The Rudolf Steiner Archive

If we look back over the evolution of mankind since the Mystery of Golgotha, we get the impression that Christianity, the Christ Impulse, has only been able to live on within the European and American civilisations in the face of definite obstacles and in association with other streams of spiritual life. And a study of the growth and gradual development of Christianity reveals many remarkable facts.

To-day I want to describe in broad outlines the growth and development of Christianity in connection with what ought to live within the Anthroposophical Society: and not only ought to, but can live, because those persons who feel an honest and sincere urge towards Anthroposophy, have this urge from the very depths of their being.

If we take the facts of repeated earthly lives in all seriousness, we shall say: This inner urge to get away from the conceptions and habits of thought of those among whom life, education and social relationships have placed us, this urge that we feel to enter a stream of thought which really makes claims upon our life of soul, must have its origin in karma, in the karma coming from earlier lives on earth.

Now if we study the question of karma in connection with those personalities who find themselves together in the Anthroposophical Movement, it transpires that, without exception, before their present earthly life they have had one other important incarnation since the Mystery of Golgotha. They were already on earth once since the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and are now there for the second time since that Event.

And then the great question arises: How has the previous earthly life, with respect to the Mystery of Golgotha, worked upon these personalities who now, out of their karma, feel the urge to enter the Anthroposophical Movement?

Even from exoteric study we find that men standing as firmly within the stream of Christianity itself as St. Augustine, have said: “Christianity did not begin with Christ; there were Christians before Christ, only they were not so called.” This is what St. Augustine says.

Those who penetrate more deeply into the spiritual mysteries of human evolution and can study these spiritual mysteries with Initiation Science, will strongly confirm such a view as is expressed by St. Augustine, for it is a fact. But it becomes necessary, then, to know in what form that which through the Mystery of Golgotha became the historical Christ Impulse upon the earth, existed in earlier times.

To-day I can speak of this earlier form of Christianity by starting from impressions which came in a place not far distant from Torquay (where our Summer Course has been held), in Tintagel, whence proceeded the spiritual stream connected with King Arthur. It was possible to receive the impressions which can still come to-day at the spot where King Arthur's castle with its Round Table stood—impressions which come above all from the magnificent natural surroundings of this castle.

At this place where nothing but ruins remain of the old citadel of King Arthur, where we look back as if in memory across the centuries that have elapsed since the Arthur stream went out from thence, we realise how stone after stone has so crumbled away that there is hardly anything to be recognised of the old castles which once were inhabited by King Arthur and those around him. But when with the eye of spirit we look out from the place where the castle once stood, over the sea with its iridescent colours and breaking waves, the impression we get is that we are able at this place to penetrate deeply into the elemental secrets of nature and of the cosmos.

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And if we look back with occult sight, if we can visualise the point of time which lies a few thousand years ago, when the Arthur stream had its beginning, then we see that those who lived on Arthur's Mount had, as is the case with all such occult centres, chosen this spot because the impulses necessary for the tasks they had set themselves, for their mission in the world, needed the play of those forces which nature there displayed before them.

I cannot say whether it is always so, but when I saw the view there was a most wonderful play of waves surging and rippling up from the depths—in itself one of the most beautiful sights in all nature. These waves hurl themselves against the walls of rock and as they fall back again in seething foam the elementary spirits are able to rise up from below and come to living expression. From above, the sunlight is reflected in manifold forms in the waves of the air. This interplay of elemental nature from above and from below reveals the full power of the Sun and displays it in such a way that man is able to receive it into his being. Those who can imbibe what is given by this interplay of the beings born of the light above and the beings born in the depths below, receive the power of the Sun, the impulse of the Sun. It is a moment in which man can unfold what I will call “piety”—piety in the pagan sense. Christian piety is not the same as pagan piety which means inner surrender to the gods of nature working and weaving everywhere in the play of nature.

Those who lived around King Arthur absorbed this play of weaving, working nature into their very being. And most significant of all was what they were able to receive in the first centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha.

I want to tell you to-day about the character of this spiritual life that was connected with such centres as that of King Arthur's Round Table. And I must begin by speaking of something that is known to you all.

When a human being dies, he leaves his physical body and still has his etheric body around him for a few days. After these few days have elapsed he lays aside his etheric body and lives on then in his astral body and Ego. What happens thus to the man who has passed through the gate of death, appears to the eye of vision as if the etheric being were dissolving. After death the etheric human being expands and expands, his actual form becoming more and more indefinite as he weaves himself into the cosmos.

A remarkable phenomenon, and the exact opposite of this other, occurred in the world-historic sense when the Mystery of Golgotha took place. What was it that happened then? Up to that time Christ had been a Sun Being, had belonged to the Sun. Before the Mystery of Golgotha had come to pass, the Knights of King Arthur's Round Table stood on these rocks, gazed at the play between the Sun-born spirits and the Earth-born spirits, and felt that the forces living in this play of nature-spirits poured into their hearts and above all through their etheric bodies. Therewith they received into themselves the Christ Impulse which was then streaming away from the Sun and was living in everything that is brought into being by the Sun-forces.

And so, before the Mystery of Golgotha, the Knights of King Arthur received into themselves the Sun-Spirit, that is to say, the Christ as He was in pre-Christian times. And they sent their messengers out into all Europe to subdue the wild savagery of the astral bodies of the peoples of Europe, to purify and to civilise, for such was their mission. We see such men as these Knights of King Arthur's Round Table starting from this point in the West of England to bear to the peoples of Europe as they were at that time, what they had received from the Sun, purifying the astral forces of the then barbarous European population—barbarous at all events in Central and Northern Europe.

Then came the Mystery of Golgotha. What happened in Asia? Over yonder in Asia, the sublime Sun Being, Who was later known as the Christ, left the Sun. This betokened a kind of death for the Christ Being. He went forth from the Sun as we human beings go forth from the earth when we die. And as a man who dies leaves his physical body behind on the earth and his etheric body which is laid aside after three days is visible to the seer, so Christ left behind Him in the Sun that which in my book Theosophy is called “Spirit-Man,” the seventh member of the human being.

Christ died to the Sun. He died cosmically, from the Sun to the earth. He came down to the earth. From the moment of Golgotha onwards His Life-Spirit was to be seen around the earth. We ourselves leave behind at death the Life-Ether, the etheric body, the life-body. After this cosmic Death, Christ left His Spirit-Man on the Sun, and around the earth, His Life-Spirit. So that after the Mystery of Golgotha the earth was swathed as it were by the Life-Spirit of the Christ.

Now the connections between places are not the same in the spiritual life as they are in physical life. The Life-Spirit of the Christ was perceived in the Irish Mysteries, in the Mysteries of Hibernia; and above all by the Knights of King Arthur's Round Table. So, up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ Impulse belonging to the Sun actually went out from this place where the impulses were received from the Sun. Afterwards the power of the Knights diminished but they lived at the time within this Life-Spirit which encircled the earth and in which there was this constant interplay of light and air, of the Spirits in the Elements from above and from below.

Try to picture to yourselves the cliff with King Arthur's castle upon it and from above the Sun-forces playing down in the light and air, and pouring upwards from below the elementary beings of the earth. There is a living interplay between Sun and earth.

In the centuries which followed the Mystery of Golgotha this all took place within the Life-Spirit of the Christ. So that in the play of nature between sea and rock, air and light, there was revealed, as it were in spiritual light, the Event of Golgotha.

Understand me rightly, my dear friends. If in the first five centuries of our era men looked out over the sea, and had been prepared by the exercises practised by the twelve who were around King Arthur and who were concerned above all with the Mysteries of the Zodiac, if they looked out over the sea they could see not merely the play of nature but they could begin to read a meaning in it just as one reads a book instead of merely staring at it. And as they looked and saw, here a gleam of light, there a curling wave, here the sun mirrored on a rocky cliff, there the sea dashing against the rocks, it all became a flowing, weaving picture—a truth whose meaning could be deciphered. And when they deciphered it they knew of the spiritual Fact of the Mystery of Golgotha. The Mystery of Golgotha was revealed to them because the picture was all irradiated by the Life-Spirit of Christ presented to them by nature.

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Yonder in Asia the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place and its impulse had penetrated deeply into the hearts and souls of men. We need only think of those who became the first Christians to realise what a change had come about in their souls. While all this of which I have been telling you was happening in the West, the Christ Himself, the Christ Who had come down to earth leaving His Spirit-Man on the Sun and His Life-Spirit in the atmosphere around the earth, bringing down His Ego and His Spirit-Self to the earth—the Christ was moving from East to West in the hearts of men, through Greece, Northern Africa, Italy, Spain, across Europe. The Christ worked here in the hearts of men, while over in the West He was working through nature.

And so on the one hand we have the story of the Mystery of Golgotha, legible in the Book of Nature for those who were able to read it, working from West to East. It represented, as it were, the science of the higher graduates of King Arthur's Round Table. And on the other hand we have a stream flowing from East to West, not in wind and wave, in air and water, not over hills or in the rays of the Sun, but flowing through the blood, laying hold of the hearts of men on its course from Palestine through Greece into Italy and Spain.

The one stream flows through nature; the other through the blood and the hearts of men. These two streams flow to meet one another. The pagan stream is still working, even to-day. It bears the pre-Christian Christ, the Christ Who was proclaimed as a Sun Being by those who were Knights of the Round Table, but also by many others before the Mystery of Golgotha actually took place. The pre-Christian Christ was carried through the world by this stream even in the age of the Mystery of Golgotha. And a great deal of this wisdom was carried forth into the world by the stream known as that of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. It is possible, even to-day, to discover these things. There is a pagan Christianity, a Christianity that is not directly bound up with the actual historical Event of Golgotha.

And coming upwards to meet this stream there is the form of Christianity that is connected directly with the Mystery of Golgotha, flowing through the blood, through the hearts and souls of men. Two streams come to meet one another—the pre-Christian Christ stream, etherealised as it were, and the Christian Christ stream. The one is known, subsequently, as the Arthur stream; the other as the Grail stream. Later on they came together; they came together in Europe, above all in the spiritual world.

How can we describe this movement? The Christ Who descended through the Mystery of Golgotha drew into the hearts of men. In the hearts of men He passed from East to West, from Palestine, through Greece, across Italy and Spain. The Christianity of the Grail spread through the blood and the hearts of men. The Christ took His way from East to West.

And to meet Him from the West there came the spiritual etheric Image of the Christ—the Image evoked by the Mystery of Golgotha, but still picturing the Christ of the Sun Mysteries.

Behind the scenes of world-history, sublime and wonderful events were taking place. From the West came pagan Christianity, the Arthur-Christianity, also under other names and in another form. From the East came the Christ in the hearts of men. And then the meeting takes place—the meeting between the Christ Who had Himself come down to earth and His Own Image which is brought to Him from West to East. This meeting took place in the year 869 A.D. Up to that year we have two streams, clearly distinct from one another. The one stream, more in the North, passed across Central Europe and bore the Christ as a Sun Hero, whether the name were Baldur or some other. And under the banner of Christ, the Sun Hero, the Knights of Arthur spread their culture abroad.

The other stream, rooted inwardly in the hearts of men, which later on became the Grail stream, is to be perceived more in the South, coming from the East. It bears the real Christ, Christ Himself. The other stream brings to meet it from the West a cosmic Image of the Christ. This meeting of Christ with Himself, of Christ the Brother of Humanity with Christ the Sun Hero Who is there only as it were in an Image—this meeting of Christ with His own Image took place in the 9th century.

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I have given you here, my dear friends, an idea of the inner happenings during the first centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha, when, as I have already said, the souls were living who are now again upon earth, and who have carried with them from their previous earthly lives the urge to come in sincerity into the Anthroposophical Movement.²

When we consider this significant Arthur stream from West to East, it appears to us as the stream which brings the Impulse of the Sun into earthly civilisation. In this Arthur stream is working and weaving the Michael stream as we may call it in Christian terminology, the stream in the spiritual life of humanity in which we have been living since the end of the seventies of last century. The Ruling Power, known by the name of Gabriel, who had held sway for three or four centuries in European civilisation, was succeeded at the end of the seventies of last century by Michael. And the Rulership of Michael will last for three to four centuries, weaving and working in the spiritual life of mankind. And so we have good cause at the present time to speak of the Michael streams, for we ourselves are living once again in an Age of Michael.

We find one of these Michael streams if we look back to the period immediately preceding that of the Mystery of Golgotha, to the Arthur Impulse going out from the West, from England, an Impulse which was kindled originally by the Hibernian Mysteries. And we find a still more ancient form of this Michael stream if we look back to what happened centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha, when, taking its start from Northern Greece, in Macedonia, the international, cosmopolitan stream connected with the name of Alexander the Great arose under the influence of the conception of the world that is known as the Aristotelian. What was achieved through Aristotle and Alexander in that pre-Christian age took place under the Rulership of Michael, just as now once again we are living under his Rulership. The Michael Impulse was there in the spiritual life at the time of Alexander the Great, just as it is there now, in our own time. Whenever a Michael Impulse is at work in humanity upon the earth it is always a time when that which has been founded in a centre of spiritual culture spreads abroad among many peoples of the earth and is carried into many regions, wherever it is possible to carry it.

This came to pass in pre-Christian times through the campaigns of Alexander. The achievements of Greek culture were spread among men wherever this became possible. If one had asked Alexander and Aristotle: Whence comes your impulse to spread abroad the spiritual culture of your age?—they would have spoken, though under a different name, of that same Being, Michael, who works from the Sun as the Servant of Christ. For among the Archangels who in turn rule over civilisation, Michael belongs to the Sun. Michael was Ruler in the time of Alexander and is Ruler again in our own time. The next Ruling Archangel was Oriphiel, who belongs to Saturn. His successor, the Archangel Anael, belongs to Venus. While Zachariel, the Archangel who ruled civilisation in the 4th and 5th centuries, belongs to the sphere of Jupiter. Then came Raphael, from the Mercury sphere, at the time when a form of thought connected with medicine and healing lived in the background of European civilisation. After Raphael came Samael, whose Rulership extended a little beyond the 12th century. And then came the Age of Gabriel. Samael belongs to Mars, Gabriel to the Moon. And Gabriel was once again succeeded by Michael, who belongs to the Sun sphere, in the seventies of the 19th century. Thus in rhythmic succession these seven Beings of the Hierarchy of the Archangels rule over the spiritual life of the earth.

And so as we look back—when was the last Rulership of Michael? It was in the Alexander period. It prevailed during that period when Greek civilisation was carried across to Asia and Africa, and finally concentrated in the great and influential city of Alexandria with its mighty heroes of the spiritual life.

It is a strange vista that presents itself to occult sight. In the age which lies a few centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha, we see, going Eastwards from Macedonia—that is to say, once more from West to East but this time farther to the East—we see the same stream which proceeds from the English and Irish souls in the West and which also flows from West to East. During the Alexander period, Michael was the Ruling Archangel on the earth. During the Arthur period, when Michael was working from the Sun, the influences I have described were sent down from the Sun. But what happened later on, after the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place? What happened to the kind of thought that had been carried by Alexander the Great over to Asia?

At the time when Charlemagne, in his own way, was establishing a certain form of Christian culture in Europe, Haroun al Raschid was living over yonder in Asia Minor. All the oriental wisdom and spirituality to be found at that time in architecture, in art, in science, in religion, in literature, in poetry—it was all gathered at the Court of Haroun al Raschid. And at his side there was a Counsellor, a man who was not initiated in all these arts and sciences at that time, but who had been an Initiate in earlier times, in a former life. Around these two men, Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor, we find that all the wisdom which had been carried by Alexander into Asia, all the teachings which had been drawn from the old nature-wisdom and were imparted by Aristotle to those he was able to instruct—all this was changed. Alexandrianism and Aristotelianism were permeated and impregnated at the Court of Haroun al Raschid with Arabism, with Mohammedanism.

And then, all the learning thus permeated with Arabism was carried over into the stream of Christianity by way of Greece, but especially by way of Northern Africa, Italy and Spain. It was carried over, inculcated as it were into the world of Christendom.

But before this, Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor had passed through the gate of death, and from that life which leads from death to a new birth they looked down on what was taking place on earth in the expeditions of the Mohammedan Moors to Spain. From the spiritual world they watched the form of culture which they themselves had promoted and which had been spread by their successors. Haroun al Raschid concentrated his attention from the spiritual world more on the regions of Greece, Italy and Spain; his Counsellor more on the stream going out from the East across the regions to the North of the Black Sea, through Russia and into Central Europe.

And now the question arises: What was the destiny of Alexander and Aristotle themselves? They were deeply bound up with the Rulership of Michael but they were not incarnated on the earth at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha.

We must try to get a clear conception of the two contrasting pictures. On the earth are those who were contemporaries of the Mystery of Golgotha. Christ comes down through the Mystery of Golgotha, becomes Man, and from then on lives in the earth-sphere. And what is happening on the Sun? On the Sun there are the souls who at that time belonged to Michael, who were living in his sphere. These souls witnessed, from the Sun, the departure of Christ from the Sun and His descent to earth. On the earth there were those who witnessed His arrival. That is the difference. The experience of those who were on earth during the Michael Rulership at the time of Alexander, was that they saw as it were the other direction of the Christ Event, namely, the departure of the Christ from the Sun. They live on—I will not now mention unimportant incarnations—and they experience, in the spiritual world, that significant point of time in the 9th century, about the year 869, when there took place the meeting of the Christ with His own Image, with His own Life-Spirit brought over from pagan, pre-Christian Christianity.

Another meeting also took place in the spiritual world, a meeting of the individualities living in Alexander the Great and in Aristotle with the individualities who had lived in Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor. The wisdom from Asia, in a Mohammedanised form, living in Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor after their death, came into contact, in the spiritual world, with Alexander and Aristotle. On the one side Aristotelianism and Alexandrianism, but impregnated with Mohammedanism, and on the other, the real Aristotle and the real Alexander—not a weakened form of their teachings. Alexander and Aristotle had witnessed the Mystery of Golgotha from the Sun.

Then a great spiritual exchange, a great heavenly Council, if one may call it so, took place in the spiritual world between Mohammedanised Aristotelianism and Christianised Aristotelianism which had, however, been imbued in the spiritual world with the Christian Impulse.

In the spiritual world which borders on our physical earth—it was here that Alexander and Aristotle met with Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor and consulted together as to the further progress of Christianity in Europe, with an eye to what should come at the end of the 19th century and in the 20th century, when Michael would again have the Rulership on earth. This all took place in the light raying from that other event, namely, the meeting of Christ with His own Image. That heavenly Council was permeated by the influence of this meeting. And the lines, the threads of the spiritual life of humanity were projected with great intensity in the spiritual world which borders on the physical earth.

Below, on the earth itself, the Church Fathers gathered together in Constantinople at the Eighth Ecumenical Council, where they formulated the dogma that man does not consist of body, soul and Spirit, but only of body and soul, the soul possessing certain spiritual attributes. Trichotomy—the definition of man as body, soul and Spirit—was done away with and anyone who persisted in believing it was declared to be a heretic. The Christian Fathers in Europe never spoke of body, soul and Spirit, but only of body and soul.

The decisive event which took place in the year 869 in the super-sensible worlds as I have described it, cast its shadows down into the earthly world. The Dark Age, the Kali Yuga, received a special impetus, while what I have just described was taking place above, in the spiritual world.

Such was the real course of events. In the physical world the Council of Constantinople which eliminated the Spirit, and in the world immediately bordering on the physical, a heavenly Council such as I have described—coinciding with the meeting of Christ Himself with His own Image.

But it was known that it was a question of waiting until the new Michael Age had dawned on earth. There were, none the less, always a few Teachers who knew, even though in a somewhat decadent way, something of what takes place behind the veils of existence. There were always Teachers who knew how to present, if not always in very apt pictures, the spiritual content of the world, who could speak of what was happening in the spiritual world that is so near to the earth. And here and there these Teachers found ears willing to listen to them. Their listeners were men who learned something of true Christianity by catching here and there fragmentary words as to what would come in the 20th century after the Michael Rulership had begun once again.

In you yourselves, my dear friends, are the souls who were in incarnation at that time and listened to those who spoke of the coming Age of Michael and whose speech was influenced by impulses coming down from the heavenly Council of which I have told you.

From these experiences of a previous life in the early Christian centuries—not precisely the 9th century but before and after, chiefly before—arose the subconscious urge, when the Michael Rulership should be there once more, from the end of the 19th century onwards, to look for centres where the spiritual life is again cultivated under the influence of Michael. This impulse was rooted in the souls of those who had once heard of the teachings, who knew something of the mysteries of which we have spoken to-day.

And so the karmic urge lives in souls to find their way to that form of Christianity which was to be spread by Anthroposophy under the influence of Michael at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. What these souls had experienced in earlier times expresses itself in this incarnation in the fact that certain of them find their way to the Anthroposophical Movement.

Knowledge resulting from a converging of old pre-Christian, cosmic Christianity with inward Christian doctrines, teachings which were connected with the spiritual workings of nature and yet also with the Mystery of Golgotha, continued to be taught on earth at the time when those souls who now in this later incarnation feel themselves drawn to Anthroposophy had passed through the gates of death and were living in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. Some of them indeed came down to incarnation on the earth. The ancient teachings, with their cosmic view of Christianity, lived on, propagating traditions of the Mysteries of antiquity. This knowledge lived on in Schools in Europe like that of Chartres in the 12th century, with its great Teachers—Bernardus Sylvestris, Alanus ab Insulis and others. And the teachings lived and worked too in the great teacher of Dante, Brunetto Latini, of whom I spoke to you in the last lecture. In this way we see how there is a continuation of the knowledge in which there was still connection between cosmic Christianity and the purely human, earthly Christianity which more and more gained the supremacy on earth.

The Council held in Constantinople was an earthly, shadow-image of something that took place in the spiritual world. A constant connection was maintained between what was proceeding in the physical world and in the immediately adjacent spiritual world. And because of this, the most illustrious Teachers of Chartres felt themselves inspired by the true Alexander and the true Aristotle, although in a still stronger way by Plato and by the Platonic and Neo-Platonic thought which prevailed in the mysticism of the Middle Ages.

Something of great significance now took place. Those who had grouped themselves around Michael, and who had for the most part been incarnated at the time of Alexander, were now living in the spiritual world. Looking down from thence they saw how Christianity was evolving under the Teachers of Chartres. But they waited until these Teachers—who were the last who taught of Christianity in its cosmic aspect—they waited until these Teachers of Chartres had come up into the spiritual world. And at a certain point of time, at the end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th centuries, there gathered together in the spiritual sphere bordering on cur earth, the more definitely Platonic Teachers of Chartres and those who had in some way taken part in the heavenly Council in the year 869. There took place—if I may use trivial words of earth to describe such a sublime event—a kind of conference between the Teachers of Chartres who had just ascended into the spiritual world and were now to continue their existence there, and those who were on the point of descending to earth, among them the individualities of Alexander and Aristotle, who immediately afterwards incarnated in the Dominican Order. And then, in a body of teaching that is so misunderstood to-day but the deep significance of which ought to be realised, in Scholasticism, preparation was made for all that was to come later on in the next Age of Michael.

And now, in order that they might enter right into the heart of Christianity, the souls who belonged to the sphere of Michael, who had lived in the old Alexander time, who had not lived on earth during the first Christian centuries, or at least only in unimportant incarnations—these souls now came into incarnation in order to imbibe Christianity in the Dominican or other Orders, but mainly in the Dominican Order. Again they passed through the gate of death and continued their existence in the spiritual world.

In the 15th century and lasting on into the 16th—and it must be remembered that time-relationships are quite different in the spiritual world—there took place in the super-sensible world the great process of instruction instituted by Michael himself for those who belonged to him. A great super-sensible School was founded, a School in which Michael himself was the Teacher and in which those souls took part who had been inspired by the impulses of the Alexander Age and had later steeped themselves in Christianity in the manner described. All the discarnate souls who belonged to Michael took part in this great School in the super-sensible world during the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. All the Beings of the Hierarchy of Angels, Archangels and Archai who belonged to the Michael stream, as well as many elementary beings, also took part in it.

In this super-sensible School, a wonderful review was given of the wisdom of the ancient Mysteries. Detailed knowledge in regard to the ancient Mysteries was imparted to the souls partaking in this School. They looked back to the Sun Mysteries, to the Mysteries of the other planets. But a vista of the future was given too, a vista of what should begin at the end of the 19th century in the new Age of Michael. All this passed through these souls who now, in the present Michael Age, feel drawn to the Anthroposophical Movement.

Meanwhile, on earth, the last bout of the struggle was taking place. Haroun al Raschid had incarnated again as Lord Bacon of Verulam and in this new incarnation had set the impulse of materialism on foot. The universality in the teachings of Bacon, but also his materialism, came from his incarnation as Haroun al Raschid. Bacon was the reincarnated Haroun al Raschid. The Counsellor, who had taken the other path, incarnated in the same epoch, as Amos Comenius.

And so while Christianity illumined by Aristotelian and Alexandrian thought was going through its most important phase of development in the super-sensible worlds during the 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th centuries—during this very same period we find materialism being established on earth in the minds of men, established in science by Bacon, the reincarnated Haroun al Raschid, and in the realm of education by Amos Comenius, the reincarnated Counsellor of Haroun al Raschid. The two souls worked together.

When Amos Comenius and Bacon had once again passed through the gate of death, a remarkable thing came to pass in the spiritual world. After Bacon had passed through the gate of death, it happened that because of the particular mode of thinking he had adopted in his incarnation as Bacon, a whole world of “idols,” demonic idols, went forth from his etheric body, and spread themselves out in the spiritual world which was peopled by those who were the pupils of Michael.

As I have shown in my first Mystery Play, things that happen on earth work powerfully into the spiritual world. Bacon's mode of thinking on the earth worked so shatteringly into the spiritual world that it was flooded by a whole host of “idols.”

And the materialistic form of educational science inaugurated by Amos Comenius provided the sphere, the cosmic atmosphere, as it were, for the idols of Bacon. Bacon provided the idols; and just as we human beings have around us the mineral and plant kingdoms, so these idols of Bacon were surrounded by other kingdoms which were necessary to their existence. And these were provided by what Amos Comenius had instituted on earth.

The individualities who had once lived on the earth as Alexander and Aristotle set themselves to fight these demonic idols. And the conflict continued until the time when the French Revolution broke out on the earth.

The idols, the demonic idols which it had not been possible to overcome, which had as it were escaped from the fight, descended to earth and became the inspiring forces of the materialism of the 19th century with its many consequences. These forces are the inspirers of the materialism of the 19th century.

The souls who had remained behind, who with the assistance of the individualities of Aristotle and Alexander had profited by the teaching of Michael, came back to earth, bearing the impulses I have described, towards the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. And many of these souls can be recognised in those who come to the Anthroposophical Movement. Such is the karma of those who come to the Movement with inner sincerity.

It is a shattering experience to hear of what is happening immediately behind the events in the outer world at the present time. But it is something which, under the impulse of the Christmas Foundation at the Goetheanum must be implanted in the hearts and souls of those who call themselves Anthroposophists. It must live in their hearts and souls, and it will give them the strength to work on, for those who are Anthroposophists to-day in the true sense will feel a strong urge to come down again to the earth very soon. And with a faculty of prophecy connected with the Michael Impulse, it can be foreseen that many anthroposophical souls will come again to the earth at the end of the 20th century in order to bring to full realisation the Anthroposophical Movement which must now be established on a firm and sure foundation.

Every Anthroposophist should be moved by this knowledge: “I have in me the impulse of Anthroposophy. I recognise it as the Michael Impulse. I wait and am strengthened in my waiting by true activity in Anthroposophy at the present time in order that after the short interval allotted in the 20th century to anthroposophical souls between death and a new birth, I may come again at the end of the century to promote the Movement with much more spiritual power. I am preparing for the new Age leading from the 20th into the 21st century” ... It is thus that a true Anthroposophist speaks. Many forces of destruction are at work upon the earth! All culture, all civilised life must fall into decadence if the spirituality of the Michael Impulse does not so lay hold of men that they are capable of bringing upliftment to the civilisation that is hurrying downhill.

If there are to be found truly anthroposophical souls, willing to bring this spirituality into earthly life, then there will be a movement leading upwards. If such souls are not found, decadence will continue to spread. The great War, with all its attendant evils, will be merely the beginning of still worse evils.

Human beings to-day are facing a great crisis. Either they must see civilisation going down into the abyss, or they must raise it by spirituality and promote it in the sense of the Michael Impulse.

That, my dear friends, is what I had to say to you on this occasion and my desire is that it shall work on and bear fruit in your souls. For as I have often said at the conclusion of a happy and satisfying visit, when we have worked together for a time, we know, as Anthroposophists, that it is our karma to have been able to do so. We know too that we still remain united, even when divided in physical space. We shall remain united in the signs that can reveal themselves to the eyes of spirit and to the ears of soul if what I have said in these lectures has been received in full earnestness and has been understood.

• 2. See: Karmic Relationships, Vol. III.

During this Winter we have prepared the ground in various ways in order to understand with greater exactitude than has hitherto been possible man's life between birth and death in the physical world on the one side and on the other between death and rebirth in the spiritual world. And there will be still more to say about this subject in the coming months.

Efforts will be needed to draw together a number of details that will contribute towards a thorough understanding of this subject and throw new light upon many topics we have already studied from a different point of view. Today, then, I will ask you to think, above all, of the course of man's physical life—about which something has also been said in my book The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy—and of how it progresses in cycles: one from birth until about the seventh year, or until the change of teeth; a second cycle from the change of teeth until puberty at about the fourteenth year; then a third cycle, and so on in periods of seven years. Even to ordinary observation it will be clear that this systematic arrangement into periods of seven years is well founded, but on the other hand it will also be evident that in the actual life of the human being other facts of incisive significance cut across these seven-year periods. We ourselves have repeatedly considered a crucial occurrence in a man's life which eludes this division into cyclic periods. It is the point of time back to which a man's memory extends in later life, the moment when he begins to feel and know himself as an ‘I’, when Ego-consciousness dawns in him. This experience does not by any means occur at exactly the same point of time, but in most cases it may be said that Ego-consciousness flashes up in the human being at some point between birth and the seventh year. And something similar can be said to hold good in the later period of a man's life. Although with less abruptness than the sudden flashing-up of Ego-consciousness, there are other occurrences which as it were invalidate the regular seven-year cycle. We shall, however, always discover that whatever comes in this way into the life of man and cuts across the cyclic periods, occurs much more irregularly than the experiences connected with the actual seven-year cycles. You will hardly find two human beings whose memories go back to exactly the same point of time, that is to say who experienced the flashing up of consciousness of ‘I’ at the same age. Nor does the change of teeth occur at precisely the same age in different individuals. But why this is so in the latter case, we shall still have to consider.

When we study the cyclic periods already referred to and mentioned in my little book, Education of the Child, we shall notice that they begin in connection with the most physical, the most external member of man's being and are then concerned with the other, more inward members of his constitution. From birth until the seventh year development is connected primarily with the physical body, then for seven years with the etheric body, then for seven years with the astral body, the sentient soul, and so on. The evolutionary factors pass over more and more decisively from the external to the inner nature of man. That is essentially characteristic of the seven-year periods.

What, then, is there to be said about occurrences which cut across these seven-year periods? The flashing-up of ‘I’-consciousness during the first cycle is an emphatically inner event. For the sake of clarity, here let us consider something that seems to be in contrast with this flashing-up of Ego-consciousness. If we observe human life with discernment we shall find that the cessation of growth may be compared with some happening which cuts across the seven-year cycles of evolution. We will therefore think about the cessation of growth which after all occurs comparatively late in life, and study its implications.

The first seven-year period ends with the change of teeth. The appearance of the second teeth is, as it were, the final act of what may be called the formative principle. The last contribution made by the forces that give the human being his form is when they drive out the second teeth. That is the culmination of the formative process, for the principle which builds up the human form is no longer in action. With the seventh year the formative principle ceases to be active. What comes about later on is only an expansion of what has already been established as form. After the seventh year there is no more remodelling of the brain. All that happens is growth of what is already established as basic form. Therefore we can say that the principle of form unfolds its activity specifically in the first seven years of the life of a human being. The principle of form stems from the Spirits of Form; thus these Spirits of Form are active in the human being during the first seven years of his life. It can therefore be said that when the human being enters into life through birth, his actual form is not complete. What happens is that the Spirits of Form continue their active intervention during the first seven years of life; the human being has then reached the point when his form merely needs to grow. The basis for the form has been established by the seventh year, and the second teeth are what the formative principle still produces out of the human being. The formative principle has now come to its conclusion. Were its activity to continue, the second teeth would inevitably make their appearance later than is now the case.

Here we may ask: When these Spirits of Form have worked on the human being until the seventh year of his life, does everything they do for him come to an end?

The answer is ‘No’, for the human being goes on growing and the basic principles of his form develop still further. If nothing else intervened, growth would be able to continue without interruption. If we think only of the principles of form that are active in the human being until the seventh year there is no more reason in the case of man than in that of other beings why these forms should not continue to grow if nothing were to intervene. But something does intervene. When the human being stops growing, certain principles of form still have an effect upon him. They have already been drawing near to him but now they unite in the fullest sense with his organism, lay hold of it, but in such a way that they now act as a hindrance, and further growth is prevented. The formative principles that are active until the seventh year of life allow the human being a certain elasticity. But at that point other formative principles approach him; their nature is such that they capture and confine what is elastic in the demarcated form, thus preventing any further growth. That is why growth stops at some point. When growth stops, this means that formative forces approaching from outside are at work. Whenever formative principles are active, whenever forms grow larger, provision must be made for the stoppage of growth by the appearance of counter-formative principles which oppose the first category as its polar antithesis. When man's form has developed until about the seventh year of life (indicated in the shaded portion of the diagram) this form can continue to grow.

The formative principles have been at work until the seventh year; these principles work from within. Then different formative principles work in opposition from outside, so that the human being can grow only to the limit indicated by the line b–b. It is really as if until the seventh year of his life the human being were given an elastic garment which he can constantly stretch and enlarge. But at a specific point of time he is given one that is not elastic; he is obliged to put it on, and thenceforth cannot grow beyond its limits.

We can therefore say that in the human being a confrontation takes place between two kinds of formative principles, one working from within and the other from without. The formative principles belonging to the first category come from the Spirits of Form, from those Spirits of Form who have passed through a perfectly normal process of evolution in the Cosmos. The formative principles working from without are not of the same kind. They come from Spirits of Form whose development has been retarded and who have acquired a Luciferic character. They are the factor which works in the purely spiritual domain, whereas the forces working in the material sphere have had a normal development; having evolved through the stages of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon, they then pass to the Earth in the regular way and shape the human form from within. The ‘irregular’ Spirits of Form take what is presented to them and hold back its further development. Thus the process of growth in the human being is brought to a halt by these backward Spirits of Form. The Beings of the higher Hierarchies have the most varied tasks, among them the one that has been characterised today.

We have now been able to consider many different aspects of the work of the ‘regular’ Hierarchies and also of the work of the backward spiritual Beings belonging to the different Hierarchies. In the book Occult Science—an Outline¹ you can read how the human being reached the stage where through the Spirits of Form he could be endowed with the germinal foundation for the ‘I’, the Ego. We know that man received the germ of his physical body from the Thrones, of his etheric body from the Spirits of Wisdom, of his astral body from the Spirits of Movement, and the germinal foundation for the ‘I’ from the Spirits of Form. Bearing this in mind we can say that man, in his outer stature, has been organised by the regular Spirits of Form into an Ego-bearing being and that this comes into manifestation in the first seven-year cycle of his life. But then the backward Spirits of Form who are the opponents of the regular Spirits of Form, put a stop to his growth. This is actually the antithesis of the first, most deeply inward experience in the human being, namely, the kindling of the consciousness of ‘I’—the Ego. This happens in the early years of life, in the innermost realm of being. The outermost manifestation, the form, is checked at a later age, as a final act. Thus we perceive two evolutionary—but antithetical—processes in the human being. Of the one I have said that it comes from without and moves inward, taking hold of the sentient soul and so on, in the twenty-first year of life. Then there is another evolution proceeding from within outwards until the growth of the physical form is checked. The one evolution, the regular evolution, proceeds from the spiritual to the corporeal, from within outwards and is of interest especially for education. The other evolution—which is a much less regular and also more individual process—proceeds from without inwards and, when the human being has reached a certain age, it comes to expression in the completion of the outermost principle—the physical body.

It is very important that teachers should have knowledge of these two antithetical lines of evolution. Hence in the book The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy it was right to call attention to the first process of evolution which proceeds from within outwards, because it is only there that education is possible. On the other line of evolution—from without inwards—which is the line of individual development, it is impossible to make any actual impression. This is something of which account can be taken but which cannot be halted; neither can much be achieved in the way of education. And to be able to distinguish between where education is possible and where it is not, is of fundamental importance.

Just as the cessation of growth is caused by the backward Spirits of Form, the first actual manifestation of the ‘I’ in the human being during early childhood is the work of the backward Spirits of Will (Thrones). Between these two extremes there are other happenings which are to be attributed to backward Spirits of Wisdom and backward Spirits of Movement.

No adequate characterisation of man's life as a whole, including the existence between death and the new birth, is possible unless we take account of all the factors which have an effect upon him, and recognise that even in everyday life the influences of Luciferic beings take effect in many different ways. This influence is evident in other spheres as well. And as our endeavour in these lectures is to acquire a really fundamental understanding of man's life as a whole, we will not hesitate to think about matters which seem to be somewhat remote.

Attention shall first of all be drawn to a phenomenon from which it is evident that on the physical plane too, between birth and death, man's life has undergone essential changes in the course of evolution. If we realise this, it will, become evident that the life between death and rebirth has also changed. Those who think intellectually, but superficially, about life today may readily believe that, in essentials, things were always the same as they are at present. By no means was it so! And in certain cases we need go back only a few hundred years to find that conditions were very different. Thus at the present time there is something that has a very great influence upon man's life of soul between birth and death but that simply did not exist in its present form only a few centuries ago. It is what we today mean by the expression ‘public opinion’. Even as recently as the thirteenth century it would have been nonsense to speak of public opinion as we do today. A great deal is said nowadays against belief in authority, although in actual fact it exists in a much more oppressive form in our time than it did in these earlier, often despised centuries. In earlier centuries there were, of course, defects, but there was no blind belief in authority such as exists at present. This blindness of belief in authority is usually revealed by the fact that the authority in question cannot be specified. A person today will readily be floored when he is told that science has proved this or that. In earlier centuries, however, people attached more weight to authorities whom they encountered physically. Reference to an intangible ‘something’ is implied when it is said: ‘There is scientific proof of it.’ Such a saying urges belief in authority when confronted with something incomprehensible. Such belief did not exist in earlier centuries. People belonging to our civilisation usually concern themselves very little with matters about which the simplest, most, primitive human being in earlier centuries endeavoured to have some knowledge—matters relating, for example, to health and illness. Why, it is asked today, should anyone need to know about health and illness? The doctors know about these matters and the problems concerned can be left to them. This is also an example of what comes into the category of intangible but sovereign authority. But countless other influences make their way into life; from earliest youth the human being becomes dependent upon them and his trends of judgement and feeling force themselves into our life! These living currents swirling around among human beings are usually referred to as ‘public opinion’—and prompted the saying from philosophers: ‘Public opinions are mostly private errors.’ To realise this, however, is not as important as it is to be aware that public opinions exert tremendous power upon the life of an individual. It would be a complete misconception of history to speak about the influence of public opinion upon the life of an individual living in the thirteenth century. In those days there were single personalities who admittedly exerted a great deal of authority either in affairs of Government or in practical life, and in these spheres it was obeyed. But at this time there was nothing resembling what impersonal public opinion has become today. Anyone who is unwilling to believe this on the basis of the occult facts should study the history of Florence during those centuries and in later times too—when the government of the city passed into the control of the Medici. The tremendous power of individual authorities will then be apparent, but there was no such thing as public opinion. It first arose in an epoch preceding our own by four or five centuries and one can speak of its actual beginning. Such things must be regarded as realities, for a world of swirling thoughts does indeed exist.

