The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Lecture 3 of 16 from the volume: Human History in the Light of Spiritual Investigation. The volume of the Complete Edition of the works of Rudolf Steiner containing the original text of the this lecture, among sixteen others, is entitled: Menschengeschichte im Lichte der Geistesforschung. (No. 61 in the Bibliographical Survey, 1961).

Words spoken by Shakespeare's most famous character: “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy” are, of course, perfectly true; but no less true is the saying composed by Lichtenberg, a great German humourist, as a kind of rejoinder: “In philosophy there is much that will be found neither in heaven nor earth.” Both sayings are illustrations of the attitude adopted nowadays to many things in the domain of Spiritual Science. It seems inevitable that widespread circles, especially in the world of serious science, will repudiate such matters as prophecy even more emphatically than other branches of Spiritual Science. If in these other branches of Spiritual Science—in many of them at least—it is difficult to draw a clear line between genuine research and charlatanism, or maybe something even worse, it will certainly be admitted that wherever super-sensible investigation touches the element of human egoism, there its dangers begin. And in what realm of higher knowledge could this be more apparent than in all that is comprised in the theme of prophecy as it has appeared through the ages! Everything covered by the term ‘prophecy’ is closely connected with a widespread, and understandable, trait in the human mind, namely, desire to penetrate the darkness of the future, to know something of what earthly life in the future holds in store.

Interest in prophecy is connected not only with curiosity in the ordinary sense, but with curiosity concerning very intimate regions of the human soul. The search for knowledge concerning the deeper interests of the human soul has met with so many disappointments that earnest, serious science nowadays is unwilling to listen to such matters—and this is really not to be wondered at. Nevertheless it looks as though our times will be obliged at least to take notice of them, and also of the subjects of which we have been speaking in previous lectures and shall speak in the future. As will be known to many of you, the historian Kemmerich has written a book about prophecies, his aim being to compile facts which can be confirmed by history and go on to show that important happenings were pre-cognised or predicted in some way. This historian is driven to make the statement—at the moment we will not question the authenticity of his research—that there are very few important events in history that have not at some time been predicted, conjectured and announced in advance. Such statements are not well received in our time; but ultimately, in the sphere where history can speak with authority, it will not be possible to ignore them because proof will be forthcoming, both in respect of the past and of the present, from outer documents themselves.

The domain we are considering today has never been in such disrepute as it is nowadays, nor regarded as so dubious a path of human endeavour. Only a few centuries ago, for instance in the 16th century, very distinguished and influential scholars engaged in prognostication and prophecy. Think of one of the greatest natural scientists of all time and of his connection with a personage whose tendency to be influenced by prophecies is well known: think of Kepler, the great scientist, and his relations with Wallenstein. Schiller's deep interest in this latter personality was due in no small measure to the part played in his life by prophecy. The kind of prophecy in vogue in the days of Kepler—and only a couple of centuries ago leading scientific minds all over Europe were still occupied with it—was based upon the then prevailing view that there is a real connection between the world of the stars, the movements and positions of the stars, and the life of man. All prophesying in those times was really a form of astrology. The mere mention of this word reminds us that in our day too, many people are still convinced that there is some connection between the stars and coming events in the life of individuals, even, too, of races. But prophetic knowledge, the prophetic art as it is called, was never so directly connected with observation of the movements and constellations of the stars as was the case in Kepler's time.

In ancient Greece an art of prophecy was practised, as you know, by prophetesses or seeresses. It was an art of predicting the future induced by experiences arising perhaps from asceticism, or other experiences leading to the suppression of full self-consciousness and the presence of mind of ordinary life. The human being was thus given over to other Powers, was in an ecstatic condition and then made utterances which were either direct predictions of the future or were interpreted by the listening priests and soothsayers as referring to the future. We need only think of the Pythia at Delphi who under the influence of vapours rising from a chasm in the earth was transported into a state of consciousness quite different from that of ordinary life; she was controlled by other Powers and in this condition made prophetic utterances. This kind of prophecy has nothing to do with calculations of the movements of stars, constellations and the like. Again, everyone is familiar with the gift of prophecy among the people of the Old Testament, the authenticity of which will certainly be called into question by modern scholarship. Out of the mouths of these prophets there came not only utterances of deep wisdom, which influenced the life of these Old Testament people, but fore-shadowed the future. These predictions, however, were by no means always based upon the heavenly constellations as in the astrology current in the 15th and 16th centuries. Either as the result of inborn gifts, ascetic practices and the like, these prophets unfolded a different kind of consciousness from that of the people around them; they were torn away from the affairs of ordinary life. In such a condition they were entirely detached from the circumstances and thoughts of their personal lives, from their own material environment. Their attention was focused entirely on their people, on the weal and woe of their people. Because they experienced some thing superhuman, something reaching beyond the individual concerns of men, they broke through the boundaries of their personal consciousness and it was as though Jahve Himself spoke out of their mouths, so wise were their utterances concerning the tasks and the destiny of their people.

Thinking of all this, it seems evident that the kind of divination practised at the end of the Middle Ages, before the dawn of modern science, was only one specific form and that prophecy as a whole is a much wider sphere, connected in some way with definite states of consciousness to which a man can only attain when he throws off the shackles of his personality. Astrological prophecy, of course, can hardly be said to be an art in which a man rises above his own personality. The astrologer is given the date and hour of birth and from this discovers which constellation was rising on the horizon and the relative positions of other stars and constellations. From this he calculates how the positions of the constellations will change during the course of the man's life and, according to certain traditional observations of the favourable or unfavourable influences of heavenly bodies upon human life, predicts from these calculations what will transpire in the life of an individual or of a people. There seems to be no kind of similarity between this type of astrologer and the ancient Hebrew prophets, the Greek seeresses or others who, having passed out of their ordinary consciousness into a state of ecstasy, foretold the future entirely from knowledge acquired in the realm of the Supersensible. For those who consider themselves enlightened men of culture today, the greatest stumbling-block in these astrological predictions is the difficulty of realising how the courses of the stars and constellations can possibly have any connection with happenings in the life of an individual or a people, or in the procession of events on the Earth. And as the attention of modern scholarship is never focused on such connections, no particular interest is taken in what was accepted as authentic knowledge in times when astrological prophecy and enlightened science often went hand in hand.

Kepler, the very distinguished and learned scientist, was not only the discoverer of the Laws named after him; not only was he one of the greatest astronomers of all time, but he devoted himself to astrological prophecy. In his time—also during the periods immediately preceding and following it—numbers of truly enlightened men were votaries of this art. Indeed if we think objectively about life as it was in those days, we realise that from their standpoint it was as natural to them to take this prophetic art, this prophetic knowledge, as seriously as our contemporaries take any genuine branch of science. When some prediction based upon the constellations—and made perhaps, at the birth of an individual—comes true later on, it is of course easy to say that the connection of this constellation with the man's life was only a matter of chance. Certainly it must be admitted in countless cases that astonishment at the fulfilment of astrological prediction is caused simply because it came true and because people have forgotten what did not come true. The contention of a certain Greek atheist is, in a sense, correct. He once came in his ship to a coastal town where, in a sanctuary, tokens had been hung by men who had vowed at sea that if they were saved from shipwreck they would make such offerings. Many, many tokens were hanging there—all of them the offerings of men who had been saved from shipwreck. But the atheist maintained that the truth could only be brought to light if the tokens of everyone who in spite of vows had actually perished in shipwreck, were also displayed. It would then be obvious to which category the greater number of tokens belonged. This implies that a really objective judgment could only be reached if records were kept not only of those astrological predictions which have come true, but also of those which have not. This attitude is perfectly justified but on the other hand there is certainly much that is very astonishing. As in these public lectures I cannot take for granted a fundamental knowledge of all the teachings of Spiritual Science, I must speak in a way which will convey an idea of the significance of the subjects we are studying.

Even a confirmed sceptic must surely feel surprise when he hears the following. Keeping to well-known personages, let us take the case of Wallenstein. Wallenstein wished to have his horoscope drawn up by Kepler—a name honoured by every scientist. Kepler sent the horoscope. But the matter had been arranged with caution. Wallenstein did not write to Kepler giving him the year of his birth and saying that he would like him to draw up the horoscope, but an intermediary was chosen. Kepler therefore did not know for whom the horoscope was intended. The only indication given was the date of the birth. There had already been many important happenings in Wallenstein's life and he requested that they too should be recorded, as well as predictions made of those still to come. Kepler completed the horoscope as requested. As is the case with many horoscopes, Wallenstein found very much that tallied with his experiences. He began (it was often so in those days) to have great confidence in Kepler and on many occasions was able to adjust his life according to the prognostications. But it must be said too, that although many things tallied, many did not, so far as the past was concerned and, as subsequently transpired, the same was true of the predictions made about the future. It was so with numbers of horoscopes and in those days people were accustomed to say that there must be some inaccuracy in the alleged hour of birth and that the astrologer might be able to correct it. Wallenstein did the same. He begged Kepler to correct the hour of birth; the correction was only very slight but after it had been made, the prognostications were more accurate. It must be added here that Kepler was a thoroughly honest man and it went very much against the grain to correct the hour of birth. From a letter on the subject written by Kepler at the time it is obvious that he did not favour such procedure on account of the many possible consequences. Nevertheless he undertook to do what Wallenstein asked—it was in the year 1625—and gave further details about Wallenstein's future; above all he said that according to the new reading of the positions of the stars, the constellation that would be present in the year 1634 would be extremely unfavourable for Wallenstein. Kepler added—as well he might, for the date lay so far ahead—that even if this were a cause of alarm, the alarm would have passed away by the time of these unfavourable conditions. He did not therefore consider them dangerous for Wallenstein's plans. The prediction was for March 1634. And now think of it: within a few weeks of the period indicated, the causes occurred which led to the murder of Wallenstein. These things are at least striking!

But let us take other examples—not of second-rate astrologers but of really enlightened men. The name of an extraordinarily learned man in this sphere will at once occur to us—Nostradamus. Nostradamus was a doctor of high repute who, among other activities, had rendered wonderful service during an epidemic of the plague; he was a man of profound gifts and the selflessness with which he devoted himself to his profession as a doctor is well known. It is known, too, that when on account of his selflessness he had been much maligned by his colleagues, he retired from his medical work to the isolation of Salon where, in 1566, he died. In Salon he began to observe the stars, but not as Kepler or others like Kepler had observed them. Nostradamus had a special room in his house into which he often withdrew and, as can be gathered from what he himself says, from this room he watched the stars, just as they presented themselves to his gaze. In other words he made no special mathematical calculations but immersed himself in what the soul, the heart, the imagination can discover when gazing with wonder at the starry heavens. Nostradamus spent many an hour of reverent, fervent contemplation in this curious chamber with its open views on all sides to the heavens. And from him there came not only specific predictions, but long series of diverse and remarkably true prophecies of the future. So much so, that Kemmerich, the historian of whom I spoke just now, cannot but be astonished and attach a certain value to the prophetic utterances of Nostradamus. Nostradamus himself made some of his prophecies known to the public and was naturally laughed to scorn in his day, for he could quote no astrological calculations. As he gazed at the stars his predictions seemed to rise up in him in the form of strange pictures and imaginations, for instance of the outcome of the battle at Gravelingen in the year 1558, where the French were defeated with heavy loss. Another prediction, made long beforehand, for the year 1559, was to the effect that King Henry II of France would succumb “in a duel” as Nostradamus put it. People only laughed, including the Queen herself, who said that this clearly showed what reliance could be placed upon prediction—for a King was above engaging in a duel. But what happened? In the year predicted, the King was killed in a tournament. And it would be possible to quote many, many predictions that subsequently came true.

Again there is Tycho de Brahe, one of the brilliant minds of the 16th century and of outstanding significance as an astronomer. The modern world knows little of Tycho de Brahe beyond that he is said to have been one who only half accepted the Copernican view of the world. But those who are more closely acquainted with his life know what Tycho de Brahe achieved in the making of celestial charts, how vastly he improved the charts then existing, that he had discovered new stars and was, in short, an astronomer of great eminence in his day. Tycho de Brahe was also deeply convinced that not only are physical conditions on the Earth connected with the whole Universe, but that the spiritual experiences of men are connected with happenings in the great Cosmos. Tycho de Brahe did not simply observe the stars as an astronomer but he related the happenings of human life with happenings in the heavens. And when he came to Rostock at the age of 20, he caused a stir by predicting the death of the Sultan Soliman, which although it did not occur exactly on the day indicated, did nevertheless occur. The indication was not quite exact but this will probably not bring an outcry from historians, for they might well argue that if anyone were intent upon lying he would not tell a half-lie by introducing the difference of a mere day or so into the prediction.

Hearing of this, the King of Denmark requested Tycho de Brahe to cast the horoscopes of his three sons. Concerning his son, Christian, the indications were accurate; less so in the case of Ulrich. But about Hans, the third son, Tycho de Brahe made a remarkable prediction, derived from the movements of the stars. He said: The whole constellation and everything to be seen goes to show that he is and will remain frail and is unlikely to live to a great age. As the hour of birth was not quite accurate, Tycho de Brahe gave the indications very cautiously ... he might die in his eighteenth or perhaps in his nineteenth year, for the constellations then would be extremely unfavourable. I will leave it an open question whether it was out of pity for the parents or for other reasons, that Tycho de Brahe wrote of the possibility of this terrible constellation in the eighteenth or nineteenth year being overcome in the life of Duke Hans ... if so, he said, God would have been his protector; but it must be realised that these conditions would be there, that an extremely unfavourable constellation connected with Mars was revealed by the horoscope and that Hans would be entangled in the complications of war; as in this constellation, Venus had ascendancy over Mars, there was just a hope that Hans would pass this period safely, but then, in his eighteenth and nineteenth years, there would be the very unfavourable constellation due to the inimical influence of Saturn; this indicated the risk of a “moist, melancholic” illness caused by the strange environment in which Hans would find himself. And now, what was the history of Duke Hans' life? As a young man he was involved in the political complications of the time, was sent to war, took part in the battle of Ostend and in connection with this, as Tycho de Brahe had predicted, had to endure the ordeal of terrible storms at sea. He came very near death, but as the result of friendly negotiations set on foot for his marriage with the daughter of the Czar he was recalled to Denmark. According to Tycho de Brahe's interpretation, the complications due to the unfavourable influences of Mars had been stemmed by the influences of Venus—the protector of love-relationships: Venus had protected the Duke at this time. But then, in his eighteenth and nineteenth years the inimical influence of Saturn began to take effect. One can picture how the eyes of the Danish Court were upon the young Duke: all the preparations for the marriage were made and the news that it had taken place was hourly awaited. But there came instead the announcement that the marriage was delayed, then news of the Duke's illness, and finally of his death. Such things made a great impression upon people at the time and must surely surprise posterity.

Now world-history sometimes has its humorous sides! There was once, in a different domain altogether, a certain Professor who asserted that the brain of the female always weighs less than that of the male. After his death, however, his own brain was weighed and proved to be extremely light. He was the victim of humour in world-history!

The horoscope of Pico de Mirandola (a descendant of the famous philosopher) prophesied that Mars would bring him great misfortune. He was an opponent of all such predictions. Tycho de Brahe proved to him that all his arguments against prognostications from the stars were false, and he died in the year that had been indicated as the period of the unfavourable influence of Mars.

Numbers of examples could be quoted and we shall probably realise that in a certain sense it is not difficult to make objections. For example, a very distinguished modern astronomer—a man greatly to be respected too, for his humanitarian activities—has argued that Wallenstein's death cannot be said to have been correctly predicted in the horoscope drawn up by Kepler. In a certain respect such arguments must be taken seriously. We cannot altogether ignore Wilhelm Foerster's argument that Wallenstein knew what had been predicted; that in the corresponding year he remembered his horoscope, hesitated, did not take the firm stand he would otherwise have taken and so was himself the cause of the misfortune. Such objections are always possible.

But on the other side it must be remembered that although in illustrations produced by science, external data are of value, the modern age accepts these data as an absolutely adequate basis for scientific truths. Many things may be problematical. But we should not shut our eyes to the fact that careful comparison of events that had actually occurred in life with indications obtained from the stars, did indeed lead, in earlier times, to confidence in prognostications of the future. People were certainly alive to mistakes but they did not conceal things that were genuinely astonishing, nor did they accept these things entirely without criticism. In those times too they were quite capable of criticism and in all probability applied it on many occasions.

I wanted to quote very striking examples in order to show that in accordance with the standards of modern science too, it is possible to take these matters seriously. And even when we take what there is to be said against them, we shall have to admit that the reasons which in times of the relatively near past made brilliant minds place firm reliance in them, were not bad but sound and well-founded reasons. Even if these reasons are rejected, it must be admitted that the impression they made on brilliant and enlightened minds was such that these men believed—quite apart from details—that there is a connection between events in the lives of individuals and of peoples, and happenings in the Cosmos. These men believed that there is a real connection between the macrocosm, the great world, and the microcosm, the little world.

They believed that human life on the Earth is not a chaotic flow of events but that law manifests in these events, that just as celestial events are governed by cyclic law, so too a certain cyclic law, a certain rhythm is manifest in human and earthly conditions. To explain what is here meant, I shall speak of certain facts that can be collated by observation, as truly as the most exacting facts of chemistry or physics today. But the observations must be made in the appropriate spheres. Suppose we observe something that happens in a man's life during his childhood. If we study the longer sweep of human life, remarkable connections will come to light, for example, between the life of earliest childhood and that of very old age; a connection is perceptible between what a man experiences in the evening of his life and what he experienced in early youth. We shall be able to say: If, during youth, we were shaken by emotions due to alarm or fright, we may possibly have been exempt from their effects all through our life, but in old age things may appear of which we know that their causes are to be sought in very early childhood. Again there are connections between the years of adolescence and the period immediately preceding old age. Life runs a circular course.

We can go still further, taking as an example the case of someone who, say at the age of 18, was torn right away from the course his life had taken hitherto. Until then he may have been able to devote himself to study but was suddenly obliged to abandon this and become a merchant, perhaps because his father lost his money, or for some other reason. To begin with he gets on quite well but after a few years, great inner difficulties make their appearance. In trying to help such a person to overcome these difficulties, we cannot apply any general, abstract principles. We shall have to say to ourselves: At the age of 18 there was a sudden change in his life and at the age of 24—that is to say, six years later—difficulties cropped up in his life of soul. Six years earlier, in his twelfth year or thereabouts, certain things happened in his soul which actually explain the difficulties appearing in his twenty-fourth year: six years before, six years later—the change of profession lies between. Just as above a pendulum swinging to right and left there is a point of equilibrium, so, in the case quoted, the eighteenth year is a pivotal point. A cause generated before this pivotal point has its effect the same number of years afterwards. So it is in man's life as a whole. Human life takes its course not with irregularity but with regularity and according to law. Although the individual does not necessarily realise it, there is in every human life one centre-point; what lies before—youth and childhood—allows causes to rest in the depths of subsequent happenings, and then what took place a number of years before this centre-point of life reveals itself in its effects an equal number of years afterwards. In the sense that birth is the point polar to death, the happenings of childhood are the causes of happenings during the years that precede death. In this way life becomes comprehensible.

In the case, for example, of illness occurring, say, at the age of 54, the only really intelligent approach is to look for a pivotal point at which a man passed through a definite crisis, reckoning back from there to some event related to the fifty-fourth year somewhat in the same sense as death is related to birth, or the other way round. The fact that happenings in human life reveal conformity to law and principle does not gainsay our freedom. Many people are apt to say that this conformity to law in the course taken by events contradicts man's freedom of will. But this is not the case and it can only appear so to superficial thinking. A human being who at the age, say, of 15, lays into the womb of time some cause, the effects of which he experienced in, say, his fifty-fourth year, no more deprives himself of his freedom than does someone who builds a house and then moves into it when it is ultimately ready. Logical thinking will never say that the man deprives himself of his freedom when he moves into the house. Nobody deprives himself of freedom by anticipating that causes will have their effects later on. This principle has nothing directly to do with freedom in life.

Just as there are cyclic connections in the life of the individual, so too are there cyclic connections in the life of the peoples, and in life on the Earth in the general sense. The evolution of mankind on the Earth divides itself into successive epochs of culture. Two of the epochs most closely connected with our own, are the period of Assyrian-Egyptian-Chaldean civilisation and that of the later culture of Greece and Rome; then, reckoning from the decline of Greek and Roman culture and its aftermaths, comes our present epoch. According to all the signs of the times this will last for a very long time yet. There, then, we have three consecutive periods of culture.

Close observation of the life of the peoples during these three epochs will reveal, during the Greco-Latin period, something like a pivotal point in the evolution of mankind. Hence, too, the curious fascinating of the culture of Greece and Rome. Greek art, Greek and Roman political life, Roman equity, the conception of Roman citizenship ... it all seems to stand like a kind of pivotal point in the stream of the evolutionary process: After it—our own epoch; before it—the Egypto-Chaldean epoch. In a remarkable way, those who observe deeply enough will perceive certain conditions of life during the Egypto-Chaldean period operating again today, in quite a different but nevertheless related form. In those times, therefore, causes were laid into the womb of the ages, which now in their effects come again to the fore. Certain methods of hygiene, certain ablutions customary in ancient Egypt, also certain views of life are now, strangely enough, in the forefront again—naturally in absolutely different forms; in short, the effects of causes laid down in ancient Egypt are becoming perceptible today. In between—like a fulcrum—lies the culture of Greece and Rome.

The Egypto-Chaldean epoch was preceded by that of the most ancient Persian culture. According to the law of cyclic evolution, then, it can be foreshadowed that just as in our civilisation there is a cyclic re-emergence of Egypto-Chaldean culture, so ancient Persian culture will re-emerge in the epoch following our own. Law is revealed everywhere in the flow of evolution! Not irregularity, not chaos—but also not the kind of law conjectured by historians: that the causes of everything happening today are to be sought in the immediately preceding period, the causes of happenings in the recent past again in the immediately preceding period, and so forth. This is how historians build up a chain of events—the one directly following the other. Closer observation, however, reveals the existence of cycles, breaks ... what was once present appears again at a very much later time.

External observation itself can discern this. But it will be quite apparent to those who study the evolution of humanity in the light of Spiritual Science that there is evidence of spiritual law in the flow of happenings, in the stream of the ‘Becoming’ and that a certain deepening of the life of soul will enable men actually to perceive the threads of these inner connections. And although it is not easy to grasp everything that belongs to this sphere, although it may sometimes tend to charlatanry or humbug and direct its appeal to the lower impulses and instincts, nevertheless the following is true: When a man is able to eliminate personal interests and quicken the hidden forces of spiritual life, so that his knowledge is drawn not merely from his environment or from remembrances of his own life and that of his nearest acquaintances, when he is uninfluenced by material and personal considerations ... then he grows beyond his own personality and becomes conscious of the presence of higher forces with him, which it is only a matter of developing by appropriate exercises. When these deeper forces are brought to the surface, happenings in the life of a human being will also reveal their hidden causes and such a soul will then glimpse the truth that whatever has transpired through the ages throws its effects into the future. The law presented to us by Spiritual Science is that no happenings—and this also applies to the domain of the Spiritual—float meaninglessly along the stream of existence; they all have their effects and we must discover the law underlying the manifestation of these effects in later times. Therewith the insight will come that this law also embraces the return of the individuality into the present earthly life, where the effects of earlier lives are working themselves out.

Just as knowledge of the workings of Karma, the Law of Destiny, arises from insight into how causes lie in the womb of time and appear again in transformation, so too this insight was present in all those who have taken prophecy seriously or have actually engaged in it; they have been convinced that laws prevail in the course taken by human life and that the soul can awaken the forces whereby these laws may be fathomed. But the soul needs points of focus. In its facts, the world is an interconnected whole. Just as in his physical life the human being is affected by wind and weather, it is not difficult to assume that there are connections in everything around us, even though the details are obscure. Without actually seeking for laws of Nature, something in the courses of the stars and constellations evokes the thought: The harmonies perceptible there can call forth in us similar harmonies and rhythms according to which human life runs its course. Further observations will then lead on to the details.

As may be read in the little book, The Education of the Child in the Light of Spiritual Science, epochs can be distinguished in the life of the individual: from birth to the change of teeth, from then to puberty, then the years up to twenty-one and again from twenty-one to twenty-eight ... 7-year periods clearly different in character and after which new kinds of faculties are present. If we know how to investigate these things we shall find clear evidence of a rhythmic stream in human life, which can as it were be found again in the starry heavens. Strikingly enough, if life is observed from this point of view (but such observation must be calm and balanced, without the wonted fanaticism of opponents) it will be found that round about the twenty-eighth year something in the life of soul indicates, in many cases, a culmination of what has come into being after four periods of seven years each. Four times seven years—twenty-eight years ... although the figure is not absolutely exact, this is the approximate time of one revolution of Saturn. Saturn revolves in a circle consisting of four parts, passes therefore through the whole Zodiacal circle, and its course has an actual correspondence with the course of man's life from birth to the twenty-eighth year. Just as the circle divides into four parts, so too these twenty-eight years divide into four periods of seven years each. There, in the revolution of a star in cosmic space, we see indications of similarity with the course taken by human life.

Other movements in the heavens, too, correspond to rhythms in human life. Little attention is given today to the very brilliant researches made by Fliess, a doctor in Berlin; they are still only in the initial stage but if ever they are properly studied, the rhythmic flow of births and deaths in the life of humanity will be clearly perceived. All such research is only at the beginning; but in time to come it will be realised that one need only regard the stars and their movements as a great celestial clock and human life as a rhythm that runs its own course but is in a certain sense determined by the stars. Without looking for actual causes in the stars, it is quite possible to conceive that because of this inner relationship, human life runs its course with a like rhythm. Suppose, for example, we often go outside the door of our house or look out of the window at some particular time in the morning and always see a certain man on the way to his office ... we glance at the clock, knowing that every day he will pass at a definite time. Are the hands of the clock the cause of it? Of course not! ... but because of the invariable rhythm we can assume that the man will pass the house at a definite time. In this sense we can see in the stars a celestial clock according to which the life of man and of peoples runs its course.

Such things may well be vantage-points for the observation and study of life, and Spiritual Science is able to indicate these deeper connections. We shall now understand why Tycho de Brahe, Kepler and others, worked on the basis of calculations—Kepler especially, Tycho de Brahe less. For insight into the soul of Tycho de Brahe reveals a certain similarity with that of Nostradamus. Nostradamus, however, does not need to make calculations at all; he sits up in his attic and gives himself up to the impressions made by the stars. He ascribes this gift to certain inherited qualities in his organism, which for this reason is no cause of hindrance to him. But he also needs that inner tranquillity of soul that arises after he has put away all thoughts, emotions, cares, and excitements of everyday life. The soul must face the stars in purity and freedom. And then what Nostradamus prophesies rises up in him in pictures and images; he sees it all before him in pictures. If he spoke in astronomical terms of Saturn or Mars being injurious, he would not, in predicting destiny, have been thinking of the physical Saturn or the physical Mars, but he would have pondered in this way: Such and such a man has a warlike nature, a temperament that loves fighting, but he also has a kind of melancholy making him subject to moods of depression which may even affect him physically. Nostradamus lets this interweave in his contemplation and a picture rises before him of future happenings in the man's life: the tendency to melancholy and the fighting spirit intermingle—“Saturn” and “Mars.” This is only a sense-image. When he speaks of “Saturn” and “Mars,” his meaning is: There is something in this man which presents itself to me as a picture but which can be compared with the opposition or conjunction between Saturn and Mars in the heavens. This was merely a way of expressing it; contemplation of the stars evoked in Nostradamus the seership that enabled him to see more deeply into souls than is otherwise possible.

Nostradamus, therefore, was a man who by acting in a certain way was able to waken to life inner powers of soul otherwise slumbering within the human being. In a mood of devotion, of reverence, he completely put away all cares and anxieties, all concerns of the outer world. In utter forgetfulness of self, with no feeling of his own personality, his soul knew the truth of the axiom he always quoted: “It is God Who utters through my mouth anything I am able to tell you about your concerns. Take it as spoken to you by the Grace of your God I ...” Without such reverence there is no genuine seership. But this very attitude ensures that those who have it will not abuse or make illicit use of their gift.

Tycho de Brahe represents a stage of transition between Nostradamus and Kepler. When we contemplate the soul of Tycho de Brahe, he seems to be one who is calling up remembrances from an earlier life, rather reminiscent of Greek soothe-saying. He has in him something that is akin to the soul of an ancient Greek seeking everywhere for the manifestations of cosmic harmony. Such is the attunement of his soul—and his astrological insight is really an attitude of soul—it is as if astronomical calculation were merely a prop helping him to call up those powers which enable pictures of happenings in the past or the future to take shape before him. Kepler's mind is more abstract, in the sense that modern thought is abstract—in a still higher degree. Kepler has to rely more or less upon pure calculation in which there is, of course, accuracy, for according to knowledge derived from clairvoyance there is an actual relation between the constellations and the actions of men. As time went on, astrology became more and more a matter of reckoning and calculation only. The gift of seership gave place to purely intellectual thought and it can truly be said that astrological forecasts now are nothing but intellectual deduction.

The farther we go back into the past, the more we shall find that the utterances of the ancient prophets concerning the life of their peoples rose up from the very depths of their souls. So it was among the Hebrew prophets; in communion with their God and free of their personal interests and affairs, they were wholly given up to the great concerns of their people and could perceive what was in store. Just as a teacher foresees that certain qualities in a child will express themselves later on, and takes account of them, the Hebrew prophet beheld the soul of his people as one unit; the Past mellowed in his soul and worked in such a way that the consequences were revealed to him as a great vision of the Future.

But now, what does prophecy mean in human life, what does it really signify? We shall find the answer by thinking of the following: There are certain great figures to whom we always trace streams of happenings in history. Although today the preference is for everyone to be at one level, because it goes against the grain when a single personality towers over all the others (in their desire that all faculties shall be equal, people are loath to admit that certain men are more forceful than the rest)—in spite of this, great and advanced leaders are at work in the process of historical evolution. Things have come to such a pass nowadays that the mightiest happenings are conceived to be the outcome simply of ideas and not to lead back to any one personality. There is a certain school of theology, which still claims to be Christian, although it contends that there need have been no Christ Jesus as an individual. In reply to the retort that world-history is after all made by men, one of these theologians said: That is as obvious as the fact that a forest is composed of trees; human beings make history in the same sense that trees make a forest ... But think of it—surely the whole forest could have grown up from a few grains of seed? Certainly the forest is composed of trees but the primary step is to find out whether it did not originate from grains of seeds once laid in the soil. So, too, it is a matter of inquiring whether it is not, after all, the case that events in human evolution lead back to this or that individual who inspired the rest.

This conception of world-history suggests the thought of “surplus” forces in men who play leading parts in the evolution of humanity. Whether they apply these forces for good or ill is another matter. Such men work upon their environment out of the surplus forces within them. These surplus forces, which need not be drawn upon for the affairs of personal life, may express themselves in deeds or they may find no outlet in deeds; but with others, some kind of hindrance always seems to prevent this. Nostradamus is an interesting example: he was a doctor and in this capacity brought blessing to very many human beings. But the thought that someone is doing good, often goes against the grain! Nostradamus became an object of envy and jealousy and was accused of being a Calvinist. To be a Jew or a Calvinist was looked upon askance and circumstances therefore forced him to withdraw from his work of healing and abandon his profession. But were the forces used in this inspiring work no longer within him when he had retired? Of course they were! Physics believes in the conservation of energy or force. What happened in the case of Nostradamus was that when he threw up his work, the forces in him took a different direction. If his medical activities had continued, these forces would have produced quite other effects in the future. For where can our deeds really be said to end? If, like Nostradamus, we withdraw from some activity, the flow of our deeds is suddenly stemmed—but the forces themselves are still there. The forces in Nostradamus' soul remained and were transformed, so that what might have expressed itself in deeds at some future time, rose up before him in pictures. In his case, deeds were transformed into the gift of seership. The same may be true of human beings endowed with a faculty for prophecy today; and it was true in the case of the ancient Hebrew prophets. As biblical history indicates, these men had a real connection with forces belonging to the past and to the future of their people; their own soul, their personal life, was nothing to them. They were not war-like by nature but had within them surplus forces which from the very beginning took the same form as those of Nostradamus after their transformation. Forces, which in others poured into deeds, revealed themselves to the Hebrew prophets in the form of mighty pictures and visions. The gift of seership is directly connected with the urge to action in men, with the transformation of surplus forces in the soul.

Seership is therefore by no means an incomprehensible faculty; it can be reconciled with the kind of thinking pursued in natural science itself. But it is obvious, too, that the gift of seership leads beyond the immediate Present. What is the way, the only way, of reaching out beyond the Present? It is to have ideals. Ideals, however, are usually abstract: man sets them before him and believes that they conform to the realities of the Present. But instead of setting up abstract ideals, a man who desires to work in line with the aims of the super-sensible world tries to discover causes lying in the womb of the ages, asking himself: How do these causes express themselves in the flow of time? He approaches this problem not with his intellect but with his deeper faculty of seership. True knowledge of the Past—when this is acquired by the operations of deeper forces and not by way of the intellect—calls up before the soul pictures of the Future, which more or less conform to fact. And one who rightly exercises the gift of seership today, after having pondered the stream of evolution in olden times, will find a picture rising up before him as a concrete ideal. This picture seems to tell him: Mankind is standing at the threshold of transition; certain forces hitherto concealed in darkness are becoming more and more apparent. And just as today people are familiar with intellect and with imagination, so in a Future by no means distant, a new faculty of soul will be there to meet the urge for knowledge of the super-sensible world.

The dawn of this new power of soul can already be perceived. When such glimpses of the Future astonish us, our attitude will not be that of the fanatic, neither will it be that of the pure realist, but we shall know why we do this or that for the sake of spiritual evolution. This, fundamentally, is the purpose of all true prophecy. We realise that this purpose is achieved even when the pictures of the Future outlined by the seer may not be absolutely accurate. Anyone who is able to perceive the hidden forces of the human soul knows better than others that false pictures may arise of what the Future holds in store; he understands, too, why the pictures are capable of many interpretations. To say that although certain indications have been given, they are vague and ambiguous does not mean very much. Such pictures may well be ambiguous. What matters, is that impulses connected with evolution as it moves on towards the Future, shall work upon and awaken slumbering powers in man. These prophesyings may or may not be accurate in every detail: what matters is that powers shall be awakened in the human being!

Prophecy, therefore, is to be conceived less as a means of satisfying curiosity by prediction of the Future than as a stimulating realisation that the gift of seership is within man's grasp. Shadow-sides there may well be—but the good sides are there too! The good side will be revealed above all when men do not go blindly through the day nor blindly onwards into a remote future but can set their own goals and direct their impulses in the light of knowledge. Goethe, who has said so many wonderful things about the affairs of the world, was right when he wrote down the words: “If a man knew the Past, he would know what the Future holds; both are linked to the Present as a Whole complete in itself.” (“Wer das Vergangene kennte, der wusste das Kunftige; beides schliesst an heute sich rein, als ein Vollendetes, an.”) This is a beautiful saying from the “Prophecies of Bakis.”

And so the raison d'être of prophecy does not lie in the appeasement of curiosity or the thirst for knowledge, but in the impulses it can give to work for the sake of the Future. The unwillingness to be really objective about prophecy today is due to the fact that our age sets too high a value on purely intellectual knowledge—which does not kindle impulses of will. But Spiritual Science will bring the recognition that although there have been many shadow-sides in the realm of ancient and modern prophecy, nevertheless in this striving for consciousness of the Future a seed has formed, not for the appeasement of cravings for knowledge or of curiosity, but as fire for our will. And even those who insist upon judging everything in the human being by cold, intellectual standards, must learn from this vista of the world that the purpose of prophecy is to stimulate the impulses of will.

Having considered how attacks against prophecy may be met and having recognised its core and purpose, we have a certain right to say: In this domain lie many of those things with which academic philosophy will have nothing to do ... that is certainly true. But the light of this very knowledge will reveal, in connection with those facts which illustrate the other saying, that data of intellectual knowledge—however correct they may be—are sometimes completely valueless because they are incapable of engendering impulses of will. Just as it is true that there are many things undreamed of by philosophy, so on the other side it is true that a great deal in the realm of scientific research into the things of heaven and earth comes to nothing because it does not quicken the seed of right endeavour. But progress in life must be made in the light of a kind of knowledge which reveals that at the beginning, the middle and the end, everything turns upon human activity, human deeds!

When an earthquake takes place in some part of the world and people feel the earth stirring under their feet, as a rule they experience a feeling of terror, a shudder runs through them.

If we try to find the causes of this feeling of terror, we must turn our attention not only to those occasions when a person faces the unknown, unexpected and inexplicable, but also to those when terror arises because as long as the tremor lasts he is wondering how far it will go and what may still surge up from unknown depths.

This feeling—even if not always apparent in man's daily life—can often be experienced in contrast to conscious existence, to all those conscious thoughts and feelings in the depths of the soul-life, and which sometimes act in a way that suggests earthquakes.

