The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Public lecture in Vienna, November 22, 1889

Report in the “Chronik des Wiener Goethe-Vereins” of January 20, 1890.

On Friday, November 22, 1889, Mr. Rudolf Steiner opened the series of Goethe evenings with a highly interesting lecture on the “Goethe Archive in Weimar”.

Mr. Steiner is entrusted with the publication of Goethe's scientific writings and had the opportunity to study the Goethe Archive in detail over the summer. He described in detail the natural history collection exhibited in the Goethe House and emphasized the great value of the scientific legacy. From it it would become clear by what route the poet had climbed to the heights of light, and that the master had been a tireless researcher in every field and was considered the spiritual center of the age.

The lecturer started from the idea that we have a twofold task to fulfill in relation to Goethe. One of these is to grasp and appreciate the poet's magnificent appearance in all its aspects, to understand the origin of his writings from his soul life and to put the relationships of his works to each other in the proper light. But this purely historical side of the matter achieves only the lesser part of what we have to achieve in relation to Goethe. The far more important part is to be found in the fact that we, insofar as it is the task of each and every one of us, participate in the further development of our culture in the sense that has been opened up to us by Goethe. The cultural perspective that he has opened up for the future must be ours. We have to follow the lines of thought that find a magnificent beginning in him; we have to approach the questions of science, art, and the state from his point of view. We have to work our way up to that kind of vision through which he gained such penetrating insights, but through which he also found the blissful calm of the truly wise in the face of all the disharmonies of life. And this is the goal of the Goethe-Schiller Archives in Weimar. Whoever enters this classical place will be overcome by a breath of that mighty ethos that emanates from Goethe and spreads through all his works. Those who enter the workshop of Goethe's poetry and thought, who are able to follow in the footsteps of the spirit that led to the heights of his creativity by the hand of the treasures he left behind, will find their inner selves mightily uplifted by the impact of the ideal seriousness and high morality of Goethe's life and world view. He sees how every idea of this genius goes back to spiritual struggles that he has undergone in his inner being, how every conviction he has expressed is the conclusion of a spiritual process that we can follow in very many cases. We can often see from the notes he has jotted down the exact moment when an idea flashes in his mind, which then had a fruitful effect on his work. In particular, Goethe's scientific significance will be more clearly revealed to us through the Weimar publications than has been the case so far. The sheer shallowness that has so far dared to approach Goethe in a judgmental manner will be contemptuously rejected by all educated people, for whom new insights will arise from Weimar's handwritten treasures.

We also have important things to expect from the diaries. They will not only give us precise insights into the poet's external life, but also into the process of his inner development. They will show how he progresses from stage to stage, up to that “spiritual Montserrat” where he feels misunderstood and lonely, but enlightened by the deepest ideas. Goethe kept records not only of his external life, but above all of his inner life.

But the correspondence is also of particular importance. The intellectual life in Germany from 1790 to 1832 appears as a mighty organism, of which Goethe is the soul. He exerts a direct personal influence on the most important contemporaries, and they in turn have an effect on him. This magnificent network of intellectual interests will only become clear through the correspondence.

Above all, the publication of Goethe's scientific writings, diaries and correspondence will be an immortal monument erected by Weimar's high-minded princess. This is proof that in Weimar they know how to promote the legacy of the great German with just as much understanding as they once understood how to create the basis for the man on which he could build his way up to the heights of humanity.

It is thanks to Professor Suphan, the humane and amiable director of the archive, and to Schiller's noble descendants that, just over a year ago, Schiller's estate was also incorporated into the archive. Schiller belongs to Goethe. Through Schiller, the nation was finally opened up to Goethe. His view of the great friend is the ideal of all Goethe research.

If I have taken the liberty of claiming your interest today for a question that is currently stirring up a great deal of emotion and seems to urgently require an answer, and if I have set myself the goal of putting this question in the light of Goethe's world view, is not intended as a lecture on literary history. Rather, I hope that my remarks will awaken in you the conviction that has been deeply rooted in me for years: that this question can only be properly appreciated from this point of view, from the point of view of Goethe's world view. We Germans have a twofold task in relation to Goethe. One of these was once described by Berthold Auerbach, the much-loved storyteller of village tales, with the witty saying: We must be Goethe-ready. That is to say, we must be able to completely immerse ourselves in the lofty realm of ideas and the incomparably intimate content of feelings of the greatest German genius. We must feel what he felt and think what he thought. But that is only one aspect of our relationship with Goethe. For Goethe marks the beginning of a completely new cultural epoch in the Western world. He has shed new light on all of European culture. He has opened up new senses for us, taught us new ways of looking at things. These senses must soon arise in us, we must rise to these views, in order to continue the cultural work of our people in the direction - of course, as far as this is in the power of each of us - that has been indicated by Goethe. Anyone who does not see in Goethe this beginning of culture, from which everyone must start, who wants to somehow relate to the education of the present, simply does not understand his time. And I must unfortunately confess to you that your brothers in the heart of Europe, especially the younger generation, have by no means grasped their task in relation to Goethe. On the contrary, a certain frivolous way of thinking is asserting itself, one that turns up its nose at Goethe and believes that it has long since progressed beyond him, while in fact it still has a long way to go before it fully grasps him. Goethe is dismissed as an old man who is no longer sufficient for our new times. A new generation believes it has new ideals. Unfortunately, on closer inspection, these ideals usually prove to be quite immature products, which are miles away from the true needs of the time, while they seem to have been born of the time. And this our time, this our living present, is more, than one can believe with superficial observation, a child of Goethe, a child of our classical spirits. Our time is the time in which the individual asserts in every direction the original sovereign rights that divine power has placed in his soul. Man no longer wants to be patronized; no, he wants to be completely dependent on himself, on his insight, on his will. He no longer wants to seek the sacred, the divine self in the outside world, but delves into the depths of his own breast to get the God, to get the strength and courage of life from there.

From this urge of the individual to cast off all fetters and assert his inalienable rights of sovereignty, then also arises the movement that I have placed at the top of my remarks today: the question of the liberation of women from the supposed fetters that, according to the beliefs of certain people, their gender has so far imposed on a prejudiced world. Women no longer want to be tied to the family home, to the house; they want to step out into the open world and be on an equal footing with men in every activity. They want to take on the competition for existence with the male world, they demand a profession like the ones men have. It is an undeniable fact that the German people have so far participated the least in the extensive emancipation efforts of women. While in Russia, Switzerland, England and France, but especially in America, hundreds and hundreds of women have already entered the learned professions, the German people still stubbornly close the doors to higher learned professions to women. Is this just stubbornness or the conservative sense that suits the German so well, which has always been averse to any violent revolution because it did not want to admit that something so unreasonable could arise in history that it had to be overthrown at a stroke? Or is there perhaps a higher realization in this – even if many are completely unaware of it – that full equality for women does not even require complete assimilation, and that the latter contradicts the role and nature of women? That is the big question: are we dealing with a prejudice that must be eradicated over time, or are we dealing with a justified insight that has a right to resist the other peoples of Europe in this movement? Let us now let Goethe be our lodestar! He will guide us safely; for in him, all the depth of the German character is embodied in a single individual. Whatever has emerged in the German people as lofty and great comes to us in a personal unity in Goethe; we are all the more German the more Goethean we are. Wherever we need light, we look up to him with confidence. The turbulent life of the present casts disharmony into our hearts, we are overcome by dark moods, whole crowds of contemporaries fall prey to the gloomy world view of pessimism; we find release from all this only in the blissful calm of Goethe's harmonious world view. And what a deeply satisfying consciousness lies in this absorption in the world of ideas and will of our greatest national poet, when we consider it in the sense of Schiller's saying: And if you yourself cannot be whole, then join yourself to a whole! For man is nothing as an individual, his whole strength is rooted in the nation from which he comes, in the time to which he belongs.

Those who succumb to loneliness soon feel alone,

as Goethe himself says. We can add: They must soon succumb to a spiritual death in their sad, isolated spiritual wasteland. Think with your people, with your time! That is what we must call out to every human being. And we think most harmoniously with our people when we think and feel with Goethe, the full and complete embodiment of all our national and contemporary strength. We have no right to complain that we thereby lose our independence in order to bow completely to a foreign authority; for man can only be free when he rises to the higher ideals of culture, where all the light of education is to be sought. Only then will he consciously participate in the development of his race, only then will he independently determine his goal with great ideals, while otherwise he will only grope blindly below and be dragged along with the others, a serving and certainly unfree member of the body of humanity.

Only by seeking the human perfection of Goethe and, where we find it, joining it, can we work on our great work of liberation. We can only become free with our people and in our time, not individually. To bow down under Goethe's authority when we have recognized its height is not servitude, but the Goethean form of freedom. And it is precisely by taking our lead from Goethe that we can best further this great work of our liberation. For in the great scheme of things, Goethe stands for nothing more than a newer process of purification and liberation from self-imposed fetters. What were these fetters? They were the fetters of unnaturalness, of the desire to imitate what was foreign, of the unfree, over-tender sensitivity from which the Germans languished before his time. He strives back to nature, to direct feeling and thinking. Man has an addiction to remove himself further and further from nature. We know that the only completely naive-natural people in Europe were the Greeks. When Goethe became acquainted with their magnificent works of art in Italy, he fell into a kind of rapture. For these immortal creations had an effect on him like the magnificent works of nature itself. In them, he saw the world spirit at work. The Greeks, as he felt vividly here, had overheard the laws from the creator of the world, according to which he had created the magnificent, sublime works of nature, and had formed their works of art in the manner of men in this Goethean sense. The Romans did not understand how to penetrate into the mysterious portals of the divine world workshop, and they simply imitated the Greeks. This is remoteness from nature, which, as humanity developed further, became ever more pronounced. It may be said that when Goethe appeared on the scene in Germany, very little of what prevailed in poetry, indeed in the emotional and intellectual life of the Germans, bore the stamp of original naive truth. Everything was contrived, everything assumed, everything a cliché. Goethe was the first to seek a direct contact with the spirit of the world. And therein lies the greatness of his mission. But he owes this greatness to a circumstance that we must consider if we want to properly appreciate his relationship to women and his relation to the female nature. This is his deeply ingrained religious trait, a trait that always manifests itself in him through an idealistic belief in the divine in all that is natural and human. From his youth he was dominated by a fundamental trait that is only innate in deeper minds: belief in the supernatural in nature, the presentiment of a higher being, which later became the quest for the idea, for the spirit in all things. The mysterious, this genuine child of science as well as of religion, was what always attracted him. In everything that came his way in life and in history, he sought the point where he could perceive the workings of a higher power. And that is what he always sought in woman, and often found. Man distances himself from nature, from the immediacy of feeling, when he must exhaust his spirit in a one-sided life's work: He becomes dry, pedantic, unnatural. He loses that freshness and naturalness from which all the magic of an unmediated nature emanates. But these are precisely the qualities that women retain, of course only where they remain completely women and do not strive to be like men. For women, it is not one mental or physical quality that comes to the fore, but rather they all develop in beautiful harmony and remain in full force. Thus nature appears purer, fuller, more divine in woman than in man, who has been made one-sided by nature. Thus women are our true messengers from God, in whom man finds what he has lost himself. And herein lies what man seeks; he must seek it with particular longing because he lacks it in himself and can only do without it with difficulty.

And that is what Goethe seeks above all. For him, being with a woman always means a spiritual rejuvenation, a renewed sense of brotherhood with nature, which repeatedly invigorates and fuels his poetic power. Delving into feminine values and female essence always generates renewed artistic ability in him. When he seems to distance himself from nature in a manly way, when the full force of naturalness seems to fade from his heart, then it is always love that envelops him in that mysterious magic that makes him capable of new creativity. In the face of this trait in Goethe's nature, all the reservations that arise again and again against the purity and nobility of Goethe's treatment of female nature must fade. Unfortunately, these reservations are still frequently enough encountered. An unnatural distinction is made between the poet and the man, and only the former is allowed, while so much is desired to attach some human failing to Goethe. But in this mind everything is in undivided unity. Goethe's poetic mission is directly connected with his human mission. And his poems are nothing but direct revelations of his most intimate and purest human nature. Yes, here and there in Goethe's work we can also find individual cynical, seemingly frivolous verses. But this speaks for nothing other than the infinite love of truth that always dominated him. He never wanted to appear as an angel, always as a human being, yes, as a human being with all faults. He preferred an open confession before the whole world. But that is not the point. The main thing is that there is never a frivolous or mean streak in his love, nothing of the bon vivant. It always emanates from the mind, and it is always connected with a deep appreciation of true feminine value. His love never demeans women. He always looks up reverently to feminine value. And that is the very Germanic way. We know from Tacitus that even our ancestors in ancient times revered something in women that foreshadowed the future, and that they honored wise women at springs and in groves. That is the essence of truly religious feeling: it always commands reverence from its bearer. And Goethe worshiped in the dust before the divine in woman. Women, above all, must recognize this. And then the gloomy shadows that still cling to Goethe's lofty personality will dissolve.

It has a powerful effect on Goethe's imagination when a new female figure enters the circles of his activity. His rich inner world then surrounds the revered being with all the magic of which his rich imagination is capable. For him, the beloved is more than another mortal can see in her, because the imagination sees deeper than the mind. It is a kind of halo with which the poet's imagination surrounds her. Then, always, an ideal figure detaches itself from reality. Love becomes a lofty love intoxication, and a new poem struggles from Goethe's breast. This was the case with Friederike in Sesenheim, with Lili in Frankfurt, with Frau von Stein, with Christiane, his wife, and finally with the women who entered his life late in life: Marianne Willemer and Ulrike von Levetzow. In each case, it is the love of a noble, idealistic person, not that of a bon vivant. My esteemed and beloved teacher, Professor Karl Julius Schröer in Vienna, rightly says:

There is a piety in love again, as there was among the Greeks, and thus it is free of frivolity. If that de-divinized love is selfish, then this love, which is based on devotion, is the only passion that is free of selfishness.

To understand the truly spiritual nature of Goethe's love, one need only take a look at his often-challenged relationship with Frau von Stein. How did he see this woman, who led a life of renunciation, who did not want to be taken into account by anyone, who demanded nothing for herself but bestowed benefits on all around her? He writes about her, she appears to him

like a goddess ascending to heaven. In vain that a human being stretches out his arms to her, that his eye craves a glance. She floats, lost in the heavenly radiance that surrounds her, to heaven.

And when we see the calming and blissful effect that this woman has on the young man, who enters Weimar's life full of the most furious passions in his chest, full of high spirits and excessive joy, then we can well understand his devotion to her exalted femininity. Who does not know the follies, the high-spirited pranks that Goethe and his ducal friend played in Weimar, but who does not also know the deep need in both of them to break out of this high-spiritedness and move on to a higher life! It was in such moods that Goethe wrote verses like these:

What is the use of all the pain and pleasure? Sweet peace, come, oh come into my heart!

The sweet peace is brought to him by “the soother”, as he called his wife von Stein. Goethe's relationship with Christiane was also pure and noble. How tender is the following gesture: when he once finds her asleep in the room, he sits down very quietly beside her, lays a fruit and a flower in front of her and is enchanted by the thought that when she wakes up, she will immediately direct her gaze to the things that his loving hand has placed there. And how deeply his words touch our hearts when he speaks them as the one he loves is snatched from him by death: “The only gain of my life now is to mourn her death.” Marianne Willemer is the figure to whom we owe the most magnificent songs in the “Diwan”. Again, we have here the stirring of the poetic mood through the power of love. Even in his eighties, he writes his “Elegy” in the “Trilogy of Passion” out of the glow of passion and the imagination refreshed by the source of holy love, in which, so to speak, an apotheosis of love in the truly Goethean sense is contained. If we understand this magnificent poem, addressed to Ulrike von Levetzow, then we have the key to Goethe's love life in general. Ulrike von Levetzow was a young woman at the time, who was with her mother in Marienbad, where the poet was also staying. He was enchanted by her grace. Once again he was to feel all the bliss and sorrow of love, once again he was to heap the joys and sorrows of the earth on his bosom. The elegy contains the following: The poet has said goodbye; the bliss of the last kiss is still in his heart, and he finds the farewell difficult, he looks up at the sky, from which the star of day, the sun, has also already said goodbye. He sees clouds passing by, and his imagination transforms them into figures, changing figures of his beloved. He wants to hold on to her for a moment; but soon he remembers that the true image of his beloved can only be in his heart. And now he revives this image.

The rift with nature, as it occurs and must occur in man, can lead to bitter degeneration. That which he has lost slumbers in him as an irrepressible yearning, like a homeland that we have lost. Only love can bridge this yearning, only love can balance the conflict of nature that has been touched. If this love does not occur, then man remains for life a renegade, a being who has become estranged from his primal power and wanders a wrong path through life. Blind, selfish passions will then take the place of love. He who at first consumed himself in longing will seek to deaden himself in the frenzy of degrading sensual pleasure. He will never be able to see what is excellent, because, as Schiller said, there is only one power in the face of excellence: love. There you have the necessity of love derived from human nature. If we abolish love, we have done away with the divine self, or, because we cannot do that, we have turned away from the divine. But we carry out this apostasy when we alienate woman from her true nature, when we deprive her of her destiny of being the mediator of the divine, of nature, which appears directly naive. It is no coincidence that the emancipation movement first emerged in those European countries where love in the noble sense, as understood by the Germanic peoples, never took root. Where woman knows that she has her part to play in the whole process of human development in a way that corresponds to her nature rather than to his, and where she knows that she will be recognized and honored by the male world for her work, she does not strive beyond what is allotted to her in the plan of the world. It is a higher vision that seeks satisfaction in the harmony of different forces of action, and a lower one that would like to make everything the same. It is preferably the ideal side of culture that woman is the bearer and propagator of. What can be the reasons that should push woman out of her present position, out of the boundaries that history has drawn for her?

Firstly, the urge not to lag behind man in intellectual education and insight. Secondly, the urge not to be indebted to man for what provides her with the real basis for life.

When I consider that it was so often sensible, imaginative mothers who stood at the cradle of great men, when I look at the old woman Rat herself, Goethe's mother, who first stimulated the poetic sense of young Wolfgang by telling her fairy tales, it seems to me that this can easily be explained by the idea I have just developed about women's nature. If the divine power of nature is more purely and unadulteratedly expressed in women than in men, then it is plausible that the living influence of the mother on a person must be most fruitful at that age where everything is is still nature, everything is still naive, the heart is still whole and the head is not yet at all, the spirit has not yet broken away from its source, from nature, the division between idea and reality has not yet taken place, in a word: in childhood. Here lies a tremendous cultural influence that women have on the development of humanity, an influence that is more valuable than that which they can ever exert as doctors, civil servants or writers.

Perhaps it would be good today to reflect on spiritual-scientific questions that could serve one or the other when it comes to defending spiritual science externally. For precisely when we meet for the first time in a place where, so to speak, a kind of beginning or starting point of the spiritual-scientific movement is to be considered, it is quite good to bring to mind some of the moral questions that often arise for us, , especially when we ourselves are already working in this or that branch and then stand before people who come to us without any knowledge of spiritual science and want to know something that could perhaps lead them to a conviction or at least to an attitude towards spiritual science.

In this case, spiritual science must refer to transcendental, spiritual experience. And just as the message of the spiritual scientific world view is brought to us today, it is a narrative, a narrative of what the spiritual researcher — by making his soul an instrument to research in the spiritual world — can reveal and which has the same certainty for him as the fact that roses or tables and chairs exist for our external perception, that is, an immediate certainty of perception.

But what does that matter to us, who do not have such direct certitude of vision? the others might ask. For us it can only lead to our believing what the spiritual researcher says. Now I have always emphasized that this is not the case. It is true that the things of the higher world can only be known by penetrating into them; but if they are then only logically presented, it is such that everyone can grasp them if he applies his reason in the right way, so that he can say to himself: 'Everything that is said here agrees more with the facts than anything that is said by another philosophy'. We can therefore calmly apply our reason and find that from the logic that underlies things, the matter can already be grasped. It is not so easy, but it does come about that even the non-seeing person can form a well-founded conviction.

Of course, what can be said to outsiders will not be enough for the actual proofs. But if we take certain things that anyone can know and compare them with what the spiritual researcher says, then we can basically get quite far. Let us take just one very elementary spiritual truth: the truth that a person consists of four parts: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and that which we call the I. Of these four members, the outer world only knows the physical body, and of course everyone is free to deny that there is such a thing as an ether body or an astral body or the I.

One can say: Everyone speaks of the ego; but it is still refuted. The ego is like a kind of flame that is consumed by the fuel of the physical body like a wick. — This is how they wanted to refute the philosopher Bergson, who refers to the persistence of the ego.

But we can see how the ego survives individual perceptions. Every day shows this, since every night the ego is extinguished and cannot be experienced as something that continues uninterruptedly.

One could accept that these supersensible elements can be denied; but there is one thing that a person cannot deny, namely, that he perceives three kinds of inner experiences within himself. One is that he experiences representations in his soul. For everyone knows that when he looks at an object and then turns around and still has the impression of it, he has experienced a representation. The second thing that a person experiences, and which he must distinguish from his perceptions, are the emotions: pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, sympathy and antipathy. And there is a third thing that a person cannot deny: that he has impulses of will.

Let us take the world of imagination: a person can form an idea by letting the world of perceptions take effect on him. He can also form ideas by reading a novel, because a person also has ideas when he reads something. You all know that a person sometimes has it hard and sometimes not so hard in terms of his ideas. The images that a person instinctively likes to indulge in have a different effect than those that they indulge in with distaste or that cause them difficulties. You all know that a difficult calculation has a different effect on the way you think than a novel does. We notice that we become tired from the life of images when it takes effort on our part. This can be all the less doubted since it is a means to fall asleep more easily. It is not necessarily images that particularly irritate us, nor those that worry us, but rather those that are difficult for us. In any case, every person can experience this in themselves: falling asleep relatively easily when they immerse themselves in a world of images before falling asleep, bound by a sense of duty.

Let us now take the emotions. Lust and sorrow, joy and pain, worry, grief and the like are something that can, under certain circumstances, cause us external difficulties at such moments. A person who is severely affected by his emotions will find it difficult to fall asleep. Even joyful experiences will prevent him from falling asleep peacefully.

If you pay attention to such things, you will soon notice that emotions are a greater hindrance than perceptions when going to sleep, and especially emotions that are related to the most intense interests of the ego. If a person is anticipating a particular event, they often won't sleep for weeks. Just try it: an event that is bound to occur with a certain degree of certainty, for example the appearance of a comet – if you are not an astronomer who has an ego interest in it – will keep you awake quite well. Not the astronomer, because he has calculated and is waiting anxiously to see if his calculation is correct.

Now we can look at these emotions from another perspective. We can, in a certain respect, associate sleep with the clairvoyant side of a person. The state of sleep is such that the person is unconscious. Clairvoyance is only: sleep permeated by spiritual light, conscious sleep, if we may define it in this way. It should therefore be favorable for clairvoyant states when one is free of all emotional upheaval, and unfavorable when one is filled with it. This can be confirmed by many things that can also be known externally, for example, in the case of Nostradamus, who in the 16th century was an important clairvoyant of the kind that he had prophetic clairvoyance, so that even pure historians cannot doubt that events that he brought into verse were fulfilled and that, when compared, show that he made quite wonderful statements. Even the historian Kemmerich has recognized this because it cannot be denied. Kemmerich himself says that he had set himself completely different tasks: he only wanted to provide evidence that health conditions for humans have improved since the 16th century. And then he came to deal with Nostradamus.

When we follow Nostradamus, it is interesting to consider his life circumstances. He was a person who possessed such clairvoyant powers that were based on disposition, so that they were found in the whole family. But in his case they came up in a special way because he was a devoted, wonderful doctor. He did great things, especially during a plague epidemic in Provence. But then it was said that he was a secret Calvinist. This harmed him so much that he had no choice but to give up his medical practice. You have to understand what that means! The powers are in the personality after all! Physicists find that when forces dissolve in nature somewhere, they are utilized elsewhere. - Only in spiritual areas, people do not want to know anything about it. If a person develops such powers in his profession, then such beneficially developed as this as a doctor, so must such forces, which are released, manifest themselves elsewhere. And they all turned into clairvoyant powers in Nostradamus, because he had a certain original clairvoyance, as did Paracelsus.

Now, look: Nostradamus describes quite nicely how he came to foresee future events. He had a laboratory. But it was not a laboratory like chemists have. It was a room, a room next to his apartment, with a glass roof. From there he observed the course of the stars, letting the transformation of the constellations affect his soul. And then the things came to him that he could say about the future. It arose as an intuition. It leaped out of his mind. But in order for such things to come to him, he had to be completely free of worry and care and agitation of mind. There we have an example of how, in clairvoyance, just as in healthy sleep, there must be an absence of agitation of mind.

Now let us go further and inquire about the connection between a person and their will impulses, insofar as these will impulses have a connection with the moral. Let us again consider the moment of falling asleep. This is an important moment for a person, because, as spiritual science tells us, this is when they pass over into the astral world.

Let us consider the moral impulses in this moment of falling asleep. In order to observe these, one must pay great attention to such processes. Those people who are so careful make the following experience: So the moment of falling asleep approaches. While before the eye had seen clearly, now the outlines of the objects become more and more indefinite. Something like fog covers them. It is as if the person feels cut off from their surroundings. There is also a change in the physical body in relation to a certain something: one can no longer move the limbs. They can no longer follow a force that they used to follow. Furthermore, the person notices that they feel as if certain things, which must be described as impulses of the will, are being brought to mind all by themselves. The things he has made appear before him as a unity, things he has made in such a way that he does not have to reproach himself. And he feels an immense bliss over everything he has done well. Through good spirits, people are protected from the bad things appearing before their soul. Of course, feeling bliss over the good that has been done cannot occur if no good has been done. But then, people are generally not so bad as to do nothing good.

