The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Esteemed Attendees!

As I did last winter, I would like to take the liberty of speaking this evening about a topic that is intimately connected with the development of German intellectual life, and thus deviate from what I have been privileged to do for many years, both in this city and in other cities in Germany: to speak about a narrower topic of the spiritual-scientific worldview.

This deviation is certainly close to the human heart due to the great, momentous events in which the German people find themselves, due to the facts unfolding around us, which on the one hand represent a severe test, but on the other hand must become the source of many significant hopes for the future.

And besides, I don't think there's any need to speak out of a narrow-minded nationalistic spirit when one ties the great periods of German intellectual life to the spiritual-scientific considerations that have been cultivated here over the years. For it is my conviction, not based on some obscure feelings, but, as I humbly believe, on the recognition of the facts, that precisely what I have often shown here as a striving into the spiritual worlds is contained in its most significant germ in the most diverse endeavors of German intellectual life, in the flowering of this intellectual life.

If spiritual science wants to be science, then one could very easily – I would say – from a certain point of view, a matter of course, a matter of course that is superficial after all – one could very easily say: science must be international. And wanting to tie science to certain popular endeavors is unacceptable from the outset. So many people say. And it is so obvious when one speaks in this way that the matter of course already becomes superficial.

I will just say about this comparatively: for example, the moon is international, dear attendees, the same moon for all peoples; but what the different peoples have to say about the moon, from the soul, arises from their different dispositions. Now one could indeed say: that may apply to poetry, to literature. But if science is to become a worldview, then what science has to say must be objective, must be exactly the same for all people. But whether science penetrates deeply into the sources of existence or remains on the surface – to name only these two extremes – depends on the different dispositions of the individual peoples, on the impulses that the individual peoples have to give to humanity with what science is to them. And it is of the greatest importance that these impulses, these forces [...] arise out of the inherent qualities of the peoples! This is what is important for the overall development of humanity, not what can be common to all in the abstract sense!

To [hint] at what is actually meant here, one need only recall a saying of Goethe. When Goethe, on his great journey to the south, had not only viewed and explained the most diverse works of art in his own way, but had also studied natural facts and natural beings, he wrote to his friends in Weimar: After all that I have seen of knowledge and nature, I would most like to make a trip to India - not to discover something new, but to see what has already been discovered in my way.

The way of looking at what one is able to bring from the soul to the world phenomena and the world weaving is what matters. And that is intimately connected with the folk souls. And when one speaks, most honored attendees, of the German national soul and its effect within the German nation, it seems immediately obvious to anyone familiar with the course of German development that the summit reached by the German national soul at the end of the eighteenth century, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, must be reached. There, a worldview background was created, a background of knowledge, by minds such as Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, which, within European intellectual life, became a second [...] flowering period after the Greek one, through Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Lessing and others who belong to them. Behind Goethe's “Faust” and the other great poetic and artistic achievements stands what German world view has created in the field of thought development in those days.

Fichte, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, appears first before the souls of today in such a way that it seems so obvious to consider German minds in connection with the development of their nationality. Johann Gottlieb Fichte appears first as the great orator in the “Speeches to the German Nation”. If you consider what was achieved by those speeches, each word of which must still ignite in the German soul today, for the simple reason that in one of the most difficult times in German history, every mind was invigorated and strengthened by these words, and how they actually shed light on the possibilities for German development. And because these speeches arose from the most intimate feeling for German national character and from the most intimate kinship with the innermost forces of the German national soul.

But how easily one would say: Yes, what Fichte spoke to the German people in his enthusiastic, fiery speech back then will easily find its way into every soul. But if you start from what Fichte's world view actually is, then you come to something difficult to understand. Oh, honored attendees, if only this prejudice of the difficulty of understanding such creations as Fichte's, Schelling's, Hegel's could fade away: Never could a personality like Johann Gottlieb Fichte have delivered his “Speeches to the German Nation” if one had not experienced that world view in one's soul, which only appears difficult to understand and which he felt, always felt, had arisen in him as if through a dialogue with the German national spirit itself. For that is how he felt about what he had to say!

Now, spiritual science, esteemed attendees, as it is meant here, is based entirely on the premise that there are dormant forces in the human soul that are not used in ordinary external life, not even when one intelligently observes this , nor in ordinary external science; but which must first be developed, [which must first] be brought out of the depths of the human mind, and developed into what can be used for Goethe's expressions: spiritual eyes, spiritual ears - through which one can look into, listen to, the spiritual world - spiritual eyes, spiritual ears!

Spiritual science assumes that such a real inner sense is not bound to a physical organ, but slumbers purely in the soul, but can be brought out of it. Spiritual science assumes that such a sense is able to perceive a real spiritual world that is around us and to which we belong with our souls and with our spirit, just as we belong to the physical-sensual world with our body. Only that when we look at the physical-sensual world with the organ of the physical-sensual body, it presents itself to us, which dies with our death. Whereas when the inner sense of man proceeds just as scientifically as the other senses or external science and through the external mind bound to the brain or nervous system, when the inner sense proceeds in this way with regard to the spiritual world, then man comes to the observation of those forces that are within him and that permeate the entire external world. [He comes to the observation] of those forces that represent for him the eternal, the immortal forces of the soul that go through births and deaths.

To awaken such an inner sense, such inner forces, was Fichte's, Johann Gottlieb Fichte's, unchanging striving for a worldview. He strove for such a sense. He could only do so because this unique quality - we will see later why I say “unique” - of the German national spirit lived in him, this will to acquire in one's own soul, through an elevation, through a strengthening, through a development of the soul forces, something that cannot be acquired if these soul forces are not strengthened , but which is one and the same – not a vague fantasy is meant here – which is one and the same as that which, as spirit, as real, objective spirit, is as objective as the external natural objects are objective for the senses, which, as spirit, permeates and interweaves the world.

For Fichte, the human self was able to live into this human self if the human self was able to grasp itself inwardly in such a way as to grasp what pulses and weaves and lives through the world as its secrets.

Fichte believed that when a person comes to experience this inner self, this center of the soul, in the right sense, in a truly direct and powerful way within themselves, then not only does he live as an individual human being in such inner experience, but then the life of the world, the world spirit, that which is the creative spirit in all things of existence, lives in this inner experience.

This desire to recognize with the innermost sense organ is what is so characteristic of Fichte. And it is characteristic of him because it was in his very nature. It was in his nature to grow together with that which made an impression on him. He did not just hear something, he did not just see something, but when he heard something, when he saw something, he put the whole feeling and life of his personality into what he heard, into what he saw. He was so immersed in what he perceived that he felt creatively immersed in it – recreating the world, recreating nature, recreating every other human life. This was present in him as a personal disposition.

To illustrate this, I would like to mention a few episodes from the life of Fichte, or rather Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He was a small boy of seven years old, a simple weaver's son; there he stood once at the edge of a stream that flowed past his father's small house. He had thrown a book into the stream! And he stood there crying, watching the book float away. Then his father came along and saw what had happened. The fact was that last Christmas his father had given the boy, who was precocious and did well at school, the “Horned Siegfried” as a present. On the boy, on the seven-year-old boy in the blue farmer's coat, the child of simple people, the mighty, the primeval Germanic deed of “Horned Siegfried” made such a powerful impression that he became completely absorbed in it. And then it turned out that one had to say: Although he used to be so diligent, conscientious and dutiful at school, he is now less attentive. He was reproached for this.

What did the seven-year-old boy do? He said to himself: “I like ‘Siegfried’, I love him, I am attached to him; but he must not take my duties from me, so I throw him into the water.

And again: He had turned nine years old. The neighboring landowner had come to the village where Fichte lived to hear the pastor's sermon there on a Sunday. He had arrived too late to hear the sermon. Then someone came up with a solution. They said: “There is a boy of nine who is so good at listening to sermons that he might be able to repeat the most important parts by heart.” And so they brought in nine-year-old Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He stood there awkwardly in his blue peasant's smock. Once the ice was broken, so to speak, he began to develop the sermon as he had heard it. But not, as children relate, by reciting the words from memory. Rather, he recreated them! So that one could see: the inner fire of the soul had grown together with what had reached him from the pulpit. Even as a boy, he was so intimately united with what was around him that he absorbed everything from the world. That was what he realized, and what led him to his world view, [what led him] to his world view in such a way that he felt: What lives as will in the individual person does not live merely as will in that individual person, but what lives as will in the individual person is like that drop taken from the sea, but which is of the same kind as the whole sea. The will that man learns to recognize in his ego, that throbs, lives and weaves through all existence as the will of the world. And when man pronounces “I,” the will of the world speaks in him.

Thus in his world view, the individual ego grew together with the will of the world. And as if on the wings of the will, what radiates from the divine-spiritual existence, from the divine-spiritual will existence, shines into the human soul as duty.

To him, duty became the highest, the most significant, that which enters a person as a duty – in relation to the world and its phenomena – as a task; this was an immediate inspiration of the divine spirit of will, which pulses and weaves and lives through the world.

And so, in his will as in his ego, Johann Gottlieb Fichte felt at one with the existence of the world. He believed that when he spoke, he spoke not out of personal arbitrariness but out of that which the God who wants to speak in the soul wants to say. And one really cannot imagine that anyone could have been more earnest than Fichte was when, for example, he spoke to his audience in Jena and tried to convey to the souls of his listeners what he had experienced in his soul as a world-certainty.

It was not a matter of merely communicating certain content, certain sentences, so that they would be heard, as was the case with other speakers; no, but for him, when he ascended the lectern, it was a matter of carrying in his soul something to carry in his soul something of which he knew - in true humility, in all modesty: “The world-will, ruling through the world, speaks through me; it must be carried into the souls of my listeners on the wings of my words. And there must be established that connection between the souls of my listeners and the divine-spiritual world-will, by which I myself am aglow and inspired.

And deep within his soul – within Fichte's soul – was the realization that the deepest thing in the world must be grasped by the innermost part of the soul. In turn, here is a short story, which is familiar to those who have studied Johann Gottlieb Fichte, about how he made the following demand of his listeners, for example. As an example of how he sought to establish an immediate personal connection with his listeners, he said: “Gentlemen, think the wall.” And so the people thought about the wall; it was easy for them. After he had let them think about the wall for a while, he said: “And now think about the one who just thought about the wall!” Then the people were already somewhat strangely touched; they did not really know what they should do; they were referred to their own inner being. They should become strong in themselves, in their own inner being, that which, as something impersonal and spiritual, permeates and interweaves the world.

In this way he sought to reach his listeners. And his words were not words shaped in the ordinary way. People who knew him well said: His speech rolls along like thunder, and his words are discharged like individual lightning bolts. He sought not merely to educate good souls, but to educate great souls.

And another said of him: Oh, with Fichte it is so that he lives and moves in the realm of the invisible world of thought; not like one who dwells within, but like one who rules this invisible world.

It was out of such a spirit that Fichte then, in his Berlin lectures from 1811 to 1813, said things that were probably not often uttered before a university audience. He spoke of a “new sense”, of a spiritual sense that is necessary for man if he wants to know the eternal in contrast to the temporal. He spoke of this by comparing this sense with another sense that prevails in ordinary life. He said: “My dear listeners! If a single soul – he meant Fichte's soul – were to appear among a number of people who cannot see Fichte and have never seen Fichte, would they not declare what he has to say to be fantasy? But it is the same with everything that your senses can see compared to what man can see when the new sense - as Fichte called it - the spiritual vision, opens up to him, through which a new world arises.

A genuine spiritual-scientific striving is developed here out of German scientific striving! And Fichte said, being aware of the contrast between this German striving and the Romance striving in relation to knowledge, Fichte said: This striving, that is a striving that emerges from the original source of the living, and that does not merely want to establish a knowledge of the dead.

Even more thoroughly than Fichte was able to do, one can point to certain Western views of eternity, which show quite clearly how different Fichte is from the world development of humanity than, for example, similar spirits from the Romance, French tradition. Take the excellent philosopher Descartes, Cartesius, who was active in France at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In a similar way to Fichte, he wants to start from what is in the soul: “I think, therefore I am” - “Cogito ergo sum”. But what does it represent? An endeavour to use the intellect to clarify what one already has. Fichte's energetic activity strives to develop in the soul something that one does not yet have, in order to recognize the actual, deep secrets of the world. And one need only mention one thing that comes to light particularly strongly in Cartesius, in Descartes. Descartes also tried to gain clarity about nature from the innermost depths of his spirit, from the innermost depths of the human spirit. About that which is around us. But he does not start from the living and therefore cannot come to the living. And it is characteristic of Cartesius, of Descartes, that he regards not only the other natural phenomena, but also the animals as inanimate, as moving, soulless machines. This is no exaggeration, this is a genuine Descartesian theory: only man, who experiences a soul within himself, actually has a soul in the true sense of the word. The rest of nature is soulless.

Compare this view of nature as something soulless, compare the directly living in Fichte: the soul of man stands in it in the divine will, which pulses and weaves through the world. He looks at external things, but he looks at them in such a way that man is called upon to see in external, material things that in which he has to see the divine will... ... and living everywhere, everywhere ensouled.

The time will come, honored attendees, when people will indeed pay attention to these differences between the individual nations, because the realization of these differences of such outstanding minds must bear fruit. We Germans have no need to prove all that we have now heard from some outstanding personalities on the enemy side. We Germans have no need to join in the tone of not only the misjudgment but the slander of German intellectual life, as we can hear it everywhere. But we do have reason to penetrate into the peculiar, into the essence of German intellectual life.

And then, like Fichte's follower, we see standing before us, also unrecognized, but as a personality who will already celebrate his resurrection, Joseph Wilhelm Schelling. Schelling does not stand there like Fichte. That is precisely what is significant in German intellectual life, this versatility, this diversity. He does not stand there like Fichte; Fichte stands there as if emerging from the contemplation of the individual personality, becoming aware of the world-will pulsating and interweaving through the world. Fichte's entire personality is active out of the will. Out of the soul, out of this German soul – for which the other languages of the West do not even have a literal translation – out of this German soul, Schelling creates his magnificent view of nature and spirit, which only appears difficult to understand.

For Schelling, nature is not something dead, something merely mechanistic; rather, nature is that which has been created out of the same forces over the course of millennia and millennia, out of the same forces that the human soul feels within itself when it truly goes within. And then Schelling looks at nature and can say to himself: That which lives and moves out there in nature – the same powers of the human soul that now come into being in human souls – have created that, have created a foundation for themselves, a preparation; so that they can arise and appear internalized in the human mind, in the human soul.

And so, for Schelling, soul and nature grow together in such a way that he coins the certainly one-sided sentence: To recognize nature is to create nature!

It does not matter at all whether one becomes a follower or an opponent of these great people, whether one agrees or declares oneself to be an opponent of what these great minds have expressed; today this can even appear childish; it does not matter; but what matters is to look at these personalities and to see the best in their personalities, their spiritual striving. It must not be a matter of repeating what someone has said out of the spirit of his time, but of strengthening and empowering oneself in relation to one's own soul forces, in order to perhaps create something completely different today from what Fichte can give than what Fichte gave.

If you see it the way those who heard Schelling, Friedrich Joseph Wilhelm Schelling, did – I myself met people who heard him in his old age and who fully confirmed what those who were young when Schelling was young had to say, when Schelling was at the University of Jena at the end of the 1790s. This is how they spoke, for example – I am telling you what Schubert, who himself was a deep spirit who wanted to penetrate into the depths of the human soul, wrote in his diaries after hearing Schelling in Jena: If someone came during a few afternoon hours on a weekday, Schubert says, you saw an eventful life in Jena. But this eventful life did not come from some kind of frequent celebration, not from some other kind of gathering; rather, this eventful life was because the hour was approaching when not only students, but mature men of all professions went to Schelling's lecture hall. Schubert continues: “The personal impression Schelling made on me was of a great, powerful man.” When Schelling spoke, it seemed to him as if he were standing there and his spiritual musings were directly connected to the spiritual world and his words were shaped in such a way that he grasped what he had to say from what he looked into: the spiritual world.

Fichte came across as a powerful person, as a powerful representative of the German essence. Schelling came across as an educator, a philosophical educator, who appeared to his listeners as if he was surrounded by an aura of spirituality, which he knew how to communicate even as a young man to those who listened to him. And those who heard him in his old age – as I said, I myself still knew people like that – [they] assured that the eye, which still sparkled in old age, spoke of the immediate personal nature of nature, which presented itself to him in the communications that he sought to give to humanity, not out of prudent wisdom, but out of an inner vision of the spiritual world. And Schelling speaks of the so-called [intellectual] views. In this way we have coined the word in his way for the new sense, for the spiritual sense, the spiritual sense that can be awakened in man and is able to look into the spiritual world. Schelling's way of speaking of this spiritual sense may be one-sided; but the fact that it could be spoken of with such earnestness in German intellectual life is one of the most significant intellectual blossoms, in the presence of which one must feel in the right sense.

The third person to be considered among those who created the world view from which Goethe's “Faust” and the other works of art emerged is Hegel. In Hegel, we again notice how he strives to relive in what the soul experiences in itself as an individual soul that which permeates the world, that which pulses through the world. But while Fichte sought this in the will and Schelling in the mind, Hegel sought it in pure, senseless thought. And when thought becomes completely pure, when thought does not lean on that which the senses observe externally, but when thought creates itself as free thought out of the soul, then for Hegel it is not the human soul alone but for Hegel it is the divine world-being that penetrates into the soul and that now kindles its world-thoughts, which gave rise to things outside, in the human soul as the light of the soul itself.

In Hegel, we have a remarkable kind of mysticism that does not want to revel in dark feelings, not a mysticism that wants to live only in feeling, because it believes that in feeling alone it is more closely in touch with the secrets of the world than in thinking. We have a mysticism in Hegel that is intellectually clear and yet not intellectually superficial, a mysticism that is suffused with the light of ideas, with the light of thought. But Hegel seeks to bring to life in his soul those thoughts that truly bring man together with divine thoughts. I would like to say: mystical, but not mystical darkness, but mystical light, mystical brightness.

Hegel did indeed oppose the idea that the new meaning, the inner meaning, should become something that man could only receive through a special disposition; and that is why he criticized Schelling, who spoke of [intellectual] intuition. In a sense, Hegel was right, because for every human being – you only need to read about it in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” , for every human being, this new sense is attainable if only he wants to develop it. And this new sense, basically it lives most beautifully, most gloriously in that man, in the German, to whom Fichte, when he showed him his seemingly so dark, arbitrary teaching, wrote in 1794: Philosophical endeavor, like every pure philosophical endeavor, weaves itself into the spirituality of your feeling; for this pure spirituality of your feeling is actually the touchstone. - So Fichte wrote to Goethe in 1794.

And Goethe himself, in the beautiful essay he calls “Contemplative Judgment,” spoke of the fact that there cannot be only one way of looking at the world that relies on the external senses. Rather, just as the power of judgment judgment otherwise judges only about the external sensory experiences, so the power of judgment can develop an impulse in itself, which unfolds an inner life, so that it sees the spiritual, as the senses see the sensual.

Kant still had this inner vision, this vision of the spiritual through the human spirit, of the divine spirit through the human spirit. Goethe said: Let us then bravely face this adventure of reason! And it is from this inner sense that everything Goethe wanted to offer to science was created. And Goethe, in his scientific and cognitive struggles, showed most clearly how the German mind must understand the world differently than the Western mind.

In his early youth, Goethe encountered what Descartes' worldview had become within the development of the French world view. While Descartes still regarded animals as machines, de La Mettrie had already written the book “Man a Machine”! The mechanistic worldview, rooted in the French national character, is a mechanistic view of the world, a view of the world as a mechanism.

And when this worldview was presented to young Goethe, he said, from his German worldview: “Now they are telling us about atoms that collide with each other; this great world machine. If only they would explain to us how this beautiful and diverse world can arise from these colliding atoms. But after they have shown us how the atoms collide and push each other, they do not explain anything more about it!

Now, this striving has been preserved in the mechanism to this day. The mechanistic world view is actually the French world view. Of course, esteemed attendees, this is not meant to apply to the individual members of a nation; individuality can rise above nationality, above that which has been discussed and which arises from the character, from the inner nature of nationality. And here I believe that the right thing has been said. I would like to let the voice of a man be heard, the voice of a man who may perhaps be heard when considering the striving of the French nation towards a scientific world view. This man says:

"Thirst for truth is not a French passion. Appearance is more important than essence, the shell more than the kernel, form more than substance, the shiny more than the fertile, public opinion more than conscience. This means that the center of gravity of the Frenchman is not within himself, but in the others, in the multitude. Individuals are zeros; the digit that forms them into a number comes from outside: that is the sovereign, the writer of the day, the most-read newspaper, in a word, the current master of fashion. All this can be deduced from an exaggerated sociability; it stifles in the soul the courage to resist, the power of judgment, personal conviction, the cult of the ideal."

This was not written by a German out of one-sided national sentiment, but rather, dear honored attendees, it was written in 1875 by Amiel, Henri Frederic Amiel, the French Swiss at the University of Geneva! He could know as someone who, although he was deeply familiar with German intellectual life, was bound to French intellectual life by his blood ties. And in 1862, Amiel wrote the following:

"I feel a common bond with a Goethe, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Leibniz, who are nevertheless sufficiently different from one another, while French philosophers, orators or mathematicians leave me cold despite their great qualities, because they do not carry the sum of general life within them, do not control all of reality, gag me or make me suspicious. What the French lack is direct knowledge of the living unity, a sense of the sacred, a feeling for the mysteries of being; what is theirs is the foundation of specialized sciences, the art of making a book, it is style, politeness, grace, a sense of order, art for art's sake, discipline, elegance, truth in the details, staging, proselytizing zeal, strength in practical conclusions. But for the journey through Inferno and Paradise, other guides are needed; they are rooted to the earth, in the realm of the finite, changing, historical, and limited. Mechanism and dualism are the pinnacles of their intellectual flight. To break out of this circle, they must force themselves.

One does not want to present a one-sided view, not out of national sentiment; therefore one must choose something that is said by someone who says it out of his own attachment, out of his blood ties to the French nation.

But the time has come when, just as other things, the relationship between the individual elements of the nation must be recognized objectively. And once one has achieved something like Fichte's achievement – Fichte, for whom that which lives outside in the world of the senses is, so to speak, the nationalized field of duty – if one compares that with what lives in the British, in the English world-view, then one need only point to where one will, take old Baco of Verulam, who would accept nothing except what the senses see externally – everything else is an 'idol' to him; and his book about idols is an attempt to prove that what man can grasp in his soul has no objective validity beyond sensuality. And if we go up to Spencer and all those who have a similar view, we arrive at the latest English world view, which has been developed out of the English view: it calls itself pragmatism. What is this pragmatism? It is not something that applies to us Germans. For us Germans, as with Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, it is something that experiences truth, and by experiencing truth, one lives together with the world spirit. But the Romance peoples and the British have no conception of the objective world spirit at all. It is something that will only be fully recognized in the future. [...] Truth [...] is something that arises in the soul as a result of this soul growing together with the world spirit itself. Then the soul brings this truth to bear on external things, and the external things become a revelation of spiritual truth. What are they to pragmatism, to this pragmatic product of a worldview? A caricature! I say this, as I said, out of pure fact, not out of any antipathy. For this pragmatism, truth is only of value insofar as one connects concepts and ideas in the spiritual, which are actually only brackets, only bands that bind together the external sensual facts, so that one can find one's way in the external sensual world. Truth has no meaning in itself, has no value in itself.

A person, for example, commits an act; he has thoughts. All this is expressed. We seek the soul for thoughts and actions. The soul is a real being for us. And as we grow together with the truth, the soul itself becomes a reality for us, it is grasped as a reality.

For pragmatism, the soul is a concept that was formed to orient oneself, to hold together the otherwise disintegrating thoughts of man as with a bracket. Truth is what is useful if one wants to understand the world. - The pragmatist forms concepts and ideas with a view to usefulness, so that he can find his way in the world.

One has only to compare this with what lives in the characterized summit of German intellectual life, and one will be able to get an idea of the spiritual world position of the German within the developmental history of humanity.

But now something else comes. If you look at Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, they are great, important minds, geniuses; they represent the coming together of man with the secrets of the world from three different sides: from the side of will, from the side of thought, and from the side of feeling. If anyone today still thinks – and most people do, in fact, think – that it must be so, that they are difficult [to read and understand], then I may well express my conviction that there is a way to present what these spirits have achieved in such a form that even the simplest mind can grasp what it is about, if it only wants to. These spirits can be fruitfully employed in schools; [that they cannot be fruitfully employed there] is merely a prejudice. But the peculiar thing that confronts one when one contemplates these spirits, esteemed attendees, is that in their triplicity something like a unity hovering over them asserts itself! One has the feeling that something is being expressed in three ways, invisibly prevailing over the three. It is what one might call: the German folk spirit itself.

Amiel - again the French Swiss - has sensed something of the fact that the German folk spirit itself seeks to grow together in the souls with the innermost reason for things. Therefore Amiel says:

“Perhaps only the Germanic spirit has the need to think for itself, to search for the very basis of things.”

Amiel therefore goes on to say:

“The German spirit, like the collective inspiration, passes into these characteristic personalities; it speaks through them.”

Therefore, dear attendees, it could happen that personalities actually came along, personalities whose work is largely forgotten today. Therefore, I may speak today by wanting to reopen this as if it were a faded, forgotten pursuit of the development of German thought. Personalities who are largely forgotten today, they appear after the great personalities just mentioned. And the strange thing is that, while these personalities are smaller minds, less ingenious, after the three greats, they even show greater achievements in the field of spiritual searching, more penetrating achievements than the great ones who preceded them. Of course, the great ones need stimulation; but the lesser ones who follow usually achieve greater things, at least more penetrating things, from what has once been stimulated within German intellectual development. They are closer to the soul's inner search for the concrete spiritual world, for the search for spiritual entities that can be found with the characterized sense, just as one finds concrete external natural objects and natural facts through the external senses.

And among these lesser spirits is the son of the great Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Immanuel Hermann Fichte. Certainly, there are not many today who still occupy themselves with this Immanuel Hermann Fichte; but Immanuel Hermann Fichte – to mention only that – already stands there and says: the human being whom we observe with our outer senses, the human being who is made of flesh and blood, is bound to the perishable earthly in terms of his material and his powers. But in this human being there is another human being. This other human being – I mentioned him earlier in these lectures. People still laugh about it a lot today. But they will not always laugh! That other person, whom Immanuel Hermann Fichte calls the “ethereal man”, is a supersensible, higher person who has certain higher powers through which he is just as connected to the eternal spiritual aspect of existence, to the whole universe, as his perishable body is bound here to the physical-sensory powers of the earth. And the etheric body, which Hermann Immanuel Fichte assumes, is what first builds the physical body!

And another spirit can appear before us, again more or less forgotten, but no less significant and no less characteristic for the innermost freedom and for the innermost strengthening of the forces of German intellectual life: that is Troxler. Who still knows him today? But how he stands before him who got to know him! Troxler wrote his beautiful lectures on a world view in the 1840s. In them, we see emphasized, again and again, how the human being who stands before us with his senses lives within a spiritual world, a spiritual human being who has a spiritual world around him just as the sensual human being has a sensual world around him. Troxler speaks of abilities that the soul has, which are only hidden in ordinary life. Troxler speaks of what he calls the “super-spiritual sense”.

What does he mean by that? When Troxler speaks of the super-spiritual sense, he means that the senses we usually call that and that have different organs are not the only organs of perception for humans; but that humans can perceive another world with new organs, with new senses, with purely spiritual senses, which is just as full of content as the external physical world.

I have said here before that many people today believe that there is a spiritual world in general. And anyone who bandies a few pantheistic terms about, thinking they are talking about a spiritual world – spirit, spirit and more spirit – is merely bandying abstract terms! Spiritual science speaks of the individual spiritual beings that can be seen; just as one does not always say only “nature, nature, nature!” when faced with the external physical world, but rather “lilies, tulips, carnations” and so on. Specifically, one shows what physical nature produces individually. In the same way, one can show what spiritual nature shows individually. This is what Troxler means when he speaks of the 'super-spiritual sense'. And then he speaks of the 'supersensible spirit', which is not dependent on sensuality, but which knows itself within the spiritual, which feels itself as a body within the spiritual.

But Troxler goes even deeper in his discussion of this spiritual, this higher human being, who goes through births and deaths. And it is wonderful how Troxler – not in an abstract, indefinite way – addresses the higher human being in a very definite way. Even if this is a faded, forgotten tone in the development of German thought, it lives in it. And whether one notices what is alive there or not is certainly important for understanding; but even if one has not noticed it, it lives in the development of German thought and will be noticed! It will celebrate its resurrection as an actual spiritual science!

Then Troxler sees that in the human soul, insofar as it experiences itself between birth and death in the outer physicality, three forces live - as the most beautiful forces according to Troxler's world of vision. First there is the power of faith - that which man has as the power of faith. What a person has as love power, he has it as the power of his soul, but in the soul, insofar as this soul lives in the body. Behind the power of faith, however, there is another, higher power for the soul itself, and Troxler calls this spiritual hearing. That is to say, he believes that the human being can develop the outer form, so to speak, the shell for a spiritual hearing, through which the human being, when he becomes aware of it, can perceive the language of spiritual beings, which speak of the eternal secrets of existence. Thus, faith appears as the outer shell of a much deeper power, an eternal power in man. Spiritual hearing is love, the power of love, which expresses itself in the body as the most beautiful, greatest flowering of the human soul. Nevertheless, for Troxler this is only the outer expression of the power of spiritual touch, of spiritual feeling. The one who loves has the most beautiful flowering of human existence on earth. For him, love is the shell for the powers of which he can become aware, which extend the spiritual organs in the material world so that he can touch the spiritual world as he touches physical things with his physical senses of touch.

And what lives in us as the power of hope is in turn the shell for Troxler, the power of spiritual vision.

So that Troxler sees a higher person in the ordinary person - a higher person who has a spiritual sense just as the physical person has a physical hearing; who has a spiritual feeling just as the physical person has a physical feeling and who has a spiritual vision, a spiritual soul. And that we can be seeing, loving and hearing people in the body, that is for Troxler because, when we go through the gate of death, our soul goes out of the body. The power of faith then appears as spiritual hearing, the power of love as spiritual touch, the power of hope as spiritual strength.

It is in this spirit that Troxler also expresses the following very beautifully. He knows that, in terms of feeling, we are closer to things on a human and spiritual level than with the mere abstract mind. But one can develop such thoughts that are just as close to the direct experience of the thing as feelings usually are. Nor does Troxler seek a sentimental mysticism. This is foreign to the essentially German nature! That vague, hazy sentimentality of mysticism is not part of the German character; it is also foreign to Troxler. But Troxler nevertheless speaks of “thoughts felt” - of thoughts that, like feelings, live as thoughts in the soul. He speaks of “intelligent feeling” and of sensitive thoughts - thoughts that touch the spiritual life!

Troxler is completely imbued with this view. And he once speaks of how he feels in harmony with the entire spiritual life of the German people through such a view, insofar as this spiritual life has appeared in great personalities after Christ. There Troxler says once - I will read these words to you myself:

"Even in the past, philosophers distinguished a fine, noble soul body from the coarser body... a soul that had an image of the body, which they called a schema, and which was the higher inner man... In more recent times, even Kant in Dreams of a Spirit-Seer seriously jokes about an entire internal spiritual human being who carries all the limbs of the external one on his spirit body. Lavater writes more and thinks the same; and even when Jean Paul humorously jokes about the Bonn under-skirt and the Platner soul-corset, which are said to be hidden in the coarser body-skirt and , we also hear him asking: “What is the purpose of and where did these extraordinary abilities and desires come from that lie dormant in us, like swallowed diamonds, slowly cutting through our earthly shell? ... In the stony limbs of

of man

“grow and mature in a way that is unknown to us... We could”

says Troxler further.

"cite a myriad of similar ways of thinking and creating, which in the end are only different perceptions and representations in which... the true, only teaching of the individuality and immortality of man is contained.

Troxler also speaks of the possibility of a science of man on the path of knowledge he sought, through which – to use his own terms – the “super-spiritual sense” in union with the “supernatural spirit” can grasp the supernatural essence of man in his “anthroposophy”.

Troxler cites these [individual personalities], and many others could be cited who, entirely from the essence of German national identity, sought the way to the real, true spiritual world. And before Troxler's [inner eye] stood a certain science. He thought: When man observes man himself with his senses and explains this observation with his mind, which is connected to the senses, then anthropology arises – the science of man through the senses. But anthropology arises from man observing man as a sensual being; but the spiritual man, the higher man with the awakened senses that we have already spoken of, can also observe man; then a higher science arises. In 1835, Troxler spoke beautifully of this higher science, as anthropology is, saying:

Although it is highly gratifying that the latest philosophy, which... must reveal itself in every anthroposophy... must reveal itself, is moving upwards, it cannot be overlooked that this idea cannot be a fruit of speculation, and that the true individuality of man must not be confused either with what it sets up as subjective spirit or finite ego, nor with what it confronts it with as absolute spirit or absolute personality.

This German spiritual life developed entirely out of the German national character. And is it not wonderful to experience such a phenomenon as this: In the 50s of the last century, a simple pastor in Sachsenberg in the Principality of Waldeck published a simple little book, a wonderful little book that is at the height of spiritual science, that stands apart from all materialism, but also from all mere intellectual and conceptual considerations, that sets out to consider the human soul in such a way that it can grasp spiritual reality.

Some of the simple Rocholler writing, which is simply written for seeking circles, may seem fantastic, but that does not matter; what matters is that we have here a simple person, at the pinnacle of education, leading a way into the spiritual worlds. It is the intention that counts. That is why intentions such as this little book, which was published in Waldeck in 1856, are so infinitely important. And anyone who might think that I am choosing to present these phenomena in order to prove something is quite mistaken.

However, over the past few decades, circumstances have developed in such a way that even the vast majority of scholars were numbed by what Goethe, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel had created, and descended from this height, thinking: the one-sided, materialistic Darwinism had proved powerful, the French materialism had proved powerful.

But what I am characterizing is not something that can be explained away by German intellectual life alone; rather, hundreds and hundreds of such phenomena could be cited. When people actually become aware of this, they will see the depth of German insight that can be drawn from German national character. For that is what really strives for a German world view, from German intellectual life.

Perhaps it may be mentioned, just as an aside, how profound these things actually are. Who among physicists, overwhelmed by French mechanism and English utilitarian philosophy, does not laugh inwardly when he praises them outwardly? I may well speak about the matter, for more than thirty years have passed since I endeavored to bring out the deep significance of Goethe's Theory of Colors in opposition to that theory of colors which is completely overwhelmed by Newtonism and by mechanism in general. Whenever you talk to a modern physicist about Goethe's theory of colors, all you get is, “Goethe's theory of colors doesn't tell you anything.”

This is quite understandable for someone who is familiar with today's circumstances; but there is something here. And that is that Goethe, through his direct coexistence with the mystery of the color spectrum, has created a tremendous work about nature and dared to oppose the intellectual appropriation by the British in Newton, and that the world has not understood it. But the chapter has yet to be written: Goethe - also in the theory of colors - is right against Newton, when one will grasp even more deeply what Fichte calls Germanness within Europe.

I could point to many other minds. As I said, you only need to pick them out. For example, I could point out a soul researcher - Schultz-Schultzenstein is his name, that is certainly a German name: Schultz-Schultzenstein - who tries to place the soul life of man under the concept of “rejuvenation” in the 1850s of the last century. Schultzenstein was able to offer some wonderful insights! He said that the human soul can only be properly understood in its life here between birth and death by observing the experiences it has as feelings and thoughts at the various stages of its life. And as it progresses, one can follow how the soul, like a previous skin, sheds what has already been experienced, and something continuous, something alive is renewed and rejuvenated within the soul.

I can point to another mind, whose literary activity also began in the 1850s and who died unnoticed in 1880. In my book “The Riddles of Philosophy” - [...] already in the first edition, which appeared in 1900 - I referred to Karl Christian Planck. He was a mind that was aware of how it created from German national character. Who knows him! But that does not matter, because what was in him as a force is at work in the German character, is at work in Central Europe and brings forth what belongs to the best life in Central Europe.

I would like to mention just one thing to show Karl Christian Planck's originality. Today, from the point of view of natural science, anyone who believes that they understand everything – to look at it the way the French look at the earth, the way the English observer looks at the earth, the way the geological observer looks at the earth – they look at the universe that consists of matter. For Planck, such an observer of the earth is like someone who would look at a tree only in terms of the trunk and the wood, and not in terms of the essence of the tree, the leaves, the blossoms and the fruits! For Planck, we do not see the earth in its entirety if we do not also see the whole human being on the earth. Planck looks at the earth as a spirit would, from the outside. And in what the geologist sees, we see only part of the earth, like the trunk, the wood of the tree, but nothing else of the nature of the earth. For Karl Christian Planck, the Earth is not only a living being, but a living, spiritualized living being. And what the physical human being himself is – as a flower, as a fruit – that belongs to the essence of the Earth. – A spiritual – Goethe would say – a spiritual worldview. And Christian Karl Planck is aware that he comes to such a spiritual worldview from the depths of the German people. Planck already expresses this beautifully in the 1860s. He has written several books; the books he has written breathe the breath of such a worldview. In 1864, in his book “Grundlinien einer Wissenschaft der Natur” (Foundations of a Science of Nature), he expresses beautifully how he is aware that he has come to his view, which sees the spirit in nature, from the depths of the German essence. I will read the words to you myself:

What power

writes Planck

deep-rooted prejudices from the previous view from his

the author's

writing, the author is fully aware of this; but just as the work itself, despite all the unfavorable circumstances, which, according to the author's

situation and professional position,

a work of this kind has been opposed, but has fought its way to its realization and its path into the public, so he is also certain that what must now first fight for its recognition will one day appear as the simplest and most self-evident truth, and that in it not only his cause, but the truly German view of things, will triumph over all still unworthy external and un-German conception of nature and spirit.

What our medieval poetry has unconsciously and profoundly foreshadowed will finally be fulfilled in our nation as the times mature. The impractical inwardness of the German spirit, which was met with harm and ridicule (as Wolfram describes it in his Parzival)

In 1864, before Wagner, these words were truly written!

finally, in the strength of its unceasing striving, it attains the highest; it looks into the last simple laws of things and of human existence itself; and what poetry has symbolized in a fantastically medieval way in the wonders of the Grail, the mastery of which is attained by its hero, that conversely receives its purely natural fulfillment and reality in the enduring knowledge of nature and of the spirit itself.

Karl Christian Planck died at the age of eighty. He left behind a writing that he called “The Testament of a German”; the first edition was published in 1881; the second edition by Diederichs Verlag in 1912. Who has dealt with it?