What is the origin of this public opinion which we often accept as something that cannot be verified? What is public opinion in reality? You may remember that I have spoken of certain spiritual Beings belonging to the Hierarchy immediately above man—Beings who participate in various ways in the guidance and leadership of humanity. In my little book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Humanity, you will find a great deal on the subject of spiritual Beings belonging to the higher Hierarchies. Now we know that the mightiest incision in the evolution of humanity was made by the Mystery of Golgotha. In that event there came to pass something that was most wonderfully expressed in the esoteric teaching of St. Paul. Paul spoke in simple language but the actual way in which he spoke was rooted in profound esotericism. It was not possible for him always to give out openly what he, as an Initiate, knew; for in the first place he wanted to speak to a wider circle of people and, secondly, it was not possible in his day to give out everything he knew in the way of which he would have been capable. Nevertheless his very presentation was based upon profound esoteric knowledge. We find, for example, that there is a deeply significant truth in the distinction he makes between the ‘first Adam’ and the ‘higher Adam’—the Christ. According to Paul, the various generations of human beings are to be traced back to Adam, that is to say, the bodies of men descend from Adam. Hence it can be said that the physical increase of humanity over the Earth during the different periods, leads back finally to the physical body of Adam—Adam and Eve, naturally. We can then ask: What lies at the basis of the physical evolution of mankind from Adam onwards? Naturally, the evolution of souls! The physical bodies which have descended from Adam are the habitations of living souls. These souls had descended from cosmic worlds and had brought with them to the Earth a certain spiritual heritage, a spiritual endowment. But in the course of time this spiritual endowment had undergone decline. Individuals who lived, say, six or seven thousand years before the founding of Christianity had within them much stronger, more extensive spiritual forces than those who lived a mere thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha. The spiritual heritage which once came to the Earth with human beings had gradually withered away in the soul. Now the life between death and rebirth is of particular significance for this spiritual heritage. If we go back to the epoch long before the Mystery of Golgotha, we find that after death men had an active, inwardly illumined life of soul; but then this life of soul became dimmer and dimmer, darker and darker. An ever-fading life of soul came with human beings when they passed through death. This was particularly the case among the Greeks although they were the most advanced peoples then on the Earth, and their sages had every reason to say, in view of the stage reached in evolution: ‘Better it is to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of the Shades.’ We know that this saying was true when applied to the Greeks who lived a fully satisfying life on the physical plane; but as soon as they had passed through the gate of death their life became dim and shadowy.

In the fullest sense it is true that the spiritual life which men had brought with them to the Earth and which manifested after death as a somewhat dim clairvoyant consciousness, had become even dimmer. And especially in the fourth Atlantean epoch, the Graeco-Latin epoch, during which the Mystery of Golgotha took place, the spiritual life had reached the stage of its greatest darkness.

The all-important purpose of the Baptism by John the Baptist was that some of those who sought to be baptised should be made conscious of the conditions just described. The individuals baptised by John were completely submerged in the water. As a result, the etheric body of these individuals was liberated from them and for a short time, while under the water, they became clairvoyant. John was able to reveal to them that there had been such deterioration in the life of soul in the course of time that a human being now possessed very little of the spiritual treasure that he had once been able to take with him through the gate of death and that could give him clairvoyant consciousness. A man whom John baptised in this way became aware that a revitalisation of the life of soul was essential, that something new must radiate into human souls in order that after death there might be a life in the real sense. This new impulse streamed into the souls of men through the Mystery of Golgotha. You need only read my lecture-course entitled From Jesus to Christ and you will realise that a rich and abundant spiritual life streams from the Mystery of Golgotha into the souls of individuals who develop a relationship to that Mystery.

Hence Paul could say: just as the physical bodies of men descend from Adam, so will the content of their souls in greater and greater measure ‘descend’ from the Christ who is the second Adam, the spiritual Adam. It is a profound truth that Paul uttered here, clothed in his simple words. If the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place, men would have become progressively empty in soul and would either have developed a longing only to live outside the physical body or to live on Earth with no other wishes or desires than for a purely physical life, and so would have become more and more materialistic. Because all development is a slow and gradual process there are still some peoples on the Earth who have not yet wholly lost the original spiritual treasure, who still retain some measure of it in spite of having failed to establish any relationship to the Mystery of Golgotha. Individuals belonging to the most advanced peoples, however, can become conscious after death only to the extent to which they have learnt ‘to die in Christ’, as the second line of the Rosicrucian formula expresses it. And so in actual fact the Mystery of Golgotha has acted as illumination in men's souls.

With this clearly in mind we shall understand the gist of a question relating to man's evolution. It is the question: How came it that understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha enabled the content of man's soul to be carried into the sphere of his ‘I’, his Ego? How did this soul-content differ from what existed before the Mystery of Golgotha as an ancient heritage? The difference is that, before the Mystery of Golgotha, in respect of the content of their souls men were far less independent. They were under the direct guidance of the Beings we know as the Angeloi, Archangeloi and so on. Before the Mystery of Golgotha men were under the leadership of the Beings of the nearest higher Hierarchies to a far greater extent than was the case after that event. Indeed the progress of these Beings themselves—Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai—consists in the fact that they have learnt to lead human beings in a way that respects their independence. Men were intended to live on the Earth in a state of greater and greater independence. The leading spiritual Beings of the higher Hierarchies have recognised this and therein consists their progress.

But it is possible for these Spirits too to remain behind in their evolution. Not all the Spirits who participated in the leadership of humanity have acquired through the Mystery of Golgotha the power to guide and lead men while ensuring their freedom. Among these Beings of the higher Hierarchies there are some who remained backward and have become Luciferic spirits. What we call ‘public opinion’ is an example of the way in which some of them are active. Public opinion is not created by human beings alone but also by a certain category of Luciferic spirits of the lowest rank—retarded Angeloi and Archangeloi. These spirits are only beginning their Luciferic career and have not yet risen very high in the ranks of the Luciferic spirits, but they are definitely Luciferic in character. With the eye of seership one can perceive how certain spirits of the higher Hierarchies did not keep pace with evolution after the Mystery of Golgotha, how they adhere rigidly to the old kind of leadership and therefore cannot make any direct approach to men. Those who have kept pace with evolution can make regular and direct contact with men; the other spirits are incapable of this and they manifest their activity in the muddled, turbulent thinking that comes to expression as public opinion. The function of public opinion is intelligible only when it is realised that this is how it has made its way into human life.

Thus we have among us beings who abandon the regular course of evolution and become Luciferic in character. It is important that this should be known. The work of the Luciferic beings of whom we have already spoken and who now have great power, also began on a small scale. Indeed this is true in the case of the whole host of Luciferic beings. Admittedly, on the Old Moon there was no public opinion as we know it but something that can be compared with it—a kind of guidance of men. Some among this host of Luciferic spirits of whom we have spoken are powerful and important beings, for example backward Spirits of Form who surge in upon the human being with such violence that they stop his growth. The others are merely the recruits; nevertheless this is the beginning of the career of the Luciferic spirits, a career which later on will assume a quite different dimension because the spirits become more and more powerful. Public opinion, which under the guidance and direction of certain Luciferic spirits of the lowest order, influences human beings because they absorb it between birth and death, must necessarily have its counterweight during the life between death and rebirth. That is to say, because a human being in his life between birth and death has been caught up into the current of public opinion described, he must experience the counterweight in his life between death and rebirth. Otherwise the following would ensue.

The backward spirits who are responsible for the creation of public opinion have no significance or power whatever in man's life between death and rebirth. They have relinquished all possibility of working in that sphere because they are active here, on the physical plane, in a spiritual way—indeed in a way that is only possible in the form of public opinion. A man can take no iota of anything like public opinion with him into the spiritual world and whatever element of it he might want to accompany him into the life after death would be entirely out of place. It must be said, although it will seem strange to many people, that life in Kamaloka becomes very difficult for one who clings to public opinion or has been caught in the coils of his own judgement very early in life. This applies particularly to persons who believe that within the world of public opinion there can still be independent judgement—which is an utter impossibility. For such people Kamaloka is admittedly difficult. But when the period of Kamaloka is over, public opinion has no weight or significance whatever, and after death it is irrelevant whether people adhered to nuances of it, such as liberal or conservative, radical or reactionary. This has no significance whatever in the different groupings of human beings and moreover exists on Earth solely for the purpose of hindering men from making progress towards illumination of consciousness after death. The beings behind public opinion resolved to forgo the progress made possible by the Mystery of Golgotha. But the Mystery of Golgotha will become of greater and greater importance for the Earth's evolution. We must clearly understand that the future of the Earth's evolution cannot be assured simply by rectifying phenomena such as public opinion and the like which are inevitable in the course of evolution. Men can, however, become better in their own inner nature, therefore the process of evolution must take root more and more deeply in their inner life. In the future, men will be still more exposed to the pressure of public opinion, but inwardly they will have developed greater strength. This is possible only through Spiritual Science. But if man is gradually to become a match for those spirits who are now exerting their influence in public opinion as recruits of the Luciferic beings, this will be possible only if, between death and rebirth too, he undergoes something that strengthens him inwardly, strengthens the principle in him that is independent of life on Earth. Whereas through the influence of public opinion he becomes more and more dependent upon earthly life, in the life between death and rebirth he must receive into his very self something that in the next life on Earth will make him ever freer from the influence of public opinion.

Connected with this is the fact that at the time when public opinion began to assume importance, the Buddha-realm was established in the Mars sphere—as we heard in the lecture at Christmas. Consequently between death and rebirth man passes through this Buddha-realm on Mars. Christian Rosenkreutz had entrusted to Buddha a special mission in the Mars sphere. And what would be futile on Earth, namely the desire to flee from the conditions of terrestrial existence—this is an experience which man must undergo between death and rebirth during his passage through the Mars sphere. Among other things he strips off the incubus of public opinion which takes effect only on Earth. Many, even more overbearing influences will come in the future and it will be more than ever necessary to undergo the experience that is possible for man as a pupil of Buddha in the Mars sphere. Here on Earth, men can now be pupils of the Buddha in the orthodox sense only if they refuse to participate in the progress made by the most advanced people on Earth. But between death and rebirth Buddha unfolds what has developed from the teaching he gave on Earth, which was that man should free himself from the need for further incarnations. This has been developed into a doctrine that is inapplicable to the Earth, where life must progress from incarnation to incarnation. Thus the doctrine preached by Buddha on Earth contained the seed of what man must acquire in the disembodied state of existence. In this advanced form, Buddha's teaching is right for the period between death and rebirth. The Buddha himself appeared in the astral body of the Jesus-Child of St. Luke's Gospel² and Christ Himself leads men between death and rebirth through the Mars sphere, enabling them there to receive the Buddha's advanced teaching. Thus in the Mars sphere men can be emancipated from the tendency to uniformity resulting from the effects of public opinion which are detrimental for their further progress on Earth. Whereas in earlier times Mars was said to be the planet of warlike traits, it is now the Buddha's task gradually to transform these warlike traits in such a way that they become the foundation of the sense for freedom and independence needed in the present age. Whereas nowadays men have the tendency to surrender their sense of freedom and succumb to the fetters of public opinion, on Mars between death and rebirth they will strive to throw off these fetters and not bring them again into the life on Earth when they return to new incarnations.

It seems to me that here we have something that characterises most wonderfully how wisdom holds sway in the world, how everything that progresses or remains backward is manipulated in such a way that the final outcome is harmony in the evolution of worlds. Man cannot achieve progress by keeping as it were to the middle line, although there are many who realise the uselessness of adopting a one-sided standpoint. Admittedly, we come across idealists, materialists and other ‘-ists’ who swear by their own standpoint, but truly great individuals such as Goethe do no such thing. They try to grasp material conditions by means of material thinking. When men of less eminence imagine that they have understood this, they say: truth lies in the middle, between two different standpoints. But that would be the same as if someone in practical life wanted to sit between two chairs! The truth cannot be found by a one-sided adoption of this or that standpoint but by applying the modes of knowledge appropriate either for materialism or idealism, The world does not progress by undeviating adherence to a middle course: a middle course is appropriate when the opposing sides are also present and are recognised as forces. If something has to be weighed, the two scalepans are needed as well as the beam. Thus there must be a counterbalance to public opinion; and this is provided by Buddha's teaching in the Mars sphere—which would not be necessary if public opinion had never existed. Life needs antithesis; life progresses in and through polarity. Somebody might think that as the North and South Poles are antitheses, it would be better if neither existed! They are not, of course, antithetic in the sense implied by a certain Professor of whom it was said that because he had written his books in such haste he could not think about their contents and stated that civilisation could develop only in the middle zone of the Earth because at the North Pole people would freeze through cold and at the South Pole melt through heat! In another connection, of course, North and South Poles are genuine opposites and are necessary because progress is not achieved by adopting a neutral course but by the maintenance and harmonising of opposites. Thus what develops on Earth had to undergo a process that lies below the level of progress. Public opinion is of less value than the judgements which an individual can reach on a path of progress. Public opinion is sub-human and it is this sub-human influence that is counteracted by the Buddha-stream through which man passes between death and rebirth. Both influences are necessary and it is extremely important to bear this in mind in connection with evolution.

It can therefore be said with truth: yes, there are indeed backward spirits, but everything that remains behind on the one side and on the other outstrips the evolutionary process, is manipulated by the wisdom of the Universe in such a way that harmony is the final result. The backward spirits are utilised to constitute the opposite pole to the spirits who have progressed to further stages.

If we look at life in this way it will be clear to us that in the future course of Earth evolution the human being will bring into life more and more qualities which will have greater weight and influence than the purely physical qualities. And it will be increasingly apparent that qualities other than the purely physical will have to be taken into account. Physical qualities will be evident, which—although they become manifest only gradually—can be traced back to infancy; but there will be other qualities to which this does not apply and which show themselves in a marked form only comparatively late in life. A characteristic feature of evolution in the future will be the existence of an increasing number of individuals about whom it will inevitably be asked: What can have happened to that individual at a certain age in his life? He has completely changed; it is as though he has become a different being! Qualities that were completely absent in earlier life, that appear only when a certain age has been reached, will reveal themselves. This will happen in the case of souls who are the most highly developed and in whom a certain break in their life becomes evident. For the fact that an individual was a pupil of Buddha in the life between death and rebirth reveals itself only at a certain age. This would apply to persons of whom it can be said: Up to a particular point in their lives their individual qualities were in evidence; but then entirely new trends appeared and they were able to understand matters altogether different from those for which they had previously shown understanding. These will be individuals who in the future will be the vehicles of true spiritual progress although they may simply be regarded as late developers, manifesting these qualities only late in life. In truth, however, the reason why these individuals display these qualities only in later life is that in previous incarnations on the Earth they had established the causes which enabled them to experience the spiritual life in the Mars sphere with particular intensity and so to acquire qualities which enabled them to bring a new impulse into the evolution of humanity. True spiritual culture will more and more be in the hands of individuals of this kind, who in their youth showed little aptitude for the spiritual standpoint they adopt in later life.

We now see that this is the reason why a certain fact has always been stressed in the Rosicrucian line of thought of which we ourselves have heard in the past, although it could not then be substantiated because our studies were not as advanced as they now are. Representatives of the Rosicrucian principle of Initiation in the West have always emphasised that it is impossible to discover in their childhood those who are to become leading figures, because these are individuals who give evidence of that fundamental change in later life of which I have spoken. When a seer speaks of Buddha today, he knows that Buddha has faithfully adhered to what his teaching promised; he has continued to work for that in human nature which has no direct urge for physical embodiment and therefore does not appear at the beginning of life in a physical body but only when the physical body has undergone a certain development, when a certain stage towards spirituality has been reached. Then, at a later stage of life the gift of the Buddha to man becomes an effective influence.

All this must be borne in mind if we are to understand the whole process of man's development. What it signifies for each individual in his life between birth and death—of this we shall hear later.

• 1. See pp. 180 onwards in the Rudolf Steiner Press 1963 edition.
• 2. See the lecture-course, The Gospel of St. Luke given by Dr. Steiner in Basle, September 1909, particularly lectures four to nine.

It was my task yesterday to show how the special configuration of such mythologies as the Osiris Myth, the Greek mythology—and in a certain sense even the Old Testament teachings to which we will return presently—is connected with changes in the stages of human consciousness. We know of the development of consciousness in mankind, we know that we have to look back to earlier times of man's evolution in which there existed an old clairvoyance, a perceptibility of super-earthly things. It is well to look back at such things for this retrospection gives us orientation. Mankind is again to achieve vision directed to the super-sensible; it is to be achieved on the path of Spiritual Science, through spiritual scientific thinking. The realization of what each one can do, no matter where he stands in the world, can be helped by the will to orientate oneself for what is to come by considering what has been.

In a certain sense things take place in later times in connection with events of earlier times. We look back from our Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, in the development of which we are standing, to the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, the Greco-Latin, and to the Third, the Egyptian; we come then already to the time in which it was natural for men to express in certain mythical pictures and imaginations what they thought and felt about cosmic mysteries. In another connection we have already stated that we in our Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch have to recapitulate in a sort of inverted way what had happened in the Third, the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, so that it emerges again differently. The booklet ‘The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Mankind’, also refers, as you know, to this subject.

Now we saw yesterday that in the time of the Greco-Latin evolution, in the time that begins with the 7th or 8th century before our era, there was a kind of looking back of mankind, and this looking back to other states of consciousness in fact expressed in imaginative myths facts about the ruling spiritual beings, as we described yesterday. Men in the Fourth Epoch knew: when we look around us we see only the physical, on the other we can reflect. You know, moreover, if you have followed attentively what is said in my book The Riddles of Philosophy, that in Grecian times, and even much later, people saw Ideas—as it were—as Goethe still did, and that they could really say: we see them. Entirely abstract thinking has only come about in modern times. But at that time there was indeed a seeing of ideas, a seeing of spiritual realities, a living in spiritual realities.

In the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch this was no longer so in the full sense, but the people remembered that it had been so earlier. They said—and in fact this represented the truth:—there are, however, Beings in existence, who are not human beings, who live in super-sensible worlds and have still preserved life in the imaginative consciousness. The Greeks saw such Beings in the individuals of the Zeus-circle.

The Egyptians again said to themselves: that age in which men still lived directly with Imaginations was the age when Osiris wandered upon Earth. They meant of course not one Osiris, but it was believed that there had been a time in which men on earth lived in Imaginations. And this type of human soul which was able to live in Imaginations was described by saying: Osiris lived upon earth. Lost and slain had been this life-in-Imaginations. Osiris has been killed by his brother Typhon—that is, by that force of the human soul, which to be sure is still directed to the super-sensible, but will no longer evolve the Imaginative faculties. The ancient clairvoyance exists no more. The forces active in the old clairvoyance are now amidst the dead. Hence Osiris is the Judge of the dead; the human being meets him when he has passed through the portal of death. The figures of Osiris and Isis were brought into connection with the Death-Mystery by those people who set the Osiris myth into the centre of their thought. Moreover, in the details through which the Osiris myth has been elaborated there actually lies all that I have been stating. The point of time has also been specified in which according to the legend, Osiris was killed by Typhon.

And just as we could point to a quite definite heavenly constellation, which the Magi of the East knew as the constellation in which the new cosmic age was to approach (we have pointed out in the Christmas lectures that by a certain constellation of the ‘Virgin’ the Magi of the East knew that they were to bring their offerings to the new World-Saviour) so too have those whose thoughts centred on the Osiris myth looked back to quite definite star-constellations. They have said: Osiris was slain. They meant to say: the old life in the Imaginations vanished when the setting sun in autumn stood in seventeen degrees of Scorpio and in the opposite point of the heavens the full moon rose in Taurus or in the Pleiades. This constellation of the full moon rising in Taurus at a definite point of the year in connection with the Scorpio position of the Sun, this moment of evolution has been given by the followers of Osiris as that in which Osiris has vanished from the earth, that is, in which he was no longer there. These things naturally come about in such a way as to leave legacies behind. There have always been people, stragglers even up to recent centuries with Imaginative clairvoyance, but the point is to show when Imaginative clairvoyance disappeared from earth as a normal faculty of the human soul. And men were aware that in the ages when Imaginative clairvoyance prevailed on earth conditions were quite different from what they were later. And this too was plainly indicated in the Osiris-Isis myth. But it is just this that is so very little understood by those who explain the myth of Isis and Osiris.

It is related, as you know, that when Isis discovered that her spouse, Osiris, had been slain, she departed on a search for the dead body. She found it at last in Byblos in Phoenicia and brought the corpse of Osiris from Phoenicia back to Egypt. A deep wisdom is expressed in such a myth, a wisdom of humanity's physiology. What sort of conditions were there then during the Osiris-time? During the Osiris-time there was not yet such a script as the later script. What prevailed in Egypt during the age of Osiris was a picture-writing and this was considered sacred. And how actually was the picture-script brought about? It was brought about inasmuch as the most important signs were taken, not from animal or earthly forms, but from the star-constellations, in fact from what clairvoyance saw in the star-constellations. If I were to make a comparison from something lately in our minds, I might say: You have heard in the ‘Dream of Olaf &Åsteson’ how he experiences the spirit-snake, the spirit-dog and the spirit-bull; he describes what he feels about them. Imagine to yourselves such pictures, but in a far more perfect form, as signs—such signs then are images of Imaginations. Such signs as the signs of the earliest writing were held to be holy. In such signs was cosmic wisdom contained for ancient times, this cosmic wisdom which in fact was at the same time a heavenly wisdom, inasmuch as men read the cosmic mysteries in the star-script, as the dead alone are able to do now. The gift of possessing a writing which is really a reproduction of Imaginations only belonged to humanity at a certain period of time, and then vanished. And the ancients knew: this imaginative way of writing existed in the age of Osiris. Together with the dying away of the old life of the world in Imaginations, the ancient picture-script disappeared and there arose that which has become the abstract script. This no longer expresses mysteries, but gradually, since it has become abstract, only serves to express the sense world—namely, the ordinary letter-script. Just as Osiris was looked on in those ancient times as the hero, as the divine hero of the Imaginative script, so is Typhon, his brother but his opponent, the hero of the abstract script of letter, developed from it.

This is also indicated profoundly in the Osiris-Isis myth. Over to Phoenicia must Isis go to find the corpse; that means to find the picture-script transformed into the letter-script—to find the corpse of Osiris. The letter-script was ‘found’, invented, as we say, in Phoenicia. From Phoenicia back to Egypt the abstract-script has come, whereas the Egyptians in their old mysteries in the Osiris-time had a picture-writing reflecting Imaginations. Thus the transition from the old concrete conception in the Imaginative-script to the newer concept in the abstract script has also found expression in the Osiris-Isis myth.

All these things lie in the course of mankind's evolution. We are there looking back to an older experience in Imaginations. Real physiological wisdom is, in fact, expressed in the myths. Thinking gradually passed over to abstractions—not immediately to the quite empty abstractions of today but to the somewhat fuller abstractions of about the 6th and 5th-centuries B.C.—in the work of Thales, with whom one generally begins the history of philosophy. (You can read of it in my The Riddles of Philosophy.)

But you can see from this that humanity has to look back to earlier evolutionary periods with quite different conditions of soul. Certain Brotherhoods of modern times know, to be sure, about these entirely different conditions, but they hold that such things should still be kept under lock and key. That is not right for the present day, but it is a little dangerous to talk of these things beyond a certain degree. Up to a certain degree, however, it is not only a case of should, these things must be spoken of today, because the knowledge of ancient conditions of human consciousness helps to give orientation for what is to develop as the new. If we have knowledge of what once existed, that can help us to further the necessary new conditions of evolution, although of an entirely different kind.

Now today you find in boys who develop to the age of puberty a change of voice. It is as we know, the expression in the boys of an organic process, which occurs differently in the female sex, and which apparently makes greater inroads into the human being in the case of the female, since the process reaches more directly into the physical. But that is not true. The influence on boys is just as strong, though it lies in a different sphere, so to say, and though externally it only comes to expression physically in the change of voice.

This reaching maturity by the human being is today—in fact since the times when Osiris was dead for the outer world—almost a physical process. It was not merely a physical process in the ages when Osiris lived, no, it was a soul process. The boy of fourteen or fifteen years—as you know we have already spoken of other experiences at the time of puberty—experienced not only that his voice changed, but that what today only enters, presses into, the region of the voice, extending from the sexual essences of the organism, in those ancient times pressed also into the thoughts, the conceptual world of the young boy. We must deal with such things truthfully; the voice apparatus is simply pervaded with the sexual essences of the organism. Today the voice breaks; in those days the thoughts ‘broke’ too, since it was still the ancient Imaginative time. In those times the young boy before the age of puberty had certain Imaginations; it was a living process and all knew that the child up to nine or ten years of age had Imaginations—Imaginations of spiritual events in the atmosphere. (Today there are still slight remains of this in almost every child of tender age, it is only that people pay no attention to it, or talk the children out of it as being foolish nonsense.) In the air spiritual events are taking place around us all the time. The air is not only what physical science describes, but spiritual events are taking place. These spiritual events, essentially events of the etheric world, were perceived by children in full Imaginations up to the time of puberty. And when puberty entered—not only for the voice, but the life of concepts—the human being felt something in him (it was in fact that which shot up out of the forces which are usually called in physiology the sex forces), felt something in him of which he said: what I saw as a child through the Imaginations in the atmosphere, now comes to life in me again, it is perception, it lives in me. That took place. The man was aware that he had taken something into himself out of the atmosphere. Formerly he had seen it outside; now he felt it within him.

For woman too, in those ancient times, there had been, before puberty, a perception in Imaginations of what was outside in the atmosphere. But after puberty that which in the case of boys merely emerged in the feeling of an alteration in their mental life, in the case of the woman was like an ascent of still more inward Imaginations: it was the human image that the woman perceived within her again and again in Imagination. And then she said to herself: what I now perceive Imaginatively, is the same as I experienced in childhood before puberty, out in cosmic space, as Imaginative pictures. Both sexes, only in different ways, experienced the fact that they actually knew in the soul: in me something is born which cosmic space has fructified in me.

There you have a still more concrete form of the Osiris-Isis-myth: it is universal wisdom in so far as it is won from the atmosphere, but it is in organic connection with man, the deeper layers of the human spirit. You can get an idea of it if you seek it in the following way. You see, men think nowadays in an abstract way, inasmuch as they desire to know through the head what the world contains of laws and so on. In these old times men were clear that in this way, merely through head knowledge, one cannot know, but one knows through the whole human being. One knows what goes on outside in space, goes on etherically, by having perceived it formerly as it were, outside, and then after puberty pictured or felt it inwardly. How do you perceive then today, with the abstract perception that you have? You discover something which you see with the senses; then you think it over afterwards. That happens in rapid succession. With those mysteries, through which man in ancient times penetrated into the laws of the atmosphere present in Imaginations, it was a different matter. As child, up to puberty, he perceived, he only perceived; afterwards he worked this over inwardly. One might say it is only a perceptive process and a thinking process spread out in time; whereas today it is placed at man's own discretion to observe abstractly and to reflect, conceive abstractly. Over the whole life was spread what we now crowd together in a few moments as regards the outer physical world, perceive, conceive. That was something which in his relation to the world man thought of as spread out over the whole of human life between birth and death. To the age of puberty he perceived certain things, afterwards he reflected upon them. Such an age was once in existence.

But now think. People said to themselves: ‘this perceiving and reflecting, this is connected in a certain way with the day, with the rising and setting sun. With the rising sun, one wakes, gets up, begins to perceive and to think; with the setting sun this ceases, since one lies down to sleep.’ Thus people connected perceiving and thinking with the day; and what was spread out over the whole life between birth and death they brought into connection with more widely extended cosmic events in the heavens. Just as it depends on the sun, on the ordinary rising and setting of the sun, that I can perceive and think, so does it depend on greater, more extended star constellations which appear after centuries, after millennia, what man develops in perceiving and thinking of the kind that I have described. And as in those old times people connected the ordinary perception and thinking with the day, with sunrise and sunset—indeed as people do today though they don't think so and even believe they go by the clock—so they connected matters concerning more comprehensive cosmic mysteries with the other star-constellations, with the other events in the heavens.

You see, a deep logic, a deep wisdom lies in these things. With superficialities one cannot get at the facts. But something else too is bound up with it. These ancient peoples—and we could speak of others besides the Egyptians and the Greeks—these ancient peoples knew that the more inward-lying forces of human nature are connected with what come to expression in celestial happenings, in star-constellations. That decadence of man which is expressed in the modern attitude to the sex problem, and that greatest decadence which is expressed in the most modern attitude to sexual problems, of this nothing was yet known to those ancient peoples of the ages of which one must speak when one deals with these things. For them it was something very different when they had the feeling: it is the sexual essences which are suffused into the human being when the voice breaks and therewith the thoughts break too—or when the other appears of which I have spoken. That the divine was then pouring itself forth in man—that was the conviction of the ancients. Hence what is only viewed in a pernicious sense today is found in all old religious rites: the sex-symbols, the so-called sex-symbols, point thus to this connection—we can call it the connection between the atmosphere with its air-events and the human processes of knowledge which take place during the whole human life between birth and death.

‘Through my eye, through my ear’—so said these people—‘I am connected with what is brought by the day. Through the deeper, more inwardly lying forces, I am connected with something quite different, with the secrets of the air, which, however, are only perceived in Imaginative experience.’ And this Imaginative experience in its concrete form I have described for you with reference to these early times.

The Old Testament conception in these matters was different inasmuch as it put doctrine in the place of actual experience. The Egyptian of the Osiris-age, especially of the earlier Osiris-age, said as follows: ‘The true human being only enters me with puberty, for I then take in what formerly I saw in Imaginations. The air transmits to me the true man.’ In the doctrine of the Old Testament this was transformed into the conception: The Elohim or Jahve have breathed into man the living breath (Odem), the air. There the essence was lifted out of the direct living experience and became doctrine, theory. This was necessary, for only so could mankind be led—and that is the meaning of the Old Testament—be led from that living in union with the outer world, which still had an inner connection between the microcosm, man, and the macrocosm, the world, to their further evolution (of which I will speak later). As this connection gradually vanished, it was necessary to fall back on just such a doctrine as that of the Old Testament.

But now there came the time of the death of Osiris—and therewith the time too in which, while one thing became finer, the other thing, as it were, became coarser. How is that to be understood? Well, you can imagine it thus: When we go back into the old Osiris-time, then the human being saw or felt before puberty the Light-Imaginations within the outer air (see sketch)—if I speak for the one sex—

Thus he saw in his environment the Light-Imaginations in the air up to the time of puberty. Afterwards he had the feeling that they had entered into him, and the changes occurred of which we have spoken. For the child the air was everywhere filled with Light phenomena; for the grown man, the matured man, the air was certainly still there, but he knew that as child he had seen something else in it. He knew that the air was at the same time the bearer, the mother, of light. He knew that it was not true that when he looked out into the air there was nothing in it but what was shown physically. Beings live in it which are to be perceived in Imagination.

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These Beings were for the Greeks the Being of the Zeus-circle. Thus man knew that there were Beings in the air. But all this—the fact that human states of consciousness became changed—all this is connected with the fact that even objective things became different in the finer substantiality. Naturally, for the modern clever man it is an outrage if one says such things. I know it is an outrage, but nevertheless it is true: the air has become different. Naturally it has not changed in a way that can be tested by chemical reagents; nevertheless the air has become different. The air has lost the strength to express the Light-Imaginations; the air has—one could say—become coarser. It has actually become different on earth since that ancient time. The air has become coarser. But not only the air, but man himself has become coarser. That which formerly lived spiritually in the essences which permeated the larynx and the rest of the organism, that has also grown coarser. So that in fact if one speaks today of the sexual-essences one speaks of what is different from what one would speak of in ancient times. Everyone in older times knew: ‘The perception of the day is connected with my personality; the other, which I experience from the atmosphere, experience with my whole life, that, however, is connected with mankind as such, that goes beyond the individual man.’ Hence they also sought to fathom the social mysteries under which men live together, through the link which bound them with the macrocosm, they sought for social wisdom through the star-wisdom. But what lived in man as social wisdom bound him in fact to the celestial. This came to expression in the most everyday concepts. A human pair before the death of Osiris would never have felt anything else than that they had received a child from heaven. That was a living consciousness and corresponded also with truth. And this living consciousness could develop because man knew that he received out of the air-filled space what he himself experienced.

Of all this the coarse dregs, so to say, have been left. As in the air the coarse sediment has remained behind of that power of the air that revealed itself to man in Imaginations in earlier ages, so in man himself are the coarse dregs left behind. This had to come about since otherwise men could not have attained freedom and a full consciousness of the ego. But it is the dregs that have remained. In this way, however, all that the ancients meant by the divine, which as you can now readily realize, they connected in a roundabout way with the sexual essences, all this has been coarsened, not only in idea but also in reality. But it is there nevertheless; naturally not only in the one way, but in the other way too. The reproduction of mankind was in those olden times thought to be in direct connection with the micro-macrocosmic bond of mankind, as you have seen, but the whole social life of man on earth was in fact also thought to be in connection with this micro-macrocosmic bond. Numa Pompilus went to the Nymph Egeria to receive information from her as to how he should arrange social conditions in the Roman Kingdom. This, however, means nothing else than that he had let the star wisdom be imparted to him, had let the star-wisdom tell him how social conditions should be organized.

That which men reproduce on earth, and which is connected with successive generations, was to be placed in the service of what the stars have to say. As the individual man directed his life with his ordinary perceiving and thinking, according to the rising and setting of the sun, so the interconnections of mankind which later became ‘States’, were to be placed under the star-constellations as expressions of cosmic relationships.

In our language—and languages often contain memories of old conditions—we still have a remembrance of this connection in the fact that the relation of male and female is described by the word ‘Geschlecht’ (sex) and also the successive generations as ‘Geschlechter’ (races). It is one and the same word: the ‘Geschlecht’—the family, interconnected, blood relations—and then the relation of man and woman. And so is it too in other languages, and it all points to how man sought to find a recognizable connection with the macrocosm for what lay in his nature, in the deeper strata of his being.

These things have become coarsened in the direction we have discussed. Among other things that have remained behind is the attachment in longing and feeling to nationality, the clinging to the national, the chauvinistic impulse for the national; that is the lingering relic of what in older times could be thought of in quite different connections. But only when one looks into such things does one know the truth contained in them. What is expressed by the nationalistic longing? When man develops to excess this national feeling, this sentiment for the nation, what is living in it? Exactly the same as lives in the sexual, in the sexual in one way, in national sentiment in another. It is the sexual human being that lives his life through these two different poles. To be Chauvinistic, is, nothing else really than developing a sort of group-sexuality. One could say that where the sexual essences, in what they have left behind, grip men more, there is present more national Chauvinism; for it is the very force living in reproduction that comes to manifestation too in national sentiment. Hence the battle-cry of the so-called ‘Freedom of the Peoples or of the Nations’ is really only to be understood in its more intimate connections if one said—in a most respectable sense of course—‘The Call for the Re-establishment of the National in the Light of the Sex-Problem’. It is necessary to realize as one of the secrets of the time-impulse, the fact that the sexual problem is proclaimed in quite a special form over the earth today, without people having any idea of how out of their subconsciousness the sexual clothes itself in the words: ‘Freedom of the Peoples.’ And far more than men imagine are sexual impulses present in the catastrophic events of today, far more than men imagine! For the impulses to what is happening today lie, in fact, very, very deep.

Such truths must no longer in our present age be kept under lock and key. Certain Brotherhoods have been able to keep them under lock and key, because in the strictest sense of the word they have excluded women. Although joint work with women can nevertheless lead to all sorts of bad things, as has indeed constantly been shown today, yet the time has come in which right views, general views, on these matters must be spread among humanity. Ideas are nevertheless spread abroad which are impure, foolish, empty, inasmuch as from certain directions, without knowledge of the more intimate connections, all sorts of things are treated today as sexual problems. But you see how what here is pure, genuine, honourable truth comes in contact, on the one hand, with what can be the most impure, lowest way of thinking, as is shown from time to time in the outgrowths of Psycho-Analysis or similar things. You will always find, however, that what on the one hand, rightly understood, is profound truth, needs hardly to be altered at all in words, but only to be permeated with a low-minded type of thought, and it is simply a pernicious, stupid, objectionable conception.

A former age could speak of ‘nations’, when one pictured ‘Nations’ in such a way that one nation had its guardian spirit in Orion, another in another star, and one knew that one's life was ruled from the star-constellations. One then appealed, as it were, to the ordering in the heavens. Today where there is no longer such ordering in the heavens, there is the appeal to the merely national, the Chauvinistic appeal to the merely national, that is to say, an asserting of an impulse, psycho-sexual in the most pronounced sense, a backward luciferic impulse.

If one would see clearly and plainly what is today, one must not shrink from the actual underlying truth. But one can also see from such things why people are so afraid of the truth. Just imagine if, in the outcry on the freedom of nations and so forth that is raised today, people were to hear ‘that comes from sexual impulses!’ One should just imagine that! One should picture for once the crowing cock ... I don't mean any special one, not simply Clemenceau ... one should picture all the declaimers on this theme ... and imagine that they had to realize that what they crow is after all the mating-voice of the cock, however finely it is decked out in national garments.

These are things which mankind must learn to know today, and which they do not want to hear, for, as you know, of things that are black it is asserted that they are white, and of those that are white, that they are black. The point is, that that ancient time of which I have spoken has come now to the fifth Post-Atlantean epoch in which abstraction has gradually developed. There where the boundary lies between the fourth and fifth Post-Atlantean epochs (you can read about this in my book The Riddles of Philosophy), there men strove with all their might over the intellectual value—so to say—of the abstract. Read afterwards in my The Riddles of Philosophy where I speak of the nominalism and realism of the Middle Ages. Abstraction had grown to such a pitch that they asked themselves: When I form a concept, has that any significance for the things outside, or is it only a name in my head? Today people no longer reflect on such things. Of what interest is it to people to know that men have tormented themselves in the Middle Ages, when the abstractive power of thought was felt, what role the so-called universals, the general ideas, play in the world! That one wrestled and strove about what role abstractions play! Nowadays one thinks no more about it; one has already become used to abstractions; one does not strive to get beyond the abstract impulse but, on the contrary, to get thoroughly within it. The conflict over ‘universals’—this ultimately came to the point where it was said: ‘Universals, General Ideas, are at first as certain Ideas in God: those are Universals ante rem; then the Ideas are in the objects: Universals in re; and then the Ideas are in our mind, our soul: post rem—Universals post rem.’ That was an expedient, in order to take up a stand on the question: is a man connected with reality when he thinks, when he only thinks ideas? They still felt something of how in ancient times men had been connected with reality. When they reached maturity they thought over, as it were, what as a child they had formerly perceived; they knew therefore that only then had the true human being entered in. One had to struggle desperately over the Universals, as to whether, when one thinks, there is still something of reality left in one's thought or whether it is entirely divorced from reality and has nothing to do with it. Since that time people have grown accustomed to take the universals, the abstractions, as abstractions, and are more or less completely cut off from reality in their consciousness.