The person who is paying attention senses how something arises like a thought that remains dark and yet distinct before the soul: Oh, if only this moment could be held on to, oh, if only it could always remain like this! Then a jolt occurs and consciousness is gone.

While good impulses evoke bliss and promote falling asleep, bad impulses hinder it even more than emotions. A person falls asleep with great difficulty over pangs of conscience. Under certain circumstances, will impulses are an even worse hindrance than emotions to enter the spiritual world into which we are to enter. The life of imagination makes it relatively easy, the emotions are already more difficult, and remorse about actions for which we can reproach ourselves is the least likely to let us enter the spiritual world.

Usually, the images, that is, our images, keep watch; as we let the images of the day pass before us, we usually fall asleep quite well. But when sensations are added, they are a less good guard; we fall asleep less well under arousal. But what most guards our sleep, so that we best enter devachan, are the volitions, the volitions that have led us to moral deeds. When in our retrospective view we come to a point that fills us with satisfaction, with moral satisfaction about a good deed in which our will impulse has been expressed, then the moment of bliss is there that carries us over into devachan.

If we pay attention to what spiritual science has to say, we will find that there is already agreement between these observations and what has been found through clairvoyance. For spiritual science tells us: Man belongs to the astral world with his etheric body. Because he belongs to the astral world with his etheric body, he lives in his perceptions as in something that is not inherent in the physical world. The physical world gives us perceptions. But we have to turn away from them, and then we are left with something else: ideas. These are already supersensuous. Man has these ideas because the forces of the astral world reach into his etheric body, so that man stands in a certain connection with the astral world through his ideas. Secondly, spiritual science tells us that emotions are something that is not only connected to the astral world, but also to a higher one; for human beings also have emotions in connection with the lower devachan. Thirdly, spiritual science and all occultism teaches that through the moral work of the will impulses, the human being is connected to the higher devachan world, the world of the so-called formless devachan.

Thus, in man, these three types of soul life indicate three ways of connecting with the higher worlds. Compare what is experienced in ordinary life with what spiritual science says. It is in agreement. Imaginations do not hinder falling asleep, because we have to enter the astral world through them. On the other hand, in order to enter the world of Devachan, we must have such emotions that allow us to enter a higher spiritual world. We cannot fall asleep through such emotions, which make us toss and turn on our bed. The world of moral will impulses signifies our connection with the higher world of Devachan. We will not be allowed to enter there if we do not have such volitional impulses that we do not have to reproach ourselves for. So we cannot really sleep if we have pangs of conscience. We are locked out there. And the bliss we feel when we do a good deed is an outward sign that we are allowed to enter the devachan world. No wonder that people experience this as a bliss in which they would always like to live. They feel so close to the higher devachan world that they would like to remain there. Unless a person is clairvoyant, he cannot imagine these highest states other than as the feeling of falling asleep, which occurs as bliss and moral sensation.

Thus we can show man: You have a soul life within you. What you imagine manifests itself in such a way that it brings you into connection with a higher world, and in such a way that it makes it easiest for you to enter the higher world; it is related to the astral. What the human being lives out in this way is like a shadow of the higher world. Emotions separate us more, because through them the human being is connected to the lower devachan world; will impulses, on the other hand, separate us even more, because they are connected to the higher devachan world.

The whole thing is, however, still connected with other facts: what is most effective after death in Kamaloka are the emotions and moral impulses. Ideas about the sensory world die off, only those of the supernatural can be taken along by the person. On the other hand, our emotions haunt us after death and remain. Because they are what keep us in Kamaloka for a certain amount of time. For example, a person who is very bad would not be able to enter Devachan at all through his remorse between death and a new birth, but would have to reincarnate without it. Without moral impulses he would not be able to ascend to the higher devachan world; he would have to return and make up for it in a short time. Since he had no good emotions, even the lower devachan is closed to him.

Thus we can compare and show that we can gain an insight into the facts of ordinary life, of the ordinary life of the soul, if we explain them in terms of spiritual science.

I would like to tie in with what has just been said another fact that will seem important to you if you turn your spiritual gaze to the fact of the doctrine of reincarnation, of repeated earthly lives. If we incarnate repeatedly on earth, it must have a certain purpose. After all, evolution would serve no purpose if we did not experience something through it! What is the point of reincarnation? Through the facts of spiritual insight, we come to see how very different human life is in different ages. Let us think back to ancient times, when people spoke Greek or Latin and did what was customary at the time! What is required today: that children be sent to school, only came about late. While today we see an illiterate person as an uneducated person, this was not the case in the past. Otherwise, our statistics would have to call Wolfram von Eschenbach, for example, an uneducated person. Something else that is not considered education today was different in ancient Rome, for example: every Roman citizen – even those who plowed their fields – knew exactly the content of the Twelve Tables and much else that was related to the organization of the civil state. The Romans did not need to run to the lawyer for every little thing. – That is one example. If these great differences were known, people would no longer ask why we have to keep reincarnating as children; surely it is not necessary! No, it is not! Each time we return, civilization has changed so much that we have to learn something new. So, we were born in completely different circumstances, and it is absolutely necessary to keep coming back until the Earth has reached its goal.

Now we can best distinguish what a person can become in the successive cultures if we know that the various qualities that have been listed today as an inner soul life gradually develop in the outer culture. In our time, it is characteristic that of the impulses listed, the greatest value is placed on the imagination. We live in a culture of the imagination. The intellect is being developed. In Greek and Roman culture, people did not think so much, but they perceived more than people do today. Something funny, but at the same time something great, is contained in what Hebbel, the playwright, wrote in his notebook: Let us assume that Plato was reborn; then he would become a high school student and would have to read Plato in the Greek language, and the high school teacher is terribly dissatisfied because he does not understand Plato and beats him. - That is what Hebbel wanted to dramatize. Well, on the one hand it is quite comical, but on the other hand it is quite understandable. Because it is true that today the high school teacher represents much more than even the great philosopher Plato in his time. It is just that today, in a certain sense, one looks at the world shortsightedly. Today's farmer thinks more than the Greek philosopher thought. In contrast, in those days the perceptive faculty was much more developed. Man was connected with all of nature. Perception was then the same as what we now call imagination. Today, perception is no longer learned, only by those who undergo training. It is quite possible for someone to get far in what he learns in the laboratory, and yet be very inexperienced outside, unable to tell the difference between wheat and rye. So we can say that people today have a lot of imagination, but in those days they were trained in perception. Thus we can distinguish between two epochs: one of perception and one of imagination. Then a third will follow, through which the movements of the soul will be developed, which today only take place on the side. A person who begins to undergo a certain development must indeed already anticipate what general human culture is to become in later times. He must therefore foster the movements of the soul. It may easily happen that someone begins to develop their emotions towards higher worlds and then, in contact with other people, has the culture of ideas. Then he will observe that one time the right thing is felt, another time the wrong thing. A purely intellectual person will accept what is right and reject what is wrong on logical grounds. It will take a long time before a higher cultural level is reached in which one will feel a sense of pleasure in the face of what is right and a sense of displeasure in the face of what is wrong. This then gives one certainty about true and false being; for what is required is not just a conception of true and false being. We do not need long to prove a matter, for we grasp it in a moment. Today we must prove, develop. Then it will no longer be necessary to prove, but to please. Therefore, when we incarnate again, a soul culture will follow the culture of perception of the Greeks and the culture of imagination of our time. Then another culture will follow in relation to the impulses; then the will impulses will undergo a great education. Those people who will incarnate then will pursue, so to speak, a Socratic ideal. If that were not the case, a person, no matter how clever he is, could be an ideal scoundrel; it would be in vain that Hamlet wrote on his tablet that one can smile and smile and smile and yet be an out-and-out scoundrel.

The era of emotional upheaval is followed by an era of pronounced morality. As occult research shows, this will present itself in a very special way. Let us assume that people become ever wiser and wiser. One can become wise in the way of today's way of thinking. One can even use one's wisdom to stage evil deeds. But strangely enough, in the epoch after next, this will happen: the evil of the impulses of the will will have a paralyzing effect on intellectuality! This will be the peculiarity of the moralistic cultural epoch: immorality will have the power to kill intellectuality. A person in this epoch must therefore develop in such a way that he must follow his intellectuality with his morality. We can therefore say: We have the Greco-Roman culture as a time of the culture of perception, ours as a time of the intellectual. Then comes the time of the culture of feeling and after that the time of the actual morality.

Now it is interesting to observe how an important impulse affects people in these successive cultural epochs. Here we have to refer back to what was said before, that the faculty of perception connects us with the physical, the faculty of imagination with the astral, the emotions with the lower devachan and morality with the higher devachan.

Thus, if an impulse were to reach a person in Greek and Roman times, the person was schooled to perceive particularly what approached from outside. Therefore, the impulse of the Christ event enters the world as an external perception. Now we live in the culture of ideas. Therefore, our cultural epoch will achieve its goal by knowing Christ as something that is perceived from the astral world as an inner idea. He will manifest himself as an etheric form from the astral world. In the next epoch, in the time of the emotions, the human being will particularly express his emotions in order to see the Christ astral. And then in the morality epoch, the Christ will reveal Himself as the highest that man can experience: as an I that shines forth from the upper devachan world.

Thus, the perception of the Christ will also develop further. In his ideas, in his imaginations, man will now perceive the Christ in a natural way.

Thus we see from these representations that man can find a certain agreement between what spiritual science says and what happens in the world, provided that man brings something to it.

These are points that can be touched upon for a local association to answer some of the numerous questions through which man can approach the spiritual world.

The series of lectures we are having today and tomorrow could perhaps be used to discuss things that are similar; except that they are discussed one time as they should be discussed for members and for those friends who have spent a certain amount of time within a branch to base their world view on the points of view from which we start, while tomorrow, at the public lecture, similar things and similar starting points are to be considered, but in a way that is more suitable for those who, so to speak, come to the movement directly from the outside world, still little acquainted with spiritual science.

Today, we will take as it were the starting point of what is a well-known demand for all those who not only want to advance in spiritual science alone, but perhaps also in the development of their inner being. It is emphasized time and again that for a person's inner development — so that it may lead to his having experiences in the spiritual world — purity and loving aims and intentions are of the utmost importance. We could perhaps say, even if it is somewhat one-sided (for everything one says must be one-sided), that a spiritual researcher, or anyone who wants to ascend into the spiritual worlds and somehow find something of these spiritual worlds for themselves, must above all have a certain soul quality. This quality of the soul must be such that he sympathizes, and indeed strongly sympathizes with what is good, noble, and beautiful, and that he feels a kind of repulsion for what is evil and ugly. The purity of the soul's moral nature is repeatedly called for in relation to the path into the spiritual worlds, and we could well say: For an ascent into the spiritual worlds that is truly in line with our present time, it is absolutely necessary that the soul be completely imbued with true, moral intentions and goals. We shall hear later that it is indeed possible to develop clairvoyant powers without these basic conditions; but to acquire clairvoyant powers without the just characterized basic conditions, always has something dubious.

To understand this, let us now try to understand what we actually mean by the moral nature of man. We are led to speak of the moral nature of man when we consider, on the one hand, the impulses that come to man from the outside world to act, to will or to desire. When man is moved by some natural need, such as hunger or thirst, to perform this or that action, or even to desire or will this or that action, we do not say that such desires or wills are moral actions. Of course, that does not mean that they are immoral. But when a stone falls to the ground, that is not a moral act either, and we do not feel at all inclined to apply morality as a standard. Nor do we feel inclined to speak of morality when a person satisfies the natural demands of his organism by eating and drinking. Nor do we feel compelled to speak of morality when a person sees a beautiful flower or something else beautiful somewhere and, because it makes a beautiful, pleasant impression, is prompted to desire it. Here, too, we do not speak of morality.

When do we actually speak of morality in human nature? But only when it is not such external inducements as hunger and thirst or the sense of well-being that some object arouses in us that are the inducement to do this or that, but when the inducement arises from the innermost core of our being, like a command from within us that is independent of external inducement. We become particularly aware of the difference between this moral and what I am not saying is immoral, but morally indifferent, when we consider how we might do this or that through external inducement, but do not do it because of the inner command, which we call a moral impulse.

Take, for example, the very obvious and trivial case of someone having a powerful tendency to drink too much. Then, if he were able to do so, he would just drink. Or he can also follow an inner voice that has nothing to do with the inclination, but is opposed to this external inducement and says: What this external inducement wants to happen should not be! - Here we see that something can speak in us that contradicts the external inducement. Now, anything that amounts to such a contradiction and inner condemnation of our actions, we call a moral thing. We can only speak of a moral action if we disregard all external impressions, everything we are forced to do by external circumstances, and only look at what speaks from within us. It is precisely this ability to hear something within ourselves that goes beyond external inducement and can even contradict this inducement from outside that makes us human and sets us apart from animals.

We must feel that we have something in morality that is true in itself. This is the essential feature of all moral impulses: that they are true in themselves, and that external circumstances can contribute nothing when any action is to be designated as moral or immoral. When we do seem to designate something as moral in response to external circumstances, we are often indulging in an illusion when we make such a designation. If, for example, we were to say that a person organizes his life in such a way that he does not merely follow hunger and thirst with regard to eating and drinking, but follows the principle that it is necessary to take care of his organism in order to sustain himself in the outside world, so that we can see the external requirements of life as the decisive impulses, then that would be an illusion. Morality can only be established if we can add to the external impulse the internal impulse that it is right and good for man to sustain himself on earth, and not only for the sake of the external task, but for the sake of the internal task that can follow from it. Otherwise it is only an apparent one. The hallmark of what is moral is therefore that the impulse is not caused by the outside world, but arises purely from the powers of our soul. Now, of course, someone might say: But there are also evil voices within us; we often follow impulses that we clearly recognize as inner impulses and that are certainly not ones that we can describe as moral. One could say, however, that we cannot discuss this chapter in detail today because we have set ourselves a different task today: when a person follows such seemingly inner impulses that are bad and evil, he is not truly following himself, but rather he is following impulses whose origin he does not know and which he confuses with those that come from within. We all know the luciferic forces from our spiritual scientific considerations. These do not come from within, but, so to speak, from without, in that the luciferic entities have taken hold in our astral body and not in our I. Thus, if we define morality in this way, we are exposed to numerous contradictions. If we look at this more closely, we find that the characteristic of the moral is that all moral impulses must arise from our innermost core of being. We can then present what we, so to speak, morally like, what arouses our moral approval, and can fill us with delight and enthusiasm, as an ideal, so to speak, for which the human being is so completely at one with himself, so completely at home within himself. And if it is extremely useful and necessary in ordinary life for a person to realize that he is only completely himself when making moral judgments, or judgments that arise in a similar way, then this is an absolute basic requirement for practical occultism. It must be recognized as a principle of the occultist. It is important that all events in his life should follow the pattern of moral impulses, that nothing should happen in the soul when one enters the higher path of knowledge that does not follow the pattern of a real moral impulse.

It is important that the person who wants to become a practical occultist, who wants to follow the path of knowledge, should not undertake anything that he cannot say: If I compare it with what is in the human soul, what I call moral, the two must be similar. The path of knowledge must not deviate at any stage from that which proves similar to the moral behavior of man. The similarity of the path of knowledge to moral impulses even extends to the details. This will be illustrated by a very specific example.

As people are in the present day, morality is something very special. Basically, the Ten Commandments are still the most important of our laws. The Ten Commandments are constructed in a very special way. Of the ten, only three are constructed in such a way that they say: You shall do something. The other seven are constructed in such a way that one says: You shall not! It follows that the world powers see much more necessity in giving people moral laws that say: You shall not do something - than in giving them laws that say: You shall do something. For not doing what is commanded is in the ratio of seven to three to doing what is commanded. We may therefore say: Morality in general must work in human nature in such a way that it particularly takes the standpoint of saying, “Thou shalt not.”

We can compare this ratio of seven to three in the Ten Commandments in more detail. If we look at the seven commandments that say, “You shall not do something”, they all refer to things of the external world, to what one should not do in the physical world; whereas the three commandments that contain the “You shall” actually refer to that which goes beyond the physical world. There it says: You shall believe in one God, you shall not take the name of this God in vain, and so on. From this we see that in relation to the actual spiritual matters of the soul, the commandments are positive; on the other hand, all commandments that relate to actual moral behavior in the outer physical life have a “you shall not”. Even if we believe that the fourth commandment, “Honor your father and your mother, that you may live long on earth,” is positive, we still feel that it is fundamentally very negative, like the other six commandments. It is a kind of transitional commandment that, although it refers to the physical world, nevertheless leads from this physical world up into the spiritual world. We can prove this in minute detail, I might add, for in all ancient peoples the so-called ancestral service of religion was based on the fact that there was something divine in the ancestors, the forefathers. In this respect, the veneration of the ancestors, of whom the immediate ancestors are only a special case, was a kind of transition from the sensual world to the higher world. But this fourth commandment was especially related to the immediate physical world, to the relationship between children and parents. In relation to parents we can fulfill this commandment, we can feel that the fourth commandment is given in a positive way, that it is set up over man to prevent something from happening. In the case of the first commandments, the object to which they point does not yet exist in the physical world.

The structure of the nature of the Ten Commandments points to what constitutes an essential feature of morality in the world of the senses: that moral impulses may contradict what a person would do if he were to follow only the impulses of the physical world. This makes it clear for the path of knowledge, which must be built according to the pattern of moral impulses: We must moralize our entire knowledge on the occult path of knowledge, our otherwise merely theoretical laws of knowledge must become inner moral laws. Thus, what primarily relates to the physical plane must be so organized that it extinguishes what is directly before it, that it says: I extinguish it, just as lower inclinations are extinguished when the moral “Thou shalt not” calls. Indeed, for this reason, every true description of the path of knowledge points out that it is by refining the moral impulses that one most surely lifts the powers of knowledge up into the higher world. This is expressed in all its details. Let us assume we have some kind of plant. What can we initially identify as an external impulse that emanates from it? Let us take the plant's leaf. We can identify as an external impulse that the leaves appear green to us. Thus, for example, rose leaves are green in the physical, sensual world. Now, let us assume that someone who really wanted to attain higher knowledge as a practical occultist was required to educate himself according to the pattern of moral knowledge. Most images would have to arise in such a way that he holds up this green leaf and, in the face of the greenness of the plant, the inner impulse awakens: You shall not be green. It should be possible to look at the green leaf with such vision that the external impulse does not work, that just as the bad inclination disappears before the moral judgment, the green color of the leaf disappears through another, let's say clairvoyant power. In fact, when man develops his clairvoyant powers in the right way, as described in “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds”, he learns to look at the green leaf and, just as moral judgments extinguish bad inclinations, so the greenness of the leaf, which applies only to the physical plane, is extinguished. And where green would otherwise appear, we have a light pink or peach-like color in relation to the clairvoyant ability in this case. This color appears when we can remove through our clairvoyant power what is in the Maja, what is on the physical plane. Thus, through the clairvoyant power, we remove what is on the physical plane and trigger what, as a supersensible element, underlies the sensible. We can say that entering the path of knowledge really happens in the same way as a person's moral experience. The confrontation of the supersensible and the sensory world works in just the same way as the moral impulse works on immoral inclinations. If, on the other hand, one were to look at the roses themselves, for example this rose here, which has such a rich red color on the physical plane, one would see a bright, transparent green for this rose, and for the lighter rose a kind of rich green with a slight blue nuance.

Thus we have seen in a single case that occult judgments, which correspond to clairvoyant vision, are built up psychically, like the moral judgments that extinguish what is immoral. From this we can conclude that what we said at our starting point is confirmed. In order to arrive at higher knowledge, we must learn to extinguish all immediate impressions of the physical, external world, to make maya disappear, so that something else takes the place of maya. Now, as is well known, the best way to learn something is to memorize it through things that are similar to what is being learned. No one will practice things that have nothing to do with the subject in question in order to learn. I have never heard that someone became a mathematician by going for a walk, simply because it is not similar. Thus, we can acquire such abilities of the soul that are similar to moral impulses only by practicing on what a person already has in ordinary life. He does not yet have clairvoyance, which is something that must be acquired slowly and laboriously. But man always has the opportunity to reflect in his soul, asking himself: Which things do I find morally good and which morally reprehensible? Most people do not act immorally not because they do not know what is moral, but only because their inclinations, drives, desires or passions contradict their moral knowledge. Then, when we have examined ourselves in this way, we can go back to what we discover in ourselves, such as agreement with what we can call moral. And if we now practise this meditation by asking ourselves: How can we imagine this or that in the world according to our moral judgment? — and create images for ourselves and immerse ourselves in them, we will experience things and emotional habits in our soul that are akin to clairvoyant powers.

So the next thing a person can do to awaken their clairvoyant powers is to become one with morality and action. This is the best training for clairvoyant powers. That is why it is always emphasized that one should actually only come to have clairvoyant powers by improving one's moral character.

If we consider this, we will indeed have to ask ourselves the question: Are there perhaps no other ways to develop clairvoyant vision? We often see people develop high levels of clairvoyant ability who do not make a particularly good moral impression on us, so we cannot assume that they first cultivated their morals, their approval and disapproval, and their enthusiasm for moral judgment. We see that people who have developed clairvoyant powers through all kinds of other things show certain bad qualities that they did not have or hardly had before; for example, they become real liars when they begin to develop clairvoyant powers. Yes, sometimes it becomes a very dangerous thing for a person's character, especially when they develop clairaudience. Clairvoyance is not yet as dangerous as clairaudience. How does that fit in with what has been said? Well, as you may recall, in my writing “How to Know Higher Worlds,” it is pointed out everywhere at the crucial points that the path to knowledge of the higher worlds, as it has been characterized today, must be followed. But it is equally certain that there are other paths as well. This path must be studied in the right way, then one will soon see why qualities can arise as they have just been characterized. We must be clear about the fact that we first have within us the spiritual-soul core of our being, which we summarize in its center when we say “I” or “I am”. This spiritual-soul core of our being is embedded in the astral, etheric and physical bodies. Just as the human being lives in the world now, we actually live when we live inwardly, in our I; for all soul activities in the awakened human being are in some way connected with the I, and all appear, as it were, in the background of the I.

I have often given the example of a schoolmate of mine who, even as a young pupil, was a thoroughly materialistic thinker and said: When we think and when we feel, we are only dealing with processes in the brain; we think and feel by virtue of the movements of our brain. Even then he developed quite materialistic theories: How can one speak of the self, of the essence of the being? It is the brain that feels, wills and thinks! – I replied: Yes, but why do you then keep lying and always say: I think, I feel, I will, when you know that your brain does that? – Of course one could say that this is a cheap, trivial objection; but what matters is that it is correct, significant and immediately valid. We live in connection with our ego from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep, and we cannot separate our ego from anything we think, feel or want. Now, what we experience inwardly and what is so linked to our ego is embedded in the astral, etheric and physical bodies. We do not experience these bodies directly in normal life. All kinds of hidden, inexplicable things emerge from the astral body, but what happens in it is unknown to the person, just as what happens in the depths is unknown to someone who only looks at the upper wave of the sea. A person should just observe life and see how little is known about what goes on in the hidden depths of life.

For example, we have a child who, in the seventh year of his life, experienced only once being treated unfairly by his father or mother. This resulted in a certain agitation in the child, but it was not noticed because it apparently disappeared very quickly for the outside world. But it only descended into the astral body; down there it surges and drifts. The child lives on until the age of sixteen or seventeen. He is at school. Something happens, the teacher does this or that. Another child would just have been upset about it, but this child commits suicide! Anyone who looks at this child's life only superficially will talk about all kinds of reasons that led him to commit suicide. Only he who looks at life in its depths, where it surges and drives, in the astral body, will know that one of the most important causes was the experience of injustice in the seventh year. This lives on down there in secret and is only brought to the surface by the incident at school; if that had not happened, the suicide would not have occurred.

What happens just below the threshold of consciousness, when the astral body has experiences in the immediate present, we cannot even be certain about that, much less about how the astral body is structured, formed, composed, what its elements, its beings are. We are embedded in what the spiritual and soul powers, which we know as the hierarchies, have organized for us. Down there in the astral body there are many forces, just as there are many in the depths of the sea that cannot be seen, only the ripples on the surface. And just as the ripples on the surface are related to what is below in the depths of the sea, so is the conscious I related to what is going on in the astral body. Only a diver who can submerge himself in this world of the astral body can do this, and this diver is precisely the clairvoyant.

This applies to an even greater extent to the etheric body; there we have even more hidden depths. And only with the physical body! Although the human being has it in front of him from the outside, he has the least control over it and can only do what the stomach wants. If he had to choose between fighting an upset stomach or immoral tendencies, he would set aside all moral efforts and strive for a healthy stomach. The physical body is subject to laws that man does not have in his conscious ego, but which he acquires from outside in maya. The astral, etheric and physical bodies are permeated with forces from the beings of the higher hierarchies. But this does not prevent these from playing up into the conscious ego, that forces flow from the hidden depths of the human being into the conscious ego, as we saw in the case of the child that really happened. From the age of seven, a force had been released in the astral body through the injustice that had occurred. This force then played itself into consciousness when the teacher took the cloth used to wipe the blackboard and, when the boy, who had since turned sixteen, had given him a slap in the face. He leaves the classroom, happens to find the chemistry room open, goes in and takes poison. With all the means of psychological science, one could prove how the violence of what was down there in the astral body brought this about.