Well, people had other things to do! For example, they had to deal with the books published by the same publishing house by a man who lives in a rigid spirit - of course, that is not meant as a criticism of him at all; they also dealt with the books by the French philosopher - his name is still Bergson - a French name! He is the one who, since the beginning of the war, has not found enough defamatory words for the German worldview and German intellectual life. I think I actually said last year that this Bergson kept saying to his Frenchmen in Paris: the Germans once had a significant intellectual life, but now they have completely degenerated; all that can be seen is their mechanistic life. I said last year that in earlier times, good Henri Bergson would recite Novalis and Goethe and Schiller to you, in a time when he might not yet have called it “mechanical.” It cannot be emphasized enough. One looked out into the world with admiration. Not only now, during the war and the period of hatred – I have also tried to point out before what Bergson's “philosophy” is like.

A special feature of Bergson's philosophy is the following: He comes up with an idea; but he puts it forward in a light-hearted way. It consists in saying that one does not proceed correctly when one looks at the development of the world in such a way that one regards the subordinate beings as the origin of what man descends from, because one must start from man. That is indeed a very good thought: we must start from man. Man is the most original thing before any other being of the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdom existed. This is not understood today, but it is nevertheless founded in the writing on the reorganization of the world view of Bergson.

This also emerged in Planck's work: before the other things were there, man was there, albeit in different forms, and then he pushed away certain things that he could not use in his development, and so man came into being by excluding the plant and animal kingdoms. Just as man secretes his bones inwards, so that which is placed at the top, the plant kingdom, the mineral kingdom, secretes itself out of itself. This is a thought, esteemed attendees, that will become established in German intellectual life once the material colorations of Darwinism have been refuted and correctly illuminated.

All right, Bergson presents this; but I was able to show – as I said, just before the war, so that people would not think that it is only under the influence of the war events that things are now being characterized as they are here – I was able to show that precisely this idea, which – in a somewhat simplified form – the French philosopher Henri Bergson – that this idea, which already in the 1870s, 1882 [published], lived in the German thinker Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss – also a faded, forgotten aspiration of German intellectual life – was powerfully and energetically advocated by Preuss!

I am quoting a few words in which I have cited this Prussian, this German view of the matter; I am quoting these words from Pruss's book “Geist und Stoff” - 1899 in second edition already published. It says:

"It may therefore be time to establish a [different] doctrine of the origin of the organic species, which is not only based on one-sidedly established propositions from descriptive natural science, but is also in full agreement with the other laws of nature, which are at the same time also laws of human thought. A doctrine, at the same time, that is free of any hypothetization and is based only on strict conclusions from scientific observations in the broadest sense; a doctrine that rescues the species concept according to actual possibility, but at the same time adopts the concept of evolution as proposed by Darwin and seeks to make it fruitful in its realm.

The center of this new doctrine is man, the only species on our planet that recurs: Homo sapiens. It is strange that the older observers started with natural objects and then went so astray that they could not find the way to man, which Darwin only managed in the most miserable and thoroughly unsatisfactory way by seeking the progenitor of the Lord of Creation among the animals, while the naturalist would have to start with himself as a human being, in order to gradually return to humanity through the whole realm of being and thinking.

It was not by chance that human nature emerged from the development of all earthly things, but by necessity. Man is the goal of telluric processes and every other form that emerged alongside him borrowed its features from his. Man is the first-born being of the whole cosmos...

When its germs had arisen, the remaining organic residue no longer had the necessary power to produce further human germs. What did arise became animal or plant...

and so on. Bergson, the Frenchman, either does not know this German predecessor – which, in the case of a philosopher, would of course be just as big a mistake as if he knew him and did not name him; but the latter is to be assumed in the case of Bergson! He accuses today's Germans of mechanism! In the meantime, it has been possible to show that entire pages in Bergson's books have been copied from the Germans, whom he now disowns. Entire pages of arguments have been copied from Schelling and Schopenhauer by Henri Bergson! This is perhaps not a mechanical way of constructing intellectual life.

I would like to say: With something like this in the background, Germany's enemies now dare, insofar as they are represented by such personalities, to defame and belittle the German essence. But precisely from what is now at stake, in the world-historical development, this German essence will learn to assert that which lies at the bottom of its being, also in world-historical becoming.

Dear attendees, what is happening now – before world history – needs little saying to characterize it as one might imagine an objective act is characterized: There are enemies surrounding Central Europe. One need only mention a few figures that will speak strongly in the future, when things will be seen differently than Germany's enemies see them now: 777 million people, not counting the Italians, stood around Central Europe facing a group of 150 million. 777 million against 150 million. Do they need to be envious of this Central Europe? Well, the property of these 777 million people covers 68 million square kilometers, compared to the 6 million square kilometers of property owned by the 150 million in Central Europe. And these 777 million – multiplied by Italy – against these 150 million, they are in a position where they not only want to fight with weapons, but also want to have the better part of the rest of the world, want to starve the 150 million people. And leading people - people called “great personalities” from Germany's side - they indulge in the most vicious accusations and slanders of the spiritual life that has emerged in the 6 million square kilometers in the middle of Europe and show how little they understand of what is alive there.

Besides Bergson, there is, for example, the French philosopher Boutroux – shortly before the war, he was still traveling around in Germany, even giving lectures in German about the close scientific relationship between Germans and Frenchmen! Now he is saying things like this to his fellow Parisians: The Germans imagined that they had come to the end of all searching. With this, they also imagined that they were at the center of the divine order of the world and that they could rule over all men. [...]

We do not need to fall into this tone; but it is necessary to point out such facts and to get to know the facts. After all, Boutroux also managed – well, the Frenchman is witty – to make a joke not too long ago: the Frenchman, the Englishman and the German are talking about the pursuit of a worldview, of knowledge of external things; Boutroux said to his partner: the Frenchman, if he wants to get to know a camel, goes to the menagerie, looks at a camel and then describes it. The Englishman goes to the area where camels live, looks at the camel and then describes it. The German neither goes to the menagerie to see a camel nor to the area where camels live in distant lands, but goes into his room and studies the camel in its inwardness in its being and creates the camel in himself out of his being. The French are witty! Just this joke about Boutroux comes from Heinrich Heine!

And so much more could be said. It must be said: the German does not really need to fall back into the ways of those around him! But the German has all the more need to engage with that which is currently the best part of his nature in the pursuit of knowledge. The German nature will also overcome those prejudices which arise from the fact that, under the influence of French and English materialism, a person who searches for spiritual science is still considered today to be a dreamer, a person who does not live in reality: Oh, when you see someone like Planck or [someone like] Preuss – well, these people can spin theories, but to engage with reality, to see what lives in reality, that's what the “practitioners” are for; someone like Planck, you can't use him for life!

I could give many examples; I will just mention one in connection with Planck, since I was allowed to discuss him: about 35 years ago (Planck died in 1881) he wrote words that I will even read out. He was not a diplomat; he was not a politician; he was not one of those preachers who believe that they have a complete understanding of the workings of the world, that they have “lived it all,” who know how to speak authoritatively about everything from a broad perspective and disdain those who live only in the spiritual world. He was none of these. He was a simple man of vision! But a man who was able to see into the course of events. And what he developed before 1881 is written in his Testament of a German. He died in 1881. In it he wrote about what presented itself to him in the development of Europe. And he looked at it with discerning eyes. He wrote that war must come. And about this war he wrote the following words:

“If a people, universalistic and central by its very nature, is now in the sharpest contrast to its earlier history, unites to form a pure nation-state and, for all others, increases to the highest military armament, what else can be the consequence in a time of the highest national aspirations than ultimately the most comprehensive clash?”

So says the “impractical man of world view”! How many people who were practically inside the circumstances did not believe, when the war broke out, that the Italian would also stand against Central Europe! But the impractical man of conviction knew how to say this in 1881. Not only will the Russian East rise up against Central Europe, but as in the past we will also have to defend ourselves in the West and in the South.

“It is not only the antagonism of political interests that must provoke him,”

"but, as it is now becoming increasingly clear, above all the conflict of economic interests in their still nationally bound, still inorganically opposed form. And the more the contradictions and evils that this state of affairs brings about in relation to the universalistic increase of means of communication, which have already been discussed earlier, must come to the fore, the sharper the tension that arises on all sides as a result.

And to this is added another contrast, in which the inherent one-sidedness of our Western culture has created an enemy, and which, by the nature of things, must become hostile above all to the German spirit. From the very beginning, as we saw, Western Christianity and its striving for a full, humanly present mediation of the divine content has gone hand in hand with the rigid otherworldliness and bondage of the Oriental and Byzantine essence, for which ecclesiastical and political power and authority directly coincided. In this rigid unity, the Christian East remained just as unfreely confined as, conversely, in the West, the free national development overgrew religious unity and pushed it into the background. But the one-sided, secular, and outwardly material character of Western culture, which is rooted in this, has also made it possible for the unfree East to appropriate these external cultural means without having to absorb the deeper, free, spiritual side of that development. On the contrary, it only helped him to confront the West, which had fallen into a one-sided national separate existence, all the more consciously in the self-confidence of his distinctive religious and political unity, and thus, in view of the still unfinished state of other Slavic tribes and the disintegrating Turkish Empire, to claim an even more far-reaching significance for himself. And precisely because of this, by the very nature of things, he becomes an opponent of the nation, which also in this respect has its central and unifying human and universal calling, of the Germans, and especially of that empire, which for a long time has based its existence precisely on the comprehensive interweaving of German and foreign elements.

No political cleverness, no love of peace on the part of Germany can prevent this hostile clash within the current merely national order. For more powerful than all cleverness is the nature of the circumstances; and already now, despite the friendly attitude of Germany and Austria, the hostile mood of the Russian East is only emerging all the more clearly because one could not give it a free hand in everything, but had to set a certain goal. And if it comes to a fight one day, then, however much we have to fight it for the good of Europe, the latter will not stand by our side, but as in the east, we will also have to defend ourselves in the west and south at the same time; on all sides, national jealousy will rise up against the new empire in their midst.

But it is precisely the realization that in this last and most difficult struggle the completely inadequate nature of all previous purely national orders comes to light, that above all the universal position of the German nation, linked as it is to a series of foreign elements, is completely incompatible with it and could only lead to unending struggles. This realization will give this bloodiest of struggles its forever decisive significance and will open the minds of the nations, which are now still trapped in dull externalities, to their ultimate and lasting calling. The realization will dawn, amidst blood and tears, that it is never the mere nation-state and its commercial society that can bring peace and reconciliation, but only that of the universal law of vocation, that only in it lies the renewing rebirth for all the inner wounds, for the relationship of states to one another, for the degenerate conditions of the Orient, and for the corruption and externalization of one's own education. If the first struggle, which was intended to prevent our national awakening, has brought it to completion precisely for that reason, then conversely the second, which is caused by the very inadequacy of all this national order, will also lead beyond it forever to the humanly universal goal.

It is from the German spirit that a renewal of humanity must come, so that there may be a victory over that which lives in a sense indicated by these facts and which has come from an un-German spirit, especially in more recent times, and which can be characterized by saying: the power of incompetence that crushes all justified striving must be recognized. The German spirit is strong and vigorous and will recognize this in this area and will heal the world in this area when it becomes aware of what still lives in German intellectual life as a forgotten pursuit in many cases.

We have been able to glance over to the West on many an occasion. Finally, let us glance over to the East with a few words. This whole East, yes, how does it present itself? Central Europe?

The German essence: can it be characterized in relation to the West in such a way that one can say that one truly does not need to belittle the West in any way. One can know that the scientific spirit emanated from Italy before the dawn of the newer intellectual life. This scientific spirit has emerged from the south. One can know that the French spirit also gave rise to the rational conception of the world; that the sense of utility emerged from the English spirit, the view of the world in such a way that everything is placed in the utility. But just how far removed this British spirit is from the German spirit, well, you can tell by the fact that if someone wanted to try to characterize Fichte's theory of knowledge, where he repeatedly attempts to describe the self feeling and experiencing itself in the world spirit, if you are able to fully penetrate this field of knowledge, it would look strange linguistically alone...

If I say: “I represent the I” – not even that could be adhered to, [instead of the German word “ich” the English “i”] – not even that could be adhered to, that one [in English] goes from the lower-case “i”, as one writes in German, to the capital “I”, when you have experienced the “I” – Fichte calls it “reproduction”, the progression of culture in the “I” – within yourself, how should you call it when you want to move from the small “I” to the large “I”, since grammatically the personal “I” is written “I” everywhere.

You could say: the German essence relates to the Western essence in the same way that the Italians were the contemplatives, the French shaped reason, the utilitarian principle shaped the English; but the principle of internalization is part of the German essence. The Italian looks at the world. By looking at the world, he says: the world is quite right; but it just needs to be reshaped a little, it needs to be made to correspond to our ability, not a compulsory language, but a word that has been experienced. It is precisely when you look deep, deep inside, especially into the best sides of intellectual life, that this word is true.

The Frenchman says: This world is also worth / gap in the transcript ]. The Englishman says: [gap in the transcript] The German says: I also like the world. And within himself, he wants to create a small image of the world. The Russian, yes, one only needs to think of such characteristic figures as Ivan Karamazov in Dostoyevsky's “The Brothers Karamazov”. But this type of Karamasov character is poured out over the whole of the East in the nineteenth century. [...] Ivan Karamasov himself says: I would still accept God; but I cannot accept the world from God. The world, in the Russian sense, is actually something that should be replaced by another, namely by the one that is made for the Russian people.

It is a seemingly radical word, but anyone who follows the development of Russian thought in the nineteenth century will find it to be true. For it is indeed strange: from the first decade of the nineteenth century in Russia it is emphasized that in the Russian countryside there lives - Dostoyevsky said it, for example, despite the greatness of Dostoyevsky, one must also bear in mind the greatness of Dostoyevsky -: the Russian person is the one in all people who, through his universal humanity, must place his spiritual life in the place of others. And man faces the world in such a way that one can say: in the nineteenth century, he is increasingly coming to say to himself: European intellectual life is decrepit and has had its day. That must be eradicated. Russian intellectual life would be young; it must dominate. The Russian language means joy, means love. The West – and that includes Central Europe, but also France, Italy, Spain and England – means struggle, means war, means selfishness. This is the underlying tone of all [Russian] intellectual life in the nineteenth century.

Outwardly it does not appear so strongly; but it is so. Only strange: Who is then actually the first to have pronounced the nature of the Slav, from which they then want something quite different than lies in the Russian national spirit? They claim that a noble man spoke of it first, and they have built on that. Who was it that first characterized the matter so beautifully, coined a word, an idea, on which they then based the whole of the nineteenth century? Herder! Herder was basically the first Slavophile. But the word of a Slavophile has degenerated into megalomania. And it came to pass that it resounded again and again: Europe is decrepit, and Russian intellectual life must take the place of European intellectual life.

Dear attendees, as I said, just one more fact: in 1885 a book was published that was written by the Russian Yushakov. Yushakov stands on a somewhat different cultural ground than the one I have just mentioned – the literary counter-image, presented for that which has emerged up to the present day and up to our current terrible events – Yushakov, 1885, a remarkable book! He does not look to the West, but to the East, to Asia, to the Asian peoples. Now, as Jusakhov says in his, as I said, remarkable book: These poor Asians, they have shown themselves how they have gradually struggled from their cultural life up to the corresponding present culture, they have shown it as the struggle between two spiritual beings. But this struggle represents a reality in Asia. According to Yushakov, the two spiritual powers under whose influence the Asians were, were represented as the good Ormuzd and the evil Ahriman.

Ahriman was always the one who was the negation of Ormuzd. Jushakow says to the Iranian peoples, to whom the Persians and Indians also belonged: Ahriman, the evil spirit, took away these fruits of both material and spiritual culture from them.

But what have the European peoples of the West done? - Jushakow asks. They have squeezed out of those Asian peoples what those peoples had acquired under the influence of the good Ormuzd! Russian culture must intervene here. Russian culture is the only one capable – Jusakhov says, I am not saying this – of lovingly embracing the Asian peoples. Two powers stand in the world that will bring happiness in the future – and above all happiness to the Asian peoples; these two powers are – I am not saying this, Jusakhov is saying it! , these two powers are: the Russian peasant and the Cossack, the two great representatives of [Russian] humanity - says Yushakov in 1885. And he does not go to Asia to bring love to the Asians, to bring love to the Asians in turn, sooner or later the evil that the Western peoples have brought over Asia, which he could not really talk about in those days in the case of Germany, will be brought to light.

Strangely enough, the book is called “The Anglo-Russian Conflict”. And there Yushakov says in relation to this: The English show by their treatment of the Asian peoples as if they believed that these Asian peoples were only dependent on this unloving English love. And then Jushakow says how he imagines the relationship between his people and the English. He says to England - these are his words, his own words:

"England exploits millions of Hindus, but its very existence depends on the obedience of the various peoples who inhabit the rich peninsula; I do not wish anything similar for my fatherland - I can only rejoice that

my Russian fatherland [according to Yushakov]

is sufficiently far removed from this state of affairs, which is as splendid as it is sad.

Thus in 1885 the Russian Yushakov on England.

He is probably not primarily concerned with the alliance between Russia and England, but with restoring the blessings of Ormuzd to the Asians. Russia will now cross over to Asia, says Yushakov, because in Russia the alliance between the all-fertility developing farmer and the all-chivalry bearing Cossack is rooted in a deep culture, Yushakov believes, and they will prefer to spread Russian spirituality across Asia first.

Thus writes one of those minds that thought this way in Russia and already expressed it in the 1820s – in 1829: Western Europe and Central Europe are decrepit, have outlived their usefulness. But we in Russia, we have the right to bring this Europe under our rule. And when we have it – so says Kireyevsky – when we have it, then we will share what we have with the others, insofar as it is right.

This is not only the “right” thing to do in the political sphere, since the falsified “Testament of Peter the Great”, but also in the entire intellectual and cultural life. And what is going on through this Russophile: the excellent Russian philosopher Solowjow has said it himself. And you can read this in my book 'Thoughts During the Time of War' – it is not available at the moment, but it will be published again in a while. Solowjow himself said it: what is alive in Russian intellectual life comes from what one could call: Russia still has a long way to go before she attains the maturity of her own nature; for Russia is still today, in fact, in the midst of it, thoroughly in the midst of unclear mysticism. That is all. One has to be 'mystical' if one is to be able to say: This German spiritual life seeks the tool of mystical endeavor. On the contrary: fully conscious thoughts, light-imbued, thought-filled views, clear views; the German seeks an image of the world in order to shape his own being as similarly as possible to this image of the world.

The other nations should not be disparaged. But what can they recognize that the German strives for, that he strives for consciously, so that he makes his own image of man similar to the image of the world? The Italian cannot strive for it so consciously if he only strives from his nationality. He would have to be taught this, as it were, by suggestion, so that what is a striving for knowledge in him would have more of an effect than a morality.

The Frenchman wants it more as an intellectual art, to give the mind pleasure, to give the mind a sense of well-being. This is basically something that lies in the fundamental character as a French imprint of the mechanistic view of nature.

The Englishman wants – he would certainly also accept Fichte's science if one could transform its truths into a principle or a machine, if one could place it in the pragmatic order of life, could make pragmatism out of it, as it was mentioned today.

The Russian still needs unclear, hazy mysticism everywhere today. I have already mentioned Ivan Karamazov from Dostoyevsky's work “The Brothers Karamazov”, who is a true representative of the Russian who has absorbed Western European culture. God would be there, yes, God, but in mystical obscurity. And one can say: when the Russian becomes atheistic, he wants a mystical atheist. The Russian can become atheistic, but he almost wants the atheist to be revealed to him by God! You could also teach him Fichte's philosophy, you could also teach him Hegelianism; but then it would have to be found mysteriously on an altar somewhere or at least bear the imprint that it came into the world in a mysterious way!

In short, the various nations surrounding the German nation still stand today in such a way to this German spiritual life that there is truly every reason for the German to become aware of the germs and roots and diversity in his spiritual being! And the fruits and blossoms will come when the German becomes truly aware of this, aware of it precisely through the difficult time of trial in which he is currently mired.

Yes, what has been attempted to be presented in brief, dear attendees, developed on the 6 million square kilometers in the center, compared to the 68 million square kilometers in the surrounding area! And as if by bonds, which are also bonds of the spirit, this Central Europe is held together. The alliance between Germany and Austria is truly such a bond, one that is also based on the commonality of the spiritual life flowing through the two countries, through the two national territories.

I may say this because I have lived in Austria for more than half of my life, almost thirty years, and have participated in all the times of these thirty years in the way in which the German essence must live there in Austria, must live in multiform Austria. I have come to know what it means to take the word of one of the most German of Austrians – Robert Hamerling, the greatest son of Austria in the second half of the nineteenth century – and to feel it in the innermost being of someone who grasps the sense of belonging in Central Europe. Robert Hamerling said: “Austria is my fatherland; but Germany is my motherland”.

Robert Hamerling, as early as 1862, in his wonderful poem 'Germanenzug', spoke of this inwardness of the German world-view. Does it not appear to us in a beautiful form, this inwardness of the German world-view, when we see, for example, how Jakob Böhme, in very early times, speaks of how the German strives for knowledge, but in such a way that he wants to use it to enter into the spirit of the world? He expresses it so beautifully:

“When you look at the depths”

he means the depths of heaven

“And the stars and the earth, you see your God. And in you live and are you also. And the same God rules you also.” “You are created from this God and live in the same. Also, all your knowledge is in this God. And when you die, you will be buried in this God.”

Fine words! If we take this, which I have tried to illustrate today: it turns out that in this internalization of the German essence – in this desire to grasp what, as divine spirituality, permeates and animates the world within one's own inner being – lies the profound world-historical calling of the German. And it is so intrinsic to the German that it really stands out like a second wave in the great upheaval of the human race. If we look across to the Orient – looking differently than the Russian Yushakov – then we find in the Asian peoples how they have dreamed of, how they have also once tried to penetrate into the spiritual that lives and breathes through the world. They tried to bring the I so close that it was as if asleep, [that] the actual human inner being was asleep, and so the human being could merge into what the life of the world spirit in the principle of the All interweaves and lives through the world. Now that the greatest impulse for the evolution of the Earth has been introduced – the Christ Impulse – the Asiatic type is no longer the one that can dominate the human race.

The German nature has found the right way to penetrate into the spiritual world in the sense of the Christ impulse, so that the ego is not eradicated as it was in Asia; [but that which is sought in the future of the world as a divine-spiritual, that is achieved through the elevation, through the strengthening - not through the weakening - of the ego. But the I is precisely exalted, strengthened, in order to grow together with the whole world. Thus ancient human striving continues in the newest form, as in historical vocation the essence of the German spirit.

This is beautifully shown by Robert Hamerling, the Austrian German, in his “Germanenzug”, in which he describes in beautiful words how the ancient Germanic peoples, the ancestors of the Germans, once migrated from Asia to Europe, so that we take part in it, that we take part in the setting sun, in the mild twilight that spreads; and when everything sinks into a deep sleep, only one remains awake: the blond Teut. While everyone else sleeps, he is occupied with the thoughts of the future German being, the German task. The genius, the spirit of the German people, appears before the blond Teut and speaks to him of the future of the German people. This is how Robert Hamerling feels it and expresses it through the genius of the past to the blond Teut just as the Germanic peoples, the ancestors of the Germans, are crossing over from east to west. Thus speaks the genius:

"To whom will break the word from soul depths
Like your people, so rich, so delicate, so powerful?
Who breathes so solemnly in string sounds
His innermost? Who zich'n the sense so magnificent
Into the heavenly blue, granite hieroglyphics
Of the soul's upsurge from the narrowness of life?
Who finally ties the strands
Of the inquisitive thought to the stars
So boldly and strives and fights on all paths?
Who is so high, so deep, his urge, his hunch?
Who grasps the near and far so faithfully?
Where is every earthly and heavenly zone
reflected as in your thinking, O Teuton?

And how related, but on a higher level, appears the spiritual search for the divine reason of the world. Here, too, the genius of the German people speaks to the blond Teut as if through Robert Hamerling's mouth, from that which I just hinted at through the words of Jakob Böhme, where devotion becomes knowledge, where devotion becomes the world view, devotion to the divine spiritual forces of the world. This is how Hamerling has the blond Teut say to the genius of the German people:

"But however proudly you may strive,
Soaring high above other swarms,
You will always retain the ancient, sacred fire:
The dream-filled drunkenness of God
of the ancient Asian homeland. This holy ray, a temple fire, will glow in your chest and soul, remain with you and be your pilot at the helm! You only strive because you love: your most daring thought will be a devotion that seeks to merge with God."

Yes, the German needs to become aware of his German essence. Then he will find the right relationship to the events of the present! For he may trust in that which exists as the source, the root and germ of spiritual striving within the German nation. And whatever has such germs may be felt with hope and confidence that its blossoms and fruits will develop, despite everything that rises in hostility in the world against this spiritual foundation in German development.

I think that a truly objective, not a narrow-minded, consideration of the German nature says this. And the German can rely on such an objective consideration. Then he can also look objectively at the way in which one not only simplifies but also defames what extends over 6 million square kilometers compared to 68 square kilometers.

Anyone who looks at this, at the roots and the hoped-for seeds, blossoms and fruits of the future, may summarize what today's contemplation was, summarize it sentimentally in a few words. Words that are intimately connected with the whole feeling of the German essence, all German essence. They, too, are by Robert Hamerling, and they, too, prove how Central Europe has been welded together from this side and from the other side of the Ore Mountains, but has also been welded together by this common spiritual weaving and essence in this Central Europe.

Therefore, let us conclude today's reflection with a word from Robert Hamerling, the Austrian German, a word that summarizes in a sensitive way what I have tried to bring before your soul in a longer exposition - an unfortunately all too long exposition. Robert Hamerling says out of the sentiment from which he said “Austria is my fatherland, but Germany is my motherland”:

“And if ever the day
Should prove hostile to the German name,
From ocean to ocean shall run
The course of the German spirit!”

In the introductory lecture yesterday our attention was drawn to the fact that certain events in the more ancient history of mankind can be rightly understood only when we not merely observe the forces and faculties of the personalities themselves, but when we realise at the outset that through the personalities in question, as through instruments, Beings are working who allow their deeds to stream down from higher worlds into our world. We must realise that these Beings cannot take direct hold of the physical facts of our existence because, on account of the present stage of their development, they cannot incarnate in a physical Body which draws its constituents from the physical world. If, therefore, they desire to work within our physical world, they must make use of the physical human being—of his deeds, but also of his intellect, his powers of understanding. We find the influence and penetration of such Beings of the higher world the more clearly in evidence the farther back we go in the ages of the evolution of humanity. But it must not be imagined that this downpouring of forces and activities from the higher worlds into the physical world through human beings has ever ceased; it continues even into our own time.

To the spiritual scientist who for years now has been absorbing principles which lead his feelings and ideal to accept the existence of higher worlds—to him a fact such as this will certainly, from he outset, be to some extent comprehensible; for he is accustomed always to draw the connecting threads which link our knowledge, our thinking, our willing, with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. But from time to time the spiritual scientist is also in the position of having to guard against the materialistic conceptions which are so prevalent in the present age and make it impossible for those who stand aloof from the development of the spiritual life even to enter into what has to be said about the working of higher worlds into our physical world.

Fundamentally speaking, it is considered an antiquated attitude in our time even to speak of the influence of abstract ideas in the events of history. Many people to-day regard it as quite impermissible, in face of the genuinely scientific approach, to speak of certain ideas, abstract ideas which properly speaking can live only in the wind, taking effect in the successive epochs of history. A last semblance, at least, of belief in the influence of abstract ideas—although how they are to work is incomprehensible precisely because they are abstract ideas!—was still in evidence even in the 19th century, in Ranke's exposition of history¹⁰ But even this belief in ideas as factors in history is gradually being discarded by our progressively materialistic development, and in a certain respect to-day it is regarded as the sign of an enlightened mind in the domain of history to believe that all the characteristic features of the several epochs merely represent the convergence of physically perceptible actions, outer needs, outer interests and ideas of physical human beings. The time is now past when spirits such as Herder, as if through a certain inspiration, still portrayed the development of human history in a way which enables one to perceive that it is based on the assumption, at least, of the existence of living powers, living super-sensible powers manifesting through the deeds and the lives of men.¹¹ Those who want to be accounted very clever to-day, will say: “Well yes, a man such as Lessing certainly had many really intelligent ideas, but then, at the end of his life, he wrote nonsense such as you find in The Education of the Human Race, where the only way in which he could help himself out of his difficulties was by linking the strict conformity to law shown by the flow of historical development with the idea of reincarnation.” In the last sentences of The Education of the Human Race,¹² Lessing has actually expressed what is described by Anthroposophy on the basis of occult facts—namely, that souls who lived in ancient epochs and then absorbed active, living forces, carry over these forces into their new incarnations, so that behind physical happenings there is not an abstract onflow of ideas but an actual and real onflow of the spirit. As I said, a clever ass will insist that in his old age Lessing hit upon ideas as confused as that of reincarnation, and that these ideas must he ignored.—This reminds one again of the bitterly ironic yet brilliant note once written by Hebbel in his diary, to the effect that a fair motif would be that a master, taking the subject of Plato in his school, has among his pupils the reincarnated Plato, who understands what the master is teaching so little that he has to be severely punished!

The conception of the historical evolution of humanity has lost much of the earlier, spiritual insight, and Spiritual Science will really have to guard against the onslaught of materialistic thinking which comes from all sides and regards communications which are based on the spiritual facts as so much lunacy. That things have come to a pretty pass is shown, for example, in the fact that all those mighty pictures, those grand symbolical conceptions which emanated from the old clairvoyant knowledge and are expressed in the characters of legends and fairy-tales, have interpreters of the very oddest kind. The most curious production in this domain is undoubtedly Solomon Reinach's little book Orpheus, which has caused a certain furor in many circles in France. Everything from which the ideas of Demeter, of Orpheus, and of other mythological cycles are supposed to have sprung, is traced back in this book to purely materialistic happenings and it is often utterly grotesque how the historical existence of this or that figure, standing, let us say, behind Hermes or Moses, is alleged to have originated, and with what superficiality an attempt has been made to explain these figures as the inventions of poetic license, of human fantasy. According to Solomon Reinach's method it would be easy, sixty or seventy years hence, when outer memory of him will have faded somewhat, to prove that there never was such a man, but that it was simply a matter of popular fantasy having transferred the old idea of Reinecke Fuchs to Solomon Reinach. According to his method this would certainly be possible. The absurdity of the whole book is on a par with what is said in the Preface—that it has been written “for the widest circles of the educated public, even for the very young.” “For the very young”—since he emphasises that he has avoided everything that might cause a shock to young girls—although he has not avoided tracing back the idea of Demeter to a pig! He promises, however, that if his book gains the influence he hopes for, he will write a special edition for mothers, which will include everything that must still be withheld from their daughters.—That is the kind of thing we have come to!

One would like to remind students of Spiritual Science particularly, that it is possible to prove on purely external grounds that spiritual powers, spiritual forces have worked through human beings right up to our own century—and this quite apart from the purely occult, esoteric research with which we shall be mainly concerned here. But in order that we may understand how it is possible for Spiritual Science to maintain, on purely external grounds, that super-sensible powers exercise sway in history, let me point to the following.

Anyone who gains a little insight into the development of modern humanity, let us say in the 14th and 15th centuries and on until the 16th, will realise how infinitely significant in this outer development was the intervention of a certain personality, one in respect of whom it can be proved from completely external evidence that spiritual, super-sensible Powers worked through her. In order to throw a little light on the occult understanding of history, we may ask the question: What would the development of modern Europe have been if at the beginning of the 15th century the Maid of Orleans had not entered the arena of events? Anyone who thinks, even from an entirely external point of view, of the development that took place during this period, must say to himself: Suppose the deeds of the Maid of Orleans were erased from history ... then, according to the knowledge obtainable from purely external historical research, one cannot but realise that without the working of higher, super-sensible Powers through the Maid of Orleans, the whole of France, indeed the whole of Europe in the 15th century, would have taken on an altogether different form. Everything in the impulses of will, in the physical brains of those times, was directed towards flooding all Europe with a general conception of the State which would have extinguished the folk-individualities and under this influence a very great deal of what has developed in Europe during the last centuries through the interplay of these folk-individualities would quite certainly have been impossible.

Imagine the deed of the Maid of Orleans blotted out from history, France abandoned to her fate without this intervention, and then ask: Without this deed, what would have become of France? And then think of the role played by France in the whole cultural life of humanity during the centuries following! Add to this the facts which cannot be refuted and are confirmed by actual documents concerning the mission of the Maid of Orleans. This young girl, certainly not highly educated even by the standards of her time, suddenly, before she is twenty years old, feels in the autumn of 1428 that spiritual Powers of the super-sensible worlds are speaking to her. True, she clothes these Powers in forms that are familiar to her, so that she is seeing them through the medium of her own mental images; but that does not do away with the reality of these Powers. Picture to yourselves that she knows that super-sensible Powers are guiding her will towards a definite point—I am speaking to begin with, not of what can be told about these facts from the Akasha Chronicle, but only of what is confirmed by documentary evidence.

We know that the Maid of Orleans confided her vision first of all to a relative who—one would almost say, by chance-happened to understand her; that after many vicissitudes and difficulties she was introduced to the Court of King Charles who, together with the whole French Army, had come to his wit's end, as the saying goes. We know too, how after every conceivable obstacle had been put in her way, she finally recognised and went straight to the King, who was standing among such a crowd of people that no physical eye could have distinguished him. It is also known that at that moment she confided to him something—he wanted to test her by it—of which it can be said that it was known only to him and to the super-sensible worlds. You also know from ordinary history that it was she who, under the unceasing impulse and urge of her intense faith—it would be better to say, through her actual vision—and in face of the greatest difficulties, led the armies to victory and the King to his crowning.

Who intervened at that time in the course of history?—None other than Beings of higher Hierarchies! The Maid of Orleans was an outer Instrument of these Beings, and it was they who guided the deeds of history. It is possible that someone may say to himself: “If I had guided these deeds I would have guided them more wisely!”—because he finds one thing or another in the procedure of the Maid of Orleans at variance with his own way of thinking. Adherents of Spiritual Science, however, should not wish to correct the deeds of gods through human intellect—a very common practice in our so-called civilisation. There have also been people who quite in the Spirit of the present age, have wanted, as it were, to unburden modern history of the deeds of the Maid of Orleans. A characteristic modern work with this materialistic trend has been written by Anatole France. One would really like to know how materialistic thinking manages to reconcile itself with much irrefutable evidence—I am still speaking only of actual historical documents. And so because we are in Stuttgart and I sometimes like to take account of local matters, I want to quote from a document to which reference has already been made here.

Those who belong to Stuttgart certainly know that there once lived here a man¹³ who carried out important research on the Gospels. As spiritual scientists we certainly need not agree with the things—some of them extremely clever—that were brought forward by Gfrörer—that was his name—and we may be quite sure that if he had heard what is now being given in the domain of Spiritual Science he would have used terms he was often wont to apply to his opponents—whom he, with his stubborn-headedness, by no means always let off lightly. He would have said that these Theosophists, too, are people who are “not quite right in the head.” But this was before the time when, as is the case to-day, historical documents can be passed over for purely materialistic reasons if they happen to deal with inconvenient facts and obviously point to the working of higher forces in our physical world. And so I will again quote from a short document—a letter published in the first half of the 19th century. I will read you just a few paragraphs from this letter, which was quoted by Gfrörer at that time in justification of his belief. I will read a passage characterising the Maid of Orleans, and then ask you to think of the implications of such a vivid description.

After the writer of this letter has set forth what the Maid of Orleans accomplished, he continues:

“This and much more has the Maid brought about, and with God's help she will accomplish still greater things. The girl is of appealing beauty and manly bearing; she speaks little and shows remarkable sagacity; when she speaks she has a pleasing, delicately feminine voice. She eats little and abstains from wine. She takes pleasure in fine horses and weapons and admires well-accoutred and noble men. To be obliged to meet and converse with large numbers of people is abhorrent to her; her tears often overflow; she loves a happy face, endures unheard of toil, and is so assiduous in the manipulation and bearing of weapons that she remains uninterruptedly for six days—day and night—in full armour. She says that the English have no right to France, and therefore—as she says—God has sent her to drive them out and conquer them, but only after previous warning. For the King she shows the deepest veneration; she says he is beloved by God, is under special protection, and will therefore be preserved. Of the Duke of Orleans, your nephew, she says that he will be delivered in a miraculous way, but only after a demand for his release has been made to the English who hold him prisoner.

“With that, revered Duke, I bring my report to a conclusion. Still more wonderful things are happening and have happened than I can write of or describe to you in words. While I write this, the afore mentioned Maid has already gone to the neighbourhood of the city of Rheims in Champagne, whither the King has hastily set off for his anointing and crowning under God's protection. Most respected and powerful Duke, and greatly venerated master! I commend myself to you in all humility, while praying the Almighty to protect you and fulfil your desires. Written at Biteromis, the 21st day of June in the year 1429.

Your humble servant
PERCEVAL
Lord of Bonlaninth. Counsellor and
Chamberlain of the King of the French
and of the Duke of Orleans, Seneschal of
Berry.”

This letter¹⁴ was written by one who knew the Maid and was in close contact with the King. It is indeed amazing when one discovers all these things on purely occult grounds and with occult means of proof—for they are indeed to be found in the Akasha Chronicle—and then sees how, in cases like this, actual historical documents can also be produced. In short, it seems almost madness to doubt what was working through the Maid of Orleans. And when we also take into consideration the fact that through her deeds the whole history of modern time assumed a different aspect, this gives us the right to say that here, verified by documentary evidence, we can see the direct intervention of the super-sensible worlds. When the spiritual researcher goes further and seeks in his own way for the one who was the real Inspirer of the Maid of Orleans, he finds something very remarkable as he investigates the successive epochs of time. He finds that the same Spirit who worked through the Maid of Orleans as his instrument at that time had inspired—in a quite different form, a quite different way—another personality who was a philosopher at the Court of Charles the Bald. This was Scotus Erigena, through whose philosophical and theological ideas in an earlier period Europe had been so deeply influenced. And so we see that the same Powers work in different epochs in a different way through human beings who are their instruments; that there is continuity, an onflowing stream of happenings in what we call history.

