closer look at this dialectical-legal element. For the economic element, which from the West has conquered the world with the aid of technology, is already completely entangled in the state of affairs that has arisen through the dialectical-legal aspect. The economy was a minor element in the ancient theocratic cultures which were permeated by the divine-spiritual. People did there in the economic life what arose as a matter of course according to the place and rank into which the gods had placed them through the proclamations of the Mysteries. And then the economic life, which began again only primitively, became caught up, as it were, in the threads of the dialectical-legal life. For, at the beginning of the so-called Middle Ages, the Romans above all had no money. Economics based on money was gradually lost and the dialectical-legal culture spread in Europe as a kind of economy based on nature-produce. The early part of the Middle Ages was, basically, short of money; and this brought about all those forms of military service which were necessary because there was no money to pay the troops. The Romans paid their troops with money. In the Middle Ages feudalism developed, and with it a particular type of professional soldiery. All this came about because, tied to the soil under the influence of an economy based on the exchange of nature-produce, a man could no longer take part himself in distant campaigns of war. Thus this dialectical-legal element grew up in a kind of agricultural economy based on barter, and it was only when technology from the West permeated this economic life that the new age arose. The life of this new civilization, which has become so fragile, has arisen in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch entirely as a result of technology. I have already described this in different ways. I have described how, according to the official census, world population at the end of the nineteenth century was 1,400 million but that as much work was being accomplished as though there were 2,000 million. This is because such a phenomenally large amount of work is done by machines. The machine technology with its stupendous transformation of the economic life and the social life has arrived.

What has not yet arrived—because everything is still engulfed in the intellectual life—is precisely what must now carry this machine-technological economy into modern civilization. One experiences the strangest things today with regard to the prospects facing humanity. There are already many people today, particularly among those who pride themselves on being practical, who, for example, go into governmental positions with their practical experience where it then usually evaporates. The little practical experience people have usually evaporates as soon as they take it into a government department. Such `governing practicians', such 'practical men in government'—one has to put it in inverted commas—get the strangest ideas these days. Someone said to me recently: 'yes, the new age has brought us machines, and with them urban life; we must take life back to the land.' As though one could just remove the machine-age from the world! The machine would simply follow us into the country, I said to him. Everything, I said, could be forgotten; spiritual culture could be forgotten, but machines would remain. They would simply be taken out to the land. What has arisen in the cities will transplant itself into the country.

In fact, people become reactionaries in a grand style—when they no longer feel inclined—and this is the characteristic of people generally today: that they have no will—to form ideas concerning true progress. They would prefer to bring back the old conditions of the countryside. They imagine that this can be done. They believe that one can shut out what the centuries have brought. That is nonsense! But people today love this nonsense so tremendously because they are too complacent to grasp the new and prefer to get along with the old. The machine age has arrived. Machines themselves show how much human labour they save. It is simply that 500 million people would have to do the work machines do if their work on the earth were to be done by people.

And all this work by machines began, primarily, in Western civilization. It arose in the West and spread to the Orient very late where it did not establish itself at all in the same way as it did in occidental civilization. But that is a time of transition. And now try and grasp a thought which, however strange it may seem to you, must be taken seriously.

Let us suppose the human being in ancient times had before him a cloud, or perhaps a river, or all kinds of vegetation and so on. He did not see in these the dead nature seen by the human being of today—he saw spiritual elemental beings, up to the divine-spiritual beings of the higher Hierarchies. He saw all this, as it were, through nature. But nature no longer speaks of these divine-spiritual beings. We have to grasp them as spiritual reality beyond nature and then relate them again back to nature. The period of transition came. Man created machines as an addition to nature. These he regards for the time being quite abstractly. He works with them in an entirely abstract way. He has his mathematics, geometry, mechanics. With these he constructs his machines and regards them altogether in the abstract. But he will very soon make a certain discovery. Strange though it may still seem to the human being of the present that such a discovery will be made, people will nevertheless discover that (in this mechanistic element which they have incorporated into the economic life) those spirits are again working which in earlier times were perceived by the human being in nature. In his technical machines of the economic sphere the human being will perceive that, although he constructed and made them, they nevertheless gradually take on a life of their own—a life certainly which he can still deny because they manifest themselves to begin with only in the economic sphere. But he will notice more and more in what he himself creates that it gains a life of its own and that, despite the fact that he brought it forth from the intellect, the intellect itself can no longer comprehend it. Perhaps people today can barely form a clear idea of this, but it will be so nevertheless. People will discover, in fact, how the objects of their industry (Wirtschaft) become the bearers of demons.

Let us look at it from another side. Out of the naked intellect, out of the most desolate intellect, there has arisen the Lenin-Trotsky system that is trying to build an economic life in Russia. Despite Lunacharsky,² these people are not interested in the spiritual life. For them the spiritual life must be an ideology arising from the economic life. It can hardly be said that there is a very strong dialectical-legal element in the Trotsky-Leninist system—everything is to be geared towards the economic. The desire is, in a certain sense, to embody the intellect in the economic life. If one could do this for a time—this initial experiment will not work, but let us suppose that it were possible—the economic life would grow over peoples' heads. It would bring forth everywhere destructive, demonic forces out of itself. It would not work because the intellect would not be able to cope with all the economic demands that would surge up! Just as the human being in ancient times beheld nature and the manifestations of nature and saw in them demonic beings; so, too, must the human being of present times learn to see demonic beings in what he himself produces in the economic life. For the time being these demons, which human beings have not diverted into machines, are still in human beings themselves and manifest as the destructive beings (die zerstarenden) in social revolutions. These destructive social revolutions are nothing other than the result of not recognizing the demonic element in our economic life. Elemental spirits (elementarische Geistigkeit) must be looked for in the economic life just as in ancient times elemental beings (elementarische Geistigkeit) were sought in nature. And the purely intellectual life is only an intermediary stage which has no significance at all for nature or for what man produces, but only for human beings themselves.

Human beings have developed the intellect so that they can become free. They have to develop a faculty that has absolutely nothing to do with nature or with machines but only with the human being himself. When the human being develops faculties that stand in a relationship to nature, he is not free. If he tries to flee into the economic life he is also not free because the machines only overwhelm him. But when he develops faculties that have nothing to do with either knowledge or practical life, like pure intelligence, he can appropriate freedom to himself in the course of cultural development. It is precisely through a faculty like the intellect, which does not stand in a relationship to the world, that freedom can arise. But in order that the human being does not tear away from nature, in order that he can again work into nature, Imagination must be added to this intellect; everything must be added to it which supersensible research is seeking to find.

There is something else involved here. I related how, for the ancient oriental, the relationships of the blood line were of very particular importance, for the wise men of the Mysteries were guided by these as though by signs from the gods when they placed the human being into his appropriate [social] position. And all these things reach over then like after-effects, like ghosts, into later times. Then came the dialectical-legal element. The official stamp became the most important thing. The diploma, examination results or, rather, what was on the piece of paper that was the examination certificate—this became the important thing. Whereas in ancient theocratic times blood was the decisive factor, it was now the piece of paper. Those times drew near for which many things are characteristic. A lawyer once said to me during a discussion I had with him: The fact that you were born, that you exist, is not what matters!' This did not interest him. It was the birth certificate or the christening certificate that had to exist; that was the important thing. The paper substitute! So the dialectical-legal arose. This, at the same time, is also the expression for the unreal (das Scheinhafte) in relation to the world, for the unreal element of the intellect. But precisely in the human being himself there could develop, as the counterpart of this maya element (Scheinhafte) in the world, what gave the human being freedom.

But now there develops, out of what is signified in paper—which in earlier times was signified in the blood—out of what is signified in the letter-patent of nobility or similar documents, something that is already showing itself today and which will—continue if things go on as now. And they will continue! Descent by blood will no longer be of importance. The letter-patent of nobility and similar papers will have no more importance. At most, only what a man manages to salvage of what he possesses from the past will count. To ask 'why' was not possible when the gods still determined an individual's place in the world. In the dialectical-legal age it was possible to dispute this 'why'. Now all discussion ceases, for only the factual is left, the actuality of what an individual has salvaged. The moment people lose faith in the paper-regime there will be no more discussions. The things an individual has saved for himself will simply be taken away. There is no other way to bring humanity forward, now that nature no longer reveals the spiritual, than to turn to the spiritual itself and, on the other hand, to find in the economic element what people in earlier times found in nature.

This, however, can only be found through association. What a human being alone can no longer find can be found by an association which will again develop a kind of group-soul, taking in hand what the individual at present cannot decide alone. In the Middle Ages, in the age of the intellect, it was the individual that ruled in economics. In the future it will be the association. And people must stand together in an association. And then, when it is recognized that a spiritual element has to be kept in check in the economic life, something will be able to arise which can replace the blood-line and the patent. For, the economic life would grow above the human being's head if he did not show himself equal to it, if he did not bring a spiritual insight with him to guide it. No one would associate with someone who did not bring qualities that made him effective in the economic life and which qualified him really to control the spirits which assert themselves in the economic life. An entirely new spirit will arise. And why will this be so?

In the ancient times, in which people judged according to the blood, what had taken place before birth or before conception was of importance for human beings, for this is what they brought into the physical world through the blood. And when existence before birth had been forgotten a recognition of the life before birth still lived on in the recognition of the blood-line. And then came the dialectical-legal element. The human being was only recognized in relation to what he was as a physical being. Now the other element comes in—an economic life that is growing demonic. And the human being must also now be recognized again in his inmost soul-and-spirit being. And just as one will see the demonic element in economic life, so one will also have to begin to see that which the human being bears through repeated lives on earth. One will have to be aware of what a human being brings when he enters this life. This will have to be taken care of in the spiritual limb of the social organism.

When one judges according to the blood, one really does not need a pedagogy; one only needs a knowledge of the symbols through which the gods express where it is a human being is to be placed. As long as one judges in a purely dialectical-legal way one only needs an abstract pedagogy which speaks of the human child in a generalized way. But when a human being is to be placed in an associative life in such a way that he is fit and capable one has to take account of the following. One must realize that the first seven years in which the human being develops the physical body, are not significant for what he will be able to do later in the social life -—he must only be made fit and capable in a general way valid for all human beings. In the years between seven and fourteen, in which the etheric body is developed, the human being must first of all be recognized. What has to be recognized is what then emerges as the astral body at the age of fourteen or fifteen and which comes into consideration when the real soul-and-spiritual core of the human being is to bring him to the place he is meant to be. Here the educational factor becomes a specifically social one. It is a matter here of gaining a true understanding of the child one is educating so that one can see that a certain quality in the child is good for this, and another quality is good for that. But this does not show itself clearly until after the child leaves primary school and it will belong to an artistic pedagogy and didactics to be able to discern that one child is suited for this and another is suited for that. It is according to this that those decisions will be made that are the challenge in Towards Social Renewal for the circulation of capital; that is to say the means of production. A completely new spiritual concept must arise which, on the one hand, is capable of perceiving the economic life in its inner spiritual vitality and, on the other, can perceive what role must be played by cultural life; how cultural life must give economic life its configuration. This can only happen if the cultural life is independent, when nothing is forced upon it by the economic life. It is when one inwardly grasps the whole course of humanity's evolution that one recognizes how this evolution requires the threefolding of the social organism.

Thus, because we have been closed off from the Orient in more recent times by the Petrinism of Peter the Great on the one hand and Turkey on the other, we therefore need an independent spiritual life; a spiritual life that really recognizes the spiritual world in a new form and not in the way in which, in ancient times, nature spoke to man. One will then be able to relate this spiritual life back to nature. But once one has found it, one will also be able to develop this spiritual life in such a way in the human being that it becomes the content of his skills; that he will be able through this spiritual life to satisfy, in associative cooperation, an economic life that becomes more and more dynamic. Such thoughts as these really must exist in an anthroposophically-oriented spiritual science. For this reason such a spiritual science can only be born from a knowledge of the course of human evolution.

The first thing is to steer towards a real knowledge of the spirit. Talk of the spirit in general terms—in empty, abstract words in the way that is accepted practice today among official philosophers and in other circles and which has become generally popular—is of no use for the future. The spiritual world is not the same as the physical world. Thus it is not possible to gain a perception of the spiritual world by abstracting from the physical but only by direct spiritual investigation. These perceptions naturally then appear as something completely different from what the human being can know when he knows only the physical world. People who, out of complacency, wish only to know of the physical world call it fantastic to talk about Old Moon, Old Sun and Old Saturn. They find that, when one speaks about these former embodiments of the earth, it strikes no chord in them. Things are described there of which they do not have the foggiest notion. The fact is of course that they have no notion of them because they do not want to know about the spiritual world. Things are related to them about the spiritual world and they say: But it doesn't concur with anything we already know. But that is the whole point: worlds are found that do not concur with what one knows already. This is the way, is it not, that, for example, Arthur Drews, the philosophy professor, judges spiritual science. It does not concur with what he has already imagined. Indeed, when the railway from Berlin to Potsdam was to be built, the post master of Berlin³ said: And now I'm supposed to send trains to Potsdam! I already send four post coaches a week and no one travels in them. If people really want to throw their money out of the window why don't they do it directly! Of course, the railways looked different from the post-coaches of the 1830s of the honest post-master of Berlin. But, of course, the descriptions of the spiritual world also look different from what nests in heads like Arthur Drews'. He, however, is only characteristic of many others. He is even one of the better ones, strange as it may seem. Not because he is good, but because the others are worse.

It was first of all necessary to show how, on a strict scientific basis, one can truly penetrate into the spiritual worlds. This is what, in the first place, our lecture course this autumn has been striving towards. And even if this is only at its beginnings, it has at least been shown how, in certain areas of the sciences, knowledge can be raised to a knowledge of the spiritual as such and how this spiritual element can in turn permeate what is gained by sense-knowledge.

But what can thus be gained in the field of knowledge and what will be achieved in contrast to the accepted knowledge in the schools—for it is in this area that fine beginnings are apparent—would remain incomplete. One could in fact already show how psychology, and, indeed, even mathematics, point towards spiritual realms. But it would only be something incomplete and therefore unable to aid our declining civilization if a truly elemental and intensive will does not arise from the area of practical economic life. It is necessary that old usages, old habits, be truly dropped and that everyday life be permeated with spirituality. It must come about as a flower of the Anthroposophical Movement that, with the help of the mood of soul that can arise out of spiritual science, a perceptive understanding of practical life is brought to bear—especially of the practical economic life—and that it may be shown how the downfall can be averted if a consciousness of creating something alive is carried into this economic life.