Such a process is taking place continually on a small scale. Think for a moment: words which are the representatives of concepts, are originally in direct connection with what is seen. For instance, a small group of fighting men has one man at the head, they have this one man before them, they call him the foremost, the first, Fürst (Eng: Chief, Prince). There one has it linked directly with what is beheld, later it was set free, it became a word which denoted something without any sort of connection with a direct perception. Just think to how many words this applies! And the next step is that then certain words become privileged, that speech becomes monopolized, becomes the property of the State. Even in language certain things are developing in this direction, are they not? ... Take the simple case that someone has learnt a great deal, has become wise—let us say, without meaning anything foolish by it—he is a learned man. In a certain naive way one would then say: he is a ‘Doctor’. Here we have a connection with fact if we call someone ‘doctor’ who is seen to be learned. For it still has a certain significance when there is documentary evidence held by a Corporation which gives this recognition. But it loses the significance when it is monopolized ... Yet mankind is enthusiastic about such monopolizing nowadays. All possible words are to be monopolized. A man is not supposed merely through his gifts to be an ‘engineer’, but this must also become a recognized title from heaven knows where. And increasingly things are to be loosed from their connections. There you can see the abstraction-process on a small scale, but it is accomplished wholesale with infinite significance. A family has a father. What is the connection between the pater, who is the father of the family and the Pater, who is a priest? This tearing loose of what is contained in the word—I wanted to bring it forward as illustrating the abstraction-process taking place in humanity.

And in the case of ideas it is much more mischievous than in language; people often make use of concepts without having the least idea of their connection with what is perceived. Sometimes people then search for the real observation, become comic, frightfully comic in this search! Only remember how there is a whole literature today about the cross-sign, which is really a universal sign, spread over the world. Most amusing is all the learnedness applied to it! This sign

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is traced back to this

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That was supposed to have been the cross of former times.

Sometimes they then trace that back by saying: only the parts have been left, the swastika and so on. Yes, it is frightfully

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clever what has been written about it, quite immensely clever, the way ‘cleverness’ has been applied to such things. I do not wish at all to go in for detailed criticism. But to know what is true, cleverness is not enough. One ought, of course, to know that the cross-sign means nothing else than that the human being takes his stand, stretches out his arms and then he is the cross. From above downwards goes a stream of existence that binds man with the macrocosm, and through the outstretched hands too. And the Cross is the sign for Man.

And when you find distinguishing marks of the Assyrian kings or of the Egyptian kings, medallions, for instance, then they are medallions with the cross-sign.

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And two other signs (the cross on the medallion is one sign that ancient kings had) were, for instance, these.

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The star in the sign is generally made in such a way that one does not immediately recognize the pentagram in it—or is it even a hexagram;—however, that is not the point.

Specially clever people have said: that is the Sun, that is the Cross, that is the moon, that is the star. But the deeper meaning lies precisely in the fact that it is man, the microcosm, who is compounded of sun and moon. You see from this ordinary cross-sign, how the concept has been separated from the real object. The direct perception is this, the sign is this: man in the form of a cross. People today know so little of how to connect the object with the sign, that, as I have said, an immensely clever literature exists which seeks to find out how this sign is connected with what it wants to express. And so one could write quite clever articles over the most everyday words without discovering how these things, these words, were connected with the realities.

Humanity had to go through the period of abstractions. We know that today we are no longer in the sign of Aries, in which the Sun stood at the beginning of Spring when the transition took place from the old Imaginative time, of which echoes still lingered, to the age of abstractions. We have entered the age of Pisces. A special characteristic of this age is that man receives the force for abstract ideas out of the macrocosm. Man receives this force today from the macrocosm. But in the meantime man does not know how he is to unite the abstract ideas again with reality. They must be united again with reality.

I said at the beginning of the lecture that in this fifth Post-Atlantean epoch there must be a kind of recapitulation of the time in the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch when one looked back to the ancient Osiris-age, when Imaginations were in existence. The reverse, as it were, must take place: man must find the way back again to the Imaginations. One could say in another form: Osiris must become alive again, we must find ways and means to bring Osiris to life. I have spoken very concretely in these studies by saying that we must find forms of experience which are common to the dead and the living. Since Osiris was slain he has been with the dead; he will remain with the dead, but he will have to come again among the living, when there are concerns which are common to the dead and the living for the social life of men.

This brings us to the fact that people must understand something which it is above all necessary for our time to understand: how will Osiris be revivified? How can Osiris come to new life? How does man approach again life and experience in the Imaginative consciousness?

We will speak of this tomorrow—how he is to rise again, and how the resurrection is to be brought about. Tomorrow's considerations shall have then, as their subject, the Imaginative consciousness.

My dear Friends,

If spiritual science is to be, as it can be, a life-draught for our souls, it must prove to be strong and also suited for times as important as our present epoch, in which so many things are taking place which widen the soul-spiritual vision of those who have dedicated themselves to spiritual science. This enables us to see events in a clearer light than our contemporaries, for their outlook is frequently—I repeat, frequently—kept within narrow limits by materialism. All that has been cultivated for so many years in our spiritual-scientific movement shows us that one of our goals is to increase the soul's life of feeling, so that we become emancipated from mere thought, thus transcending the narrower limits of our own being and its environment; we may then envisage to some extent the great impulses, the great manifestations of forces which pervade the whole development of mankind on earth. When we have thus striven to increase, as it were, the tension of our feelings, then the forces acquired through spiritual science should enable us to see something of all that remains externally invisible in the events, and still more, all that the ordinary intellect is unable to see. This is above all necessary in the present time with its tempestuous waves beating so painfully against our soul, but raising it, on the other hand, to special heights, just because they conceal so many significant things. We should be able to face above all the following question: Is there a prophetic meaning in the terrible torch of war burning above our heads, does this have a prophetic meaning for the whole development of the earth?

Only those who look upon these events in a light as significant as possible can face them in the right way. Some of our friends may often have asked themselves why we have in recent years spoken in these circles of times to which we must look ahead with special attention, times which will break in upon us daring the 20th century. The children and grand children of those who are now living will have to pass through great and important and at the same time tragic and painful events, and those who are now entrusted with the task of giving the souls of these children and grandchildren forces which enable them to hold out in the midst of the events which will befall mankind in the 20th century must realise that a strong inner spiritual force must be given to these children. In the 20th century our descendants will need strong inner forces as a support for their souls, to a far greater extent than can be imagined in the ordinary life of to-day, so that they may take along with them the treasures of mankind which have been accumulated throughout the centuries of human development. And other storms will also have to be experienced by the descendants of the present inhabitants of the earth! I have said that people may wonder why we speak of such things among ourselves, but now they will more easily have a feeling for such things because we are living in the midst of the greatest and most terrible war-events which have ever occurred in the historical course of development upon the earth, in the course of history of which mankind is conscious.

Indeed, it would be quite wrong, my dear friends, not to pervade ourselves as intensely and strongly as possible with the significance of the present moment and not to envisage the question: What has spiritual knowledge—the object of our soul's deepest longing—what has spiritual knowledge to do with the events which will break in upon the development of mankind? Even when considering things quite superficially, is it possible to ignore the storm which has arisen long ago in the East and which is now threatening to break out over the modern culture and civilisation of Europe. We should at least know that very strong and powerful forces live in the womb of the East and by the way in which they now assert themselves it is already possible to see that they are forces aiming at the destruction, at the breaking up of European culture. To-day we can only have a pale idea of the full extent of this danger.

We now live in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of culture. This is the epoch of the consciousness soul and in it live souls that have something to give to mankind. If we look back upon the Graeco-Latin epoch, we see that it is essentially, but in an entirely different form, an echo, a repetition upon a higher stage, of what once existed upon Atlantis. Although there it appeared in a different form, the fourth postAtlantean epoch of culture is a kind of repetition of Atlantis. The fifth post-Atlantean epoch of culture in which we are now living is a new form; it is something quite new which has been added to the course of development which mankind has followed so far. We are now living in the midst of this epoch.

This should not be taken as an abstract truth, as a theory, but it should be grasped with the deepest and most intense feeling of responsibility, and we should realise that a long time will have to go by in the evolution of the earth before the hearts and souls of men can bring forth all that the divine order of the world has given mankind during the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of culture. The impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha arose during the fourth epoch of culture, as the most important event in the whole development of the earth. During the fifth epoch of culture the Mystery of Golgotha will not work in the same way in which it worked during the fourth epoch. For the task of the fifth epoch of culture is to approach the Mystery of Golgotha little by little with full spiritual understanding, with all the forces which the human soul contains, not only with the religious forces based merely upon feeling, but with all the forces of the soul. Little by little all the truths and forces of knowledge which the soul can develop of its own accord will serve to grasp Christ fully, the Christ who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, so that St. Paul's words, “Not I, but Christ in me”, will become a reality in a new way. After all, everything we develop through spiritual science prepares us to grasp the true essence of Christ with all the soul's inner forces of knowledge. This is a significant, important task of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of culture.

Let us now try to penetrate somewhat into the meaning of these words. If this is the task of the fifth epoch of culture, let us first bring before our souls the way in which the Christ-Impulse has influenced mankind since the Mystery of Golgotha. If its influence were limited to what people have grasped in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha throughout the centuries which have elapsed since that time, the Christ-Impulse could only have exercised a weak influence upon men. Yet the Christ-Impulse does not only appeal in an intellectual way to human reason or to an understanding based on feeling, but it is a real impulse. The Christ-Impulse streams with living strength into the course of history itself. The Mystery of Golgotha, the external symbol of which is the blood that flowed on Golgotha, is a living force streaming into the history of mankind.

Let us take a historical event in order to understand how the Christ-Impulse worked in man before he was able to grasp it; let us try to understand how it worked, as a living, driving force in the evolution of mankind. The fifth epoch of culture is called upon to bring into human consciousness the whole inner nature and essence of the Christ-Impulse; but this Impulse already worked as a living force in the sub-conscious soul-forces of man before it could rise to full consciousness in him. And a historical character who picked out, I might say, the Christ-Impulse and brought about through it important events in history is, for example, the Maid of Orleans. But other characters might also be taken as an example. When we trace back the history of Europe to the event connected with the personality of the Maid of Orleans we must say, even if we only consider the external course of history: What the Maid of Orleans did, when she rose up from the heart of the French nation and vanquished the English forces—for she actually achieved this—really implied that the map of Europe took on the aspect which it afterwards gradually assumed. Any other concept of history relating to the past centuries, in so far as it refers to the European distribution of nations and states, is an invention that does not take into account the fact that the Christ-Impulse lived in the Maid of Orleans that a living Impulse brought about the distribution of the European nations and national forces.

One might say that while the learned people disputed over many things—for example, they already began to dispute on the question as to whether the Holy Supper should be eaten in this or in that form, and whether this or that should be interpreted by this or that formula,—while the learned people showed that their understanding, their conscious understanding could not the Christ-Impulse, this impulse worked through the medium of a simple country maid, through the Maid of Orleans; it worked in such a way as to mould and shape the history of Europe. The influence of the Christ-Impulse does not depend on the comprehension we have for it. I might say that the Christ-Impulse penetrated into the Maid of Orleans through Michael, its representative.

For this purpose the Maid of Orleans had to pass through a kind of initiation. To-day we speak of initiation, and in addition we give to human consciousness the rules collected in my book, “Knowledge of the Higher Worlds”. Of course, one cannot speak of such an initiation in the case of the Maid of Orleans. In her case we can only speak of an initiation which is a remnant of old initiations that took place more in man's sub-conscious soul-forces. These old initiations continued to exist up to the present time almost like elemental forces, and many things described in old legends and fairy-tales, for example that some people passed through experiences which roused their inner soul-forces so that they could perceive certain things connected with the spiritual world, indicate that independently of man, and through the influence of divine-spiritual forces which pervade the world, certain people are, I might say, predisposed by Karma to be natural initiates, thanks to the place given to them by the general Karma of humanity, where their own Karma flows together with the Karma of humanity.

A very beautiful echo of such a natural initiation, as one might call it, is contained in a Norwegian poem that speaks of Olaf Asteson, “the Son of the Sun”, who lived in a kind of sleep during the thirteen nights and days between Christmas Eve and January 6th, the festival of Christ's appearance. Olaf Asteson's very name indicates that he possessed unconscious hereditary forces of knowledge, for its real meaning The man in whose veins flows the blood of his ancestors. The Son of the Sun, Olaf Asteson, sleeps and dreams through the thirteen nights which are the darkest of the year's course on earth and which go from the day of Christ's birth to the day of Epiphany on January 6th.

These old legends dealing with the thirteen holy nights are not based on superstition. For it is indeed a fact that there are two seasons of the year which are cosmically like opposite poles in relation to the soul-life of man living in his physical body. The festival around St. John's day, which, is celebrated in the summer, is specially suited to draw out into the cosmos, through the forces of the sun which then reach their greatest strength, all the passionate impulses of the human soul, so that it becomes united with the cosmos: In ancient times, when people forgot themselves and lost themselves in the strong physical forces outside in the cosmos, the festival of St. John was called upon to pour into the human souls the divine-spiritual forces surging through the cosmos. But the spiritual forces which are also active in the darkness unfold their greatest strength in the middle of the winter, when the sun's forces reach the lowest point of their physical unfolding. And one may rightly say that it is in accordance with cosmic laws that the festival of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth should be celebrated in the winter season. When the external physical world is darkest of all, then the soul that unites with the forces spiritually pervading the aura of the earth, may have the strongest experiences. It is during these days that Olaf Asteson sleeps and sleeps and experiences everything connected with what we call Kamaloka, also what we designate as the Soul-World, and finally what we call the Spirit-land. The Norwegian legend relates that when Olaf Asteson woke up again after thirteen nights, he could describe what he had experienced and what souls he had met in the Soul-world and in the Spirit-land. These are pictures corresponding to an imaginative knowledge, but they indicate living realities which are accessible to human souls when they transcend the body during these days of physical darkness, which are, however, days of spiritual enlightenment,—when the human soul lives in forces that surge and weave through the aura of the earth. And the end of the legend describes the forces of the Christ-Impulse which strongly take hold of Olaf Asteson, but of his sub-conscious understanding.

These legends speak, as it were, of natural initiations which could still be attained in ancient times; they speak of the spiritual world into which one could still look in the darkest season of the year. The earth's aura then truly acquires forces which it does not have when it is flooded and illuminated by the physical forces of the sun. And because Christ is united with the aura of the earth ever since the Mystery of Golgotha, also the forces of the Christ-Impulse can in those days particularly influence human souls, if only they are open to receive them.

I might therefore say that before investigating anything historically, one should take for granted that the Christ-Impulse must have worked subconsciously for thirteen days also in the soul of a character such as the Maid of Orleans; she too must have experienced, as it were, what Olaf Asteson experienced in a sleeping condition during those thirteen days and nights; her sub-conscious soul-forces must, as it were, have been enlightened by the Christ-Impulse. In that case, the Maid of Orleans must once have been in a kind of sleeping condition during the thirteen days which lie between December 25th and January 6th, and on January 6th the Christ-Impulse must have taken hold of her soul, after a sleep-like state of existence.

What we may thus take for granted, really exists in a strange way, but during a special period, when the human being lives in a kind of sleep. Before he draws his first breath in earthly life, before he leaves his mother's body and is able to receive the first earthly-physical ray of light, he passes through a state of development which is really a sleeping state of experience. When we are within our mother's body, we live in a dreamlike sleep, a state of existence into which we enter at night when we fall asleep, and the last days of existence within our mother's body are those which are, so to speak, most accessible to the unconscious influences coming from the spiritual world.

In the Maid of Orleans these must have been the days chosen to implant the Christ-Impulse into her being, the days before she opened her physical eyes to the physical sunlight and before she drew her first breath outside her mother's body. This was indeed the case, for the Maid of Orleans was born on January 6th. On that day something occurred which caused a stir in her whole village; there was something undefined in its aura. This is a historical fact. The villagers did not know what had happened; they did not know that the Maid of Orleans had been born.

A great deal lies concealed in such facts. Only when these mysterious things are seen in their true light will it be possible to understand what is really taking place below the surface of the external physical world. The divine forces seek many different ways of entering human souls. Of course, the Karma of the Maid of Orleans had to be suited to these events. Because her Karma brought about the fact that she was born on January 6th, it provided the historical basis which enabled the Christ-Impulse to influence history in a special way through the Maid of Orleans. This fact gave Europe a completely new form.

When history is studied with a little more understanding it is possible to investigate such happenings. A spiritual way of looking at the world will in future enable us to refer to such facts, for by that time the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of culture will really have extracted from human souls all their latent forces of knowledge. Human souls will then experience more and more consciously the existence of the Christ-Impulse, but only if mankind will cease to look upon spiritual science as an abstract theory and will instead feel it livingly, experience it inwardly. Spiritual science will then be able to fulfill its true mission in the development of humanity.

We must be conscious, especially in a time such as the present one, that it is necessary to bridge the chasm between the human souls living here on earth in a physical body and those that have already gone through the portal of death. In a materialistic age this chasm widens. We shall more and more learn to consider as part of mankind as a whole not only the souls that live in a physical existence between birth and death, but also the souls that live between death and a new birth. The consciousness that throughout the earth's round we are united, also united with the souls that have passed on before us into the super-sensible worlds and that these souls are working in our midst, only with different forces than those of the souls still living in physical bodies,—this consciousness will gradually grow and become more intensive. It calls for an understanding of spiritually active forces and that we should learn to consider earthly phenomena in the new light which spiritual science alone can shed upon them.

Because spiritual science, my dear friends, should be something that stirs our hearts while our souls advance in knowledge, I want to speak to you of a recent occurrence here in Dornach throwing light upon the path which at the same time leads to many things that have occupied us during these last weeks and that belong to the wider compass of our spiritual-scientific stream of knowledge. I might also choose other cases, but the following are so immediately connected with our Karma that I am again able to speak of them to-day. What I shall tell you now, may then be extended also to other souls inside and outside our spiritual-scientific movement and related to it by destiny and by the way in which death occurred in it.

Last autumn we experienced a deeply moving case here in Dornach, in the surroundings of our Building. Dear friends had moved to Dornach with their children and had settled down as gardeners near the Building. Their eldest child, a boy of seven, spiritually wide-awake and with unique heart-qualities, was a veritable Sun-child. One felt deeply attracted by the child's soul, even if one only met the boy, now and then, for brief moments. When his father had to enlist, to do his duty on the battlefield as a German citizen, the boy of seven stood, I might say, whole-heartedly in the midst of this situation and he made a special effort to replace his father as best as he could by helping his mother with all kinds of small services. He went to town by train and did the shopping quite alone, although he was only seven. One evening he did not come home. There was a lecture that evening. At about ten o'clock a friend came along and told us that the boy was missing. There was no doubt that his disappearance had to be connected with a furniture-van which had overturned. This had happened near the Building, at a place where no van had ever passed before and where no van was likely to pass again for a long time. It had fallen down a small slope and capsized in the adjoining field. The drivers had given up the attempt of lifting it that same evening and had left the van there, after unharnessing the horses, for which they were very anxious. They wanted to lift the heavy van the next day, for they were sure that it would imply a whole day's work. It was now ten p.m. The child's disappearance had to be connected with that furniture-van. All kinds of tools were fetched and everyone able to work helped. In two hours the van was standing. At midnight the boy was discovered under the van—dead.

If we consider the external facts and the whole sequence of events leading up to the circumstance that the boy, who always came home by a way which would have led him past the right side of the furniture-van, on that day choose a path which led him past its left side at the very moment when the van capsized on top of him, if we consider moreover that on the way home he was held up in a friendly way by people, so that he was a quarter of an hour late (he had gone to the so-called Canteen, to fetch something for supper)—if we bear in mind that in this accident it was a question of just a few minutes which caused the boy to be on that spot at the very moment when the van capsized and that no one had noticed the accident (people were standing not far off, and although they had seen the van toppling over, no one had seen the boy)—the external facts as such will appear to us as an outstanding example of how easily we may fall a prey to a logical illusion. I have often spoken to you about this and shown you how easily we may delude ourselves in external life and mix up cause and effect. Once I described to you the following case: In the distance you see a man walking along the bank of a river. Suddenly you see him swaying and falling into the water. Soon after he is drawn out dead. The external circumstances could justify the assumption that he fell into the river and was drowned. And you will remain by this verdict if you do not investigate things further. But in the above case you could change your view simply by drawing in an external aid, although you were strengthened in it by the fact that a stone was found on the spot where the man fell into the water. But on dissecting the corpse it will appear that the man had had a stroke; consequently he had fallen into the river because he was dead; he did not die because he had fallen into the river. Here cause and effect are reversed. People with insight into such things will frequently come across such illusions—particularly in the scientific field.

In regard to the boy's death we must therefore say: The boy's Karma had ordered the van to be there; it was his Karma that had brought it to that spot. It is wrong to think that this was accidental. For in his present incarnation the boy was not to live beyond his seventh year of age. I might say that everything was arranged accordingly. We must get accustomed to see cause and effect differently than is ordinarily the case. When we look clairvoyantly upon the boy's life, upon the life of his soul, we discover a significant fact which moves us deeply, but at the same time it can throw light upon the divine-spiritual mysteries of the universe. Soon after the boy's death, the whole aura of the Dornach Building changed. In telling you this I am relating [to] you something connected with my own experience. When one has to work for the Dornach Building of the Anthroposophical Society, when one has to arrange what should take place within it, then one knows how much one owes to the helping forces that stream into one's soul from such an aura. After the boy's death, his still unused etheric body became united, really united with the aura of the Goetheanum Building. For the etheric body is something that man discards. The individuality consisting of the Ego and of the astral body continues—this is something quite different—but the etheric body put aside at such a tender age contains forces which might have sustained the physical body and physical life for many decades. These forces have gone through the portal of death unused. After a few days they are discarded. These very forces are now active in the aura of the Building and work with it. Consequently we cannot say that the soul of this individuality works in the aura, but only his unused etheric body. Nothing is lost, even in the spiritual world. That no physical forces are ever dispersed is a fact well known to physicists; these forces only undergo a change. Also in the spiritual world we must look for transformed forces; they are the unused etheric forces of men that have died young and these forces rise up to the spiritual world. We approach such things by studying concrete examples. It is for this reason that I am describing them to you.¹

You see, the essential thing is not only to absorb thoughts and ideas concerning the spiritual worlds, but we should learn a certain way of living and penetrate into it. As human beings of the 5th post-Atlantean epoch of culture we should envisage the 6th and 7th epochs. It is essential to bridge the abyss separating the living from the so-called dead; it is essential that mankind should become more and more united, not only when men are incarnated in a physical body, but also when they take on forms of existence through which they have to pass between death and a new birth. Spiritual science exists not only for the purpose of bringing new possibilities to mankind, but in the life which awaits the earth for the remainder of its post-Atlantean development spiritual science is a first, I might say, stammering, attempt: all that spiritual science is now able to give, is really a stammering, when compared with everything that future human races will experience through spiritual science.

With this description, attempting to convey through the heart's forces certain ideas on the conditions of life and death, I want to point out to you an element of spiritual science which considers life itself, so that an understanding which is not that of the head may rise up within you, the understanding of the heart. This we should seek in a living way through spiritual-scientific immersion, for this kind of understanding is the task of the 5th post-Atlantean epoch of culture. It will be followed by the 6th and 7th epochs. But we fully grasp all that the Central-European civilisation must uphold, when we feel that the civilisation of Central Europe above all, is intimately connected with the goals that must be reached during the 5th epoch of culture. This may lead to something which I have mentioned at the beginning of to-day's lecture: to a deepened insight into things which lie concealed within our times so heavily fraught with destiny.

In the East, a soul-life is preparing which will be very significant in the future. In this connection, read what I have explained in the lectures I once gave at Christiania on the mission of the Folk-souls. The soul-character of the inhabitants of Eastern Europe is fundamentally different from that of Central Europe, not to mention that of the distant Orient. It is fundamentally different. All that spiritual science means to us should enable us to have an open spiritual eye for such things. We have often heard the legend that the Russian-Slav populations called in the Varangians and said to them: “We have a fine country, but no order. Come and make order for tip, Arrange a kind of government for us.” This, tale, born out of feeling and relating to the origins of Russian history, is a legend without any historical background, for these events have never occurred. In reality, the Varangians went out as conquerors and were never invited by the Russians! Yet these legends in history have a meaning far deeper than any historical reality behind them,—they have a prophetic meaning, a truly prophetic meaning, for they indicate something that has not yet occurred, but that will occur in the future. What will unfold in the East, will have to unfold in such a way that the capacities, of the Easterners will be used to absorb what has been developed in the civilisation of the West and to elaborate it further, so that the gifts existing in the East may be fructified by what has been produced in the West. This will one day be the task of the Eastern populations. We may, as it were, briefly characterize the nature of, the Russians of Eastern Europe by saying: If we consider the Russians, not that hypocritical community which now governs it, but the people, we must realise that the Russian soul contains a whole store of gifts; it is, so to speak, gifted in every direction, but just when it unfolds its mission within the development of the world and of mankind it will appear that within it lives something which may be called talent without any productive force. These talents will grow and increase more and more. But what preeminently characterizes the Central-European, the spiritual forces that pervade his gifts and the mood of “Constantly striving”, of living, as it were, intimately united with the Spirit of his nation, the striving to grasp what he produces—a striving that appears so, sublimely in Fichte's philosophy, where he speaks of the Ego that must constantly create itself in order to understand itself (indeed, future epochs will grasp the greatness of Fichte's philosophy!):—these very qualities which characterize Central Europe are the very opposite of what exists in Russia, in the East of Europe. The Russian souls are absolutely receptive; their greatest gift consists in absorbing things, but if anyone says that they are productive, this is an illusion. They are called upon to develop gifts which have no productive force. This idea is difficult in itself, because such things have never existed in human development, yet they must gradually unfold. In future the East will call out to the West: We have a beautiful country, but no order, (disorder will increase), come and make order.—Central Europe is called upon to bring to the East the productiveness of the Spirit. And what is happening now is an unreasonable rebellion against things which must take place in [the] future. People try to tread down things which must be reached, for in future they will say: Come to us and bring us order! In the history of mankind's development we find that what we most long for and strive after, is the very thing we reject most strongly.

The greatest misfortune that could befall us is that Russia, the East, should win in this process. It would be the greatest misfortune, not only for Central Europe, but, for Russia itself—the very greatest misfortune from an inner standpoint, because this victory would have to be reverted. Its effects could not remain. We are thus facing a tragic moment in the history of mankind's development, when the East will rebel against something which in future it will long for with all its might. For it would be doomed to decay if it refused to be fructified by the spiritual life of the peoples living on its western boundary. In the further course of civilisation the West must produce a living spiritual life, not only in the form of idealism, but a 1iving spiritual life. It will be like a spiritual sun moving from West to East, in the opposite direction of the sun's ordinary course. And in the external world the Russians will more and more realise how little they are able to do through their own forces and that they must really set themselves into the whole process of human development; also that they would commit the greatest sin by laying hands on the civilisation of the West, of the peoples of western Europe. Indeed, we may see strange, foreboding flashes of light! Did not something rise up in the East which would have been impossible in the West, the so-called, “Barefooted” world-conception, This is a kind of philosophy going out from the Barefooted Brothers, which quickly spread and took hold of many circles, although a few years ago it did not exist at all. The conception of the Barefooted! It is a conception adopted by men who make a philosophy out of their own absolute lack of faith in man, and humanity, who think that man is nothing but a poor wretch wandering about between birth and death, wandering in terror—hint pain, so that the words, freedom, brotherliness, compassion, pity, love, are empty phrases. Their only wisdom consists in roaming through the world as barefooted pilgrims who look upon the whole civilisation as a great illusion—the whole foul civilisation of western Europe, to use the words of these barefooted pilgrims—who only see the World in the ragged clothes, the stuffy room and the wide road—the world through which man roams when he has reached world-conception of the Barefooted Brothers. Indeed, it affects us, strangely when a poet gives to this “barefooted” conception in significant words spoken by one of his characters, it must affect us strangely, inasmuch as our Central-European world-conception always makes us strive to discover something which may kindle for mankind the light of the future. How does it affect us when a poet lets, one of his characters utter words that appear to sum up the world-conception and the philosophy of the Barefooted Brothers?

“Indeed, what can man mean to you?—He takes you by the scruff of the neck, he squashes you like a flea with his finger-nail! Pity him if you can! Show him how foolish you are! In return for your pity he will torture you, wind your intestines round his hand, tear every vein out of your body, an inch an hour. You fool ... pity? Pray God that they may whip you pitilessly, and there's an end to it! Pity? ... Fie!”

Gorki, of whom you will already have heard many things, comments these, words with: “Cruel, but true”, by rendering not only the world-conception of a poet in a poet's words, but his own world-conception, resulting from his own observation of the world. This is the conception of a Barefooted Brother, and it may be discussed like, any other world-conception. Yet it is one that has lost the possibility of transcending itself, of reaching something greater than itself and of sending light into life; before it can fulfill its mission in the evolution of mankind, it will have to wait until it is fructified by the light. At present, however, it is rebelling against the very things it should accomplish. Many empty words have been uttered in the world, but one of the most tragic experiences I can relate is connected with the phrases uttered by the different political parties at the war-assembly of the Russian Duma in August 1914; they surpass everything in emptiness! Such empty words can only be uttered when every living productive force of the soul is exhausted. The East is really standing upon the threshold of things to come, and it is now unfolding forces which are opposed to, those which will one day be the source of its greatness. And we in Central Europe must say to ourselves: In spite of all, the East is waiting; for the spiritual wisdom which must rise up from Central Europe.

My dear friends, try to transform into feeling what I have indicated in words fraught with heavy feelings. I have shown you what spiritual science may become if we intensify feeling and penetrate with it into spiritual science, in order to grasp the true necessity, indeed the historical necessity of a spiritual-scientific world-conception. We shall then be pervaded by thoughts filled with understanding, that rise up from our souls into the world's spaces, thoughts that will meet the forces which will soon send down their influences from the spiritual worlds, when peace will once more reign over the earthly spheres.

To-day I have shown you the influence of the etheric bodies which sever themselves from the human souls before their forces have been used up, of etheric bodies that might still have worked for many years and decades within physical bodies here on earth, and on behalf of physical life. We cannot help thinking of the many unused parts of etheric bodies rising up to the spiritual world, in addition to all other influences rising up from the individualities of men passing through the portal of death on the battlefields. These etheric bodies will form a great complex of forces, of spiritual forces, that will cooperate from spiritual regions in the formation of a spiritual world-conception which will gradually take hold of mankind. But in order that the forces proceeding from the unused etheric bodies may send flown their influence from spiritual spheres, they mum be net by the thoughts of human beings on earth, by thoughts filled with understanding for the secret working of the spiritual world which is interwoven with the forces of these unused etheric, bodies. This should be a real encouragement inducing us to fill ourselves with the great truths of spiritual science. For they will stimulate within us thoughts which will go on working in other people. The burdensome, fateful content of the life now unfolding within and around us will be followed by days of peace, when the truths which we have implanted into our souls through spiritual science will rise up before us and meet the forces gathered by the etheric forces of those who have passed through the portal of death upon the battlefields of present-day events, forces which stream down to the earth. And the result; will be something which I want to recapitulate in a few words, a result that reveals itself to spiritual, scientific research. If the fruits of spiritual science can be rightly included in the development of the times, the result will be something I want to express in the following words:

Aus dem Mut der Kämpfer,
Aus dem Blut der Schlachten,
Aus dem Leid Verlass'ner,
Aus des Volkes Opfertaten,
Wird erwachsen Geistesfrucht—
Lenken Seelen geistbewußt
Ihren Sinn ins Geisterreich.

(From the courage of the, fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the abandoned,
From the nation's deeds of sacrifice,
Shall spring forth a fruit of the Spirit,
If souls, spirit-consciously
Direct their mind and soul towards the Spirit-realm.)

• 1. The description of the other concrete cases is contained in “Rudolf Steiner und unsere Toten”. They are too intimate for publication in the News Sheet.

In the two lectures following the performance of the later Walpurgis-night scene, from the second part of Faust, I hoped to evoke the feeling that, in the whole of his inner life, Goethe was in reality on the path to the supersensible world. I wanted you to feel that he succeeded, as perhaps no other artist, no other poet, has ever done, in developing an artistic creation out of this spiritual life, so that in this creation neither the art not the wisdom falls short and, in its own place, each of the spheres—of striving and wisdom—achieves harmonic expression.

I should not like you to think that in what has been said I have been wishing to give an interpretation of this poem; that was not at all my aim. For in this sphere I consider interpretation to be utterly useless. All that was attempted in these studies was to create the possibility for you to absorb and enjoy a poem, a work of art, in the same element in which it was created. Such studies should simply teach the language, as it were, the spiritual language, in which such a work is written, and should not expound or interpret, for as a rule that too often results in misconstruction and misinterpretation.

Now, if we keep to this mood in the matter, the following may perhaps be of use. You see, there are two fundamental feelings at the base of all striving for knowledge, of every kind of striving towards spiritual experience. One of these feelings comes from man having to think, having to form ideas, as he lives his life between birth and death in the physical body. I think you will agree that we should not be complete human beings, were we not to think about things and about ourselves. Then, too, if we wish to make our lives fuller in the physical body, between birth and death, we have not only to think but also to will. And feeling lies midway between thinking and willing; sometimes it partakes more of thinking and forming ideas, sometimes more of willing. Hence, for the purpose of our proposed study, we may ignore feeling, and consider the one pole of forming ideas, thinking, and then turn to the other pole of human activity, the willing. Man is a thinking and a willing being. But there are special features about this thinking and willing. The trivially-minded, average man looks upon what can be attained as the attainment of a goal if, on the one hand, he thinks as clearly and forcibly as possible, in his own opinion, at least, and if he wills in accordance with his needs. What distinguishes the man of learning who is fundamentally honest, is that he finally admits, when he tries to advance on the path of thinking, that with his thinking in the physical body he still only goes a certain distance towards his goal.

With this thinking, my dear friends, it is exactly as if a man were striving towards a goal; he cannot see it though knowing in what direction it lies. He wants to hasten towards it, but although he knows where the goal must be, it is wrapped in darkness. He imagines it will only become clear when he reaches it. And while he is feeling that he is still nowhere near the goal but a considerable distance from it, some being seems to seize from from behind, and to stop him going farther. And he says: Thinking, the forming of ideas, drives me in a certain direction, then I am stopped; were I to pursue the path of thought in this direction, I should never be able to reach the goal thinking itself has indicated.—Thus he comes to one of the boundaries to which he is by nature subject in the life between birth and death. And it may be said that whoever has never experienced the suffering and blows of fate arising from the goal of thought, has certainly no very deep cognitional life. If, by the inner constitution of his soul, a man can fancy he is able to reach the goal of thought by thinking, he is doomed to superficiality. We can be preserved from superficiality only when by trying to think as deeply and clearly as possible, we begin to feel harassed by the hindrances to thought. This feeling of being frustrated in thought is a profound human experience, without which we cannot pass beyond superficiality into a really deep comprehension of life.

And this is not the only boundary set to the human being's full experience between birth and death; the other is encountered where the will is unfolded. This is the sphere in which there germinate men's desires arising out of the life of instinct. Man is driven to willing in the crudest sense through hunger and thirst and other instincts; and there is then a rising scale from instinct up to the purest spiritual ideals. In all these impulses, from grossest instincts up to spiritual ideals, willing is deployed. But now, if we are to try and establish ourselves in life with our will that passes over into action, we again come to a boundary. Fundamentally, Goethe's aim in Faust was to establish Faust in life by means of his will, so that he should be able to experience all that makes life happy, all that shatters life, all that gives freedom and all that is sinful. And if we try to take our stand in life with the will that passes over into action, the will translated into deed, we again find ourselves up against a boundary. But now it is a different feeling that arises. It is not so much that in our thinking we are stopped and hindered from reaching our goal, but rather that, while we are willing, we are seized upon, and our willing goes on no longer in accordance with our own wishes. In the act of willing one is snatched away. Someone else arises in our willing, who carries us off.

This then is the second feeling which, when experienced by man, leads him out of superficiality into a profound conception of life. Self-satisfied philistines, it is true, are of the opinion that a man reaches his goal by sufficiently developing his thinking and willing. But it is on these paths of complacency and self-satisfaction that the superficiality of life lies. There does not lie here what makes it possible in life's testing, after suitable probation and the crossing of an abyss, to enter another world, a world that cannot be lived through with the consciousness developed in the life between birth and death. A man is tested when, with suitable intensity, he realises in his soul the two boundary lines already referred to. Men must understand precisely from what Goethe has given, that it is not merely the bliss of endeavor—often imaginary and based on pure illusion—that can be experienced, but rather what leads a man to his goal over all hindrances, disappointments and disillusions. And whoever strives to avoid disillusionment, and refuses to transform, to metamorphose, the whole human being in certain moments of life, cannot press forward to knowledge of man, to the understanding of man.

We need not realise, my dear friends, that in this connection the Christ-permeated conception of the world and of life must, in the near future, experience a significant change. Hitherto, Christianity through the way it has developed in the different religious denominations is, usually, only at its initial stage. If we want to describe this development, we might say that it has created the feeling in man that Christ did once exist. And even this feeling that Christ once existed has been lost again in the materialistic research of the nineteenth century. What Christ brought into the world, Christ's connection with the striving of the human soul, into all this life will first pour in future through the researches of Spiritual Science, and through a spiritual kind of cosmic feeling—a supersensible experience. This will be seen if, to begin with, in this intellectual age, the majority of mankind can only have the experience in Imaginations, in imaginative pictures.

But these two basic feelings of which I have just spoken as arising from the two boundaries of self-knowledge and self-comprehension, these two feelings must find a crossing-point from a passive to an active Christianity. Just think how, for many people in the past, Christ has been nothing more than a helper in straits where a man is unable to help himself. Think of the strange way in which the Roman Catholic Church took on, at a certain time, the forgiveness of sins; anyone might sin as much as he liked, provided he repented and did due penance afterwards, he was forgiven. In short, Christ was there to help in time of need, to make good what men as a whole had no intention themselves of making good. And then look at the other, more Protestant error, where a man remains passive too, arranging his worldly life, his worldly activities, to suit himself, and then perhaps expecting that merely by belief in Christ, by a passive feeling of being united with Christ, he will be saved. This twofold passive relation to Christ belongs, and must belong, to the past. And what is to take its place must be a relation to Christ that is an active force, a going to meet Him, so that Christ does not do for a man what the man does not want to do, but gives him power through His being to do it himself. An active Christianity—or rather a Christianity that comes to activity—is what must take the place of passive Christianity in which actually (forgive the trivial mode of expression) a man does what he pleases on the physical plane, making God into a kindly friend who pardons everything if only man turns to Him at the right moment.

This my dear friends, will at the same time mark the dividing line between the age which must now belong to the past, the age that has led to so terrible a human catastrophe, and the age that must come. It is only when this coming age has passed over from a Christianity that is passive to one that is active, that it will be qualified to heal those evils that have already shown themselves and will continue to do so increasingly so long as the principles of the past prevail. These evils are rooted deep in human hearts and souls; and they must be healed if earth-evolution is to proceed.

The two basic feelings of the boundaries to thinking and willing may also be described by saying: The one boundary makes it clear that a man cannot arrive at knowledge of his own nature. As human beings we are so constituted that we cannot, on the one hand, arrive at our own human nature, cannot with our thinking reach ourselves. In willing we do this, for willing actually proceeds form ourselves; in willing we lose ourselves; but here another seizes us—another cosmic being is formed simply according to the principle of this duality. He is a dual being, not a monad, but a dual being. The one member of this twofold being cannot reach itself, the other loses itself.