I showed you yesterday how a significant myth of Babylonian-Chaldean times points to the penetration of the spiritual worlds into men upon whom much depended for the third Post-Atlantean period, for the whole of historical development in ancient Chaldea, in ancient Babylonia. But we must now also observe from the standpoint of occult science the two personalities hidden behind the legendary names of Gilgamish and Eabani. In the Sense of occult history we have to see in them personalities who stand at the starting-point of the Babylonian-Chaldean epoch of culture. The impulses proceeding from them are to be discerned again in the development of the really spiritual culture of ancient Babylonia and Chaldea.—Now Gilgamish was a personality who had many incarnations behind him and may therefore be called an “old” soul within the evolution of humanity.

You know from the book Occult Science that during the Lemurian epoch of earth-evolution only very few human beings had outlasted, on the earth itself, the happenings of this evolution, that only a few remained on the earth during the Lemurian epoch; that before the actual danger of the mummification of everything human began, the majority of souls withdrew from the earth to other planets, continuing their life on Mars, Saturn, Venus, Jupiter, arid so forth. Then, from the end of the Lemurian epoch and during the Atlantean epoch, these souls gradually came down to the earth in order to incarnate in earthly bodies under the changed earthly conditions, and to appear in ever new incarnations. Thus there are souls who came down comparatively early from the planetary worlds and others who came down late; indeed not until the later periods of Atlantean evolution. The souls who came down early have therefore more incarnations behind them in earth-evolution than those who came down later; hence we can call these latter, in contrast to the former, “younger” souls—souls who have taken less into themselves.

The individuality hidden behind the name Gilgamish was an old soul, and a younger soul was incarnated in Eabani, at the starting-point of the Babylonian civilisation. Indeed, in connection with human souls being younger or older in this sense, something very remarkable discloses itself—something that might almost be said to cause astonishment even to the occultist. If someone has reached the point to-day of giving a little credence to the truths of Spiritual Science, but otherwise still clings to the prejudices and criteria of the external world, it will seem plausible to him that modern philosophers or scholars, for example, should be accounted among the older souls. But, strangely enough, occult research finds just the opposite; and for the occultist himself it is surprising to find that in Kant, for example, there lived a young soul. Yes, the facts show that it is so ... it cannot be gainsaid. It can also be intimated here that younger souls—the majority at any rate—incarnate in the coloured races, so that it is the coloured races, especially the negro race, which mainly brings younger souls to incarnation. The characteristic quality of that kind of thinking which comes to expression in erudition, in the materialistic science of to-day, calls for younger souls. And it can be shown that in the case of many a personality where one would not in the least expect it, the preceding incarnation was in an uncivilised race. That again is what the facts tell us! It must be kept strictly in mind, for it is so. Naturally this does not in the least detract from the significance or value of the opinions we have formed about the world around us; nevertheless it must be grasped in order fully to understand the essentials here. In this sense, in Eabani we have to do with a young soul and in Gilgamish with an old soul in ancient Babylonia. The whole nature of an old soul will enable it early in life to grasp not only the essential element, the essential factor, in the existing culture, but also that which strikes into it as a new impulse, opening up a wide vista into the future.

There will be many, of course, who will protest if one tries to make it plausible to them that the Theosophists whom they are wont to look down upon are, generally speaking, older souls than people who deliver scientific lectures. Investigation shows, however, that this is so; and although spiritual research must not be misused for the purpose of forcing people to change their criteria of judgment, or of scoffing at what is after all part of the very make-up of our civilisation, nevertheless the truth must be faced fairly and squarely. Gilgamish, then, was a personality who, owing to his particular condition of soul, participated in the most progressive spiritual elements and spiritual factors of the age—in everything that threw light far into the future and at that time could be attained only if such a personality went through a kind of initiation. Through the imparting of something that can be received only through a certain initiation, Gilgamish was to be enabled to provide a kind of leaven for the Babylonian culture. He had to experience an initiation up to a certain degree.

Let us think of this Gilgamish at the point where he stood in the evolution of humanity before this initiation. He was a man of the third Post-Atlantean epoch. But in this epoch twilight had already fallen over the natural human clairvoyance, over what men were able to achieve through forces that were innate in them. These forces were no longer present to the degree that could enable any great number of men to look back into their earlier incarnations. If we were to go farther back, into the second or into the first Post-Atlantean epoch, we should find that the majority of human beings then on the earth could look back into their earlier incarnations, into the course of their soul-life before their present birth. But that faculty had been lost. In the case of Gilgamish, the Being who was to reveal himself through him, and who could do so only by leading him presently to a kind of initiation, kept a guiding hand upon him from the outset and set him at the place where he came to recognise his own position in the history of the world. As it were through super-sensible events, presented to us in the pictures of the myth I outlined to you yesterday, a friend was placed at the side of Gilgamish, a friend whose barbarity and uncivilised nature are indicated by the statement that his outer form was half animal. It is said that this friend had skins of animals on his body, which means that he was still covered with hair like the men of primeval times, that his soul was so young that it built for itself a body which showed the human being still in a savage state. Thus the more advanced Gilgamish had in Eabani a man at his side who, because of his young soul and the bodily Organisation conditioned by it, still possessed ancient clairvoyance. This friend was given to Gilgamish in order that he might find his own bearings in life. With the help of this friend he was then able to achieve certain things, such as the retrieval of that spiritual Power presented to us in the myth in the picture of Ishtar, the Goddess of the city of Erech. I told you how this Goddess had been stolen by the neighbouring City and that for this reason Gilgamish and Eabani together waged war against this city, vanquished its king and brought the Goddess back.

If we are to understand in the true historical sense such things as are presented to us in these old myths, we must investigate their occult background. Behind this rape of the City Goddess there lies something similar to the rape of Helen, who was carried off to Troy by Paris. We must realise that there are good grounds for what is stated in my little book, Blood is a very special Fluid. It is pointed out there that in the peoples of ancient times there was a kind of collective consciousness. A man did not merely feel his personal ego within his skin, but he felt himself as a member of the tribe, of the city-community. Just as the individual human soul is felt to be the centralising factor for our organism as a whole, uniting fingers, toes, hands, legs, so did man in very ancient times feel himself a member of the group-soul. Something of the kind still persisted in the early city-communities, even in ancient Greece. One common spirit, a folk-egohood, a tribal egohood, lived and weaved through the single personalities of the tribe or folk. But whatever could come to men's consciousness from this collective egohood had to be under the guidance of the Mysteries in the secret temples, where the priests directed the common spiritual affairs of a city or a tribe. And it is not a mere figure of speech, but in a certain sense an actual reality, to say that such a temple-sanctuary served as a dwelling-place for the city-ego, for the group-soul. There this group-soul had its habitation, and the priests of the temple were its servants. It was they who received the instructions of this group-soul through inspiration—through what was known as an Oracle—and bore them out into the world in order that one thing or another might come to pass. For we must think of the Oracles exactly in the sense I have indicated.

Now the direction of these temple-sanctuaries was bound up with certain secrets, and many conflicts in ancient times arose because the temple-priests of one city were carried off by the neighbouring city, so that in this way, together with the priests, the most important secrets of a city came into the hands of the neighbouring one. There you have the reality behind the picture of the abduction of Ishtar, the city Goddess, the group-soul of Erech, by the neighbouring city. The priests, the trustees of the temple secrets were made prisoners, because the neighbouring city hoped in this way to come into possession of the holy secrets and therewith of the power of the city in question. That is the real background.

In the condition of soul at first prevailing in him, Gilgamish could not himself be aware of such things; he did not see their full implications. But a younger soul could be for him as it were the clairvoyant sense which enabled him to recapture the temple treasure for his own city. Gilgamish now realised that in human life, especially in times of transition, there is such a thing as is described in the legend of the blind man and the cripple: each is helpless alone, but together they can make progress inasmuch as the blind man carries the cripple on his shoulders and the cripple lends the blind man his power of sight. In Gilgamish and Eabani, whose respective gifts differed so greatly, we see the same kind of co-operation transformed into the spiritual. In the historical facts of ancient times we find this at every turn. And it is important to understand it, for only then do we realise why it is that myths and sagas so often tell of friends who have to achieve something together—friends who are generally as unlike in their nature of soul as were Gilgamish and Eabani. But what Gilgamish also acquired through his friend Eabani was this: he was as it were “infected” by Eabani with a clairvoyant power of his own, so that to a certain extent he could look back into his own earlier incarnations. This would certainly have been beyond his normal faculties. And now let us picture vividly how Gilgamish must have been influenced by this vision of his past incarnations.

What was he able to experience from the moment when it became possible for him to look back into what his soul had lived through in earlier incarnations? At first it all seemed alien to him. He could not penetrate fully into what he himself had been in these earlier incarnations; he did not, as it were, recognise himself. So it would be with any human being if he began to look back into his previous incarnations. In most cases things would be different from what they are in the vain imaginings which are always so much in evidence when there is talk of some person or other being an incarnation of this or that individual. We may well come across a person who cites a whole series of great names in history as those of his former incarnations ... in fact numbers of people are convinced that they were never below the rank of a queen or a princess! In these matters, which should be treated with great earnestness, there must be no unlawful play of fancy, no misusage.

Now one who, like Gilgamish at that time, begins to look back on his successive incarnations, may also now and then be veritably astonished. Gilgamish himself looked back to incarnations when he was still involved in all kinds of conditions determined by the sway of the group-soul. To be sure he had, in a certain respect, as a person, worked his way out of these connections; through Eabani he had also come to know for the first time the whole import of what is symbolised in the myth through the figure of the city Goddess. But when he looked back there was much in his earlier incarnations that did not please him, that went against the grain. He found, for example, that in these incarnations his soul had had unusual friendships, human connection, of a kind which in his present life he would have regarded as shameful. Thus, in face of what the City Goddess had revealed to him indirectly, through Eabani, he began in a certain way—as the myth indicates—to upbraid, to reproach his own soul. In the myth it is said that he reproaches the Goddess about her lovers, for he is jealous of them. He is looking as it were across the horizon of his own soul and the visions are living realities before him, as real as human beings who stand around someone in the physical world, eliciting feelings of sympathy or antipathy towards them. In the reproaches leveled by Gilgamish against the Goddess we perceive that he is really speaking in terms of what is happening in his own soul. Thus, for example, when it is said that he reproaches the Goddess about her previous relationship with one who is called Ishullanu (Ischlanu) in the myth, this signifies that his own friendship with a certain person who had been his master's gardener in the preceding incarnation was not pleasing to him.¹⁵ What took place in the soul of Gilgamish and which first imparted to it that inner content, that inner realisation, which he needed in order to become the inaugurator of the Babylonian civilisation—all this is shown to us in the picture of the regaining of a certain clairvoyance, of the ascent into super-sensible worlds which, because he was an old soul, were in a certain sense lost to him. This is shown to us in the myth.

And then Gilgamish was to undergo a kind of initiation by being led back to that kind of vision which his own soul had possessed during Atlantean incarnations. What the myth presents as the journey over the sea, and the wanderings of Gilgamish to the West, is nothing else than the inner path towards initiation by which his soul is led upwards to spiritual heights where it can perceive its ancient Atlantean surroundings, when, still clairvoyant, it had gazed into the spiritual world. The myth tells that an this, his spiritual journeying, Gilgamish was brought to the great Atlantean Being, Xisuthros, This was a Being who belonged to certain higher Hierarchies and who during the Atlantean time lived in the sphere of humanity but was afterwards transported from the world of men to dwell in higher regions. Gilgamish was to meet this personality in order that through beholding him he might come to know the condition of souls when they are able to look into the spiritual worlds. Thus he was to be led upwards again into the spiritual spheres by being transported in his life of soul into Atlantean times. And when he is bidden not to sleep for seven nights and six days, this signifies nothing else than an exercise which was to make the soul capable of penetrating fully into the corresponding spiritual regions. When we are now told that he was not able to endure the test, Isis again signifies something of great importance, namely that Gilgamish is represented as a personality who was brought to the very brink of Initiation—who was destined, as it were, to look through the portal of Initiation into the mysteries of the spirit but owing to the conditions of the times was not able to penetrate fully into their depths. In short, this is intended to indicate that the inaugurator of the Babylonian civilisation had remained at the portal of Initiation, that he could not look with full clarity into the higher worlds, with the result that he gave Babylonian culture the stamp that is a sign of no more than a glimpse into the secrets of Initiation.

We shall now see that the nature of external Babylonian culture was indeed such that it confirms what has just been said. Whereas, for example, everything points to the fact that Hermes was a personality who gazed into the very depths of the holiest secrets of Initiation and could therefore become the great inaugurator of ancient Egyptian culture, it must be said that the Babylonian culture was prepared in the way I have just described: through a leading personality who had in his soul all those qualities which develop when penetration into the innermost essence of Initiation has not been fully achieved. Hence historical development in ancient Babylonia gives clear evidence of an external culture and an inner, esoteric culture running parallel to one another. Whereas in the life of ancient Egypt there was greater interplay between these two aspects, in the ancient culture of Babylonia they fell apart. And within what must be regarded as the Babylonian culture inaugurated by Gilgamish, there was enshrined the content and substance of the most sacred, most hidden Mysteries of the Chaldeans.

The Initiates of these Mysteries were indeed initiated into the innermost secrets, but this influence flowed through the external culture only as a tiny stream. This external culture proceeded from the impulse given by Gilgamish. Everything that has been said points to the fact that Gilgamish, as a personality, had not actually reached the point where he could have experienced complete Initiation. But just because at the time in which he was working he did not give effect to his own, personal impulses, did not impart his own personal forces to the world, he was very specially able to let one of the spiritual Beings we place in the rank of the Fire-Spirits, the Archangeloi, work through him. Such a Being did indeed work through Gilgamish, and it is in a Fire-Spirit that we must see the source of the ordering of Babylonian life and its impelling forces, for which Gilgamish was the instrument. So we shall rightly conceive of this Gilgamish in a picture that suggests the symbol of the ancient centaur. Such ancient symbols correspond more closely to reality than is generally supposed. A centaur—half man, half animal—was always intended to represent how in the more mighty of men of old the highest spiritual manhood and that which united the single personality with the animal organisation in a certain sense actually fell apart. Gilgamish gave the impression of a centaur to those who were capable of judging what he was, and it is the same to this day.

Remarkably enough, this picture of the centaur is cropping up again in the field of modern scientific thought. There has recently been published a book which sets out to base itself entirely on scientific facts, and yet goes to work with a certain absence of prejudice, hence it does not produce such an amateurish, senseless hotch-potch as do those who call themselves Monists. The author makes a genuine effort to understand man, and how, as an independent being of soul-and-spirit, he is related to the physical organism. And then this author, who bases himself on natural science, comes out with a remarkable picture. Quite certainly he was not thinking of the centaur when he conceived this picture, but referring to what results from natural-scientific ideas about the relation of the soul to the body, he says: This may be likened to a horseman riding upon his horse. The facts of natural science, when rightly understood, compel one to say: The soul is independent and uses the body as its instrument, as a rider uses his horse.—Yes, the centaur is here again; things will develop rapidly, and before people are aware of it, spiritual-scientific ideas will take root in our contemporaries under the compulsion of the facts of natural science itself. Not long ago I was talking to a philosopher who sets great store by materialistic ideas, and he said to me: “Of course the picture of the centaur arose because the old inhabitants of Greece saw certain tribes coming down from the North on their horses, and as it was generally misty, they thought that horse and rider were a single form. With all their superstition they might easily imagine this.”

That is a really ingenuous idea—perhaps not exactly philosophical—but certainly ingenuous! This picture of the centaur, which did not arise because the Greeks could not distinguish the rider how his horse but because the earlier peoples inevitably thought of the spiritual being of man as independent of the bodily nature—this idea of the centaur is again cropping up in our time out of the very concepts of natural science. It must therefore be said that despite all materialistic ideas we are coming to the point to-day when materialism itself, if only it will take the facts as they really are, will lead by and by to what Spiritual Science has to say from its occult sources. But if, in line with our studies, we want to focus our occult observation upon a figure such as Gilgamish—who has already become an object of interest to external research—we must realise that there we have to do with penetration by a Being of the spiritual Hierarchies. So that while we must in truth see every human being, in respect of his spirituality, in the picture of the centaur, in the case of one who works as Gilgamish worked, we must recognise, in addition, that the spiritual part of the centaur is directed by higher Powers who are sending down their forces to further the progress of humanity. And we shall find an going farther back into history that this is revealed even more clearly. We shall also see how modification takes place in the course of the ages up to our own time and how spiritual forces, when they work through human beings, assume constantly different forms the nearer we come to the immediate present.

---

• 10. Leopold von Ranke, 1795–1886. See Rudolf Steiner, Karmic-Relationships: Esoteric Studies, Vol. II, lecture XIV.
• 11. J. G. Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, written between 1784 and 1791. Tr. by T. Churchill; Outline of a Philosophy of the History of Man. (London, 1803.)
• 12. G. E. Lessing. The last paragraphs of The Education of the Human Race, published in 1780, are as follows:
  
  “But ... why should not every individual man have existed more than once upon this world?
  “ Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest? Because the human widerstanding, before the sophistries of the Schools had dissipated and debilitated it, lighted upon it at once?
  “Why may not even I have already performed those steps of my perfecting which bring to man only temporal punishments and rewards ?
  “And once more, why not another time all those steps, to perform which the views of Eternal Rewards so powerfully assist us?
  “Why should I not come back as often. as I am capable of acquiring fresh knowledge, fresh expertness ? Do I bring away so much from one, that there is nothing to repay the trouble of coming back?
  “Is this a reason against it? Or, because I forget that I have been here already? Happy is it for me that I do forget. The recollection of my former condition would perrnit me to make only a bad use of the present. And that which even I must forget now, is that necessarily forgotten for ever?
  “Or is it a reason against the hypothesis that so much time would have been lost to me? Lost?—And how much then should I miss?—Is not a whole Eternity mine? "
  
  Tr. F. W. Robertson (1872).
  Reprinted (1927) by Anthroposophical
  Publishing Co.
• 13. August Friedrich Gfrörer, 1803—1861.
• 14. Letter of Perceval de Boulainvilliers, 21st June, 1429. See: Procés de condamnation et de réhabilitation de Jeanne d' Arc, ed. Quicherat, Tome V, pages 114—21. (Paris, 1849) where the text is in Latin. The name Boulainvilliers is said to have been incorrectly rendered in several of the earlier translations.
• 15. See Thompson, op. cit., p. 33. (Gilgamish is reproaching Ishtar):
  
  Lovest thou, too, Ishullanu, the gardener he of thy Sire, Bringing delights to thee ceaseless, while daily he garnish'd thy platter...."
  
  (From the Sixth Tablet.)

We must now turn our attention to the relation between ordinary religious consciousness and the knowledge that can be gained through higher clairvoyant powers concerning the higher worlds in general, and in particular—this is specially relevant to our theme—concerning the relation of Christ Jesus to these higher worlds.

It will be clear to you all that the evolution of Christianity so far has been such that most persons have not been able to attain through their own clairvoyant knowledge to the mysteries of the Christ-Event. It must be granted that Christianity has entered into the hearts of countless human beings, and to a certain degree its essential nature has been recognised by countless souls; but these hearts and souls have not been able to look up to the higher worlds and so to receive clairvoyant vision of what really took place in human evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha and everything connected with it. Hence the knowledge that can be gained through clairvoyant consciousness itself, or through a person having accepted on one or other ground the communications of the seer concerning the mysteries of Christianity, must be carefully distinguished from the religious inclination to Christ and the intellectual leanings towards Him of a person who knows nothing of clairvoyant investigation.

Now you will all agree that during the centuries since the Mystery of Golgotha there have been men of all degrees of intellectual culture who have accepted the mysteries of Christianity in a deep inner way, and from what has been said lately in various lectures you will have felt that this is quite natural, for—as has been emphasised again and again—it is only in the twentieth century that a renewal of the Christ-Event will take place, for this is when a certain general heightening of human powers of cognition begins. It brings with it the possibility that in the course of the next 3,000 years, and without special clairvoyant preparation, more and more persons will be able to attain a direct vision of Christ Jesus.

This has never happened before. Until now there have been only two—or later on today we may perhaps discover three—sources of knowledge concerning the Christian mysteries for persons who could not rise by training to clairvoyant observation. One source was the Gospels and all that comes from the communications in the Gospels, or in the traditions connected with them. The second source of knowledge arose because there have always been clairvoyant individuals who could see into the higher worlds, and through their own knowledge brought down the facts of the Christ-Event. Other persons followed these individuals, receiving from them a ‘never-ending Gospel’, which could continually come into the world through those who were clairvoyant. These two seem at first to be the only two sources in the evolution of Christian humanity up to the present time. And, now from the twentieth century onwards, a third begins. It arises because for more and more people an extension, an enhancement, of their cognitional powers, not brought about through meditation, concentration and other exercises will occur. As we have often said, more and more persons will be able to renew for themselves the experience of Paul on the road to Damascus. Hence we can say of the ensuing period that it will provide a direct means of perceiving the significance and the Being of Christ Jesus.

Now the first question that will naturally occur to you is this: What is the essential difference between the clairvoyant vision of Christ which has always been possible as a result of the esoteric development described yesterday, and the vision of Christ which will come to people, without esoteric development, in the next 3,000 years, beginning from our twentieth century?

There is certainly an important difference. And it would be false to believe that what the seer through his clairvoyant development sees today in the higher worlds concerning the Christ-Event, and what has been seen clairvoyantly concerning the Christ-Event since the Mystery of Golgotha, is exactly the same as the vision which will come to an ever greater and greater number of people. These are two quite different things. As to how far they differ, we must ask clairvoyant research how it is that from the twentieth century onwards Christ Jesus will enter more and more into the ordinary consciousness of men. The reason is as follows.

Just as on the physical plane in Palestine, at the beginning of our era, an event occurred in which the most important part was taken by Christ Himself—an event which has its significance for the whole of humanity—so in the course of the twentieth century, towards the end of the twentieth century, a significant event will again take place, not in the physical world, but in the world we usually call the world of the etheric. And this event will have as fundamental a significance for the evolution of humanity as the event of Palestine had at the beginning of our era. Just as we must say that for Christ Himself the event of Golgotha had a significance that with this very event a God died, a God overcame death—we will speak later concerning the way this is to be understood; the deed had not happened before and it is an accomplished fact which will not happen again—so an event of profound significance will take place in the etheric world. And the occurrence of this event, an event connected with the Christ Himself, will make it possible for men to learn to see the Christ, to look upon Him.

What is this event? It consists in the fact that a certain office in the Cosmos, connected with the evolution of humanity in the twentieth century, passes over in a heightened form to the Christ. Occult clairvoyant research tells us that in our epoch Christ becomes the Lord of Karma for human evolution. This event marks the beginning of something that we find intimated also in the New Testament: He will come again to separate, or to bring about the crisis for, the living and the dead.¹ Only, according to occult research, this is not to be understood as though it were a single event for all time which takes place on the physical plane. It is connected with the whole future evolution of humanity. And whereas Christianity and Christian evolution were hitherto a kind of preparation, we now have the significant fact that Christ becomes the Lord of Karma, so that in the future it will rest with Him to decide what our karmic account is, how our credit and debit in life are related.

This has been common knowledge in Western occultism for many centuries, and is denied by no occultist who knows these things. But recently it has been verified again with the utmost care, by every means available to occult research. We will now enter more exactly into these matters.

Ask all those who know something of the truth about these things, and you will find everywhere one fact confirmed, but a fact which only at this present stage in the development of our Movement could be made known. Everything which can make our minds receptive towards such a fact had first to be gathered together. You can find in occult literature information concerning these matters if you wish to search for it. However, I shall take no account of the literature; I shall only bring forward the corresponding facts.

When certain conditions are described, including those I have dealt with myself, a picture has to be given of the world a man enters on passing through the gate of death. Now there are a great many men, especially those who have gone through the development of Western civilisation—these things are not the same for all peoples—who experience a quite definite event in the moment following the separation of the etheric body after death. We know that on passing through the gate of death we separate ourselves from the physical body. The individual is at first still connected for a time with his etheric body, but afterwards lie separates his astral body and also his Ego from the etheric body. We know that he takes with him an extract of his etheric body; we know also that the main part of the etheric body goes another way; generally it becomes part of the cosmic ether, either dissolving completely—this happens only under imperfect conditions—or continuing to work on as an enduring active form. When the individual has stripped off his etheric body he passes over into the Kamaloka region for the period of purification in the soul-world. Before this, however, he undergoes a quite special experience which has not previously been mentioned, because, as I said, the time was not ripe for it. Now, however, these things will be fully accepted by all who are qualified to judge them.

Before entering Kamaloka, the individual experiences a meeting with a quite definite Being who presents him with his karmic account. And this Being, who stood there as a kind of bookkeeper for the karmic Powers, had for many men the form of Moses. Hence the mediaeval formula which originated in Rosicrucianism: Moses presents man in the hour of death—the phrase is not quite accurate, but that is immaterial here—Moses presents man in the hour of his death with the record of his sins, and at the same time points to the ‘stern law’. Thus the man can recognise how he has departed from this stern law which he ought to have followed.

In the course of our time—and this is the significant point—this office passes over to Christ Jesus, and man will ever more and more meet Christ Jesus as his Judge, his karmic Judge. That is the super-sensible event. Just as on the physical plane, at the beginning of our era, the event of Palestine took place, so in our time the office of Karmic Judge passes over to Christ Jesus in the higher world next to our own. This event works into the physical world, on the physical plane, in such a way that men will develop towards it the feeling that by all their actions they will be causing something for which they will be accountable to the judgment of Christ. This feeling, now appearing quite naturally in the course of human development, will be transformed so that it permeates the soul with a light which little by little will shine out from the individual himself, and will illuminate the form of Christ in the etheric world. And the more this feeling is developed—a feeling that will have stronger significance than the abstract conscience—the more will the etheric Form of Christ be visible in the coming centuries. We shall have to characterise this fact more exactly in the next few days, and we shall then see that a quite new event has come to pass, an event which works into the Christ-development of humanity.

With regard to the evolution of Christianity on the physical plane, let us now ask whether for the non-clairvoyant consciousness there was not also a third way, over against the two already given. Such a third way was in fact always there, for all Christian evolution. It had to be there. The objective evolution of humanity is not directed in accordance with the opinions of men, but in accordance with objective facts.

Concerning Christ Jesus there have been many opinions in the course of the centuries, or the Councils and Church assemblies and theologians would not have disputed so much among themselves; and in no period, perhaps, have so many people held various views of the Christ as in our own. Facts, however, are not determined by human opinions, but by the forces actually present in human evolution. These facts could be recognised by many more people simply through noticing what the Gospels have to say, if people had the patience and perseverance to look at things really without prejudice, and if they were not too quick and biased in considering the objective facts. Most people, however, do not want to form a picture of Christ according to the facts, but one that suits their own likings and represents their own ideal. And it must be said that in a certain respect Theosophists of all shades of opinion do this very thing today. When, for example, certain highly developed individuals who have attained an advanced stage of human evolution are spoken of in theosophical literature as Masters, or Adepts, this is a truth that cannot be disputed by anyone who knows the facts. It applies to individuals who have had many incarnations; through exercises and holy life they have pressed on in advance of mankind and have acquired powers which the rest of humanity will acquire only in the future. It is natural and right that a student of Theosophy who has acquired some knowledge concerning the Masters, the Adepts, should feel the highest respect for such lofty individuals. If we go on to contemplate so sublime a life as that of Buddha, we must agree that Buddha should be looked on as one of the highest Adepts. And we shall then be able to gain through our minds and feelings an inward relationship to such a person.

Now because the Theosophist approaches the figure of Christ Jesus on the ground of this theosophical knowledge and feeling, he will naturally feel a certain need—and a very comprehensible need—to connect with his Christ Jesus the same concept he has formed of a Master, of an Adept, perhaps of Buddha; and he may be impelled to say: ‘Jesus of Nazareth must be thought of as a great Adept!’ This preconceived opinion would turn upside down any knowledge of the real nature of Christ. And it would be no more than a preconceived opinion only prejudice, although an understandable one. How shall someone who has won the deepest, most intimate relationship to the Christ not place the bearer of the Christ-Being in the same rank as the Master, the Adept, or the Buddha? Why should he not? This must seem to us quite comprehensible. Perhaps to such a person it would seem like a depreciation of Jesus of Nazareth if we were not to do so. But by applying this concept to Jesus of Nazareth we are led away from directing our thought according to the facts, at least as these facts have found their way to us through tradition. Anyone who examines without bias the traditional records—disregarding all opinions offered by Church Councils and Fathers and so on—will not fail to recognise one fact: Jesus of Nazareth cannot be called an Adept.

Where in tradition do we find anything which allows us to apply to Jesus of Nazareth the concept of the Adept as we have it in theosophical teaching? In the first periods of Christianity one thing was emphasised: that Jesus of Nazareth was a man like any other, a weak man like any other. And those who uphold the saying, ‘Jesus was truly man’ understand most nearly who it was that came into the world. Thus if we pay proper heed to the tradition, no idea of ‘Adept’ is to be found there. And if you remember all that has been said in past lectures concerning the development of Jesus of Nazareth—the history of the Jesus-child in whom up to his twelfth year Zarathustra lived, and the history of the other Jesus-child in whom Zarathustra then lived up to his thirtieth year—you will certainly say: Here we have to do with a special man, a man for whose existence the world's history, the world's evolution, made the greatest preparations, evident from the fact that two human bodies were formed, and in one of them up to the twelfth year, and in the other from the twelfth to the thirtieth year, the Zarathustra-individuality dwelt.

Since these two Jesus-figures were such significant individualities, Jesus of Nazareth certainly stands high; but not in the same way as an Adept does, for the Adept goes forward continuously from incarnation to incarnation. And apart from this: in the thirtieth year, when the Christ-Individuality enters into the body of Jesus of Nazareth, this very Jesus of Nazareth forsakes his body, and from the moment of the Baptism by John—even if we do not now speak of the Christ—we have to do with a human being who must be designated in the truest sense of the word as a ‘mere man’, save that he is the bearer of the Christ. But we must distinguish between the bearer of the Christ and the Christ Himself. Once the body which was to be the bearer of the Christ had been forsaken by the Zarathustra-individuality, there dwelt in it no human individuality who had attained any specially high development. The stage of development shown by Jesus of Nazareth sprang from the fact that the Zarathustra-individuality dwelt in him. As we know, however, this human nature was forsaken by the Zarathustra-individuality. Thus it was that this human nature, directly the Christ-Individuality had taken possession of it, brought against Him all that otherwise comes forth from human nature—the Tempter. That is why the Christ could go through the extremities of despair and sorrow, as shown to us in the happenings on the Mount of Olives.

Anyone who leaves out of account these essential points cannot come to a real knowledge of the Being of the Christ. The Christ-bearer was truly man—not an Adept. Recognition of this fact will open for us a first glimpse into the whole nature of the events of Golgotha, the events of Palestine. If we were to look upon Christ Jesus simply as a high Adept, we should have to place Him in a line with other Adept-natures. Some people may perhaps tell us that we do not do this because from the very outset, owing to some preconceived idea, we want to place Christ Jesus beyond all other Adepts, as a still higher Adept. Those who might say this are not aware of what we have to impart as the results of occult research in our time.

The question is not in the very least whether the prestige of other Adepts would be impaired. Within the world-conception to which we must adhere according to the occult results of the present time, we know just as well as others that there existed as a contemporary of Christ Jesus another significant individuality whom we regard as a true Adept. And unless we go into exact details, it is even difficult for us to distinguish inwardly this human being from Christ Jesus, for he really appears quite like Him. When, for instance, we hear that this contemporary of Christ Jesus was announced before his birth by a heavenly vision, it reminds us of the annunciation of the birth of Jesus, as told in the Gospels. When we hear that he was not designated merely as of human birth, but as a son of the Gods, this reminds us again of the beginning of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. When we hear that the birth of this individuality took his mother by surprise, so that she was overwhelmed, we are reminded of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, and of the events in Bethlehem, as told in the Gospels. When we hear that the individuality grew up and surprised all around him by his wise answers to the questions from the priests, it reminds us of the scene of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple. When we are told that this individuality came to Rome and met there the funeral procession of a young girl, that the procession was brought to a halt and that he awakened the dead, we are reminded of an awakening from the dead in the Gospel of Luke. And if we wish to speak of miracles, numberless miracles are recorded in connection with this individuality, who was a contemporary of Christ Jesus. Indeed, the similarity goes so far that after the death of this individuality he is said to have appeared to men, as Christ Jesus appeared after His death to the disciples. And when from the Christian side all possible reasons are brought forward either to depreciate this being or to deny altogether his historical existence, this is no less ingenious than what is said against the historical existence of Christ Jesus Himself. The individuality in question is Apollonius of Tyana, and of him we speak as a really high Adept.

If we now ask about the essential difference between the Christ Jesus event and the Apollonius event, we must be clear what the important point in the Apollonius event is.

Apollonius of Tyana is an individuality who went through many incarnations; he won for himself high powers and reached a certain climax in his incarnation at the beginning of our era. Hence the individual we are considering is he who lived in the body of Apollonius of Tyana and had therein his earthly field of action. It is with him that we are concerned. Now we know that a human individuality takes part in the building up of his earthly body. Hence we must say: the body of this individuality was built up by him to a certain form for his own particular use. This we cannot say of Christ Jesus. In the thirtieth year of Jesus of Nazareth the Christ came into the physical body, etheric body, and astral body of Jesus; hence He had not himself built up this body from childhood. The relationship between the Christ-Individuality and this body is quite different from that between the Apollonius-individuality and his body. When in the spirit we turn our gaze to Apollonius of Tyana, we say: ‘It is the concern of this individuality, and his concern plays itself out as the life of Apollonius of Tyana.’ If we want to represent in a diagram a life-course of this kind, we can do it like this:

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Let the continuous individuality be shown by the horizontal line; then we have in (a) a first incarnation, in (b) a life between death and a new birth, in (c) a second incarnation followed again by (d) a life between death and a new birth, then a third incarnation, (e) and so on. That which passes through all these incarnations—the human individuality—is like a thread of human life, independent of the sheaths of the astral body, etheric body and physical body, and also, between death and a new birth, independent of those parts of the etheric body and astral body which remain behind. Thus the life-thread is always separated from the external Cosmos.

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If we want to represent the nature of the Christ-life, we must draw it otherwise. When we consider the preceding incarnations of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ-life certainly develops in a certain way. But when we draw the life-thread, we have to show that in the thirtieth year of the life of Jesus of Nazareth the individuality forsakes this body, so that from now onwards we have only the sheaths of physical body, etheric body and astral body.

The forces which the individuality develops, however, are not in the external sheaths. They lie in the life-thread of the Ego, which goes from incarnation to incarnation. Thus the forces which belonged to the Zarathustra-individuality, and were present in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, preparing that body, pass out with the Zarathustra-individuality. Hence the sheaths which remain are a normal human organism, not in any sense the organism of an Adept, but the organism of a simple man, a weak man. And now the objective event occurs: whereas in other cases the life-thread simply goes farther, as in (a) and (b), it now turns along a side path (c); for through the Baptism by John in Jordan the Christ-Being entered into the threefold organism. In this organism the Christ-Being lived from the Baptism until the thirty-third year, until the Event of Golgotha, as we have often described.

Whose concern, then, is the life of Christ Jesus from the thirtieth to the thirty-third year? It is not the concern of the individuality who went from incarnation to incarnation, but of that Individuality who from out of the Cosmos entered into the body of Jesus of Nazareth; the concern of an Individuality, a Being who was never before connected with the earth, who from out of the Universe connected Himself with a human body. In this sense the event which took place between the thirtieth and thirty-third years of the life of Christ Jesus, between the John-Baptism and the Mystery of Golgotha, are those of the Divine Being, Christ, not of a man. Hence this event was not a concern of the earth but a concern of the super-sensible worlds, for it had nothing to do with a man. As a sign of this—that it had to do with no man—the human being who had dwelt in this body up to the thirtieth year forsook it.

These happenings have originally something to do with events that took place before such a life-thread as our human one had passed into a physical human organization. We must go back to the ancient Lemurian time, into the age wherein human individualities, coming from Divine heights, incarnated for the first time in earthly bodies; back to the event which is indicated for us in the Old Testament as the Temptation through the Serpent. This event is of a very remarkable kind. From its outcome all men suffer as long as they are subject to incarnation. For if this event had not happened, the whole evolution of mankind on the earth would have been different, and men would have passed in a much more perfect condition from incarnation to incarnation. Through this event, however, they become more closely entangled in matter, allegorically designated as the ‘Fall of Man’. But it was the Fall that first called man to his present individuality; so that, as he goes as an individuality from incarnation to incarnation, he is not responsible for the Fall. We know that the Luciferic spirits were responsible for the Fall. Hence we must say that before man became man in the earthly sense, there occurred the divine, super-sensible event by which a deeper entanglement in matter was laid upon him. Through this event man has indeed attained to the power of love and to freedom, but through it something was laid upon him that he could not lay upon himself by his own power. This becoming entangled in matter was not a human act, but a deed of the Gods, which happened before men could cooperate in their own fate. It is something which the Higher Powers of progressive evolution arranged with the Luciferic powers. We shall have to go into all these events and characterise them more exactly. Today we will place only the chief point before our minds.

What happened at that time needed a counterpoise. The pre-human event—the Fall of Man—needed a counterpoise, but this again was a concern not of human beings, but of the Gods among themselves. And we shall see that this action had to take its course as deeply in matter as the first action had taken place above it. The God had to descend as deeply into matter as He had allowed man to sink into matter.

Let this fact work upon you with its full weight; then you will understand that this incarnation of the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth was something that concerned Christ Himself. And what part was man called upon to take in it? First of all, as spectator, to see how the God compensates for the Fall, how He provides the compensating act. It would not have been possible to do this within the personality of an Adept, for an Adept is one who by his own efforts has worked his way out of the Fall. It was possible only in a personality who was truly man—who, as man, did not surpass other men. This personality had surpassed them before he was thirty years of age—but no longer. Through that which then took place, a Divine event was accomplished in the evolution of mankind, just as had been done at the beginning of human evolution in the Lemurian time. And men were partakers in a transaction which had taken place among Gods; men could look upon it, because the Gods had to make use of the world of the physical plane in order to let their transaction play itself out to the end. Hence it is much better to say: ‘Christ offered to the Gods the atonement which He could offer only in a physical human body’, than to use any other form of words. Man was a spectator of a Divine occasion.

Through this atonement something had happened for human nature. Men simply experienced it in the course of their development. Thereby the third way was opened, besides the two already indicated.

Men who have gone deeply into the nature of Christianity have often pointed out these three ways. From among the large number of those who could be named I will mention only two who have given eminent testimony to the fact that Christ—who from the twentieth century onwards will be seen through the more highly developed faculties—can be recognised, felt, experienced, through feelings which were not possible in the same form before the Event of Golgotha.