Every day one should keep an ever-watchful eye on the so blatantly visible signs of our declining economic life. This old economic life cannot be galvanized. For just as today no one should be proud of what he gains from ordinary science—for that would definitely lead humanity into the future prophesied by Oswald Spengler—so, too, no one should be proud of what he can gain from the old economic life by way of abilities that correspond to this old form. Today no one can be proud of being a physicist, a mathematician, a biologist in the usual sense. But also no one can be proud of being a merchant, an industrialist in the old sense. But this 'old sense' is the only thing we have today. Nowhere today do we see anything arising like a true association. What is really needed, as a kind of second event of this Goetheanum, is to have something on the lines of this lecture-course, which could provide something tangible out of the realm of practical life itself, and which could stand side by side with the sciences. We will not get any further with what is contained in just one stream but only when this other side of human striving also has its place.

This today is still the characteristic feature of our present human evolution: on the one side the traditional bearers of the old spiritual life who calumniate and slander one when, working out of the modern scientific approach, one tries to achieve a spiritualization. They already do this today quite consciously because they have no interest in the progress of human development and because, for the time being, they only think to hold back this evolution of humanity. Sometimes they do so in a truly grotesque manner, like that strange academic⁴ who recently spoke in Zurich about Anthroposophy and went to such extremes that even his colleagues were shocked; so that, as it seems, this attack against Anthroposophy has actually acted as mild propaganda for it. These representatives of a redundant spiritual life persist, however, and will do so far more, for they will dose ranks with formidable slanders. Here one sees what one is up against, arising in the form of slanders and so on, in regard to untruth.

On the other side one can notice another strong resistance; which, however, occurs in the unconscious. And this is a painful experience. In this area one can definitely speak of an inner opposition, sometimes quite unintentional, against what must lie in the direction of spiritual-scientific endeavour. It will be a matter of having to learn, particularly in this area, to identify with the aims that spiritual science can set here. For to judge, in the subjective way that has been usual up to now, what must be willed from spiritual science, would be to do the same as the priests and others in other areas do when they declare spiritual science a heresy. This is what makes difficulties for our Anthroposophical Movement—the fact that precisely in this area a kind of inner opposition is clearly noticeable. One can say that it is particularly in this area that what sheds light in such a strange way on certain accusations which come from many sides, shows itself most clearly. They say: 'In this Anthroposophical Society everyone only repeats what one man has said. But in reality they do not repeat at all; everyone just says what he thinks so that the one man can approve it.' We have experienced this many times, have we not? A person talks frequently about what he may want, saying that I said so, even though from me he actually heard the exact opposite. Now this is the real rule of blind faith in authority. A strange faith in authority! This has been evident in many cases. But it would be particularly damaging if this strange kind of opposition—there has actually always been more opposition than faith in authority and, therefore, an indictment of faith in authority is really unjust—it would be far more fatal if what I refer to here as inner opposition were, particularly in the sphere of practical life, to take on wider dimensions. For then the opponents of anthroposophical striving would, as long as they could, of course say: `Aha, a sectarian, fantastic movement which cannot be practical.' Of course it cannot be practical if people do not engage themselves in it; just as, after all, no matter how good one is at sewing, one cannot sew without a needle.

With this I only wished to draw attention to something that needs watching. It is by no means intended as a criticism or as a reference to the past but is something necessary for the future. Nevertheless, I would of course not have referred to it if I did not see all sorts of smoke-clouds rising. But I am really only pointing out what has, as it were, to be a challenge to really cooperate on all sides and not to shelter behind reactionary practices and, behind the bulwark of these reactionary practices, destroy Anthroposophy even though one is perhaps trying to help it. So I am not referring to something that has already happened but to something that is necessary for the future. It is necessary to think about these things.

With these comments I shall have to let it rest for today. Tomorrow and the following day we shall have to link up this prelude which, as you will see, is in fact an introduction to a study of the Christ-experience in the twentieth century.

• 1 . See Das Ereignis der Christus-Erscheinung in der atherischen Welt (The Event of the Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric World), sixteen lectures given in different cities in 1910, (GA 118).
• 2 . Anatol Vasilevich Lunacharsky (1875–1933), Russian writer and politician. From 1917 he was the Commisar for the education of the masses.
• 3 . Karl Ferdinand Friedrich von Nagler (1770–1846).
• 4 . It has not been possible to establish who this was.

by Hella Wiesberger

In order to properly determine the relationship between Rudolf Steiner's epistemological approach to work, as discussed in the documents presented in this volume, and his overall impact, it is necessary to consider not only the external history of this branch of his work, but also, first of all, his conception of the meaning and significance of the cultic as such.

According to the insights of anthroposophy, in ancient times humanity lived in the instinctive, clairvoyant awareness that all life in the world and in humanity is brought about, shaped and sustained by the creative forces of a divine spiritual world. This awareness grew weaker and weaker over time until it was completely lost in modern times as a result of intellectual thinking that was focused solely on the physical laws of the world. This was necessary because only in this way could the human being become independent of the creative spirituality of the universe in terms of consciousness and thus acquire a sense of freedom. The task of human development now consists in using the free intellect, which is not determined by world spirituality, to gain a new awareness of the connection with world spirituality.

This realization was what led to one of Rudolf Steiner's fundamental concerns: to pave a path for modern intellectual thinking to spiritual knowledge that was appropriate for it. This is how the first anthroposophical guiding principle begins: “Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge that seeks to lead the spiritual in man to the spiritual in the universe.”¹ The concrete means for walking this path are to be found in the complete works, paradigmatically in the fundamental works «The Philosophy of Freedom» and «How to Know Higher Worlds >».

While it was natural for ancient cultures to cultivate in their external life, through symbols and cultic acts, that which could be inwardly experienced from cosmic spirituality, and thereby to shape their social life, the fading of the consciousness of being existentially connected to the divine-spiritual world also meant that the sense of the cultic had to be lost. And so, for modern abstract thinking, which has become the dominant intellectual force in the course of the 20th century, the traditional cultic forms can only be regarded as incomprehensible relics of past times. Existing cultic needs do not come from the intellect, but from other layers of the human soul.

This raises the question of what reasons could have moved Rudolf Steiner, as a thoroughly modern thinker, to cultivate cultic forms in his Esoteric School and later to convey them to other contexts as well. To answer this question fully, the whole wide and deep range of his spiritual scientific representations of the nature and task of the cultic for the development of the human being, humanity and the earth would have to be shown. Since this is not possible here, only a few aspects essential to the present publication can be pointed out.

Understanding cults arises from spiritual vision.

We need harmony between knowledge, art, religion and morality for our complicated social life, which threatens to spread chaos across the earth.²

Rudolf Steiner's fundamental concept of the cultic is rooted in his spiritual vision, trained with modern means of knowledge, to which the spiritual world content reveals itself as “the source and principle of all being” ³ and whose nature evokes an equally cognitive, artistic-feeling and religious-worshipping experience. As long as humanity lived in an instinctive clairvoyance, cultures were sustained by such a unified scientific, artistic and religiously attuned spiritual vision: “What man recognized, he formed into matter; he made his wisdom into creative art. And in that the mystery student, in his liveliness, perceived what he learned as the Divine-Spiritual that permeates the world, he offered his act of worship to it, so to speak, the sacred art re-created for cult.“ ⁴

Human progress demanded that this unified experience be broken down into the three independent currents of religion, art and science. In the further course of development, the three have become more and more distant from each other and lost all connection to their common origin. This has led to cultural and social life becoming increasingly chaotic. In order for orienting, rising forces to become effective again, the three “age-old sacred ideals” – the religious, the artistic and the cognitive ideal – must be reshaped from a modern spiritual-cognitive perspective. Rudolf Steiner regarded this as the most important concern of anthroposophy, and he emphasized it in particular on important occasions in the anthroposophical movement, for example at the opening of the first event at the Goetheanum building.⁵

In the spirit of the words spoken on this occasion: “When nature begins to reveal her manifest secrets to him through spiritual vision, so that he must express them in ideas and shape them artistically, the innermost part of his soul is moved to worship what he has seen and captured in form with a religious sense. For him, religion becomes the consequence of science and art,” ⁶From the very beginning, he had been driven to shape the results of his spiritual vision not only according to science but also according to art: towards a pictorial quality that contains spiritual realities. For “images underlie everything around us; those who have spoken of spiritual sources have meant these images” (Berlin, July 6, 1915). Because it seemed necessary to him, especially with regard to social life, to shape the essence of the spiritual not only scientifically but also visually, everything that characterizes anthroposophy as a worldview should also be present in the image through its representative, the Goetheanum building (Dornach, January 23, 1920). After the fire on New Year's Eve 1922 destroyed this pictorial expression of the view, he expressed what he had wanted to present to the world with the Goetheanum in a somewhat succinct formula:

“The Goetheanum was felt to be a physical sign of the formation that the three main interests of humanity are striving for in the depths of the human soul. These main interests are the religious-moral, the artistic and the cognitive interest.” ⁷

The formulation of the cognitive and artistic interest is clear. But what about its religious interest? If this is not as clearly perceptible, this is partly due to the characterization of religion as the “mood” of the human soul for the spiritual that lies beyond the sensual (Mannheim, January 5, 1911), and partly due to the often-stated belief that the religious and moral essence of anthroposophy cannot could not be confessional in the sense of forming a religion, that spiritual scientific endeavors should not be a “substitute” for religious practice and religious life, that one should not make spiritual science “into a religion”, although it could be “to the highest degree” a “support” and “underpinning” of religious life (Berlin, February 20, 1917). Anthroposophy as a science of the supersensible and the Anthroposophical Society as its community carrier should not be tied to a particular religious confession, since Anthroposophy is by nature interreligious. Even its most central insight, the realization of the importance of the Christ-spirit for the development of humanity and the Earth, is not based on that of the Christian denominations, but on the science of initiation from which all religions once emerged. In this sense, he once characterized it as a “fundamental nerve” of spiritual scientific research tasks to work out the supersensible truth content common to all religions and thereby “bring mutual understanding to the individual religious currents emerging from the initiations religious movements over the earth“ (Berlin, April 23, 1912).⁸ From this it follows logically that, from the point of view of anthroposophy, practical religious observance within a confession must be a private matter for the individual. This has been expressed in the statutes of the Society from the very beginning.⁹

The ideal of the sacralization of one's whole life

Sacramentality is an expression of the fact that human action is aglow with holiness.⁹

What was done only on the church altar must take hold of the whole world.¹⁰

The ability to experience how spiritual beings are manifested in a cultic, sensory way had to fade away because it is a law of development that forces must be lost in order to be conquered anew at a different level. To this end, every development must proceed in a seven-fold rhythm: from the first to the fourth stage it is evolutionary, but from the fifth to the seventh stage it is involutionary, that is, retrogressive. This means that the third, second and first stages must be relived as the fifth, sixth and seventh, but now with what has been gained as new up to the fourth stage. For humanity on earth, the new thing to be attained consists in the special or 'I-ness', which in the phase of evolution develops physically out of birth and death and in the phase of involution is to spiritualize into freedom and love. The latter, however, requires sacrificing the egoism that was necessary for the development of specialness and the sense of freedom.

This fundamental law of micro-macrocosmic development is referred to many times in the complete works. It is expressed particularly vividly, because it is presented in diagrams and meditation, in the following notes:

Handwritten entry in a notebook from 1903 (archive number 427)

Stepping, you move through the power of thought on the floods of specialness and follow seven guiding forces under the truth: desire pulls you down, the guiding forces placing you in the power of disbelief; spirit pulls you up, raising the seven to the sounding sun.

1. In the special being, discover the law: for the law wove the first of the seven into the material.
2. In movement, discover life: for the second of the seven poured life into matter.
3. In desire, discover the person: for the person was imprinted by the third of the seven in the material.
4. In the thought, recognize yourself: for the I gave the fourth of the seven its self.
5. In your desire, discover renunciation: for through renunciation, the fifth of the seven sacrificed itself so that you may be yourself.
6. In your movement, discover blessed calm: for the sixth of the seven sacrificed blessed calm so that you may live moving as yourself.
7. In thy particularity discover thy eternal law: for as eternal law the seventh of the Seven has created thy self in particularity, and as eternal law will lead it out of particularity.

The power of regression was born in humanity when the Christ, the world spirit effecting the cosmic-human evolutionary-involutional process, historically appeared and through the great sacrifice at Golgotha became the leading spirit of the earth:

“... That man can develop back again to an awareness of his spiritual relationship [to the cosmos] is due to the Mystery of Golgotha. But that which one owes to the Mystery of Golgotha must be sought out of one's own free inner motivation. Christianity presupposes freedom.” (Dornach, February 11, 1920)

Now that this retrogression of consciousness has set in from our age, it is necessary that the Christian element of freedom should also be incorporated into the nature of the cult, into sacramentalism. This means that, increasingly, it is no longer the case that one person must make the sacrifice for all others, but that each person must experience, together with all others, becoming equal to the Christ, who descended to earth as a being of the sun (Dornach, December 23, 1922). For spiritual science, freedom and individualism in religion and in sacramentalism do not mean that every person should have their own religion. This would only lead to the complete fragmentation of humanity into separate individuals but that through the assimilation of spiritual-scientific knowledge, a time will come, “however far off it may be,” in which humanity will be increasingly seized by the realization of the inner world of truth. And through this, “in spite of all individuality, in spite of everyone finding the truth individually within themselves, there will be agreement”; while maintaining complete freedom and individuality, people will then join together in free connections (Berlin, June 1, 1908).