But what is present down there in the human being can also be drawn up into the conscious I through certain behavior. We could pump up forces from the astral body through the conscious I and thereby come into possession of clairvoyant, that is, supersensory powers in consciousness. But in doing so, we are pumping up forces from what the gods have given us. This is indeed something that is often recommended in books that give instructions on how to enter a path of knowledge. It is very often the case that those who write such books also have no idea of the true process, because these things are not done with the conscientiousness with which they must be done. But it is to be understood that the forces that are instilled by higher hierarchies into our astral, etheric and physical bodies belong there. If we pump them up, we withdraw something from our organization; we take away something from what the gods have given us, and we weaken ourselves as a result. The weakening can show itself in such a way that the truthfulness instilled by the gods is damaged. These powers, which previously prevented people from lying, are pumped up to such an extent that they now begin to lie. Here is the great difference between this way of acquiring clairvoyant powers and the one described above, which you find consistently carried out in my writing “How to Know Higher Worlds”. What is this way based on? Exactly on the fact that nothing is developed on the path of knowledge that is not carried out according to the pattern of purely moral judgment. But this never flows from the astral body, but must be acquired as something that arises in the conscious ego like an inner voice. For we cannot regard as a moral being that which has no consciousness. We speak of morality only in relation to a being that is capable of allowing impulses to arise out of the core of its nature, which is connected with its inner being.

But now, in addition to moral forces, there are also those that lead the soul up into the higher world. If these are not to come from our astral body, then they cannot come from within ourselves at all. They cannot possibly come from within ourselves, because what comes from within ourselves would have to come from the conscious ego. But apart from moral impulses, at most aesthetic judgments, which decide on beauty, and, in a sense, mathematical judgments arise from the conscious ego. But the astral body should not be pumped up; so where can they come from? From the supersensible world, in which we are placed and which has indeed produced our three bodies. But these forces do not have to come from these three bodies themselves. So it is not the detour through the three bodies that must be chosen, but a path that brings us directly into contact with the spiritual realms, with the beings of the hierarchies, so that these forces of the higher world flow directly into us. We must therefore have access to these worlds through which higher forces can flow into our souls. For this it is necessary that all higher knowledge is connected with something other than with ordinary knowledge. With ordinary knowledge one does not enter into the higher worlds. To enter into the higher worlds, a very specific basic mood of the soul is necessary. This is the first thing that even the ancient Greek philosophers emphasized: Someone who can only think well, who only wants to grasp things intellectually, through mere thinking and philosophizing, cannot enter the spiritual worlds. One must start from something else. Before one can confront a thing cognitively, one must confront it in a different way.

All knowledge begins with wonder, and only those who start from a place of wonder are on the path to true knowledge. Nothing that we do not first face in wonder can lead to the path of knowledge at all. Let all pedagogy declaim that one must start from observation; if wonder is not there first, it remains mere intellectual cognition. Wonder is the first thing one must have.

The second thing that allows us to enter the spiritual world is to learn to worship. To worship that which works through the object. Knowledge that is not so connected with the soul that the soul walks the path of knowledge in the sense that it first lives in awe and in worship of that which manifests itself through the object, does not go beyond intellectual knowledge.

The third is to feel in harmony with world events. The spiritual teaching provides many means for this, in particular by carrying the idea of karma within us with all the seriousness of life. It is a long way from being convinced of karma in human life to the point where it becomes a true seriousness of life. If we are truly convinced of karma, then when someone slaps us, we must not say, “I don't like you slapping me!” Instead, we should ask ourselves, “Who actually slapped me? I myself, because in my previous life I did something that caused the other person to give me this slap, and I have not the slightest reason to tell him that he is doing me wrong, but in a sense I have set up an automaton for myself. — Not being in contradiction but in harmony with world events is the third thing. The Gospel itself gives a corresponding teaching: If someone strikes you on the right cheek, then offer the other one as well. If one knows that through karma one has to look for the cause within oneself, if one recognizes how one only lives out what one has brought about through one's own arbitrariness, through one's own guilt, then one comes to know oneself in harmony with the world process. That is the third.

And the fourth is: complete surrender to the process of the world, seeing oneself as if one were actually only a part of it. So that we can list four qualities with which we can relate to the outside world, to the outside of life: first, admiring, marveling; second, venerating; third, knowing ourselves to be in harmony with the world process; fourth, completely surrendering ourselves to this world process.

By developing these qualities, we open our soul, open it so that those forces can flow into it that flow out of the spiritual world in a virginal state, as it were. We inhale these forces like fresh mountain air, after having previously inhaled air that has been consumed by other organisms. Thus we see what a great difference there is between what can be given, as it were, by grace through the higher hierarchies themselves, and what we acquire by pumping up something out of the forces they place in our organization. By such a consideration we learn truly to distinguish between two paths that both lead to real clairvoyance. But one path leads to clairvoyance through the fact that man himself encounters the beings of the higher hierarchies directly.

Man has not always been a moral being. As long as man had only developed the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body, one could not speak of moral impulses. We speak of ancient sun-men who appropriated the etheric body, and of moon-men who acquired the astral body. But there was nowhere a realm of morality during these periods of development. The mission on earth is that morality is added to what man can otherwise experience. This is the task for the acquisition of such powers that lead to the spiritual world: man must develop beyond what he has acquired in the course of Saturn, Sun and Moon evolution. From all this it can be seen that, because it can be directly proven by reason, one cannot say that man can entrust himself to the offered paths of knowledge without judgment, to black magic as well as to moral impulses. One must only be willing to test everything through reason. If you try to respond to it correctly through today's description, what has been said will prove to be true, so that if you apply such standards to the description of paths of knowledge, you can really distinguish them without further ado. And it is important that man learn to say to himself: For me, the description of a path of knowledge in which not everything is patterned after a moral impulse is suspect from the outset. A person who does not consider a path that contradicts what one can actually feel as a moral impulse to be suspicious, who cannot feel the necessity of moral impulses, would have to ascribe it to himself if he were to get into danger. Therefore it was not at all unnecessary to include this consideration among the reflections that can be cultivated, because it is indeed right and good that someone who is interested in spiritual science today not only accepts the things that have been researched, but also, to a certain extent, familiarizes themselves with how things are found. Let us assume that someone wants to accept spiritual science but does not want to enter the path of knowledge for this incarnation. It is also useful for him to get an idea of how the knowledge is gained. He can gain an understanding of it, just as a chemist accepts a truth because he is told the experiment by which the knowledge in question is gained, even if he has not done the experiment himself.

Now, in our time, it is especially necessary for those who want to follow the path to higher knowledge to observe the things that have been characterized today; for we live in an age in which man is called upon by higher powers to become more and more independent and self-reliant. In the times that have passed until the Mystery of Golgotha, it was the case that man, without his doing, was in a certain way imbued with clairvoyant powers; this was like an inheritance from primeval times. But since the Mystery of Golgotha, man lives in such a way that he must consciously face things. Therefore, it is necessary that man learn to appropriate that very mood in the soul that is achieved through the four virtues, through the four powers: marveling, admiring, venerating, feeling harmony with the process of the world, and to devote himself to the process of the world, and that he may open himself freely to those influences that may come to him from the higher hierarchies precisely through the development of these virtues.

Now there is a possibility, so to speak, of moving out of the most fundamental soul impulses into such an attitude towards the world as in these four virtues: If we repeatedly and again and again devote ourselves to the thought in our souls that we, as we stand in the world, as we are interwoven in the world of Maja, the great illusion, have sprung from the divine forces with this Maja, this illusion, which always has its origin in the spiritual world. The fact that we live in the world of Maja, of illusion, does not prevent us from surrendering to the spiritual forces in the world of Maja and illusion, from which they have arisen. Maya is like the life in the play of waves on the sea, but it is still raised by the sea and is formed from the substance of the sea. Just as the play of waves comes from the world of the sea, and the foam is a formation from the substance of the sea, so the world of Maya arises from the spiritual underground, so that we can say: Even though we are wrapped up in this world of illusions, we have emerged from the Divine. This is expressed in Western esotericism by the words: Ex deo nascimur – we are born of the Divine.

And a second fundamental feeling is that we must not pump up the forces that the divine powers have placed in our astral, etheric and physical bodies, but that we must devote ourselves directly to the spiritual world, dying to the world. We do this through the four virtues: awe and wonder, reverence, harmony and devotion to the cosmic process. These are the things that bring us ever deeper into the mood that Western esotericism expresses as follows: In Christus morimur — in Christo morimur.

Then we can hope that we are heading towards awakening in the spiritual world, that we are opening up to the forces that are being newly bestowed on us there, as they were once bestowed on the astral body. Through the Holy Spirit we will be awakened again, we will be transported back into the spiritual world, so that man can ascend again into the higher world: Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.

We should know that any esoteric teaching that is correct for today's world must banish all methods that pump forces from the lower bodies up into the ego that are supposed to lead to higher knowledge; for we are healthy when these forces remain below. It is a false esoteric path when we befog ourselves in this or that way and then consider certain things to be right simply because we have pumped up the forces that would not allow us to think these things are right if they remained in their place. These are serious matters, leading to a true understanding of why, in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds,” the powers for developing clairvoyant abilities are localized directly in the area of our larynx. They are, in the highest sense, moral faculties, and are also presented in the Buddha's teaching as the eight-fold path. To a certain extent they are moral; in the broader sense they lead man upwards to a thorough moralization of our knowledge as well, to an impregnation of it with that which otherwise is only in our morals.

Spiritual science must become an instrument of mutual understanding, whereby we learn to understand each other, as it were, across all of humanity and into the soul. And this learning to understand each other, even into the soul, must permeate us as an anthroposophical attitude, so to speak, and live in us, otherwise the occult truths that flow into humanity through spiritual science will not be easily understood by us either. In this respect, spiritual science can, because it is, so to speak, the key to understanding the innermost, bring about peace and harmony across the earth. How can it do that?

Let us illustrate this with a concrete example. Take, for example, the relationship between two people who have different religious beliefs across the earth, let us say Christianity and Buddhism. What we can say with reference to Christians and Buddhists, who provide us only with classical examples, we could of course also say for the world views of two people living side by side in Europe; for what applies on a large scale will also apply on a small scale through spiritual knowledge. If we take the Christian and the Buddhist as they are in the traditional orthodox creeds, how do they relate to each other? Well, in such a way that the Christian actually believes that the Buddhist can only be saved if he accepts Christianity in the form that he has. And so we see the missionary activities of Christians among Buddhists; they take their particular confession there. And the orthodox Buddhist behaves in a very similar way. Suppose both became anthroposophists. How would a Christian, as an anthroposophical Christian, relate to a Buddhist? Well, let us say that he hears what is one of the most important things in Buddhism and what, basically, is only properly understood by someone who lives within Buddhism itself. Today, there are two ways of learning about the content of the various religious beliefs: from people who study comparative religion and from those who learn about the content of the various religious beliefs in a spiritual-scientific way. If we consider those who practice comparative religion, we must say that they are extraordinarily hardworking and active people who endeavor to cultivate the scholarly comparison of different religious beliefs. But when they compare these religious beliefs, something very special comes to light; then what they are looking for, even if they do not admit it, is actually only the untruthfulness of the various religious beliefs. These people are looking for what is not true, what was accepted by the various religious beliefs in childlike times; that is, they are looking for untruth. The person who studies this as a spiritual scientist seeks the main core in the individual religious beliefs; he seeks what is contained in a single nuance, but still as a perceptional nuance, in this or that religious belief. He seeks, therefore, what is true in the individual religious beliefs, not what is false.

In this respect, things can go strangely. Isn't it true that no one who knows the facts will have anything but the greatest respect for Max Müller, perhaps the greatest scholar of comparative religion or the greatest authority on religious studies. He, too, did not give much more than what one might call: the untruth of the oriental creeds. But he believed that he was giving everything with it. And then H. P. Blavatsky appeared and spoke quite differently. She spoke in such a way that one saw in her: she knows the main core of the oriental creeds.

What did Max Müller say? His judgment is somewhat grotesque and shows that a scholar does not necessarily need to be well-versed in logic. He thought that people follow Blavatsky, who only gives them a completely false representation of oriental religions, while she does not take into account the true representation of them, which, for example, he, Max Müller, gives. And he used the following comparison: Yes, when people are walking down the street and see a real pig grunting, they are not particularly surprised, but when they see a person grunting like a pig, it causes a stir. He wanted to compare what is naturally given in the oriental religious systems, namely his kind of religious comparison, with the pig that grunts naturally – I am not making the comparison! - and wanted to compare what H. P. Blavatsky has given with a person who grunts like that. Well, I won't even talk about the tastelessness of the comparison; because it doesn't seem very logical to me: I would be a little surprised if I met a person who could grunt deceptively. But I would not, really not, use the other comparison of comparative religious studies with the said animal, and it is strange that Max Müller himself used it.

Spiritual science introduces us to the truth of different religions. Take a key point in Buddhism: the Buddhist knows, when he has understood the basic tenet of his faith, that there are bodhisattvas, and he knows that these bodhisattvas, once beginning as an individuality, undergo a more rapid development than the other human individualities and then ascend to the Buddha. Buddha is a general name for all those who, in a human, carnal incarnation, ascend from the bodhisattva to the Buddha. And one of those who are especially honored with the name Buddha is precisely the son of Shuddhodana: Gautama Buddha. And with regard to him, it must be recognized, as with every Buddha, that when he attained the dignity of Buddha at the age of twenty-nine, the incarnation in which this occurred was his last incarnation, and that he would not need to descend again to a carnal incarnation on earth. This is regarded as a truth by Buddhists. A comparative religion scholar would regard it as a childish notion. But the anthroposophist, who familiarizes himself with the secrets of religions in all fields, does not approach the Buddha in this way, but he knows that such a thing is a truth. And so, just like any devout Buddhist, the anthroposophist faces Buddhism and says: Yes, I know that there are such things as bodhisattvas who ascend to the Buddha, who do not need to reincarnate again. That is one of the sentences of your religious community that I recognize, just as you do, and by acknowledging it, I can look up to your Buddha with reverence, just as you do. That is to say, the anthroposophical Christian begins to fully understand what the Buddhist says, and he has the same feelings and perceptions with him, he shares them with him, and they understand each other from the one side at first.

Now let us take the opposite case, where the Buddhist has also become an anthroposophist and is learning to recognize what the Christian, who has raised himself above the narrow-mindedness of the confessional orthodox point of view, knows about Christianity. Let us assume that the Buddhist Buddhist hears what a Christian can say about the Christ Impulse itself. He hears that within Christianity, within Christian esotericism, it has been recognized that at one point in the course of evolution, a being called Lucifer approached man in his development; he then hears that as a result, this human being descended lower than would have been the case had there been no Luciferic influence. And he then hears that it is actually something that we look up to as if it were a matter for the gods when we consider the rebellion and revolt of Lucifer against the progressive powers of the gods. So we are looking into a matter for the gods. And then we hear from the Christian who really understands his Christianity that the settlement of this matter between the advancing gods and Lucifer had to become what we call the Mystery of Golgotha. And why?

Well, in its present form, death and everything associated with death has really come about through the influence of Lucifer. But death is something that can only be found in the physical world. There is no death in a supersensible world, insofar as supersensible worlds are accessible to man with his clairvoyant consciousness. Not even the group souls of animals die; they only transform. There is metamorphosis, but not what is called death. The disintegration, the falling apart of a part of a particular entity, death, only exists in the physical world. Now, as a compensation, it had to be chosen - this can only be hinted at - by supernatural beings to suffer death in order to have a common cause with men, something that could be a compensation for the Luciferian rebellion. To conquer Lucifer, the Divine had to go through death; to do so, it had to descend to earth.

So what happened through the Mystery of Golgotha is a divine matter through which a compensation was created for the Lucifer matter. It is the only divine matter that has taken place before the eyes of men. This unique impulse, which cannot be imagined as anything other than the passing through of the Divine through death on the physical plane and the emanation of the Christ impulse into the spiritual atmosphere of the earth from that point on. This is now regarded by anyone who knows Christianity as the primary essence of that Christianity. In this way, Christianity, understood in a deeper sense, differs from all other religions in that the other religions see the main thing about their origin in some religious founder, in a personality; but that Christianity does not see the essential in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, but sees in this personal founder only the bearer of the Christ impulse, that Christianity sees the essential in a fact. This must be grasped with all possible intensity: in a fact that had to take place as such at some point in the evolution of the earth: in the passing through of the divine through death. That is the special truth of Christianity: that it is not an individuality but a fact, an event, an experience that is placed at the starting point. Of course, it does not matter if someone says to us, “Yes, look, Jesus of Nazareth still has all kinds of passions, all kinds of qualities that a, let us say, according to oriental views, somehow advanced man should no longer have.” That does not matter at all. That is not the point at all. Anyone who allows themselves to be misled by this has no understanding of Christianity, because Christianity is not about Jesus of Nazareth at all, but about the event of Golgotha, about that fact. Let other founders of religions have personal qualities that other peoples like better than those of Jesus of Nazareth! But those who become Buddhists or anthroposophists will realize that in Christianity it is the event of Golgotha that matters, and they will give the Christian back what he has given them. They will say: Just as you yourself admit that there are bodhisattvas who develop as individualities, ascend to the Buddha and then do not need to incarnate again, so we admit that once in the development of man such a passing through of the divine through death has occurred. You admit that there is a shade of truth in our religion, and we admit that there is a shade of truth in yours. — Thus both sides understand each other. They would not understand each other, for example, and discord would be created if Christians came who thought they had become Anthroposophists and said: I don't believe you that a Buddha can no longer appear in a physical body, but I assume that in a certain time the Buddha will appear again in a physical body. - That would be an impossibility for someone who recognizes the essence of Buddhism. It would be impossible to expect the Buddhist to believe that his Buddha could appear in the flesh again. The Buddhist would say: “You do not understand Buddhism.” And it is quite natural and should not be a matter for discussion that just as the person who claims that a Buddha will come again in the flesh does not know Buddhism, so the person who claims that a Christ can come flesh again, who therefore does not realize that it concerns here a unique life of a divine entity on Earth, precisely for the purpose of passing through death on the physical plane, and not something else. So it concerns mutual understanding across the whole Earth, to really grasp each other and thereby establish peace. Discord would be caused if one were to claim to a Buddhist that Buddha would reappear in the flesh; and discord would be caused if one were to claim that the Christ could come again in the flesh. Such things would have to take a deep revenge, for they are impossibilities in view of what really lives in the evolution of mankind. It would be grotesque if anyone were to claim that the Christ had to come again and that people should understand him better now than they did then and should prepare themselves better for him and not kill him: such a person would not know that the killing was crucial and that without it there would be no Christianity at all! The good will to understand really does lead to mutual understanding, and we see how spiritual science can be an instrument for seeking the main core in the individual religious denominations everywhere. If you really want to, you will find it. That is why it is the message of peace for the world. Spiritual science will have to create a cultural soul for the whole world, just as it has given rise to the material cultural body that now extends across the whole earth in industry and commerce. It is precisely by recognizing the diversity that has been given to humanity in the various religious beliefs, and then in turn relating to that which appears to us as the core of truth through spiritual science, that we achieve a kind of synthesis, a unification of the various world views in our time. This should be emphasized with regard to one point.

The aim of the anthroposophically oriented movement that we are pursuing here has never been to present the differences between religious denominations in such a way as to ascribe advantages to one religious denomination and disadvantages to the other. How often has it been said: The spiritual height that was there immediately after the Atlantic catastrophe in the culture of the ancient Indian Rishis has not been reached at all today. It has therefore not been reached by Christianity as it exists today either. We do not indicate advantages and disadvantages, but present the individual religions in their essence. So we also only present when we draw attention to other differences. If we follow the more oriental way of thinking, namely the one that has the most followers, the Buddhist one, you will see one thing: there the main interest of the people is taken up by what is called the passage through the various incarnations. They speak there of a bodhisattva; but a bodhisattva is not one who lives only from the year of birth to the year of death, but one who comes back again and again and then becomes a Buddha; and one speaks of bodhisattvas as if they appeared in various numbers within the development of humanity. One generalizes more, one grasps more the individualities that remain. But how has it been done so far in the Western view? The exact opposite was the case. When people spoke of Socrates, Plato, Raphael, Michelangelo, they were referring to personalities, and here the Western view presents the limited entities as the essential being. This had its good side, because thereby a special education was achieved to chisel out and work out the individual human personalities. This was essentially the case with those views that H. P. Blavatsky, for example, did not understand: the ancient Hebrew and the New Testament views.

One looked, for example, to Elijah. The occult researches about him have something surprising. I need only say that we notice the uniqueness of which makes him a forerunner of what should have happened through the Christ Impulse. He still understands the matter in such a way that the Divine Being is expressed in the National Ego; but he already points out that the most worthy means of recognition lies in the Ego itself. In this respect, Elijah can be seen as a kind of herald of Christianity, and none of the other prophets seems to me to be a herald in the same way as Elijah. There is still a hint of Jehovah in his words, but with him we find Jehovah as close to the human ego as possible. Then we turn our attention to another figure, again as an individual personality, to John the Baptist. We find how he precedes the Christ Impulse, how John the Baptist really presents himself as the one who characterizes the Christ Impulse in words. He says: Change your mind, no longer look to the times of ancient clairvoyance, but seek the Kingdoms of Heaven within your own humanity! — That which the Christ Impulse is in reality: John the Baptist characterizes it. He is a herald of Christianity in a most wonderful way. What lives in the heart of John the Baptist appears to us as a kind of further development, an inner spiritual further development, compared to what lived in Elijah.

We then turn to Raphael and look at him as seemingly a very different figure from John the Baptist; but by looking at Raphael - yes, we just need to immerse ourselves in him a little in a truly human way, and we find in him a herald of Christianity.

Take the following. We turn to a passage from the Acts of the Apostles, the passage where it says: “And Paul came to Athens, and the Athenians gathered around him, and Paul stood before them and said: You women and men of Athens, you have so far worshiped your gods in all kinds of signs; but the Godhead does not live in external signs in reality. You also have an altar, however, on which it says: “To the unknown God!” But I say to you that the unknown God is the one who cannot be indicated by external signs in his true form, but who underlies all that is alive and all that exists. He is the one who lived on earth and was resurrected, the one who, through resurrection, will lead man himself to resurrection.” And further on, the Acts of the Apostles tell us – and we can almost see Paul standing before the Athenians – how some Athenians believed and others did not. Among the former was Dionysius, the Areopagite. Then we look at the painting that hangs in the Camera della Signatura in Rome and was painted by Raphael, and which is called “The School of Athens”. Now let us assume – as was quite natural at the time – Raphael had before him the passage from the Acts of the Apostles that we have just been discussing. It came to life in him. And now we look at the various Athenians, to whom he gave the faces, and except for the hand movement, we see stepping forward – stepping forward among the Athenians – a figure whom we recognize if we just consider Paul in the Acts of the Apostles.

And so we could go through the most diverse things with Raphael. If we focus on his various Madonnas, we must ask ourselves, however: Isn't one thing strange about Raphael, he is great when he paints the scenes that show the becoming, the growing in the emergence of Christianity, the little Jesus as something that contains the whole of Christianity becoming in the germ. But we do not find Raphael's painting of Judas betraying Christ, nor does he actually paint Christ carrying the cross, because his Christ carrying the cross seems to us to be forced, not at all like Raphael's other works. Instead, we find the Annunciation, the Ascension, that is, the things that point precisely to the emergence of Christianity.

And how did these things speak to people? Yes, they spoke most peculiarly. You know that one of Raphael's most magnificent works is in Dresden: the Sistine Madonna. People who think superficially might think that this is a work of art that was paraded through Germany like a victor. It made no impression on Goethe at all because he had heard how people generally thought about this work. As a young man, Goethe was not yet as sure in his judgment as he was in his old age and was still receptive to what people said. What did the museum officials in Dresden tell him? Well, that the child was ugly in its entirety, that the Madonna had been painted over by an amateur, that the little putti below had been added by some kind of handyman. That was still the attitude towards the Sistine Madonna when Goethe came to Dresden as a young man. But let us see how it is now. Let us consider what Raphael actually has become for people! Raphael worked in Rome at a time when there was much dispute about religious dogmas. The way in which Raphael paints the Christian mysteries is interdenominational. If we take the later great Italian painters, we see the religious mysteries painted in such a way that we recognize: this is the Christianity of the Latin race. Raphael paints in such a way that we are dealing with universal renderings of Christian mysteries that transcend nations. That is why we see how, in a short time, the Sistine Madonna finds its way into the souls even in Protestant areas. And if anthroposophy is to work for the understanding of the Christian mysteries, it will find its way best into those souls in which the feelings live that are won by images like the Sistine Madonna, into those souls that are prepared in this way. And when we say today that Christianity is only at the beginning of its development, that it will only receive its true form through the spiritual key that anthroposophy is able to give, then we know that Raphael stands as a herald for this Christianity.

And again we turn our gaze to yet another figure, taking only what is Western in outlook: we turn to the figure of the German poet Novalis. If we turn to Novalis, we find traces of the purest anthroposophical teaching in every detail; one need only unravel them, so to speak. Thus we see how Novalis is imbued with an anthroposophical Christianity.

We have thus presented four figures as personalities. That was the Western view. Now comes the spiritual-scientific deepening. Through this, people will already experience why, for example, Raphael feels that magnetic attraction to be incarnated into the earth on a Good Friday, in order to outwardly suggest through the birth on Good Friday that he has something to do with the Easter mystery. These things can only be hinted at today; in a few decades people will understand the things that are being asserted in this way, just as they understand scientific facts today: that it is the same individuality that lived in Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael and Novalis. First they will recognize the personalities, then the individuality as it has passed through them. And now we understand the fourfold heraldry and the ascent in this fourfold heraldry. Now we stand by such a thing quite differently than we used to. Today we already know that the original form of the Stanze in Rome can no longer be seen; they have been spoiled, are no longer as they were painted by Raphael's hand, and only centuries need pass for these things to disappear. Even if the replicas will have a longer life, what created the individuality is dissolved into its atoms. But even if Raphael's physical works are pulverized by the passage of time, we know that the same individuality that created those works was present again in Novalis and brought about, in a different way, what was in him.

