The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In continuation of what I have said in the preceding reflections on the tasks of anthroposophical world view in the present and for the development of humanity, today I would like to add a few more things from a different perspective: those points of view that can arise when one sees how the world view of the nineteenth century led, as it were, to a kind of absurdity in Friedrich Nietzsche, and how it can be shown, precisely from the phenomenon of Nietzsche, that such a view of the world and of the human being as is presented in anthroposophy is an historical necessity for the development of humanity. I do not wish to repeat things that I have already said about Nietzsche here and elsewhere in the anthroposophical movement, but I would like to point out two implications of Nietzsche's world view today that I have touched on even less.

Throughout his life, Nietzsche was characterized by a tendency to arrive at a view of the value and essence of morality in man. Nietzsche was a moral philosopher in the proper sense of the word. He wanted to come to terms with himself regarding the origin of morality, the significance of morality for humanity, and the value of morality for the world order. In this quest for clarity, we see how two main themes run through his entire life, which, in relation to many other things, has undergone the most diverse transformations.

The first is that throughout his life – from the point in his life that he had already passed through in his second year at university until the end of his life, one might say – he had an essentially atheistic view. The atheistic element is what has remained constant throughout all the transformations of Nietzsche's world view.

And the second is that, in the face of what has come to him peculiarly in the moral impulses of the present, what has also come to him in the intellectual and practical impulses of human life in the present, he has asserted one virtue as the most fundamental, and that virtue is honesty towards himself, towards others, towards the whole world order. Integrity, honesty, that is what he considered to be the most important thing, what is most necessary for modern man, both inwardly, to his soul, and outwardly, to the world.

Nietzsche once listed four cardinal virtues that he considered to be the most important for human life. Among these four cardinal virtues, honesty, this honesty towards oneself and others, is the first. These four cardinal virtues are namely: firstly, honesty towards oneself and one's friends; secondly, bravery towards one's enemies; the third cardinal virtue is generosity towards those whom one has defeated, and the fourth cardinal virtue is courtesy towards all people.

These four cardinal virtues, which Nietzsche described as being particularly necessary for present-day humanity, all tend towards the one he described as the first, and which he regarded as a kind of necessary temporal virtue: they tend towards honesty, towards sincerity. And one can say: there is a relationship between this virtue of sincerity and his atheism.

Nietzsche first of all grew out of his age completely and utterly. He then outgrew this age in an even more comprehensive sense. Even a superficial examination shows how he initially took root in Schopenhauer's worldview, which is also an atheistic one, and how he initially saw this Schopenhauerian worldview artistically realized in Richard Wagner's musical drama in the first period of his life.

Nietzsche started out with Schopenhauer and Wagner. He then absorbed what can be called the positivism of the time in scientific life, that is, the world view that thinks the whole world is built solely on what is immediately perceptible, on what is perceptible to the senses, and which therefore sees the sensual as the only thing that matters for the world view.

And Nietzsche then attained a certain independence in the third period, by assimilating the modern idea of development, which he so elaborated that he applied it to man, by setting himself the ideal, as a kind of positivistic ideal, that man must develop into the superman.

Thus Nietzsche has outgrown various currents of thought and currents of culture of his time. But how has he outgrown them? The answer to this significant question also contains important information about the characteristics of the entire age that occupies the last third of the 19th century. One must ask oneself the question: Why did Nietzsche become an atheist? He became one out of a sense of integrity, out of inner honesty. He took with complete honesty what the 19th century was able to offer him in the way of knowledge, what he was able to absorb with holy zeal from this 19th-century knowledge. And he said to himself quite intuitively: If I take this particular kind of 19th-century knowledge honestly, then it does not lead me anywhere towards the divine; then I must exclude the divine from my world of thought.

There lies the first great conflict between Nietzsche and his age, so that he had to become a fighter against his time. When Nietzsche looked around at the people who had also absorbed the knowledge of the 19th century, he saw that the vast majority of them still believed in a divine world order. He perceived this as dishonesty. It seemed dishonest to him to look at the world on the one hand as the knowledge of the 19th century looked at it, and then somehow to assume a divine order on the other. Because he was still speaking in the various thought formulas of the 19th century, he did not actually express what he instinctively felt about the 19th-century world view. He felt that the 19th century viewed world phenomena in the same way that one views the human organism when one has it as a corpse, when it has died. If one believes in this human organism in death, so to speak, if one believes that this dead organism has an inner truth, then one could not honestly believe that this organism only has a meaning when it is permeated by the living and ensouled and spiritualized human being. Anyone who studies a corpse should actually say to himself: What I can look at, what I can study, has no truth. It only has a truth if it is permeated by the spiritualized human being. It presupposes the spiritualized human being. But that is no longer there when I have the corpse before me.

Nietzsche felt this very clearly, although he did not express it so clearly: if you look at nature in the way that modern world knowledge looks at it, you look at it as a corpse. You should actually say to yourself: what you interpret as nature around you no longer has the divine in it. But if one accepts it in its absoluteness, if one speaks of this nature in such a way that one only follows its laws, then one must obviously deny that a divine underlies it. Because the way it stands before you, this nature, has no more of a divine basis than a human basis underlies a human corpse.

These were the feelings that lived in Nietzsche's soul. But the 19th-century world view had such a strong effect on him that he said to himself: Yes, we have nothing but this nature before us, and modern times have taught us to have nothing else before us. If we stick to this knowledge of nature, then we must reject God.

And so Nietzsche, as a student of Schopenhauer, rejected any divine, considering it dishonest to have modern knowledge and yet still speak of a divine. In this respect, his inner life was extraordinarily interesting because it strove for such intense honesty. He perceived it as a cultural lie of the 19th century that on the one hand there was a view of nature as it was, and on the other hand people still spoke of a divine. But he also took life seriously within this natural order in which one still believed. And he saw that the life of modern man had actually developed in such a way that it had become quite natural for him to assume such an order of nature. After all, nature had not forced modern man to accept this order, but life had become such that it could only endure such a view of nature. The view of nature actually came from life. And Nietzsche felt that this life was thoroughly dishonest. And he strove for honesty.

He had to say to himself: If we live in such an order as modern humanity recognizes as the true one, then we can never feel like human beings within this truth. That was actually the basic feeling in the first period of his life: How can I feel like a human being when I am surrounded by this natural order as it is now viewed? That which is truth does not allow me to come to my consciousness as a human being! Nietzsche felt and sensed this too, and so he said to himself in this first period of his life: “If one cannot live in truth, then one must live in appearance, in poetry, in art.

And when he turned his gaze to the Greeks, he believed he had recognized in them the people who, out of a certain naivety, had come to this dissatisfaction with the truth and who therefore consoled themselves with appearances, with beauty. This is what he expressed in his first, so beautifully written hymn, “The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music”. He wanted to say: Man, when you are in the realm of truth, you can never feel like a human being. So flee from the realm of truth into the realm where you create a world that does not correspond to truth. In this world of poetry you will be consoled by what truth can never give you.

The Greeks, he believed, had felt as the true naive pessimists that one could not be satisfied within the world of truth. That is why they created above all their wonderful tragedies, a world of beautiful appearance, in order to have in this world that which can satisfy man.

In Richard Wagner's musical drama, Nietzsche believed he saw a renewal of this beautiful appearance, with the express purpose of leading people away from the so-called real world into the world of appearances, in order to find satisfaction as human beings. So there was no possibility for Nietzsche to say to himself: Let us take the sensory world, deepen our contemplation of the sensory world, penetrate from the external manifestation to the inner divine, and thus feel connected to this divine as a human being and come to feel truly human in the world.

For Nietzsche, this consideration was not possible. He saw no possibility — because he wanted to be honest — of arriving at such a consideration from what the 19th century was. Hence the other: This whole reality gives us no satisfaction, so we satisfy ourselves with an unreal world. Just as if there were beings somewhere who came to a planet where they found only corpses, and in the face of these corpses would have to see not remnants of reality but true reality, because they had once permeated, and as if these beings, who thus encountered a planet of corpses, were beings who, in order to console themselves for these corpses, invented beings to animate them. That was Nietzsche's first sense of the world.

And basically, the writings that followed The Birth of Tragedy were: David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer, On the Use and Disadvantage of History for Life, Schopenhauer as Educator, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, confrontations of his honesty with the dishonesty of the time. This time spoke, although it had no way out of sensuality into the spirit, it still spoke of spirit; this time spoke of the divine, although basically it could not include a divine in its knowledge anywhere. This period spoke something like this: In the past, people surrendered to the delusion of a divine, but we know from the study of nature that there is no divine. But we have our concerts, of course, in which we make music. — There is a chapter in David Friedrich Strauß's “The Old and the New Faith” that particularly annoyed Nietzsche, where David Friedrich Strauß asserts this philistine point of view. That is why Nietzsche wrote this essay about Strauss as a philistine and writer, in spite of the fact that Strauss was a relatively excellent man, in order to show how one can either be dishonest by still assuming a divine quality that one should no longer assume, or how one must fall into the banal and philistine, as he saw it with David Friedrich Strauss.

But now the second period in Nietzsche's life began. He remained true to himself with regard to the demand for honesty, he remained true to himself with regard to his atheism. But in the first period, he adopted ideals, albeit aesthetically colored, ideals that would have a justification and with which people could console themselves about the reality of the external senses.

But now, I would like to say, in the second period of his life, his mind clings more strongly to what, according to the prevailing view of the time, the world reveals to people alone. And so he said to himself: No matter how much a person devotes himself to ideals, these ideals are born out of his very nature! People imagine many beautiful things, but this ideal beauty is only an all-too-human one.

And so the time came for him when he saw particularly the human weakness, the all-too-human, the devotion of man to his physique. And since he took the view of nature seriously, he said to himself: Man cannot help but devote himself to his physique! - Nietzsche once said: Long live physics, even longer live honesty in believing in physics. “Let us be honest,” he said to himself in the second period of his life. ”Let us be clear: no matter how beautiful an idealistic thought a person has, it is still an emanation of his physical nature. Therefore, when we approach human life, let us not describe the smoke it produces at the top, but let us describe the fuels from which this smoke is formed at the bottom: then we will not arrive at the idealistic-divine, but at the human-all-too-human.

And so, in the second period of his life, Nietzsche, because he wanted to be honest with himself and with others, virtually killed all idealism in life. So he said to himself: What people usually call soul is actually just a lie. This is based on the structure of the body, and something that comes from this structure of the body reveals itself in such a way that it is given the name soul.

And Nietzsche saw in this inclination of some modern people, for example, to Voltaire, the true enlightenment, that true enlightenment that consists in man no longer engaging in some illusory world in order to elevate himself above reality, but rather that he actually looks at reality in its physical nature and sees all morality emerging from the physical.

And if you then look at the third period in Nietzsche's life, you can't help but notice how he, one might say, out of a highly pathological nature, took this honesty to excess, as he said: If If you take seriously and honestly what you can know about nature and the laws of nature in the modern sense, then you have to say: Everything that is supposed to live as spirit in the human being is precisely the emanation of his physical being. Therefore, the human being can only be the perfect one who, in comparison to others, shows the physical being to be the most perfect; that is, the one who has such a physical nature that the strongest instincts live in him.

Nietzsche ultimately saw instinctual life as superior to all spiritual life, as that which, in its development, leads man beyond himself, in that instincts become ever stronger and stronger, remain instincts, but rise ever higher and higher above the animal: this is where man becomes superman.

What was it, then, that actually impelled Nietzsche in this way, that he first recognized the ideal in appearance as necessary for man, that he then, as he put it, led this ideal onto the ice, because he saw how it arises from the physical, and that he then wanted to lead man to the superman through a higher development of his physique, his instinctive life? It was impossible, if one stood within the world view of the 19th century, to grasp the physical in the sense of this world view, and then still get out of it if one wanted to remain honest. One simply had to stay inside.

And Nietzsche developed, if one may say so, an iron honesty in placing himself with all that he had in the physical. So that in fact his ideal for the future, if one may still speak of an ideal, for human civilization should have consisted in man's enlightenment about the great illusion of having a spirit. That these undercurrents are usually not seen in Nietzsche, who, however, worked his way out as honestly as possible, is only due to the fact that he denied the spirit with so much spirit that he glorified the spiritual poverty of humanity in such a brilliant, brilliant, witty way.

It becomes simply impossible to be a moral philosopher, as Nietzsche was by his very nature within the 19th-century world view, if one honestly wants to take this on board. For if one is no longer able to speak of the fact that man's task on earth is to bring a spiritual and supernatural element into this earthly world, if one feels compelled to remain within the mere earthly world, then, if one wants to establish morality, one wants to establish it without justification. Morality becomes outlawed if one accepts the world view of the 19th century in all honesty. And that is what Nietzsche really experienced deep inside: that morality became outlawed. He wanted to be a moral philosopher. But where did the moral impulses come from? That was the big question for him. If one finds the luminosity of the supersensible in man, then morality arises as the demand of the supersensible on the sensible. If one finds no supersensible element in man, as was the case with the world view of the 19th century, then there is no source from which one could draw moral impulses. If one wants to distinguish good from evil, then one needs the supersensible. But the supersensible had to be rejected by Nietzsche, who honestly took the world view of the 19th century. And so he groped around in human life to find something like the origin of the moral impulses.

So he looked at the cultural development of humanity, found how strong racial people acted as conquerors towards weaker people, how these stronger racial people imposed the direction of their actions on the weaker ones, how they, out of their instinctive nature, demanded of those whom they had acted as conquerors towards: This is how you should act! Nietzsche could not believe in any categorical imperative, in moral commandments. He could only believe in the instinctive racial supermen, who saw themselves as the good ones, the others as the bad ones, that is, as the inferior human beings, on whom they imposed the direction of action.

And then it happened that those who were the inferiors according to the conquerors joined forces and now, not with the more brutal older means, but with the finer means of the soul and spirit, with cunning and guile, made themselves conquerors over the others. And those who had previously considered themselves the superiors, the good ones, they called the bad ones, because they were conquerors, power-seekers, force-seekers, militarists; they called them the bad ones. And they called themselves the good, who had previously been called the inferior, the bad. Being poor, limited, oppressed, weak, overcome and yet holding on in weakness, in being overcome, that is the good, and being a conqueror, overcoming the other, that is the evil.

Thus good and evil arose from good and bad. But good and bad did not yet have the later moral connotation, but merely the connotation of the conquering, the powerful, the noble, in relation to the army of slave people, who were the inferior, the bad ones. And what was later distinguished between good and evil, that came only from the slave revolt of the previously bad, inferior, who now called the others criminals and evil, in revenge for what had happened to them. Thus, to Nietzsche, the later morality, clothed in the concepts of “good” and “evil,” appeared as the revenge taken by the oppressed on the oppressors. But he found no inner foundation for morality. He could only stand beyond good and evil, not in the midst of good and evil. For to find an inner foundation for good and evil, he would have had to resort to the supersensible. But that was a delusion to him, it was merely the expression of weak human nature, which did not want to admit to itself that its true essence is exhausted in the physical.

If one wants to characterize Nietzsche, one would like to say: Actually, all thinking people of his time should have spoken as he did, if they had been as honest as he was. And he made it his goal to be completely honest. That is why he became a fighter against his time, and that is why he had such sharp intellectual weapons, and why he strove for a revaluation of all values. He saw the values by which he lived as being the product of dishonesty. Centuries had already worked to bring about modern scientific concepts and also introduced them into all of history. But the same centuries had left that which was no longer compatible with them in human souls: divine and moral ideas. Values had emerged that now had to be reevaluated.

Nietzsche's life is a tremendous tragedy. And I don't think that anyone has really grasped the essence of human civilization in the last third of the 19th century and how it continued to have an effect in the 20th century, in the right way, who has not even seen into such a tragedy as it took place in a soul experiencing this civilization, as in Nietzsche. It is really the case that we have to see the collapse we are now experiencing as a consequence of what Nietzsche calls the dishonesty of modern civilization. One would like to say that Nietzsche became a fighter against his time because he had to tell himself: If this dishonesty continues, then only a destructive struggle can break out among the nations that belong to this modern civilization. And this tragedy in Nietzsche's life arose from the fact that Nietzsche wanted to find the foundations of morality, but could not find them in the education of his time. Nowhere could he find a source from which he could draw moral impulses. And so he groped his way through and wounded his fingers everywhere in the groping. And out of the pain he described his time, as he has just described it.

What was he looking for? He was looking for something that can only be found in the supersensible realm, something that cannot be found in the realm of the sensible. That is what he was looking for. No matter how beautiful, great, and noble the moral principles you come up with, they cannot heat a machine, turn a wheel, or set the electrical apparatus in motion. But if one applies only that to one's cognition which sets the machine in motion, sets the electrical apparatus in motion, turns the wheel, if one introduces only that into one's cognition, then one can never understand how that which lives in man as a moral impulse is to reach into one's own human organism. You can think up the most exalted ideals, but they can only be smoke and fog, because there is no possibility of them taking effect in a muscle, in some skill or the like. There is nowhere in the sensory world where you can see moral ideals taking effect in the organic. Imagine the most beautiful moral ideals – Nietzsche could only say to himself – if you harbor them in your head, then you are to your own organism as you are to a machine. You can make posters for the machine, write on them “Moral Ideals”: it will not heat with them, it will not turn. But should you revolve around your moral ideals if you are as nature intended you to be? You can think them up, they may be very beautiful, but they cannot intervene in the workings of the world! Therefore, they are a lie in the face of reality. It is not the person who devotes himself to ideals who is effective, but the one who fuels his machine so that the instincts become powerful: “the blond beast,” as Nietzsche paradigmatically expresses it.

And so Nietzsche stood with his problems before Man, who could only have been moral to him if the moral impulses in him had found a point of contact. They did not. Therefore, no good and evil, but - “Beyond Good and Evil”.

But now consider: we have always had to characterize this whole modern world-knowledge by saying that it does not approach man, it cannot gain any conception, any idea of man. So, if one experiences in the sense of the modern world-view, one does not have man in one's soul. Yet in Nietzsche everything tended towards man. Everything tended towards something he could not have! And now, in keeping with the modern idea of development, he wanted to transform man into the superman, only he did not have man. How could it be shown, from what was not available, how man develops into the superman! Man was not there for contemplation, for intuitive perception, for feeling, for the impulses of the will. Now the superman! It was as if one had formed these words only out of old habit: man and superman - and now choked, because these words have no content, just as one chokes in a vacuum.

Nietzsche was faced with the necessity of entering the supersensible world with moral problems, and could not enter. That was his inner tragedy. And with that, he is at the same time the representative soul of the end of the 19th century, that representative soul who points out the necessity: If you want to remain honest as human beings, you must enter the supersensible world in order not to declare the ideals of morality to be a lie.

Nietzsche goes mad because he is confronted with the necessity of entering the supersensible world and cannot do so. Many other people do not go mad; but I do not want to explain the reasons why they do not go mad, because one must indeed observe certain limits of politeness when describing the peculiarities of civilization. But one thing is clear from Nietzsche's life: modern man can only be honest and upright with himself and others when he enters the supersensible world. In other words, honesty and uprightness do not exist in a nonsensory world view. Nor can the path from man to superman be found if one cannot take the other path from the sensual to the supersensible. And if morality belongs in a certain sense to the superman, then it demands that this superman be sought not in the sensual but in the supersensible, otherwise it is a mere word, the word “superman,” that is called out but to which nothing resounds from the world.

Tomorrow I will approach the subject from the other side, from the side of how what Nietzsche encountered must now be further developed so that moral values in human life can be understood in the right way and harmonized with the knowledge of our time.

On the “tailoring problem” of the Anthroposophical Society

Tomorrow I will look at the topic from a different angle, from the angle of how what Nietzsche encountered must now be further developed so that morality can be properly understood in human life and reconciled with the knowledge of our time. These are the questions that the members of the Anthroposophical Society must ask themselves. Having an understanding of such questions is part of the Anthroposophical Society. And it is now in the process of coming to its senses.

At the end of February, I would like to add, a meeting of delegates will take place in Stuttgart – if traffic conditions still permit – at which the fate of the German Anthroposophical Society will be discussed first, so that the conditions of the Anthroposophical Society can then be discussed in more detail. These things must be taken very seriously today. For it was precisely during my presence in Stuttgart that I felt so keenly how, above all, those who want to do something within the Anthroposophical Society must bear in mind that anthroposophy, in the three stages that I described to you here recently, has become something that has outgrown what the Anthroposophical Society wants to remain in many ways.

In the first stages of the Anthroposophical Society's development, no thought was given to how, later on, under the influence of a Goetheanum and other things, people in the furthest reaches would relate to Anthroposophy, in the sense of opposing it or of adhering to it. The Society must grow with the growth of Anthroposophy. And so the next problem, which is to occupy the minds of the Anthroposophical Society at the end of February in Stuttgart – forgive me, my dear friends, if I express this in a figurative way – the next problem is a tailoring problem. It is the problem that has been raised by the fact that anthroposophy today is something in relation to which the Anthroposophical Society represents clothes that anthroposophy has outgrown. The sleeves of the skirt no longer reach the hands, not even the elbows, not to mention the trousers. Now the problem of tailoring must really be solved with the full application of the mind: how do you make the right clothes for Anthroposophy out of the Anthroposophical Society? That will be the big problem for Stuttgart at the end of February. And this is indeed pointed out in the call that has now been sent out.

What has struck me most is that there is not enough of what I hinted at at the end of my last lecture here last week. I said: Of course, not everyone can become a physician in the anthroposophical sense, but there can be understanding for what is happening in medicine that is inspired by anthroposophy to the greatest extent, there can be understanding, there can be interest. This interest must be present in the broadest sense among the members of the Anthroposophical Society for everything that happens within Anthroposophy. Then we will also succeed in solving the problem of the tailor. But it must be solved, otherwise other means must be considered; for the opponents are full of interest and are extremely attentive to everything, and their methods consist precisely in being good disseminators of the Anthroposophical worldview. Oh, if the members of the Anthroposophical Society were as good at spreading the Anthroposophical worldview as the opponents, then things would go excellently!

The opponents take everything they can from the writings, interpret it in the most absurd way and spread it with frantic interest. So that Anthroposophy is very well known – but as a caricature – on the part of the opponents. Until now, there has been no equal to this in terms of the true form of Anthroposophy. That is how it is. But this is what has now become critical and what must necessarily be led towards a solution. We need a strong and not a weak Anthroposophical Society in the near future.

I recently gave you the names of the provisional committee that will manage affairs within Germany for the time being until the assembly of delegates takes place. The last time we were in Stuttgart, a number of prominent figures declared their willingness to make their voices heard at the assembly of delegates, thereby awakening hope among those who care about the Anthroposophical Society that the support of anthroposophy in the most diverse directions will be presented to the world in a truly penetrating way. But the lecturers who have agreed to take on this task will really have to summon up all their strength and mobilize all their interest if they are to fulfill their duties. We will see.