There is, for example, a man who in his whole cast of mind can be looked upon as a sharp opponent of what we have characterised as Jesuitism: Blaise Pascal, a great figure in spiritual history, standing forth as one who has set aside all that had arisen to the detriment of the old Churches, but has also absorbed nothing of modern rationalism. As always with great minds, he really remained alone with his thoughts. But what is the fundamental feature of his thinking at the beginning of the modern period? When we look into the matter we see from the writings he left behind, particularly from his inspiring Pensées—a book accessible to anyone—how he perceived and felt what man must have become if the Christ-Event had not taken place in the world.

In the secrecy of his soul, Pascal set himself the question: What would have become of man if no Christ had entered into human evolution? And he replied: We can feel that in his soul man encounters two dangers. One danger is that he should recognise God as identical with his own being: knowledge of God in knowledge of man. Whither does this lead? When it arises so that man recognises himself as God, it leads to pride, haughtiness, arrogance; and man destroys his best powers because he hardens them in haughtiness and pride. This is a knowledge of God that would always have been possible, even if no Christ had come, even if the Christ-Event had not worked as an impulse in the hearts of all men. Human beings would always have been able to recognize God, but they would have become proud through this consciousness in their own breasts. Or there might be human beings who hide themselves from the knowledge of God, who want to know nothing about God. Their gaze falls on something else; it falls on human powerlessness, on human misery, and then of necessity there follows human despair. That would have been the other danger, the danger of those who had put away from them the knowledge of God.

Only these two ways, said Pascal, are possible: pride and arrogance, or despair. Then the Christ-Event entered into human evolution, and worked so that every man received a power which not only enabled him to experience God, but the very God who had become like unto men, who had lived with men. That is the sole remedy for pride: when we turn our gaze upon the God who bowed Himself to the Cross; when the soul looks to Christ bowing Himself to death on the Cross. And that, too, is the only healing for despair. For this is not a humility that makes a man weak, but a humility that gives healing strength which transcends despair. As the mediator between pride and despair, there dawns in the human soul the Helper, the Saviour, as Pascal understood Him. This can be felt by every man, even without clairvoyance. This is the preparation for the Christ who from the twentieth century onwards will be visible for all men; who as the Healer for pride and despair will arise in every human breast, but earlier could not be felt in the same way.

The second witness I would summon from the long line of men who have this feeling, a feeling that every Christian can make his own, is one already mentioned in many other connections, Vladimir Soloviev. Soloviev also points to two powers in human nature, between which the personal Christ must stand as a mediator. There is a duality, he says, for which the human soul longs: immortality, and wisdom or moral perfection; but neither belongs to human nature from the start. Human nature shares the characteristic of all natures, and nature leads not to immortality, but to death. In beautiful meditations this great thinker of modern times works out how external science shows that death extends over everything. If we look at external nature, our knowledge replies, ‘Death is!’ But within us lives the longing for immortality. Why? Because of our longing for perfection. We have only to glance into the human soul to see that a longing for perfection lives in us. Just as truly, says Soloviev, as the red rose is endowed with red colour, so truly is the human soul endowed with the longing for perfection. But to strive after perfection without longing for immortality, he continues, is to give the lie to existence. It would be meaningless if the soul were to end with death, as all natural being ends. Yet all natural existence tells us, ‘Death is!’ Hence the human soul is under the necessity of going beyond natural existence and seeking the answer elsewhere.

Proceeding from this thought, Soloviev says: Look at the natural scientists, what answer do they give when they wish to teach the connection of the human soul with nature? A mechanical natural order, they say, prevails and man is part of it. And what do the philosophers answer? That the spiritual, meaning an empty abstract thought-world which pervades all the facts of nature, is to be recognised philosophically. Neither of these statements is an answer for a man who is conscious of himself, and asks from out of his consciousness, ‘What is perfection?’ If he is conscious that he has a longing for perfection, a longing for the life of truth, if he asks what Power can satisfy this longing, there opens for him an outlook into a realm, the realm of Grace over and above nature, which at first stands before the soul as a riddle; and unless the answer to it can be found, the soul is constrained to regard itself as a falsehood. No philosophy, no natural science, can connect the realm of Grace with existence, for natural forces work mechanically, and thought-powers have only thought-reality. But what is it that is able, with full reality, to unite the soul with nature? He Who is the personal Christ working in the world. And only the living Christ, not one that is merely thought of, can give the answer. Anything that works merely in the soul leaves the soul alone, for the soul cannot of itself give birth to the kingdom of Grace. That which transcends nature, which like nature itself stands there as a real fact, the personal historic Christ—He it is who gives not an intellectual answer but a real answer.

And now Soloviev comes to the most complete, the most fully spiritual answer that can be given at the end of the period now closing, before the doors open to that which has so often been intimated to you: the vision of Christ which will have its beginning in the twentieth century. In the light of these facts, a name can be given to the consciousness which Pascal and Soloviev have so memorably described: we can call it Faith. So, too, it has been named by others.

With the concept of Faith we can come from two directions into a strange conflict regarding the human soul. Go through the evolution of the concept of Faith and see what the critics have said about it. Today men are so far advanced that they say Faith must be guided by knowledge, and a Faith not supported by knowledge must be put aside. Faith must be dethroned, as it were, and replaced by knowledge. In the Middle Ages the things of the Higher Worlds were apprehended by Faith, and Faith was held to be justified on its own account.

The fundamental principle of Protestantism, also, is that Faith, alongside knowledge, is to be looked upon as justified. Faith is something which goes forth from the human soul, and alongside of it is the knowledge which ought to be common to all. It is interesting to see how Kant, whom many consider a great philosopher, did not get beyond this concept of Faith. His idea is that what a man should attain concerning such matters as God, immortality and so forth, ought to shine in from quite other regions, but only through a moral faith, not through knowledge.

The highest development of the concept of Faith comes with Soloviev, who stands before the closed door as the most significant thinker of his time, pointing already to the modern world. For Soloviev knows a Faith quite different from all previous concepts of it. Whither has the prevailing concept of Faith led humanity? It has brought humanity to the atheistic, materialistic demand for mere knowledge of the external world, in line with Lutheran and Kantian ideas, or in the sense of the Monistic philosophy of the nineteenth century; to the demand for the knowledge which boasts of knowledge, and considers Faith as something that the human soul had framed for itself out of its necessary weakness up to a certain time in the past. The concept of Faith has finally come to this, because Faith was regarded as merely subjective. In the preceding centuries Faith had been demanded as a necessity. In the nineteenth century Faith is attacked just because it finds itself in opposition to the universally valid knowledge which should stem from the human soul.

And then comes a philosopher who recognises and prizes the concept Faith in order to attain a relationship to Christ that had not previously been possible. He sees this Faith, in so far as it relates to Christ, as an act of necessity, of inner duty.

For with Soloviev the question is not, ‘to believe or not to believe’; Faith is for him a necessity in itself. His view is that we have a duty to believe in Christ, for otherwise we paralyse ourselves and give the lie to our existence. As the crystal form emerges in a mineral substance, so does Faith arise in the human soul as something natural to itself. Hence the soul must say: ‘If I recognise the truth, and not a lie about myself, then in my own soul I must realise Faith. Faith is a duty laid upon me, but I cannot do otherwise than come to it through my own free act.’ And therein Soloviev sees the distinctive mark of the Christ-Deed, that Faith is both a necessity and at the same time a morally free act. It is as though it were said to the soul: You can do nothing else. If you do not wish to extinguish the self within you, you must acquire Faith for yourself; but it must be by your own free act! And, like Pascal, Soloviev brings that which the soul experiences, in order not to feel itself a lie, into connection with the historic Christ Jesus as He entered into human evolution through the events in Palestine. Because of this, Soloviev says: If Christ had not entered into human evolution, so that He has to be thought of as the historic Christ; if He had not brought it about that the soul perceives the inwardly free act as much as the lawful necessity of Faith, the human soul in our post-Christian times would feel itself bound to extinguish itself and to say, not ‘I am’, but ‘I am not’. That, according to this philosopher, would have been the course of evolution in post-Christian times: an inner consciousness would have permeated the human soul with the ‘I am not’.¹ Directly the soul pulls itself together to the point of attributing real existence to itself, it cannot do otherwise than turn back to the historic Christ Jesus.

Here we have, for exoteric thought also, a step forward along the path of Faith in establishing the third way. Through the message of the Gospels, a person not able to look into the spiritual world can come to recognition of Christ. Through that which the consciousness of the seer can impart to him, he can likewise come to a recognition of the Christ. But there was also a third way, the way of self-knowledge, and as the witnesses cited, together with thousands and thousands of other human beings, can testify from their own experience, it leads to a recognition that self-knowledge in post-Christian time is impossible without placing Christ Jesus by the side of man and a corresponding recognition that the soul must either deny itself, or, if it wills to affirm itself, it must at the same time affirm Christ Jesus.

Why this was not so in pre-Christian times will be shown in the next few days.

• 1. Acts 10:42 "to testify that He is the one ordained by God to be judge of the living and dead." and II Timothy 4:1 "Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead."
• 1. Cf. Carlyle's famous account in Sartor Resartus, Book II, Chapter VII, of his encounter with a repudiation of the ‘Everlasting No’. (Translator's note.)

The reversing of Egyptian remembrance into material forms by way of Arabism. The harmonizing of Egyptian remembrance. The Christian impulse of power in Rosicrucianism.

In the previous lectures wide reaches, both of human evolution and also of world evolution, were brought before our souls. We saw how mysterious connections in the evolution of the world are reflected in the civilizations of the different nations belonging to the post-Atlantean period. We saw how the first epoch of earthly development is reflected in the civilization of ancient India; the second, during which the separation of the sun from the earth took place, is reflected in the Persian civilization; and we have endeavoured, as far as time permitted, to sketch the various events of the Lemurian epoch—the third in the course of the earth's development—in which man received the foundations of his ego, which is reflected in the civilization of Egypt. It was pointed out that the initiation wisdom of ancient Egypt was a kind of remembrance of this, which was the first period of earthly evolution in which man participated. Then, coming to the fourth age, that in which the true union between body and spirit is so beautifully presented in the art of Greece, we showed it to be a reflection of what man experienced with the ancient gods, the beings we have described as Angels. Nothing remained that could be reflected in our age—the fifth—the age now running its course. Secret connections do, however, exist between the different periods of post Atlantean civilization; these we have already touched on in the first of these lectures.

You may recall how it was stated that the confinement of the people of the present day to their own immediate surroundings, that is, to the materialistic belief that reality is only to be found between life and death, can be traced to the circumstance of the Egyptians having bestowed so much care on the preservation of the bodies of the dead. They tried at that time to preserve the physical form of man, and this has not been without an effect on souls after death. When the bodily form is thus preserved the soul after death is still connected in a certain way with the form it bore during life. Thought-forms are called up in the soul, these cling to the sensible form, and when the person incarnates again and again and the soul enters into new bodies these thought-forms endure.

All that the human soul experienced when it looked down from spiritual heights upon its corpse is firmly rooted within it, hence it has not been able to unlearn this, nor to turn away from the vision which bound it to the flesh. The result has been that countless souls who were incorporated in ancient Egypt are born again with the fruits of this vision, and can only believe in the reality of the physical body. This was firmly implanted in souls at that time. Things that take place in one age of culture are by no means unconnected with the ages that follow.

Suppose that we represent here the seven consecutive cultural periods of post-Atlantean civilization by a line. The fourth age, which is exactly in the middle, occupies an exceptional position.

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We have only to consider this age exoterically to see that in it the most wonderful physical things have been produced, things by which man has conquered the physical world in a unique and harmonious way. Looking back to the Egyptian pyramids we observe a type of geometric form which demonstrates certain things symbolically. The close union of spirit—the formative human spirit—and the physical form had not yet been completed. We see this with special clearness in the Sphinx, the origin of which is to be traced to a remembrance of the Atlantean etheric human form. In its physical form the Sphinx gives us no direct conviction of this union, although it is a great human conception; in it we see the thought embodied that man is still animal-like below and only attains to what is human in the etheric head.

What confronts us on the physical plane is ennobled in the fourth age in the forms of Greek plastic art; and the moral life, the destiny of man, we find depicted in the Greek tragedies. In them we see the inner life of the spirit played out upon the physical plane in a very wonderful way; we see the meaning of earthly evolution in so far as the gods are connected with it.

So long as the earth was a part of the sun, high Sun-Spirits were united with the human race. By the end of the Atlantean epoch these exalted Beings had gradually faded, step by step, along with the sun, from the consciousness of man. Human consciousness was no longer capable of reaching up after death to the high realms where vision of the Sun-Spirits was possible. Assuming that we are at the standpoint of these Beings (which we can be in spirit), we can picture them saying: We were once united with humanity but had to withdraw from them for a time. The divine world had to disappear from human consciousness so as to re-appear in a newer, higher form through the Christ-Impulse.

A man who belonged to Grecian civilization was incapable as yet of understanding what was to come to earth through the Christ; but an Initiate, one who, as we have seen, knew the Christ aforetime, could say: That spiritual form which was preserved in men's minds as Osiris had to disappear for a time from the sight of man, the horizon of the Gods had to be darkened, but within us dwells the sure consciousness that the glory of God will appear again on earth. This certainty was the result of the cosmic consciousness which men possessed and the consciousness of the withdrawal of the glory of God and of its return is reflected in Greek tragedy.

We see man here represented as the image of the Gods, we see how he lives, strives, and has a tragic end. At the same time the tragedy holds within it the idea that man will yet conquer through his spiritual power. The drama was intended as a presentation of living and dying humanity, and at the same time it reflected man's whole relationship to the universe. In every realm of Greek culture we see this union between things of the spirit and things of the senses. It was a unique age in post-Atlantean civilization.

It is remarkable how certain phenomena of the third age are connected as by underground channels with our own, the fifth age. Certain things which were sown as seed during the Egyptian age are re-appearing in our own; others which were sown as seed during the Persian age will appear in the sixth; and things belonging to the first epoch will return in the seventh. Everything has a deep and law-filled connection, the past pointing always to the future. This connection will best be realized if we explain it by referring to the two extremes, those things connecting the first and the seventh age. Let us turn back to the first age and consider, not what history tells us, but what really existed in ancient pre-Vedic times.

Everything that appeared later had been first prepared for; this was especially the case with the division of mankind into castes. Europeans may feel strong objections to the caste system, but it was justified in the civilization of that time, and is profoundly connected with human karma. The souls coming over from Atlantis were really of very different values, and in some respects it was suitable for these souls, of whom some were at a more advanced stage than others, to be divided in accordance with the karma they had previously stored up for themselves. In that far off age humanity was not left to itself as it is now, but was really led and guided in its development in a much higher way than is generally supposed. At that time highly advanced individuals, whom we call the Rishis, understood the value of souls, and the difference there is between the various categories of souls. At the bottom of the division into castes lies a well-founded cosmic law. Though to a later age this may seem harsh, in that far-off time, when the guidance of humanity was spiritual, the caste principle was entirely suited to human nature.

It is true that in the normal evolution of man those who lived over into a new age with a particular karma came also into a particular caste, and it is also true that a man could only rise above any special caste if he underwent a process of initiation. Only when he attained a stage where he was able to strip off that which was the cause of his karma, only when he lived in Yoga, could the difference in caste, under certain circumstances, be overcome. Let us keep in mind the Anthroposophical principle which lays down that we must put aside all criticism of the facts of evolution and strive only to understand them. However had the impression this division into castes makes on us at the present time, there was every justification for it, and it has to be taken in connection with a far-reaching and just arrangement regarding the human race.

When a person speaks of races today he speaks of something that is no longer quite correct; even in Theosophical handbooks great mistakes are made on this subject. In them it is said that our evolution runs its course in Rounds, that in each Round there are Globes, and in each Globe, Races which develop one after the other—so that we have races in each epoch of the earth's evolution.

But this is not the case. Even in regard to present humanity there is no justification for speaking of a mere development of races. In the true sense of the word we can only speak of race development during the Atlantean epoch. People were so different in external physiognomy throughout the seven periods that one might speak rather of different forms than races. While it is true that the races have arisen through this, it is [in]correct to speak of races in the far back Lemurian epoch; and in our own epoch the idea of race will gradually disappear along with all the differences that are a relic of earlier times. We still speak of races, but all that remains of these today are relics of differences that existed in Atlantean times, and the idea of race has now lost its original meaning. What new idea is to arise in place of the present idea of race?

Humanity will be differentiated in the future even more than in the past; it will be divided into categories, but not in an arbitrary way; from their own spiritual inner capacities men will come to know that they must work together for the whole body corporate.

There will be categories and classes however fiercely class-war may rage today, among those who do not develop egoism but accept the spiritual life and evolve toward what is good a time will come when men will organize themselves voluntarily. They will say: One must do this, the other must do that. Division of work even to the smallest detail will take place; work will be so organized that a holder of this or that position will not find it necessary to impose his authority on others. All authority will be voluntarily recognized, so that in a small portion of humanity we shall again have divisions in the seventh age, which will recall the principle of castes, but in such a way that no one will feel forced into any caste, but each will say: I must undertake a part of the work of humanity, and leave another part to another—both will be equally recognized.

Humanity will be divided according to differences in intellect and morals; on this basis a spiritualized caste system will again appear. Led, as it were, through a secret channel, the seventh age will repeat that which arose prophetically in the first. The third, the Egyptian age, is connected in the same way with our own. Little as it may appear to a superficial view, all that was laid down during the Egyptian age re-appears in the present one. Most of the people living on the earth today were incarnated formerly in Egyptian bodies and experienced an Egyptian environment; having lived through other intermediate incarnations, they are now again on earth, and, in accordance with the laws we have indicated, they unconsciously remember what they experienced in Egypt.

All this is re-appearing now in a mysterious way, and if you are willing to recognize such secret connection of the great laws of the universe working from one civilization to another, you must make yourselves acquainted with the truth, not with all those legendary and fantastic ideas which are given out concerning the facts of human evolution.

People think too superficially about the spiritual progress of humanity. For example, someone remarks about Copernicus that a man with such ideas as his was possible, because in the age in which he lived a change in thought had arisen regarding the solar system. Anyone holding such an opinion has never studied, even exoterically, how Copernicus arrived at his ideas concerning the relationship of the heavenly bodies. One who has done this, and who more especially has followed the grand ideas of Kepler, knows differently, and he will be strengthened even more in these ideas by what occultism has to say about it.

Let us consider this so that we may see the matter clearly, and try to enter into the soul of Copernicus. This soul had lived in the age of ancient Egypt, and had then occupied an important position in the cult of Osiris; it knew that Osiris was held to be the same as the high Sun-Being.

The sun, in a spiritual sense, was at the centre of Egyptian thought and feeling; I do not mean the outwardly visible sun; it was regarded only as the bodily expression of the spiritual sun. Just as the eye is the expression for the power of sight, so to the Egyptian the Sun was the eye of Osiris, the embodiment of the Spirit of the Sun. All this had been experienced at one time by the soul of Copernicus, and it was the unconscious memory of it that impelled him to renew, in a form possible to a materialistic age, this ancient idea of Osiris, which at that time had been entirely spiritual. When humanity had sunk more deeply within the physical plane, this idea confronts us again in its materialistic form, as the Copernican theory.

The Egyptians possessed the spiritual conception and it was the world-karma of Copernicus to retain a memory of such conceptions, and this conjured forth that “combination of bearings” that led to his theory of the solar system. The case was similar with Kepler, who, in his three laws, presented the movement of the planets round the sun in a much more comprehensive way; however abstract they may appear to us, they were the result of a most profound conception. A striking fact in connection with this highly gifted being is contained in a passage written by himself and which fills us with awe when we read it. Kepler writes: “I have thought deeply upon the Solar System. It has revealed to me its secrets; I will carry over the sacred ceremonial vessels of the Egyptians into the modern world.”

Thoughts implanted in the souls of the ancient Egyptians meet us again, and our modern truths are the re-born myths of Egypt. Were it desired, we could follow this up in many details; we could follow it up to the very beginnings of humanity. Let us think once more of the Sphinx, that wondrous, enigmatic form which later became the Sphinx of Oedipus, who put its well-known riddle to man. We have learnt already that the Sphinx is built up from that human form which on the physical plane still resembled that of animals, although the etheric part had already assumed human form. In the Egyptian age man could only see the Sphinx in an etheric form after he had passed through certain stages of initiation. Then it appeared to him. But the important thing is that when a man had true clairvoyant perception it did not appear to him merely as a lump of wood does, but certain feelings were necessarily associated with the vision.

Under certain circumstances a callous person may pass by a highly important work of art and remain unmoved by it; clairvoyant consciousness is not like this; when really developed the fitting emotion is already aroused. The Greek legend of the Sphinx expresses the right feeling, experienced by the clairvoyant during the ancient Egyptian period and also in the Grecian Mysteries, when he had progressed so far that the Sphinx appeared to him. What was it that then appeared before his eyes? He beheld something incomplete something that was in course of development. The form he saw was in a certain way related to that of animals, and in the etheric head we saw what was to work within the physical form in order to shape it more like man. What man was to become, what his task was in evolution, this was the question that rose vividly before him when he saw the Sphinx—a question full of longing, of expectation, and of future development.

The Greeks say that all investigation and philosophy have originated from longing; this is also a saying of clairvoyants. A form appears to man which he can only perceive with his astral consciousness; it worries him, it propounds a riddle, the riddle of man's future. Further, this etheric form, which was present in the Atlantean epoch and lived on as a memory into the Egyptian age, is embodied more and more in man, and re-appears on the other side in the nature of man. It reappears in all the religious doubts, in the impotence of our age of civilization when faced with the question: What is man? In all unanswered questions, in all statements that revolve round “Ignorabimus,” we have to see the Sphinx. In ages that were still spiritual man could rise to heights where the Sphinx was actually before him—today it dwells within him in countless unanswered questions.

It is therefore very difficult for man at the present time to arrive at conviction with regard to the spiritual world. The Sphinx, which formerly was outside him, is now in his inner being, for a Being has appeared in the central epoch of post-Atlantean evolution Who has cast the Sphinx into the abyss—into the individual inner being of every man.

When the Greco-Latin age, with its after-effects, had continued into the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries we come to the fifth post-Atlantean age. Up to the present new doubts have arisen more and more in place of the old certainty. We meet with such things more and more, and if desired we could discover many more instances of Egyptian ideas, transformed into their materialistic counterpart in the new evolution. We might ask what has really happened in the present age, for this is no ordinary passing over of ideas; things are not met with directly, but they are as if modified. Everything is presented in a more materialistic form; even man's connection with animal nature re-appears, but changed into a materialistic conception. The fact that man knew in earlier times that he could not shape his body otherwise than in the semblance of animals, and that on this account in his Egyptian remembrances he pictured even his gods in animal forms, confronts us today in the generally held materialistic opinion that man has descended from animals. Darwinism is nothing but an heirloom of ancient Egypt in a materialistic form.

From this we see that the path of evolution has by no means been a straightforward one, but that something like a division has taken place, one branch becoming more materialistic and one more spiritual. That which had formerly progressed in one line now split into two lines of development, namely, science and belief.

Going back into earlier times, to the Egyptian, Persian, and ancient Indian civilizations, one does not find a science apart from faith. What was known regarding the spiritual origin of the world passed in a direct line to knowledge of particular things; men were able to rise from knowledge of the material world to the most exalted heights; there was no contradiction between knowledge and faith. An ancient Indian sage or a Chaldean priest would not have understood this difference; even the Egyptians knew no difference between what was simply a matter of belief or a fact of knowledge. This difference became apparent when man had sunk more deeply into matter, and had gained more material culture; but in order to gain this another organization was necessary.

Let us suppose that this descent of man into matter had not taken place; what would have happened? We considered a like descent in the last lecture, but it was of a different nature; this is a new descent in another realm, by which something like an independent science entered alongside the comprehension of what was spiritual. This occurred first in Greece. Up till then opposition between science and religion did not exist; and would have had no meaning to a priest of Egypt. Take, for instance, what Pythagoras learnt from the Egyptians, the teaching regarding numbers. This was not merely abstract mathematics to him; it gave him the musical secrets of the world in the harmony of numbers. Mathematics, which is only something abstract to the man of the present day, was to him a sacred wisdom with a religious foundation.

Man had, however, to sink more and more within the material, physical plane, and it can be seen how the spiritual wisdom of Egypt reappears—but transformed into a materialistic, mythical conception of the universe. In the future, the theories of today will be held to have had only temporal value, just as ancient theories have only a temporal value to the man of today. Perhaps men will then be so sensible that they will not fall into the mistake of some of our contemporaries who say: “Until the nineteenth century man was absolutely stupid as regards science; it was only then he became sensible all that was taught previously about anatomy was nonsense, only the last century has produced what is true.” In the future men will be wiser, and will not give tit for tat; they will not reject our myths of anatomy, philosophy, and Darwinism so disdainfully as present-day man rejects ancient truths. For it is the case that things which today are regarded as firmly established are but transitory forms of truth.

The Copernican system is but a transitory form, it has been brought about through the plunge into materialism, and will be replaced by something different. The forms of truth continually change. In order that all connection with what is spiritual should not be lost, an even stronger spiritual impulse had to enter human evolution. This was described yesterday as the Christ-Impulse. For a time mankind had to be left to itself, as it were, as regards scientific progress, and the religious side had to develop separately; it had to be saved from the progressive onslaught of science.

Thus we see how science, which devoted itself to material things, was separated for a while from things spiritual, which now followed a special course and the two movements—belief in what was spiritual, and the knowledge of external things—proceeded side by side. We even see in one particular period of development in the Middle Ages, a period immediately preceding our own, that science and belief consciously oppose each other, but still seek union.

Consider the Scholastics. They said: Faith was given to man by Christ, this we may not deny; it was a direct gift; and all the science which has been produced since the division took place, can only serve to prove this gift. We see in scholasticism the tendency to employ all science to prove revealed truth. At its prime it said: Men can gaze upwards to the blessedness of faith and to a certain degree human science can enter into it, but to do this men must devote themselves to it.

In the course of time all relationship between science and belief was, however, lost, and there was no longer any hope that they could advance side by side. The extremity of this divergence is found in the philosophy of Kant, where science and belief are completely sundered. In it, on the one hand, the categorical imperative is put forward with its practical postulates of reason; on the other hand, purely theoretical reason which has lost all connection with spiritual truths and declares that from the standpoint of science these cannot be found.

Another powerful impulse was, however, already making itself felt, which also represented a memory of ancient Egyptian thought. Minds appeared that were seeking a union between science and belief, minds that were endeavouring, through entering profoundly into science, to recognize the things of God with such certainty and clarity that they would be accessible to scientific thought. Goethe is typical of such a thinker and of such a point of view. To him religion, art, and science were one; he felt the works of Greek art to be connected with religion, as he felt the great thoughts of Divinity to be reflected in the countless plant formations he investigated.

Taking the whole of modern culture, we have to see in it a memory of Egyptian culture; Egyptian thought is reflected in it from its beginning.

The division in modern culture between science and belief did not arise without long preparation,—and if we are to understand how this came about we must glance briefly at the way post-Atlantean culture was prepared for during the Atlantean epoch.

We have seen how a handful of people who dwelt in the neighbourhood of Ireland had progressed the furthest; they had acquired those qualities which had to appear gradually in the succeeding epochs of civilization. The rudiments of the ego had been developing as we know since the Lemurian epoch, but each stage of selfhood in this small group of people, by whom the stream of culture was carried from West to East, consisted in a tendency to logical thought and the power of judgment. Up to this time these did not exist; if a thought arose it was already substantiated. The beginning of thought that was capable of judgment was implanted in these people, and they bore the rudiments of this with them from West to East in their colonizing migrations, one of which went southwards towards India. Here the first foundations of constructive thinking were laid. Later, this constructive thinking passed into the Persian civilization. In the third cultural period, that of Chaldea, it grew stronger and with the Greeks it developed so far that they have left behind them the glorious monument of Aristotelian philosophy.

Constructive thought continued to develop more and more, but always returned to a central point, where it received reinforcement. We must picture it as follows: When civilization came from the West into Asia one group, that having the smallest amount of purely logical thinking capacity, went toward India; the second group, which traveled towards Persia, had a little more; and the group that went towards Egypt had still more. From within this group were separated off the people of the Old Testament, who had exactly that combination of faculties which had to be developed in order that another forward step might be taken in this purely logical form of human cognition.

With this is associated the other thing we have been considering, namely, the descent to the physical plane. The further we descend the more does thought become merely logical, and the more it tends to a merely external faculty of judgment. Pure logical thought, mere human logic, that which proceeds from one idea to another, requires the human brain as its instrument; the cultivated brain makes logical thought possible. Hence external thinking, even when it has reached an astonishing height, can never of itself comprehend reincarnation, because it is in the first place only applicable to the things of the external sense world that surrounds us.

Logic may indeed be applied to all worlds, but can only be applied directly to the physical world; hence when it appears as human logic it is bound unconditionally to its instrument, the physical brain. Abstract thought could never have entered the world without a further descent into the world of the senses. This development of logical thought is bound up with the loss of ancient clairvoyant vision, and was bought at the cost of this loss. The task of man is to re-conquer clairvoyant vision, adding logical thought to it. In time to come he will obtain imagination as well, but logical thinking will be retained.

The human head had in the first place to be created similar to the etheric head before man could have a brain. It was then first possible for man to descend to the physical plane. In order that all spirituality should not be lost a point of time had to be chosen for the saving of this, when the last impulse to purely mechanical thought had not yet been given. If the Christ had appeared a few centuries later He would have come, as it were, too late, for humanity would have descended too far, would have been too much entangled in thought, and would not have been able to understand Christ. Christ had to come before this last impulse had been received, when the spiritually religious tendency could still be saved as a tendency leading to belief. Then came the last impulse, which plunged human thought to the lowest point, where it was banished and completely chained to physical life. This arose through the Arabs and Mohammedans. Moslem thought is a peculiar episode in Arabian life and thought, which in its passage over to Europe gave the final impulse to logical thinking—to that which is incapable of rising to what is spiritual.

To begin with, man was so led by what may be called Providence or a spiritual guidance that spiritual life was saved in Christendom; later, Arabism approached Europe from the south and provided the field for external culture. It is only capable of comprehending what is external. Do we not see this in the Arabesque, which is incapable of rising to what is living, but has to remain formal? We can also see in the Mosque how the spirit is, as it were, sucked out.

Humanity had first to be led down into matter, then in a roundabout way by means of Arabism, and the invasion of the Arab, we are shown how modern science first arose in the sharp contact of Arabism with Europeanism which had already accepted Christianity. The ancient Egyptian memories had come to life again; but what made them materialistic? What made them into thought-forms of the dead? We can show this clearly. If the path of progress had been smooth the memory of what had taken place previously would have re-appeared in our age. That which is spiritual has been saved as a whole, but one wing of European culture has been gripped by materialism. We also see how the remembrance of those who recalled the ancient Egyptian age was so changed by its passage through Arabism that it reappeared in a materialistic form. The fact that Copernicus comprehended the modern way of regarding the solar system was the outcome of his Egyptian memory. The reason why he presented it in a materialistic form, making of it a dead mechanical rotation, is because the Arabian mentality, encountering this memory from the other side, forced it into materialism.

From all that has been said you can see how secret channels connect the third and the fifth age. This can be seen even in the principle of initiation, and as modern life is to receive a principle of initiation in Rosicrucianism let us ask what this is.

In modern science we have to see a union between Egyptian remembrances and Arabism, which tends towards that which is dead. On the other side we see another union consummated, that between what Egyptian initiates imparted to their pupils and things spiritual. We see a union between wisdom and that which had been rescued as the truths of belief. This wondrous harmony between the Egyptian remembrance in wisdom and the Christian impulse of power is found in Rosicrucian spiritual teaching. So the ancient seed laid down in the Egyptian period re-appears, not merely as a repetition, but differentiated and upon a higher level.

These are thoughts which should not only instruct with regard to the universe, earth, and man, but they should enter as well into our feeling and our impulses of will and give us wings; for they show us the path we have to travel. They point the path to that which is spiritual, and also show how we may carry over into the future what, in a good sense, we have gained here on the purely material plane.

We have seen how paths separate and again unite; the time will come when not the remembrances only of Egypt will unite with spiritual truths to produce a Rosicrucian science, but science and Rosicrucianism will also unite. Rosicrucianism is both a religion and at the same time a science that is firmly bound to what is material. When we turn to the Babylonian period we find this is shown in myth of the third period of civilization; here we are told of the God Maradu, who meets with the evil principle, the serpent of the Old Testament, and splits his head in two, so that in a certain sense the earlier adversary is divided into two parts. This was in fact what actually happened; a partition of that which arose in the primeval, watery earth-substance, as symbolized by the serpent. In the upper part we have to see the truths upheld by faith, in the lower the purely material acceptance of the world. These two must be united—science and that which is spiritual—and they will be united in the future. This will come to pass when, through Rosicrucian wisdom, spirituality is intensified, and itself becomes a science, when it once more coincides with the investigations made by science. Then a mighty harmonious unity will again arise; the various currents of civilization will unite and flow together through the channels of humanity. Do we not see in recent times how this unity is being striven for?

When we consider the ancient Egyptian mysteries we see that religion, science, and art were then one. The course of the world evolution is shown in the descent of the Gods into matter; this is presented to us in a grand dramatic symbolism. Anyone who can appreciate this symbolism has science before him, for he sees there vividly portrayed the descent of man and his entrance into the world. He is also confronted with something else, namely, art, for the picture presented to him is an artistic reflection of science. But he does not see only these two, science and art, in the mysteries of ancient Egypt; they are for him at the same time religion, for what is presented to him pictorially is filled with religious feeling.

These three were later divided; religion, science, and art went separate ways, but already in our age men feel that they must again come together.

What else was the great effort of Richard Wagner than a spiritual striving, a mighty longing towards a cultural impulse? The Egyptians saw visible pictures because the external eye had need of them. In our age what they saw will be repeated; once more the separate streams of culture will unite, a whole will be constructed, this time preferably in a work of art whose elements will be the sequence of sound. On every side we find connections between what appertained to Egypt and modern times; everywhere this reflection can be seen. As time goes on our souls will realize more and more that each age is not merely a repetition but an ascent; that a progressive development is taking place in humanity. Then the most intimate strivings of humanity—the striving for initiation—must find fulfillment.

The principle of initiation suited to the first age cannot be the principle of initiation for the changed humanity of today. It is of no value to us to be told that the Egyptians had already found primeval wisdom and truth in ancient times; that these are contained in the old Oriental religions and philosophies, and that everything that has appeared since exists only to enable us to experience the same over again if we are to rise to the highest initiation. No! This is useless talk. Each age has need of its own particular force within the depths of the human soul.

When it is asserted in certain Theosophical quarters that there is a western initiation for our stage of civilization, but that it is a late product, that true initiation comes only from the East, we must answer that this cannot be determined without knowing something further. The matter must be gone into more deeply than is usually done. There may be some who say that in Buddha the highest summit was reached, that Christ has brought nothing new since Buddha; but only in that which meets us positively can we recognize what really is the question here. If we ask those who stand on the ground of Western initiation whether they deny anything in Eastern initiation, whether they make any different statements regarding Buddha than those in the East, they answer, “No.” They value all; they agree with all; but they understand progressive development. They can be distinguished from those who deny the Western principle of initiation by the fact that they know how to accept what Orientalism has to give, and in addition they know the advanced forms which the course of time has made necessary. They deny nothing in the realm of Eastern initiation.

Take a description of Buddha by one who accepts the standpoint of Western esotericism. This will not differ from that of a follower of Eastern esotericism; but the man with the Western standpoint holds that in Christ there is something which goes beyond Buddha. The Eastern standpoint does not allow this. If it is said that Buddha is greater than Christ that does not decide anything, for this depends on something positive. Here the Western standpoint is the same as the Eastern. The West does not deny what the East says, but it asserts something further.

The life of Buddha is not rightly understood when we read that Buddha perished through the enjoyment of too much pork; this must not be taken literally. It is rightly objected from the standpoint of Christian esotericism that people who understand something trivial from this understand nothing about it at all; this is only an image, and shows the position in which Buddha stood to his contemporaries. He had imparted too many of' the sacred Brahmanical secrets to the outer world. He was ruined through having given out that which was hidden, as is everyone else who imparts what is hidden.

This is what is expressed in this peculiar symbol. Allow me to emphasize strongly that we disagree in no way with Oriental conceptions, but people must understand the esotericism of such things. If it is said that this is of little importance: it is not the case. They might as well think it of little importance when we are told that the writer of the Apocalypse wrote it amid thunder and lightning, and if anyone found occasion to mock at the Apocalypse because of this we should reply: “What a pity he does not know what it means when we are told that the Apocalypse was imparted to the earth 'mid lightning and thunder!”

We must keep in mind the fact that no negation has passed the lips of Western esotericists, and that much that was puzzling at the beginning of the Anthroposophical movement has been explained by them. The followers of Western esotericism never find in it anything out of harmony with the mighty truths given to the world by H. P. Blavatsky. When we are told, for example, that we have to distinguish in the Buddha the Dhyani-Buddha, the Adi-Buddha, and the human Buddha, this is first fully explained by the Western esotericist. For we know that what is regarded as the Dhyani-Buddha is nothing but the etheric body of the historic Buddha that had been taken possession of by a God; that this etheric body had been laid hold of by the being whom we call Wotan. This was already contained in Eastern esotericism, but was only first understood in the right way through Western esotericism.

The Anthroposophical movement should be especially careful that the feeling which rises in our souls from such thoughts as these should stimulate in us the desire for further development, that we should not stand still for a moment. The value of our movement does not consist in the ancient dogmas it contains (if these are but fifteen years old), but in comprehending its true purpose, which is the opening up of fresh springs of spiritual knowledge. It will then become a living movement and will help to bring about that future which, if only very briefly, has been presented to your mental sight today, by drawing upon what we are able to observe of the past.

We are not concerned with the imparting of theoretic truths, but that our feeling, our perception, and our actions may be full of power.

We have considered the evolution of Universe, Earth, and Man; we desire so to grasp what we have gathered from these studies that we may be ready at any time to enter upon development.

What we call “future” must always be rooted in the past; knowledge has no value if not changed into motive power for the future. The purpose for the future must be in accordance with the knowledge of the past, but this knowledge is of little value unless changed into propelling force for the future.

What we have heard has presented to us a picture of' such mighty motive powers that not only our will and our enthusiasm have been stimulated, but our feelings of joy and of security in life have also been deeply moved. When we note the interplay of so many currents we are constrained to say: Many are the seeds within the womb of Time. Through an ever deepening knowledge man must learn how better to foster all these seeds. Knowledge in order to work, in order to gain certainty in life, must be the feeling that pervades all Anthroposophical study.