Thus we see how today, in addition to what the Western way of looking at things has achieved, the limited vision of personalities is added to individuality; how, in other words, the best that the Western world view has achieved is combined with the best that the Eastern way of looking at things has. This is how time progresses. As humanity progresses and realizes these things, the spiritual world will not remain silent, but will speak to humanity in even the most mundane of phenomena. And so, people will not only have to rise to the spiritual world through a kind of knowledge, but more and more this knowledge will be transformed into a kind of, one might say, experience. But for this to happen, a real spiritual movement is needed today. That such a movement is necessary is evident simply from the fact that people no longer judge even the simplest things in the right way.

Let us single out one detail today. A person who leads a healthy life goes through waking and sleeping in the course of twenty-four hours. We know that when he falls asleep, the physical and etheric bodies remain in bed and the astral and I go out. What then happens to what remains in bed? When the clairvoyant looks back from his astral body at what is happening in the etheric and physical bodies, he sees how a more vegetative life begins, a life that has actually been destroyed by daytime consciousness. Fatigue is compensated for; that is, the etheric body and the physical body now flourish and sprout, and the astral body and the I have been withdrawn. When they submerge again into the physical body and etheric body in the morning, they have to make them tired again; they graze, let wither what has sprouted during the night.

Everything that is in the microcosm is also present in the macrocosm. When we see in spring how the earth lets its greenery shoot out in the plants, how flowers and leaves sprout and how the plants prepare to bear fruit, what do we have there? The one who compares externally will say that the waking up in the morning can be compared to the waking up of nature in spring. But the opposite is true! We have to compare the blossoming in spring with falling asleep. We have to compare the emergence and growth of plants in spring with what happens in the etheric and physical body of a person when they fall asleep. Then, as summer approaches, it becomes more and more alive, as in the human physical and etheric bodies in the middle of the sleep period. And in autumn it becomes as if the human being descends into the physical and etheric body in the morning, in autumn, which causes withering of what has sprouted during spring and summer. One must correctly put together what happens outside and inside; one must not seek external allegories and compare spring with waking up and autumn with falling asleep, but the other way around.

So that we can say: That which is the spirit of the earth goes to sleep in spring and wakes up as earth spirits in autumn and winter. In winter, they are connected to the earth as earth spirits, in order to rise again in spring and summer to the heights of heaven, to the astral heights and to the other side of the earth. When spring comes again, they go back to sleep.

It does not contradict that the earth sleeps once on one half and the other time on the other half. Something similar is also the case with man in a certain respect. The person who follows the processes clairvoyantly sees that in spring it is the same as when a person falls asleep, where the individual spirit withdraws into the astral world; he sees that in spring what we call the earth spirits withdraw into the astral world, and vice versa. Yes, today's humanity – except for those sitting here, who would probably burst out laughing if one were to speak of the falling asleep and waking up of the earth spirits. One believes this humanity; it does everything to prove that it has no idea of the real processes of the world. But it was not always so, not at all, but it was different in the past! There was an old human clairvoyance, and that saw these facts correctly. It was seen that the earth spirits withdraw in spring to go up, so to speak, into cosmic heights. In autumn these spirits descend again. This was recognized in ancient times. It was natural to point out that in the middle of summer there is something like an absence of the actual earth spirit from the earth. Instead, there is an upsurge of the elemental nature spirits, as in a paroxysm, and a lagging behind of what is earthly-bodily on the earth, which thus emerges through the senses. If one wanted to make this clear, one could not do better than to move the Feast of St. John to this time, in order to point out how the sprouting nature spirits and the actual spirits of the earth, which are the I and the astral body of the earth, work.

But what about when winter approaches? Then the earth wakes up, and the astral body and the ego are connected with the earth. That is when we have to move the festivals that primarily relate to the spiritual part of the human being. That is where Christmas has been moved to. And then, when the spirit of the earth moves upwards, which is indicated by Easter, this movement away from the earth, this movement into the astral, was related to the relationship between the sun and the moon.

All these things that we are looking into connect us in a wonderful way with ancient clairvoyance, showing us how, in what has been handed down from ancient times, we have to see something that has to do with ancient human clairvoyance. It is quite natural for the materialistic world view to say that it has only the body to educate, that it says: It is inconvenient for us, especially with regard to cheque transactions and similar things, to have Easter early one year and late the next, and this must be remedied so that trade and industry can get away with it as comfortably as possible. Easter should always be celebrated on the first Sunday in April! — This is only appropriate for the materialistic age, which has no connection with the spiritual world. Just as it is appropriate for materialism to entertain such ideas, it is equally true that a spiritual movement must maintain the connection with humanity's ancient festivals. And we will not hold back in doing what is appropriate for a spiritual worldview, especially with regard to practical activity.

And this should be expressed in what is presented to you in our calendar, which of course appears ridiculous to the outside world, but we do not want to withhold it from them, even if they think we are fools because of it. It is expressed through this calendar that we must maintain the connection with ancient times. In the illustrations for the calendar, which were created by a dear and beloved member of our group, you have a renewal of that which has already become dry and barren: the imaginations that relate to the constellations of the sun and moon and the signs of the zodiac, renewed for the soul of today, given in such a way that you really benefit from it when you look at the sequence of weeks and days. If you ask how you can gain access to such things yourself, then take a look at the Soul Calendar: these meditations are the result of many years of occult research and experience. If you make them effective in the soul, you will see that what is forming in the soul is the connection between the effectiveness of spiritual

worlds in the succession of time. And what we call the Mystery of Golgotha, we have made outwardly, exoterically, so that it does not shock at first glance. We have drawn a circle around it, on which 1912/13 is written, but inwardly the calendar is calculated in such a way that the beginning is marked by the birth of human ego-consciousness, that is, with the Mystery of Golgotha. And besides, the years are counted from Easter to Easter, which is bound to prove rather inconvenient for commercial life, but is necessary for spiritual life.

Thus something is provided that has grown out of our way of thinking and that can be used by everyone, so that by using it they can take a step closer to the spiritual path than can be achieved by any other means.

It will become more and more apparent how the things we undertake within our anthroposophical movement are actually conceived from a unified basic principle and impulse, and how the individual does not owe his existence to a whim, but is placed in such a way that he really fits into our work as a whole as a single building block. For this, of course, it is necessary that more and more individual members also develop an understanding of this collaboration and that we move beyond special interests and special aspirations and focus more on what unites us. Of course, it is understandable that many individual members have special aspirations and special requests, that some would like to bring this or that into the anthroposophical movement. But especially here in this place, where truly selfless cooperation will be necessary if we really want to achieve what we have planned, it must be deeply, deeply rooted in our hearts that we will only have a beneficial effect if we do not assert our special aspirations, but rather what can be integrated into the whole, what is being striven for, as a building block. Otherwise it cannot become a whole. This is so extraordinarily important, and in this respect I believe that the realization of what should have happened there is the basis for studying how the anthroposophical movement should develop.

So today I have tried to present to you some of our anthroposophically oriented views, and we have thus created a kind of substitute for what should have been this time, but could not be because not all the official approvals have been obtained: namely, the laying of the foundation stone of our Johannesbau. But we hope that in the not too distant future we will be able to make up for this. For perhaps in doing so we will also lay the foundation stone for a revival of the anthroposophical movement as we understand it in the West. And if we succeed in doing the right thing in this field, then we will already have provided the proof that we, in all loyalty to the truth, without any inclination towards sensationalism, are making those occult efforts our own which present-day humanity needs for its further development.

When we listen to the tones of the heart of our dear Novalis, through which he knew how to proclaim the mission of Christ so intimately, we feel some justification for our spiritual current, because we feel that from a personality, how their whole nature is deeply entwined with all the riddles and secrets of the world, we feel how something resounds from it like a longing for those spiritual worlds that the newer human being must seek through the very worldview that we strive for. It is a wonderful thing to immerse oneself in the heart and soul of a person like Novalis. How he emerged from the depths of Western spiritual life, himself profound in his grasp of the longings for the spiritual world. And when we allow ourselves to be affected by the way he, in this incarnation, allowed the spiritual worlds to flow into his youthful heart, and how these spiritual worlds were illuminated for him by the Christ impulse, then we feel this as an invitation to our own souls, to our own hearts, to strive with him for that which shone before him like a lofty light unceasingly, towards which he lived his short existence this time. And we feel how he was one of the prophets of modern times in this incarnation for that which we want to seek in the spiritual worlds, and we also feel how we can best be inspired for this quest by the enthusiasm that lived in the heart and soul of a Novalis and that came to him from his intimate union with the Christ impulse. And we may connect ourselves in this moment with what lived in the soul of Novalis as an expression of the Christ Impulse. the light that radiates so gloriously from the Orient, we may connect in this moment with what lived as an expression of the Christ impulse in the soul of Novalis.

We know that it once resounded as a great prophecy in ancient Hebrew times and as the significant word of Elijah, welling up out of Creation. We know that it was the impulse that was present when the cosmic Christ-being descended into the body of Jesus of Nazareth. We know that it was the same impulse that prophetically foreshadowed what was to be embodied in the development of humanity. We know that it was the same impulse that magically conjured up the infinite mysteries of Christianity in Raphael's soul. And longingly and with a sense of mystery, we turn to the re-embodied soul of Elijah, of John the Baptist, of Raphael in Novalis, and we feel with this soul how all its spiritual vibrations are permeated and aglow with the longing for a new spiritual life for humanity, and then we feel the courage and we feel that something of the strength comes to us to live for this new spiritual life of humanity. Oh, why was he born, this Novalis, into the modern era, to prophetically foretell the spiritual realization of the Christ impulse? After all, around him on his spiritual horizon there was a revival of the great spiritual currents of all humanity. He, Novalis, emerged from the circle in which spiritual life itself was glowing, like a first proclamation of the theosophical-anthroposophical world view of the West. In the radiance of the Goethean sun, the Schilleran sun, this soul, yearning and weaving towards the Christ impulse, matured.

What kind of spiritual current lived in Goethe? How does the spiritual sun express itself through Goethe and radiate onto Novalis, Goethe's young contemporary? From Spinoza's worldview, Goethe had sought to feel out everything that could calm his burning passions, bless him and turn him towards the spirit. From Spinoza's comprehensive world view, Goethe sought a view of the world and of the spiritual beings that permeate the world and radiate into the human soul, so that this human soul can solve nature and its own riddles by feeling and recognizing the existence that lives and moves in all beings and worlds. Goethe strove to rise to purity and contemplation from what he could get from Spinoza. Thus he sensed something of that monotheistic world-view in the spiritual sense, which already rings out to us and shines forth from the ancient Vedic word; and one can hear them resonate in the most beautiful way, if one only wants to, Goethe's word, like a renewing world Vedic word, with the warm enthusiasm that resonates from Novalis, in the Christ-secret of the world. Light streams out of Goethe's Vedic word, love and warmth stream into the light when we feel Novalis's Christ-announcing words pour into Goethe's words of light. And when we grasp Goethe at another point, where Goethe, while fully maintaining the knowledge of world unity, recognizes the independence of each soul in the Leibniz sense, then we are not touched by the words of Goethe, but rather by the spirit of the Western monadology, which is a resounding of the Sankhya philosophy. In all that experienced a resounding like the Sankhyaphilosophy, the Weimar of that time, the Jena of that time, matured, matured with his heart turned to Christ, Novalis. And sometimes one senses such a spirit, imbued with a modern nuance of Sankhya's attitude, like Fichte in his brittleness; one senses how it is tempered into the true spirit of the time when one thinks of Novalis alongside him and accepting him in devotional enthusiasm. On the one hand, we hear Fichte's remarkable renewal of the ancient Indian saying that the world as it surrounds us is only a dream and thinking as it usually is is a dream of this dream, but reality is the human soul, which pours out its will as power into this dream world. So Fichte's renewed Vedanta words. Next to them, Novalis's confidence. Oh, he feels this confidence something like this: Yes, physical existence is a dream, thinking is a dream of dreams, but from this dream everything arises that the human soul feels and perceives as its most valuable and can do spiritually in feeling and perceiving. And from the dream of life, from the Christ-inspired self, the soul of Novalis creates magical idealism, as he calls it, that is, spirit-filled idealism. And we feel how something connects almost more harmoniously than it can in the world's dream, when we see Novalis' loving soul standing next to another spiritual hero of his time, listening to how Schiller tries to inspire the world with his idealism, and how Novalis, by painting Schiller's ethical idealism, proclaims his magical idealism from the heart, which is inspired by Christ in himself. How deeply it speaks to our soul, this, what we might call the goodness, the innermost Western heartfelt goodness of Novalis, when he writes enthusiastically about Schiller. The whole kindness of a human soul, the whole capacity for love of a human soul, is expressed when we let such a word of Novalis's speak to us, as Novalis spoke it to praise Schiller for what this Schiller was to him, for what he was to humanity. To express this praise, Novalis says something like the following:

If the dispassionate beings that we call spirits can perceive, in the heights of the mind, such words and such human knowledge as flow from Schiller, then these dispassionate beings that we call spirits may well may one day be filled with the desire to descend into the human world and be embodied here, in order to work in true human development, which may absorb such knowledge as flows from such a personality.

Dear friends! Such a heart can be adored, such a heart can be loved, it is a model heart for all those who want to surrender to this feeling of genuine, true, devoted adoration and love. Such a heart can also express in the simplest way what the secrets of the world and of the human soul are. That is why many of the words that came from Novalis's mouth have the value of echoing what has been allowed to resound from the threefold human current to the spirit in all times, so full of yearning and sometimes so full of light. So he stands before us, this Novalis, who has barely reached the age of thirty, this reincarnated Raphael, this reincarnated John, this reincarnated Elijah; so he stands before us, and so we may venerate him ourselves, so he can be one of the mediators among many who teach us the way to find our way to the spiritual revelations that we strive for in our spiritual world view movement, the right heart, the right love, the right enthusiasm, the right devotion, so that we may succeed in letting that which we want to bring down from the lofty heights of the spirit also flow into the simplest human souls. For, however one or other may say about the difficulty in understanding the newer spiritual research, this very difficulty will be belied by the simple heart and simple mind; for they will understand what is brought down from spiritual heights through what we seek in our spiritual current. We should find the way from spiritual heights not only to those who have absorbed a certain amount of learned spiritual life in some form or other, but we should seek the way to all yearning souls that long for truth and for the spirit. And just as our motto should be Goethe's words, which in their simplicity must be deeply appreciated: “Wisdom is only in truth,” so our goal must be to transform the spiritual life that we seek and that we hear about, that it may be granted to us through the grace of the spiritual powers, to shape this spiritual life in such a way that it finds access to all, all longing souls. That must be our endeavour. We want to work in truth and be diligently intent on finding the way to all seeking souls, on whatever level of their incarnation. The secrets of incarnation are profound, as is shown to us by the path of an incarnation such as that of Novalis. But it can shine for us like a kind of guiding star, so that, following it emotionally, we also have the good will to work our way up to it in knowledge, and on the other hand to cultivate the vital will to penetrate with our knowledge to every human heart that is truly seeking the spiritual. And so we may be guided by the words of Novalis, which can also serve as a kind of motto for our undertaking at the starting point of the anthroposophical spiritual movement.

Words are no longer just words. If words of the spirit can found a world view, then these words will enlighten and warm the highest and simplest souls. That must be our longing. It was also Novalis' longing. He expresses it in beautiful words, which I would like to quote with only a single word change at the end of these words, and which are said to be spoken to your hearts, my dear friends. I am changing this word in Novalis, even if the philistines, who think of themselves as free spirits, may be a little annoyed. And so let our guiding star, among other guiding stars, be that which lies in Novalis' beautiful words:

When numbers and figures
are no longer the
key to all creatures,
When those who sing or kiss know more
than the great scholars,
When the world returns to free life
and to the world,
And one recognizes in fairy tales and poems
The eternal world histories,
Then a secret word flies before one
And the whole false herd-being disappears.

Today let us try to add something to what is already familiar to us. What I have to say may be useful to some of you in that it will lead to a more exact idea of the nature of man and his relationship to the cosmos.

Anthroposophists often hear objections to spiritual science from outsiders. Scholars and laymen alike criticize the division of man into the four members of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego.¹ These skeptics often say that perhaps one who has developed hidden soul forces may be able to see these things but there is no reason why one who has not should concern himself with such ideas. It should be emphasized, however, that life itself, if one is attentive to it, confirms what spiritual science has to say. Furthermore, the things anthroposophy has to teach can be extremely useful in everyday life. This usefulness, which is not meant to be taken pragmatically, gradually comes to carry conviction even for those who are not particularly inclined to concern themselves with clairvoyant perception.

Now let's consider nervousness. It is well-known today that there are many people who complain of nervousness and all that this implies, and we are hardly surprised when the statement is made that there is none who is not afflicted. Considering present social conditions to which all this nervousness can be attributed, such a statement can be readily understood.

Nervousness becomes manifest in a variety of ways, most obviously perhaps when a person becomes an emotional fidgety-gibbet, that is to say, someone who constantly jumps from one thought to another and is unable to hold a single thought in his head, let alone carry it through to a conclusion. Such constant scurrying in the inner life is the most common form of nervousness. Another is one in which people do not know what to do with themselves and are unable to make anything of themselves. When called upon to make a decision in a given situation, they are at a loss for an answer. This condition can lead to more serious symptoms that may finally be expressed in various forms of disease that simulate organic illnesses in a most deceptive way. Gastric disturbances are an example. Many other conditions might be mentioned, but who in our time does not know of them? We need only mention the “political alcoholism” that has pervaded the important events of public life. This expression was coined because of the way political affairs in Europe have been conducted during recent months. There has been no little talk about it since people began to notice how unpleasantly the prevailing nervousness is making itself felt.

If people remain as they are, we need not doubt but that there will be no improvement in the near future. The prospects of change are by no means hopeful. There are many harmful factors strongly influencing our lives that pass like an epidemic from person to person and thus those who are weak also become infected.

It is extremely harmful for our time that many of the men who hold high and responsible positions in public life have had to study as one does today. There are whole branches of learning that are taught in such a way that throughout the entire school year the student will be unable to spend his time and energy really thinking through what he has heard from his professors. As a result, when he is faced with an exam, he is forced to cram for it. This cramming, however, is dreadful because it provides no real connection of interest of the soul with the subject matter that the student is to be examined in. No wonder the prevailing opinion of the student often is one of wanting to forget as soon as possible what he has just had to learn!

What are the consequences of these educational methods? In some respects, men are no doubt receiving the training needed to take part in public life. But, as a result of their schooling, they are not inwardly united with their work. They feel remote from it. Now there is nothing worse than to feel remote in your heart from the things you have to do with your head. It is not only repugnant to sensitive people, but it also acts most adversely on the strength of the etheric body. Thus, because of the tenuous interest that may exist in the core of a person's soul for his professional pursuits, his etheric body is gradually weakened. Precisely the opposite effects are obtained, however, when anthroposophy is taken up in a healthy way. A man will not merely learn that he consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. He will also come to behave in such a way that these members unfold strongly and harmoniously in him.

Often in anthroposophy, even a simple experiment repeated with diligence can work wonders. Let me speak in detail, for example, of forgetfulness, so common and such a nuisance, but also so significant in our lives. Strange as it may seem, anthroposophy shows it to be harmful to health, and that many upsets bordering on severe illness can be avoided if people would only be less forgetful. And who can claim to be exempt, since there is no one who is not forgetful to some degree. Just consider the numerous cases in which people can never find where they put things. One has lost his pencil, another cannot find his cufflinks, etc., etc., all of which seems trivial but such things do, after all, occur often enough in life.

There is a good exercise for gradually curing such forgetfulness. Suppose, for example, a lady is forever putting her brooch down when she takes it off in the evening, and then cannot find it in the morning. You might think the best cure for her forgetfulness would be to remember to put it always in the same place. There is, however, a far more effective means of remembering where it is. This does not, of course, apply to all objects but in this case the lady should say to herself, “I will put my brooch in a different place each evening, but as I do so I will hold the thought in mind that I have put it in a particular spot. Then I will form a clear picture in my mind of all the surroundings. Having done this, I will go quietly away. I realize that if I only do this once, I probably will not succeed, but if I make a habit of it, I will find that my forgetfulness gradually disappears.”

This exercise is based on the fact that the person's ego is brought consciously into connection with the deed he does, and also that he forms a picture of it. Connecting the ego, that is, the spiritual kernel of man's being, in this way with a pictorial image, sharpens memory. Such an exercise can be quite useful in helping us to become less forgetful.

Further results can also be attained from such an exercise. When it becomes habit to hold such thoughts when things are put aside, it represents a strengthening of the etheric body, which, as we know, is the bearer of memory. But now assume you have advised someone to do this exercise not because he is forgetful but because he is nervous. It will prove to be an excellent cure. His etheric body will be strengthened and the nervous tendencies will disappear. In such cases, life itself demonstrates that what spiritual science teaches is correct.

Here is another example that may also appear trivial on the surface. You know that the physical and etheric bodies are intimately connected. Now anyone with a healthy soul will be moved to compassion for clerical workers and others whose professions demand a great deal of writing. Perhaps you have noticed the strange movements they make in the air whenever they are about to write. Actually, with some of them the movements are not so extreme and they may only give a kind of jerk when they write, a jerk repeated for every up and down stroke. You can see the jerking in the writing. This condition is easily understood through spiritual science. In a healthy human being the etheric body, guided by the astral body, is always able to permeate the physical body. Thus, the physical body is normally the servant of the etheric body. When, undirected by the astral body, the physical body executes movements on its own, it is symptomatic of an unhealthy condition. These jerks represent the subordination of the etheric to the physical body, and denote that the weak etheric body is no longer fully able to direct the physical. Such a relationship between the physical and etheric bodies lies at the occult foundation of every form of cramp or convulsion. Here the physical body has become dominant and makes movements on its own, whereas in a healthy man all his movements are subordinated to the will of the astral body working through the etheric.

Again, there is a way of helping a person with such symptoms, provided the condition has not progressed too far, if one takes into account the occult facts. In this case we must recognize the existence and efficacy of the etheric body and try to strengthen it. Imagine someone so dissipated that his fingers get to shaking and jerking when he tries to write. You certainly would do well to advise him to write less and take a good vacation, but better still you might also recommend that he try to acquire a different handwriting. Tell him to stop writing automatically and try practicing for fifteen minutes a day to pay attention to the way he forms the letters he writes. Tell him to try to shape his handwriting differently and to cultivate the habit of drawing the letters. The point here is that when a man consciously changes his handwriting, he is obliged to pay attention to, and to bring the innermost core of his being into connection with what he is doing. The etheric body is strengthened in this way and the person is made healthier.

It would not be a bad idea to introduce such exercises systematically into the classroom to strengthen the etheric body even in childhood. But, even though anthroposophy can give such pedagogical advice, it will doubtless be a long time before leading educators will consider it anything but foolish. Nevertheless, suppose that children were first taught to write a particular style of penmanship and after a few years were expected to acquire an entirely different character in their handwriting. The change, and the conscious attention it would involve, would result in a remarkable strengthening of the etheric body.

So you see, something can be done to strengthen the etheric body. This is of immense importance because in our time weakness of the etheric body leads to many unhealthy conditions. What has been indicated here represents a definite way of working upon the etheric body. When these exercises are practiced, an actual force is applied to the etheric body that certainly could not be applied if the existence of this body were denied. Surely, however, the effects of the force, when they become apparent, demonstrate the existence of the etheric body.

The etheric body can be strengthened by performing another exercise, in this case, for the improvement of memory. By thinking through events, not only in the way they occurred but also in reverse sequence, that is, by starting at the end of an event and pursuing it through to the beginning, will help to make the etheric body stronger. Historical events, for example, which are usually learned in chronological sequence, can be followed backwards. Or a play or story can be thought through in reverse from end to beginning. Such exercises when done thoroughly are highly effective in consolidating and strengthening the etheric body.

When you come to think of it, it soon becomes apparent that people do not do the things that would contribute to the strengthening of the etheric body. The restless daily bustle of modern life does not allow them the opportunity to come to that inner quiet required for such exercises, and in the evening after the day's work they are generally too tired to be bothered. Should spiritual science begin to penetrate their souls, however, people would soon see how many things done in the bustle of modern life could be dispensed with, and they would find the time to practice such exercises. They also would become aware of the positive results that could be achieved if such exercises were carefully applied in education.

Another little exercise may be mentioned here. If it has not been cultivated from early youth, it is, perhaps, not quite so useful in later life. Nevertheless, it is still a good exercise to practice in later years. With certain things we do, no matter whether or not they are of enduring importance, it is good practice to look carefully at what is being done. This is comparatively easy in writing and I am quite sure many people would soon correct their hideous handwriting if they really looked at the letters.

In still another exercise a person should endeavor to watch himself the way he walks, moves his head, laughs, etc. In short, he should try to form a clear picture of his movements and gestures. Few people actually know what they look like when they are walking, for instance. While it is good to make this experiment, it should not be prolonged because it would quickly lead to vanity. Quite apart from the fact that it can be corrective of undesirable habits, this exercise also tends to consolidate the etheric body. When a man cultivates an awareness of his gestures and involuntary actions, the control of the astral becomes increasingly stronger over the etheric. Thus, he also becomes able, if necessary, to suppress certain actions or movements out of his free will.

It is an excellent accomplishment to be able to do quite differently the things we do out of habit. Nowadays, people only alter their handwriting for unlawful purposes, but I am not advocating a school of forgery when I suggest that if one changes one's handwriting honestly, it will help to consolidate one's etheric body. The point is that it is good to be able to do quite differently on occasion the things we do habitually. This does not mean that we need become fanatical about the indifferent use of our right and left hands. If a man, however, is occasionally able to do with his left hand what he commonly does with the right, he will strengthen the control of his astral over his etheric body.

