The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Today it is my task to speak about a topic that has millions of enthusiastic followers in the world, on one side, that has found the most violent adversaries, on the other side, not only adversaries who combat this field of the so-called spiritism the sharpest, but also those who ridicule it who lump together it with the darkest superstition or what they call dark superstition; adversaries who want to ignore it only with empty words of joke and scorn.

It may be not easy to speak just in our present about such a topic where as a rule with the “pros and cons” the most violent passions are aroused straight away. I would like to ask those listeners among you who may be enthusiastic followers of spiritism not to roundly condemn me immediately, if to you any of my explanations seems to correspond not completely to your views, because we representatives of theosophy, nevertheless, are combined with the spiritists in one matter in any case: we have the intention to investigate the higher spiritual worlds, those worlds which are beyond the everyday sense-perception. We are in agreement on that. However, on the other side, I would like to ask the scientists also to realise that that movement in whose name I myself speak has not chosen the slogan only like a signboard, as a phrase, but in the most serious sense of the word: no human opinion is higher than truth.—I would also like to ask the scientist to keep in mind that he may take into consideration that the views of science were subjected to change in the course of times, and that is why the scientific views of today cannot be regarded as being fixed.

Let me now outline the development of the spiritistic movement without taking sides, because no human opinion is higher than truth.

I would like to emphasise above all that the founders of the theosophical movement, Mrs. Helena Petrowna Blavatsky, and the great organiser, Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, went out from the spiritistic movement. They were experts of the spiritistic movement and turned to the theosophical movement only, after they had vigorously searched for truth before within the spiritistic movement, but had not found it.

Theosophy does not want to combat spiritism, but to search for truth where it is to be found.

I would like to emphasise something else that will surprise some of you, however, that will not at all surprise others who are in the know. Allow me to express it: you can never hear the last word about spiritism and similar matters from people like me who are forced to speak about that. You know that there is in any science a rule which is simply justified by the scientific methods, and the rule is that one shows the results of science before a bigger audience in popular way. If one wants to do more intimate acquaintance with these results, if one wants to get to know the more intimate truth, then a longer way is necessary: a way using the different methods in any detail. As a rule the researchers are not able to report in popular talks what takes place inside of the laboratories, of the observatories. That applies to the physical science. On the other side, in the great spiritual movements of the world somebody who is reasonable and allowed to express the words with regard to the spiritual views has to withhold the last word because the last words are still of quite different kind. They are of such a kind that they can hardly be discussed publicly. That is why you can never hear the very last word of this matter from an occultist—unless you are able and want to go his ways most intimately. But to those who are in the know of the matter something becomes clear from the way how a matter is said, what is said not only between the lines, but perhaps also between the words.

After this introduction I would like to move on the topic which certainly has a tremendous cultural-historical significance even for somebody who wants to make it ridiculous. I would like to speak about the matter in a sense which really throws light from this point of view: what does spiritism search for today? Does it search for something new, or is it something ancient that it searches? Are the ways on which it looks absolutely novel, or has humankind gone on them since centuries or even since millennia?—If anybody puts these questions to himself, he reaches his goal concerning the history of spiritism the fastest. What the spiritists search for is at first the knowledge of those worlds which are beyond our sensory world, and secondly the significance of these worlds for the goal, for the determination of our human race.

If we ask ourselves: were these problems not the tasks of humankind, since it strives on our earth and wants anything?—Then we must say to ourselves: yes. And because they are certainly the highest tasks, it would already appear as something absurd from the beginning if in the world history something absolutely new had appeared with regard to these questions. It seems if we look around in the old and new spiritistic movements, as if we deal with something absolutely new. The strongest adversaries refer to the fact that it has brought something absolutely new into the world, and other adversaries say that the human beings had never needed to combat this movement like nowadays. There a change must have happened in humankind with regard to the way to look at the case. This is illuminated to us like lightning if we get clear in our mind that humankind has behaved in three different ways to the questions which we call spiritistic today.

There we have one way which we can find in the whole antiquity, a way which changes only in the Christian times. Then we have the second way to position ourselves to these questions, the whole Middle Ages through, till the 17th century. Only in the 17th century spiritism basically starts taking on a certain form that one can rightly call spiritism today.

The questions that the spiritist wants to answer today were the object of the so-called mysteries the whole antiquity through. I try only to characterise with few lines what one has to understand by mysteries. It was not the custom in antiquity to announce wisdom publicly. One had another view of wisdom and truth. One believed the whole antiquity through that it is necessary to train super-sensible organs to the knowledge of the super-sensible truth at first. One realised the fact that in every human being spiritual forces slumber which are not developed with the average human being, that spiritual forces slumber in the human nature which one can wake and develop by means of long exercises, through steps of development, which the disciples of the mysteries describe as very difficult. If the neophyte had developed such forces in him and had become a researcher of truth, one was of the opinion that he is to the average human being in such a way as a sighted is to a blind-born. This was also the goal within the holy mysteries. One aimed to achieve something similar in the spiritual field as today the doctor aims to achieve with the blind-born if he operates him that he becomes sighted. One was clear about the fact that—like with a blind-born who is operated the colours of the light and the forms of the things appear—a new world appears to somebody whose internal senses are woken, a world which the everyday reason cannot perceive. Thus the follower of the mysteries tried to develop a human being of lower level to one of higher level, to an initiate. Only the initiate should be able to recognise something of the super-sensible truth by immediate beholding, by spiritual intuition. The big mass of human beings could get the truth by means of pictures. The myths of antiquity, the legends about gods and world origin, which simply appear today—indeed, in certain sense rightly—as childish views of humankind, they are nothing but disguises of the super-sensible truth. The initiate informed people in pictures of that which he could behold within the temple mysteries. The whole Eastern mythology, the Greek and Roman mythologies, the Germanic mythology and the mythologies of the savage peoples are nothing but metaphorical, symbolic representations of the super-sensible truth. Of course, only somebody can completely understand this who occupies himself not in such a way as anthropology and ethnology do it but also with their spirit. He sees that a myth like the Hercules legend shows a deep inner truth; he sees that the conquest of the Golden Fleece by Jason shows a deep and true knowledge.

Then another way came with our calendar. I can indicate only roughly what I have to say. A certain basis of higher, spiritual truth was determined and made the object of the confessions, in particular of the Christian. And now this basis of spiritual truth was removed from any human research, from the immediate human striving. Those who studied the history of the Council of Nicaea know what I mean, and also those who understand the words of St. Augustine who says there: I would not believe in the truth of the divine revelation unless the authority of the church forces me.—Faith that determines a certain basis of the truth replaces the old mystery truth which retains it in pictures. Then follows the epoch when the big mass is no longer informed about the truth of the super-sensible world in pictures, but simply by authority. This is the second way how the big mass and those who had to lead them behaved to the highest truth. The mysteries provided it to the big mass on account of experience; it was provided by faith and fixed by authority in the Middle Ages.

But beside those who had the task to retain the big mass by faith and authority were also those in the 12th and 13th centuries—they existed at all times, but they did not appear publicly—who wanted to develop by immediate own beholding to the highest truth. These searched for it on the same ways on which it had been searched for within the mysteries. That is why we find in mediaeval times beside those who are only priests, also the mystics, theosophists and occultists, those who talk in an almost incomprehensible language hard to be understood by modern materialists and rationalists. We find people who had reached the secrets on the ways which avoid the senses. In an even more incomprehensible language those people spoke who had the guidance of the spirit as mystery priests. So we hear from one that he had the ability to send his thoughts miles away; another boasted that he could transform the whole sea into gold if it was permitted. Another says that he could construct a vehicle with which he would be able to move through the air.

There were times when people did not know how to do with such sayings, because they had no notion of how they were to be understood. Moreover, prejudices flourished against such a kind of investigation since the oldest times. That becomes clear to us at once where these prejudices came from. When in the first centuries of our calendar the Christian culture spread over the countries of the Mediterranean Sea, it appeared that the cult actions and the ceremonies of Christianity and also most of Christian dogmas agreed with ancient pagan traditions, and were not so different—even if in a watered way—from that which had took place in the old pagan Mithras temples. There said those who had the task to defend the reputation of the church: bad spirits gave the pagans these views; they aped within the pagan world what God revealed to the Christian church.—However, it is an odd imitation which leads the way of the original! The whole Christianity was aped in the pagan mysteries—if we apply the word of the accusers, what the church has later found! It is comprehensible that every other way than that of the authoritative Christian faith, as Augustine characterised it, was wrong and in the course of time it was regarded as such which was not given by good powers; since the church had to provide the good powers.

Thus these traditions continued through the whole Middle Ages. Those who wanted to come on their own ways, independently to the highest super-sensible truth were regarded as magicians, as allies of the bad or of the bad spirits. The mark stone is the Faust legend. Faust is the representative of those who want to get by own knowledge to the secrets. Hence, the bad powers must have captivated him. One should only do research in the writings handed down from earlier times, only the trust in authority should lead to the super-sensible powers. In spite of that, initiated minds realised—even if they were defamed as magicians and were prosecuted—that the time must come again when one has to progress to truth on own, human ways.

Thus we see occult brotherhoods originating in Europe from the middle of the Middle Ages on which led their members on the same ways as the old mysteries had done this to the development of higher intuitive forces. So that within such occult brotherhoods the way to the highest truth was taken like in the mysteries—I mention only that of the Rosicrucians, the deepest and most significant one, founded by Christian Rosenkreutz. This way can be investigated strictly historically till the 18th century. I cannot explain in detail how this happened; I can only give one example, the great representative of the occult science of the 16th and 17th centuries, Robert Fludd. He shows for those who have insight into these fields in all his writings that he knows the ways how to get to truth that he knows how to develop such forces that are of quite different kind than the forces in us which see any body of light before themselves. He shows that there are mysterious ways to get to the highest truth. He also speaks of the Rosicrucian Society in such a way that the relationship is clear to any initiate.

I would like to present three questions only to you to show you how these questions were discussed in veiled form at that time. He says of them that everybody who has arrived at the lowest level must be able to answer them with understanding. These questions and also their answers may appear quite futile to the rationalists and materialists. The first question which anybody must answer who wants to rise in worthy way to higher spiritual spheres is: where do you live?—The answer is: I live in the temple of wisdom, on the mountain of reason.—Understanding this sentence really, experiencing it internally means already to have opened certain inner senses.

The second sentence was: where truth comes from to you?—The answer is: it comes to me from the creative , and now there comes a word which cannot be translated at all into German: from the highest ..., mighty all-embracing spirit who has spoken through Solomon and wants to inform me about alchemy, magic and the kabala ...—This was the second question.

The third question is: what do you want to build?—The answer is: I want to build a temple like the tabernacle, like Solomon's temple, like the body of Christ and ... like something else that one does not pronounce.

You see—I cannot go into these questions further—that one veiled the super-sensible truth in a mysterious darkness for all non-initiates in such brotherhoods, and that the non-initiate should make himself worthy at first and had to get to a moral and intellectual summit. Somebody who had not stood the trials who did not have the force in himself to find the experiences inside was not judged as worthy, was not admitted to the initiation. One considered it as dangerous to know this truth. One knew that knowledge is connected with a tremendous power, with a power as the average human being does not suspect at all. Only somebody is able to possess this truth and power without any danger for humankind who has got to that moral and intellectual height. Otherwise one said: without having reached this height he behaves with this truth and power like a child that is sent with matches into a powder magazine.

Now one was of the opinion in these times that only somebody who is in the possession of the highest super-sensible truth can explain the phenomena as they are told everywhere and since millennia in a popular way—phenomena which the modern spiritism shows again. The matters were nothing new but something ancient that spiritism recognises today. In ancient times one spoke about the fact that the human being can have such an effect on the human beings as it is not the case, otherwise: certain human beings cause that knocking sounds are to be heard in their surroundings that objects move, contrary to the laws of gravitation, with or without touch that objects fly through the air without applying any physical force et cetera. Since the oldest times one knew that there are human beings who can be transported into certain states, today we call these states trance states, in which they speak about things about which they can never speak in the waking consciousness that they also tell about other worlds not belonging to our sense-perceptible world. One knew that there are human beings who communicate by signs about that which they see in such super-sensible worlds. One also knew that there are human beings who are able to see events which are far away from them and also to report about that; human beings who could foresee and forecast future events with the help of their prophetic gift. All that—we do not verify it today—is an ancient tradition. Those who believe to be able to accept it as truth consider it as something natural. Such not physical, not sense-perceptible phenomena were regarded as true through the whole Middle Ages. Indeed, they were considered by the church of the Middle Ages in such a way, as if they were caused by means of bad skills, but this should not touch us. In any case, the way to the super-sensible world was not searched for on the way of these phenomena in the time of the 17th and 18th centuries. Nobody claimed till those times that a dancing table, an anyhow appearing ghost which is seen with eyes or in any way in trance could reveal anything of a super-sensible world. Even if anybody told that he saw a blaze in Hanover from here, one believed it; but nobody saw anything in it that could seriously give information about the super-sensible world. Reasonable people considered it as a matter of course that one could not look for the super-sensible world that way. Those who wanted to get to super-sensible perception searched for it by developing inner forces in the occult brotherhoods.

Then another time came in the development of the West, in which one started looking for truth scientifically. There came the Copernican world view and the researches of physiology; technology, the discoveries of the blood circulation, of the ovum et cetera. One attained insights into nature with the senses. Somebody who does not approach the Middle Ages with prejudices but wants to get to know the world view of the Middle Ages in its true form, convinces himself soon that this medieval thinking did not imagine heaven and hell as localities in space, but that they were something spiritual to it. In mediaeval times no reasonable human being thought to advocate that world view which one attributes to the medieval scholars today. Copernicanism is nothing new in this sense. It is new in another sense; in the sense that since the 16th century sense-perception became decisive for truth; what one can see what one can perceive with the senses. The world view of the Middle Ages was not wrong as one often shows it today, but it was only a view which was not got with bodily eyes. The bodily sensualisation was a symbol of something spiritual. Also Dante did not imagine his hell and his heaven in the earthly sense; they were to be understood spiritually.

One broke with this point of view. The real psychologist of the human development finds out this. The sensuous was raised, and now sensuality conquered the world gradually. However, the human being got used to it without noticing it. Only the searching psychologist rushing behind the development is able to make a picture of it. The human being gets used to such changes. With his feeling, with his senses he looks at everything, and accepts the sensuous only as true. Without knowing it, people considered as a principle of the human nature to accept only what they can see in any way of what they can convince themselves by sensory inspection. People did not think much of such circles that spoke of an initiation and led to super-sensible truth on occult ways; everything had to be sensually shown.

What about the super-sensible view of the world? How could one find the super-sensible in the world in which one wanted to seek for truth only in the sensory effects? There were rare, so-called abnormal phenomena which were not explicable by means of natural forces known till then; phenomena that the physicist, the naturalist could not explain, and which one simply denied because one wanted to accept the sensually explicable only. There were these phenomena which were handed down through millennia to which the human being sought refuge now: now one went to them. Simultaneously with the urge to keep only to the sense-perceptible appearance the urge for the super-sensible resorted to such phenomena. One wanted to know what scientific criticism could not explain; one wanted to know how it is. When one started searching for evidences of another world in these matters, the birth of modern spiritism took place. We can give the hour of birth and the place where it happened. It was in 1716; there a book was published by a member of the Royal Society, a description of the western islands of Scotland. Everything was collected in it that was to be found out about the “second sight.” This is that which one cannot perceive with the usual eyes, but what one could find out only by super-sensible research. Here you have the precursor of everything that was later done by the so-called scientific side to the investigation of the spiritistic phenomena.

Now we also stand already at the gate of the whole spiritistic movement of the newer time. That person from whom the whole spiritistic movement started is one of the strangest of the world: Swedenborg. He influenced the whole 18th century. Even Kant argued with him. A person who could bring to life the modern spiritistic movement had to be disposed like Swedenborg. He was born in 1688 and died in 1772. In the first half of his life he was a naturalist who stood at the head of the natural sciences of his time. He encompassed them. Nobody has a right to attack Swedenborg as an illiterate man. We know that he was not only a perfect expert of his time, but he also anticipated a lot of scientific truths that one discovered on the universities only later. So he stood in the first half of his life not only completely on the scientific point of view which wanted to investigate everything by the appearance to the senses and by mathematical calculations, but he also was far ahead of his time in this regard. Then he completely turned to that which one calls visionariness. What Swedenborg experienced—you may call him a seer or visionary—was a particular class of phenomena. Somebody who is only somewhat initiated in these fields knows that Swedenborg could only experience this class of phenomena.

I only give a few examples. Swedenborg saw a conflagration in Stockholm from a place which was removed sixty miles from Stockholm. He informed the guests, with who he was in a soirée, about this event, and after some time one heard that the fire had happened in such a way as Swedenborg had told it. Another example: a high-ranking person asked for a secret which a brother had not completely told before his death because he died before. The person turned to Swedenborg with the strange demand whether he could not discover him and ask what he wanted to say. Swedenborg ridded himself of the order in such a way that the person in question could have no doubt that Swedenborg had penetrated into this secret.

Still the third example to show how Swedenborg moved within the super-sensible world. A scholar and friend visited Swedenborg. The servant said to him: you have to wait for some time, please. The scholar sat down and heard a discussion in the next room. However, he heard always only Swedenborg speaking; he did not hear answering. The case became even more noticeable to him when he heard the discussion taking place in wonderful classical Latin, and particularly when he heard him intimately talking about states of the emperor Augustus. Then Swedenborg went to the door, bowed before somebody and spoke with him but the friend could not see the visitor at all. Then Swedenborg came back and said to the friend: excuse that I let you wait. I had lofty visit—Virgil visited me.

People may think about such matters as they want. However, one thing is certain: Swedenborg believed in them, regarded them as reality. I said: only a person like Swedenborg could get to such a kind of research. Just the fact that he was expert naturalist of his time led him to this view of the super-sensible nature. He was a man who got used to accepting nothing but the sensuous, the sense-perceptible in the time of the dawning natural sciences. Everybody knows it who knows him; the reasons become clear in the talk which I hold next time here about the topic “Hypnotism and Somnambulism”—and that is why he also depended on it as such a man who sees the spiritual in the world. As well as he insisted to recognise only as right what he could calculate and perceive with senses, the super-sensible was brought by him into the shape which it had to have for him; the super-sensible world was pulled down to a deeper sphere under the influence of the ways of thinking of natural sciences. Because it approaches us in such way like the views of the sensory world, I cited the reasons. We hear next time how such a thing comes about. However, the preconditions are given by the own spiritual development of the human beings who got used to the sense-perceptible.

I do not want to speak now about the significance and core of truth of Swedenborg’s visions, but about the fact that somebody sees—as soon as he enters this field which forms the basis of Swedenborg's views—his dispositions in this area, what he has developed in himself. A proof of it may be a simple example.

When the wave of spiritism spread in the second half of the 19th century, one also made experiments in Bavaria. It became apparent there that with the experiments at which also scholars were present and took place at different places quite different spiritual manifestations happened. In such an event one asked whether the human soul is received via heredity from the parents, so that also the soul is hereditary, or whether it is made new with every human being. In this spiritistic séance it was answered: the souls are made new. Almost at the same time the same question was put in another séance. The answer was: the soul is not created, but is passed on from the parents to the children.—One thought that at one séance followers of the so-called creation theory were, and at the other séance some scholars were present who were followers of the other theory. In the sense of the thoughts which lived in them the answers were given. Whichever facts may be there, whichever reasons of these facts may be there, it became clear that the human being receives as a manifestation what corresponds to his view. It is irrelevant whether it faces him only as an intellectual manifestation or as a vision; what the human being sees is founded in his own dispositions.

This search for sensuous-extrasensory proofs became just a child of the natural sciences of the materialistic time. The principle was actually drawn up that one had to seek for the extrasensory world as one had to seek for the sensuous one. Just as somebody convinces himself in the laboratory of the reality of forces of magnetism or light, one wanted to convince oneself of the super-sensible world by the appearance to the senses. People had forgotten how to behold the spiritual in purely spiritual way. They had forgotten how to develop the belief in super-sensible forces and how to learn to recognise what is neither sensuous nor analogous to the sensuous, but what can be seized only by spiritual intuition. They had got to be used to get everything on the sensory way, and that is why they also wanted to get these matters on the sensory way. Research moved on this way. Thus we see Swedenborg’s direction going on. What appears offers nothing new to us; spiritism offers nothing new! We take an overview of this later and understand it then also better.

All the phenomena which spiritism knows were explained that way. There we see the South German Oetinger who elaborated the theory that there is a super-sensible substance which can be seen as a physical phenomenon. Only, he says, the super-sensible matter does not have the raw qualities of the physical matter, not the impenetrable resistance and the row mixture. Here we have the substance from which the materialisations are taken.

Another researcher of this field is Johann Heinrich Jung called Stilling who published a detailed report on spirits and apparitions of spirits and described all these matters. He tried there to understand everything in such a way that he did justice to these phenomena as a religious Christian. Because he had tendencies to be a religious Christian, the whole world seemed to him to manifest nothing but the truth of the Christian teaching. Because at the same time natural sciences made claims, we see a mixture of the purely Christian standpoint with the standpoint of natural sciences in his representation. Esotericism explains the phenomena by the intrusion of a spiritual world into our world.

You see all these phenomena registered in the works of those who wrote about spiritism, demonology, magic et cetera in which you can also find something that goes beyond spiritism, like with Ennemoser, for instance. We see even carefully registered how a person can enable himself to perceive the thoughts of others who are in distant rooms. You find such instructions with Ennemoser, also with others. Already in the 19th century you find with a certain Meyer who wrote a book about the Hades from spiritistic standpoint as a manifestation of spiritistic manipulations and stood up for the so-called reincarnation theory. You find a theory there to which theosophy has led us again, and which shows us that the old fairy tales are expressions of the higher truth prepared for the people. Meyer got this view on account of sensuous demonstrations.

We find all the spiritistic phenomena with Justinus Kerner. They are significant because of the moral weight of the author. There we find, for example, that near the seeress of Prevorst things—spoons et cetera—are repelled by her; it is also told that this seeress communicated with beings of other worlds. Justinus Kerner registered all the communications which he got from her. She informed him that she saw beings of other worlds which went through her, indeed, but which she could perceive and that she could even behold such beings which came in along with other people. Some people may say about these matters: Kerner fantasised and was fooled a lot by his seeress. However, I would like to say one thing: you know David Friedrich Strauss who was friendly with Justinus Kerner. He knew how it stood with the seeress of Prevorst. You also know that that which he performed goes in a direction which runs against the spiritistic current. He says that the facts of which the seeress of Prevorst reports are true as facts—about that cannot be discussed with those who know something about it, he considered the matters as being beyond any doubt.

Even if a bigger number of human beings existed who were still interested somewhat in such things, the interest decreased, nevertheless, more and more. This could be led back to the influence of science. It refused to look at such phenomena as true manifestations in the time of the forties when the law of energy conservation was discovered forming the basis of our physics when the cell theory was drawn up when Darwinism prepared. What came up in this time could not be favourable to the pneumatologists. Hence, they were strictly rejected. That is why one forgot everything that these had to say.

Then an event took place which meant a victory for spiritism. The event did not happen in Europe, but in the country where materialism celebrated the biggest triumphs in that time where one had made oneself used to consider only as true what hands can seize. This happened in America, in the country where the materialistic way of thinking intimated by me had strongly developed. It went out from the phenomena which belong in the broadest sense to those which one has to call abnormal but sensual. The well-known knocking sounds, the phenomena of moving tables and the knocking through them, the audibility of certain voices which sounded through the air accompanied by intelligent manifestations for which no sensuous reason existed—they pointed to the super-sensible so clearly in America, in the country where one attaches much value to the outer appearance. Like by storm the view gained recognition that there is a super-sensible world that beings which do not belong to our world manifest themselves in our sensory world. Like a storm this went through the world.

A man, Andrew Jackson Davis, who concerned himself with these phenomena, was called upon for explaining these matters. He was, in similar way as Swedenborg, a seer; he only did not have the deepness of Swedenborg. He was an unlearned American grown up as a farmer boy and Swedenborg was a learnt Swede. He wrote a book in 1848 (?): The Philosophy of Spiritual Intercourse. This work arose from the most modern needs which had originated within the modern battle in which one wanted to accept the sensuous only in which everybody wanted to put his personal egoism forward, in which everybody wanted to grab so much to himself, wanted to become as happy as he only was able to. In this world one was no longer able to have sense for a faith which leads beyond the sensuous world, according to the ways of thinking which were tied to the material only. One wanted to see and one wanted to have such a faith which satisfies the needs and desires of modern humankind. Above all Davis says plainly that modern people cannot believe that a quantity of human beings is blessed, another quantity condemned. It was this what the modern could not stand; there an idea of development had to intervene. Davis was informed of a truth which shows an exact image of the sensuous world. It may be characterised by an example. When his first wife had died, he had the idea to marry a second wife. However, he had doubt, but a super-sensible manifestation caused that he gave himself the permission. In this manifestation his first wife said to him that she had married in the sun-land again; that is why he felt to have the right also to marry a second time. In the beginning of the first part of his book he informs us that he was educated as a farmer boy like a Christian, but he realised soon that the Christian faith can deliver no conviction, because the modern human being must understand the what, the why and the where to of the way.

I was sent out—he tells—to the field by my parents. There came a snake. I attacked it with the hayfork. But the tooth broke off. I took the tooth and prayed. I was convinced that the prayer must help. But ... [gap in the transcript]. How can I believe in a God who allows that I experience such a thing? He said to himself. He became an unbeliever. By the spiritistic séances in which he took part he got the ability of trance and became one of the most fertile spiritistic writers. He emphasises that the appearance of that world is approximately the same as that of the sensory world. It would be an unbelief that a good father does not care for his children, because the father makes long journeys for this purpose et cetera.

You see that the earthly world is transferred to the other world. Therefore, this way of thinking spread like a wildfire all over the world. In short time one could count millions of followers of spiritism. Already in 1850 one could find thousands of media in Boston, and one could also pay 400,000 $ in short time to construct a spiritistic temple. You will not deny that that has a great cultural-historical significance. However, with regard to the modern way of thinking this movement had only prospects of success if science took hold of it, that means if science believed in it.

If I held a lecture about theosophy, I could speak in detail of the fact that still quite different powers stand behind the staging of the spiritistic phenomena. Behind the scenery deep occult powers are at work. But this cannot be my task today. I tell another time who is, actually, the true director of these phenomena. But this is certain: if this occult director wanted to presuppose that these phenomena convinced the materialistically minded humankind of the existence of a super-sensible world thoroughly if it should believe in it in the long run, the scientific circles had to be conquered. These scientific circles were not so hard to conquer. Just among the most reasonable, among those who could think thoroughly and logically were many who turned to the spiritistic movement. These were in America Lincoln, Edison, in England Gladstone, the naturalist Wallace, the mathematician Morgan. Also in Germany was a big number of excellent scholars, they were experts in their fields, and were convinced of the spiritistic phenomena by media, like Weber and Gustav Theodor Fechner, the founder of psychophysics. Friedrich Zöllner also belongs to them about whom only those who understand nothing of the matter can say that he became mad when he did the famous experiments with Slade. Then, however, also a personality who is yet underestimated: this is the Baron Hellenbach, deceased in 1887. He presented his experiences in spiritistic fields in his numerous books in such a brilliant way. For example, in his book about biological magnetism and in the book about the magic of figures, so that these books are true treasure troves to study which way this movement has taken—in particular in more inspired heads—in the second half of the 19th century.

A European impulse came to the American movement and this went out from a man who stood in the European culture, from a disciple of Pestalozzi, and it originated at a time which is already significant because of its other discoveries. This spirit is Allan Kardec who wrote his Spirits’ Book in 1858, in the same year in which many other works appeared epoch-making for the western education in different fields. We only have to call some of the works to indicate the significance of the mental life in this time. One is Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection; the other is a basic work about the psycho-physical field by Fechner. The third one is a work of Bunsen which familiarises us with spectral analysis and which gives the possibility to discover something of the material composition of the stars for the first time. The fourth one was the work of Karl Marx: The Capital. The fifth one was a work of Kardec, a spiritistic work, but of quite different kind as the American works. He represented the idea of reincarnation, the re-embodiment of the human soul. This French spiritism had as numerous supporters as the American one in short time. It spread over France, Spain and especially also over Austria. It was completely in accord with the ancient teachings of wisdom of theosophy. Also spirits like Hellenbach, an Austrian politician, could accept it. He represented the scientific form of spiritism Kardec had founded. Hellenbach played a prominent role in important political matters of Austria in the sixties and seventies of the last century and proved to be a clear and keen thinker at every step. Spiritism got a scientific form in Germany that way. Also such spirits founded the scientific spiritism in Germany who did not want to speak like Hellenbach or Gladstone, Wallace, Crookes who assumed angelic spirits of the old Christendom but who wanted only to speak about the reincarnation of the human being and the intrusion of beings unknown to us whose forms Hellenbach leaves open. But also those who generally do not want to know anything about a yonder world were no longer able to not accept the facts as such. Even people like Eduard von Hartmann who wanted to know nothing about the theories of the spiritists, however, said that the facts could not be denied. They let themselves not be swayed during the period of the exposures. The most famous one was that of the medium Bastian by the Crown Prince Rudolf and the archduke Johann of Austria. The media, which had convinced our scientific circles, were exposed with the medium Bastian. Everybody who simply has some insight in this field knows that Hellenbach is right when he says: nobody will claim that there are no wigs. Should one also believe that there is no real hair because one has discovered wigs?—To somebody who works in occult fields the sentence applies that one can prove to many a bank that it is a corrupt bank; yes, but did not this bank do also honest banking business once? The assessment of the spiritistic truth hides behind such comparisons.

We have seen that the scientific and materialistic ways of thinking since the 18th century—we can call 1716 the natal year of spiritism—have completely adapted themselves to the modern thinking, also to the materialistic views. A new form was sought for to be able to approach the higher, super-sensible truth, and everybody who faced these facts tried to understand them in his way. The Christian faith found a confirmation of its ancient church faith; also some orthodox have accepted it to find favourable proofs of their case. Others also found confirmation from the standpoints of the material thinking which assesses everything only according to the material relations.

Also those who were thorough scientific researchers like Zöllner, Weber, Fechner and also several famous mathematicians like Simony et cetera tried to get closer to the case, while they moved from the three-dimensional on the four-dimensional. The philosophical individualists who could not believe that in the spiritual world also an individualistic development exists like in the physical one were led by means of thorough investigation to understand that the human way, this sensory way to be—to see with bodily eyes to hear with bodily ears—is only one way of many possible ways. The representatives of a super-sensible spiritism like Hellenbach found their ideas confirmed on account of the spiritistic facts. If you imagine a person who knew to deal with the peculiarities of every single medium who knew how to adapt himself to the most difficult circumstances, so that it was a relief to meet him, Hellenbach was such a man. Also those who spoke only about a psychic force of which one does not and needs not think a lot also these followers of a psychic force, like Eduard von Hartmann or also spirits like du Prel of whom I will speak next time, they all explained the facts in their ways. There were many theories, from the popular interpretations for the people who looked after the manifesting spirits, after writing media, after communications by knocking sounds et cetera, from these religious seekers in old way up to the most enlightened spirits: everybody explained these phenomena in his way. This was in the time when this lack of clarity prevailed in every field, in the time when the phenomena could no longer be denied—but the minds of the human beings proved to be absolutely incapable to do justice to the super-sensible world.

In this time the ground was prepared to a renewal of the mystic way, to a renewal of that way which was taken in former times in the occult science and in the mysteries, but in such way that it is accessible to everybody who wants to go it. The Theosophical Society was founded by Mrs. Helena Petrowna Blavatsky to open an understanding of the ways. The theosophical movement revived the investigation of wisdom as it was nurtured in the mysteries and by the Rosicrucians in mediaeval times. It wants to spread what one has searched for in recent time on other ways. It is based on the old movements, however, also on the newest researches.

Somebody who gets a better understanding of the theosophical movement will find that the way of theosophy or spiritual science which leads to the super-sensible truth is on one side really spiritual, on the other side, that it answers the questions: where does the human being come from, where does he go to, what is his vocation?

We know that one had to speak in certain way to the human beings of antiquity, in more different way to those of the Middle Ages, and again in another way to the modern human beings. The facts of theosophy are ancient. But you convince yourselves if you seek on the way of theosophy or spiritual science that it satisfies any demand of modern scientific nature if it is understood in its very own figure. He would be a bad theosophist who wanted to give up any of the scientific truths for theosophy. Knowledge on the bright, clear way of true scientific nature—yes, but no knowledge which limits itself to sensory things which limits itself to that which takes place in the human being between birth and death, but also knowledge of that which is beyond birth and death. Spiritual science cannot do this without having the authorisation of it—just within a materialistic age. It is aware that all the spiritual movements must converge at a great goal at last which the spiritists will find in spiritual science in the end. However, it searches the spiritual on other, more comprehensive ways; it knows that the spiritual is not found in the sensory world and also not by arrangements of sensory nature only, maybe by means of a beholding which is analogous to the sensory looking. It knows that there is a world of which one receives an insight only if one goes through a kind of spiritual operation which is similar to the operation of a blind-born that is made sighted. It knows that it is not right if the modern human being says: show me the super-sensible like something sensory.—It knows that the answer is: human being, rise up to the higher spheres of the spiritual world, while you yourself become more and more spiritual, so that the connection with the spiritual world is in such a way as the connection is with the sensuous world by means of your sensory eyes and ears.

Theosophy or spiritual science has that viewpoint which a believer of the Middle Ages, a deep mystic, Master Eckhart, expressed, while he characterised that the really spiritual cannot be searched for in the same way as the sensuous. In the 13th, 14th centuries, he expressed meaningfully that one cannot receive the spiritual by sensuous performances, by anything that is analogous to the sensuous. Therefore, he says the great truth leading to the super-sensible: people want to look at God with the eyes, as if they looked at a cow and loved it. They want to look at God as if He stood there and here. It is not that way. God and I are one in recognition.

We do not want to behold a higher world by means of events like knocking sounds or other sensuous arrangements. It is called a super-sensible world, indeed, but it is similar to the sensuous world round us.—Eckhart characterises such apparently super-sensible events saying: such people want to behold God as they look at a cow. However, we want to behold the spiritual developing our spiritual eyes like nature developed our bodily eyes to let us see the physical. Nature has dismissed us with outer senses to make the sensuous perceptible to us. The way, however, to develop further in the sensuous to the spiritual to be able to behold the spiritual with spiritual eyes—we ourselves have to go this spiritual way in free development, also in the sense of modern development.

Notes:

In the title of the talk, the term spiritism is used instead of the more common term spiritualism. Allan Kardec used it for the first time in his book The Spirits’ Book. Since then it is used outside the English speaking world to distinguish spiritism and spiritualism (Spiritualismus). The latter term is applied to the opposite of (philosophical, religious) materialism.

St. Augustine (354–430): Evangelio non crederem, nisi me ecclesia commoveret auctoritas (Contr. Epist. Manich., 5)

Christian Rosenkreutz (1378–1484), cf. CW 130

Andrew Jackson Davis (1826-1910) The Philosophy of Spiritual Intercourse: Being an Explanation of Modern Mysteries (1853). Davis dictated his first and most significant book in trance in 1845: The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations and a Voice to Mankind.

Robert Fludd (1574–1637), English philosopher and physician, Rosicrucian
Apologia Compendaria, Fraternitatem de Rosea Cruce … (1616)
Microcosmi Historia (1619)
Clavis Philosophiae et Alchymiae Fluddanae (1633)

Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) in his Divine Comedy

It was in 1716: M. Martin Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, London 1703
Martin Martin (?–1719), Scottish writer

Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), Swedish scientist and philosopher

Stockholm: the place from which Swedenborg saw the conflagration was Goteborg, 400 km away from Stockholm.

Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702 -1782), Swabian theologian and theosopher

Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling (1740–1817), German pietistic-mystic author

Joseph Ennemoser (1787–1854), physician and mesmerist

Johann Friedrich von Meyer (1772–1849), Protestant theologian, politician
Hades, a Contribution to the Theory of Spirits (1810) (link to German page as the article in the English wikipedia is insufficient)

Justinus Kerner (1786–1862), German physician, poet, author
History of Two Somnambulists (1824), The Seeress of Prevorst. Revelations of the Human Inner Life and about the Penetrations of the Spirit World into ours (1828), Leaves from Prevorst (1831–1839), The Somnambulistic Tables (1853)

Seeress of Prevorst: Friederike Hauffe (1801–1829), somnambulist, born in a little village, named Prevorst

David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874), German theologian and writer of The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined (1846)

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), 16th President of the United States

Thomas Edison (1847–1931), American inventor and businessman

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898), British politician, Prime Minister

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913), British naturalist

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871), British mathematician and logician

Ernst Heinrich Weber (1795–1878), German physician, founder of experimental psychology

Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–1887), German philosopher and experimental psychologist, the founder of psychophysics

Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner (1834–1882),German astrophysicist. He explains that the spiritistic phenomena are caused in a four-dimensional space and appear as shadows in the three-dimensional space: Transcendental Physics (1878)

Henry Slade (1835–1905), fraudulent medium

Baron Lazar von Hellenbach (1827–1887), Austrian politician, philosophical and socio-political writer, famous spiritist. On the Magic of Figures (Vienna, 1882).

Allan Kardec (pen name of Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail, 1804–1869), French spiritist, systematiser of spiritism

Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria (1858–1889)

Archduke Johann Nepomuk Salvator of Austria (1852–1890?) Einblicke in den Spiritismus (Insights into Spiritism) (1885)

Oskar Simony (1852–1915), Austrian mathematician and physicist: On Spiritistic Manifestations from the Scientific Standpoint (1884), cf. R. Steiner mentions him in CW 169 Toward Imagination (Anthroposophic Press, 1990), lecture 6

Master Eckhart (~1260–1327), German Dominican monk and mystic, c f. R. Steiner CW 7 Mystics after Modernism

Wieland's significance

[ 1 ] There are historical figures to whom posterity cannot quite do justice. They seem destined by fate to prepare the way for others. These others become the leaders of humanity. Their names will be inscribed in golden letters in the books of history. What they have produced will be gratefully remembered and will live on from generation to generation. But these leaders of humanity have teachers. And the names of the teachers are often obscured by the students. And that is only natural. For the teachers of great pupils need not be great. But even if they themselves are great, they easily fall into the general fate. - In the great age of German poetry at the end of the eighteenth century, this was the fate of three personalities: Klopstock, Herder and Wieland. They were completely eclipsed by the great triumvirate of Lessing, Schiller and Goethe. And it is not only their age that owes an immeasurable debt to them, but also Schiller and Goethe themselves. Herder was Goethe's teacher in the best sense of the word. And Goethe himself beautifully expressed Klopstock's attitude to the German people and their education: "Our literature would not have become what it is now without these mighty predecessors. With their appearance, they were ahead of their time and, as it were, dragged it after them" (Conversations with Eckermann: November 9, 1824). And Goethe also found the right words about Wieland's importance. "The whole of Upper Germany owes its style to Wieland. It has learned a great deal from him, and his ability to express himself properly is not the least of it" (Conversations with Eckermann: January 8, 1825). This is supplemented by Goethe's words in "Dichtung und Wahrheit". There he also speaks of the influence that he himself had experienced through Wieland. "How many of his brilliant productions fall into the period of my academic years. Musarion had the greatest effect on me, and I can still remember the place and the spot where I saw the first sheet that Oeser gave me. It was here that I thought I saw antiquity alive and new again. Everything that is plastic in Wieland's genius showed itself here in the most perfect way." - Such words clearly describe Wieland's position in German intellectual life. And no one can have a judgment of what was going on in this intellectual life during the second half of the eighteenth century who does not at least acquaint himself with Wieland's most important creations. If one takes a closer look at them, one finds how wonderfully they complement those of Klopstock, Lessing and Herder. Klopstock's cozy religiosity, Lessing's critical severity and Herder's philosophical height are complemented by Wieland's grace and gracefulness. And thus the latter was even closer to the immediate needs of man than the others. In a certain sense, he brought the ideas that those on the heights of humanity represented down into bourgeois thinking and feeling. What they showed in their holiday dress, he put on his everyday coat. It would be unfair to forget the essence of his character above the lighter dress. An impartial examination of his life and his creations can teach us this.

Boyhood

[ 2 ] Wieland grew out of a school of thought that was widespread in Protestant regions in the middle of the eighteenth century. This was expressed in a certain unpretentious piety, which was less concerned with grasping high religious truths than with cultivating the mind and heartfelt intimacy. A "good man" must find the way to honest, sincere piety in his heart, so said this direction. It did not seek lofty doctrines, but the pure soul. This movement is called pietism. One must not close oneself off from either its light or its dark sides if one wants to understand the emergence of a spirit like Wieland's from it. In circles that cannot rise to particular spiritual heights, it promotes a true and healthy ideality and a direct judgment in questions that go beyond the everyday. But it also entails a certain narrow-mindedness. The pietist struggles to make an honest judgment; but he also easily regards this, his judgment, as the only authoritative one, and becomes - without actually wanting to - intolerant of others. - And this also characterizes the pietistic home from which Christoph Martin Wieland grew up - he was born on 5 September 1733 as the second son of the Protestant preacher from Oberholzheim in Upper Swabia, Thomas Adam Wieland. Both his father and his mother, Regina Katharina, were excellent people. When Christoph Martin was three years old, his father was transferred to nearby Biberach. The boy spent his early childhood there until he was fourteen. A sensible, precocious boy grows up in a small middle-class home, whose head is primarily concerned with the souls of his fellow human beings, under conditions that can perhaps be well described by saying that he learns to know the greatness of humanity from a small mirror, rather than in reality. The small mirror is the books. And the boy Wieland was a little bookworm. He absorbed the writings of Cornelius Nepos and Horace and was already busy turning out long Latin poems and German verses in his twelfth year. Among his works was a heroic poem about the destruction of Jerusalem.

[ 3 ] At the age of fourteen, Wieland was able to swap the pietistic atmosphere of his father's house for that of the school in Kloster-Bergen (near Magdeburg). The pious Abbot Steinmetz ran this school. It was probably in the nature of things, given the boy's previous education, that he used the more ample opportunity here to get to know the world through reading. Horace, Xenophon, Cicero, Lucrez, the materialist writer of antiquity, Bayle, the influential doubter of the time, Wolff, the leading philosopher, and the mighty Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire occupied his lively mind. Under such influences, it was inevitable that some of the ideas he had received in his pious father's house or encountered at school would falter. Doubts about Christianity, as he had come to know it, sank into his soul. And it took all the fervent power of Klopstock's "Messiah" to give his mind the stability it needed at that time. The first three cantos of this poem had just been published at that time. Wieland read them, like so many others, with delight. The power of pious feeling that flowed from them was stronger than any ideas that could be aroused by doubters and enlighteners. - But the young man, who was not in a position to transform the material he had absorbed from the books into a secure judgment of his own through any kind of life experience, was assailed by much. He soon became acquainted with Haller's poems, which were based on the view of nature at the time, and with Breitinger's critical studies, which set completely new standards in the evaluation of artistic works. In addition, in 1749 he was allowed to stay temporarily with his relative in Erfurt, Wilhelm Baumer, who was a doctor and professor of philosophy. He introduced him to the most important philosophical doctrines and to Cervantes' "Don Quixote". In this way, the young Wieland was simultaneously introduced to the thought systems through which mankind sought to solve its great mysteries and to the humorous treatment of a rapturous idealism in "Don Quixote".

Student days

[ 4 ] These circumstances determined the state of mind in which Wieland returned to his father's house in 1750 and in which he soon afterwards went to the University of Tübingen. It would be to completely misjudge Wieland's inner life if one were to attach too much importance to a love affair that entered his life at that time. It was with Sophie von Gutermann from Augsburg, who was visiting relatives in Biberach around this time. Although the relationship was an intimate one, it played no more of a significant role in Wieland's development than some later ones. Incidentally, it dissolved of its own accord when Sophie married la Roche, the electoral court councillor, in 1753. Even if this "infidelity" put him in a gloomy mood for a while, it did not have a profound effect on his development. In particular, it should not be attributed to this mood that he took a pious, moralizing direction in the following years. Rather, this had a completely different origin. When he was in Tübingen, he had little interest in the chosen science of law. Instead, he recently immersed himself in Klopstock's "Messiah" and added to this the study of Platonic idealism. He also became acquainted with Leibnizen's philosophical writings. From all this, he drew for himself an idealistic view of the world, which he expressed in the poem "The Nature of Things". His wonderful talent for form, which he had developed from Klopstock, was immediately revealed. The philosopher Meier from Halle, to whom Wieland sent the poem without naming himself, liked it so much that he immediately ordered it to be printed. Wasn't such recognition supposed to bring the young man, who had little stability, completely into the direction that had followed Klopstock at the time? And so it came about that the subsequent poems "Lobgesang auf die Liebe" and "Hermann" ran entirely along Klopstockian lines. - And that was what forged a direct personal relationship between Wieland and the critic of Klopstock's school, Bodmer.

Entrance into literary life. Wieland and Bodmer

[ 5 ] This introduced Wieland to a school of thought that was particularly decisive for German educational life at the time. Among other names, it was also linked to Bodmer's. And it signified a kind of intellectual turnaround in Germany. Until the middle of the century, Gottsched, who worked in Leipzig, had been the guiding spirit in literature. His work was comprehensive. Whatever he said about any contemporary phenomenon was considered authoritative. His position was shaken by two events. One was that he refused to recognize Klopstock. The second was Lessing's rejection of his admiration of France. With regard to Wieland, the first event comes into consideration first. Bodmer had gained the upper hand over Gottsched as a critic. He stood up for Klopstock; and those who went along with Klopstock as a poet naturally gravitated towards the new critical direction, which in Bodmer and his followers enthusiastically advocated the Messiah poet. - It was therefore a great encouragement to Wieland when Bodmer judged the former's "Hermann" in the most favorable way. He virtually portrayed the young man as Klopstock's rival and thus provoked feelings of gratitude in the strongest possible way. As a result, Wieland not only continued to write in the Klopstockian manner, but also, after his return to Biberach in 1752, wrote a treatise on Bodmer's epic poem "Noah", in which he placed the revered man on an equal footing with Milton and Klopstock. How much Bodmer's poetry is really worth, and how much Wieland's judgment was biased, cannot be of interest in a consideration of the latter's development. What matters is that through this process the young Wieland moved to Zurich in 1752 at Bodmer's invitation, and that this stay became immeasurably important to him. He lived in Bodmer's house as a guest for a whole year. That was his first direct contact with life. Whatever one may think of Bodmer, he was in a certain sense a powerful personality, a whole man. For someone who had previously only got to know great people from books, getting to know such a personality meant a lot. It is a different thing to read about important things or to see them spring to life directly from a soul. - This vividness and immediacy matter much more than whether one or the other finds that the personality in question was not really a great one. - But Bodmer was a characteristic figure. He had gradually come to see the moral world view as the deeper foundation of art. The forms of poetry should lead man to his highest ideas. Beauty should be an expression of the highest truth. These views settled in Wieland's soul. And he increasingly came to advocate them quite vigorously himself. It may now please some to think little of this transitional stage in Wieland's development. It has also been suggested that the marriage of his beloved Sophie, which had just taken place, had made him world-weary and driven him into this moralizing manner. But one might mock the fact that he said at the time, in reference to the poet Uz, that "one should prefer even the worst church hymns to the most charming song of Uz an infinite number of times"; precisely in the direction that Wieland's creations later took, this point of passage in his development was infinitely important. He subsequently freed himself completely from any moralizing direction and became a master of a style devoted purely to beautiful forms. Grace and grace in the depiction of the sensual became one of his elements. The fact that he always retained his majesty and firmness is due to the fact that he had really learned to know moralizing judgement from his own life. As a result, he came to know it in a justified way as one-sidedness. You have to have gone through certain things yourself if you want to gain a correct relationship to them.

[ 6 ] In 1754, Wieland accepted a position as court master. He gradually freed himself from Bodmer. He was particularly influenced by his reading of the Englishman Shaftesbury, who saw the morally good as a sister concept to the beautiful. Beauty is what pleases man; and the good is the beautiful in action. The fact that Wieland was able to gain an impression of such a world view shows the direction in which Bodmer's view had taken. This living-in had proved particularly fruitful for the development of very noteworthy pedagogical ideas in Wieland. His "Plan von einer neuen Art von Privatunterweisung", published in 1753, had brought him the above-mentioned position of tutor. In 1758, he added a "Plan for an academy to educate the minds and hearts of young people".