In conclusion I would like to point out that the so-called theories of Spiritual Science only attain final truth when they are changed into something living—into impulses of feeling and of certainty as regards life; so that our studies may not merely be theoretical, but may play a real part in evolution.

We have tried to substantiate certain truths about the inner life of the fifth post-Atlantean period and about the development of the period from the sources that spiritual science opens up, using individual examples that simply result from the study of the physical world. Yesterday, in particular, we pointed out how important it is to note that a certain crisis can also be observed in the outer life during the 19th century. I have often pointed out how the mid-19th century in particular represents the crisis of materialism, and yesterday we were able to show, using a particular example from our own area, how certain indications — only indications, but still indications — of insights that could only come through anthroposophy were present, but how these insights are buried, I would say historically buried, just as a geological history of the earth is buried. that can only come through anthroposophy, but how these insights are buried, I would say, historically buried, just as one geological layer of the earth is buried and another lies above it. And so one would be able to prove in many cases in the spiritual life of modern times how the urge, the drive for a deeper insight, as it is opened up by anthroposophy, was present, especially present from certain conditions of earlier times in the course of the first half of the 19th century, and how then, brought about by the great advances in natural science, another layer, a completely opposite layer of human thinking, human thinking, has been superimposed on it, so that today what was already there is extremely difficult to reveal. And those people who today draw their concepts and ideas only from the uppermost layer covering the lower one, are strangely in darkness about what was already there. In this way, quite grotesque things arise.

Especially when you look at Troxler, who was also born in Switzerland and taught there for many years, and consider him in the context of European intellectual life, as I tried to do in my last book, The Riddle of Man), one can see in him how, although he did not yet have the things that can now come through spiritual science or anthroposophy, he worked towards them, I would like to say, in certain ideas, concrete ideas. In a straight line of development, if this existed in human development, but it is not given to the human race, a real spiritual deepening could have arisen, as it must be drawn today from the sources that spiritual science has. Then, in this country least of all, would spiritual science appear today as a foreign plant, but it would appear to those people who would only know the spiritual life of the 19th century in one of its most important representatives, as a continuation of the spiritual life. And if someone who was familiar with Swiss intellectual life were to speak at the Aarau conference in May 1916, he would say something like this: With this anthroposophy, we Swiss in particular do not have anything foreign coming into the country, but rather we greet an old acquaintance in this anthroposophy; after all, we have even been given a beautiful, wonderful definition of anthroposophy by our fellow countryman Troxler. In connection with the whole historical life, especially in this country, that would be the truth if it were told. But instead of that, in this Aarauer Aura in the writing, of which I already spoke to you yesterday, another thing was said. First of all, this spiritual science is lumped together with other things in order to be able to present it as a quantite negligeable, so to speak. It is said: “The overview may only use what is necessary for the characterization” — the overview that is to be given in this speech.

"Among these movements, all of which are immigrants in our country, the best known are the Christian Scientists, popularly known as faith healers, the Mazdaznan, the Theosophists and finally the Anthroposophists with their enormous temple in Dornach.

So we see that while it would be so nice to correspond to reality, that in Anthroposophy we would greet an old acquaintance here, Anthroposophy is declared to be an intruder. You see, that is just one symptomatic expression, but it could be multiplied not by thousands but by millions in our time, such a symptomatic expression of how our time is inclined to speak untruthfully. This is precisely what one should study in the impulses that underlie our contemporary culture: what the inclination towards untruthfulness is in our time. Of course, one soon realizes why the man in this case tells the untruth. He does not know the truth, of course, and has no idea of this truth, because he probably has not read much by Troxler. But that is precisely the characteristic of our time, that the most uncalled stand up and become teachers, enlighteners of the people, and that this must necessarily be connected with the spreading of untruth. Lack of thought is what underlies such things.

Now it is a matter of seeing these things in a deeper context. First of all, seeing that these things already arise from impulses, as we have discussed them in the course of this week, and that they must be seen through by our friends, so that our friends with spiritual science can place themselves in our present life in the right way. For it cannot be denied that it is quite difficult for many to assert themselves today as spiritual scientists, as confessors of spiritual science, in view of the situation in the world and what is happening in the outer world, and what, as can be seen more and more, naturally cannot find anything in this spiritual science that it understands. First of all, one must see the bigger picture. Some time ago, we characterized how completely inaccurate the theories of natural scientists are in the face of reality, given the great progress they have made in the world of facts. The facts that natural science has brought to the surface of existence can only be admired; it is truly a great achievement. But what has been said about the struggle for existence, about selection, about all the problems related to the problem of birth and kinship, all this is as inaccurate as possible, as is already recognized by scientists today. I even explained this in the public lecture in Basel.

But all of this is connected through the way in which certain old traditions have emerged in modern times with the present form of these old traditions. It is intimately connected with this. Modern times have indeed shown that they need the old times for their educational life. For the humanities scholar, this is not surprising, because the humanities scholar knows that certain impulses repeat themselves in every age. So it is only natural that impulses which intervene in a different form in the fifth post-Atlantic period in the development of humanity should also arise as repetitions of the fourth post-Atlantic period. This fourth post-Atlantic period began, as we know, in the eighth century BC and ends in the fifteenth century AD. Since the fifteenth century AD, we have entered a completely new era, as can be seen even on the surface, as we demonstrated yesterday with a few examples. But certain things that took place in the fourth post-Atlantic period are repeating themselves on a different level in our period. And I would like to say: “Outwardly, this fifth post-Atlantic period has indeed shown that it even has to consciously carry over certain things from the fourth post-Atlantic period. Did we not see how in the 15th century Greek scholars emigrated to Western Europe and brought ancient Greek scholarship in a new form first to Italy and then to the rest of Europe? What blossomed in European intellectual life through the impulses that arose from the traditions of an older time is called the Renaissance. And more than one might think, today's life still depends on the Renaissance.

But in other ways, too, one can show everywhere how, in relation to certain things, this fifth post-Atlantic period wanted to build on the fourth post-Atlantic period. Is it not a remarkable fact that Pico de Miranda, in the 15th century, when one could still speak more freely about Christianity than today, undertook to invite the most important scholars from all over Europe to Rome to discuss with them nine hundred theses that would essentially show how to arrive at a worldview suitable for the coming era. Of course, for obvious reasons, nothing much came of this. But this Pico de Mirandola, who was steeped in Greek culture, tried to substantiate Christianity in all its profound wisdom by drawing on Plato and Platonic philosophy. He believed that with the help of Plato, the Greek philosopher and greatest philosophical genius of the fourth post-Atlantic period, Christianity could be proven. So he wanted to create a connecting bridge between Plato and Christianity. One would like to say what a wonderful perspective would have resulted from this if such things could have been successful, if another geological layer had not been superimposed on top of it, if today in Europe we had a free, genuine Christianity permeated by Platonic philosophy!

But something else preceded that. Something preceded it that is connected in the deepest sense with many peculiarities of more recent spiritual life. If we take a look at the origin of Christianity, if we take a look at the time in which that exalted Being, whom we have come to know as the Christ, embodied Himself in a human body, and at the time in which that human life of feeling spread life, which was linked to this greatest event of the development of the earth, to the Mystery of Golgotha, which alone gives meaning to life on earth – if one takes a look at this time of the first spread of Christianity, then one notices that among those who, as a small group of people, brought this Christianity to Europe, there were some – they were then called Gnostics, especially by their opponents – who lived in the belief that the highest ideas, the highest wisdom, were necessary to make understandable the most significant event in the evolution of humanity on Earth.

We know that it is a misunderstanding of today's spiritual science to lump it together with Gnosticism. That is not the point. Gnosticism is something that was alive in the first Christian centuries, and was then buried like an old geological layer, and it cannot revive in the old form; it would then take on a Luciferic character. What is today spiritual science or anthroposophy must be born completely out of our time, and precisely this must be born completely out of our time, must fully reckon with all the great advances of the scientific world view. Thus spiritual science must not be confused with Gnosticism; but it must be recognized that the Gnostics, starting from the highest ideas, attempted to understand the Mystery of Golgotha by way of a spiritual evolution of the universe. And there is a deep striving for wisdom in the Gnostic systems. Everywhere we look, if we examine the matter from a spiritual-scientific point of view, we see how Christianity appears, I might say is borne by the Gnostic vehicle, as it appears to have been born out of a broad wisdom. It is one of the peculiarities of the development of Western civilization from the beginning of our era to the present day that this development was met with all the might of the wisdom in which Christianity was steeped. In a sense, the Gnostics were the ones most fiercely opposed. That is why only a few of their writings have come down to us, and most of what we know about the Gnostics comes from the writings of those who supposedly refuted them. But they did not refute them, they only eradicated them, they only pushed back the actual wisdom. That is the peculiar thing that was to be pushed back by the European impulses, the actual wisdom. And therein lies the origin of the fact that today even well-meaning people say: Well, these anthroposophists, if you look at their idealistic, ethical striving, that may still be acceptable; but what they want to research about world evolution, about the evolution of humanity, that goes - even well-meaning people say - into the regions of the worst fantasy. In order to make such a judgment possible, the sources of wisdom that also flowed in Gnosticism first had to be suppressed so that later European humanity could have the belief that the Lord gives His to His own in their sleep, and it is so beautifully preached that one says that the Most High must be simple. But what is really meant is that it must be comfortable, that it must not be necessary to expend any thought at all in order to find those regions, or to expend any spiritual effort at all in order to find those regions from which the deepest things in humanity have emerged.

And so we see that the West developed almost exclusively under this principle of suppressing the Gnostic. But this Gnostic element has not been completely suppressed. It has been suppressed in relation to the people, in relation to the broad masses, to whom, as we were able to discuss yesterday, it was even denied to get hold of the Bible until the invention of the printing press. But in a sense, the old wisdom that was already there was passed on. It was passed down and kept alive, as we have already indicated, in certain occult brotherhoods, which found their way into the education of Western Europe, occult brotherhoods that have developed up to modern times, some of which have been preserved in older forms, some of which have developed into what is today called modern Freemasonry. We know that such occult fraternizations, under this or that name, do indeed preserve a certain knowledge, a certain store of wisdom, but only through tradition, and that they do not endeavor to cultivate this store of wisdom in a truly living way. Until recent times, until the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantic period, it was indeed easy to preserve such wisdom in the circles of those occult brotherhoods that closed themselves off from the outside world and selected their people, those they wanted to admit, to whom they gave of this wisdom what they wanted to give them. Until recent times, it was relatively easy. Today, even that is more difficult, and there is a vast literature, as you know, in which the various degrees into which one is said to be initiated are communicated, along with their rituals and their so-called secrets. In particular, there is a vast English and French literature in this field.

On the whole, however, it can be said that what is written in these books of this literature will not be of much use to anyone in particular. Although there are enough people today who study this literature, even study it “with great zeal,” the students of such literature are still for the most part those who can say, “There I stand, I poor fool, and am as wise as before,” although these people often do not disdain to say what they do not know, though not often “with bitter sweat,” but still with great pomp. For this literature is so composed that he who has not special keys cannot penetrate it. This is due to the fact that in times when one no longer had direct access to the old Gnostic insights gained through clairvoyance, these things were also handed down in such inner occult brotherhoods in a purely external way. Of course, there have been individuals throughout the centuries, albeit only a limited number, who knew certain secrets associated with this ancient wisdom. But at the same time, these people chose to express themselves in such a way that they did not speak to the ordinary mind, which was increasingly emerging in humanity, but that they spoke through all kinds of signs and symbols. And so it has become more and more common in those occult brotherhoods to communicate what was preserved as ancient knowledge through signs and symbols, through very specific symbols. And to remain silent about these symbols and their meaning was strictly imposed on those who were truly initiated to a certain degree. So that there was actually always a fairly large group of people for such occult fraternization who knew the symbols but did not understand them. They then began to interpret the symbols. Nothing special comes of that, because something special only comes of it if you really learn to read the symbols. Then there was a small, limited number of people who really learned to read the symbols. These people did indeed arrive at a certain insight, at a certain wisdom, which was couched in the style of the old wisdom, which, as we know, still arose from atavistic human clairvoyance. We can best understand what this old wisdom was really like if we once again take a closer look at something that I have already touched on in recent weeks. On the one hand, let us consider the scientific research of modern times. I am referring less to the natural-scientific world view than to the way in which this natural-scientific research is carried out. Here we must say: in the relevant institutions, laboratories, cabinets, observatories, clinics and so on, the facts of nature are investigated. Certainly, in the course of time, the most magnificent things have come out of these things, and it must be emphasized again and again that spiritual science fully recognizes the progress of natural science. Great and momentous things have come out of it. But what has come out is, I might say, based only on the exploitation of a lucky groping in the dark. Anyone who takes an interest in the course of scientific research will notice this. The fact that this scientific research has produced the great technical advances that influence our whole lives today does not speak against it. These technical advances are also based on the fact that, to a certain extent, there is a wise guidance in the fact that certain things have been revealed in the last few centuries that could then be applied to our technical advances. But what all this scientific research has not led to is the revelation of certain secrets that can be expressed through what can be researched in laboratories, clinics and observatories. Of course, it was possible to find out how to make this or that powder by “scientific research” in the spirit of modern times; it was possible to find out how to make this or that machine, and then to bring this or that machine to a truly magnificent level of perfection. All that could be done. But the longed-for secrets of existence were not revealed. In modern times, we know how the chemical composition of a substance called phenacetin works on the human body. We know because we have tried it. And all that is attempted today in technical progress is an application of the tried and tested. Research is not aimed at revealing secrets. Sometimes this research does come up with hypotheses, but hypotheses never lead to the unveiling of secrets, but only to the transposition into nature of what has already been conceived. Thus, on the one hand, in modern times we have a natural science that, while it does diligent, conscientious research and from which we can learn a great deal, is unsuitable for pointing to the secrets of existence. One can achieve an extraordinary amount with this natural science, but know nothing at all about the connections of existence. That is on the one hand.

On the other hand, one has certain truths of faith, truths of religious creeds. In these religious creeds it is said - let us take something quite ordinary - that the human soul is immortal. Something is said about the nature of the Godhead and so on, but nothing is done to apply these truths to real objects, such as a soul that one wants to explore, that one wants to talk about in concrete terms. Concepts and ideas are sought that are, so to speak, beneficial to man, that he likes, and from which he can indeed be edified; these are sought. But these ideas are not applicable to anything that is actually there; rather, these ideas are supposed to refer to something that is not there. One avoids applying these ideas to something that is actually being explored in one's immediate life. So that today religious denominations talk about something with their beliefs that no one actually has a concrete idea of, something that they at most convince themselves that they have a concrete idea of. When someone wants to talk intelligently about such things, he speaks as I quoted an important contemporary theologian as saying the other day: “You natural scientist, you have the human being as nature reveals it; I retain the human being as a free being!” But when you then follow his words, he simply hands everything over to natural science, even saying that the human being is such that his freedom is taken from him by nature. I would like to know what he is talking about at all. He remains in what has been handed down to him through words. And such a person does not have more than what has been handed down to him in words.

Now, such things differ quite significantly from what the ancient Gnostic wisdom actually was; but they have transferred their way of thinking, their way of imagining, to what wants to open up in many ways, theoretically or otherwise, in modern times. Because everywhere in such occult societies or in non-occult societies that include occult circles, people talk about so-called esotericism. But what one often hears in this esotericism is also nothing more than what does not refer to anything specific that can be grasped, but what is modeled on religious truths as they are often taught today without object. An esoteric truth does not become esoteric by being spoken of with a certain very drawn-out story that marks a sentimentally exalted expression: Oh, that is abysmally esoteric, one dare not say it... because...! What one so often dare not say has no very abundant content. If you go back to older times, there were indeed things that were quite esoteric and were not shared by certain individuals who possessed them with those who were not considered mature. But these were truly not abstract truths, but very, very concrete truths. Today, the outer world can only gain an idea of the concreteness of such truths by looking at the last foothills of these older truths. And these foothills are just fading away, so to speak, at dusk, in the evening twilight of the fourth post-Atlantic period. In Paracelsus, however, we do find some indications, last foothills, weak foothills of the old deeper insights; but he does not speak abstractly when he speaks of such foothills of the old deeper insights; he speaks very concretely, so concretely that one sees how, in his work, spiritual life flows together with natural life in the imagination. For example, when he speaks of man, he speaks of salt, mercury, and sulfur. You can read about it in my writing: “Mysticism in the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life.” He speaks, then, of external natural things, but he speaks of the deeper character of these external natural things. He speaks in a sense that it is not possible to speak of these things today, as one will speak again when this spiritual science or anthroposophy, which we practice, experiences a corresponding continuation. Then we shall again dig into that which should not hover in cloud-cuckoo-land, but which should really delve into the secrets of nature; we shall again speak in the most concrete way. These were also only offshoots of an ancient knowledge, of which Paracelsus still spoke.

You understand what is at stake when one wants to characterize this ancient knowledge. It is about not just looking into a void when you really want to develop spiritual concepts, but also to see the natural existence with your concepts, as it were, in a glass of water that you heat up and from which, when it cools down again, salt settles to the bottom, the spiritual process, that spiritual process that also takes place in our human organism itself. As you are all listening to me, something very similar is happening in you to what happens in this glass of water containing dissolved salt that is treated in such a way that the dissolved salt settles to the bottom. And only when one can follow this entire cycle of phenomena, but as they are spiritually, through the different spheres, then one speaks of real Gnostic knowledge. And again, Paracelsus saw something quite different from what a chemist or physicist sees today when sulfur burns. For what happens when sulfur burns will happen again in all of you when you go home, go to bed and sleep through what you have thought through here. And so it was for Paracelsus that he saw the spiritual in the processes everywhere in the outer nature – but as I said: only in the last foothills. That was the old esoteric, which was really strong-minded enough to imbue itself with ideas that had real value and that intervened in external existence. But that is why this old esoteric was connected with the highest human activity, which was developed for social life. There was a certain power in the old esoteric; because the one who understood something about the spiritual world could do something. Today many people can do something, because they learn from science to achieve a high level of skill; but they do not understand the subject, and those who understand it, that is, who repeat the words that come from understanding, they cannot do anything, they want the secrets to remain “secrets”, as I hinted to you yesterday. This time had to come, because humanity had to undergo a crisis in moral terms, and because certain secrets had to be reconquered from human freedom, which only took place in our fifth post-Atlantic period.

But the truth cannot be stopped. And in what I hinted to you the day before yesterday, that certain people now already see how smoke, which is developed, becomes sensitive and follows the sound, how even flames follow the sound, lies the beginning of a realization, to which the time must come, to a realization that will lead to what, for example, Goethe hints at in the evocation of the spirit. Because the beginning of this is, after all, this seeing of the smoke being transformed, which I hinted at the day before yesterday. But people today would only misuse certain things. Precisely the important things that still have to come out within our fifth post-Atlantic period, they just have to come out slowly, because today people would misuse them badly. I will have to refer to such things in the following period. In particular, I will have to point out the relationships that currently exist between spiritual science and various branches of knowledge, for example medicine. And then, in the following period, I would still like to speak about a very important topic, about the so-called karma of the human profession, because the concept of the various professions will have to change significantly for the following period, and indeed for a period that will follow very soon. If people continue to understand what is meant by a profession in the way that arises from our present way of thinking, it will truly lead to social chaos. But more about that in later lectures.

Today, however, I want to point out something else. In the fourth post-Atlantic period, more and more things have developed in such a way that people began to carefully guard what they knew about the spiritual connections between nature and human existence, and this practice has been passed on to the occult fraternizations of which I have spoken. These occult fraternizations were, as already indicated, as a rule quite incapable of finding anything out about spiritual connections by themselves; but they did pass on certain old secrets. And those human beings who today have no connection with such occult fraternization, who often have no idea that such occult fraternization even exists, would be amazed if they really understood what lives in many a formula and in many a practice that is found within occult fraternizations, and how some people in such occult fraternizations, who then use the masses at their disposal for their own purposes, know certain secrets handed down from time immemorial, even about physical existence. Certainly, most of this knowledge has been handed down to the series of unfortunate alchemists, those unfortunate other people who, under this or that name, existed precisely in the transition period from the fourth to the fifth post-Atlantic period, who were so similar to the man of whom Faust said of his father said: “he was a dark honorable man... who, in the company of adepts, locked himself in the black kitchen, and, according to endless recipes, poured together the adverse,” and then did this or that with this adverse, poured together, as you know from this Faust scene. That was a time of much trial and error, but for the most part real wisdom had already been lost. This real wisdom, however, has found its way into many occult brotherhoods.

Now there is a law that must be observed if such things are to be considered at all. This law could be characterized in the following way: One could say that such things as the survival of wisdom among people are not bound to the laws of the dead, but to the laws of the living. Therefore, there must always be life in the further development of these things. These things cannot be simply handed down by tradition, for then they die, and then necessarily what is good in them must change into what is bad. And at first the impulse to let live was not present in the occult wisdom of these occult brotherhoods. All they did was to preserve a certain occult wisdom, to guard it from the world and to use it as they wished, and then at most to acquire a certain power through all sorts of atavistic mediumistic machinations or the like. It must be fully understood that these things will become worse and worse if they are not taken up by direct life. Therefore, occult truths must reproduce themselves in the worst possible way in those occult societies that preserve these occult truths, give them to their people in symbols, but do not work them in a living way. The good that lives has the same property as everything that is alive: after some time it must die if new life is not implanted in it. But there was also a certain temptation in the purely traditional preservation of occult wisdom in these occult fraternities. For those who are in living contact with the spiritual worlds, this temptation need not be present to the same extent. But for those in whom the living connection has already died to a certain extent, this temptation that I am referring to can very easily arise. And so certain occult fraternities were not at all free from the influence of such temptation. Such occult fraternities have enough graduates and adepts who put what they have seen of human wisdom at the service of human egoism, whether it be the egoism of individuals or that of groups.

In particular, it became more and more common among certain occult fraternities to combine what could be gained from occult wisdom with all kinds of political points of view and political impulses. And it must be said that such occult fraternities have thoroughly and closely combined what they have often practiced with clearly defined political tendencies. And in the case of occult fraternization, it is almost a characteristic of modern times that they have combined political tendencies with what they have been given from certain insights into interrelationships. — It is indeed extremely difficult to talk about these things in the present day because these things are immediately misunderstood, and it will really take a certain period of preparation before certain things can be spoken about at all. But it can be indicated that occult fraternization is definitely concerned with finding ways and means to bring the political affairs of modern times into their orbit, to shape them in their sense, or, in trivial terms, to gain political influence. And they have gained this in abundance and in a most satisfactory manner. And when the connections are once revealed between much of what has happened in modern times in political life and the sources in the occult fraternizations, from which it has happened through all sorts of channels that the public does not notice today, then strange discoveries will be made. For today more than ever, people talk about insisting on their freedom. But many a one who today presents himself to the world and talks about his freedom, who makes great declamations about his freedom, is anything but free. He just does not suspect how he is pulled by the various strings from this or that so-called occult side. And it would make an interesting chapter to describe how this or that so-called authoritative personality seemingly plays their great ideas out into the world from their own soul, how they are also celebrated by thousands and thousands, how entire groups of newspapers write for this personality write, it would be interesting to show how this machinery works, which pulls the strings from certain occult fraternizations, and how the relevant authoritative personality would appear to be quite unimportant in the process through her own individuality. For it must be emphasized that certain occult fraternities are aware of the sources of wisdom that were once so tapped, as I have indicated to you in recent weeks, but that these sources of wisdom are often misused. And they are always misused when they are applied in the way I have just indicated. Especially in an age in which, as in the fifth post-Atlantic period so far – you can see this from all the considerations we have been making in these weeks – occult knowledge has declined and people have been cut off, as it were, from the occult context for the outer life from the occult connections, those occultists who abused the old traditional occult knowledge had to work all the more strongly, but in a harmful sense. For the people were not at all armed against it. Hence it is that wherever honest occult knowledge appears, so many ways and means are sought to make it impossible. Honest occult knowledge, which simply represents the truth, is highly inconvenient for those who want to fish for occult knowledge in secret. We ourselves have had an example of this, which is not one of the most significant examples, but which can serve to illustrate a few points. When the Alcyone fraud was revealed by the Theosophical Society, it was linked to much more extensive intentions. They wanted a great deal from it. The fact that people believed in Alcyone was only a means to an end. The actual purpose was to be seen in something quite different. But that is why people found it so unpleasant when we vigorously rejected this Alcyone humbug, because they realized that the matter was being seen through, and that, you see, is the most unpleasant thing for occultists fishing in troubled waters for the occultists fishing in troubled waters, it is most unpleasant when they realize that someone has penetrated their plans, really penetrated the matter, and is not inclined to go along, but to go an honest, sincere way. If you study our entire movement, as it has developed for the last twenty-eight years, you will see that we have always tried to keep to the right path between public announcement and the practice of spiritual science, and we have even placed great emphasis on really going out to people and saying what people today will allow us to say. And further, particular emphasis is placed on our friends understanding how the demand to present a certain occult knowledge to humanity arises today, not out of arbitrariness, but out of the necessity of the time. And here it is necessary to take up the thread from such great minds as Troxler's, who expressed so beautifully the longing for spiritual knowledge such as is found in anthroposophy. But that this anthroposophy must rise up out of the upper geological layer that has settled over it is felt by many, many people.

Of course, one could easily believe that it is pessimistically described when, again and again, it is pointed out from this very place how the spiritual life of our time has come to a kind of dead end and that this coming to a dead end shows that rescue and help must come through spiritual science. But anyone who considers this to be an exaggeration, too radical or too pessimistic, has not studied the longings that have arisen in the last days of the best people of the 19th and 20th centuries. If you read any of Troxler's writings, you will see that such longings were particularly strong in him. At least he was still able to point to an anthroposophy, even if it did not take the form of today's spiritual science. Later times could no longer do so. I have often spoken to you about Herman Grimm, who is, so to speak, half Swiss, since his mother came from Switzerland; I have also recently pointed out how Herman Grimm from school as the Kant-Laplace hypothesis, in such a way that he says, scholars of the future will have a lot of trouble understanding how this fantasy could have been accepted by a certain age. This Herman Grimm, of course he could not come to spiritual science, the end of the 19th century was not suitable for that. But he saw the deadlock into which the newer spiritual life was moving. And it is interesting, endlessly interesting, to see how such people, such finely organized spirits, such spirits that have grown up with Goethe, how they constantly speak of something that they actually do not know, but that must come. They are constantly speaking of something that must come. The answer would be what spiritual science could give to humanity. But they know nothing about that. But they speak out of their longings in strong words, in words that surpass in radicalism much of what has been said here from this place, but which in turn show that the things have not been misunderstood.

Herman Grimm, the subtle observer of the intellectual life of humanity, especially from its artistic side, often turned his gaze to the question: Where should this lead, when one sees what has become of it in recent times? Certainly, he then consoled himself again and again: There will come a time when Goethe will be understood, when people will increasingly empathize with him. But on the other hand, other thoughts often occurred to him as well. He was able to appreciate the great advances that came about in the 19th century; but on the other hand, he also saw the dark side of this progress. In a volume of essays published in 1890, there is an interesting passage that, I would say, expresses precisely these sentiments. Herman Grimm says:

“The world is filled with the urge to achieve an unknown goal, for the love of which the tremendous efforts we are witnessing are being made.”

So it is an unknown goal; what he sees are multiple efforts towards an unknown goal. He says:

And now he states in abstract words what he alone knows about the goal:

“The goal is: to make all of humanity, in its final form, a kingdom of brothers who, yielding only to the noblest of motives, move forward together.”

But if there is such a longing to unite humanity in a realm of brotherhood, which, as we have also seen from lectures given recently, applies to the physical plane, then what is needed for this is the common bond of understanding for a general humanity. This general humanity is not present, however, if spiritual science cannot be spread; for the more recent development has been to fragment humanity. Then Herman Grimm continues:

“If you only follow history on the map of Europe, you might think that mutual general murder must fill our immediate future.”

We read these things today with a special feeling when a person looks at the fate of Europe in 1890 and comes to the conclusion:

“Those who follow history only on the map of Europe might believe that a mutual general murder must fulfill our immediate future; while those who study it on the globe” - that is, in the context of the earth with the whole world - “can be sure that the hour is approaching when the Germanic peoples, united in the same thoughts of the highest spiritual striving, will open the way to the true goods of human life for all the countless millions of Asia and Africa and what the world otherwise harbors.

And now comes the sentence that shows how people who saw what was happening in the 19th century in the destiny of humanity were able to speak about what they had seen with open eyes and not as sleepily as most of humanity. Herman Grimm continues:

“Allow these thoughts... .”

He is referring to the idea of the fraternization of peoples, as he has just expressed it, and of looking at the world through the lens of the globe.

“Permit this thought, which seems to be at odds with our enormous military armaments and those of our neighbors, but in which I believe and which must enlighten us, if it is not better to abolish human life by a communal decision and to set an official day of suicide.”

I think that such very serious sentences, which correspond to deep human feelings, could point to one thing: that seriousness is necessary for life in our time. Imagine what is going on in the soul of the person who expresses such feelings! But I know that many also read such a sentence and read it as one reads the newspaper today; they are incapable of looking into the seriousness of the times because it is more comfortable to sleep. But the lack of understanding of spiritual science arises from the complacency of oversleeping the demands of the time. The less one wants to sleep, the more one wants to understand how necessary it is not to sleep today, the more one will recognize that something like spiritual science is necessary for humanity. But for us, who are in spiritual science, it is necessary that we arm ourselves with this seriousness so that we can find the right relationship to the world that does not yet have this seriousness.

One of the criticisms that is made against our spiritual science by many theologians and others who believe they stand on a Christian foundation, but without understanding it correctly, is that spiritual science affirms truths regarding a large number of hierarchies that embrace beings standing above man in the spiritual world. We speak, as you know, of spiritual hierarchies embracing the angels, archangels, archai, exusiai, and so forth; we speak of these kingdoms of the higher super-sensible worlds just as we speak of the animal, plant, mineral, and elemental kingdoms within the earthly world. It is quite clear to us, moreover, that human life falls into two sections. One of them takes its course between birth and death. During this life, or by reason of this life, man descends from the super-sensible world to the kingdoms of the human being, and to those of the animal, plant, and mineral in his physical environment. When an individual passes through the portal of death, the other section of his life begins; he or she ascends to the higher kingdoms that tower upward from below just as the other kingdoms descend from above downward. The individual ascends into the kingdoms of the angels, archangels, archai, and so on. The person of the present day who believes, but without understanding, that his own foundation is that of Christianity is especially antagonistic to this view of the beings who have their place between man and the real Godhead, which is far above humanity and those beings who have their place in this super-sensible space, i.e., the angels, archangels and so forth. Especially the people who believe themselves to be unusually advanced in their Christian conception will declare that this knowledge of the spiritual hierarchies and their beings represents a relapse into an ancient polytheism or, as it is said, into a kind of paganism. In their opinion it is precisely the mission of contemporary man to place nothing whatever between himself and the Godhead, but to live in the world directing his view to what is offered to the senses, and then to find his way directly to the Godhead without the mediation of angels, archangels, and so forth. Many people consider it especially sublime to stand thus, without mediation, face to face with their god.

You may hear this objection raised against spiritual science from many directions. It indicates that in those very circles there is absolutely no understanding of what the spiritual needs of our time really are, since it is not important if a man imagines he can find the way to his god, but rather whether he actually can. What is really important is not at all the question of whether the human being imagines he has a conception of his god, but whether he really does have such a conception. From our point of view, we must ask what the conception is that those individuals really hold when they say, “We do not wish any mediation by other spirits but will ascend directly from our souls to our god.” What is the concept held by such men? Do they really have a conception of God when they speak of Him? When a man speaks of his god in a justifiable manner, does he conceive of what must be meant by the term God?

This is not the conception they hold, but rather something quite different. When we review all the concepts such individuals form of their god, what is really represented in such concepts? Nothing other than the being of an angel, and all those who say that they look up directly from their own souls to God are really looking only to an angel. If you examine all the descriptions given by such people, no matter how lofty they may seem, you will find that they describe nothing but an angel, and what they are saying is nothing more than to demand that one should conceive nothing higher under the term God than an angel. For example, what is called God in modern Protestantism, the God about whom there is so much talk among the protestants, is nothing other than one of the angels—nothing else whatever. The important fact is not whether a person imagines that he or she is finding the way to the highest God, but to what such a person really does find the way. Thus, in this manner, individuals find the way only to their own angel—I say to their own angel because that is important.

If we fix our attention first on the beings of the lowest hierarchies—archai (spirits of personality, as we have also named them), archangels and angels—then comes man, the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom and the mineral kingdom.

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When we direct our attention to these beings who are relatively the lowest, we need only bear in mind what has already been explained in order to know that the archai, the spirits of personality, are also time spirits.They are the controlling forces for the entire temporal epoch; they are what lives as spirit in a temporal epoch. We live today in a different spiritual relationship from that of the ancient Greeks or Romans because we are controlled by a different time spirit, who is, of course, a most sublime being. Then we have, in turn, those beings whom we call archangels whose mission is to establish harmony among men on earth; thus they are also, in a certain sense, the leaders and guides of peoples. The angels, standing just above man, guide and lead him through the portals of death so that he has his angel by his side from death to a new birth and is lead by him again into a new life. The mission of the angels is to guide individual humans through repeated earthly lives.

Now we have come all the way down to man. In his earthly existence today, man remembers only his life in the physical body. The memory of angels extends much further, and it is only through the far greater extension of their memory that they can guide and direct man's repeated earthly lives. But the modern theologian does not even conceive the angel correctly because he has eliminated the angels' characteristic of guiding the individual through repeated earthly lives. Let us grasp the fact that it is only the archangels who are beings who control human relationships over long stretches of time. Then, if we also conceive of angels as beings who really control the life of the individual, we shall readily acknowledge that it is a concealed egoism that makes people wish to ascend directly to their god. Although they do not admit it, the truth is that what they wish to do is to ascend only to their own god, to their own angel.

This has immense practical significance and is most important because it bears within it a certain germ in that men speak of one god, but he is nothing but a phantasm. The truth is that, in surrendering to this phantasm, each speaks of his own god; that is, of his angel. As a result, in the course of time each human being comes to worship his own god, that is to say, his own angel. We already see how strong is the impulse of humans each to worship his own god. During modern times, the union of human beings with those gods who are common to all has become quite restricted. The emphasis that each places upon his own god has become most conspicuous. Humanity has been fragmented into bits and pieces. All that survives is merely the word god, which has a common sound for the peoples using the same language, but each individual conceives something different in connection with this one word; that is, his own angel. He does not even ascend to the archangel who guides society.

At the bottom of this lies a certain concealed egoism but people will not admit it. When we consider this, however, we see it is an important statement because a man really lives in an untruth when he denies that he looks up to his angel while declaring that he looks up to the one and only god. He lives in a nebulous conception; that is, an inner illusion, an inner maya, and this has important consequences. When we surrender ourselves to this inner illusion and to fantastic conceptions, we do not all change the spiritual realities that come about by virtue of our correct or incorrect conception. As a human being really looks up to his angel but does not admit this, believing on the contrary that he is looking up to God, while really not looking up even to an archangel, he deadens his soul by means of this untruthful conception. This stupefaction of the soul is everywhere present nowadays but, when the soul is stupefied, the consequences for human evolution are disastrous. This is so because the deadening of the soul brings about a suppression of the ego, a beclouding of the ego, and then other forces that ought not to work in the soul do actually slip in. That is to say, in place of the angel, whom the person at first wanted to revere but whom he wrongly names “God,” the luciferic angel slips in and it gradually comes about that the individual reveres not the angel, but the luciferic angel. Then, however, the steep incline is near that leads man downward because he is close to the utter denial of God; that is, the denial of his own angel, which is always connected with the denial of the true ego. I have shown you an example of this in the book by Leblais, Materialism and Spiritualism, where it is asserted that the cat has an ego just as a human being does, and where the author speaks of the “high priest of the dogs!”

Thus, we must understand that, from many points of view, the answer to the question: Who is to blame for the materialism of our time? must be: The religions are to blame, the religious sects. They darken the consciousness of man and put in the place of God an angel who is then replaced by a corresponding luciferic angel. The latter will soon lead the human being into materialism. This is the mysterious connection among proud egoistic religious sects who are unwilling to listen to anything that stands above the angelic level, but assert with boundless pride that they are speaking of God, whereas they are speaking only of an angel, and incompletely at that. In the final analysis, this incredible arrogance, which is often called humility, was bound to bring on materialism. When we bear this in mind, we see a highly significant connection; that is, through the false interpretation of one's angel as God, the inclination to materialism arises in the human soul. There is an unconscious egoism lying at the bottom of this that is expressed through the fact that the human being disdains to ascend to a knowledge of the spiritual world and hopes to find a direct connection with his god only out of himself. When you pay close attention to what I have here suggested, you will gain an insight into much that plays a part in the present. There is only one single way of avoiding misinterpretation of God and that is to acknowledge the spiritual hierarchies. We then know that the present religious denominations do not rise any higher than to the hierarchy of the angels.

As we consider this, we are standing more or less within the realm of what a person develops in conscious life, but much that lives in the human being is also unconscious, or not clearly conscious. Now we might say that the connection between an individual and his or her angel is a real one, but then so is one's connection with the hierarchy of the archangels and that of the archai. The misinterpretation of the angel, which is performed more or less consciously, leads also more or less consciously to a materialistic conception of the world, not in the case of the individual human being but gradually over a period of time. When we are talking about an individual's relation to his angel, we are still dealing in some way with conscious processes of the human soul. But in the relationship of the human being to the hierarchy of the archangels, we already stand in the midst of something of which man knows little; something of which he speaks a great deal at times but regarding which he knows almost nothing. Nowadays, to be sure, we have confessions directed not to the hierarchy of the archangels but frequently to one archangel—not a clearly expressed confession but the inclination of the feeling nature to one or another of the archangels. At least in one field this bore obvious fruit during the nineteenth century: in the rise of the idea of nationality. This idea is grounded in an unconscious desire to overlook the cooperation among the archangels and instead, be inclined to always embrace a single archangel. Something egoistic lies at the basis of this as is the case with man's inclination to a single angel, but here the egoism is of a social nature.

Now, we might well desire to describe what arises in connection with this social-egoistic inclination to an archangel, just as materialism arises consciously in connection with the misinterpretation of the angel. But here we walk on slippery ice and it is not possible to speak of it in our day.