In this sense, it was repeatedly pointed out that what had previously been performed only on the church altar must take hold of the whole world, that all human activities should become an expression of the supersensible. Especially since the First World War, it has been emphasized more and more strongly how important it is for the whole of social life to find its way back into harmonious coexistence with the universe, since otherwise humanity is doomed to “develop more and more disharmony in social coexistence and to sow more and more war material across the world”. One will not come back to ascending cultural forces as long as one serves only human egoism, especially in science and technology, alongside a separate religion, as long as one does research and experiments at the laboratory and experimental table without the reverent awareness of the “great law of the world”. “The laboratory table must become an altar“ is a formula that one encounters again and again.¹¹

The fact that there is still a long way to go and that tolerance should therefore be exercised, both by those who have to continue to maintain the old forms and by those who should strive for the future, is clear from the following statements:

"Of course, just as it is true that a completely new era is dawning in relation to the spiritual life, it is also true that the path to the Christ, which was the right one for many centuries, will remain so for many centuries to come. Things are gradually merging. But what was right before will gradually change into something else as people mature for it.” (Karlsruhe, October 13, 1911)

"Just as the one who, because he believes that he has so deeply grasped the spirit of the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ, within himself that he can immediately, one might say, ‘dialogue’ with this Christ, must look with understanding at those who need the positive statutes of a confession, who need the Christ-servant who again and again gives them consolation with the words: Your sins are forgiven. On the other hand, those who can see that there are people who are already dealing with themselves should be tolerant. This may all be an ideal in earthly existence, but at least the anthroposophist may look up to such an ideal.” (Norrköping, July 16, 1914)

But the importance of cults was not only emphasized for the individual, but also for the development of the whole of humanity and the Earth. In lectures given at the time when the religious renewal movement “The Christian Community” was founded and in which it was said that the mysteries are contained in the cults and that they will only reveal themselves in their full significance in the future , “the mysteries of the coming age,” it was explained that a time would come when the earth would no longer be; everything that today fills the material of the natural kingdoms and human bodies will have been atomized in the universe. All processes brought about by mechanical technology will also be a thing of the past. But through the fact that, through “right” acts of worship that arise out of a “right grasp of the spiritual world,” elemental spiritual beings that have to do with the further development of the earth can be called into these declining natural and cultural processes, the earth will arise anew out of its destruction (Dornach, September 29, 1922).

Another reason for the saying that the mysteries of the future lie in the cultic, which shines deeply into the overall development of humanity and the cosmos, arises from the spiritual-scientific research result that the divine-spiritual of the cosmos will reveal a different nature in the future than it has done so far through free humanity, which has become self-responsible out of I-consciousness: “Not the same entity that was once there as Cosmos will shine through humanity. In passing through humanity, the spiritual-divine will experience a being that it did not reveal before.“ ¹² For this new mode of revelation of the cosmic spiritual being will only be able to emerge in the future, since the essence of a genuine cult is that “it is the image of what is taking place in the spiritual world” (Dornach, June 27, 1924).

The prerequisite for all this is the spiritualization of thinking. Only on this basis will it be possible to gradually sacralize all life activities. Then, out of the knowledge of spiritual realities, the old ceremonies will also change, because where there are realities, symbols are no longer needed (Karlsruhe, October 13, 1911, and Workers' Lecture Dornach, September 11, 1923).

The change of ceremonies here refers to the Christian sacraments, which, in the traditional Christian view, contain the meaning of Christianity, but whose origin is to be found in the ancient mysteries. It was only in the 16th century, with the translation of the Bible as declared to be the only authentic one by the Council of Trent in 1546, the Vulgate, that the Latin “sacramentum” replaced the Greek “mysterion”. However, the term “sacrament” has been used in ecclesiastical language since the time of the church father Tertullian in the 2nd century. With regard to the number, meaning and effect, the view was, however, fluctuating until the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Ferrara-Florence in 1439 set the number at seven (baptism, communion, penance, confirmation, marriage , ordination, extreme unction) and proclaimed as dogma that the sacraments are acts instituted by Christ, consisting of a visible element (materia) and ritual words (forma), through which the sanctifying grace is conferred.

If, on the other hand, the Protestant Church recognizes only two sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper, this, according to Rudolf Steiner's presentation in the lecture Stuttgart, October 2, 1921, is due to the fact that at the time of the Reformation there was already no sense of the inner numerical constitution of the world. For the concept of the seven sacraments originally arose from the ancient insight that the overall development of the human being is brought about by processes of evolution and involution. The seven sacraments were therefore intended to add the corresponding counter-values to the seven stages through which the human being passes in life, including the social, and in which he or she develops values that are partly evolutionary and partly involutionary. The seven stages in human life are: birth, strength (maturity), nourishment, procreation, recovery, speech, transformation. They are characterized as follows. The involution inherent in the birth forces is the dying process that begins with the birth process; it should be sanctified by the sacrament of baptism. The entire maturation process, including sexual maturation, should be sanctified by the sacrament of confirmation. The process referred to as “nourishment” refers to the embodiment of the spiritual-soul in the physical-bodily, that is to say, the right rhythm must be established between the spiritual-soul and the physical-bodily so that the soul-spiritual does not sink down into the animalistic, but also does not lose itself in a spirituality foreign to the world. The involution inherent in this process of evolution should be hallowed by the sacrament of Holy Communion. Linked with this rhythmic process of vibration between the soul-spiritual and the physical-corporal is the possibility, through the faculty of memory, of being able to swing back again and again in time. For complete development, it is necessary to remember previous experiences on earth. The involution inherent in the memory capacity evolving from the human being should be sanctified by the sacrament of penance, which includes examination of conscience, repentance and the resolution to correct the mistakes made and to accept appropriate retribution imposed by oneself or by the priest, so that the process of remembrance is Christianized and at the same time elevated to the moral level. These four processes exhaust the evolutionary processes that have taken place since the birth of man. The act of remembering already represents a strong internalization; evolution is already approaching involution. A natural involutionary process is death. The corresponding sacrament is extreme unction. Just as the physical body was stimulated by the corresponding natural processes of life, so now the soul-spiritual life is to be stimulated by the sacrament of extreme unction, which in the old knowledge of nature was seen as a process of ensoulment. “Expressed in rhythm, at death the physical body is to disappear again, while the soul-spiritual life is to take form.” This is what is called “transubstantiation”.

Since the individual life of a human being comes to an end with death, the two remaining stages and sacraments relate to something that is no longer individual in nature. On the one hand, there is the interrelationship between the human being and the heavenly-spiritual, which unconsciously exists in every human being. If this were not the case, one could never find one's way back. But there is an involutionary process hidden deep within the human being, “even more hidden than that which takes place within the human being when he passes through death with his organism,” a process that does not come to consciousness at all in the course of the individual's life. The evolutionary process corresponding to this involutionary process would have been seen in the sacrament of priestly ordination, which corresponds to what is called “speech”.

The seventh, he said, was the image of the spiritual and mental in the physical and bodily, as expressed in man and woman: “One should say that a certain boundary marks the descent into earthly life. Woman does not reach this boundary completely, but man crosses it. This is actually the physical-bodily contrast.” Because both carry a certain imperfection within them, there is a natural state of tension between them. ‘If the sacramental evolutionary value is sought, we have it in the sacrament of marriage.’

This fundamental idea of Christian esotericism in relation to sacramentalism – that man enters life as an imperfect being, develops partly evolutive and partly involutive values, and that in order to make him a fully developing being, the countervalues are to be added to them in a sacramental way – has no longer been understood since one began – “of course, again rightly” – to discuss the sacramental. Today, however, we urgently need to arrive at involutional values.

Spiritual thinking as spiritual communion, as the beginning of a cosmic cult appropriate for humanity in the present day.

That all that is our relationship to the world first recognizes itself as cosmic cultus in the human being is the first beginning of what must happen if anthroposophy is to fulfill its mission in the world.¹³

When Rudolf Steiner speaks of the spiritualization of the forms of the sacraments, this is in turn conditioned by the law of development in that the sacrament of communion contains the involutionary counterpart to the incorporation of the soul and spirit into the physical body. Since the last stage of the process of incarnation was the binding of thinking to the physical brain, the reverse development, the re-spiritualization, must also begin with this physical thinking, this intellectuality.

Already in his first book publication, in the writing “Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung” (1886), he started at this point by explained how pure, that is, unadulterated thinking unites with world spirituality. This is also referred to a year later with the sacramental term “communion”, when it is stated:

"He who grants thought its ability to perceive beyond the sense perception must also, of necessity, grant it objects that lie beyond mere sensory reality. But the objects of thought are those. By seizing the idea, thought fuses with the source of the world's existence; that which operates externally enters into the mind of man; he becomes one with objective reality at its highest potency. The realization of the idea in reality is man's true communion. Thinking has the same significance for ideas as the eye has for light and the ear for sound. It is an organ of perception.“ ¹⁴

Since the content of anthroposophy is nothing other than what can be researched in this way from the world of ideal, spiritual reality and what is, by its very nature, of a moral and religious character, it goes without saying that even in its early days was proclaimed that through their teachings it should be effected to sanctify and sacralize all of life, even into its most mundane activities, and that therein even lies one of the deeper reasons for their appearance (Berlin, July 8, 1904). It also becomes clear why it is said in the lectures on 'The Spiritual Communion of Humanity', which are so important for the context under consideration here, that the spiritual communion to be experienced in spiritual thinking is the 'first beginning' of what must happen if anthroposophy is to fulfil 'its mission in the world' (Dornach, December 31, 1922).

How this can become a reality through the spiritual communion performed in the symbol of the Lord's Supper is characterized in the lecture Kassel, 7 July 1909: Humanity is only at the beginning of Christian development. Its future lies in the fact that the earth is recognized as the body of Christ. For through the Mystery of Golgotha, a new center of light was created in the Earth; it was filled with new life down to its atoms. That is why Christ, at the Last Supper, when He broke the bread that comes from the grain of the Earth, could say, “This is my body,” and by giving the juice of the vine, which comes from the sap of plants, He could say, “This is my blood!” The literal translation continues: “Because he has become the soul of the earth, he was able to say to that which is solid: This is my flesh - and to the sap: This is my blood! Just as you say of your flesh: This is my flesh - and of your blood: This is my blood! And those people who are able to grasp the true meaning of these words of Christ, they visualize and attract the body and blood of Christ in the bread and wine, and the Christ-Spirit within them. And they unite with the Christ-Spirit. Thus the symbol of the Lord's Supper becomes a reality.

However, it continues: “Without the thought of the Christ in the human heart, no power of attraction can be developed to the Christ-Spirit at the Lord's Supper. But through this form of thought such attraction is developed. And so for all those who need the outer symbol to perform a spiritual act, namely the union with Christ, Holy Communion will be the way, the way to the point where their inner strength is so strong, where they are so filled with Christ that they can unite with Christ without the outer physical mediation. The preliminary school for mystical union with Christ is the sacrament – the preliminary school. We must understand these things in this way. And just as everything develops from the physical to the spiritual under the Christian influence, so under the influence of Christ, those things that were there first as a bridge must first develop: the sacrament must develop from the physical to the spiritual in order to lead to real union with Christ. One can only speak of these things in the most general terms, for only when they are taken up in their full sacred dignity will they be understood in the right sense."

In the same sense, it is said in the lecture Karlsruhe, October 13, 1911, that when man, through becoming acquainted with the knowledge of the higher worlds, through concentration and meditation exercises in scinem, is able to penetrate completely with the element of spirit, the meditative thoughts living in him 'will be exactly the same, only from within, as the sign of the Lord's Supper - the consecrated bread - was from without'. In his memoir, 'My Life-long Encounter with Rudolf Steiner', Friedrich Rittelmeyer reports that when he asked, 'Is it not also possible to receive the body and blood of Christ without bread and wine, just in meditation?' he received the answer, 'That is possible. From the back of the tongue, it is the same.

In the lecture Dornach, December 31, 1922, it is indicated that spiritual knowledge can be further deepened by uniting with the world spirit, with the words that spiritual knowledge is “the beginning of a cosmic cultus appropriate for humanity today,” which “can then grow.” In other contexts, it is pointed out that this requires a certain sacrifice, through which one can go beyond the general experience of spiritual communion to truly concrete cosmic knowledge. What has to be sacrificed in this process is referred to by the technical term “sacrifice of the intellect”. This is not to be understood as renouncing thinking as such, but rather as renouncing egoism, the will of one's own mind in thinking, which consists in arbitrarily connecting thoughts. Two lectures from 1904 and two lectures from 1923 and 1924 contain explanations of this.

The two lectures from 1904 have only survived in an inadequate transcript and therefore remain unpublished to this day. Therefore, the relevant text is quoted here verbatim. The lecture of June 1, 1904 states that certain prerequisites are needed to be able to read the Akasha Chronicle, to explore cosmic evolution, one of which consists in

“that one makes one's own thoughts available to that principle, that power and those entities which, in the theosophical language, we call the Masters.”¹⁶ Ultimately, the Master must give us the necessary instructions to be able to read the Akashic Records. It is written in symbols and signs, not in words of any language that exists or has existed. As long as one only uses the power that man habitually uses when thinking – and every man, who has not expressly learned to do so, uses this power – one cannot read in the Akasha Chronicle.

If you ask yourself, “Who is thinking?” you will have to say to yourself, “I am thinking.” You connect object and predicate when you form a sentence. As long as it is you yourself who connects the individual concepts, you are not able to read in the Akasha Chronicle. You are unable to read because you connect your thoughts with your own ego. But you have to eliminate your ego. You must renounce all your own sense. You must merely present the ideas in order to have the connection of the individual ideas established by forces outside of you, by the spirit.

So to read in the Akasha Chronicle, it is necessary to renounce not thinking, but to renounce connecting the individual thoughts on your own initiative. Then the Master can come and teach you to let the spirit from outside join your thoughts into what the universal world spirit is able to show you about what has taken place in history. Then you no longer judge the facts, but the universal world spirit itself speaks to you. And you provide it with your thought material.

Now I must say something that may perhaps give rise to some prejudice. I must say what is necessary today in preparation for eliminating the ego in order to be able to read in the Akasha Chronicle. You know how it is today a thing held in contempt, what the monks in the Middle Ages cultivated. They cultivated the “sacrifice of the intellect.” The monk did not think as today's researcher thinks. The monk had a certain sacred science, sacred theology. One did not have to decide on the content. Therefore, it was said that in the Middle Ages the theologian had to use his reason to explain and defend the given revelations.¹⁷ That was, however one may judge it today, a strict schooling in the sacrifice of the intellect to a given content. Whether this is something admirable or reprehensible in modern terms is not our concern.

This sacrifice of the intellect, which the medieval monk made, led to the elimination of judgment based on the personal ego; it led him to learn how to place the intellect at the service of something higher. In the process of reincarnation, the fruits of that sacrifice come to fruition and make him a genius of insight. When higher insight comes, he can apply his abilities to the facts that can be read in the Akashic Records.” (Berlin, June 1, 1904)

In the lecture held a few weeks later, it says:

”... The further one advances on the path of knowledge, the more one must cultivate devotion; one becomes ever more and more devoted. From this devotion flows the strength for the highest realizations. He who can refrain from connecting his thoughts attains to the reading of the writing in the Akasha-Chronicle. But one thing is necessary: the personal ego must be eliminated to such an extent that it makes no claim to connecting the thoughts itself.

