The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Today, I would like to speak again to you about inner development. Those who occasionally visit these talks remember that I have already given various statements about this object. Hence, I only touch what has already been discussed earlier and add what exceeds this.

I have talked repeatedly about the phenomena of the higher worlds, and the question immediately suggests itself, how do we come to such knowledge?—The way to this knowledge is not so easy that it can be described in one or two hours even in quite superficial way. Nevertheless, I have to drop a hint now and again how one has to imagine this development. You all know that we talk here not only about the usual physical world, but also about the worlds of soul and spirit that we got to know as astral world and devachan. The human being lives in these worlds. He does not belong to one, but to three worlds. He still belongs to much more worlds, but the knowledge of still higher worlds exceeds the usual cognitive capacities of the human being so much that one can talk about these worlds only with difficulty.

The question that we must put to ourselves is, how does the human being penetrate up to the astral and spiritual worlds?—These are the worlds in which he lives here, indeed, about which he knows, however, nothing, at first, in which he lives if he does no longer have a sensuous body. Everything that lives as sensuous world round us can carry no weight for us. However, then the other worlds that are attained by higher knowledge have a higher significance to us. One often asks, to which end does the human being need, actually, the knowledge of other worlds than that in which he lives? If he gives his fellow man a treat, to what end does he need to look for higher worlds?—This is an objection that must be recognised very soon as invalid. Those forces, facts, and beings that the human being meets in the higher worlds are not only efficient in these worlds but also in our physical world. For the things are not made by themselves, they have come about by the forces of the spiritual world. We also recognise ourselves only cursorily if we recognise ourselves only by the senses. We perceive with the senses only what happens between birth and death. With the birth of the human being, a whole sum of dispositions and abilities enter the world. Only a superficial judgement can say that the human being should begin with his whole world of dispositions only at the moment of birth or of the embryonic development.

In occultism, which deals with the worlds unknown to the senses, one speaks of the fact that the usual human being lacks the ability to discriminate the most significant facts. He does not observe intensely enough how clumsily the human being enters the world, how he learns more and more to use his only as rudiments existing organs of the spiritual life. There we see the one who is very little able to use the organs of his mind, whereas the other controls not only his whole limbs in a quite special way, but also learns to use his cerebral tools quite specially. Just the materialistic thinker would have to say, I believe in the significance of the human organs; however, why do these organs answer to the feelings and sensations of the one human being, and to the feelings and sensations of the other one?

Everybody admits that a hammer, which the human being uses for any reasonable performance, must have come about by a reasonable work of thought at first. Everybody believes that concerning the hammer. The materialistic thinker does not believe that concerning the body, the living beings generally. Hence, someone who studies the miraculous constructions of the human brain or heart can never believe that all these things could come about by chance, by any spiritless events. However, these things present themselves with every person in another way than it can be found with the animals. All animals are copies of a general pattern, the particular differences come less into consideration. The word “individuality” makes this difference clear to us at once. Because every human being is an individuality, he comes much more into consideration. Every human being, every individuality prepares his body in his way.

For this body has to fit the special predisposition of every human being. When he enters his existence with birth, he existed already spiritually, and he himself has prepared the organs for his individual use, not completely, because he is also an animal creature, but the higher he develops, the more he also controls the construction of his own organs. One could at most believe that a human being—completely existing on the lowest level—has begun at his birth, However, no reasonable thinker can suppose that a thinking being was not yet there before his birth. Everybody can carry out the performances with the hammer; however, nobody is able to do the performances of the brain of the fellow man. Hence, the human being is not understandable without assuming that he exceeds birth and death, but only if one recognises the forces that have prepared the organs of the human thinking already before.