The cultivation of the will, as we may call it, is most important. I have already mentioned how nervousness often makes it impossible for people to know what they should do. They do not know their desires, or even what they should desire. This may be regarded as a weakness of the will that is due to an insufficient control of the ego over the astral body. Some people do not know what they want and, if they do, they never manage to carry it out. Others, still, cannot bring themselves to will firmly what they should.

The way to strengthen one's will is not necessarily to carry out something one wishes, provided, of course, it will do no harm to leave the wish unfulfilled. Just examine your life and you will find countless desires it would no doubt be nice to satisfy, but equally possible to leave unsatisfied. Fulfillment of them would give you pleasure, but you can quite well do without. If you set out to examine yourself systematically in this way, every restraint will signify additional strength of the will, that is, strength of the ego over the astral body. If we subject ourselves to this procedure in later life, it becomes possible to make good much that has been neglected in our earlier education.

Let me emphasize that it is not easy to apply what has just been described in the education of the child. If a father, for example, denies a wish of his son that he could fulfill, he is apt to awaken the boy's antipathy. Since it is thus possible to arouse antipathy, you might say that the non- fulfillment of wishes in education is a doubtfully correct principle. What, then, is to be done? The answer is for the person guiding the child or pupil to deny himself the wishes in such a way that the child becomes aware of the denial. There is a strong imitative impulse at work here in the child, especially during the first seven years, and it will soon become evident that he will follow the example of his elders and also deny himself wishes. What is hereby achieved is of untold importance. When, through our interest in anthroposophy, our thoughts are directed in the right way, we come to know spiritual science not only as theory but as a wisdom of life that sustains and carries us forward.

A most important means of strengthening the control of the ego over the astral body was presented here in two recent lectures.² In them I discussed the importance of being flexible enough to consider what is said not only for, but also against, an issue to be able, as it were, to see both sides of a problem. Generally, people see only one side, but there is really no problem in life that should be treated this way. Pros and cons are never lacking. We would do well to acquire the habit of always adducing the pros as well as the cons in a case. Being what they are, human vanity and egoism usually favor what one wants to do. Therefore, it is also good to list the reasons against.

The fact is that man would so much like to be “good” that he is often convinced he will be if he does the things there are so many reasons in favor of doing, and disregards the things there are so many reasons against. It is an uncomfortable fact to have to realize, but there are always many possible objections to practically everything we do. People are not nearly as good as they think. That is a universal truth, a truism, but it can become an effective truth when it is made a practice in everything that is done to consider also what might be left undone.

The results to be attained by these means can be clarified by an example. No doubt you have met people so weak-willed that they would rather let others take care of their affairs. They would rather sit around asking themselves what they should do than find reasons in themselves to act. What I am now going to say must also be conceived as having many cons as well as pros. Assume that one of these weak-willed people is confronted by two others. One of them says, “Do this.” The other says, “Don't.” The one whose will exerts the stronger influence on the weak-willed person will be the victor. This is a most significant phenomenon because the decision of “yes” or “no” made by the weak-willed person will have been brought about by the adviser whose strength of will was the greater.

In contrast, however, suppose that I stand alone and quite independently face in my own heart the necessity of making a “yes” or “no” decision. Then, having answered “yes,” suppose I go forth and do what must be done. This “yes” will have released a strong force within me. When you thus place yourself in consciousness before a choice of alternatives, you allow strength to prevail over weakness simply from the manner in which your decision is made. This is important because in this way the control of the ego over the astral body is greatly strengthened. Try to carry out what I have just described and you will find it will do much to strengthen your will.

This problem, however, also has its darker side. You will not strengthen but only weaken your will if, instead of acting under the influence of what speaks for one course as opposed to another, you were out of slackness to do nothing. Seemingly you will have followed the “no” direction, but in reality you will have been merely lax and easy going. If you feel limp and weary, it would be better not to attempt to make a choice until you are inwardly strong and know that you can really follow through with the eventual pros and cons you place before your soul. It is obvious that such things must be brought before the soul at the right time.

The control of the ego over the astral body is also strengthened when we witness from our souls everything that creates a barrier between us and the surrounding world. The anthroposophist, however, should not feel that he should repress justified criticism if it is objective. On the contrary, it would represent a weakness to advocate the bad in place of the good, and one need not do this. But we must be able to distinguish something that is to be criticized objectively from something that we find exasperating simply because of its effect on ourselves. The more we make ourselves independent of what confronts us, the better. Thus it is good to practice self-denial in not considering bad in our fellow-men the things we consider bad only because they are bad for us. In other words, we should not apply our judgment only where we ourselves are not involved. This is really difficult to apply in life. When a man has lied to you, for instance, it is not easy to restrain your antipathy, but having caught him in it you should not immediately jump to conclusions. There is another way. We can observe from day to day how he acts and speaks and let this, rather than what he has done to us, form a basis for our judgment. Then you are taking into consideration what there is in the man himself and are not basing your judgment on the effect his conduct has made on you. Your personal relationship with him should be disregarded in order that you may view him quite objectively.

It is advisable for the strengthening of the ego to reflect on the fact that in all cases we might well refrain from a considerable portion of the judgments we pronounce. It would be more than enough if but a tenth of them were experienced in our souls. Our lives would by no means be impoverished thereby.

These may seem like small details I have given here, but it must also be our task now and again to consider such problems. Then, in order to lead purposeful, healthy lives, we see how differently life must be grasped than is ordinarily the case. It is not always right to send to the drug store for medicine when a man is ill. What is important is to order life in such a way that people become less susceptible to illnesses and that they have a less oppressive effect. They will become less oppressive when we strengthen the influence of the ego over the astral body, the astral body over the etheric, and the etheric body over the physical. Self-education and an influence upon the education of children can follow from our fundamental anthroposophical convictions.

• 1. Spritual science views man as a fourfold being:
  
  The physical-mineral body man has in common with the mineral kingdom.
  
  The etheric or life body is the carrier of all life and growth forces. It is the element man has in common with the plant kingdom. Plants have physical and etheric bodies.
  
  The astral body is the carrier of feelings, instincts, etc., that man has in common with the animals, which possess a physical, etheric, and astral body.
  
  The ego, unique spark of divinity in man. It makes possible self-awareness and enables man to become a free being capable of choice between good and evil.
  
  —Translator
  
  
• 2. How to Disprove Theosophy, January 8, 1912; How to prove Theosophy, January 10, 1912. These lectures have not yet been published in English.

We have been busy getting acquainted with the way man's life processes and the sense-zones locate him in the cosmos, and we have tried to look at some of the consequences that follow from the facts on which this knowledge is based. Above all, we have to some extent cured ourselves of the trivial notion, held by many who want to befriend the spirit, that everything that can be referred to as ‘material’ or ‘perceptible to the senses’ is to be despised. For we have seen that here in the physical world it is precisely the lower organs and functions that reflect higher activities and relationships in the human being. In their present state, we can only view the senses of touch and life as being very dependent on the physical world—equally so the ego sense, the sense of thought and the sense of speech. But we must accustom ourselves to seeing those senses that in the Earth sphere only serve the inner being of the organism as the shadowy reflections of something that is immense and significant for the spiritual world once we have passed through death: the sense of movement, the sense of balance, the sense of smell, the sense of taste and, to a certain degree, the sense of sight. We have emphasised the fact that in the spiritual world the sense of movement enables us to move among the beings of the various hierarchies in accordance with the way they attract or repel us. After death we experience our connection with the hierarchies as spiritual sympathy or antipathy. Physical balance, as we know it here in our physical bodies, is not the only thing the sense of balance provides for us; it also holds us in balance between the beings and influences of the spiritual world. It is similar with the other senses: taste, smell, sight. And, in so far as a hidden spirituality plays into the physical world, it is of no use to turn to the higher senses for clarification. Rather we must enter the realms of the so-called lower senses. Mind you, these days it is not possible to speak about many of the highly significant things that lie in this direction. For today there are such strong prejudices that all one has to do to be misunderstood and accused of all kinds of things is to speak out about precisely those things that are interesting and significant in a higher spiritual sense. So, for the time being, I must forgo speaking about some of the interesting things that go on in the realm of the senses.

In this respect, the situation was much more favourable in earlier times. In those times, however, there were not the same possibilities of disseminating information, either. Aristotle could discuss certain truths much more unguardedly than they can be discussed today, when such things are immediately taken personally and awaken personal sympathies and antipathies. In Aristotle's works, for example, you can find profound truths about the human being which one simply could not explain to a large audience of today. I was referring to some of these in the last lecture when I said that the Greeks did not fall prey to materialism even though they knew more than we do of how our soul-spiritual nature is related to our physical, bodily nature. In Aristotle's writings, for example, you can find wonderful descriptions of the external appearance of a brave person, or a coward, or an indignant person, or of someone who is addicted to sleep. There, in a manner that from a certain point of view is correct, you find described what kind of hair and complexion and wrinkles cowardly people have, what sort of bodies drowsy people have, and so on. To say even this much would create problems these days; other things would be even more problematic. People of today take these things much more personally. In many respects they positively want to use the personal to keep themselves in the fog about the truth. That is why some circumstances today compel one to speak in more general terms if one wants to speak truthfully.

Specific insights about every kind of human being and every human activity await those who, in the right spirit, turn to our preceding considerations with the necessary questions. We have said, for example, that the human senses are presently located in more or less separate, static regions. They are just like the constellations, each of which remains motionless in its own region of the cosmos—in contrast to the planets, which appear, circling, wandering, changing their location in a relatively short time. Moreover, the boundaries of each sense region are fixed, whereas the life processes pulse through the whole organism and circulate through the individual sense-zones, permeating them with their influence.

Now we also have said that our sense organs were more like vital organs during Old Moon. There they functioned more as vital organs, whereas the organs that are now vital organs were essentially more related to the soul. Consider, then, something that has been emphasised more than once: that sometimes people will regress to, or return to, an atavistic state that was a natural and usual state in an earlier time—in this case, during the Old Moon period. We have noted that there is a form of regression that revives the dreamlike imaginative vision of Old Moon. Today, such an atavistic regression into the visionary state of Old Moon is a form of illness.

Now I ask you please not to lose sight of something: namely, that the visions themselves are not pathological. If that were so, we would have to say that everything mankind experienced on Old Moon was the product of illness, for there one lived entirely in such visions. And we would have to say that Old Moon was an illness that humanity had to go through—an illness of soul, at that—so that the humanity of Old Moon was necessarily insane. Naturally, one cannot say this; it is utter nonsense. The pathological aspect does not lie in the visions themselves, but rather in the fact that they cannot be sustained by the human organisation in its present, earthly form. The earthly, human organisation adapts to such visions in a way that is not appropriate to them. Just consider: when someone has the kind of vision one had on Old Moon, this vision is only adapted for engendering the kind of feelings, activities and acts that were appropriate to Old Moon. The illness consists in someone having such a vision here on Earth and responding to it in ways that only an earthly organisation can respond. This only happens because the earthly organisation cannot tolerate this vision with which it is more or less impregnated.

Take the most obvious, concrete kind of case: circumstances arise in which someone has a vision. Then, instead of remaining in quiet contemplation of the vision and relating it to the spiritual world, which is the only world to which it can rightly be related, the person applies it to the physical world and behaves accordingly. In other words, he starts to go berserk because the vision is doing what it should not do—permeating his body and bringing it into action. This is the most obvious kind of case. Today, when an atavistic vision arises that the body cannot tolerate, it does not remain in the domain which has brought it to life, which is where it should remain. A person becomes powerless if, his physical body is too weak to stand up against the vision. If the physical body is strong enough to stand up against it, the vision is weakened. Then the objects and events in it cease to appear—falsely—as if they really belonged to the world of the senses, for that is how they seem to someone who is made ill by them. Thus, if the physical body is strong enough to counter the falsifying tendencies of an atavistic vision, the following occurs: in such cases, a person relates to the world in a fashion that is similar to that of Old Moon, and yet he is strong enough to reconcile this Moon mode of experience with the earthly organism in its present state.

What does this imply? It implies that this person has somewhat altered his inner zodiac with its twelve sense-zones. It is changed in such a way that what happens in this zodiac of the twelve senses is more like a life process than a sense process. Or, better expressed, one could say that events in the regions of the senses, events which actually do impinge on the sense processes, are transformed into life processes—so that the sense processes are lifted out of their present, dead state and transformed into something living: you still see, but something lives in that seeing; you hear, but simultaneously there is something living in that hearing. Something lives in the eyes or in the ears which otherwise only lives in your stomach or on your tongue. The sense processes are truly brought into movement. And it is quite in order for that to happen. For then our modern sense organs acquire qualities that could otherwise only be possessed in the same degree by our vital organs. The forces of sympathy and antipathy flow strongly through our vital organs. Now just consider how much of our whole life depends on sympathy and antipathy—on which things we accept and take up and which we reject! And now those very powers of sympathy and antipathy, powers that are otherwise developed in the life organs, once more begin to pour into the sense organs. The eye not only sees red, it experiences sympathy or antipathy along with the colour. The sense organs regain the capacity to receive and be permeated by the life forces. So we can say: in this way the sense organs are brought once more into the sphere of life.

For this to happen, there must be changes in the life processes. Through these changes, the life processes become more ensouled than they otherwise would be in earthly life. The ensouling takes place in such a way that the three life processes—breathing, warming and nourishing—are more or less united. Then they begin to manifest themselves more in the sphere of the soul. With normal breathing, one breathes the prosaic, earthly air; the normal process of warming involves earthly warmth; and so on. But when they are ensouled, the life processes are united by a kind of symbiosis. They cease to be separated in the way they are usually separated in the present-day human organism; they establish connections with each other. Breathing, warming and nourishing unite to form an inner association with one another. And this is not nourishing in the coarse, material sense, but is rather the process of nourishing. The process occurs without it being necessary for anything to be eaten, and it does not occur on its own, as when we eat, but in conjunction with the other processes.

The four remaining life processes are united in a similar fashion. Secretion, growth, maintenance and reproduction are united to form a single, more ensouled process, a life process that has more to do with the soul. And then these two parts can unite yet again-not just gathering all the life processes together so that they function as one, but by combining three of the processes in one group and the other four processes in another so that these two groups, in turn, can function in concert.

In this way three new soul faculties arise. In character they resemble—but are not identical with—the earthly faculties of thinking, feeling and willing: here is another triad of soul faculties. The new faculties differ from thinking, feeling and willing as they normally present themselves on Earth. They are more like life processes, but not so differentiated as the life processes otherwise are on Earth. When someone is able to sustain this sinking-back into Moon without lapsing into visions, a very intimate, subtle process takes place. The sense-zones are transformed into regions of life, the life processes are ensouled, and there arises a kind of understanding that is faintly suggestive of the Old Moon visions. Nor can a person remain constantly in this state, for then one would cease to be fit for life on Earth. To be fit for Earth one needs the kind of senses and vital organs we have described previously. But in special circumstances a person can enter into this other state. Then, if the state tends more towards the will, it leads to aesthetic creation; if the state tends more towards perception, it leads to aesthetic enjoyment. Truly aesthetic human behaviour consists in the enlivening of the sense organs and the ensouling of the life processes. This is an extremely important truth about humanity; it explains much. This enlivening of the sense organs and this new life in the regions of the senses is to be found in the arts and the enjoyment of art. Something similar occurs with the vital processes, which are more ensouled in the enjoyment of art than they are in normal life. These days, it is impossible to understand the full significance of the changes a person undergoes when he enters the artistic sphere, because a materialistic approach is incapable of grasping the facts in their full reality. Today a human being is seen as concrete and fixed. But, within certain limits, people actually are variable. This is demonstrated by the sort of variability we have just been observing.

Elucidations such as those that have just been presented contain far, far-reaching truths. To mention only one such truth: there is the fact that precisely those senses that are most adapted to the physical plane of existence are the senses that must undergo the most radical changes when they are led halfway back into a quasi-Moon existence. In order to serve someone who follows this road halfway back into the time of Old Moon, the sense of the I, the sense of thought and the sense of physical touch must be wholly transformed, for these senses are robustly adapted to Earth existence.

It is of no use to art, for example, to confront the I or the world of thoughts the way we normally do. At the very most, you might find the usual relationship to the I and to thought in some minor arts. No art describes or portrays a person's I directly, in the way the person actually lives, standing within the real world. The artist must go through a process whereby the I is lifted out of the specialisation it has acquired on earth; it must give him a generalised sense of meaning, a sense for the typical. An artist does this as a matter of course. Similarly, an artist cannot directly express the world of thoughts in the way in which it is usually expressed here on earth. Otherwise he would not be able to produce any poetry or works of art at all, but at the very most only didactic things, things that contain some lesson and are not artistic in the true sense of the word. The changes that the artist makes in the world that confronts him enliven the senses by leading them back to a previous condition in the way I have been explaining.

But, regarding this change in the senses, there is something else that must still be considered. I said that the life processes intermingle. Just as the planets come into conjunction, and just as their mutual relations are significant—in contrast to the immobile stars—the sense-zones can also come into motion; once they have been transposed to the planetary dimension of human life, they can come to life and attain to relationships with one another. This is the reason why artistic perception is never as restricted to specific sense-zones in the way in which our usual perception is. The particular senses also develop certain relationships with one another. Let us consider an example—say, painting.

A consideration that is based on true spiritual science would discover the following things. Sight, the sense of warmth, the sense of taste, the sense of smell—these have their discrete zones as far as normal sense observation goes. Their respective areas are separate. In painting, however, these sense regions merge in a remarkable fashion, not only in the concrete organs, but also in their spheres of influence as I have described them in preceding lectures.

A painter, or someone who is enjoying a painting, does not merely see the content as colours: the red or the blue or the violet. Instead, he actually tastes the colours, although of course not with the actual organ, or else he would have to lick the painting with his tongue, which he does not do. But a subtle process that is similar to the process of tasting nevertheless takes place in all those areas allied to the sphere of the tongue. When you use the processes of sensory perception to see a green parrot, your eyes see the green colour. But when you enjoy a painting, other subtle, imaginative processes also participate in the act of seeing. These processes are associated with your tongue and belong to your tongue's sense of taste. They are similar to the subtle processes that occur when you taste something, when you eat your food. Now, the act of seeing simultaneously involves other processes—not the processes that actually happen on the tongue, but rather fine, physiological processes associated with these—so that in the deeper sense of the word the painter really does taste the colours.

And he smells the nuances of the colours—not with his nose but rather with the more soul-allied things that accompany the act of smelling from deeper in the organism. Therefore, the individual sense-zones begin to merge as they become areas more given over to the life process.

When we read a description intended for instructing us as to how something looks or how something happened, we employ the sense of speech, or the sense of word. Through it, we obtain information about one thing and another. But if we listen to a poem in the same way as we listen to straightforward information, we will not be able to understand it. The poem does manifest itself to the sense of speech, of course, but it cannot be understood solely through the sense of speech. In addition to the sense of speech, the ensouled senses of balance and movement must also be focused on the poem—not just the usual senses of balance and movement, but the ensouled senses. So we again see that the senses merge. The regions of the senses have become life regions and the sense organs function in combination. Furthermore, this whole process must be accompanied by life processes that relate to the soul instead of functioning like the usual life processes in the physical world.

Someone who engages the fourth life process so intensely that he sweats when he listens to a piece of music has gone too far; that is no longer appropriate to the aesthetic realm, for secretion has been taken as far as physical secretion. The first point is that the process should remain on the soul level and not lead to physical secretion, even though physical secretion is based on exactly the same process. The second point to note is that secretion should not emerge as a discrete process, but rather in an association of four processes—all of them on a soul level: secretion, growth, maintenance and reproduction.

On the one hand, spiritual science has the task of linking the development of Earth to the spiritual worlds. From many points of view we have seen that mankind is headed for disaster unless this link is established. On the other hand, however, spiritual science must also revive the capacity for grasping and understanding the physical world in terms of the spiritual. Not only has materialism led to an inability to rise to the spirit, it also has led to an inability to understand the physical. The spirit is alive in everything physical. If it is lost sight of, it becomes impossible to understand the physical. Just ask yourselves, what could someone who knows nothing of spiritual realities know about the way an entire sense-zone can become a life-zone, and about the way vital processes can manifest as soul processes? What do contemporary physiologists know about these subtle processes that occur in us? Materialism has gradually brought us to such a pass that we have lost all contact with concrete reality. We live only in abstractions, and now we are abandoning the abstractions, too. At the beginning of the nineteenth century people still spoke of vital energy, or of life energy. Naturally, one cannot do anything with such an abstraction, for matters can only be grasped when one enters into the concrete. Once you have a full grasp of the seven life processes you are involved with the realities, and what matters is to re-establish a connection with reality. People try to put new life into all sorts of greyish abstractions, abstractions like elan vital. Even though they may intend exactly the opposite, they are only leading mankind deeper into the crudest materialism, materialism that stoops to mysticism. These abstractions say nothing; they simply testify to an inability to understand. The development of humanity in the immediate future depends on a knowledge of things that can only be discovered in the spiritual worlds. We must make real progress in our spiritual understanding of the world.

In this regard, we ought to go back to the good Aristotle, who was closer to the ancient vision than people are today. I only want to remind you of one characteristic thing about old Aristotle. A whole library has been written about the notion of catharsis, by which he attempted to show what is at the root of tragedy. He said: Tragedy is a unified presentation of events from human life, events which arouse fear and pity as they unfold; furthermore, the soul is purified because of the way this fear and pity unfold, and so the effects of the fear and pity are also purified. The age of materialism has written so much about this passage because it does not possess the organ for apprehending Aristotle. The only ones on the right track were those who saw that Aristotle's expression ‘catharsis’ is medical, or quasi-medical, and not so in the sense of today's materialistic medicine. The aesthetic experience of tragedy really does engender processes that reach right into the physical body and are the organic events that normally accompany fear and pity. It does this because vital processes are changed to processes of soul. A tragedy purifies these vital effects because they are simultaneously elevated to processes of soul. And if you read further in Aristotle's Poetics you will find a hint of this deep understanding of the aesthetic man—not understanding in the modern style, but out of the ancient traditions of the Mysteries. You will find yourself much more in the grips of immediate life reading Aristotle's Poetics than you ever will by reading the tract of some modern aesthetician who can only sniff around and dialecticize, but is unable to get hold of realities.

Schiller's Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man marks another high point in the understanding of aesthetic man. He lived in a more abstract time, however. Today we need to add the spiritual—the spiritually concrete—to the idealism of that time. But when we look at the more materialistic time of Goethe and Schiller, we see that the abstractions of Schiller's letters on aesthetics nevertheless contain something of what we have been talking about. It is only that the process has descended nearer to the physical plane—but only so that the material may be all the more thoroughly penetrated by an intensively grasped spirituality. What does Schiller say? He says: Humanity, as it lives on earth has two basic drives: it has rational impulses and natural impulses. The logic of the impulse to reason functions as a natural necessity. One is forced to think in a certain way; thinking is not at all free. What avails it to speak of freedom as regards this sphere of natural necessity where one is forced to think that three times three is nine, and not ten? Logic implies a strict rational necessity. For this reason, Schiller says that the person who conforms to the necessities of pure reason is subject to spiritual compulsion.

Schiller contrasts the necessity of reason with the necessities of the world of the senses—of everything that lives in the drives and emotions. There, also, a person must follow a natural necessity rather than his own free impulses. Then Schiller looks for a middle condition between the necessities of reason and the necessities of nature. He finds it in what occurs when a person forms something aesthetically—when rational necessity inclines towards what the person loves or does not love, and when his thinking follows or avoids inner impulses and pictures instead of being bound by rigid, logical necessity. But this state also suspends natural necessity. For one ceases to follow, as through compulsion, the necessities of the natural senses. These necessities are ensouled and spiritualised. A person ceases simply to want what the body wants; instead, sensual pleasures are spiritualised. In this way, the necessity of reason and the necessity of nature approach one another.

Naturally, you must read Schiller's letters on aesthetics for yourselves; they are among the most significant philosophical productions of world history. There, living in Schiller's analyses, you will discover the very things you have just been hearing, only there they are described in metaphysical abstractions. The way vital forces are returned to the sense-zones is contained in what Schiller calls the freeing of natural necessity from rigidity. And what Schiller calls the spiritualisation of natural necessity—he might more aptly have called it ‘ensouling’—contains what we referred to as the functioning of the life processes as soul processes. The life processes become more ensouled, the sense processes come more to life—that is the true process that you will find described in Schiller's letters on aesthetics. There it is put more in abstract, rather ghostly concepts, because that was how it had to be in that era. At that time thinking was not yet spiritually strong enough, not strong enough to descend with the spirit into the regions sought by the seer. In those regions there is no opposition between matter and spirit; rather there is an experience of how the spirit everywhere saturates matter so that there is no possibility of ever bumping into spiritless matter. Contemplation that is merely mental is merely mental only because the person is not able to make his thoughts as strong and as spiritual—as concretely spiritual—that the thoughts can cope with matter. In other words, he is not able to penetrate to what is truly material. Schiller is not yet able to see that the vital processes can function as soul processes. He is not yet able to go as far as to be able to see how the processes that work physically as nourishing, warming and breathing can be formed into something that ceases to be material and instead lives and bubbles in the soul. When this happens, the material particles are scattered by the force of the concepts with which one grasps the physical process. And Schiller is equally unable to look up to the realm of the logical in such a way that he ceases to experience it as merely conceptual. He is not able to come to that stage of development, which can be reached through initiation, whereby the spiritual processes are experienced in their own right and whereby a living spirituality enters into what would otherwise be mere knowing. Thus the attitude that lives in Schiller's aesthetic letters is that ‘I do not quite trust myself to directly approach concrete experience.’ Nevertheless, that which one grasps more exactly when one tries to approach the realm of life through the spirit, and the realm of material through the living, is already stirring in these letters.