It is not at all easy to understand this, because man claims the right to connect the predicate with the subject. But as long as he does this, it is impossible for him to really study occult history. When he allows thoughts to arise in selflessness, but also in awareness and clarity, an event occurs which, from a certain point of view, every occultist knows, namely the event that the ideas, the thoughts, which he previously formed into sentences and insights from his personal point of view, are now formed by the spiritual world itself, so that it is not he who judges, but is judged in him. It is then the case that he has sacrificed himself so that a higher self speaks spiritually through his ideas. This is - understood occultly - what was called in the Middle Ages the “sacrifice of the intellect”. It means giving up my own opinion, my own conviction. As long as I myself associate my thoughts, and do not make my thoughts available to higher powers, which then, as it were, write on the tablet of the intellect, I cannot study occult history.” (Berlin, July 25, 1904)

In the two lectures Penmaenmawr, August 31, 1923, and Prague, April 5, 1924, the term “victim of the intellect” occurs again, in connection with the research result of a lost epic-dramatic poetry from the first four Christian centuries. This poetry was created by the mystery teachers of that time because they foresaw that in the future people would develop their intellect more and more, which would indeed bring them freedom but also take away their clairvoyance, a grave crisis must overtake them because they will no longer be able to comprehend the regions from which the actual deeper foundations of the development of the earth and of humanity and the cosmic significance of Christianity can be understood. This foresight had caused the mystery teachers great concern as to whether humanity would really be able to mature for that which came into the world through the Mystery of Golgotha. And so they clothed the teaching that the sacrifice of the intellect is needed to understand the Christ in his cosmic significance cosmic significance in a “mystery drama”.¹⁸ In this lost epic drama, In a moving way, it is said to have depicted how a young hero acquired the clairvoyance for the cosmic significance of Christianity through his willingness to make the sacrifice of the intellect. And with this poetry - it is said to have been the greatest that the New Testament produced - those mystery teachers wanted to put before humanity, like a kind of testament, the challenge to make the “Sacrificium intellectus”. For if the connection with that which has entered into humanity through the mystery of Golgotha is to be found, then this Sacrificium should basically be practiced by all who strive for spiritual life, for erudition: “Every man who is taught and wants to become wise should have a cultic attitude, an attitude of sacrifice.” (Penmaenmawr, August 31, 1923, and Prague, April 5, 1924). For “sacrifice is the law of the spiritual world” (Berlin, February 16, 1905); “Sacrifice must be, without sacrifice there is no becoming, no progress,” it says in notes from an instruction session in Basel on June 1, 1914.

Artistically formulated, the “sacrifice of the intellect” is found in the third mystery drama, “The Guardian of the Threshold”. In a moment of spiritual drama, the spiritual student Maria, supported by her spiritual teacher Benediktus, who characteristically appears in this picture, set in the spiritual realm, makes a vow before Lucifer, the representative of the egoistic forces, to always keep her love for self away from all knowledge in the future:

Never again will I
let myself be found by that bliss
Which people feel when thoughts mature.
I will prepare my heart for the service of sacrifice,
That my spirit may always think, and, thinking,
to offer the fruits of knowledge to the gods.
Then knowledge becomes my sacred duty.

From the lectures from 1904, it is clear that the sacrifice that the spiritual disciple Maria vows to make is equivalent to what is characterized there as the “sacrifice of the intellect”.

In addition to the references to the spiritualization of the sacrament of communion in spiritualized thinking, there are also references to the spiritualization of the sacrament of baptism. In contrast to spiritual communion as an individual event within the human being, this points to the spiritualization of external work. The beginnings of this could already be made today in education and teaching, if each human child is seen from the point of view that it brings the power of the Christ-spirit into the world in its own personal way.¹⁹ In another context, we find the remark: “That which was formerly performed in the mysteries as the symbolum of the sacrament of baptism should today be introduced into external events, into external deeds. Spiritualization of human work, sacralization in external action, that is the true baptism.^{20In notes from an esoteric lecture, Hamburg, November 28, 1910.}

The Forms of Worship Created for Various Communities

Cult unites the people who come together in it.²¹

The question of how ritual can build community was discussed in detail in 1923, when a fundamental reorganization of the Anthroposophical Society had become necessary due to various subsidiary movements that had emerged since the end of the First World War and the fire at the Goetheanum. The problem of “community building” had become particularly pressing at that time, on the one hand due to the youth streaming into the Society, most of whom came from the youth movement (the “Wandervogel” movement) that was struggling with the ideal of community at the time, and on the other hand due to the religious renewal movement “The Community of Christ”, which was founded in the fall of 1922, shortly before the building burnt down. This movement had formed after young theologians, mostly still students, approached Rudolf Steiner around 1920/21 with the question of whether he could advise and help them in their need for a spiritual renewal of the religious profession. His answer was that he himself had spiritual science to offer and could not in any way found a religion; however, if they, together with a group of 30 to 40 like-minded people, carried out their plans, it would mean something very great for humanity.²² For he was convinced that for those people who want to seek the path to the spiritual through religious practice, the renewal of Christian religious life is a deep necessity. And so he provided the most energetic support for this young movement, admittedly not as its founder, but, as he said, as a “private individual”. He gave lectures on the foundations of “what a future theology needs” and, above all, he gave “a valid and spiritually powerful, spiritually fulfilling cultus”, because a recovery of religious life must come about through healthy community building, which in turn is only possible through a cultus (Dornach, December 31, 1922, and March 3, 1923).

After the establishment of the “Christian Community” in the Anthroposophical Society had created a certain uncertainty regarding the relationship between the two movements, he felt compelled to address the issue of community building and worship. Starting from the question of whether the community formed by the “Christian Community” is the only one possible in the present, or whether another possibility could be found within the Anthroposophical Society, he presented the two poles of community formation made possible by worship. While the well-known pole in religious worship lies in the fact that through word and action, entities of the supersensible worlds are brought down to the physical plane, the other pole is a “reverse” cultus, which can arise when one rises up to the supersensible worlds in anthroposophical working groups through a common effort of knowledge. When a group of people come together to experience what can be revealed from the supersensible world through anthroposophy, “then this experience in a group of people is something different from the lonely experience”. If this is experienced in the right spirit, it means a process of awakening in the other person's soul and a rising to spiritual community: “If this consciousness is present and such groups arise in the Anthroposophical Society, then in this, if I may may say, at the other pole of the cultus, there is something community-building in the most eminent sense present” and from this, this ‘specifically anthroposophical community-building’ could arise (Dornach, March 3, 1923).

This form of cultic experience, which is possible without external ceremony, obviously lies in the line of the cosmic cult that can be experienced through spiritual knowledge. Nevertheless, if he had been able to work for a longer period of time, Rudolf Steiner would also have created a cult that could be performed externally, so to speak, as an effective aid on the difficult path to the cosmic cult to be sought in the purely spiritual. For the experience of cosmic cult as a spiritual-mystical union of the human spirit with world spirituality should always be striven for, but, at least today, it can certainly only rarely be truly experienced. Rudolf Steiner once hinted at this when he said: “I recall that a great mystic of the Alexandrian school confessed in his old age that he had only experienced that great moment a few times in his life, when the soul feels ripe to immerse itself so that the spirit of the infinite awakens and that mystical moment occurs when the God in the breast is experienced by the human being himself. These are moments at midday, when the sun of life is at its highest, when something like this can be experienced, and for those who always want to be ready with their abstract ideas, who say: once you have the right thoughts, they must lead you to the highest - for them such midday hours of life, which must be seen as a grace of earthly life, are not time when they would willingly travel. ²⁴ For such abstract minds, the moment must always be there to solve the riddles of the world. (Heidelberg, January 21, 1909).

That Rudolf Steiner considered the possibility of creating a new form of anthroposophical worship in 1923, the year of the reorganization of the Anthroposophical Society, is clear from two of his statements in the spring of 1923. One of these was made in the context of describing the “reverse” cult as a specifically anthroposophical form of community building. In this context, he added the following remark to the statement that many people come to the Anthroposophical Society and not only seek anthroposophical knowledge in abstracto, but also, out of the urge of our consciousness soul age, corresponding community formations: “One could now say: the Anthroposophical Society could also cultivate a cult. Of course it could; but that belongs to a different sphere now” (Dornach, March 3, 1923). The other statement was the answer to a question posed in a personal conversation about a cult for the anthroposophical movement. The questioner, Rene Maikowski, recorded this conversation as follows and made it available for reproduction:

However, this new form of the anthroposophical cult of knowledge was never realized. After Steiner's death, Marie Steiner tried to create a kind of substitute by giving the celebrations held at the Goetheanum, especially the annual festivals, an artistic-cultic character.

In retrospect, it is clear that the needs of various walks of life, as expressed to Rudolf Steiner, have given rise to a wealth of ritual texts.

The first to be written were the texts for the rituals of the interreligious cult of knowledge, as it had been practised within the Esoteric School from 1906 until the outbreak of the First World War in the summer of 1914.

Shortly before or immediately after the end of the war (end of 1918), he had been asked to redesign church rituals. This request came from a Swiss anthroposophical friend, Hugo Schuster, who had been so deeply moved by Rudolf Steiner's descriptions of Christ that it had led him to become a priest. And after he had been ordained within the Old Catholic Church in the summer of 1918 – in which the rituals were already being read in German – he received a ritual for burials and, in the spring of 1919, a new translation of the “Mass”.²⁵

Other friends of anthroposophy who were or had been priests also received ritual texts upon request. Pastor Wilhelm Ruhtenberg, who had become a teacher at the Free Waldorf School in Stuttgart, founded in 1919, received a baptismal and a marriage ritual in 1921. The following account of how this came about was handed down:

"As early as 1921, Pastor Ruhtenberg was often asked by anthroposophical friends to marry them and baptize their children. He then asked Rudolf Steiner for a baptismal ritual. After he had received it, he no longer felt that the black robe with the white bib was appropriate and asked for a new robe. Rudolf Steiner drew what he wanted and indicated the colors. According to Ruhtenberg's report, the marriage ritual was as follows: “Once a bridegroom came to me and said that Dr. Steiner, whom he had asked to perform the wedding, had sent him to me. I didn't want to let the man go away empty-handed, so I married him. But after that I went to Dr. Steiner and said to him: “Doctor, if you send me someone to marry, then please give me a ritual for it.” A few weeks later, as I was sitting with my class in the eurythmy lesson, the door opened; Dr. Steiner came up to me, handed me some sheets of paper and said: “Here is the marriage ritual for you.” I sat down immediately to immerse myself in the ritual with burning curiosity. After the lesson, in the office, I asked about the garment for this act. I still had the sketch of the baptismal garment with me, and Dr. Steiner wrote the colors for the marriage ceremony next to it; the shape of the garment remained the same.” ²⁶

Before that, another teacher, Johannes Geyer, who had also been a pastor, had received a baptismal ritual for the baptism of a child for whom he had been asked by an anthroposophical friend.

Rituals were also designed for the free Christian religious education at the Waldorf School after Rudolf Steiner was asked whether a religious celebration could be arranged for the students of the free religious education on Sundays. The answer was that this would have to be a cult. So the first ritual, the “Sunday Act,” was created before New Year's Day 1920. In response to further questions, he developed the three other rituals: the “Christmas Ritual” during the Christmas season of 1920; the “Youth Ritual” in 1921, standing for church confirmation; and the “Sacrifice Ritual” in spring 1923 for the two upper classes, standing for the sacrifice of the Mass.

The “sacrifice ceremony” came about after Rudolf Steiner was told in a meeting with the religion teachers on December 9, 1922 that a student in the upper classes had asked if they could receive a Sunday act that would take them further than the youth celebration. He had taken this suggestion particularly thoughtfully and described it as having far-reaching significance; he wanted to consider it further. He did not want to include a mass in the activities associated with free religious education, but “something similar to a mass” could be done. A few months later, in March 1923, the text of the ceremony was handed over and on Palm Sunday, March 25, 1923, the “sacrificial ceremony” could be held for the first time for the teachers and the students of the eleventh grade.²⁷

However, he never returned to the request expressed at the teachers' conference on November 16, 1921 for a special Sunday event just for the teachers.

When the work of the “Christian Community”, founded in the fall of 1922, raised the question of whether free religious education and the “acts” were still justified, Rudolf Steiner spoke unequivocally to the effect that both types of religious education, the free Christian and the “Christian Community”, had their own character, their own goals and full justification for the future. If some parents wished their children to participate in both types of instruction, he also allowed this, provided it did not become a health burden. (At that time, religious education for the Christian Community was not taught in schools, but in their own rooms). The unchanging basic attitude of the greatest possible tolerance in religious matters is also evident from the way he characterized the difference in the objectives of the two types of religious education: “The inner meaning of our youth celebration is that the human being is placed in humanity in a very general way, not in a particular religious community; but the ‘Christengemeinschaft’ places him in a particular religious community.” But - and he emphasized this several times - “there can't really be a discrepancy between the two in terms of content”.²⁸ And when the “Christian Community”, to which the “Youth Celebration” ritual had also been made available for their area of responsibility (confirmation), asked him whether this ritual might not require some changes for their sacramental context he developed in a “spirited” way that it was precisely “instructive” to know that the same ritual was used “as the expression of different life contexts”.²⁹

He expressed similar views regarding the “sacrifice ceremony”. Maria Lehrs-Röschl reports, as quoted above, how, after the first performance of this act, teacher colleagues requested that the ceremony be repeated for the teachers alone. Since the people performing the act were inclined to the opinion that the act should only take place for students with the participation of teachers and parents, she was asked to ask Rudolf Steiner about it: “I asked him in a way that already showed that I thought it was unacceptable to consider the sacrifice ceremony differently than for students. But Rudolf Steiner looked at me with wide-open eyes (I knew this gesture as his expression of surprised, slightly disapproving astonishment) and said: “Why not? This act can be performed anywhere there are people who desire it!”

For the purposes of the “Christian Community”, the missing rituals were gradually created, in addition to the completely redesigned “Human Consecration” Mass and the rituals handed over to it that had been created earlier. The last ritual to be created was that for the appointment of the Chief Executive. It was created shortly before Rudolf Steiner's death.

The abundance of rituals that came into being in this way is all the more astonishing given that Rudolf Steiner himself once said that it is difficult to design a ritual: “You can see from the fact that for a long time everything ritual-like has been limited to taking over the traditional that it is difficult to design a ritual. ... All cultic forms that exist today are actually very old, only slightly transformed in one way or another.” (Stuttgart, June 14, 1921).