[ 7 ] Wieland's thinking and outlook on life became increasingly free. His epic poem "Cyrus" appeared (as a fragment) in 1759. The ideas of the Enlightenment that were increasingly emerging at the time had taken hold of him in a particular form. He idealized the Persian king as a hero of freedom. For him, it was less a depiction of the historical Cyrus than the idea that an enlightened person has of a ruler who rules in the spirit of an age thirsting for freedom. Wieland also tried his hand at drama. His tragedy "Lady Johanna Gray" was performed to great acclaim in Winterthur in 1758 and even found favor in the eyes of the critical Lessing. - By this time, Wieland had already become known in wider circles as a writer. His outer life changed in 1759 when he exchanged his position as a tutor in Zurich for one in Bern. However, he gave this up after a short time and supported himself for a while by teaching various subjects on a freelance basis.

Wieland in Switzerland

[ 8 ] In Bern, he met an intellectual lady, Mademoiselle Bondeli. She had also become famous as Rousseau's friend. The fact that Wieland became engaged to her is of less importance, as life broke off the engagement. However, it was important to him that in Bern he had the opportunity to engage in animated conversation with a witty personality who was at home in almost all areas of human knowledge and who was able to judge the world from a high point of view. Her image accompanied Wieland throughout his life; many of her features can be found in the female figures in his poems, and as an old man he made the beautiful judgment about her "that she was the most beautiful, brightest, most educated and in every respect most perfect female spirit, which was connected with a heart so regular, at the same time so tender and strong, so loving and so completely free of all weakness".

[ 9 ] The time had come when Wieland had to think about finding a more stable position in life. His relatives and friends at home helped him in this. They made it possible for him to be appointed senator in Biberach on April 30, 1760. Such a senator was entitled to certain positions in the municipal office, which constituted a bread provision. Wieland received one in July of the same year as director of the chancellery. However, the appointment remained provisional for four years. Biberach was divided in religious terms. A Catholic and a Protestant party fought over the appointment of the posts, and Wieland only later became the definitive town clerk. In 1765, he married Dorothea von Hillenbrand from Augsburg, who had been brought to him through the efforts of her relatives. It was a marriage without enthusiasm, but the basis for a lasting happiness in life, a quiet, contented companionship, which lasted until his wife's death in 1801. The keynote of this companionship can be found in the words that Wieland wrote about his wife: "My wife is one of God's most excellent creatures in the world, a model of every feminine and domestic virtue, free from every fault of her sex, with a head without prejudice and a moral character that would do honor to a saint. The twenty-two years that I have now lived with her have passed without my once wishing that I were not married; on the contrary, she and her existence are so interwoven with mine that I cannot be away from her eight days without experiencing something akin to Swiss homesickness. Of the thirteen children she has borne me, ten are living, kind, good-natured creatures, healthy in soul and body, who, together with their mother, constitute the happiness of my life."

Shakespeare translation

[ 10 ] During his time in Biberach, Wieland undertook one of the most important and influential deeds of his life. He began translating Shakespeare's plays in 1762. By 1766, he had succeeded in making twenty-two of these plays accessible to the German public. If one considers that until then Shakespeare had been virtually unknown in Germany and that since that time he had gained an influence on German intellectual life that can only be compared to that of Schiller or Goethe himself, one will see the fundamental importance of Wieland's work in the right light. Lessing therefore immediately paid tribute to it in the right way. And both Goethe and Schiller owe Wieland a debt of gratitude in this respect, for it was through him that Shakespeare was first and foremost communicated to them.

New artistic style

[ 11 ] The petty circumstances in Biberahh were made somewhat more bearable for Wieland by the fact that the former Electorate of Mainz minister Count Stadion had settled in the neighboring castle of Warthausen in 1761, where the government councillor la Roche also lived with his wife Sophie. She was Wieland's former girlfriend. Wieland entered this house as a good friend and always welcome guest. French taste, a certain free, even light view of life and experience of the world was at home here. For the poet, who was also warmly befriended by Sophie la Roche, there was the most wonderful stimulation. What was said was very much in the spirit of the Enlightenment, in many respects had the character of doubtfulness and was based on Voltaire, Rousseau, the French encyclopaedists d'Alembert, Diderot and others. - As a result of all this, Wieland himself lost the heaviness that his lifestyle had still had due to his earlier circumstances. A purely artistic view of the world became more and more prevalent. Sobriety, immersed in grace and graceful beauty, became more important to him than a view of the supernatural heights of the ideal. Such an attitude places life higher than all reflection and contemplation about life. Even if man's reason is not sufficient to exhaust the actual depths of existence, this reason is there, and one abides by it. Even if sensuality is deceptive, this sensuality is given to man and he should rejoice in it. The confession that appears as the background behind Wieland's creations during his time in Biberach can be summarized in words such as these. In 1764 he published the novel "The Victory of Nature over Enthusiasm, or the Adventures of Don Sylvio of Rosalva". In 1765 his "Comic Tales", and in 1766 and 1767, in two volumes, the "History of Agathon". With "Don Sylvio" and the "Comic Tales" he now incurred the disgust of the Klopstockians, just as he had previously been accepted into their circle with joy. - And it was inevitable that the new style of his work would soon find uncalled-for imitators who were not interested in depicting the sensual in an artistic form, but simply in depicting the abject itself. Wieland had to expressly emphasize that he had nothing to do with such unartistic beginnings. - It cannot be said that in the two works mentioned the poet had already achieved what he obviously had in mind. For "Don Sylvio" he had the style of "Don Quixote" in mind. In this style, he wanted to protest against superstition and false idealism in favor of a healthy natural sense. In the "Comic Tales", material from Greek mythology is used to create graceful but nonetheless rather questionable descriptions.

Wieland's idiosyncrasy

[ 12 ] Only a complete impartiality, which does not want to judge but to see into a person's soul with understanding, can do justice to Wieland in this point of his artistic development. The way in which he had to acquire a view of life was not suitable for creating a fixed center in his own personality. He had absorbed the thoughts of many people in the mirror of books. Such a way produces peculiar effects, especially in the case of great talent tending towards artistic perception. Man lets the various opinions of his fellow men pass by his mind more like pictures. Such strong inclinations, such firm judgments are not formed as is the case when life itself is the teacher. One is more partial to the one, less to the other; but one gives up one's whole personality to neither. This remains unstable. People who do not get to know much in this way arrive relatively quickly at a fixed view of life. Life forces such a view on them. After all, life usually only takes hold of people from one side. It makes them one-sided, but firm. People who develop like Wieland are different. They get to know life through its reflections in many people's minds. And every world view has a certain justification. Few people can think of anything that doesn't have some justification within certain limits. Anyone who has to deal with opinions about things rather than with the things themselves will easily have to let firmness take a back seat at the expense of versatility. It would only be worse if he lost all inner stability. But this was not even remotely the case with Wieland. The core of his being was rooted in the noble traits of the German bourgeoisie. - Indeed, in a certain respect, his entire significance was based on this. Through the easy flexibility of his style, he was able to conquer the refinement of French taste and the artistic transfiguration of sensuality in the sense of the Greek view of the world for German intellectual life, and yet remained related to this intellectual life in its popular character through his own essence. He never lost the German spirit over French grace and Greek grace.

[ 13 ] But as a "man of books" he was unsparingly exposed to the impact of living people in the two cases in which he was confronted with a firm world view. So it was in Zurich with Bodmer, so it was in Warthausen with Stadion and the la Roches. There the moralism, here the worldly manner flowed into his own blood.

[ 14 ] Wieland now felt the need to enlighten himself about his change. The poet does this through poetry. This became the novel, the "History of Agathon". However, he presents his own development in the guise of a process from the ancient Greek world of the fourth century BC. The idealist Agathon, who initially lives entirely in Platonic higher worlds, is contrasted with the worldly child Hippias. Hippias stands on the ground of a world view that is based purely on the satisfaction of human selfishness and material well-being. Although Agathon feels repelled by such a view, his contact with it does not remain without consequences for his development. He undergoes the transformation from an idealist who is turned away from the world to a man who surrenders to immediate reality. - In his search for reality, Wieland focused on Greekness. His transformation was not aimed at a common reality, but at an artistically ennobled one, one filled with spirit. Thus it is not arbitrary that he clothed his own path of development in Greek garb. Certainly others have seen Greekness differently. The way in which Wieland saw it corresponded to a necessity in his time. And Goethe, by his own admission, learned a great deal from Wieland in this respect. He also did in other respects. The "Agathon" created a new style of novel. And the seeds that were sown in it were later developed in Goethe's style in "Wilhelm Meister". Goethe also points to such things when he speaks of Wieland having given the German educated a style. In this way Wieland became a pathfinder. He himself bore the fruit of his striving in the beautiful sense when, in 1764, he conceived the plan for the work that was then printed in 1768: "Musarion, oder die Philosophie der Grazien", a poem in three books. Goethe's assessment of this work has already been mentioned above. It rightly bears the significant subtitle "Philosophy of the Graces".

"Musarion"

[ 15 ] Wieland was increasingly confronted with an important question in life: does idealism have any value if it does not come from the innermost nature of man? And this main point was naturally linked to a series of secondary questions: does idealism not often only appear as an inwardly untrue enthusiasm? Should one not prefer the more or less sensual but true enjoyment of life, which moves in lower regions, to untrue idealism? These are the questions at the heart of the "Musarion". This is why Wieland contrasts the Stoic Cleanth and the Pythagorean Theophron with the Musarion, who is devoted to the graceful enjoyment of life. The former is untrue and phrase-like; the latter is true, even if it does not rise to supernatural heights. The grace of a free treatment of verse is poured over the whole. Wieland philosophizes in a playful manner, but the play is art, and philosophy is like a witty conversation. But the conversation is one conducted by a personality who is at the full height of the situation. - One must not for a moment disregard the fact that neither true idealism nor crude sensuality is opposed in the "Musarion". Those who can observe both without bias will not feel their feelings hurt in any direction.

The sensual in Wieland

[ 16 ] A similar question and a similar attitude are expressed in the unfinished poem "Idris and Zenide", written between 1766 and 1767. Here too, in an artistically graceful manner, spiritually refined love is juxtaposed with the supernatural flight of fancy on the one hand and raw sensuality on the other. The fact that the poet at times through his choice of subject matter

[ 17 ] as in "Nadine" has not been able to avoid the impression of lasciviousness, must certainly be admitted. However, it must not be assumed that the poet resorted to Greek paganism clothed in sensual forms in order to offer his readers a frivolous thrill of entertainment. Rather, he was concerned with a serious question of life, namely: what role does and may the sensual play in human existence? The poet's judgment should not depend on how this or that person views such a question. - Some of Wieland's later works also belong to the same period and soul direction: "Grazien" (published in 1770), the "Neue Amadis" (1771) and "Aspasia" (1773); according to the plan and also in the essential parts, they were written some time before their publication.

[ 18 ] The departure of Count Stadion von Warthausen brought about a change in Wieland's life. What had made his work in Biberach bearable for the poet no longer applied. The count also died soon afterwards in 1768.

University teacher. Activity in Erfurt

[ 19 ] Just as the thirty-six-year-old Wieland was beginning to find his work and surroundings rather dull, his life took a turn for the worse. At the court of the Elector of Mainz, attention had long been drawn to the writer, who dealt with the things that interested the worldly circles at the time with such great talent. Elector Emmerich Joseph ruled in Mainz. He saw in Wieland the right man to bring his declining University of Erfurt back to prominence and appointed him professor there. Wieland's acceptance of this appointment could not have been in doubt. He had long had pedagogical inclinations. This had become apparent in the two writings mentioned on the occasion of his stay in Switzerland. And so it was that our poet arrived in Erfurt as professor of philosophy in July 1769. - His work was extraordinarily important for the university. Even if Wieland was not a pioneer in the field of philosophy, he had nevertheless acquired a comprehensive knowledge of the great world questions and intellectual heroes within the limits that had once been set for him. And it always has an invigorating effect when someone is able to speak of these things to his listeners in such a way that they feel something of how the riddles of the world can be not just school questions, but questions of life. Wieland's lectures gave the university a new, fresh impetus. He spoke about philosophical, literary and historical matters. - And it is essential that the whole thing had an effect on Wieland's own style. He had to think things through again in a systematic context that had previously passed through his mind more fragmentarily. In addition, the times made certain demands on every thinker in this direction. It was the high tide of the Enlightenment. The effects of Rousseau, of the French Enlightenment and scientific materialists, of German free-spirited philosophy, had set thought in motion. Wieland's appointment to a philosophical chair coincided with an epoch in which humanity was intensively reflecting on its tasks, its purpose, its freedom and self-determination. It was natural that Wieland had to deal with all this. Rousseau had seen in the state of nature the only possibility of happiness and in all civilization only a development towards unhappy conditions. Whoever did not want to give in to despair at the progress of mankind or to indifference towards it, had to ask himself about the ways in which a higher development is possible. There was a feeling everywhere that mankind had progressed from a kind of immature state to maturity. Ancient beliefs had begun to waver. In an essay on the Enlightenment, Kant answered the question: "What is Enlightenment?" with the words: "Man, make bold to make use of your reason". All of these questions played a part in Wieland's thinking when he was preparing what he had to say to his Erfurt listeners. And they initially took on a form that corresponded to his inclination towards pedagogical tasks. This resulted in the novel "Der goldene Spiegel, oder die Könige von Scheschian", which was published in four volumes in 1772. In the guise of an oriental tale, he presents his thoughts on the best form of government and the education of the people. He shows what can lead to the ruin of a state and what can be a blessing. In the character of Danischmend, he embodies a statesman who also educates his prince. - Wieland wanted to create a thoroughly contemporary book. And he succeeded. For he made a great impression on many. The ideas of the time also play a role in the "Contributions to the Secret History of the Human Mind and Heart. Drawn from the Archives of Nature". The underlying idea is that the happy state of nature painted by Rousseau is an illusion. Humanity should not dream of a bliss that it once possessed and lost, but should see its task in the further development into the future.

[ 20 ] The full wealth of Wieland's humor came to light in the prose work "Socrates mainomenos, oder die Dialoge des Diogenes von Sinope", which was published in 1770. Here he attempts to portray the cynical philosopher Diogenes in a more unbiased light than is usually the case. In Erfurt, he also put the finishing touches to the poem "The Graces", which in a certain respect contains a confession of faith by Wieland. The Graces are portrayed as the creators of sensual and spiritualized beauty. A feeling rather than a thought hovers over the whole. All the difficult questions of life are supposed to find their transfiguration in a lifestyle ennobled and made easy by beauty. And the same feeling is poured out over the "New Amadis", which was also begun in Biberach and completed here. Here, the characters of the heroes are distorted into the foolish, those of the heroines into the tawdry, in order to show the value of spiritualized as opposed to merely sensual beauty in light artistic play.

Calling to Weimar

[ 21 ] As beneficial as Wieland's work in Erfurt was for the university, he found little inspiration for himself there. There was little intellectual activity to be found among the other professors, and they had not exactly welcomed Wieland with joy, as he "did not belong to the subject". There were therefore rays of hope in his life again when he was able to visit the la Roche family in Ehrenbreitstein near Koblenz on a journey in 1771 and make the acquaintance of Georg and Fritz Jacobi, as well as Johann Heinrich Merck in Darmstadt. All of these personalities later became friends of Goethe. In particular, Merck, who was very discerning and well versed in science and life, was a good advisor not only for Wieland but also for Goethe. Of particular importance, however, was the fact that Wieland was introduced to Duchess Anna Amalie of Weimar in November 1771 during one of his excursions there. She was in charge of the government on behalf of her son Karl August, who had not yet reached adulthood. With her own open eye, she recognized Wieland's importance. It suited her fine-minded, refined nature to have such a man close to her. She therefore soon suggested that he take over the education of the hereditary prince. And with Wieland's consent, the first of the four great personalities who would make this city the center of German intellectual life for decades to come moved to the princely court in Weimar. Goethe came in 1775, followed soon after by Herder and finally Schiller. From 1772 to 1775, Wieland was Karl August's tutor. From then on, he lived with a pension as a friend of the court and the Weimar intellectual greats, appreciated and loved by all. His princess had found in him what she was looking for and needed, a loyal friend and advisor who also appealed to her sense of beauty and her need for spiritual entertainment through the lightness of his art. The young hereditary prince gained complete trust in his teacher and retained it in the friendliest and most liberal manner when he outgrew his education and came to the government.

[ 22 ] The combination of Wieland's graceful art and the court's need for entertainment resulted in a series of occasional poems by the poet for festive occasions. This placed his graceful muse in a not unworthy service; and it even resulted in something that was significant in a certain direction: Wieland's Singspiel. In "Aurora" and "Alceste", Wieland provided fine texts, which the talented composer Schweitzer then set to music. What was striven for there is significant because the ideal was to strive for a harmonious unison of poetry and music, an endeavor that led to such great success in the field of musical drama much later.

[ 23 ] Wieland used his muse to accomplish what he was virtually predestined to do by all his talents: he founded a journal for German education in the "Teutscher Mercur". If anyone, he was now called to create such a center of German intellectual endeavor. The way he worked corresponded precisely to what the widest circles needed. He was not a cosmopolitan, but a man who lived at the height of education, who, through his own character, was rooted in the emerging German education, and who, through his immersion in French taste and the beauty of the old world, was able to broaden people's horizons. He may well have annoyed Goethe with the first issues of the "Mercur", who had expected great things in his youthful urge and now thought he was only looking at a medium level of education; however, Wieland met the needs of his time and satisfied them.

"History of the Abderites"

[ 24 ] However, Wieland was not a man who flattered people's weaknesses. He showed this most clearly when he began his novel "Geschichte der Abderiten" in the second volume of "Mercur", although its completion was delayed until 1780. - The plot is also set in a distant place and time. It describes the goings-on in the small Thracian town of Abdera. The well-traveled, well-versed Democritus is placed in the midst of a population who, in their foolishness, understand nothing of his greatness and yet, in their naïve arrogance, judge everything the wise man says and does. The "Abderites" alone are suitable to give Wieland a permanent place in German literary history. Human narrow-mindedness, silliness, arrogance, lack of judgment, nosiness, etc. are portrayed here with the most delicious satire. Abdera is mentioned, but "all the world" is meant. Wieland had experienced enough of this kind of Abderitism in Biberach and Erfurt. This novel not only brilliantly portrays those who understand nothing in the narrowest of parochial politics and participate in everything in order to accomplish the most stupid things, but also those who are least aware of it. After all, they are often the ones who are up to their eyeballs in philistinism and philistinism. They see the philistine in everyone else; their arrogance and self-delusion protect them from discovering it in their own nature. Wieland portrays this type with inexhaustible humor. And the portrayal is really such that it fits all times and countries. All criticism of the unevenness of this novel, all criticism of the poor composition at this or that point should fall silent in the face of the delicious humor that permeates the whole, and above all in the face of the universality with which all sides of more or less open or secret philistinism come into their satirical own.

[ 25 ] A number of other achievements date from Wieland's first Weimar period. The poem "An Psyche", later called "Die erste Liebe", and the story "Der Mönch und die Nonne auf dem Mittelstein", which was later called "Sixt und Klärchen", should be mentioned here. "Die erste Liebe" was written in 1774 for the wedding of the Weimar court maid Julie von Keller to the Gotha chief magistrate von Bechtolsheim. The young lady, who wrote the poem herself, was generally regarded as an extraordinarily charming figure. Wieland, however, put into the poem the feelings he had retained for Sophie la Roche, whom he had loved in his youth. He himself considered the poem to be one of his best. (Cf. his letter to Sophie la Roche of August ro, 1806.)

[ 26 ] In the narrative poem "Sixt und Klärchen", which appeared in the "Teutschen Mercur" in 1775, Wieland draws on a legend linked to the two rocky peaks on the Mittelstein (or Mädelstein) near Eisenach. In these rocky peaks, the imagination can see two people embracing. Legend has it that they are a monk and a nun who were petrified here as punishment for their embrace. This is the only time that Wieland treats a German subject. Otherwise it is old-world or new but foreign material that he deals with. - Duchess Amalie was so pleased with Wieland's creation that he treated it again for her in the cantata "Seraphina", for which the Weimar composer Ernst Wilhelm Wolf provided the music. - In 1776, the poetic story "Gandaliin, oder Liebe um Liebe" was published, whose subtly ironic tone was extremely popular with Wieland's circle of friends.

Goethe in Weimar

[ 27 ] While Wieland was gaining love and esteem in wider circles, especially in his immediate Weimar circle, Goethe appeared in Weimar in 1775 (November 7) at the invitation of Karl August. The first meeting of the two men in the city, where they were to live together as friends for a long time to come, was preceded by something that put Wieland to a hard test and showed his character and essence in the most beautiful light. Shortly before this, Goethe had written the wicked farce "Gods, Heroes and Wieland", in which Wieland had been mocked in the worst possible way. Goethe had probably not originally thought of publishing the mocking poem, but then allowed it to be published. The mockery was provoked by Wieland's imprudence. In 1773, Wieland had written letters to a friend about the German Singspiel "Alceste", in which he placed his Alceste above Euripides in certain respects. In this farce, Goethe bitterly rejected what he considered to be naïve vanity. Wieland had already shown greatness of character in that he brought the farce into the "Mercur" quite objectively and by fully recognizing its good qualities. He was so little swayed by it against Goethe that he did not in the least alter the opinion he had previously formed of the latter's poetic genius. Nevertheless, the way Wieland behaved both inwardly and outwardly at his first meeting with Goethe in Weimar was a masterpiece of strength of soul. The whole of this behavior is illuminated with a bright ray when one considers the letter that the man who had been so badly affected shortly before wrote to Jacobi on io. November 1775 to Jacobi: "Goethe arrived in Weimar on Tuesday, the 7th of this month at 5 o'clock in the morning. O, best brother, what can I tell you? How completely the man was after my heart at first sight! How enamored I became of him as I sat at table that very day at the side of the splendid youth! All I can tell you now, after more than one crisis that has been going on in me these days, is this: since this morning my soul has been full of Goethe, like a drop of dew from the morning sun." Soon afterwards, Wieland wrote to Zimmermann about Goethe: "In all observations and from all sides, he is the greatest, best, most glorious human being that God has created." - A beautiful friendship based on full mutual recognition, respect and love developed between the two personalities, which lasted for a long time. Goethe not only appreciated Wieland as a person and as a poet; he also enjoyed spending time in his house and was always able to emphasize to friends what wonderful times he had had with Wieland and his friends. In his poem "To Psyche", written in 1776, Wieland sketches a brilliant picture of Goethe, completely imbued with true understanding and the most devoted admiration. Both Wieland and Goethe were visiting the estate of Frau von Keller near Erfurt at the beginning of 1776 with the aforementioned Frau Julie von Bechtolsheim. This visit, during which Goethe probably read scenes from his "Faust", inspired Wieland to write the above-mentioned poem.

Poetic tales

[ 28 ] As Goethe was particularly impressed by Wieland's poetic stories, he felt encouraged to write more of this kind. Through the "Winter Fairy Tale", written in 1776, the style and mood of the oriental fairy tale of "One Thousand and One Nights" found its way into German poetry. In contrast, the "Summer Fairy Tale", written a little later (1777), was borrowed from the legend of King Arthur and his Round Table. Wieland found the material in the "Bibliotheque universelle des Romans". This fairy tale is written in the tone of light artistic play, through which Wieland introduced the German public to a circle of legends that had been almost forgotten since the Middle Ages. Goethe and Merck, as well as others, held it in high esteem. The short poem "Hann und Gulpenheh, oder: Zuviel gesagt, ist nichts gesagt" (Hann and Gulpenheh, or: Too much said is nothing said), written in 1778, is based almost exactly on an oriental tale. The story comes from a Turkish novella collection "The Forty Viziers"; and Wieland found it in the "Bibliotheque universelle des Romans". - The poem "Der Vogelsang, oder die drei Lehren" is also from the same period. The material is borrowed from a translation of "One Thousand and One Nights", which Galland had published under the title "Contes Arabes". Here, Wieland has the opportunity to portray a king as he should not be. The content of the story is not unrelated to an essay that Wieland had published shortly before in "Mercur" on "The Divine Right of Authority". In it, he argued against what he considered to be the one-sided view that no power from above should impose a right on a people, but that all rights must emanate from the people themselves. Wieland, on the other hand, argued that the circumstances of life could not be governed by such abstract demands, but that the course of history meant that government fell to one or the other. - "Pervonte, or the Wishes" is adapted from an Italian folk tale. The first two parts were written in the spring of 1778, but the third was not added until 1795. Wieland also found this material in the "Bibliotheque universelle des Romans". But it is precisely this poem by Wieland that shows what free, rich imagination and complete mastery of form can make of a given material. At Wieland's funeral (1813), Goethe said to Falk about this creation: "The sculpture, the willfulness of the poem are unique, exemplary, indeed completely priceless. In these and similar products, it is Wieland's true nature, I would even say at its very best, that gives us pleasure."

"Oberon"

[ 29 ] Wieland reached the pinnacle of his creativity in his "Oberon". This romantic epic was written between November 1778 and February 1780 and was published in "Mercur" in the first months of 1780. Two intellectual currents flowed together in this poetic work. One arose from Wieland's interest in the character of Oberon, the fairy or elf king in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The second came from the "Bibliorh&que universelle des Romans" so often used by our poet. It is the story of a knight from the time of Charlemagne, Huon of Bordeaux. According to an old book of chivalry, it was incorporated into the aforementioned French library through an excerpt prepared by Count Tressan. - Wieland has now interwoven the quarrel and reconciliation of the ghost king Oberon with his wife Titania with the love and knightly adventure of the old Frankish hero, who travels to the Orient to conquer his wife under the greatest dangers and battles, and who then has to undergo the strongest tests of courage, privation and loyalty with the latter before he achieves his happiness. These tests are imposed on him by Oberon himself. For the test of his and his wife's fidelity must also lead to a turn for the better in the fate of Oberon and Titania. - In the most beautiful way, our poet develops these threads, half earthly, half supernatural, in true Romantic style. The whole can be followed like a grandly unfolding dream plot. For just as the dream creates and resolves conflicts, so it happens here. But the progress is always based, if not on an external, then all the more on an inner spiritual necessity and lawfulness. And this regularity is completely dramatic throughout the long twelve cantos. The treatment of verse and language is masterly in every respect. Goethe fully recognized all this and therefore wrote to Lavater after the poem was published: "Oberon will be loved and admired as a masterpiece of poetic art as long as poetry remains poetry, gold gold and crystal crystal." - Many have objected to the composition of the poem, believing that the poet has not fully succeeded in uniting the two plots linked to the couple Huon and Rezia on the one hand and Oberon on the other. Anyone who penetrates into the basic romantic character of the whole cannot make such an assertion. In such a style, the free interplay of motifs, the weaving in a dreamlike twilight, is not only possible, but quite appealing. And with such a style it is inadmissible to demand a strictly realistic motivation, an intellectual, dry clarity. Wieland also felt completely in his element during this work. He wrote to Merck on August 19, 1779: "My fifth and sixth cantos seem to me, entre nous, so good that it only annoys me not to be able to keep such a work until after my death. Then, I am sure, it would make a sensation from its rising to its passing." In a letter to a friend in Zurich, he calls Oberon the best thing that his head and heart have produced together since the former matured and the latter became calmer. When the work was published, Goethe even delighted his friend with a laurel wreath, to which he added the following significant lines: "When reading your Oberon, I would often have wished to testify my applause and pleasure to you quite vividly; there are so many things I have to tell you that I will probably never tell you. But, you know, the soul falls from the manifold into the simple when it thinks long; therefore, instead of everything, I send you here a sign, which I beg you to take in its primitive sense, as it is very significant. Receive from the hands of friendship what fellow and posterity will gladly confirm to you." It is by no means too much to say that many of the best of his age were quite in line with Goethe in their judgment of "Oberon".

[ 30 ] In a style similar to that of Oberon, Wieland then worked on a story whose basis was taken from an Italian novel of the sixteenth century: "Clelia and Sinibald, a legend from the twelfth century." However, he was unable to reach the heights of the former work. - The short story "The Water Skid" was also begun at that time, but was probably not completed until 1795.

[ 31 ] Through the latter creations, Wieland became the father of the important intellectual movement known as "German Romanticism". Even if he is less often mentioned in this context, in essence he certainly belongs in this direction with some of his finest achievements.

[ 32 ] Between all these works lies the three-act Singspiel "Rosamund", which was intended for performance on the Mannheim stage in 1777. In order to attend the latter, Wieland traveled to Mannheim in the winter of 1777 to 1778 and, to his deepest satisfaction, was able to meet the admirer of his muse, Goethe's mother, Frau Rat in Frankfurt am Main, who was a friend of his. - This was a very fruitful time for Wieland's work. The light dramatic works "La Philosophie endormie" and "Pandora" were also written during these years. The inspiration for the essay "Einige Lebensumstände Hans Sachsens", which was written in 1776, came from his correspondence with Goethe.

Wieland and older schools of thought

[ 33 ] Lavater's "Physiognomics" prompted Wieland to write "Thoughts on the Ideals of the Ancients" in 1777. In such prose writings, the richness, diversity and style of his mind became apparent. What can be said of these "Ideals" in this direction also applies to the "Dialogues in Elysium" written in 1780, the "Conversations on Some Recent World Events" (1782), the "Conversations with the Gods" (1789 to 1793) and especially the "Introduction to the Seventh Letter of Horace" (1781 to 1782), the "Epistle to a Young Poet" (1782). In the latter, he turns against immature young poets who turn to famous personalities in the belief that they are special geniuses, often making them quite uncomfortable. As editor of the "Mercur", Wieland naturally had to endure such an onslaught in particular. - The essay "Was ist Hochteutsch" (What is High German) belongs to the year 1782. Wieland also worked as a translator during this time. He published "Horace's Letters" (1781 to 1782), his "Satires" (1784 to 1786) and "Lucian of Samosata's Complete Works" (until 1789). - In his light, witty manner, he treated the much-maligned cynic Peregrinus Proteus (in the "Secret History of the Philosopher pp.") from 1789 to 1791, for whom he acted as advocate, as he did a few years later for the often-attacked Apollonius of Tyana in the novel "Agathodaemon". In this last work, he had the opportunity to address the cultural conditions at the time of the emergence of Christianity and its first form itself. He knew how to treat this difficult subject with spirit and dignity, in his own way. He was no less successful in doing this for the conditions in Greece at the time of the fourth century BC in the novel "Aristipp and some of his contemporaries" (1800). The work is written in epistolary form and shows an in-depth knowledge of the period from which the material originates. And this knowledge has been artistically processed in the free, intelligent drawing of personalities and events. - The poet also chose the epistolary form for two other stories that deal with a somewhat later culture in a similar way: "Menander and Glycerion" (1802) and "Krates and Hipparchia" (1804). In the first work, Wieland wants to give an unvarnished picture of Greek love life; in the second, he wants to show that the idea of a spiritualized conception of love was not at all alien to this life. - A number of novellistic stories are combined under the overall title "Das Hexameron von Rosenhain".

Wieland's last works

[ 34 ] In 1804, "Euthanasia. Conversations on life after death". Here, Wieland turned against the narrow-minded notion that virtue only acquires its value through its reward in a future life, rather than carrying it within itself.

[ 35 ] Of occasional poems, the following are worthy of attention due to the beauty of their language and the warmth of their content: "To Olympia" and "On October 24, 1784". They are addressed to Duchess Amalia, his "Olympian patron queen", while "Merlin's prophesying voice" is addressed to the hereditary princess Maria Pavlovna. The latter poem marks the end of Wieland's poetic career.

[ 36 ] Wieland's patriarchal nature was often emphasized in his circle of friends. And for the quiet nature of his Weimar life, which flowed with participation in all things human, this description is certainly apt. His personal existence is characterized by this calmness and a harmony of soul that is quite congenial within certain limits, and this is also reflected in all his later creations. Only in such a way was it possible to find the tones that we encounter in "Aristippus", only such inner unity can the spiritual irony with which Athenian life at the time of Pericles is richly depicted. The character portrayal of Socrates in this epistolary novel also stems from the same view of life and attitude. - For all the unpretentiousness of his nature, Wieland imprinted his own character on all his works. It has been shown that he borrowed his material either from other literary creations or from cultural and intellectual history. As such, he knew how to put his stamp on the foreign, the appropriated. Its significance lies in the way it is treated. And this form of Wieland's independence can even be seen in his translations of Lucian, Florazen and Cicero.

[ 37 ] Nowhere are his translations literal, but they are always real conquests of the foreign for German intellectual life.

Wieland's last years

[ 38 ] The effect that Wieland achieved is probably best expressed in the fact that the Göschen publishing house in Leipzig was able to begin a complete edition of his works in 1794, even in four different editions. This had grown to 36 volumes by 1802. - From 1797 onwards, the poet was able to live on the Osmannstedt estate, which he had purchased. Wieland's long-desired quiet solitude was marred by the fact that in September 1800 he had to watch Sophie Brentano, the granddaughter of his childhood friend la Roche, who had become very dear to him, pass away at the most beautiful age. She had visited Osmannstedt twice, in 1799 and 1800, the first time with her grandmother. The other loss that hit Wieland was the death of his wife in November 1801. - He was no longer able to stay on his estate alone; he sold it and spent the rest of his life back in Weimar. - He had to mourn loved ones even more often, such as Herder in 1803, to whom he was deeply attached as a friend, Sophie la Roche in February 1807 and the noble woman to whom he owed so much, Duchess Amalie, in April of the same year. In 1806, he also witnessed the storm of war that blew over Germany and, like Goethe, got to know Napoleon personally. The latter even decorated him with the Legion of Honor. In the period that followed, Wieland was even quieter than before, since the friends mentioned were still alive. He also knew how to enjoy and make use of this peace and quiet. And on January 20, 1813, the life of the octogenarian died quietly and calmly. He was buried on the 25th in the Osmannstedt garden, which used to be his property and where Sophie Brentano and his wife are buried. There is a small memorial on the grave with the inscription: "Love and friendship embraced the kindred souls in life / And their mortal lives are covered by this common stone." - Goethe gave a funeral oration honoring his friend in the most beautiful way in the "Amalia" lodge of the Freemasons, which Wieland had joined in 1809.

[ 39 ] If Wieland's posthumous fame could not be fully realized by the great stars Lessing, Schiller and Goethe, the greatest of the three, Goethe himself, did much to ensure that the esteemed contributor to the development of German intellectual life was given his due.

For many years now, almost every winter I have had the privilege of speaking here about one or other topic from the field of spiritual science, as it is meant in tonight's reflections. And just on the occasion of my last lectures, which I was allowed to give here, I allowed myself to make the remark that when one speaks of spiritual science today in our present time in the sense in which it is meant here, one then by no means talking about anything in our time that is well known or even popular in wider circles; on the contrary, with this spiritual science one has to talk about something that is widely unrecognized and, above all, misunderstood. Indeed, this spiritual science has to fight against misunderstanding upon misunderstanding. One person may be informed about this spiritual science from second or third or sometimes even seventh or eighth hand reports and come to the conclusion that it is something like a new sect entering the world or some new attempt to found a religious community or something similar. The other comes to the opinion that this spiritual science has fantasy and 'dreaming' at its sources. Above all, it contradicts in the most eminent sense what today, as a worldview, wants to establish itself, as they say, as genuine, true science.

Perhaps I may, just on the occasion of this lecture, conclude with a few words about the misunderstandings that are currently close to us here, and may I first devote the greater part of the lecture to our topic and to that from whose field I have already been able to bring some details here for discussion, today in general, in order to then consider some special questions in the lecture on January 27 of next year.

Above all, it may be said that spiritual science wants to place itself in the spiritual life of the present, precisely as this spiritual life of the present has developed from the scientific way of thinking that has taken hold of the spiritual life of humanity for three to four centuries. And it may be said that the most serious misunderstanding is the assumption that this spiritual research can somehow come into conflict with the legitimate claims of true scientific research. From its point of view, this spiritual science will admire and fully recognize this science, and must do so if it wants to stand on the ground of true and genuine observation of humanity and the times. It will admire and recognize the great scientific achievements of our age where it is justified, will acknowledge what science has done for the transformation of our entire cultural life, will acknowledge how it is a scientific way of thinking, what is at work at every turn today and lives in our cultural assets and, in particular, what has virtually transformed all external areas of the rest of life in the course of the nineteenth century.

To what extent this spiritual science is fully included in the natural scientific series of development on the one hand, but on the other hand must go beyond its final conclusions, precisely because it draws the last and most genuine conclusions about what today is often called natural science thinking, I would like to explain this first by means of a kind of comparison, by which we simply want to communicate, but by which we do not want to prove anything special about what spiritual science has to say.

I do not want to talk about what science has achieved in terms of commercial and industrial aspects of contemporary cultural life; I want to talk about what scientific thinking has achieved. Apart from the fact that it has influenced the various cultural fields, it has contributed to a certain education of all human thinking, it has transformed the nature of the habits of thought, of the life of imagination and the cognitive needs of the human soul to a much greater extent than is usually realized. For this transformation has not only taken hold of those who have been drawn to science directly through their profession, their inclination or their interest, but of all souls; people simply think differently today than they did five or six centuries ago. We are accustomed to holding very different ideas about what we might call the reign of a sense of existence than we had in earlier centuries.

This is not something that has been arbitrarily brought about; rather, it is based on that inner necessity that had to take place in the history of mankind, just as human life must be different for an old man of sixty than for a man of thirty. These things correspond to historical laws of life, and anyone who wants to deny them must deny the inner truth of things. Those people who today are not yet seized by this change in thinking will be seized by it in the future, in difficult times, in the very near future. Thus, if we may say so, centuries of scientific education have transformed the innermost part of human thought and feeling. We may say so.

How does that which wants to shape cultural development as spiritual science relate to this transformation of human thinking over the last four centuries? I would like to illustrate this to you through a comparison. Let us look at the farmer who harvests the fruits when they are ripe. The greater part of the harvest is used as human food. But a part must be used, if life is to continue, to be sown as seed again, so that a harvest can ripen again next year.

We can compare this process in the life of nature with what has been achieved in recent centuries through scientific knowledge. The greater part of this must be used to allow human cultural life to flow broadly; it is incorporated into the important industrial achievements, into commercial life, into external social coexistence, into the individual sciences; and the individual branches of this culture flourish because the scientific way of thinking flows into them all. This part of human thought can be compared to the part of the seed that is used for human food.

But a part – and certainly not the least valuable part – of thoughts that have entered the human soul only in the last century, a part of these inner acquisitions, of what we have learned about the secrets of the existence of the world precisely through the natural sciences, can be used like the seed that goes into the field to produce new fruit. This is the part we use for what is referred to as meditation, concentration of thought. We can process this part of scientific thoughts and ideas inwardly with the soul, allowing them to take effect in our soul, to germinate there, so to speak. Under the influence of these thoughts, to which we devote ourselves in meditation, which we practise in the very innermost, most intimate soul work, we can allow precisely these scientific ideas to work on our soul in such a way that they work, weave, and bring forth sensations and feelings within it, that they practise this soul life so inwardly that this soul life not only expresses the word 'development', which is so popular today, but also comes into development itself. It is precisely the scientific way of thinking, when meditatively processed, that transforms our soul, makes our soul into something else. And it will soon become clear how, from this point of view, spiritual science is the correct continuation of the scientific way of thinking. But with regard to this spiritual science, when such considerations are employed, as is the case today, only suggestions can be given, only communications about the method of research, through which the spiritual researcher himself can devote himself to contemplation, the means by which everyone can be convinced.

Therefore, I would first like to draw attention to some of the results of spiritual science and then show how the spiritual researcher arrives at these results. These results are so at odds with what people today believe and suppose to be truth that they seem quite paradoxical, like something fantastic, like a flight of fancy for some. The spiritual researcher in particular knows how alien these results must be to many a soul of the present time, and he is least surprised when someone who wanted to be his friend walks away from him with the impression that he was talking to a fanatic. The spiritual researcher is fully aware of every reaction, even hostile confrontation, because he knows where such antagonism can come from.

Above all, spiritual research is a unique discipline in that it seeks to connect the human soul with its spiritual source in a way that is based on scientific thinking. It shows that what man carries in his soul as the deepest, innermost part is spiritual , a spiritual core; and that this spiritual core is connected with an all-embracing spiritual life of the world that lies beyond the life of the senses, and that it cannot be perceived or recognized by the ordinary human senses or by the intellect that binds itself to these human senses. But in this method of research, a tremendous difference between spiritual science and all other sciences immediately comes to light. Every other science works with the same means of thinking and looking at things, which are otherwise peculiar to man in everyday life. Just as man is, just as he develops in the normal way from childhood to later age, as he develops a certain capacity for knowledge, so he also approaches the scientific research objects of the present. And everything that such a normal person has to say forms the content of the sciences in the various fields of life.

It is quite different in spiritual research. It takes development seriously. It is based on the fact that with the powers of knowledge, with the soul faculties, which are initially inherent in people in their everyday lives, these boundaries cannot be crossed, which separate the sensual from the supersensible, the material from the spiritual; but it is based on the fact that a person's powers of knowledge, a person's soul powers, can be developed. It is serious about the word “development”. And today we will be speaking about intimate inner processes and activities of the soul, through which the soul elevates itself beyond itself, comes to develop powers of knowledge that are not those of ordinary life, but that, within this soul, which can be addressed in the soul as the true, immortal, spiritual core of the human being.

In a sense, spiritual research is not as comfortable as other forms of research; it cannot accept people as they are, but must make uncomfortable demands of them. If you want to become a spiritual researcher, you have to transform your soul so that it is guided beyond the ordinary level through its own activity and conducts research with powers that are not present in everyday life. This is the language of spiritual research. Only these powers lead to the regions of the spiritual world and to its beings.

But then, when the soul is led out so that it grasps its own essential core as a soul, then it first comes to a truth that, in the truest sense of the word, represents the continuation of the findings of natural science, but which is still everywhere looked upon as fantasy wherever it has not been studied in detail. One comes to the truth about repeated lives, the truth that can be expressed in a nutshell by saying: What we experience and work for in this life between birth and death, we do not experience and work for only once. As we see our life, when we look back into childhood as far as we can, and as we hope for our life in relation to the rest of the life before death, we do not live only once. We go through the gate of death and live in a purely spiritual world, which can only be seen with the spirit, a life between death and new birth, and then enter with the fruits of this life, also with those that we gather between death and new birth, into a new life on earth, to which we can look in the future just as we can look back into the past on the already expired earth lives of the individual human. So we always look forward to life on earth - between birth and death - and to life that passes between death and new birth in a purely spiritual world. The way we present this truth in today's spiritual life, it seems quite naturally fantastic to the vast majority of people. But all new truths in the world have seemed as fantastic as they have appeared. It will always be the fate of new truths that at first they seem like fantasies, then they become something that can no longer be seen as different; they then become a matter of course. Then, when man beholds himself as in an extended memory, then he can also explore the connections of this spiritual-soul core, which goes from life to life, with the spiritual worlds, through which the divine-spiritual, which interweaves and lives through this life, also passes. But from that which the spiritual researcher has so fully brought to life within himself, it springs forth for man that which he needs more and more for the cultural development of our earth, especially in the present and in the future.

Thus I have presented some of the truths of this spiritual research. It now remains for me to show how the spiritual researcher arrives at these truths, that is, how the spiritual world is investigated and researched. One must not believe that this spiritual world can be investigated with the senses that we can apply to the sensory world. It is a spiritual world precisely because it cannot be perceived by the senses. It is necessary for the study of this spiritual world that man himself should make himself the instrument of investigation. All other sciences have their external instruments. Spiritual research has as its only instrument the human organism itself, which is, however, the most wonderful instrument we can find on earth. But this organism must undergo a certain transformation if it is to acquire, to use a phrase from Goethe, “spiritual eyes and ears” in order to see what is always around us in spiritual form, but which cannot be seen unless a spiritual eye and spiritual ear are developed in the human soul, which would otherwise remain dormant.

How does one develop the spiritual organs through which the spiritual world becomes visible, audible and perceptible to man? Not tumultuous external processes, not experiments that can be carried out in the same way externally as in laboratories or clinics, bring about this change, but inner soul processes that the spiritual researcher can carry out with himself if he wants to gain insight into the spiritual world. What I have to say in this description may appear to many people to be extremely mundane. But it must be said: however mundane these things appear, in their execution they are among the most difficult that a person can undertake on this earth, including all his other activities. But we are not speaking of special wonders, of some things that in their simplest form not every person would know, when one has to speak of what the spiritual researcher must develop in his soul if he wants to come to the real exploration of the supersensible. The soul forces that the spiritual researcher has to develop are always there in the soul, but only in their beginnings, as they are needed for everyday life. The spiritual researcher has only to develop these qualities to an unlimited degree. Here I must call attention to something that is not only present everywhere in everyday life, but is also necessary in the most eminent sense. It is what is called attention: the attention of the soul to these or those things, the turning of interest to these or those things, as we have them in ordinary life.

We need to pay attention to two things. Many people need to reflect – but usually they think about these things when things are no longer going well – they need to reflect on why their memory is getting worse in life. Why does memory get worse at all? If you delve deeper into the question of memory, you come to the conclusion that it is actually a question of attention. What we grasp intensely with our attention remains in our memory.

You could say something quite mundane as an introductory remark when you want to point out the importance of attention. Many a person is quite annoyed in the morning when they cannot find this or that thing that they put here or there in the evening. They have completely forgotten it. For example, they cannot find their cufflink. Why does this happen? Well, they have forgotten where they put it. He can remedy that. A sure way to help himself is to resolve not just to lay it down thoughtlessly, but to think: I am putting the button in this place, I am laying it down with will. If you also pay attention to the act from your inner arbitrariness, you will not forget it, you will surely remember the place where you put the button. This can be extended to all other memories. If only people realized that they also take into their memory everything they take into their arbitrary attention, then they would combine the attention problem with the memory problem, and a training of the memory can be summarized in a training of attention.

And there is another point to which attention must be drawn, which seems even more important. It is necessary for a healthy mental life that we are able to recognize the experiences we have had back to the point of our childhood as ours in memory. If we are incapable of this, if, let us say, at the age of thirty a person's soul life is such that he cannot recognize certain experiences that he had at the age of five as his own, then a perforation of the ability to remember occurs that is somewhat unhealthy. Only then are we healthy when we can follow our entire present self as a continuous thread. This depends on our being able to experience the events that happen to us in such a way that they line up on a thread of memory through which, as it were, our ego runs. And a person - this happens in certain mental illnesses - can, as it were, come to have a double ego in that he can have the opinion that someone else has experienced what he has actually experienced. Such things happen. Then his healthy soul life is destroyed, torn apart. Much could be achieved for the education of people in whom one can recognize in many cases that such a perforation of the ego is taking place, much could be achieved for education if one were clear about the fact that the ability to remember is intimately connected with the way we pay attention to and are interested in the things of the world. Nothing but attention — that is what belongs to the imaginative soul forces.

It is this attention that must be developed to infinity by the spiritual researcher in what is called concentration of thought. To do this, however, an ordinary, everyday soul force must be driven with tremendous inner energy and resignation to an extent that it is otherwise never driven in external life. The human being must bring himself to explore the state of mind in which he is when he is attentive; he must become aware of it when he is attentive in ordinary life. His attention is aroused by external impressions, by sensational things that have a strong effect on him. But the spiritual researcher must transform his attention so that he does not allow himself to be forced by anything external, but is able, through inner arbitrariness alone, to unfold the activity of the soul that would otherwise only be unfolded in attention.

The safest way to achieve this goal is one that is highly inconvenient for many people. In order to achieve something very safely, you have to force yourself to turn your attention to something that is as uninteresting as possible in ordinary life; something you would like to run away from, that is completely uninteresting. If you can bring yourself to treat that from which you otherwise run away with your soul in such a way that you place it at the center of your spiritual life, that you concentrate all the powers of your soul on this one thing, but in relation to the rest of your soul, through inner arbitrariness, through training of the soul, you come to be as in sleep, so that no eye, no ear perceives anything externally, that all the worries of life fall silent: Anyone who has silenced their entire being in this way, as is otherwise only achieved in sleep, but then does not fall asleep but focuses on something that they have deliberately placed at the center of their mental life and now turn their soul's attention to in an unlimited way, will awaken forces in their soul that would otherwise remain dormant in their soul.