Thus we can see all areas of life struggling to move towards the goals of spiritual science. At the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century there arose a philosophy which expressed a longing for greater concreteness. This philosophy had a more or less conceptual form, however, and the longing could not be satisfied. And, because its initial vitality ebbed, this longing for greater concreteness gradually degenerated into the coarse materialism that has lasted from the second half of the nineteenth century into our own time. But something else must also be understood: For spiritualism to establish links only with the spirit is not enough; the material world must be conquered—we must learn to recognise the spirit in matter. That happens through such knowledge as we have been discussing. It leads one to discover new connections, such as the unique place of aesthetic man in Earth evolution. To a certain extent, aesthetic man lifts himself above the stream of development and enters a different world. And that is important. The aesthetically inclined person and the person who works in an aesthetic field do not act in a way that is entirely appropriate to someone on earth, but rather their sphere of activity is in a certain way lifted out of the Earth sphere. With this discovery, aesthetics leads us to some profound secrets of human existence.

On the one hand, anyone who expresses such things as these is touching on the highest truths; on the other hand, what he says can sound virtually nonsensical—mad and distorted. But we will never understand life as long as we timidly hold ourselves back from the real truths. Take any work of art that you wish—the Sistine Madonna or the Venus of Milo: if it really is a work of art, it is not entirely of this earth. It has been lifted out of the stream of earthly events. That is self-evident. And what lives in a Sistine Madonna or a Venus of Milo? That which lives in them also lives in the human being. It is a power that is not entirely adapted to Earth. If everything in humanity were adapted to the earth, mankind would not be able to live on any other level. But not everything in the human being is adapted to the earth and, for occult vision, not everything in humanity is attuned to being earthly man. There are mysterious forces that some day will provide mankind with the impetus to lift itself out of the sphere of earth existence. Nor will we ever understand art as such until we see that its task is to point beyond the merely earthly and beyond what is solely adapted to the earth—to point to the sphere where that which lives in the Venus de Milo truly does exist.

The more you cast your gaze towards the humanity of the future and towards the spiritual challenges of the future, the more you must take certain facts into account, certain facts that are necessary to any truthful picture of the world. Today we still are living with many versions of the assumption that anyone who states something logical and who logically substantiates what he says is necessarily saying something significant about life. But being logical—logicism—is not enough on its own. And because people are always so satisfied when they can produce something logical, they maintain the truth of all imaginable kinds of world view and philosophical system. And of course, all of these can be supported logically: no one who is acquainted with logic would question that they are supportable by logic. But mere logical demonstration does nothing for life. What is thought, what is held in the light of consciousness, needs to be more than just logical, it needs to measure up to reality. What is merely logical is not necessarily valid; only what measures up to reality is valid. I will use just one example to show you what I mean. Suppose you are describing a tree trunk that is lying here before you. You can describe it quite systematically and demonstrate to someone that something really is there because you are describing it just as it is. All the same, your description is a lie. For what you describe does not exist in its own right and cannot possible be a tree trunk in the state in which it is now lying there, cut off from it roots and branches and twigs. It is only a part of existence when seen along with its branches, blossoms and roots, and it is nonsense to think of the trunk as existing in its own right. It is not a reality when it is only seen as it is, lying there. It must be seen with all its shoots and with everything in it that enables it to come into being. One must become convinced that the trunk lying before one is a lie because the truth is before one only when the whole tree is there. Logic does not require us to see a tree trunk as a lie, but it accords with reality that we see it so and that we only accept the whole tree as the reality. A crystal is a truth. In a certain respect it exists in its own right, although only in a certain respect, mind you, for all is relative here, too. A crystal is a reality, but a rosebud is a lie if it is seen only as a rosebud.

So you see how all manner of things occur today because the concept of being in accordance with reality is lacking. Crystallography and, at a pinch, mineralogy are still sciences that accord with reality. But when you get to geology, it no longer accords with reality, for it is an abstraction in the way the tree trunk is an abstraction. It is an abstraction, not a reality, even though it is lying there before you. Things contained in the earth's crust came into being along with what grows out of the earth's crust and thus cannot be conceived without it. We need philosophers who are not satisfied to limit themselves to their powers of abstraction, thinking up new abstractions. More, and increasingly more, there must arise a thinking that accords with reality and is not merely logical. Thinking alters the whole course of world evolution. For what is a Venus de Milo or a Sistine Madonna from the standpoint of thinking that accords with reality? If you take them just as they are before you, you are not in contact with reality. You must be enraptured. To see a work of art truly, you must be lifted out of the earth's sphere and removed from it. To really encounter the Venus de Milo, your soul must be different from the soul that responds to earthly things; precisely the things that do not exist on this earthly plane are what transport the soul to the plane where they really do exist—to the realm of the elemental world, which is where what is in the Venus de Milo really exists. One is able to stand before the Venus de Milo in a way that accords with reality precisely because she possesses the power to tear us away from mere sense-bound vision.

I have not the slightest desire to promote teleology in the negative sense of the word. Nor shall I say anything about the uses of art, for that would be adding pedantry and philistinism to teleology. I shall say nothing about the uses of art. But we can well speak of the sources of art and how art comes to be a part of our lives. We do not have time to cover the whole subject today, so I will just make a start with a few preparatory words. A counter-question leads us to part of the answer: What would happen if there were no art in the world? If that were so, all the forces that are now devoted to art and the enjoyment of art would be used to produce a life that runs counter to reality. If you were to remove art from the development of humanity, then human development would contain just as many lies as it now contains works of art! Here art displays that unique and dangerous relationship that arises when one nears the threshold of the spiritual world. Just listen yonder, where things always have two sides! If a person has a sense for being in accord with reality, then an aesthetic attitude gives him access to higher realities. An aesthetic attitude leads someone who lacks the sense for being in accord with reality directly into a world of lies. There is always a dividing of the ways and it is very important to be aware of this fork in the road. This does not just apply to occultism; it already applies when you come to the realm of art. To bring about a way of seeing the world that accords with its reality is an aim of spiritual science. Materialism has given us a way of seeing things that goes directly against reality.

As contradictory as this all seems, it is only contradictory for those who judge the world according to their preconceptions, rather than in accordance with what is really there. We really do live in a phase of development in which the direct influence of materialism is putting more and more distance between us and the ability to comprehend what even a normal object of the senses is—an ordinary thing of the physical world. There have been some very interesting experiments that shed light on this problem.¹³ They conform exactly to a materialistic way of thinking but, like so many things produced by materialistic thought, they support the development of precisely those abilities that mankind needs for developing a spiritual world-view. The following experiment has been carried out—I am taking just one example from among the many such experiments. A whole event was planned ahead of time: A person is to give a lecture in the course of which he says something injurious and upsetting about someone present in the audience. All of it is planned. The lecture is given word for word as planned beforehand. The person against whom the insult is directed is supposed to jump up and a real scuffle is to develop—this is how events are supposed to develop. During the course of the argument, the man who has jumped up is to reach into his pocket and draw out a revolver. Other details of the incident are planned out exactly. In other words, you must imagine the unfolding of a fully programmed, detailed scene. Thirty people were in the invited audience—not just any people, but advanced students of law, and lawyers who had already completed their studies. After the scuffle is over, each of the thirty was asked to describe what happened. Others who were privy to what was going on were there to ensure that protocol was followed and that the whole event went exactly according to plan. So each of the thirty is questioned. Each has seen the event. None of them is thick-headed. They are all educated people, the very ones who later will go out into life and investigate what really has occurred in the case of such a fracas or of other incidents. Yet of these thirty, twenty-six falsely described what they saw and only four could produce an acceptably accurate account—only four tolerably accurate accounts! Such experiments have been going on for years in order to demonstrate how the truthfulness of witnesses should be weighed in a court of law. Every one of the twenty-six sat there and could say, ‘I saw it with my own two eyes.’—One forgets to consider what is required in order to be able to correctly describe something that has occurred before one's very eyes!

We need to consider the art of maintaining a true perspective on what happens before our very eyes. Someone who is not conscientious towards events in the world of the senses will never be able to develop the feeling of responsibility and the conscientiousness necessary for viewing spiritual facts. Just look at this world of ours that is presently so under the influence of materialism and ask yourselves how many are aware that it is possible for twenty-six people out of the thirty who have witnessed an event to be unable to describe it without committing falsehoods, with only four who are able to give even tolerably accurate accounts. In view of something like this, you can begin to feel what immeasurable significance the results of a spiritual world-view have for ordinary life.

Now you might ask yourself whether things were different in earlier times. Our current mode of thought has not always been current. The Greeks did not yet possess the abstract manner of thinking that we have, and need to have, in order to get about the world in a way appropriate for today. But the manner of thinking is not the important thing; the truth is what matters. In his own way, Aristotle tried to use more concrete concepts to describe the inner aesthetic mood and the aesthetic attitude. But the aesthetic constitution was understood in an even more concrete, imaginatively clairvoyant fashion by the early Greeks, who were still connected with the Mysteries and who experienced pictures instead of concepts. In those times, one looked back to the age of Uranus, who embodied everything that we can take in through our heads and through the powers that now are manifest in the outer world through the sense-zones. Uranus—the twelve senses—is wounded. Drops of his blood fall, foaming, into the ocean called Maya. Here you see the senses beginning to come to life and sending something down into the ocean of the life processes, and there below you see how the blood of the senses pulses through the life processes which begin to foam up and become processes of soul. And the ancient Greeks' understanding of this led them to see how Aphrodite¹⁴—Aphrogenea, the goddess of beauty—is created out of the foam that arises when the blood of the wounded Uranus drips into the ocean of Maya. This, the more ancient of the myths about the creation of Aphrodite, expresses the condition of the aesthetic man and is one of the most significant imaginations and one of the most significant thoughts in the whole of mankind's spiritual evolution. But still another thought needs to be placed beside the thought of this ancient myth which shows Aphrodite being born from the drops of blood of the wounded Uranus that fall into the sea—rather than as the child of Zeus and Dione. We need a further imagination—one that penetrates even more deeply into reality and goes beyond the realities of the elemental world into the physical realities. We need an imagination from a later age—one that approaches the physical-sensory world. Alongside the myth that shows how Aphrodite, beauty, was born into the world of mankind, we need to place the great truth about how original goodness entered into humanity. We need to show how the spirit descended into Maya-Maria, just as the drops of Uranus' blood trickled into the ocean whose name also was Maya—and how, out of the beautiful foam that arises [*The German for foam—Schaum—has many suggestive echoes. For example, there is the word schauen, ‘show’ or ‘spectacle’, and also ‘Schema’, which means ‘perceptible manifestation, semblance, or appearance’, and which refers to a concept that is central to Schiller's account of aesthetic man. (Tr. note.)], the herald who announces the approaching dawn of a new age is born. The sunrise that announces the eternal regency of the Good ... of understanding of the Good, The True-and-the-Good, the spirit. This is the truth Schiller intended when he wrote the words:

Only through beauty's dawn-lit gate
Can you pass into the realms of knowledge.¹⁵

The knowledge he refers to is primarily moral knowledge.

You can see how the tasks of spiritual science are growing—not mere theoretical ones, but real life tasks. In our day it is no wonder that the misunderstandings about spiritual science multiply among those who are not devoted to the truth. We have to accept that as an inevitable side-effect.

Many people have been caught in the grip of a most peculiar attitude towards the truth, especially in our materialistic age. And if I had to tell you about the letters I receive, then today I would have to make yet another addition to that part of our collection where the enemies of the truth are exhibited. I do not even like to mention the latest incredible nonsense, which came in a letter I received yesterday. Yes, my dear friends, this is something we must feel; just reflecting a little on it is not enough. For although our time demands it, bringing spiritual science to mankind in a form that is appropriate to our time is not such a simple task. One must speak out in spite of thereby being exposed to the dangers involved in telling numbers of people—and it truly is more than a few—about truths that not only touch upon what is highest and most holy, but that also go most deeply, affecting heart and soul. Think of the times when there were not a few sitting in the auditorium who later became thorough-going enemies and falsified what was being said! Those who, at any rate, still take the Society seriously, must go through this experience of speaking to many people who, like yourselves, are supposedly friends, while knowing that in the past there have been some who turned out to be enemies—people who later falsified the truths they heard and used what they received here to attack the truth. One must always reckon—sometimes while watching it happen—on the possibility that the person who is listening to what is being said may turn against us in the way others have turned in the past. Today this must colour our work in the realm of spiritual science: knowledge of the human soul takes on special significance.

Such things are not to be taken too lightly. Let us try to refresh our memory for a moment, our memory of truth's path as it has appeared in cosmic development, in the evolution of humanity, and remind ourselves of how much was involved in the progress of truth! I will not say any more about it today. But we have touched on an area that is closely related to the direct connections between this life and the spiritual world. Only by understanding it can we shed lights on such things. One must take such opportunities as this to touch on what today's representatives of the truth must undergo. And I hope that there are at least a few of you who know why every now and then I have something bitter to say about the way people relate to the truth, and that there are some who know that it is not quite truthful to say that I am the guilty one. Perhaps I might characterise our contemporaries' much-loved illogicality with an anecdote that would seem silly in other circumstances. But this false logic is used, not in the service of the truth, but in the service of lies.

Once there was a man who took another man's estate away from him. After he had taken it, the former owner did not possess it as before, but instead had to begin all over again to work for what he already had earned once. A trial was conducted. The former possessor of the estate was there and also the man who had taken it away. Each had his own advocate. Now, advocates are not always there to present the unconditional, absolute truth, but rather to say what is useful to the person they represent. In this case, the advocate who was lodging the complaint was the first to speak, the one representing the man from whom something had been taken. And, indeed, to begin with he seemed on the way to convincing the court. But then the advocate of the man who had taken the estate away took the floor and said to the judge, ‘Your Honour, you have heard that my client confesses to having done everything that he has done. You have asked my client, “Do you plead guilty, or not guilty?” To that my client answered, “I took all those things, but I do not feel that I am guilty.” And my client is entirely correct in saying this. He will concede that he took all those things; but he need not feel guilty about it. Nor can Your Honour find him guilty, for in order to establish the guilt one must go back to the original cause of the matter. Just consider, Your Honour, this man has become a thief. But he never would have become a thief if the other man had not possessed these things he took away from him! The original owner is the one who has trespassed! If he had never had the possessions, my client could never have become a thief! So he is truly the guilty one! It was only when my client saw that this man had these possessions that he was tempted to become a thief.’ And this advocate spoke so eloquently that the court finally declared, ‘Yes, until today we have always believed that the thief is the guilty one. But all those who have believed that the person who takes something is guilty have been mistaken, for when one examines the real, original cause, one sees that the person from whom the things were taken, the original possessor, is the guilty one.’

Everyone will see that what I am telling you is utter nonsense. But this is exactly the sort of logic that is used today against spiritual science. Spiritual science makes its way into the world and accomplishes certain things. Then these things are distorted by people who say they only do so because they see the truth in spiritual science. They are using the same logic as someone who says that the person from whom something is taken is the guilty one because he has tempted the other to take it from him. Such is the logic abroad today and, if you will only take care to observe the life around you, you will see instances of this kind of logic.

Yesterday I was blamed—among other things—for everything that happens in the world when someone or other lies about spiritual science and commits certain acts. This is the same logic as that followed by one who says: ‘The real guilt does not lie with the person who takes, but with the person from whom something is taken, for he is the one who created the original cause of the theft.’

• 13. The experiment referred to was carried out by Franz von List, a professor of criminal law.
• 14. The birth of Aphrodite: Compare lines 188 ff. of Hesiod's Theogony:
  
  But the members themselves, when Kronos
  had lopped them with the flint,
  he threw from the mainland
  into the great wash of the sea water
  and they drifted a great while
  on the open sea, and there spread
  a circle of white foam
  from the immortal flesh, and in it
  grew a girl, whose course first took her
  to holy Kythera
  and from there she afterward made her way
  to sea-washed Cyprus
  and stepped ashore, a modest lovely goddess,
  and about her
  light and slender feet the grass grew,
  and the gods call her
  Aphrodite, and men do too,
  and the Aphro-foam-born
  goddess, and garlanded Kythereia,
  because from the seafoam
  she grew, and Kythereia, because she came forth
  from wave-washed Cyprus,
  and Philommedea, because she appeared
  from medea, members ...
  
  (Hesiod, translated by Richmond Lattimore. The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1959.)
• 15. Schiller, when he wrote the words: The words in question are to be found in the poem, Die Kunstler (The Artist).

What I would like to give you today is a thoroughly undemanding analysis of some recent directions in recent philosophical thinking. I want to take some well-known currents of thought from the surface of recent intellectual life as my point of departure. Later—very soon, if not in the next lecture—we will have time to consider some of the details and the special ramifications of contemporary thought. I would like to describe a certain tendency that is fundamental to some of the most recent of contemporary schools of thought. The whole direction taken by certain schools of thought is marked by the loss of a sense for how to orient oneself in reality, and by the loss of a sense for truth in so far as ‘the truth’ refers to an agreement between our knowledge and something that is objective. Just observe what difficulties the adherents of some recent schools of thought find themselves in when they need to decide whether a judgement about reality—about some aspect of reality or other—is right or wrong. They have difficulty in finding valid epistemological grounds, valid scientific or philosophical grounds, for their decision. There is no trace of a principle or—to use a more scientific expression—of a criterion for deciding whether particular judgements are true judgements; that is, there is no way of deciding whether they have been made with regard for reality. Certain of the old criteria have been lost and it is quite evident that nothing has come along to take their place in recent times.

I would like to take as my point of departure a thinker who died very recently. Initially, the physical sciences were his field. He turned from them to a kind of inductive philosophy in which he attempted to find something to replace the old concepts of truth, the feeling for which has been lost. I am speaking of Ernst Mach. Today I can only give you an outline of his ideas. Ernst Mach was sceptical about all the concepts produced by the thinking that preceded his time-all the thinking up to the last third of the nineteenth century. Although it approached its concepts more or less critically, this earlier thinking still spoke of the world and man under the assumption that man perceives the world through his senses—processes his sense perceptions with the help of concepts, and thereby arrives at certain pictures and ideas about the world. This assumes—and, as I said, I cannot go into all kinds of epistemological considerations today—that the impressions of colour, sound, warmth, pressure, and so on, originate in something objective. It assumes that the impressions are made on our senses by something objective, something objectively out there in external space and, in general, external to our soul life. It assumes that these impressions create sense experiences which then are further digested. And it also assumes that the human I is the true agent which is actively at work in the whole process of knowledge, and forms the basis of the entire life process. This I was acknowledged in one form or another and there was much speculation about it. People said: There exists something which one is justified in seeing as a kind of I. It is active and it is what ultimately shapes sense experiences into concepts and ideas.

Ernst Mach looked around our given world and said, more or less: None of these concepts are justified—neither the concept of subjectivity and of the I which is the subject of knowledge, nor the concept of the object that is the basis of sense impressions. What are we really given? he asked. What does the world really put before us? Fundamentally, all that is given are our sensations. We perceive colours, we perceive sounds, we have sensations of smell, and so on; but beyond these sensations, nothing at all is given to us. If we review the whole world, everything is some [form] of sensation, and beyond the sensations nothing objective is to be found. The entire world around us actually resolves into sensations. The multiplicity of sensations is all that there is. And if we can say that nothing exists beyond sensations, then we cannot say that there is some kind of I active within us. For what is given to us in the sphere of the soul? Again, only sensations. When we observe what is within us, the only thing given is the succession of sensations. These are strung together as on a thread: yesterday we had sensations; today we have sensations; tomorrow we will have sensations. They connect like the links of a chain. But everywhere, nothing is there but sensations; there is no active I. An I only appears to be there because groups of sensations are associated with one another and thus are separated out from the total world of impressions. We call this group of impressions ‘I’. They belong to us and are a part of what we perceived yesterday and the day before yesterday and half a year before that. We have found a group of sensations that belong together, so we use the expression ‘I’ as a common designator to apply to them all. Thus both the I and the object of knowledge fall away; the manifold of sensations is all that a human being can talk about. At first we relate to the world naively but, if we observe reality, all that is really there is a multiplicity of variously-grouped colours, variously-grouped sounds, variously-grouped experiences of temperature, variously-grouped experiences of pressure, and so on. And that is all.

Now along comes science. Science discovers laws. In other words it does not simply describe sensations—here I see this sensation, there I see that sensation, and so on—it discovers laws, laws of nature. Why should men need to establish natural laws if all they ever experience is a multiplicity of sensations? Merely watching the multiplicity of sensations never leads to judgements. It is only when we have more or less achieved laws that we arrive at judgements. What have our Judgements to do with the world of experience, which is really nothing more than a chaotic multiplicity? What guides one in forming judgements? Sensations are all that one has to go on-and Mach maintains that one sensation cannot even be measured against another. If that is so, what is the source of criteria for passing judgements, establishing laws and arriving at the laws of nature? To this Ernst Mach replies that it is merely a matter of economy of thought. By devising certain laws we are enabled to follow particular sensations and hold them together in our thought. What we call a law of nature is a method of associating sensations. It is the method we feel is the most economical for our thinking, the one that requires the least amount of thought.

We see a stone fall to earth. This involves a collection of sensations—one here, one there, and so on—nothing but sensations. The law of weight, of gravitation, gives us a way of combining these sensations. But there is no further reality in the law of gravitation; the sensations are the real content.

But why should we ever think out the law of gravity in the first place? Because we find it convenient: it is economical to have a concise way of referring to a special group of sensations. It gives us a kind of comfortable overview of the world of sensations. And the ways of thinking that we find most comfortable—these are the ones we call laws. What we accept as valid laws are the thoughts that give us the most convenient overview of some group of sensations. Laws provide us with certain useful expressions. Through them we know—so to speak—that when one set of conditions (that is, some collection of sensations) is repeated, then others will again be found to follow them. It is convenient for me to use the law of gravity to gather together the sensations aroused by a falling stone, for then I know: If this is a law, one thing will fall to earth like another. Thus I can think about the future in terms of the past. That is economy of thought. It is the law upon which Ernst Mach says the whole business of science is founded—the law of economy of thought, the law of the application of the least energy, which says that the greatest possible sum of sensations should be thought with the least possible number of thoughts.

You can see that no one will ever arrive at reality in this way. For, collecting together groups of sensations in the most comfortable manner possible serves nothing beyond making one's life more comfortable. The expressions to which one is led by the principle of economy of thought tell one nothing about the real basis of the sensations. The thoughts merely serve to give us a comfortable orientation in the world. The only fundamental reason for a thought is that we find it comfortable; that is why we connect certain sensations as we do. Thus you see that we have here a criterion of truth that quite deliberately tries to avoid establishing any sort of objectivity. Its only purpose is to support man's capacity to orient himself by means of sensations.

Richard Wahle¹⁶ was a thinker who based his ideas on similar considerations. Richard Wahle also said: People think that one thing is a cause, that another thing is an effect; that an I lives within us, that objects live outside us. But that is all nonsense. (I use approximately the same expressions as those he used.) In truth, the only things in the world that are known to us are these: that here I see the occurrence of a colour, that there a sound occurs. The world, says Wahle, consists in such occurrences and nothing more. We have already gone too far if we name these occurrences ‘sensations’, as Mach called them, for the word ‘sensation’ already contains the hidden implication that there is someone present who is doing the sensing. But how could one possibly know that the occurrence of which one is presently aware is a sensation? Out there is an occurrence of colour, an occurrence of sound, an occurrence of pressure, an occurrence of warmth; within is an occurrence of pain, an occurrence of joy, an occurrence of repletion, an occurrence of hunger. Or within is an occurrence in which someone thinks, ‘There is a God.’ But nothing more is present there than the occurrence in which someone thinks, ‘There is a God.’ Having the idea that God exists is just like having a pain. Both are only occurrences. Wahle believes, to be sure, that one must distinguish between two kinds of occurrence, the primary ones, and the so-called miniatures: Primary occurrences are those that come with an original sharpness, such as occurrences of colour, occurrences of sound, occurrences of pressure, occurrences of warmth, occurrences of pain, occurrences of joy, occurrences of hunger, occurrences of repletion, and so on. Miniatures are fantasies, intentions and, in short, everything that appears as a shadowy picture of primary occurrences. But when one takes the sum of all primary occurrences and all miniatures, that is all the world has to offer us. Fundamentally, everything else is poetry—it has been written-in without justification. Such is the case, Wahle believes, when, instead of restricting themselves to saying, ‘Three years ago there were certain occurrences, then there were others’, people are blinded by the fact that these occurrences follow one another and make the further assumption that the occurrences are collected together in an I. But where is this I? There is nothing there but occurrences, occurrences that are arranged in sequence, series of occurrences. Nowhere is an I to be found. And then others come along and claim to have discovered laws that connect occurrences, natural laws. But these laws, too, present us with nothing more than series of occurrences. And it is absolutely impossible to come to any decision as to why the series of occurrences are as they are. When men think they know something because they have strung together occurrences in a particular way, that knowledge is just so much folderol. Such knowledge, according to Wahle, is neither valid nor is it especially lofty—it is just a sign that someone has had to think something out because he has had difficulty in relating to his own occurrences. The I is the most curious of all mankind's inventions. For nowhere in the sum total of occurrences is such a thing as an I to be found. Some unknown factors seem to lurk behind the manner in which occurrences follow one another, since it does not seem arbitrary. But—and I am using the words that Wahle would use—it is entirely beyond the capacities of human judgement to ascertain what kind of unknown factors might be at work there. There is nothing one can say about them. All that a human being can know is that occurrences occur and that the factors directing them are unknown. Physics, physiology, biology, sociology—they all falter about in the dark, seeking for the director-in-charge. But this faltering about merely helps us to live with the occurrences. It will never lead us to knowledge about the unknown factors at play in the succession of occurrences. It is human folly, therefore, when people believe they can arrive at a philosophy which teaches us something about why the occurrences are as they are. Humanity has devoted itself to this folly for a time; it is high time they gave it up. One of Wahle's most important books bore the title The End of all Philosophy. Its Legacy to Theology, Physiology, Aesthetics and National Policy (Das Ganze der Philosophie und ihr Ende. Ihre Vermachtnisse an die Theologie, Physiologie. Aesthetik und Staatspedagogik). In order to teach about this ‘end of philosophy’, and in order to teach that philosophy is nonsense, Richard Wahle became a professor of philosophy!