It follows that anyone who undertakes to shape cults, if they are to become a true reflection of processes in the spiritual world, must have a sovereign relationship with the spiritual world. However, they must also have artistic creativity at their disposal. For cult forms as reflections of spiritual processes are by no means to be equated with photographs, but are independent creations based on physical means. A supplementary explanation for this seems to be given in the following statement: “As man rises to the next level of existence, images arise for him, but we no longer apply them in the same way as our thoughts, so that we ask: how do these images correspond to reality? but things show themselves in images consisting of colors and shapes; and through imagination, man himself must unravel the entities that show themselves to him in such symbolic form.” (Berlin, October 26, 1908). This is illustrated in concrete terms by the example of the cult of the dead, and the comment concludes: “It could be even more complicated, but in its simplicity, as it is now, what is to be conquered through it can already be conquered for humanity.” (Dornach, June 27, 1924). The term “conquer” again suggests how difficult it must be to shape ritual.

He once justified simplicity – a striking feature of all his rituals – by saying that a complicated cult would not satisfy people today and that it would therefore have to be made “extremely simple” (Stuttgart, June 14, 1921). But it is precisely this simplicity that in turn testifies to a strong artistic ability to create. Now art and cultus are also closely related in their origin, since they both originated in the same spiritual region: “With the evolution of humanity, the rite, a living image of the spiritual world, develops into the spheres of artistic production. For art likewise emerges from the astral world - and the rite becomes beauty.” (Paris, June 6, 1906). An incident related by Emil Bock is of interest in this context: “When I received the Children's Burial Ritual from him in the spring of 1923, he himself beamed with delight at this special kind of creativity, which was at the same time the highest art of receiving. On that day, during a conference, he approached me twice with the words, “Isn't the text beautiful!” ²⁹

Another characteristic arises from the esoteric principle of continuity, one of his most important leitmotifs:

“The future rests on the past / the past endures the future / to the vigorous presence”.³⁰

Wherever possible, he linked the newly explored to the traditional old for the sake of the continuous progress of development. This was also the case with his ritual designs. The necessity of taking into account the stream of the past is formulated as follows: “In order to maintain the continuity of human development, it is still necessary today to take up ritual and symbolism, as it were” (Dornach, December 20, 1918). In this, something is something is preserved that can and will be resurrected once we have found the way to bring the power that emanates from the Mystery of Golgotha into all human activity (Dornach, September 29, 1922). And the words point to the future trend that is only now beginning to reveal itself in the present: “In our time it is only possible to arrive at symbols if one delves lovingly into the secrets of the world; and only out of anthroposophy can a cult or a symbolism arise today.” (Stuttgart, June 14, 1921). In the same sense, it is said in a lecture on various cults that today, in a cult, what can be perceived through modern spiritual scientific schooling in the laws of world spirituality must be brought in, and that one can “at most stand at the beginning again” with the construction of such a cult (Dornach, September 11, 1923, lecture for the workers on the Goetheanumbau).

The connection between elements of the past and the future in the formation of the “Human Consecration Ritual” for the “Christian Community” was once pointed out as follows: “This cult takes full account of the historical development of humanity, and therefore carries in many its details and also in much of what occurs in its totality, a continuation of the historical; but it also bears everywhere the impact of that which can only now reveal itself to the supersensible consciousness from the spiritual world. (Dornach, March 3, 1923).³² He expressed himself similarly regarding the translation of the mass text for Pastor Schuster, who had had asked him to “bring some of the viable Catholic rituals not in the strange translation in which one often enjoys it today, but to bring it into a form that was actually originally in it”; and then, although it was only a translation, it actually became “something new” from it. In the same context, he also said of the funeral ritual: “Of course one had to tie in with the usual funeral rituals. But by not translating the usual ritual lexicographically, but rather correctly, something different emerged.” (Stuttgart, June 14, 1921)

The following saying also points to a characteristic of rituals: “Only one cult at a time can be legitimately brought down from the spiritual world.” ³³ The question of how the various cult forms correspond to this one possible cult can be answered to the effect that the cults given for different walks of life – the cult of knowledge of the esoteric school, acts for the free religious education of the Waldorf school, ecclesiastical cult for the “Christian Community” – must be essentially the same in the depths with this “one” cult for the various walks of life. This seems to be confirmed by another statement handed down by Emil Bock, according to which the “sacrifice ceremony” was an attempt to give the “Act of Consecration of Man” of the “Christian Community” something corresponding to it, insofar as it could be performed by lay people, that is, by those not ordained as priests. Maria Lehrs-Röschl comments on this: “What arose again and again in the development of Christianity as a longing and striving for lay priesthood - albeit also repeatedly persecuted and ultimately made to disappear - has here [with the sacrifice celebration] experienced a new germination through Rudolf Steiner.” From all this it can be seen that for Rudolf Steiner there was no contradiction between esoteric cult of knowledge, free religious cult and church cult. On the one hand, because, as everywhere, the freedom of the individual was his highest commandment in religious matters and only that which makes “absolute religious freedom” possible (Zurich, October 9, 1918) is considered true Christianity. On the other hand, because only by extending the cultic into all branches of life can the path to the high ideal of sacralizing the whole of life be followed. The necessary prerequisite for this, however, is that spiritual thoughts and feelings “equally permeate and spiritualize the inner being with just as much consecration as in the best sense of inner Christian development, the sacrament spiritualizes and Christifies the human soul.” If this becomes possible, and according to Rudolf Steiner it will become possible, then we will have advanced another step in our development and “real proof will be provided” that Christianity is greater than its outer form (Karlsruhe, October 13, 1911).

• 1. See “Anthroposophical ic Leading Thoughts», GA 26
• 2. Ilkley, August 5, 1923
• 3. “The world of ideas is the source and principle of all being,” beginning of “Credo. The Individual and the Universe», printed in «Words of Truth», CW 40.
• 4. Berlin, 5 March 1922
• 5. Dornach, September 26, 1920
• 6. Autoreferat der Ansprache vom 26. September 1920 zur Eröffnung des ersten Hochschulkurses am Goetheanum, geschrieben für die «Waldorf-Nachrichten», IH. Vol. March 1921.
• 7. In a draft for an article about the burnt-down Goetheanum.
• 8. This was already one of the goals of the Theosophical Society. (Point 2 of the three principles reads: “to lead man to a higher knowledge by research into the kernel of truth of religions, sciences and world-views of all times and peoples.”)
• 9. Right from the start, the statutes of the Theosophical and then also of the Anthroposophical Society state that membership is not tied to a religious confession.
• 9. Cologne, December 27, 1907
• 10. Dornach, November 27, 1916
• 11. Heidenheim, April 29, 1918. See also ”The Spiritual Leadership of the Human Being and Mankind” (1911) GA 15; Dornach, November 27, 1916; Zurich, October 9, 1918; Dornach, December 30, 1922.
• 12. See ‘Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts’ (essay ”The Future of Humanity and the Activity of Michael), GA 26.
• 13. Dornach, December 31, 1922
• 14. See ‘Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Schriften’, edited and commented by Rudolf Steiner, preface to volume II, S.IV (1887), GA 1.
• 16. About the Masters, see the volume ” History and the Content of the First Section of the Esoteric School 1904 to 1914», GA 264.
• 17. On the two types of truth - the truths of knowledge and the truths of revelation - in modern spiritual science, see the lecture Liestal, October 16, 1 916 in “Philosophy and Anthroposophy”, GA 35, as well as the study by Hans Erhard Lauer “Erkenntnis und Offenbarung in der Anthroposophie”, Basel 1958.
• 18. The term “mystery drama” was noted by Rudolf Steiner in his notebook for the lecture Prague, April 5, 1924. Notebook archive number 336.
• 19. Dornach, November 27, 1916.
• 21. Dornach, 3 March 1923.
• 22. Emil Bock in «Wir erlebten Rudolf Steiner. Erinnerungen seiner Schüler», herausgegeben von M.]. Krück von Porturzyn, 1. Auflage Stuttgart 1956.
• 24. Refers to a saying of the will-o'-the-wisps in Goethe's “Fairytale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily,” which was the subject of this lecture.
• 25. Schuster, Hugo (1876-1925)
  Swiss. As a young merchant in St. Gallen in 1903/04, he took an active part in the development of anthroposophical work in Switzerland, e.g. in the founding of branches in St. Gallen, Bern and Basel. He felt drawn to the priesthood by Rudolf Steiner's descriptions of Christ. He was ordained as a priest of the Old Catholic Church in 1918 and took up his first post in Basel. At the beginning of 1919, he received the burial ritual from Rudolf Steiner. Although Rudolf Steiner had often spoken words of remembrance at the funerals of members of the Anthroposophical Society, he had never performed a ritual, because, as Marie Steiner once put it, he wanted to practice the profession of priest no more than he wanted to practice that of a doctor. But when a member of the Society took on the role of a priest, a collaboration arose. On the occasion of such a death, Pastor Schuster performed the funeral ritual given by Rudolf Steiner for the first time on January 14, 1919 in Arlesheim, and Rudolf Steiner spoke the words of remembrance afterwards. From a handwritten telegram transcript of Rudolf Steiner in the archive of the Rudolf Steiner estate administration, it can be seen that when a member died in May 1920, he asked Pastor Schuster himself if he could perform the funeral ceremony. There is also evidence of such a jointly conducted ceremony in October 1920. According to a letter written by Marie Steiner, Rudolf Steiner spoke at the funerals and cremations of members “when the relatives asked him to. In the beginning, there were only a few isolated cases. Since they gradually became more numerous and the cult was given to the priests who had turned to him (the Christian Community), he wished the matter to be handled in this way, since he did not want to practice the profession of a priest any more than he did that of a doctor.” Since Schuster had to give up his job as a result of illness as early as 1921, the funeral ritual passed to the Christian Community. Rudolf Steiner had conferred the ritual of the Mass upon him in 1919. On April 20, 1919, immediately before leaving for Stuttgart, where the next day a meeting of the signatories of the Appeal to the German People and the Cultural World marked the beginning of the people's movement for a threefold social organism, Rudolf Steiner sent Schuster the first parts - the gospel and offertory of the mass. The accompanying letter reads: “Dornach, April 20, 1919. My dear Reverend Schuster! Please find enclosed everything from the Mass that is ready to be handed over. But I also want to take the matter with me on the journey, and it is my opinion that now that my book (“The Key Points of the Social Question...”) is finished, everything will soon be in your hands. Please do not be angry that you are receiving so little for the time being; the matter is progressing. Sincerely, Rudolf Steiner.” The other parts followed a little later. The exact date is not known.
• 26. From the biographical sketch “Wilhelm Ruhtenberg” in “Der Lehrerkreis um Rudolf Steiner in der ersten Waldorfschule”, Stuttgart 1977, p. 210f.
• 27. Maria Lehrs-Röschl in “On religious education. Rudolf Steiner's words for Waldorf teachers, Stuttgart 1985.
• 28. See “Conferences with the teachers of the Free Waldorf School in Stuttgart 1919 to 1924”, Volume 1 (Introduction by Erich Gabert), GA 300, 5. 41.
• 29. In response to the question that was asked again later, he then made the desired changes. Emil Bock handed them down to the priests of the “Christian Community.
• 29. Emil Bock in “We experienced Rudolf Steiner. Memories of his students”, edited by M.J.Krück von Porturzyn, 1st edition Stuttgart 1956.
• 30. From “Twelve Moods” in “Truth Sayings”, GA 40.
• 32. This reference to historical development obviously refers to the four parts of the Christian mass sacrifice - gospel, sacrifice, consecration, communion - which “represent the path of the initiate from the old pagan mysteries” (Dornach, January 11, 1919; Munich, November 4, 1906).
• 33. Carl Unger, “On the Question of the Relationship between the Christian Community and the Anthroposophical Society” in “Schriften II”, Stuttgart 1964.

Yesterday I told you the story of Gerhard the Good—which most of you probably know—so that today we can illustrate various points in our endeavour to increase our understanding of the matters we are discussing. But before I interpret parts of this story for you, in so far as this is necessary, we must also recall a number of other things we have touched on at various times during these lectures. From what has been said over the past few weeks you will have seen that the painful events of today are connected with impulses living in the more recent karma of mankind, namely, the karma of the whole fifth post-Atlantean period. For those who want to go more deeply into these matters it is necessary to link external events with what is happening more inwardly, which can only be understood against the background of human evolution as seen by spiritual science.

To begin with, take at face value certain facts which I have pointed out a number of times. I have frequently said that, in the middle of the nineteenth century, an endeavour was made to draw the attention of modern mankind to the fact that there exist in the universe not only those forces and powers recognized by natural science but also others of a spiritual kind. The endeavour was to show that just as we take in with our eyes—or, indeed, with all our senses—what is visible around us, so are there also spiritual impulses around us, which people who know about such things can bring to bear on social life—impulses which cannot be seen with the eye but are known to a more spiritual science.

We know what path this more spiritual science took, so I need not go over it again. Around the middle of the nineteenth century, then, it was the concern of a certain centre to draw people's attention to the existence, as it were, of a spiritual environment. This had been forgotten during the age of materialism. You also know that such things have to be tackled with caution because a certain degree of maturity is necessary in people who take in such knowledge. Of course, not all those can be mature who come across, or are affected by, this knowledge in accordance with the laws of our time, which underlie public life. But part of what must be done at such a time can be the requirement to test whether the knowledge may yet be revealed publicly.

Now in the middle of the nineteenth century two paths were possible. One, even then, would have been what we could describe by mentioning our anthroposophical spiritual science, namely, to make comprehensible to human thinking what spiritual knowledge reveals about our spiritual environment. It is a fact that this could have been attempted at that time, in the middle of the nineteenth century, but this path was not chosen. The reason was, in part, that those who possessed this esoteric knowledge were prejudiced, because of traditions that have come down from ancient times, against making such things public. They felt that certain knowledge guarded by the secret brotherhoods—for it was still guarded at that time—should be kept within the circle of these brotherhoods. We have since seen that, so long as matters are conducted in the proper way, it is perfectly acceptable today to reveal certain things. Of course it is unavoidable that some malicious opponents should appear, and always will appear, in circles in which such knowledge is made known—people who are adherents for a time because it suits their passions and their egoism, but who then become opponents under all sorts of guises and make trouble. Also when spiritual knowledge is made known in a community, this can easily lead to arguments, quarrelling and disputes, of which, however, not too much notice can be taken, since otherwise no spiritual knowledge would ever be made known. But, apart from these things, no harm is done if the matter is handled in the right way.