Still more obscure are the relationships of the human being to the archai, the time spirits. These relationships are subliminal in nature. Human beings do stand at least in a sort of relationship to angels. Even though they do not admit it, yet, when they say, “I believe in God,” they admit this in the false way I have indicated. But if they at least desire to establish a relationship to the angels, their attempted relationship to the archangels in their feelings and emotions is not in tune with the spirit of our times. When they claim they have a certain connection by reason of their blood or something of the kind, this connection at the present time is false. This leads to false paths that I will not, cannot, describe today, but they are similar to the ones they encounter when they deal with the spirits of a time. People will embrace them in the forms in which the spirit of their own time presents itself to them. Just bear in mind how we endeavor by means of spiritual science to oppose this egoistic representation when we describe the consecutive periods of time with their special characteristics, letting them work upon us. By this, our hearts and souls may be broadened to extend over the entire evolution of the earth, indeed, over the entire cosmic evolution, attaining thereby, at least in our thoughts, a relation to the various time spirits. But people today will not have this. Much that has only been suggested would have to be described if we should wish to picture those false ways upon which men enter because of this egoism in reference to the spirit of the time. I have been able to give you from a work of fiction¹¹³ a dark picture, described in a remarkable fashion, of our immediate present. Such false paths as are there described are connected with this false relationship to the spirit of the time. But as we encounter these false paths in relation to the time spirit, we enter into a most important realm. When a human being who substitutes his angel for God passes from his angel to a luciferic angel, it is a confusion in belief, in acknowledgment of a world conception, which is, in a sense, individual. Next there may be a confusion of entire peoples; nevertheless, it remains an aberration among human beings in a certain way, and the consequences can always be blamed on human aberrations. But when we advance to the spirit of the time and fall into error in relation to it, we then collide with the cosmos in our errors. There is a mysterious relationship between errors related to the time spirit and the beginnings of what man brings down upon himself cosmically. A person disinclined to look up to anything above the angel sees nothing of this connection. What I am now saying let each of you receive as best you can. It is asserted from spiritual science and profound investigations, but I would have to speak for months if I wanted to place these investigations before you in detail.

The errors the human being perpetrates in relation to the spirit of the time clash with cosmic events and these cosmic events strike back. The result of their being brought into human life—at first, their beginnings—is decadence that extends even to the physical body, bringing diseases and mortality and all that is connected with them. Perhaps in a not too distant future humanity will be convinced that much that man performs on the physical plane, when it is of such a nature as to transgress even all the way to the time spirit, evokes destructive forces in earthly evolution whose influences extend even to illness and death. If you ask yourselves on the basis of insights you have acquired, whether much of what has been happening recently may not constitute a violation of the time spirit, you will be able to answer that these profound connections extending to illness and death introduce a compensation for all sorts of sins perpetrated against the time spirit.

We know perfectly well that the clever men of the present will, of course, only laugh when such things are asserted. They know, on the basis of their scientific view of the world, that it is mere nonsense, as they say, to suppose that what a human being does, what men do in their relationships, could cause events to occur in the elemental sphere. But the time is not far distant when men will believe this simply because they will be able to see it.

What is lacking in our age for a real view of the world, capable of supporting human life, is seriousness. It is for this reason that one of the first demands made upon those who enter spiritual science is to develop this seriousness in their view of the world and really to penetrate the course of human evolution a little. We have frequently emphasized the fact that the evolution of the world really acquires meaning only through the Mystery of Golgotha, and we have already introduced many considerations that revealed the Mystery of Golgotha in its deeply significant light. But our characterization must become ever more thorough if we wish to comprehend the complete significance of this event. The question may be asked how the human soul then really reaches Christ. It may be said that, since Christ is, of course, a Being higher than all the archai, the way to Christ must be found. The paths that are used today by the ordinary religious confessions do not lead to the Christ but at most to an angel, as we have seen. People may conduct themselves as they do today in the names of various angels or even archangels, if the luciferic beings have taken the place of the progressive beings. But one cannot so conduct oneself in the name of the Christ since it is an absolute impossibility for two human beings who are hostile to one another to confess the Christ. I think this is not difficult to see because it is self-evident. This is possible when a person utters the name, Christ, Christ, or Lord, Lord—as Christ indicated—and means only his or her own angel, but it is impossible when a person is really speaking of Christ. So the question may arise as to how, indeed, the soul comes to a path leading to the Christ. We may approach the solution to this problem in various ways and shall here enter upon a road we have come to in a natural way from many considerations.

People today know extremely little of the past. Least of all do they know why certain things have been handed down. At best, they know they have been handed down but they scarcely know why. Tradition reports, for example—this may be read in all sorts of esoteric books even including those on Freemasonry—that there were mysteries in ancient times. They were a secret institution in which the mysteries, as even the name suggests, contained secrets that were really so also in the external sense. That is, one who had found access to the mysteries was informed about certain things that he was obligated not to communicate except to those who, in turn, were associated with him in these mysteries; it was a stringent rule that these mystery communications should not be betrayed. It was one of the most punishable misdeeds should one utter a mystery secret within hearing distance of the uninitiated, but it was just as punishable an offense were one to listen who was not qualified to hear it. As long as the mysteries existed in the ancient sense, this rule was observed in the strictest way. Why was this? Why did it happen in this way?

You see, there is a good deal of talk today about the mysteries, especially on the part of people who utter all sorts of pretty words and who wish to whine a little through what they say. Especially where there is much talk about these things without the necessary will to understand much, as is frequently the case among the Masons, a great deal of nonsense is practiced; people talk superficially about these things without knowing too much. They do not notice whether these things are discussed on the basis of facts or whether the talk is nothing but words. We may have the most astonishing experiences in connection with these things, which I do not wish in the least to criticize or rebuke, but the matter is too serious to be left without some mention of it. For instance, the following may occur. Someone or other is a member of one of the societies that are called by all kinds of fraternal names and claim to be protectors of the mysteries. Such a person—and I am telling you facts—comes to you and asks for information about something seemingly of interest to him—at least, in words—but which he can little understand. Later, it is reported that he has been making speeches here and there about these things and that what he has said has been more or less worthless. To these very miseducated persons who have been spoiled by certain occult brotherhoods, it is most futile of all to speak because they do not enter into what is really important. Only in this way could it recently happen, for example, that a book was published by a well-known lecturer and writer, a free thinker regarding the secrets of Freemasonry, that naturally contains nothing whatever but the shallowest stuff. This nonsense is taken seriously even by those who belong to so-called occult brotherhoods.

Now we will bring to mind a real characteristic in connection with the practices of the mysteries that has grown from the evolution of humanity. I have frequently stressed the fact that humanity has changed in the course of earthly evolution and that an important incision occurred in this evolution at the time when Christ passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. If we wish to consider a vitally important characteristic of this evolution along with others we have already mentioned, we must say that, when we go back beyond the Greco-Latin period and especially if we should pass beyond the fourth century before Christ all the way into the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries—we might even remain within the Greco-Latin but we should find more if we entered into the Egypto-Chaldean or even passed all the way to the Persian—we find everywhere that what was uttered by men had an entirely different significance for the rest of mankind from what it possessed, for example, even in the seventh and eighth centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha. The words that one person spoke to another had an entirely different meaning during the time when the ancient atavistic characteristics of the soul, leading all the way even to atavistic clairvoyance, were still present from what it had later, even today. At that time the word possessed, by reason of its inner power, a sort of suggestive quality; there dwelt in it much inherited divine-spiritual power. When the human being spoke, his angel also spoke in a certain way from the higher hierarchies.

From this fact you can imagine that oral communications in those ancient times were something wholly unlike those of our day. Even if we knew all these mysteries, it would be impossible for us to express ourselves now in words as it was possible in ancient times because in speaking with words we must speak with what they have become through language. Indeed, in words we have conventional signs. We can no longer go to the human being and, with the same power with which one could still speak of Christ in the third, fourth, or fifth centuries, cause a gentle tremor that was a healing force to pass through his soul by means of the words, “Thine angel holds thee dear.” That can no longer be done today; words have lost their ancient suggestive quality, their power. When human beings spoke to one another in ancient times, the power of human fellowship streamed from soul to soul. Just as we breathe the same air when we sit together in a hall, so did a spiritual power of what they were in common live in what human beings said to one another. As evolution has advanced, this has been lost. The word has been rendered ever less divine.

If you let your spiritual eye dwell upon this truth, you will be able to say that there might have been certain combinations of words, certain word formulas, that had a greater effect than others that were in general oral use. Such word formulas, possessing a power far surpassing that of other words, were communicated in the mysteries. Because these formulas gave the person who knew them a lofty power over other humans, you can now understand that they could not be disclosed or misused. It is an absolute fact that when an ancient Hebrew temple priest uttered in the right way what was ordinarily called the Word, but which was a certain combination of sounds, it then came about that, since in ancient times the force lay in this combination of sounds, a different world surrounded the human beings to whom he spoke; that is, in a spiritual sense, but this spirituality was real.

You can understand, therefore, that it was not only a criminal act to speak the mystery formulas to one to whom they should not be spoken since a certain domination was thus exercised over him that was unjustifiable, but it was also frowned upon to listen because a person thus exposed himself to the danger of being given over completely into the power of the other person. These things are not so abstract as certain persons wish to represent them; they are concrete and real. It is the times that have changed and it is necessary to pay attention to this. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, words no longer possess this significance; otherwise, as you can easily see, real freedom could not have arisen among human beings; in a way, their souls would have remained nothing but the product of speech. Words had to lose this inner force. But another power then entered into earthly evolution that could gradually return to men what originally came from words if only they should find the right relationship to it. The people of ancient times learned to think from their words, and there were no other thoughts in ancient times than those that came from words. But the power of thoughts could come from words only if they were of the character I have described. In later times this power was no longer present. But then He came, that Being who could again restore this force to thoughts if they were filled with Him, that Being who could say, “I am the Word.” This is the Christ. But men must first find the way to make Christ live in their souls. The Christ is there. We know that since the time of the Mystery of Golgotha He is a real power. Now, while we are speaking about karma, we also want to show how He has a relationship to it. An angel enters into relationship with the single man alone, but the Christ can have a far higher significance than even an archangel since He not only united men here on earth in accordance with the time spirit but also unites the living with the dead; in other words, He unites those souls who are here organized in their bodies and also those who have already passed through the portal of death. We must learn, however, to understand a little better how the Christ can be found in the spirit of our times; that is, how a way to Him can be found, since we began with the question, “How can the human being find a way to the Christ today?”

Above all other things, it is necessary that man should once more rise above the egoistic habit of living only in his own soul. A word of truth in the Gospels—and how many words that we read in the Gospels are not taken according to their true meaning because they do not please us—a word of truth in the Gospels is, “Where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them.”¹¹⁴ The spirit of vain mysticism that says, “The Christ shall be born in my soul,” is not the spirit of Christianity; that spirit declares, “Where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” However, in order to explain the entire spirit of this saying in connection with repeated earthly lives, as we wish to do in these reflections, and also in connection with the vocational life of a human being today, I must discuss something especially characteristic of our age. We must learn to rise above the egoistic limitation within our human nature. In a sense applicable to our time, we must rise above this by learning once again to know and think of the cosmos with which the human being is related and from which he is born by learning to think of it in relation to man.

Do you believe that today's science is capable of thinking of the cosmos in relation to man? Recall the assertion of Hermann Grimm that I have quoted even in public lectures, “Natural scientists conceive of a sort of mechanism in which the human being cannot possibly exist.”¹¹⁵ It is entirely impossible today for the scientific view of the world for one to think of man in relation to the cosmos. This cannot be done unless we first learn to view things concretely. Someone constructs a machine today and believes that nothing further has really happened than the actual construction or what will be brought about by means of it. But to give oneself up to such a belief means to establish what may be called negative superstition, and it is most widespread. Superstition is the belief in spirits when none exist, but a person may also express a disbelief in spirits when they are present, and this is negative superstition. Humanity abandons itself completely to this negative superstition without really knowing it because it is not yet accustomed to think of the things that enter human evolution as being cosmically interrelated and under a moral point of view. They are considered only as a mechanism.

Let us select a single example but one that is characteristic of our age and similar to much else that dominates our external life; that is, the steam engine. What a role is played today by the steam engine! Just think for a moment of how many things would not exist if there were no steam engine. I will not say that everything men have must be produced by it, but much is brought about by this machine that is in accord with the true spirit of the age.

The steam engine was really not produced until the eighteenth century. What existed before that time constituted nothing more than impractical experiments. In other words, we may say that the enormously significant steam engine that is used universally today was first made applicable in 1719 by Newcomen¹¹⁶ and then later, in 1762, by Watt.¹¹⁷ We can speak of these two as the originators of it, at least in the sense in which today we speak of it and everything connected with it.

Now, what makes it possible for us to have steam engines, which are by no means old? What is the basis of this possibility? You see, the year 1769—I shall now make an assertion that will seem extremely curious to everyone who thinks scientifically—when Watt first made the steam engine useful, was a year by no means far removed from Goethe's conception of the Faust. Although they lie far apart, perhaps we might discover in our reflections curious interrelationships between this steam engine and the conception of Goethe's Faust. But we must first survey in thought much that is connected with the introduction of the steam engine into human evolution. On what principle does the steam engine actually rest? It really rests on the possibility of creating space void of air, or occupied by little of it. The entire possibility of making steam engines rests on the creation and use of a vacuum. In ancient times men spoke of the horror vacui, the horror of a vacuum. Something objective was indicated thereby. It meant that space wants always to be filled with something; that something empty could really not be produced; that nature had a certain horror of a vacuum. First, the belief in the horror of a vacuum had to disappear. Secondly, the possibility had to be established that space containing little air or being almost void of air, could be created. Only then was it possible to consider the use of steam engines. The air had to be eliminated from certain spaces. It is not possible through a mechanical consideration to attain to a new cosmic, moral conception in contrast with the ancient cosmic and moral conception of the horror vacui. But what really happens when we create a space containing little or no air with the purpose of placing what is thus brought about in the service of human evolution?

The ancient Biblical narrative declares that Jahve breathed the living breath, the air, into man, and he became thereby a living soul. Air had to be introduced into man in order for him to become what he ought as an earthly human being. For many hundreds and even thousands of years, man made use of only that rarefaction and condensation of air that occurred automatically in a cosmic connection. Then came the modern age when man undertook to rarefy the air, to put away what Jahve had put in, to work in opposition to the manner in which Jahve can work in placing humans on the earth. What really happens when man makes use of space containing little air, that is, drives air out of space? Here opposition occurs against Jahve. You may now easily think that, whereas Jahve streams into man through air, man drives Jahve out when he creates a space containing rarefied air. When the steam engine is created in this way, Ahriman gains the possibility of establishing himself as a demon even in the very physical entity. In constructing steam engines, the condition is created for the incarnation of demons. If anyone is unwilling to believe in them, he need not do so; that is negative superstition. Positive superstition consists in seeing spirits where there are none; negative superstition consists in denying spirits where they are. In steam engines ahrimanic demons are actually brought even into a physical object. That is, while the cosmos has descended with its spiritual element through what has been poured into human evolution, the spirit of the cosmos is driven out through what is created in the form of demons. That is to say, this new, important and wonderful advance has brought about not only a demonology, but also a demon magic that frequently imbues modern technology.

Many things, and here again I make a somewhat paradoxical statement, become manifest when we learn rightly to read what is often considered least significant. After all, this (here the letter i was first written on the blackboard without a dot, and later a dot was placed over it) is the principal part even of the material substance of this letter, but only the dot makes it the letter i. Consider how much less this dot contains than the other part even though it is the dot that makes the letter. The person who clings only to the material element in the evolution of humanity will also frequently see even in the material only what contains a hundred times as much as the dot and will fail entirely to see the dot. But one who observes more closely, who does not merely stare at the phenomena but reads them, will often learn to read things in the right way when a delicate suggestion is made. It is astonishing that in a biography of James Watt you will find mention of the following fact; I shall refer to it in a way that will seem utterly insane to every modern and intelligent person. But of course, you yourselves must first understand the interpretation of this fact. Watt could not at first accomplish what he intended through his invention, his steam engine. You see, its development stretched from 1712 to 1769. When once a man has invented something, others, of course, imitate it again and again. Thus much was constructed between these two dates. When Watt had finally made his machine really workable by means of other improvements, he had used a contrivance in it for which someone else held a patent; because of this, he could not proceed until he had thought out something different to replace it. He then discovered what he needed in a strange way. He was living, of course, in an age in which the Copernican view of the world had long been held, which I have characterized as something suitable for the spirit of our age alone. It actually occurred to him to construct his mobile apparatus in such a way that he could call it the “movement of the sun and the planets.” He spoke of it thus because he was really guided by what is conceived in the Copernican system as the revolution of the planets around the sun. He had actually brought down and concealed within the steam engine what had been learned in the modern age as the movement of the heavenly bodies.

Now, bear in mind what I recently explained as something that will happen but which is at present only in its beginnings; that is, that delicate vibrations will accumulate and tremendous effects will thus be produced. Thank God, it has not yet been achieved! But the beginning lies in the fact that the movement of the sun and the planets is copied. Since the movements of the sun and the planets possess a profound significance for our earth when they radiate inward, do you believe that they possess no significance when we copy them here in miniature and cause them to radiate outward again into cosmic space? What then happens has profound significance for the cosmos. Here you see directly how even those vibrations I spoke of are now added to the demon through which he can unfold his activity outward into cosmic space.

Of course, no one should suppose that what I have just said indicates that steam engines should be done away with. In that case one would have also to do away with a good deal more because they are by no means the most demoniacal. Whenever electricity is used—and much else besides—there is far more of demon magic because this operates with entirely different forces having an entirely different significance for the cosmos. Obviously, anyone who understands spiritual science will realize quite clearly that these things should not be done away with, that we cannot be reactionary or conservative in the sense that we must be opposed to progress. Indeed, the demon magic signifies progress, and the earth will continue to make more and more progress. Developments in the world soon will make it possible to produce immense effects ranging outward into the universe. Doing away with these things or condemning them is not what we are after because they are obviously justified. But what must be borne in mind is that since they must appear on the one side in the course of human progress, counter forces must be created on the other to reestablish a balance. Counter forces must be created. They must bring about a balance that can be created only if humanity again comes to understand the Christ principle, if humanity finds the way to Christ. For a time humanity has been led away from the Christ. Even those who call themselves the official representatives of the Christ seek an angel instead of Him. But the way the soul must take to the Christ must be found. Just as we work all the way to the physical stars and into the cosmos by means of the demons of the machines, so must we find the way spiritually into the worlds in which human beings live between death and a new birth where the beings of the higher hierarchies are to be found. What I am now alluding to is connected with what I have already explained. Human beings enter more and more into a vocational karma on the one side, as I have explained, and from the other this vocational karma must be counteracted by an understanding of the spiritual world, which in turn can prepare them to find a way to Christ.

We will speak further of these things tomorrow.

• 113. Albert Steffen, Der rechte Liebhaber des Schicksals [The True Lover of Destiny].
• 114. Matthew 18:20.
• 115. Grimm made this statement in the 23rd “Goethe“ lecture with reference to the Laplace-Kant fantasy of the origin and past destruction of the earth.
• 116. In 1711, the English inventor Thomas Newcomen (1663–1729), together with this associate Cowley, succeeded in constructing an atmospheric steam engine that could be used for practical purposes in 1712.
• 117. The Scottish inventor James Watt (1736–1819) was at first unable to utilize for his steam engine the already well known mechanism of the crankshaft and connecting rod because it had already been patented by someone else. However, he circumvented the problem by utilizing the so-called solar and planetary rotary motion.

In the lectures given during this week there lies much which can lead us to understand the nature of man in its connection with the historical evolution of humanity in such a way as to enable us to gradually form a conception of necessity and free will. Such questions can be less easily decided by means of definitions and combinations of words than by bringing together the relevant truths from the spiritual world. In our age humanity must accustom itself more and more to acquire a different form of understanding for reality from the one so prevalent today, which, after all, holds to very secondary and nebulous concepts bound up with the definitions of words. If we consider what certain persons who think themselves especially clever write and say, we have the feeling that they speak in concepts and ideas which are only apparently clear; in reality however, they are as lacking in clarity as if someone were to speak of a certain object which is made, for example, out of a gourd, so that the gourd is transformed into a flask and used as such. We can then speak about this object as if we were speaking of a gourd, for it is a gourd in reality; but we can also speak of it as if it were a flask, for it is used as a flask. Indeed, the things of which we speak are first determined by the connections we are dealing with; as soon as we no longer rely upon words when we are speaking, but upon a certain perception, then everyone will know whether we mean a flask or a gourd. But then we may not confine ourselves to a description or a definition of the object. For as long as we confine ourselves to a description or definition of this object it can just as well be a gourd as a flask. In a similar way, that which is spoken of today by many philologists—persons who consider themselves very clever—may be the human soul, but it may also be the human body—it may be gourd or it may be flask. I include in this remark a great deal of what is taken seriously at the present time (partly to the detriment of humanity). For this reason it is necessary that a striving should proceed from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, for which clear, precise thinking is above all a necessity, a striving to perceive the world not in the way in which it is customary today (not by confusing the gourd and the flask) but to see everywhere what is real, be it outer physical reality, or spiritual reality.

We cannot in any case arrive at a real concept of what comes into consideration for the human being when we hold only to definitions and the like; we can do so only when we bear in mind the relationships of life in their reality. And just where such important concepts as freedom (free will) and necessity in social and moral life are concerned, we attain clarity only when we place side by side such spiritual facts as those brought out in these lectures, and always strive to balance one against the other in order to reach a judgment as to reality.

Bear in mind that over and over again—even in public lectures and also here—I have brought out with a certain intensity, from the most varied points of view, the fact that we can only rightly grasp what we call concepts when we bring them into relation with our bodily organism, in such a way that the basis of concepts in the body is not seen in something growing and flourishing, but just the opposite—something dying, something in partial decay in the body. I have expressed this in public lectures by saying that the human being really dies continually in his nervous system. The nerve-process is such that it must limit itself to the nervous system. For if it were to spread itself over the rest of the organism, if in the rest of the organism the same thing were to go on that goes on in the nerves, this would signify the death of man at every moment. We may say that concepts arise where the organism destroys itself. We die continuously in our nervous system. For this reason spiritual science is placed under the necessity of pursuing other processes besides the ascending processes which natural science of today considers authentic. These ascending processes are the processes of growth; they reach their summit within the unconscious. Only when the organism begins to develop the processes of decline does the activity of the soul appear which we designate as conceptual or indeed as perceptive activity of the senses. This process of destruction, this slow process of death, must exist if anything at all is to be conceived. I have shown that the free actions of human beings rest upon just this fact, that the human being is in a position to seek the impulses for his actions out of pure thoughts. These pure thoughts have [the] most influence upon the processes of disintegration in the human organism. What happens in reality when man enacts a free deed? Let us realize what happens in the case of an ordinary person when he performs an act out of moral fantasy—you know now what I mean by this—out of moral fantasy, this means out of a thinking which is not ruled by sense-impulses, sense-desires and passions—what really takes place here in man? The following takes place: He gives himself up to pure thoughts; these form his impulses. They cannot impel him through what they are; the impulses must come from man himself. Thoughts are mere mirror-pictures, they belong to Maya. Mirror-pictures cannot compel. Man must compel himself under the influence of clear concepts.

Upon what do clear concepts work? They work most strongly upon the process of disintegration in the human organism; they bring this about. So we may say that on the one side the process of disintegration arises out of the organism, and on the other, the pure deed-thought (Tat-Gedanke) comes to meet this disintegrating process out of the spiritual world. I mean by this the thought that lies at the basis of deed. Free actions arise by uniting these two through the interaction of the process of disintegration and willed thinking.

I have said that the process of disintegration is not caused by pure thinking; it is there in any case, in fact it is always there. If man does not oppose these processes of disintegration with something coming out of pure thinking, then the disintegrating process is not transformed into an up-building process, then a part that is slowly dying remains within the human being. If you think this through, you will see that the possibility exists that just through the failure to perform free actions man fails to arrest a death process within him. Herein lies one of the subtlest thoughts which man must accept. He who understands this thought can no longer have any doubt in life about the existence of human freedom. An action that is performed in freedom does not occur through something that is caused within the organism but occurs where the cause ceases, in other words, out of a process of disintegration. There must be something in the organism where the causes cease; only then can the pure thought, as motive of the action, set in. But such disintegrating processes are always there, they only remain unused to a certain extent when man does not perform free deeds.

But this also shows the characteristics of an age that will have nothing to do with an understanding of the idea of freedom in its widest extent. The age running from the second half of the 19th century to the present has set itself the particular task of dimming down more and more the idea of freedom in all spheres of life, as far as knowledge is concerned, and of excluding it entirely from practical life. People did not wish to understand freedom, they would not have freedom. Philosophers have made every effort to prove that everything arises out of human nature through a certain necessity. Certainly, a necessity underlies man's nature; but this necessity ceases as disintegrating processes begin, as the sequence of causes comes to an end. When freedom has set in at the point where the necessity in the organism ceases, one cannot say that man's actions arise out of an inner necessity, for they arise only when this necessity ceases. The whole mistake consists in the fact that people have been unwilling to understand not only the up-building forces in the organism, but also the disintegrating processes. However, in order to understand what really underlies man's nature it will be necessary to develop a greater capacity to do this than in our age. Yesterday we saw how necessary it is to be able to look with the eye of the soul upon what we call the human Ego. But just in our times human beings are not very gifted in comprehending this reality of the Ego. I will give an illustration.

I have often referred to the remarkable scientific achievement of Theodor Ziehen “Die physiologische Psychologie”—“Physiological Psychology.” On page 205 the Ego is also spoken of; but Ziehen is never in a position even to indicate the real Ego, he merely speaks of the Ego-concept. We know that this is only a mirror-picture of the real Ego. But it is particularly interesting to hear how a distinguished thinker of today—but one who believes that he can exhaust everything with natural scientific ideas—speaks about the Ego. Ziehen says:

It will perhaps occur to you that the Ego-concept which is expressed in the small word “I,” is a very complex threefold entity containing thousands and thousands of partial concepts. But I beg you to ponder this, the word is indeed short, but its conceptual content must be complex, as shown by the fact that each one of you would be at a loss if he were asked to render in thoughts the content of his so-called Ego-concept.

And now Ziehen attempts to say something about the thought-content of the Ego-concept. Let us now see what the distinguished scholar has to say concerning what we must really think when we think about our Ego.

You will immediately think of your body, [you notice that he says—you will think of your body] of your relationships to the outer world, [connection with the outer world] your family and personal relationships, [in other words you will soon begin to think of your bank account and to count your money!] of your name and title.

Now the distinguished scholar emphatically points out that we must also think of our name and of our title if we are to grasp or to encompass our Ego in the form of concept.

..... Your principal inclinations, predominating ideas and finally your past, and thus prove to yourself how extremely complex this Ego-concept is. Indeed, the reflective human being reduces this complexity of the Ego-concept to a relative simplicity by placing his own Ego as the subject of his feelings, thoughts and movements, against the outer objects and other Egos. Of course, this contrast and this sharpening of the Ego-concept has also its deeper scientific and philosophical basis, but considered purely psychologically this simple Ego is only a theoretical fiction.

Thus “this simple Ego” is only a “theoretical fiction” that means a mere fantasy-concept, which constructs itself when we put together our name, title, or let us assume our rank and other such things also, which make us important! By means of such points we can see the whole weakness of the present way of thinking. And this weakness must be held in mind the more firmly because of the fact that what proves itself to be a decided weakness for the knowledge of the life of the soul is a strength for the knowledge of outer natural scientific facts. What is inadequate for a knowledge of the life of the soul, just this is adequate for penetrating the obvious facts in their immediate outer necessity.

We must not deceive ourselves in regard to the fact that it is one of the characteristics of our times, that people who may be great in one field are exponents of the greatest nonsense in another. Only when we hold this fact clearly in mind—which is so well adapted to throw sand in the eyes of humanity—can we in any way follow with active thought what is required in order to raise again that power which man needs in order to acquire concepts that can penetrate fruitfully and healingly into life. For only those concepts can take firm hold of life as it is today, which are drawn out of the depths of true reality—where we are not afraid to enter deeply into true reality. But it is just this that many people shun today.

At present people are very often inclined to reform the spiritual reality, without first having perceived the true reality out of which they should draw their impulses.

Who today does not go about reforming everything in the world—or at least, believing he can reform it? What do people not draw up from the soul out of sheer nothingness! But at a time such as this only those things can be fruitful which are drawn up from the depths of spiritual reality itself. For this the Will must be active.

The vanity that wishes to take up every possible idea of reform on the basis of emptiness of soul is just as harmful for the development of our present time as materialism itself. At the conclusion of a previous lecture I called your attention to how the true Ego of man, the Ego which indeed belongs to the will-nature and which for this reason is immersed in sleep for the ordinary consciousness, must be fructified through the fact that already through public instruction man is led to a concrete grasp of the great interests of the times, by realizing what

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struction man is led to a concrete grasp of the great interests of the times, by realizing what spiritual forces and activities enter into our events and have an influence upon them. This cannot be accomplished with generalized, nebulous speeches about the spirit, but with knowledge of the concrete spiritual events, as we have described them in these lectures, where we have indicated, according to dates, how here and there certain of these powers and forces from the spiritual world have intervened here in the physical.

This brought about what I was able to describe to you as the joint work of the so-called dead and of the so-called living in the whole development of humanity. For the reality of our life of feeling and of will is in the realm where the dead also are. We can say that the reality of our Ego and of our astral body is in the same realm where the dead can also be found. The same thing is meant in both cases. This, however, indicates a common realm in which we are embedded, in which the dead and the living work together upon the tapestry which we may call the social, moral, and historical life of man in its totality; the periods of existence which are lived through between death and a new birth also belong to this realm. We have indicated in these lectures how between death and a new birth the so-called departed one has the animal kingdom as his lowest kingdom, just as the mineral kingdom is our lowest kingdom. We have also pointed out in a certain way, how the departed one has to work within the being of the animal kingdom, and has to build up out of the laws of the animalic the organization that again forms the basis for his next incarnation. We have shown how as second kingdom the departed one experiences all those connections which have their karmic foundation here in the physical world and which, correspondingly transformed, continue within the spiritual world. A second kingdom thus arises for the departed one, which is woven together of all the karmic connections that he has established at any time in an earthly incarnation. Through this, however, everything that the human being has developed between death and a new birth gradually spreads itself out, one might say, quite concretely over the whole of humanity.

The third kingdom through which the human being then passes can be conceived as the kingdom of the Angels. In a certain sense we have already pointed out the role of the Angels during the life between death and a new birth. They carry as it were the thoughts from one human soul to another and back again; they are the messengers of the common life of thought. Fundamentally speaking, the Angels are those Beings among the higher Hierarchies of whom the departed one has the clearest living experience—he has a clear living experience of the relationships with animals and human beings, established through his karma; but among the Beings of the higher Hierarchies he has the clearest conception of those belonging to the Hierarchy of the Angels, who are really the bearers of thoughts, indeed of the soul-content from one being to another, and who also help the dead to transform the animal world. When we speak of the concerns of the dead as personal concerns, we might say that the Beings of the Hierarchy of the Angels must strive above all to look after the personal concerns of the dead. The more universal affairs of the dead that are not personal are looked after more by the Beings of the Kingdom of the Archangeloi and Archai.

If you recall the lectures in which I have spoken about the life between death and a new birth, you will remember that part of the life of the so-called dead consists in spreading out his being over the world and in drawing it together again within himself I have already described and substantiated this more deeply. The life of the dead takes its course in such a way that a kind of alternation takes place between day and night, but so that active life arises from within the departed. He knows that this active life which thus arises is only the reappearance of what he has experienced in that other state which alternates with this one, when his being is spread out over the world and is united with the outer world. Thus when we come into contact with one who is dead we meet alternating conditions, a condition, for instance, where his being is spread out over the world, where he grows, as it were, with his own being into the real existence of his surroundings, into the events of his surroundings. The time when he knows least of all is when his own being that is in a kind of sleeping state grows into the spiritual world around him. When this again rises up within him it constitutes a kind of waking state and he is aware of everything, for his life takes its course within Time and not in space. Just as with our waking day-consciousness we have outside in space that which we take up in our consciousness, and then again withdraw from it in sleep—so from a certain moment onward the departed one takes over into the next period of time the experiences which he has passed through in a former one; these then fill his consciousness. It is a life entirely within Time. And we must become familiar with this.

Through this rhythmic life within Time, the departed enters into a very definite relationship with the Beings of the hierarchy of the Archangeloi and of the Archai. He has not as clear a conception of these Archangeloi and Archai Beings as of the Angels, of man, and of the animal; above all he always has this conception that these Beings, the Archai and Archangeloi, work together with him in this awaking and falling asleep, awaking and falling asleep, in this rhythm which takes place within the course of time. The departed one, when he is able to do so, must always bring to consciousness what he experienced unknowingly in the preceding period of time; then he always has the consciousness that a Being of the Hierarchy of the Archai has awakened him; he is always conscious that he works together with the Archai and Archangeloi in all that concerns this rhythmic life.

Let us firmly grasp the fact that just as in a waking state we realize that we perceive the outer world of which we know nothing during sleep, just as we realize that this outer world sinks into darkness when we fall asleep, so in the soul of the so-called dead lives this consciousness—Archai, Archangeloi, these are the Beings with whom I am united in a common work in order that I may pass through this life of falling asleep and awaking, falling asleep and awaking, and so forth. We might say that the departed one associates with the Archangeloi and Archai just as in waking consciousness we associate with the plant and mineral world of our physical surroundings. Man cannot however look back upon this interplay of forces in which he is interwoven between death and a new birth. Why not? We may indeed say, why not, but just this looking back is something which man must learn; yet it is difficult for him to learn this owing to the materialistic mentality of today. I would like to show you in a diagram why man does not look back upon this.

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Let us suppose that you are facing the world with all your organs of perception and understanding. This will give you a conceptual and perceptive content of a varied kind. I will designate the consciousness of a single moment by drawing different rings or small circles. These indicate what exists in the consciousness during the space of a moment. You know that a memory-process takes place when you look back over events—but in a different manner than modern psychologists imagine this. The time into which you can look back, to which your memory extends, is indicated by this line; it really indicates the space which here reaches a blind alley. This would be the point in your third, fourth or fifth year that is as far back as you can remember in life. Thus all the thoughts which arise when you look back upon your past experiences lie within this space of time. Let us suppose that you think of something in your thirtieth year for instance, and while you are thinking of this you remember something that you experienced ten years ago. If you picture very vividly what is actually taking place in the soul you will be able to form the following thought. You will say, if I look back to the point of time in my childhood which is as far back as I can remember, this constitutes a “sack” in the soul, which has its limits; its blunt end is the point which lies as far back in my childhood as I am able to remember. This is a sort of “sack” in the soul; it is the space of time which we can grasp in memory. Imagine such a “soul-sack” into which you can look while you are looking back in memory; these are the extreme limits of the sack which correspond in reality to the limit between the etheric body and the physical. This boundary must exist, otherwise ... well, to picture it roughly, the events that call forth memory would then always fall through at this point. You would be able to remember nothing, the soul would be a sack without a bottom, everything would fall through it. Thus, a boundary must be there. An actual “soul-sack” must be there. But at the same time this “soul-sack” prevents you from perceiving what you have lived through outside it. You yourself are non-transparent in the life of your soul because you have memories; you are non-transparent because you have the faculty of memory.

You see therefore—that which causes us to have a proper consciousness for the physical plane is at the same time the cause of our being unable to look with our ordinary consciousness into the region that lies behind memory. For it does really lie behind memory. But we can make the effort to gradually transform our memories to some extent. However we must do this carefully. We can begin by trying to keep before us in meditation with more and more accuracy something which we can remember, until we feel that it is not merely something which we take hold of in memory, but something which really remains there. One who develops an intensive, active life of the spirit will gradually have the feeling that memory is not something that comes and goes, comes and goes—but that memory contains something permanent. Indeed, work in this direction can only lead to the conviction that what rises within memory is of a lasting nature and really remains present as Akashic Record, for it does not disappear. What we remember remains in the world, it is there in reality. But we do not progress any further with this method; for merely to remember accurately our personal experiences, and the knowledge that memory remains—this method is in a higher sense too egotistical to lead farther than just to this conviction. On the contrary, if you were to develop beyond a certain point just this capacity of looking upon the permanency of your own experiences, you would obstruct all the more your outlook into the free world of spirit. Instead of the sack of memories, your own life stands there all the more compactly and prevents you from looking through.

Another method may be used in contrast to this; through it, the impressions in the Akashic Record become remarkably transparent, if I may use this expression. When we are once able to look through the stationary memories, we look with a sure eye into the spiritual world with which we are connected between death and a new birth. But to attain this we must not use merely the stationary memories of our own life; these become more and more compact, and we can see through them less and less. They must become transparent. And they become transparent if we make an ever stronger attempt to remember not so much what we have experienced from our own point of view, but more what has come to us from outside. Instead of remembering for instance what we have learned, we should remember the teacher, his manner of speech, what effect he had upon us and what he did with us. We should try to remember how the book arose out of which we learned this or that. We should remember above all what has worked upon us from the outer world. A beautiful and really wonderful beginning, indeed an introduction to such a memory, is Goethe's Wahrheit and Dichtung (his autobiography) where he shows how Time has formed him, how various forces have worked upon him. Because Goethe was able to achieve this in his life, and looked back on his life not from the standpoint of his own experiences, but from the standpoint of others and of the events of the times that worked upon him, he was able to have such deep insight into the spiritual world.

But this is at the same time the way that enables us to come into deeper touch with the time which has taken its course between our last death and our present birth.

Thus you see that today I am referring you, from another point of view, to the same thing to which I have already referred—to extend our interests beyond the personal, to turn our interests and attention not upon ourselves, but upon that that has formed us, that out of which we have arisen. It is an ideal to be able to look back upon time, upon a remote antiquity, and to investigate all the forces that have formed these “fine fellows”—the human beings.

Indeed, when we describe it thus, this offers few difficulties; it is no simple task, but it bears rich fruit because it requires great selflessness. It is just this method that awakens the forces which enable us to enter with our Ego the sphere which the dead have in common with the living. To know ourselves, is less important than to know our time; the task of public instruction in a not too distant future will be to know our time in its concrete reality, not as it now stands in history books ... but time such as it has evolved out of spiritual impulses.