The rise to the astral and the spiritual worlds is connected for the single human being with certain difficulties, with renunciations to which he has to submit himself, and with certain dangers. He is accustomed to the world of the senses, but to the other worlds, he is not so accustomed. Above all, we have to realise that the causes of many matters that remain invisible in the world become clear to us in the higher worlds. The human being is thereby surprised, upset. The exercises by which he wants to advance strain him in certain ways too. Because there are dangers, some people say that one can also come to the highest knowledge of the divine world forces if one knows nothing about these spiritual and astral forces concealed behind the sensuous world. Today, one almost argues that the human being can also rise to the divine knowledge without passing the worlds first, which separate him from the highest of all.

Only someone can argue in such a way who has no real idea of the higher worlds. A kind of higher knowledge that is also often called theosophical is nothing else than a quite usual knowledge of the human lower self, and if he declares his lower self as his divine ever so much, he finds nothing but his lower self. Only outside himself, the human being finds his higher self, because we are born out of the external world.

Some spiritual movements want to divert the human being from the external world; one should look for the higher self only in oneself. This point of view can never lead to a real knowledge; it is unchristian and antichristian at the same time. Only in the orientation to the world, which surrounds us, we find our higher self. We must seek for the god in the invisible worlds and in all external creatures, facts, and processes. If anybody says to us, deny the external world, this external matter does not exist, he denies the divine world; and there is for a big perspective no worse knowledge than turning away from the outside world. Just the deepening in the outside world leads to higher knowledge. Everything physical dries out, if it is raised a little above the earth, everything mental dries out, if it is raised a little above the spiritual world.

The human being has to live in the world with the attitude that he belongs to it as the hand to the body. This attitude really leads to higher development. Ask your own inside where the sense of a human being is located. Just as little the human being can turn away from the outside world, just as little the sense of the human being is enclosed in the skin. He belongs to the higher self of the world. While we investigate the higher self of the world, we investigate our own higher selves. It is not possible to agitate for occultism. Only someone who really wants to fulfil the conditions of the higher development must also pledge himself to explain what occultism prescribes for such high development. Hence, the real occult direction of theosophy should not be confused with that which one often calls theosophy externally. It concerns methods proved for centuries. It is left to the free will of every human being when he wants to reach the goal; hence, one cannot object that he is an outsider.

The higher development to which every human being can reach takes place slowly and gradually. He lives always in the visible world. You all live not only in the sensuous world, but mental and spiritual forces and events surround you here. These spiritual and mental worlds are there for someone whose spiritual and mental eye is opened. The methods are available to open the spiritual and mental eye of the human being generally. Then he lives only for these worlds; for it is something different to live in these worlds and to perceive in these worlds. The human being lives also in these worlds at night, but he does not perceive them because he still lacks the organs. The higher development lies in the fact that the soul gets organs and thereby learns to perceive.

At first, any higher recognising arises at night. While for the only sensually perceiving human being darkness spreads at night, the darkness is illuminated for the mentally perceiving one. There is a light, which can illuminate the world, even if no sun is there, which does not make the table discernible, however, the mental facts. This is the astral light. If you have soul organs, your soul is not blind, and then the human soul can see the astral light where the eyes saw the figure before.

The astral light illuminates the soul as the sunlight illuminates the body during the day. Everything that should be developed in the human being exists as a rudiment in him, as well as the human embryo has rudiments of eyes and ears, the rudiments of clairvoyance are in the soul. However, as the human embryo cannot yet see the physical world, the spiritual and mental rudiments must also be developed in the human being. He is an embryo in the mental world now, actually. What does not see the mental and spiritual will see it later. There the consideration begins, what does this soul do during sleep?—The soul is not passive there, even if it does not see. The forces of the physical human being wear themselves out in the course of the day, but the human soul works during sleep on the recovery of the physical forces. Because the soul is occupied with itself, it has no free strength at its disposal to develop organs anew. However, these forces must pay to form something new; thereby something is taken away from the human body. The human spirit has built up his physical body gradually; the soul forms the tools gradually, which the human being uses. The soul works in the same way if the physical body is worn out. During sleep, it fixes everything again.