But at that time this was not believed. So ancient prejudice won the day and it was agreed to take another path. But, as I have often said, this failed. It was decided to use the path of mediumistic revelation to make people recognize the spiritual world in the same way as they recognize the physical world. Suitable individuals were trained to be mediums. What they then revealed through their lowered consciousness was supposed to make people recognize the existence of certain spiritual impulses in their environment. This was a materialistic way of revealing the spiritual world to people. It corresponded to some extent to the conditions of the fifth post-Atlantean period, in so far as this is materialistic in character.

This way of handling things began, as you know, in America in the middle of the nineteenth century. But it soon became obvious that the whole thing was a mistake. It had been expected that the mediums would reveal the existence of certain elemental and nature spirits in the environment. Instead, they all started to refer to revelations from the kingdom of the dead. So the goal which had been set was not reached. I have often explained that the living can only reach the dead with an attitude which does not depend on lowering the consciousness. You all know these things. At that time this was also known and that is why, when the mediums began to speak of revelations of the dead, it was realized that the whole thing was a mistake. This had not been expected. It had been hoped that the mediums would reveal how the nature spirits work, how one human being affects another, what forces are at play in the social organism, and so on. It had been hoped that people would start to recognize what forces might be used by those who understand such things, so that people would no longer be dependent solely on one another in the way they are when only their sense perceptions come into play, but would be able to work through the total human personality. This was one thing that went wrong.

The other was that, in keeping with man's materialistic inclinations, it soon became obvious what would have begun to happen if the mediumistic movement had spread in the way it threatened to do. Use would have been made of the mediums to accomplish aims which ought only to be accomplished under the influence of natural, sense-bound reasoning. For some individuals it would have been highly desirable to employ a medium who could impart the means of discovering the knowledge which such people covet. I have told you how many letters I get from people who write: I have a lottery ticket; or, I want to buy a lottery ticket; I need the money for an entirely selfless purpose; could you not tell me which number will be drawn? Obviously, if mediums had been fully trained in the techniques of mediumship, the resulting mischief with this kind of thing would have been infinite, quite apart from everything else. People would have started to go to mediums to find a suitable bride or bridegroom, and so on.

Thus it came about that, in the very quarter that had launched the movement in order to test whether people were ready to take in spiritual knowledge, efforts were now made to suppress the whole affair. What had been feared in bygone times, when the abilities of the fourth post-Atlantean period still worked in people, had indeed now come to pass. In those days witches were burnt, simply because those people called witches were really no more than mediums, and because their connections with the spiritual world—though of a materialistic nature—might cause knowledge to be revealed which would have been very awkward for certain people. Thus, for instance it might have been very awkward for certain brotherhoods if, before being burnt at the stake, a witch had revealed what lay behind them. For it is true that when consciousness is lowered there can be a kind of telephone connection with the spiritual world, and that by this route all sorts of secrets can come out. Those who burnt the witches did so for a very good reason: It could have been very awkward for them if the witches had revealed anything to the world, whether in a good or a bad sense, but especially in a bad sense.

So the attempt to test the cultural maturity of mankind by means of mediums had gone awry. This was realized even by those who, led astray by the old rules of silence and by the materialistic tendencies of the nineteenth century, had set this attempt in train. You know, of course, that the activities of mediums have not been entirely curtailed, and that they still exist, even today. But the art of training mediums to a level at which their revelations could become significant has, so to speak, been withdrawn. By this withdrawal the capabilities of mediums have been made more or less harmless. In recent decades, as you know, the pronouncements of mediums have come to amount to not much more than sentimental twaddle. The only surprising thing is that people set so much store by them. But the door to the spiritual world had been opened to some degree and, moreover, this had been done in a manner which was untimely and a mistake.

In this period came the birth and work of Blavatsky. You might think that the birth of a person is insignificant, but this would be a judgement based on maya. Now the important thing is that this whole undertaking had to be discussed among the brotherhoods, so that much was said and brought into the open within the brotherhoods. But the nineteenth century was no longer like earlier centuries in which many methods had existed for keeping secret those things which had to be kept secret. Thus it happened that, at a certain moment, a member of one of the secret brotherhoods, who intended to make use in a one-sided way of what he learnt within these brotherhoods, approached Blavatsky. Apart from her other capacities Blavatsky was an extremely gifted medium, and this person induced her to act as a connecting link for machinations which were no longer as honest as the earlier ones. The first, as we have seen, were honest but mistaken. Up to this point the attempt to test people's receptivity had been perfectly honest, though mistaken. Now, however, came the treachery of a member of an American secret brotherhood. His purpose was to make one-sided use of what he knew, with the help of someone with psychic gifts, such as Blavatsky. Let us first look at what actually took place. When Blavatsky heard what the member of the brotherhood had to say, she, of course, reacted inwardly to his words because she was psychic. She understood a great deal more about the matter than the one who was giving her the information. The ancient knowledge formulated in the traditional way lit up in her soul a significant understanding which she could hardly have achieved solely with her own resources. Inner experiences were stimulated in her soul by the ancient formulations which stemmed from the days of atavistic clairvoyance and which were preserved in the secret brotherhoods, often without much understanding for their meaning on the part of the members. These inner experiences led in her to the birth of a large body of knowledge. She knew, of course, that this knowledge must be significant for the present evolution of mankind, and also that by taking the appropriate path this knowledge could be utilized in a particular way.

But Blavatsky, being the person she was, could not be expected to make use of such lofty spiritual knowledge solely for the good of mankind as a whole. She hit upon the idea of pursuing certain aims which were within her understanding, having come to this point in the manner I have described. So now she demanded to be admitted to a certain occult brotherhood in Paris. Through this brotherhood she would start to work. Ordinarily she would have been accepted in the normal way, apart from the fact that it was not normal to admit a woman; but this rule would have been waived in this case because it was known that she was an important individuality. However, it would not have served her purpose to be admitted merely as an ordinary member, and so she laid down certain conditions. If these conditions had been accepted, many subsequent events would have been very different but, at the same time, this secret brotherhood would have pronounced its own death sentence—that is, it would have condemned itself to total ineffectiveness. So it refused to admit Blavatsky. She then turned to America, where she was indeed admitted to a secret brotherhood. In consequence, she of course acquired extremely significant insights into the intentions of such secret brotherhoods; not those which strive for the good of mankind as a whole, disregarding any conflicting wishes, but those whose purposes are one-sided and serve certain groups only. But it was not in Blavatsky's nature to work in the way these brotherhoods wished. So it came about that, under the influence of what was termed an attack on the Constitution of North America, she was excluded from this brotherhood.

So now she was excluded. But of course she was not a person who would be likely to take this lying down. Instead, she began to threaten the American brotherhood with the consequences of excluding her in this way, now that she knew so much. The American brotherhood now found itself sitting under the sword of Damocles, for if, as a result of having been a member, Blavatsky had told the world what she knew, this would have spelt its death sentence. The consequence was that American and European occultists joined forces in order to inflict on Blavatsky a condition known as occult imprisonment. Through certain machinations a sphere of Imaginations is called forth in a soul which brings about a dimming of what that soul previously knew, thus making it virtually ineffective. It is a procedure which honest occultists never apply, and even dishonest ones only very rarely, but it was applied on that occasion in order to save the life—that is the effectiveness, of that secret brotherhood.

For years Blavatsky existed in this occult imprisonment, until certain Indian occultists started to take an interest in her because they wanted to work against that American brotherhood. As you see, we keep coming up against occult streams which want to work one-sidedly. Thus Blavatsky entered this Indian current, with which you are familiar. The Indian brotherhood was very interested indeed in proceeding against the American brotherhood, not because they saw that they were not serving mankind as a whole, but because they in turn had their own one-sided patriotically Indian viewpoint. By means of various machinations the Indian and the American occultists reached a kind of agreement. The Americans promised not to interfere in what the Indians wanted to do with Blavatsky, and the Indians engaged to remain silent on what had gone before.

You can see just how complicated these things really are when you add to all this the fact, which I have also told you about, that a hidden individual, a mahatma behind a mask, had been instituted in place of Blavatsky's original teacher and guide. This figure stood in the service of a European power and had the task of utilizing whatever Blavatsky could do in the service of this particular European power. One way of discovering what all this is really about might be to ask what would have happened if one or other of these projects had been realized.

Time is too short to tell you everything today, but let us pick out a few aspects. We can always come back to these things again soon.

Supposing Blavatsky had succeeded in gaining admission to the occult lodge in Paris. If this had happened, she would not have come under the influence of that individual who was honoured as a mahatma in the Theosophical Society—although he was no such thing—and the life of the occult lodge in Paris would have been extinguished. A great deal behind which this same Paris lodge may be seen to stand would not have happened, or perhaps it would have happened in the service of a different, one-sided influence. Many things would have taken a different course. For there was also the intention of exterminating this Paris lodge with the help of the psychic personality of Blavatsky. If it had been exterminated, there would have been nothing behind all those people who have contributed to history, more or less like marionettes. People like Silvagni, Durante, Sergi, Cecconi, Lombroso and all his relations, and many others would have had no occult backers behind them. Many a door, many a kind of sliding door, would have remained locked.

You will understand that this is meant symbolically. In certain countries editorial offices—I mean this as a picture!—have a respectable door and a sliding door. Through the respectable door you enter the office and through the sliding door you enter some secret brotherhood or other working, as I have variously indicated over the last few days, to achieve results of the kind about which we have spoken. So the intention was to abolish something from the world which would have done away with, at least, one stream which we have seen working in our present time. Signor d'Annunzio would not have given the speech we quoted.

Perhaps another would have been given instead, pushing things in a different direction. But you see that the moment things are not fully under control, the moment people are pushed about through a dimming of their consciousness, and when occultism is being used, not for the general good of mankind—and above all, in our time, not with true knowledge—but for the purpose of achieving one-sided aims, then matters can come to look very grave indeed.

Anyway, the members of this lodge were, from the standpoint of the lodge, astute enough not to enter into a discussion of these things. Later on, certain matters were hushed up, obscured, by the fact that Blavatsky was prevented by her occult imprisonment from publicizing the impulses of that American lodge and giving them her own slant, which she would doubtless otherwise have done. Once all these things had run their course, the only one to benefit from Blavatsky was the Indian brotherhood. There is considerable significance for the present time in the fact that a certain sum of occult knowledge has entered the world one-sidedly, with an Indian colouring. This knowledge has entered the world; it now exists. But the world has remained more or less unconscious of it because of the paralysis I have described.

Those who reckon with such things always count on long stretches of time. They prepare things and leave them to develop. These are not individuals, but brotherhoods in which the successor takes over from the predecessor and carries on in a similar direction with what has been started.

On the basis of the two examples I have given you, of occult lodges, you can see that much depended on the actual impulses not being made public. I do not wish to be misunderstood and I therefore stated expressly that the first attempt I described to you was founded on a certain degree of honesty. But it is extremely difficult for people to be entirely objective as regards mankind as a whole. There is little inclination for this nowadays. People are so easily led astray by the group instinct that they are not objective as regards mankind as a whole but pay homage to one group or another, enjoying the feeling of ‘belonging.’ But this is something that is no longer really relevant to the point we have reached in human evolution. The requirement of the present moment is that we should, at least to some degree, feel ourselves to be individuals and extricate ourselves, at least inwardly, from group things, so that we belong to mankind as human individuals. Even though, at present, we are shown so grotesquely how impossible this is for some people, it is nevertheless a requirement of our time.

For example, let me refer to what I said here a few days ago. A nation as a whole is an individuality of a kind which cannot be compared with human individualities, who live here on the physical plane and then go through their development between death and a new birth. Nations are individualities of quite a different kind. As you can see from everything we find in our anthroposophical spiritual science, a folk spirit, a folk soul, is something different from the soul of an individual human being. It is nonsense to speak in a materialistic sense, as is done today, of the soul of a nation while at the back of one's mind thinking of something resembling the soul of an individual—even though one, of course, does not admit this to oneself. Thus you hear people speak of ‘the French soul’; this has been repeatedly said in recent years. It is nonsense, plain nonsense, because it is an analogy taken from the individual human soul and applied to the folk soul. You can only speak of the folk soul if you take into account the complex totality described in the lecture cycle on the different folk spirits. But to speak in any other sense about the folk soul is utter nonsense, even though many, including journalists, do so—and they may be forgiven, for they do not know what they are talking about. It is mere verbosity to speak—as has been done—for instance of the ‘Celtic soul and the Latin spirit’. Maybe such a thing is just about acceptable as an analogy, but there is no reality in. We must be clear about the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha. So often have we said that the Mystery of Golgotha was accomplished in such a way that what has been united with earth evolution ever since is there for all mankind, but that if an individual speaks of a mystical Christ within him, this is no more than idle talk. The Mystery of Golgotha is an objective reality, as you know from much that has been said here. It took place for mankind as a whole, which means for every individual human being. Christ died for all human beings, as a human being for human beings, not for any other kind of being. It is possible to speak about a Christian, about one whose attitude of mind is Christian, but it is complete nonsense to talk of a Christian nation. There is no reality in this. Christ did not die for nations, nations are not the individualities for whom He died. An individual who is close to the Being of the Mystery of Golgotha can be a Christian, but it is not possible to speak of a Christian nation. The true soul of a nation, its folk soul, belongs to planes on which the Mystery of Golgotha did not take place. So any dealings and actions between nations can never be interpreted or commented upon in a Christian sense.

I am pointing out these things simply because it is necessary that you in particular, my dear friends, should understand just how important it is today to arrive at clear-cut concepts. This can only be done by applying spiritual science, and yet mankind as a whole strives to fish in muddy waters with concepts that are utterly nonsensical and obscure. So the important thing is, above all, to arrive at clear-cut concepts, to see everything in relation to clear-cut concepts, and also to understand that in our time certain occult, spiritual impulses have been working, chiefly through human beings. This is fitting for the fifth post-Atlantean period.

Now if Blavatsky had been able to speak out at that time, certain secrets would have been revealed, secrets I have mentioned as belonging to certain secret brotherhoods and connected with the striving of a widespread network of groups. I said to you earlier that definite laws underlie the rise and evolution of peoples, of nations. These laws are usually unknown in the external, physical world. This is right and proper, for in the first place they ought to be recognized solely by those who desire to receive them with clean hands. What now underlies the terrible trials mankind is undergoing at present and will undergo in the future is the interference in a one-sided way, by certain modern brotherhoods, with the spiritual forces that pulse through human evolution in the region in which, for instance, nations, peoples, come into being. Evolution progresses in accordance with definite laws; it is regular and comes about through certain forces. But human beings interfere, in some part unconsciously, though if they are members of secret brotherhoods, then they do so consciously.