This brings about what could be called – I do not particularly value the expression – a spiritual chemistry. Because when you develop your imagination and thinking, you are doing something in your own soul life that can be compared and only compared with the separation of hydrogen from water in the chemical laboratory. When we have water in front of us, it is liquid. If we separate the hydrogen from it, we have a gas that has very different properties than water. No one can see the properties of hydrogen and oxygen in the water. And no one can recognize the spiritual destiny in the person who stands before us every day. To do this, the spiritual and mental must be separated from the physical and bodily. This does not happen through external processes, but through the increase of that which may appear so ordinary to man, into the immeasurable. So that one can indeed say: “Although it is light, the light is heavy.”

There are many details that need to be observed. Here, only the principle can be stated. If the soul then increases its attention, as required, it is able, through the concentration of forces that are otherwise unconscious, to tear everything of the soul and spirit away from the physical, just as hydrogen is torn away from oxygen in the laboratory.

If you continue such inner exercises of the soul life, then the day will come when you can connect a meaning to the words that are otherwise just a phrase: Now I know that I can think even when I am not thinking with the brain; now I know that I can think and visualize even when I am not using my body; now I know what it means to leave the body and to feel and experience the soul and spiritual realm. And when someone leaves the physical body with the soul and spirit, he has completely different qualities and experiences in his inner life than a person has within his body. Just as someone says that hydrogen can be extracted from water, then hydrogen has the properties of a gas that burns, so from the point of view of an everyday materialist, one can laugh at what the spiritual researcher experiences when he reaches the point of lifting his spiritual soul out of his physical body through long, energetic exercises. It sounds like empty phrases when he talks about it. And yet I would like to describe the progress, at least in detail.

What the spiritual researcher experiences when he continues the exercises is indeed so completely paradoxical that from a certain moment on he feels: Yes, your thinking used to be such that you had to use your brain to think – but now you feel that you are actually thinking outside of your brain. He feels as if he can move like a sun in the spiritual with his present thinking, emancipated from the brain. He experiences himself in such a way that he now even knows: the way he thinks otherwise now runs almost automatically, it is bound to the brain. From a certain moment on, one acquires a very definite knowledge about it: When you are in your present state, you have to slip back into your brain if you want to use your brain again. You perceive your brain as something external to you, like you would perceive an external object, a table, a chair, next to you.

Then comes that significant experience, which makes such a significant, such a shattering impact on the spiritual life of the spiritual researcher. It must be repeated several times in life, but when it occurs for the first time in life, it is the most harrowing event that cannot be compared to anything else in life. It can occur, for example, as the following: one wakes up in the middle of sleep as if to a dream, but it is not a dream, but a spiritual reality that outshines all the rest of the reality of the day. The experience can also occur in the middle of the outer life of the day, but it does not disturb it, because true and correct preparation will never make a person fantasize. In the life of the day as well as in the life of the night, the moment may arise, which I would characterize in the following way. But it can also occur in hundreds of other ways; I will give only a typical example. Something of what is attempted to be described with words will present itself to every person who becomes a spiritual researcher. He will communicate what happens in such a way that he says: It is like a room in which he finds himself. Lightning strikes the room; he follows the lightning as if speaking to himself inwardly, he feels the elements striking his body in a flash, as if his body were being destroyed. From that moment on, he knows that he is united with the spirit without the body, he knows that man carries a spiritual and soul element within him; this is the direct experience of every person who can have the experience if he wants to. Only from that moment on do you know what the human essence is in the truest sense of the word; what lies beyond birth and death.

This experience can only be made in a spiritual way, not through external experiments. Those who demand that the spiritual be established through external experiments should also demand that some experience they had fifty years ago be extracted with some kind of powder so that it can be prepared and made visible externally. Spiritual facts are not established externally. That which spiritual researchers of all times have called “approaching the gate of death”, that is, experiencing death in the image, that is, what a person experiences in real death when his eternal core detaches itself from the physical body, is experienced in the image in the serious experience, which so absorbs the soul of the person who has already had it once, imprinting on the soul that seriousness that can be expressed and felt with the words: You were connected to the deepest core of your being, to that which, as the eternal, spiritually permeates, lives through and interweaves the world. However, this seriousness is to be lived through painfully and not without making the greatest efforts to which man is unaccustomed. Not without surrendering what is otherwise considered pleasure and joy; what one otherwise likes in life, not without giving up what one otherwise strives for in life for certain moments, one attains this purest experience, which has been spoken of and points to light in the spiritual world. Then one attains something further when one adds the following to what has just been said: One must also give up everything that one perceives as desirable in everyday life, and one must give it up in such a way that one completely renounces everything that one otherwise desires, everything that one otherwise likes, that one gives up everything that gives one pleasure, and one must not give it up in such a way that one has only a very specific self-awareness in the devotion, but in such a way that one really renounces during this devotion all such activity that we otherwise call our complete devotion to the world, which one otherwise does not really know, that one gives up no compulsion and nothing that otherwise calls us to devotion in life. This must be added, and the spiritual world, into which we have entered, senses this with what we call the spiritual state.

One should not imagine this perception in the spiritual world as being the same as the perception in the external world. The external world is presented to us in such a way that we can say: there is an object out there that I see with my eye or perceive with my other sensory organs. One can only experience spiritual states if, after devotion, one becomes one with the states. We do not experience these states from outside ourselves, but in such a way that they enter into us. We have to immerse ourselves, become one with the spiritual states that come to meet us. Therefore, when a person increases his inner thinking through attention, and when we make this thinking an organ of perception for spiritual states through devotion, then we perceive these spiritual states.

What one experiences inwardly can be called spiritual mimicry. Just as in ordinary life one unconsciously expresses one's spiritual states in facial expressions, so too, through the processes described, one becomes one with the spiritual world because one feels at one with it. As the soul experiences, it is driven to a facial expression, it becomes very active, very active, as it lives into the conditions. By experiencing the spiritual world, it undergoes something similar inwardly in a spiritual-soul way, as it is the facial expression of our face. A reliving is the perception of the spiritual world, an invisible, supersensible reliving. This reliving is attained, as it were, through this spiritual chemistry, through this detachment of the life of ideas from the instrument of the brain.

Likewise, one can detach the faculty of speech from the tool that otherwise serves language. When we speak, a certain part of the brain is externally active, which we have to use as a tool of our body, the one that specifically leads to the larynx. The one who studies the secrets of human speech knows that, even when one is thinking, finer movements take place internally than the coarser external speech movements. Now, as a spiritual researcher, one must be able to grasp the inner activity of the soul, which one otherwise expresses in speech. The mental researcher must detach it from the sound and the word; he must keep it as an inner activity, not allowing it to become a word, not shaping it into words, and he must keep it so inwardly that not even the parts of the brain that are otherwise active when speaking are used. He detaches the power of speech from speaking. He learns to keep something inwardly in his soul that otherwise vibrates inwardly when speaking. Then he does not speak, but what otherwise floods and pulses through the soul in the word is a strong power, a power through which he not only performs inner facial expressions, but also what can be called inner gestures, inner gesticulation, signs. Then not only intermediate states of the spiritual world, intermediate processes of perception, come to light, but the spiritual world itself is revealed, revealed in us, when we can imitate it in inner gestures. And only through the power of language will it be possible to imitate the processes of the spiritual world.

You can put yourself in the shoes of the beings and actions of real spirits around us. Only by living in their gestures and becoming one with them can you perceive the spiritual beings; this is how you gain knowledge of the spiritual world, but you also gain knowledge of your own sojourn in the spiritual world. When the ability to speak has been chemically detached from speaking, so to speak, the moment has arrived when memory can be extended beyond the previous life on earth, when it is realized that these are not theories; when it is known that our life did not begin yesterday, but that it is the continuation of many previous lives. From the moment we can imitate the spiritual world through the power of speech in an inner gesture, we know that our present life on earth is part of a whole chain of lives. In an inner gesture, we come to the spiritual essence that represents the eternal.

Something else has to be separated from our activity. But this is more difficult to understand. I would like to express what I mean in the simplest way. When we remember our childhood, we have to say: In our childhood we were all four-footed creatures. We walked on all fours. We straightened up through our own inner activity, which was certainly practiced, but which left no memory of its inwardness to the human being. And just imagine what the human being, as a cultural being on earth, is because he looks up into the heavenly sphere with his face! That has changed his entire direction in space. The human being has only made himself into the being that he is. To experience again in later life that inner urge that inspired us when we made ourselves into an upright being and thereby formed ourselves into a human being, that is what we should activate in our soul.

This leads us to a third power of the soul, which we separate from our bodily life. We have already used this power in the past of our present life. We no longer need it in later life, because then we can straighten ourselves up. But now we bring out the strength with which we straightened ourselves up; we apply it, we become aware of it. At that time it worked without us having caught up with it in our soul; we were content with becoming upright beings from crawling beings through the inner application of this strength. The spiritual researcher learns to recognize a wonderful soul power in this power. Through this power he is able not only to experience the spiritual through the state of thought and the gestures of spiritual beings through the detached power of speech, as in the state of thinking, but he is able to experience the spiritual beings themselves, to become one with them, as it were, to become one with the spiritual worlds, to work and weave in them. With them one learns to recognize that the human being has come to earth as a spiritual being, and by bringing these forces with him, he has become what he is as an earthly being. He has become a human being by bringing the body from a horizontal to a vertical position. Only man uses this power in the universe to change from a quadruped to a biped. If you discover this power inwardly in the soul, then you enter into the inner being of other spiritual beings that permeate and live through the world. These are beings that have different tasks to perform because they have a different purpose in the world than humans do. One gains insight into earthly conditions by concentrating one's attention, recognizing spiritual beings with their co-experiences, by unfolding in the spiritual world precisely that which gives the human being his spiritual physiognomy as a human being. Through inner physiognomy, one becomes one with the spiritual beings. Inner gestures and movements lead to the perception of processes in the spiritual world; but spiritually motivated physiognomy, as it gives the upright physiognomy to a person, leads to the knowledge of that which people can only experience and experience in the spiritual world, in association with other spiritual beings.

The paths that lead the spiritual researcher into the spiritual worlds are briefly indicated. These ways cannot be particularly popular. Today they are such that one must say that they go against one of the characteristics of the human soul: its love of comfort. This love of comfort goes so far today that the human soul only acknowledges the existence of something when it can simply passively devote itself to it. If one demands of this soul that it should first be active itself, that it should itself experience that which previously meant nothing to it, and through which it should then recognize the object in its own experience, then this goes against the complacency of today's soul, which wants to be passive, which does not want to conquer truths for itself, but wants to be given them.

Therefore, spiritual research is so aligned with the goals of the present that these goals of the present do not want to know about spiritual science, because, especially in the most spiritual sense, these goals are directed towards passivity. Spiritual science demands the development of soul powers that are based on activity and that, in their further pursuit, lead into the higher, supersensible worlds; because the spiritual can only be experienced through inner activity.

But today's man often imagines the spiritual to be mere fantasy. He imagines it to be like an external object that commands him: “I am here, you have to recognize me.” In this way, he is very far from the right understanding. The following was explained quite philosophically in a newspaper: When you immerse yourself in Kant or any other philosopher, all the concepts are so intangible that you have to think about them for a long time before you can understand them. Can our time provide a remedy for this? And precisely because of the spirit of our time, he [the author] finds that they can be made tangible. Everything should be made tangible, including the spirit. Yes, even that which every human being can know is not visible, human thinking, the thought should become visible. And how should that happen? Well, Spinoza, for example, who is said to be difficult for people to understand, who want to make everything vivid, should be approached in such a way that the cinematograph is used. Why not? You could do the following, says the person concerned. This has not been suggested as a fairy tale, but as a serious proposition based on the aims of our time. It shows how Spinoza arrives at seemingly difficult thoughts. Through the idea of the expansion of thought, it shows how the whole of ethics, up to God, are juxtaposed, culminating in the higher ideas. Cinematography could be used to illustrate Spinoza's entire ethics from individual forces. That is one of the aims of our time. And the editor of this journal, who is taking up the treatise, makes the following comment: “So we could finally hope that the ancient masters of humanity can be brought closer to people in a way that corresponds to the present day through what most people today obviously see only as a game, namely the art of film.

In this way, however, spiritual science cannot keep pace with the goals of our time. These goals of our time are geared towards passivity, and even if we were to talk for hours about the goals of our time, this passivity of the spirit is the necessary correlate in relation to what could be said about these goals in intimate terms. This much can be said.

If you look closely, you will see that the spiritual life of humanity is no different from the rest of nature. What is gained on the one hand must be taken away on the other. One has to admire the boldness of the inventions of the mind that are used in technology. Man will even conquer the unruly air; but all this is achieved with the most profound spiritual passivity.

But precisely for this reason our time is also so ripe for developing the spirit itself in its activity. Indeed, more than that, our time has the necessity of making the spirit inwardly active. The innermost moral, intellectual and emotional powers are brought forth through the habits of thinking and feeling that are gained through spiritual science. On the one hand, as a result of the education that humanity has already acquired under the influence of what is truly admirable in itself, spiritual science is seen as something paradoxical, something fantastic, perhaps even something quite different; but as a result, this opposition locks itself onto the other side. Opposition is necessary. Just as when you press an elastic ball for a long time, it finally develops that strength, which is perceived as an elastic counterforce against the pressure, so the soul must come to strong and ever stronger passivity precisely through the admirable achievements of thought, so that it longs for inner activity. Unconsciously, it already longs for this activity today. And all activity can become a power through which the soul is liberated and redeemed when spiritual research is allowed to work in the fabric of contemporary spiritual culture.

With just these few remarks, I wanted to show today how spiritual science wants to engage with the whole spiritual fabric of the present.

Looking back at what has just been discussed, it will be fully understood that spiritual science faces opposition from all sides. One of these oppositions comes from those who believe that religions or something else is endangered by spiritual science. They will not appear incomprehensible to the observer of history. For the time of Copernicus, the fact that the earth orbits the sun was just as fantastic as the fact of repeated earth lives is for our contemporaries. At that time, people believed that religion was endangered by Copernican astronomy; just as people today believe that religion is endangered again by the teaching of spiritual science about repeated earth lives.

We can be more reassured about such beliefs if we consider that when an outstanding scholar-philosopher, who was also, admittedly, active in the [cosmological] field, came to the realization that truth is invincible, he was talking about Galileo. He said that today the Church has learned to see in Galileo, in Copernicus, no longer those whom she once saw in them; but today she has learned to point out that through discoveries in the field of science, the glory of divine revelations is revealed to mankind all the more brightly. Science in the true sense of the word is to the praise of religious life, not to critically do something detrimental to true, religiously understood life.

That it is not so widely understood, that was made clear to a large number of our friends who want to start building a relatively small structure in the near future that will provide a home for spiritual science and a variety of studies. Many of these voices were instructive, which certainly sometimes spoke from a point of view that is so thoroughly imbued with what fantastic stuff, what a reverie this spiritual science actually is. Yes, it was interesting from a cultural-historical point of view when the remarks that had been made about the building in the most diverse places were also presented to me. It was interesting to look at things from this point of view as well. Indeed, one could admit that the humanities or their adherents have a little imagination, but they don't have as much as those who have occasionally written these articles.

At most, they can measure up to the article that I also received, about a spiritual researcher who is quite close to me and which states what he expresses in terms of fantasies. You can't get enough of his fantasies, and then you move on to the second section, where you are then really told, probably from the elbow, the very worst fantasies about birth, kinship, descent. Truly, even if he had some imagination, if he were inclined to fantasize par excellence [...], he would never dream up so much fantasy, especially not a fantasy about external descent, about kinship and so on.

The strangest things can be read. For example, it is said that a Buddhist temple is to be built on the site. Just as modern chemistry is far removed from what was once practiced as chemistry in distant Asia centuries or millennia ago, so too is modern spiritual science far removed from what Buddhism is. It takes more than a little imagination to talk about Buddhism. Today I have tried to explain, albeit insufficiently, what the adherents of spiritual science actually want. Perhaps some of the ideas will be able to be gained from it after all. But that will have little to do with what these spiritual researchers are supposed to be, according to the newspaper reports. One remark, which has appeared in at least thirty newspapers, has particularly caught my attention. We learn of a remarkable ability of the spiritual researchers: they can make it rain. It was emphasized everywhere that the foundation stone was laid in the pouring rain. What kind of people must the spiritual researchers be that they can order rain so that they can lay the foundation stone protected by the rain? If that were the case, they would certainly be very dangerous. But if you get to know those who make the Dornach building their own, you will recognize that they like sunshine just as much as you do; that they did not order the rain at all and did not shy away from the day. It would even have been daytime when the foundation stone was laid if some of the members who would have liked to have been there had not come on a later train. That is a more trivial explanation, which cannot be made much of, but it looks a little better if one says: These people must have certain reasons for working at night and in the rain. That was not said, but it was still in the subconscious and can be interpreted from the words. But reality is not that interesting. As for the rest, the future will show how little foundation there is for the fantastic ideas that have been spread in the outside world about this place, which is said to be a place of activity in the sense indicated in this lecture. This lecture was not given to talk about this place, but because it is being given, I may refer to it with these few words, because, so to speak, spiritual science has made an unwanted sensation in this area.

If you want to say what this building is for, yes, isn't it true that stations are built so that people can travel by train? They are built so that the machines, the trains, can drive in and out. For this, the stations must be usable. We must see as the characteristic quality of this building nothing other than that which is useful for the purposes of spiritual science, which is capable of stirring the soul when the word of spiritual science is spoken, as is necessary to bring the soul into contact with the spiritual world. To evoke the mood of the soul that is necessary in our time, to prepare the soul to receive the spiritual world, it is necessary to speak not only through the word, but also through that which is around us. What otherwise can only be expressed in words should be poured into the architecture. In the form of symbols that are truly artistic, a building should be created in the interior design that can serve the cultivation of spiritual culture in a spiritual way, just as a train station serves its material purposes in the right way. Even if the comparison is a trivial one, it is still apt.

It will be more and more recognized that what spiritual science can achieve from the human soul is connected with all the goals of the present. By appealing to the active element in the soul, to that which can only be awakened through activity in the soul, spiritual science speaks at the same time to the most important activities of the soul through the results of its research. More and more, those souls who can be active in the truest sense will desire spiritual science in the spirit. Spiritual science will appeal to soul powers that can only be taken into account from the present time onwards, but which also have to intervene in all the aims of human culture; above all in artistic life, so that just as in ancient times spiritual science developed on the one hand and art on the other from the common source of spiritual life, so here too artistic activity will go hand in hand with the current of spiritual science. And a weak beginning for this is to be given in the architecture of the site that will be built in Dornach. The architecture should speak to those who, in the longings of the soul, feel drawn to it, through the form of the same spiritual secrets, of which otherwise only in words can be actually stammered. Spiritual science has a hope. How many opponents it can grow up with in the present, that it corresponds to a necessity of the heart and the human soul, that will be seen from what it has inserted into culture. Just as scientific and religious prejudices were unable to stop Copernicanism, so the truths of spiritual science will not be hindered by the prejudices of these opposing sides. That which lies in the organism of human becoming and happening will happen with the same inevitability with which a young person matures and ripens according to an inner law. Just as this natural property is inherent in humanity, so too will this spiritual science mature. And just as natural science intervenes in and transforms the outer material life, so too will spiritual science intervene in the social, moral and spiritual conditions of the soul life. Just as we travel differently today – by rail – than we did two centuries ago, so too do longings live differently in the soul today than they did two centuries ago.

These longings must be satisfied; we can also see this from the following remarkable matter, which may be recalled again, even if something external is compared with something internal: When the first railways were to be built in Germany, the Medical College was consulted. The college replied that no railways should be built, otherwise people would suffer severely from nervous disorders when traveling on them. And if some people still want to travel, then the railways should at least be fenced in with boards so that the other people do not become dizzy. That was the judgment in 1837. The railways run all the same. That is how it is in life. And spiritual science will run through spiritual life, just as the obstacles of antagonism will want to assert themselves. Spiritual science will show precisely in those in whose hearts it is to take root how unfounded all the prejudices against it are. Science will see how in spiritual science it finds its best ally, how science, limiting itself to external matters, cannot achieve what spiritual science must give it. It will recognize that spiritual science contradicts natural science just as little as there is a contradiction for healthy thinking in the following. We can have three people standing in front of us, one and two others in front of him. The question arises: Why does the one live? Well, because he has a lung inside and breathes air in and out. Nothing to be said against that. But the other says: I know he also lives for another reason. I found him hanged eight days ago; because I cut him down, he is alive today. Everyone is right. The natural scientist is fully justified in saying that when certain qualities appear in life, we have inherited them from our parents, our ancestors and so on. He has the merit of pointing to what is given in the line of inheritance. The spiritual scientist says: what develops in the wonderful mystery of growth, that is brought by the person from previous earthly lives. There is no contradiction in this; both are true.

And with the religious concerns it will be as with the concerns about Copernicanism. The one who stands on the ground of revelation nevertheless feels united with all those minds that have grasped the truth from their point of view; what spiritual research is supposed to be, that it will become, and when spiritual research is an achievement of our time, then the people blessed by this cultural progress will have counted these spiritual goals of spiritual research as their own; as spiritual beings, they will have felt united with spiritual research, they will have grasped its point of view in relation to the spiritual world.

As with all other honest minds connected with human progress, spiritual research also feels at one with Goethe, and with his words I would like to summarize today's reflection from this point of view. To all those who are prejudiced against spiritual research, I would say this: if people believe that religion or something else is endangered by spiritual science, then the spiritual researcher, whose soul has been touched by spiritual science, knows that he is walking through the world and knows that Goethe's words are true, and that they that the one who truly allows himself to be penetrated by science and art, enters in such a way that his soul is truly religiously moved; and that only the one who lacks the gift for science and artistry in the right sense will not be religiously moved in the true sense of the word. Therefore, allow me to characterize the position of spiritual science in relation to the goals of all times and also of our time with Goethe's words, by saying with Goethe:

He who possesses science and art
also has religion;
he who does not possess those two
shall have religion.

The title of this lecture series is, Spiritual Science's Answer to the Large Questions of the Present Time, published in German as, Antworten der Geisteswissenschaft auf den Grossen Fragen des Daseins.

It is a far cry from the great Zarathustra or Zoroaster, who formed the subject of our last lecture in this series, to the three great personalities who provide the subject matter of our lecture to-day, and the gulf of time which, in our imagination, we are called upon to span is wide indeed. It is a gulf which stretches from a time thousands of years ago, long before our Christian Era. A time which we can only understand by attributing to the human beings existing then a mental outlook utterly foreign to our own. From this distant standpoint of time, we pass to the 16th and 17th centuries of our own era, to the time when that spirit was first kindled which, ever since, has been the source and inspiration of all vital and progressive culture from then to the present day. As we shall see, this spirit, which burnt so fiercely in the 16th and 17th centuries in individuals such as Galileo and Giordano Bruno, found a fresh medium in a personality so near our own times as that of Goethe.

Galileo and Giordano Bruno are the two names we must mention when we review the beginnings of that epoch in our human evolution at which Natural Science had reached the same turning-point as Spiritual Science has reached to-day. The same great impulse which was then given to the thought of Natural Science will be, in a certain sense, given to this of Spiritual Science in the immediate future. Hence the importance of a comprehensive survey of the lines of thought and feeling of the men of that day, viz.: during the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries—the time of Galileo and of Giordano Bruno—so that we may be able to understand their teaching in the full sense of the word.

Casting a retrospective glance over the centuries immediately preceding theirs, viz:—from the 11th to the 15th centuries, we must try and realize what at first sight appears to be the peculiar conception of the Science current in those days, and how wide was the field which the term then embraced. We must realise that during these centuries, Scientific Knowledge was viewed from an entirely different standpoint from that from which it is viewed to-day. The popular conception of Scientific Knowledge was then very different from the ideas which prevailed in later times and from those which prevail to-day. For we are now speaking of the days before the printing-press, of those days when, for the majority of the people, their sole means of participating in Spiritual and intellectual life was through the Church or the school, etc.—That is to say they could only learn from oral instruction. Hence the necessity, if we would understand those times, of obtaining a correct picture of the scientific methods pursued by the educated men of that day.

In the times preceding those of Galileo and Giordano Bruno, there was an impulse towards Science, but it was an impulse which is very difficult for the modern mind to understand. We can only understand it by placing ourselves, in imagination, in an entirely different mental atmosphere from that by which we are surrounded to-day. In those days, whatever auditorium you might have entered where Science was being taught, you would always have noted one thing. Let us take, for example, a lecture on Natural Science. No matter what branch of Natural Science it might be, whether Medicine or another, the lecturer would base all his deductions solely upon the authority of ancient writings, especially upon those of Aristotle. To-day, the lecturer on Science bases his thesis upon the results of modern investigation, carried out in such or such an institute, where scientific methods of research are followed. But the lecturer of the days preceding those of Galileo and Giordano Bruno based his thesis upon the ancient writings, especially upon those of Aristotle, which were the foundation of all Science in those days.

The figure of Aristotle stands out pre-eminent as an intellectual giant in the history of human progress; and the service he rendered to his time is unspeakably important. But, for the moment, the interesting point for us is the fact that the books of Aristotle were seldom read in the sense in which they were originally given, but the traditional rendering gave the tone, and was everywhere considered determinant.

No matter whether it were a question of the definition of a principle or of an axiom, or the question of any truth whatever, it was always referred to Aristotle. “Such was Aristotle's opinion on this point,” “you will find it expressed thus by Aristotle”. Now the modern investigator or the lecturer on Science, or even the popular lecturer, always emphasizes the fact that this or that has been observed in some place or another. But the scientific teacher in the centuries preceding Galileo and Giordano Bruno laid stress upon the fact that a few centuries ago, the great authority, Aristotle, made such or such an assertion upon such or such a question. Just as to-day we refer, in Spiritual matters, to the authority of the revelations of religious documents and tradition and not to personal investigation, so, in those days, teachers of Science did not refer to nature the observation of nature, but referred back to written authority. They referred back to the writings of Aristotle.

It is extraordinarily interesting to study a University discourse and to note how doctors and their colleagues relied upon the theories of Aristotle.

Now Aristotle was an intellectual giant; and though we must admit that even such an intellectual individuality should not be taken literally after the lapse of so many centuries, still, on the other hand, we must acknowledge that the works of Aristotle are so prodigious and so magnificent that even if they learnt nothing new, if men had studied Aristotle diligently, that is to say the original Aristotle, they would have accomplished a great deal. For the deeply illuminating teachings and theories of Aristotle could not have failed to have been of the greatest benefit to them.

This, however, was not the case. The lecturers of those days and the teachers who preached Aristotle in season and out of season, as a rule, understood nothing at all about him.

The doctrines taught in the time preceding that of Galileo and Giordano Bruno and claiming to be those of Aristotle were an almost incredibly mistaken version of his teaching. To-day, I will confine myself to showing you from the standpoint of Spiritual Science the place Galileo and Giordano Bruno took in the intellectual life of their time. I would call to mind in this connection an incident which is perfectly true and which I have often related before.

One of the most devoted adherents of Aristotle was at the same time a friend of Galileo's. Galileo, like Giordano Bruno, was an opponent of the followers of Aristotle, and with good reason, but not of Aristotle himself. Galileo maintained that men ought to go to the great book of Nature, which speaks so clearly to man, and learn from there the meaning of the Spirit in Nature. They should not rely entirely upon the books of Aristotle for their final authority. Now at that time, the School of Aristotle taught a marvelous doctrine concerning the seat of the nerves. Their theory was that the whole nervous system originated in the heart, that from the heart, the nerves spread to the brain and from thence spread over the entire body. “This”, said they, “is the teaching of Aristotle, therefore it must be true.” Galileo, who based his information upon the investigation of the human body, carried out by means of his physical eyes, and did not rely upon the teaching of ancient writings and ancient tradition, affirmed that the nerves had their seat in the brain and that the chief nerves originated in the brain. Galileo told this to one of his friends and wished him to see for himself and be convinced. “Yes, indeed, I will see it,” said the friend who took the opposite view, and he attended a demonstration on the human body. Then, indeed, this scholar, who was a devout follower of Aristotle, was greatly astonished and said to Galileo:—“It does indeed seem as if the nerves originated in the brain; yet Aristotle maintained that they originate in the heart. If there appears to be any contradiction here, I would believe in Aristotle rather than in Nature.” Such was the mental attitude which Galileo had to combat. Aristotle, or rather the distorted view of Aristotle, was dragged into all questions connected with Science.

To quote another instance:—A scholar of the Church wrote a treatise on immortality. Let us consider for a moment the method they employed in those days. They took their subject matter from the Church Doctrine, adding to that what they believed to be the teaching of Aristotle on the subject. Thus they used the words of Aristotle to support their own views, twisting his teaching so that they could claim its support, no matter from which side of the question, whether for or against, they wished to argue. To return to our scholar of Divinity. He had collected various passages from Aristotle in order to demonstrate the opinion of Aristotle upon the question of the immortality of the soul. Now this also is a perfectly true incident. The clergy had to submit their books to their superiors before publication. In this case, the superior objected to the book. “It is dangerous,” he said, “It would be better not to attempt it, for these extracts from Aristotle (in support of immortality) might also be used to support the opposite view.” The author of the book wrote back “If it is only a question of demonstrating more clearly the most acceptable meaning of Aristotle on this subject, then I will support it by another quotation, for one could quite well go on making quotations.” In short, from every point of view, Aristotle was used and abused.

From these two incidents, we can see how greatly Aristotle was misunderstood at the time of Galileo and Giordano Bruno. We will take the example of the origin of the nerves in the heart. The meaning of this statement is hidden. We can only understand it when we realize that Aristotle lived at the end of the period of ancient Greek culture and, therefore, at the end of the period of the old clairvoyant consciousness. Because Aristotle looked back into the past, he transmitted a Science that arose out of a clairvoyant consciousness which was able to see behind the material world into the Spiritual. It was this clairvoyant consciousness which had produced the old Science. The essence of this primeval Science was transmitted by the Greek culture as ancient Science, and this it was which Aristotle possessed. He was one of the last who recorded it. But Aristotle was not himself capable of developing that clairvoyant consciousness, for he only possessed an intellectual consciousness.

Note this well. Not without reason was Aristotle the first historian of Logic. This is because the intellectual argumentative thought was to become dominant. Thus, Aristotle assimilated the ancient teaching and reduced it into a logical system in his writings. Hence there is much in his writings which we cannot understand until we have learnt what it is he really meant. Thus, when he speaks of nerves, we must not ascribe to the word the meaning given to it to-day, nor the meaning it had even in the time of Galileo and Giordano Bruno, which was already related to our own. When Aristotle speaks of the nervous system, he means the Etheric Body of man. By which we mean the super-sensible part of human nature, which is closely connected with the human physical body. This Etheric body can now no longer be seen by man, the power of doing so having been lost during man's progressive evolution. Aristotle could no longer see it, but he knew about it, the knowledge having come to him from those times when the clairvoyant consciousness saw, not only the physical body, but also the Etheric Aura, the Etheric Body, which is really the builder and strength-giver of the physical body.

Aristotle drew his teaching from those times in which man perceived the Etheric Body as we now-a-days perceive colours. Thus, if you look at the Etheric Body instead of at the physical body, the former is truly the origin of certain currents. For Aristotle, this origin was not in the brain, but in the heart. The description given by Aristotle of these currents had usually been designated by the title of nerves. By those currents he did not mean nerves in our sense of the word, but he meant super-sensible currents, super-sensible forces. These proceed from the heart, flow to the brain and, from thence, are distributed to the various activities of the human body. These are matters which we cannot understand until we have learnt by means of Spiritual Science about the super-sensible parts and principles of human nature.

Man had lost the power of seeing clairvoyantly even so long ago as the centuries preceding Galileo and Giordano Bruno. Hence people had no idea that Aristotle was speaking of the Etheric Current. They thought he meant the physical nerves, so they asserted that “Aristotle states that the physical nerves proceed from the heart.”

Such was the contention of the devout followers of Aristotle. Those, however, who had studied in the book of Nature could not allow this. Hence the great battle between Galileo and Giordano Bruno and the School of Aristotle.

The followers of Aristotle completely misunderstood him; no-one understood the real Aristotle; Galileo and Giordano Bruno naturally did not understand him either, for they did not take the trouble to penetrate to the real meaning of the works of Aristotle. Thus Galileo and Giordano Bruno were the two great Intellectuals of their time, who turned away from the pedantry of the Scholastics and of book-learning to the great book of Nature itself, which is available to each and all

Professor Laurenz Muellner, for whom, as philosopher, I have the greatest admiration, refers to this in a lecture which he gave in 1894 as Rector of the Vienna University. In this lecture, he drew attention to the fact that the great Galileo, with his wonderful knowledge and grasp of all the great laws of mechanics, had discovered the laws which govern the distribution of space. Now it is just these laws which govern the operation and, distribution of space which strike the eye and stir the emotions so very forcibly when we see them exemplified in St. Peter's at Rome. This mighty building influences us all. And each one experiences something tangible, which we can all understand. Let me illustrate this by the following example:—Speidel, the Viennese journalist, and the sculptor Natter were driving in the neighborhood of Rome. As they approached the city, Speidel suddenly heard a most extraordinary exclamation from Natter, who was a very genial spirit. Natter sprang suddenly to his feet. His friend could not think what was the matter with him, for he only heard the words “I am frightened”. As Natter would say no more then, it was only later that his friend heard that the exclamation had been called forth by the sight of the dome of St. Peter's in the distance.

Something akin to terrified wonder at the effect of the marvelous distribution of space, created by the genius of Michelangelo, overwhelms all who see this wonderful building. Laurenz Muellner draws attention to the fact that it is owing to Galileo, that great thinker, that it has become possible for mankind to conceive mathematically and mechanically such an effect of space-distribution as meets the eye in the wonderful building of the dome of St. Peter's, at Rome. At the same time, we must not forget that Galileo, who discovered the laws of Mechanics, was born when Michelangelo, the builder of St. Peter's, was almost on his deathbed. This means that it was from the Spiritual forces of Michelangelo that that skill in the distribution of the laws of space arose, which was not available to the intellect of man until later.

From this, we must infer that what we may term intellectual knowledge, knowledge governed by reason, may come much later than the actual composition of matter in space.

If such matters are carefully and thoughtfully considered, it will be seen that human consciousness has undergone a change; that, earlier, men possessed a certain clairvoyance and that the manner of thinking with the intellect does not go back very far. This habit or manner of thinking with the intellect, owing to certain historical necessities, arose during the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Minds like those of Galileo and Giordano Bruno are the first harbingers of what was to come. Hence their fierce opposition to the school of Aristotle and especially to those who first completely misinterpreted Aristotle—who may be taken as the expression of the ancient wisdom—and then used their misinterpretation of him as an argument against Natural Science. We have now indicated Galileo's position in the world. He was, in the highest sense of the word, the man who first inaugurated the system of severe thought necessary for Natural Science, that system of the relation of Natural Science to Mathematics, which has continued on his lines from his day to our own.

What is it that distinguishes Galileo from all other men up to his time? It is the doctrine which he was the first to realize and which he preached with such noble courage, thus proving himself a child of his age. The feelings which possessed Galileo can be to some extent rendered in the following words, which will help us to understand his whole soul and attitude of mind. “Here we stand as men upon the earth. Nature spreads herself out before us, with everything requisite for our senses and for our reason, which is connected with the instrument of the brain through nature”. Galileo says this many times, in various passages in his works, as may be verified, ”through Nature speaks the Divine Spiritual. We men approach Nature, view it with our eyes and study it with our other senses. What we perceive with our eyes, what we receive through our senses, is implanted in Nature by Divine Spiritual Beings. At first, the thoughts of the Divine Spiritual Beings exist yonder; then, as if springing forth from the thoughts of these Beings, come the visible things of Nature as the revelation of. Divine thought. Then come our powers of perception and, above all, our reason, which is inseparable from the brain. There we stand, ready to spell out, as from the letters of a book, and to arrive at the author's meaning, that which Divine thoughts have expressed in Nature.”

Galileo took his stand firmly on the ground upon which all the great minds in the course of earthly evolution have taken their stand. He believed that the manifestations of Nature, the things of Nature, are as the letters of an alphabet, which express the mind of the Divine Spiritual beings. Thus the human mind exists that it may read what the Divine Spiritual Beings have written there, written in the form of minerals, in the course of natural phenomena, in the course of the movements of the stars. Human nature exists that it may read the thoughts of the Divine Mind. To Galileo, however, the Divine Mind is only distinguished from the human mind by the fact that everything that can be thought is thought by Divine Mind at once, in a single moment, unfettered by space or time. Let us apply this to any single field; to the field of Mathematics. We see at once how extra ordinary this conception is. If a student desires to learn all that has as yet been learnt by mankind about Mathematics, he will have or to toil at Mathematics for years. Then, as you know, man's conception of Mathematics depends greatly on time. Now, Galileo argued thus:—What humanity succeeds in grasping in the course of many years is conceived by the Divine thought in one second. Divine thought is unfettered by space or time. Above all, the human mind must not suppose that with its reason limited, as it is, by space and time, it can immediately understand the Divine Mind. Man must strive. He must observe each step. He must study each separate phenomenon carefully. He must not think that he can afford to ignore the phenomena, that he can leave out of account what God has planned as the foundation of the phenomena. Galileo affirmed that it was wrong not to wish to know the, true meaning of the wonderful manifestations which Nature unfolds, by means of human reason, that it was wrong not to strive to ascertain the truth by minute investigation. He affirmed that to endeavour to arrive at the truth by speculation, instead of studying carefully the details of the various phenomena, was an entirely false method of thought.

But the motive which prompted Galileo was quite other than those which give rise to similar language to-day. Galileo would not limit the human mind to observation because he denied the operation of the Divine Mind in Nature; on the contrary, just because the Divine Mind manifests itself in Nature and reveals itself as so great, so powerful and so wonderful; because (to the Divine Intelligence) all creative thought springs into being in a moment, while the human mind requires an eternity in which lovingly to decipher the letters of the Alphabet and can only arrive gradually at the detailed thoughts which they represent. It is humility at the thought of how far human reason is below the Divine Reason which prompts Galileo to warn his contemporaries. “you can no longer see behind the things of sense. Not because this was never possible to man, but because the time for doing so has gone by.”

Observation, experience and individual thought; these composed the standard which Galileo placed before his contemporaries. This he was able to do because, in a certain sense, his mind was cast in a mathematical mould and because his method of thinking was so rigidly mathematical. In illustration of this we will take the matter of the telescope. Galileo heard that a discovery had been made in Holland, by means of which it was possible to perceive the most distant stars in the firmament. We must bear in mind that there were no newspapers in those days. He only heard from travelers that some thing had been discovered in Holland of the nature of a telescope. Galileo could not rest till he had found out for himself what this was and himself invented a telescope by means of which he made the great discoveries which confirmed the theories which had recently been promulgated in the Copernican-cosmo-conception. In order to understand these things aright, we must remember these two facts:—that nothing was then understood of the old super-sensible science, and that Galileo was a pathfinder for the new science. Secondly, that a short time before, Copernicus had given a new aspect to the conception of the world through external thought concerning the movements of the planets round the Sun. We must put ourselves in the position of the men of that time and try to enter into the mentality of those who believed, as men had done for thousands of years before them:—“Here we stand on the firm earth, immovable in space.” To men with views such as these, the idea was now presented for the first time, that the earth was spinning round the Sun with incalculable rapidity. Such a conception literally out the ground from under their feet. We cannot be surprised at the excitement such an idea created in all, whether partisans or opponents. To minds like that of Galileo, the way by which Copernicus had arrived at his conclusions was particularly convincing. Let us examine in the light of the present time the means by which Copernicus arrived at his conclusions.

What made Copernicus arrive at the conception that the planets move round the Sun?

Up to his time, a theory of the universe had prevailed, which was itself not understood because it was intended to be taken in a Spiritual sense. As then understood, it was indeed an impossible conception. Men had to suppose that the planets described the most complicated movements—circles—and then circles within circles. It was precisely this terrible complication of ideas which had to be got rid of. This it was which was so obnoxious to certain types of mind.

In reality, Copernicus made no new astronomical discoveries. Be said to himself “Let us proceed along the simplest lines of thought in order to arrive at an explanation of the movements of the planets.” He expressed his system of the universe in the simplest of terms. And with what a wonderful result! The Sun was placed in the centre while the planets revolved around it in circles or in ellipses, as Kepler proved later. The whole conception of the universe was reduced to a wonderful simplicity.

It was this simplicity which so greatly influenced the mind of Galileo. For he always emphatically affirmed that “the human mind is capable of recognizing truth in its simplicity.” Beauty is to be found in the simple, not in the complex. And truth is beauty.

It was because of its Beauty and because of the simplicity of its Beauty that the Copernican theory of the system of the Universe was accepted by so many minds at that time. Galileo in particular accepted it because he found in the teaching of Copernicus that Beauty in simplicity for which he was seeking.

Now he could see the Moons of Jupiter, which hardly anyone would believe in. The eyes of Galileo were the first to see the Moons of Jupiter which encircle him as the planets do the Sun. It was a solar system in miniature. Jupiter with his Moons was as the Sun with his planets. This discovery confirmed the theories of a solar system constructed in accordance with a conception. It seemed so to Galileo, who applied the theory of Copernicus in miniature to a visible world. Hence Galileo was indeed a Pioneer of the New Science.

Thus it came about that he divided the presence of mountains in the Moons, that there were spots in the Sun and that the Nebulae extending across the stars were disintegrated worlds of stars. In short, all which may be expressed as the revelation of the Divine Wisdom expressed in the world of sense. All this made a tremendous effect upon Galileo. With his mathematical mind, the question of time, which was completely lost sight of in the material conception of the visible world, naturally influenced him greatly. Galileo first created the impulse in the human mind to admit that we cannot see behind the material veil with our normal consciousness: “The super-sensible is not to be understood by the human senses. It cannot be comprehended by human reason. Divine Reason grasps it outside time and space, while man's reason is limited to time and space. Let us confine ourselves to that which, in time and space, our human reason can understand.”

Now, seeing that Galileo achieved such greatness in so many things, he is also, from the point of view of philosophy, one of the most important pioneers of the modern Spiritual development of humanity. Can we then wonder that we also see in him a mind who wished to make clear to himself and to others the relation of man to the world of sense and to his own soul-life.

It is a popular fallacy that Kant was the first to draw attention to the fact that the world around us is nothing but illusion and that it is not possible to arrive at “the thing in itself,” at things as they really are. Expressed rather differently, Galileo had already demonstrated this idea; only, behind the visible, he always saw the all-pervading thoughts of the Divine Spiritual, and it was only from humility and not from principle that he said that only after long aeons of time would mankind be fit to draw nearer to it.

But Galileo said:—“When we see a colour, it makes a certain impression on us. For example, red. Is the red colour in the things?” Galileo used a very remarkable illustration, which showed at once that the primary conception was incorrect. That, however, is immaterial to our purpose. The point we wish to emphasize is the conception itself as an idea of that time. Galileo said:—“If you take a feather and tickle a man on the soles of his feet or the palms of his hands, the man will experience a sensation of tickling. Now is the tickling in the feather? No. It is entirely subjective. What is in the feather is quite different. As the tickling is subjective, so too is the red colour subjective, which is visible in the world.” Thus he compared colours and even sounds with the tickling caused by the application of a feather to the soles of the feet.

Once we realize this, we can already trace in Galileo the beginnings of what came down to us as the philosophy of our modern times. For modern philosophy doubts the possibility of Man's ever being able to penetrate behind the veil of the world sense in any way whatsoever.

Thus we see in Galileo, who was born in 1664, the quiet, determined pioneer, while Giordano Bruno, who was somewhat older, being born in 1648, reflected in his mentality all the great truths which were fermenting in the minds of men such as Copernicus, Galileo himself and others at that period. The mind of Giordano Bruno mirrors for us all the great ideas of that time in a mighty, comprehensive system of philosophy.

What was Giordano Bruno's own personal attitude to the world, quite apart from the mental attitude of the men of his day? Giordano Bruno (who only knew the corrupted version of Aristotle) argued thus:—“Aristotle maintains that a sphere exists which extends to the Moon, thence to the different spheres of the stars; then comes the sphere of
the Divine Spiritual. Thus, according to Aristotle, the Living God must be sought for outside the spheres of the stars.”

Giordano was viewing the Universe according to the conception of Aristotle. He saw first the earth, then the spheres of the Moon and of the Stars. Then, finally, beyond these again, beyond this world and beyond that inhabited by man, in the great periphery of this world, the Divine Spirit, which literally directs the revolutions and movements of the world of the planets.

Giordano Bruno could not reconcile this conception with the actual human experience of his day. That which could now be perceived by means of the human senses, that which he himself perceived when he looked at plants, animals and man, that which he saw when he looked at mountains, seas, clouds and stars, all this appeared to him as a marvelous image of what lives in the Divine Spirit itself. In the moving stars, in the clouds sailing through the air, he saw not only a script written by the Divine Being, but something which might pertain to the Divine Being as a finger or a limb does to ourselves. The fundamental conception of Giordano Bruno was not that of a God who directs the visible world from outside, from the periphery, but a God who is incorporate in every single manifestation of the visible, whose bodily form is the visible world.

If we seek to understand how it was that he arrived at such a conclusion, we find that it was the result of the joy of the intoxication of delight in the spirit of the new age which had just begun. This new age had been preceded by a time during which man had been content to grope about amongst the old ideas of Aristotle. A time in which the leading Scholars, if they walked through woods and fields, had no eyes for Nature and all her beauties, but had their minds wholly set on Parchments and Writings which had originated with Aristotle.

Now, however, the time had come when the voice of Nature began to make itself heard by men. Great discoveries revealed themselves one after another. Mighty minds like that of Galileo pressed on from point to point, recognizing the Divine in Nature herself at every step.

The theory of the God in Nature, in contradistinction to the mediaeval conception of Nature, from which God was eliminated, was accepted everywhere with an universal delirium of joy. To this spirit, every fibre of Giordano Bruno's being responded. “There is Spirit in all things,” he says, “This is proved by physical research. Wherever we see a visible creation, there we shall meet the Divine.” There is only one difference between the physical and the Divine. Because we are men and confined within narrow boundaries, the visible appears to us to be limited by time and space. To Giordano Bruno, the Spirit of God exists behind the sense-world. Not in the way in which (as he thought) it had existed for Aristotle or the men of the Middle Ages. He believed the Divine Spirit to be self-existing; and Nature only the body by means of which its Spirit manifested itself in all its beauty.

Nevertheless, man cannot perceive the whole of the Divine Spirit in Nature, he can only see a part. In all things, in all time and in space, the Divine Spirit is to be found. This was the creed of Giordano Bruno. Hence he says “Where is the Divine? In every stone, in every leaf, the Divine is everywhere. In all creation, specially in beings possessing a certain independent existence”. These beings, which recognise their own independence, he terms Monads. By a Monad, he means something which floats and flourishes in the ocean of divinity. All Monads are mirrors of the Universe. Thus Giordano conceived of the universal Spirit as divided into many Monads, and in each Monad that was an individual Spirit, there was something which was a reflection of the Universe.

Such a Monad is the human soul, and they are many. Indeed, the human body itself is composed of many Monads, not of one. If we understand the truth about the physical body according to the ideas of Giordano Bruno, we shall not see the fleshly human body, but a system of Monads; these Monads cannot be clearly seen, just as we cannot distinguish the separate midges in a swarm; the chief Monad is the human soul. When the human soul comes into existence at birth, so said Giordano Bruno, the other Monads which belong to the soul collect together and, by this, the existence of the Chief-Monad, of the Soul Monad, is made possible. When death approaches, the Chief-Monad discharges and disperses the other Monads.

According to Giordano Bruno, birth is the assembling of many Monads round a Chief-Monad, while death is the separation of the inferior Monads from the Chief-Monad, so that the Chief-Monad may be able to take on another form. For each Monad is obliged to take on, not only the form by which we know it here, but every form which it is possible to take on in the Universe. Giordano Bruno conceives of a procession through every form. Thus he approaches as close as possible—in his enthusiasm—to the idea of the re-incarnation of the human soul.

And with reference to the conception of our collective reality, he says:—Man, with his normal consciousness, stands confronted by this reality. What he first receives are the impressions of the senses. These are his first means of knowledge. Of these, there are four, says Giordano Bruno. The first means by which man acquires knowledge is by the impressions of the senses.