If you use the forces of sleep different, you must compensate it. The harmony of the forces can substitute everything that gets lost in the struggle of the forces. Because the human being feels, thinks, and wills erratically today, where he works perpetually, where he follows any intention, in the job, with every sensation, his forces wear out due to this struggle. If then he intends to take away certain soul forces from his body, he must atone for them with certain performances taking place harmoniously. Hence, the inner development provides particular virtues to start with, so that the strength that is taken away from the body is replaced by rhythm. These virtues are: control of thoughts and actions, impartiality, endurance, equanimity, trust in the whole surroundings.

Today, the human being is given away to any idea; however, he must be someone who controls his thoughts. Then he gets rhythm in himself. To accomplish actions from own initiative, to decide to act in such a way that the action is his very own, this produces such a calmness in him that is necessary for the soul. Endurance, standing firmly and certainly, enduring pain, grief, and joy. Further, on, the human being must acquire the biggest impartiality. He is worn out by nothing more than, if he approaches the negative aspects of the things. This causes disharmony and at the same time, he is exhausted. A Persian legend is authoritative that reports to us how Christ Jesus and his disciples once saw a rotting dead dog lying by the wayside. The disciples asked the master not to waste his time with the dog, the animal were too ugly. However, Christ looked at the dog and said which nice teeth the animal has. He looked here for the beautiful in the ugly thing. Any affirmation animates, any negation exhausts and kills. Not only because a moral strength belongs to it to turn to the positive side of a thing, but also because any affirmation animates and makes forces of the soul free and certain.

In such an age like ours, nervousness also prevails. Nervousness and negative criticism belong together. The provided virtues are there to release higher forces for the human being. Such virtues, which should make the lower life rhythmical, give the soul forces, so that it can dedicate itself to the higher development. This inner development proceeds completely quietly.

I would like to tell some of the matters, which still belong to it. These matters were once the secret of the occult schools, but now they are informed because of certain reasons. If a human being has prepared his soul by such exercises, he is referred to any teacher whom he will find when he should find him. Then he goes through different stages of learning and must use the forces that he has released for the higher soul life.

The first thing is that a single opinion is worth nothing at all. The human being as an advanced pupil has thoroughly to overcome his personal opinion, the expression: I believe this or that about that.

However, the advanced pupil must understand not only the foolishness of the materialist, but also go through the good reasons in himself, which the materialist can have for himself to understand how somebody could get around to becoming a materialist. He will find that all human beings where they say yes to the things, that is where they recognise the positive side, are mostly right; where they say no, that begins which the advanced pupil must learn to overcome. He must have got to know the reasons and the content of any worldview not only logically, but he must also have lived with it. He must put himself in the soul of any sceptic. The higher forces do not awake unless the pupil does know what can be argued against anything. Who has gone through this also rouses forces in his soul, which come definitely.

He must then overcome any superstition; not only the superstition of the African fetishist, but also that of the sophisticated European. Everybody knows the effects of hypnosis. Our European professors, for example, Wundt (Wilhelm W., 1832-1920, physician, physiologist, and philosopher), explained hypnotism saying that certain cerebral parts were not well supplied with blood. However, this is nothing else than the superstition of the African. In this way, you could disprove all materialistic theories that speak of certain cerebral parts only. Even if Haeckel is a great naturalist, it must be clear to everybody that that which this naturalist asserts about these matters is the purest superstition. The pupil must overcome all forms of superstition.

The third is the knowledge of the illusion of the personal self, while the human being persuades himself that he can find the higher life in himself. If he has reached this, he is ripe for the second stage. He has to go through the illusion of the personal self; he must recognise its authorisation to get rid of it in so doing. The next is that everything must become a symbol to him, “All that is transitory is only a symbol” (Faust II). One has to regard anything as a metaphor, a simile of that which it expresses. The single flower, even the single human being must become a metaphor for him; then he feels forces roused in his soul.—If he has learnt for a while to regard the things as metaphors, then he has to learn that the human being is a small world that nothing is in him that does not correspond to the world outdoors. A deep sense is in the Germanic mythology where we are told that from the giant Ymir the whole world is formed.