In what flashes up as instincts and desires along with unaccountable moods and inhibitions which often encroach on our conscious life, with the havoc an earthquake makes where things on the earth's surface are concerned, in all this man—however well he believes he knows himself—confronts this uncertainty: Whatever else will be flung up from the innermost depths of my soul? For anyone who delves more deeply into his being soon sees that all the life of ideas playing part in the consciousness—namely, what he controls from waking to falling asleep—resembles the dancing waves on the surface of the sea, the upward striving of which and the way they carry on their game must be traced to depths unknown to ordinary perception. Such is man's life of ideas. This alone should make those pause who, starting from so-called scientific findings, repeatedly raised objections to the statements of spiritual science imparted in these lectures.

If spiritual science cannot view man as so simple a being as people so often see him, the outer testimony of life itself and daily service are proof of his complex nature.

Spiritual science cannot consider man as only composed of what the eye first sees, or as external anatomical physiological science perceives him, dissects him, and with its own methods studies him. But when confronted by everything outer perception and science can master—that is to say, man's physical body—spiritual science must set up in contrast the higher super-sensible members of his being. We must say that these are only perceptible by means of the knowledge I outlined in the lecture on “Death and Immortality”, [an untranslated lecture given in Berlin on October 26th, 1911. GA# 61. e.Ed.] and of which more will be said in forthcoming lectures. From direct observation, unobtainable in the world of the senses and open only to a clairvoyant consciousness, spiritual science must place over against the outer physical body what we may call the next member of man's being—the etheric or life-body. (One need not object to an expression which like others just serves for a description.)

And when spiritual science affirms that the forces and substances belonging to man's physical body are present and equally active in his environment, it must add that the original activity of these forces and substances first appears in man's physical body after he passes through the gate of death. Man brings these forces and substances into the physical world. During the whole of his life they are attached to the higher etheric forces which counteract the decay of the physical substance, which decay sets in the moment the etheric at death is loosened from the physical. As our study today will soon convince us, for an all-embracing experience of life there is nothing strange when, added to man's physical body, we mention a higher one too. For in life divisions appear everywhere, and man is obviously twofold in so far as this physical body contains all that belongs to his physical environment, and is penetrated by the etheric or life-body.

But spiritual science must point out that everything playing its part in our conscious life must be clearly distinguished from all activities and forces present even when consciousness is extinguished, as normally happens in sleep. For it would be logically absurd to claim that all our daytime instincts, desires and ideas, in their pulsating soul life, arises when we awake, but vanish, leaving no trace, when we fall asleep. When a man is asleep what we see belongs to the physical body and the activity of the physical world. This means that when the man lies on his bed we have the physical and etheric bodies for us, but sharply divided from what we will now call the astral body—the actual vehicle of our consciousness.

Where this vehicle of our consciousness is concerned, if we really want to understand our soul life, we must again clearly distinguished between what always lives in us and is subject to our inner thought and the decisions made by our will, and on the other hand what can be said to surge from deeper soul levels, and is responsible for our temperament, the colouring and character of our soul life, although outside our control. From our normal consciousness we must distinguish all that fills our soul in a wider sense, such as those things we possess from earliest childhood to the end of our days, what makes us talented or not, good or evil, what renders us sensitive to aesthetics and beauty but has no connection with what we consciously think, feel or will. In speaking the language of spiritual science we first distinguish two parts of our soul life: one that forms an extended, or subconscious (as it is now called, it being no longer possible to deny its existence) soul-life, and the other, our conscious life playing its part in all our thoughts, will impulses, tastes and opinions.

Whatever one thinks of the need to make this division, if we consider life in the light of experience we are bound to admit it proves that we must begin by distinguishing these four parts of man. By examining without prejudice what on all sides of life presents, proof is found everywhere of what spiritual science declares. This is especially apparent when one examines the more detailed evidence spiritual science offers. One finds first of all that this knowledge not only tells us of etheric forces working in the organism, shaping this body that bears our soul into a purely physical structure, but it tells us besides that all we reckon as memory is anchored in the etheric body. For not the astral but the etheric body carries our memory, and this etheric, though not closely knit to the life of soul, is closely knit to the physical body that, as a rule, remains attached to it when, as normally happens only in sleep, man sinks into subconsciousness. So according to spiritual science, memory, and everything in our depths of which we are not fully conscious, must be sought in the etheric underlying physical body. To justify considering the etheric as the vehicle of memory, apart from the physical, we should admit that everyday life has to offer us proof of the independence of memory from the physical body.

If these assumptions of spiritual science are correct, how do we explain our relation to the outer world, and does our ego register the conscious impressions this outer world makes on our soul?

In regard to all this we, as men belonging to the physical world, must first depend on our sense organs and our intelligence linked with the instrument of the brain. Thus we may say that everything belonging to man's world-picture, the sum of all that lives in his daily consciousness, depends on the physical body and the state of its health, but above all on normal well formed sense organs and a well-developed brain. Are we justified in saying that what lies in the depths of the soul and can only be reflected in memory, is not bound to the outer organism in the same degree as daily consciousness, but lives beneath the threshold of all that relates to the senses and the brain? Have we reason to speak of an independent memory? If this is so, one would have some right to say that the etheric inside the physical body also has an independent existence, and one that is unaffected by the outer injuries afflicted on the bodily organism. An interesting question we can raise is whether the normal course of consciousness, dependent on a well-developed brain, runs parallel with that of memory, or does the latter function separately so that when the physical body no longer acts as the vehicle of perception, the memory proves itself independent? Let us ask life to answer our question. We shall then discover a remarkable fact, that anyone can verify, for it is to be found in literature. For all our queries regarding facts dependent on clairvoyant consciousness can be answered by seeing whether they are verified by life itself.

A personality whose tragic fate is known to all can serve as an example—Frederick Nietzsche. When the final disaster had for sometime been approaching, and Nietzsche had already experienced sudden attacks of insanity, his friend Overbeck (formerly Professor in Basle who died a few years ago) fetched him from Turin and took him to Basle in very difficult circumstances. Now Bernoulli's interesting book relates the following. I shall skip the isolated episodes of the journey from Turin to Basle and just look at what struck Overbeck after returning with Nietzsche to Basle. Nietzsche had no special interest in what took place around him, nor in anything relating to the sphere of normal consciousness. He scarcely noticed it, nor did he apply any effort of will towards anything that happened. He made no difficulty over allowing himself to be taken to a nursing home where he met an old acquaintance who happened to be the director. When Nietzsche, who had lost all interest for the outside world, heard the man's name, something surged up and, to the great surprise of his friend Overbeck, he immediately went on with the conversation he had held with this doctor many years earlier! He took up the matter exactly where it had been left seven years before—so accurately did memory function; whereas the instruments for the outer perception—the brain, the reason and the normal consciousness—had all been destroyed, thus rendering him indifferent and inattentive to what he would have perceived had his consciousness been normal. This palpably shows how that to which we must now concede a certain independence, continues its function in spite of a damaged organism. But we will go further. An experiment so clearly shown by Nature herself lets us see how matters stand when we make comprehensive use of our powers of observation. When Nietzsche was later taken to Jena, and visited there by Overbeck and others, it was evident there too that they could speak only things he had experienced in the past, and nothing that played any part in his immediate surroundings which could only have been observed by the part of him dependent on the physical body. On the other hand, the independent activity of the etheric body, the vehicle of memory, was very much in evidence. And countless such examples could be cited. It is of course true that a completely materialistic thinker can say that certain parts of the brain had remained undamaged and happened to be those that carried the memory; but one who is of this opinion will find it does not hold good when he faces the actual fact and takes an unprejudiced view of everyday life. Thus over against the physical body there stands the etheric or life body, which spiritual science shows us to be also the vehicle of memory.

In considering man from another aspect, that of his inner life, we see how he is daily aware of waves surging up from unknown depths, of which he is not so conscious as of his thinking, feeling and willing. Among things that point to the way these lower regions affect our soul and our conscious life—for this soul extends beyond the ordinary consciousness—belongs something to which I have already alluded, something most important for people to understand—dream-life. Dreams surging up and down in chaotic forms apparently lack all law and order, yet follow a subtle inner pattern of their own, and, although beyond man's control, play their part in the soul's subconscious regions and come in contact with the upper regions. I never intend to make our arbitrary statements in these lectures, but only those statements which I borrowed as in natural science from life, experience, or based on the findings of spiritual science. In wider circles it is scarcely known that a science of dreams exists in the same way as one of physics and chemistry, but it has disclosed a great deal about what lies hidden in the depths of the soul life. We will begin by relating quite a simple dream, which will probably at first seem absurd but it characterises what tries to reach the soul's hidden depths.

A peasant woman once dreamed she was on her way to the church in the town. She dreamed quite clearly how she reached the town, entered the church and how the parson was standing in the pulpit preaching. She heard his sermon quite distinctly. She found the fervent and heartfelt way he preached most wonderful. She was especially impressed by the way the preacher spread out his hands. This indefinite gesture, which affects many folk more than a definite one, deeply impressed this woman. An extraordinary thing then happened. Both the figure and voice of the preacher were transformed, and, after several intermediate phrases had been passed through, nothing was left in the dream of the parson's fine words. His voice had become the crow of a cock and he had turned into a cock with wings! The woman wakes up, and a cock is crowing outside her window!

If we look into all this we find that this dream has a great deal to show us. First it points out that in elucidating a dream we cannot reckon with the ordinary idea of time. The same idea of time expressed when looking back on our waking life is no longer valid in regard to dreams. No doubt time seemed long to the dreamer as she dreamed of going to town step by step, entering the church, watching the preacher ascend the pulpit, listening to the sermon, and so on. In the physical world all this would have taken some time. Of course the cock did not crow for as long as this, yet it awakened her. Now what the crowing of the cock aroused in the woman's soul corresponds to the backward course of the dream pictures. She looks back on a world she believes herself to have experienced and it is filled with pictures borrowed from the daily life. But the occasion was outwardly caused by the crowing of the cock which lasted a very short time. So if we take an external view of the matter, the length of time necessary for the woman's inner experience would be quite brief in relation to what it seemed in the dream. Now when spiritual science informs us that from falling asleep to re-awakening man is absent from his physical and etheric bodies, and finds himself in his astral body and ego in a super-sensible world invisible to the outer eye, we must realise that the cock's crowing has jerked the woman out of this super-sensible life. It would be wrong for man to think he experiences less in the world he inhabits between sleeping and waking than he does in the physical world, only these experiences are of a purely soul nature. As the woman is roused the cock's crowing plays into her waking, and she looks back on her experience. Now we must not consider the pictures and all the illusions of the dream as what she really experienced in sleep. We must realise—otherwise we shall not grasp the true dream phenomena—that the woman cannot really see into the experiences she has had before waking. But when the moment for waking approaches, the impact of the sleeping on the waking life indicates she has experienced not what it really was: something which induces her to insert into sleep-life symbolic pictures borrowed from daily life. It is as if the woman merges what she sees everyday when awake into pictures concealing her real experience in sleep. For this reason the time sequence does not appear as it really runs; but these pictures drawn over her sleep life like a curtain seemed to take as long to unfold as if they had been physical perceptions. So we must say that dream pictures in many respects are a covering or veil rather than a disclosure of what a person experiences in sleep. It is important to note that the dream—through the pictures man places over his sleep life—is itself a reality but no true reflection, and merely points to the fact that something has been experienced in sleep.—Proof of this lies in these dreams being different according to what lives in the man's soul. Anyone who is tormented by a bad conscience or worried by some occurrence during the day will have quite different dreams from anyone who on reaching the spiritual world in his sleep can yield himself to the peace and blessedness through which life acquires meaning. The quality of the experience, not the experience itself, reveals it to be something happening in the hidden depths of the soul. The dream becomes a particularly good revealer when it appears in the following way. We shall now consider dreams of this sort; I have already referred to it in other connections. In the case of a certain man, this dream, evoked by an event in his youth, was periodically repeated.

Already as a school boy he had displayed a certain talent for drawing, for which reason when he was about to leave school his teacher set him the task of drawing something especially difficult. Whereas normally the boy could copy a number of drawings in a short time, owing to the detail and exactitude this one demanded he was unable to complete it during the year. So it happened that when the time for his leaving school was approaching much remained undone and he had only finished a comparatively small part of the work. One must realise that the student, knowing he would not finish, suffered a good deal of anxiety and fear. But the anxiety he felt at the time was nothing compared to what recurred at regular intervals after a number of years. After being free of the dream for several years the man would then dream he was a school boy again, was unable to finish his drawing, and re-experienced the same anxiety. This feeling would rise to a very high pitch, and once it had re-occurred it would be repeated throughout the week. It would then disappear for years, but would again return, be repeated for a week, then disappear again, and so on.

One understands such a dream only by considering the rest of the man's life. As a school boy, then, he had his gift for drawing and it developed in stages. Careful observation revealed that his ability always increased after the dream which announced improvement in his drawing. He was able to achieve more. So we can say that following the dream the man felt himself filled with a greater capacity for expressing himself in his drawing. This is an extraordinarily interesting thing which can play a part in man's world of reality. Now what light can spiritual science shed on such an experience? If we call to mind what was said in recent lectures, namely, that in man lives the super-sensible core of his being, which not only continuously organises his inner forces but shapes his physiognomy too, and note that this core is a super-sensible entity which is man's basis, we must say: This central core works all his life on man's organism enabling him to keep developing new faculties connected with his outer accomplishments. This central core worked on the physical organism in such a way as to keep increasing the man's grasp of form, giving him the faculties needed to look at things as a draughtsman and to express what he saw in forms. The central core of man's being works into his body. Now as long as its activity streams into the body it will be unable to rise into consciousness. The forces all flow into the transformation of the body and then appear as faculties—in this case a faculty for drawing. Only when a certain stage has been reached and the man is ripe to carry this transformation into his consciousness, enabling him to exercise his newly-won faculties, the moment this central core rises to consciousness, he is able to know what is happening and functioning in the hidden depths of his soul. But in this instance we have a transition. While the man remains unaware that the central core is working on his faculty for drawing, no progress being visible, everything remains hidden in the depths of his soul. But when the time is ripe for this central core to rise into consciousness, this is asserted through a particular dream. It is clothed in this form to announce that the inner core has reached a certain termination with the faculties in question. The dream proves each time that something has been achieved. Until the dream appears the soul forces have been working down in the hidden depths of the body so as gradually to produce the faculties in a crystallised form. But this stage having been reached, and the body being now ready for the faculty, a transition takes place. It does not enter the consciousness at first but streams into the semi-consciousness of the dream. By means of the dream the hidden part of the soul life breaks through to the level of consciousness. So this faculty is always enhanced after being symbolically expressed in the dream.

Thus we see how this central core of man's being works in both physical and super-sensible organisations. Then when man has raised it to a certain level of consciousness, its task is completed, and after expressing itself in a dream its activity is transformed into forces evident in conscious life. What lies below, thus corresponds with what plays its part above in the consciousness, so we see why so much cannot find its way there, being still needed first to form the organs which will produce the faculties destined for conscious use. Thus we see how all life is open to observation and how the central core of man's being works upon his organism. When in childhood man gradually develops from within outwards, this same inner core that later goes on working in him functions prior to the advent of ego-consciousness up to the point of time to which the first memory can be traced. The whole being of mankind is involved in continuous self-transformation. Man is sometimes ignorant of what his soul experiences yet this works creatively in him; at other times this creative activity is discontinued and then it rises into consciousness. In this way our higher spheres of consciousness are related to what lies in the sub-consciousness, in the hidden depths of the soul. These hidden depths often speak quite a different language and contain much greater wisdom than the fully conscious man is aware of. That human consciousness cannot be regarded as the equivalent of what we call the intelligence of things, which seems to reflect human consciousness, can be inferred from the fact that rational activity, the ruling of reason, meets us also where we cannot admit that the light of reason is working in the same way as in man. In this respect if we compare man with the animals we find that man's superiority does not consist in his rational actions but in the light his sub-consciousness sheds upon them. In the case of beavers and their constructions, and wasps too, we see that intelligence governs the animals performances. In this way we can survey the whole range of animal activity. We see that here there rules fundamentally the same intelligence man employs when his consciousness illumines some part of the rational activity of the world. Man can never consciously shed light on more than part of this world activity, but a far wider active intelligence streams through our subconscious soul-life. There, not only does intelligence bring about unconscious conclusions and concepts—as a naturalist like Helmholtz points out—but without man's participation, intelligence produces many things artistic and wise.

I may now refer to a subject already mentioned which I should like to call “The Philosopher and the Human Soul”. I am thinking especially of those 19th-century philosophers inclined towards pessimism. The philosopher deals particularly with reason, the conscious activity of the intelligence, and only admits what this activity can investigate. If we take philosophers like Schopenhauer, Mainländer and Eduard von Hartmann, we find them starting from the idea that when man views the world with an open mind, as far as he can judge everything points to the conclusion that evil and suffering far outweigh joy and happiness. Eduard von Hartmann has more over produced in interesting estimate by which he most ingeniously showed how suffering and sorrow predominate. First he put together all man is bound to experience in this way of suffering and sorrow and subtracted this from the sum of joy and happiness. According to his reckoning, suffering and sorrow predominate; the philosopher deduces this by a process of reasoning and so of course has some justification, for if sorrow and suffering predominate life must be viewed with pessimism. Reason is responsible for the philosopher's example based on calculation, and comes to the conclusion that, from the standpoint of conscious life, the world appears to be anything but good.

In my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity I have pointed out that this calculation based on reasoning, this subtraction, is really not applicable. For who performs the operation, even when it is carried out by an ordinary man who is no philosopher? It is performed by the conscious soul-life. But astonishingly enough consciousness makes no distinction between the values of life. For life again shows us that even if man produces such an example, based on calculation, it does not lead him to conclude life is worthless. From this we must realise (I have already said that Eduard von Hartmann's calculation is clever and correct) that if man makes this calculation he can draw no conclusion from it in his conscious life. Robert Hamerling has declared in his “Atomistik des Willens” that there must be an error in this calculation, for every living being including man even when sorrows prevail still desires life and does not want it to come to an end. So in spite of this subtraction man does not conclude life to be worthless. Now in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity I have indicated that this example is inapplicable, because in the depths of his soul man calculates quite differently. Only consciousness subtracts, the subconscious part of the soul divides. It divides the amount of happiness by that of sorrow. You all know that in subtraction if the amount of sorrow equals 8 and that of joy 8, too, the result is nought. If one divides instead of subtracting, the sum would read: eight divided by eight equals one; so one always obtains one as a result instead of nought. However high the denominator, provided it is not infinite, it still results in desire for existence. This division is made in man's hidden depths of soul with the result that he consciously feels the value and joy of life. In the same context I indicated that this peculiar phenomenon in man's soul life, namely, that, provided his nature is sound, he still has pleasure and joy in existence and appetite for the world, even when faced by overwhelming sorrow—that this phenomenon is comprehensible only because in the depths of his soul man carries out what in arithmetic we may call a division sum.

So we see that in its depths the soul life reveals how man's subconscious is ruled by reason. Just as the beaver building his lodge, or the wasp, displays an intelligence that by no means reaches the animal's consciousness and for which it cannot consciously account, so intelligence rules the depths of man's soul. Like the force in the sea which drives the waves upwards, this intelligence rises into the consciousness that covers a far smaller part of life than is included in the wide horizon of the soul life. We now begin to understand how man has to look upon himself as swimming on the ocean of the life of soul and consciousness, and how consciousness actually illumines his soul life only in part—the part that with his upper consciousness is swimming on the subconscious. In daily life too we see how man's attention is continually drawn to what governs these lower regions, and how differently life deals with outer events in the case of different people. Things of which we know nothing may hold sway in the depths of our soul. We may have experienced them in a far distant past, and are perhaps outwardly no longer conscious of them, but they still work on. To spiritual investigator they appear implanted and functioning in the centre of man's being, even if their activity does not follow a conscious pattern. Thus the following may occur. An experience that has made a deep impression in childhood may remain present in later years in the depths of someone's soul. We know that children are particularly susceptible to injustice. A child is often extremely open to perceive such a thing. Let us say that, in his seventh or eighth year, a child who has done something or other has experienced injustice either at the hands of his parents or anyone else in his environment. In later years the conscious soul-life covered it. It may have been forgotten in so far as consciousness is concerned, but it is not inactive in deeper unconscious regions. Let us say such a child grows up and in his sixteenth or seventeenth year at school again suffers injustice. Another child who has been spared this earlier experience may grow up and be exposed to the same kind of thing. He goes home, cries, protests, and perhaps complains of the teacher, but there are no further consequences. The matter blows over as if it had never happened and sinks into subconscious regions. But the same thing may happen to the other child who grows up having experienced injustice in his seventh or eight year, no longer consciously remembering it, but this time the matter does not pass unnoticed—and may result in a suicide. The explanation is that, whereas the same thing may have affected the consciousness of both children, in the one something came to light that flashed up from hidden depths.

In countless cases we can see how our subconscious soul-life plays into our consciousness. Take the following which we meet with time and again, but which unfortunately are not properly observed. There are people who during their whole later life display a characteristic one could describe as a yearning. It surges up, and if no one asks what they longer for, they reply that the worst of it is they do not know. Everything one offers them by way of comfort they cannot accept; the yearning remains. Adopting the methods of spiritual science, if one looks back into such a man's earlier life, one will remark that this yearning is due to former quite special experiences. One will then find—anyone who observes in this way can convince himself of it—that in early youth these people's attention and interest were constantly turned towards some definite thing not really belonging to the essential part of their being. They were led into a sphere of activity for which their soul had no longing. Hence the soul was denied what it really desired. Attention was focused in quite another direction. So later the following is seen. As the man's former urge had remained unsatisfied, his various successive experiences have grown into something working as a passion or instinct, manifest as the yearning or indefinite hankering for what earlier could have been satisfied. This is no longer possible because in the course of life attention was first focused on matters to which the soul was not drawn. For this reason these concepts have become so fixed that the man in question no longer understands what earlier would have suited him. Formerly no understanding was shown him where what was ruling and weaving in the soul's depths was concerned. He has now become disaccustomed to it, can no longer grasp it, and what is left is not what was meant for him.

So we see how parallel with man's stream of consciousness there runs an unconscious stream, and it appears every day into thousands of instances. But other phenomena show us how the conscious soul-life plunges into subconscious regions, and how man may make contact with these subconscious depths. Here we come to the point where spiritual science indicates how the soul sheds its light into the etheric body when man descends into his own inner depths. But what does he finds there? He finds what carries him beyond the restricted confines of humanity, and unites him with the whole cosmos. For we are related to the cosmos in both our physical and etheric bodies. When our soul life streams into our etheric body we can live ourselves into the wide spaces of the world, and man then receives the first intimation of something no longer belonging to him but to the cosmos. We then reach the life of human imagination. When man descends still further and inwardly expands over what covers the normal conditions of time and space, he senses how his physical and etheric bodies depend on the cosmos and belong to it. So what is outside man illumines his consciousness when he delves into the hidden depths of his soul. Having seen how the soul's hidden life can flash into human consciousness, we must on the other hand realise that we make our descent in full consciousness. We obtained the same result when we start our descent through Imagination, that is, not fantasy but true Imagination as understood by Goethe. On plunging still deeper we come to what we call clairvoyant forces. There are not limited to man's concerns in time and space, but enable us to attain the wide spaces of the cosmos, normally invisible.

In so far as we penetrate beyond Imagination we come to the sphere of the hidden things of existence. The gateway lies deep in our own soul and only after going through it do we find the spiritual and super-sensible depths of existence which, imperceptible to normal consciousness, form the basis of perceptible things. Through imagination—provided that it does not give way to fancy but that man lives with things so that a comprehensive picture replaces his perception—he realises how he forms part of the things. He knows that Imagination will not disclose the essential being, but Imagination is the pathway leading to what lies deeper than anything reason and ordinary science can grasp. Because of this a philosopher, Frohschammer, in a one-sided way calls the world's basis its creative element, “the creative imagination in things”. So according to this philosophical statement, when from his normal consciousness man plunges into subconscious regions—and who will deny that imagination belongs there—he will become more closely related to the essence of things where imagination is more creative in the things than reason can render possible. In spite of the fact that this outlook is extremely one-sided, it is yet in closer agreement with what the world conceals, than a purely intellectual point of view—when man passes from his intellectual activity into the world of imagination—world of a thousand possibilities compared to the hundred his intellect offers—he feels himself leaving his every day world and entering the manifold possibilities provided by the subconscious. In comparison all surface experience seems merely a small extract. Or may it not be that life itself offers millions of possibilities, whereas barely a thousand are realised on the surface of existence, and these we perceive? One need look only at the spawn produced by fish in the sea, the countless seeds brought forth in life, and compare this with what later appears in life—with what becomes reality. This shows how in its depths life holds far greater riches than appear on the surface. The same thing applies when man descends from what his reason can grasp to the realm of Imagination. Just as when we descend from the realm of outer realities to that of manifold possibilities, do we plunge from the world of reason into the magic land of Imagination.

But it is one-sided to think world creative forces run parallel with Imagination, because although it enables man to make his descent he does not go so far as to rise from these depths to the reality of the super-sensible world. This is possible only after evolving the clairvoyant powers found when he descends—consciously of course—from the surface of the soul-life into its hidden depths. Here we reach those forces that flash up merely unconsciously. If a man has this aim he must fashion his soul into an instrument of spiritual perception, in the same way as the chemist and physicist set up their instruments to observe outer objects. The soul must become an instrument which it is not in everyday life. Here indeed Goethe's words ring true:

“Geheimnisvoll am lichten Tag
Lässt sich Natur des Schleiers nicht berauben;
Und was sie deinem Geist nicht offenbaren mag,
Das zwingst du ihr nicht ab mit Hebeln und mit Schrauben”

“Nature will ne'er by day unfold
From out her veils for you her secret stores;
What from your spirit she would fain withhold
You cannot force from her with any tool of yours.”

Instruments and experiments, those “tools”, will never enable one to reach the spirit, for they are based on what is external. But when consciousness illumines what lives in the depths veiled in darkness, one may then enter those spheres where the soul lives as an eternal, infinite being among creative beings who are infinite as the soul. Only by means of its own intimate experience can the soul be forged into such an instrument. It has been fully pointed out in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds how through meditation and concentration one can acquire what is needed to carry the conscious soul to the hidden depths. When we firmly resolve to exclude all sense impressions, to repress all remembrance of anxieties, sorrows, excitements and so on, including all other feelings, we are left with our emptied soul and all external memories are extinguished as in sleep. But in sleep the forces prevailing in the hidden depths are too weak to reach consciousness or, rather, the soul lacks the strength to plunge consciously into these regions. Man only succeeds in this by focusing his will on his subconscious life, for instance, devoting himself to a definite thought or chain of thoughts, thus performing the work normally done subconsciously. The will must govern the whole proceeding. The will must decide the thought, and only what the man's will sets in motion counts. In meditation man places before him a thought-content his will has selected. He takes a first step when for a given time he allows himself to think, contemplate and remember only what he has placed in his consciousness, keeping his spiritual eye focused, and concentrating his normally disbursed soul-forces. He must make of his will a focal point and not allow the thought to work suggestively. In other words, he must not be controlled by the thought but must always be able to extinguish it at the will. He must train his soul to the point where he brings thoughts to his consciousness through the will alone holding them as long as he likes, thereby inwardly strengthening his will. The thoughts belonging to the outer world are less effective than those we define as symbolic, or allegorical. For instance, if a man brings the thought “light” or “wisdom” into his consciousness, he will certainly reach a high point but will still not get very far. It will be different if he tells himself that wisdom is presented in the symbol of light, or love in that of warmth. In other words, he must choose symbols that have their life in the soul itself. In brief, he must dispense with thoughts borrowed from the outer world, bearing in mind, and devoting himself to, those that allow of many interpretations and are shaped by himself. Of course a materialist can say that such a person is in fact a visionary, as these thoughts mean nothing. But it is unnecessary for them to have any meaning. They serve only as training for the soul, enabling it to plunge into these depths. When man so strictly masters his soul that external influences, or those arising from the depths, no longer prevail, when his will controls every conscious thought, enabling strengthened in the forces to play their part, he then lives in true meditation, true concentration. By means of such exercises the soul undergoes a change. He who reaches this point will observe that his soul descends to other regions. If we described the experience open to one who thus meditates, we see at once in what the super-sensible core consists. The following experience is possible.

Man may come to a point where he perceives that the thoughts he develops are affecting him and transforming something within him. He no longer knows the soul only in thought, but perceives that part of it which drives to expand into cosmic space. It works upon him from cosmic space formatively; he feels himself to be growing into one with space, but always under fully conscious control. Now something of very great importance must be added that must never be neglected when investigating the reality of the outer super-sensible world. Man realises he is experiencing something, but he is unable to think of it in the way he ordinarily thinks. He cannot grasp these experiences with clear cut thoughts. They are manifold and allow of numerous interpretations, but he is unable to bring them into his consciousness. It is as if he were to come up against an obstacle when he attempts to bring all these into his usual consciousness. He must realise that a more extensive consciousness is behind him, but he senses resistance and feels powerless to use the ordinary instrument of his body. One then recognises the difference between what lives within us, and that of which we are conscious. We learn that our forces work into the etheric body, but that our physical body lies like a log outside. This is the first experience. And the second experience, following the exercises repeated time after time, is that the physical body begins to yield, so that the things we could not interpret at first and experienced only in the deeper regions of the soul can now be translated into ordinary ideas.

Everything spiritual science tells us regarding the spiritual worlds is clothed in concepts belonging to everyday life. But in this case the knowledge has not been acquired by logical processes nor by external judgments, but through super-sensible experience and the light shed by consciousness on the hidden depths of the soul. These things are brought into consciousness only after being supersensibly experienced, and he who has fashioned his soul into an instrument of super-sensible perception has now roused what reaches his physical and etheric forces, transforming his organism, thus enabling these facts to be imparted to the outer world and explained in ordinary terms. Spiritual science is imparted logically. When we clearly grasp what lies in our subconscious we can say: the spiritual investigator beholds what he referred to when he said that a repeated dream showed how the essential core first works inwardly, and how later, when the talent for drawing appeared, the man consciously experienced the result. So we first see this working on the subconscious, followed by a transformation; then what has worked in the depths rises into consciousness. In this conscious descent into the subconscious man starts by consciously living in meditation and concentration, after which the will forces he has applied to this transform the etheric and physical body. We ourselves then carry our super-sensible experience into our everyday consciousness. Thus it is possible by spiritual training to gain direct perception of what we observe in life provided we descend to the hidden depths of the soul.

What I have mentioned here as the result of this method of training, the only one suited to present-day man if he wishes to train himself for clairvoyant vision, makes its appearance in a natural way into man who has a tendency to work out of the centre of his soul. Through this natural tendency man can carry certain forces down into the hidden depths of his soul; then there arises in him a natural kind of clairvoyance. Clairvoyance of this kind can lead to what has been indicated just as well as the fully conscious clairvoyance described. When man thus penetrates down into the depths of his soul and perceives how what he has accomplished in his etheric body through meditation and concentration works on his bodily organisation, he no longer remains in the same spatial and temporal conditions as when he is within his purely external perception; he presses, rather, through space, time, and what is usually in the sense world, and comes to the spiritual things lying at the basis of the things of the senses. When we see a man with trained clairvoyant consciousness penetrating to the nature of things, it is possible for this to happen in certain conditions through a natural tendency. In the lecture on The Meaning of Prophecy, (see November 9, 1911 – Berlin) Nostradamus was shown to be a case where natural tendency resulted in clairvoyant powers. How this plays into life, how it generally works, what extended consciousness is and what means the working of soul forces which lie beyond the usual boundary of the conscious life of the soul—all this may be found in a book I should like to mention here. It gives a wonderful description of how the working of the hidden forces of the soul and spirit appear to ordinary science, and also of the connection of the spiritual forces acquired without particular training with what is given in my book about the relation of man to the higher worlds. The book referred to is written by Ludwig Deinhard and called “Das Mysterium des Menschen im Licht der Psychischen Forschung”. In it you find the two methods of super-sensible investigation described—the one which keeps to the methods of ordinary science as well as that which is in keeping with entrance into super-sensible worlds through actual schooling, that is, through meditation, concentration, and so on. But whoever wishes to penetrate more precisely into the soul's experience should turn to the description in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds.

Thus the soul manifests the same remarkable turbulence of underlying force that we experience in earthquakes. On the other hand spiritual science is called upon to point out that man can descend to these hidden depths of existence: an experiment of course only his own soul can make. But only by traveling through these regions and first grasping our own being shall we penetrate the depths where we find the spiritual external foundations of what belongs to the outer world. Spiritual science leads us through the inner depths of the soul to the hidden depths of the cosmos. This is the essential part of the methods of spiritual science. When we view things in this way, Goethe's words are confirmed in a quite special sense—words he spoke after Haller had written in such a mistaken way of nature. When Haller said:

“To Nature's hidden core no living soul can probe;
Happy the one to whom she does not show her shell!”,

Goethe, as one approaching the threshold of clairvoyance, was aware of the relation between human consciousness and the hidden depths of the cosmos. He knew it through his own experience, his life in the outer world, by his contact with nature; so to Haller's words which took account of knowledge of the outer world only, he replied;

“Ins Innre der Natur”—
O du Philister!—
“Dringt kein ershaffner Geist.”
Mich und Geschwister
Mögt ihr an selches Wort
Nur nicht erinnern;
Wir denken: Ort für Ort
Sind wir im Innern.
“Glückselig! Wem sie nur
Die äussre Schale weist!”
Das hör' ich sechzig Jahre wiederholen;
Ich fluche drauf, aber verstohlen
Sage mir tausend tausendmale:
Alles gibt sie reichlich und gern;
Natur hat weder Kern
Noch Schale,
Alles ist sie nit eniem Male;
Dich prüfe du nur allermeist,
Ob du Kern oder Schale seist.

“To nature's hidden core”—
O you philistine!—
“No living soul can probe.”
In voicing such a thought
You surely must forget
Me and my kin.
We think that everywhere
We are within.
“Happy the one to whom
She does but show her shell!”
I've heard this now for fully sixty years
Cursing in secret such ideas;
Again and yet again myself do tell:
Richly she gives of her rich store,
Nature has neither core
Nor has she shell,
For she is all in all and everything;
And at the most you can but find
Whether yourself you're core or rind.

We can truly say that the world contains much that is enigmatical and what enters mans consciousness is scarcely more than the outer shell of his life of soul. But if we adopt the right methods we see that man made break through the shell and reach the core of his being, and from these depths gain insight into cosmic life. Thus we can truly join with Goethe in saying:

“Müsset in Natur betrachten
Immer eins wie alles achten;
Nichts ist drinnen, nichts ist draussen:
Den was innen, das ist aussen ...”

“If you would on nature gaze
You must notice all her ways;
Nothing is without, within her,
What is outer, that is inner.”

Man must simply begin to discover what is hidden within! Since spiritual science has its own way of explaining these hidden depths, it must admit that when we contemplate the outer world we are faced by riddle upon riddle. These riddles may often cause a shudder when we find riddles in our own inner being and perceive how these inner forces work in our immediate experience, or when we stand anxiously facing what unknown things may be in store for us. The outside world presents man with a series of riddles. If we rightly compare our outer life with our inner life, we feel something of the activity of these inner soul forces which are excluded from the restricted range of our ordinary consciousness. But these forces surge into clear consciousness just as those of the earthquake thrust through the crust of the earth. When we see on the one hand, however, that we can entertain certain hope that man made descends to the depths of his being, there solving these manifold riddles, on the other hand, we can entertain the hope that the further promise of spiritual science may be fulfilled. This promise tells us that not only can the soul's riddles be solved, but that in passing the gateway of the spiritual world, further vistas of the great outside world unfold for man's soul, and its riddles, too, find solution. Man penetrates through the riddles and barriers of the soul if he has the courage to comprehend himself as a riddle and if he bestirs himself to raise his soul, as instrument of perception, to the hope and assurance that for his spirit the great riddles of the cosmos may be solved, thus bringing him satisfaction and a sense of security in life.

It is without question that among the teachings of spiritual science least acceptable to many of our contemporaries we may count that of repeated earth lives, and the echoing-on into a man's later earth-life of causes going back to a previous life of his on earth. This is what we call the law of spiritual causation or Karma. It is easy to understand that men of the present day are bound to adopt a suspicious and adverse attitude towards this knowledge; it follows from all the habits of thought in modern life and will doubtless last until a more general recognition is reached of the enlightening nature of these basic truths of spiritual science. But an unprejudiced observation of life, an unbiased outlook on the enigmas with which we meet daily, and which are only explicable on a basis of these truths, will increasingly lead to a change in the habits of thought, and thus to a recognition of the enlightening nature of these great truths.