The second are the images we construct in our imagination when the things which have impressed the senses are no longer before us, when we only remember what we have experienced. Here we already penetrate further into the soul. This second channel of knowledge he terms “the power of imagination.” The word must not be taken to mean what it does to-day, but it must be understood in the sense in which it was used by Giordano Bruno. After a man has received what the impressions of sense have to give him, he enters (forming the picture within himself) into the impressions. The impression is made from without on the within. It then follows that man, while he penetrates the things with his reason and then proceeds further, draws nearer to the truth, instead of going further away from it. Hence Giordano Bruno recognises reason, the intellect, as the third means of acquiring knowledge, and in this he has in mind the moment when we leave the objects visible to our senses and ascend to the realm of thought. Then something higher and truer than any impression created by the senses flows towards us.

According to Giordano Bruno, the fourth stage is Reason. Reason to him is a living and weaving in the regions of Pure Spirit.

Thus the system of Giordano Bruno comprises four stages of knowledge. He does not, however, classify them in the same way as they are classified, for example, in my books, “The Way of Initiation” and “Initiation and its Results”, under the headings of Present Knowledge, Imaginative Knowledge, Inspirational Knowledge and Intuitive Knowledge. His classifications are more in the abstract. We must, therefore, think of him in the following way: Giordano Bruno lived first at that point of time when the knowledge of visible phenomena was, advancing, therefore he used expressions which resemble those used now to express knowledge of the ordinary visible world, rather than those which relate to the higher worlds. But when Giordano Bruno looks up to the Spiritual World, we can have no doubt of his meaning from the tremendous emphasis with which he says “The Divine Spirit which exists in everything, which has its bodily form in all things, possesses that of which we have the representation, as the idea is the conception of the thing”.

“In what way is the world in God? How is the Spirit in God?” he asks, and replies: “The Spirit is in God as Idea, as the Thought that precedes the Word.” In everything is the Spirit in Nature, as form, he replies, by which he means, that the idea which exists in the Divine Spirit is in the crystal, which has a form; it is in the plant, which has a form; in the animal, which has a form; it is in the human body, which has a form. Of all visible things which have form, a counterpart exists in the human soul as the concept of them.

Giordano Bruno carries this still further. The things of Nature are shadows of the Divine Ideas. “Note well”, he says, “Our concepts are not the shadows of things, they are the shadows of the Divine Thoughts.” Thus, if we have the things of Nature around us and thus have the shadow of the Divine Idea, our concepts will be again fructified thereby. While we are forming our concepts, the Divine Spirit is weaving His Ideas into the original, so that we come in direct contact with the stream which connects us with the Divine Idea.

When we study the theories of that Physical Science which is to-day called Monism, (unlike that of Giordano Bruno), what strikes us most is the fact that, if we would be consistent in speaking of these theories, we must say “they do not mention the Divine Thought”. But Giordano Bruno did not say that, he was a Spiritualist in the strictest sense of the word. What he has to gibe us out of the true inspiration of the Renaissance relates to the Monads. The assembling of the Monads at birth and their dissolution at death refers to the Divine Thoughts, which, in his conception of the world, flow into the world of ideas; and in his own words “The human thought is a reflection of the Divine.” If this is once thoroughly understood, we shall understand something of the spirituality of Giordano Bruno.

But for this, one thing is necessary: we must distinguish between the real and the unreal Giordano Bruno, between the Giordano Bruno who was so greatly misunderstood and the real man himself.

Giordano Bruno was the master-mind, who, by his unbounded enthusiasm, spread broadcast among his contemporaries the more intellectual achievements of Galileo in the realms of Scientific Thought. This is why every utterance of Giordano Bruno carried such weight. All the joy and enthusIasm of the Spirit of the age, all its delight in the discovery of the working and weaving of Nature in the physical world, was concentrated in the personality of Giordano Bruno. This flood of rejoicing was itself crystallized into a system of philosophy, for the Divine Spirit which dwells in all visible things most certainly illuminated the soul of Giordano Bruno, and he was conscious of it. Hence we can understand those utterances of Giordano Bruno, which we do well to remember; they sound as if Nature herself had a direct message for men in those days. We can only quote a few words here.

Consider how wonderful the following thought is, to which Giordano gives expression in contradistinction to the teaching of Aristotle on the same subject. “The Spirit of Divine intelligence is not beyond the visible world, it is not exterior to it, it is everywhere, wherever we may look. The Divine Intelligence does not dwell in any place exterior to the visible world. It does not dwell in that vague realm, of which we may say ‘something moves in circles wide’, it does mot dwell in a revolving, encircling realm, with which we can communicate only from a great distance. The Divine Spirit is the united principle of that vital force, which is in everything and in Nature herself.”

Such was the language which rang out at that time, such the convictions which sprang from the innermost depths of the soul of Giordano Bruno. The question now remains how best to reproduce this language to-day, so that it will speak directly to our hearts and minds. Hermann Brunnhofer, who called attention to this and had to submit to being called a too enthusiastic admirer of Giordano Bruno, put his words into fine verse:

Non est Deus vel intelligentia exterior
Cirounrotans et circumducens;
Dignuis enim illi debet esse
Internum prinzipuim Motus,
Quod est Natura propria, species propria, anima propria,
Quam habeat tot quot in illius
Gremio et corpore vivent
Noe generali Spiritu, corpore.

Anima, Natura animantia
Plantea, Lapides quae univena ut
Disimus proportionaliter cumastro
Euden composita ordine, etaedem
Contemperata complexion um, symmetus,
Secundum genus, quantumlebet secundum
Specierum numeros singula deslingunlui.

1. Giordano Bruno says philosophically: It is worthy of God to be the inner moving principle of things.
2. See also: Herman Brunnhofer, The Influence of Giordano Bruno upon Goethe—Goethe's Journals—Vol. VII, 1886.

Goethe translates this line for line in the poem beginning:

“What Kind of God were He who from the World
Remained aloof and the great Universe Around His finger twirled?” etc.

This is a poetical translation of the mind of Giordano Bruno through the instrumentality of the mind of Goethe. It was not merely that Goethe wrote these verses with Giordano Bruno's works lying beside him. Some other influence must have been at work than that which would have made Goethe merely recast the words of Giordano Bruno in a poetical form. We see in this how the spirit of Giordano Bruno becomes fully alive in Goethe. Nevertheless it is not only a couple of centuries which have to be bridged when we pass from the days of Galileo and Giordano Bruno to Goethe. We must realise that what in the case of Giordano Bruno had its origin in the first great enthusiastic mood from which arose the philosophic cult of Nature, became in Goethe a mood leading him with complete devotion from one thing to another and finally causing him to bring back into Nature the God whose existence man now learned to feel in Nature herself. In Goethe the mood of Giordano Bruno had become his own. It was born in him, as it were. It was already present in him when, at the age of seven, he took the music desk belonging to his father and arranged on it mineral ores from his father's collection, so as to have some products of Nature herself—for the same purpose he took plants from his father's herbarium. He then placed a little stick of incense on the top of the heap and waited, burning glass in hand, for the Sun to rise, so that he might enkindle the incense from its rays and thus consummate a sacrifice culled from the forces of Nature to the God who lives in the plants and minerals and to whom he had erected an altar.

Thus did Giordano Bruno live in Goethe at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, but in such a way that what lived as the innermost attitude of his soul, Goethe carried into every detail of Nature.

It was this mental attitude which made it impossible to Goethe to understand how the Scientific investigators of that day could attach such importance to the outward signs which differentiate men from animals. The physical Scientists of the eighteenth century maintained that man did not possess the same number of small bones in the upper part of the jaw bone as the animals—viz. the inter-maxillary bones—which contain the sheath of the upper teeth. Animals possess these and this is where men differ from animals. Goethe could not understand this highly materialistic idea. This indeed could not be the God who was the inner vital principle of Nature. The God of whom Giordano Bruno spoke as “circumroians et circumducens.” He must be a God who worked outside Nature, a God who, first of all, made the animals, then made man and then, in order to differentiate man from beast, arranged that animals should have the inter-maxillary bones, while these should be wanting in man.

Goethe was the great investigator of Nature, who endeavoured to show that that which existed in Nature as form was capable of rising higher, and that it is not in anything external, such as the inter-maxillary bones, that the difference between the human and the animal world is to be found, but that something exists in man which, though it may be clothed with tones and muscles like those of the animals, constitutes the higher mind of humanity. This is only another proof of the magnitude of Goethe's genius. He not only discovered traces of the inter-maxillary bone and proved that it had only disappeared in man because it was a subordinate bone, but he also shows that the vertebrae may be distended if the activity of the mind contained in the brain finds this to be necessary. A long time ago, when I was studying the Scientific writings of Goethe, in order to understand his assertion that the bones of the skull are transposed vertebrae, the latter having been extended into the cavities of the skull, I came to the inevitable conclusion that Goethe must have conceived the idea that the brain itself was transposed spinal marrow and that this change had been wrought by the mind. That not only the covering tissue, but that the brain itself had been moved up from the vertebrae and spinal marrow to a higher level. It was a wonderful moment im my life when I discovered that, in the last decade of the eighteenth century, Goethe had written in pencil on a slip of paper “The brain is in reality only a piece of transposed spinal marrow.” Professor Bardeleben relates this in his article in the Weimar Year-Book on “Goethe as Scientific Investigator.”

Thus we see the mood which first appeared in Giordano Bruno applied by Goethe to the different parts of living beings. We see how Goethe applied the ideas of Giordano Bruno—to whom, as we have seen, he approaches so closely, even in his choice of words—in a practical way to everything in natural scientific thought.

This is why Goethe laid such stress upon finding in the whole plant world the metamorphosis of the primal archetypal plant (Urpflanze). Added to the great achievements of Goethe as artist were his noteworthy achievements as a scientific investigator of Nature. In a certain sense, the spirit which had come down from the clairvoyant stages of perception to a material form of vision was incorporated in Goethe, as a personality who saw the Divine in all his observations of Nature, even in the individual plants. The expression “Urpflanze”, Primal Archetypal plant. What did Goethe mean by that? He meant to indicate the Spiritual essence in the various species of Plants. With regard to this, the conversation between Schiller and Goethe at Jena, after a meeting of the Botanical Society, which they had both attended, is important. When they had left the assembly, Schiller said:—“What they said about plants was very unsatisfying.” Goethe replied:—“It might have been expressed differently. We ought to be able to see, not only those parts of the plant which we hold in our hands, but also their Spiritual relationship.” Then he took a piece of paper and drew the structure of a plant in a few strokes. He showed to Schiller that the type is not only present in the Lily, the Dandelion or the Ranunculus, but in all plants. Then Schiller, who could not understand the structure of the primal plant) said:—“That is no reality, it is nothing but an idea.” Goethe was very puzzled and said:—“It would gratify me very much to think that I could have ideas without knowing it and even see them with my physical eyes.” For Goethe could perceive the Spiritual element which permeates all plants. He saw it so clearly that he could even draw it. The same applies to the primal archetypal animal in all animals.

Thus Goethe pursued the God who does not work from without the material world, but who lives and operates within all visible things. Thus he followed the Divine Spirit which moves invisibly in everything, working in a concrete way from plant to plant, through leaf, blossom and fruit. It works in the same way from one animal to another, and also from one bone to another, from one animal form to another. It is interesting to note that Goethe was not understood by the men of his own time, not even by Schiller. But little by little the spirit of Goethe will take root even in the thought of the Natural Scientists. It will be acknowledged that Goethe's ideas were a stage higher than those of Giordano Bruno. Giordano Bruno spoke of a God, a pantheistic God, who is to be found everywhere, in plants and in animals. But Goethe, although he too sought the great spirit who does not operate from without, said further:—We must not only seek for Him in general; we must study the detailed phenomena and look for the Spirit in the separate things. For it lives in one way in plants, in another in mineral; one way in this bone and another way in that.

The Spirit is in perpetual action; it forms the various parts of matter, matter follows the moving spirit. This can be expressed as one universal spirit, as was done by Giordano Bruno. It can also be sought with deep devotion in every single detail, as Goethe did. In this way, man draws nearer and nearer to the Spirit at work in the outspread carpet of Nature, by degrees will that Spirit reveal itself.

If we study the successive stages of progress represented by Galileo, Giordano Bruno and Goethe, and search for the root principle which directed such great minds, we shall learn by degrees to adhere to the root principle which directed them, and not to be led away by the will-of-the-wisp of superficial criticism. For even the greatest minds do not escape criticism. Let us take Galileo with his great conception of the Divine, which embraced the whole of Creation in the span of one moment, and was unfettered by space or time. When we consider this, the question is bound to arise:—“What do the men of to-day know about the real significance of Galileo?” As a rule, they know little more about him than the one incident which is assuredly not true, that he said, as is supposed, “It moves, nevertheless.” A fine saying, truly, but, as can be seen from the investigations of the Italian scholar, Angells de Gubernatis, it cannot be true. And how often do we not hear that the last words of Goethe were:—“More light”, which is exactly what he never did say.

Hence we see that these great minds must be studied in the light which Spiritual Science is able to throw upon them, We cannot, as we are so fond of doing, judge of the past with our own, individual, unaided, modern mind.

These three master-minds form a wonderful, harmonious triad, which marks the beginning of our modern age; in Galileo and in Giordano Bruno we see the dawn, in Goethe we see the Sun itself, which show how the Spirit of the modern age already taught him to see that the smallest atom of matter cannot exist without Spirit behind it, which brings one atom in touch with another.

I would call to your remembrance an incident which Goethe relates himself. Many years after the death of Schiller, it was decided to transfer his remains from their grave to the Princes Mausoleum. There was some difficulty in deciding which were really the bones of Schiller. Goethe was attracted by a skull, which he saw must have belonged to a man of the type of the genius of Schiller; on closer inspection, he decided that this must be Schiller's skull, as he recognised it from the strongly marked peculiarity in the shape of the skull. This skull was accordingly placed in the Princes Mausoleum. Here he recognised the principle, which was also recognised by Galileo, that the spirit (or genius) must be sought for humbly and mathematically.

The ancient church lamp still hangs in the cathedral at Pisa, swinging backwards and forwards before countless souls. But Galileo had only sat before it once, when he measured the beating of his pulse by the regular swinging of the lamp and thus discovered the laws of balance, which are of such vast importance to-day. This was a Divine Inspiration. There are many such cases. At the grave of Schiller, Goethe was inspired with the thought which lived in the philosophic inspiration of Giordano Bruno. “Spirit is inseparable from matter. It is everywhere. Not, however, tossing it wildly about and driving it round, but, as Spirit which exists in the minutest atom.” This conception of the Spiritual, which existed in Giordano Bruno, was re-born in Goethe's soul, as he held the skull of Schiller in his hand, and, as water congealed into ice, so was the Spirit of Schiller made manifest to him in the skull of Schiller.

Goethe's entire spiritual standpoint lies before us when we study the poem which he wrote after having looked on Schiller's skull. Especially those lines, which are so often misinterpreted, and which we can only understand when we realise that in the situation which we have described above, Goethe saw the individuality of Schiller in plastic form before him, as if frozen.

Then he cries, as he must do, forced thereto by the similarity of the Spirit which united Giordano Bruno and Goethe:

Was kann der Mensch imleben mehr gewinnen,
Als dass sich Gott-Natur ihm offenbare,
Wie sie das Feste ladesst zu Geist verrinnen,
Wie sie das Geisterzeugte fest bewahre.

What can a man wrest more from life
Than that Nature, all-divine, reveal to him
How that she causeth the firm and formed to melt into Spirit,
And how what is born of the Spirit she holdeth fast in form.

Dear attendees! The riddles of [nature] first approach man insofar as he is a cognizant being and insofar as he has to implement his knowledge in practical life. The riddles of the soul are different. If knowledge is necessary above all for orientation in the world, if we find ourselves in a world that does not want to be illuminated for us through knowledge, so to speak spiritually as in a dark room, then it must be said: the riddles of the soul are those that are experienced directly, but in a way that very many people have no adequate conception of. Today, there is much talk about the unconscious and subconscious life of the soul. However, since we have hardly enough ways to gain more precise ideas about this subconscious life of the soul — as this very evening is intended to show — it is also the case that the profound influence of the soul's riddle on the human being cannot be sufficiently appreciated from the direct consciousness of the present and from what is recognized science in this present. Doubts about those things that are intimately and closely related to the longings and hopes of the human soul life not only bring the person a sense of instability of the soul, they not only rob him of the security of the soul life, they not only take away the strength to find and maintain his position in life in a moral and social sense, but they intervene in the entire inner constitution of the human organism's life as a whole. What is at issue here cannot be fully understood unless one knows that in the deeper layers of the soul there are forces that are initially unknown to the human being – and yet they work in the same way as the conscious forces, but – one might say – they dig deeper into the whole of human nature.

It seems at first to be a small thing when a person has to give in to doubt about one or other question, for there are indeed enough reasons for doubt regarding the great riddles of the world that can only be solved in the course of a long time. But doubt itself, when it takes root in the most intimate life of the soul, when, as it were, the soul must continually eke out its existence, not consciously, but unconsciously - if the expression may be permitted - tormented by doubt, then this doubt eats so deeply into the organism that it also gradually attacks physical health. For what emanates from the soul does not immediately interfere with physical life. But what gnaws at the soul in this way over a long period of time, little by little and again and again and again, and especially in such a way that it does not fully come to consciousness, ultimately undermines physical health and thus actually the whole existence of the person. For this reason, the whole area of these soul mysteries, especially in recent times, has once again entered the field of vision of even earnestly striving scientists.

Anthroposophy, as it is meant here, wants to work strictly on the basis of the most serious scientific conscientiousness and methodology that could only be developed in the course of the last four to five centuries, especially in the nineteenth century, in scientific research. However, since Anthroposophy wants to deal with what the deepest longings, the most earnest hopes and the strongest forces and sources of life of the human soul are, Anthroposophy concerns every human being – and one might say – it is therefore in its nature to address not only the individual field of science, but all people. One can also see how simple, healthy human understanding, if it is not occupied by one or the other prejudice, can certainly find the path to understanding anthroposophical research methods. I spoke about this in the two lectures that I recently gave here in the Philharmonie. Today, my presentation will focus on the riddles of the soul.

These soul mysteries have also recently been brought before the scientific forum with great intensity. This natural science, which, where it is justified, is fully recognized by anthroposophy, and which rightly points out again and again its great triumphs for knowledge and for life in the most recent times, this natural science has, especially in the present day, forced serious thinkers, I might say, to face the riddles of the soul. Scientific research is concerned, after all, primarily with that which is given to man sensually and which can be traced back to its laws through observation and experiment and through the combining mind. But what this scientific research has increasingly lost sight of in recent times is the human being himself. Natural science methods are and will always be applied to the outer human nature, the physical organization of the human being. In the extension of these methods to the great questions of the soul life, anthroposophy must find that these natural science methods do not remain true to themselves, even with great researchers. For this reason, I would like to begin by pointing out the way in which the present-day natural sciences in particular often approach the riddles of the soul, and how anthroposophical research must nevertheless take a negative view of this approach because, as I emphasized in the previous lectures, — must proceed more strictly and critically in the supersensible, in the realm of soul and spiritual life, out of scientific conscientiousness, than one proceeds on the natural science side when questions of soul and spiritual life are to be considered.

I would like to start with an example to show how natural science believes it can approach the riddles of the soul, and how anthroposophy has to approach these riddles in a completely different way. I would like to draw attention to a work that has recently made a great impression in certain circles because it deals with the soul riddle right up to the human question of immortality and breathes a thoroughly scientific spirit. It is the work in which Oliver Lodge wrote about what he was supposedly able to learn about his son Raymond's soul through mediumistic art after his son's death. One may cite this attempt by Oliver Lodge, which is considered a failure for anthroposophy, to penetrate into the soul life up to the question of immortality, because anyone who is familiar with the scientific conscientiousness of natural research will see on every page of I would like to say, can see in every page of this extensive book by Oliver Lodge how the strict methods of natural science are observed, how everything that the natural scientist is accustomed to using in the laboratory or in the physics cabinet is seemingly applied here to the study of the soul. I would like to mention only the experiment that was most striking, and that was almost a kind of “experimentum crucis” for many.

Oliver Lodge, with the help of a medium, allegedly received messages from the soul of his son Raymond Lodge, who died in the war. Among these messages was one of particular significance. As Oliver Lodge believed, the soul of his son made the revelation to him through the medium that Raymond Lodge had had his photograph taken with other comrades a fortnight before his death, that a group picture had been taken, that the photographer had taken two pictures in succession and that the way Raymond Lodge was sitting was slightly different in the first and second pictures. Nobody knew anything about this picture when the medium brought the message that was supposedly coming from Raymond Lodge's soul. Oliver Lodge's family did not know anything. The picture had been taken in France and had not yet arrived in England when the corresponding seance took place. Nevertheless, the matter had been described in full detail by the medium. To the strict naturalist Oliver Lodge, it seemed as if this experiment undoubtedly established that the soul of his deceased son himself had spoken. For who could know anything about what was completely unknown at the place where the experiment was carried out. All sources of error, as we know them from physical research, for example, were carefully excluded. Therefore, the impression of this experiment, as it was described in the detailed book, was extraordinarily striking, even for unbiased readers. And yet, although a strict natural scientist speaks here with observation of all scientific certainty, anthroposophy must point out that its kind of research into the supersensible must be more critical than such a scientific method driven into the soul realm. For ultimately, what has been said here is nothing more than lay opinion regarding soul research.

There are simply abnormal powers and abilities in the human organism, and in certain borderline fields modern science has much to do with such abnormal abilities. Anthroposophy, however, has nothing to do with these abnormal abilities, but only with the further development of the normal human faculty of knowledge into the supersensible realm. It is possible to know how abnormal faculties can work, how it is actually possible that through special — and these are always actually morbid predispositions of the human being, which however mediumship presupposes —, how through such predispositions the conditions of sensory experience can be broken through in certain cases, how space can be overcome, but also how time can be overcome, and how it is a certainly established result that through such abnormal, pathological abilities, the person sees, for example, how he falls from a horse during a ride that is to take place in a fortnight. If the foresight is correct, the event occurs despite all the precautions taken to avert it. Such experiences are verified results; however, they are not based on the normal cognitive abilities of humans, but on abnormal abilities.

But if Oliver Lodge now thinks that some supersensible world has spoken to him, then it must be pointed out that in this case nothing more needs to be present than that the medium has had such foresight. The two photographs did indeed arrive in England later, and Oliver Lodge's eyes rested on them. The later seeing of the photographs can be seen and described through the medium's abnormal abilities based on such foresight. So in this case we are dealing with nothing more than the development of abnormal abilities that do not look into a supersensible realm, but only see what is happening in the ordinary physical world. These abilities can only do this: break through the conditions of space and time that are otherwise given to our sensory abilities.

I only mentioned this example in the introduction to point out how critical anthroposophy is, despite the fact that it points in the strictest sense to the path that really leads into the supersensible realm and shows us how the eternal core of the human being is connected to the eternal in the cosmos, and how the individual, everyday event in the life of the soul can be taken as a starting point for the great questions of birth and death, of immortality and the unborn. Although anthroposophy seeks such paths to the supersensible in the strictest sense, it must nevertheless critically reject that which, in imitation of abnormal human abilities, can only deal with that which after all only takes place in the sense realm. Anyone who understands the significance of such criticism for anthroposophy will not want to see anthroposophy in the light of those misunderstandings in which it is still seen today by many who only deal with it superficially. But the whole of anthroposophy's research methods is based on the need to apply scientific methodology to the most intimate inner soul life. It must awaken slumbering abilities in the soul, and it awakens them — not through any fantastic or mystical methods, but through systematic schooling, as I have described it — at least on a trial basis — in the two lectures already mentioned. But it would be easier for present-day humanity to form an unbiased judgment on such questions if people were willing to educate themselves about how differently people throughout the world want to ground their vision and also their faith from the intimate foundations of their soul life. I would like to point out just two polar opposites, so to speak, when it comes to characterizing the diverse abilities of people around the world.

In this way, the differences between the West and the East in terms of their understanding of the soul are particularly apparent. As a representative spirit of the West, I would like to cite Herbert Spencer, who has indeed gained such tremendous, if unjustified, influence on the way of thinking of the newer view of nature. Where Herbert Spencer talks about education, he also talks about the goal of educating the human being, and in doing so, he gives us the opportunity to really look into how he feels about the riddles of the soul.

I will only briefly present what he implies: Even if we educate people to be good citizens, to be efficient members of human society, to be efficient professionals, the most important thing in education is what enables people to educate others. The parental vocation is the highest in education. And on this occasion, it is particularly interesting to see the reasons Herbert Spencer gives for this view. He says that the highest goal in human life is to produce the next generation, the offspring. Therefore, the highest goal of education is to raise the next generation. No criticism of Herbert Spencer's assertion is intended here. One can make this claim if one is completely on the ground that wants to scientifically justify more or less everything that is valid in human life, only on the ground of external sensory perception, external natural science.

But the polar opposite of this view is presented to us by a thinker of the East who was particularly significant in his work in the second half of the nineteenth century: the Russian thinker Vladimir Solovyov. He turns his gaze to the riddle of the human soul from a completely different angle, so to speak. He says that human life has value only if, on the one hand, it sets itself the goal of perfecting itself in the truth; without this goal, human life would be worthless. But it would also be worthless if man did not partake of immortality, because, in Solowjow's opinion, a striving for perfection that could somehow be abandoned to destruction would be the greatest deception that the universe could perpetrate on a human being. Therefore, he demands that man strive for perfection in the truth and partake of immortality for the highest soul riddles, and on this occasion he speaks again in a very characteristic way – like the polar opposite of Herbert Spencer – by says: How dreary and desolate existence would be if it had to be exhausted only in the succession of generations that are produced one after the other, if the wheel of existence would run in such a uniform manner.

We see, then, that in the West and in the East, two representative human thinkers express themselves in opposite senses about the same area. It can be said that when Herbert Spencer deals with spiritual questions, he looks entirely at the external nature and only applies to the human soul what, in his opinion, can be accepted according to the pattern of recognized scientific conclusions and judgments. Solowjow demands the opposite, and that from the depths of the human soul. He demands something as the goal of human development that is also based on the succession of generations, but which goes far beyond what, in his opinion, would exist in a uniform course of the same wheel, which would only ever turn in history.

Now, one seems to me to be as imperfect as the other. In Herbert Spencer we see how a thinker cannot rise, I might say, from the depths of natural science to the heights of the riddle of the soul. In Solowjew we see how from mystical depths there emerges the indefinite, very mystical-sounding demand for immortality, but how here, too, there is absolutely no way to arrive at real knowledge in this field. And perhaps it may be said, especially in the present time, that if one looks impartially at these two sides and is sincerely and honestly devoted to what has emerged as the highest flowering of Central European, of German intellectual life, that the deepening that is necessary here in relation to the riddle of the soul must be found precisely in this German intellectual life.

This, ladies and gentlemen, I wanted to say first to show that one must indeed have ideas about the way in which people in the nineteenth century wanted to approach the riddles of the soul, how, so to speak, the soul are today's burning questions, and how the peculiarities of intellectual life in the most diverse regions of the earth present obstacles and hindrances to finding completely unimpeded paths into the regions in which the eternal of the human soul is rooted. At first, the human being appears to us as a unified being. And this is fully justified. But in this unified being, we must seek out the forms of reality that have entered into it. The way in which anthroposophy attempts to do this is often challenged by those who call themselves abstract monists or the like. Anthroposophy does not in any way offend against a justified monism. For no one denies that there is a unified activity in water when one shows how oxygen and hydrogen are effectively present in water. Nor does one deny what we encounter as a unified human nature when one conscientiously searches scientifically for the forms of reality that converge in human nature. But these forms of reality converge in a mysterious way. We see, when we devote ourselves to our external sensory observations and deepen these through recognized science, through physiology, biology and so on, the external physical corporeality of the human being. On the other hand, we see how the soul reveals itself out of this physical corporeality, how it permeates the physical corporeality, enlivens it and allows the spirit to flow into it.

But only when we realize, in an unbiased way, how these different forms of reality – the physical, the soul, and the spiritual – work together in the unified human being, can we hope to approach a solution to the riddle of the soul. Of course, I am not saying that the riddles of the soul can be definitively solved by anthroposophy today, but one can hope to point out the path to the solution. And again and again one is pointed to the two ends of physical earthly existence that approach man so mysteriously, when the great riddles of the soul come before one's eyes. One is pointed to birth and death. Let us first consider these physical ends of human life, and then ascend into the supersensible realm.

What the outer physical body of man is, we basically only see in its very own form in the corpse before us. Therefore, it is actually quite correct what many naturalists have said: that the characteristic of death is actually the presence of the corpse. This is also true for death. But if you look at what you are facing in the corpse without prejudice, it is characteristic enough for the whole human being.

Du Bois-Reymond believed – as he stated in his famous lecture “On the Limits of Natural Knowledge” – that the human being, as a conscious, waking being, is not transparent to his own knowledge, that this knowledge reaches certain limits when it comes to human consciousness. From the movements that the matter in our nervous system undergoes, we cannot understand — du Bois-Reymond said — how we feel: “I see red, I hear organ tones, I smell the scent of roses.” But du Bois-Reymond thought that ordinary natural science could be used to understand the sleeping person, in whom consciousness has dawned, and thus precisely that which, in his opinion, is unfathomable for ordinary natural knowledge. No! But through that in which natural science is great today, the sleeping person can be understood just as little as the plant. What pervades a being as life can only be seen in supersensible knowledge, in supersensible contemplation, as I have characterized it in my writings 'How to Know Higher Worlds' and 'Occult Science: An Outline' and in the two lectures already mentioned. What pervades man as a sleeping being, as invigoratingly as a plant, cannot be known through ordinary natural science. Here, man is only accessible as a physical being after he has died. And when he has died and lies before us as a corpse, we see how he begins to follow quite different laws from those he followed from birth or conception to death.

But as the human corpse approaches its dissolution, it follows the same laws that we see in the natural world and that we understand through ordinary science. So that in what happens to the human corpse, we have before us what man would be if he were not permeated, as a corporeal-physical being, by a spiritual-soul element that must snatch him from death, from dissolution, in every moment of life. For the laws of nature that we fathom with ordinary natural science dissolve the human organism, and what holds it together must therefore follow different principles.

Thus, we get to know the human being in his or her physical body, when it is detached from the soul and spirit. The laws that are effective there must be effective in the human being throughout his or her life on earth, because they are the laws of the physical, chemical existence of the substances and forces that the human physical body contains. They are now overcome in the opposite direction by what is in the human being besides these substances and physical forces. But if one wants to get to know the human physical body in its purest form, then one must seek it out in the corpse. There the human being is completely surrendered to external physical nature, and there one can see how he carries this physical organization within him in whatever way.

Now, in the books and lectures mentioned, I have pointed out that there are dormant forces in the human soul that can be awakened, just as forces are gradually awakened in the soul of a child as it lives in a dream-like soul life. If only human beings had the intellectual humility to say to themselves one day: You were once a very small child with a dream-like soul life that poured into your physical being; education and life have brought out of the depths of your thought, feeling and will, which you have today for orienting yourself in the world and for knowing yourself, and which, above all, has led to the triumphs of recognized science, especially natural science. But can we not assume that, when one has everything that life and education and inherited traits can give one, one nevertheless, at some point in one's mature life, presupposes soul abilities - if I want to express myself scientifically - as 'latent' in the soul?

Can we not say that at any given moment in our lives we can take our own soul life into our own hands and continue it from the point where we left off? Only practice can prove that this is possible. But the practice of anthroposophical research also shows this. I would like to mention only briefly that it is through inner soul exercises that such dormant abilities are awakened in people. These soul exercises, which relate primarily to the life of imagination and thought, consist of meditation, of systematically regulating concentration on very specific conceptual complexes. What do we achieve when we strengthen and energize our souls in the way described in the books mentioned?

Just as a muscle, when used, strengthens through use, so our soul abilities are also strengthened and invigorated in a very specific way when such soul exercises are done by a person with perseverance over a long period of time. And if I am to characterize how people come to such abilities in the normal way, I would like to say: When we, as honest people, look at our thoughts and how they develop from our outer perception and from the phenomena of life, then we can only say: It happens in us in such a way that we would have to confess: “It thinks in us.” For the fact that I think, it announces itself to an unbiased self-examination: we notice how “it” thinks in us. And we refer this thinking back to ourselves by seeing thinking revealed through our body and say, “I think,” while for ordinary consciousness and for ordinary science we should actually only express, “It thinks in us.” But when we strengthen the soul life through appropriate meditation and concentration exercises, then we really come to the inner consciousness that may express, “I think.”

For then thinking breaks away from what the physical organization is. I know how many paradoxes are expressed for today's consciousness with such a sentence. But here again, anthroposophy, with its research, which is a vivid one, proceeds with great caution and criticism. Anthroposophy is well aware of how ordinary thinking is bound to the physical organization of the human being. It does not present itself in an amateurish or dilettantic way. It agrees with those who study the central organ of the nervous system, the brain, and show us how this or that part of the human soul abilities turns out when this or that part of the brain is removed. Anthroposophy also examines how memory and the ability to remember are connected to the physical organism. And that is why it comes to the conclusion – which some may even misunderstand as a kind of materialism – that for the whole ordinary soul, the physical body is the absolute basis. But then, when appropriate meditation and concentration exercises are done and when the thinking is strengthened, the thinking as soul life breaks away from the physical organization, only then does the soul appear as an independent entity. Then the human being knows: “I think,” and in this “I think” he knows that thinking now proceeds as an independent process, purely soul-spiritual, no longer conditioned, no longer dependent on the bodily organization.

And in addition to the thought exercises, will exercises are added. Again, I would like to characterize only in principle how these will exercises lead to a very specific goal. One might say: Just as it is unjustified to say to ordinary thinking, “I think,” so it should be clear on the other hand that man, insofar as his own will flows into action, faces a real unknown. Take just the simplest volition, for example, raising an arm or a hand: First you have the thought of raising the arm or hand. This thought, however, is clearly in consciousness. But then something completely indeterminate comes, like what is experienced in consciousness as the goal of the action, flows down into the physical organism and asserts itself there as a volitional impulse. For in the end you see only the result of this volitional impulse: the raised hand, the raised arm. We see the beginning and the end of the whole process, the middle is shrouded in complete darkness.

As Anthroposophy develops its vision, it recognizes a similarity between what constantly comes about in the waking day life of the will and what thinking shows as peculiar between falling asleep and waking up. That which lies in between the thought of the goal and the thought that then states the achievement of the goal in the will, is something that stands before the soul just as the life of the soul that takes place between falling asleep and waking up. Anyone who, with the strengthened consciousness that can be achieved through meditation and concentration, observes how sleep approaches a person and how waking up happens again, knows that there is something positive in the process of inducing sleep. Not only does the physical body of the person enter into a different stage , but that in fact the soul and spirit carry out a positive action in falling asleep and waking up, that positive, only unconscious experiences take place in sleep, which are absolutely the same as those experiences that lie between the goal of an action and the thought that states the achievement of an action. So we are actually pursuing the achievement of an action into the waking life of the day when we pursue the will of consciousness in the ordinary life of the day. The exercises of the anthroposophical researcher are intended to penetrate into this darkness, where the will takes place in the ordinary life of the soul, if one does the exercises that I like to suggest on such occasions. There are many exercises, but I will now only mention those that are characteristic because they represent something fundamental.

Whereas otherwise, for example, the sequence of external facts is presented in the order in which they occur, the usual way to begin is to present this process in reverse, so that, for example, one feels a melody backwards or presents a five-act drama backwards in small sections, the fifth act first to the first or, as can be particularly fruitful for everyone, to imagine the course of one's daily life running backwards in pictures in the evening, so that if one has gone down a staircase, one goes up the stairs from bottom to top, from the lowest step to the highest. This causes the will, which lives in thought, to break away from the external world of facts and also from the human being's own physical interior.

So that, as on the one hand, through meditation and concentration, thinking becomes independent, free, and unfolds through these exercises of the will, now the will becomes something that is independent of the organism. While the ordinary will of man, in so far as it is dependent on instincts, drives, desires and emotions that have their basis in the body, while this will also has its basis in the body, it is made independent of physical body through such exercises of will.

And just as the human being, by making his thinking independent of his physical body, is able to look beyond birth and conception into his prenatal existence, and to see the soul and spiritual eternal in that existence as it was in a soul and spiritual world before descending into the physical existence in order to unite with a physical body, how, therefore, through the strengthening of the life of thought, the soul existence can be seen before birth or conception, so the image of what the human being will become after passing through the gate of death also arises through the will being trained. By creating certain aids for the will, which can thus be detached from the body, this will becomes more and more able to penetrate into the external objective existence free of the body.

A good training of the will, for example, is to walk alongside oneself critically, as it were, like a second personality, in relation to one's actions, deeds and moral motives, so that one can objectively view one's own actions as one would otherwise objectively view another person. In this way, one steel one's willpower inwardly so that it becomes independent of all corporeality.

This help is still very useful: I only need to describe how a person is always different after certain periods of time. We all know how we have changed after a decade in our overall state of mind and life. But what has made us different is life itself. Life has taken us into its great school, given us different or altered soul experiences, taken away certain habits, given us others, and so on. We are more or less passively surrendered to life when it is a matter of transformation, of metamorphosis of our own soul or bodily constitution. But if you take what is at work in your moral habits and motives into your own hands, for example by saying to yourself: You have a habit, you want to change it and make it completely different, or something similar, and if you practice it enough, especially if you set goals that run over time, then you will achieve more and more of what is the independence of the will from the physical body of the human being. But through this, something is developed into a power of cognition, of which one rightly says that it, as it is in ordinary life, should not become a power of cognition, and I know very well what speaks against the application of this power, as it is in ordinary life, as a power of cognition. But it should not be used in this way in anthroposophy either; it should be transformed. It should undergo a metamorphosis on a supersensible level.

It is love, the ability to love. In ordinary life, this ability to love is also bound to the physical organism. By doing such exercises of the will as I have indicated, and by inwardly freeing the will from the physical body, the human being becomes able to give himself completely to an external objective. But this is not a sensual objective, it is a spiritual objective. What has happened to man through such exercises, I can characterize as follows. But I ask you not to misunderstand what I give as a characteristic. It is meant in the very real sense, but meant for the further development of man's normal abilities, not for ordinary consciousness.

Take the human eye. It is relatively independent, integrated as a kind of independent organism into the human organism as a whole to a certain degree. We can use the eye appropriately in the service of our entire humanity by being fully transparent within ourselves. I would like to say in a figurative sense: the eye serves us because it is selflessly integrated into our organism. If the eye becomes cloudy, for example if its vitreous body becomes cloudy, if some kind of cataract occurs and it becomes filled with its own matter, then the possibility of looking out into the physical world of the senses through the eye also ceases. Now it is certainly not to be maintained that our physical organism, for example, can be compared to a diseased eye filled with its own substance in the ordinary course of life. But for higher knowledge it is. Precisely what makes it a healthy organism in ordinary physical life also makes it incapable of serving the human being to penetrate into higher, supersensible worlds in ordinary life. If, on the other hand, we do such exercises of the will as I have indicated, in order to penetrate what would otherwise remain dark in the will, then we also make the whole human organism transparent in a spiritual-soul way, so to speak, making it into a sense organ, an overall sense, a total sense. And by thus making the whole human organism as selfless in a certain respect as the eye is in the human organism for external seeing, we enable the human organism to look into the supersensible spiritual world in order to place itself in it. For these exercises, of which I have spoken, make the human organism transparent.

For ordinary consciousness, the ordinary human organism is indeed an obstacle to higher knowledge. It is the tool for ordinary life, for placing oneself in the ordinary world. But the human being can only place himself in the physical world by penetrating into this physical body with his spiritual soul. In a sense, this physical body is opaque. When it becomes transparent in the way indicated, we look out into the spiritual world. But by also tearing the will away from the physical body in this way, an image of death as it really is for the human being as a whole enters into our knowledge. By learning to recognize how we can remain in consciousness as human beings, independent of our physical bodies, and with our will power reaching into the future, we gain an insight into what happens to the soul and spirit of the human being when the corpse is taken up by the external forces and laws of nature. We gain a picture of the soul and spirit that frees itself from the body when the physical body of a person succumbs to death.

As you can see, dear attendees, anthroposophy cannot philosophically speculate or mystically fantasize about human immortality in some frivolous way. It must show step by step how the human being, in a systematic inner development, ascends to a state of insight that enables him, for example, to truly recognize what passes through birth and death as the spiritual-soul, eternal core of the human being, untouched by the physical body. And now we can say how that which, as a corpse after death, succumbs to the external laws of nature as physical corporeality relates to what can be attained as spiritual-soul in meditative or in will development. The path taken by anthroposophical knowledge and life is the opposite of that taken by the human being when, as a physical personality, he passes through death. Death unites the human being with physical-sensory reality, as we can see through it with our intellectual knowledge. What is experienced as an exercise in anthroposophical research methods unites the soul with the spiritual by tearing it away from the physical-bodily in terms of both thought and will. And by tearing the will and the thought away from the physical body, the mind, the sensation and the feeling, which is at the center of the soul's life and the most intimate of the soul's life, is also torn away from the physical body. One learns to recognize what can escape from death, and one learns to recognize it by simultaneously learning to understand what death actually means in human life under such conditions.

I have pointed out that the forces we find at work in the corpse are always present in the human being between birth and death, or between conception and death. The other forces I have spoken of, which are used in supersensible knowledge for the immediate spiritual-soul life that goes into eternity, are always present as the counterforces to those forces that become visible in the corpse at death, so that life is a continuous struggle between these two kinds of forces. And man, with his mind, which stands in the middle between thought and will, thereby takes part in this struggle and sees how the forces at work in the corpse are continually subject to a certain kind of decay. Why is that so? Well, the thinking of ordinary consciousness, being present between birth and death, turns to those forces that are at work in the corpse. You only need to remember the following – I could draw on much evidence from the depths of anthroposophy, but for today it may suffice if I merely point it out.

Whenever the sprouting and sprouted organic life that lives in nutrition takes over and develops particularly when the person remains asleep, whenever the constructive life that we develop particularly in childhood, where we have to shape our organism plastically, then the conscious thought life recedes. In the physical organism, the conscious thought life does not turn to the constructive forces, but to the destructive ones, to the dying forces, to those forces that only appear summarily, highly increased in a single moment, in human death. One would like to say: What appears in death in the highest degree, lives in us continually, and if it did not live in us, then ordinary human thinking would not be able to develop. This ordinary thinking turns to the forces that are always dying in us, to the destructive forces that age us in the second half of life by getting the upper hand against the forces that are also always present in us and rejuvenate us. These rejuvenating forces are active in our will and in the subconscious realm of thinking. But while ordinary cognition deals with the destructive forces, supersensible cognition, as striven for by anthroposophy, turns cognition precisely towards the opposite pole.

By making the human organism into a sense organ in a higher sense, as already indicated, man can make transparent what would otherwise be dormant, asleep, in the will, and can thus look into the spiritual world and get to know that which he cannot see in the state of sleep because of our own organism being opaque. This volition in the spiritual world becomes transparent, and we then look at the thinking of ordinary consciousness by learning to recognize the invigorating thinking that builds up the human being and works in from a spiritual world, by taking over what the human being receives through birth from the forces of heredity. What the human being receives in this way as growth forces can be applied as observing forces in observation and in experiment, while the physical experiment must turn to the dying forces. Thus we see birth and death continually at work in human nature. And by seeing death not only in that one moment of human life, but by seeing it spread in its individual [basic elements] over the whole of earthly existence, we confront it with what constantly fights this death and what, when we see through it, shows how the human being lives in an eternal existence that passes through birth and death unchanging, imperishable, one might say.

Anthroposophy seeks to follow the individual everyday events of the soul life — ordinary thinking, which it feels connected with the forces of dying, and ordinary willing, which it feels connected with the forces of building and growing — in such a way that, in their further pursuit, ways can be found to solve the great soul riddle of human immortality. I would like to say: The soul being is inwardly illuminated in terms of knowledge when we can add to what we have in ordinary soul life only as a reflection of sensory knowledge, in this way, supersensible knowledge. In ordinary life we carry the immortal soul within us, but this immortal soul is only filled with what it receives from external impressions. Even our memories are ultimately only reminiscences of external impressions, even when these external impressions have been taken up and transformed by the will and the mind. And even what ordinary mysticism often mistakes for a revelation proves to be only a reflection of the external physical-sensual existence for an unbiased knowledge. Man bears within himself the immortal, but he must first become conscious of the deeper reasons for this nature of his own in supersensible beholding, by transforming his whole cognitive faculty.

Then he penetrates through the gates that show the paths to the actual great riddles of the soul. In this respect, one can distinguish three levels of consciousness. And in these three levels of consciousness, all three of which can live in man, the path that man must take if he wants to solve the riddles of the soul is clearly shown. We shall disregard for the moment the very dull state of sleep, which is a kind of unconscious consciousness. But emerging from this unconscious state of sleep, as from the depths of a sea, are dreams, which are no less remarkable in their symbolism when they are considered quite impartially, as they sometimes appear to us, to mention just one example, as a visualization of conscience. One need only recall how, in a dream, when one has, for example, committed a sin of omission against a friend, this sin of omission emerges like a visualized conscience. One could point out many things in this regard.

But if one looks with an unbiased eye at what is present in this dream life, one must say: This dream life mocks everything that puts the human being into existence in an orienting way in the waking day life, through which alone he can fruitfully place himself into the world between birth and death. Where does this come from? Precisely those who see through the fact that man is present as a spiritual-soul being during sleep and that his consciousness is only subdued, will, when studying the dream life, be able to observe this sporadic flashing of consciousness in the dream in such a way that man then, with his spiritual soul, only comes to the periphery of the physical, that he does not yet fully enter the physical sphere when he wakes up or, when dreams accompany his falling asleep, step out of it.

When a person lives with their soul and spirit on the periphery of their physical body and this physical body faces them like a dark entity, then dreams burdened with arbitrariness arise. And when the human being's physical organization proves to be too weak to, I would say, fully absorb the soul and spirit into its own organization, to permeate itself with it and to permeate it with itself, then the spiritual-soul experience of dreams continues into the physical organism, where it becomes hallucinatory, visionary, mediumistic life, the kind of life that is easily suggestible, and so on. Yes, it is precisely those formations that arise when what should remain only on the periphery of the physical body as dream-like formations, as dream-like soul experiences, submerge too deeply into the physical organism that occur as pathological manifestations of the soul life. This leads those riddles of the soul life that are connected to the hallucinatory, visionary or medial life towards a solution. Anthroposophy must take a negative view of precisely these phenomena if they are to assert themselves in such a way that something of the spiritual world can really be recognized through them. But when the human being, with his soul and spirit, not only hovers on the periphery of the physical, but when he completely submerges himself in his physical body so that the two become one, when the arbitrary life of the dream the dream images are permeated by the forces of the orientation lines, which are formed from the laws of the full physical body with the outer physical nature, then the healthy, waking day life enters. Then what the physical human organization is has become one with the spiritual-soul in its dying and building powers; then they work together as one.

But the human being, who lives in his spiritual-soul, works through the instrument of the physical body, which gives him orientation in the physical-sensory world. When, through the exercises described, the human being not only becomes completely one with his physical body in his spiritual and mental being, but, beyond that, the whole physical organism of the human being becomes a sense organ, then the third state of consciousness occurs - supersensible consciousness. Then the ordinary waking consciousness of the day relates to supersensible consciousness in the same way that a dream relates to the waking life of the day. In approaching the riddles of the soul, we can distinguish between the darker consciousness of the dream, the lighter consciousness of the waking day, and the supersensible consciousness. It is the last that leads us into the eternal depths of the human soul, to the questions of our pre-birth and our immortality. Even those riddles that point to the morbid side of psychic life can be solved by comparing their phenomena in an appropriate way with what can develop in a healthy way as supersensible knowledge.

I have thus attempted to show what supersensible knowledge can achieve in relation to solving the riddles of the soul. The possibility of developing such supersensible knowledge, as I have described it, is only available today, after humanity has passed through the scientific age and has been able to obtain the corresponding knowledge through the conscientiously developed, serious, scientific methods. Therefore, the safest way to proceed in the field of supersensible knowledge is not to be a layman or a dilettante in the field of natural science, but to have learned how to really research in the field of natural science, and to leave to natural science what is its own, and then to leave to the spiritual what belongs to it.