Hence man is never correctly represented when shown as a mere monad, but only when an effort is made to show him as standing midway between being unable to reach himself, and losing himself. And when it is possible for men to feel both at the same time with all intensity, then he feels himself rightly as a man on earth. When he feels a kind of oscillation between the two, then he feels himself man on earth. In spite of this oscillation, what must be arrived at is repose of being. This repose of being is attained in the physical sphere by the pendulum, the balance; in the spiritual, moral sphere, man must be able to attain the condition of repose reached by the balance and the pendulum. He must not aspire to a position of absolute rest; that would make him indolent and corrupt. He should strive for the state of repose midway between the beats, midway between the not-reaching and the losing himself.

In order to develop these feelings correctly it is essential that other feelings be added concerning life and reality.

You know, my dear friends, I have often called your attention to the one-sided way in which evolution is understood today. Think how the whole of evolution is now conceived as if what comes after were always the result of what went before. Actually, the man of today thinks of the successive stages of evolution almost like a set of cardboard boxes fitting into one another. And then, as for development, one box represents the human being between birth and the seventh year; then the second is taken out, and that is the human being from seven to fourteen; the third from fourteen to one-and twenty, and so on—one always coming out of another. To modern man the most acceptable idea is evolutionary advance in a straight line.

This is really at the bottom of all the grotesque notions that are learnt at school nowadays, notions which in future will be regarded as scientific lunacy of the enlighted period of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To imagine thus that there was once a nebular condition (the Kant-Laplace theory) and that then, one after another, cardboard box out of cardboard box, the successive stages always proceeded out of the earlier—this is an abnormal idea of present-day science. For things are not like that. Just think how evolution in the individual man between birth and death appears, to even a moderately unprejudiced observation! The actual limit of the first period in life is the change of teeth, as we know—the cutting of the second teeth. I have often drawn attention to this. How what is this second cutting of teeth at about the seventh year, at the close of the first life-period? It is a consolidation, a hardening, of the human being, when a hardening process takes place in men. It is like a drawing together of all the life-forces, so that eventually the densest, most mineralised part, the second teeth, can appear. It is a real concentration and densification of all the forces of life.

The second period in life ends at puberty. And the case here is exactly the reverse. Here there is no concentration of life-forces but, on the contrary, a rarefication of them all, a dispersal, an overflowing. An opposite condition pulses in the organism. And then again, only in a more refined way, in the twenty-first year when the third life-period ends, consolidation takes place in man, the forces of life are once more drawn together. With the twenty-eighth year there is again expansion. The twenty-first year has more to do with the placing of what is within man,the twenty-eighth more with his attitude to the whole wide universe. Approximately at the thirty-fifth year there is again a kind of contraction. That is the middle life—the thirty-fifth year.

Thus, evolution does not go in a straight line but, rather, in waves: contraction, hardening; softening, expansion. That is essentially the life of man as a whole. By being born here in the physical world, we contract into our individual skins; while we are living our life between death and a new birth, we are increasingly expanding.

What follows from all this, my dear friends? It follows that the idea of evolution going in a straight line is of no help at all; it leads mankind astray, and we must reject it. All evolution proceeds rhythmically; all evolution goes with the rise and fall of waves—expanding, contracting.

Contraction, expansion. Goethe sensed this in its elementary stages. Read his Metamorphosis of Plants; read his poem The Metamorphosis of Plants, and you will see how he follows the particular formation from foliage leaf to foliage leaf, then to petal, stamen, on to pistil; how he describes it as a continuous expansion, contraction, not only in external forms, the saps also expand with their forces and again contract—expand, concentrate; expand, concentrate. When in the eighties of the last century I wrote my first introduction to Goethe's scientific works, I tried to reconstruct his archetypal plant, tried to bring into a picture this expansion, contraction, expansion, contraction—on and on right up to the blossom. No one can really understand life who does not picture it in rhythm, as a progressive rhythmic process. It must be repeatedly emphasised that to imagine evolution as proceeding in a straight line does not help us to a true understanding of life.

The same applies to the understanding of man's historical life. In the most recent number of the periodical Das Reich (October 1918) where I dealt with Lucifer and Ahriman in life, I pointed out how luciferic and ahrimanic periods alternate rhythmically in historic evolution. Life never proceeds in a straight line; it goes in waves. But while this is so, it is associated also with an external change. And only by looking clear-sightedly into these relations can we arrive at a deeper comprehension of life. Those who think of evolution as proceeding in a straight line, say: First there existed the most undeveloped animals, then more and more perfect ones, up to the apes, and out of these developed man.—If we apply this to what is moral—I have often called your attention to this—if we extend this further, it follows that the genuine, thorough-going Darwinian says: We already see in the human kindliness, and so on. This again is a worthless idea, for it takes no account at all of the rhythm of life. According to this idea evolution goes on in a straight line, one cardboard box coming out of another. In reality the matter is like this. Imagine the most highly developed animals with their proclivities further developed in a straight line—this way you do not arrive at man, you would never come to man. But the more highly developed animals would evolve those very qualities you find attractive in the animal kingdom, in a most unattractive way. What you admire in animals as companionableness, as incipient good-will and social behaviour, when further developed turns to its rhythmic opposite—to the principle of evil. Mad man developed according to Haeckel's idea, then, my dear friends, there would have evolved from the anthropoid apes a human society inevitably destined to develop the war of all against all. For in all these aptitudes, good as they may be in animals, there lies the further evolutionary impulse to clash together in violent and most bloody conflict. That is rhythm, a wave-like rise and fall, and no one finds what is hidden in nature who does not see the possibilities of evolution in rhythm. To look only on the outside of events can never teach us to realise what in reality is there. Man was able to develop only because, in the higher animals, their evolutionary possibilities did not come to anything, for these were met by another wave of cosmic becoming which subdued the tendency to evil, in a way overcame it, by what men were meant to be in the very beginning. So that we have to picture it thus: The animal kingdom rises to a certain height; then comes the other wave to meet it, and this deadens the evil development.

My dear friends, reincarnation can also be regarded from the moral point of view. What would man have become had he just been born, over and over again on the physical plane, and being thus born physically on the physical plane, he had not been met by all that is constantly being taken up into the spiritual world and again sent down; were man not thus ensouled after birth then he would live always at war on earth. They would only with to live in conflict and would develop the most terrible fighting instincts. These fighting instincts rest on the foundation of the human soul; they are rooted in the human organism. But they are paralysed, if I may so express it, by what comes from above out of the supersensible, from those human beings who are constantly taken up into the spiritual world. This is expressed also in the outward form, my dear friends. It is altogether grotesque for those with inner sight when the human head is represented as having gradually evolved from the animal head. It is indeed complete nonsense. The truth is that, were the animal head to develop further, a fearsome monster would emerge in what, in the present incarnation, you evolve out of the lower part of your body. Were that alone to form the head, were it to form the head out of itself, the result would be a real abortion of a head—a horrible animal-monster. For that is where the possibility of such a monstrosity lies. Only because the spiritual comes from above and, as it were, washes up against it, is the human head able to arise. It springs from the relationship of two forces, the one pressing upward from the body, the other coming to meet it from the cosmos. This human head is constructed in a state of equilibrium; and it is because of its equilibrium that we are not able to deal freely with what we bring with us from the spiritual world. We slip into our physical head and cannot there clearly express what we actually are, when we hurry into existence through birth. If we could think as we did before birth, we should not think a Homunculus, we should think a man, a Homo.

You remember in my Christmas lecture at Basle (December 22, 1918) not long ago, I mentioned in passing that, before his birth, Nikolaus von der Flüe saw scenes that he lived through as a man after his birth. But when a man is born, and does not overcome being asleep in his cognition—that is, when he cannot develop waking existence outside his body, but thinks only with his body—then he never thinks a man but only a Homunculus. A man never reaches the real man by seeking to enter into himself through the head. It is really a fact thgat he seeks to enter in but is held back; somewhere in the middle of man there exists what his is unable to reach. This is within man himself, yet he remains Homunculus and does not come to Homo.

Actually were we in possession of every technical resource, we should put into the phial that represents Homunculus on the stage, only a horrible little monstrosity, small, and therefore not unattractive; and this is really what would come into being were it left to the human body alone, out of itself, to produce something. There would come forth a sort of animal that nevertheless would be no animal but a human abortion; something on the way to becoming human yet not quite succeeding. Neither do we succeed if we do not make the approach by way of this path to becoming men, this path that does not reach man. We do not then succeed for we do not thus enter inside ourselves.

And again, if man grasps himself through his will, he is immediately seized upon by another being. Then he loses himself, then all kinds of strange motives and impulses surge up into his willing. Only when a man endeavours to bring the inner forces into equilibrium does he succeed in becoming complete man.

Now, my dear friends, with what I have said compare three different passages in the second part of Goethe's Faust that you can now have the opportunity on witnessing. Think of the sublime moment when Faust appears before Manto. Goethe is trying here to shed over the whole incident the inner repose of the human soul called forth by experiencing equilibrium. Faust would like, on the one hand, to avoid the sentimentality of the abstract mystic, and one of his last speeches is “O, could I from my path all magic ban”. He did not want external magic, he wanted to find the inner path to the supersensible world. He is near it, and then again far from it. As I explained yesterday Goethe is perfectly honest when Faust is standing before Manto. But Faust, my dear friends, does not hold to this abstract repose; he is tossed from pillar to post. Hence from the one side he is continually thrown to the opposite, where man loses himself through the will. Compare all this with what happens to Faust in the scenes where he is developing his life with Mephistopheles. There you have always the Faust of will, who, however is continually losing himself by his impulses being seized by Mephistopheles. This is where a man goes astray in his willing, where he will lose himself; here you have all the dangers that threaten man's moral impulses. And this is expressed with tremendous depth in Goethe's Faust.

Then take the moment when Mephistopheles joins the Phorkyads, when he himself takes on the form of a Phorkyad, and in all his ugliness goes as far as admitting it. Previously he was lying, but when the Phorkyads surround him he is obliged to admit his ugliness. Read the speech of the Phorkyads again; they too acknowledge their ugliness, and are in a certain way honest in their ugliness. In this moment you have a contrast to that sacred and sublime moment when Faust stands before Manto. What makes us lose ourselves in motives of will is clearly seen when Mephistopheles appears for the last time in the Classical Walpurgis-Night. Faust appears for the last time visibly, in the external drama, precisely in this scene with Manto—Mephistopheles in the scene with the Phorkyads. Goethe wished to indicate from the depths of his profound experience that, fundamentally, what makes us lose ourselves in the motives of will can only be set right if we not merely abhor it morally, but also experience it as something offending our taste. This was at the root of Schiller's feeling too, when he placed what is moral in such close connection with the aesthetic in his Aesthetic Letters.

This is just what is so distressing, my dear friends, that in the recent development of mankind culture has been brought to such a high pitch as, for instance, we see in Schiller's Aesthetic Letters, and this has all been forgotten. Imagine how Schiller believed that in these letters, written in the first place to the Duke of Augustonburg, he had brought about a deed of political significance. Whoever grasps the following two facts in their true depth learns much concerning the evolution of mankind. First he learns that Schiller's Aesthetic Letters were the outcome of his conception of Goethe's urge towards becoming; and, secondly, that this could be forgotten, that this forgetting has largely contributed to the present human catastrophe. Those who keep these two facts before them indeed learn much about the evolution of humanity.

And, from the point of view of drama, how great is the moment when in the terrible scene where Mephistopheles is among the Phorkyads we are shown how what is morally impermissible lives in man like a feeling that is aesthetically offensive. There, shown in all its atrocity, is the impulse, the essential impulse, that drives man to lose himself in the pole of will. Should a man fail to recognise this it will prove his ruin; only by realising it is one freed from it. You will find this expressed in the last scene of my first Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation. There it is shown how only knowledge, a clear conception of who it is who tempts and seduces us, can save us from being led astray. It is therefore essential in the age of the consciousness-soul now entered that, in order to overcome temptation, we should strive in the right way to come to know the tempter, not allowing ourselves to sink down into a merely external knowledge of nature and a merely abstract mysticism.

In short, my dear friends, abstract mysticism, the ‘easy understanding of the divine within’, from which nothing results but a terrible egotistical abstraction—this abstract mysticism is just as bad as materialism.

As I said, take three moments in Goethe's Faust. Take purely artistically what you can feel as Faust stands before Manto; what you feel when Mephistopheles becomes a Phorkyad among the Phorkyads. And take the third moment when Homunculus crashes against Galatea's shell-chariot—feel what this Homunculus is. We come from the spiritual world seeking through conception and birth for physical existence. In this physical existence we meet with what, out of this physical existence, is given us as our physical body. Every evening we go back into the world that we leave at birth; every morning we, as it were, repeat our birth when we plunge again into our physical body. Then we can feel how, coming in from without, we do not arrive at what man is; we meet only with Homunculus, the manikin, the human being in embryo, and we realise how difficult it is to come to the real man. We might arrive at the real man could we contrive to have a perfectly clear conception just before waking, when all the evolutionary possibilities of the night are exhausted. This clear conception, my dear friends, would be a world-conception, it would be such that we should no longer feel ourselves hemmed in by any boundary, but feel as if poured out over the whole universe, over all cosmic light, all cosmic sound, all cosmic life, and in front of us a kind of abyss. One the far side of this would be a continuation of what we were feeling before we met the abyss on waking—namely, warmth. Warmth flows out over the abyss. Now, however, we cross the abyss by waking, into air, water and earth of which our organism is composed. Certainly we are approaching man, and by letting Homunculus fructify in the spiritual world, we have prepared ourselves to understand man. But in the ordinary course of life we do not do what I have just mentioned. The living conception we develop when sleep should have had its effect upon us before we wake, would have to be brought with us into waking life. This conception would be an experiencing ourselves in light, in cosmic sound, in cosmic life, a meeting with the beings of the higher hierarchies, just as here the physical body comes into connection with the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms. This conception, developed concisely just before waking when sleep has done its work upon us, we should have to bring deep down into our physical body; then we should be able to understand what this human body is. But alas “the Gods will not suffer it”. We plunge down; it flashes, flames up, and we hardly notice it. Instead of looking into ourselves, we hear with our external ears; instead of feeling ourselves within our skin, we feel what is outside with our sense of touch. If we did not sink down into what we are able to reach only by the physical eye, the physical ear, through physical sound and physical touch, Homunculus would receive new life and become man, but against the resistance of the elements he is dashed to pieces. The light of the eye flames up instead of cosmic light, we begin to hear physical sound in the ear instead of cosmic sound, the life of the body is aroused instead of cosmic life—Homunculus is shattered. If we experience this consciously, we experience the end of the Classical Walpurgis-night. Thus, this end scene is taken from actual, true life.

These things are not there merely to be spoken of on Sunday afternoons in the Anthroposophical Society. They are there as truth, to become gradually known to mankind, so that as impulses they may with their being penetrate what must be accepted in the future evolution of man, if he is to advance to what can save and not destroy. For men will really find the correct connection with reality only if they adopt new concepts and from now onwards they begin to see what has always been extolled as the great achievement of the nineteenth century is at an end.

You see, my dear friends, it is not surprising that, from a certain point of view, this achievement of the nineteenth century, that continued into the twentieth, should be felt to be perfect. It is not to be wondered at all. Is it not true that before the tree becomes bare in autumn, it is in its fruiting in its most perfect stage of development. This natural science of the nineteenth century, that still haunts the twentieth, al these technical perfections that have reached a certain height, are the tree before it yields its fruit. All from which it has grown has to wither, and it is not enough that the tree should go on growing, a fresh seed must be sown in the field of human culture, a new tree must be planted. It does not suffice to think we understand the evolution of animals, to think of them as having advanced to the stage of man. It is not enough that frequently some spirit arises, who first writs articles of genius about animals, and later, to follow these, a book about the origin of man. Rather is it essential that men should discard the idea of a straight line in evolution, that they should learn to understand the rhythm of life, flowing like the waves of the sea, that they should learn how, in the inner being of man, the way does not go straight on, but across two boundaries. At the one boundary we feel almost suffocated, for someone seizes us and will not allow us to go where our thinking would take us. On the other side we feel as if the powers of Mephistopheles were dragging us to destruction. We must find the balance between what belongs to Homunculus and what belongs to Mephistopheles, between not being able to reach ourselves in Homunculus, and grasping the self only to lose it in Mephistopheles. The understanding of this equilibrium is what modern man must gain. And Goethe, foreseeing this in feeling, lived himself into this understanding when with absolute honesty he tried in his Faust to speak as he did of the riddle of humanity.

Mankind must strive to grow out of what today is the typical point of view of the crowd. Nothing is more resented at present than this striving, and nothing is more injurious to mankind than this hostility against any effort to rise above the commonplace. On the other hand, as long as this resistance is not definitely opposed by those who recognise the necessity of penetrating into the supersensible, there can be no sure human evolution. At the end of the nineteenth century Hamerling, in his Homunculus sought to make what we might call a last appeal to mankind out of the past, by presenting all that is decadent in modern humanity as Homunculism.

We might picture this to ourselves, my dear friends; suppose someone were now to read this Homunculus of Hamerling's which appeared at the end of the eighties of the nineteenth century. I have given many lectures about it, even before the war I actually spoke of it, not without a certain significance. Let us suppose then that someone reads Hamerling's Homunculus and lets work upon him what Hamerling imagines as the evolutionary progress of his Homunculus. He thought it out at that time, when men had already broken away from Goethe and all that he gave, and wished to hear no more of it. Hamerling represented the evolution of his Homunculus, how he was completely under the sway of materialistic thinking, how he lived in a world where people did not enrich themselves with spiritual treasure but became millionaires instead. Homunculus was a millionaire. He pictured the world where men treat even spiritual matters with frivolity, the world in which journalism—with respect be it mentioned—that was already developing, has since sunk yet deeper into the slough. We assume then that someone reads this Homunculus, and he might say: Why, yes, this Hamerling who died in 1889, had, when he wrote his Homunculus, with his physical eyes actually only seen mankind as it then was, hurrying on its chosen path. He might continue: Had people then taken seriously what Hamerling emphasises in his Homunculus, had they let it work upon them a little more deeply and not just as a literary production, but as something to be taken in earnest, then indeed they would not have been surprised to learn that, because of men being as they then were, our present world-catastrophe had of necessity to arise. This is what anyone reading Homunculus today might say to himself. What is there in the development of this world-catastrophe to astonish us, when a writer in the eighties of the last century was able to represent the man Homunculus in this way? But, underlying this representation of man, of Homunculus, is at the same time the appeal not to stop short at the life that can give us only Homunculism, but to cross the abyss where Spiritual Science speaks of the supersensible knowledge that alone can change Homunculus into Homo. And so it might be said: Mankind is placed in the Homunculism which, in the scent we are today presenting, finds itself in a world the man of today is not very eager to enter—in a world leading to the region of the Phorkyads, between Homunculism and Mephistophelianism. Goethe divined this and represented it in his Faust; he also divined that a path must be made that will avoid the crags of fantastic, abstract mysticism, as it avoids the other crags of a phantom-like conception of nature, remote from all reality,a path that leads to supersensible knowledge where fresh social impulses will be found.

This is a very deep layer of consciousness. Let us penetrate it, let us permeate our feeling with it, let us learn to understand the language of this sphere of consciousness, coming as it does from the region where we feel: Through thinking, a man cannot reach himself; through willing he loses himself. To be unable to reach oneself in thinking is Homunculism; losing oneself in willing is Mephistophelianism. And when we feel this then we enter into such profound scenes with a language that makes intelligible what forms the conclusion of the Classical Walpurgis-night. Ultimately, everyone views the universe according to how the forces he has received enable him to represent it. But the present task of mankind consists in raising those forces, so that much of the universe may be seen that, to man's hurt, has not been seen during the last decades.

Thus, going deeply into such a profound scene as the one we are now producing, is a way for men to advance in the direction which mankind at this time should take. What lies in true Goetheanism is what mankind at this time should take. What lies in true Goetheanism is what mankind must seek. This is not the Goetheanism of the professors, not the Goetheanism of the Goethe Society at the head of which is not a Goethe enthusiast at all but a former finance minister bearing the significant name of Kreuzwendedich; neither is it all that men thought they must make out of Goethe's teaching at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. What must be sought will become something good and a good impulse towards man's advancement in the direction he must go—if in the coming age he is to find salvation and not destruction.

The original idea of any sacred festival is to make the human being look upward from his dependence on earthly things to those things that transcend the Earth. The Easter Festival especially can bring these thoughts near to man's heart. During the last three, four or five centuries humanity of the civilised world has undergone an evolution of soul and spirit which led man farther and farther away from the thought of his connection with Cosmic powers and Cosmic forces. Man became more and more restricted to those relationships alone which hold good between himself and the Earthly powers and forces. Indeed it is true to say that by the methods of knowledge recognised today, no other relationships can be considered. If a man who stood near to the sanctuaries of Initiation in pre-Christian times, or even in the first centuries of Christianity, could learn to know the character and trend of our present scholarship—if he could approach it with the mood of soul belonging to that ancient time—he simply would not understand how it is possible for man to live without a consciousness of his non-earthly, cosmic relationships.

I will now give a brief outline of certain facts, the precise details of which you will find in one or other of the Lecture-Courses. The purpose of these present lectures is to bring especially the Easter thought near to our hearts; I cannot therefore go into all the details now.

We may transplant ourselves in thought into one of the many different religious systems of antiquity. Take for example the one that is least far removed from the modern man—the Hebrew or Jewish system of religion. In such religious systems of antiquity—in so far as they are monotheistic—we shall find the reverence for, the worship of, the One God. It is the Divinity of whom we speak in the Christian conception as the First Person of the Godhead—the Father God.

Now all those religions in which this conception of the Father God was living were more or less aware—the Priests indeed were fully aware—of the connection of the Father God with the cosmic Moon forces—with all the forces that now flow down from Moon to Earth. Scarcely anything is left today of that ancient consciousness of man's connection with the Moon forces—unless it be the imaginative inspiration which the poetic mind still feels that it receives from thence, or again in Medicine the counting of the embryo period as ten lunar months. But the older world-conceptions had a clear consciousness of the fact that when man descends to this physical life from the spiritual world where he dwelt as a soul-spiritual being in his pre-earthly life, the currents of those forces and impulses which proceed from the Moon pour through him.

To understand what shapes him in the fulness of his life—what lives in him as the forces of nutrition, breathing and the like, in a word, as the general forces of growth—man must look not to the earthly forces but to forces from beyond the Earth. Man can indeed become aware, if he considers the matter truly, how the earthly forces are related to himself. If we did not hold our body together by forces from beyond the Earth—if our body did not receive its form through these what could the earthly forces do to hold our body together? The moment the forces from beyond the Earth have left it, this body is indeed exposed to the earthly forces. Then it disintegrates and dissolves; it becomes a corpse. Earthly forces can only make a corpse of man; they cannot form and mould him. But there are other forces in him which lift him out of the earthly realm. These forces make him a connected organism, a connected form and figure within the earthly realm between birth and death. They prevent him from falling a victim to the forces which take hold of him in death and destroy him. Throughout his earthly life they battle against the destruction of his form; indeed they must be battling all the time. For these forces man is indebted to the Moon influences.

While on the one hand, therefore, we may state this somewhat theoretic truth: The Moon forces contain the formative principle of the human body, we must realise on the other hand that the ancient religions revered and worshipped in these forces which guide man, so to speak, through birth into this physical existence, the forces of the Divine Father. The Initiates of the ancient Hebrew culture were clearly aware that the forces which guide man into this Earth-existence, which maintain him here, and from which—as physical man—he escapes when he passes through the gate of death, stream from the Moon.

To love the Divine Father forces with heart and mind, to look up to them and to express this reverence in sacred ritual, in prayer and praise—such was the content of certain monotheistic religions of ancient time. But the old religions were more consistent than we generally think. History describes these things quite wrongly for it only has the outer documents to go upon and is unaware of what can be observed by spiritual sight.

The religions which looked up to the Moon—to the spiritual Beings in the Moon—belonged really to a later period. The primeval religions possessed not only this conception of the Moon, but also had a clear idea of the Sun forces; nay more (as we may also mention at this point) of the Saturn forces. Here indeed we are entering a realm of history for which no outer documents exist. For the time we are now considering lies many thousands of years before the founding of Christianity. These are the epochs which I called in my Occult Science, the ancient Indian (since one must have a name and the civilisation of that first epoch existed on the soil that afterwards was India), and the ancient Persian. In those old civilisations man's evolution was very different from what it was in later times. Moreover his religious beliefs depended on this unfolding of his life.

Our lives today (and it has been so for more than two thousand years) unfold in such a way that a certain break in our earthly life and development escapes our notice. Indeed it is scarcely perceptible today. The inner change that takes place in the human being about the thirtieth year of life remains for present day humanity to a large extent in the subconscious, in the unconscious. But it was very different eight or nine thousand years before the Christian era. In those epochs man developed until about the thirtieth year of his life so that one might call this development continuous. But in the thirtieth year a far-reaching metamorphosis took place in him. I will describe it in a radical way. I admit it is radical, but this way of expressing it will serve to characterise the facts.

The following thing might well happen in those olden times. Before the thirtieth year of his life a man had made the acquaintance of another man, say, three or four years younger than himself. His friend would therefore undergo this metamorphosis about the age of thirty, a little later than he did. Now if the two had not seen one another for some time and then met once more—I am speaking in modern terms, which make it seem still more radical—it might well happen that he who had undergone the change, being addressed by the other, simply failed to recognise him. So deeply was the memory transformed.

The small communities of those very ancient times were connected with the Mystery Schools, and in these the lives of the young folk were registered. For they themselves, in that they underwent this revolutionary transformation, forgot their earlier life. They had to learn over again what they had experienced in life until about the thirtieth year. So they became aware, ‘In my thirtieth year I have become an altogether different man. I must go to the Registry (a modern expression, needless to say!) to learn what was the content of my life before this change.’ Yes, indeed it was so! And in the instruction which they then received, they learned that it was the Moon forces which had worked upon them exclusively until the thirtieth year, and that then the Sun forces had entered into the development of their earthly life. The Sun forces and the Moon forces work upon man in very different ways. What does the man of today know of the Sun forces? He knows only the outward and physical aspect. He knows—forgive me saying so—that the Sun forces make him perspire, that they make him warm. He knows, maybe, one or two other things. We have Sun baths and the like. Thus certain therapeutic properties are known and so forth; but all these ideas are quite external. The man of today simply does not conceive what the forces that are spiritually connected with the Sun are doing with him.

Julian the Apostate, the last of the pagan Caesars, had still received instruction in what was left of the ancient Mysteries, concerning these forces of the Sun. He wished once more to make this knowledge an influence in the world and for this very reason was murdered on his campaign into Persia. So strong were the powers in the first Christian centuries which intended that all knowledge of such things should disappear. No wonder if this knowledge cannot be attained in any ordinary way today!

Now the Moon forces represent that element in man which determines him, which fills him with an inner necessity, so as to act according to his temperament, his instincts, his emotions—in a word, according to the whole nature of his physical and etheric bodies. It is the spiritual Sun forces, on the other hand, which free him from this necessity. They as it were melt away the forces of necessity within him. Through the Sun forces, man becomes a free being.

In those ancient times the two things were sharply separated from one another in man's development. In the thirtieth year of his life he became a Sun man, that is to say, a free man. Until the thirtieth year he was a Moon man, that is to say, an unfree man. Today these things merge into one another. Today the Sun forces work already in childhood alongside of the Moon forces, and the Moon forces work on into a later age. Today, therefore, Necessity and Freedom are mingled; they work into one another. But it was not always so. In the pre-historic times of which I am now speaking, the Moon influences and the Sun influences were sharply separated in the course of human life. Hence in those olden times it was said: Man is born not once, but twice. This was said of the great majority of human beings—and it was considered abnormal, pathological, if a man did not experience this fundamental metamorphosis of life at the age of thirty.—This second birth was the Sun-birth of the human being; the first was called the Moon-birth. And when in the further course of evolution this Sun-birth became less clearly noticeable, certain exercises, sacred rituals and actions were applied to those initiated in the Mysteries. Thus the Initiates underwent what was no longer there for mankind in general. They were the “Twice-born”.

We can still find the term “Twice-born” in oriental writings, but the expression is already a derived one. Indeed I would like to ask any Orientalist or Sanskrit scholar (I believe our friend Professor Beckh is here and you may ask him whether these things are so according to his special studies)—I would like to ask any Sanskrit scholar whether modern scholarship can explain in clear terms what the expression “Twice-born” signifies. No doubt there are plenty of formal explanations, but of the substantial meaning of the term our scholars are quite unaware, for it can only be known by those who are aware of the real facts of life from which it is derived. Spiritual research alone can give information on these matters. But when spiritual research has had its say, I would ask any open-minded scholar who knows the available documents—who knows all that external scholarship can lay hands upon: Does not external scholarship subsequently confirm, piece by piece, the researches of spiritual science? It will do so indeed, if things are only seen in the true light. But I have to draw attention to matters which must take precedence of all documentary research; for by documentary research alone one simply cannot understand the life of man.

Thus we look back upon an ancient time when they spoke of a Moon-birth of man as of his creation by the Father. And as to the Sun-birth, they knew that in the spiritual rays of the Sun, the power of Christ the Sun is working; and this is the power that makes man free. Think for a moment: what does the spiritual Sun force bring about? We owe it to the Sun that we, as human beings upon Earth, are able to make anything of ourselves. We should be strictly determined, placed in an inexorable Necessity—a Necessity not even of Destiny but of Nature—if the liberating forces of the Sun, the impulses that melt away Necessity, did not come near to us.

In those ancient world-conceptions, as man gazed upward to the Sun he was aware of these things. “This Eye of the World, whence radiates the power of the Christ, this Eye of the World brings it about that I must not remain subject to the iron Necessity with which I was born out of the Moon forces. I need not remain, my whole life long, a human being evolving by Necessity. These Sun forces—these forces of the Christ, looking down upon me through the cosmic Eye of the Sun—bring it about that I, during my earthly life, by my own inner freedom, can make of myself something which I was not yet by virtue of the Moon forces when they placed me into this earthly life.”

The consciousness in man that he could transform himself, that he could make something of himself—this was attributed to the Sun forces.

In parenthesis and for the sake of completeness, I will add that they also looked up to the Saturn forces. In these they recognised all that maintains the human being when he passes through the gate of death—that is to say, when he undergoes the third earthly metamorphosis.

 Birth: the Moon-birth second Birth: the Sun-birth third Birth: Saturn-birth, earthly death 

In earthly death man was maintained by the forces holding sway at the outermost limit (as they conceived it) of the planetary system of the Earth—the Saturn forces. The Saturn forces hold man upright and carry him out into the spiritual world, preserving his being as a connected whole when the third metamorphosis takes place. Such indeed was the world-conception of an olden time.

But humanity evolves. There came a time when the ancient knowledge of how the Sun forces work upon man, was preserved only within the Mysteries. And it was preserved longest of all in the medical departments of the Mysteries. For the same Sun forces which in the normal course of man's development give him his freedom—give him the opportunity to make something of himself—the same Sun forces, the forces of the Christ, are also working in many different ways in certain plants upon the Earth, and in other earthly beings and earthly creatures. Here they represent medicaments and means of healing.

But mankind in general has lost this connection with the Sun. While the consciousness that man depends upon the Moon forces—the Divine Father forces—remained for a long time, the consciousness of his dependence on (or as we should rather say, his liberation by) the Sun forces was lost. What we today call the forces of Nature—the forces of which we speak almost exclusively in our modern world-conception—are indeed simply and solely the Moon forces, which have become abstract and all-powerful.

But the Sun forces were still known to the bearer of the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, who not only knew them, but was able to direct his whole life by them. Indeed He had to know them; for the same Sun forces which had been attainable only in the ancient Mysteries by human beings looking upward to the Sun—this in their own down-pouring to the Earth, He was destined to receive into His own Body.

I described it yesterday. At the time of the founding of Christianity this was felt to be the essential point.—In the body of Jesus of Nazareth, in the thirtieth year of his life, a transformation had taken place. It was the same transformation which all human beings had undergone in primeval times, but with this difference: that in those olden times the rays of the spiritual Sun had entered into all men at this point in their life. Now the essence and Being of the Sun Himself—the Christ—descended into human evolution and took up His abode in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. This is the truth underlying the Mystery of Golgotha, as the primal foundation of all earthly life.

We shall recognise the full connection of these things by turning our attention now to the ancient Mysteries and the way in which men there celebrated the Easter Festival in its full human form, by which I mean the Act of initiation. For Initiation was in truth an Easter Festival. It took place, to begin with, in three stages. But before the candidate could attain true Knowledge or initiation, the first requirement was that through all that had come toward him out of the Mystery, he should have grown truly humble—so humble that no one today can have any real conception of such humility. True, the men of today think themselves very humble in respect of knowledge; but to anyone who can see through these things, they still appear possessed by the greatest arrogance.

At the starting point of his Initiation, this above all had to come over the human being, that he no longer considered himself a human being at all, but said: “I must first become a human being.” Of course we cannot expect the man of today at a given moment in his life no longer to consider himself a human being. But in those times it was the very first requirement. The candidate must in all truth, not consider himself a human being. He must say to himself: Certainly I was a human being before I descended into an earthly body. In the pre-earthly existence I was a human being in soul and spirit. Then the soul and spirit entered into the physical body which it received from the mother—from the parents. The soul and spirit—I will not say ‘clothed itself’, for that would be a wrong expression—the soul and spirit permeated itself with the physical body. But as to how the soul and spirit in the course of time permeates the physical—permeates the nerves-and-senses system, permeates the rhythmic system, permeates the system of metabolism in the limbs—of this the human being has no consciousness. He looks outward through the senses and becomes aware of the surrounding physical world. But what after all can a man do when at last he has so far penetrated his physical body with the soul and spirit that he considers himself a fully evolved and grown-up human being? What can he do? He can but look outward from his eyes, hear outward through his ears, feel outward with his skin, perceiving warmth and cold, roughness and smoothness. He cannot perceive inward, he cannot look through the eyes into himself. At most he can flay the physical corpse of man, and then imagine he is looking into himself. But he is not really doing so. It would be childish to believe that he is.

Suppose that I have a house before me here, and instead of looking in through the windows I pick up all manner of instruments and—if I am strong enough—break the house to pieces. There indeed I have the single bricks lying before me. I stare at the pile of bricks. This is what man does today. He flays the human being and dismembers him in the hope of knowing him. But he cannot; for it is not the human being that one learns to know in this way. If we would learn to know the human being, then even as we look outward through the eyes, so we must become able to look back again through the eyes, and to hear back again inward through the ears. All these things taken together—the eyes, the ears, the whole skin as an organ of touch, of warmth, the organ of smell, and so forth—all these together were called in the ancient Mysteries, the Gate or Portal to the human being. Indeed the starting-point of Initiation was this: Man came to realise that he knew nothing of the human being. Therefore, since he had no self-consciousness of man, he could not be one. He must first look inward through the senses, whereas in ordinary life he looked only outward.

Such was the first stage of Initiation in the ancient Mysteries. Now the moment the man learned thus to look inward he also experienced himself in the pre-earthly life. For then he knew: I am in my own being of soul and spirit.

We may draw it diagrammatically. Here is the head. Man looks outward. Now, instead, he learnt to look inward.

But in thus looking inward he became aware of what had entered into him as the pre-earthly life and being, which had entered in through eye and ear and skin, etc. Of this he now became aware. Here it was that he possessed his pre-earthly existence. Moreover it became clear to him that only now could he learn to know what we today should call Natural Science. When we study Natural Science today, how do we set about it? We are led to see the things of Nature, to describe them and so forth. But this is just as though I had known a human being for a long time; now I am about to see him again, and someone lays on me the strict injunction: “When you see him again you must forget all you had in common with him; you must not remember anything at all of what you had in common with him before.” Think of it! It is inconceivable what it would mean to husbands and wives, for instance, if on some occasion when they are about to meet again, they were strictly commanded to forget all that they had undergone together in the past. I can conceive that in some cases this might sometimes be not unpleasant to them! Still, life could not subsist under such conditions. Yet this is what is required of the modern man with regard to Nature through the very ordering of present-day civilisation. For he already knew the kingdoms of Nature—he knew them in their spiritual aspect—before he descended to the Earth. The human being of today is led to forget all that he learned of minerals and plants and animals before his descent to Earth. The ancient Initiate, on the other hand, was thus instructed in what was called the first Degree within the Mysteries: “Behold the crystal quartz!” Thereupon everything was done to make him remember what he had known of the quartz before he came down to the Earth, or again what he had known of the lily or of the rose. Recognition was taught as knowledge of Nature. And when a man had learned this Nature—lore recognition of what he had seen before he came down to earthly life—then he was received into the second Degree.

In the second Degree he learned Music; he learned the Architecture, the Geometry, the Mensuration of that time, and so forth. For what did the second Degree contain? It contained all that the human being perceives when he now no longer gazes into himself through the eyes, or hearkens inward through the ears, but when he actually enters into himself. At this stage it was said to the candidate: “Thou enterest the human Temple Grove”. He learned to know the Temple Grove of man—permeated physically by the forces of soul and spirit, of which man consisted before he descended into earthly life. Thus he entered into himself. And it was said to him: There are three chambers in this Temple Grove. The one was the chamber of Thinking. Seen from outside it is the head. It is but small, but when one sees it from within, it is great as the universe; one learns to know its spiritual nature. This was the first chamber. In the second chamber the candidate learned to know the life of Feeling, and in the third chamber the life of Willing. Moreover in discovering how man is organised in his organs of Thinking, Feeling and Willing, the candidates were learning to know what holds good on Earth.

The knowledge of Nature holds good not only on the Earth. Man already acquires it before he descends to Earth. Here on Earth he is only called upon to recollect it. But houses are not built in the spiritual world as they are built with earthly architecture. Music is yonder, it is true, but that is spiritual melody. Whatever is earthly music has been cast downwards into the earthly air; it is a projection of the heavenly Music, but in the form in which man experiences it, it is earthly. Likewise all that we measure is earthly. We measure earthly space: Mensuration, Geometry, is an earthly science. This in fact was the important thing for the candidate for Initiation in the second Degree: he became aware that all talk of knowledge by mere earthly methods is vague and void, save in so far as it be related to Geometry, Architecture and Mensuration. He saw that a real science of Nature must be pre-earthly knowledge, remembered, recognised; and that the true sciences of Earth are Geometry, Architecture, Music and Mensuration. For these can be learned here on the Earth.

Thus man descended into himself, and learned to know the three-chambered Man as against the single human incarnation which one perceives in ordinary life, when, without entering inside the human being, one merely knows him from outside.

And in the third Degree man learned to know the human being when he no longer dives merely down into himself and knows himself as a spiritual being, but when this spiritual being learns to know the body itself. Hence in all ancient Mysteries the path one had to take was through the Gate of Death. One became aware what man is like when he has laid aside the earthly body. Only there was a difference between the real death and the death of Initiation. I shall explain in the following lectures why there must be this difference; now I will only state the facts.

When man actually dies, he lays his physical body aside. He is no longer bound to it. He no longer follows the earthly forces, he is freed from them. But when he is still connected with the physical body—as was the case in the act of initiation in ancient times—then he must attain by dint of inner strength the freedom from the body which he has as a matter of course in real Death. That is to say, for a certain length of time, he must hold himself free. Hence for Initiation it was necessary to achieve the strong inner forces of the soul, whereby one could hold oneself in soul free from the physical body. And the same forces which gave man power to hold himself free from the earthly body, these same forces gave him the higher knowledge—knowledge of things which can never be seen by the senses nor conceived by the intellect. These forces transplant the human being into the spiritual world, just as his physical body transplants him into the physical world. At this stage the Initiate was able to know himself as soul-spiritual Man even during the earthly life. Henceforth, for the Initiate, the Earth was a Star—a Star external to the human being—while he himself (notably in the more ancient Mysteries) must live with the Sun instead of with the Earth. He knew now what man receives from the Sun. He knew how the Sun forces work within him.