This is the first opportunity I have had of addressing you since the Christmas Foundation Meeting at the Goetheanum and before beginning the lectures themselves I want to speak of certain matters connected with the impulse which came into the Anthroposophical Movement through that Christmas Meeting. We were glad on that occasion to welcome a number of Members from England, above all Mr. Collison, a friend of many years and the President here, and I should like now to renew the greeting I gave him in Dornach then as the representative of the English Society.

The deep significance of the impulse brought into the Anthroposophical Society through the Christmas Foundation Meeting must be realised to the full and many things that were said by way of characterisation before that Meeting will now have to be expressed in opposite terms. The Society had passed through difficult times both outwardly and in an occult sense too, because in the post-war period a number of different enterprises were set on foot from within the Society itself and this made it necessary that the Society should be imbued with a new impulse.

So far as I myself am concerned—and I may be permitted to say it here—this was connected with something of very great significance.

Some time before Christmas I was faced with a question—although the intention to give a new foundation to the Society had taken shape long before then.

It became necessary for me to decide on taking the very step I had for good reasons refused to take at the time when the Anthroposophical Society separated from the Theosophical Society. I had started then from the supposition that if I abstained from all administrative work and from the official leadership of the Society, merely occupying the position of a teacher, certain things connected with the inner life would present less difficulties than is the case when the teacher also holds an administrative office.

But what was to be expected in the years 1912 and 1913 did not come about; things have not worked out within the Anthroposophical Society as one assumed they would. And so I was obliged to give most earnest consideration to the question of whether I should or should not take over the Presidency. I came to the conclusion that it was necessary to do so. But among our English friends too I want to emphasise something that was inevitably associated with the decision to assume the Presidency of the Anthroposophical Society. Vis-à-vis the Movement as a whole such a step was hazardous for it placed one before a very definite eventuality.

The whole basis of the Anthroposophical Movement is that revelations of the substance of spiritual knowledge flow down from the spiritual world. If one wishes to carry out the work of the Anthroposophical Movement, it is not possible to devote oneself exclusively to human affairs and activities. One must be open to receive what may flow from the spiritual worlds. The laws of the spiritual world are definite and inviolable; they must be strictly obeyed. And it is difficult to combine the demands of an external office to-day—even though it be the Presidency of the Anthroposophical Society—with the occult duties connected with the revelations coming from the spiritual world. And so one was obliged to face the question: Will the Spiritual Powers who have showered their blessings upon the Anthroposophical Society hitherto, continue to do so?

You will certainly be able to realise what such an eventuality meant. The answer of the Spiritual Powers might well have been that this must not be, that there must be no assumption of any external, official position.

But to-day it can truly be said, before all the Spiritual Powers connected with the Anthroposophical Movement, that the links between the spiritual worlds and the revelations which should flow through the Anthroposophical Movement have become more intimate still and the revelations have been vouchsafed in even greater abundance than before; so of the two eventualities, the fortunate one for the progress of the Movement has actually come about. It may now be said that ever since the new Foundation of the Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum last Christmas, those Spiritual Powers from whom our revelations are received have showered upon us even greater grace than before. Therefore in this respect too, a heavy care has been removed from the Society.

Before the Christmas Meeting it was often necessary to emphasise the distinction between the Anthroposophical Movement which is the reflection on earth of a stream of spiritual life, and the Anthroposophical Society which had an external form of administration in that its functionaries were elected or formally appointed.

Since Christmas, the opposite holds good. The Anthroposophical Movement is now one with the Anthroposophical Society; the two are no longer to be distinguished from each other. For since I myself have become the President of the Society, the Anthroposophical Movement has become identical with the Anthroposophical Society.

This made it necessary in Dornach last Christmas to institute an Executive Council—which is not a Council in the exoteric sense but is to be regarded as an esoteric Executive Council, responsible for its actions to the Spiritual Powers alone, and which has not been elected, but just formed. The whole procedure at Christmas differed from that usually adopted at foundation gatherings. This Executive Council may be called a Council of initiative seeing its tasks in what it actually carries out. Hence the Statutes adopted at the Christmas Meeting are not worded in terms of ordinary Statutes but are a simple statement of the relationship that should exist between man and man, between the Council and the Members, between the individual Members themselves, and so forth. The intentions of the Council are set forth as a statement of what we intend and wish to do; they are “Statutes” in respect of form only. The whole procedure was quite different from that usually adopted by Societies.

The fact of salient importance is that an esoteric trend has now been brought into the Anthroposophical Society. The whole Movement, flowing through the Society as it now does, must have an esoteric character.

This must be taken in all earnestness. Only those impulses for human action which come from the spiritual world will be determinative so far as the Executive is concerned. It will not be a matter of giving effect to certain paragraphs or the like, but of promoting the true spiritual life unreservedly and with no other intent.

Reference may here be made to a matter that may seem of secondary importance. New Membership Cards have been or are in course of being issued. As we now have about 12,000 Members all over the world, the same number of Membership Cards have had to be prepared. All these Cards will now bear my own signature. Many people considered that a stamp could be used for this purpose. But in the Anthroposophical Movement from now onwards, everything must have a directly individual, human character and I must obey this even in a detail like the above. Every Membership Card must lie before my eyes, I must read each name and sign my own below it with my own hand. In this way a relationship is established with every individual Member—slight though such a relationship may be to begin with, it is nevertheless real in the human sense. It would of course be much easier to let somebody else stamp the 12,000 Membership Cards, but this will not be done. This is a symbolic indication that in the future the human element prevailing in the Society is all-important.

If the Executive Council at the Goetheanum is met with understanding from the Members, you will see that as time goes on every one of the intentions implicit in the Christmas Meeting will be carried into effect—although things can only be done by degrees and patience will be necessary. The Council must be met with understanding for it cannot take the fifth step before the second or the second before the first and if up to the present it has taken only half a step, the time will come when it is ready to take the fifth. If things are to be conducted in a really human way, one cannot live in the realm of abstraction; one must always enter into the concrete.

And so a new trend will become apparent in the Anthroposophical Movement. The Movement will be esoteric in spirit; it will no longer seek for the esoteric in external things. Certain truths that it will be possible to communicate will be esoteric for the reason that only those who participate in a living way in what goes on in the Society will be capable of really working upon and assimilating them. But the Lecture-Courses will no longer be withheld from the outside world as hitherto; they will not be sold through the trade but they will be available for those who wish to obtain them. We shall, however, make a certain spiritual reservation by stating that we can recognise only such objections or criticisms as may come from those who are qualified by knowledge to pass judgment upon the contents of the Lecture-Courses. Whatever people may choose to say in the future, in the domain of the occult one's actions must be positive, not negative.

All these things must be understood as time goes on. If the understanding is really there, the Anthroposophical Movement will take on an entirely new character. It will be realised that the Executive Council at the Goetheanum feels itself responsible only to the spiritual world and every individual in the Society will feel united with this Executive.

It may then be possible to achieve what must be achieved by the Anthroposophical Movement if it is to fulfil the aim which in the course of these lectures I shall set before you from the depths of the spiritual life.

For centuries now men have become less and less accustomed to turn their minds to the spiritual world. We say, and rightly say, that the last few centuries have inaugurated an age of materialism which has set its stamp not only upon man's thinking but also upon his will, his actions, indeed upon his whole life. And we in the Anthroposophical Society realise that the purpose of this Society is to awaken forces whereby men will be released from their bondage to matter, from influences which make them deny the reality of the Spiritual.

But if the Anthroposophical Movement is to provide the impulse that is needed in the evolution of humanity, all the teachings, all the treasures of wisdom which have for many years been flowing through it must be applied with real earnestness. We must ponder deeply on the realities of man's life to-day. He comes into the world through birth with traits inherited from parents and ancestors, he is influenced and guided by current views and opinions and at a certain age he becomes alert and awake to the life that surrounds him in the outer world. He pays attention to the ideas, the thoughts, the deeds, the impulses to be found in his environment; he tries to understand his place as a member of a particular nation, as a member of humanity in general, and so forth.

In the Anthroposophical Movement we accept the enlightening truth that all of us who are present here have passed through earlier lives on the earth. We have carried into this present life the fruits of those earlier lives. And we are mindful not only of what we are within our present nation, within modern humanity, but we realise that we have already passed through a number of incarnations on the earth and that in other conditions of existence between death and rebirth we have so worked at the development of the Self, the Ego, that we have made ourselves what we are to-day.

But in his everyday consciousness man does not realise that these previous earthly lives must also be taken into account. Nor will any progress be possible unless he studies the whole of life in the light of karma, of destiny taking shape from one earthly life to another. The historical life of humanity must, above all, be studied from this point of view. We say to ourselves that here or there an outstanding personality appeared, one who accomplished great things for mankind. Do we really understand such a personality if we merely consider that he was born at a certain time and then follow the experiences and events of that single life? If the teachings available in the Anthroposophical Movement are taken seriously, our attitude must rather be this: There we see a personality who in his incarnation now or in the past, represents the fruits of earlier earthly lives, and we cannot really understand him without taking those earlier lives into account.

If this point of view is seriously adopted, however, our conception of history will be radically different from that prevailing to-day. It is customary nowadays to recount the facts and events of the various epochs of human history—in connection, let us say, with a statesman, a painter or some other outstanding figure. Accounts are given of his life and deeds on earth, but the idea that earlier earthly lives play over into a given incarnation is never seriously considered. Yet there can be no real understanding of history without the knowledge that what happens in a later time is the fruit carried over by the human being himself from earlier into later epochs. The human beings who are living to-day or who lived centuries ago were also on the earth in past ages and have carried over into this later epoch the results of what they thought and experienced in those bygones times.

How, for example, are we to understand a phenomenon of the present age as disturbing as the following?—For well nigh two thousand years, all that was inaugurated through the Mystery of Golgotha has been with us; ever since then the Christ Impulse has been working in European and Western civilisation. But in the very same world through which the Christ Impulse has passed, warming the hearts and enlightening the minds of men, a different element has taken root. In that same world are to be found the results of all that is inculcated even into our children through the introduction of modern science into the schools, all the ideas and views presented to us by the newspapers every morning at breakfast. Then again, think of the prevailing conceptions of the nature and being of man, think of all that science has introduced into public life, all that art and other branches of culture have produced .. . it cannot be said that these things are permeated by the Christ Impulse. They are there side-by-side with the Christ Impulse. Indeed many men are at pains to prevent the influence of the Christ Impulse finding its way into the domains of anatomy, physiology, biology or history, and to keep all such fields of knowledge separate and apart.

Why is it so? As long as we merely speak of some personality who was, let us say, a scientist, who received this or that kind of education, who engaged in some form of research, or again, if we merely speak of a statesman as having been a Liberal or a Conservative, we shall not understand how the Christ Impulse can flow through modern civilisation simultaneously with elements that need have nothing whatever in common with Christianity. How can this be? We shall, however, be able to understand if we study the different earthly lives of outstanding personalities, for we shall realise then that human beings carry over into later epochs the thoughts, the impulses of will they unfolded in their earlier incarnations.

We observe personalities in history who have had great influence upon our own epoch. Think, for example, of one whose influence upon external life, especially in domains where science plays a part, has been deep and far-reaching—I am referring to Bacon, Lord Bacon of Verulam. He appears in the world and details of his life are well known. We see him working in the sphere of Christian civilisation. Yet there is no trace whatever of the Christian Impulse in his writings. Bacon of Verulam might equally have arisen from some non-Christian civilisation. What he actually says about Christianity is extremely superficial compared with the real impulse that was within him. The same characteristic is to be perceived in Bacon the scientist, Bacon the philosopher, Bacon the statesman.

Again, think of a personality like Darwin. Darwin was a good and sincere Christian, but there was no connection whatever between his Christianity and his ideas about the evolution of animals and man. The trend of thought in both cases is altogether different from that of the Christian Impulse.

We shall make no headway unless we ask ourselves: What can there have been in the earlier earthly lives, let us say of Bacon, or of Darwin? What had they carried over from their earlier incarnations?

If the Anthroposophical Society is to fulfil its purpose, such questions must no longer remain abstract. The mere knowledge that man lives many times on the earth, that one thing or another is carried over from an earlier into a later life will not lead us far. There is of course nothing against reflections of this kind; they amount to no more than a general belief and are innocuous. But what we must do is to study the concrete realities of man's being and understand his life in some later epoch in the light of what he was in earlier incarnations.

We shall now proceed to study these matters, beginning with an example taken from history, in order to tackle the subject of karma in all earnestness. Observing the progress of evolution revealed by civilisation, by the deeds of humanity, we shall be able to perceive how individuals carry over into a later epoch what they acquired and made their own in an earlier one.

For example: Bacon of Verulam appears in a certain age; Darwin appears in a later epoch. We discern a certain similarity between them. Superficial study merely sets out to discover how Bacon, how Darwin, evolved their particular views and ideas. But if we go more deeply into the matter we find that both of them introduce into Christian civilisation an element which, to begin with, is altogether inexplicable as a product of that civilisation.

As we look back, the question arises: Had not Bacon and Darwin passed through earlier lives on earth? They carried over from those earlier incarnations the traits and characteristics revealed in their later lives. When we understand them as individuals, then and only then do we understand their real place in history. For when the reality of karma is taken seriously, history resolves itself into deeds of men, into streams of human lives flowing from remote ages of the past into the present and thence into the future.

From now onwards these things will be spoken of without reserve; we shall speak of facts of the spiritual life in such a way that external history and the external world of nature will themselves reveal to us the spiritual realities lying behind.

It is certain that these questions, bearing as they do upon the spiritual and physical worlds alike, will, to begin with, be taken less seriously than is their due. For judgments about such matters cannot be formed as judgments are formed about the things of ordinary life. And in order to indicate the many underlying factors which have to be taken into consideration, I should like to make a certain personal reference—although it is meant to be quite objective—before we come to answer the questions: Who was Bacon in his previous life? Who was Darwin in his previous life?¹

In the Goetheanum Weekly, as you know, I am writing the story of my life. But in a periodical intended for the outside world as well, it is not possible to speak of everything and certain additions must be made for the sake of those within our Movement who earnestly desire to find their way into the spiritual world. And so to-day, before I proceed in the next lectures to answer such questions as have here been raised, I should like to make this brief personal reference.

Those who like myself were born in the sixties of last century have lived through the epoch when the Gabriel Rulership of the preceding three and a half centuries was superseded by the Michael Rulership. The Michael Rulership, that is to say the entry of the Sun-Impulse belonging to Michael into the civilisation of humanity, began at the end of the seventies of last century. In the time immediately after the entry of the Michael influence, in the eighties and nineties, when the Michael Rulership was beginning to take effect behind the scenes of external happenings, those who were passing through the period of the development of the Intellectual or Mind Soul—that is to say between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-five—were really living in a kind of aloofness from the physical world. For when a human being is consciously active and alert in the Mind Soul he is aloof in a very real sense from the material world.

We speak of man as a being composed of physical body, etheric body, sentient body. With his physical body he stands clearly within the physical world. With his etheric body, sentient body and sentient soul too, he is strongly involved in the external world. But he can live aloof and apart from the external, material world when he is fully conscious in the Mind Soul, before the Consciousness or Spiritual Soul awakens in the thirty-fifth year of life. Full consciousness within the Mind Soul can transport a man altogether into the world of soul. And so in the eighties and nineties of last century there was opportunity for those possessed of the corresponding faculties to live in the Mind Soul, aloof to a greater or less extent from the physical world.

What does this mean? It means that in the Mind Soul, aloof from the material world, one was able to live in the very world into which Michael was entering on his way down towards the earth. The eighties and nineties produced many things that evoked wonder and admiration, there were many fields in which men became expert and many ways by which culture was enriched. Modern literature has words of high praise for this period. Think only of what was achieved by newspapers and in the world of art from the years 1879, 1880–1890 onwards. But in these very years there were happenings of an altogether different character.—Behind a thin veil, a very thin veil at that time, was a world adjoining our physical world. Peculiar conditions prevailed shortly before the close of Kali Yuga at the end of the 19th century. In a neighbouring world, separated from the physical world by a veil so thin that it was impenetrable only to the everyday consciousness of men, things were taking place which must come to clearer and clearer evidence in the physical world and their influences brought to effect.

In very truth something mysterious was at work in the closing decades of the 19th century. There were momentous happenings, grouped around the Spirit we name Michael. Participating in these happenings were strong and forceful followers of Michael, human souls living at that time in their existence between death and rebirth, not yet incarnate in the physical body; but there were also mighty demonic Powers who under the sway of Ahrimanic influences set themselves in rebellion against what was thus to come into the world.

If I may now be allowed to make a personal reference, it is this: Conceptions of the reality of the spiritual world presented no difficulty to me at any age. What the spiritual world revealed penetrated into my soul, formed itself into ideas, into thoughts. On the other hand, things that came easily to others were difficult for me. I was always able quickly to grasp the arguments of natural scientific thinking, but concrete facts would not remain in my memory, simply would not register there. I could without effort understand the wave-theory, the arguments of the mathematicians, physicists and chemists; on the other hand, unlike most others, I could not recognise a particular mineral if I had seen it only once or twice; I was obliged to look at it perhaps thirty or forty times before I could recognise it again. I found it difficult to retain concrete pictures of the things of the external, material world. It was not easy for me to come fully into the physical world of sense.

For this reason I lived with all the forces of the Mind Soul through what was taking place in this world behind the veil, in this sphere of Michael's activity. And it was there that the great challenge arose once and for all to deal earnestly with the reality of the spiritual world, to bring these momentous questions to the light of day. External life offered no incentive, for all that was done there was to hash up once again the old, well-worn biographies of men like Darwin and Bacon. But there behind the scenes, behind this thin veil, in the region where Michael was at work, the great questions were brought to an issue. And this above all was borne in upon one: What a vast difference there is between asking these questions inwardly and putting them into actual words!

At the present time people think that once something is known it can immediately be spoken about. Indeed everything that enters people's ken to-day is at once put into words and announced. But when the questions at issue in Michael's sphere in the eighties and nineties took hold of a man, they worked on into the 20th century. And even after having lived with these questions for decades, every time one wanted to utter them, it was as though the opponents of Michael gathered round and sealed one's lips—for about certain matters silence was to be maintained.

Much that remained a Michael secret had therefore to be carried onward in the heart of the Anthroposophical Movement itself—above all the truths relating to historical connections of the kind to which reference has been made. But for a certain time now—actually for months—it has been possible for me to speak of these things without reserve. That is why I have been able to speak freely of the connections between earthly lives, and shall also do so here. For this is part of the unveiling of those Michael Mysteries which took the course I have described to you.

This is one of the subjects which, up till now, has been dealt with in a more abstract way. At the beginning of the lecture I spoke of an eventuality, namely that the spiritual world might have withheld consent. It has not been so. What has actually happened is that since the Christmas Foundation Meeting and above all because of the opportunities vouchsafed to me for occult work, the demons who hitherto prevented these things from being voiced have been compelled to remain silent. The things to which I refer are not, of course, entirely new, for they were experienced a long time ago in the way I have indicated to you. But it must be remembered that in occultism things that are discovered one day cannot be communicated the next.

I have now spoken of a certain change in circumstances and am telling you these things in order that when, in the future, reference is made to concrete realities in the repeated earthly lives of conspicuous or inconspicuous personalities, you may understand them with the necessary earnestness. Such things must not be lightly taken but with the respect that is their due.

In the forthcoming lectures such indications will be multiplied and elaborated. But before speaking about earlier incarnations of men like Darwin and others I wanted first to emphasise by what kind of spiritual atmosphere these things must be pervaded and the nature of the enlightenment that needs to be shed upon them.

• 1. Dr. Steiner did not speak further of Darwin in these lectures. Readers are referred to his lecture in Dornach, 16th March, 1924. Karmic Relationships, Vol. I.

This is the first opportunity I have had of addressing you since the Christmas Foundation Meeting at the Goetheanum and before beginning the lectures themselves I want to speak of certain matters connected with the impulse which came into the Anthroposophical Movement through that Christmas Meeting. We were glad on that occasion to welcome a number of Members from England, above all Mr. Collison, a friend of many years and the President here, and I should like now to renew the greeting I gave him in Dornach then as the representative of the English Society.

The deep significance of the impulse brought into the Anthroposophical Society through the Christmas Foundation Meeting must be realised to the full and many things that were said by way of characterisation before that Meeting will now have to be expressed in opposite terms. The Society had passed through difficult times both outwardly and in an occult sense too, because in the post-war period a number of different enterprises were set on foot from within the Society itself and this made it necessary that the Society should be imbued with a new impulse.

So far as I myself am concerned—and I may be permitted to say it here—this was connected with something of very great significance.

Some time before Christmas I was faced with a question—although the intention to give a new foundation to the Society had taken shape long before then.

It became necessary for me to decide on taking the very step I had for good reasons refused to take at the time when the Anthroposophical Society separated from the Theosophical Society. I had started then from the supposition that if I abstained from all administrative work and from the official leadership of the Society, merely occupying the position of a teacher, certain things connected with the inner life would present less difficulties than is the case when the teacher also holds an administrative office.

But what was to be expected in the years 1912 and 1913 did not come about; things have not worked out within the Anthroposophical Society as one assumed they would. And so I was obliged to give most earnest consideration to the question of whether I should or should not take over the Presidency. I came to the conclusion that it was necessary to do so. But among our English friends too I want to emphasise something that was inevitably associated with the decision to assume the Presidency of the Anthroposophical Society. Vis-à-vis the Movement as a whole such a step was hazardous for it placed one before a very definite eventuality.

The whole basis of the Anthroposophical Movement is that revelations of the substance of spiritual knowledge flow down from the spiritual world. If one wishes to carry out the work of the Anthroposophical Movement, it is not possible to devote oneself exclusively to human affairs and activities. One must be open to receive what may flow from the spiritual worlds. The laws of the spiritual world are definite and inviolable; they must be strictly obeyed. And it is difficult to combine the demands of an external office to-day—even though it be the Presidency of the Anthroposophical Society—with the occult duties connected with the revelations coming from the spiritual world. And so one was obliged to face the question: Will the Spiritual Powers who have showered their blessings upon the Anthroposophical Society hitherto, continue to do so?

You will certainly be able to realise what such an eventuality meant. The answer of the Spiritual Powers might well have been that this must not be, that there must be no assumption of any external, official position.

But to-day it can truly be said, before all the Spiritual Powers connected with the Anthroposophical Movement, that the links between the spiritual worlds and the revelations which should flow through the Anthroposophical Movement have become more intimate still and the revelations have been vouchsafed in even greater abundance than before; so of the two eventualities, the fortunate one for the progress of the Movement has actually come about. It may now be said that ever since the new Foundation of the Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum last Christmas, those Spiritual Powers from whom our revelations are received have showered upon us even greater grace than before. Therefore in this respect too, a heavy care has been removed from the Society.