He must get to know how every organ is connected with the world, and then he is able to proportion his own organism. Walking through the world, he is not aware how his organs are connected with the world. He has to learn this. The Eastern occultist even teaches a quite special sitting posture, so that the pupil is also externally in a right relation to the world.

Further, on, he has then to learn—this may only be mentioned here—to regulate something consciously that nature regulates, otherwise, in him without his aware assistance. This is the respiratory system at first. If the human being wants to develop higher, his breathing has to become adequate to the big developmental processes. In a strictly prescribed way, he has to inhale, to hold his breath, and to exhale. If the human being regulates his breathing from the spirit, he spiritualises his breath, his life air. With it, he rises from hatha yoga to raja yoga, the royal yoga.

Then the highest comes, the exercises of meditation and contemplation, the life of the human being within himself. If he has prepared himself and has practiced in such a way, if he has made his life rhythmic, he is completely ripe for leading an inner life. There are three stages of meditation. It can be organically integrated in the rhythmic respiratory process. At first, he has to start from the sensory world, so that he can distract himself from the external world and from its various external impressions. Taking in hand his whole attention independently helps him in the higher development. If he is able to master his attention in such a way, he must be able to become engrossed completely in the object of his attention, to add nothing else; only one thought must live in him. It is the best if his teacher gives him particular tasks according to his individuality. If he has reached that, he is not distracted if a gun fires a bullet beside him. Then he has to leave the object of his reflection, but to maintain the activity. This brings him in the highest worlds.

If he accomplishes this, he attains that condition, which occultism calls dhyana, after he has thought through the object, however, has then dropped it, and lives then in the activity only. He can leave this condition immediately; then his inner eye awakes.

He learns to practice the forces of his thinking using external objects. However, he does not come fairly far; he reaches a world, which looks like a kind of skeleton of the higher world. Now, he has to develop a feeling of particular intensity from the object, again excluding all others. Thus, he must be able to feel something quite certain if he has a crystal in his hand; he must feel something if he has an octahedron in his hand. He gets a feeling that one can have towards the lifeless world. We compare the lifeless rock to the living, blood-filled being and say to ourselves, this has sensuousness; however, the water-clear rock is without desire.

If I am able to feel how the stone left its desire, how it has become pure and chaste, and

If I know how to become engrossed in this feeling, so that the world dies around me and

If I let only this feeling live in me—may it be the feeling from the crystal, from the animal, or the human being, and

If I can then leave the object, and go back in the same way as just now and come into the state of dhyana,

Then I notice that the feeling is not only a feeling, but that it starts becoming light, that feeling starts becoming a light phenomenon. In such a way, that appears which one perceives as a form of thought that one should better call a form of feeling.

These are single concepts I wanted to give you today. There have always been teachers who gave the single individuality instructions, tasks suitable for him. Any human being has his own name in the spiritual world; he is even more individual in it than in the physical world, and this own individuality must be taken into consideration carefully, especially in the higher stages concerning higher development. Hence, only a teacher can give what is necessary.

I have today given the first steps of that which one calls recognising the self. If the human being learns to feel the objects round himself, and the objects take on colours, which become pictures, then he sees his world of feelings round himself. He must face himself objectively, and then he crosses the threshold where he perceives himself with all that which he is and not yet is. The first guardian of the threshold stands there before us who shows us, thou art that!

Anybody must learn to recognise himself, because he gets world knowledge by self-knowledge. However, nobody is allowed to take self-knowledge for knowledge of god. Hence, one could read at the gate of the Delphic temple, recognise yourself (gnothi seauton)! If one has attained self-knowledge, one enters the innermost sanctum of the world where the divine forces prevail and spiritual knowledge is given. If the own inside feels connected with the world inside where one can only speak of inner development, if the human being approaches this knowledge worthily and not in frivolous way or with base motives, then he attains it. He gets what can develop his humanity more and more and makes him a worthier member in the development of humanity. However, nobody has to strive for higher knowledge only on his own. The human being shall develop, increase his forces, and collect knowledge only to become a servant of the whole universe.