But in earlier times, people always had some kind of idea of how to penetrate the hidden depths of the soul life, which today is achieved by strengthening the soul life. People spoke of a threshold that must be crossed if one wants to penetrate into the real soul life, and they spoke of how one can speak of crossing this threshold through an intuitive consciousness. But there were also very characteristic ways of speaking about how this knowledge of the supersensible is a healing process. The human striving for health in intimate community was found to be connected with this permeation with supersensible knowledge. Now, in relation to the soul life and its riddles, one will learn again that a process of healing is indeed taking place through the fulfillment with supersensible knowledge. To understand this, one does not need to be a psychologist oneself, just as one does not need to be a painter oneself to appreciate a picture. Just as one will be able to appreciate a picture if one has been raised healthily, so will the one who has been educated correctly in terms of common sense be able to understand what the anthroposophist says and judge whether it is healthy or unhealthy for a person. One can verify through common sense what the anthroposophist claims, and one will feel nothing in it, by taking it in, other than something that connects with the whole soul of man in a healing way, which above all supplies man with the forces that give him moral and social support and lead him to what can give moral impulses from the spiritual world.

For this reason, I was obliged to speak of supersensible forces as early as the beginning of the 1890s in my “Philosophy of Freedom”, where I presented as moral intuition those forces under whose influence man becomes a morally free being, so that what is to be gained through anthroposophical knowledge already exists in a presentiment in our moral life and in our ordinary consciousness. And by inwardly opening our cognitive powers to the forces that live in it, we equip ourselves with currents that have healing powers and give our lives support. In this way, anthroposophical knowledge does not give man theoretical views, but something that flows into his entire existence, connecting the reality of external nature with the inner moral world, so that these two no longer fall apart into two. And anyone who has ever stood before the full extent of the soul questions that arise here will also understand how one can strive for a knowledge of the soul, as spoken of here.

If someone today is honestly grounded in natural science, then he looks to an origin of the earth – even if the Kant-Laplace theory is modified today – from which physical existence emerges from a pure physical nebula gas ball, and from this later emerged what constitutes the higher natural kingdoms and also man. And today's physics shows how the end of the earth will one day be concluded in the heat of death, how through a great corpse that will be buried, which man perceives as the content of his human dignity, his human value and his moral value. Through these scientific ideas, man today gets an idea of the arbitrariness of the sensual-physical world, because the sensual powers necessarily give rise to forms of appearance, in contrast to which the moral world would have to be abandoned to decay if the powers assumed by science were to have exclusive validity.

But if we look at the world in such a way that we do not turn to the ordinary powers of thought, to the powers of dying, to which intellectual knowledge turns, because it is bound to the powers of dying and with these powers can only grasp the dead, inanimate nature, but if we point to the immortal, living nature of the world's existence, by rising from the ordinary knowledge of the soul to that knowledge of the soul that is given to supersensible vision, then our soul is anchored in an immortal world existence, and only then is a prospect of a true solution of the soul's riddles opened up. If someone now wanted to say: But this anthroposophy lacks the secure foundation of external knowledge of facts, because it only wants to build on what has been developed from the inner life of the soul. So anyone who sees through everything that I have only been able to hint at today will still say to themselves: Such an objection is like the one that someone would make who said: Everything must stand on firm ground so that it does not fall. That is of course true for things that stand on the earth. If, on the other hand, we look out into space, it would be foolish to ask: What does the earth rest on, what does the moon rest on, what do the other bodies of the universe rest on? They simply have their support in their mutually interacting forces; they support each other.

And one must recognize how what anthroposophy undertakes to achieve actually characterizes the world from the most diverse perspectives and thus supports each other. Until one has grasped the cosmic aspect of anthroposophical knowledge in this way, one will always think that it is unfounded, just as one could foolishly think that the earth is unfounded because it does not rest on a firm foundation in the universe, as every other body does rest on a foundation. Sensory knowledge and intellectual knowledge must rest on a foundation. But that which is developed out of the soul in the manner indicated bears itself, in that it seeks to penetrate from the most diverse sides into the supersensible realm of existence and thereby also prepares the way for the real, vital solution of the soul riddles.

Thus we can say: just as the soul riddles are connected with the processes of recovery and illness of the whole human being, so too must the processes of recovery lie in the penetration of the knowledge of the supersensible human nature, in the knowledge of the true immortality of the human being. In its own way, the most recent period would have to restore the instinctive knowledge of earlier times.

Words of truth do indeed come up from the depths of man's older striving, but modern times cannot strive for knowledge in the same way as earlier times. Natural science has taught us to strive for knowledge in a different way with regard to human existence and natural existence. And just as knowledge is sought in the natural realm, so too in the supersensible realm, not in the manner of nebulous mysticism, but with a clear development of the powers of knowledge into the eternal. But when this happens, then the modern man, who has found support in life in the face of the riddles of the soul's life, may speak again as the ancient Greek once did: “When you leave the body and ascend to the free ether, you will be an immortal god, having escaped death!”

In our discussion of the Wrangell brochure, we have reached the chapter beginning on page 37, entitled “Materialism”. I will read this chapter first:

Materialism

As stated earlier, the materialistic view recognizes only that knowledge which can be gained through sense perceptions and logical conclusions based on them, and denies the reality of occult perceptions. The sense perceptions of most people do not provide direct evidence of the reality of spiritual forces and phenomena that are not bound to material bodies. From this the materialist concludes that the assumption of such forces and beings independent of matter is not justified, and declares the conclusions to be drawn from it to be worthless. According to him, world events are the necessary consequence of the forces and conditions present in matter from the very beginning, which only allow development, and according to the law of the dispersion of energy, must ultimately lead to a state of equilibrium, and consequently to eternal death. The intellectual task of man is to investigate the laws according to which the process of this world development takes place, in order to endure the least possible suffering and waste of energy by adapting to these laws.

If one fundamentally rejects the occult evidence for the existence of spiritual entities, then logically nothing can be said against the materialistic view.

We see here, in a few concise sentences, the essence of the materialistic train of thought. But in order to arrive at a clear understanding of the full significance of the materialistic world view in our time, we actually have to take various things into account.

It must be clear that those who have become honest materialists in our time have a hard time coming to a spiritualistic worldview. And when speaking of “honest” opponents of spiritualism, it is actually the theoretical materialists who should be considered first and foremost, because those people who from the outset, I would say “professionally”, believe they have to represent this or that world view, do not always need to be described as “honest” representatives of a world view. But Ludwig Büchner, for example, was an honest representative of materialism in the second half of the 19th century, more honest than many who, from what they consider a religious point of view, feel they have to make themselves opponents of a spiritual world view in the sense of spiritual science.

Now, I said that it is difficult for materialists to arrive at a spiritual conception of the world. For materialism, as it presents itself to us today in those who say: Yes, man has his senses and perceives the world through his senses, he observes the processes that the senses can follow and cannot, on the basis of what the senses present to him to the assumption of a spiritual being that is independent of the sense world – this materialism has emerged with a certain inevitability from the development of modern humanity, because it is based on something that had to emerge in the development of modern humanity.

Anyone who takes the trouble to study the older spiritual life of humanity will find that it reached an end with the 14th, 15th, 16th centuries among the actual civilized peoples. Today, one need only really deal with what the present can give to the consciousness of man and then pick up a book that, in terms of its conception, is still fully immersed in the way the world was viewed scientifically in the 13th, 14th, 15th century , 14th, 15th century, and one will find that the present man, if he takes things seriously and worthily, no longer has and can have a proper understanding of what is really said in the older literature up to the marked turning point.

Of course it does happen, but only with those who are dilettantes, or even those who have not yet become dilettantes, that they repeatedly dig out all kinds of tomes from this older literature that deal with natural science and then come to all kinds of conclusions about what is said in them in a profound way. But anyone who values true relationships with what they acquire will have to find that the modern human being cannot really have true relationships with this older way of looking at nature. It is different with the philosophical view. But today's man cannot really do anything with the view of nature of the older time, because all the concepts that he can form about nature are only a few centuries old, and with these one must approach nature today. Our physical concepts basically all go back to the Galilean world view and nothing earlier. One must already unfold a broad historical-scientific study when engaging with earlier scientific works, because the exact exploration of the material world, the external sense world, in whose current we find ourselves today, has actually only begun in the last few centuries.

Do you remember that we were just talking about measuring in reference to Wrangell's booklet? Weighing is also part of measuring, as we have seen. However, the introduction of weighing as an instrument into the methods of the natural sciences has only been common practice since Lzvozszer, so it is not yet 150 years old, and all the basic ideas of today's chemistry, for example, are based on this weighing.

On the other hand, if we want to form ideas today about the workings of electrical forces, for example, or even just thermal forces, then they must be based on the research from the last half of the 19th century. People today can no longer cope with the older ideas. The same could be said with regard to biological science. However, anyone who needs to know the development of science would also need to get to know the older literature; but we, who want to take spiritual science seriously, must get rid of what we so often encounter in so-called theosophists. I have often spoken of the fact that I got to know a theosophical community in Vienna in the 1880s, for example. There it was almost a kind of custom to pick out all kinds of old tomes and to read in them things that one really did not understand very well, because basically it takes a lot to read a scientific work, for example, from the 14th century. But people formed judgments. These judgments were always pretty much the same. Namely, when someone pretended to have read such a book – although they had only flicked through it – they said “abysmally deep”. These were the judgments that were made. At the end of the 1980s, I heard the word “abysmally deep” – relatively naturally – more often than any other. Of course, I also heard the word “shallows” often.

What must be borne in mind is the great importance of the views, concepts and ideas that have been gained under the influence of the views of recent centuries. When we consider the explanations of the basic concepts of mechanics, the wealth of physical, chemical and biological concepts, and also some of the things that have been brought together to see how the soul expresses itself in the external physical body, we have the result of the last few centuries, and especially of the second half of the last century, an enormously expanded research result before us. And this research result must necessarily be gained, not only because all external, technical, economic, material life is based on it, which humanity had to achieve at some point, but because a large part of our world view is also based on it. And one is actually - even if it does no harm in a certain limited field, but it is true - one is actually in such a field of world view as that of today's science a hay rabbit if one knows nothing of today's physics, biology and so on, as they have developed.

Of course, it must be emphasized again and again that the research results of spiritual science are obtained on the basis of those perceptual abilities that have often been mentioned. They cannot be obtained in the same way, although with the same certainty, as the scientific-materialistic results. And of course - if one surrenders to what was indicated yesterday - this spiritual science is a reality. But for our time today, for our present, much more is needed than just somehow having a spiritual relationship to the spiritual-scientific results, which can be fully grasped by common sense. It is much more necessary than somehow catching scraps of the spiritual world to familiarize oneself with the materialistic world view, at least with a section of it, in order to be able to really represent to the outside world today what spiritual science wants. For one cannot go before the world and truly represent spiritual science if one has no idea of the way in which the scientist researches today, how he must think and how he must handle research alongside clarification. And if one repeatedly refuses to pick up a book on natural science in order to familiarize oneself with modern natural science, then one will never be able to avoid committing gaffes when representing the spiritual-scientific worldview in the face of what is the dregs of the external worldview. Today it is also much less important to listen to the traditional religious systems than to the honestly gained venerable results of materialistic research. One must only be able to relate to these materialistic research results in the right way.

Let us take, just to show what is at stake at the present moment, any field; let us take the field of human anatomy and physiology. If you take any common book today – and I have always recommended such books over the course of the many cycles – you will get a picture of how today's physiologist builds his ideas about the structure of the human body, based on the bone system, the cartilage, tendon, muscle system, the nervous, blood, sensory, main system, and so on. And a picture will emerge of how people today, living in materialistic thought, imagine the interaction, say, of the heart and lungs, and again of the heart with the other vascular systems of the body. And then an answer can present itself to the question: How does a person who has acquired his concepts from materialistic research actually relate to these things? What ideas does he actually have in him? And here one must say: Significant ideas have indeed been gained; ideas that had to be gained in such a way that one really had to turn away from everything spiritual, from carrying spiritual thoughts into research. One had to enter into the material realm as it presents itself to the five senses, as they say in popular terms, and into the context that arises from the five senses. One had to see through the world in this way, and much remains to be done in this area, in all possible fields of scientific research.

But now suppose you have acquired a picture of the structure of the human body such as the anatomist and physiologist have today. Then you will find that the anatomist and physiologist say: Well, the human being is made up of various organs and organ systems, and these work together in a certain way.

You see, when an anatomist or a physiologist speaks today and summarizes his ideas into an overall picture of the human being, then, within this picture, the same thing remains based on sensory observation. From this, very specific ideas arise that can be taken up. But one must relate to them in the right way. Perhaps I can make this clear by means of a comparison. For example, someone might say: I want to get to know Raphael, how do I do that? - I would tell him: If you want to get to know Raphael, then try to immerse yourself in Raphael's paintings; study the Marriage of Joseph and Mary, one of the paintings in Milan, and then the various paintings up to the Sistine Madonna and the Ascension, and get an concept of how Raphael tried to distribute the figures in space, how he tried to distribute light and shadow, to enliven one place in the picture at the expense of the other, to emphasize one and withdraw the other, and so on, then you will know something about Raphael. Then you will have the preparation to get to know Raphael even better, then you will gradually get a picture of the configuration of Raphael's soul, of what he wanted, from which sources of his mind his creations emerged. One could imagine that someone comes and says: Oh, looking at the pictures does not suit me, I am a clairvoyant and look directly into Raphael's soul, see how Raphael created and then talk about Raphael. I can imagine someone coming and saying: I don't need to see anything of Raphael at all, but delve directly into the soul of Raphael. Of course, in Raphael research this would be considered nonsense, but in the field of spiritual science it is practiced a great deal, despite the many admonitions over the years in which we have been doing spiritual science. One could see how few felt compelled to use the literature mentioned in the course of the lecture cycles and to use it in such a way as to obtain images from what materialistic research has produced.

But just as one would err if one were to stop at the image and not want to progress to the soul that is expressed through the image, so the materialist stops. What one could say to the materialist is, for example, this: Yes, you are looking at an image, but you do not notice that you should consider what you are looking at as the outer revelation of a spiritual inner reality. But it is true that materialistic research has brought together an enormous amount of material. If one regards this as the external manifestation of a spiritual reality, then one is on the right path. The materialist only makes the mistake of having the material and not wanting to accept that it is the expression of a spiritual reality. But on the other hand, one must always be in the wrong when one asserts something spiritual and a materialist says things about which one has no idea. Of course one can have an overview of the rich field of research and still have no idea about a great deal; but one must have some idea about the way in which things are acquired. And if our School of Spiritual Science is to serve as a place where a number of people who have studied one field or another interpret the materialistic basic premises that one must have according to the present-day development, then our School of Spiritual Science will achieve a great deal.

We could do it today, saying that what is set out in our cycles of material could suffice; we could conclude with it and use the next time to show our friends the material basis of the conditions that must be there. One will then see, when one looks at today's physics, chemistry and biology in the appropriate way, that what is in our cycles will arise. Then one would have taken the right approach to materialism.

My dear friends, you are quite mistaken when you say that materialism is wrong. What nonsense! To say that materialism is wrong is just as if you wanted to say: the Sistine Madonna is blue here and red there, that's wrong, that's just matter. Materialism is right in its own field; and if you take what it has contributed to human knowledge, it is something tremendous. We do not need to fight materialism, but only to show by its development how materialism, if it understands itself, leads beyond itself, just as I have shown how anatomy and physiology lead beyond themselves and necessarily into the spiritual realm.

One can only ask: Why are there so many people who, instead of accepting materialism as a mere research method, stop at it as a world view? - The right thing would be to say that today it would indeed be something completely complicated and foolish to practice alchemy instead of chemistry; today one must practice chemistry and not alchemy as in the 12th century. That goes without saying. But it is necessary to rise up out of today's research into the spiritual life. If our friends would only take the trouble to study the little book Haeckel and His Opponents, they would find that all the thoughts on which it is based are governed by the biogenetic law. It is significant that we have not yet managed to get a second edition of this little book 'Haeckel and his Opponents'. And yet it is extremely important to be informed, if not about the latest research results - one does not necessarily need to know these in detail - then at least about the way the researcher proceeds and how he or she goes about their research. This is of the utmost importance.

If someone says: I don't need to study the book, why should I, the spiritual world is clear to me from the outset; I don't need to climb the whole ladder – if someone says that, then today he is an egoist who only considers himself and does not pay attention to what the times demand of us. But we must pay attention to this if we want to serve the spirit of the time. It is extremely important that we keep this in mind. Of course, one has the right to say, why do I need a scientific basis, the spiritual world is clear to me. That may be true. But if you want to learn something in the field of the spiritual world – you can of course do it in such a way that you interpret what is there – but if you want to learn something, you have to familiarize yourself with what is available in materialistic science.

On the other hand, one must ask: How is it that there are many anatomists, physiologists, physicists, chemists and so on today as natural scientists, and even those who call themselves experimental psychologists, that they do not want to hold materialism as a research method, but as a worldview? Here one must honestly have the courage to answer: To conduct research in a materialistic way, all that is required is to stare at the world with the five senses and to use external methods. One need only surrender to the world passively, then one stands firm. Plucking any old plant, counting the stamens, taking the microscope, staining a cross-section in order to study the structure, and so on – I could, of course, list many more things – that is what people do. You just have to stand there, be passive and let nature take effect on you. You let yourself be led by nature.

In the very first writings I published, I called this the dogmatism of experience. People hold on to the dogmatism of experience. You can read about it in my book “Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung” (Basic Principles of an Epistemology of the Goethean World View). I also later called it “fact fanaticism”. But to enter the spiritual world, one must work inwardly, and for that one needs inner activity. And that is where people run out of strength. One can see in our time that this strength has been exhausted. If you make comparisons in the field of anatomy, for example, you will find that one can almost point the finger to the point where the strength has been exhausted.

Take the anatomist Ayrt/, who was replaced on his chair by the anatomist Langer. Compare the writings of the two scientifically, and you will see how, in the succession of the two scholars, one is absolutely clear that there is something spiritual behind the external, and the other no longer cares. Why is that? Because, however meritorious materialism is as a research method and however much it has achieved, without which people could not live today, people were too lazy to bring what they had grasped into active life. Laziness, real indolence of mind, has made people persist in materialism. Because materialism became so dominant and presented itself as reality, people did not rise to the spiritual. It is laziness and inertia, and one must have the courage to recognize this reason.

Immerse yourself in the fields of scientific research and you will see that this scientific research is magnificent and admirable. Delve into everything that is fabricated by the monists and other associations as “world views” and you will see that they are based on laziness and inertia, on an ossification of thought. This is what we must clearly face, that we must distinguish - if we stand on the ground of true spiritual science - between the entirely justified materialistic research methods and research results and the so-called materialistic world view.

Most of the time, those who do materialistic research cannot even think, because it is easier to do materialistic research than to think spiritually. I will give you an example to illustrate that materialists simply stumble when they want to move from materialistic research methods to a worldview. So let us assume that I have tried to gain an atomistic world view. I will therefore say: bodies consist of atoms. These must be thought of in motion, so that when you have a material object in front of you, it consists of atoms. There are spaces between the atoms. The atoms are in motion, and according to the materialistic world view, heat is generated by this motion. If one were to say that heat is based on the movement of atoms, then one would be right, then one would only be stating a fact. However, one comes to the realization that it is impossible to speak of atoms as something that actually exists. Atoms are imagined – and they have to be imagined if they are to make sense – but what is perceived should first be brought about by the atoms. So you can't see an atom. You see that the so-called atomistic world view is composed of nothing visible, of nothing that can be perceived by the senses.

Now, however, you can reflect and say: the world consists of atoms and these are in motion. One wants to investigate the kind of movement that underlies heat, light, magnetism, electricity, and so on, and one comes to assume that certain atomic movements are the cause of sensory perception. So one comes to atoms. One divides what is given, and if one divides again and again, one must finally come to the indivisible, and that is the atom. Divisible atoms are meaningless. The last parts, that is, the atoms, must be indivisible. Now, however, people also want to explain movement from the atoms – I can only hint at this, but you can follow it up in the philosophical-scientific literature of recent times – they also want to explain movement from the nature of the atoms. But if you think about how one atom must push the other for motion to arise, which we see in heat, electricity and so on, then you cannot think of atoms as rigid; you have to think of them as elastic. It is necessary to think of them elastically, because rigid atoms would not give the movement that must come out during a collision if heat, electricity or magnetism is to come out.

So these atoms must be elastic. But what does that mean? It means that the atom can be compressed and then springs back to its former state. It must therefore be compressible and spring back again, otherwise one cannot even think of the pushing of the atoms. Now we have gained two things: first, the atom must be indivisible; second, it must be elastic. These two facts confront modern thinking, which pays homage to atomism. The atom must be conceived as indivisible, otherwise it is no longer an atom, and it must be conceived as elastic, because it would be a senseless idea to trace the movement of the atom back to rigid atoms. English thinkers in particular have emphasized these two sentences very sharply: firstly, the atom is indivisible, and secondly, the atom must be conceived as elastic. If I allow a body to be elastic, it is inconceivable that the parts push together and then spring back into the original position to create the elastic body. This is inconceivable without it being divisible and movable. But the atom must be indivisible on the one hand, and on the other hand it must be divisible, because otherwise it cannot be elastic. But what does that mean?

It means that if we want to imagine atoms, we come up with two contradictory basic assumptions. There is no way around this. There is an enormous amount of interesting literature about thinking the world picture together out of non-rigid atoms. But then the atom is no longer an atom, because it has to be thought of as divisible. That is to say, one comes to the conclusion that the idea of the atom is impossible as long as one assumes that the atom is material. In the moment when you do not think of the atom materially, when you think that the atom is not something material but something else, one can think of the atom as indivisible, just as the human ego is also thought of as indivisible. Suppose the atom is force, then you can also think of it as being put together. If you do not think in materialistic terms, you do not need to think that there are spaces in between. The two things are therefore perfectly compatible if we do not think of atoms materially. If we carefully consider what optics, the science of electricity, and so on, offers us, and draw the final consequences as to how the atom must be, then we come to the conclusion that the atom cannot be material. You are bound to touch on spiritual matters. But this step has to be taken. It makes no difference whether the atom is elastic or rigid; we are not concerned with such details. Materialism should not be fought, but understood. The great amount of work and good results should not be despised by spiritual science.

Let us now turn to the next chapter of the Wrangell treatise:

Doubts about the materialistic world view

But many people harbor doubts: could it really be that the whole world is not based on any rational, moral thought, and that the concepts of what is expedient and moral arise only in the human breast, but have no validity outside of it?

We feel within us the striving for good, and the concept of good is inseparable from the concept of freedom, because where absolute necessity reigns, there is no evil and no good. A stone must fall in a certain direction with a certain speed, and it would be senseless to call this fall evil or good.

Should that which we feel in our innermost being to be the true measure of life be only deception and delusion, and is this idea of good, that is, of morality chosen in freedom, not to be found in the whole of the world, of which man is only a tiny fraction? Should the small part, man, endowed with lofty feelings and thoughts, stand in this respect higher than the whole, which proceeds unconsciously, without purpose, like a dead wheelwork, to end in eternal death? Most people's minds resist such a solution and seek another.

It is all right to say that the intellect objects to this, but it is much more important in our time to say that thinking objects to it. If one wishes to stand only on the ground of materialism, then one must go to the atom and grasp it as matter. But one can also call it force, and then one arrives at the fact that where one finds matter, there is the cosmic world of thought. There then the moral world order has its full place in it.

Now, some have found it more convenient to say: Yes, if you rethink the world like that, scruples and doubts arise for sense knowledge everywhere and it is not right to accept this sense knowledge as the only valid knowledge; but man is so constituted that he cannot penetrate deeper. This results in the following situation: there stands the man, who is perhaps a very good researcher in the field of the external sense world and who, as a materialistic researcher, can produce something lasting, beautiful and magnificent, but he is not inclined to go further. And so he says: there must be all sorts of things behind matter; but we are not able to penetrate there with the human capacity for knowledge. He calls himself an agnostic. He does not realize that this talk, that man does not have the ability and so on, is inspired by Ahriman and he does not listen to what good spirits tell him; he does not listen to that. In truth, he is just a slacker. Slacker is what you call it when you say it honestly, agnosticism is what you call it in science.

The next chapter in Wrangell's book is now entitled:

Agnosticism

The answer to the question of the origin and purpose of the universe and the destiny of man, which presents the least difficulties to the mind, but leaves the demands of the heart completely unsatisfied, is the point of view of the agnostic (” “not-knowing"), when he says: these questions transcend the limits of human knowledge, and therefore, by their very nature, must remain unanswered, and it is more reasonable to devote one's time and energy to tasks where there is a prospect of overcoming them.

— One cannot object to saying, I will devote myself to a task that I can accomplish. That is within a person's freedom. But it is not within a person's freedom to say: What I do not know, no one else may know. All philosophizing about what man cannot know is actually, at bottom, a scientific infamy, and, furthermore, it is a scientific megalomania without parallel, because man sets himself up as the arbiter of what may and may not be researched, because he presents what he himself wants to accept as decisive for all other people. What impotence lies in the sentence: “There are limits to knowledge”! What arrogance and conceit lies in it, but should also be made clear. This should not be whispered in the ears, but blared. —

Without denying the existence of spiritual beings, the agnostic maintains that this area is not accessible to everyone, while everything based on sensory experience is within the realm of knowledge of the normal person, and he should be content with that. Those people in whom the intellect, trained to be critical, predominates, can remain at this point of view without being paralyzed in their actions; but for most people, this answer is no answer. If one takes the standpoint of a person without personal occult experiences and without knowledge of other people's reports of such perceptions that appear credible to him, then, logically speaking, he is free to speak out in favor of or against the existence of spiritual worlds. —

But one is not entitled to deny the scientific nature of the opposing view.

The degree of credibility of the reports of others cannot be measured with objective, i.e. universally valid rigor, and the judgment about it is inevitably influenced by subjective motives in each individual case.

- Yes, you can show that.

If the facts can be verified by any normal person, then in most cases there is no need to go to the trouble of verifying them personally, because the current organization of scientific research ensures that an erroneous observation or report is soon discovered, and this compels every observer and reporter, if only for the sake of his reputation, to be as careful and truthful as possible, and in any case an observation error does not remain undetected for long.

— Basically, that doesn't say much more than if someone were to say the following: With the way scientific work is organized today, if you go to Basel and buy a chemistry book, you can believe what's in it, because it contains chemical results, and it wouldn't occur to a chemist to lie. — But that would only legitimize the belief in authority. And if people would only admit this to themselves, they would realize how much they accept on trust today. I have often emphasized that spiritual science, although in its infancy, can be tested. Spiritual science is still young; when it is older, the spiritual scientist will be in the same position as the chemist is today: it will then be clear that one does not lie in spiritual science.

Occult perception, however, is different, and this essential difference has long led the men of exact science, who are accustomed to controllable facts, to treat occult communications not only critically, i.e. with scrutiny, but skeptically, i.e. with outright rejection.

- The real reason is that they are too lazy.

Now, however, this no longer seems possible, because the evidence for the immaterial existence of spiritual beings is so compelling that men of undoubted scientific training consider this question to be proven. It is enough to mention names such as Zöllner, Wallace, du Prel, Crookes, Butlerow, Rochas, Oliver Lodge, Flammarion, Morselli, Schiaparelli, Ochorowicz, James, among others.

— There Mr. von Wrangell relies on those who tie in with atavistic abilities, while we assume that every person can acquire the abilities that make it possible to test the spiritual as one tests the scientific.

These men not only find no contradiction between occult facts and established results of exact sensory research, but their habit of unprejudiced criticism leads them to reject the skepticism of the materialist and to devote themselves to the study of occult phenomena.

— But they do not do it in the right way. They drag everything down to the same field of experimentation as chemistry, even that which can only be attained through the free activity of thought. Instead of constructing inwardly, they go around, as it were, with a yardstick, measuring. —

These authorities may err in their judgment, but their point of view can serve as proof that we are justified in assuming the existence of spiritual entities without exposing ourselves to the accusation of scientific ignorance. Assuming that one has no occult abilities oneself, one is dependent on the reports of others and must examine them for their credibility.

— It would be better to try to engage with what is said in “How to Know Higher Worlds”. It is much easier than many assume. Most people just don't recognize it, but all sorts of complications are recognized. It would actually be relatively easy to experience at least enough of the spiritual world in a few years to recognize it in general. But people say: That is nothing; because they strive for what I have called gut-level clairvoyance. And if it does not come to gut-level clairvoyance, then none of it means anything to them.

The sources of error in occult perceptions lie both in the subject and in the object. Even a superficial knowledge of the perceptual material accumulated by spiritists and other occultists shows us that here, admittedly, the sources of error flow abundantly...

— They really do not. It is no different than saying: nature never lies! But it lies all the time. Take a glass of water and stick a stick in it, it will appear broken to you; but it is not. Take the path of the sun in the sky, compare the size in the morning and the size at noon: nature lies to you all day long. The spiritual world lies just as much and just as little. It is extraordinarily interesting, for example, to visualize the processes in the etheric body of a person when they have an intestinal disorder, or to observe what the etheric body does when the digestive processes take place. It is just as interesting as when one usually studies anatomy or physiology, even more interesting. But it is unjustified to regard what is nothing more than a process in the etheric body during digestion as a magnificent process of the cosmic world. The spiritual world itself does not lie; it must only be interpreted in the right way. There is no need to disdain what happens in our etheric body during digestion. It should not be misunderstood. The senses, too, do not deceive in reality. When you reach into the water, you find with the sense of touch... [gap in the transcription]. In the course of time, natural science has acquired good rules through study, while it is believed in the humanities that the less study one has undergone, the more suitable one is for it.

Thus: “Even a superficial acquaintance with the material of perception accumulated by spiritualists and other occultists shows us that here, admittedly, the sources of error flow abundantly... .”

because they not only lie, as in the material world, in the subject, but also in the object, in that numerous malicious entities are supposed to make it their business to mislead the person doing the research. If one could rightly say of ordinary sensory perceptions: nature never lies, only man sometimes misunderstands them - it is, according to the secret researchers, different in the spiritual world. Therefore, if the reality of spiritual phenomena that are independent of matter is admitted, it is a great and difficult task to separate the wheat from the chaff there. This is the task of spiritual science, which, if one wants to pursue it seriously, requires a person's full time and energy, as is the case with every other branch of knowledge, albeit perhaps to a lesser extent. For the majority of people, however, such study is neither possible nor necessary. Just as one can be a Christian and find consolation and uplift in the teachings of Jesus, and see in his person the realization of the moral ideal, without being a theologian, so one can recognize in the basic teachings of Theosophy an interpretation of the actual meaning and purpose of one's own life without being familiar with the comprehensive structure of esoteric science.

— This is a claim that cannot be readily accepted, for even if people are not chemists or biologists, they can still live today. But man must gradually come to know that which belongs to the world to which the human soul itself belongs. It is a kind of unjustified denial when people say that to be a Theosophist one needs no more familiarity with esoteric science than one needs to be a theologian to be a Christian.

The world view that best furthers a person's actions and feelings is the one that most satisfies both his intellect and his feelings.

The next chapter is entitled:

The Soul's Survival After Death

If we assume that the spiritual principle in man, that which is designated by the word soul, is an entity that continues to exist after the death of the body, then various ideas about its further fate are possible. Of these, we will only consider the Christian view and the doctrine of re-embodiment here, as they are currently in the foreground for us. The teachings of Christ have been a source of comfort and moral strength for millions, and will probably continue to be so in the future. However, it cannot be denied that for the scientifically educated European, the difficulties of an intellectual nature have increased and do not allow the conflict between faith and knowledge based on Christian teachings to be resolved. The existing contradiction demands a sacrifice, either of the intellect or of the mind. In addition to these intellectual difficulties, many people have serious moral reservations about the usual Christian view. All Christian denominations teach that after death, the soul of man endures a fate that is eternal in duration: eternal bliss or eternal damnation. Every person feels that this belief contradicts the demand for justice. The basis of all morality is justice.

- If only one knew a little more! Of course Wrangell is right when he says that one cannot speak of eternal bliss and eternal damnation in this way, since these contradict justice. For “eternal” is an absurdity if one believes that it is something infinite. “Eternal” is only an age, a world age, and actually one should not speak of “eternal” in the Christian sense either, but only of an age, and that roughly corresponds to the time between death and a new birth.

Deep within every human breast lies the unshakable desire for each person to receive what is deserved. The concept of merit may change, as may the value placed on what is experienced and felt. But there can be no doubt that people would be happier, better, more satisfied if they were convinced that the way the world works meets the demand for justice in every detail. In what we experience in the course of our physical life, we do not see justice prevailing in ourselves and others, regardless of whether we consider mental, spiritual or physical suffering and joy as a measure of the value of what we experience. According to the teachings of the Christian churches, this apparent injustice of earthly life is to be compensated for in the hereafter; but it is basically infinitely intensified by the eternal consequences of temporal transgressions or merits.

— It is self-evident that Wrangell only speaks of what the Christian churches say, which arose after Justinian had closed the Greek schools of philosophy. But he overlooks the fact that we have the task of making the blocked wisdom accessible to humanity again. One must look for the right reasons. One could also show that those who teach Christianity today do not teach true Christianity, but rather a form of it that has been adapted.

The next chapter is called:

Reincarnation and Karma

The doctrine of reincarnation and karma, on the other hand, offers us the possibility of resolving the visible injustice of a life's destiny by the fact that it was self-imposed in previous lives, and that there is the possibility of improving it for subsequent reincarnations.

Such a belief, when it has become an inner certainty, gives one the strength to bear one's fate, even the hardest, without inner revolt, and spurs one on to improve it for the future by following the voice we call “conscience”.

The sense of responsibility in our consciousness is strengthened, and the danger that humanity, in a frenzy and selfishness, seeks to exploit the short span of temporal life, would be eliminated. The doctrine of rebirth and karma makes man free, because it puts him on his own.

Of course, the great mystery of the “what for” of it all remains unsolved, but the purpose and task of the individual life are clear and certain.

The next chapter is the conclusion of Lessing's “Education of the Human Race”:

Lessing's view of the doctrine of reincarnation.

“Is this hypothesis (of reincarnation) so ridiculous because it is the oldest? Because the human mind, before it was dispersed and weakened by sophistry and school, immediately fell for it? Why should I not come back as often as I am able to gain new knowledge, new skills? Do I get so much out of it at once that it is not worth the effort to come back?”

According to the doctrine of reincarnation, it is our fate to live on this earth until we have reached our destiny: knowledge of God, which is knowledge of self. Death is not annihilation; our sense of self, our true nature, merely enters into another body. Even the suicide does not escape; he only cuts the thread of life, which, according to inexorable laws, must be reattached.

- So Lessing. These were strong words. But they were also the words of a man who had the education of his time within him and who was necessarily led to this doctrine of reincarnation by what this and Christianity could give him. At this point, one sees the eminent education, one sees the historical critic. But now people say, of course Lessing is a great man; he wrote Nathan and so on, that's good, but when he grew old he devoted himself to such fantastic dreams as the doctrine of reincarnation; you can't go along with that. Well, in that respect the court master has become much cleverer than Lessing was in his old age. Many a person believes that he is much cleverer than Lessing, who is otherwise even recognized as a great man. One should at least recognize the ridiculousness of such an acknowledgment; recognize that one must strive toward what Lessing had finally worked his way to. They should realize how ridiculous it is if they do not want to go along with this, the ripest fruit of Lessing's thinking, not to mention what has followed in the newer intellectual life. These people speak without going into the actual core, which was already at the basis of the new intellectual life, but which for many who interpret it is a closed book. Now Wrangell continues:

That Goethe also believed in reincarnation is known to us from Eckermann and Boisserau's notes. Kant says in his “Lectures on Psychology”: “The beginning of life is birth; but this is not the beginning of the life of the soul, but of the human being. Birth, life and death are therefore only states of the soul... Consequently, the substance remains, even though the body perishes, and so the substance must also have existed when the body came into being.

Now follows the last chapter:

A brief summary of the train of thought

Let us try to briefly summarize the train of thought set out above.

The concept of the law-governed, the necessary chain of cause and effect in events, is not an original insight. On the contrary, direct consciousness gives us the idea of conditional freedom.

The concept of lawfulness, on which all science is based, probably first came to man from observation of the temporally regular course of celestial phenomena. Then this concept was applied with ever-increasing success to the phenomena of the inanimate (physics, chemistry), then to the animate, and finally also to the spiritual. The concept of lawfulness can only be tested and irrevocably proven on the basis of phenomena that can be quantitatively determined, that can be measured. The extension of the idea of the necessity of the material to the spiritual is an assumption that, according to analogy with what happens in the material, can indeed be given a certain probability, but which cannot be proven because the touchstone of measurability is lacking here. Numerous facts, examined by discerning men of science, do not allow any truth-seeking person to deny the existence of spiritual beings without providing proof, which is why he rejects the facts in question and their probative value.

The basic tenets of Theosophy – reincarnation and karma – do not contradict any scientific fact, satisfy the intellect and, better than other teachings, meet the basic requirement of all morality – the demand for justice.

Belief in these basic assumptions must strengthen people to endure unwanted life destinies and promote the striving for good in them.

And so, my dear friends, this brochure stands before us as a document of our time, as the expression of a person who, after thoroughly studying scientific methods, stands firmly within them and wants to bear witness to the fact that one can be a good, fully conscious scientist and precisely because of this, not in spite of it, must arrive at a world view that honors the spirit.

You will have gathered from the last chapters of Mr. von Wrangell's brochure that he has not yet delved very deeply into spiritual science, that he has not approached the difference between what spiritual science wants and amateurish theosophy. And so it is all the more important to see how someone who is scientifically trained longs for what can only be truly given through spiritual science, so that one can say: through such a brochure one has come to know how an unprejudiced scientist can relate to a spiritual-acknowledging view.

We can pull other strings and we will do so occasionally. We will delve further into the matter in order not only to cultivate spiritual science in an egoistic way, but to really see it as a cultural ferment and to work through it on the developmental path of humanity. It is extremely important that we get into the habit of really going along with everything.

Sometimes, our ranks offer a particular experience. Please don't be offended when I talk about this experience, but it really can be had. You see, there are certain members in our ranks who say, “Public lectures aren't important to us,” and they say it in a way that shows they're not really involved. They say that the public lectures are not the most important thing; the branch lectures, yes, those are for us, but we have progressed beyond what the public lectures provide. And yet it is precisely the case that the public lectures are designed for those who have a connection to the outside world. And much more reference is made to contemporary science in the public lectures than in the private lectures, which show how often delicate consideration has to be given to the fact that one does not love to base strictly scientific questions. And this delicate consideration is often interpreted to mean that one says: the public lectures are not so important.

The truth of the matter is somewhat different. There is only one kind of selfishness at the root of these matters. I do not want to break a lance for the public lectures, I just want to challenge the unfounded opinions of many people. It may be easier to miss this or that intermediate link in the branch lectures here or there; but the public lectures must be shaped link by link. This is not popular with many people whose work is not part of the overall cultural process of our time. But it is precisely this process of engaging with the cultural process of the time, this not shutting ourselves off, that is important.

Of course, it is easier to talk about angels, Lucifer and Ahriman than about electrons, ions and so on. But it is true that we must also bring ourselves to the realization that we must pull the strings towards the present culture. But I ask you not to take the matter one-sidedly again, as if I wanted to urge you to buy the entire scientific collection of Göschen tomorrow and sit down to gradually concoct everything, as the students would say. I do not mean that at all. I only mean that where one wants to speak authoritatively about the position of spiritual science in our culture, one must also have an awareness of it and should not fall into the trap of saying: this outer science is a pipe dream. As an individual, one can say that one has no time to deal with it; but the whole institution, the whole enterprise, should be given a certain direction through what I have said. And it should not be surprising that the School of Spiritual Science aims to pursue individual branches of science in such a way that they will gradually lead to spiritual science. We still need the materialistic culture out there. And those anthroposophists are wrong who say: What do I care about materialistic culture, it is none of my business, it is for coarse materialists; I cultivate what one experiences when one dreams, when one is not quite right while being fully conscious; the rest is none of my business, I have the teachings of reincarnation and karma and so on. On the other hand, there is the world out there that says: We have real science, serious and dignified methods, and now the anthroposophists are coming along with their spiritual science; they are the purest fools.

This antagonism cannot remain unresolved, and we cannot expect mediation from the outside. It must come from within. We must understand and not lie back on the sickbed and say: if we first have to climb up into the spiritual world through science, that is far too arduous for us.

I wanted to speak about the significance of materialistic culture and draw your attention to it, because I have often emphasized that materialism comes from Ahriman, but Ahriman must be known, just as Lucifer must be known and reckoned with. And the Trinity, which we were able to see in the model yesterday, is the one with which humanity will have to become familiar.

I would like to repeat once more: try not to annoy the outside world by talking about a new religion. If we were to talk about the group as a “Christ statue,” it would be a big mistake. It is enough to say: there stands the representative of humanity. Everyone can see what is meant there. It is important that we always find the right words, that is, that we consider how we want to place ourselves in the whole cultural world and come to describe the matter with the right words. That is what must be said again and again. We do not want to speak to others: We have only just presented the real Christ. - We may know that and keep it to ourselves. For us it is important to understand the full blessing of materialistic culture, otherwise we make the same mistake as those who do not examine.

Let us ask ourselves whether we are not doing the same with others. We do not need to withhold the true judgment, but we must understand what is going on outside. Then we will also be able to counter what is going on outside in the right words. But, my dear friends, we will have a lot to do in this direction, because the laziness I have spoken of today is very, very widespread and we must find the courage to tell people: You are too lazy to engage in the activity of thinking.

If we understand what is going on outside, then we can also use strong words and take up an energetic fight. But we must familiarize ourselves with it and pull the strings of the outer culture. That is why I wanted to give an example of the very commendable Wrangell brochure, which shows how someone is strong as a scientist, but has not sufficiently studied the spiritual scientific world view, but through the whole direction of his soul tends towards spiritual science.

We have often shown the drawing of threads, mostly in relation to specific personalities, and I advise you, where there are branches, to do the same in collaboration. Of course, this cannot be the work of just one person; it would never be finished. Rather, there must be someone who takes on a brochure about Eucken's world view for my sake, and someone else takes a brochure that deals with the blood, muscle and nervous system and so on, and works through it with the others. This can be branch work. It can be arranged so that on one branch evening, work is done purely in terms of spiritual science, and then the next evening, a subject like this is covered. When one person has done it on one day, another can do it the next time. Everyone can take up something that is somehow close to them. And why should someone who has no scientific education not be able to take up this or that? There are questions of life that can also be linked to such things. It is much more useful to use the time for such studies than to extract all kinds of occult intricacies and material from dreams and tell people about them. This is not meant to be one-sided either. It is not meant to say that one can never speak of occult experiences; but it is a matter of drawing the right line of connection. It is not a matter of despising the science of the senses, but of mastering it. The science of the senses is not to be trampled or destroyed, but mastered.

The considerations we are currently undertaking concern matters that are treated as mysteries by many people who know something about them in one form or another. And for certain reasons, knowledge of these things is kept away from the world from many sides, because it is believed that the things in question are parts of a comprehensive knowledge of supersensible matters that should not yet be communicated to mankind. I do not consider this view to be correct with regard to certain things that are being discussed here. On the contrary, it seems to me necessary for humanity to make the courageous decision to enter into a real consideration of the supersensible worlds. And one cannot do that otherwise than by directly grasping what is specifically considered in relation to the question in question.

Today, I would like to deal with a preliminary question first. Yesterday we spoke about the stages a person goes through between death and a new birth. A very common objection to discussing these things, not on the part of the initiated, but on the part of the uninitiated, is that one simply says: Yes, why is it necessary to know something about these things? One could indeed wait until one passes through the gate of death, and then one will see what it is actually like in the spiritual world. It is something that is said very often. Now, the thing is that we can never answer such questions from a so-called absolute point of view when we talk about reality, but that we, from a spiritual-scientific point of view, must always answer them from the point of view of the time in which we live. We live in the fifth post-Atlantic period, which began in the 15th century of our calendar. It concluded the fourth post-Atlantic period, which, as we know, began in the 8th century BC and came to an end in the 15th century AD. There are seven such cultural periods. From this, however, it can be seen that we have passed the midpoint of the cultural development of the earth, which was in the fourth post-Atlantic period, and that we are simply entering – we are, after all, also in the fifth great earth period – the time when the earth is in a descending development.

The considerations we have been making in these days can already draw your attention to the fact that it is important to look at the descending development, at that which is, so to speak, not in evolution but in devolution, which is in retrogression. Our whole evolution on earth is in retrogression. Certain abilities and powers that were present in the previous period of ascending development cease to exist, and others have to take the place of these ceasing powers and abilities. This is particularly the case with certain inner psychic abilities of the human being. It can be said that until the fourth post-Atlantic period, until around the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, people still had the ability to have a certain connection with the supersensible world. We know that these abilities have disappeared in the most diverse ways. They no longer exist as elementary abilities; they have, so to speak, dwindled away. Not only has the life of man on earth changed between birth and death with regard to such abilities, but actually, and even more radically, has the life of man changed between death and a new birth. And it must be said that for this period of time, from death to a new birth, in the present cycle of mankind, which thus already belongs to the descending ones, it is so that men, when they go through the gate of death , they must have certain memories of what they have acquired here in the physical body if they want to find the right attitude and the right relationship to the events to which they are exposed between death and a new birth. It is one of the necessary prerequisites for a right life after death that people here before death acquire more and more certain ideas about life after death, because only when they remember these ideas, which they have acquired here, can they orient themselves in the time between death and a new birth. It is factually incorrect to claim that one can wait until death to have such ideas about the life between death and a new birth. If people continued to live in these prejudices, if they persistently refused to want to gain insights here already about life between death and a new birth, then this life, this life free of the body, would become a dark one for them, one in which they would be disoriented; they would not be able to penetrate their spiritual surroundings in the right way through everything that I described to you yesterday. Until almost the Mystery of Golgotha, it was the case that people brought abilities into their physical life here that originated in the spiritual world. That is why they had atavistic clairvoyance. This atavistic clairvoyance came from the fact that certain spiritual abilities extended from the pre-birth state into this life. That stopped. People no longer have abilities here in physical life that extend from the prenatal life. You know that. But the other thing must be done instead: people must acquire more and more ideas here on earth about the post-mortem life, the life after death, so that they can remember after death, so that they can carry something through the gates of death.

That is what I want to comment on in particular regarding this preliminary question. So the comfortable notion that one can wait until death to form such ideas does not apply if one considers in concrete terms at what point in time of the development of the earth we actually are. And this must always be borne in mind. For views that are absolutely valid, that apply at all times, do not exist; there are only views that can guide people for a certain period of time. This is what one must acquire in such an eminent sense through spiritual science.

And now I would like to discuss a few things that can bring our considerations to a preliminary conclusion. We started from the assumption that the present human being feels a gulf between what he calls ideals, be they moral or other ideals, which he also calls ideas, and what he feels to be his views on the purely natural order of the world. The concepts and views that man forms about the natural order of the world do not enable him to assume that what he carries in his heart as ideals has real power and can actually be realized like a natural force.

The essential thing to consider in this question is now the following: We now know how it is with the structure of the human being here on the physical earth. We also know how it is with the structure of the human being in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. Some time ago I raised a question which actually already comes before the human soul as a concrete question when the human being looks at life, but which is precisely a question to which one cannot say anything when one is faced with the gap just characterized between idealism and realism between idealism and realism, that is the question: How is it that in our world order some people die very young, as children or young people or in middle age, while others only die when they have grown old? What is the connection with the order of the world? Neither idealism on the one hand nor realism on the other, which cannot regard ideals as real powers, can shed any light on such questions, which are, however, questions of life. These questions can only be approached if one has something very definite in mind. And that is to realize that the present human being, as he will one day stand before us as an earthly human being, can cope relatively easily with space, but he does not cope in the same way with time. In this respect, the sum of all existing philosophical views does not really offer any significant insight, and the question of the nature of time has so far only been treated in the narrowest human circles. It is not that easy to speak about time and its essence in a way that is accessible to the general public, but perhaps I can succeed in giving you an idea of what I mean by bringing time into discussion in analogy to space. I will have to tax your patience a little, because the brief consideration I want to give to this subject seems to have a somewhat abstract character.