This then was the third Degree; and it was followed by the fourth, which worked upon the candidate somewhat as follows.—When a man eats on Earth, he knows he is eating cabbage, wild-fowl, and so forth, and drinking all manner of things. He knows: These things are now outside me, and now they are within me. He breathes the air. First it is outside him, then it is within, and then it is outside again. So he stands in connection with the earthly forces; he bears within himself the forces and substances which are otherwise outside him on the Earth. “Before thou art initiated”—thus it was explained to the candidate for Initiation in ancient times—“before thou art initiated thou art an Earth-bearer, a cabbage-bearer, bearer of wild fowl, of veal, and so forth. But when thou hast been initiated into the third Degree, and art given what can be given to thee when freed from the body, then thou will be not a cabbage-bearer, a pork-bearer, a veal-bearer, but a bearer of that which the Sun forces give thee.” Now in many of the Mysteries that which the Sun forces spiritually give to man was called Christos. Hence he who had passed beyond the three Degrees was called a Christopher, or Christophorus. For he felt himself henceforth bearer of the Sun forces (even as on Earth he might feel himself as a cabbage-bearer and the rest). In most of the ancient Mysteries Christophorus was the name for those who attained the fourth Degree.

In the third Degree man had to understand certain things; above all he had to understand that for the moments of Knowledge the craving for the physical body must cease. He must perceive that while man in his physical body belongs to the Earth, yet in reality the Earth is only there to destroy the physical body, not to build it. Henceforth he learned to know the upbuilding forces, whose origin is in the Cosmos. But he learned something else besides when he became a Christophorus. Then above all he learned to know that spiritual forces are at work even in the substance of the Earth, only they are not visible to earthly sight. Speaking in modern words—though they spoke with the same meaning I can only tell you of these things in modern language, not in the words of that time—they explained to him: “If thou wouldst learn the science of substance—how the substances are combined and separated—thou must behold the spiritual forces which permeate the substance out of the Cosmos. Thou canst not know these things when thou art uninitiated. Thou must first be initiated into the fourth Degree and be able to see through the forces of the Sun-existence. Then thou canst study Chemistry.”

Just imagine, if we today required of a man wishing to take his degree as a chemist or pharmacologist that he would first feel himself in relation to the forces of the Sun even as he feels himself in relation to the cabbage of the Earth. What madness this would seem! Yet these were the realities. It became fully clear to men: With all the forces that are living in the body and that we make use of for ordinary knowledge, we can study only Geometry, Mensuration, Music and Architecture. With these forces we cannot study Chemistry; and if we do study it, we shall be talking in superficialities.

And so indeed it is. Since the time when the ancient Initiation Science was lost, all talk of Chemistry has been superficial. It drives anyone who is seeking for real knowledge to despair when he has to study the official Chemistry of today. For it rests only on external data, not on an inner penetration of things. If men only had an open mind they would say to themselves that something quite different is necessary. We must acquire a different mode of knowledge if we would truly study Chemistry. It is the present cowardice of knowledge which is instilled into the human being and prevents him from awakening to such an impulse.

When man had attained this stage he was ripe to become an Astronomos, which was a still higher Degree. To learn to know the stars outwardly by calculation and the like, was considered altogether meaningless. In the stars, spiritual Beings live. They can be known only if one has overcome bodily vision, nay, if one has even overcome Geometry and can live within the Universe, thus learning to know the spiritual essence of the stars. At this stage man was truly resurrected. And now he could behold how the Moon forces and the Sun forces work, even into the earthly man.

I have had to bring these things near to you from two sides today. In the ancient Mysteries—not at a certain season of the year but at a certain Degree in a higher development of man—Easter took place as an inner experience: Easter as the Resurrection of the man of soul and spirit, out of the physical body into the spiritual Universe. And in this way those who still had knowledge of the Mysteries at that time looked up to the Mystery of Golgotha. They said to themselves: What would have become of mankind if the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place? In bygone ages there was the possibility of being initiated into the secrets of the Cosmos. For in very ancient times man had experienced as a matter of course his second birth, about the thirtieth year of his life; and in subsequent times there still remained at least the memories of this; there was a science of the Mysteries, preserving in tradition what had actually been experienced in former times.

But in the age when the Mystery of Golgotha took place, all these things had been wafted away and forgotten. Mankind would have fallen into utter decadence had not the Power to whom the Initiates in the Mysteries ascended when they became Christophorus, descended into Jesus of Nazareth to be present henceforward on the Earth; so that man might henceforward be united with this Power through Christ Jesus.

Thus what appears before our eyes in the Easter Festival today is connected with a certain chapter in the historic evolution of the Mysteries. Truly we only become aware of the content of the Easter Festival when we call this ancient sacred history to life again.

These things will be the subject of our further study. But you will now at any rate be able to draw near to what the candidate for Initiation in ancient times experienced. He could say to himself: Through my Initiation I have come to understand how the Sun and Moon work within me in their mutual and heavenly relationships. For now I know that I, as physical man, am shaped and formed in such and such a way; that I have such and such eyes and nose and other bodily forms both inwardly and outwardly throughout my body; that this bodily form could grow, and grows to this day in the process of nutrition—all this is dependent on the Moon forces. All that is Necessity depends on them. But that I can live and move as a free inner Being within my bodily nature—that I can transform myself, that I have myself in hand—this depends on the Sun forces, the forces of the Christ. These are the forces I must kindle in my inner being if I would mould with conscious knowledge, and attain by my own inner work, what the Sun forces would otherwise have to do within me, once more by a kind of Necessity.

In this way we shall also understand why man even today looks upward to the Sun and Moon and determines from their mutual constellation the time of the Easter Festival. For this alone has still remained. We calculate when is the first Sunday after the first full Moon after the Spring Equinox. The Easter Festival of the year is fixed for the Sunday following the first full Moon, indicating (as I shall explain in greater detail tomorrow) that we recognise in the form and structure of the Easter Festival something that must be determined from above, out of the Cosmos.

But the Easter thought must be regained. And it can only be regained by looking back to the ancient Mysteries, where the human being was made aware how it is when he looks within himself and beholds—the Gate of Man! And when he actually enters into himself—the Three-chambered inner Man! And when he makes himself free—the Gate of Death! When he lives and moves freely in the spiritual world, he becomes a Christophorus.

The Mysteries themselves receded in the age when the free development of man had to take place. But now the time is come when they must be found again. Of this, my dear friends, we must be fully conscious. Institutions must be created today to find the Mysteries once more.

Out of this consciousness we held our Christmas Foundation Meeting. For it is an urgent necessity that there should be a place on Earth where the Mysteries can once more be founded. The Anthroposophical Society in its further progress must become the path to the Mysteries renewed. This will also be our task: out of a right and true consciousness to cooperate towards this end. And to this end the life of man will have to be considered according to the three stages: the stage where we turn our gaze into the human being; the stage where we strive to enter right within him; and the stage where we become, in consciousness, what in the outer reality we become only in Death.

Let us then take away with us these words as a solemn remembrance of this lesson which we have held today, and let us make them active in our souls:

 Stand in the porch at Man's life-entrance, Read thereon the World's writ sentence, Dwell in the soul of Man within, Feel in its pulsing, Worlds begin. 

In ordinary life we do not see the World's Beginning, but only this or that within the World.

 Think upon Man's earthly ending. Find therein the Spirit's wending. 

Let this then, be the extract from today's lesson:

 Stand in the porch of Man's life-entrance, Read thereon the World's writ sentence. Dwell in the soul of Man within, Feel, in its pulsing, Worlds begin. Think upon Man's earthly ending, Find therein the Spirit's wending. 

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 (original text) Steh' vor des Menschen Lebenspforte; Schau an ihrer Stirne Weltenworte. Leb' in des Menschen Seeleninnern; Fühl' in seinem Kreise Weltbeginnen. Denk an des Menschen Erdenende; Find' bei ihm die Geisteswende. 

One may say that the original idea of Festivals was to make people lift their eyes, turning them from dependence on earthly things to dependence on super-earthly ones. And it is consideration of the Easter Festival that can especially bring about such thoughts. In the course of the last four or five hundred years the civilization of the world has gone through a spiritual evolution which has inclined humanity to turn its attention more and more away from its connection with cosmic forces and cosmic powers. Human attention has been restricted increasingly to the study of those conditions prevailing between man and earthly forces and powers. It is also the case that with those means of knowledge which are considered legitimate to-day it is impossible to keep other connections in view. If anyone in pre-Christian times, or even in the first Christian centuries, who was closely associated with the Mysteries could have experienced our present-day knowledge, he would not in the least have understood—if he approached things with the thoughts and feelings of those days—how it was possible for people to live without a consciousness of their super-earthly, their cosmic connections.

I might here give an outline of many things which you find more fully described in different cycles of lectures; but as these present lectures are intended to give a more intimate understanding of the thought of Easter, I naturally cannot bring forward every particular but can only hint at how things are.

If we were to transfer ourselves in thought into the various ancient religious systems of the past, we might choose as an example that one most familiar to modern people, the ancient Hebrew-Jewish system; we would find, when these ancient systems are mono-theistic, the worship of the one Godhead. This is that Godhead of whom, in accordance with Christian acceptance, we call the Father.

Now, in all those religions in which the thought of this Father-God lived, there has existed more or less, but especially among the priests of the Mysteries, a connection between this God and the cosmic moon-forces, a connection with everything streaming down to earth as force from the moon.

Of this ancient consciousness of the connection between man and the moon forces, hardly anything has remained other than the stimulus given to the poetic fancy of the soul by the moon, and the number of months in the gestation period of man, in accordance with the ten lunar months as reckoned in medicine. But in the older ideas concerning such things a clear consciousness did exist, that when man came down from the spiritual world, where in pre-earthly times he had lived as a psycho-spiritual being, into physical life, he was filled with and strengthened by impulses that streamed to him from the moon. When a man considers what it is that has formed him as living being, what lives in him as the forces of nutrition and ˂ breathing, and as forces of growth generally, he must not look to the forces of the earth but to forces outside the earth.

It is easy for him to see how, when looking to earthly forces, these are connected with him. But if our body were not held together by forces outside the earth, if it did not receive its form from forces beyond the earth, what could the mere earthly forces do towards its preservation and cohesion (Zusammengehalt)?

The moment the non-earthly forces—those coming from beyond the earth—leave it, the body is exposed to the forces of the earth: it then perishes, disintegrates, and becomes a corpse. The forces of the earth can only make corpses of men, they cannot construct their human form. Those forces living in man, by which he is raised above what is earthly, so that between birth and death he can live on earth as a coherent organic form and not succumb to the forces of earth that lay hold of him at death and destroy him, against which he wages a life-long struggle here—for they must be struggled against—these forces he owes to the influences of the moon-world.

If on the one hand we can state theoretically that the moon contains the forces by which the human body is formed, we must realize on the other hand that ancient religions reverenced these as the divine Father-forces which were the means of bringing man into physical existence at birth. The ancient Hebrew Initiate had a distinct consciousness of the fact that the forces leading man to earthly existence streamed to him from the moon, maintained him on earth, and were torn from him as physical man when he passed through the gates of death.

A kindly feeling of love for these Father-forces, a looking up to them in the practice of their cult by means of prayers, etc., was the content of certain ancient monotheistic religions. These ancient mono-theistic religions were more consistent than people think. Such matters are very incorrectly represented in history, because history can only go by external documents, not by what is observed with the help of spiritual vision.

Those religions which looked up to the moon, and to that which existed in the moon as spiritual Beings, belonged to a later period. Compared with the opinions held by them concerning the moon, those held by earlier religions concerning the Sun-forces, and even the Saturn forces, of which I shall have something to say later, were very clearly defined, but they concerned themselves principally with the Sun-forces.

With these early religions we enter an historical field of study for which external documents no longer exist, lying as they do many thousands of years earlier than the foundation of Christianity. In order to provide this age with a name I have called it in my book, “An Outline of Occult Science,” the “Old Indian,” which was followed by the “Old Persian,” age. In these civilizations human development was very different from what it became later, and religious beliefs depended upon this development. During the last two thousand years and more we have developed so that we are not aware that a split has occurred in our earthly evolution. This has hardly been noticed. What takes place in the greater part of present-day humanity, inwardly, at about their thirtieth year, has also hardly been noticed. It has remained to a great extent in the subconscious; it has not entered into man's consciousness. Conditions were very different in a humanity that lived eight or nine thousand years before the foundation of Christianity. The development of individuals was then more continuous up to about the age of thirty. With the thirtieth year a great change took place. What I have now to say about this change has naturally to be spoken of somewhat crudely, but these simple descriptions are in accordance with the facts that concern us at the moment.

In those remote times the following might happen: A man might have contracted a friendship with someone (before his thirtieth year who was considerably younger than himself—perhaps three or four years younger. This man shortly afterwards experienced the change that took place about the age of thirty. It might happen, these two men not having seen each other for a long time, that the one who had experienced the change at his thirtieth year was spoken to by the other without his knowing who he was. His memory had been so completely changed. I have had to put this in the language of to-day, hence it may strike you as being somewhat crude. In olden times the control of certain arrangements (Einrichtungen) stood in close connection with the Mystery schools; and by these, in the small societies then existing, a register of the lives of the young people was kept, because they themselves forgot, owing to the great alteration (Umschwung) that had taken place in them, and had to be taught again what they had experienced in life before their thirtieth year. These men then knew: I have become a quite different being in my thirtieth year, I must go to “the registry” (a modern expression, of course) in order to learn what I had previously experienced. This is actually what happened! Through instructions they received, at the same time they were told: Before your thirtieth year the Moon-forces worked in you exclusively; after attaining this age the Sun-forces entered into the development of your earthly life. The Sun-forces work on man with an entirely different purport from the Moon-forces. What does present-day humanity know of the Sun-forces? Only the outer physical part. Man knows that they warm him, that they cause him to perspire; he knows besides this that people practise sun-bathing, that there is something therapeutic connected with the forces of the sun, but all this he learns in a merely external way. He has no idea what the forces that are spiritually connected with the Sun do to him.

Julian the Apostate, the last of the heathen Cæsars, had experienced something of these forces in the last lingering note of the Mysteries, and just when he desired to make proof of these experiences he was murdered on his expedition into Persia; so powerful in the early Christian centuries were the forces which desired all knowledge of such things to be lost.

It is therefore not to be wondered at that even to-day no knowledge concerning them can be acquired. While the Moon-forces are those which determine what man is, which permeate him with an inward necessity (Notwendigkeit), as to his actions, and determine his instincts, his temperament, his emotions and the nature of his physical-etheric body generally, the spiritual Sun-forces free him from this compulsion. They caused this necessity or compulsion to dissolve, as it were, and man became really a free being through the Sun-forces. In that ancient time to which I have referred, the difference between these two forces in human evolution was strictly defined. In his thirtieth year a man then became a Sun-man, a free man; up to his thirtieth year he was a Moon-man, and was not free. To-day these two conditions slide one into the other. To-day the Sun-forces work along with the Moon-forces even in childhood, and the Moon-forces continue to work on into later years; so that to-day these two things, compulsion or necessity and freedom, work one into the other. This was not always the case. In the early pre-historic times of which we are speaking the action of the sun and that of the moon were absolutely distinct in the course of a man's life. This is why it was said at that time concerning the greater part of humanity: a man was born not once but twice. For it was held to be abnormal, something pathological, if a man did not experience this great change of life in his thirtieth year. It came about in the course of human evolution that the second of these births—they were spoken of as the Moon-birth and the Sun-birth—that the Sun-birth was no longer so noticeable in man, and certain ceremonies were carried out, certain exercises and actions were performed on those who desired initiation into the Mysteries. Such persons then experienced, in the Mysteries, what could be no longer experienced generally by men, and they became the “twice-born.”

When this expression “twice-born” is found in Oriental literature to-day it is misleading. Any Oriental scholar, any Sanskrit expert, might be asked—I think Professor Beckh is present here and you can ask him—if it is not the case that, as a matter of fact, no Oriental science can clearly and distinctly put before you, in a few words, what the content of the expression “twice-born” really is. Formal explanations there certainly are in plenty, but what it means in substance no one knows. Only those who are aware that it reaches back to a reality know the reality I have just explained to you. In such things spiritual observation alone can speak. And when once it has spoken, I would like to ask all those who hold with what can be learned from documents, with everything external science can discover—I would like to ask, taking for granted that science has gone to work in an unprejudiced manner, if this science does not corroborate in every particular the investigations made by spiritual science? Your attention must, however, be directed to certain things which take precedence of all documentary science; for the understanding of life, of man, cannot be gained by a science of documents.

Let us turn our gaze back to a very far-off age when people spoke of the Moon-birth of man as creation through the Father. With regard to the Sun-birth, people were quite clear that in the spiritual Sunlight the power of Christ, the Son, was active, and that this was the power that freed people. Consider for a moment what this force, this Sun-force, does. It is the force that enables us as men on earth to make something out of ourselves. We would have been strictly confined within an unchangeable, natural—not fateful—necessity, if the liberating Sun-forces had not by their influence dissolved this necessity.

This fact was known to those who held the more ancient opinions concerning the world. They looked up to the sun and said: This eye of the world, from which the power of Christ streams forth, is the cause of my not having to remain always under that brazen necessity with which I was born from out of the forces of the moon, as a man whose whole life had to evolve under compulsion. It is the Christ-force looking down on me through that cosmic Sun-eye that enables me through my inner freedom to make something of myself during my life on earth, something I could not have been, through the Moon-forces which placed me here.

This consciousness that he could transform himself, could make something out of himself, is what men saw in the forces of the Sun.

I would like to add here, but only by way of parenthesis, that Saturn was also looked up to as a third source of birth. In the Saturn forces these men saw all that preserved them when they passed through the gate of death: the third earthly metamorphosis. Birth on earth, meaning birth through the Moon; the second birth, meaning birth through the Sun; the third birth, meaning Saturn birth or earthly death. Man was here upheld by the mighty forces of Saturn, forces then holding sway at the extreme limit of the planetary system of the earth. These forces preserved him, bore him out into the spiritual world, and provided a connecting link for his being, when the third metamorphosis took place. This was absolutely the mental outlook of the men of those ancient times.

But human evolution goes on. A time arrived when it was no longer known in the Mysteries how the Sun-forces affected mankind. Knowledge concerning these forces was preserved longest among the medical workers in the Mysteries. For the forces which in his ordinary development give man freedom, and the possibility of making something out of himself—the Sun- or Christ-forces—live also under various conditions in certain plants and in other earthly beings and things, and reveal in these earthly things properties of healing.

Generally speaking, all sense of their connection with the sun was lost to humanity; and while for a considerable time the consciousness still remained that man is dependent on the Moon-forces, or Father-forces, all consciousness of his dependence—or rather his liberation by means of the Sun-forces—had long been lost. What to-day we call Nature-forces, almost the only ones we do speak of when discussing our conceptions of the world, are but Moon-forces that have become entirely abstract. But the Sun-forces were still known to One, even Jesus of Nazareth, the bearer of the Christ, who lived His life in accordance with them. He knew them because he was ordained to receive these forces into his own body as they streamed to earth from the sun—forces which men had only been able to come in touch with in the Ancient Mysteries when they looked up to the sun. This I explained in the last lecture. What was of greatest importance was this, that in the thirtieth year of His life a change took place in the body of Jesus of Nazareth similar to that change which in primeval times took place in everyone, only it was but the reflection (Schein), as it were, of the Spiritual sun that shone into these men, while now the original Lord of the Sun, the Christ himself, came down into human evolution and took up His abode in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. This fact lies behind the Mystery of Golgotha as the supremest event (Urergebnis) affecting all earthly life.

You will realise the full connection of these things when we now consider how the festival of Easter, which in those days was an entirely human concern, was actually carried out in the Ancient Mysteries—the Festival of Easter was, in fact, an initiation. The ceremony progressed through three stages. The first requirement, before the neophyte could attain true knowledge, before he could be initiated, was that through all that came to him from the side of the Mysteries he should be made so humble that people to-day can hardly form an idea of this deep, inner humility. People imagine to-day that they have the appearance, as regards knowledge, of being exceedingly modest, while for those who can see into the matter they are really possessed by pride. When about to enter upon initiation a man has, in the first place, to feel convinced that he cannot consider himself to be a man at all, but says rather: I have first to become a man!

It cannot be said of people to-day that at any point in their lives they consider themselves not to be men. But this was the first demand made on them, that they should hold themselves not to be men and should address themselves as follows: I certainly was a man before I came down into an earthly body; in pre-earthly existence I was a man of soul and spirit. The Soul-Spirit then entered a physical body, which it had received from its parents.

It, then, not clothed itself with the physical body—that would be to express it incorrectly—but it permeated itself with this physical body (durchdrungen mit diesem physischen Leibe). Men have really no idea of the manner and means by which the Soul-Spirit, in the course of long ages (das Geistig-Seelische durchsetzt das Physische), permeates the physical, permeates the nerves and sense-system, permeates the rhythmic-system, the digestive-system, and the limbs of man. They have no idea of this. They know very well that they are able to perceive the physical world by means of their senses. But what is a man capable of when he has reached the point where he has permeated his physical body so profoundly with his soul and spirit nature that he considers his development to be complete, when he is a fully evolved, fully developed man. ... What is he then capable of? At present he can certainly see external objects, he can hear external sounds, perceive through his skin things warm or cold, smooth or rough: he can perceive things outwardly; but he cannot perceive inwardly. He cannot look into himself with his eyes; he can at most remove the skin from a dead body and think that he sees into it, but he does not do so really. It is childish to think, for instance, here before me is a house, it has windows but I cannot see through them, so I will take all kinds of instruments, and, if I am strong enough, smash the house down, but then I will have only a heap of broken bricks before me, and these ruins are all I see. This is what people do to-day. They flay, they dissect people, in order to learn about them; but by such means they learn nothing. It is not the man at all they learn to know by such methods. If it is desired really to know something of man, you must be able to turn your eyes inwards and view him exactly as we view him to-day when we direct our eyes to him outwardly, and in the same way you must hear inwardly with your ears. All these activities taken together—those of the eyes, the ears, the whole skin as organ of touch, the organs of smell, etc., all these were called in the Mysteries the door to man (das Tor zum Menschen).

Initiation depended principally upon a person becoming aware that he knew nothing at all of human nature (vom Menschen); therefore, as he had no self-consciousness of human nature, he could not be a man. He had first to learn to look inward through his senses as ordinarily he looked outward. This was the first stage or degree of initiation in the ancient Mysteries. As soon as the pupil learnt to look thus inwards, in that same moment he became conscious of his pre-earthly existence. At that moment he knew: I am now “in my soul and spirit.”

The ordinary man looks outwards; instead of this the pupil of the Mysteries learnt to look inwards. In this inward gazing he became aware of what had entered into him in his pre-earthly existence, what had passed into him through his eyes, his ears, his skin, and so on. He was aware of these things, and through this was also aware of his pre-earthly existence. At this stage he was told that he would learn to know what we call natural science.

When we study natural science to-day, how do we do it? We are led to observe the things of Nature, to describe them, and so on. But this is much the same as if I were to meet a man again whom I had known long ago, and someone were to insist: You have to forget everything you did in company with this man; on seeing him again you are not to recall the intercourse you had with him. It is unbelievable that responsible people would do such a thing as this! I can indeed believe that occasionally this might be agreeable.... but under such conditions life could not go on. But this is imposed on the man to-day simply through the laws of civilization. For he knew the kingdoms of Nature; he knew them from their spiritual side before he came down to earth. To-day he is told to forget all that he knew of the mineral, plant, and animal world before he came down to earth, whereas the ancient Initiates taught him about them in what was called the first stage of the Mysteries. The Initiate said: Look at this piece of quartz. ... And then he did everything he could that might enable the pupil to recall what he had known about quartz before he came down to earth, what he had known, say, of the lily, the rose, etc. What was thus imparted as knowledge of Nature was a remembrance, a re-cognition (wieder erkennen). And anyone who had learnt the teaching regarding Nature as a remembrance of what he had seen before he descended into earthly life was received into the second degree.

In the second degree the pupil learnt Music, which at that time was Architecture, Geometry, Surveying, etc. For in what did this second degree of initiation consist? It comprised all that a man perceived when he not only looked inwards into himself with his eyes, or listened inwardly with his ears, but when he actually entered into himself (in sich hineinsteigt). The neophyte seeking initiation then said to himself: Thou enterest now into the grotto of the human temple (Tempelgrotte). He now learnt to know this grotto of the human temple. This was that physical part of him which was permeated by the soul and spiritual forces which were man before he came down into earthly life. Into this he now entered. He was told that this hidden place had three chambers. The first was the chamber of Thought; there he learnt all that was connected with this. ... Verily seen from outside the head is small.... when a man enters and sees it from within it is as vast as the whole universe. Here he learnt to know his spiritual nature. This was the first chamber. The second chamber was that in which he learnt to know Feeling. The third chamber was where he learnt to know Will.

He then learnt how a man is organised according to his instruments of thought, feeling, and will; he learnt what was of value on earth. Knowledge of Nature was not only of value on earth; man had already acquired knowledge of Nature before he came down to earth. But here we must remember that houses are not built above in the spiritual world as they are here with the help of earthly architecture. Over there, there is music, but it is spiritual Melos. Earthly music is something projected into earthly air; it is a projection of heavenly music, but as experienced by men it is earthly. It is the same when we measure things here on earth. We measure earthly space; the art of measuring, geometry, or surveying is an earthly science. It was important that those seeking initiation in the second degree should be made to realize that all talk of knowledge gained by mere earthly means, unless connected with geometry, architecture, or the art of surveying, is illusory; that true natural science is a recollection of pre-earthly knowledge; and that geometry, architecture, music, and the science of measuring are sciences that have to be learnt here on earth.

Thus in the second degree of initiation a man descended into his own self and learnt to know the men of the three chambers in respect of the single earthly incarnation, as he would otherwise learn to know them from outside, without descending into their inner being.

In the third degree the pupil learnt to know men, not simply by sinking down into himself (wenn er nun nicht bloss in sich untertaucht), by getting to know himself as spiritual being, but when this spiritual part of him learnt further to know the body. Therefore in all the Ancient Mysteries this degree was known as the gate of death. Here he learnt how it is with a man when he lays aside his earthly body; only there is a difference between actual death and that experienced during initiation. Why this must be I will explain in the next lecture; at present I only mentioned the fact.

When man really dies he lays aside his physical body. He is no longer bound to it, nor does he follow any longer the forces of the earth, having been freed from them. But while still bound to his physical body, as was the case in olden times at initiation, he had to attain liberation from the body (which at death comes of itself), and had to maintain it for a certain time through his own inner power. The attainment of those strong powers by which a man is able to maintain his soul in freedom, apart from the body, was necessary to initiation. It is these that give him a higher knowledge concerning the things he can never perceive through his senses, never think through his understanding. They place him as man in the spiritual world as the physical body places him as man in the physical world. He had then advanced so far as to be able to realize what he was as man of soul and spirit, to know that he had been initiated while still in earthly life. From this time onwards the earth for the Initiate was as a star existing outside humanity (Von da ab war die Erde ein ausser dem Menschen befindlicher Stern für den Initiierten), and in the ancient Mysteries he had before all else to learn to live with the sun instead of with the earth. He knew what he had received from the sun, and how the Sun-forces worked in him.

This third degree that I have just described was followed by a fourth. It affected the man seeking initiation in the following way: When on earth a person eats vegetables or game, when he drinks various things, he knows that such things were outside him and that now they are within him. He breathes the air; at first it is outside, then within him, then outside again. He is so closely bound up with the forces of the earth that he bears within him earthly substances and forces which otherwise were outside him. It was clearly explained to those seeking initiation in ancient times: Before initiation thou art a bearer of Earth, of vegetables, game, pork, etc. But when once initiated in the third degree, and when all those things have been imparted to thee that can be imparted to one who is free of the body, thou art no longer a bearer (träger) of cabbage, pork, or veal, but thou then dost become a bearer of those things which the Sun-forces give to thee.

That which the Sun-forces give spiritually was called, in all the Mysteries, Christos. Therefore, he who had surmounted the first three degrees of initiation—though on earth he might feel himself to be a bearer of cabbages—knew that he was a bearer of the Sun-forces and that he was called a Christophoros. In nearly all the Ancient Mysteries this was the name for those who had entered the fourth degree.

In the third degree certain things had to be grasped; the Neophyte had principally to realize that, in moments of knowledge, desire according to the physical body must cease, that as regards his physical body he belonged to the earth, but that really the earth has only to do with the destruction of his physical body, not with its construction. If the man of those former ages had been addressed in the words of to-day, he would have had things explained somewhat as follows (the sense would certainly have been made clear to him, but to you I can only say these things in the language of to-day, not in that of those former times): If you would know the teaching concerning substances, how these unite and separate, you must look up to the spiritual forces that from out the cosmos permeate all substance. This you cannot do unless initiated. For this you must have been initiated in the fourth degree. You must be able to perceive with the forces appertaining to Sun-existence; you can then study chemistry.

Supposing that someone to-day, wishing to take a degree in chemistry or in pharmacy, had first to submit to the necessity of feeling as a cabbage feels with regard to the forces of the sun, how absurd this would seem! But this was a fact. It was made absolutely clear that with such forces as people have in life, and which are generally employed during life, only geometry, surveying, music, and architecture can be studied ... not chemistry. If people speak of studying chemistry to-day, they speak in an entirely external way. All talk of chemistry has been entirely external ever since the time when the ancient initiation-wisdom was lost. This is a fact. It is enough to drive to desperation those who really wish “to know,” when they have to learn modern official chemistry, for it is founded only on assertion, not on any inward understanding of the matter. If men were only unprejudiced they would acknowledge that something else is needed, that people must be able to understand or realize differently if they wish to study chemistry. It is the modern timidity regarding knowledge or realization (erkennen) that has been implanted in people that holds them back from such an impulse.

After this a man was ripe. When sufficiently ripe to become Astronomos, which was a still higher grade (for to learn something of the stars externally, through calculations and the like, was considered absolutely unreal), he knew that in the stars spiritual beings dwelt who can only be known when physical perception has been overcome, when geometry has also been overcome, when man actually lives in the universe (Weltenall) and learns the spiritual nature of the stars—he was then a “Risen One.” He could then see how the Moon-forces and the Sun-forces actually work within earthly humanity.

I must therefore endeavour to-day to help you to understand from two sides how Easter was experienced inwardly in the ancient Mysteries—how this Festival did not take place at any fixed season of the year but when a man attained a certain degree of development. Easter was then experienced by him as a resurrection of his soul and spirit-nature out of the physical body, as a rising into the spiritual universe (Weltenall). It was thus that those who still knew something of the wisdom of the Mysteries at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha regarded this Mystery. They said: What would have happened to mankind if the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place? In olden times it was possible for man to be initiated into the secrets of the cosmos, for in quite ancient times he experienced a second birth naturally, as one might say, when he was about thirty years old. At that time at least there were still memories of this, and there was a science of the Mysteries which preserved in its traditions what an earlier age had experienced. All this had faded and been forgotten by the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Mankind would have become entirely decadent, if the Power to which Initiates of the Mysteries rose when they became Christophoroi had not entered into One Jesus of Nazareth—so that it has remained on the earth ever since—and men, through Jesus Christ, have been able to unite themselves with it.

Thus what rises before our eyes to-day in the Festival of Easter had already formed a part of the history of the Mysteries. Men will only know the real meaning of Easter when they revive this ancient portion of the history of the Mysteries. They will only approach an understanding of the real meaning of Easter when they endeavour in some way at least to understand what men seeking initiation experienced in olden times. Such an Initiate said to himself: Through initiation I have become aware of how sun and moon work in me in their reciprocal relations to each other; I now know that I have been formed as physical man in a certain way; that I have eyes of a certain kind, a nose, a whole bodily form constructed within and without as it is; and the fact that this form is able to grow and continue to grow to-day through the nourishment it receives depends on the Moon-forces. All I require comes from them. That I am inwardly free, that I can be active as a free being within my bodily nature, that I can transform myself, take myself in hand, depends upon the Sun-forces, upon the Christ-forces. These I must stimulate, if I wish to achieve consciously by my labour what the Sun-forces accomplished in me under other conditions through a sort of natural necessity.

From this we can understand how man still looks up to Sun and Moon to-day and from their reciprocal constellations fixes the time of the Easter Festival. This method of reckoning is something that has remained from former times. People ask: When is the first Sunday following the first full moon after the Spring equinox? And they fix the Easter Festival of the year on the first Sunday after the full moon; indicating thereby that people see something in the structure, in the form of the Easter Festival, that comes from the cosmos and must accord with it. The thought of Easter must be grasped once more. It can only be understood when people look back to the content of the Ancient Mysteries, where man was first made aware of what took place when he looked into himself: the door of humanity! When he entered into himself, living inwardly in himself: the three-chambered inner man! When he made himself free: the Gate of Death! When he moved freely in the spiritual world: when he was a Christophoros.

The Mysteries themselves went back to a time when free human development had to find a place. And the time is now come when the Mysteries have to be found once more. They must be found again. People must realize consciously that preparations have to begin now, by which they can be found again.

Out of this consciousness the “Christmas Session” (Weihnachtstagung) was held, for it is an urgent necessity that a place should exist on the earth where Mysteries can once more be established. The Anthroposophical Society in its further development must provide the means for a renewal of the Mysteries. Your task, my dear friends, must be to co-operate towards this end, doing so out of the right consciousness. This demands that life be considered according to its three stages—according to the stage in which a man looks into the nature of men; according to the stage when he strives towards the inner being of men; according to the stage in which he is in that state of consciousness which otherwise he only experiences in the reality of external death.

As a remembrance of the lesson that has been given here to-day, let us take with us the following words, allowing them to work powerfully in our souls:—

Stand before the portals of the lives of men,
Behold on their lintels words of power.

Live in the inward souls of men,
Feel in this realm the beginning of worlds.

—otherwise world-beginning is not always perceived, but only what is in the world—

Ponder the earthly-end of man;
Find in it the Spirit's turning-point.

In these words you have the essence of to-day's lesson—

Steh' vor des Menschen Lebenspforte;
Schau an ihrer Stirne Weltenworte.

Leb' in des Menschen Seeleninnern;
Fühl' in seinem Kreise Welt beginnen.

Denk an des Menschen Erdenende;
Find' bei ihm die Geisteswende.

My dear friends! Today we will try to bring to a conclusion the things we have been discussing and which are part of our program.

I have given you the annual and monthly moods as a basis for a breviary, and within the annual and monthly moods we must now seek the weekly moods. These weekly moods arise, as I began to indicate yesterday, when we look at how the weekly mood is actually already indicated in the August mood, so that within this August mood we already have the first week within the monthly mood. Just as in a living organism certain limbs have a little more of the whole [organism] and of the other [limbs] than others, so it must also be with what we find out organically as our behavior in relation to the world, and so the August mood would be the mood for meditation for the first week of the month, the September mood for the second week, the October mood for the third week, the November mood for the fourth week. In this way, the weeks intertwine with the months in a corresponding way. It cannot be otherwise, and we must make sure that we go with the months in the weekly arrangements. However, sometimes shifts will have to be made so that we can get the weeks into the course of the year. Then the daily moods follow the weekly moods, and these daily moods, which must follow the weekly moods, lead into the whole context of the world in a different way from the preceding parts of the breviary. I will now read the daily moods slowly, beginning with Saturday: Saturday:

My gaze is directed towards the divine spiritual ground of being
The senses behold the revelation of the essence of Being
The World Spirit rules in the World Matter
The World Spirit weaves in the dead, in the living, in the sentient
The World Spirit creates in man his image of being
The soul reveals the creative power of the spirit
The soul strives for spiritual fulfillment.

Sunday:

The spirit reigns full of light
Into the darkness it shines
The darkness seems to live from the light
The spirit weaves in the darkness, essentially
Darkness is enlivened by light
Light makes darkness good
The light's glow is the good in the darkness.

Monday:

Darkness seizes the received light
It wants to shine, not be illuminated
It takes possession of what it has received
It lets its own light prevail
It should not flow towards the original light
It should be itself
Darkness deceives the light.

Tuesday:

Light-Unity fades
Darkness turns away from the light
Darkness turns against the light
And so darkness is against darkness
As light is darkness deception
As light is darkness evil
As light is darkness destruction.

Where is the light in darkness?
Where does the soul find the spirit?
On Golgotha stands the cross
Christ shines on the cross
He guides through death
He shines in the darkness
He is the light of my soul.

Thursday:

Christ leads souls
From darkness He leads
Light in the Urlicht is His power
Life from death He wrests
Salvation from evil He wrests
Rise from ruin He wrests
To God's All He leads man's self.

Now, as on a higher level, Friday returns to Saturday:

Friday:

With Christ, my will is done
His cosmic goals flow into my will
Christ reigns for the future of the earth
Christ lives in the Father, shining through himself,
revealing through the healing spirit
Christ creates the spiritual goals in the soul
the soul can absorb the essence of Christ
the soul can feel: Christ in me.

The word pervades heaven and earth
It spoke authoritatively to Moses on the mountain
It forms world beings, for the revelation to man
It weaves in the human interior, to the hidden through itself
It shines as the sun from the light into the darkness
It lives in Christ, bright out of the darkness, gentle in the brightness. It comes to earth in Jesus.

Now comes the third week:

I look into the world with a spirit-borne feeling
The spirit feels my nature
The world sinks into darkness
The inner being shines in prayer in the spirit being
The inner being needs a ruler in the darkness of the world
Oh, the spirit takes a level head.

Thursday:

Christ leads souls
From darkness He leads
Light in the Primordial Light is His power
Life from death He wrests
Salvation from evil He wrests
Rise from ruin He wrests
To the All of God He leads the human self.

Or let us take the first Saturday in August:

The spirit of the world of becoming arises
In darkness, light is born
The spirit rests in the being of the senses
The spirit lives in my life.

The first week repeats the same saying in this case:

The spirit of the world of becoming arises
Light is born in darkness
A spirit of spirit rests in the senses
The spirit lives in my life.

Now Saturday:

My gaze is directed towards the divine spiritual ground of being
The senses behold the ground of being's revelation of being
The world spirit reigns in the world's substance
The world spirit weaves in the dead, in the living, in the sentient
The world spirit creates in man an image of its being
Soul reveals the spirit's creative power
Soul strives for spiritual fulfillment.

So it is possible, my dear friends, to use this breviary by arranging it in the appropriate way, and if you use it correctly, you will gradually find the opportunity to learn to preach in pictures; the word can come alive in you. But do not believe that the word can somehow come to life without practice. Only the practice that is in harmony with the ruling intentions of the world, only the practice that we carry out in us in accordance with the intentions of the world of becoming, draws the power of the living word from within us. And it is important that you connect these things, which are intended for pastoral care, with the appropriate trust, with the appropriate faith. The spirit cannot be given to anyone who does not fully believe that he is living in the weaving of the spirit. I ask you to pay particular attention to this, my dear friends, when I now speak about community building and about ordination.

I am now speaking about these matters as they arise from what has been said to me by those who really want to take on the task they have spoken of in all seriousness. I would like to answer the question: How can communities be founded, how can communities be led?