To the phenomena we may include in this field quite certainly belong those usually comprised under such names as human fortune or misfortune, words with such manifold meanings. It is only necessary to utter these two words and immediately the sensitive judgment of man's heart will respond to the call to observe the boundaries set between his knowledge and the happenings in the outer world. This verdict sounds as clearly as any other in the soul, and leads to a fervent desire to know more of those inexplicable relationships which, though rejected again and again at a certain stage of enlightenment, must nevertheless be acknowledged by a really unprejudiced desire for Knowledge. To realize this, we need only call to mind how enigmatic good fortune or misfortune—especially the latter—may be in a man's life. This element of enigma can certainly not be solved by any theoretical answer; it clearly shows that something more than any theory, more than what may be called abstract science, is needed to answer it. Who can doubt that in man's soul there is a definite urge to be in a certain harmony with his environment, with the world? And what an amount of disharmony may be expressed when sometimes a man must say of himself, or his fellow-men of him, that throughout his life he is pursued by ill-luck! With such an admission is linked a “Why?” of deep significance for all we have to say about the value of human life, about the value too of the forces forming the foundation of human life. Robert Hamerling, yhe important but alas too little appreciated poet of the nineteenth century, has included in his Essays a short article on “Fortune”, beginning with a reminiscence that recurred to him again and again in connection with this problem. He had heard this story related in Venice—whether it was legendary or not is of no consequence. A daughter was born to a married couple. The mother died in child-birth. The same day the father heard that all his property had been lost at sea. The shock brought on a stroke, and he, too, died the day the child was born. Hence the infant met with the misfortune of becoming an orphan on the first day of her earthly existence. She was first of all adopted by a rich relation, who drew up a will bequeathing a large fortune to the child. She died, however, while the child was still young; and when the will was opened it was found to contain a technical error. The will was contested and the child lost the whole of the fortune intended for her. Thus she grew up in want and misery and later had to become a maid-servant. Then a nice, suitable young man whom the girl liked very much fell in love with her. However, after the friendship had lasted some time, and when the poor girl, who had been earning her living under most difficult conditions, was able to think that at last some good fortune was coming her way, it transpired that her lover was of the Jewish persuasion and for this reason the marriage could not take place. She reproached him most bitterly for having deceived her, but she could not give him up. Her life continued its extraordinary, alternating course. The youth was equally unwilling to give up the girl, and he promised that after the death of his father—who had not long to live—he would be baptized, when the marriage could be celebrated. He was in fact very soon called to his father's death-bed. Now, to add to the troubles of this unfortunate girl, she became very ill indeed. In the meantime, the father of her betrothed had died at a distance, and his son was baptized. When he came back to her, however, the girl had already died of the mental suffering she had endured in addition to her physical malady. He found only a lifeless bride. Now he was overcome by most bitter grief, and he felt that he could not do otherwise—he must see his beloved again although she was already buried. Eventually he was successful in having her body exhumed; and behold, she was lying in a position that clearly showed she had been buried alive and had turned in the grave when she woke.

Hamerling says he always remembered this story when talking or thinking of human misfortune, and of how it sometimes actually seemed as if a human being were pursued by misfortune from his birth, not only to his grave but as in this case beyond it. Of course, the story may be a legend, but that is of no consequence, for everyone of us will say: Whether the facts are true or not, they are possible, and might have happened even if they never actually did happen. But the story illustrates very clearly the disquieting question: How can we answer the “why” when considering the value of a life thus pursued by misfortune? This at any rate shows us that it might be quite impossible to speak of fortune or misfortune if a single human life only were taken into account. Ordinary habits of thought may at least be challenged to look beyond a single human life, when we have before us one that is so caught up in the intricacies of the world that no concept of the value of human life can fit in with what this life went through between birth and death. In such a case we seem compelled to look beyond the limits set by birth and death.

When, however, we look more closely at the words fortune or misfortune, we see at once that after all they can only be applied in a particular sphere, that apart from mankind there is much outside in the world that may indeed remind us of man's individual accordance or discordance with it, but that we shall hardly venture to speak of fortune or misfortune in connection with analogous occurrences outside mankind. Suppose that the crystal, which ought to develop regular forms according to definite laws, should be compelled, through the vicinity of other crystals, or through other forces of Nature at work near it, to develop one-sidedly and is prevented from forming its proper angles. There are actually very few crystals in Nature perfectly formed in accordance with their inner laws. Or, if we study the plants, we must say that in them, too, an inner law of development seems to be inborn. We cannot fail to see, however, that very many plants are unable to bring to perfection the whole force of the inner impulse of their development in the struggle against wind and weather and other conditions of their environment. And we can say the same of the animals. Indeed, we may go still further, we need only keep undeniable facts before our eyes—how many germs of living beings perish without reaching any real development, because under existing conditions it is impossible for them to become that for which they were organized. Think of the vast quantity of spawn in the sea alone, spawn that might become inhabitants of the sea, populating this or that ocean, and how few of them actually develop. True, we might say in a certain sense: We see quite clearly that the beings we come across in the different kingdoms of Nature have inner forces and laws of development; but these forces and laws are limited by their environment and the impossibility of bringing themselves into harmony with it. And indeed, we cannot deny that we have something similar when we speak of human fortune or misfortune. There we see that a man's power to live out his life cannot become a reality because of the many hindrances continually obstructing him. Or we may see that a man—like a crystal fortunate enough to develop its angles freely in every direction—may be so fortunate as to be able to say with the crystal: Nothing hinders me; external circumstances and the way of the world are so helpful to me that they set free what is purposed in the inmost core of my being.—And only in this case does a man usually say that he is fortunate; any other circumstances either leave him indifferent or impel him to speak directly of misfortune. But unless we are speaking merely symbolically, we cannot, without falling into a fantastic vein, speak of the ill-fortune of crystals, of plants, or even of the amount of spawn that perishes in the sea before it comes to life. We feel that to be justified in speaking of good or bad fortune, we must rise to the level of human life. And again, even in speaking of human life, we soon notice a limit beyond which we can no longer speak of fortune at all, in spite of the external forces by which man's life may be directly hindered, frustrated, destroyed. We feel that we cannot speak of “misfortune” when we see a great martyr who has something of importance to transmit to the world, condemned to death by hostile authorities. Are we justified in speaking of misfortune in the case of Giordano Bruno, for instance, who perished at the stake? We feel that here there is something in the man himself which makes it impossible to speak of ill-fortune, or if he is successful, of good fortune. So we see good or bad fortune definitely relegated to the human sphere—and within that to a still narrower one.

Now when it comes to man himself, to what he feels with regard to fortune or misfortune in his life, it would seem that when we try to grasp it conceptually, we very seldom succeed. For just think of the story of Diogenes (again this may be based upon a legend, but it may also have happened), when Alexander urged him to ask a favor of him—certainly a piece of good fortune. Diogenes demanded what very few men would have asked for—that Alexander should move out of his light. That then was what he regarded as lacking to his happiness at the moment. How would most men have interpreted their fortune at such a moment? But let us go further. Take the pleasure-seeking man, the man who throughout his life considers himself fortunate only when all the desires arising from his passions and instincts are satisfied—satisfied often by the most banal of pleasures. Is there anyone who would believe that what such a man calls good fortune could also be good fortune for the ascetic, for one who hopes for the perfecting of his being, and considers life worth living only when he is denying himself in every possible way, and even subjecting himself to pain and suffering that would not be inflicted upon him by ordinary fortune or misfortune? How different the conceptions of fortune and misfortune are in an ascetic and a sensualist! But we can go still further and show that any universally accepted conception of good fortune eludes us. We have only to think of how unhappy a man can be who, without reason, without any foundation of true reality, becomes fiercely jealous. Take a man who has no grounds for jealousy at all, but believes that he has every possible ground; he is unhappy in the deepest sense of the word, yet there is no occasion for it at all. The extent, the intensity, of the unhappiness depends not on any external reality but simply on the man's attitude to external reality—in this case, to a complete illusion.

That good luck as well as bad may be in the highest degree subjective, that at every turn it projects us, so to speak, from the outer world into the inner world, is shown by a charming story told by Jean Paul at the beginning of the first volume of his “Flegeljahre”. In this, a man who lived habitually in Central Germany pictures to himself how fortunate it would be for him to be a parson in Sweden. It is a most delightful passage where he imagines that he would sit in his parsonage and the day would come when by two o'clock in the afternoon it would be dark. Then people would go to church each carrying his own light, after which pictures of his childhood would rise before him—his brothers and sisters, each carrying a light. It is a charming description of his delight in the people going to church through the darkness each with his own lantern. Or he dreams himself into other situations, called up simply by the memory of certain natural scenes connected together in his mind; for instance, if he imagined himself in Italy he could almost see the orange trees, and so on. This would throw him into a mood of most wonderful happiness; but there was no reality in any of it, it was all only a dream.

Doubtless Jean Paul, with this dream of being a parson in Sweden, is pointing to a deep connection in questions of good or bad fortune by showing that the whole problem can be diverted from the outer world to man's inner being. Strangely enough, it would seem that since good or bad fortune may be entirely dependent upon the inner being of man, the idea of good fortune as a general idea disappears. Yet again, if we look at what a man generally calls good or bad fortune, we see that in countless cases he refers it, not to his inner being, but to something outside himself, We might even say: The characteristic quality of man's desire for good fortune is deeply rooted in his incessant urge not to be alone with his thoughts, his feelings, his whole inner being, but to be in harmony with all that works and weaves in his environment. In reality a man speaks of good fortune when he is unwilling that some result, some effect, should depend on himself alone; on the contrary, he attaches great importance to its depending, not on himself but on something else. We need only picture the luck of the gambler—here no doubt the small and the great have much in common. However paradoxical it may seem, we can quite well connect a gambler's luck with the satisfaction a man may have in acquiring an item of knowledge. For acquiring knowledge evokes in us the feeling that in our thinking, in our soul-life, we are in harmony with the world. We feel that what is without in picture-form is also within us in our apprehension of it; that we do not stand alone with the world staring us in the face like a riddle, but that the inner corresponds to the outer, that there is living contact between them, the outer mirrored in, and shining forth again from the inner. The satisfaction we have in acquiring knowledge is proof of this harmony. If we analyze the satisfaction of a successful gambler we can only say—even if he has no thought of whence his satisfaction arises—that it could not exist at all if he himself could bring about what happens without his cooperation. His satisfaction is based on the fact that something outside himself is involved, that the world has “taken him into consideration”, that it has contributed something for his benefit. This single shows that he does not stand outside the world, that he has definite contact, definite connection, with it. And the unhappiness a gambler feels when he loses is caused by the sensation of standing alone—bad luck gives him a feeling of being shut out from the world, as if the contact with it were broken.

In short, we see that it is by no means true that, by good or bad fortune, a man means only something that can be locked up within himself; on the contrary, when he speaks of good or bad fortune he means in the deepest sense what establishes contact between him and the world. Hence there is hardly anything about which the man of our enlightened age becomes so easily superstitious, so grotesquely superstitious, as about what is called luck, what he calls his expectation from certain forces or elements outside himself which come to his assistance. When this is in question, a man may become exceedingly superstitious. I once knew a very enlightened German poet. At the time of which I speak he was writing a play. This play would not be finished before the end of a certain month—he knew that beforehand. Yet he had a superstition that the drama could not be successful unless it were sent in to the manager of the theatre concerned before the first day of the next month; if it were later, according to his superstition it could have no success. One day, towards the end of the month, I happened to be walking in the street when I saw him bicycling in hot haste to the post office. Through my friendship with him I knew that his work was far from finished; so I waited for him to come out. “I have sent my play in to the theatre”, he said. “Is it finished then?” I asked; and he replied: “There is still some work to do on the last acts, but I have sent it in now because I believe it can only be successful if it goes in before the end of this month. I have written, though, that if the play is accepted, I should like it returned when I can finish it; but it had to be sent in at this time.”—Here we see how a man expects help from outside, how he expects that what is to happen will not be effected by him alone, by his efficiency or his own powers, but that the outer world will come to his aid, that it has some interest in him so that he does not stand alone by himself.

This only proves that when all is said the idea of fortune in general eludes us when we try to grasp it. It eludes us, too, when we look into any literature that has been written about it; for those who write about such things are usually men whose business it is to write. Now at the outset everyone knows that a man can, indeed, speak correctly only of something with which he has not merely a theoretical but a living relation. The philosophers or psychologists who write about fortune have a living relation to good or bad fortune only as they themselves have experienced it. Now there is one factor that weighs very heavily in the balance, namely, that cognition as such, as it meets us in the world of man outside, that knowledge when it is taken in a certain higher sense, signifies at the very outset a kind of good fortune. This will be admitted by everyone who has ever felt the inner delight that knowledge can give; and this is substantiated by the fact that the most eminent philosophers, from Aristotle down to our own times, have constantly characterized the possession of wisdom, of knowledge, as a piece of particularly good fortune. On the other hand, however, we must ask ourselves: What does such an answer to the question concerning fortune mean to one who works the whole week long with few exceptions in the darkness of the mines, or to one who is buried in a mine and perhaps remains alive for days together under the most horrible conditions? What has such a philosophical interpretation of fortune to do with what dwells in the soul of a man who has to perform some menial, perhaps repulsive, task in life? Life gives a strange answer to the question of fortune, and we have abundant experience to show that the philosophers' answers are often grotesquely remote, in this connection, from our experience in everyday life, provided we consider this life in its true character. Life, however, teaches us something else with regard to fortune. For life appears as a noteworthy contradiction to the commonly accepted conceptions of fortune. One case may serve as an example for many.

Let us suppose that a man with very high ideas, even with the gift of an exceptional imagination, should have to work in some humble position. He had perhaps to spend almost all his life as a common soldier. I am speaking of a case that is indeed no legend, but the life of an exceedingly remarkable man, Josef Emanuel Hilscher, who was born in Austria in 1804 and died in 1837. It was his fate to serve for the greater part of his life as a common soldier; in spite of his brilliant gifts he rose to nothing higher than quartermaster. This man left behind him a great number of poems, not only perfect in form but permeated by a deep life of soul. He left excellent translations into German of Byron's poems. He had a rich inner life. We can picture the complete contrast between what the day brought him in the way of fortune and his inner experiences. The poems are by no means steeped in pessimism; they are full of force and exuberance. They show us that this life—in spite of the many disappointments inherent in it—rose to a certain level of inner happiness. It is a pity that men so easily forget such phenomena. For when we set a figure of this kind before our eyes, we can see—because indeed things are only relatively different from one another—we can see that perhaps it is possible, even when the external life seems to be entirely forsaken by fortune, for a man to create happiness out of his inmost being.

Now anyone can inveigh against fortune, especially from the point of view of spiritual science—indeed, if he clings to misunderstood or primitive conceptions he may be fanatical in his protest against the idea of good fortune or equally fanatical in explaining life one-sidedly from the idea of reincarnation and karma. A man would be fanatical in his protest against fortune were he through misunderstanding the principles of spiritual science to say: All striving after good fortune and contentment is after all only egoism, and spiritual science makes every effort to lead men away from egoism. Even Aristotle considered it ridiculous to maintain that the virtuous man could in any way be content when he was experiencing unaccountable suffering. Good fortune need not be regarded merely as satisfied egoism, but even were this so in the first place it could still be of some value for the whole of mankind. For good fortune can also be regarded as bringing our soul-forces into a certain harmonious mood, thus allowing them to develop in every direction; whereas ill-fortune produces discordant moods in our soul-life, hindering us from making the most of our efficiency and powers. Thus, even if good luck is sought after in the first place only as a satisfaction of egoism, yet we can look upon it as the promoter of inward harmony in the soul-forces, and can hope that those whose soul-forces achieve inner harmony through good fortune may gradually overcome their egoism; whereas they would probably find it hard to do so were they constantly pursued by ill-fortune. On the other hand, it may be said: If a man strives after good fortune and receives it as the satisfaction of his egoism, he can—because his forces are harmonized—work for himself and for others in a beneficial way. So what may be called good fortune must not be assessed one-sidedly.—Again, many a man who thinks he has fathomed spiritual science when he has only perceived something of it from a distance falls into error by saying: Here is a fortunate man, and there one who is unfortunate; when I think of karma, of one life determining another, I can easily understand that an unfortunate man has prepared this bad fortune for himself in a former life, and that in a former life the fortunate man has prepared his own good fortune. Such an assertion has something insidious about it because to a certain extent it is correct. But karma—that is, the law of the determining of one earth-life by another—must not be accepted in the sense of a merely explanatory law; it must be regarded as something that penetrates our will, causing us to live in the sense of this law. And this law is only vindicated in life if it ennobles and enriches this life. As regards fortune, we have seen that a man's quest of happiness springs from a desire not to stand alone, but to be in some way related to the outer world so that it may take an interest in him. On the other hand, we have seen that good fortune may—in contradiction to external facts—be brought about solely by a man's conceptions, by what he experiences from external facts.

Where is there a solution of this apparent contradiction—depending, not on abstractions and theories but on reality itself?

We can find a solution if we turn our minds to what may be called the inmost core of man's being. In former lectures¹ we have shown how this works on the outer man, even shaping his body, and also establishing the man in the place he occupies in the world. If we follow up this conception of the inner core, and ask ourselves how it can be related to the man's good or bad fortune, we most easily find the answer if we consider that some stroke of good fortune may so affect a man that he is bound to say: I intended this, I willed it, I used my good sense, my wisdom, in such a way that it should come about, but now I see that the result far exceeds all that my wisdom planned, all that I determined or was able to see beforehand.—What man is there, in a responsible position in the world, who would not in countless cases say something of this kind—that he had indeed used his powers but that the success that had befallen him far out-weighed the powers exerted? If we comprehend the inner core of man not as what is there just for once but as something in the throes of a whole evolution, in the sense, that is, of spiritual science; if we comprehend it not simply as shaping one life but many, as something therefore that would shape the one life as it is in our immediate present, so that when this inner core of man's being goes through the gate of death and passes into a super-sensible world, returning when the time comes to be active in physical life in a fresh existence—what then can such a man, grasping his central being in this way, understanding himself within a world-conception of this kind—what attitude can he adopt towards a success that flows to him in the way we have pictured? Such a man can never say: This has been my good fortune and I am satisfied; with the powers I set in motion I expected something quite insignificant, but I am glad that my fortune has brought me something greater.—Such a man who seriously believes in karma and repeated earth-lives will never say that, but rather: The success is there but I have shown myself to be weak in face of such a success. I shall not be content with this success, I shall learn by it to enhance my powers; I shall sow seeds in the inmost core of my being which will lead it to higher and higher perfection. My unmerited success, my windfall, shows me where I am lacking; I must learn from it.—No other answer can be given by one to whom fortune has brought success, if he looks upon karma in the right way and believes in it. How will he deal with such a lucky chance? (The word chance is used here in the sense of something that comes upon one unexpectedly, it is not meant in the ordinary way). For him it will be considered not as an end but as a beginning—a beginning from which he will learn and which will cast its beams upon his future evolution.

Now, what is the opposite of the instance we have given? Let us place it clearly before us. Because a man who believes in repeated earth-lives and karma, or spiritual causation, receives a stroke of good fortune as a spur to his growing forces, he regards it as a beginning, as a cause of his further development. And the converse of this would be if, when we were struck by some misfortune, by some misadventure that might happen to us, we were to take it not simply as a blow, as the reverse of the success, but looking beyond the single earthly life, we were to see it as an end, as what comes last, as something the cause of which has to be sought in the past, just as the consequence when appearing as success has to seek its effects in the future—the future of our own evolution. We regard ill-fortune as an effect of our own evolution. How so?

This we can make clear by a comparison showing that we are not always good judges of what has occasioned the course of a life. Let us suppose someone has lived as an idler on his father's money up to his eighteenth year, enjoying from his own point of view a very happy life. Then when he is eighteen years old his father loses his property; and the son can no longer live in idleness but is obliged to train for a proper job. This will at first cause him all sorts of trouble and suffering. “Alas!” he will say, “a great misfortune has overtaken me.” It is a question, however, whether in this case he is the best judge of his destiny. If he learns something useful now, perhaps when he is fifty he will be able to say: Yes, at that time I looked upon it as a great misfortune that my father had lost his wealth; now I can only see it as a misfortune for my father and not for myself; for I might have remained a ne'er-do-well all my life had I not met with this misfortune. As it happens, however, I have become a useful member of society. I have grown into what I now am.

So let us ask ourselves: When was this man a correct judge of his destiny? In his eighteenth year when he met with misfortune, or at fifty when he looked back on this misfortune? Now suppose he thinks still further, and enquires concerning the cause of this misfortune. Then he might say: There was really no need for me to consider myself unfortunate at that time. Externally it seemed at first as if misfortune had befallen me because my father had lost his income. But suppose that from my earliest childhood I had been zealous in my desire for knowledge, suppose that I had already done great things without any external compulsion, so that the loss of my father's money would not have inconvenienced me, then the transition would have been quite a different matter, the misfortune would not have affected me. The cause of my misfortune appeared to lie outside myself, but in reality I can say that the deeper cause lay within me. For it was my nature that brought it upon me that my life at that time was unfortunate and beset with pain and suffering. I attracted the ill-fortune to myself.

When such a man says this, he has already begun to understand that in fact all that approaches us from outside is attracted from within, and that the attraction is caused through our own evolution. Every misfortune can be represented as the result of some imperfection in ourselves; it indicates that something within us is not as well developed as it should be. Here we have misfortune as opposed to success, misfortune regarded as an end, as an effect, of something occasioned by ourselves at an earlier stage of our evolution. Now if, instead of moaning over our ill-luck, and throwing the whole blame upon the outside world, we look at the core of our inner being and seriously believe in karma, that is, the causation working through one earth-life to another, then ill-luck becomes a challenge to regard life as a school in which we learn to make ourselves more and more perfect. If we look at the matter thus, karma and what we call the law of repeated earth- lives will become a force for all that makes life richer and increases its significance.

The question, however, may certainly arise: Can mere knowledge of the law of karma enhance life in a definite way, making it richer and more significant? Can it perhaps bring good fortune out of bad?—However strange it may seem to many people nowadays, I should like to make a remark that may be significant for a full comprehension of good fortune from the point of view of spiritual science. Let us recall Hamerling's legend of the girl pursued by ill-fortune up to her death, and even beyond the grave since she was buried alive. No doubt anyone not deeply permeated by the forces knowledge can give, will find this strange. But let us suppose that this unfortunate girl had been placed in an environment where the outlook of spiritual science was accepted, where this outlook would prompt the individual to say: In me there dwells a central core of spiritual being transcending birth and death, showing to the outer world the effects of past lives, and preparing the forces for subsequent earth-lives. It is conceivable that this knowledge might become strength of soul in the girl, intensifying belief in such an inner core. It may perhaps be said: As the force issuing from spirit and soul may be consciously felt working into the bodily nature, it might well have worked into the girl's state of health; and the strength of this belief might have sustained her until the man returned after his father's death. This may appear odd to many who are not aware of the power of knowledge based on true reality—knowledge not abstract and merely theoretical but working as a growing force in the soul.

We see, however, that as regards the question of good fortune this belief may offer no consolation to those who are definitely fixed for their whole life in work that can never satisfy them, those whose claims upon life are permanently rejected. Yet we see that firm faith in the central core of man's being, and the knowledge that this single human life is one among many, can certainly give awakening strength. All that in the outer world at first appeared to me as my ill-fortune, as the evil destiny of my life, becomes explicable to my spiritual understanding through my relation to the universal cosmos in which I am placed. No commonplace consolation can help us to overcome what in our own conception is a real misfortune. We can only be helped by the possibility of regarding a direct blow as a link in the chain of destiny. Then we see that to consider the single life by itself, is to look upon the semblance and not the reality. An example of this is the youth who idled away his time until his eighteenth year and then, when misfortune befell him and he was obliged to work, regarded it as sheer ill- luck and not as the occasion of his later happiness. Thus, if we look more deeply into the matter we see clearly that study of a life from one point of view alone can give only an apparent result, and that what strikes us as good or bad fortune appears merely in its semblance if we study it in a circumscribed way. It will only show us its true nature and meaning if we study it in its proper place in the man's whole life. Even so, if we look at this whole human life as exhausted within the boundaries of birth and death, a life that can find no satisfaction in ordinary human relations and the usual work will never seem comprehensible to us. To become comprehensible—comprehensible according to the reality we have often expressed in those terms to which, however, where real human destiny is concerned, only spiritual science can give life-this can become comprehensible only when we know that what we find intelligible no longer has power over us. And to him for whose central being good fortune is only an incentive to higher development, ill-fortune is also a challenge to further evolution. Thus the apparent contradiction is solved for us when, in observing life, we see the conception of good or bad fortune approaching us merely from the outside, converted into the conception of how we transform the experiences within ourselves and what we make of them. If we have learnt from the law of karma not only to derive satisfaction from success but to take it as an incentive to further development, we also arrive at regarding failure and misfortune in the same way. Everything undergoes change in the human soul, and what is a semblance of good or bad fortune becomes reality there. This, however, implies much that is immensely important. For instance, let us think of a man who rejects outright the idea of repeated earth-lives. Suppose, then, that he sees a man suffering from jealousy founded on an entirely imaginary picture created by himself; or another pursuing a visionary happiness; or on the other hand he may see someone who develops a definite inner reality merely out of his imagination, develops something most real for the inner life—that is, out of mere semblance, not out of the world of real facts. Thus he might say to himself—Would it not be the most incredible incongruity as regards the connection of man's inner nature with the outer world, if the matter ended with this one fact occurring in the one earth-life? There is no doubt that, when a man passes through the gate of death, any illusion of fortune or of jealousy which he has looked on as a reality will be wiped out. But what he has united with his soul as pleasure and pain, the effect which has arisen in the stirrings of his feelings, becomes a power living its own life in his soul and connected with his further evolution in the universe. Thus we see, by means of the transformation described, that man is actually called upon to develop a reality out of the semblance.

With this, however, we have also arrived at an explanation of what was said at the beginning. It becomes clear to us now why it is impossible for a man to connect his fortune with his ego, with his individuality. Yet, even if he cannot directly connect it with his ego as external happenings that approach him and raise his existence, he can, nevertheless, so transform it within himself, that what was originally external semblance becomes inner reality. Thereby man becomes the transformer of outward semblance into being, into reality. But when we look around upon the world about us, we see how the crystals, the plants and animals are hindered by external circumstances so that they cannot live out fully the inner laws of their growth; we see how countless seeds must perish without coming into true existence. What is it that fails to happen? Why can we not speak here of good or bad fortune as we have stated it?—The reason is that these are not examples of an outer becoming an inner, so that in fact an outer is mirrored in the inner and a semblance transformed into real being. It is only because man has this central core of being within him that he can free himself from the immediate external reality and experience a new reality. This reality experienced within him lifts his ordinary existence above external life so that he can say: On the one hand, I live in the line of heredity, since I bear within me what I have inherited from my parents, grandparents, and so on; but I also live in what is only a spiritual line of causation, and yet can give me something besides the fortune that may come to me from the outside world.—Through this alone it is clear that man is indeed a member of two worlds, an outer and an inner. You may call it dualism, but the very way that man transforms semblance into reality shows us that this dualism is itself merely semblance, since in man outer semblance is continually being transformed into inner reality. And life shows us, too, that what we experience in imagination when we call an actual fact false becomes reality within us.

Thus we see that what may be called good and bad fortune is closely associated with what is within man. But we see, too, how closely associated it is with the conception of spiritual science, that man stands in a succession of repeated earth-lives. If we look at the matter in this way we may say: Do we not then base our inner happiness on an outer semblance and reckon with this happiness as something permanent in our evolution? All external good fortune that falls to our share is characterized in what, according to legend, Solon said to Croesus: Call no man happy till you know his end.—All good fortune that comes to us from outside may change; good fortune may turn into bad. But what is there in the realm of fortune that can never be taken from us? What we make of the fortune that falls to us whether it comes from success or failure. Fundamentally the following true and excellent folk-saying can be applied to the whole of a man's relation to his fortune: Everyone is the smith of his own fortune.—Simple country people have coined many beautiful and extraordinarily apposite sayings about fortune, and from these we can see what profound philosophy there is in the simplest man's outlook. In this respect those who call themselves the most enlightened could learn very much from them. To be sure these truths are often presented to us in a very crude form. There is even a proverb that says: Against a certain human quality the Gods themselves contend in vain. There is, however, also a noteworthy proverb that connects this particular human quality—against which the Gods are said to contend in vain—with good fortune, saying: Fools have the most luck. We need not conclude from this that the Gods seek to reward such men with good fortune to make up for their stupidity. Nevertheless, this proverb shows us a distinct consciousness of the inner depths and of the necessity for deepening what we must call the interdependence in the world of man and fortune. For as long as our wisdom is applicable to external matters alone, it will help us very little; it can help us only when it is changed into something within ourselves, that is, when it again acquires the quality, originally possessed by primitive man, of building on the strong central core that transcends birth and death, the central core that is explicable only in the light of repeated earth-lives. Thus what a man experiences as the mere semblance of fortune in the outer world is distinguished from what we may call the true essence of fortune. This comes into being the moment a man can make something of the external facts of his life, can transform them and assimilate them with the evolving core of his being which goes on from life to life. And when a sick man—Herder—in the most severe physical pain says to his son: “Give me a sublime and beautiful thought, and I will refresh myself with it”, we see clearly that in an afflicted life Herder awaits the illumination of a beautiful thought as refreshment—that is, as a stroke of good fortune.

Hence it is easy to say that man with his inner being must be the smith of his own fortune. But let us fix our minds on the powerful influence of that world-conception of spiritual science that we have been able to touch upon to-day, where it is not merely theoretical knowledge but knowledge that stirs the core of our souls, since it is filled with what transcends good or bad fortune. If we grasp this world-outlook thus, it will furnish us with more sublime thoughts than almost any other, thoughts that make it possible for a man—even at the moment when he must succumb to misfortune—to say: “But this is only a part of the whole of life.”

This question of fortune has been raised to-day to show how everyday existence is ennobled and enriched by the real thoughts concerning life's totality which spiritual science can give us, thoughts that do not merely touch upon life as theories but that bring with them the forces of life. And this is the essential. We must not only have external grounds of consolation for one who is to learn to bear misfortune through the awakening of those inner forces, rather must we be able to give him the real inner forces that lead beyond the sphere of misfortune to a sphere to which—although life seems to contradict this—he actually belongs. This, however, can only be given by a science which shows that human life extends beyond birth and death, and yet is linked with the whole beneficent foundation of our world-order. If we can count upon this in a world-conception, then we may say that this conception fulfills the hopes of even the best of men; we may say that with such a conviction a man can look at life as one who though his ship is tossed to and fro by surging waves yet finds courage to rely on nothing in the outer world, but on his own inner strength and character. And perhaps the observations of to-day may serve to set before men an ideal that Goethe in a certain way sketched for us, but that we may interpret beyond Goethe's hopes as an ideal for every man. True, it does not stand as something to be immediately achieved in the single human life, but as an ideal for man's life as a totality—if a man, tossed to and fro in his life between good and bad fortune, feels like a sailor buffeted by stormy waves, who can rely on his own inner power. This must lead to a point of view which, with a slight adaptation of Goethe's words, we may describe thus:

Man stands with courage at the helm
By wind and waves the ship is driven—
The wind and waves do not affect him.
Controlling them he looks in the green depths
And trusts, no matter wrecked or safe in port,
The forces of his inner being.

• 1. The Hidden Depths of Soul Life. Berlin, 23rd November, 1911.

This is the 9th of 16 lectures given by Rudolf Steiner at Berlin, in Autumn of 1911 through the Spring of 1912. The title of the series of lectures is: Human History in the Light of Spiritual Investigation. It was published in German as: Menschengeschichte im Lichte der Geistesforschung.

If it was already somewhat difficult from the point of view of the ideas ruling at present to explain the origin of man spiritual-scientifically (what should have been done in the last lecture of this cycle) it will be today still less easy to speak about the origin of the animal world. For, if on the one hand the difficulty results from the fact that everything concerning the animal world is still much more remote for the human observation—at least seemingly—than everything concerning nature and essence of man, so on the other hand a quite special difficulty must arise because according to the present world conception, an influence of spiritual events, spiritual causes on the development and origin of animal existence will not at all be admitted. Instead, we find that in the course of the development of our mental life in the last periods the notion is formed quite specially that exactly the same causes, powers and realities partake in the development of animals' life as in the development of the lifeless, so-called inorganic nature, and we know that the greatest triumphs of natural science have been realized just in this sphere of the so-called pure natural development of living beings.

Now we must certainly say, on the one side the great longing aims at a pure natural development—as one usually says—that means such a development that only considers those powers which also rule in lifeless existence, and we see on the other side how a research moving in this direction thinks to hurry from triumph to triumph—nay, if we interpret it in the right sense, even does so. Nevertheless, on the other hand we can perceive how deeper thinkers who stand entirely on the basis of facts of natural science, and who are also fully acquainted with that which natural science has brought forward in recent times, are not in a position to share the opinion of those thinkers who want throughout to derive life from a mere union or a mere combination—although from a very complicated one—of those powers and events which are also present in lifeless nature. A great part of the thinkers of the present and the recent past did not take much trouble saying: up to a certain time probably the development of our earth has principally consisted in unfolding out of itself lifeless processes, and at a certain point of time some materials have joined in such a complicated way that the simplest living beings originated ... where after then the development progressed in such a way that out of these simpler living beings, in the struggle for life and in adaptation to the surrounding, so to speak, more and more complicated living beings have developed up to man. But in contradiction to this idea many philosophers of recent time have argued that it is impossible to think that at any time, that which can be called in the real sense an original procreation or an issuing forth of the living from the lifeless, could arise out of a mere union of lifeless matter.

To such thinkers mentioned above Gustav Theodor Fechner, a man of genius in many ways, belongs. Because really important progress in natural science in various regions is connected with this personality, we should truly not pass by so lightly the theories of such a thinker as it is generally done today. Gustav Theodor Fechner cannot understand that the living ever could have developed out of the lifeless. It is much more obvious to Fechner to imagine that the lifeless can go forth out of the living through processes of isolation, because we see indeed that the inner life process of the living beings excretes the materials which, after having served a certain time in the life process, pass over to the rest of nature and belong then, as it were, to lifeless, to inorganic processes. So Fechner can well imagine that our earth at its starting point has been a single whole living being. This huge living being “earth” has done its breathing—so to say—from the cosmos and has perhaps also taken its nutrition from the (space of the) universe. Out of the entirety of this huge, enormous organism, which has once been our earth, on the one hand, living beings have developed as through a special constriction of that which in the huge earth organism has been living organs only, which thus became independent. And on the other hand—so Fechner imagines—those substances which today belong to the lifeless nature processes were excreted in a similar way as today substances are excreted from an organism after having served the living processes for a certain time. Thus, on the lines of this thinker, not the living came forth from the lifeless, but the lifeless came forth from the living. In a similar way, perhaps in a still more fantastic one, the natural investigator Wilhelm Preyer forms his own imagination. He has proved his legitimacy, his qualification for speaking about natural science not only through his abundant physiological and biological research, but also through his publications about Darwinism. Preyer also pictured to himself that the earth, at its starting point, was a kind of living being; he was always disinclined to speak of something lifeless in an absolute sense. He says we have really no right to look upon a flame as a kind of life process on the lowest level, a life process which is simplified, and has descended from a higher level; just so such life processes as we observe today could have developed in ascending. What Preyer means is: when a flame is burning, then it seems as if something like a life process is displayed to us in the consuming of the matter, in the entire method and way in which the burning, as a fact, presents itself to us. And he therefore supposes that it may not be out of the question that the earth itself was a huge life process, a life process that took place, nevertheless, under quite other conditions than the life processes of today. And so we see the most curious imagination has issued from the head of an investigator of nature, which Preyer expresses as follows: The earth could have been at the starting point of its evolution a huge enormous organism, the breathing of which we have to look for in the glowing vapors of iron, the blood flow of which we have to imagine in the glowing liquid metals, and the nourishment of which must have been brought about through meteorites drawn from the universe. This is certainly a peculiar life process, but this natural investigator thinks he couldn't go in another way if he were to trace back, not the living from the lifeless, but the apparently lifeless from the original living. And that which appears to us today as our life, in various realms appeared to him only as a life shaped especially, whereas the life of a burning candle seemed to him as a life formed backwards, in a certain way, so that the latter may appear to us outwardly as lifeless.

If we must say that such developments in recent mental life can show us—so to speak—how notable thinkers standing firmly upon the grounds of natural science, not only with regard to their convictions but also their comprehension, do not refer to the earth at all as the glowing liquid lifeless gas ball of the Kant-Laplace, but look upon the earth at its origin as a huge living being, in order to be able to explain that what is living today, this fact can, in some respects, teach us that it is, indeed, not so easy to trace back the living to the lifeless. Yes, we even must say that just the (human?) spirits having struck out in a new direction who have obtained the greatest results of research in natural science recently, cannot teach us that natural-scientific thinking has traced back all living to the lifeless, and that in this regard, natural science would just contradict what Spiritual Science has to say: that all substances, and then in general, all life can be traced back to spiritual causes. It is indeed true that the great results of natural science performed by Darwin or Lamarck or other pioneer spirits exclude any regard of spiritual causes, fundamental for these phenomena.