Above all else, we can see that a total helplessness regarding the criteria of truth lies at the root of such an approach. All impulse to come to any decisions regarding knowledge has been lost. What this is based on could be characterised in the following way. Imagine someone who has a book which he has been reading for a long time. He has read it again and again and certain information contained in the book has become a part of the way he lives. Then one day he thinks to himself: Yes, here I have this book before me and I have always assumed that it gives me information about certain things. But when I take a really good look at it, the pages contain nothing but letters, letters, and more letters. I have really been an ass to believe that information about things that are not even in the book could somehow flow to me from it. For nothing is there but letters. I have been living in the mad expectation that if I let these letters affect me and if I enter into a relationship with them, they could give me something. But nothing is there but rows of the letters of the alphabet—just letters. So I must finally release myself from the insane notion that these letters describe something, or that they could somehow relate to one another, or that they could group into meaningful words, or such like. That really is a picture of the kind of thinking on which Wahle's non-philosophy, his un-philosophy, is based. For his great discovery consists in this: Men have been foolish asses, he says, to believe that they could read in the book of nature and explain how occurrences are connected! They witness occurrences, but there is nothing there beyond the unconnected occurrences. At the very most, there might be some further, unknown factors at work which are responsible for the special groupings of the letters.

This is how Wahle fails to identify with the impulse to decide about the truth of judgements and to make discoveries about the nature of the world. Human knowledge has lost the power to formulate any criterion of truth. In earlier times one believed in the human capacity to arrive at truths by means of judgements based on inner experience.

This belief has slipped from one's grasp. Hence the way philosophers wander about in this area, philosophising. By way of these two examples I wanted to demonstrate how a criterion of truth and a feeling for one's capacity to produce the truth have been lost.

A contemporary school of thought called Pragmatism demonstrates the loss of the older understanding for a criterion of truth. In Pragmatism you have a large-scale, calculated version of this loss. William James¹⁷ is the most prominent, if not the most significant, proponent of Pragmatism. The following is a brief characterisation of the principle of Pragmatism as it has recently appeared.

Men pass judgements and they want them to express something about reality. But no human being can possibly generate anything within himself that will enable him to pass a true judgement about reality. There is nothing in man that, in and of itself, leads to the decision: that is true and the other is false. In other words, there is a feeling that one is powerless to find any original, self-sufficient criterion for whether something is true or false. And yet, because they live in a real world, men feel it is necessary to make judgements. And the sciences are full of judgements. But if one reviews the entire spectrum of the sciences with all their judgements, do they contain anything about anything that is in a higher sense true, true in the sense in which the old schools of philosophy spoke of truth and falsehood? No! According to what William James says, for example, any line of thought which asks whether something is true or false is a totally impossible way of thinking. One makes judgements. If certain judgements are passed, then one can use them to get along in life. They prove to be useful and applicable to living—they enhance one's life. If other judgements were passed, one would soon cease to come to terms with life, one's life would cease to progress. They would not be useful, they would harm life. This applies to even the most unsophisticated judgements. One cannot even say, reasonably, that the sun will rise again in the morning, for no criterion of truth is available. But we have formed the judgement: The sun rises every morning. If someone came along, maintaining that the sun would only rise for the first two thirds of the month, but not during the last third, this judgement would not bring him forward in life; he would run into trouble in the last third of the month. The judgements we form are useful. But there can be no talk of whether they are true or false. All that can be said is that one judgement helps us to get on in the world, enhances life, and that the contrary is the case with another, which gets in the way of life. There is no independent criterion of truth and falsehood: what enhances life we call true, and what hinders life, false. Thus everything to do with the question of whether or not we should pass a certain judgement is reduced to external matters of practical living. None of the impulses one once believed one possessed are valid.

Now, this line of thought is not the arbitrary product of one or the other school. One of the most extraordinary things about the line of thinking I have just described is that it has spread to practically the whole of our earth's intellectual community. It makes its appearance, independently, in one place and then in another, because present-day humanity is organised so as to fall into this way of thinking. The following interesting example demonstrates this. In the 1870s, in America, Pierce¹⁸ wrote the first book about Pragmatic Philosophy. This was taken up by William James and, in England, by Schiller,¹⁹ and these and others continued to develop it. Now, at the very same time that Pierce was publishing his initial treatment of the ideas of pragmatic philosophy in America, a German thinker published the book The Philosophy of As If (Philosophie des Als Ob). It was a parallel occurrence. The philosopher in question was Hans Vaihinger.²⁰ What is this Philosophy of As If all about? It begins with the thought that human beings are actually incapable of forming true or false concepts in the way they used to do, although they still persist in forming them. The atom is a well-known example of this. The concept of the atom is, of course, wholly absurd. For our thinking attributes all sorts of qualities to the atom, qualities that will not stand up when, they are put to the test of the senses. And yet sense impressions are thought of as the effects of atomic activity. So the concept is contradictory. It is a concept of something that is totally unobservable. The atom, as Vaihinger says, is a fiction. We create many such fictions. All the higher concepts we form about reality are, fundamentally, fictions of this sort. Since there is no criterion of truth or falsehood, the reasonable man of the present needs to be clear that he is dealing in fictions. One must be fully conscious about making fictions. One must be clear that the atom is nothing but a fiction and that it cannot really exist. But one can observe the various things that are manifest in the world as if they were ruled by the life and movements of atoms—as if. For this fiction is useful. Establishing such fictions makes it possible to connect the appearances in certain ways. The I is also a fiction, but it is a fiction one has to create. For it is much more comfortable to treat the appearances that come together as if an I were active within them than it is to get along without the fiction of the I ... even though one can rest assured that it is a fiction. Thus we live according to fictions. There is no philosophy of reality, only a “Philosophy of As If”. The world humours us by appearing as if it agreed with the fictions we have made about it.

As a whole, in its tendencies and also in the way it presents individual arguments, the philosophy of Pragmatism is very similar to the “Philosophy of As If”. As I said, it was written down during the same period, the 1870s, when Pierce was writing his treatise on ‘Pragmatic Philosophy’. But an objective criterion of truth was still possible for the humanity of the 1870s. They still possessed enough rudiments of the old beliefs for their science not to have to consist of fictions. The 1870s were an awkward time for someone who wanted to become a professor of philosophy to publish a ‘Philosophy of As If’. It was not yet possible to get away with it. So Vaihinger looked for a way out. At first he acted as one has to act (has one not?). He left the Philosophy of As If lying in his desk while he went about his teaching. When the time came, he accepted his pension. Then he published the Philosophy of As If, which has now appeared in numerous editions. I simply tell the story; I am not pointing my finger, I am not judging, I am only telling the story.

So we see that there was a tendency for the old criteria of truth to break down and for truth to be measured against life. Formerly it was believed that life should be shaped in accordance with the truth, so life was put in the service of truth. What one meant by truth in the old sense did not include fictions, not even useful fictions. But, according to the extraordinary definition of the Philosophy of As If, truth is the most comfortable form of error. For, although there is nothing else but error, some errors are more agreeable and others less agreeable. The fact that what we call truths are simply the more agreeable errors is something we must clearly understand.

Thus, an impulse to do away with the concept of truth as it had been understood in older theories of knowledge really has been developing in the more recent schools of thought. One must ask oneself, ‘What is this all about?’ Naturally, there would be much to tell if I were to give you a comprehensive account of the matter. But to begin with we will take only one from among the many possible examples. In recent times, a boundless flood of empirical knowledge has become available to mankind. At the same time, men's thinking has become increasingly powerless. Thinking has lost its sovereignty over this inexhaustible richness of empirical observation and empirical knowledge; it cannot hold them together.

The way in which people have become more and more accustomed to abstract thinking is another factor. One did not think so much in earlier times, but one tried to keep one's thinking connected to the external world and to actual experience. It was felt that thinking needed to be connected with something and that it could not progress if it were wholly isolated. But along with the extensive cultivation of thinking, one has also learned to think abstractly—has become accustomed to abstract thinking and has become fond of it. To this must be added other harmful characteristics of our age, above all, the view that anyone who wants to become even so much as a lecturer must produce some kind of elevated thinking or research, and that those who want to become professors must do something quite immense! A kind of hypertrophy of thinking, so to speak, has been thus created. Thinking is set loose on its own; it begins to arrive at forms of thought that, as such, are merely internally logical. I will show you one of these internally logical thought-forms.

Just picture the following: Here is a mountain. On this mountain (A) a shot is fired. After a while, say two minutes, two more shots are fired. Then, after a further two minutes, three shots are fired.

And now, over here (B) there is someone who is listening. I will not say that he is wounded, but he is listening. What he hears would be, first a single shot, then after a certain period, two shots, and then, after another pause, three shots. But now let us assume that matters are not so simple, with one, two, and then three shots being fired here, and over here someone who hears the shots—first one, then two, then three. Let us assume that someone (C) moves from this mountain (left) towards this other one (right). Assume that he flies at a certain speed and that he moves very fast. You know from elementary physics that sound requires a certain time to get from here (see drawing) to there. Therefore, when a shot is fired here (A), a certain period of time will elapse before it will be heard by a person who is listening over here (B) ... then the sound of the single shot will arrive. Two minutes later, the pair of shots will arrive and, after a further two minutes, the three shots. But let us assume that this other person (C) moves faster than the speed of sound. As he passes this mountain, moving towards the other, he is already moving faster than the speed of sound. The first shot is fired ... then two shots ... then three ... After the three shots have been fired, he arrives at this other mountain and flies on at the same speed until he overtakes the three shots—that is, he flies past the sound of the three shots—flying quickly past them, for he is moving faster. Eventually, the sound of the three shots will arrive here (D). He is flying after them. He hears them as he overtakes them and continues onward, flying towards the two shots that had been fired earlier. These he also hears as he overtakes them. Then he overtakes the single shot and hears it. Therefore, someone who is flying faster than sound would hear the shots in reverse order: three shots ... two shots ... one shot. If one is living in circumstances usual for an ordinary human being on the ordinary earth, and thus has the usual relationship to the speed of sound, one would hear one shot at this point, two shots here, three here. But if one does not behave like an ordinary human being on the ordinary earth, but instead is a being who can fly faster than the speed of sound, one would hear the events in reverse order: three shots, two shots, one shot. All that is required is that one practise the minor skill of chasing after the sounds while flying faster than the sounds of the shots are moving.

Now, this is unquestionably as logical as it could be. There is not the slightest logical objection to be brought against it. Thanks to certain things that have emerged recently in the sciences, the example I have just been describing to you—in which someone flies in pursuit of sounds and hears them in reverse order—has been used to introduce countless lectures. Again and yet again, lectures begin with this so-called example. For this is supposed to demonstrate that the way in which one perceives things is a result of the situation in which one is living. The only reason that we hear as we do, rather than in reverse, is that we move at a snail's pace in comparison with the speed of sound. I cannot describe here all that is derived from this train of thought, but I wanted to acquaint you with it, since for many it is the basis of a widespread, acutely discerning theory, the so-called theory of relativity.

I have only described the most obvious parts to you. But you can see from what I have described that everything here is logical—very, very logical. Now, these days one finds countless judgements—the philosophical literature is teeming with them—all of which are derived from the same assumptions about thought. It is as though thinking has been torn away from reality. One thinks only about certain isolated conditions of reality and then constructs further thoughts from them.

It is scarcely possible to reply to such things, for the naturally expected reply would be a logical reply. But there can be no logical reply. It was for this reason that I introduced a certain idea in my last book, On the Riddles of Humanity (Vom Menschenratsel). This is the idea that if one wants to arrive at the truth, it is not sufficient just to form a logical concept, or a logical idea. There is the further requirement that the concept or idea must be in accordance with reality. Now, a very lengthy discussion would be required if I were to show you that the whole of the theory of relativity does not agree with reality, even though it is logical—wonderfully logical. We could show how the concept that is constructed regarding the series of one, two and three shots is completely logical and that, nevertheless, it is not a concept that would be formed by someone who thinks in accordance with reality. One cannot disprove the theory, one can only refrain from using it! And someone who has understood the criterion of being in accord with reality would refrain from using such concepts.

The empirical phenomena that Lorentz,²¹ Einstein, and others are trying to understand by means of this theory of relativity must be approached in an entirely different manner, not along the lines in which they and the others are thinking.

What I have been describing to you here is only one current in the ongoing stream of recent thought. Naturally, remnants of earlier thought are always being intermixed with the more recent thinking. But the ultimate and radical consequences of the assumptions on which almost all recent thinking is based are already contained in what I have been describing to you. We can see one distinctive peculiarity. A self-sufficient criterion of truth and falsehood has been lost—or, better said, the feeling for such a criterion has been lost. The resulting emancipation of abstract thinking has led to the formation of concepts which, being logical, are indisputable. In a certain sense they even accord with reality. But they remain merely formal concepts, for they are not suitable for saying something real about reality. They swim on the surface of reality without penetrating to the actual impulses at work in reality.

The following is an example of a theory that stays on the surface of reality and does not want to submerge in reality: Consider how, within the sphere of human reality one can distinguish the mineral realm, the plant realm, the animal realm and the human realm. And men live within a social order, as well—one could call it a sociological order. Perhaps other, higher, orders could be found, but we are not presently concerned with those. Now, in the middle of the nineteenth century, when a materialistic concept of reality held sway, the fashion in which people pictured these superimposed realms was one that must seem simplistic to us. Basically, only the mineral realm was taken into account. One said to oneself: Now, plants consist of the same things that are to be found in the mineral realm; they are simply organised in a more complicated way. The animal realm is again just a matter of further complication, and the human realm is more complicated still ... and so we reach the higher levels. Mind you, when one proceeds further, to the social order, it is no longer possible to discover more complicated atomic movements. Certain patterns of movement correspond to the mineral realm—that is how people pictured things. The movements become more complicated in the plant realm—this one knew, although it was not possible to observe the atoms. Still more complicated movements correspond to the animal realm, and even more complicated ones to the human realm. All was built up in this way. But, of course, when one comes to the social order it is not so easy to continue thinking in terms of atoms, for no atomic movements are there to be observed.

It was left to a thinker of the final third of the nineteenth century to at last accomplish the wonder of reducing sociology to biological concepts. He treated social structures, such as families, like cells. These then group themselves, do they not, into regional communities—or whatever we shall call them?—which are the beginnings of tissues. Then the theory goes further—countries are complete organs ... and so on. The person who created this way of thinking.²² Schaffle then wrote a book Social Democracy's Empty Future. (Die Aussichtslosigkeit der, Sozialdemokratie), which drew on these theories for support. Hermann Bahr,²³ the Viennese writer, was still a young, but very talented, whipper-snapper in those days. He wrote a reply to Schaffle's Social Democracy's Empty Future and called it, Herr Schaffle's Empty lnsights (Die Einsichtslosigkeit des Herm Schaffle). This outstandingly-written book has since been forgotten.

Thus, as I was saying, the old materialists conceived of reality in terms of ever more complicated structures. In doing so, they naturally had to introduce certain concepts, concepts, say, about how the movements of the atoms, which in a mineral are fixed, become more labile and seek to achieve a balanced form in plants, and so on. In short, various theories were constructed in which it was attempted to derive one thing from another. Once materialism had been active for long enough, it was possible to think back and see how little fruit it had borne and how poorly its idea of reality had stood up to exacting tests. And so people came to the idea: Yes, to be sure, there is the mineral realm, and after that comes the plant realm. Mineral substance is contained within the plant, and the laws applying to minerals even apply there; the salts and other substances contained in the plant function in accordance with their own physiological-chemical laws. But the plant realm can never arise out of the mineral realm. Something further is required, some creative element. When one proceeds from the mineral realm to the plant realm, something creative has to be added to it. This creative element—the first creative element—works creatively in the realm of the minerals. Then a second creative element manifests itself in the mineral realm and the animal realm arises. So the animal sphere must take hold of the plant and mineral realms. Then a fourth creative element appears and takes hold of the three lower realms—takes them into the human sphere. Then, when we come to the social order, a further creative element again takes hold of the subordinate realms. A veritable hierarchy of creative elements! Of course there is nothing objectionable in the logic of this thinking. As thought, it is correct thought. But you will certainly have to think differently about these matters if you call to mind some of the concepts of spiritual science—concepts which we shall not be discussing today. These reflections remain stuck in abstractions; they never arrive at a concrete picture. Some details are mentioned, of course, but when one sets about thinking in this fashion one is stuck with an abstract concept of creativity. All the thinking remains stuck at the level of abstractions. And yet it is an attempt to use clear, formal thinking to overcome an unadorned materialism. One arrives at something higher, but only as an abstract concept.

Boutroux's²⁴ philosophy is an attempt to overcome unadorned materialism. He makes use of a formal thinking derived from the unprejudiced observation of the hierarchy of the realms of nature. He seeks the concept of an ascending creative scale in what could be called the hierarchy of the sciences. This leads to interesting conclusions. But the whole attempt remains stuck in abstractions. It is easy to show this by examining the details of Boutroux's philosophy. To begin with, I will only describe the line of thought he takes; perhaps the rest can be introduced later. Here we have an attempt to capture reality by applying abstractions to a more or less superficial observation of reality. But it is not thus to be captured. He does not want a mere ‘Philosophy of As If’, nor does he want to found some sort of mere pragmatism, or to restrict himself to an unreal enumeration of occurrences. But he cannot arrive at the sort of concreteness needed for reading the external world and for discovering what lies behind it. He cannot help us to look at the external world as one looks at the letters in a book to discover what is behind them; he only shows us some abstractions. These are supposed to express what it is that lives in the realms of reality. Whereas it was the criterion of reality that was missing in the other philosophical lines of thought I have been describing, what has been lost here is the power to take hold of reality concretely. One is no longer able to submerge in the inner impulses that are at work in reality, but only to skim along the top.

This shows us another fundamental tendency of modern life. I mentioned that thinking has emancipated itself in a particular way Torn from reality. Once emancipated from reality, it proceeds in abstractions.

If you will observe all the various recent schools of thought, you will perceive how the ability to plunge into reality has been lost. The ability to grasp reality in its true shape is becoming weaker and weaker. For a classic example of this follow the development of thought that leads from Maine de Biran²⁵ to Bergson.²⁶ Whereas Biran, living in the first third of the nineteenth century, still pursued a line of thought whose important psychological concepts enabled him to submerge in the real sphere of the human being, Bergson strikes out on a curious path that is wholly characteristic of the particular tendencies at work in recent thought. Bergson notices, on the one hand, that it is not possible to submerge in an immediate, living reality by means of the usual abstract thinking nor with the help of anything offered by scientific thinking as it is currently practised and as it is embodied in various scientific conclusions. He saw that this thinking is fundamentally unable to connect with reality—that it will always remain more or less on the surface of reality. For this reason he wishes to grasp reality by means of a kind of intuition. At present, I can only give you the broadest outlines of this intuition at the moment. It is an inner mode of experience; it contrasts with an approach which tries to capture reality in external structures of its own devising. This leads Bergson to some odd conclusions regarding the theory of knowledge and psychology. I will omit the intermediate steps and proceed to the summit from whence he points to the materialistic view that memories and other higher manifestations of soul life—manifestations involving complicated inner forms or movements—are dependent on structures in the brain. He says, to the contrary, that the shaping of these complicated forms has nothing at all to do with the purpose of the brain. What happens, rather, is that the soul acts and comes into relationships with reality which are then expressed in sensations, perceptions, in practical engagement with life, and in the way we move our body. These things are beyond the reach of abstract thinking and must be grasped by intuition, by inner experience. The function of the inner structures that are dependent on the brain extends no further than to their effects on perception and on the promotion and arrangement of life. Memory is not the result of formations in the brain; memory functions with an intensity that is independent of the brain.

This is an attempt to overcome a materialistic concept of knowledge. It is a curious attempt in that what it brings to light is the opposite of reality. For memory depends precisely upon the support of the physical body, the physical brain and the whole physical system.

Memory could never be established in the soul life if the soul were not able to extend its development into the physical body and establish within it the things necessary for exercising the faculty—the ability—to remember. So here we have a theory in which the drive to overcome materialism leads to conclusions that are precisely the opposite of the right ones. The truth of the matter is that memory needs to be annexed to the soul—it is among the capacities that the human soul needs to acquire. Therefore, memory, with the help of the physical body, needs to be annexed to the soul. But Bergson arrives at a contrary view—the view that the physical body does not participate in the development of memory. I am not describing these things in order to say something in particular about Bergsonian philosophy, but merely to show you this curious manifestation in contemporary thinking. Proceeding in an entirely logical fashion, one arrives at the opposite of what is correct.

We could start, therefore, with those more epistemologically orientated philosophies which speak of the inability to arrive at a criterion of truth and falsehood, and then proceed to the philosophies that are more concerned to arrive at the truth. What we would find, throughout, is that they all arrive at exactly the wrong conclusions because of their helplessness in dealing with the truth. Thus does contemporary thinking lean towards the very things that are incorrect and false. This phenomenon is connected with the way in which mankind has developed a tendency towards abstractions and an ability to work with abstractions, for this has made man a stranger to reality. Mankind is detached from reality and cannot finds its way back into reality. You can read about this in detail in my book, The Riddles of Philosophy (Die Ratsel der Philosophie). If one separates oneself from reality and lives in abstractions, the way back to reality is not to be found. But a counter-tendency is beginning to make itself felt. People are beginning to discover in themselves a kind of longing for spiritual concepts. But the helplessness persists; there is still an inability to arrive at the spirit. Significant and instructive things are to be observed happening in contemporary attempts to find a path that leads out of this absolute helplessness, a path leading to spiritual truths. And we have just looked at an example in which thinking that has been emancipated from reality seeks for the truth and arrives at the opposite of the truth.

The philosophy of Eucken²⁷ is a characteristic example of someone who is seeking for the spirit without having the slightest ability to grasp even so much as the shirt-tail of anything spiritual. Although Eucken speaks of nothing but the spirit, he does so only in words. He never actually says anything about the spirit. Because his words are wholly incapable of capturing anything truly spiritual, he speaks unceasingly of the spirit. He has already written countless books. To read through his books is a genuine torture, for they all say the same thing. There you will always find ... that one must discover how to grasp one's own being with thinking that exists in itself, that takes hold of itself without any dependence on anything external or on any external resistance, that beholds itself within itself, that proceeds entirely within itself and in so doing enters into itself and then recreates itself from out of itself. If you hear Eucken deliver a series of lectures about Greek philosophy, or read one of his books about it, you will find the development of Greek philosophy presented in this manner: At first thinking tries a little to take hold of itself, but it cannot yet do so ... Or you can hear how Paracelsus is gradually beginning to take hold of the inner world ... Or you can read a book about the development of Christianity-everywhere you will find the same things; everywhere the same! Yet our modern philistines find this philosophy so infinitely important; they rejoice to hear someone speaking about the spirit and theorising about the spirit as long as they are not required to know anything about the spirit or to actually enter into anything spiritual. This is why many say that Eucken's philosophy is the reawakening of Idealism, the reawakening of the life of the spirit, and is the right philosophy for creating a cultural ferment that will again enliven today's deathly, exhausted spiritual life, and so on. And yet anyone who has a feeling for what pulses, or ought to pulse, through a philosophy, and who reads or listens to Eucken, will have the lively impression that he is supposed to take hold of his own hair and drag himself into the heights, and then drag himself higher still, and higher still again. For such is the self-consistent logic of Eucken's philosophy. I have tried to give a totally objective account of these things in my Riddles of Philosophy. Anyone is capable of saying what I have just said, for it is not necessary to embark on critical analysis—merely acquainting oneself with the concepts as they are is enough.

Thus we see how certain contemporary streams of thought flow from a helplessness in the face of truth; we see how it is even possible to construct philosophies out of such helplessness in the face of reality. If one were not concerned about life, this might not seem so terrible. But terrible it is. And now and again it is necessary to enter into what lives and weaves in contemporary intellectual life in order to develop a feeling for what might overcome these things.

I have only described to you a few of the currents of thought that have been important to the intellectual life in the most varied places, places where philosophical views of the world are presented in lectures and are taught. Over the last years, the various streams of thought have been developing similar tendencies, so that a common structure of thought exists overall. I touched on this when I showed you how the ‘Philosophy of As If’ and Pragmatism arose at the same time, independently of one another.

But the thinkers have also borrowed various things from one another. The exchange of thoughts is always an active business. Vaihinger was wholly independent of Pierce; the two, one in Germany, the other over there in America, arrived at this approach to life independently of one another. Indeed, one finds many such echoes between personalities in one culture and personalities in another. Only by observing these in detail does one obtain a true picture of what is really going on in the spiritual life. And an unbelievable amount is written and thought and considered along these lines today, but the speculations pay no attention, to some of the simplest of things. Certain connections are ignored because the present day has not preserved a sense for reality. And this sense for reality is something that must be learned. As a sort of appendix to today's lecture let me state: This sense for reality is a thing that has to be learned.