If you simply overlook a piece of the room, you know that what you overlook reveals itself to you in a perspective character. You have to take into account the perspective of the room when you overlook a piece of it. If you now bring the piece of room that you overlook and to which you instinctively ascribe a perspective character onto a surface, then you take the perspective into account. If you look down an avenue, you see the distant trees of the avenue as smaller and closer together. You can express this in perspective, and you can, in a sense, express in perspective on a surface what you see in space.

Now it is clear that what you see in space is juxtaposed in a flat surface. In space, it is not juxtaposed; there are two trees in front (see drawing on p. 164), and two trees are far away. But by bringing the visible space into the flat surface, you place what is behind one another next to one another. You have the instinctive ability to transpose what you have painted or drawn on a surface into three dimensions. That you have this ability is due to the fact that man, as he is now as an earthly man, has become relatively detached from space as such.

Man has not detached himself from time in the same way. And that is something tremendously important and significant, but something that unfortunately is hardly noticed, hardly noticed by science. Man believes that when he develops in time, he has time. But in reality he does not have real time. He does not have real time at all, but what you experience as time is actually, in relation to real time, something that can be called an image. Just as this image (see drawing) in the plane relates to space, so what the ordinary person calls time relates to real time. The ordinary person does not experience real time, but rather experiences an image of time. And that is very difficult to imagine.

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For example, it is extremely difficult for you to imagine that something that is effective today does not need to be present at the present moment in time, but is real at a much earlier point in time and is not real at the present moment in time. You can, so to speak, project that which is present in a very early period of time into your own time.

What I have just said has a very significant consequence. It has the consequence that everything we call nature has a completely different character than everything we have to regard as a certain part of the human being itself. For example, Ahriman also works in nature outside, or rather the Ahrimanic powers work; but the Ahrimanic powers never work in nature outside at the present time. If you look at nature as a whole, Ahriman is at work in nature, but he is working from a distant time. Ahriman works from the past. And whether you look at the mineral, the vegetable or the animal kingdom, you must never say that there is something in what is currently unfolding before your eyes in which Ahriman is active. And yet Ahriman is active in it; but from the past. If I were to describe the matter, I would have to say: Here is the line of development from the past into the future, and here you survey nature.

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Yes, now you have to imagine looking into it. What you see before you in the present contains no ahrimanic powers, but Ahriman works through nature from the past, from a particular past.

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And to you, Ahriman appears in nature, when you become aware of him there, in perspective. If you were to say: Ahriman is at work in the present — then you would be making the same mistake in relation to nature as if you were to say: When I survey a room, the distant trees stand beside the near trees (see drawing on page 164) because they can be placed in perspective within the space.

A fundamental requirement for a real view into the spiritual world is this: that one learns to see in perspective in time, that one learns to place every being at its correct point in time.

If I said yesterday that after death the I is, as it were, transferred from a fluid state into a kind of solid state, that is not all there is to it. Suppose you lived here on earth with your I from 1850 to 1920, and in 1920 you became aware of your I. I mean: you will become aware of it earlier, but now you look back, with the spirit self through the hierarchies you look back at your ego; there you see your ego always as it was from 1850 to 1920. The ego stays there, stays put. This means that your experiences do not go with you soon after your death, but you look back on them. You now look back from a temporally distant perspective and you see into the length of time, just as you see into the length of space here in the physical world. I can also express it this way: when you die, say, in 1920, you live with all that I described to you yesterday as the members of your being, but then you look back on the stretch of time in which you lived here on earth with your ego. And that stretch of time remains there, and you always see it as you continue to live in perspective, at the point in time where it was. And so you have to imagine that Ahriman is active outside in nature, but from an earlier point in time.

This is very important. It is something that is given very little consideration. If one wants to understand the world, if one wants to speak spiritually of time, then one must absolutely imagine time in a spatial way and must consider this connection of the spiritual substance with time. This is very important.

Now, what I said to you about the Ahrimanic powers, that they work from the past, is true for nature. But with human beings it is different. For the human being, while he lives here between birth and death, it is different precisely because everything that comes to an end in time becomes maya, deception, for him. While he lives here, the human being lives within the course of time itself, and by living through a certain number of years, he lives through the course of time. As time passes, he himself passes with time. That is not the case with space. When you walk down an avenue, the trees remain behind and you move forward, and you do not take the trees, which are left behind, and your impressions with you in such a way that you would have the impression that the tree image is moving with you when you take a step. You do that with the image of time. Here in the physical body you actually do this – because you yourself continue to develop in time – by allowing yourself to be deceived about time in relation to its perspective. You do not notice the perspective of time. And in particular, the subconscious mind does not notice it. The subconscious mind does not notice this living with time at all, and gives itself over to a complete deception with regard to the perspective of time. But this has a very definite consequence. It has the consequence that Ahrimanic powers can now work as present powers in what happens in man. Ahrimanic powers work in the life of the human soul as present powers. So that man stands in relation to nature in this way: when he looks out into nature, there is nothing Ahrimanic in the present. The Ahrimanic works in him as a presence, precisely as Maja, as deception. But the human being is given over to this deception about the things that I have explained to you, so that through the human being the Ahrimanic powers gain the possibility of creeping into the present, of walking into the present. We can say that the Ahrimanic forces – and the same applies to the Luciferic forces, albeit from a somewhat different point of view, which we will discuss in a moment – work in nature in such a way that they actually have nothing to do with the present, but extend their effects from prehistoric times. These Ahrimanic forces are currently at work in the human being.

What are the consequences? The consequence is that, in his deepest soul, man cannot feel related to nature in relation to the point just discussed. He looks at his being, or rather feels himself in his being, senses the nature-based being. Because ahrimanic powers are countervailing powers in him, and ahrimanic powers are past powers in nature, everything that is natural appears to him differently from that which develops within himself. Man does not unravel the difference he perceives between himself and nature in the right way. If he unraveled it in the right way, it would be as I have just explained. He would say: Outside in nature, Ahriman works from the past; in me, Ahriman works as a present power. But because of this, even if he does not know the difference, he behaves in the sense of this difference and perceives nature as spiritless. He does perceive that in the present the Ahrimanic powers are not directly active in nature, but he perceives nature as spiritless because he does not say to himself: Ahriman works from the past – instead, he only looks at present-day nature. Ahriman does not work in it.

But Ahriman, however strange it may sound, is the power that the general creation of the world uses to bring forth nature. When one speaks of the spirit of nature, when one speaks of the pure spirit of nature, one should actually speak of the ahrimanic spirit. There it is fully justified, the ahrimanic spirit. The beings of the normal hierarchies make use of the ahrimanic spirit to bring forth what extends around us as nature. The fact that we do not perceive nature in a spiritualized way is precisely because in the present life of nature the spirit is not contained, but works from the past. And that is the secret, I would say, of the world-creative powers, that they make use of a spirit that they have left at an earlier stage to work at a later stage, but let it work from the past.

When we speak of nature, we should not speak of matter, nor of forces; we should speak of ahrimanic entities. But then we would have to place these ahrimanic entities in the past. The result is a strange one: suppose some natural philosopher ponders, ponders what is behind the phenomena of nature. Well, he comes up with all sorts of theories and hypotheses about atomic connections and the like. But that is not the case. Behind what is spread out around us in a way that appeals to the senses, there is not actually what the natural philosophers usually assume, but behind all of this there is the sum of the Ahrimanic powers, but not as a presence. So if the natural philosopher is compelled to assume, let us say, that there are some atomic structures behind the chemical elements, then that is wrong; behind the chemical elements there are Ahrimanic powers. But if you could detach what you see from the chemical elements and look beyond, you would see nothing behind them in the present: it would be hollow where you look for atoms, and what is at work there comes from the past and works in this hollow space. That is how it is in reality. Hence the many unsuccessful theories about what the “thing in itself” is; for this “thing in itself” is not there at all in the present. Rather, where the “thing in itself” is sought, there is nothing; but the effect is there from the past. So that one could say that if Kart had sought his “thing in itself,” he would have had to say: Where I want to approach the 'thing in itself', there I cannot approach. — That is what he said. But he did not realize that in the beginning he would have found nothing there at all, and that if he had gone behind the veil of things, he would have had to go far back; then he would have found Ahrimanic powers.

In man himself it is different. It is precisely because man is vividly placed in time that it has been possible for the Ahrimanic powers to enter our world through the gateway of humanity and to work within man as such. And the consequence of the Ahrimanic powers working in man is that man detaches what he sees in the present from the spiritual, that man detaches his present existence from the spiritual. This is the consequence of our carrying the Ahrimanic powers within the Maja in us. So that one can say: Just as we view the world materially, detached from the spirit, as a mere natural order that believes it has reached its peak in the law of the conservation of energy and matter — which is an illusion — what we see as a natural order is merely brought about by the fact that we carry the Ahrimanic powers within us, and that they are not present as powers in nature outside us. Therefore, what we think about nature, in that we think of it merely materially, does not correspond to nature, but only to present nature. But this present nature is precisely an abstraction, because the past Ahriman always works in it.

Now, not only the Ahrimanic but also the Luciferic is at work in people. This Luciferic, however, has, so to speak, a different tendency in the universe than the Ahrimanic. Let us visualize the tendency of the Ahrimanic as we have now expressed it. The tendency of the Ahrimanic in us is to present the world in materialistic terms. That we conceive the world materialistically, that we think of a mere natural order, is the consequence of the fact that we carry Ahrimanic in us. That we carry ideals within us, which detach themselves from the general nature, according to which we want to orient ourselves in our mutual behavior, but which must appear to us only like dreams within the present world view, which are dreamed out when, according to the natural order, the earth has arrived at its final state , that is the consequence of the fact that the luciferic powers, which, like the ahrimanic ones, live in us, are constantly striving to tear the part of us that is accessible to them completely out of the natural order and to spiritualize it completely. The main tendency of the luciferic powers, insofar as they live in us, is to make us as spiritual as possible, to tear us away from all material life if possible. That is why they present us with ideals that are not natural powers, but that are powerless in the present natural order. And if, in the course of the future period of the earth, man were to fall entirely prey to the influence of Lucifer, so that he would believe that ideals are just imagined things towards which the mind can be directed, then this man would follow the luciferic powers. The material earth, to which we belong, would decay, scatter in the universe, would not fulfill its purpose, and the luciferic powers would lead man into another spiritual world to which he does not belong. To do this, they need the trick of making us believe in ideals that are actually mere dreams. Just as Ahriman, on the one hand, presents us with a world that is a mere natural order, so Lucifer, on the other hand, presents us with a world that consists purely of imagined ideals.

This is something very significant. And at present, I would say, a balance is only being struck in those areas that still lie in the human unconscious. But people must become more and more aware of this, otherwise they will not get out of this dilemma, they will not be able to build a bridge between idealism and realism, but this bridge is necessary.

What currently still creates a kind of balance is the following. When very young people die, for example children, these children – and the same applies to young people – have just looked into the world; they have not fully lived out their existence here on the physical plane. With a life unlived on the physical plane, they pass over into the other world, which is lived between death and a new birth, as I described yesterday. Because they have only lived part of their earthly life, they bring something of earthly life with them into the spiritual world that cannot be brought across when one has grown old. You arrive differently in the spiritual world if you have grown old than if you die young. If you die young, you have lived your life in such a way that you still have a lot of strength in you from your prenatal life. As a child and as a young person, you have lived your physical life in such a way that you still have a lot of the strength in you that you had in the spiritual world before you were born. In this way, a close connection has been created between the spiritual part that one has brought with one and the physical part that one has experienced here. And through this close connection, one can take something that one acquires on earth with one into the spiritual world. Children or people who have died young take something from earthly life with them into the spiritual world that cannot be taken at all if one dies as an older person. That which is taken along is then over there in the spiritual world, and what is carried over by children and young people gives the spiritual world a certain heaviness that it would not otherwise have, the spiritual world in which people then live together, gives a certain heaviness to the spiritual world and prevents the luciferic powers from completely separating the spiritual world from the physical one.

So you see, we are looking at an enormous secret! When children and young people die, they take something with them from here, which the luciferic powers use to prevent us from completely detaching ourselves from earthly life. It is extremely important to realize this.

If you get older here on earth, you cannot thwart the luciferic powers in the way described, because after a certain age you no longer have that intimate connection between what you brought with you at birth and physical life on earth. When one has grown old, this inner connection is dissolved and just the opposite occurs. From a certain age onwards we instill our own nature in a certain way into the spiritual substance within the physical earth. We make the physical earth more spiritual than it would otherwise be. So from a certain age onwards we spiritualize the physical earth in a certain way, which cannot be perceived by the outer senses. We carry spiritual into the physical earth, as we carry physical up into the spiritual world when we die young; we squeeze out, so to speak, spiritual when we grow old, I cannot say it any other way. Growing old consists in the spiritual sense from a certain aspect of squeezing out spiritual here on earth. This in turn prevents the reckoning of Ahriman. As a result, Ahriman cannot, in the long run, have such an intense effect on people that the opinion that ideals do have a certain meaning could completely die out. But in today's time frame, we are already very, very close to people falling into the most terrible errors precisely with regard to what has been said. Even well-meaning people easily fall into such errors with regard to what has been said. And these errors will become ever greater and greater and, with increasing earth development, can become enormous.

To give you an example: a very ingenious philosopher, Robert Zimmermann, wrote an “Anthroposophy” in 1882. I have already mentioned this in a context. This “Anthroposophy” is not what we now call Anthroposophy, it is more or less a concept jungle. But that is because Robert Zimmermann was not able to see into the spiritual world, he was only a Herbartian philosopher. Now he has written this “Anthroposophy”. But it is precisely in this “Anthroposophy” that Robert Zimmermann deals with the question that I have placed at the top of our considerations these days from his point of view. On the one hand, he sees ideas: logical ideas, aesthetic ideas, ethical ideas; on the other hand, he sees the order of nature. And he cannot somehow find a bridge between the logical, the aesthetic, the ethical ideas and the order of nature, but he does stop at it: on the one hand, there is the order of nature, and on the other hand, there are the ideas. And the conclusion he comes to is extremely interesting, because it is actually typical of a person in the present day. He comes to the conclusion that it is forbidden to man once and for all to populate nature with ideas and to ascribe to ideas the power of nature. The two worlds can actually only be connected in the mind of man. So he says. And so he means at one point, where he summarizes almost everything he says and thinks: “The realization of ideas is neither a fact of the past nor a fact of the present, but a task whose fulfillment lies in the future and in the hands of man. The dream of a “golden age”, of which a sober rationalist like Kant as of that of “eternal peace, as an extreme positivist like Comte as the ‘état positif’, raved about, will be fulfilled when the entire world of ideas has become real and the entire reality is permeated by the ideas, that is to say, when that which Schiller called “the secret of the master's art,” the “consumption” of matter by form, becomes manifest, or, as Schleiermacher put it, “when ethics become physics and physics become ethics.”

Yes, but that can never be! It can only be that people realize ideas in their social order. But when the earth has reached its end, the whole dream of ideas will have been dreamt. Nothing else is possible according to such a philosophy. Therefore such a philosophy always remains abstract and must finally confess: “A philosophy which, like the one above, neither takes the theocentric point of view, inaccessible to human knowledge, as in theosophy, and regards the ‘dream of reason’ as a reality that has long since been created, nor, like anthropology, takes the anthropocentric but uncritical standpoint of common experience, in order to view from there a reality filled with ideas as a 'dream of reason', which thus simultaneously wants to be anthropocentric, that is, starting from human experience, and yet philosophical, that is, going beyond it, at the hand of logical thinking, is Arihroposophie.” “Anthroposophy” is therefore here the admission that one can never cross this chasm between unreal ideas and idea-less reality.

But in man himself there is a natural being, which thus belongs to the natural order, connected with a spiritual being that can absorb the spiritual. This is not denied by an anthroposophist like Robert Zimmermann. But man cannot be regarded by contemporary science either in such a way that the riddle would be solved through man, through this microcosm.

Let us now look back at something we have already mentioned during this stay. We have said that we actually have to divide the human being into three parts, not as conveniently as the skeleton, of course, as I have already explained. But I have also spoken about this in the final notes to my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' (Mysteries of the Soul). We can divide the human being into three parts: the head, the trunk and the extremities, with everything that belongs to the extremities belonging to the extremities, including everything sexual. If we divide the human being in this way and now apply what we already know: that the formation of the head, the shape of the head points to forces of the previous incarnation, the limb man points to the future incarnation and actually only the trunk belongs to the present. So, after what I have explained today, you will no longer find it very incomprehensible when I tell you: insofar as the human being carries his head, this head points back to the earlier incarnation, into the past. The forces of the past, Ahrimanic forces, are at work in the head, and what applies to Ahrimanic forces in general applies to the human head in particular. Everything that is actually formed in the human head does not actually belong to the present, but the forces of the previous incarnation have an effect on the head; and the creative powers make use of the ahrimanic powers to shape our head, to give our head its actual form. If the creative powers did not make use of the ahrimanic spirits to shape our heads, then we would all – forgive me, but it is so – wear a much softer head, but we would all have an animal head: one who is bullish in character would have a bull's head, another who is lamb-like in character would have a lamb's head, and so on. It is due to the influence of the Ahrimanic powers, which the creative forces use to shape us, that this animal head, which we would otherwise wear, does not really sit on us, as the Egyptians drew it on some of their figures; that we do not go around like these Egyptian figures, who have good reasons for this, because in the Egyptian mysteries, too, though from an atavistic point of view, things were taught that can be taught again now. We also do not go around like that, as in the Rosicrucian pictures, where every woman is painted with a lion's head and every man with an ox's head. That is the Rosicrucian painting of man. The Rosicrucians chose a more average animal and therefore gave the women the head of the animal that most resembles them, the lion, and the man the head of the animal that most resembles him, the ox, the bull. That is why in Rosicrucian figures you see man and woman placed side by side: the woman with the most beautiful lion's head, the man with a bull's head. But this is absolutely correct. That metamorphosis – to use a Goethean term – can take place, that our head, which tends towards the animalistic in its form, can be shaped so that it is a human head, comes from the influence of the Ahrimanic powers. If the deities did not make use of Ahriman to shape our bony heads, then we would walk around with animal heads.

But the divine powers also make use of the luciferic spirits. If they did not make use of these luciferic spirits, our limbless man would not be able to transform from the present to the next incarnation. The luciferic beings are necessary for this. And it is to the luciferic entities that we again owe the fact that, by dying, the form that the man of the extremities still has now is gradually transformed into the broader form that he is to have in the next incarnation. Then, in the middle of the path between death and a new birth, Ahriman must intervene to take on the other task: to reshape the head in the appropriate way. Just as we would go around with animal heads if we did not owe it to Ahriman that we get a human head, so our nature of the extremities would not metamorphose into the human until the next incarnation, but would pass over into the demonic. We lose our head, as we now have it, under all circumstances through death, not only as matter that unites with the earth, but also as form; in the next incarnation we carry over what will become the head from the extremity of man. But this would become a demonic being if we did not have the luciferic powers, who are connected with us, to thank for the fact that the transformation can take place from a demon, which is merely a spiritual soul, into the human form of the next incarnation.

Thus, Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers must participate in our becoming human, and the human cannot be understood without calling upon the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic for help. Humanity cannot be spared the task of truly understanding the activity of Ahriman and Lucifer in the future. The Bible quite rightly says that the Deity of whom it speaks at the beginning breathed the living spirit into man. But the living spirit works in the trunk of the human being. Insofar as we are dealing with the normally functioning divine entities, we are dealing only with the trunk of the human being. Insofar as we are dealing with the head man, we are dealing with an opponent of the powers of Yahweh, and thus also with an opponent of the Christ. And insofar as we are dealing with the man of the extremities, we are dealing with the Luciferic opponent.

Therefore, one will only understand the human being if one presents him under these three aspects. In our central group for our building, we therefore have this trinity: the representative of humanity, who is trained in such a way that the forces of breathing, of the trunk, of heart activity and so on are primarily active in him – this is the middle figure; then the figure in which everything main, head-related is active: Ahriman; and the figure in which everything extremity-related is active: Lucifer.

We must dissect the human being in this way if we want to understand the human being, because in the human being, the human being as such is united with Ahriman and Lucifer. At the same time, this is an indication that everything that is more or less connected with human thinking, which, after all, is bound to the head in relation to

its physical connection to the head — human thinking flows on the basis of perceptions as something external and obvious — that all this has an Ahrimanic character. Through the senses of the head we perceive nature primarily, and we build up an image of nature with the ahrimanic character just described, because we ourselves carry the ahrimanic in the formation, in the shaping of our head.

Ideals, on the other hand, have a great deal to do with love, with everything that belongs to the man of the extremities, inwardly, psychologically. I shall come back to this in the near future. That is why the Luciferic power has special access to ideals. Ahriman takes hold of us through our head, Lucifer through our extremities. Through our head Ahriman tempts us to conceive of nature without spirit; through our extremity man Lucifer tempts us to conceive of ideals without the power of nature.

But it is the task of the present human being, by surveying such things, to arrive at a correct overview. For you see, there is a certain boundary within us, precisely in our chest-humanity, in our trunk-humanity, whereby the forces of the head, which are Ahrimanic forces, are separated from the luciferic forces that belong to the extremity-humanity. If we were able to see ourselves completely by looking mystically into ourselves, then we would indeed comprehend the natural order through the head, but we would also see into ourselves through the natural order. And if the luciferic powers were to decide in us, then the luciferic powers would also enlighten us about the ahrimanic powers, and in this way we would come to a connection between the natural order and the spiritual order. But for a certain reason we cannot do this, and that is because we have a memory. What we absorb from nature in the way of ideas and concepts, of impressions, we store in our memory. And if here (see diagram on page 179) we have only schematically drawn the head human being, the trunk and torso human being, and the extremities human being, then in the trunk human being there is the septum, which leads to that which we take in through the head, in the natural order, coming back to us as memory material. As a result, we do not see down to the Luciferic, and thus we do not notice the Ahrimanic, as we do not see what is behind a mirror, but rather what is reflected. Here the natural order is reflected in what at the same time separates our Ahrimanic from our Luciferic, and what is the basis for the forming memory, for the forming power of recollection. If we could not remember the things we have experienced, if this partition were not there, if, looking into ourselves, we could see through ourselves, we would look down into ourselves as far as the Luciferic. Then we would also perceive the Ahrimanic.

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But now consider: what appears to us in this mirror is what we live through in the course of our lives, what we look back on after death, what becomes a solid ego from a fluid ego. This is what we look back on. That is what we live with. And Ahriman and Lucifer work with us, working with us in such a way that Ahriman brings us to wearing a human head, and Lucifer brings us to not becoming a demon, but to having the possibility of coming to a next incarnation.

I have perhaps tried your patience a little with things that are perhaps a little more difficult to understand, but I wanted to at least evoke a feeling for what actually creates the gap between idealism and realism. It arises from the fact that the Luciferic in us arouses idealism, which is powerless in nature, that the Ahrimanic in us evokes the mere natural order, which appears spiritless to us. Thus idealists, abstract idealists, are actually under the influence of Lucifer, while materialists are under the influence of Ahriman. It is necessary to engage with these things, not just to engage in so-called theosophy in a schematic way, but to engage with these more precise things. For it is necessary that man should become conscious of the fact that he must do something to remain united with the spirit for the rest of his development on earth. It is an uncomfortable truth, one might say, even a hated truth, truly a hated truth, for it contradicts so much that is pleasant to man, that is pleasant to him out of laziness. Nothing is more difficult for people today than when they are told: If you want to maintain your connection with the spirit in the future, you have to do something about it. Most people would like the Mystery of Golgotha to have dissolved into the ground, so that they have nothing to do with their own affairs, so that they can be redeemed from their sins through Christ and go to heaven without having to do anything. And that is why most theologians get so angry about anthroposophy, because the anthroposophical side can never admit that man has nothing to do to maintain his connection with the spirit, that this can also happen in the future of the development of the earth without any action on his part. The connection between the physical and the spiritual, between what the members of man are between birth and death, and what the members of man are between death and new birth, this connection is called into question by the future development of the earth, and it will only not come into disorder if men will really occupy themselves with the spiritual towards the future. Spiritual scientific evidence for this already exists today. This spiritual scientific evidence is highly, highly inconvenient truth, but it sheds light on important and significant matters.

I would like to say that the connection between the soul-spiritual and the physical-etheric in the human being of the counterweight has already become very loose, and it is necessary for the human being to be more and more alert to himself, so that nothing happens in the connection between his physical-etheric and soul-spiritual that could, so to speak, suck him dry, that could suck him dry soul-spiritually. For when such prejudices become more and more active, when one does not need to know anything about what happens after death in life, or when the gulf between so-called idealism and pure natural order becomes ever greater, then people are in danger of losing their soul more and more. Today, I might say, this loss is still held in check by the fact that when young people die, a certain heaviness is given to the spiritual world and Lucifer is thwarted, and when old people die, so much spirituality is poured into the physical world that Ahriman is thwarted. But one must not forget that as a result of people turning away from the spiritual realm, the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers become more and more powerful, and that little by little, as the devolution of the earth goes on and on, this dam could no longer be fully effective.

That is what I would like to see emerging from our deliberations as a kind of bottom line, a feeling – and feelings are always the most important thing that can arise from spiritual scientific life – of the necessity of dealing with the spiritual from the present earth cycle onwards. I have emphasized this from the most diverse points of view, that it is necessary from the present point of view that people occupy themselves with the spiritual. And there will be no other way of dealing with spiritual matters in the future than by acquiring understanding and not resisting the process of really absorbing even the more difficult considerations such as we have been discussing in recent days and particularly today. People must come to understand the perspectivity of time. When this understanding of the perspectivity of time comes among people, then they will no longer say: Here is idealism, but it is only a mere dream that has no force of nature, and on the other side lies the natural order. Instead, people will come to recognize that what lives in us as ideals is the germ for the future, and that what is the natural order is the fruit of the past.

This sentence is a golden rule: every ideal is the germ of a future natural event; every natural event is the fruit of a past spiritual event. Only by this rule can one find the bridge between idealism and realism. But for this one thing is necessary: any ideal could never become the germ of a future natural event if this future natural event were prevented by the present natural event. We can put any hypothesis before our eyes. Let us assume the possibility that applies today, that through the so-called law of entropy, the evolution of the earth will one day pass into a kind of general warming, and that all other natural forces will cease, then within this final state, of course, all ideals would have died out. This final state follows quite well if one assumes that, according to pure causality, the present physical states will simply continue. If one thinks as present-day physics does, that such a final state will one day exist according to the law of conservation of energy and matter, then there is no room in this final state for an ideal to arise in it as a future natural event, because the future will simply be the consequence of the present natural event. But that is not how it is, that is not how it presents itself to the present study of nature, but it presents itself differently. All the substances and forces that exist today will no longer be there in the future. The law of conservation of matter and energy does not exist. Where we look for substance, we find nothing but the influence of something Ahrimanic that has passed away. And what surrounds us in the world of the senses will no longer be there in the future. And then, when nothing of what is physical now remains, when all this has been completely dissolved, the time will have come when the present ideals will join the natural process of what is now perishing.

This is how it is in the great universe. And for the individual human being, it is the case that he will be incarnated again in the next world incarnation when everything that he has grown into with the present incarnation has been partially overcome, when, that is, an environment can be created for him that is different from the present environment, when everything that is keeping him here on earth can be removed from the present environment. If all this has changed so that he can experience new things, then he will be incarnated again. The present ideals that can form in man will be nature, when all that is now nature will no longer be there, but something new will have emerged. But the new that arises is nothing other than the spiritual that has become nature.

Behind appearances and ideals we must seek that which forms the bridge over the abyss. But one must discover it. Today one can only discover it if one is not afraid to develop the concepts so powerfully that they themselves can penetrate reality. Therefore, the present time really has the necessity to engage very much in everything that can be experienced spiritually. But — let me add this as a postscript — it will be necessary for people to be able to develop ever greater and greater impartiality towards spiritual considerations. The day before yesterday, I ended by pointing out, as it might seem unnecessary to do for some people, but I do not like to do it, it is never unnecessary, a number of things that stand in the way of fruitful spiritual scientific work, including on the part of the Anthroposophical Society. Above all, what is needed here is real impartiality. Time and again, we see that the dissolving power that actually brought about materialism and destroyed the old spirituality is penetrating into human thinking, especially into the spiritual, into the willed spiritual. I have pointed out how materialistic some theosophical views are. Of course, it is not easy to find the right words when discussing spiritual-scientific matters, because our language today is no longer suitable for the spiritual, because we first have to search again for such a connection between language and the subject that is suitable for the spiritual. But it is necessary that the spiritual-scientific movement is not always corrupted by what is most harmful. One must characterize impartially what takes place in the spirit. Again and again I experience that I am asked: There is someone, there is someone who has spiritual experiences. — The meaning of the questions, which are often asked in this way, is that the actual question is: Is it now possible to surrender to what this or that person sees with blind faith in the truth? And if the answer is in the affirmative, then blind devotion arises; if it is in the negative, then the person in question is immediately denounced as a heretic and it is said: Well, that is atavistic clairvoyance, you don't give anything to that. — Yes, this either-or must be taken quite differently in this field. We must really face up to the statements about the spiritual with all our healthy reason. But if we want to become dogmatists, we cannot become spiritual scientists. If we want to either idolize or condemn, we cannot become spiritual scientists. There will also be infinitely valuable contributions to the characterization of the spiritual world from sides that one does not necessarily want to swear by.

On the other hand, there are times when people swear by some esoteric personality. Then it can be shown that this seer personality has at some point – well, maybe even once – retouched a little, or retouched a lot; then that personality is finished. Before, the same people swore by them, and now they have been undone.

Yes, you don't get ahead within humanity in this way. You don't get ahead within humanity with the either/or of deification or demonization, but only by facing things with your common sense. For example, it may also be the case that someone, of whom one even knows: Well, he does not disdain to tell a tall tale now and then – something quite true, important, essential comes out of the spiritual world.

We would not have the either/or that I am talking about if we wanted to introduce dogmatics, but if we wanted to place ourselves with common sense, precisely within this anthroposophical movement. That is one thing. The other is this: it is extremely difficult, because of the way things are often handled within our circle, to place the Anthroposophical Society in the cultural movement of the present day. This requires discernment on the part of those who are already members of this society. Once you are a member, you have a certain obligation to exercise this discernment. For we will go completely wrong with this Anthroposophical Society if we do not seek to connect with the general spiritual culture of the present, if we repeatedly and repeatedly fall back into the error of being sectarian. That will be the death of our movement if we become sectarian. Just consider that things like the ones we have discussed these days will not seem particularly strange to someone who is currently involved in science and cultural life, if he or she only acquires the necessary lack of prejudice. But in order to achieve something in this way, it is necessary to have the will to distinguish. With us it can easily happen that a question is asked in a stereotyped way when it is a matter of: should someone listen to anthroposophical lectures or should he be given a cycle? So the question is asked in a stereotyped way, without taking into account the level of education, the whole world position of the person concerned. But the stereotyped way is what is absolutely harmful to us. It is the schematic that makes it possible for a person like the one in Holland, around whom a whole bunch of nonsense has crystallized, to swim into the Anthroposophical Society and find protectors there, while people who are capable of judgment are often repelled by it.

To mention a specific example: some time ago, Mr. von Bernus appeared within the Anthroposophical Society with the clear aim — which one may find a little better, a little worse, as common sense may speak — of building a bridge between the general cultural life, the literary and scientific life of the present, and our anthroposophical life. Now, Mr. von Bernus, in his own way, has poetically reworked and brought out into the world a number of things, some of which are in my books and some of which are in cycles. He showed me himself: he has received a pile of letters, letters of criticism, because a truly contemporary attempt has been made here! One would not be surprised if someone who perhaps has a lot at stake could be repelled by such behavior as was perpetrated against him by the Anthroposophical Society in the past. Nevertheless, the journal he founded will be of tremendous service to the Anthroposophical Movement. He had, after all, managed to get the Anthroposophical Society represented in Munich in his art gallery. But everywhere one could see certain resistances to something that was as justified as possible! And if one looks at Bernus' experiences, they give a good picture of how the Anthroposophical Society should learn to be a real society.

In so far as the Dornach structure came into being, it is a society. But much else, in particular, is left undone, clearly showing that the Anthroposophical Society does not see itself as a society at all, but as a sum of individual sectarian little circles. But we must get beyond this stage of sectarianism. And we will not get beyond it unless some thought is given to the matter.

It is so difficult, and it is true that one does not like to say such things, but after all, many things are necessarily said to me because I am personally so closely involved with this anthroposophical movement. If the Anthroposophical Society should gradually develop more and more into a society with an expressed tendency to keep me completely quiet — which is what it is actually developing into and what it has always had as a tendency — then it is not a matter of personal vanity when I emphasize this. It makes me very uncomfortable that I have to emphasize it, but in the Anthroposophical Society there is a tendency to keep quiet about me, and there the personal is linked to the factual. Because of this – because everything that a society otherwise does is not being done – only the venomous words that the apostate members have created bubble to the surface.

Yes, these are things that I sometimes have to point out and that must not remain unspoken. I have raised them in the places where I have been able to speak recently, because I really believe that in these catastrophic times it is very important that anthroposophy is represented in the world in the right way. But it is so difficult to get people to reflect more deeply on how one should actually proceed in the anthroposophical field in order to make this Anthroposophical Society a real society. — Individuals have indeed made a start, but as a rule everything gets stuck in the starting blocks. Now, I think that perhaps, by drawing attention to the matter a second time, it will be given a little thought. I am not saying this for personal reasons, but because of certain necessities of the time, as you will indeed gather from what I have just said, from which you will be able to discern many seeds that can serve to help you understand our catastrophic times.

[Blackboard writing] September 2, 1918

Every ideal is a germ for a future natural event.

Every natural event is the fruit of past spiritual events.

First of all, I would like to remind you of something we discussed yesterday, so that we can then proceed to further considerations. Yesterday, I essentially explained that one cannot gain insight into the relationship between the ideal or spiritual and the material in the world, or into the purely causal natural order, without taking into account the nature of human sleep.

We started from St. Augustine's thought that he wanted to experience true certainty about the world in his inner experience. I said that we can no longer base ourselves on this thought for the simple reason that we have to know today that every human sleep refutes this thought. For we could never somehow hold on to the idea that what a person experiences within himself is preserved post mortem, after death, and that what a person experiences within himself is truly eternal, if we had to look at it from the point of view of the time from falling asleep to waking up, as ordinary consciousness today looks at it. The ordinary consciousness of today sees how, during sleep, what is experienced within the human being dawns. But now we said that as soon as a person completes the first step of looking into the spiritual world, he realizes that from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, what we call the human being's ego and its astral body – that is to say, the human being's actual spirit-soul nature – is so connected from within with the nature of the angels, archangels and archai, as the human being is otherwise connected here during waking life with the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. Only because man's consciousness is dulled during sleep by the powers opposed to the world is he not aware that during sleep he is connected to the hierarchy of angels, archangels and archai, that they imbue his ego and his astral body with their own being, that they hold and carry his astral body and his ego. And we have explained how three things arise from this connection between human beings and spiritual beings: Firstly, that we have the feeling of personality more or less clearly even in our ordinary consciousness. We know ourselves as an ego. We would never know ourselves as an ego with only what is available to us during waking hours. The feeling of free personality that continues during the day, while we are awake, is a kind of after-effect of what we experience during sleep. This comes from the fact that from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, we are connected with the angelic being from the spiritual world to which we belong. But the archangelic being, or actually a series of archangelic beings, is also connected with our spiritual soul being. And this is the reason why, when we are awake, we know ourselves as members of the whole of humanity, that we recognize ourselves as human beings on earth.

Every human being actually has an awareness of their free personality, even if it is not entirely clear. The awareness that one is a human being in general is already more shadowy in the background. Yes, certain philosophers, like Fewerbach or even Auguste Comte, have argued that it is a significant discovery for a person to come to feel that they are a human being in general, a member of the whole of humanity. And yesterday we heard Auguste Comte speak of the Great Being; by this he means nothing other than the human being. But Comte speaks from the standpoint of ordinary materialistic science; he does not know what underlies spiritually this consciousness that one is human, which lies in the background of our soul life. One would have no inkling of being a human being if that which is separated from our physical and etheric bodies during sleep were not imbued with the nature of the archangels.

And again, we are imbued with the nature of the archai from the hierarchy of the so-called Zeitgeist (the spirit of the age). But what comes from this remains a rather dark, shadowy consciousness. Indeed, today's humanity does not have it at all if it does not feel part of history, of historical life. The oriental world view has not penetrated to this consciousness of living as an earthly human being at all. This has been the particular task of Western culture: to feel like a historical being, as a being – let us say for ourselves – who belongs to the 19th, 20th century. But the present materialistic consciousness of humanity knows little more than the date and some other external historical data – we will hear shortly how little these actually have any significance for real life. For only spiritual science leads us to recognize how the human soul changes from millennium to millennium, how human beings become different, and how we now look back to ancient times and know that the people of the third post-Atlantic period, the Egyptian-Chaldean peoples, had a very different soul and human condition than we do today. This sense of being at home in the whole development of humanity is an echo of our connection with the archetype, with the arche, during the time from falling asleep to waking up. So that we should know that we are connected with this third spiritual hierarchy from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up. Now, how does our life differ from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, that is, every day, from the life between death and a new birth? Every evening when we fall asleep, we lay aside, I would say provisionally, our physical and etheric bodies. These remain with us. There we are connected with these entities of the third hierarchy; when we wake up, we return to our physical and etheric bodies. It is different when we can no longer return, when we have died. Then our physical and etheric bodies are apparently handed over to the driving forces of that which is becoming earthly. We know that this is only apparent, as we have recently discussed; but for our experience, our physical and etheric bodies are handed over to the spaces of earth and heaven. During this time between death and a new birth, we not only come into contact with the beings of the third hierarchy, as we do in sleep, but we also come into equally intimate contact with the beings of the second hierarchy, with the exusiai, that is, the Spirits of Form, with the Dynameis, the Spirits of Movement, with the Spirits of Wisdom, Kyriotetes, and also with the beings of the first hierarchy, with the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones. Just as we, here in our human existence, focus on the world and, in the surrounding world, everything that is contained in the realms of nature appears to us, so we become aware, now not externally but internally, of the intervention of the higher hierarchies between death and a new birth. From a certain point of view, this is essentially the difference between sleep and death in a human being: that during sleep we are actually only indirectly connected with the beings of the third hierarchy, but after death we are connected with the beings of all three hierarchies, up to the highest spiritual beings.

Now, if you hold on to this, you will be able to see how man is placed in the whole universe, how man, as a microcosm, is connected to the whole universe, to the macrocosm. Let us visualize what I have said schematically. Let us say, then, that after death our spirit is inwardly connected with the beings of the third hierarchy, with the beings of the second hierarchy, with the beings of the first hierarchy, just as it is outwardly connected here with the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms, from which it is built. But there is another connection. When you get to know all the things that the beings of the third hierarchy initially work on – they also have other tasks, but we are only ever talking about things in parts, aren't we? The beings of the third hierarchy are individual beings that work individually and also through their work together through their effects, which bring forth something, create something. If you visualize what these entities of the third hierarchy work, it is first of all everything, I say, that happens in the historical life of humanity (see drawing on page 57). You can also grasp the thought in this way: No one knows anything of the reality of the historical life of humanity without having an inkling that what actually constitutes history is not made by human beings, but by the beings of the third hierarchy. The beings of the third hierarchy – angels, archangels, archai – actually make history, and man participates in the work of this third hierarchy by having his consciousness as a personality, his consciousness as a human being, as a historical being on earth, in the characterized way. So that man stands in the world is because these entities make up historical life, and man, in turn, has what he is inwardly and through which he is inwardly connected to historical life from these entities. The external historical life, which is recorded in popular history, which is essentially a fable convenante, is only a reflection of the inner historical life that is created in his development by the beings of the third hierarchy.

Now we may ask: What is the similar task of the beings of the second and first hierarchy, that is, the Exusiai, Dynameis, Kyriotetes, the form spirits, the movement spirits, the wisdom spirits? Yes, they have a much more comprehensive task. We will initially disregard their relationship to humans. You can best imagine this task in front of the soul when you focus on your etheric body. Right, when you start from your self and go inward, you come to your astral body. Through your astral body, you are connected to the historical life of humanity. In turn, the beings of the third hierarchy, who make up the historical life of people, have an effect on the historical life of humanity. But if you go further, if you go down to the etheric body, this etheric body is a very complicated entity. In today's consciousness, man is not aware of much of the complexity that underlies this human etheric body. But you do get a certain idea of what has to work in this ether body when you study “Occult Science in Outline”; there you are shown, in the succession of Saturn, Sun and Moon time, that is, the successive embodiments of our Earth, how this ether body develops from the entire cosmos, and how the beings of the higher hierarchies participate. If we express this in a vivid formula, we can say from a certain point of view: Everything in the becoming of the world that is now more comprehensive, with which our etheric body is just as connected as our astral body is with the historical life of humanity, is created and formed by the beings of the second hierarchy, by the Exusiai, Dynameis, Kyriotetes. So, to illustrate this, I will say: The beings of the second hierarchy create everything that has an effect on the human etheric body.

But this in turn gives rise to something else. When you wake up in the morning and immerse yourself in your etheric body, you actually plunge into the creature of the beings of the second hierarchy. And you also submerge into your physical body. Of this physical body, which is why the being of mystery calls it the temple of man, what the external anatomy and physiology reveal is really only the very, very outermost shell. One can only grasp this tremendous, wondrous structure of the human physical body if one knows that it is the creature of the interaction of the beings of the first hierarchy. When you descend into your physical body upon waking in the morning, you actually descend into the work of the highest hierarchies. So think about how things are distributed in life: here between birth and death, when we are awake, we first descend into our astral body, in which the historical life of humanity is effective. But we also dive into our etheric body, the creature of the second hierarchy, in which much of the cosmos is effective, the etheric life of the cosmos. And we dive into our physical body, which is the creation of the beings of the first hierarchy. And when we live between death and a new birth, we do not live with the creature, but with the creators themselves.

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Now you have one of the considerable differences in the life between birth and death and the life between death and a new birth. Here you descend by immersing yourself in your physicality, in all that is a creature of the higher hierarchies. When you die, you descend into the hierarchies themselves. You go from the creature to the creators. That is how things are connected.

And now, looking at what we have just discussed, let us ask: What exactly is our Earth? What geology and other sciences usually explore of our Earth is, after all, only the outer shell. What exactly is our Earth? As you know, we have our physical body in common with the entire mineral kingdom. Because we share our physical body with the entire mineral kingdom, we stand in it in a part of the earth when we are awake. We share our etheric body with the entire plant kingdom, standing in a second link of our earth. We share our astral body with the animal kingdom. We have the I for ourselves. There we stand in the three kingdoms of the earth, and our whole earth actually consists of the three kingdoms. This is the ground, so to speak, on which we stand, not physically, but with our human nature. But this cannot be seen, it remains supersensible. By standing on this ground, its lowest link is the mineral kingdom.

Now you remember from the “Geheimwissenschaft” that the mineral kingdom was not present during the earlier embodiments of our earth; the moon did not yet have a mineral kingdom, nor did the old sun, nor did Saturn. You only need to read about it in the “Geheimwissenschaft”. It was only on the earth, during the fourth embodiment of our earth, that the mineral kingdom came into being. I ask you to take careful note of this. It is a difficult matter, but it is an extraordinarily important one. In a sense, three formations had to precede it before the mineral earth could develop. We call these three formations the three elemental realms; the mineral realm is the fourth. We could also speak in these terms about the earlier embodiments: During the Saturn embodiment of our Earth: first elementary realm; during the Sun embodiment of our Earth: second elementary realm - the beings that were in the mineral realm at that time were earlier in the elementary realm -; during the Moon time - not the present time, the old Moon time -: third elementary realm. As we progress to Earth, the mineral realm arises as the fourth realm. Man carries this within himself.

To stand in the mineral kingdom is to stand in the fourth formation. We carry this mineral kingdom within us; only through this are we actually visible beings. But this mineral kingdom is also the only closed one in us. Only when the earth will have reached its end, when it will have entered into a different embodiment, will man be just as closed in the plant kingdom as he is today in the mineral kingdom. Then he would stand in the fifth formation. So the Earth will come to an end state and will arise anew: Jupiter time; man will then have his relationship to the plant kingdom as he has his relationship to the mineral kingdom today. He will stand in the fifth formation. To stand in the plant kingdom means to stand in the fifth formation.

There will come a new incarnation of our Earth, we call it the Venus incarnation, the Venusian age. Man will then stand for himself in the animal kingdom, not be an animal, but stand in the animal kingdom; as you know, this is different from being an animal. But to stand in the animal kingdom means to stand in the sixth formation. And then comes the conclusion, I would say, the seventh of all becoming. We call it the volcanic embodiment of the earth. Man has then reached the highest level of his education, only then has he become fully human. To stand in the human kingdom means to be in the seventh education, to stand in the seventh education. And in seven educations the life of man is complete.

Let us take a look at the human being today. He stands, as we do, in the mineral kingdom; he does not yet stand in the plant kingdom. When man stands in the plant kingdom, his whole life will be different. He will not feel as a personality, but as he feels today as a personality, he will feel as a human being, he will feel as a member of the whole of humanity. He will, for example, when he once stands in the plant kingdom, find it unbearable that he has a certain degree of happiness when someone next to him is surrounded by misfortune. Today, the human being feels as if he is closed off from other people by a partition. It must be so, otherwise man would never be able to develop his personality. But in the future kingdom of Jupiter, where man will be in the fifth education, it will be different; then it will be an absolutely unbearable thought that one can be happy and the other unhappy next to him, because people do not feel like an organism, as one says in abstracto. Now they do not feel as an organism: but that is an untruth, a deception, a maja. But the time will come when man will stand in the plant kingdom, where he will not find individual happiness tolerable when there is unhappiness next to him.

This thought underlies those spiritualists of whom I spoke to you yesterday. I told you: in the future, the English spiritualists will have to fight a great battle against the entire English popular culture. The flower of this popular culture is utilitarianism; and what this utilitarianism has driven out in Bentbam is essentially the principle that was called the maximation of happiness. This utilitarianism will increasingly fill their thinking. Therefore, only the opposition of the spiritually minded will enable this thinking to become spiritualized. That is the perspective for the future: the spiritually minded will have to overcome popular culture, to overcome it to the point of annihilation. That is why I was able to quote to you that Bentham, who, starting from popular culture, came to the principle that the good on earth consists in the happiness of the greatest number of people, has his most fierce opponents in the spiritually minded people of his own country, who tell him: That is a purely devilish definition, because this definition can only be made if you consider nothing but the mere present. If you think a little about the future of development, you know that the thought is quite unbearable: the happiness of the greatest number, because the opposite would be the unhappiness of the least number, and that would have to be evil. But evil and bliss have nothing to do with each other; for in the future, when man feels that he is in the plant kingdom, he feels that he is a member of the whole of humanity, and this opposite will be an impossibility. Just as today an important organic limb cannot simply be cut out of a human being without the whole human organism perishing, so in the future, when the earth is in the plant kingdom, not one particular group of people will be able to suffer without the whole suffering. That is a certain state of development that is coming. And because Bentham's definition of happiness has no future, only the present, it must be fought against, especially by those who aspire to spirituality.

Yes, why should it be a contradiction when it is said that good is defined by Bentham as the happiness of the greatest number, and evil is defined as the happiness of the least number? It is not an abstract contradiction for the rational mind, but the spiritualist does not think abstractly; the spiritualist thinks concretely. He does not think: What is the opposite of the other? but he thinks of the real that develops and that mostly does not agree with the mere thoughts of people.

And in an even higher degree the individual human being will participate in the whole when he is in the sixth education. And then especially when he is a full human being, a completely spiritualized human being, in the seventh education.

Yes, but we have seen from this that, as we now stand on the firm ground of the earth, we as human beings, insofar as we are creatures, actually only come to the fourth education. We have the mineral kingdom, that is finished. The other kingdoms, as they exist today, will partly perish, and man will develop them in a different way: the plant kingdom, as I have described it. We will not describe the animal and human kingdoms today, but next time.