To be able to judge these things you need what yesterday I called a wider horizon; you need the acquisition of a wider horizon. I showed you the forces of which Blavatsky became the plaything, in order to point out how such a plaything can be tossed about, from West to East, from America to India. This is because forces are at work which are being managed by human beings for certain ends, by means of utilizing the passions and feelings of nationality, which have, however, in their turn first been manufactured. This is most important. It is important to develop an eye for the way in which a person who, because of the type of passions in her—in her blood—can be put in a certain position and be brought under the sway of certain influences. Equally, those who do this must know that certain things can be achieved, depending on the position in which the person is placed. Many attempts fail. But account is taken of long periods of time and of many possibilities. Above all, account is taken of how little inclination people have to pay attention to the wider—the widest, contexts.

Let us stop here and turn to yesterday's story. It tells us about the time around the tenth century, when the constitution of souls was still that of the fourth post-Atlantean period. We saw how the spiritual world intervened in the life of Emperor Otto of the Red Beard. His whole life is transformed because the spiritual world makes him aware of Gerhard the Good. From Gerhard the Good he is to learn the fear of God, true piety, and that one must not expect—for largely egoistic reasons—a blessing from heaven for one's earthly deeds. So he is told by the spiritual world to seek out Gerhard the Good. This is the one side: what plays in from the spiritual world.

Those who know that age—not as it is described by external history, but as it really was—are aware that the spiritual world did indeed play in through real visions such as that described in connection with Emperor Otto the Red, and that spiritual impulses definitely played a meaningful part. The one who wrote down this story says expressly that in his youth he had also written many other stories, as had other contemporaries of his. The man who wrote down the story of Gerhard the Good was Rudolf von Ems, an approximate contemporary of Wolfram von Eschenbach. He said he had written other stories as well but that he had destroyed them because they had been fairy tales. Yet he does not consider this story to be a fairy tale but strictly historical, even though externally it is not historical—that is it would not be included in today's history books which only take physical maya into account. In the way he tells it, it cannot be compared with external, purely physical history; and yet his telling is more true than purely physical history can be for, on the whole, that is only maya. He tells the story for the fourth post-Atlantean period.

You know, for I have repeatedly said this, that I am not taking sides in any way but simply reporting facts which are to provide a basis on which judgements may be formed. Only those who do not wish to be objective will maintain that what I shall attempt to say is not objective. Someone who does not wish to be objective cannot, of course, be expected to find objectivity in what is, in fact, objective. The fact that the spiritual world plays into human affairs is not the only important aspect of the story of Gerhard the Good. It is also significant that a leading personality receives from the spiritual world the impulse to turn to a member of the commercial world, the world of the merchant. It is indeed a historical fact that, in Central Europe, at that time the members of the ruling dynasty to which Otto the Red belonged did start to patronize the merchant classes in the towns. In Europe this was the time of the growth of commerce.

We should further take into account that at that time there were as yet no ocean routes between Orient and Occident. Trade routes were definitely still overland routes. Merchants such as Gerhard the Good who, as you know, lived in Cologne, carried their trade overland from Cologne to the Orient and back again. Any use of ships was quite insignificant. The trade routes were land routes. Shipping connections were not much more than attempts to achieve with the primitive ships of those days what was being done much more efficiently by land. So in the main the trade routes were overland, while shipping was only just beginning. That is what is characteristic of this time, for comprehensive shipping operations only came much later.

We have here a contrast arising out of the very nature of things. So long as Orient and Occident were connected by land routes, it was perfectly natural that the countries of Central Europe should take the lead. Life in these Central European countries was shaped accordingly. Much spiritual culture also travelled along these routes. It was quite different from what came later. As the centuries proceeded, the land routes were supplanted by ocean routes. As you know, England gradually took control of all the ocean connections which others had opened up. Spain, Holland and France were all conquered as far as their sea-faring capacities were concerned, so that in the end everything was held under the mighty dominance which encompassed a quarter of the earth's dry land, and gradually also all the earth's oceans.

You can see how systematic is this conquering, this almost exterminating, of other seafaring powers when you remember how I told you some time ago that in the secret brotherhoods, especially those which grew so powerful from the time of James I onwards, it was taught as an obvious truth that the Anglo-Saxon race—as they put it—will have to be given dominance over the world in the fifth post-Atlantean period. You will see how systematic the historical process has been when you consider what I have also mentioned and what was also taught: that this fifth post-Atlantean race of the English-speaking peoples will have to overcome the peoples of the Latin race.

To start with, the main thing is the interrelation between the English-speaking peoples and those whose languages are Latin in origin. Recent history cannot be understood without the realization that the important aim—which is also what is being striven for—is for world affairs to be arranged in such a way that the English-speaking peoples are favoured, while the influence of any peoples whose language is based on Latin fades out. Under certain circumstances something can be made to fade out by treating it favourably for a while, thus gaining power over it. This can then make it easy to engulf it.

In those secret brotherhoods, about which I have spoken so often, little significance is attached to Central Europe, for they are clever enough to realize that Germany, for instance, owns only one thirty-third of the earth's land surface. This is very little indeed, compared with a whole quarter of the land surface plus dominance over the high seas. So not much importance is attached to Central Europe. A great deal of importance was attached, however—especially during the period when present events were being prepared—to the overcoming of all those impulses connected with the Latin races.

It is remarkable how short-sighted the modern historical view is and how little inclination there is to go more deeply into matters which are quite characteristic of situations. I have already pointed out that what has so long been practised as a pragmatic view of history is not important, reporting as it does on one event, followed by another, and another, and yet another. What is important is to recognize the facts characterized by the many interrelationships in the events which follow one another. What matters is to point out what is characteristic about the facts, namely, what reveals the forces lying behind maya. Pragmatic history must today give way to a history of symptoms.

Those who see through things in this way will be in a position to form judgements about certain events which differ considerably from those of people who reel off the events of world history—this fable convenue—one after the other, as is done in historical science today. Consider some of the things you know well in connection with some others about which I shall tell you. First of all, a simple fact: In 1618 the Thirty Years War began because certain ideas of a reformative kind developed within the Czech Slav element. Then certain aristocrats belonging to these Slav circles took up the movement and rebelled against what might be called the Counter-Reformation, namely, the Catholicism from Spain which was favoured by the Habsburgs. The first thing usually told about the Thirty Years War is the story of the rebels going to the town hall in Prague and throwing the councillors Martinitz and Slavata and the secretary Fabrizius out of the window. Yet this is quite insignificant. The only interesting point is perhaps that the three gentlemen did not hurt themselves because they fell onto a dunghill. These are not things which can bring the Thirty Years' War to life for us or show us its real causes.

The reformative party elected Frederick, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, as counter-King of Bohemia in 1619. Then followed, as you know, the battle of the White Mountain. Up to the election of the Elector Palatine, all the events were caused by the passionate feelings of these people for a reform movement, by a rebellion against arbitrary acts of power such as the closure or destruction of Protestant churches at Braunau and Kloster Grab. There is not enough time for me to tell you the whole story. But now think: Frederick, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, is elected King. Up to this point the events are based on human passions, human enthusiasm, it is even justified to say human idealism—I am quite happy to concede this.

But why, of all people, was the Elector Palatine of the Rhine chosen as King of Bohemia? It was because he was the son-in-law of James I, who stands at the beginning of the renewal of the brotherhoods! Here, then, we may discern an important finger in the pie if we are trying to look at history symptomatically. Attempts were being made to steer events in a particular direction. They failed. But you see that there is a finger in the pie. The most significant sign of what kind of impulses were to be brought to bear in this situation is that the son-in-law of one of the most important occultists, James I, was thrown into this position.

You see, the fact is that the whole of recent history has to do with the contrast between the ancient Roman-Latin element and that element, not of the English people—for they would get on perfectly happily with the world—but that element which, as I have described sufficiently, is to be made out of the English people if they fail to put up any resistance. It is the conflict between these two elements that is at work.

Meanwhile something else is manipulated, for a great deal can be achieved in one place by bringing about events in another.

Let us look at a later date. You might pick up a history book and read the history of the Seven Years War. Of course the history of this war is read just as thoughtlessly as any other. For to understand what is really going on and investigate what forces of history are playing a part, you have to look properly at the various links between the different circumstances. You have to consider, for instance, that at that time the southern part of Central Europe, namely Austria, was linked with every aspect of the Latin element and even had a proper alliance with France, whereas the northern part of Middle Europe—not at first, but later on—was drawn to what was to be made, by certain quarters, into the English-speaking, fifth post-Atlantean race.

When you look closely at the alliances and everything else that went on at that time—those things which were not maya, of course—you discover a war that is in reality being waged about North America and India between England and France. What went on in Europe was really only a weak mirror image of this. For if you compare everything that took place on the larger scale—do extend your horizons!—then you will see that the conflict was between England and France and that North America and India were already starting to have their effect. It was a matter of which of these two powers was cleverer and more able to direct events in such a way that dominion over North America or India could be snatched away from the other. At work in this were long-term future plans and the control of important impulses. It is true: The influence snatched by England from France in North America was won on the battle fields of Silesia during the Seven Years' War!

Watch how the alliances shift when the situation becomes a little awkward and difficult; watch the alliances from this point of view!

Now, another story. It is necessary to look at these things, and once one is not misunderstood, once it is assumed that one's genuine purpose is to gain a clear picture of what is going on in the world, once one strives to be objective, it will not be taken amiss when such stories are told; instead it will be understood that our concern is for comprehension and not for taking sides. In fact, it is precisely those people who feel they are affected by a particular matter who ought to be particularly glad to learn more about it. For then they are lifted above their blindness and given sight, and nothing is better for a person than real insight into how things work in the world. So let us now take an example which can show you a different side of how things work.

Through circumstances which you can look up in a history book, the kingdoms of Hanover and England were once linked. The laws of succession in the two countries were different—we need not go into this in detail—and as a result of this, when Victoria came to the throne of England, Hanover had to become separate. Another member of the English royal house had to take the throne of Hanover. The person elected, or rather the person jostled onto the throne of Hanover was Ernst August, Duke of Cumberland, who had previously been connected with the throne of England. So this Ernst August came to the throne of Hanover at the age of sixty-six. His character was such that, after his departure to become the king of Hanover, the English newspapers said: Thank goodness he's gone; let's hope he doesn't come back! He was considered a dreadful person because of the whole way he behaved. When you look at the impression he made on his contemporaries and those who had dealings with him, a certain type of character emerges which is striking for one who understands characters of this kind. The Hanoverians could not understand him. They found him coarse. He was indeed coarse, so coarse that the poet Thomas Moore said: He surely belonged to the dynasty of Beelzebub. But you know the saying: The German lies if he is polite. So they had a certain understanding for coarseness, but they did presuppose that someone who is coarse is at least honest. Ernst August, however, was always a liar as well as being coarse, and this the Hanoverians could not understand. He had other similar traits as well.

First, Ernst August repealed the Hanoverian constitution. Then he dismissed the famous ‘seven professors’ of Göttingen University. He had them sent straight out of the country, so that it was not until they reached Witzenhausen, which lay beyond his majesty's borders, that their students were permitted to take leave of them. I need not tell you the whole story. But what is the explanation? Those who seek no further for an explanation of this extraordinary mask merely find Ernst August coarse and dishonest. He even cheated Metternich, which is saying much indeed, and so on. But there is something remarkably systematic in all this. And the systematic aspect is not changed by the fact that he lived most of his life up to the age of sixty-six in England, where he was an officer of the Dragoons.

An explanation may be found in the fact that in his whole manner he was manifesting the impulses one has when one is a member of the so-called ‘Orange Lodge’. His whole manner was an expression of the impulses of the Orange Lodge, of which he was a member.

What we must do is learn to understand history symptomatically and widen our horizons. We need to develop a sense for what is important and what really gives insight. So I told you the tale of Gerhard the Good in order to demonstrate how, through such phenomena as the Orange Lodge, and so on, what had been Central Europe was quite systematically drawn over to the West. I am not uttering any reproach, for it was a historical necessity. But one ought to know it and not apply moral judgements to such things. What is essential is to develop the will to see things, to see how human beings are manipulated, to see where there might be impulses by which people are manipulated. This is the same as striving for the sense for truth. I have often stressed that this is not something that enables one to say: But I really believed it, it was my honest and sincere opinion! No indeed. One who possesses the sense for truth is one who unremittingly strives to find the truth of the matter, one who never ceases to seek the truth and who takes responsibility for himself even when he says something untrue out of ignorance. For, objectively, it is irrelevant whether something wrong is said knowingly or unknowingly. Similarly it is irrelevant whether you hold your finger in the candle flame through ignorance or on purpose; either way you burn it.

At this point we must understand what happened at the transition from the fourth post-Atlantean period-when commerce was still just under the influence of the spiritual world, as is indicated in the story of Gerhard the Good—to the fifth period, when everything commercial was drawn over into the occult sphere which is guided by the so-called ‘Brothers of the Shadow’. These brotherhoods guard certain principles. From their point of view it would be extremely dangerous if these principles should be betrayed. That is why they were so careful to prevent Blavatsky from making them public or causing them to pass over into other hands. They were, in fact, to be passed over from the West to the East; not to India but to the East of Russia.

Someone with a sense for what lies behind maya can understand that external institutions and external measures can have differing values, differing degrees of importance in the total context. Consider an incident in recent history. I have told you so many occult, spiritual things that I have, in a way, ‘done my time’ and am now free to go on and give you some indications out of more recent history. No one should say that I am taking this time away from that devoted to occult matters; these things are also important.

So let us take an example from more recent history. In 1909 a meeting was arranged between the King of Italy and the Tsar of Russia. So far there had not been much love lost between these two representatives, but from then on it was considered a good thing to manoeuvre them into each other's company. So the meeting at Racconigi took place. It was not easy to arrange. In the description of all the measures he had to take to prevent ‘incidents of an assassinatory nature’ you can read how difficult it was for poor Giolitti, who was Prime Minister at the time.