Thus we are also led to extend out interest to a characteristic of our age and its rise from the universal world process. Why did Goethe strive so intense to know Greek art, to understand his age, through and through, to weigh it against earlier ages? Why did he make his Faust go back as far as the Greek age, as far as the age of Helen of Troy, and seek Chiron and the Sphinxes? Because he wished to know his own age and how it had worked upon him, as he could know it only by measuring it against an earlier age. But Goethe does not let his Faust sit still and decipher old state-records, but he leads him back along paths of the soul to the impulses by which he himself has been formed. Within him lies much of that which leads the human being on the one hand to a meeting with the dead, and on the other hand with the Spirits of Time, with the Archangels (this is now evident through the connection of the dead with the Archangels). Through the fact that man comes together with the dead, he also comes in touch with the Archangels and with the Spirits of Time.

Just the impulses that Goethe indicated in his Faust contain that through which the human being extends his interest to the Time Spirit, and that which is preeminently necessary for our times. It is indeed necessary for our times to look in a different way for instance upon Faust. Most of those who study Faust hardly find the real problems contained in it. A few are able to formulate these problems, but the answers are most curious.

Take for example the passage where Goethe really indicates to us that we should reflect. Do people always reflect at this point? Yet Goethe spares no effort to make it clearly understood that people should reflect upon certain things. For instance you know that Erichtho speaks about the site of the Classical Walpurgis-night; she withdraws and the air-traveler Homunculus appears with Faust and Mephistopheles. You will recall the first speeches of Homunculus, Mephistopheles and Faust. After Faust has touched the ground and called out. “Where is she?”—Homunculus says:—

It's more than we can tell
But to enquire would here be well.
Thou 'rt free to hasten, ere the day,
From flame to flame, and seek her so:
Who to the Mothers found his way,
Has nothing more to undergo.

Homunculus says:—

Who to the Mothers found his way,
Has nothing more to undergo.

How does he know that Faust has been with the Mothers? This is a question which necessarily arises; for if you will look back through the book you will find that there is nowhere any indication that Homunculus, a distinct and separate being from Faust, could have known that Faust had been with the Mothers. Now suddenly Homunculus pipes out that, “Who to the Mothers found his way, has nothing more to undergo.” You see, Goethe propounds riddles. With clear-cut necessity it ensues that Homunculus, if he is anything at all, is something within the sphere of consciousness of Faust himself, for he can know what is contained in the sphere of Faust's consciousness only if he himself belongs to this same sphere of consciousness.

Call to mind the various expositions we have given of Faust:—how Homunculus is really nothing else than what must be prepared as astral body, in order that Helen may appear. But for this reason he is in another state of consciousness; his consciousness is spread out over the astral body. When we know that Homunculus comes within the sphere of Faust's consciousness we can understand his knowledge. Goethe makes Homunculus come into existence because, through the creation of Homunculus, Faust's consciousness finds the possibility of transcending itself as it were, not merely of remaining within itself, but of being outside. He, too, is where Homunculus is to be found; Homunculus is a part of Faust's consciousness. Goethe as you see takes alchemy very seriously. There are many such riddles in Faust which are directly connected with the secrets of the spiritual world. We must allow Faust to work upon us so that we become aware of the depths of spiritual reality which are really contained in it. We can only understand a man like Goethe when we realize on the one hand, that he had studied what had formed him really as if he had viewed it from outside, as can be seen in his autobiography (Wahrheit and Dichtung)—and that on the other hand, he knew that this must lead back to distant perspectives, to distant connections with the dead. Faust enters the life of very ancient civilizations of humanity, the life of spiritual Beings lying far back in the past.

[But if one wants to see clearly what is necessary in a positive sense for the present, then one must also have an eye and a feeling for the negative in many respects, one must develop the right feeling for the negative. One must have an eye for everything that prevents the necessary coming together of living people in a common plan with the work of the dead. You can discover these obstacles everywhere today. You find them at every turn. You find them precisely where education — forgive me for using this ugly word — is spread today.¹

How can a person today feel truly intelligent, deeply intelligent, enlightened, when he can write something like this: “Swedenborg, whose dark and enigmatic personality even Goethe explored with reverent hesitation, communicated with angels beyond the earth. He said that these supernatural beings, armed with thoughts, even walk around dressed in robes. The struggle for knowledge and enlightenment is not foreign to them, for they have set up a printing press from which they sometimes send a few sheets to particularly fortunate people. The newspapers of the hereafter are then covered with Hebrew letters. A peculiar feature of the venerable biblical symbols is that every line, every edge, every curve conceals a mysterious spiritual value. Man only has to learn to read the angelic squiggles correctly in order to be initiated into the truth of the hereafter, into the reversed, eternally sunlit life, into the blissful festivity and exhilarating paradise of the hereafter. Swedenborg, who sometimes managed to die to earthly life while still alive and to make the transition to the afterlife before physical death, asked the angels many questions and reported on them. Centuries before him, Babylonians, Egyptians, and Jews practiced the same craft of exploration. Generations after him, even to this day, it is done by those beings on earth who are dissatisfied, who want to seek counsel from God about their future, who do not want to renounce the company of their dead, and who finally believe that the bridge built from their dream-filled beds to the realms of the incomprehensible is a solid, seraphic path, cemented and supported by spirits.

And so the person in question, who considers himself very clever, continues his reflections, indulging in cheap mockery of those who try to build a bridge to the hereafter; for this very clever man has read the book of another person who considers himself very clever and writes about it: “This beyond of the senses, inhabited by the soul, is what the weighty book by Max Dessoir wants to describe anew, after thousands of thinkers have already entered this path to the afterlife. This time, therefore, it is a philosopher who speaks, who has strived more for knowledge of human nature than for the separation of orphaned schools of thought, an art lover who has not shied away from interpreting the enigmatic moment of an artist's birth, a man who has occasionally searched the bones and nerves of human beings with a knife in his hand in order to find his way through the numerous earthly hiding places of the soul.”

Because Dessoir is so multifaceted in his protection against the rashness of fanatics and the coldness of arrogant rationalists, his judgment on matters of the hereafter, which he has been preparing for more than thirty years, deserves respect and attention even from those who cannot follow him on his path,” and so on.

I had to discuss this individual, Max Dessoir, in the second chapter of my book, “Von Seelenrätseln” (On the Riddles of the Soul), because this university professor had the audacity to discuss anthroposophy as such. I had to undertake the task of proving that the whole way Max Dessoir works is the most unscrupulous, superficial way imaginable. This man has the audacity to pass a disparaging judgment based almost exclusively on nonsensical quotations that he extracts from a few of my books and always quotes in such a way that they are distorted in the most absurd manner. One must state the facts in this way if one wants to see the scandal that is possible within what is today often called science. I have only seen Dessoir once in my life; it was in the early 1990s. At that time, he made a very clever remark to me. My “Philosophy of Freedom” had not yet been written. Max Dessoir said at the time—it was at a Goethe dinner in Weimar: “Yes, you do have one fault, you concern yourself with too many sciences.” That was the great mistake, trying not to be one-sided!

Among the other absurdities that Max Dessoir commits in his book is, for example, that he now refers to my Philosophy of Freedom as my “first work.” It was written about ten years after my actual first work; I had been a writer for ten years before Philosophy of Freedom. All this and much more is equally false in Dessoir's book. How many people will read the necessary, factual refutations in my book Von Seelenrätseln (On the Riddles of the Soul), which show what hot air Dessoir's scholarship is! But how much journalistic rabble of the sort found in Max Hochdorf in Zurich is gathering to trumpet Max Dessoir's nonsensical book Vom Jenseits der Seele (Beyond the Soul) in such a way that one says, “This beyond the senses, which is inhabited by the soul, is what Max Dessoir's weighty book wants to 'Vom Jenseits der Seele' (Beyond the Soul), after thousands of thinkers have already entered this path into the hereafter,” and so on.

It is necessary to focus on such things. It is well known that what is attempted on the basis of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is distorted in the most unprecedented ways here and there, sometimes by people who know very well that the opposite of what they say is true. But these are mostly poor wretches who have been unable to satisfy their personal interests within society, who believed they could satisfy them, and whom one can pity, but about whom there is no need to talk further. And they themselves know best how it stands with the objective truth of what they say. But poison such as that spread by Max Dessoir must be taken more seriously, and I had to do my part to clarify, sentence by sentence, so to speak, the entire philosophical worthlessness of Dessoir's arguments. Until a healthy judgment prevails in the widest circles about such alleged science as that of Max Dessoir—and there are many such Max Dessoirs—and until a healthy judgment prevails about such followers of Max Dessoir, such as the author of this article, who of course cannot resist concluding his article with the words: “Because the path to the afterlife is so completely blocked” — of course, for the blocked mind of this Mr. Max Dessoir, the path to the afterlife is blocked! — ‘people have tried again and again over the millennia to break down the barriers.’ Dessoir calls these fighters for the desperately fixed yet intangible spirit realm ”magical idealists.” He lists them all, these faith healers, apostles of numbers, Egyptian magicians, Negro saints, anthroposophists, neo-Buddhists, Kabbalists, and Hasidim. He is a highly captivating chronicler of all those generations who have submitted to miracles and yet rebelled against them. A peculiar society forms when one lists all the men, wise and foolish, who wanted to gather around the pure spirit. Cagliostro and Kant, Hegel and even the modern sorcerer Svengali meet there as they wander aimlessly on their way to the afterlife.

It is, of course, impossible to prevent people from writing in this way, but in the widest circles a healthy judgment must prevail which prevents what comes into the public domain in this way from being accepted as authoritative. For it goes without saying that thought forms of this kind, spraying around in our social organism, prevent any possibility of beneficial progress for humanity. For oneself, when one has had to attack scientific rubbish such as that of Max Dessoir, one can wash one's hands and declare oneself satisfied. But this scientific rubbish flows and flows, and today there are far too many channels through which this rubbish can flow. Sometimes one has to nail down an example. In this case, it had to be done again, because you can imagine how many people's minds will once again be filled with a judgment about anthroposophy when a feature article such as the one that appeared on December 14, 1917, in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung is written by someone who is considered quite clever and who bases his views on someone else who is considered just as clever, namely Max Dessoir!

These things must be regarded as cultural-historical facts, and their cultural-historical significance must be taken into account. Certainly, there is unfortunately only a slight possibility today of bringing something like this chapter I have written, “Max Dessoir on Anthroposophy,” to the attention of the general public. For even in the Anthroposophical Society there is only a small circle that truly understands its task: the task of enlightening humanity about the way science is often practiced today, of enlightening it in the right and proper way. And what is practiced today as science is only a symptom of general thinking. For just as things are in science — of which Max Dessoir, with all his followers, is a glaring example — so they are in other fields. And if you ask the question: What deeper forces have led to today's catastrophe? — you will always remain on the surface if you do not go into these deeper reasons, into what lies in the contortion, in the deliberate contortion and in the deliberate superficiality, charlatanism, a charlatanism that seeks to maintain itself by attributing serious intellectuality precisely to charlatanism. This must be seen in its true form in a healthy sense. I cite the example of Max Dessoir only because it is so obvious. But it is an example of much that exists as negative in our time. If anyone in humanity wants to have a heart for the positive aspects of growing together with the spiritual world, then they must also have a heart for rejection, for strong, heartfelt rejection wherever possible, of the inauthentic, the superficial, the useless.

We are experiencing this very much in our own day, that often those who are portrayed in the worst light in public life are precisely the most decent people. There is no need to view these things with pessimism, but there is a need to seek forces within one's own soul that will produce and nurture a healthy judgment about these things in that soul.]

• 1. The section in brackets was not available in the original translation.

To-day, the 8th May, the Theosophical Society celebrates the Day of the White Lotus, which to the outer world is known, in the usual terminology of the day, as the death-day of the instigator of that Spiritual stream in which we now stand. To us it would seem more appropriate to select a different designation for to-day's festival, one taken from our knowledge of the Spiritual world and which should run more like this: ‘The day of transition from an activity on the physical plane to one in the Spiritual worlds’. For to us it is not only an inner conviction in the ordinary sense of the words but an ever-increasing knowledge, that what the outer world calls death is but the passing from one form of work, from an activity stimulated by the impressions of the outer physical world, to one entirely stimulated by the Spiritual world. When to-day we remember the great instigator, H. P. Blavatsky, and the leading persons of her movement who have also now passed over into the Spiritual realm, let us in particular try to form a clear idea of what we ourselves must make of our Spiritual movement so that it may represent a continuation of that activity which she exercised on the physical plane as long as she remained on it; so that on the one hand it may be a continuation of that activity and at the same time be possible for the Foundress herself to continue her work from the Spiritual world, both now and in the future. On such a day as this it is seemly that we should in a sense break away from our usual study of theosophical matters, and theosophical life, and should instead go through a sort of conscientious retrospect, a retrospect concerning what the tasks and duties the theosophical movement sets before us, and which may also lead us to a sort of prevision of what this movement should become in the future, and what we should do, and avoid doing.

What we are carrying on as the Theosophical movement came into the world as the result of certain quite special circumstances and certain historical necessities. You know that there was here no question, as in other Spiritual movements or unions of any sort,—of one or more persons determining to follow certain ideals according as the quality of their hearts and minds leads them to feel enthusiasm for these ideals, trying to enthuse other people and to induce them to form societies or unions for carrying these into practice. Not in this way should we view the Theosophical movement if we understand it aright. We only do this if we look upon it as an historical necessity of our present life: something which, regardless of what people feel or would like to feel about it, was bound to come, for it already lay in the womb of time, so to speak, and had to be brought to birth. In what way then may we regard the Theosophical movement? It may be considered as a descent, a new descent of Spiritual life, of Spiritual wisdom and Spiritual forces, into the sensible physical world from the super-sensible ones. Such a descent had to take place for the further development of man, and must repeatedly take place in the future. It cannot of course be our task to-day to point out all the different great impulses through which Spiritual life has flowed down from the super-sensible worlds in order that the soul-life of man should be renewed when it had, so to speak, grown old; but in the course of time this has frequently occurred. One thing, however, must be borne in mind.

In the primeval past, not long after the great Atlantean catastrophe which the traditions of the various countries record as the story of the Flood, came that impulse that we may describe as the inflow of Spiritual life that poured into the development of mankind through the Holy Rishis. Then came that other stream of Spiritual life that flowed down into man's evolution through Zarathustra or Zoroaster, and we find another stream of like nature in that which came to the old Israelites through the revelations of Moses.

The following lecture was given on, and dedicated to, the anniversary of Goethe's birthday, and in connection with the lecture series, Wonders of the World, Ordeals of the Soul and Revelations of the Spirit. This lecture is not a part of the 10 lectures in the above named lecture series, and was presumably translated from shorthand reports, unrevised by the lecturer, by an unknown translator.

My dear theosophical Friends!

The composition of “Faust” was Goethe's companion from his early years, on, one may say in the truest sense of the word,—till his death. For the second part of the poem was left behind by him, sealed, as his literary testament. The composition of certain important passages of the 2nd part of Faust really belongs to the closing years of that universal genius. Anyone who has had the opportunity of following Goethe's spiritual evolution, as revealed in his life-work, will discover many a thing of the most extreme interest, particularly in reference to the fact that Goethe's ideas continually altered regarding the course of development of his poem, when he returned again and again to this labour of his life. There is an interesting memorandum extant on the conclusion of “Faust” as it was intended to be, in accordance with Goethe's views of that date—a period which we may fix at the end of the ’eighties or beginning of the ’nineties of the eighteenth century. We find here, besides a few notes on the first and second parts, a short sentence containing an indication bearing on the conclusion of the poem. This scrap of writing shows the words jotted down in pencil by Goethe, “Epilogue in Chaos on the way to Hell.” This reveals to us that it was Goethe's intention at one time not to honour his Faust by the kind of apotheosis which forms the present conclusion of the poem, brought to an end in his extreme old age; but that, in accordance with the course indicated in the Prologue in Heaven,—from Heaven, through the world, to Hell—he desired to bring Faust to a conclusion with the Epilogue in Chaos on the Way to Hell. At that time Goethe entertained thoughts which led him to believe that knowledge which overstepped certain limits could only end in chaos. We may trace a certain connection between the frame of mind which prompted these words, which I quoted as Goethe's own, with that which was said yesterday regarding the ordeals of the soul; on the one hand the losing of itself in nothingness; on the other hand the descent into the turbid inner nature of the human being and the failure, in spite of all efforts, to find the junction. Goethe's personality was indeed one which compelled him to vanquish all difficulties, step by step, and to experience all vicissitudes in his own person. It is for this reason that all his creations leave such an impression of sincerity and truthfulness on us,—sometimes indeed the effect is so powerful that we cannot immediately keep pace with him; because it is impossible for us, unprepared, to transport ourselves into the particular phase of his personality prevailing at one period or another of his life. We may note a truly great advance in Goethe between the moment at which he intended to conclude his “Faust” with an epilogue in chaos on the way to hell, and that other period in which he brings his work to a close in the spirit of the monumental words “Wer immer strebend sick bemüht, den können wir erlösen.”¹ For when Goethe, wrote the present, universally-known conclusion to his “Faust,” the premonition of which we spoke yesterday was alive within him, coupled with that inner strength which brings the assurance that, though we must pass through all ordeals of the soul, we shall-inevitably accomplish the closing of the circle described yesterday. This, my dear theosophical friends, is intended as a slight indication of the most pronounced characteristic in Goethe's life. Those among us who love a harmonious life, who cannot accommodate themselves to its contradictions, though these are the vital element in a progressive life reveals many contradictions, and that Goethe's judgment of many matters in his old age differed from that of his youth. But this was only because he was forced to conquer every truth for himself. Goethe's personality is a striking example of the necessity of the lessons of life; it shows us that it is precisely life on the physical plane which evokes direct inner experiences, and that life, with its succession of events, is needful for us, in order that we may become human beings in the true sense of the word. When we pass in review Goethe's whole life and contemplate its successive stages, we are struck by the universality of his genius, the magnificent comprehensiveness and many-sidedness of his mentality. It is most important to study Goethe precisely from this point of view, in his life-time, and also to measure by our own time the importance of that which he was by reason of the universality of his spirit, and then to ask ourselves how Goethe can above all things influence our own epoch by the universality of his genius.

It is well for us, then, to devote a little study to the inner character of the time in which we live,—to our present epoch and its spiritual culture. It is especially important for theosophists to consider attentively the spirit of our age. It is often said that we live in an age of specialists, in which exact science must reign supreme. How frequently do we hear the words of the great physicist Helmholtz repeated, namely, that at the present day there can be no mind comprehensive enough to embrace all the various branches of human knowledge, as they now exist. It has become absolutely proverbial that there can be no doctor universalis at the present day, and that one must be content with a general knowledge of special subjects. But when we consider that life is one and undivided, that everything in life is involved with everything else, and that life does not ask whether our souls are capable of comprehending what belongs to the common spiritual living organism of our age;—when we consider this we must conclude that it would be a disaster for our age, were it impossible to find, at least to some extent, the spirit ruling in all specialisation. And our quest will be easiest, if we endeavour to approach the subject precisely by those avenues opened up by theosophy or spiritual science. That science must be universal; it must be in a position to survey at a glance the branches of the various sciences in all the different domains of civilised life. To-day let us examine at least one aspect of our modern intellectual life, and see how it appears in the light of theosophy. As our time is limited, we will avoid those departments of science which are more or less unaffected by the passage of time, as least as to their nature and purpose, in spite of the enormous extensions which they have undergone in our day,—I mean mathematics, although even here we might point to the fact that the weighty deliberations carried on in certain branches of mathematics during the nineteenth century may be said to have opened up the supersensuous world to that science. But it must be mentioned that great and wonderful discoveries have been made in all branches of science in the course of the last few decades, which testify everywhere, when examined in the proper light, to the fact that the teachings of theosophy exactly agree with science; whereas none of the theories that have been applied to these discoveries up to the present day at all coincide with the facts which have been accumulated with so much diligence and energy for the last forty or fifty years. Taking, for example, chemistry and physics, we see how remarkable has been the tendency in the development of these branches in that period. When we were young, in the ’seventies or ’eighties or earlier, the so-called atomistic theories prevailed in chemistry and physics. These theories attributed all phenomena to particular kinds of vibration, either of ether or some other material substance. In short we might say that it was customary then to explain everything in the world, in the final instance, by the theory of vibration. Then as we approached the last decade of the nineteenth century, it was shown by the facts which gradually came to light that the theory of motion, or atomistic theory, was untenable. It may even be called a remarkable achievement (in the most limited sense of the word), that Professor Ostwald, who was chiefly noted as a chemist and natural scientist, brought forward at a congress in Lubeck, in place of the atomistic theory, the so-called theory of energy, or energetics. In a certain respect this was a progressive step; but the later discoveries in the field of chemistry and physics, down to our own times, have finally given rise to a considerable amount of scepticism and want of faith regarding all theoretical science. The idea of attributing external physical facts, such as the phenomena of light, etc., to the vibration of minute particles, or to a mere manifestation of energy, is now only entertained by unprogressive minds. This opinion is chiefly strengthened by all that has become known of late years regarding the substances which gave rise to the theory of radium; and we can already note the extraordinary circumstance that, owing to certain facts which have come to light by degrees, distinguished physicists such as Thomson and others have found themselves obliged to throw overboard all theories, first and foremost the ether hypothesis with its artistic forms of vibration, once cultivated with such extreme seriousness and assiduous application of the integral and differential calculus. The theory of motion was therefore fated to be discarded by the great physicists, who then returned to the vortices of Cartesius, a theory which may be said to be based on ancient occult traditions. But even these theories have been relinquished in their turn; a feeling of scepticism towards all theorising shows itself precisely in physics and chemistry, as a result of the conviction that all matter crumbles away, as it were, under the experiments of modern physical science. Things have gone so far that, in view of the advance of modern physical science, the theories of atomistic vibration and of energetics can no longer be upheld. All that might still have found a hearing 5, 6 or more years ago, all on which so many fond hopes were built, when we were young, when even the force of gravitation was ascribed to motion,—in the eyes of those acquainted with the real facts, all this has been demolished. But we still of course hear of extraordinary ideas on the part of the unprogressive. There is an interesting fact in this connection, which I might mention, as it is my intention to discuss certain characteristics of our own time and of Goethe. A little book has just appeared which also takes the standpoint that there is no such thing as gravitation, that is, that there is no attraction between matter and the planets.—It has always been a difficulty for science to support this so-called theory of attraction, because one must ask: How can the Sun attract the Earth, if it does not stretch anything out into space? Now within the last few days this book has appeared, in which attraction is ascribed to the effect of concussion. For instance, we represent to ourselves a body, whether planet or molecule, upon which impacts are continually being exercised from all sides by other planets or other molecular bodies, How does it happen that these bodies impinge upon one another from all sides? For of course they do impinge upon each other everywhere, one in this, another in the opposite direction, an so on.

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The essential point here is that when the number of impacts exercised from outside is compared with that produced by the bodies in the space between, the result is a difference. The last-mentioned are fewer and have less force than the outer. The consequence is that through the outer impacts the two bodies, whether molecules or planets, are driven together. According to this theory the force usually called attraction is attributed to the impacts of matter. It is refreshing to find something like a new thought now-a-days; but to any one who looks more deeply into the matter this theory is nothing more than refreshing. It is refreshing for the simple reason that the same theory had already been worked out with all possible mathematical quibbles. It is contained in a book, now out of print, written when I was a little boy, by a certain Heinrich Schramm, “The Universal Vibration of Matter as the First Cause of all Phenomena.” In this book the theory is much more thoroughly dealt with. Such ideas constantly reappear when scientists leave out of consideration the evolution of the spiritual life. In this respect the most extraordinary observations may be made;—errors caused by a one-sided view are repeated over and over again. What I should like to impress upon you above all is, that in consequence of the achievements of physics and chemistry of late years, abundant proofs have been furnished that that which is called matter is merely a human conception, which melts away under experiments, and that physics and chemistry, leaving behind all motion and energy, steer directly to the point at which matter merges into the spirit at its foundation. The body of facts accumulated by physics and chemistry already demand a spiritual foundation. Geology and paleontology are in a similar case. In these sciences more comprehensive theories, based upon vast aggregations of force, prevailed till about 1860–1870. To-day we find scepticism. everywhere; and among our best geologists and palaeontologists there is an inclination to restrict their labours to the bare registration of facts, because they dare not combine them in thought. A considerable amount of courage is needed to develop a system of thought embracing the series of facts before them. People are afraid to take the step now demanded even by geology and paleontology:—from the material to the spiritual,—a step which would transcend the Kant-Laplace theory. They dare not acknowledge that their imaginary universal nebula is finally merged in the spiritual regions, the world of the hierarchies, of which all that we might call the outer, physical, or perhaps the astrophysical theory, is but the garment. The case is different when we come to those sciences which have to deal more with life and the soul. We come in the first place to biology.

Now you all know how great were the hopes built on the progress of biology, the science of life, when Darwin's great work, “The Origin of Species”, appeared. Perhaps you also know that at the natural science Congress held in Stettin in the year 1863 Ernst Haeckel, with rare courage, extended to the human being the theory apparently applied by Darwin only to the animal, and we see that the science of biology afterwards developed in a remarkable way. We find cautious spirits who confine themselves more to the registration of facts; but others are there, who push forward impetuously, constructing daring theories on the results of investigations dealing with the relationship of forms among the different creatures. Foremost of all we find Haeckel boldly constructing pedigrees, showing how, from elementary forms of life, the most complicated structures have arisen through ever-new ramifications. But side by side with these more striking tendencies,—as we might call them—there is a line of investigation which it is also important to notice. This might be called the school of the anatomist, Carl Gegenbaur. In accordance with his nature, Gegenbaur was of opinion that, in the first place, we ought not to concern ourselves with the correlation existing between different creatures. He looked upon the Darwinian theory as a guiding principle of investigation, to be used as a standard, by the aid of which certain facts relating to the forms of living creatures could be traced. Let us suppose that the train of thought of a scientist might be expressed in the following words:—“I am not prepared to say that the higher animals might not be descended from the birds or fishes, but I will start from the principle that a relationship exists between them, and, keeping this in view, will examine the gills and fins, and will see whether more and more subtle resemblances do not come to light.” And in fact it was found that, by using Darwin's method as a clue, more and more important scientific facts were discovered. Important results were also arrived at when this method of research, stimulated by the Darwinian impulse, was applied to the descent of man, by following up all the evidence of paleontology and other archaeological records relating to geology. Wherever scientists have gone to work with caution, their method has been as follows: They begin by tracing the links, laying down Darwin's theory as a guiding principle. And here we have the astounding result that the Darwinian theory, used in this way, has shown itself to be extraordinarily fertile in results of late years, and that by the discoveries to which it has led up till the present time, it has contradicted and annulled itself! So that we may observe the remarkable fact, scarcely to be found to the same extent in any other domain of science, that the Darwinian scientists disagree on all points. Thus, there are still persons (certainly the very unprogressive) who relate the human being to the anthropoid apes still extant, or at least only slightly metamorphosed. There are some, particularly among those who pursue the modern analysis of the blood and the relationship among the components of the blood, who have returned to the older forms of the Darwinian theory. Katsch, for instance, affirms that it is impossible, in view of the facts which have come to light, to relate the human being to any animal form whatever now extant. All shades of opinion prevail, from that according to which man is related to the ape as he now exists,—on to others which diverge from the latter, but, following the descent of man is not traceable to the ancestors of these of these apes to any other mammals. It is held that we must retrace our steps to animals of which we can form no representation, and that from these man is descended on the one hand, while the mammals have branched off on the other hand, so that the apes are very distantly related to the human being. What strikes us as remarkable in this is the circumstance that when these scientists employ the forms familiar to us at present, in order to call up a picture of that real, primeval man, all existing physical forms dissolve into a nebulous mass;—the result is nil. How is this? Because there is a point in the science of biology, at which the outer physical facts arrived at by sincere effort, leads to the conclusion that the ancestors of man cannot be represented as physical beings, as all attempts in this direction fail. We at last arrive at the spiritual, primal form of man, the fruit of an earlier planetary evolution,—at that spiritual, primal man spoken of in theosophy. Precisely those facts which have been revealed by the researches of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries bear incontrovertible testimony to this truth, and the disagreement among scientists is concealed solely because the students only attend the lectures of one professor, and do not compare his teachings with those of others. If they compared the opinions of the various learned authorities, they would make strange discoveries. In the books of a certain naturalist they would find a passage very distinctly underlined, to the following effect: “If any of my students now preparing for his doctor's degree should propound this theory, which is brought forward by another, I would reject him unhesitatingly.” This assertion is however no exaggeration, it is only what is said by the professor of one university of his colleague of another university. And the disagreement mentioned is one of the most conspicuous phenomena in the field of biology; while in physics and chemistry the utmost resignation prevails with regard to theories. When we come to physiology we find still more singular conditions. We find that this science everywhere leads to the most extravagant theories. We see how even the mere outside husk of physiology is everywhere influenced by all sorts of things behind or within the physical, even among thinkers who, without knowing it, are yet absolute materialists in their mode of thought. I might mention hundreds of things in this connection, such for instance as the strange theories put forward of late years by a school of thought in Vienna, the so-called Freud school;—theories dealing with the manner in which the sub-conscious life of man, as it shows itself in dreams or other phenomena of life, comes within the domain of physiology. I can merely hint at these facts, and only mention them because they show that it is necessary everywhere, even theoretically speaking, that the mass of empirical facts of the outer senses be traced to spiritual causes. At the same time we find that the moment at which general comprehension, or conception of the impression necessarily made by science as a whole at the present day, makes itself felt, a kind of resignation sets in. In philosophy also we find the same resignation. You are probably aware that under the influence of William James in America, of Schiller in England and of other scholars in the philosophic field, a strange theory has been developed, which is really the outcome of a tendency inherent in facts, to strive towards their spiritual origin; but its followers nevertheless refuse recognise that origin in the spirit. This is the so-called pragmatism, which affirms that, in considering the various phenomena of life, we must, invent theories regarding them, as if they were capable of being combined; but that everything that we think out exists as an economy of the mind, and has no inner, constitutive, real value. This theory is the final refuse of the seared minds of the present day. It denotes the most absolute unbelief in the spirit, a reliance only on fragile theories, invented for the purpose of combining facts, and a failure to believe that the living spirit first implanted in the objects the thoughts which we find in them at last. The strangest fate of all sciences in this respect is reserved to psychology. There are certain psychologists who are incapable of finding the way to a living spirit, in which the soul finds itself as if reborn in the objects. On the other hand they cannot deny that, if any harmony at all can be established between the soul and the objects, something must be transferred to the objects from the soul. What is experienced in the soul must have something to do with the objects. And in connection with this, there is a curious word in circulation in German systems of psychology,—one which really flies in the face of all philological thought—the word “to feel into” (an object) (Einfühlen). There can be no clearer example of helping oneself out of a dilemma, than the use of such a word to avoid exact thought. As if it were of any importance that we should feel something into the objects, without being able to find in the things themselves the essential, real connection between the objects and that which we see in them. This is a state of forlornness, in which psychology finds itself bereft of the spirit, and tries to help itself out of the difficulty by the use of such a word. Thus we might find many similar masterpieces brought into existence at the present day by systems of psychology which cannot be taken seriously. Other systems of psychology confine themselves to a description of the outer instruments of the soul-life,—the brain, etc.; and it has gone so far that psychologists are listened to with respect when they prove by experiment that no force or energy absorbed or taken into our system in food and drink, is lost. This is supposed to prove that the law of the conservation of energy must also hold good for psychology, and that there is no such thing as a soul-nature independent of the body, and working apart through its bodily instruments. A conclusion such as this is perfectly illogical. One who can draw such a conclusion, and who is in a position to formulate such a thought at all, must also admit that it would be reasonable to stand in front of a bank, to calculate how much money is carried in and how much is carried out, and then to reckon how much remains in the coffers; and from this to draw the conclusion that there are no employees at work in the bank. Such conclusions are really drawn, and they are even regarded as scientific in our day. Theories like these are built up on the returns of modern research. They cast a veil over the real nature of the facts. We can observe the real status of psychology in a highly interesting personality, a truly remarkable man, who wrote a work on psychology in the ’seventies of the last century, Francis Brentano. He wrote the 1st. volume of a psychology which should have filled several volumes. Whoever is willing to follow the contents of the 1st. volume with an understanding of the real standpoint of psychological facts, must reflect that, considering the nature of the premise from which Francis Brentano starts, and if it be at all possible to advance on the basis of these premisses, his arguments must lead into spiritual science or theosophy. This is the only way open; and those who will not be led to spiritual science, or even will not make a slight effort to arrive at a reasonable comprehension of the life of the soul, may be supposed to be incompetent. And here we have the interesting fact that the first volume of a psychological work intended to embrace several volumes, had no successor. He only wrote the 1st. volume; and though Brentano dealt, in smaller works, with one or another of the problem which occupied him, he never found his way to spiritual science; hence he barred the way to any further progress in psychology.

By another and still more pregnant fact we may see how even the negative, principle, so conspicuous everywhere at present, demands that the thinkers who take their stand on the wonderful facts that have come to light during the last few decades, should tend towards spiritual science. This is doubtless a difficult step for many at the present day. Some are deterred by reasons into which we need not enter now; we will merely show how, on all hands, when we try to find the true forces in modern science, when we set to work with honesty and sincerity, comprehensively and energetically, the merging of science into theosophy is a necessary consequence. Farthest of all from the union with spiritual science is history, as it is written at the present day. The historians who apparently approach it most nearly,—those who do not merely regard history as a succession of fortuitous human impulses and passions and other facts belonging to the physical plane,—are those who recognise the existence of ruling thoughts. As if abstract thought could possibly have any influence! Unless we ascribe will to those thoughts, they cannot be spiritual powers, nor can they become active. To recognise governing ideas in history, therefore, apart from entities, is devoid of all sense. Not until active life has been infused into history, not until the spiritual life-principle is conceived as pervading the soul, expending itself ever more intensely as it passes from soul to soul,—not until history is understood as it is understood in “les Grands Inities” (by Édouard Shuré) has the point been reached at which that science merges into theosophy or spiritual sciences. Thus we may boldly affirm that it is evident to any unprejudiced observer that all learning imperatively calls for the theosophical mode of thought. Thinkers who penetrate deeply into the spiritual life, who follow the path of knowledge with heart and soul, and are not content merely to weave theories, but whose very heart is bound up with true knowledge,—spirits like these, it is true, show by their lives how life is everywhere in touch with spiritual science. As an example, I may cite a man who was known to the world for years as a celebrated poet, who was for long years condemned to a sick-bed and during that time wrote down the thoughts and experiences that came to him on the path of knowledge, as a bequest to posterity;—a poet who was not of course taken seriously as a philosopher, by philosophers. I mean Robert Hamerling. But the latter, who was perhaps only justly appreciated by Vincenz Knauer (who even made him the subject of lectures) was not a theoretical philosopher, but one who entered heart and soul on the paths of wisdom, and synthesised the sciences of chemistry, physics, philosophy, physiology, biology and history of modern times, as far as these were accessible to him, fertilising his knowledge by his poetic intuition. Robert Hamerling, who was able to fructify the thoughts regarding the world, by his own gift of poetic intuition, laid down in his “Atomistics of the Will” all that he found upon the path of knowledge. His path was not like that trodden by so many to-day, who start from the mere theory of some school of thought; it led directly from life itself. In his “Atomistics of the Will,” he has written much of importance for those who take an interest in the tendency of ordinary learning and intellectuality to merge into spirituality. A passage from the “Atomistics of the Will” written in 1891, will follow here as an example of the thoughts collected by him in his solitude, on the evolutionary path of knowledge on which he had entered. “It is possible,” says Hamerling on p. 145 of Vol.II. of “Atomistics of the Will,” “ that living beings exist, whose corporeality is more tenuous than atmospheric air. At regards other heavenly bodies, at least, nothing can be urged against this supposition. Beings whose corporeality is of such extreme subtlety would be invisible to us, and would exactly correspond to those beings ordinarily called spirits, or to the etheric bodies, or souls surviving after the death of individuals ... ” He continues in the same strain. Here we have an allusion to the etheric body in the middle of a book which is the outcome of the intellectual life of the present day. Let us suppose that truth and uprightness everywhere prevailed, together with an earnest striving to know what really lives in the thought of men; let us imagine that an honest desire existed to try to understand what we already possess; that, in other words, people should write fewer books, until they have learnt the content of other books already written,—then the work done in our time would be very different; there would be continuity in it. Were this so, it would have to be admitted that, during the last few decades, spiritual life has been breaking forth, and vistas opening of spiritual aims and perspectives, wherever science has been honestly and earnestly prosecuted. For there are many examples like that of Robert Hamerling.