Before the Christmas Meeting it was often necessary to emphasise the distinction between the Anthroposophical Movement which is the reflection on earth of a stream of spiritual life, and the Anthroposophical Society which had an external form of administration in that its functionaries were elected or formally appointed.

Since Christmas, the opposite holds good. The Anthroposophical Movement is now one with the Anthroposophical Society; the two are no longer to be distinguished from each other. For since I myself have become the President of the Society, the Anthroposophical Movement has become identical with the Anthroposophical Society.

This made it necessary in Dornach last Christmas to institute an Executive Council—which is not a Council in the exoteric sense but is to be regarded as an esoteric Executive Council, responsible for its actions to the Spiritual Powers alone, and which has not been elected, but just formed. The whole procedure at Christmas differed from that usually adopted at foundation gatherings. This Executive Council may be called a Council of initiative seeing its tasks in what it actually carries out. Hence the Statutes adopted at the Christmas Meeting are not worded in terms of ordinary Statutes but are a simple statement of the relationship that should exist between man and man, between the Council and the Members, between the individual Members themselves, and so forth. The intentions of the Council are set forth as a statement of what we intend and wish to do; they are “Statutes” in respect of form only. The whole procedure was quite different from that usually adopted by Societies.

The fact of salient importance is that an esoteric trend has now been brought into the Anthroposophical Society. The whole Movement, flowing through the Society as it now does, must have an esoteric character.

This must be taken in all earnestness. Only those impulses for human action which come from the spiritual world will be determinative so far as the Executive is concerned. It will not be a matter of giving effect to certain paragraphs or the like, but of promoting the true spiritual life unreservedly and with no other intent.

Reference may here be made to a matter that may seem of secondary importance. New Membership Cards have been or are in course of being issued. As we now have about 12,000 Members all over the world, the same number of Membership Cards have had to be prepared. All these Cards will now bear my own signature. Many people considered that a stamp could be used for this purpose. But in the Anthroposophical Movement from now onwards, everything must have a directly individual, human character and I must obey this even in a detail like the above. Every Membership Card must lie before my eyes, I must read each name and sign my own below it with my own hand. In this way a relationship is established with every individual Member—slight though such a relationship may be to begin with, it is nevertheless real in the human sense. It would of course be much easier to let somebody else stamp the 12,000 Membership Cards, but this will not be done. This is a symbolic indication that in the future the human element prevailing in the Society is all-important.

If the Executive Council at the Goetheanum is met with understanding from the Members, you will see that as time goes on every one of the intentions implicit in the Christmas Meeting will be carried into effect—although things can only be done by degrees and patience will be necessary. The Council must be met with understanding for it cannot take the fifth step before the second or the second before the first and if up to the present it has taken only half a step, the time will come when it is ready to take the fifth. If things are to be conducted in a really human way, one cannot live in the realm of abstraction; one must always enter into the concrete.

And so a new trend will become apparent in the Anthroposophical Movement. The Movement will be esoteric in spirit; it will no longer seek for the esoteric in external things. Certain truths that it will be possible to communicate will be esoteric for the reason that only those who participate in a living way in what goes on in the Society will be capable of really working upon and assimilating them. But the Lecture-Courses will no longer be withheld from the outside world as hitherto; they will not be sold through the trade but they will be available for those who wish to obtain them. We shall, however, make a certain spiritual reservation by stating that we can recognise only such objections or criticisms as may come from those who are qualified by knowledge to pass judgment upon the contents of the Lecture-Courses. Whatever people may choose to say in the future, in the domain of the occult one's actions must be positive, not negative.

All these things must be understood as time goes on. If the understanding is really there, the Anthroposophical Movement will take on an entirely new character. It will be realised that the Executive Council at the Goetheanum feels itself responsible only to the spiritual world and every individual in the Society will feel united with this Executive.

It may then be possible to achieve what must be achieved by the Anthroposophical Movement if it is to fulfil the aim which in the course of these lectures I shall set before you from the depths of the spiritual life.

For centuries now men have become less and less accustomed to turn their minds to the spiritual world. We say, and rightly say, that the last few centuries have inaugurated an age of materialism which has set its stamp not only upon man's thinking but also upon his will, his actions, indeed upon his whole life. And we in the Anthroposophical Society realise that the purpose of this Society is to awaken forces whereby men will be released from their bondage to matter, from influences which make them deny the reality of the Spiritual.

But if the Anthroposophical Movement is to provide the impulse that is needed in the evolution of humanity, all the teachings, all the treasures of wisdom which have for many years been flowing through it must be applied with real earnestness. We must ponder deeply on the realities of man's life to-day. He comes into the world through birth with traits inherited from parents and ancestors, he is influenced and guided by current views and opinions and at a certain age he becomes alert and awake to the life that surrounds him in the outer world. He pays attention to the ideas, the thoughts, the deeds, the impulses to be found in his environment; he tries to understand his place as a member of a particular nation, as a member of humanity in general, and so forth.

In the Anthroposophical Movement we accept the enlightening truth that all of us who are present here have passed through earlier lives on the earth. We have carried into this present life the fruits of those earlier lives. And we are mindful not only of what we are within our present nation, within modern humanity, but we realise that we have already passed through a number of incarnations on the earth and that in other conditions of existence between death and rebirth we have so worked at the development of the Self, the Ego, that we have made ourselves what we are to-day.

But in his everyday consciousness man does not realise that these previous earthly lives must also be taken into account. Nor will any progress be possible unless he studies the whole of life in the light of karma, of destiny taking shape from one earthly life to another. The historical life of humanity must, above all, be studied from this point of view. We say to ourselves that here or there an outstanding personality appeared, one who accomplished great things for mankind. Do we really understand such a personality if we merely consider that he was born at a certain time and then follow the experiences and events of that single life? If the teachings available in the Anthroposophical Movement are taken seriously, our attitude must rather be this: There we see a personality who in his incarnation now or in the past, represents the fruits of earlier earthly lives, and we cannot really understand him without taking those earlier lives into account.

If this point of view is seriously adopted, however, our conception of history will be radically different from that prevailing to-day. It is customary nowadays to recount the facts and events of the various epochs of human history—in connection, let us say, with a statesman, a painter or some other outstanding figure. Accounts are given of his life and deeds on earth, but the idea that earlier earthly lives play over into a given incarnation is never seriously considered. Yet there can be no real understanding of history without the knowledge that what happens in a later time is the fruit carried over by the human being himself from earlier into later epochs. The human beings who are living to-day or who lived centuries ago were also on the earth in past ages and have carried over into this later epoch the results of what they thought and experienced in those bygones times.

How, for example, are we to understand a phenomenon of the present age as disturbing as the following?—For well nigh two thousand years, all that was inaugurated through the Mystery of Golgotha has been with us; ever since then the Christ Impulse has been working in European and Western civilisation. But in the very same world through which the Christ Impulse has passed, warming the hearts and enlightening the minds of men, a different element has taken root. In that same world are to be found the results of all that is inculcated even into our children through the introduction of modern science into the schools, all the ideas and views presented to us by the newspapers every morning at breakfast. Then again, think of the prevailing conceptions of the nature and being of man, think of all that science has introduced into public life, all that art and other branches of culture have produced .. . it cannot be said that these things are permeated by the Christ Impulse. They are there side-by-side with the Christ Impulse. Indeed many men are at pains to prevent the influence of the Christ Impulse finding its way into the domains of anatomy, physiology, biology or history, and to keep all such fields of knowledge separate and apart.

Why is it so? As long as we merely speak of some personality who was, let us say, a scientist, who received this or that kind of education, who engaged in some form of research, or again, if we merely speak of a statesman as having been a Liberal or a Conservative, we shall not understand how the Christ Impulse can flow through modern civilisation simultaneously with elements that need have nothing whatever in common with Christianity. How can this be? We shall, however, be able to understand if we study the different earthly lives of outstanding personalities, for we shall realise then that human beings carry over into later epochs the thoughts, the impulses of will they unfolded in their earlier incarnations.

We observe personalities in history who have had great influence upon our own epoch. Think, for example, of one whose influence upon external life, especially in domains where science plays a part, has been deep and far-reaching—I am referring to Bacon, Lord Bacon of Verulam. He appears in the world and details of his life are well known. We see him working in the sphere of Christian civilisation. Yet there is no trace whatever of the Christian Impulse in his writings. Bacon of Verulam might equally have arisen from some non-Christian civilisation. What he actually says about Christianity is extremely superficial compared with the real impulse that was within him. The same characteristic is to be perceived in Bacon the scientist, Bacon the philosopher, Bacon the statesman.

Again, think of a personality like Darwin. Darwin was a good and sincere Christian, but there was no connection whatever between his Christianity and his ideas about the evolution of animals and man. The trend of thought in both cases is altogether different from that of the Christian Impulse.

We shall make no headway unless we ask ourselves: What can there have been in the earlier earthly lives, let us say of Bacon, or of Darwin? What had they carried over from their earlier incarnations?

If the Anthroposophical Society is to fulfil its purpose, such questions must no longer remain abstract. The mere knowledge that man lives many times on the earth, that one thing or another is carried over from an earlier into a later life will not lead us far. There is of course nothing against reflections of this kind; they amount to no more than a general belief and are innocuous. But what we must do is to study the concrete realities of man's being and understand his life in some later epoch in the light of what he was in earlier incarnations.

We shall now proceed to study these matters, beginning with an example taken from history, in order to tackle the subject of karma in all earnestness. Observing the progress of evolution revealed by civilisation, by the deeds of humanity, we shall be able to perceive how individuals carry over into a later epoch what they acquired and made their own in an earlier one.

For example: Bacon of Verulam appears in a certain age; Darwin appears in a later epoch. We discern a certain similarity between them. Superficial study merely sets out to discover how Bacon, how Darwin, evolved their particular views and ideas. But if we go more deeply into the matter we find that both of them introduce into Christian civilisation an element which, to begin with, is altogether inexplicable as a product of that civilisation.

As we look back, the question arises: Had not Bacon and Darwin passed through earlier lives on earth? They carried over from those earlier incarnations the traits and characteristics revealed in their later lives. When we understand them as individuals, then and only then do we understand their real place in history. For when the reality of karma is taken seriously, history resolves itself into deeds of men, into streams of human lives flowing from remote ages of the past into the present and thence into the future.

From now onwards these things will be spoken of without reserve; we shall speak of facts of the spiritual life in such a way that external history and the external world of nature will themselves reveal to us the spiritual realities lying behind.

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In the Goetheanum Weekly, as you know, I am writing the story of my life. But in a periodical intended for the outside world as well, it is not possible to speak of everything and certain additions must be made for the sake of those within our Movement who earnestly desire to find their way into the spiritual world. And so to-day, before I proceed in the next lectures to answer such questions as have here been raised, I should like to make this brief personal reference.

Those who like myself were born in the sixties of last century have lived through the epoch when the Gabriel Rulership of the preceding three and a half centuries was superseded by the Michael Rulership. The Michael Rulership, that is to say the entry of the Sun-Impulse belonging to Michael into the civilisation of humanity, began at the end of the seventies of last century. In the time immediately after the entry of the Michael influence, in the eighties and nineties, when the Michael Rulership was beginning to take effect behind the scenes of external happenings, those who were passing through the period of the development of the Intellectual or Mind Soul—that is to say between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-five—were really living in a kind of aloofness from the physical world. For when a human being is consciously active and alert in the Mind Soul he is aloof in a very real sense from the material world.

We speak of man as a being composed of physical body, etheric body, sentient body. With his physical body he stands clearly within the physical world. With his etheric body, sentient body and sentient soul too, he is strongly involved in the external world. But he can live aloof and apart from the external, material world when he is fully conscious in the Mind Soul, before the Consciousness or Spiritual Soul awakens in the thirty-fifth year of life. Full consciousness within the Mind Soul can transport a man altogether into the world of soul. And so in the eighties and nineties of last century there was opportunity for those possessed of the corresponding faculties to live in the Mind Soul, aloof to a greater or less extent from the physical world.

What does this mean? It means that in the Mind Soul, aloof from the material world, one was able to live in the very world into which Michael was entering on his way down towards the earth. The eighties and nineties produced many things that evoked wonder and admiration, there were many fields in which men became expert and many ways by which culture was enriched. Modern literature has words of high praise for this period. Think only of what was achieved by newspapers and in the world of art from the years 1879, 1880–1890 onwards. But in these very years there were happenings of an altogether different character.—Behind a thin veil, a very thin veil at that time, was a world adjoining our physical world. Peculiar conditions prevailed shortly before the close of Kali Yuga at the end of the 19th century. In a neighbouring world, separated from the physical world by a veil so thin that it was impenetrable only to the everyday consciousness of men, things were taking place which must come to clearer and clearer evidence in the physical world and their influences brought to effect.

In very truth something mysterious was at work in the closing decades of the 19th century. There were momentous happenings, grouped around the Spirit we name Michael. Participating in these happenings were strong and forceful followers of Michael, human souls living at that time in their existence between death and rebirth, not yet incarnate in the physical body; but there were also mighty demonic Powers who under the sway of Ahrimanic influences set themselves in rebellion against what was thus to come into the world.

If I may now be allowed to make a personal reference, it is this: Conceptions of the reality of the spiritual world presented no difficulty to me at any age. What the spiritual world revealed penetrated into my soul, formed itself into ideas, into thoughts. On the other hand, things that came easily to others were difficult for me. I was always able quickly to grasp the arguments of natural scientific thinking, but concrete facts would not remain in my memory, simply would not register there. I could without effort understand the wave-theory, the arguments of the mathematicians, physicists and chemists; on the other hand, unlike most others, I could not recognise a particular mineral if I had seen it only once or twice; I was obliged to look at it perhaps thirty or forty times before I could recognise it again. I found it difficult to retain concrete pictures of the things of the external, material world. It was not easy for me to come fully into the physical world of sense.

For this reason I lived with all the forces of the Mind Soul through what was taking place in this world behind the veil, in this sphere of Michael's activity. And it was there that the great challenge arose once and for all to deal earnestly with the reality of the spiritual world, to bring these momentous questions to the light of day. External life offered no incentive, for all that was done there was to hash up once again the old, well-worn biographies of men like Darwin and Bacon. But there behind the scenes, behind this thin veil, in the region where Michael was at work, the great questions were brought to an issue. And this above all was borne in upon one: What a vast difference there is between asking these questions inwardly and putting them into actual words!

At the present time people think that once something is known it can immediately be spoken about. Indeed everything that enters people's ken to-day is at once put into words and announced. But when the questions at issue in Michael's sphere in the eighties and nineties took hold of a man, they worked on into the 20th century. And even after having lived with these questions for decades, every time one wanted to utter them, it was as though the opponents of Michael gathered round and sealed one's lips—for about certain matters silence was to be maintained.

Much that remained a Michael secret had therefore to be carried onward in the heart of the Anthroposophical Movement itself—above all the truths relating to historical connections of the kind to which reference has been made. But for a certain time now—actually for months—it has been possible for me to speak of these things without reserve. That is why I have been able to speak freely of the connections between earthly lives, and shall also do so here. For this is part of the unveiling of those Michael Mysteries which took the course I have described to you.

This is one of the subjects which, up till now, has been dealt with in a more abstract way. At the beginning of the lecture I spoke of an eventuality, namely that the spiritual world might have withheld consent. It has not been so. What has actually happened is that since the Christmas Foundation Meeting and above all because of the opportunities vouchsafed to me for occult work, the demons who hitherto prevented these things from being voiced have been compelled to remain silent. The things to which I refer are not, of course, entirely new, for they were experienced a long time ago in the way I have indicated to you. But it must be remembered that in occultism things that are discovered one day cannot be communicated the next.

I have now spoken of a certain change in circumstances and am telling you these things in order that when, in the future, reference is made to concrete realities in the repeated earthly lives of conspicuous or inconspicuous personalities, you may understand them with the necessary earnestness. Such things must not be lightly taken but with the respect that is their due.

In the forthcoming lectures such indications will be multiplied and elaborated. But before speaking about earlier incarnations of men like Darwin and others I wanted first to emphasise by what kind of spiritual atmosphere these things must be pervaded and the nature of the enlightenment that needs to be shed upon them.

The meetings at Stuttgart came to a close two days ago, and you are probably thinking that I ought to give you a report on some of the things that happened there. We arrived at a certain definite conclusion, which seemed inevitable under the conditions that prevailed.

It will be essential to an understanding of what came about that I give you a sketch of how things developed. You know from comments I have been making these past several weeks that lengthy preparations preceded the Stuttgart meetings. The aim of these preparations, which proved extremely tiring to all concerned, was to try to create a situation in which the life-needs of the Anthroposophical Society could be met, thus ensuring the Society's continuance in the immediate future.

In everything that follows it should be kept in mind that what went on in Stuttgart did not have its origin in the sad events surrounding the Goetheanum fire, nor was it influenced by them. For I had already talked with a member of the Executive Committee early in December and discussed with him the necessity of doing something to consolidate the Society, and he was given the assignment of getting the whole Executive Committee and various others to take on the problem. So what occurred in Stuttgart was a direct consequence of the talk I had on December tenth with Herr Uehli to acquaint him with my observations on the current state of affairs in the Society.

The burning of the Goetheanum came as a most painful experience while we were in the midst of these developments. But even if we still had the Goetheanum standing here in its pristine form, these things would have happened exactly as they did. For what was it we faced? We were facing the fact that the Anthroposophical Society had taken on a form in the past two decades that had undergone considerable modification since 1919 as a consequence of including various enterprises among its concerns.

My words could easily be taken as deprecating these undertakings, but nothing of the sort is intended. I need only mention the name of the Waldorf School, which is one of the enterprises I was referring to, to convince you that my remark was made for quite a different purpose than to express some superficial judgment. It implied no reflection on the worth and significance of any of these enterprises or on anyone responsible for their guidance.

The transactions in Stuttgart were meant to—and indeed did—concern themselves solely with the Anthroposophical Society from the aspect of its whole configuration and how it should be shaped.

Now it is not an easy matter to describe this configuration as it really is, since it branches out in so many directions. But I believe that everyone of you has some idea of how the Society has developed up to the present, and can picture things for himself with the help of the comments I have been making here in the past several weeks to round out the picture.

One of the especially important developments that have taken place in the Society's life has been the incurring by leading individuals—or at least by a considerable number of them—of quite specific anthroposophical tasks for the Society that have grown out of the work. These tasks have been waiting for completion since 1919, but they were not carried out. When the problem this caused became only too plain, I had to speak to the Central Executive Committee in Stuttgart as I did on December tenth last.

One of the latest undertakings to grow out of the soil of the Anthroposophical Movement was the Movement for Religious Renewal, which has contributed heavily to the current crisis in the Society. That is one aspect of the facts that have developed in the Society's life.

The other aspect is that youth has approached the movement—youth full of deep inner enthusiasm for anthroposophy and everything it includes, and university youth has also come into the picture with quite different expectations, with a quite definite picture of what is to be found in the Society, with quite definite feelings. One might say that these academic young people approach the Society with strong heart impulses and a special sensitivity to the way the anthroposophists reacted to them, and that they took everything not so much from a rational angle as in a spirit of keen feeling-judgment.

Now what lay behind all this?

The fact is, my dear friends, that young people today are having soul experiences that are making their first appearance on the stage of human evolution. This fact is not to be summed up in abstract, superficial phrases about a generation gap. That gap has always existed in some sense, and been especially marked in strong personalities while they were young and preparing themselves for life at an educational institution. We need only recall certain characteristic examples. You can read in Goethe's Truth and Science how, when he was a student in Leipzig, he stayed away from lectures because he found them so terribly boring, and went instead to the pretzel bakeshop across the street to chat with companions while Professor Ludwig and others held forth in the lecture halls on learned doctrines.

But despite the ever-present generation gap, even these somewhat radical members of the younger generation eventually took over their inheritance from their elders. The geniuses among them did likewise. Goethe most certainly remained an incomparable genius to the day he died. But when it came to taking part in the life of his time, he became not simply Goethe the genius but the fat privy councillor with the double chin. That must also be recognized.

These things have to be looked at in a completely unprejudiced way. Until the last third of the nineteenth century, the generation gap about which people talk superficially today was always there, but it was resolved in good philistine style, with youth gradually absorbing more and more philistine characteristics and entering, as it always had, into what its elders passed on to it.

Today, however, that is no longer possible. If one were to use terminology borrowed from Oriental wisdom, one would have to say that it became impossible when Kali Yuga ended, because from that time forward social life was no longer ruled by the principle of authoritarianism as it had been heretofore. Mankind's involvement in the consciousness soul phase of its development took ever more marked effect. This lived in the souls of people born in the 1890's and in the first few years of the twentieth century, perhaps not in a sharply defined form, but nevertheless in an extremely strong instinctive way. This inner life of theirs has to be really lovingly contemplated by older people if they want to understand it. That takes quite a bit of doing. For our culture, our civilization has assumed a form, especially in educational institutions, which makes the resolving of problems between youth and age that always used to take place no longer possible. Young people of the present feel this; it is their inner destiny. It shapes every aspect of their lives, and means that they approach life with a quite definite craving or demand. This predisposes present-day young people to become seekers, but seekers of a wholly different stripe than their elders.

This holds true of them in every area of life, and especially in the spiritual area. It is very strange how the older generation has been reacting to them for some time past. I have not neglected to call your attention to characteristic instances. Let me remind you of the lecture I gave on Gregor Mendel. Every now and then, scientists of the twentieth century have rather vehemently stated it as their opinion that Gregor Mendel, a Moravian, the solitary schoolmaster who later became an abbot, was a genius who had made remarkable contributions to the work of determining the laws of heredity. If we review Gregor Mendel's relationship to the educational institutions he attended, we cannot miss the fact that when he was old enough to take his examinations for the teaching profession he failed them by a wide margin. He was thereupon given time to prepare himself for a second try. Again he flunked. At that time—I am speaking of the 1850's—people were a lot more tolerant than they became later. So, in spite of his two failures to pass his teacher's examinations, Mendel was appointed to a secondary school position, and he became the man who accomplished something regarded as one of the greatest feats in the field of modern natural science.

Let us take another case closer at hand: that of Röntgen. Nowadays nobody doubts that Röntgen is one of the greatest men of modern times. But he was dismissed from secondary school as a hopeless case. He had the greatest trouble getting a position as a tutor because he couldn't finish school; he had been thrown out, and later just barely managed to get into a college, where he finally graduated. But even then he was unable to get a tutorial post in the field in which he sought it. In spite of this, he performed one of the most epoch-making feats in the fields of practical and theoretical science.

These examples could be multiplied ad infinitum. On every hand we find indications of the unbridgeable gap between what older times had to offer and what lives in youth in an indefinable way.

Putting the matter in rather radical terms, one can say that modern youth could not care less how many Egyptian kings' graves are opened; they are not much concerned with that. But they do care about finding far more original sources of serving human progress than the opening of ancient kings' graves offers. Youth feels that we have entered upon a phase of mankind's evolution in which much more elementary, more original sources will have to be drawn upon for its furthering.