If I may be allowed to mention something personal, I should like to say that I have always attempted—even in external scientific matters—to develop the sense for reality, the sense for how to keep on the trail of reality. This consists not only in being able to judge what is really there, but also in being able to find ways of applying real measures and real comparisons to reality. Perhaps you are acquainted with the so-called doctrine of the eternal return—the return of the same things—that is to be found in Nietzsche. According to this doctrine, we have already sat together countless times before in just the way we are sitting now. And we will sit together in this way countless times again. This is not a doctrine of reincarnation, but a doctrine about the repetition of the same things. At the moment I am not concerned to criticise the doctrine of the eternal return. This doctrine of eternal return is derived from a quite definite picture of how the world was formed. Out of this other, prior, view of the world Nietzsche developed some impossible ideas.

I was once present with other scholars at the Nietzsche Archive. The doctrine of the eternal return was being discussed and people were interested to know how Nietzsche might have arrived at this idea. Now, just think of the marvellous possibilities there! Anyone who is acquainted with academic circumstances will see what beautiful opportunities there are for writing the greatest possible number of dissertations and books about how Nietzsche originally came upon the idea of the doctrine of the eternal return. Naturally, one can come up with the boldest of theories to explain it. One can find all kinds of things; one only has to look for them. After the discussion had gone on for a while, I said to the gathering: Nietzsche often arrived at an idea by formulating the contradictory of some idea he encountered in another person. Thus I was trying to approach his ideas realistically. To my knowledge, I said, the contrary of this idea of his is to be found in another philosopher, Duhring, who said that the original configuration of the earth made it impossible that anything should ever repeat itself. And I said that, to the best of my knowledge, Nietzsche had read Duhring. So I suggested that the simplest thing would be to go into Nietzsche's library, which has been preserved, take down the books by Duhring, and look at the passages where the counter-theory is to be found. We then went to his library and located the books. We found them the relevant passages—with which I was quite familiar—and found heavy markings in Nietzsche's own hand and some characteristic words. When he came to passages where he intended to formulate a contradictory idea—I am no longer sure exactly which word he used in this particular case—Nietzsche would write something like ‘ass’ or ‘nonsense’ or ‘meaningless’. There was such a characteristic word written in the margin at this place. Thus the idea for ‘the doctrine of the eternal return’ was born in Nietzsche's spirit when he read this passage and formulated the contradictory idea! Here it was just a matter of looking in the right place. For when he met certain ideas, Nietzsche really did tend to formulate the contradictory idea.

Here we have another characteristic manifestation of the powerlessness of the modern criterion of reality. I have been showing you some of the things that originate in this powerlessness. We have another example in this use of contradiction to confront a stated truth or a pre-existing judgement when one is unable to arrive at any independent criterion of truth of one's own. But one must not generalise about such things. It would naturally be absurd to take this example and come to the abstract judgement that Nietzsche arrived at his entire philosophy in this manner, for at times he was entirely positive and simply extended an idea while remaining completely faithful to its original spirit. This, for example, is how the whole of what we encounter in Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil (Jenseits von Gut und Bose) came into being. This can be demonstrated in all particulars. Once again, all one has to do is go to Nietzsche's library. There one will find a book on morality by Guyau.²⁸ Read all the passages where Nietzsche has made notes in the margins—you can then find them again, summarised, in Beyond Good and Evil. Beyond Good and Evil is already contained in Guyau's treatment of morality. These days it is necessary to pay attention to such connections. Otherwise one can arrive at entirely false impressions about what kind of person this or that thinker was.

Today I wanted to share with you some perspectives on the modern intellectual life. I have restricted myself to what is most familiar and straightforward. If circumstances permit, we can return to these matters in the near future and examine them in greater detail.

• 16. Richard Wahle (b. 1857): Das ganze der Philosophie und ihr Ende. Ihre Vermachtnisse an die Theologie, Aesthetik und Staatspedagogik, Vienna and Leipzig, 1894.
• 17. William James (1842 – 1910): American philosopher and psychologist.
• 18. Charles Sanders Pierce (1839 – 1914): American philosopher.
• 19. F. C. S. Schiller (1864 – 1937): English philosopher.
• 20. Hans Vaihinger (1852 – 1933): Philosophie des Als Ob, System der theoreticshen, praktischen und religiosen Fiktionen der Menschheit auf Grund eines idealistischen Positivismus, 2nd edition, Berlin, 1913.
• 21. Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853 – 1929): Dutch physicist; founder of the theory of electrons.
• 22. Albert Schaffle (1831 – 1903): Die Aussichtslosigkeit der Sozialdemokratie. Drei Briefe an einen Staatsmann zur Erganzung der ‘Quintessenz des Sozialismus’, Tubingen, 1885.
• 23. Hermann Bahr (1863 – 1934): Die Einsichtslosigkeit des Herm Schaffle. Drei Breife an einen Volksmann als Antwort auf ‘Die Aussichtslosigkeit der Sozialdemokratie’, Zurich, 1886.
• 24. Emile Boutroux (1845 – 1921): French philosopher.
• 25. Francois Pierre Gauthier Maine de Biran (1766 – 1824): French philosopher.
• 26. Henri Bergson (1859 – 1941): French philosopher.
• 27. Rudolf Eucken (1846 – 1926): German philosopher.
• 28. Marie Jean Guyau (1854 – 1888): French poet and philosopher. Esquisse d'une morale sans obligation ni sanction, Paris, 1884.

The three lectures of today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow will be interconnected. Today I want to look at some things that will lay the groundwork for certain perspectives on man's relation to the cosmos and to all of life.

Consider the development of the human soul as we can observe it here between birth and death, living in the physical body. Among other things, we might notice that two properties, or complexes of energy, are necessary to the soul if it is to lead a fulfilling earthly life between birth and death—we have frequently directed our attention to such things.

What needs to be acquired, on the one hand, is memory. Just imagine that memory was not among our earthly possessions! You only need to consider how different our soul life would be if we could not look back to days past, all the way back to a certain moment after our birth, and could not retrieve what we have experienced from these more or less unplumbed depths. Our consciousness of our I, as we now possess it, is dependent on the way our experiences connect. I have drawn your attention to this frequently. Now, you all know that memory only begins to appear at a certain point in our earthly life. It is not present before then, and so all our experiences prior to that first remembered point in time are wrapped in forgetfulness. Therefore we can say: From a certain point in our earthly life onward, our soul life is related to our body in such a way that, in greater or lesser detail, our experiences can always be called up in us as memories—we can remember them.

This faculty of memory can only be developed under the influence of our earthly life, and developing a memory is one of the tasks of our earthly life. During that long period of our development when we were beings of the Moon, we did not have a faculty comparable to our earthly memory. In order for our organism to be able to develop memory, we have had to become a part of the organism of the earth, with all its forces deriving from the mineral realm. Memory develops as a result of the interaction between the human soul and the earthly, physical body. It is only during the Earth period of evolution that memory, in the form in which we develop it in our physical, earthly body, becomes necessary to the spiritual world. It only became necessary with the arrival of the Earth period because until then there were other things that took the place of memory. During the Moon period, for example, man's powers of dreamlike clairvoyance took the place of memory. Just imagine that every time you experienced something the experience would be written down in some particular place to which you always had access—as they occurred, all your experiences would be written down there, one after the other. Then all you would have to do to find an experience would be to look in that place where everything had been written down. And this is in fact the kind of experience undergone by man on Old Moon. Everything he experienced in his old, dreamlike, clairvoyant consciousness was, so to speak, engraved in a subtle etheric substance. Everything that man was able to experience through his dreamlike, clairvoyant consciousness was written into the substance of the world. And whenever a human soul needed something comparable to our memory of today, it simply had to direct its dreamlike, clairvoyant awareness toward what was engraved in the fine etheric substance of the world. Man on Old Moon looked at the traces left behind by his own experiences in the way people of today look at the objects of the external world. All one had to do to see something one had experienced was simply to observe the world substance. There, written into the substance of the world, one found the previous contents of that old, dreamlike, imaginative consciousness.

This way of living in the world was therefore very different from today's. Just imagine that you could re-think everything you ever thought, because it was following you about like the tail of a comet—that is a translation of the actual experience of Old Moon into the terms of present-day thinking. This condition had to end because mankind needed to become individualised. Man had to learn to present himself as an individuality. He can only do this if his experiences remain his own property rather than being immediately engraved into the world substance. His experience must be engraved only into his own fine etheric individuality, his own fine etheric substance. So long as man lives on Earth, whatever is developed in his waking consciousness is accompanied by movements of his etheric body. The shape of the physical body marks the boundary of these accompanying movements. To a certain extent they are unable to pass beyond the limits of the skin. Thus, for the whole of life between birth and death, the fine etheric substance, whose movements accompany experiences of thoughts, ideas, feelings and experiences of will, is rolled up within the physical body. We have often described how it all unrolls and is received by the world substance when the physical body is laid aside in death. Then, after death, we can begin to look back on everything that has been engraved into our etheric individuality and watch it be absorbed into the substance of the cosmic ether.

I have briefly mentioned how things stand with memory, which develops in response to the physical body's forces of resistance. The situation is similar with respect to something else that is important for our life on earth and which we rightfully acquire for ourselves there.

In addition to memory, our life on Earth also requires us to develop habits. Habits are another thing that we did not yet possess on Old Moon in the form that we have them on Earth. On Old Moon we possessed neither memory nor the ability to form habits—not in the earthly form they have today. If you observe human development from childhood onwards, you will see how habits gradually begin to develop as certain actions are repeated again and again. As we are educated, we receive guidance which establishes certain actions as habits. At first these have to be learned, but once they have become habits our souls perform them more mechanically.

During the Earth period, if the I is to unfold properly, habits must be developed in the right way. What took the place of habits during Old Moon? During that period, every time we needed to accomplish something or whenever something was supposed to happen through us, we were directly influenced by one or the other being from the higher spiritual world. Our deeds were always held in check by the impulses we received from the beings of a higher world. At that time we were much more a member of the whole organism of the hierarchies than is the case now, in the Earth period.

If we had remained in this state, we should never have developed the power to be free, for every detail of our actions would depend on the impulses of higher beings. They would have to exercise their power whenever we acted. We can only receive into ourselves the gift of freedom by being released from the sphere of the beings of the higher hierarchies and by entering into a condition in which repeatedly[,] acts can become habits. In this manner it is possible for actions to originate in us. And so, acquiring the capacity to form habits is also intimately connected with the way humanity achieves inner freedom.

Even during the Earth period, the state we leave behind when we enter through birth into physical existence resembles our previous state on Old Moon. Up there in the spiritual world, before we are born and step down into earthly existence, we are powerfully influenced by higher spiritual impulses. There in the spiritual world it is always higher spiritual beings who guide us to what we need to do; they help us prepare an earthly existence that will proceed in accordance with our karma. When we enter the physical body we are torn from this world in which habits do not exist—this world which is subject only to the uninterrupted impulses of higher spiritual beings. To a degree we still possess an echo of our condition in the spiritual world when we enter physical existence. This expresses itself in the way we behave as children up to the age of seven. As children we follow habits less and are more under the influence of imitation. At first we begin to do things under the direct influence of what is happening around us: we imitate the examples that are shown to us. This is an echo of the way we had to act in the spiritual world. There it was necessary for us to receive an impulse for every single thing we did. That is why children imitate to begin with, directly following the impulses that come to them. Independence, the capacity of the soul to act independently, only emerges in the course of time, just like the capacity to live in accordance with habits.

Both memory and habits are important ingredients of our soul life. Both these significant elements of our soul life are metamorphoses. They are transformations of quite other conditions in the spiritual world. Memory is a transformation of the way imaginative dream experiences leave their traces behind them in the spiritual world; habit arises when one is torn free from the impulses of higher spiritual beings.

Looking at these matters in the way we have just done enables one to arrive at a concept of how differently constituted from the world on this side of the threshold is the world on the other side of the threshold. We need to be able to think in this way. Again and again it must be emphasised: On the other side of the threshold everything is different. We go to the trouble to characterise the spiritual world by using words that apply to the physical world, it is true. But again and again it must be made clear that we have to gradually accustom ourselves to shaping these pictures in a manner that is as different as possible from that in which we picture the physical world. Only in this way can we ever arrive at adequate and correct pictures of the spiritual world.

At the same time, considerations such as the preceding ones give us a glimpse of what is important and essential to our earthly existence. It is utter nonsense to believe that earthly existence should be valued lightly. I have already drawn your attention to this mistake, from various points of view. Like all the other phases of human development, earthly, physical existence has its purpose. We reap permanent, eternal gains from what our soul experiences by having a physical body and by way of what we experience under the influence of memory and habit, which are gifts of the physical body. Gradually, in the course of repeated Earth lives, we acquire these gains. Again and again, therefore, we have to more or less give up the power of memory and return to the state to which we were accustomed during Old Moon; we have to give back to the substance of the cosmos what has been engraved in us during our life on Earth. And this is what does happen as soon as we die. We have to submit ourselves to the impulses of the higher spiritual beings once more in order that the ability to follow their impulses can be translated into habit when we have returned to an earthly body.

At this point I should also to draw your attention to something I have already mentioned frequently in the past, for it is very, very important and cannot be repeated often enough. We acquire memory and habits during our life on Earth. For a start, let us look at memory. Considering it as we just have done, memory seems to be a natural gift of the Earth. And, as you know, a person can always develop the power and ability to remember, no matter how weak his memory seems at the time. Suppose that, as memory developed, nothing were to happen except what is entirely natural—nothing but what is precisely in accordance with the way in which it would develop under the influence of the mineral forces at work in the physical organism of the Earth. In that case we would not develop a memory such as the one to which we are accustomed. Normally we do much more than this—you all know that we do much more toward developing a memory. Perhaps it would be better to say, more is done to us. We learn things by heart. After a certain age we are required to learn things by heart, to memorise them. It makes a difference whether our memory is acquired by simply allowing it to develop more or less of itself, or whether we are required to do more than would just happen automatically. Eventually we retain a poem if we read it often enough or if it is recited to us frequently. But this is not sufficient for education these days; in addition we are required to memorise poems. Why, we are even punished if we have not memorised the poem assigned to us. This is how things are in the present cycle of human development.

I ask you, please, do understand what I am now saying. No one should go about saying that today I was thundering on about memorising, saying it should be done away with. That is not what I am saying! In our time it really is necessary for us to memorise certain things, for our cycle of development requires that our memory be trained in a quite particular way.

What, then, happens in our souls when memorising is brought in to help our natural inclination to acquire a memory? In this case, we summon Lucifer. And it is right that luciferic forces be called in to help build memory. Once more I want to emphasise that you are not to say: Oh, one must protect oneself from Lucifer; let us cease requiring our children to memorise anything! This is a bad habit that some have acquired. Again and again they express the belief that one must protect oneself from Lucifer and Ahriman by doing everything possible to prevent them from having access to us. The person who tries to protect himself from them is the one to whom they really do have thorough access! Luciferic and ahrimanic powers must be reckoned with in world development. They must retain their place in it; what matters is that this happen in the right way.

Let us look at a special case: Why is it necessary to call upon luciferic powers to help us to develop memory? The people of today are no longer aware of it but, in the past, in times not so long ago in the development of humanity, memory was of a different strength than is the memory of today. We need a relatively long time to memorise a longer poem. The ancient Greeks did not need so much time. Many of the ancient Greeks knew the Homeric poems from beginning to end. But they did not learn them in the fashion in which we memorise things today, for then the power of memory was constituted differently. How were things memorised during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch? What happened in those days was a kind of repetition of what had happened to an even greater degree in the Atlantean period itself, and which I have described in my writings about development in the time of Atlantis. On Old Moon there were powers which made it possible to draw behind one the contents of dreamlike imaginative experiences, like the tail of a comet. These powers from Old Moon were carried over and were transformed from a more outward power, which involved interaction with the world, into a more inward power. As it was transformed into an inward power, memory began to awaken in Atlantean humanity and the world seemed to bestow it on them automatically. And in Atlantis man did not have to exert himself very much to develop his memory, for it was like a power which he encountered in his dealings with the external world and which flowed into him from there. This state of affairs was repeated during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. Then what had previously happened to him in his interactions with the world without his needing to do anything further about it, was to a certain extent repeated within the human being.

Now that man has entered the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, he finds it increasingly necessary to exert himself in order to acquire the power of memory. What came to him automatically during the time of Atlantis, and again during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, must now be made his own so that it can contribute to his individualisation and freedom. Whenever something is required that really corresponds to a previous ability—as when powers that were once natural are summoned to help build memory—we are dealing with a manifestation of Lucifer. Whenever we artificially call upon something in our age that was natural in the age of Greece, something like the effortless acquisition of memory, it becomes luciferic. But in order to summon up a strong impression of this luciferic element in your souls be aware of the role that Lucifer has played in the development of humanity. You must be aware of this as we describe these things. During the Greco-Roman times Lucifer was more or less kept within bounds. He was still in his rightful place. But he is no longer kept in his rightful place in the same way. Now, in order for man to be able to further develop his memory, it is necessary for him to enter into an agreement with Lucifer. Now it has become necessary for man to do something actively for his memory; during the Greco-Roman epoch memory came of itself without his needing to do anything further about it. Thereby what merely happened to the human being during the Greco-Roman epoch today has become a luciferic deed.

In the same moment that luciferic activity appears, however, the other side of the balance becomes active: the ahrimanic side. And, on the one hand, at the same time that humanity has been memorising things and thus calling on the assistance of Lucifer to build their memory it has, on the other hand, also been developing an ahrimanic support for memory by writing things down. On frequent occasions I have indicated that the people of the Middle Ages were not mistaken in feeling that printing was a particularly ‘black art.’

But everything that aids memory externally is to some degree ahrimanic. Again, I am not saying that it is right to flee from everything that is ahrimanic, although perhaps it is precisely in our circles that too much is done to call up Ahriman. One loves him far too much!

Herein lies the task of mankind—to establish a position of balance, and not believe that Lucifer and Ahriman are to be escaped without more ado! It is rather to confess, boldly, courageously and energetically, that these two kinds of beings are necessary to world development and that the powers coming from the ahrimanic and luciferic sides are there for man to put to use in his own activities and development. These are there for man to use, but it also is necessary for him to establish a balance between Lucifer and Ahriman in the most varied spheres. Lucifer and Ahriman must balance each other. So we must pursue our activities in such a way that they are able to balance one another. This is the reason why it was necessary for the luciferic and ahrimanic elements to intervene in Earth evolution. And from our previous studies we know that the description that stands at the beginning of the Old Testament is an important symbol for the intervention of the luciferic element. There it is described how woman tempts man and how the luciferic element intervenes—indirectly, through woman—in the development of the Earth. This is how the intervention of the luciferic element, which we locate in the Lemurian period, is symbolised in the Bible.

The intervention of the ahrimanic element followed after that, during the Atlantean period. And, just as a knowledge of the human being was required in the fourth post-Atlantean period in order to understand the biblical symbol of Lucifer, so today the fifth post-Atlantean period needs this knowledge in order to begin to understand the counter-symbol and be able to present it to the human soul in an adequately sketched, if incomplete, fashion. (I have mentioned this earlier.) Just as Lucifer stands at the side of Eve, so Ahriman stands at the side of Faust; and just as Lucifer approaches woman directly, so does Ahriman directly approach man. Just as man is tempted indirectly through woman, Gretchen is indirectly lied to through Faust. Since Ahriman is the one who is at work, lies are the means by which Gretchen is tempted. Ahriman is the spirit of deception whom we can picture as standing opposite Lucifer, the spirit of temptation. This is one way we can name them: Lucifer, the tempter, and Ahriman, the deceiver.

There is much in the world that is there purely for the purpose of protecting mankind from luciferic temptation. There are rules, teachings, descriptions of moral impulses, and institutions established in the course of human development—all these are there to protect mankind from luciferic temptations. Today, the right means for protecting oneself from the ahrimanic fall, the fall into untruth, are much less developed.

All the luciferic parts of the human being are related to the passions and emotions. Where falsehood and deception play a role, however, one can feel Ahriman at work in man's development. In our time it is not only necessary for people to arm themselves against luciferic challenges. They must also prepare themselves against the challenges of Ahriman, now that he has entered the field.

Some of this is contained in the Faust poems, which show how man can fall to Ahriman, even in such a matter as the misunderstanding of words. In his Faust, Goethe gives us a fine picture of how Faust passes through various ahrimanic dangers. There are various confusions between Lucifer and Ahriman, to be sure, but for reasons mentioned today and previously, Goethe was right to use Ahriman rather than Lucifer in his own Faust. There is much in both the first and second parts that is ahrimanic, right into such details as the role of misunderstood words. At the end of the second part there is a conversation. Faust believes the talk is about some diggings; but a grave is what is actually meant! ‘Graben’ (to dig, en-grave)—and ‘Grab’ (grave) are the words! Ahriman's impulse resounds here, right into the misunderstanding of ambiguous words. Goethe had an extraordinarily fine sense for representing ahrimanic impulses. In a manner more instinctive than conscious he wove untruth and distortion into those places in Faust where ahrimanic impulses are at work. It is very important to understand this.

Just as memory and habit are to a certain degree metamorphoses and transformations of modes of activity in the spiritual world, so also are there further capacities which we develop in the spiritual world which are transformations of what we have acquired here in the physical world and what has been revealed here. We have been characterising memory and habit as the results of transformations, as metamorphoses of spiritual experiences of an earlier time. But some things, for example, such as the relationship of our ideas to external objects, only appear for the first time in the physical world. Objects surround us. We picture them in our thoughts. What we call physical truth is the agreement of our ideas with the objects; this is truth on the physical level of existence. If we express an idea for which the physical plane does not provide a proper model, then it is not true. Whenever we speak of physical truths this always refers to an agreement between what we are thinking and the physical facts. In order to relate to the truth in this manner it is necessary for us to live in a physical body and be able to use it to look at external things. It would be nonsense to imagine that such a relation to the truth could already have existed on Old Moon. That is an accomplishment of life on Earth. Only when we acquire a physical body is something like this agreement between ideas and external objects possible. This, however, provides Ahriman with his field of action. And how does this provide him with it?

Matters such as those we have just been talking about give one a feeling for the interconnections between the spiritual world and the physical world. Ahriman has a proper task in the spiritual world and he should also exercise a certain influence on the physical world. But he should not actually enter the physical world! He should not be admitted to matters involving the agreement between external objects and the ideas we acquire through our physical bodies. He carried out certain activities on Old Moon. If he is allowed to carry out those same activities here on Earth he distorts the connection between our ideas and external objects. Wherever man is engaged in bringing his ideas into agreement with external objects and external facts Ahriman is supposed to keep his fingers off—if I may express myself symbolically. But he does not keep them off, not Ahriman—truly not! If he kept his fingers off there would be no lying in the world!

Now I am not sure whether it is necessary to prove that there is still lying in the world. But, if there is lying in the world, then it is proof that Ahriman is at work there in a manner in which it is not proper for him to work. This activity of Ahriman in the physical world is one of the things that humanity must overcome. You might say, though: There is much beauty in the world, but in some respects it really is a bungled job; if God the Father were entirely perfect He would have created human beings in such a way that they could not stoop to lying. Such a Father God would have told Ahriman that he is to have nothing to do with the physical world! And, as we have again heard today, Ahriman is not the only one who takes a certain pleasure in discovering what is wrong with the world. There are also philosophers of Pessimism about, philosophers who derive their views from the negative qualities of humanity. The nineteenth century produced not only some pessimistic philosophers, but also some who went beyond Pessimism to become representatives of ‘Miserable-ism.’ Among the other views of the world, that one also emphatically exists! Julius Bahnsen²⁹ was not only a pessimist, he was a ‘miserablist’.

Why, then, is Ahriman allowed into the physical world? In the last lecture I gave you an example of how strongly he is permitted to work in the world. As you will recall, I described how an event was arranged so that it would go according to an exact plan. This event was observed, not by the usual kind of audience, but by thirty young lawyers and students of jurisprudence—in other words, by men who were preparing themselves to become judges of human deeds. The event had been planned beforehand so that what was going to happen was known in detail. What the experiment demonstrated about establishing a correct relationship between how people think about happenings in the external world and what actually goes on is shown by what occurred after the event. The thirty were asked to describe what had happened. Twenty-six of them gave a false description; only four could give a true description and even their descriptions were only approximations of the truth. Thirty people witness an event that follows a carefully prepared plan and it is possible for twenty-six of them to give thoroughly false descriptions of it! That shows you how effective Ahriman is! There you can see how actively present he is! But what would happen if he were not there? Then we certainly would be some kind of lambs. We would feel the impulse to think of things exactly in accordance with the facts before us, and we would consistently allow ourselves to speak only about the facts we observe. But we would have to do this! There could be no talk of freedom! We would have to act in this way; we never could act otherwise; and we never could become free beings. If we are to be able to speak the truth as free beings it must be possible for us to lie, and we are therefore obliged to develop within ourselves the power to conquer Ahriman every time we speak. He has to be there, ‘provocative and active, doing his devil's work’. Those words should give you a picture of Ahriman's presence and of how error only occurs when we follow him directly instead of remembering that he is the one to be overcome as, provocative and active, he goes about his devil's work. Some speak about flight. They say, pulling long faces: ‘But is this not perhaps something ahrimanic? Oh, I must not have anything to do with this!’ In many cases, the only thing all this signifies is that the person in question is moving toward the comforts of Lucifer and leaving freedom behind.

What would help would be to acquaint oneself with the impulses that need to be overcome. To a certain extent we need Ahriman on one side and Lucifer on the other in order to bring about a balance between them.

These are the preliminary considerations I wanted to share with you today. They provide the necessary foundations for the spiritual-scientific vistas on life and the cosmos that will open out before us tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

• 29. Julius Bahnsen (1830 – 1881).