Thus, today, when man regards himself as a creature standing among other creatures, he stands in the fourth formation. But he extends into the other formations, for we have seen that even in sleep man is under the influence of the third hierarchy. This hierarchy is further than he is, and is already in the fifth formation today, and the other beings are further still. So he extends into the higher levels of formation. I ask you to have the patience to really think through these subtle thoughts, because you now have to make the distinction between thinking of yourself as a creature and thinking of yourself as an independent spiritual being, which you are, for example, in sleep or between death and a new birth. Insofar as you think of yourself here in your physical, in your etheric body, astral body and I, insofar as you think of yourself as a creature on earth, you are in the fourth formation; but you reach into the fifth, sixth and seventh formations. By not living only in your body, but also outside of your body, in sleep or in death, you reach into the other hierarchies, and these other hierarchies are further. We can therefore say: If we regard the earth, with everything on and in it, as a created being, then it has reached the fourth level as a created being, and we have also reached the fourth level with it. But we rise up into the other spheres, into the other elements of formation, because we feel that we are independent personalities, that we feel that we are human, that we feel that we are members of the evolution of the earth, that we know that our etheric body is a creature of the second hierarchy, our physical body is a creature of the first hierarchy.

But the seventh education is not the end. Evolution continues, and by projecting into the higher forms of education, we also project into an eighth form of education, the famous eighth sphere. We can safely say: in a sense, by reaching up to highly developed levels of higher entities, we reach into the eighth sphere of education by standing in the pool of God or the spirit realm – as you like. But we reach into this eighth sphere of education with the finest components of our spiritual being. This reaching into the eighth education is a great secret, but we can still get an idea of a, I would say, very slight, not very intensive reaching into the eighth education, if we imagine the following.

We know that at the center of the earth stands the Mystery of Golgotha. If we look back at this Mystery of Golgotha, as it took place from the year 1 to 33 of our era, in the 747th year since the founding of Rome, it is in the first third of the fourth post-Atlantic period. We speak of the cultural development of humanity into which the Mystery of Golgotha fell, as of the fourth post-Atlantic cultural level. We know that the third post-Atlantean cultural stage was preceded by the Greco-Latin cultural epoch. We are now in the fifth, because the fourth, into which the Mystery of Golgotha fell, ended in the 15th century AD. So we are in the first third of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period. Now, the human being develops through the cultural periods, but when we describe these cultural periods, we are actually describing something that the human being does not fully experience. You were all embodied in the old Egyptian-Chaldean period, which is the third post-Atlantic period, then again in the Greek-Latin cultural period and in the present one; but you only ever experience the successive time – if things go well, don't they, even if someone lives to be eighty – just eighty years, and in between lies the much longer time that passes between death and a new birth. So of what we describe by describing the successive developmental periods of the earth, the human being only experiences a part.

You could, of course, say: Well, man only experiences a part here in the physical body; but he truly does not live in vain in the physical body: he experiences the world from the point of view of the physical body because he could not experience what he experiences from the physical body between death and a new birth. Whether what a person experiences in the pure spiritual realm between death and a new birth is valued more highly or less highly is not what we wish to discuss today. But it is different from what a person experiences here through his body, and it is very important to take this into account. And it is truly not in vain that man is placed in the world through his body; for he could not experience through his body in the world, always in episodes of the development of humanity as a whole, if he did not have the development of the body. It is a thoroughly false idea to have an ascetic attitude towards the development of the physical body on earth, regarding it merely as the enemy of the higher human being. In truth it is not that, but that which gives man something that he could not attain in any other way. And the man is very much mistaken who despises the life in the body, who regards the body as something low, for it means just a highest, an most important, a most meaningful in the whole life of man. And spiritual science can least of all follow that mysticism or that wrong direction of Christianity – not the right direction, but the wrong one – which despises what it calls the earthly world. Between death and a new birth, the human being experiences the world from a different perspective; he experiences it as he can experience it: now it is not the creatures that affect him through the physical body and etheric body, but the creators themselves. There he experiences something different.

This is why we have the task during our earthly career not only to get to know the world of the senses, but also the supersensible. For the historical life of humanity, which is a result of the third hierarchy, we cannot get to know from the perspective of earthly life. And for our time – I ask you to pay attention to the fact that I say: for our time, because it was not so in the pre-Christian era – for our time it is essential that the human being becomes aware: he must, while he lives here on earth between birth and death, also get to know, if he wants to get to know himself as a historical being, what angels, archangels and archai work as historical life. If we only get to know the world in the way that today's scientists want to know it, if we only get to know the world as history describes it, as if history were made by human beings alone and not by the beings of the third hierarchy, then we only get to know the outermost layers of historical development. Only he gets to know history who is aware that he must, so to speak, contemplate here in the physical body what the beings on earth do between death and a new birth in a completely different way - if I may use the expression, which is only used comparatively - which he gets to know personally, individually, in their heavenly deeds. He must get to know it in its effects on earth in historical life.

'But it was not always like that; that is how it is in the time in which we now live. Above all, it was not like that in the third post-Atlantean period, before the year 747, in the Egyptian-Chaldean period. We know that the whole spiritual life, the whole state of mind of people was different then. Then the supermundane life radiated into the ordinary human life, then man knew, even if he interpreted it differently than we now interpret it in the mythologies: the entities of the third hierarchy worked into his ego and his astral body. He meant the beings of the third hierarchy, called them Osiris or Zeus or Apollo or Minerva or whatever, but he knew: these beings, which he only invented and interpreted in this way – but the invention and interpretation related to these beings – they have an effect. Even if he had not wanted to see them, he would have seen them inwardly, for in those ancient times there was not the same delusion of consciousness as there is today; but there was only the delusion of life, which, as one says, anthropomorphized these figures. But one knew about these figures.

This is also one of the points through which the whole life of people has changed. Today, people in their ordinary consciousness do not know what is playing into their lives. Man was born as a soul being in this third post-Atlantean time, was born again in the fourth post-Atlantean time, and was born again in our time. He does not see what the beings of the third hierarchy bring about as historical life, but he should get to know it, he should really get to know it! Not in its true form, but in mythological form, did the old man get to know it.

Now put yourself in the shoes of such a human soul – there are more incarnations, as you know, but let us consider three consecutive ones: one Egyptian, one Greek, one from the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period – let us put ourselves in the shoes of such a human soul. During the third, during the Egyptian-Chaldean cultural period, it experiences what it could experience through the fact that the entities of the third hierarchy played into life. This had gradually dawned. Some had still experienced it in the fourth, in the Greco-Latin period; many people had still experienced it in an orderly way until the year 333 after the Mystery of Golgotha, then it gradually disappeared; then people had to more and more confine themselves to what is present in the external sense world, if they did not develop inwardly in such a way that they could get to know the spiritual world again in a different way and thus ascend to the entities of the third hierarchy.

And now, when we look at such a soul that is returning, it comes with all that it has absorbed in the third post-Atlantean period, in the Egyptian-Chaldean cultural period. It comes with all that, but let us assume that such a soul refuse to look at the deeds of the third hierarchy in the historical life of humanity in the present incarnation and say to herself: What do I care what the angels, archangels and archai have done; for me, history is what human beings have ever done here on earth. Such a soul does not take into account that in everything that human beings have done on earth, the deeds of the third hierarchy are involved. Let us now assume for the sake of clarity – for some souls it also applies to the fourth, the Greco-Latin period, up to the year 333 – but let us assume for the sake of clarity that such a soul comes over from the Egyptian-Chaldean, from the third post-Atlantean period , from the third post-Atlantean period, it would not need to make any effort to know about the deeds of the third hierarchy, because that came into human life by itself; that is what this soul still carries within it. So we say that this soul was able to process back then, and that is what it carries within it. One could not have said to an ancient Egyptian – he had no real concept of historical life, but he did look to historical life – but one could not have said to him about this historical life: people make history. He would only have laughed, because he saw that the entities of the third hierarchy made history, even if he also presented them in a sensuous way in his own way.

All this is within the present-day human being, but unconsciously, of course; it has descended into the subconscious. Now they believe that history is something that people on earth have made. This gives rise to a strange state of mind, which I ask you to consider very carefully. If we were to look at such a soul in the present, we would say that this soul refuses to place itself in the historical life of humanity in reality; it says: I want to know nothing of the deeds of the archai, the archangels, the angels; I only want to know from external testimonies what people have done since those ancient times. But in this way such a soul cannot develop further; in reality such a soul remains at the point of view at which it stood in the old Egyptian times; it only has the maturity of a soul of the old Egyptian times, it does not allow itself to grasp reality. The angels, archangels and archai have developed further, they have done what could be experienced by humanity since then. Such a soul says: What the hierarchies have already done up there in the spiritual world, I will not get involved in that; I will only get involved in my own abilities. But the abilities are none other than those which she already had during the ancient Egyptian times.

Numerous such souls live in the present, and think of the peculiar situation of such a soul! Until the year 333, a soul could not yet come into this situation, because the spiritual world still extended into it by itself; but now, since that time, souls can be in a strange position: they cannot resist reality, in reality they are naturally in it, in what the angels, archangels and archai do, but they deny this with their consciousness, they only take up in their consciousness that which has been brought about here on earth by people themselves.

This is a case where people as creatures are in the fourth formation, because the fourth stage of formation is everything that happens in a creaturely way. So what men on Earth have done since Egyptian times belongs to the fourth education, but man himself rises above that, and due to the fact that since the year 333 he cannot consciously reach into it at all with his whole being, into what he actually reaches, due to that he even stands with his nature above the seventh level of education, he stands in the eighth level of education. So that today there is the possibility that souls are in fact in the eighth stage of education, but do not recognize it because they do not recognize the activity of the historical life of men through the angels, archangels and archai, but only recognize the fourth stage, so that the eighth sphere remains unconscious in them. This is an extraordinarily important fact.

If a world view arises from this state of mind, what then arises? Man ignores his own reality, he does not admit that he extends into a high spiritual realm, although he really does extend into it, but he only admits that he is in the human realm. This state of mind has only clearly come to light in what I have called the industrial age in recent days. Only the fact that people are immersed in the whole of industrial life has led them to completely ignore the fact that man reaches up into the spiritual world within a world view and only to take into account the external deeds of men. That is something significant. One cannot understand the present if one does not know that there are numerous people today who, with their world view, reach into the eighth sphere, and ignore this fact, that is to say, they bring all the damage to earth that reaching into a sphere of the world brings when one denies its existence. For by denying that he is projecting into the eighth sphere, into the eighth stage of education, he shuts himself out from the good beings of that stage of education and delivers himself into the hands of the Ahrimanic spirit of that stage of education. His thinking becomes, instead of divine or spiritual, Ahrimanic.

When speaking in spiritual scientific terms, one must point to the facts of this world in their truth. And the truth is, for example, that something like the materialistic historical view of Karl Marx, who lived from 1818 to 1883, that Karl Marx's world view is a purely Ahrimanic one. Its secret is based on the fact that only what is materially occurring on earth is recognized, that the way in which the human being's spirituality reaches up into the supersensible worlds is ignored, and that as a result of this ignorance, the human being falls prey to the Ahrimanic powers. For as soon as man excludes his consciousness from the worlds into which he reaches up, he falls prey to the ahrimanic or luciferic, in this case the ahrimanic, powers.

Now, we are faced with the fact that numerous people today advocate a purely Ahrimanic world view, fight for this purely Ahrimanic world view, and thereby also conjure up over the earth all that must come when the Ahrimanic order spreads over the earth instead of the divine order. Bentham's philosophy, of which I spoke to you yesterday, is in the first place an external theoretical expression of this Ahrimanic view of life. Marxism is such an expression, which is also already creative, which is formative, which has an enormous influence. And the indolence of bourgeois life knows nothing about it and has not cared for decades what elements of such world views have developed in the sphere of social life. Marxism is an extreme expression of this. It will continue to have an effect. What at first was only meant to be knowledge will become an event, will actually become reality. Only insight into these things, which in turn forms the will, can help in these matters.

Such truths are drastic, such truths are truly not suitable for mere Sunday sensationalism; such truths are that which is most intimately connected with the whole cultural life of the present day. And much will depend on people's willingness to recognize that which lives in their thoughts in connection with the whole order of the world. For in our time we have entered the cycle of time in which we cannot advance without falling into terrible catastrophes if we do not understand how what takes place in the human being relates to the evolution of the whole cosmos.

Such truths, when they are discovered in the search for truth – you can take my word for it – are initially disturbing. If you have a feeling for the impact of the great truths in the world, you also know the feeling of being disturbed by these great truths. It is not easy to live in the life of truth. Only the superficial might think that it is not disturbing to have to say to oneself: people, a great number of whom believed – and that is also true! – that they honestly strove for the truth, are permeated by the spirit of Ahriman! It strikes at the heart, my dear friends! Therefore, when such truths arise, one tries to come to terms with them. These truths are not there to be let in at one ear and out at the other. Nor are they there to be found in one's lonely meditation and accepted as sensations. These truths are not there for that. One must come to terms with them. One must be able to find how what one knows as world evolution, what is all around one, also agrees with what people judge, that something like that is there.

Anyone who, like me, has seen how many people there are today - now people can see for themselves through external facts - who live by Marxism or Marxism-like views, is faced with the necessity of taking a closer look at these things. One often says to oneself: Perhaps you are an illusionist after all! Of course one need not immediately doubt the whole spiritual world, but with regard to such concrete truths one often says to oneself: Perhaps you are succumbing to illusions after all! — The deep sense of responsibility towards the truth must arise precisely in the face of spiritual truths. Then one seeks to dig deeper and deeper. But there is indeed not a little, but a great deal, a great deal, which provides terrible confirmation of what I have just explained to you as the ahrimanic character of, for example, Marxism or similar world views.

When I spoke here some time ago, I made a certain demand of you. I spoke about the fact that the time as we experience it is actually an illusion, that time is in reality something quite different from how man experiences it, because man does not take time perspectively, I said at the time. Man experiences space perspectively; he sees the more distant trees smaller than the nearby trees. In reality, time is also to be seen perspectively. Events that lie far apart in time are to be seen differently than those that lie close together in time. But this is only the basis for time really being what the researchers of all times have regarded it as: time is the most important medium of human deception. We imagine, for example, that the beings of the higher hierarchies also flow through time as our own soul life flows through time: there is no truth in this. In reality, the essence of the higher hierarchies lies in elapsed times, but they work across from the elapsed times, as one can work across in space from a distant place, for example, through light signals or something similar, to beings in a nearby place in space. Time is not what people see it as, nor is time what philosophers like Kant see it as, but time in its reality is something completely different. And what man sees as reality is also a maja, a great deception. Above all, what we believe to be past remains, because we live in time as a deception. But it remains there; time really becomes something like space. And one looks at past events in the same way that one looks at distant objects in space, if one truly sees. Time is an illusion.

And further, spiritual science knows that the sources of other great illusions in human worldviews arise from the fact that man succumbs to deception with regard to time. If there were many physicists among you, I could express myself here in purely physical terms. I could show you with the help of physical formulas that just as the physicist introduces time - t, as he merely calls it - into the physical formulas, this time is only a number, and thus something quite unknown, not a reality but pure appearance. The only thing that is real is the speed, but the physicist regards this as a consequence of time. Since you are not physicists and probably will not get involved in understanding the matter, I will not go into it further either.

Time is an illusion, that is a profound truth, because time as an illusion underlies many other illusions of life. For example, if you apply time incorrectly in the course of history, you see everything in the wrong light. People in the first three Christian centuries thought that certain things that had happened were over and done with. In reality, they should have thought: the archangel or being from the hierarchy of archai who guided the events of that time is still there; it continues to have an effect in a different way. The past is only an illusion. It is very important for people to realize that time has a perspective character for spiritual reality, that they must be just as mistaken about events in the course of time – while they do not believe this – as they are about events in space if they do not allow for perspective. Consider how great the deception would be if you did not allow for perspective, if you regarded what is far away in space as having the same effect as what is close by. You are looking at a distant mountain. Your health depends to a great extent on the air around you; the air on the distant mountain does not, because if you want it to be beneficial to your health, you have to go there. As soon as we are dealing with reality in life, reality is essentially connected with perspective. But it is the same with regard to time. We live in the present when we do not believe that the more distant events of the past can be weighed as much as the near events. If we look at the Egyptian-Chaldean period in the third post-Atlantic period and only consider what the documents provide and register them as Torengeschichte registers, the fable convenue, which today calls itself history, then we make the perspective mistake. For what people did outwardly during the Egyptian period has no significance at all for today's life, but what the angels and archangels and archai did has significance; but this only emerges in the perspective formed by observation. Therefore, it is a principle, and not only today, when we all have to rediscover these things on the basis of anthroposophy, but in all times it was a principle for all spiritual researchers, that time as such is an illusion, and never was time counted in such a way by a real knower of reality that it was thought to be a truth, that it itself would have been thought of as a true reality.

Now the strange thing came to light, this Karl Marx of whom I have spoken to you, to whom millions swear today, albeit more or less in shades, more or less in formulas - but that's not what . Those who know these things know that thousands of people swear by him, or if they do not swear consciously outwardly, they do so subconsciously. This Karl Marx tried to answer the question: what are the true goods of humanity? What is it really that is achieved in humanity? — He answers the question in an extraordinarily original way, for it has never been answered before; human goods have always been considered in some other way than Karl Marx considers them. What human goods are was considered, let us say, for example, in terms of whether it had to be brought from afar, whether a lot of understanding was needed to find it, or the like. I once tried to make this clear to you by saying: Human labor must also be considered qualitatively; one must generally get involved in the concrete. We consider the elaborate Gotthard Tunnel. No one today who builds something like the Gotthard Tunnel is unfamiliar with differential and integral calculus, and differential and integral calculus is a Leibniz or, if it is better liked in England, a Newtonian - the two were arguing about the honor - invention. So one can say that Newton or Leibniz helped to create the Gotthard Tunnel. Yes, without them it would certainly not have been built! Now, the work of Newton or Leibniz must be evaluated in a completely different way than the work of someone who lays one stone on top of another in the Gotthard Tunnel. This is one way of evaluating human goods, human labor. The theory of the value of human labor, of human life, has taken various forms. Labor, goods of life, have been evaluated from the most diverse points of view, but never as Marx evaluated them. Karl Marx takes up a single element in his theory of value. For him, everything that has value in human life is only valuable because it is condensed time, namely condensed working time. Whether something can be produced in three hours, six hours, or twelve hours is the measure of its economic and global economic value. A large part of Marx's theory, which is so common today that it is possible to see it when someone from the so-called higher classes talks about work from his point of view, is based on this. A real socialist, a worker, stands up and says: “Please look it up in Karl Marx – of course he doesn't have the book with him – please, page 374, you will find this or that there.

One must really know life in order to be able to judge life, otherwise one will be amazed everywhere that this or that happens here or there. What happens happens out of the impulses of the human soul. But if one cares as little as people on earth have cared in recent decades about what has actually been going on at the bottom of the human soul, then one should not be at all surprised when the whole thing finally collapses catastrophically. But I have explained this for a special reason. It is the first time that the original has occurred, that what is only the source of deception has been made the standard of all economic values: time in the form of working hours.

So take this from a higher perspective. People who understand reality have always known that time is an illusion. Now someone comes along and says: But what has value in the world has only as much value as condensed working time is contained in it. Does that not mean in other words that your reality is an illusion and only that which is condensed time has real value? The deception is made into reality right down to the form of time by those who want to be completely materialistic, who want to stand only on the ground of reality, and reality is overlooked.

This is just one example. I could show you numerous things that comfort when one is dismayed by truths that, if one has a heart for the life of humanity, thunder into the mind. But when one then studies the matter in detail, when one looks at the hand of someone like Karl Marx, whose spirit is known to be Ahrimanic, and asks him: How do you proceed in detail? — then it is indeed the case that one comes across the Ahrimanic, and one feels: You may admit such truths to yourself. — I just wanted to give you one example here. It is not easy to have to say: Everything that protrudes into the world anachronistically today does so because people have left the spiritual world, which thus becomes their eighth sphere, and they only perceive the world in material terms. If you take this, then you will feel with all its weight what it means when I repeatedly emphasize: Today it does not matter at all whether a person says something beautiful, something that can be admitted, but what really matters is what comes from what one says or does. I must tell again and again how I have been repeatedly tested – you know I am not saying this out of some silly vanity – to draw attention to the fact that it does not matter what one thinks, but that one sees what effect one's thoughts have. You can have a thought that is absolutely wonderful. But if you have no idea how this thought will work in reality, it can have the opposite effect. I have been trying to make such things clear in various examples for years. For example, at the beginning of the 20th century, I once gave a lecture in which I said – I will now summarize much of what was discussed at the time in a few words, because I just want to illustrate –: Today there are more people who are programmatic pacifists, talking very nicely about the leadership of humanity from their pacifist point of view. Pacifism has never actually assumed such proportions as in this time – so I spoke at the beginning of the century. And that is, I said, a clear sign that we are facing the greatest war of humanity. For people in the past did not think about human interrelations in such an unrealistic way as they have done within these circles, they only went so far as the content of their thoughts, and had so little awareness of the real effectiveness of what lives in the soul that one can only recognize it through the whole world perspective. This is only done in the age in which all the things we have been talking about have been spreading.

How is it that something that is no more than a train of thought, and a very unreal one at that, can set the tone for many people, a thought that can never have anything to do with what is happening? This is Woodrow Wilson's train of thought, Wilsonian train of thought, which is nothing more than Egyptian-Chaldean train of thought, which does not care that there is a spiritual reality in history, but only adds abstract thoughts to each other. It comes from all these peculiarities of our age. A future historiography will have to baptize everything that our time has produced in terms of unreal thoughts that bring about the opposite, in the name of Woodrow Wilson.

That is what is decisive in our world view, what must be decisive, and what must be considered not from today to tomorrow, but from the point of view of the whole of cosmology, from the point of view of being placed in it. He who answers such questions from the point of view that arises out of a complete world-view judges such people as Woodrow Wilson is, not from sympathies or antipathies, but judges as one judges objectively about something. But that is the anachronism, that very many people today cannot get involved in it, because it is uncomfortable to look things in the face. You cannot look things in the face if you do not research them in depth. This must be said of such souls, who today have no connection to historical life: they are souls who ignore what real history has been through the third hierarchy and therefore do not deal with the real impulses when they speak, but basically only with empty words.

This is a fundamental requirement of our time: that we come to terms with it and realize that, even if we have the most beautiful concepts that the human mind can grasp, the most beautiful concepts that are quite sufficient to explore the nature that is spread around us, we will never understand anything about history. For history does not unfold as natural life unfolds; history unfolds as the deeds of spiritual entities. This is what must be added to the other world views. From theocracy, as I described to you yesterday, people emerged by still remembering the old theocratic order during the time of theocracy; then the metaphysical time came, which essentially developed the civil service throughout the world; then the purely materialistic time came, the time of industrialists. This would lead completely into the unreal in relation to the spiritual, if it were not for the counterweight of working one's way back into the real, into the actual, which, however, can only be observed if one can ascend to that which is veiled for man in ordinary life in the present time cycle. We must learn again to speak of supersensible things if we want to speak of history. In the nineteenth century people often spoke of historical ideas. Everyone knows that you can't chop down a tree with ideas, but the followers of Ranke and similar historians believe that the historical life of humanity is brought about by ideas. We must realize that this time, the mere metaphysical time, must also be overcome, otherwise that world view, which is purely limited to the sensual, will become overgrown. Mankind must work towards the spiritual. It can only do so if it first works its way through the field of history, from the apparent succession of events in time to the real event, which, I might say, is so tangible behind the external sensory reality, especially in the case of history. Then, however, one will no longer create social or similar programs based on ideas that relate only to the external life, but one will proclaim one's social programs again based on the revelations of the spiritual world. But the programs that people create today are very, very different from these revelations from the spiritual world.

We will discuss this next time. I will continue these reflections next Friday; they cannot be concluded so quickly.

Yesterday we tried to get to know more precisely the world that surrounds us in such a way that we share it with those who have passed through the gate of death and that we also share it with those spiritual and soul beings that we count among the beings of the higher hierarchies. In this way, we have devoted ourselves to a contemplation that is suitable for opening up to us a part of that reality that plays a part in human life, without man, with his sensory perception and also with his mind tied to sensory perception, being able to know anything about it in his ordinary waking consciousness. Since this world is a reality, a reality that plays a part in the shaping of human life, it is understandable that in the time in which we live, in which man is called more and more, take the general destiny of human development into his own hands, as we have often said, that in such a time a knowledge of these supersensible things also sinks into the human soul. Yesterday we ended our meditation, which, as a meditation on the life of the so-called dead, must be deeply penetrating for each individual human soul, with the suggestion that this is particularly necessary in our time. On the other hand, however, there must also be an urgent need to reflect more closely on such things, such as those we touched on in our meditation yesterday. For in our time even half-awake people, dreaming people, should suspect that extraordinarily important decisions are being formed.

In the course of our discussions, I have repeatedly given hints here and there about what can be said from the sources of spiritual research about the character of modern times, the character of our time itself and the near future. Such things could only be given to present-day humanity, and more or less to anthroposophically minded humanity, in a very cautious way. Just see how much of this can be found in the lectures given in Kristiania many years before these catastrophic events, for the understanding of precisely these difficult, catastrophic times. And perhaps it may also be recalled that at a time when it would have been necessary to point out, in one way or another, the seriousness of the impulses at hand, in the lecture cycle that was held in Vienna in the early spring of 1914 – that is, before the outbreak of our present world catastrophe -–, the way in which social life, the way in which human coexistence in our time is spoken of, I chose a sharp, a strong expression: I spoke at the time in these lectures, which were essentially also about the life of man between death and a new birth, of the fact that something is happening in the moral and social life of the present that can be described as a social carcinoma, as a terrible social cancer. Perhaps one or the other at that time found this to be a strong expression. But perhaps one or the other has since been able to convince himself that the facts speak for it, that such a strong expression was allowed to be chosen at the time.

However, what I already hinted at yesterday is correct and should give us much food for thought: despite all this, despite the fact that it can easily be surmised what serious impulses lie in the lap of our time, humanity today is little inclined to really grasp the seriousness of the phenomena. Today, humanity is far too comfortable for that, far too happy to indulge in those comfortable concepts that can be found in the scientific world view today, because these concepts can be gained from the handrails of external experience, because they do not require much inner effort of the mind and yet they flatter people's vanity so much. But what is necessary is that humanity should wake up, really wake up, to much of what the times demand of us today. This awakening will only be possible if certain underlying facts are no longer regarded as fantasies or dreams but as realities that play a part in our times. And so I have often hinted during our discussions that a significant change has occurred to humanity, particularly in the last third of the 19th century. I have also hinted at these things here in Stuttgart. Today, we want to once again call them to mind from a certain point of view.

I have indicated the fall of 1879 as the turning point in the development of humanity in modern times. If we want to understand this development of humanity in modern times more precisely, we must say that what happened in the last third of the 19th century is only the effect of something that happened in the spiritual world before. It began in the spiritual world in the 1840s. And the time from the forties to the end of the seventies of the 19th century is an important and essential, a significant time. What happened then did not happen on the physical plane; but in the year 1879 the repercussions descended on to the physical plane, and since that time these repercussions have been taking place on the physical plane. They are a kind of reflection of what happened before in the spiritual world. If one is to describe what underlies this, one can say that in a particular field in a particular sphere it is the manifestation of what otherwise happens more often in the development of humanity, and what has always been described by those who were still able to observe such things as a struggle between Michael and the dragon. In the most diverse fields, such struggles of normally progressing spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies against spirits of hindrance and obstruction have taken place. For the cultural development of humanity, such a struggle has taken place in spiritual realms, and in those spiritual realms that are directly adjacent to the earth, in the decades from the 1840s to the end of the 1870s. At that time, in 1879, this battle ended with a victory, if one may say so, of the good powers against certain spirits of obstruction, which at that time - one can put it that way - were thrown down from the spiritual worlds into earthly conditions, so that since then they have been working and weaving in earthly conditions. Within that which is developing in the spiritual evolution of humanity, there are spirits of hindrance that were only overthrown at the end of the 1970s and hurled down into the lower world for the upper world, and now rule in people.

If we look at these spirits of hindrance, these spirits of an Ahrimanic nature, with which the spirits that we can call Michaelic spirits have fought a fierce battle, we have to say that these Ahrimanic spirits had a good significance in past periods of human development, they had their tasks in past periods of spiritual development. These tasks were carried out in such a way that they were guided by good higher spirits. We must not imagine the so-called evil spirits in such a way that we think we just have to flee from them in order to get rid of them if possible. That is namely the best way to attach them to oneself if one wants to get rid of them in an egoistic way; rather, one has to imagine that these so-called evil spirits are also in the service of the wise world order. If they are only placed in their right position, they will perform services that are necessary for the wise world order. And so we can say that for centuries, even for millennia, these ahrimanic spirits have performed the task of dividing human beings into those community contexts that have to do with blood ties. People are connected in their earthly associations in such a way that the bonds of blood also trigger and bring about certain bonds of love. People organize themselves into family, tribal, ethnic and racial contexts. All these things are subject to certain laws of the times. These are directed by beings from the higher worlds. That which humanity has specialized, that which humanity has structured in such a way that this structure is based on blood, was guided by these Ahrimanic spirits, but under the guidance of good spirits.

But now a different era was to begin. As long as human beings were guided by blood, so to speak, they could not take their destiny into their own hands in the way that has been suggested several times. For this it was necessary that the service of these Ahrimanic spirits, as it was, be eliminated from the spiritual world. These spirits initially wanted to continue their activity of dividing people according to blood from the spiritual world; but humanity was to be driven to a more general conception of its entire spirit. What is often said in our field, that humanity is to be understood as a whole on earth, is truly not a cliché, but a modern necessity. And this is based on the fact that a strong, intense struggle has taken place between the Michaelic spirits and the spirits of Ahrimanic nature, which in the past differentiated people according to blood.

This battle has ended with the Ahrimanic entities being pushed down and now prevailing among people. They will cause confusion among people, because that is their intention after this defeat: to cause confusion with everything that can be drawn from all kinds of concepts and ideas related to blood ties and blood relationships. It is particularly important to realize that since the last third of the nineteenth century, these impulses have been active in everything that human beings can achieve here on the physical plane through their thoughts and feelings, and that reality cannot be understood without taking these impulses into account. The way in which certain international relationships and the like are discussed today has been confused by these Ahrimanic spirits, who have been defeated by the spirit of Michael.

I have often mentioned that we can say that we have been in the so-called Michaelic Age since the end of the 1970s. Michael can be seen as the Zeitgeist, which has replaced Gabriel as the Zeitgeist. This means a great deal: Michael as the spirit of the age! The spirits of the age that were present in earlier centuries worked differently than this spirit of the age. The other spirits of the age that influenced the development of humanity in earlier centuries did so more or less in the subconscious. The task of the Michaelic Zeitgeist, which has been working in human affairs since the last third of the nineteenth century, is this: to release more and more in human consciousness itself that which is to take place in the evolution of the earth. This Michaelic Zeitgeist has actually descended and is working on the physical plane of the earth.

There is something connected with all this for our time that is extremely easy to misunderstand. Ours is a very, very ambivalent time. If you describe it so superficially, you could easily call our time merely materialistic. But that is not all; the matter is much more complicated. On the whole, one can say that these more recent times are, in their fundamental character, extraordinarily spiritual, extraordinarily spiritual indeed. And there have never been more spiritual concepts and ideas than those that have been brought to the surface by modern science in the development of humanity. But these concepts, if I may express myself in this way, are abstract. In themselves, in their substance, they are thoroughly spiritual; but they are not suited, as they appear, if they are not properly treated, to express spiritual realities. These concepts of natural science, which are being instilled into all education today, are a very double-edged sword, if I may use this paradoxical simile. They can be used as they are applied by academic science today. In that case they are spiritual, but only in so far as they are applied to the external material world; their spirituality is denied. But these scientific concepts can also be applied in such a way that they serve as material for meditation, that one meditates on them. Then they will most surely lead into the spiritual world. If those who today have a scientific world-picture would not be too lazy to apply their concepts in meditation, then these people with a scientific world-picture would very soon enter into spiritual science. It is not the content of the scientific concepts that is at fault, but the way they are treated. The concepts are subtle and intimate, but people apply them in a materialistic sense. It is not so easy to make this clear in all its details, but we must communicate with each other; therefore we must let many such truths approach us only by reflection, as it were.

Thus people live in concepts, in ideas that are thin, that are, I might say, pure distilled spirit, so that one needs only to apply a strong force to arrive at spiritual science; and these concepts are the ones that are to enter the human development precisely through the Michaelic Age. But they are also the ones who are most confused by the indicated, one can already say, from heaven to earth pushed, in heaven overcome ahrimanic spirits of obstacles. They arise in so many areas where man today believes he is thinking and reasoning quite correctly, but where he is exposed to the confusion of these spirits to a high degree.

It is precisely when considering such a matter that it becomes clear how development actually takes place, let us first stay with humanity. We must bring before our soul a significant law of development, which we have also to consider from other points of view. It is, of course, an extremely superficial way of looking at things to think that events in historical life simply arise from one another in such a way that what happens in 1918 is a consequence of 1917, 1916 and so on. That is a superficial way of looking at it. Things happen quite differently; they happen in such a way that what has happened in the spiritual realm continues to have an effect in the following periods, but in a certain way. You can take any year, let us say for example 1879. Then something happens in 1880 that is determined by the fact that what happened in 1878 is repeated retrogressively. In 1881, in a certain respect, what happened in 1877 is repeated retrogressively, and so on. One can start from any point in the development of humanity, as contradictory as this may seem; one will always find that earlier annual cycles show up in later ones as important impulses. One can therefore expect that, especially in an important period of time, this law will also intervene in the development of humanity with particular clarity and importance.

I have often hinted at this, and have often spoken before these catastrophic events of the important period of 1879, and that it is only the effect of what has been taking place in the spiritual world since the forties. If we now apply this law, which I have just mentioned, we can say the following: 1879 is an important period of time; certain spirits were pushed down who had previously worked in the spiritual world as spirits of hindrance, and from then on worked here on the physical plane among people in a hindering and confusing way. What happened in 1879 is, so to speak, the conclusion of an earlier event that began between 1841 and 1844 and has been taking effect over the decades. If we now take the year 1841, we have the period of struggle in the spiritual world from 1841 to 1879. Those entities, which are under the rule of the spirit, who is called Michael – one could also describe him with another name – they prepared themselves in 1841 to take up the strong, intensive fight in the spiritual world, which then found its conclusion for the spiritual world in 1879. It lasted for thirty-eight years. Now I said: That which happens retrogressively has a retroactive effect in the following period. — Now continue calculating from 1879 for another thirty-eight years: 1917. Just as in 1880 what happened in 1878 repeats itself, and in 1881 what happened in 1877, so in a certain way what took place in the spiritual world in 1841 is repeated in the physical world in 1917 as one of the most important struggles. It is indeed the case that the year 1879 marks a turning point, which shows very energetic impulses forward and backward in the observation. And in a certain way, on the physical plane of 1917, 1918, those things are now repeating themselves that had to take place in the spiritual world in the forties, and which can be described as a struggle of normal, forward-driving spirits against certain spirits of obstruction. This is not a calculation that I have only just made today; rather, many of you know that these events have always been referred to, and that from the point of view of these events, the year 1917 must be seen as an important starting point for subsequent events.

Of course, things must not be viewed in such a way that one says: Well, we have experienced the year 1917. Certainly, one has experienced it; but what the events actually were that took place in that year, only a few people have experienced, since few people are inclined to evaluate them in their waking consciousness. That is what it is all about.

Now, through all these things I wanted to point out that we are indeed living in an important moment in the evolution of humanity, and that it is necessary to take some things more seriously at this point in time than they are taken by the present humanity in its masses. I have already pointed out how particularly necessary it is not to ignore the normal spiritual impulses in our time. As this newer time has developed, what has actually become predominant in it? What has really gained influence in this newer time? What is radiated, I might say, into the whole of general education? Basically, only that which has grown on the coarsest field of the scientific world view. But this coarsest field of the scientific world view has only the power to grasp the dead, the inanimate, never the living, which would be so infinitely necessary in this scientific age. Even today, people still do not want to see the connection between such things and general world events. They do not want to see that the more humanity endeavors to develop only concepts that relate to the dead, they are also destroying social and community life from within. It is necessary to bring scientific concepts into flux and to enliven them in such a way that they can actually be applied to human coexistence, that they are, so to speak, suitable for explaining human coexistence.

The course of development has been this way in these newer, in these most recent times: in what has been accepted as actual science, only those concepts have been formed with which one can comprehend external, dead nature. These concepts were quite unsuitable for grasping human life. But they wanted to use them to grasp human life. And so the official scientists applied these concepts to history, to social science, to social policy, and so on. But these concepts are not useful there, and so there is no useful concept for social life at all. As a result, the social life of the earth has become too much for people to handle, has become what it has become over the past four years. People will have to learn to condense their concepts and also to vitalize them.

What the natural scientists themselves develop is certainly ingenious, useful, and conscientiously methodical, but only for the external world. Today, everyone works in their own field and does not extend the concepts that are developed in any field to the totality of the human world view. Take just one example, and you will immediately understand what I actually mean. The ordinary school physicist who today looks at the magnet needle pointing with one end to the north and with the other to the south, explains to his boys that this constant pointing of the magnet needle to the north and to the south comes from the earth's magnetism, that the earth is also a great magnet; and it would be ridiculous if this school physicist were to seek in the magnet needle itself the forces that cause the needle to point in these directions. He tries to explain it in terms of the properties of the earth; he seeks the cause outside in the cosmos. In this purely dead area, the scientific concepts are still of some use, and one or other of them may still be discovered. Therefore, it does not occur to anyone to say of the magnetic needle that it has the inherent power to always point in one direction. One assumes directional forces from the magnetic north and south poles of the earth. The biologist no longer does this. It does not occur to him to develop a similar concept. The biologist sees the chicken in which the egg is formed. It does not occur to him to ask the same question as the physicist asks about the magnetic needle. The biologist simply says: When the egg is formed in the hen, the cause of the egg formation lies in the hen. If he were to proceed as the physicist does with the magnet needle, he would say: Although the hen is the place where the egg is formed, the cosmic forces are involved in the same way as the cosmos is involved in the magnet needle when the egg is formed. I must go beyond the narrow confines of nature and take what is outside to help. In the chicken there is the place where the egg develops, but the forces come from the cosmos, just as they give direction to the magnet needle from the cosmos.

It is urgently necessary to develop such a concept and to implement it methodically. But in the eyes of the official science of biology it is foolish, fantastic, it is ridiculous, because it has completely lost its way into a blind alley of the dead. This official science cannot even apply the comprehensive concepts to such things, much less can it say anything about how people could live together politically or socially in the right way. How can one hope that something so necessary for humanity could come out of this mere natural scientific world view, namely a revival, a refreshing of these concepts? Especially in the important area of human life, this cannot be. Let us make this clear by looking at a concept that we want to grasp spiritually.

Even the mere observation of the human skeleton shows something extraordinarily important, something, I would say, magnificent. When you look at the human skeleton, you see the head, which is actually only placed on the rest of the trunk skeleton; it is a world of its own. The other part of the skeleton is formed quite differently. If we apply Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, we do indeed get the transformation of the trunk into the main skeleton, but the main skeleton is formed spherically, the head is a reflection of the whole sphere of the world. The other is formed more like a moon. This is something extraordinarily significant and indicates to us that if we want to gain fruitful insights into the human being from his form alone, we must look at something that is already indicated in the form. Our natural science is indeed magnificent, but it is illiterate when it comes to knowledge of the world. It proceeds as someone who does not read the pages of a book but writes on them: A is like this, B is like that — that is, not reading but merely describing the letters. But one must proceed to reading, one must understand, describe the forms of nature not merely as science does, but interpret them in their relationships, in their transitions. Then one comes from reading the forms of nature and natural phenomena to unraveling the meaning of the world. Of course, people who hear something like this today and who, with their thick heads, are completely stuck in illiteracy, find such a thing, when it is said, quite dreadful. Good examples could be given of how something is found to be dreadful that is so far-fetched from the human skeleton, but which can be extended to the whole human organism. Man is a dual nature, and this dual nature is already expressed in the fundamental contrast between the head and the rest of the organism.

If one now, through spiritual science, engages with these two aspects of the dual nature – one could specify further aspects, but that is not the point today – then one can already read something tremendously significant from the mere shape of the human being, if one really engages with it. From a spiritual scientific point of view, it can be seen that this human head undergoes a development from birth through physical life on earth, which now differs from the development of the rest of the organism just as the head already differs in form from the rest of the organism. It is very interesting to observe that this head develops three to four times faster than the rest of the organism. If you look at the rest of the organism, you can call it by a common name, in that it is mainly organized by the heart, so that you then get an opposite between the head organism and the heart organism. This heart organism really develops three to four times slower than the head organism. If we were only heads, we would be old people by the age of twenty-seven or twenty-eight, getting ready to die because the head develops so quickly. The rest of the organism develops four times more slowly, and so we live well into our seventies and eighties. But that does not change the fact that we actually have a head development and a heart development, that we carry these two natures within us. Our head development is also usually fully completed by the age of twenty-eight; the head no longer develops. What then develops is the rest of the organism. It also sends the developmental rays into the head of its own accord. If you are able to observe the shape, the characteristic development of the shape, you could come across confirmation even from external things, even if you cannot come across the thing itself. However, you have to have spiritual knowledge to come across this. But look, who has not looked at a small child and said to themselves when they see it again later: This child only later became so similar to so and so. — This is connected with the fact that the forces of heredity are actually in the rest of the organism. The head is formed entirely out of the cosmos; and only when the forces of heredity work out of the rest of the organism, which happens more slowly, does the physiognomy of the head also resemble the rest of the organism. This is just one example of how external facts can confirm what spiritual science finds. It is important to note that the head develops much faster than the rest of the organism.

You see, knowing this was not so important in the early days when people were more unfree, more directed. In those days, the good spiritual powers took care of things. They effectively established harmony between the pace of head development and the pace of the rest of development. Now the time is coming when people themselves must ensure that such things are harmonized. Therefore, people must be able to understand such things correctly, must be able to deal with them, and they sin against development if they cannot do so. And we have an important area of human life where these things are terribly sinned against. This sin is sporadically expressed today because we have been in it since the last third of the 19th century. It will be expressed in a terrible way if people cannot understand the spiritual impulses. Today they initially express themselves in the following way: No consideration is given to the fact that if a person is to develop normally, something must be given to him that takes into account the fact that his brain development is three to four times faster than that of the rest of the organism. And one area in which this is particularly damaging is that of education and teaching, for the following reasons: Under the influence of the scientific world view, concepts have been developed that have gradually become mere concepts for the development of the head, that do not contribute to the rest of the development, concepts that are acquired at the same pace as the head develops, that cannot be absorbed at the same pace as the rest of the organism develops.

This means an extraordinary amount. Time has gradually developed louder ideas that occupy the head, leaving the heart cool and empty. They come sporadically today, as I said, but the things will increasingly take hold. You can do the test if you can observe life. Because of the dichotomy of the way the head and heart develop, the human being depends on not just developing intellectually in his youth. In youth, the head is the main focus because the other aspects develop more slowly. If we wanted to educate people for the rest of their lives as well as for the head, we would have to keep them in school their whole lives. We can only address the head in school education. But today the head is treated in such a way that it cannot give anything back to the rest of the organism in spiritual and soul terms. The rest of the organism does, of course, give its inherited impulses to the head throughout life, otherwise we would die at twenty-seven, because the head is predisposed to do so. But in return, the head should also give what is cultivated in it. You can see for yourself that today's education does not do this. To prove it, ask yourself: Is it not true that people who receive a school education today only remember what they feel in later life? — Most of the time they do not even do that, but are happy to be able to quickly forget everything. This only means that the rest of the organism observes the formation of the head. If the rest of the organism received from the head the life essence it needs, then one would not only remember in terms of memory, but one would look back on what one's teacher gave one, as on a paradise, to which one thinks back with heartfelt contentment and attachment every hour in later life, into which one plunges again and again and in which one has a source of rejuvenation. It would be a source of rejuvenation if it included education of the heart, not just of the head. Then, throughout his or her life, a person would have something from childhood teaching, from school, for the rest of the organism, which develops four times more slowly, and this would also have an effect on the organism. Today it is only just beginning, and it will get worse and worse. People will become prematurely aged because they will only remember what they have absorbed into their heads, and what has meaning only up to the age of twenty-seven. After that, it remains as useless, remembered memory; and the person ages. He ages inwardly, spiritually, early on, because the formation of the head is not suited to overflow into the four times slower development of the heart.

These things must be taken into account. But if they are to be taken into account, then our school education must become a totally different one, then it must have living concepts instead of the dead concepts that prevail everywhere today. When it comes to a Kant-Laplacean theory, people will always remember it in such a way that they grow old. What is real: the spiritual and soul starting point of our universe, from which the physical has only developed, will, if it is properly incorporated into the teaching material, be a lifelong source of rejuvenation. And it is possible to shape the subject matter, not just by using a methodical approach, but by completely reworking it in the anthroposophical sense, so that throughout one's entire life, there is something that one can recall not just in thought, but that is a lifelong source of continuous rejuvenation. We must consciously work to ensure that people are not old when they are barely fifty years old, but that they can still draw inwardly, spiritually, from what they have taken in during their youth; that they can have a source of refreshment, a refreshing drink from what they have taken in as a child. But then it must be given in such a way that it is not only suitable for the development of the head, but that it is suitable for the development of the whole human organism, which proceeds three to four times more slowly than the development of the head.

To understand such things means to bring to life what are dead concepts for the natural scientist and therefore also for our general education. Do not underestimate the great social significance of what is said here. You might think that this is only important where science in the narrower sense is effective. That is not true. Science has an effect on all of today's education, on the whole breadth of today's human development. These scientific concepts extend even into the Sunday newspapers; and even those who only absorb everything that constitutes their faith today, the real and true faith, from their Sunday newspaper, which they pretend to have towards their church or their office, are infected by science, which can only deliver dead matter, even if this dead matter may be considered in the most spiritual way. These things must be clearly seen through.

So you see: Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is truly not just something that can satisfy subjective curiosity, but something that has to deeply affect our entire development in time. And again, this intervention in our development in time depends, for our consciousness, which can be trained in anthroposophy, on the recognition of what took place in human development from 1841 to 1879 and to 1917, both supersensibly and sensibly, above and on the physical plane. These things cannot be taken seriously enough. For much, very much, has not been taken seriously in recent times. And the recovery of humanity will have to consist in people again being willing to accept perceptions, ideas, feelings about world development. Just reflect on these things!

If you look back over the past few decades, what has the world's ruling class, with the exception of a few individuals, actually done in terms of world views, major world views? At most, it has allowed natural scientific concepts to be popularized in some way, and has used these natural scientific concepts, which it has allowed to be popularized, to demonstrate all kinds of illustrative things using the means of modern times. If you could somehow announce that something from the natural sciences would be demonstrated with slides, you would attract a great deal of attention and popularity. What has the leading social class actually done with questions of world view in modern times? People were very interested if someone could tell what they experienced as a North Pole traveler or as a Brazilian explorer. It is not to be criticized that one is interested in this. When someone talks about the fact that he has somehow been able to unravel the secrets of the egg germ of the May beetle, one has felt the necessity of listening to such lectures as a well-educated bourgeois of modern times, even if one has dozed off after five minutes, unless a slide has awakened one. But where is the real will to elevate the human idea to a worldview? Where it was present, and it is very characteristic, and everyone is actually forced to reflect on it today, where have there been the most lively worldview debates, the most lively interests in worldview questions for decades? There, where the Social Democrats had their meetings. There, worldviews were formed. This is only unknown in other social classes because they guard against really getting to know human life as much as possible.