Now we can certainly say that young people with this longing have done a great deal of searching during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Then they came to know of anthroposophy and felt at once that it led to the primal sources of their seeking, to the deepest origin of humanness. They then approached the Anthroposophical Society. And last Monday or Tuesday a representative of these young people said in Stuttgart that they had received a shock on approaching it, that the contrast between the Anthroposophical Society and anthroposophy had startled them. This is a very weighty fact, is it not? It cannot simply be dismissed. You have to consider what young people, especially those from the universities, have had to suffer.

Let us say, for example, that they wanted to take a doctorate in one of the freer branches of learning and teaching, such as the history of literature. How were things done in the last third of the nineteenth century? Where did most of them get the themes for their dissertations? For brevity's sake I will have to put it rather radically. The professor had undertaken to write a book about the Romantic school. So he assigned one student Novalis, another Friedrich Schlegel, a third August Wilhelm Schlegel, and a fourth Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann—if they were lucky. If they weren't, they were assigned dissertations on Hoffmann's punctuation or his use of parentheses. The professor then read through these dissertations and took the substance of his book from them. It had all become quite mechanical. The young person was just part of a mechanism, a learned mechanism, and if I may repeat myself, after the end of Kali Yuga everything that lived in an elemental way in the youthful soul rebelled against this sort of thing. I am citing just one of countless possible examples of the same phenomenon.

Now here we have these two factors side by side: the Anthroposophical Society, in the form it had assumed during its two decades—a form I need not describe, as everyone can picture it for himself from his own standpoint—and the young students. But what the Society was encountering in these young people was simply the keenest and most radical fringe of an omnipresent element. This fact stood out only too plainly at the Stuttgart meetings.

On the one hand, the leaders of the old society were committed to what had gradually taken on fixed forms. One was perhaps a Waldorf teacher, another an office manager at “Der Kommende Tag.” We have to give all due weight to the fact that all these people were overwhelmed with work. Everybody in the Society who had any free time had been drawn into these enterprises. Rightly or wrongly, this caused a certain bureaucratic spirit to spring up in the Society.

Among these undertakings was the “Union for the Threefold Membering of the Social Organism.” Right from the moment of its founding in 1919, it had a director, and after I had worked awhile with this Union I was compelled to say that I could not go on, that I would have to withdraw. As I said in Stuttgart recently, I had to strike out and simply declare that I could not go on.

Then another director, an excellent man, took things over. I was unable to get to Stuttgart for several weeks, but when I eventually arrived, I was anxious to find out what had been happening. There were a number of matters awaiting disposition, so a meeting was held and I was informed about what had transpired. I was told, “Well, we've been setting up a card file. We have small cards on the lower right-hand section of which we clip the smaller newspaper items, and then we file them in cabinets. Then there are larger cards made of heavier paper to which we attach longer magazine articles, and there are other cards of still another size for filing letters that come in.” This went on and on. Hours were spent describing the way the card file was set up, the sacrifice and devotion with which people had been working on it for many weeks, what it contained, how everything had been so neatly stowed away in it. Now I had a mental picture of this card file with all the various sizes of cards in it, and the marvellous record there of everything that had been going on in the Society and what our opponents had been up to. It was all beautifully recorded! There must have been a simply huge pile of these cards stacked up in layers. But the people sitting there vanished as though they were ghosts; only the card file was real. Everything had been recorded!

I said, “Well, my dear friends, do you have heads as well as a card file? I am not in the least interested in your files, only in what you have in your heads.”

I am sure you will understand that I am not criticizing, just reporting, for the people who had arranged the files were groaning under the tremendous burden of their work. But on the other hand, just imagine youth coming there with their hearts on fire with enthusiasm for ideals that encompassed the whole future, only to be told the story of the card files. I am not saying that it was superfluous to have files or that they were of no value; I am saying that they were excellent and vitally necessary. But that is not the way things should be going. Hearts were needed to go out to hearts.

Now this created all sorts of impossible situations. These and many other problems finally reached a point where a reorganization of the Society had to be considered. There had to be a chance for the Society to provide human beings with opportunities to work in it, to live out their special individual capacities, to find and breathe an atmosphere in which they could go on developing. These were absolutely fundamental problems that the Society was facing. A complete revision of all the conditions surrounding its life was indicated, and that it has a tremendous life-potential is shown in the fact that youth has now approached it full of teeming inner life. But the contrasts grew and grew.

Of course, there were some individuals in the older group who had never taken any interest in the card files (if I may use the files as symptomatic of the whole approach in question). Some of these others may have been very old indeed, but still not have wanted to bother with things like the files, which had gradually become a necessity. There were definitely such members who had joined the Society as early as 1902 or 1903, who, though they may have been very different from the young people in many other respects too, had also never concerned themselves with what I will term the history of the Society.

So we faced extraordinarily difficult problems at the preliminary meetings. An incalculable weight of worry burdened one's soul.

But we don't need to talk about those sessions now. The Delegates' Conference, a summons to which was the outcome of the preparatory meetings, was held in Stuttgart last Sunday. The first order of business was to hear what the provisional steering committee, which was made up for various reasons of members of the erstwhile Central Executive and called the Committee of Nine, had to say about the past and present and future of the Anthroposophical Society. Then the German and Austrian members were to be given a hearing in the persons of their delegates.

Well, things proceeded as planned. But since I want to give you just a brief sketch of what led to the final decision, I will refrain from describing what amounted to a veritable hailstorm of motions. Scarcely was one taken care of and the business of the meeting resumed than two or three more fairly flew up to the chairman's table. It can only be described as a hailstorm, and there seemed to be no end to the discussion about them. But I will skip over all this and stress instead that absolutely excellent talks were given, penetrating, deeply anthroposophical talks. Albert Steffen spoke wonderful, heartfelt, profound words. Mr. Werbeck gave a masterly description of the categories of our opponents and of their relationship to the Anthroposophical Movement and to the rest of civilization. Dr. Büchenbacher gave a vivid account of the way people who entered the Society from about 1917 on responded to what they encountered in it. As to the fact that not everything said was first-rate and as to some lesser contributions in between, it is probably better to maintain a courteous silence. But excellent, magnificent contributions were interspersed among what I will refer to as “others.” In spite of this, Sunday and Monday and Tuesday passed, and by Tuesday evening a point was reached where one could see clearly that if the next day, the final one, were to be anything like the preceding ones, the delegates would leave as they had come. For almost nothing of what lived in the many individuals assembed in the hall had really come out, even though much anthroposophical substance had been contributed in excellent speeches. This was an assemblage of human beings and the speeches all dealt with realities, but there was no living reality in the meetings, just abstraction; they were a classic example of life lived in the abstract. By Tuesday evening real chaos reigned. Everybody was talking past everybody else.

Now I had no choice but to decide to make a proposal of my own directly after the Tuesday lecture that had been scheduled for me—a proposal based on what lived in the people represented there—and almost the entire membership of the German and Austrian Societies was present. But one had to get at what was real there and pull it together. I was to speak on Tuesday about community building, a theme called for by much that had been said. So I made a proposal. I said that we could see how everyone was talking past the others and that nothing that was being said was bringing the underlying realities of the situation to the surface. Leaving other aspects aside for the moment, one could distinguish two types of feeling, two differing viewpoints, two sets of opinions. One type is represented by the old Anthroposophical Society and the committee speaking for it; the other is made up of individuals who, to put it as exactly as possible, have no real interest in the stand taken by the committee representing the Society. They are individuals completely without interest in what the committee had to say, though they are fine anthroposophists: One can scarcely imagine anything finer than the contributions made by the young people at the Stuttgart conference; they reflected an energetic, wonderful spirit. The soul of youth made a noble impression as it urgently stormed the gates of anthroposophy. But here too there was no interest in what the Society was as a society, or in what it stood for.

A phenomenon like this has to be taken as a reality. We have to learn to see it as a fact; there is no use acting like blind men and closing our eyes to it. So I had no choice but to say that since we were confronted there with these two types, any abstract talk about reaching agreement was simply false. The old society cannot be other than it is, nor can the second group. The Society as a whole will therefore have the best chance of continuance if each faction goes its own way, with the old aristocracy—no, let me rather call them the members of the older society, laden down with history—forming one group, and the stormily progressive old and young forming another.

There is in existence an ancient draft of a constitution for the Anthroposophical Society. I can recommend its study to both parties! Each of them can carry out its provisions quite literally, but the outcome will be entirely different in the two cases. That is the way things are in real life, no matter how they may look in theory.

So I made the proposal that the old Anthroposophical Society continue with its Committee of Nine. I characterized things in the following way. I said that the old society included the prominent Stuttgart members who carry on their separate undertakings in exemplary fashion and do a tremendous lot of work; in fact, one of their outstanding characteristics, demonstrated during the four days of the conference, was the weariness they brought with them from their previous labors. I said that when I come to Stuttgart and find something needing to be done, I have only to press a button; that is the way it has been in recent years. These leading personalities in Stuttgart are extremely insightful. They grasp everything immediately without one's having to say very much. There would never be time enough to discuss everything at length. Theirs is a lightning grasp; one need only touch on a matter to have it absolutely clear to them. But for the most part they do nothing about it. Then there is the other party, full of anthroposophical soulfulness, whole-heartedly immersed in anthroposophy. I can also say something to the leaders of this group. They understand nothing of what I am saying, but they do it that very instant. That is a tremendous difference. The first group understands immediately, but does nothing. The second category understands nothing; they only give promise of eventually understanding everything; they are full of energy and feeling, but they do the things at once. They do everything without understanding it.

So there will have to be two quite differently constituted groups in the Society if it is to stay united. One group should never be allowed to get in the way of the other's functioning. There is the one group—what name shall I give it, since we have to have one? It's just a question of terminology, of course. Let's call it the conservative, the traditional party, the neatly-filed members (not to limit the term to just a set of cards), the party that occupies the curule seats. People in this party have titles: president, vice president, and so on, and administer the Society. They sit there and have a routine procedure for everything. I see a man in the audience looking at me significantly who, while I was still in Stuttgart, was in a position to inform me what such procedures sometimes lead to. For example, a credit slip for a sum like 21 marks was sent out, and it cost 150 marks to send it. That is what it costs these days to send mail to foreign countries: 150 marks. If one wants to write somebody that a credit of 21 marks has been entered on the books to his account, it costs 150 marks to do it properly. That is the way things go in an orderly ABC set-up. So there we have the party of routines, the old Anthroposophical Society. One can belong to it and be a good member. Then there is the free union of individuals who care not a whit for all that sort of thing, who simply want a loose association based on a purely human element. These two streams should now be acknowledged.

I started by giving just a thumbnail sketch of this, a mere indication. That same evening a speech was made, maintaining that it would be the worst thing that could possibly happen, for it would split the Society in two, and so on. But that was the reality of the situation! If a move were to be made that fitted the facts rather than the way people thought—for what they think is seldom as significant as what they are—it had to be the one suggested, for that would fit the realities involved. As I said, a speech was instantly made about it, warning of the terrible consequences that would ensue if anything of the sort were to prove necessary, and so on.

Even in an external, purely spatial sense, the outcome was chaos. The hall was crammed with people huddled in groups, leaving no loopholes to squeeze through between them, and they all stopped me to ask what this or that had meant. The inner chaos of the situation had become outer chaos by eleven o'clock that Tuesday evening when I tried to leave the assembly hall.

I arrived, rather weary, at the place where I was staying. At midnight someone came to fetch me. I wasn't quite on the point of going to sleep. Someone came and said that a meeting was underway down in the Landhausstrasse. I was stopped again on my way to the floor where the meeting was in progress, and drawn into a side-meeting, so that it was nearly one o'clock in the morning by the time I arrived where I was supposed to be. But it was at once apparent that my proposal had been understood after all, quite correctly understood. Now the details could be profitably discussed. It had become clear that something could really be done on the basis proposed.

Certain doubts were expressed, as was perfectly natural. It was said, for example, that there were members who sympathized with the young people and wanted to go along with their aims, but who nevertheless belonged historically to the old society and even held positions in it, which they wanted to keep so they could go on working there.

I said that this could easily be solved. The only problem in the case of individuals who join both sections is to arrange that they pay only one membership fee. Surely some technical means of doing this can be worked out. There should be no question of anyone being excluded from one of the sections because he is a member of the other. In all such matters, we should simply see to it that the realities of a situation have a chance to be recognized.

I went on to say that the various institutions can also accommodate both directions. I can easily conceive the possibility of a Waldorf teacher leaning toward the looser association and becoming part of it while a colleague feels drawn to and joins the more tightly organized group. They will, of course, still work together at the Waldorf School in a perfectly harmonious spirit.

Yesterday some people were wondering how life in this or that branch of the Society would be affected. I asked why adherents of the two groups should not be able to sit beside each other at branch meetings. But the inner realities must always be given a chance to live themselves out. When a thing is conceived in a realistic spirit, there is always a way of working it out, and this makes for unity.

It took only until 2:15 a.m. for the young people to become clear on essentials. There were, however, some white-haired young ones among them who could look back over a span of quite a few decades. It became clear, as Tuesday night changed into Wednesday morning, that the proposal would work.

Wednesday was devoted to discussing these plans. And Wednesday evening witnessed their adoption—I will give you just the résumé, and then add a few supplementary comments to this report.

So there we now have the old Anthroposophical Society with its Committee of Nine as described, and the other looser, freer Anthroposophical Society whose chief striving it is to get anthroposophy out into the world and to work for a deepening of man's inner life.

Tomorrow and the following day I will review the most important aspects of the two lectures I delivered in Stuttgart. They are intimately bound up with the life in the Anthroposophical Society, for the first lecture was on the subject of community building and the second on the reasons why societies based on brotherliness are so given to quarreling.

A provisional committee was formed for the loose association. It was made up of Herr Leinhas, Herr Lehrs, Dr. Röschl, Herr Maikowski, Dr. Büchenbacher, Herr Rath, Herr von Grone, Rector Bartsch from Breslau, and Herr Schröder. You notice that not all of them are extremely young; their number includes dignified patriarchs. So the radicalism of youth will not be the only standpoint represented, but it will certainly be able to make itself felt.

That is the way things came out. Now they need only be rightly managed. The loose association undertook specifically to form smaller, closer communities—to work for anthroposophy exoterically on a big scale, and to work esoterically on a small scale forming communities held together not so much by any set system of external organization as by inner, karmic ties.

These, then, were the two groupings we came out with. I will have something more to say about them tomorrow and the next day. It was a very necessary development! Anything that is alive refuses to let itself be preserved in old, preconceived forms; arrangements must change with and adapt themselves to the living.

You remember my saying as I left for Stuttgart that the Society's whole problem was really one of tailoring. Anthroposophy has grown, and its suit, the Anthroposophical Society—for the Society has gradually become that—has grown too small. The sleeves scarcely reach to the elbows, the trousers to the knees. Well, I won't labor the analogy. The suit looked grotesque, and this was apparent to any wholehearted person who has recently joined the Society.

Now we shall have to see whether this effort to make a new, more fitting garment rather than take the old one apart—for it would certainly get torn—will succeed. It definitely has the inner capacity to do so. We shall have to see whether people develop the strength essential to this way of working. Real life presents very different possibilities from those of theory, and that holds true in this case also. We will have to create something that can really stand the test of life.

Now there we have Herr von Grone, who is a member of both committees, the committee of the free and the committee of the more tightly organized; he will serve on both. Things will work out best if we let everybody function in his own way, either as a patriarch or as a young enthusiast, and if someone wants to be both at once, why should he not be a two-headed creature? It is absolutely vital that people's energies develop freely.

Certain things won't work, of course. I was told about one such situation, where the chairman of a group once had the startling experience of yielding the floor to someone who launched out on a flaming address only to have another person talk at the same time. The chairman said, “Friends, this is impossible!” “Why that?” was the answer. “We're trying to live a philosophy of freedom here! Why should one's freedom be limited by allowing only one person to speak? Why can't several talk at the same time?” You will agree that some things won't work, but fortunately they're not always specifically called for.

I, for my part, am thoroughly convinced that things will work again for awhile. Not for always, though; nothing can be set up for eternity. As time passes we will again find ourselves confronted with the necessity of devising new garments for the anthroposophical organism. But every human being shares that destiny; one can't keep on wearing the same old clothes. An organization is actually never anything more than a garment for some living element. Why, then, should one make a special case of social organisms and try to tailor them for eternity? Everything living has to undergo change, and only what changes is alive. In the case of something as particularly teeming with life as the Anthroposophical Movement we must therefore shape a life-adapted organization. Of course we can't attempt reorganization every single day, but we will certainly find it necessary to do so every other year or so. Otherwise the chairs occupied by the leading members will really become curule seats, and when some people make a specialty of resting on the curule seats, those not occupying them begin to itch. We must find a way to make sitters on curule seats itchy too. In other words, we're going to have to start jostling these chairs a little. But if we find the right way of arranging things, everything will go beautifully.

My dear friends, my intention was to give you a report. I certainly did not feel it to be a joking matter. But things of real life are sometimes just exactly those most suited to a slightly humoristic treatment.

Many friends have come here to-day for the first time since the Christmas Foundation Meeting and I must therefore speak of it, even if only briefly, by way of introduction. Through this Christmas Foundation the Anthroposophical Society was to be given a new impulse, the impulse that is essential if it is to be a worthy channel for the life which, through Anthroposophy, must find embodiment in human civilisation. Since the Christmas Foundation an esoteric impulse has indeed come into the Anthroposophical Society. Hitherto this society was as it were the administrative centre for Anthroposophy. From its beginning onwards, Anthroposophy was the channel for the spiritual life that has been accessible to mankind since the last third of the 19th century. Our conception of the Anthroposophical Movement, however, must be that what takes its course on earth is only the outer manifestation of something that is accomplished in the spiritual world for the furtherance of the evolution of humanity. And those who wish to be worthily connected with the Anthroposophical Movement must also realise that the spiritual impulses are also at work in the sphere of the Anthroposophical Society itself.

What does it really amount to when a man has a general, theoretical belief in a spiritual world? To believe in theory in a spiritual world means to receive it into one's thoughts. But although in their own original nature thoughts represent the most spiritual element in modern man, the thoughts themselves are such that in their development as inner spirit during the last four to five centuries, they are adapted only to receive truths relating to material existence. And so people to-day have a spiritual life in thoughts, but as members of contemporary civilisation they fill it with a material content only. Theoretical knowledge of Anthroposophy also remains a material content until there is added to it the inner, conscious power of conviction that the spiritual is concrete reality; that wherever matter exists for the outer eyes of men, not only does spirit permeate this matter, but everything material finally vanishes before man's true perception, when this is able to penetrate through the material to the spiritual.

But such perception must then extend also to everything that is our own close concern. Our membership of the Anthroposophical Society is such a concern; it is a fact in the outer world. And we must be able to recognise the spiritual reality corresponding to it, the spiritual movement which in the modern age unfolded in the spiritual world and will go forward in earthly life if men do but keep faith with it. Otherwise it will go forward apart from earthly life; its link with earthly life will be maintained if men find in their hearts the strength to keep faith with it.

It is not enough to acknowledge theoretically that spiritual reality hovers behind mineral, plant, animal and man himself; what must penetrate as deep conviction into the heart of every professed Anthroposophist is that behind the Anthroposophical Society too—which in its outward aspect belongs to the world of maya, of illusion—there hovers the spiritual archetype of the Anthroposophical Movement. This conviction must take real effect in the work and activity of the Anthroposophical Society. Such a conception will in the future contribute in many ways to the provision of the right soil for that spiritual Foundation Stone which was laid for the Anthroposophical Society at the time of the Christmas Meeting.

And this brings me to speak of what I shall have to say to you in the coming days, for which this introductory lecture is intended to provide guiding lines. I want to show how at this serious point in its existence the Anthroposophical Movement is actually returning to its own germinal impulse. When at the beginning of the century the Anthroposophical Society came into being out of the framework of the Theosophical Society, something very characteristic was foreshadowed. While the Anthroposophical Society—then the German Section of the Theosophical Society—was in process of formation, I gave lectures in Berlin on Anthroposophy. Therewith, at the very outset, my work was given the hallmark of the impulse which later became an integral part of the Anthroposophical Movement.

Apart from this, I can remind you to-day of something else.—The first few lectures I was to give at that time to a very small circle were to have the title, “Practical Exercises for the Understanding of Karma.” I became aware of intense opposition to this proposal. And perhaps Herr Guenther Wagner, now the oldest member of the Anthroposophical Society, who to our great joy is here to-day and whom I want to welcome most cordially as an Elder of the society, will remember how strong was the opposition at that time to much that from the beginning onwards I was to incorporate in the Anthroposophical Movement.

Those lectures were not given. In face of the other currents emanating from the Theosophical Movement it was not possible to proceed with the cultivation of the esotericism which speaks unreservedly of the reality of what was always there in the form of theory.

Since the Christmas Foundation, the concrete working of karma in historical happenings and in individual human beings has been spoken of without reserve in this hall [The temporary lecture-hall in the “Schreinerei” (workshop) at the Goetheanum.] and in the various places I have been able to visit. And a number of Anthroposophists have already heard how the different earthly lives of significant personalities have run their course, how the karma of the Anthroposophical Society itself and of the individuals connected with it has taken shape. Since the Christmas Foundation these things have been spoken of in a fully esoteric sense; but since the Christmas Foundation, also, our printed Lecture-Courses have been accessible to everyone interested in them. We have thus become an esoteric and at the same time a completely open society.

Thus we return in a certain sense to the starting-point. What must now be reality was then intention. As many friends are here for the first time since the Christmas Foundation, I shall be speaking to you in the coming lectures on questions of karma, giving a kind of introduction to-day by speaking of things which are also indicated, briefly, in the current News Sheet for members of the society.

As is clear from our anthroposophical literature, the development of human consciousness is bound up with the attainment of those data of knowledge which point to facts and beings of the spiritual world and with penetration into these facts. We shall hear how this spiritual world, the penetration into which has become possible through the development of human consciousness, can then be intelligible to the healthy, unprejudiced human intellect. It must always be remembered that although actual penetration into the spiritual world requires the development of other states of consciousness, the understanding of what the spiritual investigator brings to light requires only the healthy human intellect, the healthy human reason that endeavours to put prejudice aside.

In saying this, one immediately meets stubborn obstacles in the modern life of thought. When I once said the same thing in Berlin, a well-meaning article appeared on the subject of the public lecture I had given before a large audience. This article was to the following effect: Steiner maintains that the healthy human intellect can understand what is investigated in the spiritual world. But the whole trend of modern times has taught us that the healthy human intellect can know nothing of the super-sensible world, and that if it does, it is certainly not healthy!