Of course it is not possible to simply stand up with all the things we have now discussed as our goal and now go into church planting in abstracto, but rather the first work must be done as a beginning. Therefore, I can only imagine that it can be done in a favorable sense by first bringing to the people what we consider to be the right thing to do in our whole context. I can therefore only imagine that such participants in these endeavors appear in the most diverse places, who initially simply take up the way in which one must currently work on people, so that they begin by making known what they want, through lectures that clearly reveal the goal that one sets from the outset, in such a way as to be understood. First of all, the necessity of religious renewal must be proclaimed. It must be made clear that such a religious renewal is necessary. For this, of course, one must be truly convinced of the necessity of such a religious renewal. But for that one must also be imbued with the tremendous seriousness of the situation in which present-day humanity finds itself with regard to inner spiritual and religious matters, and in which it also finds itself with regard to external world events, which, after all, are nothing more than a consequence of the fact that humanity has lost sight of the actual spiritual content of the world. If we succeed in showing from today's overall decline the necessity of a new beginning, which must be taken into the hands of individual serious people, if we succeed in explaining the whole situation of the world and the situation of religious and moral life before humanity, then the spirit will be found that works in the sense of such an ascent, and the first members of the community will emerge from those who can hear it first. For those who look impartially at what is today – which, after all, very few people do – there can be no doubt: If you speak in this way, purely lecturing at first, to all those who want to hear it, and if, above all, you find warmth in your words so that people not only believe in your mind but believe in your heart, the number of community members who come to you will not be small in a relatively short time. For there are very many who are seeking today. There are far more today who are seeking than those who can lead, and if a group can be found that can lead, then it will certainly also find those who are seeking.

My dear friends, it is my unshakable conviction that the saga of Dr. Faustus contains a profound truth in the following: In the time when it was still attributed to Dr. Faustus that he had made a pact with the emissaries of hell, Dr. Faustus was seen as the co-inventor of the art of printing. However useful the art of printing has become for modern humanity, its use is, to a certain extent, of the devil, because the art of printing erects a wall between heart and heart in relation to humanity. We must not take such things so much to mean that we should now become radically conservative, radically reactionary, and say that we must work against the art of printing. On the contrary, we must profess a completely different attitude in this regard. We must be clear about the fact that before the art of printing existed, when a pastor had to speak to a congregation from the pulpit, the congregation was entirely dependent on him for an understanding of spiritual matters. We must realize that the power the pastor had to apply in order to speak intimately to his congregation was small in those days and could be small in relation to the power that must be applied today. And I see, my dear friends, that everywhere people would like to hold on to the fact that this power can remain so small. We must be clear: the art of printing must be there. We must realize that everything that the modern world has brought forth must be there. But our strength must increase in order to make good and overcome that which has been done by the world that Christ described as the kingdom on earth into which He had to bring the kingdoms of heaven.

We must not carelessly say: What was expected in the early days of Christianity did not come to pass, so the statement of the millennial kingdom was wrong. It is a lie to accuse the Bible of making an untrue statement. It is not so. Bit by bit, the de-divinized world has emerged, and bit by bit, what could previously be sought through the world must now be sought through the spirit. The art of printing does not prevail in a world that is standing still and becoming more even, but in a world that is perishing and whose decline must be countered by the dawn. If we cannot get used to thinking about these things in sharp images, then we cannot rise to the occasion in which we want to place ourselves, and above all, we cannot come to trust in the workings of the spirit, which we must have. How can we speak of the spirit if we have no trust that the spirit will work with us? How can we speak of the spirit if we only ever weigh up intellectually whether this or that can be right? How can we speak of the spirit if we are not able to connect with the spirit? Whatever echo the world sends back to us, we connect with the spirit to bring about what we recognize as right in its sense. And we cannot work in the spirit if we do not extend this trust to everything we can do in our community. We must stand in the community objectively and judiciously, we must stand in the community knowingly. The modern pastor has basically become a stranger to his community. He goes around in the community without realizing what tragic worlds are taking place among those who pass him by. The pastor needs knowledge of human nature, and he only gains this knowledge by taking an interest in the experiences of his community. There should be nothing that community members do not see in such a way that they have the judgment: when they come to the pastor with it, they will find an open heart, but also wise judgment. We should not let any opportunity pass us by to find out what the laws of the world's phenomena are. We should thoroughly study everything that is going on in the spiritual, legal, political and economic life of the world in order to be able to help people from these three sources of all human development. We should know how to truly be close to the souls we are responsible for. Much will be well if these souls know that we are aware of their weaknesses and concerns, and that we have a proper judgment for them, one that is accompanied by openness of heart.

My dear friends, we must be careful not to become Catholic, but we must have an open heart and goodwill for what must be regarded as human and humanly necessary within the community. Very few people today know what is going on in many people. Very few people know how the people around us are really struggling in their souls today. In recent times, the misery has become so great that those who still live a little in the abstract intellectualism have no faith at all and no insight into the magnitude of this misery. Today, many souls that cannot be opened up because intellectualism has withered away everything we can say to them, everything we can give them, are on the verge of returning to the Roman Catholic Church, which could experience an immense influx. They are therefore close to converting to the Catholic Church because the Catholic Church – albeit in its external and often disastrous way – really did know how to establish with ironclad consistency what souls need apart from intellectualism, for example through confession. ©, I got to know them, these Protestant pastors, who kept saying: What do we do with our preaching, which has become so intellectualistic, if we don't have something like the Catholic priest has in confession? — and who, as pastors, longed for confession. And I have also met brave Catholic priests who, for certain reasons that are not to be discussed here, felt a deep obligation to remain within the Catholic Church, but who were deeply aware of what they owed to their inner selves by lending an ear in confession to those who had deep emotional suffering to report.

Infinite things, my dear friends, are healed in the world by approaching souls in this way, which can be characterized as I have just done. But we will never be able to rediscover the possibility of relating to souls in this way if we are not also aware that we must become fighters for what is happening in the big wide world, that we have to fight for many of the rights of the spiritual ministry on the ground of the spiritual ministry, but that these rights have been taken away from the spiritual ministry in the materialistic world and continue to be taken away. How much, my dear friends, has been taken from the spiritual ministry by the materialism of doctors! People do not think about it, they do not even know. One of the sad phenomena is that the hearing of confessions has passed from the clergy to the psychoanalysts, who carry it out in a materialistic sense. Such phenomena of the time are usually not understood at all in all their depth and significance. As a servant of Christ, fight against the Ahrimanic effects that express themselves in this way in the world, for without doing so you will not be able to work in the individual as the effect of the community must be! Let no opportunity pass by to again furnish proof that there can be a pastoral psychology and pastoral psychiatry! Try to gain knowledge of the world and knowledge of human nature in this sense! Do not believe that the thoughts and aspirations of the pastor can be fulfilled by disputing the correctness of faith and knowledge. My dear friends, so much has happened in this regard that the salvation of millions of souls has been lost. Take these things seriously and consider the situation of the soul in view of what has happened and in view of the need for religious renewal today. Do not regard it as a digression from the task of the pastor as a religious worker to be expected to know what can affect the lungs of a person from the soul. Look at the spread of lung diseases and do not consider this as something that you can only learn from the materialistic medical world. Notice how worries work, brooding over them in solitude, without being able to hear the words of someone who seems wise and capable of judging such things. Listen, I say, hear something of what takes place in the outer illness as a result of the troubles over which one broods in solitude, and sense how much you can do by contemplating the solitude of those who brood over troubles; sense what you can do for the recovery of the outer life. For there are two kinds of lung disease: one is a disease of the lungs as an organ, the other is a disease of breathing, but this breathing cannot take place in the right way if the lungs are not otherwise healthy, and in the diseased lungs are the afflictions that have been brooded over in solitude. Do not consider it an impertinence, one that cannot be addressed to the office of pastor, when one asks what it is that eats away at the human organs that are supposed to refresh the organism. Unhealthy feelings, about which one is uninformed, make the liver sick and make everything that is to be regenerated by the liver and spleen sick. Do not consider it unnecessary to point out that there should be a pastoral physiology again. Consider it a question of your office: What eats away at the air organs? The unsocial feelings of people eat away at the air organs, those feelings that do not allow the potential for love to be expressed in the appropriate way. And by cultivating social feelings and mutual social respect within your community, you will help your community to breathe healthily, insofar as this is to come from the soul. Do not consider it to be outside your office to ask: What has a destructive effect on the blood and its circulation? Try to find out that the destructive effect on the blood and its circulation is caused by the feeling of the futility of existence, by insensitivity to the word that reveals itself from the Divine-Spiritual. If you can see into the mysterious connections between insensitivity to the word that reveals the divine-spiritual and the disturbances in circulation and heart diseases, and if you look at everything that strikes back - the pendulum not only goes there, it also goes here - of a materialistic attitude that comes from a ruined blood circulation and a ruined heart, which comes from this insensitivity to the spirit-filled word. Then you will be able to gauge what the situation of present humanity has actually become, and then you will feel in the right, serious way what religious renewal must actually mean. Then you will also sense something of how healing can be found in the sacred and how one does not need to lose healing in the abstraction of sanctification. It will depend entirely on this spirit, and above all, it will depend on you speaking the truth at every moment to those who belong to your community, for whose souls you are responsible, so that you are not merely administering an office, but speaking the truth.

My dear friends, mistrust is at an all-time high today. Among the forces that have developed most strongly in recent times is the mistrust from person to person, and also the mistrust of man towards his pastor. Only knowledge of human nature can counteract this increasing mistrust. Today, many people are particularly ill in their souls, but very few know anything about the mysterious connections between mental and physical illnesses. Most of the world's leading people are actually embarrassed to stray even a single step from the path of intellectualism. They always ask questions in an intellectual sense; they ask little with the heart. They ask a lot with the mind, but the hearts that want to hear cannot listen to the mind. And so something has happened that is one of the most terrible phenomena of our time.

You will find, my dear friends, that the members of your community who come to you first are many who will show that they do not come merely because there is strength in your words and your actions that attracts the fundamentally human. Rather, many will come who, when you really talk to them intimately, will say: I come to you because everything else I have tried has offered me nothing, but I don't know if you can offer me more than the other things that offered me nothing. — Many will come with precisely this attitude, and they have not developed any sense of the differences between what approaches them. Should it nevertheless be the case that you speak to people more out of the spirit than others have spoken out of the spirit, then you will find how dulled the souls are and how they can no longer even notice the difference today, and you will have to find ways to overcome precisely the dullness of the souls. Especially with regard to people who come to you with true feelings [of longing] for a life in the spirit, but with dull souls, you will not get by with anything other than being able to evoke a clear feeling of the inner intimate truth of what you have to say. Many will say to you: I cannot tell the difference between what I have been offered so far and what you are offering me. You will only get such questions if you want to convince people with intellectual arguments, but you can do without intellectual arguments if you want to enter into intimate contact with your parishioners; you can do without intellectual arguments. Learn to build on completely different arguments. Learn to build on those reasons that flow, for example, from saying: It is best if you believe me no more than you believed the others, if you believe me perhaps even less than you believed the others; I completely dispense to explain to you the matter that I have to discuss with you, with all kinds of reasons; but look and really observe everything with open eyes; see if you can't see that many things are different; and then don't let me judge, but judge for yourself. And if you then also give such people a sense of how you yourself feel about the reasons that may be put forward against your own pastoral care, if you evoke a feeling that you also know the other side and that you do not even have the slightest spark of fanaticism for the cause you represent, then you will be able to build something that you will never be able to achieve through intellectualism, which is the father of fanaticism. I say with full awareness: intellectualism is the father of fanaticism, because in no religious community has there ever been such great fanaticism as among the modern scientific communities. One must only be familiar with the currents that are flowing. One must realize how far removed from admitting the infallibility of the Roman Pope someone may be who invincibly believes in the infallibility of a professor or even in the abstract “modern science”. The faith in these things is so great because one is not even aware that it exists at all, because one takes the faith in it for granted. One does not even notice how one is stuck in a maximum of fanaticism in this area.

But, my dear friends, you will achieve nothing if your enthusiasm for the cause is not great enough to enable you to rise to such concepts, if you yourself still suffer from something that prevents you from see through the full power of this fanaticism and similar fanaticisms that live in the world today, and if you, so to speak, cannot decide to also confront this fanaticism with the spirit of Christ.

Your church planting can only be one that, first of all, starts from the right attitude, but secondly also from a strong attitude. The time when it was possible to believe that half-measures could achieve something is over. The time is over when it was possible to believe that intellectual discussions about world affairs make a difference. We must never forget that we live in the age in which humanity is to be irrevocably given freedom, and that the coming of freedom means that, if work is to be done in the spirit, it must be done from a source and origin; it means that something truly new must come into the world and that [really everything] must be ruthlessly seen and done in the spirit of this newness. Your work would be a passing one if you did not take into account that this attitude is indispensable for this work.

My dear friends, you must awaken in people everywhere the realization that modern man must be pointed to his deepest inner being and that he must draw from this deepest inner being the impulse for what he thinks, feels, wills and does. It is out of the question to think of carrying out this cult in such a way that it is in any way Catholicized. The cult, the fundamental features of which we have indicated, must be practised in such a way that it is felt to be something that really comes from the spiritual world today. It must be perfectly clear that the Catholic Church has been able to achieve such immense power because, in a sense, it is precisely because it is consistent that it can adapt to all manner of contemporary phenomena; and the Catholic Church does not do this in the way that certain newer currents have, which are characteristic of the intellectualism of modern times.

At the beginning of the 1890s, for example, we saw something emerging in Central Europe that was then called the effort to establish a Society for Ethical Culture. The movement started in America and also took hold in Europe. I was at the Goethe-Schiller-Archiv at the time when the most important events took place to establish this society for so-called ethical culture in Europe, and I asked one of the leading personalities at the time [of the Society for Ethical Culture] at the Goethe-Schiller-Archiv: What do you actually want with ethical culture? — I was told: The name itself says it all. — I could only answer: But first you have to understand the meaning of a name. If you asked people what they wanted with ethical culture, you would get a confession of immense weakness, you would get something like the answer: Yes, in relation to religious beliefs, in relation to world views, people differ so much that in the end everyone can have their own world view and everyone their own religion; religion will become more and more a private matter, but you can't live with that, you have to come to an understanding; so let's make ethics free of religious and ideological foundations and spread an ethics that is free of any religious or ideological basis. I always objected: Yes, but there have never been any other ethics than those that have emerged from the foundations of religions and worldviews and that were their consequences. — As a rule, no answer was given to this, because people were so intent on making an abstract extract from all that could be gained from the various religious beliefs, stripping away the religious character and then handing it down as a non-religious ethic, as a mere “ethical culture”. It really does not need to be directed against people when one speaks out sharply against it, and in an essay on the Society for Ethical Culture at the beginning of the nineties, I showed with all severity the impossibility of getting out of this chaos that one has finally gotten into. A fanatic of this ethical culture published a pamphlet against this essay in which he insulted with a matter of course what can actually be thoroughly substantiated. Other people also could not see that the time had come when these things had to be treated with complete seriousness. After I had written this essay, I came to Berlin, visited Herman Grimm, who said: What do you actually want with this fight against ethical culture? Are you going to this meeting? I found that they are all very nice people. — I never doubted that all the people sitting there were very nice people, but I regretted all the more that these nice people had this monstrosity implanted in their souls as if it were something self-evident. Even the leaders in spiritual life could no longer see at all what the seriousness of our situation was and is. This realization of the seriousness of the situation will actually be the most important thing with which you leave here, because everything else can only be of value if you leave here with this most important thing.

And now, so that we can discuss in the afternoon what is on your minds in relation to this, I would like to say a few words about what might be along the same lines as what is in other confessions as regards ordination. I would ask you to bring up the most important things first.

It is difficult, my dear friends, to speak about ordination today, because the times when the ceremonies that served the old ordination still had a meaning are over, and those who want to recognize these ceremonies are no longer in touch with the present day, not since the middle of the 15th century. For a new age has dawned. But those who have immersed themselves in the spirit of this new age have basically abolished the ordination of priests, and they have also abolished it within the denominations. And so today we are faced with the fact that those who have been ordained no longer live in the times, and that those who live in the times perhorrescize the ordination of priests. It cannot work in the same way today as it did in times gone by; it must be thoroughly brought into line with the spirit of our age. If you take this, so to speak, as a basic condition, I may say a few words to you about the ordination itself and its ceremony, as it is revealed to me for the present time. It is important that you really understand that I am, in a sense, communicating something revealed to me by the spirit.

It would be necessary for the transmission of the priestly ministry to take place in the presence of older priests, so that first of all older priests are gathered together, and that then the process of placing the person to be ordained in the overall context in which he is to be placed is begun. If I say that older priests should be present, it is of course extremely difficult to carry out at the beginning, but the beginning must be made in such a way that you, in the sense of what you impose on your central leadership, also order the beginning of such a matter in this sense. Then the things that need to be ordered in this way will also be available to you. Of course, there may not be older priests present at the beginning, but that must become the custom.

Then, first of all, there must be a very solemn presentation of the 14th chapter of the Gospel of John to the person who is to be ordained. I would like to emphasize that simplicity must be the supreme law in the face of such an act. If this act becomes complicated, it cannot be what it should actually be, that it should be on the mind at least once a day of the person who has gone through this act accordingly. The spiritual experience of this act should always precede the recitation of the rosary. If properly cultivated, it can be accomplished in a relatively short time, in my case in one minute. But this can only be done if the whole act is not complicated but has a unified character.

So the 14th chapter of the Gospel of John, which begins with the words: Let not your heart be troubled. Trust in the power that leads you to the divine foundation of the world and that leads you to me. - And which concludes with the words: The world shall see how I love the foundation of the world, and how I act in the sense of the foundation of the world, as is laid upon me. Do likewise, then we can leave this place in peace. — And this should be followed by the introduction to the 11th chapter of the Gospel of John, the resurrection of Lazarus, and so it should affect the person being ordained that he feels through and through from this chapter how the power to resurrect that which is dying lies in the Christ-being. I believe, however, that in order to interpret this chapter in the right way, what I have given in my book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact” as an interpretation of this chapter can still serve.

Once this has been done – I am stating things fully, perhaps they cannot be done in this fullness at the beginning – the application of the garment that I have shown here in the illustration as the one that represents the etheric body would have to be carried out. This is the beginning of the symbolization of the effect of pastoral care.

Now one has to take oil – there is still a lot to be said about the consecration of oil and water, so that you can be quite clear about it – and apply this oil in the appropriate way to the pulses on the arms and – the person to be admitted has to wear sandals – to the corresponding places on the ends of the balls of the feet. With that, the sacramental act has been performed.

By leaving only what happens to the oil in the picture and making it as clear as possible in the picture, so that all bystanders - I say all bystanders, not just those who are to be introduced to pastoral care - can clearly perceive and remembrance of the picture that has been enacted. Only after the picture has been enacted should the words be spoken, and these words should be simple so that they can always stand before the soul in the way I have described:

In the name of Christ, you are authorized
firstly to administer Communion,
secondly to perform the sacrifice of the Mass,
thirdly to administer the sacraments.

After this has been done, the stole and chasuble are to be put on, that is, everything that leads to the astral body, and then there is something else to be done – so that the matter is simple, but it must be succinct – which must be deeply engraved in the soul of the person to be received: one consecrates the host as one does in the sacrifice of the Mass. One hands the host to the one whom one would not have handed to before the anointing with the oil, and afterwards lets him himself perform the consecration of this host and after this consecration perform one's own communion. Then one consecrates the chalice, as one otherwise does in the sacrifice of the Mass, and hands the chalice to the one who is to be received, so that he consecrates it in the same way and, by drinking from it, pronounces the words that have just been expressed as the words of the sacrifice of the Mass, and which he actually speaks for the first time with authority.

After this has been done, my dear friends, the question is asked in a lapidary way:

Do you vow to continue to work in the sense in which this authority was conferred?

And his answer should be:

I vow:

To teach in Christ's name To work in Christ's name To pray in Christ's name To sacrifice in Christ's name.

All those present say:

Yes, so be it, amen.

After this has been done, the headgear that the priest has to wear only during part of the ceremony and that is to be regarded as the thing with which he sets out to teach and with which he leaves teaching and so on, this headgear is handed over by, as it were, doing that which lies in his ego effect as the crowning of the whole ceremony.

Then it would be a matter of having the person preach a sermon on a topic that has been discussed with him at length, in front of those from whom he has received the ordination, as a trial sermon, but also as a solemn investiture into his office. Then the corresponding ceremony would be over.

That, my dear friends, is what I wanted to tell you this morning. I now ask you to prepare for the afternoon everything you might have to say in connection with this or with earlier events, so that we may part as befits our serious time together.

[ 1 ] The author would like to sketch several pictures—nothing other than that—and not about the spiritual thought-life of Austria but only from this life. No kind of completeness will be striven for, not even with respect to what the author himself has to say. Many other things might be much more important than what is to be brought here. But this time only a little bit will be indicated from the spiritual life of Austria that is more or less, directly or indirectly, connected in some way with spiritual streams in which the author himself has stood during his youth. Spiritual streams like those meant here can indeed also be characterized, not by presenting mental pictures one has formed of them, but by speaking of personalities, their way of thinking and inclinations of feeling, in whom one believes these streams to express themselves, as though symptomatically. I would like to depict what Austria reveals about itself through several such personalities. If I use the word “I” in several places, please consider that to be based on my point of view at that time.

[ 2 ] I would like first of all to speak about a personality in whom I believe in myself able to see the manifestation in a very noble sense of spiritual Austrianness in the second half of the nineteenth century: Karl Julius Schröer. When I entered the Vienna College of Technology in 1879, he was professor of German literary history there. He first became my teacher and then an older friend. For many years now he has not been among the living.

In the first lecture of his that I heard, he spoke about Goethe's Götz van Berlichingen. The whole age out of which this play grew, and also how Götz burst into this age became this play grew, and also how Götz burst into this age became alive in Schröer's words. A man was speaking who let flow into every one of his judgments what, out of the world view of German idealism, he had incorporated into all the feeling and willing of his entire spiritualized personality, His following lectures built up a living picture of German poetry since Goethe's appearance on the scene, They did so in such a way that through his depiction of poets and poems one always felt the living weaving of views, within the essential being of the German people, struggling to come into reality. Enthusiasm for the ideals of mankind carried Schröer's judgments along, and this enthusiasm implanted a living sense of self into the view of life that took its start in Goethe's age. A spirit spoke out of this man that wanted to communicate only what had become the deepest experience of his own soul during his observations of man's spiritual life.

[ 3 ] Many of the people who got to know this personality did not know him. When I was already living in Germany, I was once at a dinner party, a well-known literary historian was sitting beside me. He spoke of a German duchess, whom he praised highly, except that—according to him—she could sometimes err in her otherwise healthy judgment as, for example, when she “considered Schröer to be a significant person.” I can understand that many a person does not find in Schröer's books what many of his students found through the living influence of his personality; but I am convinced that one could also sense much of this in Schröer's writings if one were able to receive an impression not merely by so-called “rigorous methods” or even by such a method in the style of one or another school of literature, but rather by originality in judging, by the revelations of a view one has experienced oneself. Seen this way, a personality grown mature in the idealism of German world views does in fact speak forth from the much maligned book of Schröer, History of German Poetry in the Nineteenth Century and from others of his works. A certain manner of presentation, in his Faust commentaries, for example, could repel many a supposed free thinker. For there does work into Schröer's presentation something that a certain age believed to be inseparable from the character of what is scientific. Even strong-minded thinkers fell under the yoke of this belief; and one must seek these thinkers themselves in their true nature by penetrating through this husk of their creations that was forced upon them by this yoke.

[ 4 ] Karl Julius Schröer lived his boyhood and youth in the light of a man who, like himself, had his roots in spiritual German Austrianness, and who was one of its blossoms: his father, Tobias Gottfried Schröer.

It was not so long ago that in the widest circles certain books were known to which many people certainly owed the awakening of a feeling, supported by a view of life in accordance with the spirit, for history, poetry, and art. These books are Letters on Aesthetics' Chief Objects of Study, by Chr. Oeser, The Little Greeks, by Chr. Oeser, World History for Girls' Schools, and other works by the same author. Covering the most manifold areas of human spiritual life from the point of view of a writer for young people, a personality is speaking in these writings who grew up in the way of picturing things of the Goethean age of German spiritual development, and who sees the world with the eye of the soul educated in this way. The author of these books is Tobias Gottfried Schröer, who published them under the name Chr. Oeser. Now, nineteen years after the death of this man, in 1869, the German Schiller Foundation presented his widow with an honorary gift accompanied by a letter in which was stated: “The undersigned Board has heard with deepest regret that the wife of one of the most worthy German writers, of a man who always stood up for the national spirit with talent and with heart, is not living in circumstances appropriate to her status nor to the service tendered by her husband; and so this Board is only fulfilling the duty required of it by the spirit of its statutes when it makes every possible effort to mitigate somewhat the adversity of a hard destiny.” Moved by this decision of the Schiller Foundation, Karl Julius Schröer then wrote an article about his father in the Vienna New Free Press that made public what until then had been known only to a very small circle: that Tobias Gottfried Schröer was not only the author of the books of Chr. Oeser, but also a significant poet and writer of works that were true ornaments of Austrian spiritual life, and that he had remained unknown only because he could not use his own name due to the situation there regarding censorship. His comedy The Bear, for example, appeared in 1830. Karl von Holtei, the significant Silesian poet and actor speaks of it in a letter to the author right after its appearance: “As regards your comedy The Bear: it delighted me. If the conception, the disposition of characters, is entirely yours, then I wish you good luck with all my heart, for you will still write more beautiful plays.” The playwright took all his material from the life of Ivan (the Fourth) Wasiliewitsch and all the characters except Ivan himself are freely created. A later drama, The Life and Deeds of Emerick Tököly and his Comrades in Arms, received warm acclaim, without anyone knowing who the author was. One could read of it in “Magazine for Literary Conversation” (October 25, 1839): “An historical picture of remarkable freshness ... Works offering such a breath of fresh air and with such decisive characters are true rarities in our day ... Each grouping is full of great charm because it is full of great truth; ...The author's Tököly is a Hungarian Götz von Berlichingen and only with it can this drama be compared... From a spirit like this author we can expect anything, even the greatest.” This review is by W. v. Ludemann, who has written a History of Architecture, a History of Painting, Walks in Rome, stories and novellas, works that express sensitivity and great understanding for art.

[ 5 ] Through his father's spiritual approach the sun of idealism in German world views had already shone beforehand upon Karl Julius Schröer as he entered the universities of Leipzig, Halle, and Berlin at the end of the 1840s and there could still experience, through much that worked upon him, this idealism's way of picturing things. When he returned to his homeland in 1846, he became director of the Seminar for German Literary History and Language in the Pressburg secondary school for girls that his father had founded in this city. In this position he unfolded an activity that essentially took this form: Through his striving Schröer sought to solve the problem of how to work best in the spiritual life of Austria if one finds the direction of one's strivings already marked out by having received the motive forces of one's own soul from German culture. In a Text and Reading Book (that appeared in 1853 and presents a “History of German Literature”), he spoke of this striving: “Seniors, law students, students of theology ... came together there (in the secondary school) ... I made every effort to present to a circle of listeners like this, in large perspectives, the glory of the German people in its evolution, to stimulate respect for German art and science, and where possible to bring my listeners closer to the standpoint of modern science.” And Schröer describes how he understands his own Germanness like this: “From this standpoint there naturally disappeared from view the one-sided factional passions: one will listen to a Protestant or a Catholic, to a conservative or a subversive enthusiast, or to a zealot of German nationalism only insofar as through them humanity gains and the human race is elevated.” And I want to repeat these words, written almost seventy years ago, not in order to express what was right for a German in Austria at that time, nor even now. I only want to show the nature of one man in whom the German—Austrian spirit expressed itself in a particular way. To what extent this spirit endows the Austrian with the right kind of striving: on this question the adherents of the different parties and nations in Austria will also decide very differently. And in all this one must also remember that Schöer expressed himself in this as a young man still who had just returned from German universities. But the fact is significant that in the soul of this young man—and not for political purposes, but out of purely spiritual thoughts about how to view the world—a German Austrian consciousness formed for itself an ideal for the mission of Austria that Schröer expressed in these words: “If we pursue the comparison of Germany with ancient Greece, and of the Germanic with the Greek tribes, we find a great similarity between Austria and Macedonia. We see the beautiful task of Austria exemplified there: to cast the seeds of Western culture out over the East.”

[ 6 ] Schröer later became professor in the University of Budapest and then school director in Vienna; finally, he worked for many years as a professor of German literary history in the Vienna College of Technology. These positions were for him only an outer covering, so to speak, for his significant activity within Austrian spiritual life. This activity begins with an investigation into the soul and linguistic expressions of the German-Austrian folk life. He wants to know what is working and living in the people, not as a dry, prosaic researcher but rather as someone who wants to discover the riddle of the folk soul in order to see what forces of mankind are struggling to come into existence in these souls. Near the Pressburg region, among the farmers, there were living at that time some old Christmas plays. They are performed every year around Christmas time. In handwritten form they are passed down from generation to generation. They show how in the people the birth of Christ, and what is connected with it, lives dramatically in pictures with depth of heart. Schröer collects such plays in a little volume and writes an introduction to them in which he depicts this revelation of the folk soul with most loving devotion, such that his presentation allows the reader to immerse himself in the way the people feel and view things. Out of the same spirit he then undertakes to present the German dialects of the Hungarian mountain regions, of the West-Hungarian Germans, and of the Gottscheer area in Krain. His purpose there is always to solve the riddle of the organism of a people; his findings really give a picture of the life at work in the evolution of language and of the folk soul. And basically the thought is always hovering before him in all these endeavors of learning to know, from the motive forces of its peoples, what determines the life of Austria. A great deal, a very great deal, of the answer to the question, What weaves in the soul of Austria?, is to be found in Schröer's research into dialects.

But this spiritual work had yet another effect upon Schröer himself. It provided him with the basis for deep insights into the essential being of the human soul itself. These insights bore fruit when, as director of several schools, he could test how views about education and teaching take form in a thinker who has looked so deeply into the being of the heart of the people as he had through his research. And so he was able to publish a small work, Questions about Teaching, which in my view should be reckoned among the pearls of pedagogical literature. This little book deals brilliantly with the goals, methods, and nature of teaching. I believe that this little volume, completely unknown today, should be read by everyone who has anything to do with teaching within the German cultural realm. Although this book was written entirely for the situation in Austria. the indications there can apply to the whole German-speaking world. What one today might call outmoded about this book, published in 1876, is inconsiderable when compared with the way of picturing things that is alive in it. A way of picturing things like this, attained on the basis of a rich experience of life, remains ever fruitful even though someone living later must apply it to new conditions. In the last decades of his life Schröer's spiritual work was turned almost entirely to immersing itself in Goethe's life's work and way of picturing things. In the introduction to his book German Poetry of the Nineteenth Century, he stated: “We in Austria want to go hand in hand with the spiritual life of the German empire.” He regarded the world view of German idealism as the root of this spiritual life. And he expressed his adherence to this world view in the words: “The world-rejuvenating appearance of idealism in Germany, in an age of frivolity a hundred years ago, is the greatest phenomenon of modern history. Our intellect (Verstand)—focused only upon what is finite, not penetrating into the depths of essential being—and along with it the egoism focused upon satisfying sensual needs, suddenly retreated before the appearance of a spirit that rose above everything common.” (See the introduction to Schröer's edition of Faust). Schröer saw in Goethe's Faust “the hero of unconquerable idealism. He is the ideal hero of the age in which the play arose. His contest with Mephistopheles expresses the struggle of the new spirit as the innermost being of the age; and that is why this play is so great: it lifts us onto a higher level.”

[ 7 ] Schröer declares his unreserved allegiance to German idealism as a world view. In his History of German Poetry of the Nineteenth Century there stand the words with which he wants to characterize the thoughts in which the spirit of the German people expresses itself when it does this in the sense of its own primal being: “Within what is perceived experientially, determining factors are everywhere recognizable that are hidden behind what is finite, behind what can be known by experience. These factors must be called the ‘undetermined’ and must be felt everywhere to be what is constant in change, an eternal lawfulness, and as something infinite. The perceived infinite within the finite appears as idea; the ability to perceive the infinite appears as reason (Vernunft), in contrast to intellect, which remains stuck at what is surveyably finite and can perceive nothing beyond it.” At the same time, in the way Schröer declares his allegiance to this idealism, everything is also at work that is vibrating in his soul, which senses in its own being the Austrian spiritual stream. And this gives his world-view-idealism its particular coloring. When a thought is expressed, there is given it a certain coloring that does not allow it to enter right away the realm described by Hegel as the realm of philosophical knowledge when he said, “The task of philosophy is to grasp what is; for, what is reasonable is real, and what is real is reasonable. When philosophy paints its gray on gray then a form of life has become old; the owl of Minerva begins to fly only when dusk is descending.” (See my book Riddles of Philosophy, vol. I.) No, the Austrian, Schröer, does not want to see the world of thoughts gray on gray; ideas should shine in a color that ever refreshes and rejuvenates our deeper heart. And what would have mattered much more to Schröer in this connection than thinking about the bird of evening was to think about the deeper human heart struggling for light, seeking in the world of ideas the sun of that realm in which our intellect, focused upon the finite and upon the sense world, should be feeling the extinguishing of its light.

[ 8 ] Herman Grimm, the gifted art historian, had nothing but good to say about the Austrian culptor Heinrich Natter. In his essay on Natter, published in his Fragments (1900), one can also read what Grimm thought about Natter's relation to Austria. “When I meet Austrians, I am struck by their deep-rooted love for the soil of their particular fatherland and by their impulse to maintain spiritual community with all Germans. Let us think now of one such person, Ignaz Zingerles. Natter's statue of Walter von der Vogelweide owes its existence to the unceasing quiet work of Zingerles. He resembled the men of our earlier centuries through the fact that he was hardly conceivable outside the province of his immediate homeland. He was a figure with simple outlines, fashioned out of faithfulness and honesty as though out of blocks of stone. He was a Tyrolean, as though his mountains were the navel of the earth, an Austrian through and through, and at the same time one of the best and noblest Germans. And Natter was also all these: a good German, Austrian, and Tyrolean.” And about the monument to Walter von der Vogelweide in Bozen Herman Grimm says: “In Natter, inwardness of German feeling was united with formative imagination, His Walter von der Vogelweide stands in Bozen as a triumphant picture of German art, towering up in the crest of the Tyrolean mountains at the border country of the fatherland, A manly solid figure.”

I often had to think of these words of Hennan Grimm when the memory came alive in me of the splendid figure of the Austrian poet Fercher von Steinwand, who died in 1902. He was “all these: a good German, Austrian, and Carinthian,” although one could hardly say of him that he was “inconceivable outside the province of his immediate homeland.” I learned to know him at the end of the 1880's in Vienna and for a short time associated with him personally. He was sixty years old at the time: a true figure of light, even externally; an engaging warmth shone from his noble features, eloquent eyes, and expressive gestures; through tranquil clarity and self-possession, this soul of an older man still gave the effect of youthful freshness. And when one came to know this soul better, its particular nature and creations, one could see how a feeling life instilled by the Carinthian mountains united in this soul with a contemplative life in the power of the idealism in German world views. This contemplation (Sinnen) was already entirely native to his soul as a poetic world of pictures; this contemplation pointed with this world of pictures into the depths of existence; it confronted world riddles artistically, without the originality of artistic creation paling thereby into thought-poetry; one can observe this kind of contemplation in the following lines from Fercher von Steinwand's Chorus of Primal Dreams:

Out of all regions
Ever ascended,
Wanders an ether in far-radiant arches;
Travel the billows to
Depths ever silent.

There with our all-seeing
Will as their cargo,
Wending their way through the fog go our ferries;
Sail between wonderful
Banks new arising.

There before all-warming
Eyes of soft mildness
Winding and turning we fashion our patterns
Out all around dreaming
Regions of star-fields.

There to misfortune we
N'er are indebted,
There we constructed our fortresses hovering, And tribulations we
Joyfully shattered.

He who would paint you with
Most holy features,
Highest abode of our contemplative urgings:
Wait for the swiftest
Servants of love!

[ 9 ] The following verses seek to portray how the soul, in thinking-waking daydreams, lives in far-away starry worlds and in immediate reality; then the poet continues:

No matter what careful
Powers accomplish,
Only on dreaming's own wide-spreading pinions
Can what is mighty be
Gained now forever.

Every o'erpowering greatness of action,
All of the angels who guard what was planted
Are given counsel by
Dreams that inspire them.

[ 10 ] Fercher von Steinwand then sings further about the penetrating of thinking, spiritualized to the point of dreaming, into the depths of the world, and about the penetrating of that kind of dreaming which is an awakening out of our ordinary waking state into those depths where the life of what is spiritual in the world can make itself tangible to the soul:

Life that our pulsating
Hearts have perceived,
Life that our struggling hearts have ascended
To all the welcoming
Cries of the spirits:

[ 11 ] And then Fercher von Steinwand lets sound forth to the human spirit what the beings of the spirit realm speak to the soul that opens itself to them in inner contemplation:

Healed ones, now be here by
Loving encircled!
What you were seeking in uplifting hours,
Here, you selected ones,
Is it disclosed;
Here in the grandeur of
Halls of the Godhead,
Where to the heart other hearts are so pleasing,
Where buried voices are
Sounding forth newly

Where now the care-worn are
Royally striving,
Radiant souls now in smiles are all wreathed,
Round all the wrecks of the
Wheels of the ages—

Only the blinded ones,
Earth-bound and foolish,
Were for the gulf of destruction begotten,
Lost to the worlds of
Spirit perfection!
Weal to the sens'tive one
Round whom we hover,
Whom we enliven to bloss'ming existence,
All without weaving in
Fugitive shadows!

[ 12 ] In the literary works of Fercher von Steinwand there then follows upon this Chorus of Primal Dreams his Chorus of Primal Impulses:

In the distances unbounded
Of our ancient mother Night.
Hark—to be in inward conflict
Seems the deep mysterious might!
Do we hear present'ment striding?
Is our longing wide awake?
Was a spirit-lightning lit?
Are our dreams through spaces gliding?

How now are powers by powers enraptured,
Blessed exchanges!
Now sudden hastenings.
Then quiet lingerings,
Reveling listenings
Change into beckonings
Marveling fearings!
Charm of desiring
Mounts, and sinks down,
Sinks into hatred.
Faced with the pallid
Picture of embracing
Cannot clasp hatred.
Ramifications dim,
Inclinings burgeoning,
Send forth their tendrils.
Ponderous inklings
Dawn and go faltering
O'er the wide spaces,
Seem to give counsel
Or to give guidance.
What they're preparing
Is it the sowing
Of immense actions,
Of radiant ages?
Who felt the furrows
To be creative!
Who wandered through them
Blissfully savoring,
Or disentangling,
Grandeurs discovering!
Yonder the stir is like spirits embracing
We are enwarmed
And are receiving,
Seeking, and thinking,
See ourselves lifted,
Woven in joy with
Highest beginnings.
You wafting ‘round us,
In us arising:
“You are ideas!—”

[ 13 ] Reflecting in this way, the poet's soul enters into an experience of how the ideas of the world-spirit announce the secrets of existence to the spirit of man's soul and of how the spirit of man's soul beholds the shapers of sense-perceptible shapes.—After presenting the observations of the soul within the chorus of primal world impulses in brilliant, ringing pictures, the poet concludes:

May duration grow accustomed
To what urge has conjured up;
May adorning and appeasement
In creation's stream prevail.
Sweetest light! in noble ringing
Mounts my heart aloft to you:
Linger at your western gate;
Help to crown the deed of love!
Risen from all earthly bonds is our impulse Soul—resurrected!
But what is ripened
Ruling, and valid
Proves to be spirit!
All that is circling,
All earth foundations,
All heavenly kindlings are
Self-made in spirit,
Came forth from spirit,
Work through the spirit
–
Powerful freedom from chaos did fashion
Space for good fortune!
Cloaked, with the dew of its deep-breathing mildness, Forest and field!
Cared that the dew and the light be companions,
Forming the hem of deep transfiguration—
Cared that each droplet should float at the threshold
of Spiritual radiance!