I have already, several times, pointed out a notable passage in Darwin's publications, in which this great pioneer points out the way in which he succeeded in showing the metamorphosis of one form of life into another, and how, by this experience, it seemed to him quite well possible to trace back today's complicated living beings to earlier, perhaps less complicated living beings and thus explain the variety of today's life forms, perhaps by means of a few differentiated original life forms. But then Darwin says, in a very characteristic manner: (in this way) we succeeded in tracing today's various forms of life back to an original one and in explaining the life of today, in its multifariousness, through evolution. But Darwin is speaking of these original forms of life in such a way that he assumes that—as he says literally—“the Creator once has poured life into them.” Yes, we may say outright that this natural investigator, Darwin, working in the midst of the 19^th Century, was convinced he was authorized in his explanation of the metamorphosis of the species in living nature, by just simply assuming that he retraced back the development in nature to issue from the Creator. As we can know from Darwin's whole manner of thinking, he must have realized at once the insufficiency of his explanation if he were not permitted to assume the action of spiritual realities at any point in earth evolution. He felt himself firm and strong on the grounds he took a stand upon, just by saying that if we could assume there was life in its simplest forms created out of the spiritual, then we also could expect of this life of simplest forms full of such impulsion power, such impetus that it was able to transform itself to complicated and manifold forms.—And in a stronger sense, this can be applied to Jean Lamarck, who was the first to speak about the natural development of living beings to more and more complicated forms through adaptation to their surroundings. We see that Lamarck's idea is the following: We may assume a development from the outwardly unaccomplished to the outwardly more and more accomplished, because by so thinking we are not at all in contradiction to evolution as a whole being interwoven with, and inspired by, spiritual fundamental forces. How else could it be possible that there is a passage in one of Lamarck's fundamental works, which we can take quite literally, and which is just significant for the way and manner characteristic for earlier natural-scientific thinkers. Lamarck says in his “Philosophie Zoologique” (“Volksausgabe's Leipzig”, ed. Alfred Kroener, p. 21):

“As it had not been taken into consideration that the individuals of one specie must remain unchanged as long as the conditions mainly influencing their manner of life don't change, and as the ruling prejudices are in accordance with the assumption of this progressive generation of similar individuals, it is assumed that every specie is unchangeable and as old as nature, and that they are separately created by the sublime Originator of all things.”

Lamarck is conscious that he must break with the concept of the one and only creation of all species at their starting point, and that he must imagine the species, now around us, as having arisen through evolution. But then he continues as follows:

“Surely, everything exists only through the will of the sublime Originator of all things. But can we order His rules in the exercise of His will? Or could we decide the way and manner in which he has done this? Could not the Almighty Infinite create an order of matter (things?) unknown to us which lets all that we see and all that exists enter into it one after another? Whatsoever His Will may have been, the immeasurable magnitude of His Might is surely always the same, and in whatsoever manner He May have accomplished His Will, nothing can diminish His Magnitude.
“Thus honoring the dispensations of this infinite wisdom, I restrict myself to the limits of a simple observer of nature.”

Thus speaks he to whom one appeals today—quite rightly—when one speaks about the doctrine of evolution. But at the same time we see that this man has thereby pointed out to himself his program in the most distinct way. What is this program?

Lamarck argues that by ascertaining through observation all that is of service to the mere natural observer, the possibility results of imagining that organisms have gradually developed in a running(?) succession; however, we must also imagine that spiritual impulses were originally holding sway in the entirety of evolution, otherwise we have no firm basis at all. We recognize this by all means as the conviction of the pioneer Lamarck. And certainly in this case we must say: Thus this natural investigator has traced for himself his special program by restricting himself to the species of the outer world, and by not ascending farther to that which must be spiritually fundamental for the whole process of evolution. He consigns the spiritual to a world into which he is not inclined to penetrate, and which he presumes, from the outset, to be a region of total, unimpeded Will of the Creator—but he restricts himself to the presentation of what has emanated out of this Will of the Creator and what issues forth in the progress of evolution.

Now on the other hand we must again say, as matters stand today, that it can never result from the experiences or research of the natural-scientific observer, that at any time the living could have developed out of the lifeless on our earth, in the conditions which are available for today's external observation. The imagination that the living developed out of the lifeless is by no means a new one—it is, in truth, the older one. In this regard I have already emphasized that it was a great progress in natural science, if one goes back only about two centuries ago, when Francesco Redi spoke the sentence: “Living can only go forth from living.” It is interesting that throughout all the earlier centuries before Francesco Redi's time, it was assumed that not only simple, but also even very complicated, living beings could come forth out of mere lifeless matter. Not only was it assumed that out of the mud of the rivers, something lifeless for the outward consideration—lower animals such as rainworms, for instance—could develop without a living germ of the rainworm ancestor put into the mud, but it was also systematically assumed that animals up to the insects or still higher ones, could develop out of lifeless matter. It is interesting that we find in a work of St. Isidor, who died in 636, that it is quoted quite systematically that out of an ox corpse—that means something gone over already into the lifeless—that if it is beaten enough, a species of worms would develop which could become bees. Indeed, this man at the head of the erudition of his time not only indicated how bees could come out of an ox corpse, but he also tells us how in the same way hornets can develop out of horse corpses, drones out of mules and wasps out of donkey corpses. And as if this were not enough, it was alleged up to the 17^th Century how mice, eels, and frogs originate out of that which is already transformed into the lifeless. And the belief that life can originate out of the lifeless in the simplest way, this belief was so strong that Francesco Redi narrowly escaped from the fate of Giordano Bruno, because he was so bold as to proclaim that the living can only originate from the living; for the supposition that living beings can originate out of lifeless matter could only depend on inexact observation, because the living germs of the living beings must have been already in the river mud if living should originate.

Spiritual Science must add to the achievements of Francesco Redi the sentence that the spiritual can only originate from spiritual. And because the entirety of earth evolution finally culminates in the spiritual, as it presents itself in a simple way and on an inferior level in the animal world, on a higher level in normal man, and on the highest one in the human spirit itself, thus this spiritual likewise originating itself at last out of the seeming unspiritual, can only be traced back to an original spiritual. If Spiritual Science is compelled today to state this fact, as we have heard in the earlier lectures and also in the past years in these cycles of lectures, and if in order to confirm further entirely in every region the sentence: “the spiritual can only originate from spiritual” it says, all that appears to us as matter is only a transformed spiritual—then it (Spiritual Science) is today not doomed to the fate of Francesco Redi or Giordano Bruno (for other things are now in fashion and people are no longer burned), but suffer other fates. It has today, anticipating, advocating a truth which will familiarize itself with the cultural life as likewise the sentence “living can only originate from living” has done, and therefore man will consider Spiritual Science as a revere, as something which is by no means based on the fundamentals of a real, scientific knowledge.

Now, at first an outline of what Spiritual Science has to say from its point of view about the question of the origins of the animal world will be outlined. Then it will be shown how the comprehension of Spiritual Science about the origin of the animal world can be entirely reconciled with the acquisitions of natural-scientific knowledge of the present, for I have set myself the task in these lectures to harmonize what Spiritual Science produces out of itself with the acquisitions of natural science.

Spiritual Science as such cannot go back to that which Gustav Theodor Fechner or Preyer have assumed as the original earth organism. On the other hand, however, we must emphasize again and again that no explanation will succeed in making it logically plausible, if only to some extent, that the manifoldness of the living beings could have, in earth evolution, developed out of a mere nebular organization, as assumed by Kant-Laplace's theory; unless we had, so to speak, to take up the expedients of the most recent mental attitude, if we would reconcile the origin of the organic or animal world with this idea. Then we would arrive at the method of thinking of the Swedish investigator Svante Arrhenius, today indeed very much admired, but not less fantastic: that germs of living beings got planted into the earth, from the space of the universe, by “compression (gravitation) of radiation” just—let us say—at the right time, when the earth was in a state to receive such germs. Everyone will realize very easily that such an explanation is no explanation, for we have then to explain where and how these living beings originated, even if they are only flown as simple germs into the earth through compression (gravitation) of radiation.

Spiritual Science must go back to a form of the earth where the earth does not present itself to us as so occupied and populated by such living beings as we know today. In a certain regard, Spiritual Science shows us something similar to what Fechner and Preyer have pictured to themselves by mere intellectual conclusions (deductions); namely, that the earth at and since its beginning has been a living being, which contained in itself gas and vapor, not only in a lifeless manner, as the theory of Kant-Laplace assumes. This theory can be explained very easily to the simplest pupil by saying: Look here, by mere rotation something can split off from a drop of a liquid, if we let it rotate, and as a little drop is thrown off it rotates around the big drop—thus in this way we originate a world system on a small scale. But doing this, we forget that we ourselves have moved this drop by rotation and that, in case such an event should have indeed happened once on a large scale—namely, that the planets have split off by means of the rotation of a gas ball—then a giant professor or a giant teacher must have ruled in the cosmos, for if we exercise an experiment we must consider all conditions and not forget our own part. If it is already impossible to explain from what we know at present the splitting off of the planets, from a gas ball which at any time may have existed, it is far less possible to explain life in a planetarian life without something living, if only lifelessness existed beforehand.

Spiritual Science leads us back to an earth which, indeed at its starting point, was not only full of life, but also spiritualized, impregnated, by spirit, so that we have to trace back earth evolution to an originally spiritualized earth being. If we picture this spiritualized earth being to our senses, as it were, in an image, this being would present itself to us in its substance in such a way that we have, comparatively around us today like the last reminders of this original state of the earth, moving, but not formed, living matter in the most inferior organisms, which are really not quite exactly easy to define as plant beings or animal beings. These most inferior organisms could really be defined as flowing life, for they appear at first as a round drop which changes its matter, so to say, through no outward cause with regard to shape and situation—lengthens into tentacles or feet, creeping over the ground, but has in itself no distinct shape. If we picture to ourselves these inferior organisms, this original life substance, then we have before us, in the sense of Spiritual Science, the whole of the original earth matter, and within this earth matter nothing at all that we have today as lifeless matter. The whole earth matter is, so to say, a living but still unformed substance, and Spiritual Science must imagine, aside from this unshaped substance, that which we call the formative principle, the transcendental formative principle, as something purely spiritual at the starting point of earth evolution.

We can imagine today what the earth had been at the starting point of its evolution along the lines of Spiritual Science, by imagining, as we have often done in previous lectures, the sleeping human being. Then we picture to ourselves sleeping man—we have the physical body, lying in bed, and this physical body is permeated with that which in a spiritual-scientific way we no longer call a material bodily form: the etheric body—but outwardly, comparatively, in the sphere of this physical body we have that which is within this physical body during the waking day life: the living life of the soul, which we call the connection between the ego and the astral body of man. So we have before us in man who is awake, the inner mental essence, or essential part of the soul nature, permeating the external bodily nature; but in sleeping man we have the external-bodily secluded from the inmost soul life. The inner soul life is unconscious in sleeping man of today. It is, as it were, not permeated with a real inner content, at least not consciously. But for a real thinker it is impossible to imagine that the sleeping man really still has this in himself, or that what is living and acting in sleeping man also brings about the appearance of soul life itself during waking. What else can we imagine, when we proceed to really logical thinking? Today we can only sketch it in rough outlines—but anyone who thinks logically cannot as a result come to any other conclusion—we can imagine nothing else than that the man, who is awake, practices, expresses his soul activity through the organs of his body, so that the man who is awake needs his bodily organs in order to develop consciousness, and that the bodily organs must be formed in such a way that when enlivened from the soul principle, they can be the bearers or mediators of the life of consciousness. But a man can never imagine that, by means of inner, living, organic action, that which comes into our consciousness as inner soul processes while awake can be produced in sleep. We only have to make a simple comparison, entirely sufficient for this purpose, to discover this fact.

Instead of the brain let us place, as the soul organ mediating our waking conscious state, the lung which breathes and mediates the life processes. Then we must say the lung breathes only by means of oxygen flowing into it from outside. But the action of the lung does not consist only in receiving the oxygen flowing into it, for the organic action cannot have an influence on the supply of oxygen. We cannot experience anything about the nature and substance of oxygen from the manner in which we nourish and enliven our lung, and the lung cannot be supplied with oxygen from inside, either. But just as we have to imagine the inner life process as going over into the lung, so we also have to imagine the inner life process going over into the brain and other organs during sleeping life. In the evening our organs are exhausted, because soul activity wears out the organs, and they must be impregnated again with a pure life activity in order to again be able to be mediators of soul activity. But just as the mere inner life activity cannot supply the lung with oxygen, the activity of the inner life cannot supply sleeping man with that which we can call the instincts, desires, and passions (emotions) of man. The nature of the soul life is not a consequence or result of the mere bodily activity of man, just as the nature of oxygen, which only unites itself with the lung from outside, is not the result of mere life activity. No one can escape the quite cogent conclusion that just as soul activity must flow into the organs for knowledge of man from outside on the moment of waking, likewise the oxygen flows into the lungs from outside, just as the oxygen as such exists in the outer world and imparts itself to the lung, with the only difference being that the lung is supplied with oxygen not alternately but always, because the lung does not sleep. Consequently, there must be something which, combining with the human ego, flows into the bodily function in the morning, when man wakes, and then works in the human soul organs. Thus we must conclude that in the life during sleep the spiritual is separated and we must regard this spiritual essence, as it were, as something that wakens in the morning apart from our bodily organs, to act as soul organs.

Consequently we have, comparatively speaking, in sleeping man a living organism, and floating over him a self-dependent, spiritual one. We must picture to ourselves the following: While we are awake, the soul processes, going on in us—that means the spiritual soul life—can really only effectuate certain processes, doubtlessly parallel with the soul processes in the organism. They are effects of the soul processes and cause fatigue, as it were—processes of dissolution of matter, whereas during sleep the body annuls these processes of fatigue.

In a similar way Spiritual Science reveals that the earth, at its starting point, had really consisted of a duality, of something not quite like sleeping and waking man, but that could be compared with what has been, so to say, moving life substance, as the last remainder of the simplest organisms are still today, but that which, in no way, have been organisms transformed into animal or human forms, not even into vegetable, plant forms. And so, if we have to imagine in connection with man's body that which is man's soul content hovering over him in sleep, so we have to picture to ourselves the earth, at its beginning, hovering over what we can call the spirit of the earth, the common, united earth spirit. And within this earth spirit we have to seek that which later becomes form in earth evolution—in this earth spirit we also, above all, have to seek that which affects stimulation of the flowing material substance, so to say the sleeping earth, so that the entire life substance comes into movement in various ways. Thus we have to imagine the stimulating causes as, I might say, spiritual streams from the surrounding of the earth, working into flowing, living matter (substance). At first these causes created in the flowing substance only such forms that did not solidify, but after having formed themselves for the time being, adopted their formless shape again, as the storm whips the ocean and forms it in various wave structures. Formed life must be derived out of formless living. The formative principle itself is to be imagined as a super-sensible, spiritual principle that was connected with the original earth substance. If today we would imagine something similar to this way of working in regard to the earth at its starting point—this reciprocal effect between spirit and matter—so could we imagine a more narrow region, where what happened was similar to what happened at the starting point of earth evolution. (Natural science of the future will prove this). We can still show something that affects unformed life substance. All those processes bringing forth our own spiritual life in brain substance or in blood substance can be compared to the processes which took place, at the earth's beginning, between the spiritual, formative principle and the living substance fundamental to the evolution of earth.

Such a thing is not able to be proved along the lines of our thinking today—it is to be proved only by Spiritual Science, that by means already described, for the whole of earth evolution something is produced, similar to what is produced in the single life of man in memory. By the training of certain forces, here also mentioned, which are resting in the depths of the soul, human memory expands, and man's spiritual outlook—and these powers are the same—the development of which enables the spiritual investigator to look immediately into the spiritual earth being. Thus matter and material life can be penetrated entirely by the spiritual view, and material processes in their existence can display themselves in such a way that not only present conditions, but also previous ones out of which they have developed, can confront the spiritual eye as living memory. Just as man in the present carries in himself that which has formed in the life of his soul since his childhood and can therewith follow the line of remembrance, so also he follows his soul life into earlier conditions; he can thus trace it back, how it has been not only now, but decades ago. If the spiritual outlook does not adhere only to external matter, but penetrates the surface of things and into a spiritual basis, then something works within the spiritual that puts man into a kind of world memory, which is also called reading in the Akasha Chronicle (see Rudolf Steiner, From the Akasha Chronicle, Ed. Phil. Anthropos., Dornach). Man is placed into a world memory, and through this he looks back into earlier original conditions of the earth.

Proofs are therefore only to be given in such a spiritual way and manner and if these things are then so investigated we have the means at our disposal to confirm what is brought to light through spiritual investigators and which reveal that a full harmony exists between that which things present to us still today, and that which the spiritual investigator must proclaim. For this reason, in a popular lecture one can take no other direction but to reveal what presents itself to the spiritual investigator, and what flows out of immediate spiritual observation, while placed by this spiritual-scientific observation, as it were at the starting point of earth evolution. At the same time, however, we must emphasize that in such conditions which we have to recognize as spiritual, the spiritual is much nearer to material production than the spiritual is today to material production. Today the spiritual uses the counter position, the resistance of the material body, so that it forms the spiritual soul-like in man only to those pictures of the material which we can put before our eyes in our imaginations. We don't accomplish a densification stronger than these pictures.

But Spiritual Science is based on the following idea. (The following lectures will draw your attention yet on the origin of matter.) All material being has been originally a spiritual one; once the spiritual was, when it itself had been creating matter, in a more original state, full of will and force, than it is today in man's spirituality. Therefore we have to imagine that what hovered over the earth as spiritual formative principle was more closely connected in a certain way to the original life substance than the soul hovering over sleeping man is connected today to his physical body. Progressing further, we have to imagine that through the interference of the super-sensible formative principle on substance, all that which is today called lifeless nature is originated. We have really to imagine that through the action of the formative principle such matter, which then becomes lifeless, has isolated itself out of a moving and stirred substance. Once again Spiritual Science is, in this way, closely connected with the investigations of Fechner and Preyer. But such unliving matter is again seized in a certain way by the formative principle, now proceeding in this lifeless matter as a crystallizing principle, so that we have to imagine all minerals issuing, going forth, from an originally spiritual, living matter, becoming lifeless and then seized by the formative principle. Therefore, when we speak about crystals, we can speak today not yet about life, but only recognize a transcendental formative principle. In another way, the formative principle was in force in the matter which remained as a living one. If today we put aside plants, we must imagine that under the influence of those substances which separated gradually as lifeless ones from the living one (and which grouped themselves in various ways)—earth differentiated, grouped itself so that we designate firm earth, liquid water, air, and so on. Further we must imagine that during this time the formative principle worked upon the entire living and lifeless substance, and that thereby the living-formed matter is exposed to the external lifeless. And while previously it was throughout only living, in itself, it now had to permeate itself with lifeless matter, because in the course of earth development the principle of nutrition—the taking in of non-living matter into living matter, became important.

Thus we see the living, so to speak, taking up the nonliving, which it had previously separated from itself in a certain way. Thereby the living on earth comes more and more into those conditions which signify themselves through the lifeless as the elements—earth, water, air, etc. and the formative principle can act in the necessary way only by forming the living, so that the shapes (forms) are adapted to the external elements.

Now we must imagine life on earth in such a way that in the course of time, by means of the formative principle, the living and the lifeless are kept separated in various ways. We must imagine that materials which today are fallen from the heights and are connected with the firm body of the earth, were in a medium earth period still dissolved (diluted), were present in the earth atmosphere as mist. We can absolutely speak about such an earth's age in which such an air veil, as it is today, was non-existent—and we must speak about mists and gasses, which nowadays have been consolidated and united with the earth for a long time. We must imagine the entire distribution of water and air in a middle earth period, in an entirely different way. We must imagine that the formative principle—which we should think of as purely spiritual—by working living substance into the lifeless, formed, matter, had to take from that latter the conditions for breathing, etc. Thus the formative principle had to create in this way the most varied forms adapted to the old earth conditions, which now do not exist at all. However, Spiritual Science now shows that the development progressed in such a way that, in those times, only a part of the living substance, as it were, was really formed and that, when the unformed matter was seized upon immediately by the spiritual principle, a part of the old, moving unformed, living substance was held back. In older times, when the earth was surrounded in quite a different way by layers of matter, which today as it is fall down because of compression, or are present in the inside of the earth in liquid form and literally lead a liquid life—that the formative principle was working, as it were, by crystallizing, into the living, forms which in today's conditions cannot exist any longer. Let us look at such a state, in which our earth did not have at all the planetary shape that it has today. At this time quite obviously other, different forms of living beings must originate, living beings which were adapted to the old conditions, and which nowadays could no longer exist. Now that may easily be accounted for, explained by the fact that many of these life forms had to die out entirely when the earth changed its formation. We find (which is geologically demonstrable and shown by paleontology) that animals have lived which, we have to imagine, were only adjusted, let us say to water, only coming to its present form, but still permeated with quite different substances, and we find other animals, as the saurian species, etc. To be brief: we can meet manifold animal species (forms) which were adapted to the conditions then. Aside from these, other forms originated which were adjusted to the conditions, so to speak, in such a way that they really could no longer be shaped out of the unformed, moving matter by the original formative principle, but which were able to transform themselves through successive generations, and to themselves improve by means of heredity in such a way that they developed the later forms out of the older ones. The new ones were then adapted to the new earth conditions. While those forms which in olden times were so strongly penetrated by the formative principle that they could not be reshaped had to die out, those organizations which had remained more movable in themselves, in which the living was not yet fashioned so strongly, could remodel themselves and thus develop themselves further on in successive generations.

With regard to man, development shows itself as follows: In olden times we cannot see him in such forms which can be seen with outer external eyes, but we find him in matter of such a fine, unfashioned moving kind, that in times where animals were already present, he could have become everything. Man was the last to descend out of the unformed into shape, into form. Whereas the animals, which are today on earth, had already earlier taken up the formative principle so that they had to reshape their earlier figure in adapting to the transformation of the earth, man did not prevail himself to descend in solid form, during old conditions, but waited until earth had approximately the distribution of air and water as it now has. As late as then a condensation of the scarcely-shaped matter into the human figure took place for man. Because man entered out of the unformed and into shaped form so late, he appeared so that he is therefore adapted not only to certain specific earth conditions, but to the whole earth. Going back to the animals, however, we must imagine their origin in such a way that determined forms had adapted themselves to quite determined territories of the earth. These animals then got the form, which by no means is still similar to today's offspring, but which was adapted to conditions then. But because they were adapted only to territorial conditions which in certain regions changed quickly, they could develop only in determined limits. But at the time when earth was liable to quick changes, man had not entered into a form, but only later, when it was possible to put formation into his bodily nature over the whole surface of the earth in such a way that he, as man, was adapted to the earth as a whole. Thus man could populate earth as a being which is adapted least of all to external conditions, and most of all to internal motive powers. Man was, from the outset, thus adapted to the formative powers in such a manner that his inner being corresponded with the spiritual, that the formative powers could work immediately in the soul, making his outer physical form an upright one, making his hands as living tools for the spirit, and his larynx a living instrument for the spirit. But all this could only happen when earth had passed through certain principles of formation (Gestaltungsprinzipien). Thus man had to be adapted no longer immediately to external life, but to that which determined out of his inner being, what was his figure and presentation in life (Sich-Darleben)—so that with man, the formative principle determines his figure indirectly through the spiritual, while with the animal the formative principle had to work much more into the lifeless and inorganic. We can today still perceive in animals how they have connected their entire soul life more closely with their bodily nature, whereas man is able to develop a soul life which can lift itself up beyond the life of the body.

Let us look at the animal, how its soul life is plunged entirely into the bodily life, as it is formed, how the delight of digestion impregnates the body, how the soul life immediately penetrates the body and shows itself connected with its bodily functions. If we compare the way in which man's soul life lifts itself up beyond the bodily nature as something independent, we will see then that man is fashioned as he is because the animal world, adapted to other conditions of our earthly being, is fashioned out of the unformed earlier than man is. In man, such a soul being independent of the bodily life could become active only because man is able, within his being of soul, to keep the formative principle when he passes through the gate of death, and discards, to begin with, his bodily life. Because the formative principle has seized the animal's soul so much earlier that an intense connection with the bodily life was produced and because the animal thereby had to be entirely absorbed by its bodily life—for this reason that which is experienced in the single animal does not get detached (free) from the bodily life. With man, it gets free; it also keeps a formative principle, aside from the organic, physical substance; it can form a new bodily life again after the time between death and a new birth. Only because being seized immediately by the formative principle, can man's spiritual-soul being have that independence which enables him to go from life to life, which enables him to pass his being in repeated lives. On the other hand, we see that the intense connection with the form of being which had to be produced in animal between alternative principles and living matter, brought it about that the formative principle, when the animal dies, is exhausted in the organic, and that animal's soul falls back again into a general, animal soul-life and continues, not individually, but in a general, animal-like way, in a living on of the animal's group soul, not of a single animal soul.

Thus we see that we have to seek the origin of the animal (like) in the fact that that which penetrates into man later and permeates him in a later state, penetrates into the animal earlier. The animal is, as it were, left behind by the continuous principle of development; it is a backward being compared with man, who is an advanced being. We can easily imagine how this formation came to pass through a simple comparison, if we picture to ourselves a liquid in a glass, in which a substance is dissolved in such a manner that we cannot distinguish it from the liquid. If we let this solution stand, then a sediment deposits itself and the finer liquid remains. In this way we have then to imagine the whole progress of earth evolution as the duality of the spiritual forming principle and the living substance below. And in the spiritual principle the formative principle for man is contained likewise. But for man the formlessness in this living substance remains the longest. For the animal, the shaping happens earlier so that in a time when man has, as it were, preserved himself still above in an unformed, thinner, finer substance, the animal being below is already consolidated and lives on in such a way that below it can only get at more and more rigid forms, which change in the course of time. Over against this man, relating to the form, can be traced back only to that which is originally in a formless living, but into which the spirit works as a motive principle and brings it gradually to the present figure. Progressing further on, we also have to imagine the animal forms such that they are not produced from a single animal form; but while here and there certain animals formed themselves, others remained behind that formed themselves later; others again descended still later, etc. And then man descended latest.

It is remarkable (peculiar) that that which now has been said is entirely explained in such books as for instance those by Haeckel if we read them in the correct way. Indeed, it is stated that in his external appearance man is to be traced back to the animal. But if we continue the scale (trace back the scale to its source) we see that man at last is to be traced back to something which cannot refer to the present earthly conditions, but to imaginary living beings. And just so with animals—we find those beings to which Spiritual Science points out as hypothetical beings—also in Haeckel's pedigree—only these trace back not to something formed, but to something formless. It is now not possible to argue this further, but it results from my Occult Science that that which presents itself now as earth has developed downward from earlier spiritual stages. That results in one not being able to say at all that Spiritual Science invents again, after all, only something unknown. No! At last the earth is traced back to earlier planetary stages of being, just as man, relating to his present life is traced back to earlier lives. And going back to earlier stages we find as the starting point of all life and of all matter, not only a living entity, but also a spiritual one. We recognize as the starting point of all life the spirit, which we experience in us ourselves. Thus we trace back foundations to the spirit, which is something we have in ourselves, that means to something known, that is in ourselves, while external science traces itself back to something unknown. Spiritual Science is in another, different position as is the present hypothetical doctrine of evolution. Spiritual Science traces evolution back not to something unknown, but to something which has been there, been present, as spiritual, and that also today can be experienced as spiritual. Only the spiritual living in us discloses itself in the same manner as it does in our glass; the thinner liquid is segregated from the more solid substance. The finer spiritual in man even disclosed itself as separated, secluded, just like the finer substance in the glass is segregated from the more solid one, which has been deposited.

Thus we must trace back the animal world to the fact that man, in order to cultivate his spiritual nature as he has it today, had to begin with to separate from the whole animal world, so that he could develop himself as a finer spiritual being, above the basis of the animal world, just as in our comparison, the finer substance reveals itself when it has separated out the more solid substance below, on the bottom. Today these events can be pointed out only inasmuch as they demonstrate the origin of the animal world. It must be left for another lecture to explain in detail how the spiritual and soul nature (Seelische) developed later. Still it must be mentioned that the facts of immediate sense perception do not at all contradict this principle, and that it will arrive at the knowledge that progress really could not be otherwise than that set forth today—because do animals present themselves to us so that we need to speak about a special spirituality, only present in man? On the contrary! It will reveal itself to closer observation that there is sometimes much more intelligence among the animal world, and that man must first gain his intelligence, and that perhaps man's priority to an animal exists in the fact that he can achieve his little intelligence. Everywhere we look into the animal world—with the structure of the beaver's dam, of the insects, with the wasps, etc., we see intelligence at work, spirit holding sway, which makes use of the animals. We cannot say that this intelligence is in the single animal. We only need to refer to how certain insects take care of their offspring—there we see that we have a super-sensible intelligence, ruling the species of animals, objective for the animal world, like matter itself is objective for the animal world. This we can perceive when the insect deposits its eggs so that the larva must live in quite different circumstances of life; perhaps the insect itself has lived in the air—the larva must live at first in the water. The insect doesn't know at all the conditions in which the larva must live; thus only an instinct, ruling it, can guide it to deposit the eggs there where the larva can live. Or let us observe animals such as the beaver, etc., which form with their organization, form what we can call outer architecture, grown from within themselves—then we are not far from admitting according to the laws of external observation that intelligence works into animal substance itself. When we look at man, we see that after he is present he has to appropriate, at first, those faculties which are already formed into animals. He is not so far advanced that he has within himself that which the animals have already formed in themselves. That is a measure by which we can see that the animals are formed earlier and that the forming of man is still going on after he is already born. Thus it is no proof that man originated from the apes when the natural scientist Emil Selenka found that the ape nature, in its embryo stage, is much nearer to man's figure, than the later ape's figure. On the contrary, we can assume from this fact that the plan for man's figure was a more original one than that for the ape's figure; only that man realizes his figure as late as he enters into earth evolution.

Everywhere natural science shows in its facts that that which Spiritual Science has to say is proved, confirmed, just through the most advanced science. Yes, we could go even farther—I don't shy away from doing so!—and show how natural science today brings to light, as it were, something against their theories, which furnishes full evidence for Spiritual Science. Just if we yield to such results of research as those about propagation of lower animals through the brothers Oscar and Richard Hertwig in 1875 (what later on is confirmed many times) that the principle of fertilization; for instance with the eggs of the sea-hedgehog (echinus)—can be replaced through the influence of acids, that consequently a fertilization can come about out of a seemingly purely inorganic process—it must be said that processes which today are bound to the principle of heredity can only be imagined, and can happen in such a way that they present themselves outwardly, while they have presented themselves quite differently in olden times. Thus we can speak very well about the fertilization of the living nucleus of the earth (which was unformed living matter) by the spiritual formative principle flowing around it, by agreeing with the facts of natural science, so that the living had fashioned (formed) itself out of the formative principle, and that then the lifeless separated from the living which was the uniform substance of the entire earth.

Contemplating the origins of the animal world it becomes clear to us that in truth the entire earthly existence reveals itself in such a way that we can understand it only along the lines of Goethe, who has said, but only by way of a hint, in such a way that results concerning the origin of man and animal, have reality for the spiritual researcher. For if we turn our gaze to the whole world, by what means, in truth, does all that which surrounds us gain its real worth, its value? Only, as Goethe says, through mirroring at last in a human soul. For Spiritual Science the natural earth process shows itself really progressing from the oldest forms to the youngest ones, in such a way that everything is composed towards presenting man as the flower of the earth form—as that which finally must be brought forth out of the earth process, as likewise blossom or fruit is brought forth, finally, out of the plant. Thus from the contemplation of the origin of the animal world as a fundamental conviction of spiritual-scientific knowledge, results what we can consider in the following words, enlightening the human being, awakening the consciousness of the dignity of man, which is built up on the basis of every other being (alles uebrigen Daseins), and at the same time really imposing on us a responsibility: because we could become man only because the whole rest of earth evolution was aimed at us, we must prove ourselves worthy of this earth by endeavoring to progress from one stage of perfection to another: for evolution shows us that it is aiming at the shape of perfection of man. And that imposes on us the obligation that binds us not to stand still, but to move upwards to more and more sublime forming of spiritual life. This spiritual life which man carries in him today could be built up only on the basis of what is lower by pushing off what is material. So we must likewise assume that we must push off and leave to lower elements that which we carry in us today in order to develop a still higher spiritual life in us. Considering this, we can say that it is true for man, but also establishes what follows as his highest duty:

The elements let permeate themselves
By forming spirit,
They must receive
The last impulse of power of the spirit;
To clothe the human being
Into spirit form and soul life!

In one of his works Tolstoi expressed surprise—one might almost say disapproval—that in exploring modern science he found every kind of investigation concerning the evolution of the insect world, concerning what seemed to him insignificant things in the organic body or elsewhere in the world, whereas he found nothing in science itself concerning the important, the essential things, concerning the questions which stir every heart. Tolstoi said that above all he found nothing whatever concerning the nature of death. From a certain point of view one cannot entirely disagree with such an objection to the modern scientific spirit, coming from so distinguished a source. Nevertheless from another aspect one may stress the point that, if such an utterance is meant as a reproach, it is indeed to a certain extent unjust towards modern science, and this for the very simple reason that modern science has long owed its magnitude and importance to that very sphere in which answers to questions connected with the nature of death have been sought in the main without success. On the basis of the conception of the world represented here, it is certainly not necessary to inveigh against deficiencies in modern science. We can admire in the very highest degree the splendid achievements, the truly significant successes, both in their own sphere and also with respect to their application in practical life and in human society; here the opinion has repeatedly been expressed that Spiritual Science has certainly no need to lag behind in any kind of admiration pointing in this direction. At the same time, however, the most important achievements of the modern scientific world stand on a footing that gives no foundation for those points of contact which must definitely be reached, when questions concerning death, immortality and the like, are to be examined. Modern science cannot do this, because from her starting point she has in the first place set herself the task of investigating material life. But wherever death intervenes in existence, we find, when we look more closely, the point of contact which draws the spiritual and the material together. Certainly, when these subjects are under discussion, there is no need to agree with the many cheap attacks on the efforts of modern science. Indeed, we may even say (and this, too, has been often emphasized here) that when the great questions of conscience are to be examined, we may—even as spiritual scientists—find ourselves with reference to the feeling of scientific responsibility and scientific conscience, more drawn to the procedure adopted today by external natural science—although it is unable to penetrate to the most weighty problems lying behind life—than to many facile explanations springing from dilettante theosophical or other spiritual-scientific sources. These often give—especially with regard to method—too easy answers to such questions as we are dealing with today.

Recently, indeed, some approach has been made from the standpoint of science, to the problem of the death of created beings. This has come about in a peculiar way. Apart from many separate attempts which have been made, analyses of which would carry us too far today, one investigator at least may be mentioned, who has handled the question of the nature of death in a significant book. This writer has adopted a strange attitude towards the question, so strange that we are obliged to say again, as we did in a similar case, concerning the explanations of the origin of man: as spiritual scientist one feels peculiarly placed with regard to modern natural science; for whenever one is faced with a fact, we find that precisely from the standpoint of Spiritual Science, we can fully accept this fact and can see in it strong proofs of that which Spiritual Science represents. Faced, however, with the theories and hypotheses advanced by the adherents of the present-day world conception, in a more or less materialistic or, as it is considered more elegant to say, in a monistic way, then indeed it is a different matter. Here, one feels that, sincerely as we may agree concerning the facts brought forward in modern times, we cannot always declare ourselves in agreement with the theories and hypotheses, which those who believe they are on the sure ground of natural science feel bound to construct on what is produced as natural-scientific fact.

The research worker who has written on the nature of death from the standpoint of his natural science has called attention to something very interesting, precisely in connection with Spiritual Science. This is Metschnikoff, the man who for long was Director of the Pasteur Institute in Paris. He seeks clarity—so far as it is possible to obtain it today—concerning the data, the actualities, which bring about the death of the living being. In the first place, when considering such a question, we must not take into account what are called violent deaths, though we may perhaps have occasion later to refer to these violent deaths brought about by accidents or otherwise. When, however, we discuss the question of the nature of death—Metschnikoff, too, draws attention to this—we must see it as established in natural existence, must study it as appertaining, so to speak, to the phenomena of life, must be able to bring the phenomena of life before our eyes in such a way that death belongs among them. So, then, the riddle of death can be solved only in the case of so-called natural death, which is brought about at the end of life, just as other natural processes are brought about in the course of a life. Since this is only an introduction to what is to be said about natural science, it is impossible to go into the interesting details of the arguments of the above-mentioned investigator and thinker. It must, however, be pointed out that in studying the actualities of life he calls attention to the fact that in the processes of life itself, in that whereby life is to some extent evolved and perfected, the naturalist really meets with nothing which could give a real reason why death, the annihilation of the being, encroaches upon life. By numerous examples, Metschnikoff seeks to show how whoever follows the course of life sees everywhere that death makes its appearance without our being able to give the ready explanation people are prone to give, when the span of life is drawing towards death; that this is brought about by exhaustion. This investigator calls attention to numerous facts which prove that although the processes of life continue, and continue in an unenfeebled condition so that there can be no question of exhaustion in life itself, yet at a certain point of time death intervenes; so that this investigator arrives at the—it must be admitted—extremely remarkable position in which fundamentally every death, every ending of life in the animal, vegetable or human kingdom is to be attributed to external influences—the action of certain enemies of life which, in the course of a lifetime, obtain the upper hand and which finally, fighting against life, work as a poison on it, and at last destroy it. Whereas, then, for this investigator, the organism itself everywhere shows signs that it does not actually come to an end through its own exhaustion, this individual expects to see—when death approaches—such enemies of life appearing in one form or another, as poison phenomena making an end of life. Here, then, we have before us a hypothesis of natural science—it is indeed no more than this—which, as it stands, traces every natural death to external influences, to the action of poison phenomena brought about by external living beings of the plant or animal kingdom which make their appearance as enemies of life and at certain moments destroy the organism.