Indeed, it is attractive to become engrossed in the past and to look around among the great spirits who preceded us. However, with the personality about which we want to speak today quite another matter than the charm of historical consideration comes into question as point of view. It rather matters with Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, 1493-1541, physician, occultist) that he can give the human beings very much still today. Just a movement of the spiritual investigation of matters as spiritual science is particularly suitable to unearth the treasure, the spirit of knowledge, the investigation, and enlightenment of nature, which is hidden with Paracelsus. Today, indeed, modern research turns more or less also to spirits like Jacob Boehme, Paracelsus, and others of the end of the Middle Ages. However, the approach of our present science is so different from the spirit, the point of view of a man like Paracelsus that it cannot do justice to him in the true sense of the word.

For Paracelsus has to be understood in another way than it normally happens if one becomes engrossed in a spirit of the past. One has to develop a living feeling of the object and the direction of thinking to which he dedicated himself. This is in certain respect such a deepening in the spiritual life, in particular in the spiritual forces and beings that form the basis of nature, and only the spiritual-scientific approach does this. Paracelsus already belongs to an interesting time. It was the time from 1493 to 1541 in which he lived that was either just over or was still right in the middle of the emergence of the bourgeoisie. This exerted a significant influence on the entire spiritual life.

Two classes only had the greatest say concerning the spiritual life before the emergence of the bourgeoisie: nobility and clergy. After bourgeoisie had emerged, the intellectual culture was based more on the single personality and its efficiency. Before, the blood relationship, the clanship had a say within the nobility in the worth and the social position of the human being, on the one side, and, on the other side, the whole power and intellectual culture of the church supported the priests. It stood as a whole behind the single personality. Only in the time of the bourgeoisie, the performance of the single was based on the personal efficiency. Hence, everything that meets us in this time of the ending Middle Ages, the emerging bourgeoisie, gets a personal character and the personality has to fight for himself much more. We could quote many of such personalities who had to use their very own forces at that time.

One of the strangest and most interesting personalities is just Paracelsus. Other things still came into consideration in his lifetime too. This has been just in the time when the scene of the peoples increased enormously when the big discoveries of distant countries were done, in the time when the just invented art of printing pointed the spiritual life to quite different directions and currents than it was once the case. All that delivers the basic tableau, so to speak, from which this personality of Theophrastus Paracelsus emerges. To all that is to be added that we are concerned with a seldom-prominent person, with a person of revolutionary character in the spiritual sense. He was a person who was aware of that which was performed once in the realms of the spiritual life and how much his own work contrasted with it.

In order to understand Paracelsus, one must look at the basic character of his work as a doctor and as a philosopher, and grasp him as a theosophist, as he combined these both soul characters with each other. This personality was uniform. With brilliant look, he tried to grasp the construction of the world edifice. His surprised sight looked up at the secrets of the starry heaven, became engrossed in the construction of the earth and in particular in the construction of the human being himself. This brilliant sight penetrated also into the secrets of the spiritual life. He was also a theosophist, while he tried to enclose the nature of the astronomical knowledge and at the same time the nature of anthropology, the doctrine of the human being in connection with the doctrine of all living beings. Nothing was mere theory in him, everything was immediate in such a way that it was bent on practise, that he wanted to use all that he knew for the welfare, the spiritual and physical health of the human being. This gives his work, his thinking, and investigations the big, immense unity. This makes him appear as sharply carved from one single piece of wood. Thus, he stands before us as an original, elementary personality.