In Fercher von Steinwand's Complete Works (published by Theodor Daberkow in Vienna), there are also several indications about his life given by the poet himself when pressed by friends on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, He wrote, “I began life on March 22, 1828 upon the heights of the Steinwand above the banks of the Möll in Carinthia (Kärten); that means, in the midst of a defiant congregation of mountains with their heads held high, beneath whose domineering grandeur burdened human beings seem continuously to grow poorer,”

Since, in his Chorus of Primal Impulses, we find the world view of German idealism cast in the form of a poetic creation, it is interesting to see how the poet, on his paths through Austrian spiritual life, receives impulses from this world view already in his youth. He describes how he enters the university in Graz: “With my credentials—which of course consisted only of my report cards—held tight against my chest, I presented myself to the dean. That was Professor Edlauer, a criminologist of high repute. He hoped to see me (he said) industriously present in his lecture course on natural law. Behind the curtain of this innocent title he presented us for the whole semester, in rousing lectures, with those German philosophers who, under the fatherly care of our well-meaning spiritual guardians were banned and kept from us: Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and so on—heroes, therefore; that means men who founded and fructified all areas of pure thinking, who gave the language and created the concepts for all the other sciences, and who, consequently, are illustrious names shining from our street comers today and seeming almost strange there in their particular diamond clarity. This semester was my vita nuova!”

[ 16 ] Whoever learns to know Fercher von Steinwand's tragedy Dankmar, his Countess Seelenbrand, his German Tones from Austria, and other works of his will be able through this to feel many of the forces that were working in the Austrian spiritual life of the second half of the nineteenth century. And everything about Fercher von Steinwand testifies to the fact that one receives out of his soul a picture from this spiritual life in clarity, truth, and genuineness. The amiable Austrian poet in dialect Leopold Hormann felt rightly when he wrote the words:

Far from all baseness
All avarice and meanness;
Foe of publicity,
That loathesome false lady;
German in soul,
Strong yet with kindness
Great in his thinking,
No faltering and wavering,
Proof against all objections:—
Fercher von Steinwand!

[ 17 ] Out of the Austrian spiritual life of the second half of the nineteenth century, a thinker arose who brought to expression deeply significant characteristics of the content of modern world views: the moral philosopher of Darwinism, Bartholomaeus von Carneri. He was a thinker who experienced the public life of Austria as his own happiness or suffering; for many years, as a representative in the federal council, he took an active interest in this life with all the power of his spirit. Carneri could only appear at first to be an opponent of a world view in accordance with the spirit. For, all his efforts go to shaping a world picture from only those mental pictures which occur in the train of thought stimulated by Darwinism. But if one reads Carneri with a sense not only for the content of his views but also for what lay beneath the surface of his truth-seeking soul, one will discover a remarkable fact. An almost entirely materialistic world picture takes shape in this thinker, but with a clarity of thought that stems from the deep-lying, idealistic basic impulse of his being. For him as for many of his contemporaries the mental pictures growing from a world view rooted entirely in the soil of Darwinism burst into his thought-life with such overpowering force that he could do no other than incorporate all his consideration of man's spiritual life into this world view. To want to approach the spirit cognitively on any path other than those taken by Darwin seemed to him to rend the unified being that must extend out over all human striving in knowledge. In his view Darwinism had shown how a unified, lawful interrelationship of causes and effects encompasses the development of all the beings of nature up to man. Whoever understands the sense of this interrelationship must also see how the same lawfulness enhances and refines the natural forces and drives in man in such a way that they grow upward to the heights of moral ideals and views. Carneri believes that only man's blind arrogance and misled overestimation of himself can entice his striving for knowledge into wanting to approach the spiritual world by different cognitive means than in approaching nature.

Every page of Carneri's writings on the moral being of man, however, shows that he would have shaped his view of life in Hegel's way if, at a particular point of development in his life, Darwinism had not struck like lightning, with irresistible suggestive force, into his thought-world; this occurred in such a way that with great effort he silenced his predisposition toward an idealistically developed world view. As his writings also attest, this world view would definitely not have arisen through the pure thinking at work in Hegel, but rather through a thinking that resounded with a hearty, contemplative quality; but his thinking would have gone in Hegel's direction.

As though from hidden depths of Carneri's soul, Hegel's way of picturing things often arises in Carneri's writings, cautioning him as it were. On page 79 of his Fundamentals of Ethics one reads: “With Hegel ... a dialectical movement took the place of the law of causality: a gigantic thought, which, like the Titans all, could not escape the fate of arrogance. His monism wanted to storm Olympus but sank back down to earth; it remained a beacon for all future thought, however, illuminating the path and also the abyss.” On page 154 of the same book, Carneri speaks of the nature of the Greek way and says of it: “In this respect We do not remember the mythical heroic age, nor yet the times of Homer. ... We take ourselves back to the highlight of ages that Hegel depicted so aptly as the youthful age of mankind.” On page 189 Carneri characterizes the attempts that have been made to fathom the laws of thinking, and observes: “The most magnificent example of this kind is Hegel's attempt to let thoughts unfold, so to speak, without being determined by the thinker. The fact that he went too far in this does not prevent an unprejudiced person from acknowledging this attempt (to see one single law as underlying all physical and spiritual evolution) to be the most splendid one on the whole history of philosophy. The services he rendered to the development of German thinking are imperishable, and many an enthusiastic student who later became an embittered opponent of his has unintentionally raised a lasting monument to him in the perfection of expression he acquired through Hegel.” On page 421 one reads: “Hegel has told us, in an unsurpassable manner, how far one can go in philosophizing” with mere, so-called, healthy common sense.

Now one could assert that Carneri too has “raised a lasting monument to Hegel in the perfection of expression he acquired through Hegel,” even though he applied this way of expression to a world picture with which Hegel would certainly not have been in agreement. But Darwinism worked upon Carneri with such suggestive power that he included Hegel, along with Spinoza and Kant, among those thinkers of whom he said: “They would have acknowledged the sincerity of his (Carneri's) striving, which would never have dared to look beyond them if Darwin had not rent the curtain that hung like night over the whole creation as long as the theory of purpose remained irrefutable. We have this consciousness, but also the conviction that these men would have left many things unsaid or would have said them differently if it had been granted them to live in our age of liberated natural science...”

[ 18 ] Carneri has developed a variety of materialism in which mental sharpness often degenerates into naiveté, and insights about “liberated natural science” often degenerate into blindness toward the impossibility of one's own concepts. “We grasp substance as matter insofar as phenomena—resulting from the divisibility and movement of substance—work corporeally, i.e., as mass, upon our senses. If the divisions or differentiations go so far that the phenomena resulting from them are no longer sense-perceptible but are now only perceptible to thinking, then the effect of substance is a spiritual one” (Carneri's Fundamentals of Ethics, p. 30). That is as if someone were to explain reading by saying: As long as a person has not learned to read, he cannot say what stands upon the written page of a book. For, only the shapes of the letters reveal themselves to his gaze. As long as he can view only these letter shapes, into which the words are divisible, his observation of the letters cannot lead to reading. Only when he manages also to perceive the letter shapes in a yet more divided or differentiated form will the sense of these letters work upon his soul.

Of course, an unshakable believer in materialism would find an objection like this absurd. But the difficulty of putting materialism in the right light lies precisely in this necessity of expressing such simple thoughts in order to do so. One must express thoughts that one can scarcely believe the adherents of materialism do not form for themselves. And so the biased charge can easily be leveled against someone trying to clarify materialism that he is using meaningless phraseology to counter a view that rests upon the empirical knowledge of modern science and upon its rigorous principles.¹ Nevertheless, the great power of materialism to convince its adherents arises only through the fact that they are unable to feel the weight of the simple arguments that destroy their view. Like so many others, they are convinced not by the light of logical reasons which they have examined, but by the force of habitual thoughts which they have not examined, which, in fact, they feel no immediate need to examine at all. But Carneri does differ from the materialists who scarcely have any inkling of this need, through the fact that his idealism continuously brings this need to his consciousness; he must therefore silence this need, often by quite artificial means. He has scarcely finished professing that the spiritual is an effect of finely split-up substance when he adds: “This conception of the spirit will be unsatisfying to many people who make other claims about the spirit; still, in the further course of our investigations, the value of our view will prove to be significant and entirely able to show the materialism which wants to grasp the phenomena of the spirit corporeally that it cannot go beyond certain bounds” (Fundamentals of Ethics, p. 30). Yes, Carneri has a real aversion to being counted among the materialists; he defends himself against this with statements like the following: “Rigid materialism is just as one-sided as the old metaphysics: the former arrives at no meaning for its configurations; the latter arrives at no configurations for its meaning; with materialism there is a corpse; with metaphysics there is a ghost; and what they are both struggling for in vain is the creative heat of sentient life” (Fundamentals of Ethics, p. 68).

But Carneri does feel, in fact, how justified one is in calling him a materialist; for, no one with healthy senses, after all, even if he is an adherent of materialism, will declare that a moral ideal can be “grasped corporeally,” to use Carneri's expression. He will say only that a moral ideal manifests in connection with what is material through a material process. And that is also what Carneri states in his above assertion about the divisibility of substance. Out of this feeling he then says (in his book Sensation and Consciousness): “One will reproach us with materialism insofar as we deny all spirit and grant existence only to matter. But this reproach is no longer valid the moment one takes one's start from this ideal nature of one's picture of the world, for which matter itself is nothing but a concept a thinking person has.” But now take hold of your head and feel whether it is still all there after participating in this kind of a conceptual dance! Substance becomes matter when it is so coarsely split up that it works only “upon the senses as mass”; it becomes spirit when it is split up so finely that it is then “perceptible only to thinking.” And matter, i.e., coarsely split up substance, is after all only “a concept a thinking person has.” When split up coarsely, therefore, substance achieves nothing more than playing the—to a materialist!—dubious role of a human concept; but split up more finely, substance becomes spirit. But then the bare human concept would have to split up even finer. Now such a world view would make that hero, who pulled himself out of the water by his own hair, into the perfect model for reality.

One can understand why another Austrian thinker, F. von Feldegg (in the November 1894 edition of “German Words”), would reply to Carneri with these words: “The moment one takes one's start from the ideal nature of one's picture of the world! What an arbitrary supposition, in all the forced wrong-headedness of that thought! Does it indeed depend so entirely on our pleasure whether we take our start from the ideal nature of our picture of the world or, for example, from its opposite—from the reality of our picture of the world in fact? And matter, for this ideal nature, is supposed to be altogether nothing except a concept a thinking person has? This is actually the most absolute idealism—like that of a Hegel, for example—which is meant to render assistance here against the reproach of materialism; but it won't do to turn to someone in the moment of need whom one has persistently denied until then. And how is Carneri to reconcile this idealistic belief with everything else in his book? In fact, there is only one explanation for this state of affairs and that is: Even Carneri is afraid of, yet covets, the transcendental. But that is a half-measure which exacts a heavy toll. Carneri's ‘Monistic Misgivings’ fall in this way into two heterogeneous parts, into a crudely materialistic part and into a hiddenly idealistic part. In the one part, the author's head is correct in the end, because he is undeniably sunk over his head in materialism; but in the other part, the author's deeper heart (Gemüt) resists the clumsy demands of rationalism's modes and conceits; it resists them with all the power of that metaphysical magic from which, even in our crudely sense-bound age, nobler natures are not able to escape entirely.”

[ 18 ] And yet, in spite of all this, Carneri is a significant personality of whom one can say (as I indicated in my book Riddles of Philosophy: “This Austrian thinker sought, out of Darwinism, to open wide vistas in viewing the world and in shaping life. Eleven years after the appearance of Darwin's Origin of Species, Carneri came out with his book Morality and Darwinism, in which, in a most comprehensive manner, he turned this new world of ideas into the foundation of an ethical world view. After that he worked ceaselessly to elaborate a Darwinistic ethics. Carneri seeks to find elements in our picture of nature through which the self-conscious ‘I’ can fit into this picture. He wants to think this picture of nature so broadly and largely that it can also comprise the human soul.”

By their very character, Carneri's writings seem to me in fact everywhere to challenge us to root everything out of their content that their author had forced himself into by surrendering to the yoke of the materialistic world view; his writings challenge us to look only at that which—like an elemental inspiration of his deeper heart—appears in them as a revelation of a large-scale human being. Just read, from this point of view, what he thinks the task to be for an education toward true humanness: “It is the task of education ... to develop the human being in such a way that he must do the good, that human dignity not suffer from this, but that the harmonious development of a being who by his very nature is happy to do what is noble and great is an ethical phenomenon more beautiful than anything we could imagine. ... The accomplishment of this magnificent task is possible through man's striving for bliss, into which his drive for self-preservation purifies itself as soon as his intelligence develops fully. Thinking is based on sensation and is only the other side of feeling; which is why all thinking that does not attain maturity through the warmth of feeling—and also all feeling that does not illuminate itself with the light of thinking—is one-sided. It is the task of education, through the harmonious development of thinking and feeling, to purify man's striving for bliss in such a way that the ‘I’ will see in the ‘you’ its natural extension and in the ‘we’ its necessary consummation, and egoism will recognize altruism as its higher truth. ... Only from the standpoint of our drive to attain bliss is it comprehensible that a person would give his life for a loved one or to a noble end: he sees precisely in this his higher happiness. In seeking his true happiness, man attains morality, But he must be educated toward this, educated in such a way that he can absolutely do no other. In the blissful feeling of the nobility of his deed he finds his most beautiful recompense and demands nothing more.” (See Carneri's introduction to his book Modern Man.) One can see: Carneri considers our striving for bliss, as he sees it, to be a power of nature lying within true human nature; he considers it to be a power that, under the right conditions, must unfold, the way a seed must unfold when it has the appropriate conditions. In the same way that a magnet, through its own particular being, has the power to attract, so the animal has the drive of self-preservation and man the drive to attain bliss. One does not need to graft anything onto man's being in order to lead them to morality; one needs only to develop rightly their drive to attain bliss; then, through this drive, they will unfold themselves to true morality. Carneri observes in detail the various manifestations of human soul life: how sensation stimulates or dulls this life; how emotions and passions work: and how in all this the drive to attain bliss unfolds. He presupposes this drive in all these soul manifestations as their actual basic power. And through the fact that he endows this concept of bliss with a broad meaning, all the sours wishing, wanting, and doing falls—for him, in any case—into the realm of this concept. How a person is depends upon which picture of his own happiness is hovering before him: One person sees his happiness in satisfying his lower drives; another person sees it in deeds of devoted love and self-denial. If it were said of someone that he was not striving for happiness, that he was only selflessly doing his duty, Carneri would object: This is precisely what gives him the feeling of happiness—to chase after happiness but not consciously. But in broadening the concept of bliss in this way, Carneri reveals the absolutely idealistic basic tenor of his world view. For if happiness is something quite different for different people, then morality cannot lie in the striving for happiness; the fact is, rather, that man feels his ability to be moral as something that makes him happy. Through this, human striving is not brought down out of the realm of moral ideals into the mere craving for happiness; rather, one recognizes that it lies in the essential being of man to see his happiness in the achieving of his ideals. “We are convinced,” says Carneri, “that ethics has to make do with the argument that the path of man is the path to bliss, and that man, in traveling the path to bliss, matures into a moral being.” (Fundamentals of Ethics, p. 423)

Whoever believes now that through such views Carneri wants to make ethics Darwinistic is allowing himself to be misled by the way this thinker expresses himself. He is compelled to express himself like this by the overwhelming power of the predominant natural-scientific way of picturing things in his age. The truth is: Carneri does not want to make ethics Darwinistic; he wants to make Darwinism ethical. He wants to show that one need only know man in his true being—like the natural scientist seeks to know a being in nature—in order to find him to be not a nature being but rather a spirit being. Carneri's significance consists in the fact that he wants to let Darwinism flow into a world view in accordance with the spirit. And through this he is one of the significant spirits of the second half of the nineteenth century. One does not understand the demands placed on humanity by the natural-scientific insights of this age if one thinks like those people who want to let all striving for knowledge merge into natural science, if one thinks like those who toward the end of the nineteenth century called themselves adherents of materialism, or even if one thinks like those today who actually are not less materialistic but who assure us ever and again that materialism has “long ago been overcome” by science. Today, many people say they are not materialists only because they lack the ability to understand that they are in fact materialists. One can flatly state that nowadays many people stop worrying about their materialism by pretending to themselves that in their view it is no longer necessary to call themselves materialists. One must nevertheless label them so. One has not yet overcome materialism by rejecting the view of a series of thinkers from the second half of the nineteenth century who held all spiritual experiences to, be the mere working of substance; one overcomes it only by allowing oneself to think about the spiritual in a way that accords with the spirit, just as one thinks about nature in a way that accords with nature. What is meant by this is already clear from the preceding arguments of this book, but will become particularly apparent in the final considerations conceived of as “new perspectives” in our last chapter,

But one will also not do justice to the demands placed on humanity by the natural-scientific insights of our age if one sets up a world view against natural science, and only rejects the “raw” mental pictures of “materialism,” Since the achievement of the natural-scientific insights of the nineteenth century, any world view that is in accordance with the spirit and that wishes to be in harmony with its age must take up these insights as part of its thought-world. And Carneri grasped this powerfully and expressed it urgently in his writings. Carneri, who was only taking his first steps on the path of a genuine understanding of modern natural scientific mental pictures, could not yet fully see that such an understanding does not lead to a consolidating of materialism but rather to its true overcoming, Therefore he believed—to refer once more to the words of Brentano (see page 45 of this book)—that no success can be expected from modern science in “gaining certainty about the hopes of a Plato and Aristotle for the continued existence of our better part after the dissolution of the body,” But whoever goes deeply enough into Carneri's thoughts, not only to grasp their content but also to observe the path of knowledge on which this thinker could take only the first steps, will find that through him, in another direction, something similar has occurred for the elaboration of the world view of German idealism as occurred through Troxler, Immanuel Hermann Fichte, and others going in the direction characterized in this book. These spirits sought, with the powers of Hegelian thinking, to penetrate not merely into spirit that has become sense-perceptible but also into that realm of spirit which does not reveal itself in the sense world. Carneri strives, with a view of life in accordance with the spirit, to devote himself to the natural-scientific way of picturing things. The further pursuit of the path sensed by these thinkers can show that the cognitive powers to which they turned will not destroy the “hopes of a Plato and Aristotle for the continued existence of our better part after the dissolution of the body,” but rather will give these hopes a sound basis in knowledge. On the one hand, F.v. Feldegg, whom we have already mentioned (“German Words,” November 1894), is certainly justified when he says—in connection with the conflict in which Carneri was placed toward idealism and materialism:—“But the time is no longer far off in which this conflict will be settled, not merely as one might suppose within the single individual, but within our whole cultural consciousness. But Carneri's ‘Misgivings’ are perhaps an isolated forerunner of completely different and more powerful ‘Misgivings,’ which then, raging toward us like a storm, will sweep away everything about our ‘scientific’ creed that has not yet fallen prey to self-disintegration,” On the other hand, one can recognize that Carneri, by the work he did on Darwinism for ethics, became at the same time one of the first to overcome the Darwinian way of thinking.

[ 19 ] Carneri was a personality whose thinking about the questions of existence gave all his activity and work in life their particular stamp. He was not one of those who become “philosophers” by allowing the healthy roots of life reality to dry up within them. Rather, he was one of those who proved that a realistic study of life can create practical people better than that attitude which keeps itself fearfully, and yet comfortably, at a distance from all ideas and which obstinately harps on the theme that the “true” conduct of life must not be spoiled by any dreaming in concepts. Carneri was an Austrian representative in the Styrian provincial diet from 1861 on, and in the federal council from 1870 to 1891. Even now, I often have to think back on the heart-lifting impression he made on me when, from the gallery of the Viennese federal council, as a young man of twenty-five just beginning life, I heard Carneri speak. A man stood down there who had taken up deeply into his thoughts the determining factors of Austrian life and the situation arising from the evolution of Austrian culture and from the life forces of its peoples; this was a man who spoke what he had to express from that high vantage point upon which his world view had placed him. And in all this there was never a pale thought. always tones of heart's warmth, always ideas that were strong with reality, not the words of a merely thinking head; rather, the revelations of a whole man who felt Austria pulsing in his own soul and who had clarified this feeling through the idea: “Mankind will deserve its name wholly, and wholly travel the path of morality only when it knows no other battle than work. no other shield than right, no other weapon than intelligence, no other banner than civilization.” (Carneri, Morality and Darwinism, p. 508)

[ 20 ] I have tried to show how a thoughtful idealism constitutes the roots, solidly planted in reality, of Carneri's soul life; but also how—overwhelmed by the materialistic view of the time—this idealism goes its way accompanied by a thinking whose contradictions are indeed sensed but not fully resolved. I believe that this, in the form in which it manifests in Carneri, is based on a particular characteristic that the folk spirit (Volkstum) in Austria can easily impress upon the soul, a characteristic, it seems to me, that can be understood only with difficulty outside of Austria, even by Germans. One can experience it, perhaps, only if one has oneself grown up in the Austrian folk spirit (Volksart). This characteristic has been determined by the evolution of Austrian life during the last centuries. Through education there, one is brought into !:I. different relationship to the manifestations of the immediate folk spirit than in German areas outside Austria. In Austria, what one takes up through one's schooling bears traits that are not so directly a transformation of what one experiences from the folk spirit as is the case with the Germans in Germany. Even when Fichte unfolds his thoughts to their fullest extent, there lives something in them recognizable as a direct continuation of the folk element working in his Central German fatherland, in the house of Christian Fichte, the farmer and weaver. In Austria, what one develops in oneself through education and self-education often bears fewer of such directly indigenous characteristics. The indigenous element lives more indirectly, yet often no less powerfully thereby. One bears conflicting feelings in one's soul; this conflict, in its unconscious working, gives life there its particularly Austrian coloring.

As an example of an Austrian with this soul characteristic, let us look at Mission, one of the most significant Austrian poets in dialect.

[ 21 ] To be sure, poetry in dialect has also arisen in other Germans out of subterranean depths of the soul similar to those of Mission. But what is characteristic of him is that he became a poet in dialect through the above-mentioned trait existing in the soul life of many Austrians. Joseph Mission was born in 1803, in Mühlbach, in the Lower Austrian district, below Mannhardtsberg; he completed school in Krems and entered the Order of Pious Schools. He worked as a secondary school teacher in Horn, Krems, and Vienna. In 1850 there appeared a pearl of Austrian poetry in dialect written by him: “Ignaz, a Lower Austrian Farmer Boy, Goes Abroad.” It was published in an uncompleted form. The provost Karl Landsteiner, in a beautiful little book, later wrote about Mission and reprinted the uncompleted poem.)

Karl Julius Schröer said of it (1875), and quite aptly, in I my opinion: “As small as the poem is and as solitary as it has remained through the fact that Mission published nothing further, it nevertheless deserves special attention. It is of the first order among Austria's poems in dialect. The epic peacefulness that permeates the whole, and the masterful depiction in the details that enthralls us constantly, I astonishing and refreshing us through its truth—these are qualities in Mission that no one else has equaled.” The setting out on his travels of a Lower Austrian farmer boy is what Mission portrays. A direct, truth-sustained revelation of the Lower Austrian folk spirit (Volkstum) lives in this poem. Mission lived in the world of thoughts he had attained through his education and self-education. This life represented the one side of his soul. This was not a direct continuation of the life rooted in his Lower Austrianness. But precisely because of this and as though unconnected to this more personal side of his soul experiences, there arose in his heart (Gemüt) the truest picture of his folk spirit, as though from subterranean depths of the soul, and placed itself there I as the other side of his inner experience. The magic of the direct folk spirit quality of Mission's poem is an effect of the “two souls within his breast.” I will now quote a part of this poem here and then reproduce the Lower Austrian dialect in High German prose as truly and modestly as possible. (In this reproduction, my intentions are only that the sense of the poem emerge fully in a feeling way. If, in such a translation, one simply replaces the word in dialect with the corresponding word in High German, the matter becomes basically falsified. For, the word in dialect often corresponds to a completely different nuance of feeling than the corresponding word in High German.)

Lehr vo main Vodern auf d'Roas

Naaz, iazn loos, töös, wos a ta so, töös sockt ta tai Voda.
God, what's so good! and try tai luck ö da Waiden.
Muis a da sogn töös, wo a da so, töös los der aa gsackt sai.
I and tai Muida are old and tahoam, know as ee, looks nothing out.
What you look and work and plod and do not care
Do it for the children, what don't you do, don't leave the place!
I'm just a pressed person and a black woman,
Graif an s'am aa, ma fint töös pai ortlinga rechtschoffan Kinern,
Gladly under Orm, on taas mer d'Ergiibnus laichter daschwingan.
If you don't have any luck, you won't live all your life.
Just stay in the same place, in the middle of the golden mass, don't get bored.
Your luck is round as a ball, balls so lightly toni as touaha.
But if something happens and misfortune befalls you, don't let it go.
Don't let anything happen to you, don't let it happen to me, don't let it happen to you.
Klock's unsan Heagoot, pitt'en, iih so ders, er mochts wida pessa!
Mocka'r and hocka'r and pfnotten and trenzen with the kimt nix außa.
Head hanging, just as if amt' Heana had eaten her protest:
You don't like it bad, you don't like it bad, you don't like it bad! Look at your soul, what you have, think about the future!
If you give something, don't talk about it, take it and so for it: good luck!
Look Naaz, mirk ta dos fai: what little politeness iis no longer gstroft!
Get ti nea ritterla, Fremd zügelt t'Leud, ist a Sprichwoat, a Worwoat.
Let's go, don't wash your hands, don't get any more clay. Go on, don't open your eyes, you won't be lucky in Trambuich.
Go two weeks and tar oani is naich, so gee du en olden.
If you go to a place that is also often the case, you are a big one -
Look at tain Gsund, ta Gsund iis pai olIn no allwail tos Pessa.
So what do you have in the world if you are not healthy? - - - - -
Come back and you'll find our old friends in the parlor,
We often go to places where you and your friends are happy to meet us,
Finding our guittäter and our vastoabani friendschoft! Olli, sö kenan uns glai - und töös, Naaz, töös is dos Schöner!"

Advice from my Father for my Travels
(Translation of Rudolf Steiner's High German prose version.)

Ignaz, now listen well to what I say to you; I am your father.
In God's name, since it must be so that you are to seek your fortune in the wide world,
Therefore I must tell you this; and what I tell you take well to heart.
I and your mother are old and have stayed at home; you know that nothing comes from that.
One slaves away, takes pains, works hard, and weakens oneself in the care of work
One does this out of love for one's children; what would one not do just so they will not fall into bad ways.
If later one becomes weak and sick, and hard times come,
Even they spring upon us lovingly if, when they come, proper honest children
Are standing by to help, so that one can more easily do what the state and life demands.
If good fortune should find you, don't live like a cavalier.
Stay as you were, in the golden mean of the middle road; do not budge from the right path of life.
Good fortune is round like a ball; it rolls just as easily away from as toward us.
If some effort does not succeed, or if a misfortune befalls you, do not speak of it to people.
Remain calm; let nothing show; do not be faint-hearted;
Pour out your troubles to God alone; beg him; I tell you, He makes everything better again!
To act troubled, to withdraw, to pull a sour face, to be whiny: nothing is achieved by that.
To let your head hang as though the chickens had eaten your bread away from you:
That improves nothing bad, let alone making the good even better!
Guard the possessions you take with you; take a little care for the future.
If someone gives you something, just receive it, without affectation, and say: “God bless you!”
Listen, Ignaz, and remember this well: no one has ever been punished for being polite!
Don't act stubborn; new places make a person modest; this is a saying and a true word.
Don't be led astray into gambling; don't let the dance floor mean too much to you.
Don't let anyone read your future in the cards; and do not seek your destiny in the book of dreams.
If two paths lie before you and one of them is new, then you take the old one.
If one is crooked, which is often the case, then you take the straight one.
Protect your health; health is the best of all possessions.
Admit it to me, after all: What does one really possess in the world if one lacks health?
- - - - -
If you ever come back home and no longer find us old folk in this little room,
Then we are there where your grandfather and your grandmother await us with joy,
Where our benefactors and our dead relatives will find us!
They will all recognize us at once—and this, Ignaz, is something very—beautiful.

[ 22 ] In 1879 Karl Julius Schröer writes the following about this Austrian from whose educated soul there arose so magnificently the life of the peasants and also, as the above section of his poem shows so well, the native philosophy of the peasants: “His talent found no encouragement. Although he wrote much more than the above work, he burned his entire literary output ... and now lives as librarian for the Piaristic faculty of St. Thekla of the Fields in Vienna, isolated from all social intercourse, as he puts it, ‘without joy or sorrow.’” As in the case of Joseph Mission one must seek many personalities of Austrian spiritual life living in obscurity.

Mission cannot come into consideration as a thinker among the personalities portrayed in this book. Nevertheless, to picture his soul life gives one an understanding for the particular coloration of the ideas of Austrian thinkers. The thoughts of Schelling, Hegel, Fichte, and Planck shape themselves plastically out of each other like parts of a thought-organism. One thought grows forth from the other.

And in the physiognomy of this whole thought-organism one recognizes characteristics of a certain people. In the case of Austrian thinkers one thought stands more beside the other; and each one grows on its own—not so much out of the other—but out of a common soul ground. Therefore the total configuration does not bear the direct characteristics of the people; but, on the other hand, these characteristics are poured out over each individual thought like a kind of basic mood. This basic mood is held back by these thinkers within their heart (Gemüt) in the way natural to them; it sounds forth but faintly. It manifests in a personality like Mission as homesickness for what is elemental in his people. In Schröer, Fercher von Steinwand, Cameri, and even in Hamerling, this basic mood works along everywhere in the fundamental tone of their striving. Through this, their thinking takes on a contemplative character.

[ 23 ] In Robert Hamerling one of the greatest poets of modern times has arisen from the lower Austrian district. At the same time he is one of the bearers of the idealism in German world views. In this book I do not intend to speak about the nature and significance of Hamerling's literary works. I wish only to indicate something of the position he took within the evolution of world views in modern times. He did in fact give expression in the form of thoughts to his world view in his work The Atomism of Will. (The Styrlan poet and folk author Adolf Harpf published this book in 1891, after Hamerling's death.) The book bears the subtitle “Contribution to a Critique of Modern Knowledge.”

[ 24 ] Hamerling knew that many who called themselves philosophers would receive his “contribution” with—perhaps tolerant—bewonderment. Many might think: What could this idealistically inclined poet undertake to accomplish in a field that demands the strictly scientific approach? And the presentations in his book did not convince those who asked this; for their judgment of him was only a wave rising from the depths of their souls where (in an unconscious or subconscious way) this judgment issued from habits of thought. Such people can be very clever; scientifically they can be very important: and yet the struggles of a truly poetic nature are not comprehensible to them. Within the soul of such a poetic nature there live all the conflicts from which the riddles of the world present themselves to human beings. A truly poetic nature, therefore, has inner experience of these world riddles. When such a nature expresses itself poetically, there holds sway in the foundations of his soul the questioning world order that,without transforming itself in his consciousness into thoughts, manifests itself in elemental artistic creation. To be sure, no inkling of the real being of such true poetic natures is present even in those poets who recoil from a world view as from a fire that might singe their “life-filled originality.” A true poet might never shape thoughts in his consciousness for what actually lives powerfully in the roots of his soul life in the way of unconscious world thoughts: nevertheless, he stands with his inner experience in those depths of reality of which a person has no inkling if, in his comfortable wisdom, he regards as mere dreams the place where sense-perceptible reality is granted its existence from out of the spirit. If now, for once, a truly poetic nature like Robert Hamerling, without dulling his creative poetic power, is able to lift into his consciousness, as a thought-world, what often has remained unconscious in other poets, then, with respect to such a phenomenon, one can also hold the view that, through this, special light is shed from spiritual depths upon the riddles of the world. In the foreword of his Atomism of Will, Hamerling himself tells how he arrived at his thought-world. “I did not suddenly throw myself upon philosophy at some point out of a whim, for example, or because I wanted to by my hand at something different. Moved by the natural and inescapable urge that drives us, after all, to search out the truth and solve the riddles of existence, I have occupied myself since earliest youth with the great questions about human cognition. I have never been able to regard philosophy as a special department of science that one can study or not study—like statistics or forestry—but always as the investigation into what is most immediate important, and interesting to every person. ... For my own part, I could by no means keep myself from following the most primal, natural, and universal of all spiritual drives and from forming a judgment over the course of the years about the fundamental questions of existence and life.”

One of the people who valued Hamerling's thought-world highly was Vincenz Knauer, the learned and sensitive Benedictine priest living in Vienna. As guest lecturer at the university in Vienna, he held lectures in which he wanted to show how Hamerling stood in that evolutionary stream of world views that began with Thales in Greece and that manifested in the Austrian poet and thinker in its most significant form for the end of the nineteenth century. To be sure, Vincenz Knauer belonged to those researchers to whom narrow-heartedness is foreign. As a young philosopher he wrote a book on the moral philosophy in Shakespeare's works. (Knauer's lectures in Vienna were published under the title The Main Problems of Philosophy from Thales to Hamerling.)

[ 25 ] The basic idealistic mood underlying Hamerling's view of reality also lives in his literary work. The figures in his epic and dramatic creations are not a copy of what spirit-shy observation sees in outer life; they show everywhere how the human soul receives direction and impulses from a spiritual world. Adherents of spirit-shy observation are critical of such creations. They call them bloodless mental products lacking the juice of real life. They are often to be heard belaboring the catch phrase: The characters of this poet are not like the people who walk around in the world; they are schemata, born of abstractions. If the “men of reality” who speak like this could only have an inkling, in fact, how much they themselves are walking abstractions and their belief the abstraction of an abstraction! If they only knew how soulless their blood-filled characters are to someone having a sense not just for pulsing blood but also for the way soul pulses in the blood. From this kind of “reality standpoints” one has said that Hamerling's dramatic work Danton and Robespierre has enriched the shadow folk of bygone revolutionary heros with a number of new schemata.

[ 26 ] Hamerling defended himself against such criticisms in his “Epilogue to the Critics” which he appended to the later editions of his Ahasver in Rome. In this epilogue he writes: “... People say that Ahasver in Rome is an ‘allegorical’ work—a word that immediately makes many people break out in goose-bumps.—The poem is allegorical, to be sure, insofar as a mythical figure is woven in whose right to existence is always based only upon the fact that it represents something. For, every myth is an idea brought into picture form by the imagination of the people. But, people will say, Nero is also supposed to ‘represent’ something—the ‘lust for life’! All right, he does represent the lust for life; but no differently than Moliere's Miser represents miserliness and Shakespeare's Romeo love. There are, to be sure, poetic figures that are nothing more at all than allegorical schemata and consist only of their inner abstract significance—comparable to Heine's sick, skinny Kanonikus who finally was composed of nothing but ‘spirit and bandages.’ But, for a poetic figure filled with real life, its inherent significance is not some vampire that sucks out its blood. Does anything actually exist that ‘signifies’ nothing? I would like to know, after all, how a beggar would manage not to signify poverty and a Croesus wealth. ... I believe therefore that Nero, who is thirsting for life, sacrifices Just as little of his reality by ‘signifying’ lust for life when placed next to Ahasver, who is longing for death, as a rich merchant sacrifices of his blooming stoutness by happening to stand beside a beggar and necessarily making visible, in an allegorical group, the contrast between poverty and wealth,” This is how a poet, ensouled by an idealistic world view, repulses the attacks of those who shudder if they catch a scent anywhere of an idea rooted in true reality, in spiritual reality.

[ 27 ] When one begins a reading of Hamerling's Atomism of Will, one can at first have the definite feeling that he let himself be convinced by Kantianism that a knowledge of true reality, of the “thing-in-itself,” was impossible. Still, in the further course of the presentations in his book, one sees that what happened for Hamerling with Kantianism was like Carneri with Darwinism. He let himself be overcome by the suggestive power of certain Kantian thoughts; but then the view wins out in him that man—even though he cannot push through to true reality by looking outward with his senses—does nevertheless encounter true reality when he delves down through the surface of soul experience into the foundations of the soul.

[ 28 ] Hamerling begins in an entirely Kantian way; “Certain stimuli produce odors in our sense of smell. The rose, therefore, has no fragrance if no one smells it.—Certain oscillations of the air produce sound in our ear. Sound, therefore, does not exist without an ear. A rifle shot, therefore, would not ring out if no one heard it. ... Whoever holds onto this will understand what a naive mistake it is to believe that, besides the perception (Anschauung) or mental picture we call ‘horse,’ there exists yet another horse—and in fact only then the actual real one—of which our perception ‘horse’ is only a copy. Outside of myself there is—let me state this again—only the sum total of those determining factors which cause a perception to be produced in my senses which I call a ‘horse’.” These thoughts work with such suggestive power that Hamerling can add to them the words: “If that is not obvious to you, dear reader, and if your understanding shies away from this fact like a skittish horse, then read no further; leave this and every other book on philosophical matters unread; for you lack the necessary ability to grasp a fact without bias and to retain it in thought.” I would like to respond to Hamerling: “May there in fact be many people whose intellect does indeed shy away from the opening words of his book like a skittish horse but who also possess enough strength of ideas to value rightly the deeply penetrating later chapters; and I am happy that Hamerling did after all write these later chapters even though his intellect did not shy away from the assertion: There in me is the mental picture ‘horse’; but outside there does not exist any actual real horse but only the sum total of those determining factors which cause a perception to be produced in my senses which I call a ‘horse’.” For here again one has to do with an assertion—like that made by Carneri with respect to matter, substance, and spirit—that gains overwhelming power over a person because he just does not see at all the impossible thoughts into which he has spun himself. The whole train of Hamerling's thoughts is worth no more than this: Certain effects emanating from me onto the surface of a coated pane of glass produce my image in the mirror. Nothing occurs through the effects emanating from me if no mirror is there. Outside the mirror there is only the sum total of those determining factors which bring it about that in the mirror an image is produced that I refer to with my name.

In imagination I can hear all the declamations against a philosophical dilettantism—carried to the point of frivolity that would dare to dispose of the serious scientific thoughts of philosophers with this kind of a childish objection. I know, in fact, what all has been brought forward by philosophers since Kant in the way of such thoughts. When one speaks as I have just done, one is not understood by the chorus that propounds these thoughts. One must turn to unprejudiced reason, which understands that the way one conducts one's thinking is the same in each case: whether, when confronted by the mental picture of the horse in my soul, I decree the outer horse to be nonexistent, or, when confronted by the image in the mirror, I doubt my existence. One does not even need to enter into certain, supposedly epistemological refutations of this comparison. For, what would be presented there—as the entirely different relationship, after all, of the “mental picture to what is mentally pictured” than of the mirror image to what is mirroring itself—already stands there for certain epistemologists as established with absolute certainty; for other readers, however, the corresponding refutation of these thoughts could in fact be only a web of unfruitful abstractions.