Such an interpretation employs all means to come to some kind of understanding of the nature of death within the actual material phenomena. In pursuing such a course, the reasoner strives to ignore as far as possible the fact that the spiritual element may intervene actively and effectively in organic life, and that perhaps this spiritual element as such may have something to do with death as we meet it in the outside world. It is not unthinkable—although at first sight this must appear absurd to those who maintain a more or less materialistic or monistic attitude—that those very enemies which appear as poisonous forces in relation to the organism might be enlisted as necessary accompanying phenomena of the spiritual forces which permeate organic beings, strengthening and stimulating them on their path towards death. It would not be unthinkable that the powerful spirit which, on the one hand, is directed to use the organism as its instrument in the physical world, might, on the other hand, make it possible through its operations for those hostile forces to seize upon the organism and destroy it.—In any case, if we allow ourselves to be influenced by such an explanation as that just quoted, there is one thing we must not disregard; namely, that modern natural science with its interest in merely material phenomena actually makes the investigation of the death of the organism an easy matter. But in reality it should not make light of it. And this leads me to emphasize that it will not be easy for Spiritual Science—which, from our own day onwards, must make the effort to take its place in the evolution of mankind—to carry out investigations concerning certain questions so simply as those world conceptions often do which expect to be able to determine something about the great riddles of existence merely out of external material facts.

Hence, from the very outset attention must be drawn to the fact that from the way in which modern natural science observes phenomena, no real distinction is made by those who feel they are standing on its firm ground between death in the plant world, the animal world, and the human world. But what have these three in common except the destruction of an external phenomenon? This, however, they share, to all intents and purposes, with the destruction of a machine: the cessation of the connection of the parts. Looking only at the external phenomena it is easy to speak of death, insofar as this death may then be spoken of as uniformly similar in plant, animal, and man. We may see where this leads, by a case which I have often quoted to a number of the audience sitting here, but which is always interesting when the relation of science to such a question is being considered. I do not wish on an occasion like this to refer to the ordinary popular writings which make it their business to carry into wider circles the results natural science is supposed to have obtained; on the contrary, if the connection with natural science is to be established, I should wish always to point to the arguments of this kind accepted as the best. Here, then, with reference to this question, we have always the opportunity to point to a distinguished book which is at the same time easy to understand; namely, the “Physiology” of no less a writer than the great English scientist, Huxley, translated into German by Professor J. Rosenthal. In the first pages of this work the subject of death is dealt with in few words but in a very remarkable way, which shows us immediately how inadequate on the whole is the thinking—the judgment on such questions, not the research—of present-day science. T.H. Huxley writing on Physiology says something to this effect: The life of man is dependent on three things, and when they are destroyed death must supervene. Then he continues: If, in the first place, the brain is destroyed, or, secondly, the pulmonary breathing is stifled, or thirdly if the action of the heart is inhibited, man's death must ensue; yet, strangely enough (though one cannot be sure nowadays that this strangeness will be felt in those wide circles in which the habits of thought have allowed themselves to be influenced by materialistic wisdom), strangely enough, Huxley says that it cannot be stated without reserve that, if the three above-named functions of the human organism are inhibited, the death of the living human being must ensue. One might rather think that supposing the brain no longer functioned, if the activity of the lungs and heart could be artificially maintained, life might still continue for a time, even without the action of the brain. Whether this is felt to be strange is only a question of habits of thought; for, actually, we should say: The life of a man when he cannot use his brain in the physical world cannot for a human being really be called a continuance of life. It must be admitted that life is ended for a man when that for which he needs the instrument of his brain can no longer play its part. And then if by some means the activities of heart and lungs could be maintained, that might be approximately a continuance of life, perhaps in the sense of a plant existence, and, if one wished to preserve a completely open mind, one might speak of that death which must still take place when the action of the heart and lungs ceases, as of a plant death added to the former death.

To speak, then, of human death so open-mindedly can only be justified when death is imminent because the man can no longer make use of the most important instrument whereby he carries on his life in the physical world—in his actual consciousness. And the ceasing of his consciousness in the physical world, insofar as it is bound up with the indispensability of a brain, must, for the human being alone, be designated as death. How superficially such things are studied is amply shown by Huxley himself when, in those pages where he speaks of death, he draws attention to natural science having not yet succeeded in progressing in the same way as, in his opinion, what he calls “an old doctrine” progresses; namely, by following the spiritual, essential actualities of the soul, through its journeying in the further course of existence, after the passage through the gate of death. Not yet, remarks Huxley, can modern natural science follow up what it has to follow: the oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and so on which compose the human organism, and which fall asunder when the man has passed through the gate of death.—Hence, this investigator considered that natural science could contribute something towards the problem of the meaning of death: that is, if the path could be followed which is taken after death by the materials composing the human organism during lifetime. And it is interesting and significant that, at the end of this first treatise on physiology by an important scientist, we find a reference to words which we can understand when spoken by the gloomy, melancholic Prince of Denmark, Hamlet—but which we should not have expected to find quoted when so serious a question is raised as the nature of death in the world. If we inquire into the nature of death in man, it is exclusively the destiny of the being of man that interests us. We can never be content with knowing the relation to one another of the various materials, the individual components, which have combined to form the exterior corporeality, so long as the essential soul and spirit of man made use of the external instruments. Out of his gloomy melancholy, Hamlet may say:

“Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away,
O that that earth which kept the world in awe,
Should patch a hole t'expel the winter's flaw.”

This the melancholic may say, and we understand it in its dramatic connection; but when the naturalist calls attention to the way the molecules and atoms once in the body of Caesar might go on living in some other being, it may be, as Huxley suggests, in a dog or in a hole in the wall; whoever is in real earnest feels in the depths of his thinking how impossible it is that such a thought should approach the great problems of the world riddles.—And this is no disparagement of natural science which has to accomplish its achievements on the material plane. It is only to point out how, on the one hand, natural science should perceive and observe its limitations, and should answer the questions about material processes and the destiny of substances, while, on the other hand, those students who wish—on what they can learn by conscientious research concerning the destiny of substance—to build up a world conception of such a problem as death, in essentials far overstep the boundaries of which they should be conscious, if they want to remain on the ground of external, material facts. As I have said, it is not so easy for Spiritual Science, because from its point of view it is necessary to examine separately the phenomena of what may be called death in plants, of what is called death in animals, and also, apart from these, what in particular constitutes death in the human kingdom.

No conception of death in the plant world can be obtained by studying plants as they are very often studied now; that is, by observing each individual plant as a separate entity. It would, of course, lead us much too far today to explain again in detail what has been already indicated in former lectures; namely, that Spiritual Science must regard the earth as a vast living being, of which the life principle has indeed altered in the course of evolution. Were we to examine the life principle of the earth throughout the ages, we should find that in the far-distant past, the earth was a completely different entity, that it has been through a process which has now led to the increased suppression of the life of the earth as a whole in favor of the individual life kingdom, in favor of the vegetable, animal and human kingdoms. But even in our present time, Spiritual Science cannot think of the earth as the merely physical combination of external substances, as it is regarded from the standpoint of modern physics, geology, and mineralogy. On the contrary, in all that is presented as the mineral basis of our existence, the ground which we tread, Spiritual Science must see something which, as the solid foundation of the whole earth organism, stands out just like, or similar to, the solid skeleton as it is differentiated from the soft parts of the human organism. As in the human being the solid skeleton inclines to become a kind of merely physical system, a merely physical aggregation of organs, so, in the vast earth organism we must regard what confronts us as physical and chemical in its action, as a kind of skeleton of the earth. It is merely separated off from the whole life of the earth, and everything which happens on the earth, everything carried out in the earth processes, must in the sense of Spiritual Science be considered as a unity. Thus, when we study plants individually, we are just as wrong if we ascribe to each plant the possibility of an individual existence as we should be if we looked at a single human hair or nail and tried to study it as an individuality. The hair or the nail has significance only, and its inner principle can only be recognized when it is studied not as an individual by itself but in conjunction with the whole organism to which it belongs. In this sense the single plant and everything vegetable upon the earth belongs primarily to the earth organism.

I must add this remark: The assertions thus maintained by Spiritual Science are to be recognized in the ways already specified in these lectures; so that we are not applying to the world around us the conclusions reached in the study of man himself. It is true it is often said that Spiritual Science presents occurrences in the universe after the analogy of processes taking place in man. We may indeed sometimes feel obliged for the sake of the presentation to make use of such analogies, because what the research of Spiritual Science perceives in the universe is illustrated and symbolized in the human organism; for the human organism primarily represents the connection of the bodily with the spiritual, and man is best understood when the connection between human and spiritual is made clear. That the earth, however, is an organism, and that what exists as a plant is embedded in the vast organism of the earth, belonging to it as hair and nails belong to the human organism, this, for Spiritual Science, is something not inferred by analogy, not at all the result of a mere deduction. On the contrary, it is the result of investigations by the spiritual scientist, along the lines described or indicated here, which can be pursued in detail in the book “Knowledge of the Higher Worlds.”—The essential in such research is that by it the investigator himself widens his consciousness, ceasing to live in himself alone, and that he is no longer influenced only by what the senses can perceive and the reason bound to the instrument of the brain can apprehend. The result of such research is that the man frees himself from the bodily instrument, that he becomes a participator in a spiritual world; then, in his own circle, in his spiritual horizon, he possesses not only what is presented to the external senses and the reason, but perceives the spiritual beings and spiritual forces. Thus, for the spiritual investigator, there exists what may be called the soul of the earth, a soul element giving life to the whole earth, just as the soul existing in man gives life to the human organism. The spiritual investigator widens his consciousness to a horizon where the soul element giving life to the whole earth comes directly under his notice. And then, for him the plant world is no longer merely the sum of the individual plants, for then he knows that what may be called the earth soul has to do with everything living and growing as a plant on the earth.

Yet the question is still: How are we to conceive that the plants begin and end their existence? How are we to picture, so to speak, the birth and death of a plant? We shall see at once that these words applied to the plant kingdom have, fundamentally, no more real significance than if we were to say, when a man's hair falls out that the hair is dead. Once a man rises to the thought that with regard to the earth he is dealing with an ensouled organism, he acquires a completely new outlook on the beginning and end of life in the plant world. To anyone not merely following the single plant individual purely externally, from seed to seed again, but rather bearing in mind the sum total of plant life on the earth, it will be obvious that here something different is at work from what may be called the beginning and end of life in the animal, or the human, kingdom. We see that the play of the elements in the course of the year is closely connected with the rise and decay of plants, with the exception of those which we count as perennials; but it is quite a different connection from that which exists, for instance, in animals. In animals we seldom find death so closely bound up with the external phenomena, as we see the withering of the plants bound up with certain phenomena of the whole earth nature when, for instance, autumn is coming on. In reality, people regard the life of a plant abstractly, detached from the fact that it is embedded in the whole earth existence; this is because they study only the single plant and do not consider the rhythmic, up and down undulation, of the life of the year, which at a definite time impels the germinating plants to sprout, brings them to a certain maturity, and, again at a definite time, causes them to wither. If we contemplate this whole process, externally sound observation, even if it has not penetrated the nature of Spiritual Science, may say: Here we are not dealing merely with the rise and decay of individual plants, but with the whole earth process, with something living and weaving in the whole existence of the earth. Where, however, do we find anything of which we can say that what it shows in its own phenomena explains how the invisible, spiritual element that we must think of as ensouling the earth is connected with the sprouting and withering of the plant? Where do we find anything at all which meets our spiritual eye so as to make this outer process intelligible to us?

Here it becomes evident to the spiritual scientist that he has something within himself to explain this living and weaving in the plant world, something which, if only it is studied in the right light, will account for the rise and decay of life in the plant world. We find in human nature what we call the ordinary phenomena of our consciousness. We know very well, however, that these phenomena can be experienced by the human being only during his waking day life, from waking up to falling asleep. The process of falling asleep, the process of waking up, are noteworthy incidents in human life. For what do we perceive? In falling asleep we become aware of a plunging of the whole inner processes of the soul into an indeterminate darkness; we are aware of the fading of our thoughts and ideas, our feelings and the impulses of our will into the darkness of sleep; at waking we become aware of the emerging of the whole of this soul content. Of this, man is conscious. Now it would doubtless be absurd to think that sleep has nothing to do with what exists as evolution of the consciousness in the whole human organism. We know how important regular, periodical sleep is for our physical life, insofar as spirit and soul live in it. We know what we owe to regular sleep. We have only to be reminded of what is constantly experienced by a man who needs a retentive memory. We say: If a man wants to avoid wearing his memory out, so that it becomes unserviceable, if he wants to keep his memory in good order, he must constantly sleep on the things to be remembered. If he has something very long to learn by heart it is clearly noticeable how much in the whole activity of remembering he owes to regular sleep. Apart from this, however, it appears quite natural that the weariness or exhaustion we notice as the result of our waking life is brought about by the life of our consciousness. By allowing the processes of our soul—our life of ideas, of feeling and of willing—to be overworked, we do violence to the delicate construction of our organism, as regards our will processes, even to the coarser parts. Quite superficial observation can teach us that tiredness of nerves, muscles and other organs is brought about solely by the encroachment into our organism of the conscious manifestations of our ideas, feeling, and will. We know quite well that if we give ourselves up to the ordinary musing of the day, where one thought gives place to another, the brain becomes less tired than if we set our thoughts to work under the compulsion of some method or doctrine. We know, too, that the muscles of the heart and lungs work throughout the whole of life without requiring sleep or rest, because weariness does not enter into this, since as a rule the organism evokes, in the unconscious or the subconscious, only appropriate activities. Only when we consciously encroach upon the organism do we produce weariness.—Hence we may say: We see the processes of the soul encroaching upon the life of the body—we see how what is active in the soul works itself out in our bodily life—in that which is evoked by the processes of the body which may be called normal—the activities of the heart and lungs and the other continuous processes of life. Here no weariness, no exhaustion, enters in. It is when conscious processes intrude that weariness enters. We become aware of a deterioration, a destruction of the organism through the encroachment of consciousness.

Here we have reached the point at which we can see the significance and function of sleep. What is worn out in the organism during the day, what is destroyed by conscious activities must, when the conscious activities are discontinued, be restored again in sleep. Here the organism must be left to itself to follow the processes inborn, inherent in it. Here we stand at the point where we can say: Again Spiritual Science coincides remarkably with what the facts of natural science tell us—even in the form adduced by the already-mentioned Russian scientist who was for many years Director of the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Now, can we not say that consciousness itself, man's spiritual life itself, causes—in order that it may subsist, that it may indeed be there at all—the exhaustion and weariness of the organism? And so, in order to throw a little light on this investigator's hypothesis, we might answer the question: Why, then, do the enemies of life described by him come into our organism? By saying: Because, fundamentally, the consciousness process always confronts what is merely organic life in man as a kind of poisoning process, and we could not rise to our higher spiritual life at all if we did not destroy the organism. In the very processes hostile to the organism lies the whole potentiality of our consciousness. When we speak of the effect of poison with reference to organic activity, we are bound to say: What we must regard as the blessing, the salvation of our life—namely, that we can be a conscious being in a physical body and can develop conscious activity—we owe to the circumstance that, with our conscious life, we encroach destructively, poisonously, upon our organism. Only, for the ordinary conscious life, this process of poisoning and destruction is by no means irreparable; on the contrary, the organism has been attacked in such a way that when the process of destruction has reached a certain point the conscious spiritual life withdraws, leaving the organism to its own activity. So then sleep intervenes; and in it, while the organism is left to its own activity, what has been destroyed through the conscious phenomena of the soul life, is restored again. The spiritual scientist is well aware of the many ingenious, more or less significant hypotheses which have been advanced concerning sleep and fatigue; one would have to speak at great length to analyze these hypotheses. Here, however, it is not our concern to explain these purely materialistic hypotheses, but to establish the fact that consciousness with its content must itself intrude destructively into the organism which contains the external instrument of the consciousness, and that the sleep condition compensates for the destructive process which is thus really repaired. Hence we may say: Sleep is the healer of those conditions which, as processes of ill health, consciousness is obliged to bring about in the organism.

Now when the spiritual scientist has come so far as not only to see what the normal, external consciousness sees—namely, that on falling asleep the conscious ideas and so on sink into indeterminate darkness—when he comes to the point of actually observing what goes on around him, even when this normal, ordinary consciousness disappears, then he also reaches the point of being able to follow the process of falling asleep and waking. It is self-knowledge in the widest sense that a man makes his own through spiritual research. And then he comes to a true conception of those processes which accompany falling asleep, and which are processes of building up, of the bourgeoning of life in the organism. Actually, through spiritual research, through all reasoning and thinking in the light of Spiritual Science, we experience something of this bourgeoning life in the mere bodily organism, every time we fall asleep; but—as it goes no farther than the mere organism—it has only the value of plant life.—What can be experienced every evening on falling asleep may be described thus: You see your own organism with the whole of your soul life; you see what has filled your consciousness during your day life sink out of sight; but as compensation you see, springing up in your own organism, processes which are restorative, not destructive—which, nevertheless, within you are only like the sprouting of plant life. Thus during sleep we have in our organism something like the experience of spontaneous vegetation. The experience of falling asleep, with the fading away of conscious ideas, is something like a springtime experience in which we see what is only plant-like in our organism emerging out of the unconscious. The moment of falling asleep may in this sense be regarded as completely parallel with the emerging of the sprouting, growing plant world in spring.

When we look at plant life in this way, we give up the idea of comparing this sprouting forth of the plants in spring with a human birth or, in general, with what can be called birth in man or in any living animal being; we come to understand that the great earth mother is a complete organism in herself experiencing in spring—in that part of the earth where it is springtime—what man for his part experiences when he falls asleep. The mistake most often made in such comparisons in usually the result of things not being viewed in their reality, but rather considered in connection with external circumstances. It will satisfy the imagination of many to be able to compare the sprouting of plants in the spring with something in the human being periodically repeated, which does not actually represent death and birth; but if a man is following his imagination only he may wish to compare the germinating of the plant world in spring with man's moment of waking. This is wrong. It is not the waking, the return of the soul content, with which the springtime is comparable; it is with the falling asleep, the fading away of the inner spiritual life, the actualities of the soul, and the germination of the merely organic, the merely vegetable in man. If, through the clairvoyant faculty, man can follow consciously at the moment of waking how his ideas and all that he remembers emerge from indeterminate darkness, then there is present again something bringing about the necessary destruction of the whole germinated inner vegetation. It is actually as if with the rising of our ideas on waking in the morning, autumn conditions had blown over everything which had grown up overnight: an inner process comparable for the whole earth with the withering of the plants towards autumn. Only, the earth is not represented as man is by two states of consciousness—waking and sleeping; while one half of the earth is asleep the other half is always awake, so that sleep always follows the sun's journey from one hemisphere to the other. Thus, then, with the earth we are dealing with a vast organism which lives its sleep life from spring to autumn, the sleep life which we are shown in the external organs, in what sprouts and grows in the plant kingdom, and in autumn withdraws into its spiritual sphere, into what is the soul of the earth; for the life of the earth is in the season from autumn to spring. Hence, we cannot speak of a real death or a real birth in plants at all, only of a sleeping and waking of the whole earth organism. As in human beings sleeping and waking is repeated rhythmically in the course of twenty-four hours, and as we do not speak in this connection of the death and birth of our thought world either, if we wish to speak correctly, should we speak of the life and death of plants. We should keep the whole earth organism in view, regarding the plant process belonging to the whole earth organism as a waking up and falling asleep of the earth. When we are feeling most pleasure in what is springing out of the earth, when we remember how men of earlier times, out of their joy in the sprouting life, kept the Feast of St. John, that is precisely the time for the earth which is midnight for man, with respect to his organism and external bodily nature. And when men prepare to celebrate the Christmas festival, when life without is dead, then we are dealing with the spiritual processes of earth. At this time man best finds his connection with the whole spiritual life of the earth; he realizes what he has indicated (from a correct instinct) by fixing mankind's spiritual festivals in winter. I know what objections external natural science can raise against this, but natural science does not consider man's correct instincts.

Now let us try to investigate what we can call death in the animal kingdom, not indeed by making judgments through analogy but rather, by expressing once more, through a process in the human being, what Spiritual Science has to give.

Now we must notice that our soul life, if we study it carefully, certainly shows a different course from that which consists in its furtherance and fructifying through the alternation of waking and sleeping. It should be pointed out that through the whole of a man's life—from his childhood, for as long as he can consciously remember—he is experiencing a kind of maturing process. Ever more and more mature does a man become through what he can absorb of life's experience. This maturing process is accomplished in a strange way. We remember—and through this alone is it possible for an ego to speak within us—all that we have experienced back to a certain point in our childhood; but we remember only the things connected with our ideas, with our thoughts. This is a very remarkable fact, but everyone in himself can follow up the statement. When you remember a painful or a pleasurable occurrence which took place perhaps thirty years ago, you will say: I can quite well recall all the details of the ideas which came into my mind, so that I can reconstruct them in my conception of the incident; but the pain or the pleasure connected with the occurrence at that time does not remain in my soul so vividly as objects of thought generally do. They have faded, severed themselves from the idea, and sunk into indeterminate darkness. We might say: We can always retrieve the ideas from the deep strata of our soul life, but—apart from exceptions—we must leave submerged our memories of what we have experienced as feelings, impulses, or passions. What we have experienced in the way of feeling remains submerged, detached from the bare ideas. Is it entirely lost? Does it lapse into nothingness? Emphatically No. For one who has not studied human life really conscientiously and in detail, it may seem to be so; but a conscientious observer studying from every point of view, will find the following: If we observe a human being at a definite juncture of his life; for example, in his fortieth year, we find him in a certain condition, a condition of soul but also of bodily health or sickness. The man appears to us as gloomily melancholic, easily depressed, or cheerful, or in some way of a phlegmatic or other temperament, easily grasping at the actualities of the world, easily absorbing what pleasure and joy can give him, and so on. The soul condition should not always be separated from the bodily; for the condition of soul appearing in a man is dependent on the way the bodily functions work. If we thus observe the soul mood and the whole disposition of a man at any age of his life, we shall soon find out what has become of the feeling experiences separated from the ideas which could only be remembered later as mental images. We shall find that what became detached as the mood of heart and soul has united itself with our deeper organization; it cannot be remembered in our inner life, but it expresses itself in the inner life, expresses itself, indeed, even as far as in health and sickness. Where are these moods lingering since we cannot remember them? They are submerged in the life of body and soul, and constitute a definite disposition in the man's whole life. Thus it appears to us that as we need memory for the whole course of our conscious life, as in sleep memory always plunges into indeterminate darkness, so our experiences of heart and soul sink down into the darkness of our own being and work upon our whole disposition.

So we have a second element at work in man. And now if we direct our gaze away from man to the whole earth organism, which we are studying as an ensouled being, we do not indeed study it as if the forces of soul and spirit at work in it are organized in the same way as the soul of man. For Spiritual Science shows us that many such beings as man dwell in the soul sphere of the earth; so that the soul of the earth presents a multiplicity, whereas that of man is a unity. Nevertheless, with respect to what has just been described, what is of a soul nature in the earth can quite well be compared with the soul experiences in man himself.—When we see how our moods of heart and soul sink down into our own organism, work on our body and come to expression in our whole disposition, we recognize a parallel to this in the sum total of processes carried out on earth, and indeed in all that finds expression in the origin of the living animal being. In ourselves, a process of body and soul is only set free through what is forced down into the darkness of our bodily disposition by the experiences of our heart and soul. For the earth, the corresponding experiences of soul and spirit are, as it were, crystallized in the birth and death of an animal being.—I know very well that a man who thinks out of hypotheses he can form a world conception which apparently stands firmly on the ground of natural science, may be disgusted by this explanation. I can sympathize with such a man. But the time will come when the direction of human thought and judgment leading to the elucidation of the processes of earthly death and birth will in the next spiritual evolution take the path indicated here; for all that we see as fact in natural science leads us to this conclusion.—Just as a man sees the moods of his soul which shape his organic disposition sinking into his bodily organism, so does he see externally in the earth organism the corresponding process of the rise of the animal world.

So, then, we find in the human being still another process: we see how out of the whole organism the so-called higher feelings and emotions emerge again in the soul. What is the characteristic of these? Whoever deals with this question without prejudice, but also without false asceticism, without false piety and hypocrisy, will say: What we may call the higher moral feelings and those moods in a man which develop into enthusiasm for all that is good, beautiful and true, for all that brings about the progress of the world, this is alive in us only because we are able, by the disposition of our heart and soul, to rise above everything originally implanted in us by instinct; so that, in our spiritual feelings, in our spiritual enthusiasm, we raise ourselves above all that the bodily organism alone can arouse. This can go so far that he whose enthusiasm is in his spiritual life sets so much store by the object of it, that it is a light thing for him even to give his physical life for the sake of what has inspired his higher moral and aesthetic feelings. Here we see that which lives as the spiritual element in this enthusiasm rise, with the suppression of our merely organic nature, in a mood which primarily has nothing to do with the course of the organic life. Thus an element in man also runs its course; that element which he sends down into the depths of his being and which there carries out its organic processes; but from the depths of his being also raise his moral and spiritual feelings, and with them the disposition of his heart and soul. These conquer, in ever-progressing evolution, what belongs merely to the organic, to the physically instinctive constitution of man.

This process, which we find in the human being divided into two elements, we find also in the world of living animals. If in our own case we let our disposition of heart and soul sink down into the life of the body, allowing ourselves to be influenced to the extent of health or sickness by our moods of heart and soul, we see, on the other hand, in all that is lived out in animal life, what constitutes a sinking down of such disposition for the whole earth. All that is feeling and passion in the whole earth organism is lived out in the animal kingdom just as our passions and impulses are lived out in our whole organization. As we look at the animal world we see in each separate form the result of the disposition of the soul of our earth. And if we consider the attraction which the earth exercises over the life of the animal world, allowing itself to be most closely linked with the external physical body, we see that this is no other than the victory of the spiritual—of what, with regard to animals we call the group soul. It is the super-sensible element which finds its representative only in externals, and conquers the external, as in man the spiritual feelings conquer what is merely instinctive. That the external processes of the earth organization always acquiesce in the power of death over the individual animal is in no way different from the victory always achieved in us by the spiritual over what is merely connected with the organic. Seeing the spiritual element in the animal from this point of view, we cannot apply the expressions birth and death to the beginning and end of an animal's existence in the same way as we apply them to man. It is certainly in animals a process of the whole earth, already more individualized than in the plant world. Nevertheless, if we bear in mind the different group souls assigned to the various animal species, we must see how, in each death which overtakes the individual animal, the external, bodily part perishes, but the group soul, which is the spiritual element in the animal, is always triumphant over the external form; just as in man the spiritual triumphs over the merely instinctive, represented not in the separate form but certainly in the organization.

Thus we see, as it were, a vast living being composed of the individual group souls of the animals, and we see the birth and death of the living animal appear in such a way that what forms the foundation of the spiritual in the individual animal has always to fight for its victory over the individuality. Hence we have death in animals presented as that which, as the group soul, moves above the wasting and decay of the individual animal form. We could only speak of a real death in connection with an animal if we failed to bear in mind what remains after the death of an animal; namely, the spiritual, as in man the spiritual, rising above itself, triumphs over the disposition of soul as well as over what is doomed to wither away.—If Darwinism ever advances beyond its present stage, it will see how, throughout the animal kingdom, from the earliest ages, a thread of evolution runs through the apparent births and deaths into the distant future; so that the whole evolution of the animal kingdom will lead at last to a victory of what the lower, the individual animal form being overcome—will issue from the entire spiritual world, leaving behind the lower part living in the individual animals, and will one day triumph over the instinctive element apparent in the whole of animal nature.

And when in man we come to what we call the human will nature—if we then do not speak only of the ideas he has had, which can be recalled again and again, and do not fix our attention only on the soul disposition which sinks in the way described into the deeper organization—if we, rather, look to the impulses of the will, we shall see that they represent above all the most enigmatic part of human nature. How the impulses of a man's will are determined depends upon the experiences life has brought him. If we look back from any point in our life, we find a continuous path, a movement, in which each soul event is linked with one before it. We find, however, that what we have experienced flows mainly into our will in such a way that if we look at ourselves thus, we may say that we have actually become richer in ideas, and riper with respect to the impulses of our will. Indeed, we develop a very special ripeness with respect to our will. This is experienced by everyone looking back upon his life. We do something in life; how we ought to have done it we actually learn only when we have done it. And everyone knows how little chance there is of finding himself in the same situation again later, so that he may apply, at a later opportunity, what he has gained as maturity in life—what he has, perhaps, won through experience of trial and error. One thing, however, he knows; namely, that all his experiences are fitted together in the whole composition of his will, in what we may call the wisdom of his willing; this makes for the maturity to which we gradually attain. It is our will life which becomes increasingly mature; the whole of our feelings, ideas, and so on, combine together to make our will, even with regard to external concerns, increasingly mature. For, when our thinking becomes riper through the experiences of life, this is indeed only a growing ripeness in the will expressed in the fitting together of thought with thought. So we see how our whole soul life as we survey it in retrospect leads us, as it were, to the center of our being, which forms the background to our will impulses and in which this constant ripening is expressed. If we bear this in mind, we have the third element of human evolution, of which we can say that in life we cultivate it in our physical body—we grow up in this element—in it we grow beyond and above what we were when we came into this existence through birth. As in this existence we are clothed in a physical body, and this physical body is the instrument we have to use for our soul—because the soul employs the reasoning power, employs the brain—the being of our soul acquires experience and maturity in life which crystallizes, as it were, in the whole structure of the mature will.

In this life, however, we are not as a rule in a position to work out, to carry through, what is now present in the impulses of our will. This is the question before mankind: What is it in these will impulses which we cultivate as the dearest possession of our souls, which we have made our own, perhaps just on account of our imperfection, that makes us never able to bring them to expression? What we send down into the depths of our being as the content of the experiences of our soul (we have observed this in the second part of our study) leads to the whole disposition of our body and soul. It leads to the way our character is determined, to what life has made of us with regard to health and sickness, whether we are more melancholic, or cheerful, and so on. But what we have made of ourselves with respect to the disposition of our will, this is our inmost being; this is what we have become. Through this, however, we have outgrown what we were. And in the second half of our life, when we are going downhill, we notice how our body refuses to carry out what we have become through the impulses of our will. In short, we see that through our life as perceiving, feeling and willing beings we become something completely at variance with what we already are, something which recoils from what we already are. As our life ripens we feel inwardly in our souls how we clash with what, through our elements, through our bodily aptitudes, through our soul life, we have become. We feel inwardly the conflict between the whole structure of our will and mature life, on the one hand, and on the other the whole structure of our organization; fundamentally we also feel this clash in every single impulse of the will leading to action. This is because our thoughts are to a certain extent transparent, and our feelings, too; but the way in which will power becomes action is inscrutable. The will clashes, so to speak, with external life, and becomes conscious of itself only when this clash takes place. And here we may follow, in the whole of life, even in the bodily organization, what already appears in the life of the soul; namely, that what a man has become, what has given him the aptitude for his talents, must be broken and destroyed by the will, which only appears in this life; otherwise this will power will never be able to make itself felt.

Just as man can become conscious of himself only through the clash with reality, so can he only experience himself as a progressive process by his whole physical life being destroyed through the will, in the same way as the brain is destroyed by the life of ideas. But whereas the brain can be restored through sleep, a new growth of the will cannot be promoted; in fact, through the impulses of the will a continuous process of destruction enters into every life. Thus we see that man must destroy his organism; we realize the necessity of real death for man. Just as we understand the necessity of sleep for the life of ideas, so we now understand the necessity of death for the life of the will. For it is only because man's physical organization is in opposition to his will that the will is aware of itself, that it is strengthened in itself, and thus goes through the gate of death into a life in the spiritual world where it appropriates to itself the forces to build up, in a future incarnation, all that man has not attained in this bodily life. This could be developed for him only by a consciousness ripe for the next move, for something which gives opportunity for a further advance that has not been fully carried out in this life; for this he could only have a consciousness ripe for the next stage which gave him the aptitude for something further that could not be lived out in this life. This will be lived out in a coming earth life, in which the man will work at his new destiny, his new earth life, in an appropriate way.

Whereas, then, with reference to death we could only speak in the plant world of a waking and falling asleep of the whole earth nature, and in the animal world could only compare death with the ebb and flow, and the conquest of our lower life of instinct, it is only with human death that we find what points us, through the destruction of this one life, to ever-recurring lives. It is only through the destruction of this one life that we can attain to what enters into the new earth life and alone leads to the true consummation of the whole human existence. Through this it is also established that the will of man, to become conscious of itself in its entirety, needs the dying away of the physical body; and that, fundamentally, the experience it requires for the correct will impulse is only present when we pass through the gate of death, when this will impulse shares the gradual decline and dying of the external organization. For the will grows by means of the opposition it perceives in the external organization; through this it grows ever stronger and prepares itself to become that which lives throughout eternity. Hence, apart from all that you find explained in Spiritual Science about an unnatural death, it is easy to see that a death brought about by an accident, or suicide, or anything of the kind, is quite different from a natural death, which gives the guarantee for resurrection to a new life. Unnatural death in any form can indeed also be something which signifies an advance in man's total destiny. But what the will, in its general nature, would have had to experience in its victory over the bodily nature, remains in a certain sense present as an inner force, and has to follow a different path when man goes through the gate of death in an unnatural way, from the one it would take if he lived to the natural end of his life.

Thus we see that we may really speak of death only when we are referring to what we may call the development of a new type of will for a new life, and that for this reason we cannot speak of a true death with reference to other beings. As regards man, however, we must speak in such a way that not only are Goethe's words true: “Nature has invented death in order to have more life”, but also in such a way that we say: If there were no death, we should have to wish that it existed, for it makes it possible that through the opposition and withering away of the external organization, the will grows increasingly—growing, indeed, for the new life. And this makes it possible for evolution to advance to greater heights through the different incarnations, so that the life also assumes a more exalted form—even though this does not occur immediately in the next lives, even though retrogression may take place. In the whole course of repeated earth lives the advance will, however, be recognized.

Thus death is the great strengthener of the will for the spiritual life. And we see—as has already been indicated—that recent natural science, although with faltering voice, agrees with Spiritual Science in pointing out that death represents a kind of poisoning process.—Yes, indeed, all spiritual evolution goes its own independent way in devastation, destruction, of the external bodily life. What the world of ideas lays waste in man is repaired by sleep. What is destroyed by the instincts of man is restored by the higher moral and aesthetic feelings and emotions; the destruction of the bodily organization brought about through the activity of the will is restored in the whole life of man through that ripeness of will which persists through death and is able to build up a new life. Thus death acquires a meaning: the meaning whereby man is able, not only to think of immortality, but actually to experience it. Whoever considers death in this way sees it approach as the power leading the external bodily life to its dissolution; but in opposition to this dissolution, he sees the dawn of a new human soul life, the life which man maintains from incarnation to incarnation throughout eternity. Not until we understand the meaning of death for man's eternity have we grasped the meaning of death for the whole of nature. Then, however, we must also give up the widespread, foolish conception which speaks of death in relation to animals and plants; then we must know that actually there can only be a question of real death when those destinies are taken into consideration which the spirit experiences in passing through bodily existence, and when we look at the realities which the spirit must develop in the bodily sphere in order to perfect its own consummation. The spirit must abandon the body to death, so that the spirit may raise itself to an ever higher level of perfection. Keeping this point of view in mind and looking upon death in the human kingdom, our soul may tell us that through death man's spirit and soul can rise to a higher perfection. Even when looking at death in the kingdoms of animal and plant we see the spirit shining through to the ground of all phenomena—and the soul may show itself at one with these words which arouse us, not only bringing us comfort but every hope of life:

Out of the spirit all being has sprung,
Deep in the spirit are the roots of all life,
The aim of all striving is spirit.