Thus the special branches of the various sciences unite and demand that which can alone give a comprehensive view of the world at the present day, such as I have endeavoured to sketch lately in “Occult Science”. Into that work are woven, imperceptibly, the latest results of all the sciences, side by side with spiritual research. When we consider this we must acknowledge that open doors to spirituality are everywhere to be found; but we pass them by unnoticed. Whoever is acquainted with modern science finds without exception that its facts, not its theories, require a spiritual explanation. Were it possible for ordinary science to emancipate itself from all theories—the atomic, the vibratory, energetics and all other forms of one-sidedness with which the world is continually hedged about by a few stock ideas,—if scientists could only liberate themselves from such trammels; did they allow the great mass of facts now brought to light by science to speak for themselves, all contradiction between the spiritual science which we follow here and the genuine results of modern research would cease. Here, Goethe may be our great helper—Goethe, who fulfilled all the conditions of a universal mind so magnificently. He fulfilled those conditions even outwardly; for whoever is acquainted with Goethe's correspondence knows that he exchanged letters with countless naturalists on all the most important questions in the various departments of science. From his experimenting cabinets and from his study, communications went forth to the different branches of science at all points of the compass. He corresponded with botanists, opticians, zoologists, anthropologists, geologists, mineralogists and historians, in short with scientists in every field. And though unprogressive minds certainly refused to recognise him as an authority, because his investigations were beyond their understanding, he found other thinkers by whom he was most highly appreciated, and who consulted him when it became necessary to settle any question of special interest. This is an incident of no great importance, but at the same time we can see how Goethe worked in thought and also in deed with the foremost philosophers of his day, such as Schelling and Hegel. We find that the minds of a number of philosophers were fructified by him, and that Goethe's thoughts reappeared in their work, in the same or another form. Finally we can see how in the course of his life Goethe seriously occupied himself with the study of botany, zoology, osteology in particular, also with anthropology in a wider sense; further with optics and physical science in their wider scope. Isolate scientists in the domain of biology are now showing a disposition to do justice to Goethe in a small degree. On the other hand it is quite comprehensible that physicists are perfectly sincere in their inability to understand Goethe's teachings regarding colour, from their own standpoint. These truths regarding colour can only be understood in the future,—unless the acquaintance with theosophy has meantime brought about a change,—perhaps not before the second half of the twentieth, or even the first half of the 21st. century. The physical science of the present day can only look upon Goethe's ideas regarding colour as nonsense; this however is no fault of the teaching; the fault lies in the forms of modern science. If you read my book, “Goethe's Conception of the World,” also the preface to Goethe's works on natural science, published by Kirschner, you will see what I mean. You will see that the latter contains an appreciation, of Goethe's theory of colour, which is scientific in the truest sense, and, compared with which, all modern theories relating to physical science are mere dilettantism. Thus we see how Goethe laboured in all departments of science. We can see how his endeavours to understand the laws of nature were everywhere fertilised by the poetic forces of his genius. Goethe looked upon nothing as separate from the rest; everything intermingled in his soul. There no one pursuit interferes with another. Goethe is himself a proof that it is an absurdity to believe that the active pursuit of some branch of intellectual knowledge could hamper intuition. If both impulses are only present in strength and originality, they do not interfere with one another. We can form an idea of the living cooperation of the human forces of the soul, as they are expressed in the different sciences, and in the entire personality of the human being; the necessity of life makes it possible for us to form such an idea, and we are helped by the fact that a modern intelligence exists, in whom this cooperation of the different soul-forces of the whole personality was actually living. It is for this reason that Goethe's personality is a model, to which we must look up in order to study that living cooperation of the soul-forces. As he is a man whose progress we can watch from year to year, in the deepening of his own inner life and understanding of the world, he is an example to us of the manner in which man must strive, in order to attain a greater intensity of the inner life. Not the mere contemplation of Goethe, not the repetition of his words, nor even devotion to his works should be our duty on a day which the calendar shows us to be closely connected, in a narrow sense, with Goethe's life,—but to consider the grandeur that radiates from his whole person, in the light of a model for our epoch. Especially the scientific thinker of our day might learn much from Goethe. For in respect to the comprehension of the spiritual life, scientific thought is not in a flourishing condition; but precisely from that quarter we shall inevitably live to see a great revival of Goethe, and a gradual and increasing understanding of his genius. A contemplation of Goethe's life may throw a flood of light on our advance to spirituality, on theosophy in general; it will illuminate our progress healthfully, because in Goethe everything is healthy. He is trustworthy in every particular, and, where he contradicts himself, it is not his logic that is at fault. Life itself is a contradiction, and must be so in order that it may continue to live. This is a thought which I would fain kindle in you on this birthday of Goethe's, to show how necessary it is that we should become absorbed in the things lying open to us. Goethe can give us an infinity. We can learn most from him if we forget much that has been written in the countless works extant on Goethe, for such communications are more likely to cast a veil over the real Goethe than to make us acquainted with him. But Goethe has an occult power of attraction; there is something in him which works of itself. If we yield ourselves up to Goethe we shall find that we can celebrate his birthday within ourselves, and we shall feel something of that which is ever young and fresh in Goethe, of which we might say that Goethe may rise again in a soul steeped in theosophy. Though Goethe's name is so often heard and his works so often quoted, our materialistic age has but a meagre understanding of him. There was a time when people were really fascinated, even by very serious discussions on the subject of Goethe,—not literary and historical discussions in our sense of the word, for these are not serious. When Goethe was the subject of serious talk there were always listeners who were carried away by that inner spiritual vein which is never wanting in Goethe. We may recall the time when old Karl Rosenkranz, the Hegel scholar, who was on a level with the highest culture of his day, ventured between 1830 and 1840 to announce a series of lectures on Goethe at the university of Königsberg. He wished to state frankly a philosopher's opinion of Goethe. He prepared his lectures, and left his study with the thought: “Perhaps one or two may come to hear what I have to say!”—But thought nearly died within him, when he found himself outside in the midst of a wild snowstorm, so violent that no one could be expected to venture out to a lecture that was not obligatory. He made his way to the lecture-hall and behold, nothing could be more unfavourable than the conditions under which he had to deliver his lecture. It was a hall which could not be heated, the floor was in bad repair, and the walls ran water in streams. But the name of Goethe was an attraction and there was a good audience, even on the first evening, and though at each lecture the conditions grew worse, and the hall more uncomfortable, the audience grew more and more numerous. Finally the attendance at Karl Rosenkranz' lectures was so great that the hall could scarcely contain it.

Goethe is one of those thinkers who can best stimulate us theosophically. A healthy view of Goethe would be to regard him, in the light of theosophy, as a great spirit incarnated in the body of Goethe,—a spirit whom we must first learn to understand. We must not allow him to be represented to us as a fleshly form in which there dwells a great spirit whom we are bound to take on authority. There are really safe paths leading to theosophy, it is only necessary to follow them, without shrinking from the trouble. This is why I never hesitate, even when great numbers are present at a course of lectures, to shed light, sometimes in a manner inconvenient perhaps to many, on some bye-path of spiritual knowledge, to risk a bold assertion or to make a statement difficult to understand. I should never shrink from such a step, because I know that only in this way is it possible for theosophy to make sound progress, or to take root in modern civilised life. It seems to me that we may mount to the highest spiritual regions without losing our warmth of heart; it seems to me that all those assembled here must be conscious to some degree of the truth, that the methods applied to the interpretation of theosophy here are those of the most modern intellectual life, and the strange opinion which prevails even in theosophical circles, that a réchauffé of mediaeval learning is served up here, instead of facts in agreement with modern science, is a very grave departure from the truth. As this has been pronounced by many—even among theosophists—it must be pointed out that anyone who can follow with understanding will be convinced that no mediaeval learning, but the union of objective, scientific teachings with genuine, modern spiritual aspirations, is our aim. It is not my province to judge how far this object has been attained; but it ought to be clear to everyone that nothing mediaeval in its character, nor anything merely associated with traditions, but objective knowledge, on a level with modern science, is the object of our study here. It should also be experienced as a certainty that the conditions of life which are the outcome of our theosophical studies are able to fill our hearts with enthusiasm. What seems to me of most importance is that what our hearts have gained from such a course of study and we carry away with us into the world,—what we have grasped in the breadth of the conceptions and words, is concentrated in our hearts; it lives itself out in our feelings and sensations, in our compassion and in our actions, and we are then living theosophy. As the rivers can only flow over the lands when they have been fed by the sources, so the life of theosophy can only stream out into the world, when it draws its forces from the springs of wisdom open to us to-day by those spiritual Powers whom we call the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings. And we have grasped the true meaning of the word theosophy, or spiritual science, when it speaks to us in the forms of modern, intellectual life, when, at the same time, instead of leaving, our hearts and souls cold, it warms them, so that that warmth may communicate itself to others everywhere in the world. In proportion as you carry out into the world what has been said here, not only in your thoughts, but also in your feelings, your impulses of will and your actions, these lectures will have served their purpose. This is the aim of these lectures. With this wish, my dear theosophical friends, I always welcome you from the heart when you come, and with the same wish I take leave of you on this day, at the close of our series of lectures, with the words: “Let us remain united in the theosophical, in the intellectual and spiritual sense, even though we must live in space separated one from the other and from the present time, in which we can be more closely united in space; let us take, as the most inspiring mutual greeting and farewell, the thought that we are together in spirit, even when we are dispersed in space. In this spirit I take leave of you to-day, on the occasion of our celebration of Goethe's birthday, at the close of our course of lectures. Let us think often of the object which has brought us together, and may it also bear fruit for that personal bond which may always unite one theosophist with another in love. May we be together in this sense, even after we have parted, and may we ever anew be drawn together again, that we may rise to heights of spiritual and supersensuous life.

• 1. Approximately: “He who is ever striving, toils onward, him we can deliver.”

It has often been explained that it is not as easy to investigate and describe the realm of the occult as is commonly thought. If one wishes to proceed conscientiously in this domain, one will feel it necessary to make repeatedly fresh investigations into important chapters of spiritual research. In recent months it has been my task, among many other things, to make new investigations into a subject of which we have often spoken here. New aspects emerge as a result of such investigations.

Today we shall deal again with the life between death and rebirth, although it can only be done in outline. This does not mean that what has previously been said has to be changed in any way. Precisely in connection with this chapter this is not the case, but in the study of super-sensible facts we should always consider them from as many points of view as possible. So today we will consider from a universal standpoint much of what has been presented in my books Theosophy or Occult Science more from the aspect of immediate human experience. The facts are the same, but we should not imagine that we are fully conversant with them when they have been described from one point of view only. Occult facts are such that we must move around them, so to speak, and examine them from every point of view. In regard to spiritual science the mistake is all too common that judgments are passed by people who may have heard a few statements about a subject without having had the patience to allow what can be said from other aspects to work upon them. Yet the truths of spiritual research can be understood by sound common sense, as was pointed out in yesterday's public lecture.

Today we shall not pay so much attention to the stage after death where the life in kamaloca begins, but rather consider the point at the end of kamaloca when life in the spiritual proper begins. This period lasts until the soul descends into a new incarnation and re-enters earthly life.

Something can be communicated about these matters because, as you know, clairvoyant vision brings one into the same realm in which a human being dwells between death and rebirth. In initiation one experiences, although in a different way, what takes place between death and rebirth. This accounts for the fact that one can communicate something about this realm.

To being with, I wish to mention two fundamental points of clairvoyant perception that also will help in our understanding of life after death. Attention has often been drawn to the great difference between life in the super-sensible world and life in the physical, material world. For instance, the process of knowledge is totally different in the super-sensible world from what it is on earth. In the physical world objects present themselves to our senses by making impressions of color and light upon our eyes, audible impressions upon our ears and other impressions upon other sense organs. To perceive objects we must move about in the world. To perceive an object at a distance, we must go towards it. Briefly, in the sense world we must move about to perceive things. The opposite holds true for super-sensible perceptions. The quieter the soul, the more everything in the way of inner movement is excluded, the less we strive to draw a thing towards us, the longer we are capable of waiting, the more surely will the perception come and the truer will be the experience we gain from it. In the super-sensible world we must allow things to approach us. That is an essential point. We must develop inner silence. Then things will come to us.

The second point I wish to make is this. The way in which the super-sensible world confronts us depends on what we bring with us from the ordinary sense world. This is important. It may give rise to considerable soul difficulties in the super-sensible world. For instance, it may be exceedingly painful to realize in the super-sensible world that we loved a person less than we ought to have done, less then he deserved to be loved by us. This fact stands before the spiritual gaze of one who has entered the super-sensible world with far greater intensity than could ever be the case in the physical world. In addition, something else may cause great pain to one with clairvoyant consciousness. None of the forces that we are able to draw from the super-sensible world can in any way change or improve a relationship of soul in the physical that we recognize as not having been right. It cannot be made good by forces drawn from the spiritual world. This experience is infinitely more painful than anything we may experience in the physical world. It gives rise to a feeling of powerlessness towards the necessity of karma that can be lived out only in the physical world. These two factors confront the pupil of occult science after only a little progress. They appear immediately in the life between death and rebirth. Suppose that shortly after death we meet a person who died before us. We encounter him, and we feel the total relationships that we had with him here on earth. We are together with the one who died before, at the same time or after us, and we feel that that is how we stood with him in life. That was our relationship to him. But whereas in the physical world when we realize that we have done an injustice to someone in feeling or in deed, we are able to make the necessary adjustment, we are not able to do so, directly, in the life after death. Clear insight into the nature of the relationship is there, but in spite of the full awareness that it ought to be different, we are incapable of changing anything. To begin with, things must remain as they are. The depression caused by many a reproach is due to the fact that one is clearly aware of the way in which a relationship was not right but it must be left as it is. Yet one feels all the time that it ought to be different. This mood of soul should be transposed to the whole of life after death. After death we realize all the more strongly what we did wrongly during our life on earth but we are incapable of changing anything. Things must take their course, regardless. We look back on what we have done and we must experience wholly the consequences of our actions, knowing full well that nothing can be altered.

It is not only with relationships to other human beings, but with the whole of our soul configuration after death, which depends on a number of factors. To begin with, let me portray life after death in the form of Imaginations. If we take the words “Visions” or “Imaginations” in the sense in which I explained them yesterday, no misunderstanding will arise. Man perceives the physical world through his sense organs. After death he lives in a world of visions, but these visions are mirror-images of reality. Just as here in the physical world we do not immediately perceive the inner nature of the rose, but the external redness, so do we not have a direct perception of a departed friend or brother, but encounter a visionary image. We are enveloped in the cloud of our visions, so to speak, but we know quite clearly that we are together with the other being. It is a real relationship, in fact more real than a relationship between one person and another can be on earth.

In the first period after death we perceive a soul through the image. Also after the kamaloca period the visions that surround us, and that we experience, point back, for the most part, to what we experienced on earth. We know, for instance, that a dead friend is there outside us in the spiritual world. We perceive him through our visions. We feel entirely at one with him. We know exactly how we are related to him. What we chiefly perceive, however, is what happened between us on earth. This, to begin with, clothes itself in our vision. The chief thing is the aftermath of our earthly relationship, just as even after the kamaloca period we live in the consequences of our earthly existence. The cloud of visions that envelops us is entirely dependent on how we spent our earthly existence.

In the first period of kamaloca the soul is clothed, as in a cloud, by its Imaginations. At first the cloud is dark. When some time has elapsed after death, Imaginative vision gradually perceives that this cloud begins to light up as if irradiated by the rays of the morning sun. When Inspiration is added to Imaginative cognition we realize that we live, to begin with, in the cloud of our earthly experiences. We are enveloped by them. We are able to relate ourselves only to those who have died and with whom we were together on the earth, or to those still on earth capable of ascending with their consciousness into the spiritual world. What we have characterized for Imaginative cognition as the illumination of the cloud of our visions from one side by a glimmering light points to the approach of the hierarchies into our own being. We now begin to live into the realm of higher spirituality. Previously, we were only connected to the world we brought with us. Now the life of the higher hierarchies begin to shine towards us, to penetrate us. But in order to understand this process, we must gain some insight into the relationships of size perceived through imaginative cognition as the soul draws out of the physical body.

This actually happens as we pass through the gate of death. Our being expands and becomes larger and larger. This is not an easy concept but that is what actually happens. It is only on earth that we consider ourselves limited within the boundary of our skin. After death we expand into the infinite spaces, growing ever larger. When we have reached the end of the kamaloca period, we literally extend to the orbit of the moon around the earth. In the language of occultism we become Moon dwellers. Our being has expanded to such an extent that its outer boundary coincides with the circle described by the moon around the earth. Today I cannot go into the relative positions of the planets. An explanation of what does not apparently agree with orthodox astronomy can be found in the Düsseldorf lectures, Spiritual Hierarchies and Their Reflection in the Physical World: Zodiac, Planets, Cosmos.

Thus we grow farther out into cosmic space, into the whole planetary system, though first into what the occultist calls the Mercury sphere. That is to say, after the kamaloca period we become Mercury dwellers. We truly feel that we are inhabiting cosmic space. Just as during our physical existence we feel ourselves to be earth dwellers, so then we feel ourselves to be Mercury dwellers. I cannot describe the details now, but the following conscious experience is present. We are not now enclosed in such a small fraction of space as during our earthly existence but the wide sphere bounded by the orbit of Mercury is within our being. How we live through this period also depends upon how we have prepared ourselves on earth—on the forces we have imbibed on earth in order to grow into the right or wrong relationship to the Mercury sphere.

In order to understand these facts we can compare two or more people by means of occult research but we will take two. For instance, let us consider a man who passed through the gate of death with an immoral attitude and one who passed through the gate of death with a moral attitude of soul. A considerable difference is perceptible and it becomes apparent when we consider the relationship of one person to another after death. For the man with a moral attitude of soul, the pictures are present, enveloping the soul and he can have a certain degree of communion everywhere with other human beings. This is due to his moral attitude. A man with an immoral attitude of soul becomes a kind of hermit in the spiritual world. For example, he knows that another human being is also in the spiritual world. He knows that he is together with him but he is unable to emerge from the prison of his cloud of Imaginations and approach him. Morality makes us into social beings in the spiritual world, into beings who can have contact with others. Lack of morality makes us into hermits in the spiritual world and transports us into solitude. This is an important causal connection between death and rebirth.

This is true also of the further course of events. At a later period, after having passed through the Mercury sphere, which in the occult we call the Venus sphere, we feel ourselves as Venus dwellers. There between Mercury and Venus, where our cloud of visions is irradiated from without, the Beings of the higher hierarchies are able to approach the human being. Now again it depends on whether we have prepared ourselves in the right manner to be received as social spirits into the ranks of the hierarchies and to have communion with them, or whether we are compelled to pass them by as hermits. Whether we are social or lonely spirits depends upon still another factor. Whereas in the previous sphere was can be sociable only if this has been prepared on earth as a result of morality, in the Venus sphere the power that leads us into community, into a kind of social life, is due to our religious attitude on earth. We most certainly condemn ourselves to become hermits in the Venus sphere if we have failed to develop religious feelings during earthly life, feelings of union with the Infinite, with the Divine. Occult investigation observes that as a result of an atheistic tendency in the soul, of rejecting the connection of our finite with our infinite nature, the human being locks himself up within his own prison. It is a fact that the adherents of the Monistic Union, with its creed that does not promote a truly religious attitude, are preparing themselves for a condition in which they will no longer we able to form any Monistic Union, but will be relegated each to his own separate prison!

This is not meant to be a principle on which to base judgments. It is a fact that presents itself to occult observation as the consequence of a religious or irreligious attitude of soul during earthly life. Many different religions have been established on the earth in the course of evolution, all of them emanating essentially from a common source. Their founders have had to reckon with the temperament of the different peoples, with the climate and with other factors to which the religions had to be adjusted. It is therefore in the nature of things that souls did not come into this Venus sphere with a common religious consciousness, but with one born of their particular creed.

Definite feelings for the spiritual that are colored by this or that religious creed bring it about that in the Venus sphere a man has community only with those of like feelings who shared the same creed during earthly life. In the Venus sphere individuals are separated according to their particular creeds. On the earth they have hitherto been divided into races according to external characteristics. Although the configuration of groups in the Venus sphere corresponds in general to the groupings of people here on earth because racial connections are related to religious creeds, the groupings do not quite correspond because there they are brought together according to their understanding of a particular creed. As a result of experience connected with a particular creed, souls enclose themselves within certain boundaries. In the Mercury sphere a man has, above all, understanding for those with whom he was connected on earth. If he had a moral attitude of soul, he will have real intercourse in the Mercury sphere with those to whom he was related during his earthly life. In the Venus sphere he is taken up into one of the great religious communities to which he belonged during his earthly existence by virtue of his constitution of soul.

The next sphere is the Sun sphere in which we feel ourselves as Sun dwellers for a definite period between death and rebirth. During this period we learn to know the nature of the Sun, which is quite other than astronomy describes. Here again it is a question of living rightly into the Sun sphere. We now have the outstanding experience, and it arises in the soul like an elemental power, that all differentiations between human souls must cease. In the Mercury sphere we are more or less limited to the circle of those with whom we were related on earth. In the Venus sphere we feel at home with those who had similar religious experiences to ours on earth and we still find satisfaction only among these communities. But the soul is conscious of deep loneliness in the Sun sphere if it has no understanding for the souls entering this sphere, as is the case with Felix Balde, for instance. Now in ancient times conditions were such that in the Venus sphere souls were to be found in the provinces of the several religions, finding and giving understanding in them. Because all religions have sprung from a common source, when the human being entered the Sun sphere he had in him so much of the old common inheritance that he could come near to all the other souls in the Sun sphere and be together with them, to understand them, to be a social spirit among them.

In these more ancient periods of evolution souls could not do much of themselves to satisfy the longing that arose there. Because without human intervention a common human nucleus was present in mankind, it was possible for souls to have intercourse with others belonging to different creeds. In ancient Brahmanism, in the Chinese and other religions of the earth, there was so much of the common kernel of religion that souls in the Sun sphere found themselves in that primal home, the source of all religious life. This changed in the middle period of the earth. Connection with the primal source of the religions was lost and can only be found again through occult knowledge. So, in the present cycle of evolution man also must prepare himself for entering the Sun sphere while still on earth because community does not arise there of itself. This is also an aspect of the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha, of Christianity. Because of it human beings in the present cycle of evolution can so prepare themselves on earth that universal community is achieved in the Sun sphere. For this purpose the Sun Spirit, the Christ, had to come down to earth. Since His coming, it has been possible for souls on the earth to find the way to universal community in the Sun sphere between death and rebirth.

Much could be added in support of the universality that is born of the Christ Mystery when it is rightly understood. Much has been said in the course of years, but the Christ Mystery can ever and again be illuminated from new aspects. It is often said that special emphasis of the Christ Mystery creates prejudices against other creeds, and that is advanced because in our Anthroposophical Movement in Central Europe special emphasis has been laid on it. Such a reproach is quite unintelligible. The true meaning of the Christ Mystery has only been discovered from the occult aspect in modern times. If a Buddhist were to say, “You place Christianity above Buddhism because you attribute a special position to the Christ that is not indicated in my sacred books, and you are therefore prejudiced against Buddhism,” that would be as sensible as if the Buddhist were to claim that the Copernican view of the universe cannot be accepted because it, too, is not contained in his sacred writings. The fact that things are discovered at a later date has nothing to do with the equal justification of religious beliefs.

The Mystery of Golgotha is such that it cannot be regarded as a special privilege. It is a spiritual-scientific fact that can be acknowledged by every religious system just as the Copernican system can. It is not a question of justifying some creed that up until now has failed to understand the Mystery of Golgotha, but rather is it a question of grasping the spiritual-scientific fact of Golgotha. If this is unintelligible, it is even more so to speak about an abstract comparison of all creeds and to say that one ought to accept an abstract similarity among them. The different creeds should not be compared with what Christianity has become as a creed, but with the essence that is contained in Christianity itself.

Take the Hindu creed. Nobody is received into this creed who is not a Hindu. It is connected with a people, and this is true of most ancient creeds. Buddhism has broken through this restriction, yet if rightly understood, it too applies to a particular community. But now let us consider the external facts. If in Europe we were to have a creed similar, let us say, to the Hindu creed, we should be obliged to swear allegiance to the ancient god, Wotan. Wotan was a national god, a god connected with a definite racial stock. But what has in fact happened in the West? It is not a national god that has been accepted, but, inasmuch as his external lie is concerned, an alien personality. Jesus of Nazareth has been accepted from outside. Whereas the other creeds essentially have something egoistical about them in the religious sense and do not wish to break through their boundaries, the West has been singled out by the fact that it has suppressed its egoistical religious system—for example, the ancient Wotan religion—and for the sake of its inner substance has accepted an impulse that did not grow out of its own flesh and blood. Insofar as the West is concerned, Christianity is not the egoistical creed that the others were for the different peoples. This is a factor of considerable importance that is also borne out by external happenings. It makes for the universality of Christianity in yet another respect if Christianity truly places the Mystery of Golgotha at the center of the evolution of humanity.

Christianity has not yet made great progress in its development because even now two aspects have still not been clearly distinguished. They will only be distinguished slowly and by degrees. Who, in the true sense of the Mystery of Golgotha, is a Christian? He is one who knows that something real happened in the Mystery of Golgotha, that the Sun Spirit lived in the Christ, that Christ poured His Being over the earth, that Christ died for all men. Although Paul declared that Christ died not only for the Jews but also for the heathen, these words even today are still little understood. Not until it is realized that Christ fulfilled the Deed of Golgotha for all human beings will Christianity be understood. For the real power that flowed from Golgotha is one thing, and the understanding of it is another. Knowledge of who the Christ really is should be striven for, but since the Mystery of Golgotha our attitude to every man can only be expressed as follows. Whatever your creed may be, Christ also died for you, and his significance for you is the same as for every other human being.

A true understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha leads to the attitude that we ask ourselves about each person we meet, “How much has he in him of real Christianity, irrespective of his particular beliefs?” Because man must increasingly acquire consciousness of what is real in him to know something of the Mystery of Christ is naturally a lofty ideal. This will become more widespread as time goes on, and to it will belong the need to understand the Mystery of Golgotha. But this is different from the concept that one may have of the Mystery of Golgotha, of its universality that holds good for all human beings. Here the essential thing is for the soul to feel that this makes us into social beings in the Sun sphere. If we feel enclosed in some creed, we become hermits there. We are social beings in the Sun sphere if we understand the universality of the Mystery of Golgotha. Then we can find a relation to every being who draws near to us in the Sun sphere. As a result of the insight into the Mystery of Golgotha that we acquire during earthly life within our cycle of evolution, we become beings able to move freely in the Sun sphere.

Of what should we be capable during this period between death and rebirth?

We come now to a fact that is exceedingly important for modern occultism. Those human beings who lived on earth before the Mystery of Golgotha—what I am now saying is essentially correct, though not in detail—found the Throne of Christ in the Sun sphere with the Christ upon it. They were able to recognize Him because the old legacy of the common source of all religions was still living in them. But the Christ Spirit came down from the Sun, and in the Mystery of Golgotha He flowed into the life of the earth. He left the Sun, and only the Akashic picture of the Christ is found in the Sun sphere between death and rebirth. The throne is not occupied by the real Christ. We must bring up from the earth the concept of our living connection with Christ in order that through the Akashic picture we have a living relationship with Him. Then it is possible for us to have the Christ also from the Sun sphere and for Him to stimulate all the forces in us that are necessary if we are to pass through the Sun sphere in the right way.

Our journey between death and rebirth progresses still further. From the earthly realm we have derived the power, through a moral and religious attitude of soul, to live, as it were, into the human beings with whom we were together on the earth, and then into the higher hierarchies. But this power gradually vanishes, becomes dimmer and dimmer, and what remains is essentially the power that we derive on the earth from the Mystery of Golgotha. In order that we may find our way in the Sun sphere a new Light-bearer appears there, a Being whom we must learn to know in his primal power. We bring with us from the earth an understanding of the Christ, but in order to develop a stage further so that we may proceed out into the universe from the Sun sphere to Mars, we need to recognize the second Throne that stands beside the Throne of Christ in the Sun. This is possible simply by virtue of the fact that we are human souls. From this other Throne we now learn to know the other Being who, together with the Christ, leads us onward. This other Being is Lucifer. We learn to know Lucifer, and through the powers that he is able to impart to us we make the further journey through the spheres of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

We expand ever further into cosmic space, but as we move out beyond the Saturn sphere our state of consciousness is changed. We enter into a kind of cosmic twilight. We cannot call it cosmic sleep, but a cosmic twilight. Now for the first time the powers of the whole cosmos can work in upon us. They work from all sides, and we receive them into our being. So after we have expanded into the spheres, there is a period between death and rebirth when the forces of the whole cosmos stream into our being from all sides, from the whole of the starry realms, as it were. Then we begin to draw together again, pass through the different spheres down to the Venus sphere, contact and become ever smaller until the time comes when we can again unite with an earthly human germ.

What kind of a being are we when we unite with this germ? We are the being we have described, but we have received into us the forces from the whole cosmos. What we receive during the outward journey depends on the extent to which we have prepared ourselves for it, and our karma is formed according to the way we have lived together with the human beings we have met during life on earth. The forces by means of which an adjustment takes place in a new earth life are built up as a result of having been together with those human beings after death. That we appear as a human being, that we are inwardly able to have karma imbued with cosmic forces, depends on the fact that we received forces from the whole cosmos during a certain period between death and a new birth. At birth a being who has contracted to the minutest dimensions, but has drawn into itself the forces of the wide expanse of the whole cosmos unites itself with the physical human germ. We bear the whole cosmos within us when we incarnate again on earth. It may be said that we bear this cosmos within us in the way in which it can unite with the attitude that we, in accordance with our earlier earth existence, had brought with us in our souls on the outward journey when we were expanding into the spheres.

A twofold adaptation has to take place. We adapt to the whole cosmos and to our former karma. The fact that there is also an adaptation to former karma that must be harmonized in the cosmos came to me in an extraordinary way during the investigations of the last few months in connection with individual cases. I say, expressly, in individual cases because I do not wish to state thereby a general law. When a person passes through the gate of death he dies under a certain constellation of stars. This constellation is significant for his further life of soul because it remains there as an imprint. In his soul there remains the endeavor to enter into this same constellation at a new birth, to do justice once again to the forces received at the moment of death. It is an interesting point that if one works out the constellation at death and compares it with the constellation of the later birth, one finds that it coincides to a high degree with the constellation at the former death. It must be remembered that the person is born at another spot on the earth that corresponds with this constellation. In fact, he is adapted to the cosmos, members himself into the cosmos, and thus a balance is established in the soul between the individual and the cosmic life.

Kant once said very beautifully that there were two things that especially uplifted him—the starry heavens above him and the moral law within him. This is a beautiful expression in that it is confirmed by occultism. Both are the same—the starry heavens above us and what we bear as moral law within us. For as we grow out into cosmic space between death and a new birth, we take the starry heavens into ourselves, and then in the soul we bear as our moral attitude a mirror image of the starry heavens. Here we touch upon one of the points where anthroposophy can only develop into a feeling for the moral-universal. What appears to be theory is immediately transformed into moral impulses of the soul. Here the human being feels full responsibility towards his own being, for he realizes that between death and a new birth the whole cosmos worked into his being, and he gathered together what he derived from the cosmos. He is responsible to the whole cosmos, for he actually bears the whole of the cosmos within him.

An attempt has been made to express this feeling in a passage of The Soul's Probation, in the monologue of Capesius, where it is said, “In your thinking world-thoughts are weaving . . .” Attention is drawn to the significance for the soul when it feels that it is man's sacred duty to bring forth the forces that one has gathered out of the cosmos, and it is the greatest sin to allow these forces to lie fallow.

Concrete investigations showed that we take the whole cosmos into our being and bring it forth again in our earthly existence. Of the forces that man carries with him, only a few have their origin on the earth. We study man in connection with the forces that work in the physical, etheric and astral bodies, and in the ego. Of course, the forces that play into our physical body come to us from the earth, but we cannot draw directly out of the earth the forces we need for the etheric body. These forces can only approach us between death and rebirth during the period we are expanding into the planetary spheres. If one takes an immoral attitude of soul into these spheres, one will not be able to attract the right forces during the time between death and a new rebirth. A man who has not developed religious impulses cannot attract the right forces in the Venus sphere, and so the forces that are needed in the etheric may be stultified. Here we see the karmic connection that exists between later and earlier lives. This indicates how the knowledge that we obtain through occultism may become impulses in our life of soul and how the awareness of what we are can lead us to rise to an ever more spiritual life.

What was prepared for by the Mystery of Golgotha is necessary in our present cycle of evolution so that man may live in the right way into the Sun sphere between death and a new birth. Spiritual science has to achieve that the human being shall be in a position to grow out even beyond the Sun sphere with the universal-human, spiritually social consciousness that is needed there. Insofar as the Sun sphere itself is concerned, the connection that is experienced with the Mystery of Golgotha suffices. But in order to carry a feeling and understanding of the human-universal beyond the Sun sphere, we must be able to grasp, in the anthroposophical sense, the relation of the several religions to one another. We must grow beyond a narrowly circumscribed creed with its particular shades of feeling and understand every soul, irrespective of its belief. Above all, one thing connected with the Christ impulse is fulfilled between death and rebirth. It is contained in the words, “Where two or three are gathered together in my Name, there am I in the midst of them.” The gathering of two or three is not connected by Christ with this or that belief. The possibility of Him being among them is provided inasmuch as they are united in His Name.

What has been cultivated for years, through the performances of the Mystery Plays, and especially the last (The Guardian of the Threshold), should provide a spiritual-scientific understanding for what is essential in our epoch. On the one hand, we have to acquire a relationship to the Christ impulse, on the other, to the Powers that stand in opposition to Him—the impulses of Lucifer and Ahriman. We must realize that as soon as we emerge from Maya, we have to deal with Powers who unfold forces in the cosmos. The time is drawing ever nearer in the evolution of humanity when we must learn to discern the essential being rather than the teaching. This is nowhere so apparent as in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha. The Being is essential, not the mere content of the words.

I should like the following to be put quite exactly to the test. In fact, it is easiest to deal with people who put to the test what is said out of occult sources. There is nothing similar in any of the other creeds to the depths that are revealed through the Mystery of Golgotha.

A particular prejudice still prevails today. People speak as if things should happen in the world as they do in a school, as if everything depended on the World Teacher. But the Christ is not a World Teacher but a World Doer, One Who has fulfilled the Mystery of Golgotha, and Whose Being should be recognized. That is the point. How little it is a question of the mere words, of the mere doctrinal content, we learn from the beautiful words uttered by the Christ, “Ye are Gods!” (John 10:34). We learn this also from the fact that He indicated repeatedly that man attains the highest when he realizes the divine in his own nature. These words of the Christ resound into the world, “Be conscious that you are like the Gods!” One can say that that is a great teaching!

The same teaching, however, resounds from other sources. In the Bible, where the beginning of Earth evolution is described, Lucifer says, “Ye shall be as Gods!” The same doctrinal content is uttered by Lucifer and by the Christ, “Ye shall be as Gods!” but the two utterances mean the opposite for man. Indeed, shattering calls sound forth in these words uttered at one time by the Tempter and at another by Him Who is the Redeemer, the Savior and the Restorer of the being of man.

Between death and rebirth everything depends upon knowledge of the Being. In the Sun sphere the greatest danger is to take Lucifer for the Christ because both use the same language, as it were, give the same teaching, and from them both the same words resound forth. Everything depends on the Being. The fact that this Being or that Being is speaking—that is the point, not the doctrinal content because it is the real forces pulsing through the world that matter. In the higher worlds, and above all in what plays into the earthly spheres, we only understand the words aright when we know from which Being they proceed. We can never recognize the rank of a Being merely by the word, but only by knowledge of the whole connection in which a Being stands. The example of the words that men are like the Gods is an absolute confirmation of this.

These are significant facts of evolution. They are voiced not on account of their content—and in this case, too, not so much on this account—but on account of the spirit they carry, so that there may arise in souls feelings that ought to be the outcome of such words. If the feelings remain with those who have absorbed such truths, even if the actual words are forgotten, not so much is lost, after all. Let us take the more radical case. Suppose that there were someone among us who would forget everything that had just been said, but would only retain the feeling that can flow from such words. Such a person would, nevertheless, in an anthroposophical sense, receive enough of what is meant by them.

After all, we have to make use of words, and words sometimes appear theoretical. We must learn to look through the words to the essence and receive this into the soul. If anthroposophy is grasped in its essence, the world will learn to understand many things, particularly in connection with the evolution of humanity. Here I want to quote two examples that are connected outwardly, rather than inwardly, with my recent occult investigations. They astonished me because they showed how a truth which was established occultly corresponds to what has come into the world as a result of inspired men and can be rediscovered in what exists already in the world.

I have occupied myself a great deal with Homer. Lately the fact that nothing can be changed after death, that relationships remain the same, came vividly before my soul. For example, if in life one was in some way related to a person and did not love him, this cannot be changed. If, bearing this in mind, one now reads the passages in Homer where he describes the world beyond as a place where life becomes unchangeable, one begins to understand the depth of these words about the region where things are no longer subject to change. It is a wonderful experience to compare one's own knowledge with what was expressed as significant occult truth by the “blind Homer,” the seer, in this epic!

Another fact astounded me, and though I strongly resisted it because it seemed incredible, I found it impossible to do so. Many of you will know the Medici Tombs by Michelangelo in Florence, with the statues of Giuliano and Lorenzo de Medici and four allegorical figures. The artistic element in these figures is usually overlooked. They are viewed as barren allegories. Now these figures with one exception, were not quite finished, and yet they do not give the impression of being merely allegorical. In the guide books we are told that the statue of Giuliano stands on one side and that of Lorenzo on the other. Actually, they have been reversed. The statue said to represent Lorenzo is that of Giuliano, and that of Giuliano is the statue of Lorenzo. This is correct, but in almost every history of art manual and in Baedecker, the facts are wrongly given. The descriptions would certainly not tally and apparently the statues were once reversed. They no longer stand where Michelangelo had placed them originally. But I want to speak mainly about the four allegorical figures. At the foot of one of the Medici statues we have the figures of “Night” and “Day;” at the foot of the other, “Dawn” and “Dusk.”

As I have said, to begin with I resisted what I am now going to say about them. Let us start with the figures of “Night.” Suppose one immerses oneself in everything one sees, in every gesture (books comment rather nonsensically that this is a gesture that a sleeping person cannot possibly adopt.) If, having studied every gesture, every movement of the limbs, one asks oneself how an artist would have to portray the human figure if he wished to convey the greatest possible activity of the etheric body in sleep, then he would have to do it out of his artistic instincts exactly as Michelangelo did it in his figure. The figure of “Night” corresponds with the posture of the etheric body. I am not suggesting that Michelangelo was conscious of this. He simply did it.

Now let us look at the figure of “Day.” This is no barren allegory. Picture the lower members of the human being more passive, and the ego predominantly active. We have this expressed in the figure of “Day.” If we were now to express in the posture the action of the astral body working freely when the other members are reduced to inactivity, then we should find this in the so-called allegory of “Dawn.” And if sought to express the conditions where the physical body is not altogether falling to pieces, but becomes limp as a result of the withdrawal of the ego and astral body, this is wonderfully portrayed in the figure of “Dusk.” In these figures we have living portrayals of the four sheaths of man. We can readily understand the once widespread legend about the figure “Night.” It was said that when Michelangelo was alone with this figure it became alive, rose up and walked about. This is understandable if one knows that it has the posture of the etheric or life body, and that in such a position the etheric body can be fully active. If this is perceived, then indeed the figure appears to rise up, and one knows that it could walk about were it not carved out of marble. If the etheric body only were really active there, then nothing would prevent it from moving about.

Many secrets are contained in the works of men and much will become intelligible for the first time when these things are studied with sharpened occult perception. Whether, however, we understand a work of art well or not so well, is not connected with the universal-human. What matters is something quite else. If our eyes are sharpened in this way we begin to understand the soul of another human being, not through occult perception, which, after all, cannot help seeing into the spiritual world, but through a perception quickened by spiritual science. Spiritual science grasped by sound human reason develops knowledge in us of what we meet in life, and, above all, of the souls of our fellow men. We shall attempt to understand every human soul.

This understanding, however, is meant in quite a different way from the usual. Unfortunately, in life love is all too often entirely egotistical. Usually a man loves what he is particularly attracted to because of some circumstance or other. For the rest, he contents himself with universal love, a general love for humanity. But what is this? We should be able to understand every human soul. We will not find excellence everywhere, but no harm is done for actually one can do no greater injury to some souls than by pouring blind love and adulation over them.

We shall speak further on this subject in the lecture the day after tomorrow.