There were two schools for him in the field with which he was mainly concerned, with the medical art. The one went back to the old Greek physician Hippocrates (~460-370 B.C.), the other to Galenus (129-200 or 216 A.D., physician, philosopher). The father of medicine, Hippocrates, stood before him like a big ideal. The modern scholar can cope neither with that which that Greek was, nor with that which Paracelsus saw in him. Indeed, it seems rather problematic today if we hear that this medicine differentiated four humours in the human being: black bile, white or yellow bile, blood and phlegm, which were said to have a certain relation to earth, water, air and fire. These should be components of the human nature. Of course, the modern naturalist regards as a childish point of view, which a detailed knowledge had to overcome in the course of time. He does not anticipate that it depends, nevertheless, still on anything else.

That is why the modern academic view understands Paracelsus so exceptionally. He did not at all understand these four members of the human nature as usual physical humours and. The naturalist of that old time regarded the substances with which the human body builds itself up from the physical, sense-perceptible substances, only as the external expression of something spiritual, of the real builder of this external body.

In spiritual-scientific talks, we have often spoken about this builder of the human body. We have spoken about the etheric body, a fine body, forming the basis of the physical body and all its manifold materials, substances and humours. This etheric body or life body contains the forces to build up the physical body. It is in such a way that this etheric body builds up any. Sensuous research does not suffice to study this etheric body; something else belongs to it, namely intuition, spiritual research. If one uses sensuous expressions of that which is considered for this spiritual research, like black, white, yellow, green et cetera, one only means metaphors of something that is behind. It is quite wrong if one identifies them with our material things.

The way in which the old doctors approached the ill human beings in the medical centres was another. It was the intuitive view, which they directed not to the physical, but to the finer, the ethereal underlying the physical. One started out from the idea: if anything is ill, it is less crucial, which external changes are discernible, but what has caused them. The disorder in the external physical body corresponds to the disorder in the etheric body. The old doctors recognised how the etheric body changes in the ill organism, and they were out to cure that force, which is behind the physical body as the sculptor. If I may express myself somewhat roughly, one can say, if anybody has fallen ill with the stomach, he suffers not from the stomach, but from the finer body the expression of which the illness only is.

Paracelsus had taken up the spirit of such an intuitive medicine in himself. However, the Roman doctor Galenus worked everywhere like an authority. Indeed, he bases his medicine on these old principles, and if one reads Galenus externally, one gets the idea: what does Paracelsus really intend fighting in such a way against Galenus and taking the older medicine under his wings? Is it not the same?—It could almost seem that way, however, it is not in such a way. For Galenus externalised medicine while he materialised the originally spiritual view. The pupils of Galenus already understood by that which was once meant intuitively, as something externally material. Instead of using the intuitive view, they researched only in the matter, speculated, invented theories. The moral view had got lost.

Paracelsus opposes this method, this loss of the intuitive view. He wanted to go back; he wanted to find the means to cure the human beings from the knowledge of the big nature. Therefore, all that was antipathetic to him, which prevailed in those days officially as medicine. He did not want to take as basis that which one can read in the books, but wanted to open the fundamental book, the big book of nature. Everything that had emerged gradually as medicine was spun out from a completely deduced speculation, from a research that knew nothing of the original spiritual view. There one could no longer see the connection between a medicament and an illness because one just did no longer behold what is behind the body because one looked only materially at everything. This caused that Paracelsus said, the light of nature should shine again.

It brought him into a sharp conflict with the medicine of his time. Such a great insight, as he had it, his reasonable nature that grasped the big connection with the universe gave him the intensive self-confidence, which has something lovely, in the way in which he behaved towards those who practised science in generally accepted way at that time. However, the pharmacology of that time bears big analogy to that of today, with the difference that our time has no Paracelsus in the medical field. However, confusion and insecurity were almost the same as they are today. This reminds very well of that old time of Paracelsus. If we pursue medicine today, we see how a remedy is invented and then is regarded and rejected as something noxious after five years, how so and so many people are examined, but the big view of the coherence of the human being with nature has completely got lost. That reminds rather well of the time of Paracelsus. It is true that most people do not anticipate that they are again embedded in such a time and that the belief in authority has such an immense power just in this field. One struggles against the belief in authority on one side, and one considers oneself superior campaigning against the old superstition that sends people to Lourdes.