It must be admitted that in a certain sense this is the general opinion of cultured people at the present time. What it means, translated into bald language, is this: If a man is not mad, he understands nothing of the super-sensible world; if he does, then he is certainly mad! That is the same way of speaking about the subject, only put rather more plainly.

We must try to comprehend, therefore, how far the healthy human intellect can gain insight into the results of spiritual investigation achieved through the development of states of consciousness other than those we are familiar with in ordinary life. For centuries now we have been arming our senses with laboratory apparatus, with telescopes, microscopes and the like. The spiritual investigator arms his outer senses with what he himself develops in his own soul. Investigation of nature has gone outwards, has made use of outer instruments. Spiritual investigation goes inwards, makes use of the inner instruments evolved by the soul in steadfast activity of the inner life.

By way of introduction to-day I want to help you to understand the evolution of other states of consciousness, first of all simply by comparing those that are normal in present-day man with those that were once present in earlier, primitive—not historic but prehistoric—conditions of human evolution.

Man lives to-day in three states of consciousness, only one of which, really, he recognises as a source of knowledge. They are:

Ordinary waking consciousness;

Dream consciousness;

Dreamless sleep consciousness.

In ordinary waking consciousness we confront the outer world in such a way that we accept as reality what can be grasped through the senses, and allow it to work upon us; we grasp this outer, material world with the intellect that is bound to the brain, or at any rate to the human organism, and we form ideas, concepts, emotions and feelings, too, about what has been taken in through the senses. Then in this waking consciousness we grasp the reality of our own inner life—within certain limits. And through all kinds of reflection, through the development of ideas, we come to acknowledge the existence of a super-sensible element above material things. I need not further describe this state of consciousness; it is known to everyone as the state he recognises as pertaining to his life of knowledge and of will here on earth.

For the man of the present time, dream consciousness is indistinct and dim. In dream consciousness he sees things of the outer world in symbolic transformations which he does not always recognise as such. A man lying in bed in the morning, still in the process of waking, does not look out at the rising sun with fully opened eyes; to his still veiled gaze the sunlight reveals itself by shining in through the window. He is still separated as by a thin veil from what at other times he grasps in sharply outlined sense-experiences and perceptions. Inwardly, his soul is filled with the picture of a great fire; the heat of the fire in his dream symbolises the shining in of the rising sun upon eyes not yet fully opened.

Or again, someone may dream that he is passing through lines of white stones placed along each side of a roadway. He comes to one of the stones and finds that it has been demolished by some force of nature or by the hand of man. He wakes up; the toothache he feels makes him aware of the decayed state of a tooth. The two rows of teeth have been symbolised in his dream-picture; the decayed tooth, in the image of the demolished stone.

Or we become aware of being, apparently, in an overheated room where we feel discomfort. We wake up: the heart is thumping vigorously and the pulse beating rapidly. The feverish movement of the heart and pulse is symbolised in the overheated room. Inner and outer conditions are symbolised in dream; reminiscences of the life of day, transformed and elaborated in manifold ways into whole dream-dramas, absorb the sleeper's attention. Nor does he by any means always know to what extent things are elaborated in the miraculous arena of his life of soul. And concerning this dream-life, which may play over into waking life when consciousness is dimmed in any way, he often labours under slight illusions.

A scientist is passing a bookshop in a street. He sees a book about the lower animal species—a book which in view of his profession has always greatly interested him. But now, although the title indicates a content of vital importance to a scientist, he feels not the faintest interest: and then, suddenly, as he is merely staring at what otherwise he would have seen with keen excitement, he hears a barrel-organ in the distance playing a melody which at first entirely escapes his memory ... and he becomes all attention.—Just think of it: the man is looking at the title of a scientific treatise; he pays no attention to it but is gripped by the playing of a distant barrel-organ which in other circumstances he would not have listened to for a moment. What is the explanation? Forty years ago, while still quite young, he had danced for the first time in his life, with his first partner, to the same tune; he is reminded of this by the tune which he has not heard for forty years, played on the barrel-organ! Because he has remained very matter-of-fact, the scientist remembers the occasion pretty accurately.

The mystic often comes to the stage of inwardly transforming a happening of this kind to such an extent that it becomes something entirely different. One who with deep and sincere conscientiousness embarks upon the task of penetrating into the spiritual life must also keep strictly in mind all the deception and illusion that may arise in the life of the soul. In deepening his life of soul a man can very easily believe that an inner path has been discovered to some spiritual reality, whereas in fact it is no more than the transformed reminiscence of a barrel-organ melody! This dream-life is full of wonder and splendour, but can be rightly understood only by one who is able to bring spiritual insight to bear upon the appearances of human life.

Of the life of deep, dreamless sleep, man has in his ordinary consciousness nothing more than the remembrance that time continues to flow between the moment of falling asleep and the moment of waking. Everything else he has to experience again with the help of his waking consciousness. A dim, general feeling of having been present between the moments of falling asleep and waking is all that remains from dreamless sleep.

Thus we have to-day these three states of consciousness: waking consciousness, dream consciousness, dreamless sleep consciousness. If we go back into very early ages of human evolution—not, as I said, in historic times but prehistoric times accessible only to those means of spiritual investigation of which we shall be speaking here in the coming days—then we also find three states of consciousness, but essentially different in character. What we experience to-day in our waking hours was not experienced by the men of those primeval times; instead of material objects and beings with clear shapes and sharp edges, they saw all the physical boundaries blurred.

In those times a man who might have looked at you all sitting here would not have seen the sharp outlines demarcating you as human beings to-day; he would not, like a man to-day, have seen these contours bound by so many lines, but for his ordinary waking consciousness the forms would have been blurred; they would have lacked definition. Everything would have been seen with less precision, would have been pervaded by an aura, by a spiritual radiance, a glimmering, glistening iridescence extending far beyond the circumference that is perceived to-day. The onlooker would have seen how the auras of all of you sitting here are interwoven. He would have gazed into these glimmering, sparkling, iridescent auras of the soul-life of those in front of him. It was still possible in those days to gaze into the life of soul because the human being was bathed in an atmosphere of soul-and-spirit.

To use an analogy: if in the evening of a bright, dry day we are walking through the streets, we see the lights of the street-lamps in definite outlines. But if the evening is misty, we see these same lights haloed by all sorts of colours—colours which modern physics interprets quite wrongly, regarding them as subjective phenomena, whereas in truth they give us an experience of the inmost nature of these lights, connected with the fact that we are moving through the watery element of the fog. The men of ancient times moved through the element of soul-and-spirit; when they looked at other men they saw their auras—which were not subjective phenomena but a real and objective part of the human being. Such was one state of consciousness in these men of old.

Then they had a state of consciousness which linked on to this, just as with us the sleep that is invaded by dreams links on to the waking state; again it was not the same as our present dream condition, but everything that was material around it disappeared, vanished away. For us, sense-impressions become symbols in the state of dream consciousness: sunshine becomes fiery heat, the rows of teeth become two lines of stones, dream-memories become earthly or also spiritual dramas. The sense-world is always there; the world of memories remains. It was different for the consciousness of one who lived in primeval times of human evolution—and we shall realise by and by that this applies to all of us, for those sitting here were present then in earlier earthly lives. In those times, when the sun's light by day grew weaker, man did not see symbols of physical things, but the physical things vanished before his eyes. A tree standing before him vanished; it was transformed into the spiritual and the spirit-being belonging to the tree took its place.—The legends of tree-spirits were not the inventions of folk-fantasy; the interpretation of these legends, however, is an invention of the fantasy of scholars who are groping in a morass of fallacy.—And it was these spirits—the tree-spirit, the mountain-spirit, the spirit of the rocks—who in turn directed the eyes of the human soul into that world where man is between death and a new birth, where he is among spiritual realities just as here on earth he is among physical realities, where he is among spiritual beings as on earth he is among physical beings.—This was the second state of consciousness. We shall presently see how our ordinary dream consciousness can also be transformed into this other consciousness in a man of modern time who is a seeker for spiritual knowledge.

And there was a third state of consciousness. Naturally, the men of ancient times also slept; but when they awoke they had not merely a dim remembrance of having lived through time, or a dim feeling of continuous life, but a clear remembrance of what they had experienced in sleep. And it was precisely out of this sleep that there came the impressions of past earthly lives with their connections of destiny, together with the knowledge, the vision, of karma.

Modern man has waking consciousness, dream consciousness, dreamless sleep consciousness. Early humanity had also three states or conditions of consciousness: the state of consciousness in which he perceived reality pervaded by spirit; the state in which he had insight into the spiritual world; and the state in which he had the vision of karma. In primeval humanity, consciousness was essentially in a condition of evening twilight.

This evening twilight consciousness has passed away, has died out in the course of the evolution of mankind. A morning dawn consciousness must arise—into which modern spiritual investigation has already found its way. And by strengthening his own soul-forces man must learn to look at every tree or rock, every spring or mountain, or at the stars, in such a way that the spiritual fact or spiritual being behind every physical thing is revealed to him.

It can become an exact science, a source of exact knowledge (although people scoff at it to-day as if it were craziness or sheer delusion) so that when a genuine knower looks at a tree, the tree, although it represents a physical reality, becomes a void, as it were leaving the space free before his gaze, and the spirit-being of the tree comes to meet him. Just as the sun's light is reflected to our physical eyes from all outer, physical objects, so will humanity come to perceive that the spiritual essence of the sun, pervading the world with its life, is also a living reality in all physical beings. As the physical light is reflected back to our physical eyes, so from every earthly being there can be reflected back as a reality to our eyes of soul, the divine-spiritual, all-pervading essence of the sun. And as man now says: “The rose is red” ... the underlying truth being that the rose is giving back to him the gift he himself receives from the physical-etheric sun-nature ... he will then be able to say that the rose gives back to him what it receives from the soul-and-spiritual essence of the sun which streams through the world with its quickening life.

Man will again find his way into a spiritual atmosphere, will know that his own being is rooted in this spiritual atmosphere. He will come to realise that within the dream consciousness, which to begin with can yield only chaotic symbolisations of the outer life of the senses, there lie the revelations of a world of spirit through which we pass between death and a new birth; furthermore, that in the consciousness of deep sleep there weaves and lives in us as an actual and real nexus of forces that which, after waking, leads us into connection with the working out of our destiny, of our karma. What we live through in our waking hours as destiny, notwithstanding all freedom, is spun during our life of sleep, when with the soul and spirit, which have left the physical and etheric, we lead a life together with divine Spirits; with those divine Spirits, too, who carry over the fruits of earlier lives into this present life. And one who through the development of the corresponding forces of soul succeeds in penetrating with vision into the life of dreamless sleep, discovers therein the connections of karma. Moreover it is only in this way that the historical life of humanity acquires meaning, for it is woven out of what men carry over from earlier epochs, through the life between death and rebirth, into new life, into new epochs. When we look at some personality of the present or some other age, we understand him rightly only when we include his past earthly lives.

During the coming days, then, we shall be speaking of that spiritual investigation which, while concerning itself first with personalities in history but then also with everyday life, leads from the present life, or a life in some other age to earlier earthly lives.

During the re-founding of the Anthroposophical Society at Christmas 1923, Rudolf Steiner also reconstituted the “Esoteric School” which had originally functioned in Germany from 1904 until 1914, when the outset of the First World War made its continuance impossible.

However, the original school was only for a relatively few selected individuals, whereas the new school was incorporated into the School for Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland.

Rudolf Steiner was only able to give nineteen lessons—plus seven “recapitulation” lessons—for the First Class before his illness and death. His intention had been to develop three classes. After his death, the Anthroposophical Society's Executive Council was faced with the dilemma of what to do about the Esoteric School—to try to continue it without Rudolf Steiner, or not. He had not designated a successor. And what to do with the stenographic records of the Class lectures.

Rudolf Steiner had always insisted that the lectures were not to be published. In fact, the members of the School were only permitted to copy the mantra—and not the text of the lectures—for their own personal contemplation. The dilemma was further complicated by the dispute between Marie Steiner—Rudolf Steiner's legal heir—and the rest of the Executive council, which claimed all of Steiner's lectures for the Society. (The dispute was eventually settled by the Swiss courts in favor of Mrs. Steiner.)

The Anthroposophical Society was permitted to hand out manuscripts of the lectures to its so-called designated “readers,” who read each lecture to the members of the school in their particular area or country. This system is still practiced.

Marie Steiner wrote:

“How can we preserve the treasure with which we have been entrusted? Not by hiding it away, thereby simply giving our enemies the opportunity to do with it what they will, but by trusting in the good spiritual powers and thereby giving new generations the possibility of receiving a stimulus in their souls that will kindle the spiritual light slumbering there, a light that will awaken in their souls what the powers of destiny have sown in them.”

Marie Steiner, letter of January 4, 1948

The lectures were published in German in manuscript book form in 1977 by the Rudolf Steiner Estate (Nachlassverwaltung—Marie Steiner's legal successor) in a limited edition and sold only upon written request to anthroposophists.

However, pirated editions containing errors and falsifications occurred to the extent that the Rudolf Steiner Estate decided to make the printed volumes in German generally available in 1992.

The Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain published the lectures in English translation in 1994.

Frank Thomas Smith—Editor, Southern Cross Review

It is true that the Goetheanum does not gain anything in its funds from the fact that it receives share capital from Futurum in liquidation in this way; but the spiritual gain achieved by connecting the clinic to the Goetheanum is so significant that I hope our members who are shareholders will understand.

It would also ensure that those members who are shareholders and who depend on their dividends would not suffer a further reduction due to further depreciation.

I must confess that it was only with a heavy heart that I wrote these lines. But I have to say: precisely because I feel so strongly let down by the personalities who approached all kinds of foundations when I held no office in the Anthroposophical Society and who have then more or less withdrawn, I decided to take over the chairmanship of the Anthroposophical Society at the Christmas Conference. I must then do everything to enable those institutions, such as the Dr. Wegman Clinic, to be run entirely in the sense that I regard as anthroposophical. It was only with the greatest reluctance that I decided at the time to take over the chairmanship of Futurum, which was not founded on my initiative. I was not supported in any way by the people who took this initiative. My warnings went unheeded. Now that I myself hold the presidency of the Anthroposophical Society, I will no longer allow anything to be done that is not in line with pure anthroposophical principles. People will say: Why did I say “yes” to these things back then? Well, those who inaugurated them might say today, if I had intervened in any other way, If we had been allowed to go our own way at the time, we could now rebuild the Goetheanum with the income from the Futurum shares. We had to give people the opportunity to show what they could do. It is enough with the one case; the impact of the Christmas Conference will ensure that it does not repeat itself.

With kind regards
Rudolf Steiner

Having now given you a picture of certain prominent features in the spiritual movements of the modern age, as well as of the tendencies underlying them,—modern spiritual movements, for which the anthroposophic movement should afford, as it were, a channel suited to the demands of these times,—I should like to go on to-day and tomorrow to certain phenomena that made their appearance in the third period of the anthroposophic movement, and try from these to construe for you what are, truly speaking, the life-conditions of the Anthroposophical Society.

Let us be clear as to how we stood at the time when the second period of the anthroposophie movement was drawing to a close,—about, that is, the year 1918 or '14,—and as to how we stand to-day; and let us try to examine more closely what these two stages signify for us,—I mean the beginning of the third period and the end of the third period.

During the past few days I have been trying more to go into the inner depths of the picture; but to-day and tomorrow I would like to put before you what is, for Anthroposophists, so to speak, of actual moment, and of a kind to enter directly into the impulses of the will.

Let us just look back again for a minute and see how, in the first and second periods, by keeping in the main to the rule of going step by step with the concrete facts and carrying forward the movement, so to speak, in pace with the developments of the inner anthroposophic life, ... how far we had actually got in this way? We will turn our eyes to this for a minute.

As I said: in the first period to begin with,—down to the years 1907—8—9,—the work was one of slow and steady acquisition, a laborious acquisition of inner, spiritual material. The foundations were laid of an actual, modern science of the spirit, and pursued into their various consequences. Down to the end of this period one may say, too, that the paper continued to appear, Lucifer-Gnosis; which periodically brought out things by myself and others, that, step by step, built up a certain solid substance of Anthroposophy.

And then, with the second period, came the time when in lecture-cycles and lectures,—and in a way, too, for the general public,—new ground was acquired. from those writings which have their very special importance for the spiritual evolution of the West; namely, from the Bible: the Gospels and Genesis.

Here, again, they were real steps that took place. One started with the Gospel of John; and then went on to the other gospels. And, led thus by the gospels, certain definite truths and treasures of knowledge came to light one after another; so that, from stage to stage, one piece of spiritual acquisition was added on to another. And everything recorded on the other side again, in the outward expansion of the Society, had its origin mainly in these inner progressive steps of spiritual acquisition.

Of course the external arrangements involved making all sorts of programmes and things of the kind. But that was not the essential feature. The essential feature was, that positive work was achieved, stage by stage; and then, of course, in proportion, the spiritual ground thus achieved could be worked out esoterically to further depths.

And so, with all this, it came to pass, by just about the end of the second period, that Anthroposophy, and all that Anthroposophy is, was widened out over the general field of human culture and civilization,—as we attempted in Munich with our performances of the Mystery Dramas.

And by the end of the second period we had got so far that it was possible to think of building our Bau, which has now met here with this disaster. One must reflect that this marked an exceedingly important stage in the development of the Anthroposophical Society. For, to put up such a building, presupposed the existence of quite a considerable number of people, who were sufficiently interested in what Anthroposophy had already produced of substantial reality, to wish to build such a home of their own.

At the same time, however, it meant taking the first essential step beyond the step-by-step work that had simply kept pace with the whole evolution of the Anthroposophical Society. It was the first step that went beyond this. For, obviously, a building like the Goetheanum was bound to attract the attention of the outside world to what was now the ‘Anthroposophical Society’, in a very different way from anything that had been there before.

Take opponents, for instance; they had existed, of course, before, opponents of every conceivable camp. Even in those days they had not only written, but printed their writings. But these opponents found really no particular public. For, assuming even that before the year 1914 an opponent of so indescribable a kind as Max Seiling had come on the scene, a certain sensational interest might possibly have induced some of the members of the Anthroposophical Society itself to read the thing; but people outside would not have bothered about it; there would have been no public. The building of the Bau first made it possible for opponents to come forward and find a public.

Things of this kind, when one is dealing with a reality like the anthroposophic movement, must by no means be regarded as matters merely of theoretic interest; they must be taken with the most intense and serious earnest; for all these things give rise day by day to ever growing problems and responsibilities.

And so we were at any rate able to put up our building, the Bau. But the fact that we could do so, my dear friends, presupposed, as I said, that there was something already there, for which the building could be put up. It was there. It was felt by really a large number of people to be something that was actually there and presented a sort of inner vitality. And there was plenty of practical experience, too, that had been collected through quite a long time. Experience was there in plenty; and there was no need to disregard it. And since a society was also there, such past experience might have been turned to very profitable use,—night to this day be turned to very profitable use. Everything I have been saying during these days was with the purpose of calling attention to certain past occurrences that imply so many pieces of practical experience.

And now this period has expired. And the terrible event, to which we may point as marking the expiration of this period, is the Burning of the Goetheanum.

And now to-day we have to ask ourselves ... you will remember that I said these lectures were intended at the same time as an aid to self-recollection for Anthroposophists . to-day we must look back in self-recollection and recall how, in those days, we were able to think with a certain security about the further course of Anthroposophy and how we purposed to carry it on; yet that nevertheless we were bound to foresee, and foresee, too, in our purposes, that directly Anthroposophy came before the open public, the opposition too would undoubtedly set in. And now, let us just note what was the starting-point of that period, and what was its end. The starting-point I have already characterized. It lay in the fact that we could venture to put up the Goetheanum. And now let us see what shape things have assumed to-day, and what the result is of Anthroposophy's being thus exposed, laid open by the Goetheanum to the judgment henceforth of a whole indeterminable number of people. Well, of this, my dear friends, I would like to show you the latest example,—in order that we may keep up-to-date, so to speak. The very latest example is contained in a leaflet recently published, and entitled The Secret Machinery of Revolution. On p.13 of this leaflet you will find the following account. (I will translate from the English.)

‘At this stage of my inquiry, I may refer briefly to the existence of an offshoot of the Theosophical Society, known as the Anthroposophical Society. This was formed as the result of a schism in the ranks of the Theosophists by a man of Jewish birth who was connected with one of the modern branches of the Carbonari. Not only so, but in association with another Theosophist he is engaged in organizing certain singular commercial undertakings not unconnected with Communist propaganda; almost precisely in the manner in which “Count St. Germain” organized his dyeworks and other commercial ventures with a like purpose. And this queer business group has its connections with the Irish Republican movement, with the German groups already mentioned’ (amongst the groups mentioned is, as an instance, the ‘Consul’ organization!) ‘and also with another mysterious group which was founded by Jewish “ Intellectuals ” in France about four years ago, and. which includes in its membership many well-known politicians, scientists, university professors, and literary men in France, Germany, America and England. It is a secret society, but some idea of its real aims may be gathered from the fact that it sponsored the “Ligue des Ancient Combatants ”, whose aim appears to be to undermine the discipline of the armies in the Allied countries. Although nominally a “Right Wing” society, it is in direct touch with members of the Soviet Government of Russia; in Britain it is also connected with certain Fabians and with the Union of Democratic Control, which opposes “secret diplomacy ”!’

Well, my dear friends, to this I need only add, that, as you know, my visit to England is planned for August, and that you may therefore see that the things of which I have many times spoken are to be taken with all seriousness; that the opponents are exceedingly well organized; and moreover, that in all circumstances and situations they very well know what they are doing. You will remember what I said some time ago to the effect that—as I said—one must never imagine that the last thing is the worst to come.

As you see, we have to-day an opposition; that is the other, final end of the third period. We have to-day an opposition, and one that shrinks from no sort of falsehood, and very well knows how to manipulate the effects of a falsehood. You must by no means imagine that it will do to pass over such things lightly and merely to say: ‘Well, with a thing like that, not only is not a single word of it true, but it is such clumsy lying that not a soul will believe it!’—Anybody who talks in that way, my dear friends, simply shows that he is going about asleep in the midst of this present-day Western civilization, and simply does not know the power of those impulses of false-hood, which the very best people, one might say, take for true, simply out of easy-goingness and sleepy-headedness.

What lies between these two dates is a matter now of peculiar importance for us to consider. For, to put it in this way: in the year 1914 the anthroposophical movement was unquestionably so far that it possessed a store of spiritual wealth, of spiritual material, with which it could have made its way through the world. As circumstances actually were, however, it was necessary to go on working very actively after 1914.—If you look back over what has taken place since that time, you will come to the conclusion that the work done since then was mainly one of deepening on the spiritual side. And in this respect again, the road taken was the straight one; this deepening in the spiritual direction was steadily pursued step by step, unconcerned indeed even with the events going on externally in the world; because, as a fact, the most urgent matter was then—and is still to-day—that that spiritual inner treasure, which is now seeking revelation for the progress of mankind, should, first and foremost, be incorporated in some actual form in the life of the civilized world. There can never be any question, in communicating or working up this spiritual store of wealth, of doing anything else than do everything direct from this spiritual store itself.