In a brief outline of philosophical thought Lessing alluded once to the only doctrine he considered worthy of the human soul—the doctrine he then expounded, in a form suited to Western consciousness, in his masterly treatise, ‘The Education of the Human Race’. He speaks there of reincarnation, of the repeated earthly lives experienced by the human soul, and continues somewhat as follows. Why, he asks, should this doctrine, so obvious in primeval days to the soul of man and one of its earliest treasures, while the soul was still uncorrupted by all kinds of theorising—why should this doctrine be less true than many other doctrines which in the course of time have been accepted as the result of philosophical speculation? After plainly indicating how this theory of repeated earthly lives is the only reasonable one for the human soul, Lessing says we might well expect that any unprejudiced man, willing to let the true nature of the soul work upon him, would grow accustomed to the doctrine—were it not for two things. We are certainly eager to know what Lessing meant by these two things that hindered the human soul from accepting the doctrine of repeated earthly lives. Lessing, however, never finished his sentence, having presumably been disturbed. He breaks off with the words: ‘were it not for two things’, and a colon. Nowhere in his writings, moreover, do we find anything to tell us what he considered these two things to be, although all kinds of speculations have been advanced by scholars who have made a special study of his work.

Now perhaps our conscience may allow us to assume that Lessing was most probably thinking of two things generally repellent to people when reincarnation is mentioned—two impulses rising up in the soul against the idea. One impulse may be expressed thus: whatever may be maintained by any form of spiritual science in favour of reincarnation, one thing is certain—that in normal consciousness we have no recollection of having lived before on Earth. Therefore, even should repeated earthly lives be in accordance with truth, they would seem to be of no significance for human consciousness and must therefore appear to it as an arbitrary hypothesis. That, for many souls, is certainly one of the objections to the idea of reincarnation. The second arises from a sense of justice towards oneself. Repeated earthly lives require an acceptance of destiny—whether we are fortunate or unfortunate, gifted or not in worldly affairs—as a consequence of what we have done in previous lives; so that, to a far greater extent than is generally believed, we ourselves would be the makers of our good fortune and abilities, or the reverse. Many souls may well exclaim: ‘If I have to accept my destiny, if my earthly existence is indeed burdened with that, have I got to accept also that I myself—the Ego within me—has in earlier lives on Earth created the destiny in which I am now involved?’ This is what could be called a man's sense of justice towards himself.

Anyone who delves more deeply into Lessing's ways of thinking and into his whole nature, making it part of his own soul will not doubt that this pioneer of the reincarnation theory meant to indicate these two objections to it. In the course of our study of eternity and of man's soul in connection with it, it will be well to pay attention to the facts just described. So now we will once again call to mind something said by the German philosopher Hegel about eternity—how if eternity belongs by nature to the human soul, it must certainly not reveal itself only after death, but must be capable of being experienced during life on Earth. Hegel puts it like this: Eternity cannot begin for the soul only at death but must belong to it already during earthly life. If we seek it in man's soul, if we seek to know how eternity lives in us and how we can investigate it by looking into our own depths, why should it not reveal itself at once, if, in the sense of Spiritual Science, it is so intimately bound up with the soul?

Former lectures have shown that this close connection holds good between what we may call the outgoing activity of the soul during its existence from birth to death and everything contained in the idea of reincarnation and in that of karma—the working of causes from earlier lives into the present one, and of the causes we are now creating to take effect in our next life on Earth. We must think of the human soul as enmeshed in this whole web of causes, bound up during its present life with all it has experienced in earlier stages of existence, and with all it has still to experience in future lives. Hence a study of the present life of the soul can lead to an outlook on the past and also on the future. If we do not take eternity as an abstract idea, but consider the human soul perceiving in itself its own being, then we come to something which could lead us to a true perception of the nature of eternity. For—to take a comparison—are we not more likely to discover what a chain is by examining it link by link rather than in its whole length? This latter method would mean tackling directly the study of eternity as such, whereas with the first method we consider the single life of a human soul as just one of the links in a whole chain representing for us the complete life of the human being throughout earthly existence.

Now it is true that anyone who looks for an assurance about eternity generally concerns himself with the present time. The lectures previously given here have shown from manifold aspects how, when a man surveys his life of soul, he repeatedly finds that all that takes its course there converges ultimately towards one central point which he calls his ego. Indeed, when we look around, at the philosophical thinkers of today, we meet with frequent indications that the only way of coming to any conclusion about our own being is by considering the nature of our ego; for it is the ego that holds together, as at a central point, everything experienced in our soul. Does it not seem, therefore, that all we experience in our heart, in our soul, in our thoughts, feelings and impulses of will, might simply arise and then pass away again? What, then, remains? To whose destiny do all those thoughts, feelings and will-impulses belong? It is this ego that proves itself to be the enduring central point. We are quite aware that if the experiences of our soul are not related to this enduring point, we can no longer speak of being an individuality. Yet, whatever fine things may be said about the ego by philosophers and thinkers, especially in quite recent times, their speculations about its nature are all open to one fatal objection. Intimately as we may come to know how this centre of our soul-life remains the same in all our conceptions, feelings and will-impulses, yet there is something able to wipe out this experiencing of the ego in normal consciousness; and this something is a constant reminder of how easy it is to refute all philosophical speculation about the endurance of the ego as normal consciousness knows it. This refutation consists in something we experience repeatedly every twenty-four hours: sleep. It is not only our thoughts, sensations and will-impulses that sleep obliterates, but also this central point, the ego. Hence, we cannot with truth speak of permanence in connection with the ego known to normal consciousness.

Nevertheless—as we have seen in previous lectures—it is possible for anyone to speak of the ego, not by focusing his attention on this central point to which he is at the moment relating his conceptions, moods of soul and will-impulses, but by considering something quite different. Here the question arises: Do we meet the ego among all the things experienced in the external world from morning till night? Anyone who asks this question without prejudice can say to himself: No, in all the experiences that come to me from the external world and make their impress on my conceptions, feelings and will impulses, no ego can be found. From nothing in the outer world can I derive the idea of the ego, yet it is there from the moment I wake until I fall asleep. What then can it be that lives in the flow of our concepts, states of feeling and impulses of will and is always to be found there, until sleep wipes it out? Since it is not to be found outside in the world, it must be sought in our own inner world. But our inner world is so constituted that we obliterate what we have in normal consciousness as our ego. Among the innumerable concepts a man is able to form, not one will really throw light on a fact of this kind, except the idea that the thought of the ego arising in normal consciousness and not received from any external source, is not a reality; for realities do not vanish as the idea of the ego vanishes in sleep. If, then, it is not a reality, what is it? Well, there is only one way of understanding it—by assuming it to be an image, a picture, but one outside the world of our experience and comprehensible only by comparing it to someone confronted by his own reflection.

Now suppose someone had never had an opportunity of seeing his own face; he would then be in the same position regarding his outward appearance as he is to his ego, which normally he always experiences as an image, never discovering its true nature. A man cannot see his own face from outside. Standing before a mirror he sees his face, but it is only the image of his face. If he looked around him what other reflections would he see? Tables, chairs, objects of that kind; but not everything around him would be reflected. Yet if he can say that there is something not in his surroundings, something which is a reflection for him alone—for nothing out there can be reflected in our consciousness in the way the ego is—it is then our own being which must experience the ego as a reflection, although in ordinary consciousness it is never directly perceived. Since it is a fact that nothing can be reflected that is not there, so, if a reflection of the ego is produced, the ego must be there, for the cause of the reflection cannot be anything else. A glance at general facts is enough to show the truth of that. We then have to say: As the ego is given to man only as a reflection, it may vanish in the way our face vanishes when we no longer look into the mirror. An image can disappear whereas reality endures and is still there, whether perceived or not. Anyone who wanted to question the truth of that would be forced to maintain that only what a man perceives exists in reality; but on following up this assertion he would soon be convinced of its absurdity.

Hence we must say: In the idea of the ego there is no reality, but the idea enables us to assume the reality of our ego. But how do we gain certain knowledge of the ego in ordinary life? We can acquire this knowledge by living not only in the present but also, through memory, in the past. If, on looking back to preceding days, weeks, years, even decades, to the point of time in our childhood where memory can take us, we could never link in one chain, as it were, all the experiences of our own inner life; it would indeed be impossible to speak at all of ego. What certain psychologists have said is quite correct: a man loses his ego, or at least consciousness of it, to the extent that the recollection of his experiences up to the time in question is wiped out. In so far as our memory fails, our ego breaks up.

We have frequently pointed out that a man is able, especially by thinking, to increase the backward stretch of his memory. Today, however, we will consider what effect it has when anyone experiences in memory not just a picture, of his ego, but his ego in its true reality. Were we simply to remember our experiences back to early childhood, there would be no great difference between that and the emergence of the idea of the ego at the present moment. Ultimately it is immaterial whether we experience the reflection of the ego while relating to this single point our present conceptions, sensations and impulses of will, or whether we draw them from the past. In both cases the ego with which we connect these experiences is but an image. Were we merely to relate our experiences to our ego, we should never, even in memory, discover its reality, for we arrive at that only by learning to know the ego in its activity, in its creative impulse; and this experience proves to us that this creative element, unaffected by the external world, maintains its activity even during sleep. What then is it that continues to live and weave within us while we are asleep?

Anyone who practises this looking back in memory seriously and without bias will say: In life I have gained knowledge of my experiences in a way that not only enables me to relate them to my ego, for it is undeniable that I have worked inwardly on my experiences, quite apart from anything external, and by so doing I have enriched them. Whoever is alive to the ripening and enhancement of life going on in his own depths knows that this cannot be due to any external reality, but to something at work within himself. Moreover, anyone who surveys life as a whole will realise that if we are to succeed in this enhancement of life, in this inner evolution, sleep is needed. We know quite well how lack of sleep creates havoc in our ideas, and to some extent lays waste our states of soul. We realise our need of sleep as a creative element, if what we experience and perceive in the outer world is really to contribute to the ripening of our inner life. By this means we become certain how it is not the ego we observe during the day that works upon us, but that behind this image stands its reality, always at work in us, even when we are asleep, for lack of sleep proves indeed to have a disturbing effect on the soul's progress. Thus, in the enhancement, the ripening, of the life of soul, we recognise the working of the ego. By acknowledging how disorganised we become if we do not sleep at the appointed time, when the ego should be released from its connection with the bodily nature and enabled to work in freedom—by knowing the lack of sleep to be an obstacle to the ripening of life, we come to be aware of the true ego working within us. We do not then perceive it as an image but as an inner force, ceaselessly at work in our life—whether we are awake or asleep.

There we have the first indication—penetrating straight to the reality—of the force that lives and weaves within us, quite independently of the world outside. On going more deeply into this inner experience, what do we find? Many of the details to be referred to today—including the following important fact—have been mentioned in former lectures. For it is a fact that we make a certain progress in life, that we become increasingly mature. But a remarkable thing comes to light: that all that is best in this maturity—everything that enables us to make the most progress in life and by means of which we can best observe the nature of the ego—is something that we can learn from our faults and shortcomings. When we have failed badly in some matter, or have done something which shows us how imperfect, how incapable we are, our very failure teaches us what we should have done. We have become more mature. By means of such opportunities in life—whether our thinking, feeling, willing or acting is concerned—we develop our wisdom, our maturity. But we should go on to say: Through the wisdom and maturity gathered from life, which become an ever stronger inner force, we learn how—because we never meet the same situation a second time to learn once more from our faults—we must store up this all-important force, for we shall never by able to use it in this life again.

We see therefore that throughout our earthly existence we are continually storing up forces that find expression in our maturity. If a life has been well spent, these forces will have gathered their greatest strength by the time the gate of death is reached. We see that we have something living in us that cannot find an outlet in the external world. We live in our souls by being able to look back on the past: it is memory that holds together the threads of the soul. But out of this memory comes forth something that lives and weaves in us as inner ripeness of life; something appearing in earthly existence as a surplus force. The spiritual scientist need only apply a law that is valid for all ordinary science: the law of the conservation of energy. Any scientist, any physicist, will accept this law for the external world. It is universally recognised that, when a finger is drawn lightly across the surface of a table, even this slight pressure is transformed into warmth. Hence we say that energy can be transformed, can go through a metamorphosis, but can never vanish away. Once we have consciously experienced that in the ripe content of our life we have stored up forces which at first cannot be used but are tested to their utmost when we pass through the gate of death, then it should not be difficult to understand that these forces, brought about by the activity of the ego independently of the body, can never be annihilated. Hence the bodily sheath, which contributes nothing to our ripeness in life, can be cast off and revert to its elements, but these forces remain intact. Because in them we have the active ego as powerful centre, the ego is present also in the ripened forces of life when the human being passes through the gate of death. This may be contested by those disinclined to apply to the spiritual life the laws of ordinary physics; but they should be aware that they run into an inconsistency directly they rise from the truths of ordinary physics to the reality of the spirit. We only need common sense in order to follow what Spiritual Science tells us, that when we go through the gate of death there lie, deep within us, stored up forces acquired in life, forces which, exerted to their utmost, in a world differing from that of the physical body, have then to work with the greatest intensity. After death these forces have to work on in a world which must obviously be presupposed, and there these forces, that is, the inner nature of man, permeated and strengthened by the ego, continue to live when man is free of the body. Thus our ordinary intelligence gives us some idea of life after death—not only showing in general terms that there is such a life, but also describing the forces which play into it.

When, however, Spiritual Science goes on to speak in more detail about life between death and rebirth, this naturally causes laughter among those who believe they are standing on the firm ground of ordinary science. This can well be understood by the spiritual scientist, for he knows that neither their laughter nor what they say depends upon reason and evidence but upon the way they think, which makes it impossible for them to acquiesce in what the spiritual scientist, as a result of his researches, is able to say about life after death. They are bound to find it ridiculous, or altogether fantastic, the figment of a dream. You know how Spiritual Science shows that a man, having passed through the gate of death, meets first with a phenomenon only occasionally arising in life—though this does sometimes happen and has, in fact, been repeatedly observed. This first experience is a quite unemotional looking back over the course of his earthly life. I say expressly that in this survey neither feeling nor emotion has any part; the whole panorama of his last life on earth passes quickly before him as if in pictures. This can be experienced in ordinary life if anyone has a shock, such as being nearly drowned, but without losing consciousness—for if that is lost the phenomenon does not occur. Those, however, who have had some great fright, endangering their life, have experienced this backward survey. That much is conceded even by the natural scientist whose research is confined to the external world. I have already reminded you how the distinguished criminologist and anthropologist Moritz Benedikt, having been nearly drowned, spoke of experiencing this backward survey of his past life. From such a natural scientist the spiritual scientist can learn a good deal, and willingly, although today in this sphere his kindly feeling will not be reciprocated.

Now what occurs when anyone experiences this sudden fear of losing his life? For a moment, though retaining consciousness, he ceases to use the external organs of his body. During the experience he loses the power of seeing with his eyes, of hearing with his ears; he is torn away, as it were, by his inner being from the physical body and from ordinary life, but without loss of consciousness. The fact that he is able to have this backward vista of his present life is proof that, when he thus looks consciously into his own depths, all that arises in his memory must be attributed to his inner being. For he retains his memory when thus torn from his physical body. Anyone experiencing a violent shock of this kind must realise that whatever it is which fills him with memories goes with him all through life but has no connection with his outer sense organs. Hence we must say that man is united with some more delicate soul-vesture that is the bearer of his memories, although at such a moment it is lifted free from his bodily organs. Obviously he cannot be asleep, for then it would be the usual thing in sleep to have this backward survey. So it follows that during a fright of this kind he has within him something not present in sleep.

This confirms what Spiritual Science has to say—that in sleep a man goes out with his soul from the physical body, leaving behind the bearer of memories, the vesture upon which he is working throughout his life, so that his memory-pictures can be preserved. In sleep he is outside the physical body, and also that external vesture of the soul, called in Spiritual Science the etheric body, which in ordinary sleep remains bound to the physical body. At the moment of death, however, this etheric body, which is also the activator of life, leaves the physical body, and only this outer physical shell of the human being remains. Death indeed comes because the etheric body, though present in ordinary sleep, is no longer there.

Hence, for a short time after death, the same phenomenon occurs as during a terrifying shock in ordinary life—a backward survey in memory.

Now, as the facts show, this survey experience is bound up with something so closely connected to the physical body that not even sleep can break the link. After death a man takes with him something that belongs not to his innermost soul but, in a certain sense, to his physical body. Spiritual Science shows that within a relatively short time—a few days only—after the discarding of the physical body, the human being becomes free of the etheric body and is then constituted in the main as he is during sleep. But Spiritual Science goes on to show how the inner soul-being is then in a situation different from its situation during life, when every morning a man has to return to his physical body and etheric body. He is closely bound to his physical body, to everything that enfolds him, and this does not specially belong to what we recognise as the real content of his life of soul.

If we are clear that during the whole of a man's waking life he is wearing out his physical body and that life in the daytime has fundamentally a destructive effect—as indeed we realise when we get tired—it will be evident that since in the morning we are able to go on consciously with our work, the destruction can be made good during the night. So, whereas in our waking state we are working all the time destructively on our bodily organism, at night, on the contrary, we are engaged in repairing the damage by replenishing our bodily vigour. We are then carrying out an activity beyond the range of consciousness. Directly we revert to any degree of consciousness, there arise those strange dream pictures that are so closely related to life in the body. We need remember only how bodily ailments may sometimes find expression in these pictures, showing where consciousness is involved. Since after death the physical body disappears, no effects of exhaustion have to be made good. Hence the forces expended during sleep on the physical body withdraw again into the soul after death, enabling it, free of the physical body, to use them for itself; and between death and a new birth they become the soul's consciousness. In proportion as the soul is freed from the physical and etheric bodies, with everything belonging to them, so does another consciousness arise, one that is not engaged in work on the physical body and for that reason unable to be aware of itself.

All this will seem to be nothing but a set of assertions. However, apart from the fact that reference can be made to the methods given in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, life itself can draw attention to those things. For how does a man's life take its course in face of death? If we follow up the way in which thoughts and memories arise in us, what has been said becomes evident to the soul. We can precisely and repeatedly recall our past experiences as memory-images, but we remember very little of all we have gone through in the way of feelings and sensations, and in the exertion of our will. Who would deny that, when some painful experience comes back to him in memory, he recalls the pain in his thought but without feeling over again the pain itself? Many other things there are, too, experienced in our heart and soul, which are not felt again. But they live on withal us in a different form, to the point of making themselves felt in our whole disposition, so that afterwards this is made up of everything we have experienced in pain and sorrow, or in times of joy and pleasure. Who can fail to realise, on looking with inquiring sympathy at someone of an obviously despondent, melancholic disposition, that the experiences he has gone through in heart and soul have been drawn down deep within him, there to remain, though perceptible to an observer in this particularly melancholy guise? It is the same with the sanguine man and his joyful response to life. It can be said that our experiences are divided between those we can always recall and those that remain below, working on us and ultimately appearing in the very life of our body. If we look thoroughly at this, we become convinced that our thoughts and concepts are so weak, so lacking in colour and life, because the emotional shading, the particular mood of soul pervading the thought as it was experienced at the time, has been suppressed and is working below the level of consciousness, leaving thought empty of feeling.

When the whole course of life is observed impartially, however, this relationship between feeling and will on the one hand, and thought on the other, can be seen to change. Thus at a certain time of life a man will repress the feelings and impulses connected with his thoughts, whereas at another time he will keep them more together. Youth is the period when we are most apt to yield over our joys, sorrows and impulses of will to our subconscious. It is then that we are most easily inclined to send down to the subconscious the experiences of heart and soul that will eventually work into our whole disposition—even into our bodily condition. But as the body becomes more firmly knit, the elements of our consciousness come to be less and less like what they were, with the result that we are less and less able to work on the subconscious, and our feelings and will impulses come by degrees to remain bound up with our thoughts. When with genuine self-knowledge a man observes life, he feels, as he grows older, how in youth a person sends down most of his moods of feeling, so that they live on in the make-up of his body. But the more rigid and dried-up a man becomes later on, the more do these experiences and the impulses of will not exhausted in action, remain united with his thoughts. Thus we see how, in this respect, the inner life is enriched as we approach death. We see how the bodily organism gradually dries up and becomes less capable of absorbing the soul's experiences, whereas, if we continue to learn from life as though from a school, the soul will become more alive, more mature. For this reason all that in youth is connected with ideals, ideas, even with mere concepts, flashes through our unconscious being, lays hold of our blood, our nervous system, and settles there, in order later to emerge as our capability for living—or the reverse. Later on we feel that our blood will no longer be, is no longer in harmony with our enthusiasm for ideals. Because of our wrong methods of education this feeling is now to some extent repressed, but in future it will belong increasingly to the best things and blessings of life. For when we are approaching the winter of life, the feelings and impulses that in earlier years we gave over to our bodily organism will add to our strength of soul, no longer being able to pass down into the body on account of the resistance they meet with there.

Bearing this in mind, we shall say: If we look into our own inner being we find how, on approaching the gate of death, it becomes ever richer. The contention that a man weakens with age is not valid; it originates in materialistic habits of thought and prejudices. In proportion to the decline of the body, the inner life of the soul gains vigour, becoming inwardly more childlike; we see a kind of approach towards those forces which are at their highest tension when we are nearing the gate of death. This is particularly true of people who are enabled, through the training indicated in the book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds to have some perceptive experience independently of their bodily organs. It is also described there, how, by means of meditation and concentration, we can so school ourselves that experience and knowledge of the spiritual world can become absolute reality for our souls. At the same time the soul knows with certainty that this experience is acquired with no help from eye or ear, or from any bodily organ, for it is then outside the body. In a case of this kind, feeling and will-impulses must permeate livingly a person's meditation and concentration: thought alone is not enough. In Knowledge of the Higher Worlds there is an exact account of how the person must not lose touch with his feelings and perceptions—with everything, indeed, that in youth withdraws into the depths of the soul. He has to meditate and concentrate with his mind, but his thoughts must be fired by his heart and soul, and infused with life by those impulses of will that are then not transformed into action but into thinking.

When a human being has developed the genuine clairvoyance appropriate for our times, he wins through to what otherwise would be experienced only after passing through the gate of death. All such clairvoyance, however, is experienced by him in such a way that he is aware of the following distinction: ‘I can certainly experience’, he says to himself, ‘a spiritual world, a world where men live between death and rebirth, for I live with them there. But all my knowledge of it I gain by simply perceiving it. The difference between me and these souls is that I perceive all this without being able to work and create in it.’ The soul is aware of this distinction, but it derives only from being closely linked to the physical body, for directly the clairvoyant consciousness is freed from it and from the etheric body, there follows a release of those forces which, while they are held in tension by the physical body, permit the seer to gain perceptive knowledge of the spiritual world beyond the gate of death. It is these forces which are pre-eminent in a man during the time between his death and rebirth. What the clairvoyant experiences is like the force of a drawn bow. He can use it only for perception, but directly the tension is released the bow springs at once into movement. So it is for the clairvoyant when he goes over from life in the physical body to life in the world after death. And he can say to himself: ‘I am able only to perceive the spiritual world, only to see what is going on there. But after death, the body having fallen away, forces are set free, just as they are with a bow when the arrow is shot off.’ These forces are available in a man's soul for other activities after his death until he is reborn. This is the period when he can look on his past earthly existence, and can then work upon his next incarnation, when he will wake to a new life on Earth. It is not only by looking at the matter in this light that we can furnish evidence for it. We can obtain satisfying evidence—though not a mathematical proof—by turning to nature. In the growth of a plant we see how leaf after leaf develops until the blossoms unfold: how these blossoms are fructified and seed develops from the fruit. Then the plant withers away. But does its force then come to an end? No, on the contrary: at this very time the forces which call the whole plant back to a new cycle of life are at their strongest. They are now inwardly concentrated at one point, as it were, and they appear again in a new form when the seed is sown in the earth. We then watch the whole plant being renewed; the beginning and the end of its life are thus united. In like manner the highly concentrated forces in ourselves when we pass through death are united with those seen at the outset of life on Earth. We see how the human being as an infant sleeps through a sort of twilight condition into life. This condition gives free play for work on the body, and this is carried out in such a way that the bodily organs harmonise with the life of the soul. It would be a sad pity if anyone wanted to maintain that the ego is not active until self-consciousness begins. No, its activity begins long before that, and afterwards the human being has only to turn its forces to the building up of consciousness and memory. Before this the forces of the ego are already working on moulding the bodily organs so that the still soft and pliable body shall be skilfully made ready to harbour the coming consciousness. Hence we see how the ego is engaged in its greatest work of art at the outset of a person's life, and this shows that he is already in possession of active forces when his memory begins to develop. if we observe the human being quite impartially, we see how he comes to relate himself to the world in his own individual way, and how his undefined features and faculties gradually take form. Finally we see how the force which had previously passed through the gate of death in a concentrated form, in readiness for building up a new body, is now actually at work on it, so that the human being can enter his new body bearing with him the fruits of his former life. In this way the ego proceeds from one earthly life to the next. By actively enhancing the life of a soul, it proves to be endowed with those potent forces which—after continuing to increase until death—maintain their activity during the time between death and rebirth in such a way that the ego can imprint them on another earthly incarnation.

Hence we see how we ourselves are responsible for the causes which take effect in our next life, since this life is the continuation of the one before; and we see how each link in the chain joins on to the next. We have only to compare this with Buddhism to see how modern Spiritual Science, speaking from an evolutionary standpoint based throughout on clairvoyance, can accept the good thought in Buddhism while rejecting the other. Buddhism is the last fruit of a primeval culture dating from the times when primitive clairvoyance was a natural gift, directly experienced, and when therefore the idea of repeated earthly lives held good. At the same time Buddhism maintains that everything working over from a man's former life, and gathered together as the ego of his present life, is merely a semblance. Fundamentally, Buddhism knows nothing of the true ego, but only of the ego we have spoken of as an image. Hence it says that our ego passes away like our body, like our sheaths, and our former experiences. All that the Buddhist recognises as playing over from the preceding life into the present one, are deeds—Karma. According to Buddhism, these deeds combine into a pattern which, in each new life, evokes the semblance of an ego, so that no real ego, but only a man's Karma works on from one life into the next. Hence the Buddhist says: the ego is mere semblance, Maya, like everything else, and I must endeavour to overcome it. The deeds of my former life, now forming a pattern as though round a central point, seem to be an ego, but that is an illusion. Therefore I have to wipe out all that Karma has thus brought into my life.

Spiritual Science says the opposite: that the ego is the concentrating deed of Karma. Whereas all other deeds are temporal and will be compensated in time, this karmic deed, that makes a man conscious of his ego, is not temporal. With ego-consciousness therefore, something enters in that we can describe only by saying—as we have done today—that its existence is rising continually to a higher level; and that when we re-enter earthly life we form ourselves again round the ego. The Buddhist, on the other hand, obliterates the ego and recognises nothing but Karma, which, working on from one life to the next, creates a fresh illusion of an ego. Adherents of modern Spiritual Science, however, for whom Karma and ego do not coincide, say: ‘My ego passes on from its present stage on Earth, with the enhancement thereby gained, to re-appear later in a further incarnation, when it will unite itself with the deeds then performed. When as an ego I have done something, it remains with this central point, and goes on with all my deeds from incarnation to incarnation.’

That is the radical difference between Spiritual Science and Buddhism. Although they both speak in a similar way of Reincarnation and Karma, it is the ego itself that progresses from one life to another and shapes our inner life of soul. When we contemplate this progress, we find it leading us back in each existence to some point in early childhood before which we recall nothing, relying on what is told us by parents and others. Then, at a certain point of time, memory awakes, but we cannot say that the forces of memory were not previously in us; they were definitely there, at work on our inner life. Evolution itself depends upon our memory arising at a certain point in our early life. Moreover, Spiritual Science shows that, just as memory awakes at a certain time in childhood, so it is possible for a man, by raising his consciousness to ever higher levels, to remember not only his immediate past but also his previous lives on earth. This is a fact of evolution which is at present evident only to clairvoyant consciousness. It is in full agreement, however, with what can be learned by other means. When a justifiable objection to reincarnation is said to be that people cannot recall their previous lives the answer is: Just as our ordinary memory is a reality, although we cannot recall our past experiences from the time before that faculty developed, so a memory that can look back to earlier lives must also be first developed. In this way memory becomes an ideal of evolution, and we have to admit: As a child I had to develop a memory for my present life: I must now go on to develop memory for previous earthly lives. Thus we arrive at the comforting fact—though narrow-minded people will certainly not be in sympathy with it—that many ideals lie ahead still for mankind, besides those derived from ordinary consciousness; and these others include a striving for the power to recall past earthly lives. But I repeat that this is not a matter on which philistine souls can be in accord with Spiritual Science. Only recently I was reading a statement by a man held in great esteem today, in which he advanced the opinion that it would never be possible for human reason to solve all the riddles of the universe—nor would this be desirable, for if all the riddles were solved there would be nothing left for us to do on Earth. Evidently he cannot conceive of evolution progressing beyond its present stage, bringing men new faculties for new tasks, nor can he imagine that what is for people's ‘good’ changes with the enhancement of their consciousness.

One of the blessings flowing from Spiritual Science is that it opens out a perspective which does not lead off into vagueness. We have no occasion to complain of looking ahead into empty time. All eternity lies before us. We can see how each link of the whole chain joins on to the next link and we can say to ourselves: You bear in you now the forces acquired in this present life, and with them you are building a future existence when there will be opportunity for you to develop these forces further. Thus, little by little, we experience how real the thought of eternity becomes, how it spreads out before the soul as a vast, everlasting perspective. One of our gains from Spiritual Science is that we no longer ask the abstract question: What is eternity?—nor do we receive a merely abstract answer, for by truly studying human life we see how eternity arises, how each link in the whole is formed, and all abstract considerations are thus driven from the field. The reality then shows—as reality always must—how everything is built up out of single parts, member by member. Thus Spiritual Science points to the nature of man's soul as throwing light upon the nature of eternity and on the way these two are connected.

If now we turn to the second objection, to which perhaps even a personality such as Lessing gave credence, someone might say : ‘On these lines my destiny becomes clear to me, but if I am to suppose that I prepared it for myself through my Karma, this makes it even more painful, for then I would have to blame my shortcomings on myself.’ In the light of Spiritual Science, however, this idea can be transformed. Before our last birth we chose to have the misfortune that now befalls us: by seeking it, and especially by overcoming it, we acquire full capability of which, previously, we could not realise our need. In our disembodied state we became convinced of our need, and only by steering our way to this misfortune do we fit ourselves for rising to a higher level. Thus, through karmic law, the school of life proves to be the bringer of good fortune; and misfortune is seen to add strength to the ideal of eternity.

There is no time now to show how our earthly bodies are continually changing their original form; and how, when the Earth comes to an end, it will be succeeded by another kind of existence. Hence our present lives on Earth do not cover the whole of human existence; they too have had a beginning. Whatever a human being has acquired during repeated lives on Earth will avail him for other forms of existence. In studying the earthly it is enough to consider the essence of the human soul. That is how we can learn that eternity does not begin only after death, for it can be discerned already in the nature of the embodied soul.

Spiritual Science, therefore, raises from the past to a new and higher level something that was foreseen to a certain extent and even investigated by searchers after the spirit in days gone by. Hegel was right in saying, that eternity could not begin for the soul only at death, but must be inherent there during its earthly existence. Here is something on which Spiritual Science will throw more and more light, with a clarity so permeated by feelings and impulses of will that it becomes the very elixir of life—something that has always been thought of as an essential part of the being, the nature, of the human soul. So I can now quote an old saying which, though not summing-up the content of this lecture, is in harmony with its character. It was uttered in the third century after Christ by the great mystic and philosopher, Plotinus, who meditated deeply upon the nature of time and eternity—upon everything, in fact, that forms the basis of what we have been considering today:

Eternity is not bound up with the soul and spirit of man's essential being as a merely fortuitous characteristic, but is a necessity for the nature of the human soul. Neither is Eternity a fortuitous characteristic of the spirit.

Eternity belongs to the spirit, is in the spirit, comes forth from the spirit.

Eternity lives through the spirit.

In the next months as already in the past winters, I would like to hold talks about objects and interests of spiritual science, the science of the supersensible worlds.

If one speaks of a science of the supersensible worlds today, one still meets many a prejudice and opposition. This is comprehensible. Since someone who knows the cultural development of the last years or decades has to admit without further ado that the cultural development was reluctant generally to accept researches about the supersensible world in any sense. If one even demanded as it happened in the past winter talks and will also further happen that these talks have a scientific character in all their appearance and make a claim to place themselves beside other scientific considerations, then these prejudices are even bigger. Indeed, one has to admit that recently within our cultural life the need has grown up to turn the sight to the supersensible worlds to receive sense and understanding of the whole human life from this knowledge of the supersensible world to gain power in our so complex life for the demands of the outer world. A growing longing for knowledge of the supersensible worlds exists.

However, on the other side one cannot deny that the present human being demands scientific justification of spiritual science in certain respect. One has to admit now that today many circles completely deny any scientific nature to a consideration of the supersensible worlds from the point of view of the present science. One denies this while one takes two quite different points of view that find, but many representatives just in our time with those who have the longing to grow out from the old traditions that are there to satisfy the supersensible needs.

What the outer science can supply today what in particular the so admirable natural sciences can deliver is enough to give the human being an satisfying view of the world someday which must satisfy any longing for a world view. Only that worldview could satisfy, one says, which simply summarises the scientific or other as scientifically approved results to get an idea about the solution of the world riddles from its totality. Others say against it, indeed, we can form a worldview on basis of modern sciences; but this view is not enough for the indelible need for knowledge of the human soul. Everything that we can know about the world with only outer science proves to us almost that this outer science is not suitable to answer the big questions of existence anyhow. Everywhere a precise knowledge of the outer science points to the undergrounds of that what this science supplies.—Within these circles there are those people again who admit, indeed, that everywhere in the world are references to something supersensible, and that the outer science is never enough to receive a satisfying idea of the solution of the world riddles that still say that the human cognitive faculties and knowledge are limited. He would exceed the limits of his efficiency and knowledge in scientific respect if he wanted to penetrate into this supersensible world.

Thus, we realise that just from that spiritual life with which spiritual science wants to be in harmony prejudices and opposition arise against it. Hence, it is necessary at the beginning of this course of talks to discuss programmatically whether the human being can get a relation to the supersensible worlds. More careful spirits have always admitted—also in the recent heyday of natural sciences—that the human being must have such a relation to the supersensible worlds, and that he is just unable maybe to penetrate with his cognitive forces into these supersensible worlds.

If one can often hear about such discussions, as they should be done here in this talks, that this is basically an unauthorised fantasy on the supersensible worlds, and if one has to find such a thing comprehensible, one can point on the other side to point also to the fact that at least more careful thinkers and researchers have always admitted that it is no arbitrariness of the human soul to conclude from that what the outer science can give that everything points in our surroundings to supersensible worlds at last.

Let me point to an older and to a recent fact out of a range of many facts and initiate that what I want to bring to mind then in the other talks by the spiritual-scientific research itself. Let me initiate with the fact that the science of the last decades did not induce those who know it really to deny the supersensible worlds. On the other hand, one can also already say for the expert of the scientific point of view that our outer science is so far that it feels already constrained to admit a certain knowledge of supersensible worlds at least in a limited measure. This strict science also disproves most seriously, what many popular worldviews present as a materialistic or monistic worldview.

I would like to point to an older fact at first: to a researcher who stood within the glamorous activity of modern natural sciences who performed a lot in a narrowly defined specialty, but kept open his look to everything that outer science cannot offer. This researcher once said the following unforgettable words: the view is admirable which natural sciences can give in their theories of that what underlies the material effects and the natural forces as diverse nuclear effects. However, this researcher was of the opinion that it would be a fatal illusion to believe that something is included in the scientific views and theories that would exclude a metaphysical need, that is a need for a knowledge of the supersensible world or at least of the assumption of a supersensible world. It would be a fatal mistake if one believed that everything that natural sciences can give is only something that corresponds to the outer view. One would always have to found it on something exceeding this view.

The naturalist concerned pronounced this in a time, when the less strict thinkers, so the daredevils of modern natural sciences celebrated those thoughts which wanted to exclude any idea of the human being of a supersensible world.—I do not tell the saying of a naturalist which was possibly sickened by any mysticism, which would have been burdened philosophically, or which would have been done possibly in a mystic meeting. The statement that I have just mentioned was done in 1867 in the dawn of the materialistic natural science of the last century in the Vienna Academy of Sciences by the famous clinician and pioneer of medical science Karl von Rokitansky (1804–1878). Someone admits that who knows the entire being and the essence of natural sciences.

I would like to mention another fact. Who could believe that today a science owes its greatness more to outer experimental researches of those thinkers who founded it upon these outer researches and experiments than physics? On one side, what could one bring in more than the physical achievements of our time as typical for the scientific thinking of the present? On the other side, one brings the achievements forward repeatedly if one wants to refute the possibility that the human being might have to deal with matters of the supersensible world.