Out of his healthy idealism, Hamerling feels that an idea, in order to be justified within a world view, must not only be correct but also in accordance with reality. (Here I must express myself in those thoughts which I introduced in the presentation on Karl Christian Planck in this book.). If Hamerling had been less suggestively influenced by the way of thinking described above, he would have noticed that there is nothing in accordance with reality in such thoughts as those which he feels to be necessary in spite of the fact that “one’s intellect shys away from them like a skittish horse.” Such thoughts arise in the human soul when the soul has been made ill by a mind for abstractions estranged from reality and gives itself over to a continuous spinning out of thoughts that are indeed logically coherent but in which no spiritual reality holds sway in a living way. It is precisely his healthy idealism, however, that guides Hamerling in the further thoughts of his Atomism of Will out of the web of thoughts he presented in the opening chapters. This becomes particularly clear where he speaks of the human “I” in connection with the life of the soul. Look at the way Hamerling relates to Descartes' “I think, therefore I am.” Fichte's way of picturing things (of which we have spoken in our considerations of Fichte in this book) works along like a softly sounding, consonant, basic tone in the beautiful words on page 223 of the first volume of The Atomism of Will: “In spite of all the conceptual hairsplitting that carps at it, Descartes' Cogito ergo sum remains the igniting flash of lightning for all modern speculation. But, strictly speaking, this ‘I think, therefore I am’ is not made certain through the fact that I think, but rather through the fact that I say that I think. My conclusion would have the same certainty even if I changed the premise into its reverse and said ‘I do not think, therefore I am.’ In order to be able to say this, I must exist.” In discussing Fichte's world view, we have said in this book that the statement “I think, therefore I am” cannot maintain itself in the face of man's sleeping state. One must grasp the certainty of the “I” in such a way that this certainty cannot appear to be exhausted in the inner perception “I think.” Hamerling feels this; therefore he says that “I do not think, therefore I am” is also valid. He says this because he feels: Within the human “I” something is experienced that does not receive the certainty of its existence from thinking, but on the contrary gives to thinking its certainty. Thinking is unfolded by the true “I” in certain states; the experiencing of the “I,” however, is of such a kind that through this experience the soul can feel itself immersed into a spiritual reality in which it knows its existence to be anchored even during other states than those for which Descartes' “I think, therefore I am” applies. But all this is based on the fact that Hamerling knows: When the “I” thinks, life-will is living in its thinking. Thinking is by no means mere thinking; it is willed thinking. As a thought, “I think” is a mere fantasy that is never and nowhere present. It is always the case that only the “I think, willing” is present. Whoever believes in the fantasy of “I think” can isolate himself thereby from the whole spiritual world; and then become either an adherent of materialism or a doubter in the reality of the outer world. He becomes a materialist if he lets himself be snared by the thought—fully justified within its own limits—that for the thinking Descartes had in mind the instruments of the nerves are necessary. He becomes a doubter in the reality of the outer world if he becomes entangled in the thought—again justified within certain limits—that all thinking about things is in fact experienced within the soul and that with his thinking, therefore, he can in fact never arrive at an outer world existing in and of itself, even if such an outer world existed. To be sure, whoever sees the will in all thinking can, if he inclines to abstraction, now isolate the will conceptually from thinking and speak in Schopenhauer's style of a will that supposedly holds sway in all world existence and that drives thinking like whitecaps to the surface of life's phenomena. But someone who sees that only the “I think, willing” has reality would no more picture will and thinking as separated in the human soul than he would picture a man's head and body as separated if he wished his thought to portray something real. But such a person also knows that, with his experience of a thinking that is carried by will and experienced, he goes outside the boundaries of his soul and enters into the experience of a world process (Weltgeschehen) that is also pulsing through his soul. And Hamerling is headed in the direction of just such a world view, in the direction of a world view whose adherent knows that with a real thought he has within himself an experience of world-will, not merely an experience of his own “I.” Hamerling is striving toward a world view that does not go astray into the chaos of a mysticism of will, but on the contrary wishes to experience the world-will within the clarity of ideas.

With this perspective of the world-will beheld through ideas, Hamerling knows that he now stands in the native soil of the idealism of German world views. His thoughts prove even to himself to have their roots in the German folk spirit (Volkstum) that in Jakob Böhme already was struggling for knowledge in an elemental way. On page 259f. of Hamerling's Atomism of Will one reads: “To make will the highest philosophical principle is what one seems to have overlooked until now—an eminently German thought, a core thought of the German spirit. From the German Naturphilosophen of the Middle Ages up to the classical thinkers of the age of German speculation, and even up to Schopenhauer and Hartmann, this thought runs through the philosophy of the German people, emerging sometimes more, sometimes less, often only at one moment, as it were, then disappearing again into the seething masses of our thinkers' ideas. And so it was also the philosophus teutonicus who was in truth the most German and the most profound of all modern philosophers, and who was the first, in his deeply thoughtful, original, and pictorial language, to grasp the will expressly as the absolute, as the unity. ...” And now, in order to point to yet another German thinker in this direction, Hamerling quotes Jacobi, Goethe's contemporary: “Experience and history teach us that man's action depends far less upon his thinking than his thinking depends upon his action, that his concepts direct themselves according to his actions and only copy them, as it were; that the path of knowledge, therefore, is a mysterious path, not a syllogistic one, nor a mechanical one.”

Because Hamerling, out of the prevailing tone of his soul, has a feeling for the fact that the accordance of an idea with reality must be added to its merely logical correctness, he also cannot regard those pessimistic philosophers' views of life as valid which wish to determine—by an abstract conceptual weighing—whether pleasure or pain predominates in life and therefore whether life must be regarded as a good or an evil. No, reflection become theory does not decide this; this is decided in much deeper foundations of life, in depths that have to judge this human reflection, but do not allow themselves to be judged by this reflection. Hamerling says about this: “The main thing is not whether people are correct in wanting to live, with very few exceptions, at any price, no matter whether things are going well or badly for them. The main thing is that they want it and this can by no means be denied. And yet the doctrinaire pessimists do not reckon with this decisive fact. Intellectually and in learned discussions, they always only weigh against each other the pleasure and pain life brings in particular situations; but since pleasure and pain belong to feeling, it is feeling and not intellect that ultimately and decisively draws up the balance between pleasure and pain. And, with respect to all mankind—indeed one can say with respect to everything living—the balance falls on the side of the pleasure of existence. That everything living wants to live, under any circumstances and at any price, this is the great fact; and in the face of this fact all doctrinaire talk is powerless:” In the same way as the thinkers from Fichte to Planck described in this book, Hamerling seeks the path into spiritual reality, except that his striving is to do justice to the natural-scientific picture of the world to a greater degree than Schelling or Hegel, for example, were able to do. Atomism of Will nowhere offends against the scientific picture of the world. But this book is everywhere permeated with the insight that this picture of the world represents only a part of reality. This book is based upon an acknowledgement of the thought that a person is submitting to belief in an unreal world if he refuses to take up the forces of a spiritual world into his thought-world. (I use the word “unreal” here in the sense employed in our discussion of Planck.)

[ 29 ] Hamerling's satiric poem “Homunculus” speaks forcibly for the high degree to which his thinking was in accordance with reality. In this work, with great poetic force, he depicts a man who himself becomes soulless because soul and spirit do not speak to his knowledge. What would become of people who really stemmed from a world order such as the natural-scientific way of picturing things sets up as creed when it rejects a world view in accordance with the spirit? What would a man be if the unreality of this way of picturing things were real? In somewhat this way one could formulate the question that finds its artistic answer in “Homunculus.” Homunculism would have to take possession of a mankind that believed only in a world fashioned according to mechanistic natural laws. One can also see in Hamerling how a person striving toward existence's ideas has a healthier sense for practical life than a person who, fearful of the spirit, shies away from the world of ideas and feels himself thereby to be a true “man of reality.” Hamerling's “Homunculus” could help those regain their health who, precisely in the present day, are allowing themselves to be led astray by the opinion that natural science is the only science of what is real. Such people, in their fear of the spirit, say that the idealism of our classical period—which, in their opinion, has been overcome today—brought knowing man (homo sapiens) too much into the foreground. “True science” must recognize that attention should be paid above all to economic man (homo oeconomus) within the world order and in human arrangements. For such people “true science” means solely the science stemming from the natural-scientific way of picturing things. Homunculism arises out of opinions like this. The proponents of these opinions have no inkling of how they are hurrying toward homunculism. With the prophetic eye of the knower, Hamerling has delineated this homunculism. Those who fear that a rightful estimation of homo sapiens in Hamerling's sense might lead to an overestimation of the literary approach will also be able to see from “Homunculus” that this does not occur.

• 1. NoteText

[ 1 ] Throughout the Christian era the Gospel of St. John was the text that made the strongest impression upon those who were trying to deepen their understanding of the cosmic mysteries of Christianity. This was the Gospel used by all the Christian mystics who were striving to mould their lives in accordance with its presentation of the personality and nature of Christ Jesus.

[ 2 ] In the course of the centuries a somewhat different attitude was adopted by Christian humanity to the Gospel of St. Luke—an attitude altogether in keeping with the indications given in the last lecture, from another point of view, regarding the contrast between these two Gospels. Whereas the Gospel of St. John was in a certain sense a text for mystics, the Gospel of St. Luke was always a devotional book for humble folk, for those whose simplicity and innocence of heart enabled them to rise into the sphere of truly Christian feeling. The Gospel of St. Luke has been a book of devotion throughout the centuries. For all those who were bowed down with sorrow or suffering it was a fount of consolation, speaking with such tenderness of the great Comforter, the great Benefactor of mankind, the Saviour of the heavy-laden and oppressed. It was a book to which especially those who longed to be filled with Christian love turned their hearts and minds, because the power of love is revealed more clearly in this Gospel than in any other Christian document. Those who were in any way conscious—and strictly speaking this applies to everyone—of having the burden of some guilt upon their hearts, at all times found consolation and edification when they turned to the Gospel of St. Luke and understood its message. They could say to themselves: Christ Jesus came not only for the righteous but also for sinners; He sat with publicans and transgressors. Whereas much preparation is necessary before the full power of St. John's Gospel can be realized, it may be said of St. Luke's Gospel that no nature is too immature to be aware of the warmth streaming from it. [ 3 ] From the earliest times this Gospel was an inspiration to the most childlike of men. All that remains childlike in the human soul from tenderest youth to ripest age has always felt drawn to the Gospel of St. Luke. And as regards pictorial representations of Christian truths and what art has acquired from these truths, we find that although much is derived from the other Gospels, the indications for the most intimate messages conveyed to the human heart by forms of art, by paintings, are to be found precisely in the Gospel of St. Luke. The portrayals of the deep connection between Christ Jesus and John the Baptist have their source in this imperishable Gospel. [ 4 ] Anyone who allows it to work upon his soul will find that from beginning to end it gives expression to the principle of love, compassion and innocence—in a certain sense, childlike innocence. Where else do we find such a tender portrayal of the childlike nature as in what is said of the childhood of Jesus of Nazareth in the Gospel of St. Luke? The reason will become clear as we penetrate more deeply into the words of this wonderful text.

[ 5 ] It will be necessary now to say certain things that may seem paradoxical to those of you who have heard other lectures or courses of lectures given by me on the same subject. But if you will wait for the explanations to be given in the next lectures, you will realize that what I shall say is in harmony with what you have previously heard from me about Christ Jesus and Jesus of Nazareth. The whole complicated range of truth cannot be presented all at once, and today I shall have to indicate an aspect of the Christian truths that may seem not to tally exactly with what has been said on some previous occasion. Our procedure must be, first to show how the separate currents of truth have developed and then the mutual agreement and harmony that finally become apparent. The Gospel of St. John was deliberately our starting-point, and I was naturally unable to indicate more than part of the truth in the various courses of lectures. What was said still holds good, as we shall see, although our attention to-day must be turned to an unusual aspect of Christian truths.

[ 6 ] A wonderful passage in the Gospel of St. Luke describes how an Angel appeared to the shepherds in the fields and announced to them that the Saviour of the world was born. Then come the words: ‘And suddenly there was with the Angel a multitude of the heavenly host.’ Picture the scene to yourselves: as the shepherds look upwards the heavens open and the Beings of the spiritual world are revealed in sublime pictures.

[ 7 ] What was the proclamation to the shepherds? It was clothed in momentous words, words that resounded through the whole of evolution and have become the Christmas message. Rightly rendered, these words would be as follows: ‘The Divine Beings manifest themselves from on high, that peace may reign on the Earth below among men who are filled with good will!’ [ 8 ] The usual expression, ‘glory’ is entirely out of place here. The sentence is correct in the form I have now given, and the contrast should be clearly emphasized. What the shepherds saw was the manifestation of spiritual Beings from on high, and the revelation occurred when it did in order that peace might pour into human hearts that were filled with a good will. [ 9 ] As we shall see, many mysteries of Christianity are embodied in these words, provided only they are rightly understood. But certain preliminaries are necessary if light is to be thrown on this momentous proclamation. Above all we must endeavour to study the accounts available to clairvoyant faculties from the Akashic Chronicle. With opened eyes of spirit we must contemplate the epoch when Christ Jesus came to humanity, and ask ourselves: What was the historical background and the source of the spiritual impulse poured into Earth evolution at that time?

[ 10 ] Currents of spiritual life from many different sides converged and flowed into the evolution of humanity at that point. The very diverse world-conceptions that had arisen in various regions of the Earth in the course of the ages converged in Palestine as though into one central point and came to expression in the events there. We may therefore ask: What are the sources of these streams?

[ 11 ] It was indicated yesterday that in the Gospel of St. Luke we have the fruits of Imaginative Cognition, and that this knowledge is gained in the form of pictures. In the events just mentioned a picture is placed before us of the manifestation to the shepherds of spiritual Beings from on high: first, the picture is of a spiritual Being, an Angel, who is followed by a ‘heavenly host’. Here we must ask: What does a clairvoyant initiated into the mysteries of existence see in this picture—which he can always evoke again at will—when he gazes into the Akashic Chronicle? What was it that was revealed to the shepherds? What was this angelic host, and whence did it come?

[ 12 ] This picture portrays one of the great spiritual streams that flowed through the process of evolution, gradually rising higher and higher, until at the time of the events in Palestine its light could shine down upon the Earth only from spiritual heights. From the angelic host revealed to the shepherds, we are led back, in deciphering the Akashic Chronicle, to one of the greatest streams of spiritual life in the evolution of humanity, a stream which, several centuries before the coming of Christ, spread far and wide in the form of Buddhism. An investigator of the Akashic Chronicle who traces back into previous ages the origin of the revelation to the shepherds, is led, strange as it will seem to you, to the ‘Enlightenment’ of the great Buddha. The light that shone out in India, setting men's hearts and minds astir as the religion of love and compassion, as a great world-conception, and even to-day is spiritual nourishment for a very large section of humanity—that light appeared again in the revelation to the shepherds! For it too was to stream into the revelation in Palestine. The account given at the beginning of St. Luke's Gospel cannot be understood unless we consider (again from the vantage-point of spiritual-scientific research) the significance of Buddha and what his revelation actually brought about in the course of human evolution.

[ 13 ] When Buddha was born in the East, five to six centuries before our era, there appeared in him an Individuality who had lived many times on Earth and in the course of his previous incarnations had already reached the very lofty stage of human development designated by an Oriental expression as that of a ‘Bodhisattva’. Some of you have heard lectures on different aspects of the nature of the Bodhisattvas. In the lecture-course Spiritual Hierarchies and their Reflection in the physical World, given in Düsseldorf some months ago, I spoke of how the Bodhisattvas are related to the whole of cosmic evolution; in Munich, in the lecture-course The East in the Light of the West¹ they were referred to from a different point of view. To-day we shall consider the nature of the Bodhisattvas from still another side and you will gradually perceive the harmony between the single truths.

[ 14 ] He who became a Buddha had first to be a Bodhisattva; individual development to the rank of Buddhahood is preceded by the stage of ‘Bodhisattva’. We will now think of the nature of the Bodhisattvas in relation to the evolution of humanity considered from the viewpoint of spiritual science.

[ 15 ] The capacities and faculties possessed and developed by human beings in any particular epoch were not always in existence. To believe that the same faculties possessed by man to-day were also present in primeval times is due to incapacity and unwillingness to see beyond the present. Man's faculties, everything he is able to accomplish and know, vary from epoch to epoch. His faculties to-day are developed to the point where with his own power of reasoning he is justified in saying: ‘I recognize this or that truth by means of my intelligence and my reason; I can recognize what is moral or immoral, logical or illogical in a certain respect. But it would be a mistake to believe that these capacities for distinguishing the logical from the illogical or the moral from the immoral, were always to be found in human nature. They came into existence and developed gradually. What man can accomplish to-day by means of his own capacities, he had at one time to be taught—as a child is taught by its parents or teachers—by Beings who though incarnated among men were more highly developed by virtue of their spiritual faculties and could hold converse in the Mysteries with divine-spiritual Beings even loftier than themselves. [ 16 ] Individualities who, though themselves incarnated in physical bodies, could have intercourse with still higher, non-incarnated Individualities, existed at all times. For example, before men acquired the faculty of logical thinking by means of which they themselves are able to think logically to-day, they were obliged to learn from certain teachers. These teachers themselves were not able to think logically through faculties developed in the physical body itself, but only through their intercourse in the Mysteries with divine-spiritual Beings in higher realms. Such teachers proclaimed the principles of logic and morality from revelations they received from higher worlds in times before men themselves were able, out of their own earthly nature, to think logically or discover the principles of morality. The Bodhisattvas are one category of Beings who, though incarnated in physical bodies, have inter-course with divine-spiritual Beings in order to bring down and impart to men what they themselves learn from their divine Teachers. The Bodhisattva is a Being incarnated in a human body, whose faculties enable him to commune with divine-spiritual Beings.

[ 17 ] Before Gautama Buddha became a ‘Buddha’, he was a Bodhisattva, that is to say, an Individuality who, in the Mysteries, was able to commune with higher, divine-spiritual Beings. In remote, primeval ages of Earth evolution, a Being such as the Bodhisattva was entrusted in the higher world with a definite task, a definite mission, which he continues to discharge.

[ 18 ] When the Earth was still in early stages of development, even before the Atlantean and Lemurian epochs, the Bodhisattva who was incarnated and became Buddha six hundred years before our era, was assigned a task which he never abandoned. From epoch to epoch, through every age, his work was to impart to Earth evolution as much as the beings concerned enabled it to receive. For each Bodhisattva there comes a time when, with the mission entrusted to him in the primeval past, he reaches a definite point—the point when what he has been able to let flow into humanity ‘from above’ can become a faculty of man's own. A human faculty to-day was once a faculty of divine-spiritual Beings brought down to man from spiritual heights by the Bodhisattvas. Hence there comes a time when a spiritual emissary such as a Bodhisattva can say; ‘I have accomplished my mission. Humanity has now received that for which it has been prepared through many, many epochs.’ Having reached this point, the Bodhisattva can become ‘Buddha’. That is to say, the time has come when he, as a Being with the particular mission to which I have referred, need no longer incarnate in a human physical body; he has incarnated for the last time in such a body and need not incarnate again as a spiritual emissary in the above sense.

This point of time arrived for Gautama Buddha. The task assigned to him had led him again and again down to the Earth; but he appeared in his final incarnation as Bodhisattva when, after his Enlightenment, he became Buddha. He incarnated in a human body that had developed to the highest possible stage those faculties which hitherto had had to be bestowed from above, but were now gradually to become human faculties in the fullest sense. When a Bodhisattva has succeeded through his foregoing development in making a human body so perfect that it can itself evolve the faculties connected with his particular mission, he need not incarnate again. He then hovers in spiritual realms, sending his influence into humanity, furthering and guiding human affairs. Henceforth it is the task of men to develop the gifts formerly bestowed upon them from heavenly heights, saying to themselves: ‘We must now ourselves develop in a way that will further elaborate the faculties acquired in full measure for the first time in the incarnation when the Bodhisattva became Buddha.’

[ 19 ] When the Being who works through successive epochs as Bodhisattva appears as one into whose human nature every faculty that previously flowed down from heavenly heights has been integrated and can now be expressed through him as an individual—that Being is a ‘Buddha’. All this is revealed by Gautama Buddha. Had he, as Bodhisattva, withdrawn earlier from his mission, men could no longer have been blessed by the bestowal of these faculties from on high. But when evolution had progressed so far that these faculties could be present in a single human being on Earth, the seed was laid that would enable men in the future to develop them in their own natures. Thus the Individuality who, as long as he was a Bodhisattva, did not enter fully into the human form but towered upwards into heavenly heights—this Individuality now for the first time drew completely into human nature and was fully embodied in that one incarnation. But then he again withdrew. For with this incarnation as Buddha a certain quotum of revelations had been given to humanity, thereafter to be developed further in men themselves. Hence the Bodhisattva, having become Buddha, might withdraw from the Earth to spiritual heights, might abide there and guide the affairs of humanity from regions where only a certain power of clairvoyance is able to behold him.

[ 20 ] What, then, was the task of that supremely great Individuality usually called the ‘Buddha’?

If we want to understand the task and mission of this Buddha in the sense of true esoteriscism, we must realize the following. The cognitive faculty of mankind has developed gradually. Attention has repeatedly been drawn to the fact that in the Atlantean epoch a large proportion of humanity was clairvoyant and able to gaze into the spiritual worlds, and that certain remnants of this old clairvoyance were still present in post-Atlantean times. After the Atlantean epoch, in the periods of the civilizations of ancient India, Persia, Egypt and Chaldea—even as late as the Graeco-Latin age—there were numbers of human beings, many more than modern man would ever imagine, who possessed the heritage of this old clairvoyance; the astral plane was open to them and they could see into the hidden depths of existence. Perception of man's etheric body was quite usual in the Graeco-Latin age; numbers of people were able to see the human head surrounded by an etheric cloud that has gradually become entirely concealed within the head. [ 21 ] But humanity was to advance to a form of knowledge acquired through the outer senses and through the spiritual faculties connected with the senses. Man was gradually to emerge altogether from the spiritual world and to engage in pure sense-observation, in intellectual, logical thinking. By degrees he was to make his way to non-clairvoyant cognition, because he must pass through this stage in order to regain clairvoyant knowledge in the future. But such knowledge will then be united with the fruits of cognition based upon the senses and the intellect.

[ 22 ] At the present time we are living in an intermediate period. We look back to a past when man was clairvoyant, and to a future when this will again be the case. In our present age the majority of human beings are dependent upon what they perceive with their senses and grasp with their intellect. There are, of course, certain heights even in sensory perception and in knowledge yielded by the intellect and reasoning mind; everywhere there are ‘degrees of knowledge’. One person in a certain incarnation passes through his existence on Earth with little insight into what is moral, and little compassion for his fellow-men. We say of him that he is at a low stage of morality. Another passes through life with very slightly developed intellectual capacities; we call him a person of low intelligence. But these powers of intellectual cognition are capable of rising to a very lofty level. A man whom, in Fichte's sense, we call a ‘moral genius’ reaches the highest level of moral Imagination but there are many intermediate stages. Without possessing clairvoyant faculties we can reach this height only by ennobling powers that are at the disposal of ordinary humanity. These stages had to be attained by man in the course of Earth evolution. What man knows to-day to a certain extent through his own intelligence and also what he attains through his own moral strength, namely the consciousness that he must have compassion with the sufferings and sorrows of others—this consciousness could not have been acquired by a human being in primeval times through his own efforts. It can be said to-day that such insight is unfolded by a healthy moral sense, even without clairvoyance, and to an increasing extent men will come to realize not only that compassion is the very highest virtue but that without love humanity can make no progress.

Man's moral sense will grow steadily stronger. [ 23 ] But there were epochs in the past when he would never have understood by himself that compassion and love belong to a very high stage of development. It was therefore necessary for spiritual Beings such as the Bodhisattvas to incarnate in human forms. Revelations of the power of compassion and love came to such Beings from the higher worlds and they were able to teach men how to act accordingly. What men have come to recognize to-day through their own powers as the lofty virtues of compassion and love—this had to be taught, through epoch after epoch, from heavenly heights.

The Teacher of love and compassion in times when men themselves did not yet realize the nature of those virtues was the Bodhisattva who incarnated for the last time as Gautama Buddha. [ 24 ] Buddha was formerly the Bodhisattva, the Teacher of love and compassion. He was the Teacher throughout the epochs just referred to, when men still possessed a certain natural clairvoyance. As Bodhisattva he incarnated in bodies endowed with powers of clairvoyance. Then, when he became Buddha and looked back into these previous incarnations, he could describe the experiences of his inmost soul when it gazed into the depths of existence hidden behind sense-phenomena. He possessed this faculty in previous embodiments and was born with it into the family of Sakya from which his father, Suddhodana, descended. When Gautama was born he was still a Bodhisattva, that is to say he came at the stage of development reached in his previous incarnations. He who is usually called the ‘Buddha’ was born to his father Suddhodana and his mother Mayadevi as a Bodhisattva and possessed the faculty of clairvoyance in a high degree even as a child. He was always able to gaze into the depths of existence.

[ 25 ] Let us realize that in the course of human evolution this capacity to gaze into the depths of existence has assumed very definite forms. It was the mission of humanity in earthly evolution to allow the old, dim clairvoyance gradually to die away; vestiges that persisted did not, therefore, retain the best elements of that ancient faculty. The best elements were the first to be lost. What remained was often a lower form of vision of the astral world, a vision of those demonic forces which drag man's instincts and passions to a lower level. Through Initiation we can look into the spiritual world and perceive forces and beings that are connected with the finest thoughts and sentiments of men, but we also perceive the spiritual powers behind unbridled passions, sensuality, consuming egoism. The vestiges of clairvoyance in the majority of human beings—it was different, of course, in the Initiates—led to vision of these wild, demonic powers behind the lower human passions. Whoever is able to see into the spiritual world can of course perceive all this himself; true vision depends upon the development of human faculties. But the one vision cannot be attained without the other.

[ 26 ] As a Bodhisattva the Buddha had been obliged to incarnate in a body constituted as other human bodies were at that time. The body in which he incarnated provided him with the power to look deeply into the astral substrata of existence and even as a child he was able to perceive all the astral forces underlying the unbridled passions of men, their consuming lusts and sensuality. He had been protected from witnessing physical depravity in the outer world, with its accompanying sufferings and sorrows. Confined to his father's palace, shielded from every unpleasant experience, he was indulged and pampered in a way considered fitting for his rank. But this seclusion only enhanced his power of vision, and while he was carefully protected and everything indicative of pain and sickness hidden from him, his eyes of spirit were able to gaze at the astral pictures hovering around him of all the wild, degrading passions of men. Whoever can read the external biography of Buddha with genuine esoteric insight will surmise this. It must be emphasized that in exoteric accounts there is often a great deal that cannot be understood without knowledge of the esoteric foundations—and this applies very particularly to the life of Buddha.

[ 27 ] It must seem strange to Orientalists and others who study the life of Buddha to read that he was surrounded in the palace by ‘forty thousand dancing-girls and eighty-four thousand women’. That statement is to be found in books sold to-day for a few shillings and the writers are obviously not particularly astonished at the existence of such a harem! What is the explanation? It is not realized that this points to the intensity of the experiences that arose in Buddha through his astral visions. Guarded from childhood against all knowledge of sorrow and suffering in the world of physical humanity, he perceived everything as spiritual forces in the spiritual world. He saw all this because he was born into a body such as could be produced at that time; but from the outset he was proof against the delusive pictures around him, having in his previous incarnations risen to the height of a Bodhisattva. Because in this incarnation he was living as the Bodhisattva he felt impelled to go out into the world in order to see the things indicated by the pictures appearing in the astral world around him in the palace. Every picture kindled within him an urge to go out and see the world, to leave his prison. That was the impelling urge in his soul, for as Bodhisattva there was in him the lofty spiritual power connected with the mission of imparting to mankind the teaching of compassion and love, with all its implications. Hence it was necessary for him to become acquainted with humanity in the world in which man can assimilate this teaching through moral insight. Buddha was to acquire knowledge of the life of humanity in the physical world. From Bodhisattva he was to become Buddha—as a man among men. The only possibility of achieving this was to abandon all the faculties that had remained to him from his former incarnations and to turn outwards to the physical plane in order to live there among men as a model, an ideal, an example to humanity of the development of these qualities.

[ 28 ] Naturally, many intermediate stages are necessary before an advance from the stage of Bodhisattva to that of Buddha can be accomplished in this sense. Such an advance does not take place from one day to the next.

Buddha felt impelled to leave the palace. The story is that on one occasion he escaped from his royal prison and came across an aged man. Hitherto he had been surrounded only by the spectacle of exuberant youth, in order to induce him to believe that nothing else existed. Now, in the old man, he encountered the phenomenon of advanced age on the physical plane. Then he came across a sick man; then he saw a corpse—the manifestation of death on the physical plane. All this came before him. [ 29 ] The legend—here once again truer than any external account—goes on to relate something very indicative of Buddha's essential nature: that when he left the palace, the horse by which he was drawn was so saddened by his decision to forsake everything that had surrounded him since his birth that it died of grief and was transported as a spiritual being into the spiritual world.²—A profound truth is expressed here. It would lead too far for me to explain why a horse is taken as a symbol for a spiritual power of man. I will only remind you of Plato, who speaks of a horse led by a bridle when he is using a symbol for certain human capacities that are still bestowed from above and have not been developed by man from his own inmost self. When Buddha departed from the palace he relinquished these faculties, left them in the spiritual world whence they had always guided him. This is indicated in the picture of the horse which dies of grief and is transported into the spiritual world. [ 30 ] But it was only gradually that Buddha could attain the rank he was destined to reach in his final incarnation on the Earth. He had first to learn on the physical plane everything that as Bodhisattva he had known only through spiritual vision.

To begin with he encountered two teachers, the one an exponent of the ancient Indian world-conception known as the Sankhya philosophy, the other an exponent of the Yoga philosophy. Buddha steeped himself in what they expounded to him. No matter how exalted a being may be, he has to become acquainted with the external achievements of humanity and although a Bodhisattva may learn more quickly, he must learn none the less. If the Bodhisattva who lived six hundred years before our era were born to-day, he would still, like a child at school, first have to learn about happenings on Earth while he was still in spiritual heights. It was essential that Buddha too, should have knowledge of what had been accomplished since his previous incarnation.

[ 31 ] He learnt the principles of the Sankhya philosophy from the one teacher and of the Yoga philosophy from the other, thereby acquiring a certain insight into world-conceptions which solved the riddles of life for many in those days, and into their effect upon the souls of men. [ 32 ] In the Sankhya philosophy he was able to assimilate an intricate system of logical thought, but the more he familiarized himself with it, the less did it satisfy him, until finally it seemed to him to be utterly devoid of life. He realized that he must seek elsewhere than in the traditional Sankhya philosophy for the sources of what it was his task to achieve in this incarnation.

[ 33 ] The second system was the Yoga philosophy of Patanjali, which sought to establish connection with the Divine through certain processes in the life of the soul. Buddha devoted deep study to the Yoga philosophy as well; he assimilated it, made it part of his very being. But it too left him unsatisfied, for he perceived that it was something that had simply been handed down from ancient time. Human beings were meant, however, to acquire different faculties, to achieve moral development themselves. Having put the Yoga philosophy to the test in his own soul, Buddha realized that it could not satisfy the needs of his mission.

[ 34 ] He then came into the neighbourhood of five ascetics who had striven to approach the mysteries of existence by the path of severest self-discipline, mortification and privation. Having tested this path too, Buddha was again obliged to admit that it would not satisfy the needs of his mission at that time. For a certain period he underwent all the privations and mortifications practised by the monks. He starved as they did, in order to eliminate greed and thereby evoke deeper forces which come into action when the body is weakened and then, rising up from the depths of the bodily nature, can lead a man rapidly into the spiritual world. But the stage of development he had reached enabled Buddha to perceive the futility of this mortification, fasting and starvation. Because he was a Bodhisattva, his development in previous incarnations had enabled him to bring the physical body to the highest pitch of perfection possible in that age. Hence he could experience what any man must experience when he takes this particular path into the spiritual world. [ 35 ] Whoever pursues the Sankhya or Yoga philosophy to a certain point without having developed in himself what Buddha had previously acquired, whoever aspires to scale the pure heights of Divine Spirit through logical thinking without having first gained the requisite moral strength, will be subjected to temptation by the demon Mara. This ordeal was undergone by Buddha as a test. At this point the human being is beset by all the devils of pride, vanity and ambition, as was Buddha when Mara stood before him. But having previously reached the lofty stage of Bodhisattva, he recognized the demon and was proof against him. Buddha could say to himself: If men continue to develop along the old path, without the new impulse contained in the teaching of compassion and love, they are bound, not being Bodhisattvas, to fall prey to the demon Mara, who pours all the forces of pride and vanity into their souls.

This was what Buddha experienced when he had worked through the Sankhya and Yoga philosophies, following them to their final conclusions. [ 36 ] While he was with the monks, however, he had had an experience in which the demon assumed a different form, one in which he arrays before the human being an abundance of external, physical possessions—‘the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them’—in order to divert him from the spiritual world. Buddha found that this temptation comes precisely on the path of mortification, for the demon Mara approached him, saying: ‘Be not misled into abandoning everything that was yours as a king's son; return to the royal palace!’ Another man would have yielded to what was then presented to him, but Buddha's development was such that he could see through the tempter and his aim, could perceive what would befall humanity if men lived on as hitherto and chose the path of hunger and mortification as the only means of ascent into the spiritual world. Being himself proof against this temptation he could disclose to men the great danger that would threaten them if they chose to penetrate into the spiritual world simply by means of fasting and external measures of the kind, without the foundation of an active moral sense.

[ 37 ] Thus while still a Bodhisattva, Buddha had advanced to those two boundary-points in development which a man who is not a Bodhisattva had better avoid altogether. Translating this into words of ordinary parlance, we may say: ‘The highest knowledge is full of glory and of beauty. But see that you approach this knowledge with a clean heart, noble purpose and purified soul—otherwise the devil of pride, vanity and ambition will seize you!’ The second teaching is this: ‘Strive not to enter the spiritual world by any external path, through mortification or fasting, until you have purified your moral sense—otherwise the tempter will approach you from the other side!’—These are the two teachings whose light shines from Buddha into our own age. While still a Bodhisattva he revealed the essential purpose of his mission—which was to impart the moral sense to humanity in an age when men were not yet capable of unfolding it out of their own hearts. Thus when he realized the dangers of asceticism for mankind he left the five monks and went to a place where, by an intense deepening of those faculties of human nature which can be developed without the old clairvoyance, without any capacity inherited from earlier times, he achieved the highest perfection that it will ever be possible for mankind to achieve by means of these faculties.

[ 38 ] In the twenty-ninth year of his life, after having abandoned the path of asceticism, there dawned upon Buddha during his seven days of meditation under the ‘Bodhi-tree’ the great Truths that can flash up in a man when, in deep contemplation, he strives to discover what his own faculties can impart to him. There dawned upon Buddha the great teachings he then proclaimed as the Four Truths and the doctrine of compassion and love presented as the Eightfold Path. We shall be considering these teachings of Buddha later on. At the moment it will be sufficient to say that they are a kind of portrayal of the moral sense and of the purest doctrine of compassion and love. They arose when, under the ‘Bodhi-tree’, the Bodhisattva of India became Buddha. The teaching of compassion and love came into existence then for the first time in the history of mankind in the form of human faculties which man has since been able to develop from his own very self. That is the essential point. Therefore shortly before his death Buddha said to his disciples: ‘Grieve not that the Master is departing. I am leaving with you the Law of Wisdom and the Law of Discipline. For the future they will serve as substitutes for the Master.’ These words mean simply: Hitherto the Bodhisattva has taught you what is expressed in the Law; now, having fulfilled his incarnation on Earth, he may withdraw. For men will absorb into their own hearts the teaching of the Bodhisattva and from their own hearts will be able to develop this teaching as the religion of compassion and love. That was what came to pass in India when, after seven days of inner contemplation, the Bodhisattva became Buddha; and that was what he taught in diverse forms to the pupils who were around him. The actual forms in which he gave his teaching will still have to be considered.

[ 39 ] It was necessary for us to-day to look back to what happened six hundred years before our era because we shall neither understand the path of Christianity nor what is indicated about that path, above all by the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke, unless we follow evolution backwards from the events in Palestine to the Sermon at Benares. Since Buddha attained that rank there was no need for him to return to the Earth; since then he has been a spiritual Being, living in the spiritual world and participating in everything that has transpired on Earth. When the greatest of all happenings on the Earth was about to come to pass, there appeared to the shepherds in the fields a Being from spiritual heights who made the proclamation recorded in the Gospel of St. Luke. Then, together with the Angel, there suddenly appeared a ‘heavenly host’. The ‘heavenly host’ was the picture of the glorified Buddha, seen by the shepherds in vision; he was the Bodhisattva of ancient times, the Being in his spiritual form who for thousands and thousands of years had brought to men the message of compassion and love. Now, after his last incarnation on the Earth, he soared in spiritual heights and appeared to the shepherds together with the Angel who had announced to them the Event of Palestine.

[ 41 ] These are the findings of spiritual investigation. It was the Bodhisattva of old who now, in the glory of Buddhahood, appeared to the shepherds. From the Akashic Chronicle we learn that in Palestine, in the ‘City of David’, a child was born to parents descended from the priestly line of the House of David. This child—I say it with emphasis—born of parents of whom the father at any rate was descended from the priestly line of the House of David, was to be shone upon from the very day of birth by the power radiating from Buddha in the spiritual world. [ 42 ] We look with the shepherds into the manger where ‘Jesus of Nazareth’, as he is usually called, was born, and see the radiance above the little child; we know that in this picture is expressed the power of the Bodhisattva who became Buddha—the power that had formerly streamed to men and, working now upon humanity from the spiritual world, accomplished its greatest deed by shedding its lustre upon the child born at Bethlehem.

[ 42 ] When the Individuality whose power now rayed down from spiritual heights upon the child of parents belonging to David's line was born in India long ago—when the Buddha to be was born as Bodhisattva—the whole momentous significance of the events described to-day was revealed to a sage living at that time, and what he beheld in the spiritual world caused that sage—Asita was his name—to go to the royal palace to look for the little Bodhisattva-child. When he saw the babe he foretold his mighty mission as Buddha, predicting, to the father's dismay, that the child would not rule over his kingdom, but would become a Buddha. Then Asita began to weep, and when asked whether misfortune threatened the child, he answered: ‘No, I am weeping because I am so old that I shall not live to see the day when this Saviour, the Bodhisattva, will walk the Earth as Buddha!’ Asita did not live to see the Bodhisattva become Buddha and there was good reason for his grief at that time. But the same Asita who had seen the Bodhisattva as a babe in the palace of King Suddhodana, was born again as the personality who, in the Gospel of St. Luke, is referred to as Simeon in the scene of the presentation in the temple. We are told that Simeon was inspired by the Spirit to go into the temple where the child was brought to him (Luke II, 25–32). Simeon was the same being who, as Asita, had wept because in that incarnation he would not be able to see the Bodhisattva attaining Buddhahood. But it was granted to him to witness the further stage in the development of this Individuality, and having ‘the Holy Spirit upon him’ he was able to perceive, at the presentation in the temple, the radiance of the glorified Bodhisattva above the head of the Jesus-child of the House of David. Then he could say to himself: ‘Now you need no longer grieve, for what you did not live to see at that earlier time, you now behold: the glory of the Saviour shining above this babe. Lord, now let thy servant die in peace!’

• 1. These lectures-courses were given in April 1909, and August 1909, respectively. Both have been translated into English.
• 2. See Buddhism in Translation, by Henry Clarke Warren (Harvard Oriental Series, Vol. III, second issue). This legend is given in great detail in the chapter entitled The Great Retirement, pp. 56–67. Difficult passages referring to "Kanthaka the king of horses" become intelligible in the light of what Dr. Steiner says here. According to the legend, Kanthaka came into existence “at the very time that the future Buddha was born” and died of a broken heart at the final parting from his master, thereupon to be reborn in heaven as the "God Kanthaka".