With regard to this, there came again an extension, as you know, in this third period, through the introduction of the eurhythmy. Of this eurhythmy at any rate it can never be said that it draws from anything else than straight from the sources of Anthroposophy itself. Everything in it is taken direct from anthroposophic sources. Are there not at the present day, my dear friends, all manner of schools of artistic movement,—all manner of attempts in one way or another to arrive at something, which perhaps on the outside looks a little like our eurythmy. But, if you go back through all that has happened, from the moment when Frau Dr. Steiner first took the eurhythmy in hand, and eurhythmy began to develop, so that from being carried on more, I might say, in a private circle during the war-time, it then was able to come out in public, and has aroused ever-increasing interest. If you take everything that has gone to the building-up of this eurhythmy, why! don't you think that there were numbers of people from one quarter or another continually hinting to one, ‘Here is something quite similar,’ ‘There is something quite similar,’ ‘This should be considered,’ ‘That should be adopted!’ The only way in which the thing could be carried forward successfully, was by looking neither to right nor left and troubling about nothing round one, but drawing simply and solely from the sources of the thing itself. The moment anything whatever in the nature of a compromise had been introduced, the thing would no longer have been what it is,—could never have become what it is. It is part of the life-conditions of a movement like this, that there should he absolute security: Everything can be drawn from the sources themselves, in ever-wider extension as it comes to be needed.

This practice of working solely from the central source, which was comparatively easy, because there could be no question about it, down to 1914,—this and this alone makes it possible to carry anything like Anthroposophy forwards in the right way.

Well, this third period, after 1914, witnessed a great many things of all kinds, in which of course,—like every other person and movement,—the anthroposophic movement too was involved. And now, of course, on the one hand for instance, it must emphatically be pointed out again and again, that during the world-war, whilst the different nations were tearing each other in pieces, there were here members of some sixteen or seventeen nationalities working together side by side, and that the Anthroposophical Society went through this whole time without deviating in the slightest from its true, original character. Rut still, one must not forget, that all the things which were surging in men's minds in those days, and therefore in the minds of Anthroposophists, were just of the sort to create divisions in the Anthroposophical Society, and to split it up. This is a fact which must be admitted.

You will understand, that in pointing out these things quite objectively I am not by any means belittling all the many good qualities of the Anthroposophists, not in any way denying them. They shall all be taken for granted. And certainly it is quite true that to a certain degree we managed to get over the things that were—let us say, ‘splitting-up’ mankind so disastrously, outside the Anthroposophical Society, between the years 1914 and 1918. Rut still, those who look a little closer will recognize, that waves of this kind, though in a different form perhaps from else-where, did nevertheless break in upon the anthroposophic movement; and in connection with this, there began to show itself somewhat markedly, my dear friends, something which I have frequently indicated before in these words: namely, that in this third period something began to take shape which I might call an internal opposition to what I myself am called upon to do in the Anthroposophical Society,—a sort of internal opposition.

Most of you, of course, are very much surprised when I speak of this internal opposition; because they themselves are not aware of it—many of them at least. But so much the worse! I could almost say; for this internal opposition came out very strongly in people's feelings, particularly during this third period. And there were external signa too in which it showed itself. When a movement like this has passed through two such periods as I have described, there by no means requires to be a blind confidence, if, in the third period, (seeing what has gone before, and that there are antecedents to go upon) something or other is then done for reasons of which the whole connection is not immediately obvious to everybody. Just reflect for a moment:—reasons, of which the whole connection could not possibly at that time be obvious to everybody, which required a great number of things to be taken together, and where, before all, it was a question of setting the anthroposophic movement permanently on the right lines! And these were the things, in which what one might call this ‘internal opposition’ showed itself.

I know, of course, that, directly I touch upon these things, a number of people will say: Aren't we expected then to have opinions of our own!—Of course one is expected to have one's own opinion as to what one does oneself: but when something is done by another person with whom one is in some way associated in life, it necessarily then becomes a question of confidence playing a part on occasions,—especially when there already are antecedents to go upon, of the kind I mentioned.

Now, at a certain moment in the third period, during the Great War, I wrote the little book called Thoughts in War-time. And thereupon this internal opposition made itself peculiarly manifest, in a quite remarkable way. Not only did people come to me and say: We thought Anthroposophy never meddled with politics!—as if this little book had meddled with politics in any way!—and more things of the kind; but it was also quite plain to see from the whole attitude, that many a heart had taken a certain tinge of something that should never be allowed to grow on anthroposophic soil,—that has its growth in very different soil! Well, it has been my lot to meet with a great many objections that were made especially to these ‘Thoughts during the Wartime’; but I never yet met, I really never yet have met with anyone who said ... and now I am going to say something dreadfully presumptuous, my dear friends; but it is quite objective ... I never found anyone say, ‘We don't rightly know what to make of the thing; but we'll wait a year or two, till 1985, and then perhaps we shall know, why this little book was written.’—And there have been a good many other things besides, all showing how very strongly the kind of thing was at work that simply tended direct towards the undermining of all natural freedom and independence of action inside the Anthroposophical Society. For one would think that the writing of the book might naturally have been left to me, as being my concern; instead of which, there had come to be a sort of notion: ‘If he means to be the person with whom we are to carry on the Anthroposophical Society, then he must only write what we please!’

These things have to be said somewhat drastically, or else, as you know, they are not understood. They are symptoms, and show the rise at that time of a certain temper of mind which is contrary to the life-conditions of the anthroposophic movement,—that within the society there arose a temper of mind contrary to the life-conditions of the anthroposophic movement!

One thing there was, however, in this third period, that cannot but be of quite peculiar importance: the consciousness namely, in founding this society, of having taken the first, leading step in a matter where a large part of the human race is bound to follow. Reflect upon it, my dear friends: a comparatively small body of people associated together, with the claim of doing something, in which they shall be followed by a large part of the human race! It imposes not only those obligations that the other people will have later, who follow after; it imposes obligations of a far higher kind, obligations that are many times, a hundredfold higher in degree, than any duties incumbent on the great mass of people who hereafter may take Anthroposophy as their guide in life.

The Anthroposophists of to-day must not suppose that they have simply the same obligations as those people will one day have, who believe in Anthroposophy, when Anthroposophists are reckoned by millions, and not by thousands. When a few thousands are forerunners in a movement, these thousands are under a far greater, a multiple degree of obligation. They are under the obligation namely, in all and every detail to exercise greater courage, greater energy, greater patience, greater tolerance and, above all things, greater truthfulness. And in this third period the test was laid in particular on truthfulness and on earnestness. What in a way was necessary, was that the thing should grow up, which formed the theme of discussion on one occasion during the course delivered to the Theologians. It was spoken of then. That was what there should have been amongst the little band of Anthroposophists, and that is what must come: namely, a feeling, a kind of sense, that Anthroposophy,—quite apart from the existence of Anthroposophists,—must be looked upon as an independent living Being in itself; as something, so to speak, that goes about amongst us, and to which we are responsible at every moment of our lives. It was said in this lecture to the theologians in so many words: Anthroposophy is herself an invisible person, going about amongst visible people, and to whom, so long as they are only a little number, they owe the very greatest responsibility,—something, that must really be treated as an invisible person, actually living amongst us, who must be consulted in every single action of life, as to what she says to it.

Whenever, therefore, so long as there is only a little band of Anthroposophists, anything is formed in the way of human associations,—friendships, or fellowships, or any sort of clique,—it becomes all the more necessary that this Invisible Being should be asked, and that everything should be so, that it can be justified before this Invisible Being.

Of course this will be, to the same extent, ever less and less the case, the more wide-spread Anthroposophy becomes. Rut so long as it is only the possession of a little band, it remains absolutely necessary that everything that is done should be done, so to speak, in consultation with this person, Anthroposophy. It is one of the essential life-conditions, that Anthroposophy should be regarded as a living Being. And this Being must only die, when the multitude of its adherents has grown past numbering. This, then, is the necessary condition: sincere and genuine earnestness in following after that Invisible Person of whom I spoke;—profound earnestness, which must grow day by day. If this profound and growing earnestness is there, then my dear friends, there can be no doubt but that everything, whatever is done, will be begun and will be carried on in the right way.

There is one fact to which I should like, in the next place, to call your attention.—Whereas the second period—from the years 1907, 8, 9, down to 1914—was more essentially the period that helped to develop Anthroposophy on the side of sentiment, of religious knowledge, in the third period there came in again something that had been there before in the first period, as I described yesterday. It came about, that Anthroposophy was again brought into a certain relation, for instance, to the scientific world, to the different branches of science and learning followed by a large part of the human race! It imposes not only those obligations that the other people will have later, who follow after; it imposes obligations of a far higher kind, obligations that are many times, a hundredfold higher in degree, than any duties incumbent on the great mass of people who hereafter may take Anthroposophy as their guide in life.

Already during the war, one might see some scientist or man of learning from one corner or another beginning to draw in to Anthroposophy. This gave the Anthroposophic Society helpers upon scientific ground. At first these men of science did not come much to the front. The scientific department, down to the year 1919 or 20 remained more of a hope, with the exception of what Dr. Unger extracted and turned to account for Anthroposophy from the Philosophy of freedom and other writings of the pre-anthroposophic time. Otherwise, apart from what was done in this respect in the further elaboration of the science of knowledge,—work which afforded valuable, substantial material for the future movement,—apart from this, one may say that at first, at the beginning of the third period, the scientific element was a hope. For this scientific element began now, in the third period, by making itself felt in precisely the reverse direction, to what it had done before, in the first period. In the first period, as I told you, the main point with the people I spoke of yesterday was, how to justify Anthroposophy in the eyes of Science. Anthroposophy was required to get her pass viséd by Science. That was the tendency in the first period. And since Anthroposophy could not do this, the scientific branch of the business gradually died out. In the second period it had ceased to exist, and towards the end of the time the whole thing leaned more towards the artistic side; interests of a general human kind came into the ascendant.

And then in the third period these scientific aspirations again crept out of their corners, but in the reverse way. Now it was no longer a question—not explicitly at least—of justifying Anthroposophy in the eyes of Science; but of refertilizing Science from Anthroposophy.

And now every kind of person began to turn up, all complaining: We can get no further with our particular science; it wants a new seed of life. It was no longer now a question, as before, in the first period, of inventing atomic constructions, because this was the customary thing, and borrowing atomic theories from physics and astronomics for the ether and the astral bodies too. Now, having experimented long enough in the hope of reducing it to Science, it was now a question of precisely the reverse tendency.

Well, this new tendency ... I will discuss it to-day only from the positive aspect ... will only work out to any-thing, will only be of any use or benefit to the anthroposophic movement, if it finds the way to work solely and purely from anthroposophic sources—much in the same way as we work in the artistic branches, in eurhythmy, for instance; and if this again is done with all the seriousness and earnestness of which I was speaking just now. So long as, after all, a good deal still of that style of thinking, which is nowadays ‘scientific’, is unconsciously introduced into the anthroposophic movement, so long nothing will profitably come of it. And, in particular, nothing will profitably come of it, so long as the idea prevails, that the people, who are to-day official representatives of science and learning, can possibly be convinced of anything whatever by argument, without finding their way themselves into anthroposophic lines of thought. They must erst find their way into the anthroposophic lines of thought; and then one can talk to them. With regard to the people to-day who are opposing Anthroposophy, our only business is to point out clearly where they are making false statements. That is a point one can discuss. But for matters more of debate, of actual substance, one obviously cannot discuss these with people, who are not only not willing to be convinced, but really indeed are not able to be convinced, because they lack the erst foundations!—This is the first thing that everyone must work at: to lay for himself the first foundations in each of the different fields of work; but to lay these foundations really from the centre of Anthroposophy, to work direct from the central sources.

And then, after the war, when the attempt was made to grapple with all manner of practical problems of life, with actual world-problems, here again it was a question of guiding everything, of letting everything take shape, from the central anthroposophic core, and of recognizing, that with these practical problems of life one can least of all deal in any sort of compromise. There can be no question of anything but simply and solely saying to the world what has to be said from the anthroposophic centre itself, and then of waiting, and seeing how many people have an understanding for it. But never in any case must anything whatever that is drawn from the anthroposophic central source be advocated in such a way before the world that one says, ‘There is some party, which perhaps one might win over’! ‘There is some person, whom perhaps we might get hold of’!—That won't do! All that is absolutely out of the question; all that is contrary to the innermost life-conditions of the anthroposophic movement!

And if, here, there is some Woman's Movement, and there some Social Movement, and somebody thinks that we ought to ‘get in’ here, or come to terms there, ‘for the people are quite close to Anthroposophy’ on the one side or other, ... all that won't do! it absolutely won't do! What is needed is to have such a firm inner security in Anthroposophy, that one manages really, wherever one may be placed, to stand for Anthroposophy and what is Anthroposophic.

I could tell you an amusing example again of this.—As you know, when people quarrel with my having taken the theosophic movement for my field of activity, I always reply, that I shall advocate Anthroposophy everywhere, wherever people ask for it; no matter where they ask for it, I shall always do so. I have done it in many places, where I was only able to do it once, for the simple reason that the people wouldn't hear any more from me a second time; but I didn't speak in any such way as to give them an external inducement, in their existing state of soul, to hear it over again a second time. And this is the thing to be avoided. If people desire to hear anything from one, then one must give them Anthroposophy,—Anthroposophy pure and simple, drawn boldly from its innermost core.

These things have all been gone through already, by way of illustration, as I might say—really just as though simply to illustrate them!—during the course of the anthroposophic movement. For instance, we once received an invitation from a spiritualistic society in Berlin; I was to speak on Anthroposophy. It never entered my head to say No;—why shouldn't these people have a right to hear something of the sort? I delivered my lecture; and directly the lecture was over, I saw how unsuitable the people were, and that in actual truth they didn't want to hear any more from me. For, after the lecture, something quite delicious occurred: namely, I was with one voice elected president of the society! Frau Doctor Steiner and her sister, who were with me, simply didn't know where they were!—‘Whatever is to be done now!’—said they—‘President of a society like this! Whatever is to be done!’—I merely replied: ‘Not come back again!’ For that, of course, was the obvious thing; the people had sufficiently shown by their whole idiotic procedure in electing a man, whom they had just heard for the first time, ... by the mere fact of electing him as president, they had shown, that what they wanted was something entirely different from Anthroposophy. What they wanted, in fact, was to make Anthroposophy spiritualistic, and they imagined that they could do so in this way.—But similar experiences maybe met with in abundant variety.

As you see therefore, there can really be never any question of not advocating Anthroposophy in whatever company. I was once, for instance, invited to speak on Anthroposophy in the Gottached Society in Berlin. And what reason could there be for my not speaking there? The only point was, that nothing should be sacrificed of Anthroposophy.

This was the problem of peculiar difficulty at the time after the Appeal to the German People and the Civilized World was written, and the Threefold Commonwealth had appeared. Then, it was really a question of doing nothing on any side whatever, except plainly urging what can be urged direct from this source, and then waiting and seeing, who will join in. And I must still express it as my conviction to-day, that, had we done this,—had we simply taken our stand on the positive ground contained in the Appeal and in the book, without seeking contact either with this party or that (a thing which I, for my part, was always for declining),—that we should then, to-day, not have been tripped up by the obstacles put in our way from those quarters; and we might very probably even have a few fruits to record;—whereas, as it is, we are so absolutely without any fruits to record in that field, my dear friends!

For in truth, it is one of the life-conditions of a society like this, that the way should always be found to work straight from the spirit itself. — One needn't, of course, imagine that one is required to do anything so senseless as to rush in everywhere in and out of season, and never on all occasions be able to fit in with actual life,—that one should behave altogether unpractically. What is necessary to-day is just the opposite! What is necessary to-day is to bring a little real practicality into what is termed practical life! For, to anyone who knows anything at all of the real conditions of life, the modern life of to-day seems ... well, very much like that of the ‘really practical people’, who take such a really practical stand in life, that they tumble down directly they try to stand on their two feet. That is what is commonly termed to-day, ‘practical life’! And when these experts in practical life make their way into a spiritual movement, then it is a bad look-out for the spiritual movement!

As I said, I want to-day to deal rather with the positive aspect of the matter; I do not want, as often before, to criticize the mistakes in what has been done, but merely to indicate how things ought to go on. The point, then, in going the straight road, is not to go it in the way of saying: I go my own straight road, — and then, if a post happens to be there, to run one's head against it! One naturally avoids posts; one naturally makes use of anything that may help one forwards. But the point is, in all one does, to put into it unreservedly that impulse which comes from the very centre.

If people took this way of going forwards, then we should soon see that the Anthroposophical Society would then in actual fact, and not just superficially or conventionally, but justifiably, at last get beyond being treated by the rest of the world as a mere sect.

What is the use of our telling people over and over again that we are not a sect, when we behave as though we were a sect! For the first thing of all, you see, that needs to be understood by the members of the Anthroposophical Society, is this condition of existence for any society what-ever in modern times: A Society cannot possibly be a Sect. And accordingly there can never really—if the Anthroposophical Society is to stand on its own true ground—there never really can be any we, where it is a question of views and ideas.

Over and over again one hears Anthroposophists saying, when addressing the outer world: ‘We (the society) hold this or that view. Amongst us,’ this or that is done. ‘We aim’ at this or that.—This kind of thing was possible in old days; then, societies could confront the world with this kind of solid uniformity. In our day, it is no longer possible. In our day, more especially with a society like this, every single person in it must be a really free individual. Views, ideas, opinions, are the property of the private individual only. The society has no opinion. And this must find expression even in the very terms in which the individual speaks of the society. The ‘we’, strictly speaking, must vanish.

¹ The really practical people, a humorous poem by Christian Morgenstern, frequently performed in Eurhythmy.

And with this there is involved something else besides. When this ‘we’ has vanished, then each person will not feel himself in the society as though it were a water-barrel that holds him up and carries him, and that he can fall back upon in case of need. Instead of which, when each person in the society has to stand for his own opinion and above all for himself, he will then also feel the full responsibility for everything that he himself says as a private individual.

This sense of responsibility,—this is what must grow continually greater and greater, so long as the society is still a little band only. And therefore it might be well to consider,—seeing that the Anthroposophical Society has not hitherto succeeded, through its habits and customs of life, in figuring before the outer world as an eminently modern society, and that these habits and customs of life have brought along with them the continual use of terms such as: ‘We believe’ this! ‘We think’ that! ‘We hold this view’! ‘Our world-conception is ...’ and so forth; until the world outside has come to believe that it is a collective mass with certain opinions, and that anyone, who wants to join, is obliged to subscribe to this collective opinion,—which naturally repels every soul with any self-respect. ... Now however, that this has happened, it becomes necessary to-day to consider a measure, which need not have been considered perhaps a year ago; because things had not then gone so far, because one had not yet been confounded with Carbonari and Soviet Governments and Irish Republicanism (all, of course, to certain non-ostensible ends). So that to-day it really looks as though we must very seriously consider the necessity of doing away with the three Points that are continually being quoted: Fraternity without distinction of races, etc.; and the comparative study of religions and study of spiritual worlds and spiritual methods. The fact that these three Points are always quoted makes the impression in the eyes of the world as though one were required to swear to these three Points. One must find a quite different form: above all one must put it into such a form, that everybody who is not willing to subscribe to an opinion, but who is interested in the pursuit of a spiritual life, doesn't need to think that he is subscribing himself body and soul to a fixed set of opinions.—This is the thing we have to consider to-day; for it is one of the life-conditions of the society, now that we have experienced the third stage and its peculiar features.

I have often been asked by different people, whether they could join the Anthroposophical Society, or not, since they were not yet prepared to subscribe to the anthroposophic doctrines. My reply was, that it would be a poor sort of society in these days, which thought of recruiting its members from the people who subscribe to its particular doc-trines. That would be something dreadful!—I invariably replied, that, for honest membership, there can be no question of anything but what can be expressed in the words: One is interested simply in the existence of a society that is looking for the way to the spiritual world. One has an interest in such a thing. How it is then done, is the concern of those who have entered the society; one person contributes one thing, another another.

I can very well understand anyone being unwilling to join a society for which he is required to pledge himself to articles of faith. But when one says, ‘Whoever is interested in the pursuit of spiritual life can be a member of this society’, then the different people will come together, who have this kind of interest; and the others, ... well, they may stay outside,—but they will be led ever further and further into the ad absurdum of life.

When we begin to reflect upon the conditions, like these, which are necessary for the life of the Anthroposophical Society; when we are no longer willing to vegetate on for ever in the old groove,—then first do we really fulfil the life-conditions of the society.

When this society, therefore, finds its way in actual fact to handling things in a perfectly free fashion,—with no sort of narrowness, but only broad-heartedly and generously,—then, and then only, will it be possible for this society to become in actual fact, what it can and should become in as much as the anthroposophic movement runs through it.—For the anthroposophic movement links on everywhere quite positively,—without compromise, but quite positively,—to all that can be found existing at the present day, and that can bear any sort of good fruit for the future.

These things mean acquiring a certain delicacy of under-standing. And it is necessary that this delicacy of under-standing should be acquired by the Anthroposophists within, I might say, the next few weeks. And then the further ways and means will be found.: that will all come in the course of actual practice.

But no one will be able to think along these lines, who does not come radically out of the more narrow circle of his private personality, and begin really to care for the cause itself,—really to recognize Anthroposophy as an invisible Being with a life of her own.

I was, in the nature of things, obliged, as you see, to speak of this third period in a different way from the two first. For the two first are really history. The third, although we are now at the end of it, belongs to the present day; and everybody ought really to know what are the necessary conditions of the day. Even in the smallest details we must work through to guiding principles like these. Such guiding principles are not dogmas; they result quite obviously, as matters of course.

What still remains to be said, I will leave over till tomorrow; and we will see if we can then bring these lectures to a conclusion.

As I am now coming to the concluding words of this course of lectures on education, I should like first of all to take the opportunity of expressing the deep satisfaction I feel that our friends in Holland, who have set themselves the task of fostering the anthroposophical conception of the world, had the will to arrange this course. Such an enterprise always involves an immense amount of hard work for the organisers. And we ourselves, just because we have very many things to arrange in Dornach, know best of all what goes on behind the scenes on such occasions, all the work that has to be done and how much effort and energy are called for. It is therefore obvious that, before leaving Holland, I should express my very warmest thanks to those who have worked together in order to bring about this whole conference. An educational course has taken place and in my closing words I may perhaps be allowed to say something about the part played by the art of education within the whole sphere of the anthroposophical movement.