However, if now a physicist came and said, you have to say goodbye to the physical thinking of the present, or at least many facts and research results are there that you have to say goodbye to an idea with which so many hopes were connected just for the purely scientific approach?—For example, to the materially imagined ether which one regarded, so to speak, as a kind of magic cure for all outer natural phenomena long time. Since phenomena like light, heat, electricity and so on should be explained only by the fact that one assumed the so-called ether as the subtlest material hypothetically behind that what our senses perceive. While one imagined this ether materially, one did not hesitate to attribute to it also that in some processes of that material ether, which fulfils us, the spiritual, the supersensible experiences of the human being would have their origin. For everything that one attributes, otherwise, to a spiritual, supersensible world this material ether became a kind of magician and explainer. What happens, if now a physicist came and said that certain things within the physical research make us assume such a connection of the natural forces, which allows us imagining that without the requirement of a material ether the rays of light would pass through the space? What happens, if this physicist said, one must already suppose from certain facts today that the light waves travel through the space without a material medium?

If this physicist said also, indeed, this violates any kind of mechanical explanation of nature, but if the physical facts require this, just the mechanical view of nature is hopelessly lost. If then he still went on and said, what has to replace the ether? Then something would have to replace it to which above all one has to attribute no material quality. Now something strange has to replace this ether.—I must stress repeatedly: for the purposes of modern physics, something strange has to replace the ether, namely purely mathematical equations. These are thoughts, structures of thought. What continues as structures of thought, this should continue not through matter, but—as one says academically—through the vacuum, through the empty space. This one considers as necessary with respect to the light that is not bound to any material substance.

If some time ago anybody had said this, one would have probably assumed that this man is a tricky representative of a spiritual worldview, because only such can state that the light flows without material medium through the space. But no mystic said this, one did not say this in a meeting where one can dish up all possible things to the people, but the physicist of the Berlin University said this, Max Planck (1858–1947), in September, 1910 on the 82-nd Conference of German Naturalists in Königsberg (now: Kaliningrad). This fact is still much more important than the just mentioned one, namely because we only have not heard here what we have heard from the clinician Karl von Rokitansky: the fact that nature herself points everywhere to a supersensible world,—but that in the thoughts of the physicist which he really writes with mathematical signs on the paper something is included that is not bound to any material medium. That is we have not only admitted that pure thoughts, spiritual effects, are somewhere in the unknown, but that physics must recognise this in its real knowledge what is not only material what carries something supersensible through space.

With it, we see science at that gate where it must not be content to say only, there may be a supersensible world, but the human knowledge cannot penetrate into it.—But now it concedes that the thoughts which science makes not only refer to the outside world which consists only in the materials and is impregnated by matter, but that the knowledge which one has refers to something spiritual, to something supersensible! With it, the evidence is supplied from the conditions of our time for someone who knows the development of science really that today it is out-of-date to say that supersensible knowledge cannot claim any validity within science. Then perhaps one may consider it not so fantastic if the spiritual scientist says that with such concessions only science just gains a path which must lead on and on, because the things develop for the moment from their beginnings to the recognition of the reality of that which the human being can survey with his cognitive forces regarding a supersensible world.

If the human being wants to penetrate into the supersensible world, he turns to the contemplation of thoughts of the world at first. We do not apply the word philosophy; the essentials are a contemplation of thoughts. Since this becomes soon clear to a human being that he cannot come to the depths of the things by the mere outer view—it may be scientific ever so much.

There the human being turns to the contemplation of thoughts and tries to get an idea of the solution of the world riddles within the thoughts. Someone who wants to draw a picture of the world out of material facts only depends also on the way to make a view of that which underlies the world. From thoughts, everything also originated what, for example, Ernst Haeckel contributes to a worldview, although he rests on the outer scientific knowledge. Whether somebody rests more or less on the outer science or whether science comes to an idealistic or spiritual worldview, in both cases one has to apply thoughts. The thought has a peculiarity if we dedicate ourselves to it. Which characteristic this thought has, this proves the fact that many people regard the research of thoughts, the philosophical reflection as unpleasant or at least as uncomfortable.

Since the Greek period, there have always been philosophers. Not only students in the sweat of their brows delve into that by necessity which the reflection about the world riddles wants to supply, but also many people who want to get clarification about life out of the whole warmth of their hearts, who maybe want to receive peace and harmony in their souls regard that as rather dry and sober and also as abstract and uncomfortable what is brought forward about the solution of the world riddles in theoretical books, in philosophy. Someone who is full of life who stands as a practitioner in life and feels attracted by that what life gives directly feels easily repelled from the sobriety and abstractness of many writings and talks that want to penetrate by work of thought into supersensible worlds.

Nevertheless, this is something that one probably gets to know with many people. However, as brilliant the philosophical systems about the world riddles appear to those who can pursue them by the preconditions of their lives, as unenjoyable such ways are for practical persons standing in life. Still those people who created such systems of thoughts from a serious thirst for knowledge felt in such a way that they said, with this work of thought a picture is given of the supersensible facts, actually, underlying the world.—Somebody who is able to admire what these thinkers have done knows how much ingenuity and dedication was applied to penetrate on this way of thinking into the world. Then he also knows which deep satisfaction one can feel about the solution of the world riddles in the philosophical systems of great thinkers. They are by no means only abstract, but the thinkers put their hearts and souls in their systems even if those seem abstract.

If it concerns such philosophical systems, one cannot deny one thing which, but someone does not feel who is a born philosopher or can experience his joy and satisfaction in abstract thoughts who is attached to such a system of thoughts with warmth, with his humanity and with the deepest need for an intrusion in the supersensible world. What such a thinker feels, I would like to bring to mind at the example of a thinker who experienced a tragic destiny then who dealt with the big questions of the conceptual solution of the world riddles in the time when he spoke about that perceptively and insistently of which the talk should be now. I mean Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). We can completely disregard what he became later.

You find that what I want to characterise here in the early years of his work where he worked out lectures at the University of Basel that one published in his posthumous works. These were lectures on the Greek thinkers under the title Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, that is, before Socrates where the great thinkers interest us like Thales, Heraclitus, and Parmenides particularly. We are interested in them because you can realise how from a lively thinking, from the Greek worldview and culture, which stood really in life and were full of immediate life, the system of ideas of Parmenides emerged. It intended to penetrate into the supersensible worlds, but ascended from the old full-juicy Greek world to the abstract thoughts of “primordial being” and “primordial non-existence.” A human being gets goose pimples who stands, otherwise, in the practical life if anybody grasps such abstract concepts like “primordial being” and “primordial non-existence” to reach the supersensible worlds. Even somebody who is used dealing philosophically with the questions of existence says to himself: it makes my blood freeze in my veins if I notice that a human being ascends to such thoughts from which all life seems squeezed like the juice from a lemon which appear too sober, dry and abstract to the other human beings. This chapter was interesting to Nietzsche because it shows how a thinker rises directly from life to an abstract world of thoughts. Nietzsche felt the thoughts of Parmenides so colorless, soulless, so completely bared of that what the heart longs for. Nevertheless, someone who deals with spiritual science understands Parmenides when he speaks of it so that it makes your blood freeze in your veins due to these dried up abstractions and if he shows that even in the most marvellous edifice of ideas something is contained that appears sober to us. There we get the feeling: how do you want to grasp the depths of this world, which faces us so lively, with the spider's web of your thoughts? However, in such a sensation is just the starting point of that what must exist in the human soul if one should attain the relation to the supersensible worlds.

Even the greatest philosopher—who spins out systems of thoughts with certain ease who can climb up to abstractions and says to himself, in these abstractions you have the truth of the things—gets only around to painting nothing but a picture with such thoughts even if they are ever so thin like cobwebs and ever so abstract. However, you must say to yourself, such a picture can never completely exhaust the wealth of that what must form the basis of the world. Somebody who puts such a worldview in thoughts as a thinker may feel satisfied in a way, but somebody who stands in the full life has a right to say to himself, such an edifice of ideas can never exhaust the full life and with it also never the depths of life.

Someone who wants to go the path to the spiritual worlds has to strengthen this edifice of ideas in a particular way and he has to pursue it until its ultimate consequences. You find all other details in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?

Here it can concern only of giving the most important points of view about the way that the human being must take if he wants to attain real knowledge of the supersensible world. One must say that everybody can feel if he gets involved with mere edifices of ideas that he gets cold spiritually that he feels in such a way as if he had not approached the world, but would have gone away from the full-juicy existence as if he had really expressed the juice from existence like from a lemon.

However, one has to feel something else, namely enthusiasm for the crystalline clearness, the wonderful architecture of a system of ideas, so that one can say in a way: what is apparently so abstract is still the greatest achievements of thinking which the human being can experience, and which show how the conceptual creating prevails in the universe.—Thus, one has to bring enthusiasm into the worlds that can appear so empty because of their abstractions. Indeed, a thinker who only thinks and cannot feel enthusiasm for the thoughts weaving through the universe can never penetrate into the supersensible world.

This is only one side of that what one must feel if one wants to set up relations with the supersensible. The other side is an experience of the spiritual researchers: namely the fact that you have ascended to thoughts, but that you feel, as if you has lost the firm ground under your feet and you hover over an abyss. As long as you have pleasure in the thoughts and you feel firm in the thoughts, you cannot ascend to the supersensible world. Not before you feel something in pursuing the thoughts that has a double comparison: as if we lose the ground under our feet and have to hover in the emptiness, or as if we see the extending blue vault of heaven, and we recognise that the blue vault of heaven is no blue vault of heaven, but you yourself whose faculty of sight does not reach so far surround the universe with a blue vault of heaven. In truth, it extends into the infinite, and you have to ask, where is a firm point? Not before you feel that with an inner uncertainty with which you nail up your glance and cause the inkling of an infinite at the same time and then imagine this sensation increased, you can feel something of that which someone has to feel strongly who creates thoughts about the world connections but wants to penetrate through them into the living feeling of spiritual facts and beings. Then he feels, as if he nails up the way with his thoughts where the spiritual beings live where the spirit is working.

What I have told I have not fantastically thought up, I have also not taken it from thoughts. It is an experience of all those who have searched the way into the supersensible worlds. This can become an experience, as I have described it in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds

What I characterised that way as a sensation increases in a way and increases with that who goes the path of knowledge up to a feeling like fear, a feeling of uncertainty. One could characterise it as a state where one does not know where one is. However, this feeling must not develop completely, it must remain in the depths of the soul; and then only we can penetrate into the supersensible world. This feeling must be illuminated straight away by that what you can compare with the feeling of courage, of energy, of willpower. The human being has to become aware of something in himself during the slow, patient progress if he gets on it repeatedly: you do this not only, or you decide not only to do that for which you have an outer cause, but you put the ideal to yourself to do this or that from your own thoughts and not to lose the thought of it and the undeterred intention for it.

If we do this repeatedly in life and develop it systematically, it gives us an idea that we can receive from no outer world and no outer view, which we can get out of the depths of the soul. If we can develop this feeling when we rise to pure thinking which is free of sensuousness and not taken from the outer world, then something forms in us that you must experience that you can also experience, but as you experience a physical or chemical experiment. In the self-experiment of the soul, you experience that you become free from any view and knowledge that you can attain only with the tools of the physical body. We become free from the physical body and penetrate into that world about which we can spin, otherwise, only webs of thoughts. Then that not really exists which many people know solely about such coming-out-of-oneself, which they know from an experiment destroying the human consciousness, but it means becoming free from the sensory existence and the sensory view. The human being penetrates with his own being about which he knows that it has an independent reality compared with the physical body, into that world which is a supersensible one because he experiences it as a supersensible one. If anybody said, you can imagine this, one could give him only by logical reasons a view of what one experiences in the supersensible worlds, and what the human being is as a supersensible being. However, somebody who penetrates into the supersensible world knows that he comes on this way to a reality of supersensible kind whose reality he recognises and about which he knows that it is nothing fantastic, as he knows this about the outer sensory world.

What I have described of the supersensible world that way is only one direction to which we must go if we want to gain a relation to the supersensible worlds. There is something else. I have described the way through the thoughts what we call meditation spiritual-scientifically, delving into inner experiences of thoughts. This is one direction. The other direction is that by which the human being can experience something that differs from all experiences of thought. All experiences of thought are in such a way that they have something abstract and impersonal. One must feel this to bring such feelings, as I have just characterised, into the mental deepening, into meditation, and you discover that if you ascend with thinking to the spiritual being you arrive at the supersensible world. Nevertheless, the question must arise, can the human being come only on the way of thinking into reality?

In order to answer this question, I must point to another side of the relation of the human being to the supersensible worlds. As well as the human being wanders in the universe, in spatial spheres on the just characterised way he can also penetrate into his own being. But then he comes to something that leads him away also from the thought as the just characterised way has led him to the thought, because the materialistic science of thought like that of which I will at once speak leads away from the thought. Materialistic science of thought shows that the thinking is bound to the cerebral process that one finds that thinking everywhere in the world which is bound to the brain.

But when the human being returns from thinking to himself and gets clear about himself and realises how the thoughts and his whole intellectual life rise like foam bubbles from the depths of the sea of his soul life, then there is something to experience where from the thought arises. Indeed, there a deep dissatisfaction comes into being if the thoughts should be only foam bubbles on the surface of the surging sea of the soul life. Since if they were this, the world would be pointless. This is an emotional experience for that who understands the meaning of life. But now I want to characterise how one gets to something by another direction that is relieved from the abstract thought which refers us to ourselves, and which is free from thought which lacks what I have just described as the abstract and sober of rational knowledge.

The other direction gives us the mystic experience. The human being who submerges in his emotional world and strives for true self-knowledge who is able to turn the eyes away from that what surrounds us in the world comes to where the great mystics have come. If we look at these mystics, we hear from them that they experience the highest in their inside which they imagine as divine that prevails in the universe. Inside of the human being a divine spark also lives. You find this, for example, repeatedly in such mystic discussions, with Master Eckhart, Johannes Tauler and many others. This is an immediate mystic experience.

However, this mystic experience always shows something typical that the opponents always put forward. For this mystic experience has something individual. A mystic who can experience the divine spark in his soul who informs us about the world and its innermost being, and just that who experiences this strongest says: it is an inner experience of such deepness that human concepts, as one applies them, otherwise, to the things and facts, cannot transmit the experience.—The deepest mystics agree just with the fact that they can bring this experience by no means in thoughts or even in words if they feel one with that what pulsates through the world as something divine. The mystics say that you can experience it, but you cannot bring it in thoughts. Hence, one can transmit it not in the common mental pictures to others, but every human being can experience the world riddle only personally.

Usually you believe to have thoughts. However, that means again that you do not attain the divine world contents. You can read that with all mystics who described it. The soul meets inner enemies there. Then the human being can no longer say, if I feel this or that ascending, feel this or that passion, experience this or that and so on, then I am master of that.—No! Then the human being feels, as if inner enemies seized him and he cannot become master of them at first, but he must become master of them, if he wants to break down what separates him from his innermost being and with it from the inner being of the world. There one starts feeling that in our inside that comes up what is more than that what we know by thought what pours forth about our self. Then it becomes necessary to search forces with which we overcome it. There certain feelings must penetrate the mystic again. Since when the mystics only stressed: you only need to penetrate in yourself, then you experience God, then that would be again a complacent contemplation, as the complacent life in thoughts and ideas.

If one wants to come to reality, one has to experience a particular way of feeling which one can define in the following way. Some of you have certainly found it confirmed in the everyday life. We all know pains and sufferings. We start from a suffering at first that you can get to know most simply. Everybody knows how agonising physical pains and sufferings can be. But he also knows that maybe if pain increases more and more it reaches a strength where it can change over to a certain stage of bliss, even of desire. This was used where one tormented people whom one wanted to give an understanding of the sources of existence, so that the pain became so strong that it changed over to the opposite. There are such stages in which one feels something in pain that appears like a kind of desire and bliss. Someone has to feel something similar, but not identical, who immerses himself in his inside where he overcomes everything with his whole power that is hostile to him. You get an image of it if you read the mystics who describe how they exerted themselves to fight against all temptations of passion, of egoism. Besides, egoism, passion grow bigger and bigger. It is a low level of contemplation if one does not feel passion and egoism growing as our enemies.

If you have then the power to overcome these inner conditions of temptation, then you penetrate into the depths of the soul where the sub-sensory soul-life begins what exceeds the mere sensory life. However, you must not understand the described things in the trivial sense. There one can easily say, these are subjective experiences by which one attains no true knowledge.—But if they are understood in such a way as I have meant them here, one knows: if you descend in your inside and must call the strong forces of overcoming, you get to something that does not apply only to the one or the other human being, but that everybody can experience with the entry into the supersensible world.

If the human beings have come once by such a way to the supersensible world, they know for sure that the human being has a relation to a world that reaches beyond the senses, the usual mind, and reason. They also recognise that the human being is rooted with his whole existence in a world that does not come into being and does not pass like the sensory world, but is everlasting.

Today it mattered to describe the relation of the human being to the supersensible world. In the next talk, I speak about the topic how the human being can attain a scientific knowledge of the most important problems, of the longings and of everything that is close to us in life, of death and immortality. In the course of the talks we shall realise that such ways, such relations of the human being to the supersensible worlds, as I have described them today, are scientific in the same sense as a physical, chemical, or biological science are scientific. Since if one alludes to the impossibility of such knowledge of the supersensible, one argues:

If we examine the forces that the human being has for science, for cognition, we realise that his cognitive faculties are limited that he is unable to penetrate in a supersensible world.—However, no serious spiritual scientist who states there that the supersensible worlds are recognisable in the same sense as the sensory world will say that the usual cognitive forces—if one speaks of the inaccessibility of the supersensible world—can lead into this world. What the philosophers and naturalists understand by the cognitive forces if they say, the cognitive forces of the human being must keep away from a world that could lead only to speculative fiction,—about those forces the true spiritual researcher must also say, these forces cannot lead into the supersensible world! If you ever so strictly examine philosophically what the human being is capable of with his usual cognitive forces, even so, one will always have to answer: these cognitive forces are inappropriate to lead into the supersensible world.

If you consider the whole course of the today's discussion, you realise that I have nowhere claimed that the human being can penetrate with the usual cognitive forces into supersensible worlds. However, I have said that the human being must only go through a way from the point of view where he stands to another point of view. He has to ascend from those cognitive forces of which one rightly says that they cannot lead into a supersensible world, to other forces that are suitable to reach the supersensible world.

As little it is right to state that a blind person sees colours, it is right that a blind person if one operates him can use his eyes and can see the world of colours.

As much of Kantianism is right that the usual cognitive forces are insufficient for the knowledge of something supersensible, it is as true that the human being can get cognitive forces with which he is able to penetrate into the worlds that seem so distant. Spiritual science does not start from the use of the usual cognitive forces, but from those, which one has to attain first. This means at the same time that the human being grows into the supersensible world.

On one side, the human being can find the way into cosmic distances and depths of space and get connection with the supersensible worlds. On the other side, he can also come by that what is deeper than the usual consciousness, by his own spiritual, breaking through the usual layers of the soul life, in that which is supersensible or sub-sensory which coincides with that which he finds outside.

Since that which the human being finds in such a way is related intimately with him. If the human being finds the way by meditation to cosmic distances and distant worlds and takes such sensations and emotions along as I have described them, he meets, indeed, strange spiritual worlds, but he meets those to which he is related and in which he has his origin.

If he finds the way through himself, he enters into spiritual worlds that one cannot grasp with the usual consciousness that yet exist really as his spiritual subsoil. There he finds himself again. If he compares what he finds by immersing in his inside, and what he finds by expanding his consciousness outward, it is the same: the true spiritual being of the human being and his real origin. He opens himself to worlds which are spiritual and in which the human being has his origin as the old mystics said.

Then the human being can find deepest satisfaction from these worlds if he makes them accessible to his knowledge to satisfy the highest longings in his soul that wanted the question answered: what is the best in myself that has to exist in a sense quite different from that what is as a material world round me?—But then the human being also finds what he needs of working power, joy of life, yes, possibility of life and health of life. Since this results from such a deepening in the world if we penetrate ourselves with forces which are brought up from the deepest depths of our soul, which were brought from cosmic distances to stand firmly on the ground on which we can work and recognise a sense of existence. If I may summarise what the today's consideration should give what like a tonic has to sound through the whole series of lectures about the supersensible worlds, I would like to do this with the words:

In cosmic distances
Recognising human being,
In soul depths
Experiencing world forces,
The human being attains
Right world knowledge
By true self-knowledge.

If I speak about death and immortality today, it may seem, as if at first such a consideration is caused in the personal needs of the human soul, which have little do with knowledge, with science. If you survey the series of spiritual-scientific talks that I have held, you yet realise that I applied a scientific standard to the considered objects already, even if a spiritual-scientific standard. Hence, the today's consideration does also not start from that what we find within our emotional life, within our longings and wishes towards a life that exceeds the life of the physical body. It will rather concern this: how has human knowledge to position itself to the questions of death and immortality completely in the sense, as this knowledge positions itself to other objects of our knowledge? Since if we abstain from the longing for a life which exceeds the bodily if we abstain from that what is to be understood possibly in the sense of concepts like fear of death and the like, we have the question of the nature of our whole human individuality in it as something that remains for the human knowledge regarding death and immortality.

But it may seem today, as if in case of all considerations of spiritual life these important questions of death and immortality are disregarded. Since if one takes one of the official psychologies, you find, indeed, the phenomena of the soul life discussed in detail. However, as far as they face us in the everyday life, for example, the question of the development of concepts, the question of memory, of perception, of attention and the like, but you will look in vain for a discussion about the real being of our soul life. Yes, you can find the prejudice just in most scientific circles this soul life that someone must be a dilettante who wants to put these questions as scientific ones.

But this scientific thinking has now to turn to roads different from the usual ones if it wants to consider issues like death and immortality. There that psychology is no longer enough which one calls “psychology without soul,” a psychology with which only the phenomena of the soul life should be considered, without looking at the real being of that what rests in our own individuality and whose expression the phenomena of the soul experiences are. Now spiritual science or anthroposophy is an unusual point of view regarding these as well as other questions.

Indeed, the questions of death and immortality have emerged like from dark depths of spirit already since more than one century from the Western cultural life. One has interpreted it always as a dream of single persons if it appeared with a great spirit, as for example with Lessing. One regarded it as a meaningless dream if it appeared with such men whose names are called less within the cultural life of the last decades. Concerning the questions of death and immortality spiritual science is also not in any opposition to natural sciences. Only the opinion is often spread, as if natural sciences must reject what spiritual science has to say for its part. Thus, we can experience that whenever something new appears, as it happened, for example, in the last decade with the problems of life, one points to the fact that the assumption of a real spiritual life that exceeds the only bodily, material life must be overcome gradually and completely. Spiritual science is not forced at all to deny something that appears, for example, in such discussions like in that by Jacques Loeb (1859–1924, German-American biologist) at the First Monists' Congress (Hamburg, 1911) about the problem of life. However, spiritual science has to hear repeatedly, as well as at that time, that it is over now with a spiritual-scientific consideration. For one can hope that one will succeed, finally, in the laboratory in producing life under outer material conditions.

Compared to all such matters I would like to remind you of one thing. There were times when one did not doubt really that one could once create life in the laboratory. People who have thought something to themselves with the representation of the Homunculus in the second part of Goethe's Faust and have remembered that this representation of Homunculus was really a kind of dream of the physical research of the Middle Ages and earlier times. That means that the creation not only of subordinated living beings, but also of the highest, the human being in the laboratory was a dream of the naturalists once. People who cherished this dream intended by no means that then the spirit had to be abolished from any consideration of humanity and the world.

No spiritual consideration of life contradicts the hope of producing life from the composition of outer substances. No, only the direction of the habitual ways of thinking matters. The habitual ways of thinking that develop with someone who immerses himself more and more in spiritual science show a view of a certain factor exceeding the material in the development of the human being and humanity.

The purely materialistic view of the human life says: there we see a human being entering the earthly existence, and we observe how the material processes happen this and that way, and we see the human being gradually growing up from a clumsy being to a human being who familiarises himself with life, can accomplish tasks of life. Moreover, we see descending processes after ascending ones as it were which lead gradually to the dissolution of the physical body or to death.

This materialistic consideration of life turns its attention solely to what one can reach with the senses and with methods of thinking and researching which are based on sensory views. There one is probably forced to exceed that what is given with the moment of birth or conception, because one cannot explain everything that appears in the human being if one pays attention only to those factors that prevail between birth or conception and death. Then one speaks of hereditary factors. However, as far as one remains within the purely material approach, one believes that all factors, all elements that should explain the human life consist only of that what one can observe between birth and death, or what comes into the human life by the inherited qualities of the parents or other ancestors.

However, as soon as people investigate this heredity, they realise that it is rather superstitious to lead back everything that the human being can realise in his life possibly to hereditary factors. Just in the last decade a brilliant historian, Ottokar Lorenz (1832–1904), tried once to examine families whose descent relations were known to what extent the qualities of the parents, grandparents and so on can be recognised in the lives of the descendants. However, he could get on this way of the purely experiential observation to nothing but to say, if one looks up in the line of ancestors, one finds that among the twenty to thirty ancestors whom everybody can count upwards human beings are who were either genii or idiots, wise men or fools, musicians or other artists, so that one can find all qualities, which are found with any human being, and that one does not come far in the reality if one clings to the prejudices of scientific theories if one wants to explain these or those hereditary factors, this or that expression of the human character, this or that quality.

Spiritual science adds a spiritual core to that what one can find in the line of heredity as conditions of the human life, which we cannot find in that which we search with the parents, grandparents and so on, but which we have to search within a supersensible spiritual world. So that in the course of the incarnation process something combines with the physical factors that is not physical that is of spiritual kind. This spiritual that one cannot see with physical eyes is that being that we carry in us as the result of our former lives on earth as one says. As it is true that we lead back our physical origin to our ancestors, we have to lead back a spiritual origin to a spiritual lineage, that means, to ourselves. Spiritual science is just forced to speak not only of one life on earth of the human being, but of repeated lives on earth. Indeed, one has to go far back for reasons that may become obvious in the course of these talks if we want to search our being in our previous life. So we say in the spiritual-scientific sense: we bring our essence with us from a former life, we have experienced this former life, and we have gone through death and then through a life between death and our appearance in this life.

Spiritual science is also forced to imagine this essence going through death and a supersensible life between death and a new life on earth. This essence is not a product of the material existence, but collects and forms the matter as it were, so that we receive this physical corporeality. Hence, we speak in spiritual science of repeated lives on earth. This idea of the repeated lives on earth faces us necessarily from the Western thinking first with Lessing (Gotthold Ephraim L., 1729–1781) in the work which he left as his testament, in the Education of the Human Race. There he says about this teaching: “even if it is the oldest one what the human beings have confessed to, must it not appear again at the summit of the human development?” In his Education of the Human Race Lessing also answers to some questions that can be objected the repeated lives on earth. Indeed, if such things appear with an excellent person, then people who judge this excellent spirit normally say: he performed great achievements, but later he became addicted to this strange dream of the repeated lives on earth, and one has to grant the great Lessing that he could also commit this strange mistake.—Thus, every little spirit feels called to condemn the great spirits with their “terrible mistakes.” Nevertheless, this idea did not let single persons of the nineteenth century rest, and even before the recent Darwinist natural sciences approached, the idea of the repeated lives on earth appears as a necessity of the human thinking again. Thus, it faces us in a book by Drossbach (Maximilian D., 1810–1884) about human rebirth, a somewhat confused book from our standpoint, but an attempt that allows itself just compared with scientific thinking to represent this idea. Soon afterwards, a little community was to be found which put a prize on the best writing about the immortality of the soul, and the prize winning writing by Widemann (Gustav W., 1812–1876) which was published in 1851 dealt with the problem of immortality from the standpoint of reincarnation. Thus, I could still state many a thing how the thinking has gradually induced many persons to consider this idea of reincarnation.

Then the scientific view of the human being came that was based on Darwin. At first, it considered the human being materialistically, and it will consider it still this way for a long. But if you take my book Theosophy or other books which are written in the spirit of spiritual science and natural sciences at the same time, you will realise that the scientific thinking—thought through to the end—imposes the necessity to the human being to think of the idea of incarnation. Nevertheless, it is not only this. I would like to show not only a logical consequence, but also that, indeed, the human being must come to the idea of reincarnation on basis of the same principle which prevails in natural sciences, namely of the principle of experience. However, another question arises there, is anybody able to collect experiences of that what should come in from supersensible worlds what should produce the human body and leave this body at death again?

One can realise cursorily still without spiritual-scientific foundations that something mental works on the outer body of the human being; but one does not like such considerations particularly today. If the human beings looked more exactly at the physiognomy of the human being in its different sculptural forms if one also looked at the facial play, at the gestures, which are individual with every human being, at the creative spirit, one would soon get a sensation how the spirit is internally working on the body.

Observe a human being who has been working on the big questions of life for about ten years, namely in such a way, as one does it in the outer science or philosophy where one reflects on these matters without having to say a lot. On the other side, observe a human being who has dealt with these issues so that they have become inner problems to him, so that they have taken him in states of the highest bliss, but also to the highest pains and the deepest tragedy. Consider a human being who deals with the questions of knowledge, and look at him, after he has led such a soul life for ten years, and you will realise how this work expresses itself in his physiognomy, how, indeed, the humanely mental works into the forms of the body. May one pursue now by certain methods such working on the outer physical body further to that point where not only certain forms of our face are changed in such a way that into them the character of the soul life is pressed, but where the indefinite form which the human being has at first becomes his completely elaborated figure?

It is necessary that the human being leads his soul life beyond the point where it is in the everyday life today. He has to learn to seize the supersensible in himself, that which is accessible to no outer observation. Then every human being can find both points by mere reflection, so to speak, where our life directly finds the supersensible.

These two points are the transitions from the wake state to sleep and again from sleep to the wake state. Since nobody should think so illogically that the human soul life stops with falling asleep and comes again into being with awakening. Our soul life must be in any state of existence in sleep, it must be somewhere to put it another way. The big question emerges which maybe the child puts that is justified for someone who gets involved with the questions of knowledge, namely the question: where does the soul go when the human being falls asleep? We see also other processes stopping, we see, for example, a burning candle going out. May one also ask there, where to does the fire go? Then we say, the fire is a process that stops if the candle goes out, and which begins again if it is kindled again.—May we compare the bodily process of the human being to the candle and say: the soul life is a process that goes out if the human being falls asleep in the evening, and is kindled in the morning when he awakes again? It seems perhaps to be in such a way, as if one could use this comparison. However, this comparison becomes impossible if, indeed, one could prove that not for the usual perception or sensation, but for a sensation to be attained by careful soul preparation that can face us which leaves our body with falling asleep and visits us with awakening again. If this is in such a way that while falling asleep not only a process takes place like a going out flame, but if we can pursue what leaves the body in the evening while falling asleep and visits it in the morning again if we can prove this process in its reality, then a supersensible inside the human being exists. Then one asks us this supersensible: how does it work within the body?

Even the famous naturalist Du Bois-Reymond (Emil Du B.-R., 1818–1896) pronounced the thought that one can understand the sleeping human being from the standpoint of natural sciences, but not the waking one in whom impulses, instincts, passions and so on surge up and down. You can read that what I have outlined today only briefly, more in detail in my writing How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds

I have described the methods there which we want to touch now briefly by which the human being gets around to getting to know the reality of that what leaves the body in sleep, and what with the awakening goes into him again. At first, we want to ask attentive soul viewers who have got a certain ability to listen to these important moments like falling asleep and awakening.

There we hear them saying what spiritual science can confirm absolutely that at first that changes what exists with sharp contours in the surroundings into something nebulous, into blurred forms. Then the falling asleep feels, as if his whole inner being is extended and does no longer depend on the forms of his skin; this is connected with a certain feeling of bliss. Then a strange moment occurs in which the human being can feel everything like in a brief vision that he has accomplished as satisfying moral things; this faces him vividly, and he knows that these are contents of his soul, he feels being in them. Then a jerk happens as it were, and the human being still feels: oh, this moment could last forever!—Some people just have this sensation who pay attention to the moment of falling asleep. The consciousness has disappeared.

The human being goes over to an inner essentiality at such a moment where the outer body plays no role, because the daily strain tires him. One feels as if the reality of the mental is scurrying. All methods of spiritual science which we can call experimental ones spiritual-scientifically consist in nothing but that the human being receives the inner power to keep that which is disappearing so that he can experience the moment of falling asleep completely consciously. The consciousness is kept. Since why does the consciousness dwindle while falling asleep? Because the human being cannot unfold that inner strength and willpower in the usual life to experience something else when the outer senses leave him. Let us ask ourselves, how much we experience in the usual life within the soul what is not stimulated by the outer impressions? There is a little left with most human beings surely. No wonder that the inner strength does not exist which can penetrate the soul-life and that is left by any outer experience at the moment, when it steps out while falling asleep. Any spiritual development is based on the penetration of our soul with the strength that the soul needs to receive the consciousness unless it receives it from the body. Meditation, concentration, and contemplation are experimental means to advance farther with the soul life than one can come in the usual life. I would like to bring in one example only.

Assuming that a human being can put a thought of benevolence or of something else in the centre of his experience and can exclude all the other thoughts, also those which one can get with the senses, to hold on this one thought only. Since the thoughts fly to the human being at such a moment as the bees fly to the flowers if one stands within the usual life. However, if one can have the strength to exercise concentration of thinking repeatedly, to practice meditative immersion, as soon as one can become free of the mere outer impressions, and delves repeatedly into pictorial thoughts which express something allegorically, then such a thought can startle the human soul-life, so that it becomes a stronger force than the human being normally has. Then such a human being falls asleep consciously, that means he experiences consciously that he grows with his soul life into a spiritual world. This is no dream, also no self-deception or self-suggestion, but something that is accessible, indeed, to every human being, but is to be reached only with care and energy. The human being can free himself completely from his physical corporeality. As he frees himself, otherwise, in sleep unconsciously from it, and as every human being is in sleep beyond the physical body, he will consciously live by such exercises in that what exists usually unconsciously beyond the human being. Briefly, the human being can experience a relief of his soul from the physical corporeality with soul exercises.

Indeed, one can always hold against such a representation that is based on inner experience: this is based on deceit! Nevertheless, whether it is based on deceit or on reality, this can be decided only by experience. Hence, I have to say repeatedly: what the human being believes to experience this way can absolutely be self-suggestion, for how far does the human being go self-deception! He can go so far that if he thinks, for example, only of a soda he already has its taste on the tongue. Something may well give the impression, as if it were perception of a spiritual world, but still it can be self-deceit. Hence, someone who does such exercises and makes his soul the experimenter must take all means to eliminate illusions. Nevertheless, in the end only the experience decides. Certainly, somebody can suggest the taste of a soft drink to himself, but it is another question whether he can quench his thirst with it.

There is the possibility to experience as reality what is in sleep beyond the physical body. How does one experience it? So that the human being makes his soul more and more independent and gets to know a quite new supersensible world. Indeed, he starts getting to know a world of spiritual light. Then something particular turns out there. The human being who otherwise does not consider his thoughts and mental pictures as realities takes them along when he leaves his body with his soul really. He loosens his conceptual life from all materiality, and this conceptual life experiences a transformation when the human being becomes free of his physical body. What I say now appears to materialistic minded people like daydreaming, even so it is reality. Our mere thoughts change into a world which we can compare—but only compare, it is different—with a propagating light with which we find the underlying cause of the things. So you get to the world in which you detach the thinking that is bound, otherwise, to the tool of the brain and submerge with your thinking in a newly appearing world. This expresses itself in the way that you feel more and more enlarged. You get to know a world of which the outer physical-sensory world is only a revelation. Spiritual beings, not atoms, form the basis of the outer sensory world, and we can penetrate as human beings into this spiritual world. So we are accepted by such a spiritual world as it were if we carry out this self-experiment in our soul.

We only attain a complete knowledge of the relation of this spiritual world to us human beings if we can also spiritually experience the moment of awakening. This is possible when the human being contemplates a lot about his inner life in meditation and concentration. For example, he can review that pictorially every morning or evening what he has experienced during the day or the day before to consider it contemplating or he contemplates his moral impulses and takes stock of himself. Then the human being gets around to experiencing the reverse moment consciously by such exercises where we submerge in our bodies that we experience, otherwise, unconsciously while awakening.

Then he experiences something that I can characterise only in the following way. You all may know that a healthy quiet sleep depends on our emotions. If the human being has thought ever so much, has exerted itself ever so much in his thinking, he falls easily asleep. But if anger, shame, remorse, and in particular a troubled conscience gnaw at him, he tosses and turns sleepless in bed. Not our thinking which we can carry over to the big spiritual world but our emotions can drive away the sleep.