But what kind of worldview do the Social Democrats teach? One that only works with the same concepts that are enshrined in the machines; a worldview that only develops views of the world in the mechanical sense: historical materialism, materialist conception of history, materialist conception of human coexistence. You can read about these concepts in every socialist magazine. Most people don't do that, but it would be quite useful to get informed. Those people who have been pushed into the machines, who have nothing to do from morning till night but work, and who, when they come away from the machines in the evening, have to deal with a social institution that is actually a copy of the machine, they have a world view that sees the world as if it were a machine. They have developed a world view that takes no account of individuality and organizes everything around the balancing concept of the dead. There is a very good saying: Death makes everything equal; but one could also say: A worldview that only deals with the mechanical, the dead, also makes everything equal, extinguishes all individual existence, all life. — So all individual existence, all life would be extinguished by the worldview that takes its ideal from the machine. As long as the matter was not serious, one allowed these things to befall one while dreaming, while sleeping, and one behaved in such a way that one rejected all questions of world view and gradually lost touch with all the impulses that can permeate human community life, human educational life in an understanding way. And basically, in more recent times, work has only been done in matters of world view where mechanical concepts were used. Even science, after all, only produced mechanical concepts. If you take Theodor Ziehen's book, which is a model for modern science, and read the final chapters, you will see that he is also one of those who say that natural science cannot come up with concepts that ethics, morality and aesthetics provide; but afterwards concepts are developed which state that everything that is not natural science is only dreamed up. Between the lines, everything that is not natural science is defamed. At the end, Theodor Ziehen says graciously: Concepts such as freedom, ethics, morality and so on must come from other fields; only the concept of responsibility should actually be rejected by real science. Man cannot be responsible any more than a flower can be blamed for its ugliness. — From a scientific point of view, this is absolutely correct if you are one-sidedly grounded in natural science, if you apply mere concepts of the dead. But then you are applying concepts that do not even come to the living, and certainly not to the I.

It is interesting to see how Theodor Ziehen talks about the I. In these lectures, which were written down and then printed so that they capture the tone of the lecture, he says about the I: “Gentlemen, it is a complicated concept, the I; when you think about what you actually think when you hear the little word ‘I’, what do you come up with?

you come? First of all, you think of your corporeality. Then you think of your family relationships. Then you think of your property relationships. Then you think of your name and title - he leaves out the medals - then... well, you think of nothing but such things. And what some psychologists have developed, he says, is just a fiction. Yes, the natural scientist, when speaking about the ego, can also come to nothing but what no human being actually thinks about when they seriously consider the matter, when they consider the ego. But the matter is serious, in that the concepts that have been developed out of the dead must also lead to the killing, the destruction, and the devastation of life. A theory that has been made out of the dead machine as a social world-view theory has a destructive rather than a constructive effect when it is introduced into life. Humanity has not decided to grasp this; therefore, it must experience it in the most extreme way. For what has happened? In the area where sources of tremendous future impulses will once arise, in the East, the theory of the dead, the continuation of the mechanistic world view in social views, in Leninism and Trotskyism, is having a destructive effect.

Consider the matter only very seriously. He who recognizes only the dead, and in man also recognizes only the dead, may he be as great a scholar as Theodor Ziehen, when he speaks about the ego, about responsibility, as Theodor Ziehen does, then his true social interpreter is not he himself — who does not dare to do so — but Lenin and Trotsky are the ones who draw the right conclusion for human society. What Lenin and Trotsky carry out are the consequences of that which is already cultivated by the purely scientific world view. But because this scientific world view makes compromises with that which is not the consequence of this world view, only because of this does it, precisely because it does not draw the conclusion, become not Leninism and Trotskyism.

It is also important, however, that things be taken in the sense of reality. What is not true has an objective effect. Thoughts are realities, not mere concepts. You cannot just say: Even if no one knows about a lie, it still works as a power. That is true, but something else is also true: If a lie exists that is not recognized as a lie, that does not change its effect; it works in the real world as a lie. And no matter how well it is meant, it still works as a lie.

There are already works today - I may have mentioned them here already - which treat the question of Christ Jesus from the standpoint of the correct present-day natural science. Very interesting books, because they proceed uncompromisingly. Above all, a Danish book. There are also others who really express what the present-day psychologist, the present-day psychiatrist, who thinks scientifically, must think about Christ Jesus. What does Christ Jesus become? He becomes an epileptic, a pathological person, a person with a morbid disposition. And the Gospels are interpreted in such a way that one sees in every chapter: they are case histories. Of course, all this is nonsense; but to say that it is nonsense, today only the one has the right to do so who sees through the matter spiritually. The one who accepts today's scientific psychology and psychiatry, from his point of view, this Christ teaching is the right one, because it draws the right conclusion there. And a person who speaks as a modern psychiatrist is still a better person, a truer, a more honest person than the one who accepts today's psychiatry and yet thinks differently about Christ, in the sense of those pastors or priests who also accept science in its entirety and yet make compromises.

A lie has an effect, however piously it is dressed up, for it is a real power. Above all, what is needed today is not to cover up life with compromises, but to face squarely what needs to be faced from certain presuppositions. If today's psychiatrist does not want to see Christ as an epileptic, as a lunatic, which according to today's psychiatry he would be, then he must give up psychiatry as it is developed today; then he must place himself on the ground of spiritual science. If people today were able to place themselves squarely on the foundations of that which can be known, then we would, with what can be known, have the right impulses for what must continue to work.

Recently, a note was slipped into my hand about a book that I was already familiar with, which had, in any case, caused the horror of the lady – because it was probably a lady. The note tells me what Alexander Moszkowski has written. I don't have the book here, but you can see from the slip what the book is about: “Anyone who has ever sat on the benches of a grammar school will find the hours unforgettable when, in Plato, he ‘enjoyed’ the conversations between Socrates and his friends, unforgettable because of the incredible boredom that emanates from these conversations. And one might remember that one actually found the conversations of Socrates heartily stupid; but of course one did not dare to express this view, because after all the man in question was Socrates, the “Greek philosopher”. The book “Sokrates der Idiot” (Socrates the Idiot) by Alexander Moszkowski (Verlag Dr. Eysler & Co. Berlin) does away with this unjustified overestimation of the good Athenian. In this small, entertainingly written work, the polymath Moszkowski undertakes nothing less than to strip Socrates of his philosophical dignity almost completely. The title “Socrates – the Idiot” is meant literally. One would not be mistaken in assuming that the book will still be the subject of scholarly debate.

Of course, today's compromisers will say: Well, we have learned enough that Socrates is a great man, and not an idiot; now Moszkowski comes along and says such a thing! But today it is necessary to have a completely different idea about such a thing. Those who know Moszkowski are aware that he stands on the ground of the scientific world view in the fullest sense of the word, right up to the quantum theory, and that he is therefore on the outermost wing of today's scientific world view. And it must be said that this Moszkowski is a much more honest man than the others, who also believe that they stand on the standpoint of the natural-scientific world-view and yet do not think that they should regard Socrates as a fool who has nothing to say on the concepts important for the world-view; who nevertheless make compromises, depict Socrates as a great man.

The fact is that today things cannot be put right for the simple reason that people do not have the sense of truth to face up to the consequences uncompromisingly in every respect. And anyone who wants to accept Socrates today must not accept the conditions that Moszkowski sets.

But that is difficult today, has been difficult for three to four centuries. Therefore, the matter was left alone until it had developed into what it has become in the last three to four years. Things must be approached at their soul-spiritual core, where their truly deeper impulses lie. It must be faced, which is particularly necessary today, to face the fact that truth and the sense of truth must enter into the souls of human beings! Then the things that are brought into the light of this sense of truth, that are illuminated by the light of this sense of truth, will be able to show their true face. Then one will be compelled to come to spiritual science simply because one sees the true face of things. For the present speaks a lot and speaks urgently, and things can be learned, such as how educational issues and questions of teaching must be studied by spiritual science today. Just as the question of the different pace of head and heart education is important for teaching and education, so there are many questions that are fundamental, important and significant for social life, for historical life, for legal life. We just have to get out of what we have dug ourselves into, out of the terrible belief in authority regarding what the scientific world view alone provides. This is necessary for our time. What the scientific world view calls 'real' provides concepts that can never reach into the realm of human coexistence. Humanity lives under this error today. If you look at things more deeply, you can see this.

That is what I wanted to say to you today. Now, let each one of you draw the conclusion from this that it is important to open our eyes and to illuminate things with the light that we can find from the light of spiritual science itself.

Yesterday I spoke about how our development appears to the Oriental. In many respects, the Oriental sees precisely what is compromising and inconsistent with his naive, intuitive spiritual faculty. And right now there are critical views among outstanding Orientals that are significant and interesting to follow. More and more views are emerging in the Asian East that the Orient must take the further development of humanity into its own hands. These views could be undone if there were more sense for what is proclaimed here as spiritual science! But then this sense must also be a living one; one must not only want to have something interesting in spiritual science, from which one prepares an inner soul voluptuousness, but one must want to have something that permeates one's whole life. And one must be able to see that it is only through the insights of spiritual science that social, moral and legal concepts can truly be grasped. What humanity has conceived under the influence of the scientific world view over the decades has not grown with the spirit that reigns in reality. No, it is at best comparable to those views that today educate people who want to spiritually kill the whole world because they only take their concepts from the world of the dead. Future times, when people will think more objectively about these things again, when the passions that so often guide and direct judgments today will have died down, future times – I am fully convinced that it can be so — will say: One of the most important characteristics of the period around 1917 was that the Weltanschhauung, which is only intended for the head and actually drives people into old age, has become a school-like Weltanschhauung. In the future, perhaps in a distant future, it will be called Wilsonism, in reference to the great schoolmaster from whom a large part of humanity wants to have a socio-political worldview impressed upon them. It is no mere accident that mere school-knowledge, which has nothing to do with the spiritual, has now become one of the most important political factors in the form of Wilsonism. This is an important and tremendously significant symptom of our time. It is just not possible to talk about these things today in a really thorough and comprehensive way that takes everything into account. But from my present allusions you will have gathered how important it actually is to try to understand these things thoroughly, how infinitely important it is to face up to these things not only out of affect, out of emotion, but out of knowledge.

I may have mentioned it here before, but I mention it again because it is important: now it is not difficult to speak out against Wilson within Central Europe; but I can point out how, in a cycle that was held long before these events, when the whole world, including Central Europe, still admired Wilson, I characterized him exactly the same way as I do now. The point is that one approaches the impulses that dominate the present time, which also dominate the present time as errors, from much deeper sources. In our anthroposophical field, our friends had the opportunity to see how, long before there was any external compulsion to see things in the right light, the right thing was pointed out again and again. May these things be better understood in the future than we have decided to understand them in the past! And I would especially urge you to bear this in mind: much of what is coming to light in the field of our anthroposophical science is infinitely better understood than we have so far chosen to understand it. It can penetrate even deeper into the hearts and souls of human beings and be awakened to a more intense life than has happened so far. May it happen! For what happens through it will already be connected with much that can truly be done, not to bring about disaster, but for the good of the future development of humanity, that can be done to make good much that has been neglected and that might perhaps be neglected further if one only listens to that which can be gained outside of spiritual science. Among our friends, too, many have a double bookkeeping of their lives. They have one in anthroposophical studies and books, for the private nourishment of their hearts and souls. The other bookkeeping is for their life outside, where they rely solely on the authority of the natural sciences. Often one does not realize that this is the case; but it is good to be a little conscientious in consulting with one's soul about these things, so that there may be harmony between these two accounts.

Man's life can only be administered in one sense. The spirit must also penetrate the scientific world view. And religious life must also be imbued with the light that can be gained from spiritual science. Take such things as were said and meant here today, and which seemingly lead the considerations of time up to supersensible heights, as they can be grasped in your presentations. Then you will see that anthroposophical education is not only education of the head, that it can also educate the heart for humanity. It is already education of the heart. It already serves all humanity, not just the humanity that might actually die at twenty-seven. It already serves to make people courageous and capable throughout their entire life. Education that fails to take into account the different pace of the development of head and heart will make him old, nervous, disharmonious and torn. Look at life, you will find this confirmed, because life can be a great teacher with regard to the confirmation of what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science brings down from the spiritual heights. Take everything that has been said, especially when it is spoken from such points of view as today, as spoken to your hearts, my dear friends, for the education of our hearts by the spirit of the world; and hold together that which should be the bond that links us together as members of our movement. Let us work together and plan to continue working, each in our own place and to the best of our ability.

If you travel from here to Basel, take the electric train to Aeschenplatz and then the route to Dornach, you will find there on the neighboring hill a building that is not yet completed but already shows the intentions associated with it, even in its exterior. This building, which is called a free university for spiritual science, is intended to represent externally represent that which is striven for by this spiritual movement, which calls itself: an anthroposophically oriented spiritual-scientific movement.

Now that the building has visibly manifested the existence of such a movement, one can already hear and read many things about the foundations of this spiritual cultural movement. Of course, there are still exceptions to be found, but in general, there are accurate descriptions of these endeavors. On the whole, however, it may still be said today that what is said or written about it in public is quite the opposite of what this movement is really striving for. It is very often described as an unscientific, obscure, and, in the worst sense, mystical movement. It is very often described as if it wanted to oppose this or that, societies, creeds, and the like. In truth, this movement and this Dornach building, the Goetheanum, through which it is represented, wants to serve those longings, those goals, which today often live so unconsciously in the human soul, in the human soul of the broadest masses, which in many respects have not yet found the form to express themselves, but which are connected with all that which should lead present and future humanity out of the cultural chaos, which can be perceived by anyone who is unbiased, and from which everyone who is unbiased must extricate themselves in the present.

If one is to indicate from historical phenomena where, I would say, the main nerve of this movement lies, then perhaps to something that seems quite remote from today's man, that also seems to belong to quite abstract regions of thought and imagination, but which only needs to be developed for the most general and broadest human interests in order to lead us to the very thing that today's culture needs for its renewal, for its rebirth. I would like to point out what Goethe strove for, based on the full breadth and depth of his world view, which is still far from being sufficiently appreciated today. I would like to point out what he strove for as an insight into the living world in contrast to the dead, inanimate, inorganic world.

What Goethe strove for in terms of knowledge was closely connected with his entire spiritual striving, and he drew the best that his world view contains from the contemplation of art, but he extended what he had gained from the contemplation of art to actual scientific knowledge, as he had to view it in the sense of the breadth and scope of his world view. Goethe allowed himself to be influenced, admittedly with regard to the plant world, which was so dear to him, and his contemplation of it, everything that could be available to him in relation to the plant world from the science of his time; but it can be said that nothing that he could find in the science of his time was sufficient to explain the essence of the secrets of this plant world. And so, out of the originality of his nature, he himself turned his comprehensive gaze over the whole plant world, as far as it was accessible to him, over all its forms, and sought a unity out of the diversity, out of the variety of plants. He sought that out of the variety of the plant which he called his primal plant. When you hear the definition of what he meant by his idea, it may seem abstract, but it is not. By his original plant, Goethe meant a unified image, of which every plant, whatever external form it may take, is an image, a unified, ideal, spiritual entity with which one can traverse the plant world and which is revealed, so to speak, in every single plant.

“Such a primal plant - as Goethe wrote from Italy to his friends in Weimar - such a unitary plant, which can only be created in the mind and is nowhere to be seen in the external world, must surely exist - so he said, seemingly abstractly. How else could one know that a single is a plant?

But it matters little what his abstract opinion of these things was. What matters more is that he had the faith, the profound and coherent belief in the essence of things, which is expressed in the following words. He said and wrote about this archetypal plant: “If you have grasped it in spirit, then it must be possible not only to compare and recognize with it the plant forms that are out there in the world, but it must be possible to inwardly and spiritually devise plant forms yourself that, even if they do not exist, could exist.”

This is a weighty and momentous saying. For what does a man, a man of insight, who wishes to grasp such a spiritual idea want? He wants nothing less than to evoke in his soul a thought that can lead him, I might say, to use his own expression, to invent an external reality that can then take shape. He wants to become so inwardly related to what grows in plants, to what grows in living things in general, that he has in his own spirit, in his own thinking, in his own imagination, what is revealed outwardly in growth as power. He wants to immerse himself inwardly with his whole being in the outer world. This striving is much more significant than what Goethe achieved with it in detail. As I said, if we characterize it only in relation to the plant world, which may interest some but not others, and if we characterize it only in relation to the plant world, which Goethe wanted, it may seem abstract to some. But in this kind of spiritual endeavour there is something that can be extended to the whole extent of human knowledge, of the human view of the world.

Then one rises from the contemplation of the individual, insignificant living creature to that of the whole human being, the human being who not only contains, when one ascends to his wholeness, that which today's external natural science observes, which in many ways the materialistic sense of the time regards as the only thing about man, but which encompasses body, soul and spirit.

Goethe started from natural science. What is called anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, on the one hand, starts from Goethe, in that it seeks to develop the kind of world view that processes and allows to be revealed in the spirit that which is as intimately related to reality as Goethe's idea of the Primordial Plant is intimately related to the individual plant; on the other hand, this spiritual movement is in complete harmony with the true scientific attitude of our time, not with some obscure mysticism. And it is in complete harmony with a genuine, honest and contemporary religious endeavor of the human spirit in modern times. In past years, I have often spoken in this place of the fact that anthroposophy, the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, by no means underestimates the importance of this natural science, with its enormous influence on modern culture. Indeed, it appreciates this natural science much better than many of those who want to stand on the ground of this natural science. Anyone who has not just adopted the popular prejudices about science and believes that they are a true scientist, but who has consciously immersed themselves in what science can achieve for the overall education of the human soul and mind, must say: if science, as it has developed over the past three to four centuries, but particularly in the course of the second half of the 19th century, would fully grasp itself in its own essence, would those who pursue it fully understand their own nature, then this natural science would already proclaim today of its own accord what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to proclaim. This natural science would speak of itself as human soul and human spirit, of that which is of eternal value in the human being.

Why does not natural science do this, although it so conscientiously, with such penetrating methods, penetrates into the outer sensual reality of nature? Why does not this natural science, on the other hand, rise in the same way as Goethe did for the plant world, to such an inner processing of the idea of nature that one becomes one with creative nature itself in one's inner being?

To answer this question, one must look back a little on the historical development of humanity in modern times. In natural science itself, great and powerful progress has been made. We need only go back to the work of Copernicus and Galileo, to see how much our understanding of nature has developed up to the present day. But at the same time, we must consider how little this scientific work was actually completely free in terms of its entire rule, in terms of its entire work within the intellectual life of modern civilization. It was not, because not a unified world view emerged in the course of the more recent development of humanity, which, in addition to free, independent natural science, also tried to penetrate into the nature of the external sense world. In the external sense world there were monopolies, monopolies for the knowledge of soul and spirit. The religious world views continued to retain certain ideas about soul and spirit. And they managed to get the public to admit, more or less voluntarily, that only they had anything to say about the human soul, about the human spirit.

Natural scientists, like other people, were influenced by what I would call a monopoly on knowledge about soul and spirit. And they limited themselves, because they did not dare to ascend from the knowledge of the world to the knowledge of the soul world, to the world of the spirit; they limited themselves to saying: Yes, natural science has its limits; it must limit itself to the sense world alone. A mind such as Goethe's, which was certainly imbued with a reverent religious impulse throughout his life, sensing a divine element in all of nature and in the whole world, always felt the necessity to shape his view of the physical, the , the soul and the spiritual.

But we must consider the situation of natural science, which is to some extent under the influence of the monopoly of knowledge just mentioned. We must consider what natural science can give to man through its own efforts. Then one will understand such a unified striving for knowledge and spirit as was present in Goethe. Those who do not allow themselves to be oppressed, I would say, by the commandment, 'Thou shalt not know soul and spirit', will undergo a spiritual education precisely through the way in which the modern spirit tries to penetrate the secrets of natural science. And this education then gives the stimulus to continue the development of the human spirit to higher levels of development than those that one simply has by being born a human being.

But to understand such stages of development, one needs a certain intellectual modesty. This intellectual modesty is very necessary for the present human being. This intellectual modesty must lead the present human being to say to himself: You are not only a being that may have developed from lower organisms in the process of the evolution of the world order to its present perfection, but you are a being that can develop itself further, has developed itself further in this life; so that the forces that you received at birth can experience a higher and ever higher education.

You see, you have to be able to say the following. You have to be able to look impartially at a five-year-old child holding a volume of Goethe's lyric poems. This five-year-old child will truly not be able to do much with Goethe's volume of lyric poems, at least not what the adult human being knows how to do with Goethe's volume of lyric poems. It will perhaps tear the volume apart or do something else with it. It must first grow up, then it will treat the volume of Goethe's lyric poems in the right way. Its development must be taken into account. For although as a five-year-old child everything contained in the volume of lyric poems is before the eyes of this human being, the possibility does not yet exist for this human being to draw out of this volume of lyric poems everything that could be in it for him. Thus the human being of the present must learn to feel his way in relation to the whole expanse of nature and the world. He must be able to say to himself with intellectual modesty: You stand before nature in such a way that, owing to your present development, it cannot give you what it truly contains within itself; one must be able to assume the possibility of taking one's development into one's own hands, so that, by attaining a higher level of development attain a higher level of development than that which one simply acquires by birth, by then being able to treat what one always has before one, what one believes to recognize - like the five-year-old child who does not yet know what to do with it - in such a way that it reveals to one all the secrets it holds. The very effort that one makes when applying the scientific method today, when applying it intensively, the depth that one penetrates, can lead one to feel that, out of the effort of the spirit, a power is awakened that enables one to undergo such a development. It is truly not due to modern natural science that people are so reluctant to admit that man can undergo development! No, it is due to the pressure that I have just characterized, and which one must only look at without prejudice in order to be able to devote oneself freely to what lies in the scientific treatment of the world itself. Then one will feel that the soul is inwardly awakened precisely by looking at nature in the modern sense, that forces arise in it that were not there before. As a rule, it is precisely today's scientists who do not bring themselves to awaken these forces. But if they could bring themselves to do so, they would be in a position to proclaim what is sought in the problem of the immortality of the soul, the eternity of the human spirit. Scientific thinking and a scientific attitude can lead to an inner awakening of the human spirit. And this can then be continued and systematically developed.

How this is possible, I have often outlined from this place and described in detail in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds?” and in the second part of my “Occult Science”. One can continue in full self-education that which one notices developing through modern scientific knowledge. One can apply to the spirit that which is called meditation, concentration of thought-life, of feeling, of will. One can develop that inner world of ideas to such an extent, or at least the ideas that one applies by observing stars, by working in a chemical-physical laboratory, by observing plants or people or animals externally; one can further develop the inner spiritual power that you apply by devoting your thoughts to such an extent that you only want to live in these thoughts until at least the thought leads the soul to grasp inner connections. You cannot grasp them if you do not allow your soul to develop such inner self-culture. It is possible to awaken an inner soul culture. You can indeed achieve such an awakening so that your ordinary life, which you live out in ordinary science, seems like a sleep from which you awaken. And from this awakening one can observe anew what surrounds one as the world.

That is one thing that the modern human being can undergo. If he applies natural science in the right, I would say Goethean way, he will come to a religious realization, to a real spiritual realization.

But also from the life of the modern human being itself emerges that leads to such a path and, I would say, to a corresponding goal for the future.

Those who look at history superficially, as it is usually presented superficially today, do not have the real history in front of them. One must look more inwardly at the historical life of men. One must be able to compare, for example, how a person in the 9th or 10th century AD was in his entire state of mind, and how a person of the present day is, even if he is a person living in the simplest, most primitive way; for even the simplest person today differs quite significantly from the person of the 9th or 10th century AD. I do not want to go back any further. People are definitely in a state of development. Today, we have to take the word “development” not only in the limited sense in which natural science usually takes it. It must be possible to use it in a much broader sense if one wants to penetrate into the essence of human development.

It must be possible to say that a number of centuries ago, that is, in the centuries I have just mentioned, people were much closer to each other within certain associations. Before this relatively short time, a person was connected to his neighbor through blood or tribal ties. This closeness, which brought people together into associations relatively recently, no longer exists in modern times. If you are unbiased, you can see this everywhere. Modern man is much more closed in on himself; I would go so far as to say that modern man has become much more of a loner in his soul. People in older times did not pass each other by as people in newer times do. People in newer times have become more estranged from each other. But I would like to say that something else arises from a spiritual conscience than arose for people centuries ago. It arises - again one can see it if one looks into one's own soul without prejudice and has a sense for such things, again one can perceive something like an inner voice - it arises as something like an inner obligation: You should now, since you no longer feel close enough to those immediately closest to you through blood or tribal ties, be able to come close to them through your soul development. You should take up his will in a real human love within you. You should not pass him by so that you can live socially with him, but you should be able to take up his will into yours, to make his thoughts your thoughts. You should be able to think, feel and want with his inner soul state in your inner soul state. You should be able to approach him spiritually and soulfully.

Just as engaging with natural science represents a kind of awakening for the soul, a kind of waking up in the ordinary consciousness that one otherwise has in everyday life and in ordinary science, if one only looks at ordinary science correctly, then this ordinary science gives, I would say, inner social duties that awaken more and more in man. It represents something that can be described in contrast to this awakening – I will have to express it somewhat paradoxically now, but some of the truths that must be incorporated into cultural life today must still sound paradoxical – it can be described as a feeling that overcomes us when we feel inwardly: we must be close to our neighbor in spirit and soul, we must live in his will, his thoughts; it is something that feels like losing ourselves in people. This losing of self in our neighbor in his spiritual and soul life, this devotion to our neighbor, is actually the basis of the much caricatured process of social feeling in the present.

And if one says: natural science can awaken us - this feeling, I would like to say, brings about the opposite state of mind, a strange state of mind, if one can only understand it. But just as little as one becomes aware of the awakening from the natural scientific method, just as little does one become aware of this feeling of empathy for one's neighbor. But modern man will be increasingly seized by it. Then, in contrast to the awakening through science, they will feel this like falling asleep, like resting in the surroundings, like the transition of one's own soul into the soul of the other. And just as the mysterious life of a dream awakens, full of life, out of natural sleep, so can awakening come out of this devotion to what is humanly and soulfully alive, which will increasingly take hold of modern humanity more and more as a duty of conscience. It is a kind of sleep in the human environment; but out of it rises something like a dream from natural sleep. And this dream from natural sleep can be compared to what will emerge more and more from the real, not the caricatured social feeling.

This dream will give rise to that which tells the human being: See, by immersing yourself in the will that is developing alongside your will, by becoming one with the thought that develops alongside your thoughts, you know how you are inwardly connected to this person.

Just as Goethe sensed something that was given to him through his idea of the primal plant, which he had to describe as a way of living into the whole power of the plant world itself, so one lives into the living environment of the human world, precisely through the most modern feeling. And again, something awakens in you from this living into the human world, which now arises like a new realization precisely from social life. You feel connected with the being of the other person. You feel as if something in you, as if a dream, is speaking through the being of the other person, bearing witness to you: you were already connected with this person in times gone by.

From this real experience, from this genuinely modern experience, what has already grown for individual favored spirits, such as Lessing, will grow for newer humanity as a real experience, as a real experience. If you want to be pedantic, even if it is in a higher sense, you can say: Lessing, such a person was certainly great, but in his old age, when he was already half demented, he wrote his 'Education of the Human Race' and came up with the crazy idea that humanity lives in repeated lives on earth. But for those who are not pedants but who can really penetrate the development of a man like Lessing, it is quite clear that such a man was only the forerunner for all those who will come to know this peculiarity, this mighty experience, which will arise out of the rightly understood social feeling, will arise out of it, full of life, like a dream; but it will be a dream full of life, not just like dreaming, the having been connected with people whom one meets again in earthly life, the having been connected in earlier earthly lives, with looking at the fact that one will be together with them again in later earthly lives. The experience of repeated earthly lives will develop out of the right social life and feelings of modern man.

Natural science, in its research, has already come to the conclusion that it no longer wants to be purely materialistic, at least in the case of some minds. But when the ordinary natural scientist wants to prove that something lives in man that is spiritual and soul-like, that is not merely an expression of the body, then he does not turn to such phenomena that he can prove, that he can present as one presents phenomena of the laboratory, the clinic and the like, but he turns precisely to the abnormal phenomena of human life. And I would like to say that it has become fashionable to examine the world of dreams, which awakens so mysteriously from its natural sleep, in order to point out how the human being also has a spiritual and a soul element within him. But that means examining everything that arises from the phenomena of suggestion, hypnosis, somnambulism, mediumship, and so on. Here too, it is tempting to confuse anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, which seeks to draw on a sound knowledge of nature and a sound experience of the human world, with that which would like to lean on such phenomena as hypnotism, somnambulism and the like for a real exploration of the human spiritual and soul nature.

We can start from the world of dreams to get a little closer to these phenomena. We can point out how this world of dreams conjures up images before people, into the human soul, in the time between falling asleep and waking up, when the human being is not fully connected to his spiritual and soul life to the resting body. But the one who can properly study this dream world will never answer the question, “What is this dream world?” “This world of dreams is something that takes people beyond their ordinary external daily lives.” – Then, for the unbiased person, it is quite clear that all sorts of things must interfere in this dream world that come only from the lower, animal-like instincts of human nature.

Consider Just consider what a person is capable of doing in a dream, how he tends towards the lower drives, how he often tends towards a life of crime in what he imagines in his dreams. Man must say to himself: he is not transported into some higher spiritual realm when he dreams, but on the contrary, he has descended into the subhuman. Truly, it is a dream itself when people today want to claim, want to claim quite willingly, that in their dreams they are transported into a higher world. No, in a dream we are brought into a lower world than the one we see through our senses. And especially when a person is subjected to the influence of some suitable fellow human being, so that he is placed in the sleep-like state of hypnosis, one can even, I might say, exert irresponsible influences on the person by acting in a kind of sleep-like state. Then he regards a potato as a pear and eats it as a pear, purely because he is being suggested, this idea is being given to him: this potato is a pear. And still completely different things can be given to him! It is only the extreme state, which also otherwise exists as, I would like to say, not a completely permissible state, where one counts on the damping down of consciousness by the other person, and wants to persuade him, I would like to say, to rape ideas. For those who work in the sense of true spiritual science, the question arises: what is the state of mind in which a person is in a dream? What is the state of mind in which a person is when he is in such a hypnotic or mediumistic - which is also similar to a hypnotic state - when he is in such a hypnotic state and can experience such influences from any fellow human being or from other surroundings?

In a hypnotic state, it is indeed possible for thought transfers to occur over long distances; they can be demonstrated and proven experimentally. But the question arises as to what regions a person, with his entire human, physical, mental and spiritual being, is brought when one descends into these regions. One then brings him into a region that is subhuman, that represents the animalistic in man.

In fact, man is being hypnotized down, profaned down into that which plays in him as animalistic. And it is precisely through this that one gets to know the animal in man, which is nevertheless something quite different from the animal in the animal series; but one enters into the region of the subhuman.

In contrast to all that is presented here, the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science referred to here would like to lead to the attainment of the soul-spiritual in man, not by dampening what is already in man in order to seemingly feel something spiritual-soul, but that one develops up what is already there in the sense world to a higher insight by educating thought, will, feeling through meditation, concentration, as it is presented in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds?” Anthroposophical spiritual science aims to lead people beyond themselves, in a healthy way, beyond what is already there in sensory perception and ordinary science.

In this way, it enters into a region that is quite new compared to the external sensory world. This is very important in order to realize that man becomes dependent when he is placed in a hypnotic, a somnambulistic, or a mediumistic state, or even when he merely surrenders himself to the dream-world of fantasy, that he becomes dependent on his outer sensory environment in a way in a way that he is no longer dependent when he surrenders to normal sensory life; when we surrender to sensory life in an awake state, then our will can avert our eyes from something that we do not want to look at, can even pay a little attention to what we hear. In short, we are more powerful through our will when we relate to our surroundings through the senses. What is placed in the freedom of our will, what brings us into a free relationship when we perceive sensually in an awake state, becomes a relationship of compulsion, as it is in animality, when we are subdued in the waking state through hypnosis. In this state we do not discover the soul in man, but that in us which is animalistic and which is otherwise veiled by our free spirituality. What is otherwise veiled comes to the surface and dominates the person. Man is organized down to the animal. Only one does not recognize - since the human being does not behave like the animal, but expresses himself more spiritually - that it is nevertheless a matter of a downward organization to animality. In contrast to this, what anthroposophical spiritual science wants is to raise the human being to a higher level of consciousness, and only through this does one recognize that which presents itself at a lower level of consciousness. For when man develops his spiritual nature as I have described in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds,” then a different relationship to the world also arises. But not the world that presents itself when we are hypnotized or in a mediumistic state, or when we become somnambulant, not the world of our ordinary sensory surroundings presents itself, but a new world, a spiritual world, a world which man has not known before, but which presents itself to him as a real one, just as the outer sense world presents itself to the senses as a real world.

You see, the human being can undergo this development by ascending from the human into a superhuman, just as he descends from hypnosis, from somnambulism, into an inhuman. This development can be undergone, and in this way the human being can ascend to an immediate perception, an immediate experience of the spiritual. In this way, the spirit can enter into human consciousness.

Now one can certainly say that in a book such as this one, “How to Know Higher Worlds,” it is shown which development one must undergo in order to comprehend that the true world, which one gets to know in this way, is the real one, as I have described it. But not everyone can become a spiritual researcher themselves, not everyone can enter this spiritual world themselves so that they can make statements from this spiritual world. However, the one who reaches that development, which, where one knows about the existence of a spiritual, a supersensible world, has always been called the world beyond the threshold of ordinary consciousness, who enters this world, in which he has the spiritual around him as one has the sensual around him for ordinary consciousness, he makes his discoveries in the spiritual. He knows, for example, through these discoveries, that through that which appears today in man, by having him in a hypnotic, somnambulant state, by becoming a medium, his ordinary consciousness is subdued. What appears in man as the subhuman, that in truth represents an earlier stage of human development, and that which today develops as his sensory perception, his intellectual perception, that represents a later stage of development. And even that can be recognized - you can read about it in “Occult Science” - that today, when a person is put under hypnosis, it becomes apparent in an abnormal way how he was in his environment in an evolution of the earth world that lies far behind what geological external science presents to us as the evolution of the earth. One can even learn something about a much more spiritual state of the Earth, in which man also already existed and perceived his surroundings as he perceives his surroundings today when his consciousness is dulled. We recognize something of the past of the earth, which was not as the Kant-Laplace theory presents it, but was as a spiritual-soul being itself, in which man was embedded as a being of the senses. And on the other hand, man of the earthly future will recognize where the earth will be more spiritual again, where man, through his natural condition, will recognize as one recognizes today when one develops the soul further, as I have described it.

These knowledge, although it is a need of the newer, the modern man, will initially, I would say, only be attained by individual people. Individual people will enter into that region of life that lies beyond the threshold of ordinary consciousness. So much is necessary if one really wants to come to these higher realizations. You see, I will give you a simple higher realization. But in this simple higher realization, the one who comes to it sees, for example, what the attainment of higher realizations, the discovery of higher realizations, is actually based on. In the usual story, it is not known today that basically the development of all humanity is just as internally conditioned as the development of the individual human being. Who would not find it ridiculous today if someone were to say: a person who lives to be seven, fourteen, twenty years old and so on is always the result of what he eats and drinks; what he eats causes the child to develop further and further from childhood on, making it an adult. Everyone knows that this is not the case, that a person goes through certain stages of development that even lead to certain leaps in natural development. We have such a clear leap, for example, around the seventh year, when the teeth change. Those who have an understanding of such things know what powerful revolutions take place in the human organism, for example, when sexual maturity occurs; later on, the changes are no longer as clearly and distinctly perceptible, but they are nevertheless present. Something develops in man that springs from the depths of his being. But it is the same for all of humanity. And so it was around the middle of the 15th century of our era that humanity took a leap in its development. The state of mind of people has become quite different. What I have characterized today as the fact that man feels lonely in relation to other people, that he is closed in on himself, that he no longer feels close to people through mere blood relationship as he used to. This growing independence, this becoming personal, has developed in step with the change of teeth, the onset of sexual maturity, in the individual human being, in the individual human organization. So, out of the whole evolution of mankind, something came in the middle of the 15th century. Such knowledge can only come from the spiritual world. And only when one has gained such knowledge, as an inner fact of experience, can one also have an opinion about the realities of repeated earthly lives, about the path of the spirit in human development, about the life of the spirit in natural existence, and so on.

But everything that can be done to arrive at such knowledge can be prepared for through meditation, concentration, and the devotion of thoughts, feelings, and impulses of the will, as described in “How to Know Higher Worlds.” One can develop and then say to oneself, “You are now ready to receive higher knowledge.” But then one must wait. The nature of spiritual science does not allow one to go out and collect knowledge; one can only prepare one's own soul; then one must wait. Then one must, I might say, wait for the moment, which one feels like a gracious effect from the spiritual world; one must wait until the illumination comes. That illuminations from the spiritual world occur in one person but not in another. That is why the truths arise in some people, who must communicate them to their fellow human beings. Even when such simple realizations arise, such as the turning point in the whole development of humanity in the 15th century, one must have become acquainted with them in one's pure soul life today. One must have learned to renounce the forcible conquest of the spiritual world; one must have worked only on the development of the soul in order to prepare oneself to receive the truths. Then they come, come at the appropriate moment. One must limit oneself to accepting them as such individual truths. One must only be clear about one thing: if one wants to draw consequences from them, as some people do, then one only brings forth caricatures of the spiritual world. Let us suppose that some man has made various inner discoveries; he comes to an idea; then he builds a whole system out of it, a system of nature, a system of history, an economic or a social system, or something. Men are not satisfied with making such individual spiritual experiences, but continue to draw their conclusions, building systems upon them. The one who is experienced in the spiritual world only works on his spiritual development so that he is ready to receive what reveals itself to him. Then he again accepts such an individual experience and waits for another to arise. Just as in the external, sensory reality, one must wait for the new experience to approach, one must always be inwardly filled with resignation, through which one can wait until the individual inner realizations arise. Otherwise one often produces figments of the imagination. And because most people only have such hazy fantasies, they think that the laws that come into play only come from fantasies. But in truth, no figments of the imagination arise when a person makes an effort to move forward. Only when he does not make an effort to gain ideas about the invisible does he arrive at figments of the imagination. But only if he strives to let all thoughts and development, all work in the spirit, aim solely at the spirit becoming more and more perfect in its cognitive faculty, then he can get sufficiently far; when he has learned to wait, then the discoveries in the spiritual world present themselves to him through that which is to be communicated in the spiritual world. Man can, of course, come to discoveries himself if his fate, I might say, is favorable in this respect and he learns to wait. But above all, he can come to recognize as truth what spiritual discoverers tell him, and to acquire the judgments through such an inner development that he can also he receives from the other person as the truth.

This is the secret of life that people will live when the spirit becomes their guide in the world of the senses and in the supersensible world. This will be the peculiarity that human coexistence will become more intimate. Today we see an illusory, a misunderstood socialism, we see how people want to work socially, but actually become more and more socially distant from each other. But then, when people realize that they can develop to the point where they can acknowledge what the other person comes to through the intimacies of his inner life, through which he makes spiritual discoveries, then they will be able to enrich themselves spiritually in their lives together. Then one will realize that it is precisely when the spirit will be the guide in the sensory realm of man that the social life will be able to receive its true meaning through this spirit.

If one really wants to consciously cross the threshold, penetrating into spiritual worlds presupposes that one, in a sense, becomes fearless in the face of the experiences of the spiritual world. The ordinary world of the senses allows us, I would say, to be cradled in a certain sense of security. But the one who crosses over from this world of the senses, over the threshold of the spiritual world, into the real spiritual worlds that underlie our world of the senses, experiences the fact that, as it were, the comfortable, firm ground is no longer under him. The spiritual world does not have the same forces of gravity and the like as this world of the senses. Within the spiritual world, man feels as if he were on a surging sea, and the security that one otherwise has through a fixed point of view in the external world of the senses, through ordinary life, this security must be provided by inner strength, through which one steers through the spiritual world.

Furthermore, you must bear in mind that when you enter this spiritual world, you are not initially adapted to it. You are adapted to a world as a human being between birth and death; you are not adapted to that which reveals itself as eternal to human nature when you enter the spiritual world. You are adapted to this world, to the world here. When one enters the spiritual world after having developed in order to enter it, one feels, as long as one is still in the body and has not yet passed through the portal of death, that one is not yet adapted for the whole process of development. One often feels this as a burning pain, I might say. Many shrink from it. Only if one prepares well to experience one thing or the other, can one rise above oneself, can one venture out onto the open sea of spiritual knowledge, on which one must have the guide, the spiritual guide within oneself.

But it is already possible for every person today, if they observe such things as I have presented in “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds », to see from his own conviction, not through reasoning, that what the spirit-discoverers, the modern seers, can really reveal to the world is based on truth and taken from reality.

Human coexistence will result from the fact that we can learn to see when the other person develops the ability to fully recognize what has been discovered. A spiritual coexistence will arise that will provide the basic power for a life that humanity will need in the future, especially if some structures in the social organism are to be overcome that have emerged from old forces and which can only be overcome by new spiritual forces that develop from soul to soul.

Precisely because the spiritual will become a reality for people, precisely because of this people will come closer together. One only has to consider whether a person discovers this or that in the spiritual world; that depends on the way his life is. Isn't it true that a person's knowledge of the external world of the senses differs depending on whether he was born in Europe or America or Asia. In the same way, every person's knowledge of the spiritual world differs, depending on whether he is a spiritual explorer, a seer. The knowledge of the other person, who in turn has different knowledge, is a supplement to his own knowledge. People will know different things from the spirit. But they will be able to complement each other.

In the face of real spiritual knowledge, as it is meant and presented here today, there is truly no shame or anything degrading if one person, in a truly social existence, simply accepts what is transmitted to him from the spiritual world, while another person is able to discover it. There is no need to fear that some man who becomes a spiritual discoverer will shine through immodesty within his community of fellow human beings. On the contrary, anyone who wants to penetrate into the spiritual world must first acquire what I have called intellectual modesty in the corresponding high power, and he knows very well, especially when he begins to know something of the spiritual world, how little he actually knows. There is no danger of those who recognize spiritual things becoming particularly proud. Those who talk about the spiritual world in empty phrases, who talk about the spirit without knowing anything about it, who talk about it through mere philosophical conclusions, they may become proud. But those who penetrate into the spiritual worlds also know how small they are as human beings in the face of this spiritual world, which wants to realize itself through them, and they truly know that they should neither be arrogant nor dogmatic.

Now I would like to mention something else. On the one hand, it must be said that for the sake of the future of humanity, it is necessary today that those who have not yet discovered certain truths listen to those who have discovered them, and that this is by no means shameful, degrading to freedom, it can also be pointed out that even the one who can perhaps recognize to a high degree, who is a seer, learns tremendous things from his fellow human beings. That is the remarkable thing, that in this direction one gains a completely new relationship to one's fellow human beings precisely through seership, precisely through the development of the soul-spiritual. We must not forget that things can reveal themselves even in a simple, elementary way of life. We experience them, we have the sense to penetrate into what, as mysterious soul-spiritual depths, are also revealed, for example, through a child. This gives us cause, if only we do not interpret it symbolically, if only we do not brood over it, but give ourselves to it in love, to recognize spiritually that afterwards, when the seer has exercised such love for the simple, the blessed moment comes for him to recognize something great. And every great, real spiritual seer will be able to tell you about those moments when, not through the interpretation of what he has just seen, but through the actual experience of this power within him, he has subsequently learned something different from some human being, by choosing the spirit as his guide. You get to know a person. What they share with you from their experiences, from their experiences, perhaps as the simplest, most primitive person, leads you into the depths of the soul, if you are able to recognize correctly, to find the right context. You make the discovery that what people experience, what people learn, can lead to a revelation in every person.

Yes, over the whole wide circumference of human beings, when we choose the spirit as our guide to the world of the senses and the supersensible world, every human being can give us something of what he has gained from the world, and something can be revealed in us that is absolutely necessary for his further development. We often notice that people themselves do not apply to their lives with their inadequate powers what they believe they have in their consciousness, in their conscious soul life; they think it is something highly unimportant because people are inadequate to see through their own judgment to see the supersensible. If one looks into the depths of the human soul, if one has acquired the sense in this way, as I have described it today, then, as a spiritual researcher, one can also gain so much in modern natural science, through the way in which natural science works in clinics, in observatories, in chemical and physical laboratories. If we accept what the researchers, with their power of judgment, often understand from their own very inadequate understanding when they describe their work and their results, which they themselves do not really achieve with what they say about it, cannot reveal in its depths, if we accept what we are told about the work in the scientific workshops, then deep natural secrets are revealed to us. And precisely through what spiritual science does in this field, what medicine so often strives for today, what it cannot achieve with its own means, what is connected with what I have described, that medical science and natural science can be fertilized by spiritual science.

But social life will also be able to be fertilized when the spirit can become a guide through the sensual world and into the supersensible world. And there is no need to believe that the religious element, which should be one of the fundamental forces of every human being, will suffer from the knowledge of spiritual life, from the fact that spiritual life is taking hold among us and that the spirit is becoming a guide for people in the world of people! No, quite the opposite is the case. Precisely what the religious denominations themselves have sought, they could not attain to because of the needs that have arisen from healthy scientific life, in that they have preserved old traditions. As a result, they could only achieve what they wanted to create as a belief in the soul and spirit through dogmatic commandments, while in truth, when people come to make the spirit their guide in the world of the senses, they will be at one with their soul life in the spiritual. But people who recognize the spirit, people who live with their ideas, with their perceptions in the spirit, they will also be able to worship the spirit, they will be able to find the way to truly religious worship. Those people who know nothing of the spirit will not be religious people even if they belong to a “word religion.” Those who have the spirit as their guide do not fear that Christianity could be damaged by the spirit being imbued with modern spiritual science. Oh no, those who say that spiritual knowledge should not come because it will undermine religious sentiment and Christianity show themselves to be small. He who truly recognizes the spirit cannot think so little of the power of the Christ impulse, which has been working in the world since the Mystery of Golgotha. He must think much higher. He must think in such a way that he says to himself: Whatever insights may come, the more one penetrates into the spirit, the better one will learn to worship that which can only be elevated in its significance for people by being recognized ever better and better recognized.

Not spiritual science will hinder the real religious development of mankind, but the desire to remain stuck beyond real knowledge and spiritual progress will have a hindering effect on religious development. And it could be that in the not too distant future, many people will realize where the obstacles to religious development actually come from. They will come from the fact that the denominations no longer want to live with what is present in the innermost human being as a need.

You see, I just wanted to show how the spirit can become man's guide through the world of the senses and into the supersensible world. I can only do this in a sketchy way in such a lecture as I was allowed to give here.

Man comes to know that within him which is eternal and immortal, which passes through birth and the gates of death, precisely by developing the spirit within him to which he belongs. He comes to recognize that through his soul and his spirit he belongs to the spiritual world, just as he belongs to this world through his body.

Today, however, the fact that I have characterized is fully alive in the depths of the subconscious. But the one who sees through things today knows that there are many people who long for such a spiritual fellowship; but in people's consciousness this is often not the case. In the broadest circles, I might say, there is still an aversion, an antipathy to such spiritual leadership. But anyone who is inside such a spiritual movement looks at the way in which spiritual movements or even external cultural movements have been met with in the course of the historical development of humanity! And if today one is wholeheartedly attached to the idea that something like the Dornach building, the School of Spiritual Science, the Goetheanum, as an external representative – it is not yet finished, it is only just being built, but hopefully it will be finished in the not too distant future – that something like this should stand as a visible sign of the spiritual movement that I have characterized in today's lecture, then one has to remember history in the face of various disparaging judgments.

Imagine what today's world would look like if, at the time when Columbus wanted to equip a few ships to steer westward into regions of which he truly knew nothing, and which the others knew nothing about either, if the opinion had triumphed. You can read about it in history that this opinion was very much present – that it regarded Columbus's intention as folly, as madness! But in the end, he won. Imagine what would have happened in modern times if it had not been the cleverness of those who refused Columbus's ships that had won, but the “madness” of Columbus that had won. For many people, this madness of Columbus is what anthroposophical spiritual science wants. Even today, for many people it is madness. But this madness does not just include that which is only a spiritual realization; no, this madness includes such a development of the spirit through which one also becomes a truly practical person, through which one becomes such a person that one can practically attack a voyage of discovery into real life. A real voyage of discovery into life is to be inaugurated through that for which this Dornach building is to be the external representative.

Therefore, many people may see madness in what is to be undertaken with it. Those who, through inner insight, have connected their hearts and minds with what is to be a symbol of the beginning of the spirit's guidance in the development of humanity through the sensual world and into the supersensible world, know that out of this “madness” must develop that which many people, and ultimately all people of the civilized world, must seek, so that we may emerge from some of what is sensed by the unprejudiced as chaotic, as cultural confusion, in order to arrive at that which numerous people and numerous souls long for after all, long for more than the contemporaries of Columbus longed for India in his time, long for the light that is to dawn for humanity, so that it can truly strive towards higher cultural goals in humanity.