An educational art has grown up within the anthroposophical movement, not, so to speak, as something which has found its way into the movement through some abstract intention, but it has arisen with a certain necessity out of the movement itself. Up to now few activities have grown out of the anthroposophical movement so naturally and inevitably as this art of education. In the same way, simply as a matter of course, eurythmy has grown out of the anthroposophical movement through Frau Dr. Steiner, medicine through Frau Dr. Wegman; and educational art, as with the other two, has, I may venture to say, arisen likewise in accordance with destiny, with karma. For the anthroposophical movement as such is, without any doubt, the expression of something which corresponds to human striving through the very fact that humanity has arisen on the earth.

We need only look back into those ancient times in the evolution of humanity when Mystery Centres were to be found here and there, in which religion, art and science were cultivated out of experiences of the spirit, and we become aware how in those old, sacred centres human beings have had, as it were, intercourse with beings of the super-sensible world in order to carry spiritual life into external, physical life. We can pursue our way further into the historical development of humanity and we shall discover ever and again the urge to add what is super-sensible to what man perceives with his senses. Such are the perspectives which open up when we penetrate into the historical evolution of humanity and see that what lives in anthroposophy today is ceaseless human striving. As anthroposophy however it lives out of the longings, out of the endeavours of human souls living at the present time. And the following may in truth be said: At the turning point of the 19th to the 20th century it has become possible, if one only has the will, to receive revelations from the spiritual world which will once again deepen the whole world-conception of mankind.

These revelations from the spiritual world, which today must take on a different manifestation from the old Mystery Truths, must accord with modern scientific knowledge. They form the content of anthroposophy. And whoever makes them his own knows also that out of the conditions of our present age many, many more people would come to anthroposophy were it not for the tremendous amount of prejudice, of pre-conceived feelings and ideas, which put obstacles in their path. But these are things which must be overcome. Out of the small circle of anthroposophists must grow an ever larger one. And if we call to mind everything which is living and working in this circle we may perhaps—without in any way wishing to declare that anthroposophy is itself a religious movement—we may perhaps allow a deeply moving picture to rise up before us.

Call to mind the Mystery of Golgotha. Only a hundred years after the Mystery of Golgotha, the most brilliant Roman writer, Tacitus, writes about Christ as if he were someone almost unknown, who had met his death over in Asia. At that time therefore, in the height of Roman civilisation, of Roman spiritual and cultural life, where people were living in the traditions of the previous several thousand years, even there nothing was known of Christ. And it is possible to paint a word-picture of a significant fact: There above is the Roman civilisation—in the arenas, in brilliant performances, in everything that takes place in Roman social life, in the life of the state. Below, underground, are those regions known as the catacombs. There many people gather together, gather by the graves of those who, like themselves, were believers in the Mystery of Golgotha. These people must keep everything secret. What goes on under the earth only comes to the surface on those occasions when, in the arena, a Christian is smeared with pitch and burned as an entertainment for those who are civilised citizens. Thus we have two worlds: above, the life of Roman civilisation, based on old, resplendent traditions; below, what is developing in secret under the earth. Let us take the brilliant writer of this epoch. He was able to write what amounts to no more than a brief reference in his notes to the coming into being of Christianity, while his writing table in Rome may well have stood over one of the catacombs without his knowing anything whatsoever about what was taking place beneath him.

Let us take several hundred years later. What earlier had spread over the world in such a spectacular way has now disappeared; the Christian civilisation has risen to the surface of the earth and Christianity is beginning to expand in Europe where previously there had been the Roman culture. Keeping such a picture in view one sees how things actually proceed in the evolution of humanity. And often, when contemplating the present time, one is inclined to say: To be sure, anthroposophists today do not bury themselves under the earth; that is no longer customary, or they would have to do it; externally they find themselves in surroundings as beautiful as those we have here; but now ask yourselves whether those from outside, who regard ordinary, normal civilisation as their own, know more about what is taking place here than the Romans knew about what was taking place in the catacombs. One can no longer speak so precisely; the situation has passed over into a more intellectual sphere, but it remains the same. And when in thought one looks forward a few hundred years, one may at any rate indulge in the courageous hope that the picture will change. Of course, those who know as little about anthroposophy today as the Romans knew about Christianity find all this very fantastic; but no one can work actively in the world who is unable to look courageously at the path opening out before him. And anthroposophists would fain look with the same courage at the way which lies ahead. This is why such pictures rise up in the mind's eye.

From time to time we must certainly turn our attention to all the opinions about anthroposophy which are held today. Gradually it has come about that scarcely a week goes by without the appearance of some sort of antagonistic book dealing with anthroposophy. The opponents take anthroposophy very seriously. They refute it every week or so, not indeed so much from different standpoints, for they are not very inventive, but they nevertheless refute it. It is quite interesting to observe how anthroposophy is dealt with when approached in this way. One discovers that very learned people, or people who should have a sense of responsibility, write books on some subject or other and introduce what they have read about anthroposophy. Very often they have not read a single book whose author is an anthroposophist, but they gather their information solely from the works of opponents.

Let us take an example. There was once a Gnosis, of which scarcely anything exists except the Pistis-Sophia, a writing which does not contain very much and is moreover extremely difficult to understand. All those who write about the Gnosis today—for at the present time this realm is very much in the forefront—know little about it, but nevertheless regard themselves as its exponents. They believe that they are giving some explanation of the Gnosis when they say it originated out of Greek culture. I must often think of how it would be if everything related to anthroposophy went the same way; if, as many people often wish, all anthroposophical writings were to be burnt; then anthroposophy would be known as the Gnosis is known today. It is interesting that today many people say that anthroposophy is a warmed-up Gnosis. They do not know anthroposophy because they do not wish to know it, and they do not know the Gnosis because no external document dealing with it exists. Nevertheless this is how people talk. It is a negative example, but it can notwithstanding point in a definite direction. It can certainly only point to this: Courage and strength will be needed if anthroposophy is not to go the same way as the Gnosis, but is to develop so as to unfold its intrinsic reality. When one looks such things in the face, a feeling of deep satisfaction arises when one sees all the various undertakings which come about, of which this conference is an example; for such things taken together should ensure that anthroposophy will work powerfully into the future. In this educational course anthroposophy has, as it were, only peeped in through little windows. Much however has been indicated which may serve to show how anthroposophy goes hand in hand with reality, how it penetrates right into practical life. Just because everything real is permeated with spirit, one can only recognise and understand reality when one has an eye for the spirit. Of course it was not possible to speak here about anthroposophy as such. On the other hand it was perfectly possible to speak about a sphere of activity in which anthroposophy can work fruitfully: I mean the sphere of education.

In the case of eurythmy for instance it was destiny itself that spoke. Today, looking at things from outside, it might well be imagined that at a certain moment someone was struck with a sudden thought: We must have a eurythmy. This was not so, but at that time there was a family whose father had died.

There were a number of children and the mother was concerned about their welfare. She was anxious that something worth while should develop out of them. The anthroposophical movement was still small. The question was put to me: What might develop out of the children? It was in connection with this question that the first steps were taken to come to something in the nature of eurythmy. To begin with the attempt was confined to the very narrowest limits. So it was out of these circumstances that the first indications for eurythmy were given. Destiny had spoken. Its manifestation was made possible through the fact that there was an anthroposophy and that someone standing on anthroposophical ground was seeking her life's career. And soon after—it did not take so very long—the first pupils who had learned eurythmy themselves became teachers and were able to carry eurythmy out into the world. So, with the help of Frau Dr. Steiner, who took it under her wing, eurythmy has become what it is today. In such a case one may well feel convinced that eurythmy has not been sought: eurythmy has sought anthroposophy.

Now let us take medicine. Frau Dr. Wegman has been a member of the Anthroposophical Society ever since there was a Society. Her first attempts to heal out of an artistic perception gave her the predisposition to work medically within the Anthroposophical Movement. As a whole-hearted anthroposophist she devoted herself to medicine. So here too medicine has grown out of the being of anthroposophy and today exists firmly within it because its growth has come about through one particular personality.

And further. When the waves of the world war had subsided, people's thoughts turned in all possible directions: Now at last something really great must happen: now, because human beings have experienced so much suffering, they must find the courage to achieve something great; there must be a complete change of heart. Immense ideals were the order of the day. Authors of all kinds, who otherwise would have written on quite other subjects, wrote about “The Future of the State” or “The Future of the Social Order” and so on. Everywhere thoughts were turned towards what could now come about out of man himself. On anthroposophical soil many such things sprang up and faded away. Only in the realm of education there was very little to show up to this time. My little book, The Education of the Child from the Aspect of Spiritual Science, which appeared more or less at the beginning of the Anthroposophical Movement, was already there and it contained all kinds of indications which could be developed into a whole system of education. It was however not regarded as anything special, nothing more than a booklet that might help mothers to bring up their children. I was constantly asked: Should this child be dressed in blue, or that one in red? Should this child be given a yellow bed-cover or that child a red one? I was also asked what one or another child should eat, and so on. This was an admirable striving in an educational direction but it did not amount to very much.

Then in Stuttgart, out of all these confused ideals, there emerged Emil Molt's idea to found a school for the children of the workers at the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory. And Emil Molt, who is present today, had the notion to hand the direction of the school over to me. That was a foregone conclusion. Destiny could not have it otherwise. The school was founded with 150 children drawn from the Waldorf-Astoria factory. It was provided with teachers drawn from the Anthroposophical Movement. The law pertaining to schools in Württemberg made it possible to choose as teachers men and women who were regarded as suitable. The only condition made was that those who were to become teachers should be able to give some proof in a general way that they were well-fitted for their task. All this happened before the great “freeing of humanity” through the Weimar National Assembly From that time onwards we should no longer have been able to set about things so freely. As it was, we could make a beginning, and it will be possible at least for a few years to maintain the lower classes also.¹

Well, then anthroposophy took over the school, or one might equally well say, the school took over anthroposophy. And in a few years the school grew in such a way that children were entered coming from very different backgrounds and belonging to all classes of life. All kinds of people wanted their children to attend Waldorf School, anthroposophists and non-anthroposophists. Very strange opinions were held. Naturally enough parents are fondest of their own children and of course want to send them to an excellent school. To give one example, we have had the following experience. There are many opponents whose opposition is based on scientific grounds; and they know that anthroposophy is so much foolish, unscientific rubbish. Nevertheless they send their children to the Waldorf School. They even discover that the Waldorf School suits their children admirably. Recently two such people visited the Waldorf School and said—But this Waldorf School is really good, we notice this in our children; but what a pity that it is based on “Theosophy.” Now the Waldorf School would not be there at all if anthroposophy were not there. So, you see, the judgment of many people amounts to this: It is as if one would say: That is an excellent dancer; the only pity is that he must stand on two legs. Such is the logic of opponents. One cannot do otherwise than say that the Waldorf School is good, for nothing whatever in this school is planned in order to make it a school with a definite “world-conception.” In regard to religious instruction, the Catholic children are taught by a Catholic priest, the evangelical children by an evangelical clergyman; and only because in Germany there are a great many non-churchmen who belong to no religious community, are we obliged to arrange for a free religion lesson. Otherwise these children would have had no religious teaching at all. I have great difficulty in finding teachers for these free religion lessons, for they are over-full. There is no inducement whatever to persuade the children to come, for we only want to be a modern school. All we want is to have practical and fundamental principles for the instruction and education. We have no wish to introduce anthroposophy into the school, for we are no sect; what we are concerned with is universally human. We cannot however prevent children from leaving the evangelical and Catholic religion lessons and coming to the free religion lesson. It is not our fault, but they come. And so we have ever and again to see to it that this free religion lesson is continued.

The Waldorf School is growing, step by step. It now has about 800 children and between 40 and 50 teachers. Its growth is well in hand—not so its finances. The financial situation is very precarious. Less than six weeks ago there was no means of knowing whether the financial position would allow the Waldorf School to exist beyond 15th June. Here we have an example which shows clearly how difficult it is today for an undertaking to hold its own in the face of the terrible state of economic affairs in Central Europe, even though it has proved beyond any manner of doubt the spiritual justification for its existence. Again and again, every month, we experience the utmost anxiety as to how we are to make the existence of the Waldorf School economically possible. Destiny allows us to work, but in such a way that the Sword of Damocles—financial need—is always hanging over our heads. As a matter of principle we must continue to work, as if the Waldorf School were established for eternity. This certainly demands a very pronounced devotion on the part of the teaching staff, who work with inner intensity without any chance of knowing whether in three months time they will be unemployed.

Nevertheless anthroposophical education has grown out of the Anthroposophical Society. What has been least sought for is what prospers best. In other words, what the gods have given, not what men have made, is most blessed with good fortune. It is quite comprehensible that the art of education is something which perforce lies especially close to the hearts of anthroposophists. For what is really the most inwardly beautiful thing in the world? Surely it is the growing, developing human being. To see this human being from the spiritual worlds enter into the physical world through birth to observe how what lives in him, what he has carried down in definite form is gradually becoming more and more defined in his features and movements, to behold in the right way divine forces, divine manifestations working through the human form into the physical world—all this has something about it which in the deepest sense we may call religious. No wonder therefore that, wherever there is the striving towards the purest, truest, most intimate humanity, such a striving as exists as the very foundation of anything anthroposophical, one contemplates the riddle of the growing human being with sacred, religious fervour and brings towards it all the work of which one is capable.

That is something which, arising out of the deepest impulses of the soul, calls forth within the anthroposophical movement enthusiasm for the art of education. So one may truly say: The art of education stands within the anthroposophical movement as a creation which can be nurtured in no other way than with love. It is so nurtured. It is indeed nurtured with the most devoted love. And so many venture to say further that the Waldorf School is taken to the heart of all who know it, and what thrives there, thrives in a way that must be looked upon as an inner necessity. In this connection I should like to mention two facts.

Not so very long ago a conference of the Anthroposophical Society was held in Stuttgart. During this conference the most varied wishes were put forward coming from very different sides. Proposals were made as to what might be done in one or other sphere of work. And just as today other people in the world are very clever, so naturally anthroposophists are clever too; they frequently participate in the cleverness of the world. Thus it came about that a number of suggestions were interpolated into the conference. One in particular was very interesting. It was put forward by pupils who were in the top class of the Waldorf School and it was a real appeal to the Anthroposophical Society. The appeal was signed by all the pupils of the 12th Class and had more or less the following content: We are now being educated in the Waldorf School in a genuine, human way; we dread having to enter an ordinary university or college. Could not the Anthroposophical Society also create an anthroposophical university? For we should like to enter a university in which our education could be as natural and human as it is now in the Waldorf School.—The suggestion thrown into the meeting stirred the idealism of the members and as a result the decision was actually taken to found an anthroposophical university. A considerable sum of money was collected, but then, in the time of inflation, millions of marks melted away into pfennigs. Nevertheless there were people who believed that it might be possible to do something of the kind and to do it before the Anthroposophical Society had become strong enough to form and give out judgments. Well, we might certainly be able to train doctors, theologians and so on, but what would they be able to do after their training? They would receive no recognition. In spite of this, what was felt by these childlike hearts provides an interesting testimony to the inner necessity of such education. It was by no means unnatural that such a suggestion was put forward. But, to continue the story, when our pupils entered the top class for the first time we were obliged to take the following measures. We had been able to give the young people only what constituted a living culture, but now they had to find access to the dead culture essential to the Abitur examination.² We had therefore to plan the time-table for the top class in such a way that our pupils could take the Abitur. This cut right across our own curriculum and in our teachers' meetings we found it extraordinarily difficult to reconcile ourselves to putting the examination work as the focal point of the curriculum during the final year of this class. Nevertheless we did this. I had a far from easy time when I visited the class, for on the one hand the pupils were yawning because they had to learn what they must know later for the examination, and on the other hand their teachers often wanted to fit in other things which were not necessary for the examination but which the pupils wanted to know. They had always to be reminded: But you must not say that at the examination. This was a real difficulty. And then came the examination. The results were passable. However, in the college of teachers and in the teachers' meetings we were—pardon the expression—thoroughly fed up. We said: We have already established the Waldorf School; and now, when we should crown our work during the last school year, we are unable to carry out our intentions and do what the school requires of us. And so, there and then, in spite of everything, we resolved to carry through the curriculum strictly to the end of the final school year, to the end of the 12th class, and moreover to suggest to the parents and pupils that we should add yet another year, so that the examination could be taken then. The pupils accepted this with the greatest willingness for they saw it as a way out which would ensure the realisation of the intentions of the Waldorf School. We experienced no opposition whatever. There was only one request which was that Waldorf School teachers should undertake the coaching for the examination.

You see how difficult it is actually to establish within present day so-called reality something originating purely out of a knowledge of man. Only those who live in a world of fantasy could fail to see that one has perforce to deal with things as they are, and that this gives rise to immense difficulties. And so we have on the one hand the art of education within the anthroposophical movement, something which is loved quite as a matter of course. On the other hand we have to recognise that the anthroposophical movement as it exists in the social order of today is confronted with formidable difficulties when it endeavours to bring about, precisely in the beloved sphere of education, those things of which it perceives the deep inner necessity. We must look reality in the face in a living way. Do not think that it would occur to me for a single moment to ridicule those who out of inner conviction are inclined to say: Well, really, things are not so bad; too much is made of it all, for other schools get on quite all right. No, that is not the point! I know very well how much work and effort and even spirit are to be found in the schools of today. I fully recognise this. But unfortunately human beings today do not look ahead in their thinking. They do not see the threads connecting education, as it has become in the last few centuries, with what is approaching us with all the violence of a storm, threatening to ravage and lay waste our social life. Anthroposophy knows what are the conditions essential to the development of culture in the future; this alone compels us to work out such methods as you will find in our education. Our concern is to provide humanity with the possibility of progress, to save it from retrogression.

I have described on the one hand how the art of education stands within the anthroposophical movement, but how, on the other hand, through the fact that this art of education is centred in the anthroposophical movement, that movement is itself faced with great difficulties in the public life of today.

When therefore it so happens that to an ever increasing extent a larger circle of people, as has been the case here, come together who are desirous of hearing what anthroposophy has to say on the subject of education, one is thankful to the genius of our time that it is possible to speak about what lies so closely to one's heart. In this particular course of lectures I was only able to give a stimulus, to make certain suggestions. But when one comes down to rock bottom, not all that much has been achieved; for our anthroposophical education rests on actual teaching practice. It only lives when it is carried out; for it intends nothing more nor less than life itself. In actual fact it cannot truly be described, it must be experienced. This is why when one tries to stimulate interest in what must necessarily be led over into life, one has to make use of every possible art of speech in order to show how in the anthroposophical art of education we have the will to work out of the fullness of life. Maybe I have succeeded but ill in this course, but I have tried. And so you see how our education has grown out of anthroposophy in accordance with destiny.

Many people are still living in anthroposophy in such a way that they want to have it only as a world conception for heart and soul, and they look askance at anthroposophy when it widens its sphere of activity to include art, medicine, education and so on. But it cannot be otherwise, for anthroposophy demands life. It must work out of life and it must work into life. And if these lectures on the art of education have succeeded in showing to some small extent that anthroposophy is in no way sectarian or woven out of fantasy, but is something which is intended to stand before the world with the cool reasonableness of mathematics (albeit, as soon as one enters into the spiritual, mathematical coolness engenders enthusiasm, for enthusiasm is a word that is connected with spirit [The German words for enthusiasm and spirit are Geist and Begeisterung.] and one cannot help becoming enthusiastic, even if one is quite cool in the mathematical sense, when one has to speak and act out of the spirit)—even if anthroposophy is still looked upon today as an absurd fantasy, it will gradually be borne in on people that it is based on absolutely real foundations and strives in the widest sense of the words to embody and practise life. And possibly this can be demonstrated best of all today in the sphere of education.

If it has been possible to give some of those who have been present here a few stimulating ideas, then I am content. And our work together will have its best result if all those who have been a little stirred, a little stimulated, find in their common striving a way to continue in the practice of life what these lectures were intended to inspire.

• 1. It was then possible that a State law might prevent children from entering the school before the fifth class.
• 2. The German matriculation.

It is a little difficult to continue what has been given in the last lectures, because so many friends who have not taken part in these studies are here to-day. On the other hand it is hardly possible to make a new beginning, for many things contained in the previous lectures have still to be completed. Friends who have just arrived will have to realise that if some of our thoughts to-day prove somewhat difficult to understand, it is because they are connected—inwardly, though not outwardly—with preceding lectures. At Easter we shall have a self-contained course, but to-day I must continue what has gone before. We did not expect so many friends at this date, although needless to say we are extremely glad that they have come.

In recent lectures we have been speaking of definite karmic relationships—not with the object of finding anything sensational in the successive earthly lives we have studied, but in order to arrive step by step at a really concrete understanding of the connections of destiny in human life.

I have described successive earthly lives of certain historic figures, in order to call forth an idea of how one earthly life works on into the next—and that is not an easy matter.

Again and again it must be emphasised that a new trend has come into the Anthroposophical Movement since the Christmas Foundation Meeting at Dornach. Of this I should now like to say a few introductory words.—You know, my dear friends, that since the year 1918 there have been all manner of undertakings within the Anthroposophical Society. Their origin is clear. When the Anthroposophical Society was founded, this question was really being asked, out of a deep occult impulse: Would the Anthroposophical Society continue to evolve by virtue of the inner strength which (in its members) it had acquired until then? There was only one way to make the test. Until then, I, as General Secretary, had had the leadership of the German Section, which was the form in which the Anthroposophical Movement had existed within the Theosophical Society. The only way now was for me no longer to take in hand the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society but to watch and see how this Society would evolve through its own inherent strength.

You see, my dear friends, that is something quite different from what the position would have been if already at that time (as at our Christmas Foundation Meeting) I had said that I would undertake the leadership of the Society. For the Anthroposophical Society, if led by me, must naturally be an altogether different thing than if led by someone else. Moreover, for certain deep reasons, the Society might have been led all the better if I myself had not had the administrative leadership. Many things might have been done if human hearts had spoken—things which in fact remained undone, or which were even done from outside, often enough under resistance from the anthroposophists.

During the War, of course, we had little opportunity to unfold our forces in all directions. So it came about that after the year 1918, the prevailing state of affairs was taken advantage of by those from many quarters who wanted to do this or that. If I had said at the time, “No, these things shall not be done”, then of course we should hear it said to-day: “If this or that had only been allowed, we should now have numbers of flourishing undertakings.”

For this very reason it was the custom at all times for the leaders of occult movements to let those who wanted to do something try it out and see what became of it, so that convictions might be called forth by the facts themselves. For that is the only way to call forth conviction. And so it had to be in our case too.

The upshot of it all has been that since the year 1918, opposition to our Movement has grown rife, and has brought about the present state of affairs, when it is impossible for me, for instance, to give public lectures in Germany.

At the present moment these facts must in no way be concealed from the Anthroposophical Movement. We must face them with all clarity. As long as we work with unclear situations we shall make no progress.