Our emotions are associated with our soul life in the narrower sense. We share our thoughts with the world. The way in which our emotions just affect us is something intimately connected with what we ourselves are. Somebody who has learnt now in such a way to free his soul consciously from his body, also gets clear from immediate observation how he carries his emotions into the world into which he enters if he has become free of body. As blissful it makes us on one side to submerge in a world of spiritual light, free of the body, as much we feel chained in this world to our emotions gnawing at us. With it then we go into the spiritual world and have to carry it again into our body. However, by the mentioned exercises we find our emotional world again while submerging in our bodies. It faces us as something strange. We get to know ourselves submerging in our emotional world, and thereby we get to know, while we pursue it now consciously, what works in truth killing on our organism. I note here that I speak about death in a later talk that has a quite different meaning considering it with plants or animals than with the human being. Spiritual science does not take the easy way out to find these phenomena identical in the three realms if we pursue that consciously what has become the possession of our soul that it settles in our physical body and can work destroying in it. Then we get to know how our innermost being really forms the body while it combines with that what comes from father and mother and from the other ancestors as hereditary factors. There we see the human being entering in the physical life, we see him entering clumsily at first. He cannot yet speak; then we see the forms becoming more and more certain and see him becoming an active human being gradually.

Considering the whole development of the human being spiritual-scientifically, we realise how an inner essence develops and this forms the human being working on the body from the spiritual from birth or conception on. We find the same essence that works creatively on the body if we can pursue how it leaves the body and penetrates into a spiritual world. There we find two things: an element that enables us to pour out our own being like in a spiritual world of light; but we also find something in this essence that we must bring into this spiritual world, namely our emotional world, that is everything that we have got to know in life. In these two things we have on one side what is creative in the human being what leaves the body as our spiritual essence, goes through death and appears again in a new body after an interim and on the other side we have our emotions which we get to know by the spiritual-scientific view as a real being as that what destroys our body and leads to death.

Therefore, we realise how our spiritual essence enters in existence, builds up the body gradually, and we see this essence working the strongest in the first months where we do not yet have an inner soul life where we do not yet think. There we see the human being entering existence sleeping as it were. If we try to remember, we can come back to a certain point, not farther. We have slept into existence as it were. Only from the third, fourth years on the human being can feel as an ego. The reason is that the spiritual essence of the human being is busy forming the body at first. Then he comes to a point where the body has to grow only, and from then on the human being can use what flowed once in his body for his soul life which works within the physical body constantly in such a way that we take up the necessity of death at that time, where we start saying “I” to ourselves, up to which we can remember later where we begin an inner life.

What do we receive with this necessity of death? We receive the possibility to take up the outer world, to enrich our inside being perpetually, so that we become richer in life every day. In that part of our being that we carry in sleep into the spiritual world that forms our soul being everything is contained that we get as joys and sorrows, as pleasure and pain. While we live and develop a consciousness, we have the possibility for our inner essence to enrich it perpetually. We take this enrichment along if we go through death, but we can have it only because we had to destroy our bodies throughout life. Our body is built as it has developed from the preceding life. However, we absorb something new perpetually that enriches our soul life. Nevertheless, this new can no longer penetrate completely into our physical body, but only up to a certain degree. That expresses itself by the fact that we feel the fatigue of yesterday removed; but it cannot completely penetrate into our body. What penetrates into our body cannot develop completely in the bodily.

We take the former example once again. A human being works on questions of knowledge for ten years. Thus, his physiognomy has changed after ten years if this activity has been a matter of his heart. However, his body limits this change. The desire to develop internally further may still exist; but, the later absorbed can no longer work into the body. Hence, we see, because the body puts a border, the richer inner life beginning when the soul has poured forth into the body. First, we see the physiognomy of such a human being changing—of a thinker, poet or artist; then only we see the rich spiritual life developing. Not before our outside world limits us, we develop so surely, but we can no longer carry into our physical bodies what we develop in ourselves because our body is built up according to that what we have got in a former life on earth. Therefore, we have to carry through death what we still get internally. This helps us to build up the next body, so that we have built only in a body of the next life what must destroy our present body.

A view presents itself there that fits into the scientific thinking, a view of what death and immortality means what the repeated lives on earth mean. There we realise if we change our physiognomy how the human being has built that into his body what he has got in former lives on earth. We see the results of our former lives in the developing body, and we see in that what we get now what stands in the way of our bodily, so to speak, as a spiritual, the developing elements of our future life.

Spiritual science regards the earthly life as something that is between something former and something following. The later considerations will show how our perspective increases to the times of our existence which the human being spends free of body in the supersensible worlds. In order that such matters would not remain pipe dreams, it is necessary that we look at the methods that enable the soul to perceive even if it lacks the physical brain. Only because the human being enables the soul to perceive that in the supersensible what must remain, otherwise, a mere assertion it becomes a proven reality.

Today we stand strictly speaking only at the beginning of a science that deals with such matters. Just many people consider themselves as the best experts of the matters, as the most enlightened ones and regard these matters as fantasies. I would not be surprised if anybody said, this is daydreaming that completely contradicts any scientific truth!—Nobody will find it more comprehensible than I do if anybody says this. But while the human beings become engrossed more and more in spiritual science, they realise that we can prepare our souls by meditation so that it can know about itself, can develop inner forces by which it can still know, can still perceive if it leaves the body and can no longer perceive with the organs of the body. This has to be found experimentally—one may say, it is to be found spiritual-experimentally—that the soul is something that one can experience if it can no longer use the bodily organs. It goes through births and deaths and works in such a way that it builds up the body that goes through death and collects new forces to build the body during the earthly existence. With the questions of the nature of the human being, you attain answers to the questions of death and immortality at the same time.

Goethe said once in an essay that nature invented death to have much life. Spiritual-scientific research proves such a notion to be true saying, in any life, the human being enriches his soul life; he must die because his respective body is built as an effect of his former lives on earth. While killing his body, he creates the possibility to work into in a new body what now he cannot work into his body and into the world.

Such a worldview influences our lives deeply. If it penetrates our whole being if it remains not only a theory, we feel such a truth only as a truth of life. Since we say to ourselves when we have crossed the middle of our lives when our hairs begin becoming grey and our faces get wrinkles: life is going downhill!—Why is it going downhill? Because that what the soul has got cannot be brought into the body. However, what we have gained internally, and what must destroy our present bodies is worked into a new body. Someone can argue easily: you spiritual researchers state that the human being becomes weak in old age, so you say that just with the body the mind dwindles away!—As this objection is a given, it is a given that one only admits that such a man does not think about that: from what is our present brain built?—It is built from our former lives! We must destroy our bodies and our brains with our thoughts. But the thoughts, which kill the bodies, are those, which use the brain. It is obvious that something must stop that is bound to a tool like the brain. However, our spiritual being does not stop with it. That is why it occurs that we do no longer find the tools in ourselves to realise what we have appropriated in the present life if the human being moves in downward direction. Then this yet works in a soul life which is not bound to the brain, and which cannot be expressed by cerebral thoughts. This prepares itself to act creatively in the next life. One says it not only in Goethe's sense that nature invented death to have much life—but we have also to say, death is there to work out that in new forms what we acquire internally in life. In this sense, we can say if we see the age approaching: thank God, that life can go downward, that death can be! Since if it did not exist, we could not take up what flows towards us from the world in such a way that it forms us. We need death, so that we can make that what we experience the contents of our own being. Hence, we regard death as that by which just life can advance. Hence, there is no better adviser than spiritual science; it is not only a comforter towards the fear of death, but it gives us strength, while we are walking towards death and see the outside dying. Since we know that then the inside grows. Spiritual science will raise the whole life to a higher level at which life seems meaningful and reasonable.

From the following talks will arise that life does not proceed endlessly forward and backward, but that also reincarnation has a beginning and an end. Now I would only like to point to it. From that which spiritual science has to say about death and immortality arises that we have the effects of our present life in a following life.

The complete human existence disintegrates into the existence between birth and death and into that between death and a new birth. There we see what Goethe felt in terms of the simple life extended to the whole life while we look back not only at the little yesterday, but also at the big yesterday where we made our present life. We look there at the joys or pains of life and feel: joy strengthens us for the future; we must experience grief for overcoming obstacles to strengthen ourselves also for the future. There we see a big contrast expanding in the future life and think of the Goethe's verses:

If yesterday is clear and accessible,
If today you work freely and strongly,
Then you can hope for a tomorrow
That is also fortunate.

Happiness and optimism flow to us from the internally conceived spiritual science showing us: indeed, the spirit forms the material and survives while the material life is destroyed to reveal itself always anew, and which applies the newly acquired. I would like to summarise this for the purposes of the today's evening with the words:

While living the spirit shows
Always its power only,
Dying, however, the spirit shows,
How through all deaths
It always survives to higher life.

During a nice September day of this year, I drove with some friends from Zurich to the neighbouring town Einsiedeln. There a Benedictine Abbey was founded in the early Middle Ages and acquired a certain notoriety through diverse circumstances. At that day, just a pilgrimage day took place. Einsiedeln was prepared to welcome many pilgrims. At that time, I myself also wanted to do a kind of pilgrimage, but not directly to that place Einsiedeln, but from there to an adjacent site. A car was taken to drive to the so-called “Devil's Bridge.” Finally, on a quite rough way, uphill and downhill, we arrived there and found a quite modern inn that was built relatively short time ago. In this inn, a board is found: “Natal site of the doctor and naturalist Philippus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus, 1493–1541.”

This was the goal of my pilgrimage at first: the birthplace of the famous, in many respects also infamous, Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus von Hohenheim. At first one saw meadows with many flowers and grazing cows all around in a strange place where many ways crossed. One could feel something particular by the peculiar of nature as you can hardly find it in Europe anywhere but in the Alpine regions. Nature has something there, as if the plants have an own language, as if they wanted to say anything, as if they could become rather talkative. This site is also suitable to grow together with that which the spirit of nature can tell you.

There the picture of a boy emerged before my soul who grew up during the first nine years of his life in that nature who really had his birthplace in a house which stood once there, and which was replaced with the new one. Since the old doctor Bombast von Hohenheim lived in the fifteenth century at this place, and his little son was the future Paracelsus. I tried to put myself in the situation of that boy about whom I knew that he had grown together with the whole nature already from his earliest childhood. I tried to imagine this boy in this nature talking intimately with the plants. In a certain respect, the outer configuration definitely shows what that boy Paracelsus let speak to himself from the early morning to the late evening, except those times in which he went with his father on the ways that this undertook to the adjacent places. One can consider as sure that the father could exchange some interesting thoughts about the interesting questions with the little boy in the midst of nature at that time, questions that that child could already put about what the experience of nature directly shows. Something that matured in that boy that we may come to know in the life of Paracelsus faces us in a childlike figure if we have the picture of the old honest-good, but very expert licentiate, the old Bombastus von Hohenheim taking the inquisitive boy by the hand.

While this picture emerged in my soul, I remembered another picture which I already had many years ago when I stood in Salzburg in front of a house where a board displayed that in this modest house Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus von Hohenheim died at the age of 48 years. Between these two pictures this eventful, this unique life is enclosed to me.

If we look a little closer at his life, we find, indeed, still completely with the character of the fifteenth, sixteenth centuries, a deep knowledge of nature arising which became then medical science and philosophy, theosophy. A knowledge of nature, which originates from deeper clairvoyant soul forces whose true figure I have already suggested in the talks of this cycle. What waked up these deeper soul forces and enabled Paracelsus to look within nature behind that what the outer senses and the outer intellect can recognise only, was really caused by the intimately adherence with nature, by feeling his soul forces related to that what germinates, sprouts and blossoms in nature. When the nine-year-old boy moved with his father to Carinthia into a similar nature, he could also feel related with the spirit of nature.

Paracelsus growing up in such a way advanced further and further just in an individual, in a quite peculiar and personal view of nature. How could this be different? Everything was connected that took root in his mind with the forces peculiar to him and with the abilities, with the way as he stood to the things how they were talking to him. Hence, he also especially appreciated throughout his life to have grown together so intimately with nature. If he wanted to stress to his enemies that his inside was related to nature, he often pointed to it later. These were his words: “Give ear how I justify myself: I am not spun subtly by nature, it is also not the habit of my country that one attains something with silk spinning. We are brought up neither with figs, nor with mead, nor with wheat bread; but with cheese, milk, and oat bread, this cannot make subtle fellows. Those are educated in soft clothes and in women's rooms, and we who grew up in pine cones do not understand each other well. This is why someone can even be considered as rude who believes to be subtle and gracious. The same applies to me what I regard as silk, the other call it drill.” He is of such a type, he thinks, as the human beings are who have not completely separated themselves from the topsoil of natural existence but are intimately connected with it. He takes his power and wisdom from this connection. That is why his motto was throughout his life: “Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself.” This penetrated his whole character; it shows us this man mental-plastically. Hence, we can understand that when he came to the university later he could not familiarise himself with the way how he should continue scholarly now what he knew about medical science naturally, only encouraged by the conversations with nature and with his father. He could not cope with this at first actually.

In order to realise what he had to withstand there, we have to look at how at that time medicine was done. There it was authoritative above all what one could have in the old traditions and documents of the old doctors Galen (131-~200 AD), Avicenna (AbÅ« AlÄ« al-Husain ibn AbdullÄh ibn SÄ«nÄ, ~980–1037) and others. The lecturers dealt preferably with commenting and interpreting what one could read in the books. This was deeply antipathetic to the young Philippus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, and he probably thought above all that a big distance was between that which one could get directly and intuitively from the spiritual work of nature and what had gone away so far from it as scholarship, as mere intellectual concepts and ideas. Hence, he wanted to go through another school. He went through this other school thoroughly. We soon see Paracelsus leaving the university and wandering about in Germany, Austria, Western and Southern Europe, Poland, Holland, Lithuania, and Scandinavia, with the intention to get to know something from the way everywhere—to speak with Goethe—“how nature lives in creating.” Since he had the thought in mind, actually: indeed, the whole nature is a uniform, but she speaks in many languages, and just because one learns to recognise how one and the same thing changes its form in the different regions, one advances to the being of the inner unity, to that what underlies as something spiritual everything only sensorily discernible. However, he wanted to get to know not only how any ore, any metal directly results from the configuration of the mountains and of its source to get such a picture how nature lives in creating, he wanted to get to know not only how the plants assume other shapes depending on the climate and the environment, but he had something else still in mind. He said to himself: with its surroundings, the whole human organism is connected. One cannot understand the human body and soul as the same everywhere; at least one does not recognise the human being if one looks at him only at one place.

Therefore, he wandered through the different regions that were accessible to him to recognise with his look deeply penetrating into the spiritual how the human being is related with nature, depending on the different influence of climate and region. Not before one experiences this different influence everywhere, one gets to that what informs us about the nature of health and illness in the sense of Paracelsus. Hence, he was never satisfied to get to know any illness only at one place, but he said to himself, the fine substances are different which compose the human organism, depending on whether the human being lives, for example, in Hungary, in Spain or in Italy, and nobody recognises the human being who cannot pursue the finer substances with penetrating look.

When one reproached him that his “high school” was vagrancy, he referred to the fact that the divine spirit does not come to anybody who is sitting on the fireside bench. He realised that the human being has to go where the divine spirit works in the different shapes of nature. A clairvoyant knowledge developed in him that he could have only because of his connection with nature.

However, Paracelsus also felt that this knowledge had so intimately grown together with his soul that he became more and more aware that, actually, one could bring to mind only by an intimate way of pronouncing what he had learnt directly on the high school of nature. He called nature his “book” and the various areas of the earth the “single pages” of this book which one reads walking on them. He despised those increasingly who studied the old Galen, Avicenna and others only and removed from the book that spreads out with its various pages as the “book of nature” in front of him. However, he also felt that that what he could learn in such a way in his high school could be put only intimately into words. Hence, he wanted to use another language than Latin that had become foreign, actually, to the immediate soul life, which was used in those days only at the universities. Since he believed that he could not succeed in bending the words and in formulating so that they could immediately express what flowed out of all being. Therefore, he felt the urge to express in his mother tongue what he wanted to express. Two things resulted from that. Once, that he had a high self-confidence of the value of his knowledge not because of boasting or arrogance, for he was a humble nature strictly speaking. That is why he said that one could not learn anything from medical science, actually, but one must approach nature directly again while renewing medical science.—Hence, his proud words: “Who wants to follow the truth has to go to my kingdom. Follow me, you Galen, Avicenna (AbÅ« AlÄ« al-Husain ibn AbdullÄh ibn SÄ«nÄ, ~980–1037, Persian polymath), Rhazes (AbÅ« Bakr Muhammad ibn ZakarÄ«yÄ ar-RÄzÄ«, 854–927, Persian polymath), Montagnana (Bartolomeo da M., ~1380–1452) and Mesue (YÅ«hannÄ ibn MÄsawayh, ~777–857, Assyrian physician), I do not follow you. You from Paris, you from Montpellier, you from Swabia, you from Meissen, you from Cologne, you from Vienna, and from the regions of the Danube and Rhine rivers, you from the islands, you from Italy, you from Dalmatia, you from Sarmatia, you from Athens, you Greeks, you Arabs, you Israelites. Follow me and I do not follow you ... I become the king, and the kingdom will be mine, I lead the empire and gird your loins!” Not from arrogance and haughtiness, but from the consciousness that nature speaks out of him, he said, the kingdom is mine.—With it, he meant the kingdom of scientific and medical knowledge of his time.

The second thing that resulted was that he was soon by such a disposition and such a knowledge an opponent of the official representatives of his discipline. First, they could not stand at all that he expressed himself in German what they regarded only as possible to express in Latin language. He was a complete innovator of that. They could also not understand that he walked through the lands and wanted to learn. They could not at all believe that someone who was connected with the whole nature had a living sensation of the fact that the human soul-life is everywhere a fruit of natural existence in the region and that one has not only to observe the plants blossoming and the animals thriving there. Hence, Paracelsus appreciated farmers, shepherds, even knackers who worked in and with nature. He was convinced that in their simple knowledge something would be included of a real knowledge of nature from which he might learn something, so that he learnt as it were as a vagrant from vagrants. Hence, he says about himself: “I followed the art at the risk of my life and was not ashamed of learning from vagrants, headsmen, and barbers. My teaching was tested sharper than silver in poverty, fear, war and misery.”—One could not forgive him this. When he was appointed later at the university of Basel—as it were like by an error of the representatives of his discipline—, one of the scholars noticed with horror that Paracelsus walked in the street not in the costume of the professors, but like a vagrant, like a carter. This was not acceptable; this violated the reputation of the entire profession.

Therefore, it happened then that he encountered the contradiction of his colleagues where he wanted to apply what he had learnt from the big book of nature, and experienced what those have to experience who have to experience envy and opposition the worst. However, what one could least forgive him was that he was successful with his deep insights into nature where others had no success where they had applied everything that was in their power and could reach nothing. It is true if one offered resistance to him there or there he was not sparing with rude words, but if one considers the conditions with which he worked, one knows that it was completely justified. Where he was urged to discuss this or that medical problem with these or those colleagues, the debates became heated. There, for example, the others talked in Latin that he understood rather well, then he shouted back towards them in German what he regarded as proofs, they regarded, as follies. A picture of the whole way resulted how he collided with his contemporaries.

We can briefly explain in the following way what he gained as insight. He said: the human being, as he faces us as a healthy and ill being, is not a single entity, a single species, but he is placed in the big nature. One can assess health and illness in a certain respect only if one knows all effects that originate from the big world, from the macrocosm to pull the human being into their circles.—Thus, the human being appeared to him at first like a single entity in the macrocosm. This was one direction as he looked at the human being. Then he said to himself: someone must attain an intimate knowledge of all events in the big nature outdoors who wants to assess how all phenomena which happen, otherwise, outdoors in wind and weather, in rising and setting of stars and so on flow through the human nature as it were, work into them.—Because Paracelsus did not confine himself to the special knowledge of the human being, but let the clairvoyant gaze wander over the whole macrocosm, over physics, astronomy, chemistry, and collected everything that he could get hold of, the human being was a part of the macrocosm for him.

However, besides the human being appeared to him as a being independent largely, while he processes the substances of the macrocosm and by the way, in which he processes them, he lives either in connection or in opposition with the macrocosm. As far as the human being is a part of the macrocosm, Paracelsus looks at him as the lowest, most primitive, purely physical-bodily human being. But as far as the human being receives a certain circulation of substances and forces in his organisation and develops independently, is active independently in them, Paracelsus saw something included in the human being that he calls the “archaeus” that was to him like an inner master builder whom he also called the “inner alchemist.”

He draws the attention to this inner alchemist who transforms the outer substances which do not resemble what the human being needs as material inside as he changes milk and bread into meat and blood. This was to him a big riddle. In it expressed itself what he saw working as the inner alchemist who adapts himself harmoniously in the universe or opposes it. This was to him the human being in a second direction who can have such an inner alchemist in himself who transforms the substances into poisons destroying the organism, or into those means furthering and developing the organism.

Then he distinguished a third one: that what is the human being apart from the outer world. There Paracelsus realised that the human organisation is so designed that in the cooperation of the forces and organs a little world, a microcosm, an image of the big world exists. Notabene: this is something different from the first viewpoint of Paracelsus. After the first viewpoint, the human being is a part of nature. As far as with his third viewpoint the single parts of nature co-operate, he finds a likeness of the mutual relation of sun and moon in blood and heart, in the nervous and cerebral systems and in the interactions of them. In the other organs, he finds an inner kingdom of heaven, an inner world edifice. The outer world edifice is to him like a big symbol that recurs in the human being like a little world. In a mess that can originate in this little world, he sees the third way in which the human being can become ill.

He saw the fourth viewpoint in the passions and desires, which exceed a certain measure, for example, rage and fury. They react then again on the physical organisation.

Finally, he still saw the fifth viewpoint that is by no means admitted today, in the way, how the human being is integrated into the course of the world, and how to him from the whole spiritual development the causes of illness can result.

Paracelsus developed five viewpoints this way which he demanded not theoretically, but which he realised from the nature of the human being in immediate view of the relation of the human being to nature. Because he saw the human being placed in nature, and did not intellectually but clairvoyantly consider the way in which the single parts co-operate Paracelsus could position himself in a particular way to the sick human being. Strangely enough, he related not with one, but with all soul forces to the whole world. Hence, his nice sentence: with the mind we learn to recognise God the Father in the world; by faith we learn to recognise Christ, the Son; and by imagination, we learn to recognise the Spirit.

As the knowledge of the healthy and sick human being results from these three aspects, he wanted to put the human being before his soul. However, he wanted to look not only at the human being, but he wanted to observe how the single things are related in nature with each other and with the human being. Something peculiar could thereby happen: if he faced a sick person, he beheld how nature worked under the just cited viewpoints; the irregularity of the substances and of the organs resulted to his intuitive sight. He had the whole human being before himself.

He could not dress in abstract words what he experienced in front of the sick person, he could not formulate it; but he settled in the sick person. He needed no name of the illness, but while he was like submerged in the illness, he realised something quite new: how he had to combine the substances that he knew in nature, so that he could find means against this illness. However, it was also not only the mental in which he submerged, but also the moral, the intellectual and spiritual. Call him a vagrant if you want, as one did; maybe call charlatanism what he did. Nevertheless, stress also that he was bared of all means that he had to run up debts and so on. But then do not forget that he unselfishly became completely one with the illness he faced.

Hence, one could say, if he used everything that nature gave him for the sick person, the most important remedy would be love above all. Not the substances heal, he said, but love.—Love also worked from him onto the sick person, because he completely saw himself transported in the nature of the other human being. The second what had to arise from him by his especially intimate relation to nature was that he beheld the effective means in any single case that he applied; he beheld it developing its forces in the human organism. From it, the second arose to him: confident hope. He calls love and hope his best healing powers, and he never set himself to work without love and hope. The man who walked around as a vagrant was completely filled with the most unselfish love. However, he often had weird experiences. His love went so far that he cured those free of charge who had no money. However, he also had to live on something. Some people often cheated him out of his fee; then he went on and did not care. However, also collisions happened with the surroundings. Thus, the following occurred to him, for example.

When he was in Basel, because he was later appointed city doctor, also like by a kind of error, he accomplished some famous cures. Once he was called to a Canon Lichtenfels who had an illness that nobody could cure. Paracelsus had stipulated a fee of hundred thalers if he cured him; the canon agreed. Then Paracelsus gave him the remedy, and after three or four times the illness was cured.

There the canon meant if this was done so easily, he also does not pay the hundred thalers,—and Paracelsus was left with nothing. He sued the canon to set an example; but he did not win his case at the Basel court: he should keep to his rate. Then he distributed, as one said, bad flyers against the court and especially against the canon. This bred bad blood. A friend drew his attention to the fact that his stay was no longer safe in Basel. Then he fled in the dead of night from Basel. Had he gone half an hour later, he would have been imprisoned.

Someone who knows the peculiar life of this person understands the impression deeply penetrating into our hearts originating from the picture that comes from Paracelsus' last years: a picture that shows a face in which a lot of spiritual is expressed. He experienced a lot, but at the same time, the life badgered this soul and this body badly. On one side, you notice the suffering, relatively young man with the old features, wrinkles, and baldness and which struggle and striving which essence of the whole time evolution were in Paracelsus and on the other side, how he had to experience the tragic of a human being who confronted his time this way. Even if it is a legend, what should have happened in Salzburg that the Salzburg doctors would have decided once to incite one of his servants to precipitate Paracelsus from a rock who thereby met his death and was carried to his house. Even if that is not true, the life of Paracelsus was already in such a way that one must not split his skull; one worried his life out so that we understand his early death completely.

Such a man like Paracelsus made a deep impression on all who searched the way to the spiritual worlds in the next time. Someone who knows Goethe's life feels that Paracelsus whom Goethe got to know soon made a deep impression on him. Goethe had grown together like Paracelsus as it were with the surrounding nature. On another occasion, I have already told that Goethe showed this emotional attachment as a seven-year-old boy while he built an altar, rejecting everything that he has as religious explanations about nature from his surroundings. He took a music stand, laid minerals of his father's collection and plants on it, waited for the sun rise in the morning, collected the sun beams with a burning glass and lighted a little aromatic candle, which he had put on top, to light a sacrificial fire which was kindled in nature itself, and offered a sacrifice to the God of the big nature that way. This affinity to nature appears with Goethe so early and develops later into the great, also clairvoyant ideas about nature. We see in Goethe who is already in Weimar this way of thinking working on in the prose hymn To Nature: “Nature! We are surrounded and embraced by her, we are unable to escape her, and unable to penetrate deeper into her. Uninvited and unwarned she takes us along in the circulation of her dance until we are tired and fall from her arms ...”

Also in another way, we see a lot of resemblance between Goethe and Paracelsus. He becomes a true student of nature in botany and zoology. We realise how he tries to recognise the being of the objects of nature on his Italian Journey spiritually observing how the single appears in its variety. It is nice as he sees the innocent coltsfoot transformed which he knows from Germany. There he learns how the outer forms can express the same being in various way. Thus we realise that he wanted to recognise—everywhere searching the unity in the variety—the uniform as the spirit. It is significant what he writes from Rome to his friend Knebel (Karl Ludwig von K., 1744–1834) in Weimar on 18 August 1787: “After I have seen many plants and fish near Naples and in Sicily, I would be tempted if I were ten years younger to travel to India, not to discover anything new, but to look at the discovered in my way.” He wants to behold intuitively spiritually what spreads out in the sensory world. Paracelsus headed for the spirit in nature, Goethe headed for the spirit.

No wonder, hence, that Paracelsus' life appeared beside Faust's life vividly in Goethe's soul. If we open ourselves to Goethe's life especially, his Faust stands not only as the Faust of the sixteenth century before us who was a kind of contemporary of Paracelsus in a certain respect, but Paracelsus himself stands before us as he worked on Goethe. We have something in the Faust figure in which Paracelsus played a part. Why did Goethe resort to Faust?—One tells in the legend of Faust that he laid the Bible behind the bank for a while, became a doctor of medicine, and wanted to study the forces of nature.

Indeed, we realise that Paracelsus remained loyal to the Bible and was even a Bible-expert, but we see him laying the old medical authorities, Galen, Avicenna and others “behind the bank,” even burnt them once and went directly to the book of nature. This trait did a big impression on Goethe. And further: do we not see a similar trait when Faust translates the Bible into his “beloved German,” so that that which comes from it can directly flow into his soul, and when Paracelsus translates that into his beloved German which natural science is to him? We could state some other traits that would show that in Goethe something of the reappeared Paracelsus lived when he created the Faust figure. Yes, one would like to say, one sees in the Faust—Goethe translates it only into the ideal—what often happened between Paracelsus and his honest father when they were together, where Faust tells how he had contact with his father. Briefly, we can look at Paracelsus if Faust works as a figure of the Goethean creating on us.

While we have both figures beside ourselves, something faces us that shows in peculiar way how Goethe could make something quite different from the Faust figure as from the Paracelsus figure of the sixteenth century. If we look at the Goethean Faust, he is dissatisfied about what the different sciences, medicine, theology and so on can give him. However, Goethe can present this Faust not in such a way that we see the immediate settling in nature. Goethe could do it, but there had to be something for him, why he did not do it. Why did he not do it?

There it is remarkable at first, what is not only an outer fact that Paracelsus died with a harmonious soul that has grown together with the spirit of nature in the years in which we can imagine Faust saying the words:

I've studied now, to my regret,
Philosophy, Law, Medicine,
and—what is worse—Theology
from end to end with diligence ...
(Verses 355–357)

What now Faust further experiences, he experiences it in an age which Paracelsus did not reach in the physical world. Therefore, Goethe presents a kind of Paracelsus as it were from the age on in which Paracelsus died, but a Paracelsus who could not settle in the living spirit of nature.

How does he present him? Although he shows that Faust found a deep understanding of nature, also a kind of feeling related with nature, it is different than it was with Paracelsus. We feel this, when Faust speaks to the spirit of nature:

Spirit sublime, all that for which I prayed,
all that you now have granted me
you showed your face to me, but not in vain.
You gave me for my realm all Nature's splendour,
with power to feel and to enjoy it. You grant
not only awed, aloof acquaintanceship,
you let me look deep down into her heart
as if it were the bosom of a friend.
You lead the ranks of living beings past me,
and teach me thus to know my fellow creatures
in air and water and in silent wood.
(Verses 3217–3227)

Faust grows together with her in a way, because he was separated from nature before. Nevertheless, Goethe cannot show that Faust penetrates so vividly into the details of nature as Paracelsus penetrated; he cannot show that this happens at once, while he speaks to the sublime spirit of nature. Goethe cannot show how Faust would grow together with nature, but he must show an inner soul development. Faust has to go through a merely mental-spiritual development to reach the depths of the creating of nature and world. Thus, we realise with this way of Faust, although he often reminds of Paracelsus, that everything that Faust experiences is experienced in the moral, in the intellectual, in the emotional life, and not like with Paracelsus with whom as it were the feelers reach nature. It had really to happen that Faust could ascend to unselfishness, to the intimate love of the spiritual at the end of the second part, not while he grows together with nature, but goes even farther away from her. Goethe lets Faust go blind:

The darkness seems to press about me more and more,

But in my inner being there is radiant light.
(Verses 11,499#8211;11,500)

Faust becomes a mystic, he develops the soul in all directions, and he faces the resisting Mephistophelean forces. Briefly, Faust must develop purely inside his soul, has to raise the spirit in his soul. When this spirit is raised inside, the manifest to the senses is destroyed even with Faust because he goes blind: “But in my inner being there is radiant light.”

Faust realises—we recognise this at the end of the drama—that the spirit working in nature forces up the inner soul forces if the human being develops them. If this spirit is developed enough, the human being directly attains what penetrates as something spiritual the human being and nature.

Thus, Goethe let his Faust experience an inner soul path so that his Faust comes to the same goal to which Paracelsus came. If one thinks about what induced it, one realises that the powers of time cause the successive epochs of development, the historical life.

One recognises then what it means that the year of Paracelsus' death is something before that big revolution which the work of Copernicus caused for the outer natural science. Paracelsus' life still falls into the time in which it was right that the earth was stationary in the universe that the sun walks around it, and so on; this still worked beyond Paracelsus. Only after his death, the quite different kind of the view of the solar system and the world system prevailed. People literally lost the ground. Someone who regards the Copernican world system as a matter of course today gets no idea of that storm which broke out when the earth “was set in motion.” One can say, the ground under the feet faltered literally. But that also caused that the spirit did no longer stream immediately like an aroma into the soul as with Paracelsus. If Copernicus had confined himself to that which the senses perceive, he would never have put up his world system. Because he did not trust in the senses, he could put up his world system, while he exceeded the sensory appearance with intellect and reason. The course of development was this way. The human being had to develop his mind and his reason immediately. The times since the sixteenth century have passed not without effect.

While Goethe had to lift his Faust out of a Paracelsus figure of the sixteenth century to a Faust figure of the eighteenth, he had to consider that the human being could no longer be connected with nature in such an immediate and primitive way as Paracelsus was. Hence, Faust became a figure that could not discover the forces of existence, the sense of being by the immediate connection with nature but by the hidden forces from the depths of the soul.

However, at the same time the essentials appear that in the human being the stream of existence does not pass by insignificantly. Paracelsus is a son of his time as a great, superior figure. Goethe created a figure in his Faust poetically, which he made the son of his time in a certain direction which learnt to use reason and intellect in the natural sciences of his time, and which could work out the mystic. Hence, one has to say, because Goethe felt pressured into presenting not a Paracelsus figure but another figure, the deep caesura appears in the development of the European humanity in this period. The importance of such a caesura even appears in the greatest geniuses, and in the difference between these both figures. It is interesting for someone who wants to get to know Goethe to the highest degree to look at his creating in the Faust figure, because his Faust informs us about Goethe more than his other figures.

If we look at spiritual science from these observations, it can feel intimately related with Goethe, but can also feel intimately related with Paracelsus in another way. How with Paracelsus? Paracelsus could receive the deepest insights into nature from the developed forces of his soul by immediate contact with nature. However, this time in which one was able to do this is past since Copernicus, Galilei, Giordano Bruno and Kepler. Another time has begun. In his Faust Goethe showed the type of this time in which one has to work with the hidden soul forces, so that higher sensory forces come into being from the depths of the soul. As the eyes see the colours as the ears hear the tones, these higher senses perceive the spirit in the surroundings and that which one cannot behold as spirit with the usual senses.

Thus, the modern human being has to experience the deeper soul forces, while he does not grow together with nature as Paracelsus did but while he turns away from her. However, if he gets around to bringing up the deeper forces from his soul, to developing an understanding also of what lives invisibly as a spiritual and supersensible behind the visible, behind the sensory nature, if the human being works out the Faustian from himself, then the Faustian becomes the clairvoyant insight into nature. In a way any human being can experience developing the inner spirit that he can say indeed—even if he cannot believe to have solved the riddles of the world by what his eyes and outer senses teach him: “But in my inner being there is radiant light.” This can lead us to the spirit that prevails in everything.

Thus, the way from Paracelsus to Goethe is extremely interesting if one sees reviving in the Faust figure from Goethe's soul what for Paracelsus what also for Faust is the essentials is: the fact that the human being can penetrate into the depths of the world and into the laws with which the everlasting immortal spirit of the human being is related not by the outer senses, but only by an immediate connection with nature, as with Paracelsus, or by a development of higher senses, as Goethe poetically indicated in the continuation of the Faust figure of the sixteenth century. That is why for Paracelsus that became more and more a principle that then Goethe stressed for his Faust with the words:

Nature, mysterious in day's clear light,
lets none remove her veil,
and what she won't reveal to your mind,
you can't extort from her with levers and with screws.
(Verses 671–674)

With it one does not mean—neither in the sense of Paracelsus nor in that of Goethe—that one could not investigate the spirit of nature, but that the spirit reveals itself in nature, indeed, to the spirit woken in the soul, but not to the instruments which we have in the laboratory, not to the levers and the screws. Hence, Goethe says: “What she won't reveal to your mind, you can't extort from her with levers and with screws.” But to the spirit she can reveal it. This is the right interpretation of this Goethean word. Since Goethe agreed absolutely with Paracelsus, while he created a reflection of Paracelsus in his Faust, and Paracelsus together with Goethe would have regarded the spirited words as valid:

to understand some living thing and to describe it,
the student starts by ridding it of its spirit;
he then holds all its parts within his hand,
except, alas! For the spirit that bound them together.

Goethe adds, namely, when he conceived his Faust first, because he himself was still in high spirits in a juvenile way and did not belong to the “extremely clean and superfine” people in the sense of Paracelsus:

which chemists, unaware they're being ridiculous,
denominate encheiresin naturae.
(Verses 1936–1941)

However, this wants to say that nobody who wants to approach nature without developed higher cognitive forces can recognise the primal grounds of nature and cannot recognise how the immortal spirit of the human being is connected with nature, or to speak with Jacob Böhme where it comes into being (German: urständet).

If one covers the way from Paracelsus to Goethe as we have tried to outline it today, then you realise that Paracelsus and Goethe are living confessors of the other principle, not of the principle of those views of nature and world which they wanted to meet with the Goethean saying:

To understand some living thing and to describe it,
The student starts by ridding it of its spirit;
He then holds all its parts within his hand,
Except, alas! For the spirit that bound them together.

No! Paracelsus and Goethe approach nature and the human being in such a way that for them counts:

Who wants to recognise and understand some living thing,
looks for the spiritual light in primal grounds.
There he holds all its parts within his hand,
And never will he misjudge
The truth of the things within the spiritual tie.