Then there was the question of finding a suitable personage who would pay Rome's homage to the Tsar. This had to be a personage of a particular kind. Such things have to be prepared well in advance so that when the right moment arrives they can be set in train on the spot. For a really ‘juicy’ effect to be achieved, not just any personage would do for the purpose of paying Rome's homage to the Tsar—the homage of the Latin West to the self-styled Slav East. It would have to be a special personage, even one who might not easily be persuaded to undertake this task. Now ‘by chance’, as the materialists would say, but ‘not by chance’, as those who are not materialists would say, a certain Signor Nathan—what a very Italian name!—was at that time the mayor of Rome. For many reasons his attitude was rather democratic and not at all one that would make him inclined to pay homage to the Tsar, of all people. He had only taken Italian citizenship shortly before becoming mayor of Rome. Before that he had been an English citizen. The fact that he was of mixed blood should be taken into account; he was the son of a German mother and had assumed the name of Nathan because his father was the famous Italian revolutionary Mazzini. This is a fact.

So persuading him to pay homage to the Tsar made it possible to say: See how thoroughly democracy has been converted. Here was someone who was not an ordinary person but one who had been anointed with all the oils of democracy, but—also someone who had been well prepared. From that moment onwards certain things start to become embarrassing. Today it is known, for example, that from that moment onwards all the correspondence within the Triple Alliance was promptly reported to St Petersburg! Human passions also played some part in the matter, since a special role was carried out in this reporting by a lady who had found a ‘sisterly’ route between Rome and St Petersburg. Such things can obviously be ascribed to coincidence. But those who want to see beyond maya will not ascribe them to coincidence but will seek the deeper connections between them. Then, when one seeks these deeper connections, one is no longer capable of lying as much, is no longer capable of deceiving people in order to distract them from the truth, which is what matters.

For instance—I am saying this in order to describe the truth—it would obviously have been most embarrassing for the widest circles if people's attention had been drawn to the fact that the whole invasion of Belgium would not have taken place if that sentence I have already mentioned, which could have been spoken by Lord Grey—Sir Edward Grey has now become a lord—if that sentence had really been spoken. The whole invasion of Belgium would not have taken place. It would have been a non-event, it would not have happened. But instead of speaking about the real cause, in so far as this is the cause because it could have prevented the invasion, it was obviously more comfortable to waste people's time by telling them about the ‘Belgian atrocities’. Yet these, too, would not have happened if Sir Edward Grey had taken this one, brief measure. In order to hide the simple truth something different is needed, something that arouses justified human passions and moral indignation. I am not saying anything against this. Something different is needed. It is a characteristic of our time, even today when it is particularly painful, to make every effort to obscure the truth, to blind people to the truth.

This, too, had to be prepared carefully. Any gap in the calculation would have made it impossible. The whole of the periphery, which had prudently been created for this very purpose, was needed.

But these things were very carefully prepared, both politically and culturally. Every possibility was reckoned with; and this was certainly necessary, since the most unbelievable carelessness sometimes prevailed, even in places where such a thing would be least expected. Let me give you an example, an objective fact, which will allow us to study this carelessness.

At one time Bismarck had a connection with a certain Usedom in Florence and Turin. I have told you before: Modern Italy came into being by roundabout means and actually owes her existence to Germany; but this is connected with all sorts of other things. What I am saying has profound foundations, and in politics all sorts of threads interweave. Thus at one time threads were woven which were to win over the Italian republicans. In short, at a certain time one such link existed between Bismarck and Usedom in Florence and Turin. Usedom was a friend of Mazzini and of others who enjoyed a certain prominence in nationalistic circles. Usedom was a man who posed very much as a wise person. He employed as his personal secretary somebody who was supposed to be a follower of Mazzini. Later it turned out that this personal secretary, of whom it had been said that he was initiated into Mazzini's secret societies, was nothing but an ordinary spy. Bismarck tells this tale quite naively and then adds, as an excuse for having been so mistaken: But Usedom was a high-grade Freemason. Many things could be told in this way and often it would turn out that those involved are totally innocent because the ones who pull the strings remain in the background.

You cannot maintain that there is no point in asking why such things are permitted to happen by the wise guides of world evolution—why human beings are, to a large degree, abandoned to such machinations, by making the excuse that there is no way of getting to the bottom of these things. For, indeed, if one only seeks them honestly, there are many ways of finding out what is going on. But we see, even in our own Society, how much resistance is put up by individuals when there is a question of following the simple path of truth. We see how many things which should be taken objectively in pursuit of knowledge, when they would best serve the good of mankind, are instead taken subjectively and personally. There are—are there not?—within our Society groups who have studied very attentively an essay of, I believe, 287 pages which they have taken utterly seriously and about which they are still puzzling, as to whether the writer—who is well enough known to us—might be right. In short, within our own circles we may sometimes discover why it is so difficult to see through things. Yet it is, in fact, not at all difficult to see through things if only one strives honestly for the truth. For years so much has been said within our Society. If you were to bring together all that has been said since 1902 you would see that it contains much that could help us to see through a great deal that is going on in the world. Yet our anthroposophical spiritual science has never been presented as belonging to a secret society. Indeed the most important things have always been dealt with in public lectures open to anybody. This is a contrast which should be noted.

I might as well say now: If certain streams within our Anthroposophical Society continue to exist and if, for the sake of human vanity, they continue to interpret to their own advantage certain things which have been said behind closed doors—for no more reason than one would exclude first-year students in a university from what is told to those in their second year—then, eventually there will be nothing esoteric left. If things are not taken perfectly naturally, if people continue to stand up and say: This is secret, that is very esoteric, this is occult, and I am not allowed to speak about this!—if this policy continues to be followed by certain streams in our Society, if they continually fail to understand that any degree of vanity must stop, then everything mankind must be told about today will have to be discussed in public. Whether it is possible to make known certain things, the needs of the moment will tell. But the Anthroposophical Society is only meaningful if it is a ‘society’, that is, if each individual is concerned to make a stand against vanity, against folly and vanity and everything else which clothes things in false veils of mysticism, serving only to puzzle other people and make them spiteful. The mysteriousness of certain secret brotherhoods has nothing to do with our Society, for we must be concerned solely with bringing about what is needed for the good of mankind. As I have often said, our enemies will become more and more numerous. Perhaps we shall discover what our enemies are made of by the manner in which they quarrel with us. So far we have had no honest opponents worth mentioning. They would, in effect, only be to our advantage! The kind of opposition we have met hitherto is perfectly obvious through their ways and means of operation. We might as well wait patiently to discover whether further opponents will be from within our circle, as is frequently the case, or from elsewhere! I have just had news of opposition from one quarter which will empty itself over us like a cold shower. A forthcoming book has been announced during some lectures. The author, a conceited fellow, has never belonged to our Society but has been entertaining the world with all sorts of double egos and such like. He has now used the opportunity of the various national hatreds and passions to mount an attack on our Anthroposophy of a kind which shows that his hands are not clean.

So we must not lose sight of these things and we must realize that it is up to us to hold fast to the direction which will lead to truth and knowledge. Even when we speak about current issues it must only be in pursuit of knowledge and truth. We must look things straight in the eye and then each individual may take up his own position in accordance with his feelings. Every position will be understandable, but it must be based on a foundation of truth.

This is a word which must occupy a special place in our soul today. So much has taken place in our time which has puzzled people and which should have shown them that it is necessary to strive for a healthy judgement based on the truth. We have experienced how the yearning for peace only had to make itself felt in the world for it to be shouted down. And we still see how people actually get angry if peace is mentioned in one quarter or another. They are angry, not only if one of the combatants mentions peace, but even if it is mentioned in a neutral quarter.

It remains to be seen whether the world will be capable of sufficient astonishment about these things. Experience so far has been telling, to say the least. In April and May 1915 a large territory was to have been voluntarily ceded, but the offer was rejected so that war could be waged. Since world opinion failed to form an even partially adequate judgement about this event, there seems to be really nothing for it but to expect the worst. We might as well expect the worst, because people seem bent on telling, not the truth, but what suits their purposes. Their thinking is strange and peculiar to a degree. Yet to tackle things properly the right points have to be found.

Let me read you a short passage written by an Italian before the outbreak of the present war, at a time when the Italians were jubilant about the Tripoli conflict—which I am not criticizing. I shall never say anything against the annexation of Tripoli by Italy, for these things are judged differently by those who know what is necessary and possible in the relationships between states and nations. They do not form judgements based on lies and express opinions steeped in all kinds of moralistic virtues. But here we have a man, Prezzolini, who writes about an Italy which pleases him, which has evolved out of an Italy which did not please him. He starts by describing what this Italy had come to, how it had gone down in the world, and he then continues—directly under the impression of the Tripoli conflict:

‘And yet, totally unaware of this economic risorgimento, Italy underwent at the same time the period of depression described above. Foreigners were the first to notice the reawakening. Some Italians had also expressed it, but they were windbags carrying on about the famous and infamous “primacy of Italy”. The book by Fischer, a German, was written in 1899, and that by Bolton-King, an Englishman, in 1901. To date no Italian has published a work comparable to these, even to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of “unification”. The exceptional good sense of these foreigners is notable for, truly, outsiders have neither wanted, nor do they now want, to know anything about modern Italy. Then, as now, people's judgement, or rather prejudgement of Italy amounted to saying: Italy is a land of the past, not the present; she should “rest on her past glory” and not enter into the present. They long for an Italy of archives, museums, hotels for honeymooners and for the amusement of spleen and lung patients—an Italy of organ-grinders, serenades, gondolas—full of ciceroni, shoe-shiners, polyglots and pulcinelli. Though they are delighted to travel nowadays in sleeping cars instead of diligences, they nevertheless regret a little the absence of Calabrese highwaymen with pistol and pointed velvet hat. Oh, the glorious Italian sky, defaced by factory chimneys. Oh, la bella Napoli, defamed by steamships and the unloading thereof; Rome filled with Italian soldiers; such regret for the wonderful days of Papal, Bourbon and Leopoldine Rome! These philanthropic feelings still provide the basis for every Anglo-Saxon and German opinion about us. To show how deeply they run, remember that they are expressed by people of high standing in other directions, such as Gregorovius and Bourget. The Italy who reformed herself and grew fat, the Italy who is seen to carry large banknotes in her purse—this is the Italy who has at last gained a proper self-confidence. We should forgive and understand her if she now reacts by going a little further than she ought in her enthusiasm. Ten years have hardly sufficed for the idea of the future and strength of Italy to pass from those who first saw it, to the populace at large who are now filled and convinced by it. It would have been in vain had our great thinkers piled up volumes of journals, statistical papers, philosophical works and books of modern art.’

This is the attitude, my dear friends! ‘It would have been in vain had our great thinkers piled up volumes of journals, statistical papers, philosophical works and books of modern art.’ All this would be worthless, he thinks, to raise up a people. This modern man has no faith in the worth and working of culture and spiritual values!

‘It would have been in vain had our great thinkers piled up volumes of journals, statistical papers, philosophical works and books of modern art; neither the people nor the foreigners would ever have been convinced, at least not before the passage of very many years.’

So this man has no confidence in creating spiritual culture in this way.

‘A great and brutal force was needed to smash the illusion and give every last and miserable village square a sense of national solidarity and upward progress.’

To what does he attribute the capacity to achieve what no spiritual culture could produce? He says:

‘It is the war which has served to do this.’

There you have it! This is what people believed. Tripoli was there and it had to be there. Moreover, they also said: War is needed to bring the nation to a point which it was not found necessary to reach by means of spiritual culture.

Indeed, my dear friends, such things speak to us when we place them side by side with another voice which says: We did not want this war; we are innocent lambs who have been taken by surprise. Even from this side comes the cry: To save freedom, to save the small nations, we are forced to go to war. This man continues:

‘We young people born around the year 1880 entered life in the world with the new century. Our land had lost courage. Its intellectual life was at a low ebb.’

These were the people born around the year 1880.

‘Philosophy: positivism. History: sociology. Criticism: historical method, if not even psychiatry.’

This may indeed be said in the land of Lombroso!

‘Hot on the heels of Italy's deliverers came Italy's parasites; not only their sons, our fathers, but also their grandsons, our elder brothers. The heroic tradition of risorgimento was lost; there was no idea to fire the new generation. Among the best, religion had sunk in estimation but had left a vacuum. For the rest it was a habit. Art was reeling in a sensuous and aesthetic frenzy and lacked any basis or faith. From Carducci, whom papa read to the accompaniment of a glass of Tuscan wine and a cheap cigar, they turned to d'Annunzio, the bible of our elder brothers, dressed according to the latest fashion, his pockets full of sweets, a ladies' man and vain braggart.’

Yet this marionette—of whom it is said here that he was ‘dressed according to the latest fashion, his pockets full of sweets, a ladies' man and vain braggart’—this marionette had made clear to the people at Whitsuntide in 1915 that they needed what no work of the spirit could give them!

When times are grave it is most necessary to make the effort to look straight at the truth, to join forces with the truth. If we do not want to recognize the truth we deviate from what may be good for mankind. Therefore it is necessary to understand that precisely in these times serious words need to be spoken. For we are in a position today in which even one who is seven-eighths blind should see what is happening when the call for peace is shouted down. Someone who believes that you can fight for permanent peace while shouting down the call for peace might, conceivably, hold worthwhile opinions in some other fields; but he cannot be taken seriously with regard to what is going on. If, now that we are faced with this, we cannot commit ourselves to truth, then the prospects for the world are very, very bad indeed.

It is for me truly not a pleasant task to draw attention to much that is going on at present. But when you hear what is said on all sides, you realize the necessity. We must not lose courage, so long as the worst has not yet happened. But the spark of hope is tiny. Much will depend on this tiny spark of hope over the next few days. Much also depends on whether there are still people willing to cry out to the world the utter absurdity of such goings on—as has been done just now, even in the great cities of the world.

The world needs peace and will suffer great privation if peace is not achieved. And it will suffer great privation if credence continues to be given to those who say: We are forced to fight for permanent peace; and if these same people continue to meet every possibility for peace with scorn, however disguised in clever words. But we have reached a point, my dear friends, when even a Lloyd George can be taken for a great man by the widest circles! We may well say: Things have come a very long way indeed!

Yet these things are also only trials to test mankind. They would even be trials if what I permitted myself to express at the end of the Christmas lecture were to happen, namely, if it were to be recorded for all time that, in the Christmas season of the nineteen hundred and sixteenth year after the Mystery of Golgotha, the call for ‘peace on earth among men and women who are of good will’ was shouted down on the most empty pretexts. If the pretexts are not entirely empty, then they are indeed more sinister still. If this is the case, then it will be necessary to recognize what is really at work in this shouting down of every thought of peace: that it is not even a question of what is said in the periphery, but of quite other things. Then it will be understood that it is justified to say that what happens now is crucial for the fortune or misfortune of Europe.

I cannot go further tonight because of the lateness of the hour. But I did want to impress these words on your heart!