As you know, all manner of experiments were made in the hope of being ‘truly scientific’—shall we say? Quite naturally so, in view of the characters of those concerned! Scientists who also partake in our Society naturally like to be scientific. But that is the very thing that annoys our opponents. When we say to them, “As scientists we can prove this or that truth”, they come forward with all their so-called scientific claims, and then of course they become furious. We should be under no illusions on this point. Nothing has annoyed our opponents more than the fact that our members have tried to speak on the same subjects as they themselves do, and in the same manner, only—as these our members often used to say—“letting a little Anthroposophy flow into it.” It was precisely this which called forth our opponents in such overwhelming numbers.

Again, we offend most strongly against the life-conditions of Anthroposophy if we give ourselves up to the illusion that we can win over the adherents of various religious communities by saying the same or similar things as they, only once more “letting Anthroposophy flow into it.”

But now, since the Christmas Foundation Meeting, an entirely new element must come into all that is being done in the field of Anthroposophy. Those of you who have observed the way Anthroposophy is now being presented here, or the way it was presented at Prague and again at Stuttgart, will have observed that impulses are now at work which call forth something altogether new, even where our opponents are concerned. If we try to be ‘scientific’ in the ordinary sense of the word—as, unfortunately, many of our members have tried to be—then we are presuming, so to speak, that it is possible to enter into discussion with them. But now take the lectures that have been given here, or the lectures at Prague, or the single lectures at Stuttgart—can you believe for a single moment that there can be any question of entering into discussion with our opponents on these matters? It goes without saying: we can enter into no discussion with our opponents when we speak of these things. How, for example, should we discuss with any representative of the civilisation of to-day the statement, for example, that the soul of Muavija appeared again in the soul of Woodrow Wilson?¹

Thus in the whole Anthroposophical Movement there is now a prevailing quality which can tend to nothing else than this.—We must take it at last in real earnest that there can be no question of entering into discussion or argument with our opponents. For if we do so, it will in any case lead nowhere. Thus we must realise that, with regard to our opponents, it can only be a question of refuting calumnies, untruths and lies. We must not give up ourselves to the illusion that these things can be discussed. They must expand by their own inherent power; they cannot be decided by any dialectic.

Through the whole tenor of the Anthroposophical Movement as it has been since Christmas last, this will perhaps be realised increasingly, even by our members. Henceforth the Anthroposophical Movement will take this attitude: It will no longer pay heed to anything other than what the spiritual world itself requires of it.

It is from this standpoint that I have placed before you various thoughts on karma. Those of you who were here, or who heard my last lecture at Stuttgart, will remember that I tried to show how the individualities who lived in the 8th and 9th centuries A.D. at the Court of Haroun al Raschid in Asia, having continued to evolve after death in different directions, played certain definite parts in their new incarnations. At the time of the Thirty Years' War (and a short time before) we have on the one hand the individuality of Haroun al Raschid, reincarnated in the Englishman, Bacon of Verulam. And a great organiser at the Court of Haroun al Raschid, who had lived at the Court—not indeed as an Initiate, but as the reincarnation of an Initiate—this individuality we found again as Amos Comenius, whose field of action was rather in Middle Europe. From these two streams, much in the spiritual part of modern civilisation flowed together. In the spiritual and intellectual aspect of modern civilisation, the Near East—as it was in the time immediately after Mohammed—lived again, on the one hand through the reincarnated Haroun al Raschid, Bacon of Verulam; and on the other hand through Amos Comenius, who had been his counsellor.

In the present lecture I wish to emphasise the following fact:—The evolution of man does not merely take place when he is here on earth, but also when he is between death and a new birth. Bacon as well as Amos Comenius, having fastened Arabism—so to speak from two different sides—on to the civilisation of Europe, died again and passed into the life between death and a new birth. And there they were together with many souls who came down to earth after their time. Bacon and Amos Comenius, having died in the 17th century, lived on in the spiritual world. Other souls, who came down to earth in the 19th century, were in the spiritual world together with the souls of Bacon and Amos Comenius from the 17th to the 19th. On the one hand there were souls who gathered mainly around the soul of Bacon—Bacon whose work became so dominant. Then there were the souls who gathered around Amos Comenius. And though this is rather a pictorial way of speaking, we must not forget that there are ‘leaders’ and ‘followers’—albeit under quite different conditions—even in the spiritual world which men pass through between death and a new birth. Such individualities as Bacon or Amos Comenius worked not only through what they brought about on earth—through their writings, for example, or through the traditions of them which lived on on earth. No, these leading spirits were also working through the souls whom they sent down, or the souls with whom they were together and who were then sent down; they worked by causing certain tendencies to germinate in these souls in the spiritual world. Thus among the men of the 19th century we find souls who had become dependent already in their evolution in the pre-earthly life on one or other of these two spirits—the discarnate Amos Comenius, and the discarnate Bacon.

As I said, I want to lead you more and more into the concrete way in which karma works. Therefore I will now draw your attention to two personalities of the 19th century whose names will be known to most of you. One of them was especially influenced in his pre-earthly life by Bacon, and the other by Amos Comenius.

If we observe Bacon as he stood in earthly civilisation—in his earthly life as Lord Chancellor in England—if we observe him there, we find that his working was such that an Initiate stood behind him. The whole Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, as it is outwardly pursued by the historians of literature, is appallingly barren. All manner of arguments are brought forward which are supposed to show that Shakespeare the actor did not really write his dramas, but that they were written by Bacon the philosopher and Lord Chancellor, and so on ...

All these things—working with external methods, seeking out similarities in the way of thought in Shakespeare's dramas and Bacon's philosophic works—all these are barren superficialities. They do not get at the real truth. For the truth is that at the time when Bacon, Shakespeare, Jacob Boehme, and a fourth were working on the earth, there was one Initiate who really spoke through all four. Hence their kinship, for in reality it all goes back to one and the same source. Of course, these people who dispute and argue do not argue about the Initiate who stood behind, especially as this Initiate—like many a modern Initiate—is described to us in history as a rather intolerable fellow. But he was not merely so. No doubt he was so sometimes in his external actions, but he was not merely so. He was an individuality from whom immense forces proceeded, and to whom were really due Bacon's philosophic works as well as Shakespeare's dramas and the works of Jacob Boehme, and also the works of the Jesuit, Jacob Balde.

If we bear this in mind, then we must see in Bacon, in the philosophic realm, the instigator of an immense and far-reaching stream of the time.

It is most interesting to observe what could become of a soul who lived throughout the two centuries, in the life beyond the earth, under the influence of the dead Bacon. We must turn our attention to the way in which Bacon himself lived after his death. For our studies of human history it will in fact be more and more important to observe the human beings who have lived on earth not only until the moment of their death but in their working beyond death, where they work on and on upon those souls who are afterwards to descend to earth. This applies especially to those who have themselves been responsible for great spiritual achievements.

No doubt these things may be somewhat shocking for men of the present time. So for instance I remember—if I may make this digression—I remember on one occasion I was standing at the entrance to the railway station in a small German University town with a well-known doctor who went in a great deal for occultism. Around us stood many other people. Presently he warmed up to his subject and out of his enthusiasm said to me in a loud voice, so that many of those who were around could hear him: “I will make you a present of the biography of Robert Blum; but that is a biography which begins only after his death.” Spoken loudly as it was, one could well observe the shock it gave to those who were standing around us! One cannot say without more ado to the people of to-day, “I will make you a present of the biography of a man, but it begins only after his death.”

For the rest—apart from this two-volumed biography of Robert Blum, which begins not with his birth but with his death—little has yet been done in the way of relating the biographies of men after their death. Biographies generally begin at birth and end at death; there are not yet many works that begin with a man's death.

Yet, for the real happenings of the world, what a man does after his death is immensely important, notably when he passes on the results of what he did on earth—translated into the spiritual—to the souls who come down after him. We cannot understand the age which succeeds a given age if we do not observe this side of life.

Now I was specially interested in observing those individualities who surrounded Bacon after his death. Among them were individualities who were subsequently born as natural scientists. But there were also others who were born as historians; and if we observe the influence of the dead Lord Bacon on these souls, we see how the materialism which he founded upon earth—the mere researching into the world of sense (for, as you know, everything else was for him an ‘idol’)—translated into the spiritual, reverts into a kind of radicalism. And so indeed, in the very midst of the spiritual world, these souls received impulses which worked on in such a way that after their birth, having descended to the earth, they would attach no value to anything that was not a concrete fact visible to the senses.

I will now speak in a somewhat popular form, but I beg you not to take my words too literally, for if you do so it will of course be only too easy to say: ‘How grotesque!’ Among these souls there were also some who, by their former tendencies—derived from former earthly lives—were destined to become historians. And among them was one who was the greatest. (I am still speaking of the pre-earthly lives of all these souls). One among them was the greatest. Under the influence of Lord Bacon's impulses, all these souls said to themselves, in effect: It is no longer permissible to write history as it was written in former times, to write it with Ideas, investigating the inner connections. Only the actual facts must now be the object of our research.

Now I ask you, what does this mean? Are not the intentions of men the most important thing in history?—and they are not outwardly real! These souls, however, no longer permitted themselves to think in this way; and least of all did the soul who afterwards appeared again as one of the greatest historians of the 19th century—Leopold von Ranke. Leopold von Ranke was a pre-earthly disciple of Lord Bacon.

Study the earthly career of Leopold von Ranke as a historian. What is his principle? Ranke's principle as a historian is this: nothing must be written in history save what is to be read of in the archives. We must compile all history from the archives—from the actual transactions of the diplomats.

If you read Ranke you will find it so. He is a German and a Protestant, but with his sense of reality this has no effect on him. He works objectively—that is to say, with the objectivity of the archives. So he writes his History of the Popes—the best that has ever been written from the pure standpoint of archives. When we read Ranke we are irritated, nay dreadfully so. It is a barren prospect to imagine the old gentleman—quick and alert as he was until a ripe old age—sitting forever in the archives and merely piecing together the diplomatic transactions. That is no real history. It is history which reckons only with the facts of the sense-world—that is to say, for the historian, with the archives.

And so indeed, precisely by taking into account the life beyond the earth we have the possibility to understand why Ranke became what he was.

But now we can also look across to Amos Comenius, and observe how he worked on the pre-earthly willing of souls who afterwards descended to the earth. For just as Leopold von Ranke became the greatest disciple of Bacon—of Bacon after his death—so did Schlosser become the greatest disciple of Comenius after his death.

Read Schlosser's History; observe the prevailing tone, the fundamental note he strikes. On every page there speaks the moralist—the moralist who would fain seize the human heart and soul—whose object is to speak right into the heart. Often he scarcely succeeds, for he is still rather a pedant. He speaks, in effect, like a pedant speaking to the heart. Nevertheless, being a pre-earthly disciple of Amos Comenius, he has absorbed something of the quality that was in Comenius himself, who was so characteristic by virtue of the peculiar quality of his spirit. For after all, Comenius too came over from Mohammedanism. Though he was very different from the spirits who gathered around Lord Bacon, nevertheless Comenius too, in his incarnation as Comenius, concentrated on the real, outer world. Everywhere he demanded visibility, objectivity, in education. There must always be an underlying picture. He demands vision—object lessons, as it were; he too lays stress on the sense-perceptible, though in quite another way. For Amos Comenius was also one of those who at the time of the Thirty Years' War believed most enthusiastically in the coming of the so-called Millennium. In his Pansophia he wrote down great and world-embracing ideas. He wanted to work for human education by a great impulsive power. This too worked on Schlosser. It is there in Schlosser.

I mention these two figures—Ranke and Schlosser—in order to show you how we can understand what appears as the spiritually productive power in man only if we also take into account his life beyond the earth. Only then do we understand it—just as we have also learnt to understand many things by taking into account repeated lives on earth. For in the thoughts which I have recently placed before you, we have observed this marvellous working across from one incarnation to another. As I said, I give these examples in order that we may then consider how a man can think about his own karma. Before we can dwell on the way in which good and evil—or illnesses or the like—work over from one incarnation to another, we must first learn to perceive how that which afterwards emerges in the spiritual and intellectual life of civilisation also works across from one incarnation to another.

Now my dear friends, I must admit that for me one of the most interesting personalities in modern spiritual life, with regard to his karma, was Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. Anyone who observes him closely will see that his most beautiful works depend on a peculiar fact, namely this: Again and again, in his whole human constitution, there was a kind of tendency for the Ego and astral body to flee from the physical and the etheric bodies.

Morbid conditions appear in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, bordering very nearly on dementia. But these morbid conditions only express in a rather more extreme form what was always present in him in a nascent state. His soul-and-spirit tends to go out—holds to the physical and etheric only by a very loose thread. And in this condition—the soul-and-spirit holding to the physical and etheric by a very loose thread only—the most beautiful of his works originate; I mean the most beautiful of his longer works and of his shorter poems too. Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's most beautiful poems may even be said to have originated half out of the body. There was a peculiar relationship between the four members of his nature. Truly there is a great difference between such a personality and an average man of the present time. With an average man of this materialistic age we generally find a very firm and robust connection of the soul-and-spirit with the physical and etheric. The soul-and-spirit is deeply immersed in the physical and etheric—‘sits tight’, as it were. But in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer it was not so. He had a very tender relation of the soul-and-spirit to the physical and etheric. To describe his psyche is really one of the most interesting tasks one can undertake when studying the developments of modern spiritual life. Many things that emerge in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer appear almost like a dim, cloudy recollection—a recollection which has however grown beautiful in growing dim. When Conrad Ferdinand Meyer writes we always have the feeling: He is remembering something, though not quite exactly. He changes it—but changes it into something beautiful and form-perfected. We can observe this wonderfully, piece by piece, in certain of his works.

Now it is characteristic of the inner karma of a human being when there is such a definite relationship of the four members of his nature—physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego. And in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's case, when we trace back this peculiarly intimate connection, we are led, first of all, to the time of the Thirty Years' War. This was the first thing clear to me in his case: there is something of a former earthly life at the time of the Thirty Years' War. And then there is a still earlier life on earth going back into the pre-Carlovingian age, going back quite evidently into the early history of Italy.

When we endeavour to trace Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's karma, the peculiar, intangible fluidity of his being (which none the less expresses itself in such perfection of form)—the peculiar, intangible fluidity of his life somehow communicates itself to our investigation, until at length we feel: We are getting into confusion. I have no other alternative but to describe these things just as they happened in the investigation.

We go back into the time of the 6th century in Italy. There we have the feeling: We are getting into an extraordinarily insecure element. We are driven back again and again, and only gradually we observe that this is not due to ourselves but to the object of our research. There is really in the soul—in the individuality—of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer something that brings us into confusion as we try to investigate him. We are driven to return again and again into his present incarnation or into the one immediately before it. Again and again we must ‘pull ourselves up’ and go back again.

The following was the result.—You must remember, all that has lived in a human soul in former incarnations becomes manifest in the most varied forms—in likenesses which are often quite imperceptible to outer observation. This you will have seen from other instances of reincarnation given here.

So at length we come to an incarnation in Italy in the early Christian centuries—at the end of the first half of the first millennium A.D. Here we come to a halt. We find a soul living in Italy, to a large extent at Ravenna, at the Roman Court. But now we come into confusion. For we must ask ourselves: What was living in that soul? The moment we ask ourselves this question (in order to call forth the further occult investigation), the whole thing is extinguished once again.

We become aware of the experiences which this soul underwent while living at the Court at Ravenna—at the Roman Court. We enter into these experiences and we think we have them, and then again they are extinguished—blotted out from us; and we are driven back again to Conrad Ferdinand Meyer as he lived on earth in the immediate past. At length we perceive that in this later life he obliterates from our vision the content of his soul in the former life. Only after long trouble do we perceive at length how the matter really stands. Conrad Ferdinand Meyer—or rather the individuality who lived in him—was living at that time in a certain relationship to one of the Popes who sent him, among others, to England on a Roman Catholic, Christian Mission.

The individuality who afterwards became Conrad Ferdinand Meyer had first absorbed all that wonderful sense of form which it was possible to absorb in Italy at that time. The Mosaic art of Italy bears witness to it; also the old Italian painting, the greater part, nay practically the whole of which has been destroyed. This art did not continue.

And then he went on a Roman Catholic Christian Mission to the Anglo-Saxons. One of his companions founded the Bishopric of Canterbury. What afterwards took place at Canterbury began essentially with this foundation. The individuality, however, who after-wards appeared as Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, was only there as a witness, so to speak. Nevertheless, he was a very active person, and he called forth the ill-will of an Anglo-Saxon chieftain, at whose investigation he was eventually murdered. That is what we find to begin with.

But while he lived in England there was something in the soul of this Conrad Ferdinand Meyer which robbed him of real joy in life. His soul was deeply rooted in the Italian art of his time—or, if we will call it so, in the Italian spiritual life. He gained no happiness in the execution of his missionary work in England. Yet he devoted himself to it with great intensity—so much so that his assassination was a reaction to it.

This constant unhappiness—being repelled from something which he was none the less doing with all force and devotion out of another impulse in his heart—worked on in such a way that when he passed through his next earthly life there ensued a cosmic clouding-over of his memory. The inner impulse was there but it no longer coincided with any clear concept.

And so it came about that in his subsequent incarnation as Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, an undefined impulse was at work in him, to this effect: ‘I was once working in England. It is connected somehow with Canterbury. I was murdered owing to my connection with Canterbury.’

So indeed the outer life of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer in this incarnation takes its course. He studies outer history, he studies Canterbury, studies what happened in Canterbury, in connection with the history of England. He comes across Thomas à Becket, Chancellor of King Henry II in the 12th century. He learns of the strange destiny of Thomas à Becket, who from being the all-powerful Chancellor of Henry II, was murdered virtually at his instigation. And so in this present incarnation as Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, his own half-forgotten destiny appears to him in Thomas à Becket. It comes before him, half-forgotten in his subconsciousness, for I am speaking of course, of the subconscious life which comes to the surface in this way. So he describes his own fate in a far distant time. But he describes it in the story of what actually happened in the 12th century between King Henry II and Thomas à Becket of Canterbury, whose fate he recounts in his poetic work Der Heilige (The Saint). So indeed it is—only all this takes place in the subconscious life which embraces successive incarnations. It is as though within a single earthly life a man had experienced something in his early youth in connection with a certain place. He has forgotten it. He experienced it maybe in the second or third year of his life. It does not emerge, but some other similar destiny emerges. The very same place is named, and as a result he has a peculiar sympathy for this other person's destiny. He feels it differently from one who has no ‘association of ideas’ with the same place.

Just as this may happen within one earthly life, so it took place in the concrete instance I am now giving you. There was the work in Canterbury, the murder of a person connected with Canterbury (for Thomas à Becket was Archbishop of Canterbury), the murder of Thomas à Becket at the instigation of the King of England. All of these schemes work in together. In the descriptions in his poem he is describing his own destiny.

But now the thing goes on—and this is most interesting in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's case. He was born as a woman about the time of the Thirty Years' War—a lively woman, full of spiritual interest in life, a woman who witnessed many an adventure. She married a man who first took part in all the confused events of the Thirty Years' War, but then grew weary of them and emigrated to Switzerland, to Graubünden (Canton Grisons), where he lived a somewhat philistine existence. But his wife was deeply affected and impressed by all that took place in the Graubünden country under the prevailing conditions of the Thirty Years' War.

This too is eclipsed, as though with another layer. For it is so with this individuality: That which is living in him is easily forgotten in the cosmic sense, and yet he calls it forth again in a transmuted form, where it becomes more glorious and more intense. For out of what this woman observed and experienced in that incarnation there arises the wonderful characterisation of Jürg Jenatsch, the man of Graubünden, in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's historic novel. Observing Conrad Ferdinand Meyer in this incarnation, we have indeed no explanation of his peculiarity if we cannot enter into his karma. I must say—speaking with a grain of salt—that I envy the people who ‘understand’ him so light-heartedly. Before I knew his reincarnations, all that I understood was that I did not understand him. This wonderful inner perfection of form, this inner joy in form, this purity of form, all the strength and power that lives in Jürg Jenatsch, and the wonderful personal and living quality in The Saint,—a good deal of superficiality is needed to imagine that one understands all this. Observe his beautiful forms—there is something of clear line in them, almost severe; they are painted and yet not painted. Here live the mosaics of Ravenna. And in The Saint there lives a history which was undergone once upon a time by this individuality himself; but a mist of the soul has spread over it, and out of the mist it emerges in another form.

And again one needs to know: All that is living in his romance of Graubünden, Jürg Jenatsch, was absorbed by the heart and mind of a woman; while in the momentum, the driving power that lives in this romance there lives again the swashbuckler of the Thirty Years' War. The man was pretty much of a philistine, as I said, but he was a swashbuckler. And so, all that comes over from former experiences on earth comes to life again in a peculiar form in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. Only now do we begin to understand him. Now we say to ourselves: In olden times of human evolution, men were not ashamed to speak of Spirits from beyond descending to the earth, or of earthly human beings finding their way upward and working on from spiritual worlds. All this must come again, otherwise man will not get beyond his present outlook of the earthworm. For all that the natural-scientific conception of the world contains, it is the world-outlook of the earth-worm. Men live on earth as though only the earth concerned them, as though it were not true that the whole Cosmos works upon all earthly things and lives again in man. As though it were not true that earlier epochs of history live on, inasmuch as we ourselves carry into later times what we absorbed in former times.

We do not understand karma by talking theoretic concepts about successive earthly incarnations. To understand karma is to feel in our hearts all that we can feel when we see what existed ages ago flowing into the later epochs in the souls of men themselves. When we begin to see how karma works, human life gains quite a new content. We feel ourselves quite differently in human life.

Such a spirit as Conrad Ferdinand Meyer feels his former earthly lives like an undertone—an undertone that sounds from far away. We understand what appears in him only when we develop an understanding for this undertone. The progress of mankind in spiritual life will depend on its ability to regard life in this way, to observe in all detail what flows across from former epochs of the world's evolution into later epochs through the human beings themselves. Then we shall cease, in the childish way of psycho-analysts, to explain the peculiarities of souls by speaking of ‘hidden underlying regions’ and the like. After all, one can ascribe anything one likes to what is ‘hidden’. We shall look for the real causes. In some respects, no doubt, the psycho-analysts do quite good work. But these pursuits remind us of the story of how someone heard that in the year 1749 a son was born to a certain patrician. Afterwards this son emerged as a very gifted man. To this day we can point to the actual birth-place in Frankfurt of the man who afterwards came forth as Wolfgang Goethe. ‘Let us make excavations in the earth and see by dint of what strange emanations his talents came about’. Sometimes the psycho-analysts seem to me just like that. They dig into the earth-realm of the soul, into the hidden regions which they themselves first invent by their hypotheses, whereas in reality one ought to look into the preceding lives on earth and lives between death and a new birth. Then if we do so, a true understanding of human souls is opened out to us. Truly the souls of men are far too rich in content to enable us to understand their content out of a single life alone.

• 1. See Vol. I, lecture X.