One may be right with it, but one does not anticipate that only the form of superstition has changed and that superstition becomes hardly smaller if one sends anybody to Wiesbaden (spa town) and other places. One can see in it something similar as it existed with Paracelsus and his time when one was inclined to oppose the conventional. Paracelsus said, “As I take the four for me, so you have to take them also and to follow me and I have not to follow you, you have to follow me. Follow me, you Avicenna (~980-1037, Persian polymath), Galenus, Rasis (854-927, Persian polymath), Montagnana, Mesue (~777-857, Assyrian physician) and all those from Paris, from Cologne, from Vienna and from the regions of the Danube and Rhine rivers, from the islands, from Italy, from Dalmatia,Sarmatia, Athens, you Greeks, you Arabs, you Israelites, follow me, I do not follow you. I become the monarch and the empire will be mine, and I lead the empire and gird your loins.” That as a characteristic and expression of his personal strength. He believed to owe this strength to his original relationship with the secrets of nature. She expressed herself for Paracelsus in such a way that he saw not only what he saw with his eyes, but with his being, which combined with nature.

He undertook big journeys. He did not want to listen to anything scientific from the chairs, but from the dark intuitiveness of the simple people outdoors who had not yet cut the band of feeling with nature; he wanted to learn from them. I would like to bring his soul condition to your mind by a comparison. It is rather nice to see how the animals know instinctively for sure in the field what they have to graze and what they have to leave what serves them for their welfare and what would become detrimental to them. This is based on the relationship of the being with its environment. This relationship exists in the soul forces and is able to choose what is good and what is not good.

The being breaks free from nature by the intellect and speculation. It is no superstition, if one says that the simple human being who lives in the countryside has still something of the original forces, which lead the animal to its food instinctively, that this relationship still delivers something of the knowledge how the single herb, how the single stone works on the human being. This feeling is different from the usual knowledge, which, however, is no longer so important for him. Hence, one finds with a human being, who has not yet gone through education, an original certainty what is useful for him within nature. Paracelsus feels related to this original feeling for nature. He emphasises repeatedly that those people are not the right ones who wander the world in such a way that they travel around the world in carriages and apart from the immediate contact with the rural population. Paracelsus travelled differently. He listened to that which the simple man could say to him. The instinct of the simple man became to him the intuition of the ingenious human being. He did not cut the connection between nature and the original intuitive force in the human being. He expresses this in such a way: “By nature I am not spun subtly, it is also not the way of life in my country to acquire something with silk spinning. We are not bred with figs, nor with mead, nor with wheat bread, but with cheese, milk, and oat bread. That cannot make subtle fellows because one is dependent on that which one has got as adolescent. Such a human being is almost rude compared to the subtle men feeling superior, to superfine people, and to those who have grown up in soft clothes and in boudoirs, whereas we grow up in fir cones, therefore, we do not well understand each other.”

He knew that he always walked on his journeys through Poland, Hungary to Turkey in the sun, not only in the sun of the physical world, but also in the spiritual sun. What distinguishes Paracelsus is the uniform sight in the spiritual. Hence, the human being is to him not the human being in whom one slips in with the sensory examination, but he is connected with the whole nature. He says, look at the apple and then at the apple pip. You cannot understand how the pip grows if you do not look at the whole apple.

That is why one also does not understand the elementary human being if one does not recognise the earth with all its substances and forces, because it has all its strength from the earth. Then a force incorporates a finer materiality in this physical elementary human being. Paracelsus calls it the archaeus. From the elementary body, he distinguishes the finer body, which is the builder of the physical body and the builder of the earth. Thus, he looks from the externally sense-perceptible at the cause, from the body at the life body, from the externally physical at that which as a force forms the basis of it. This is the first member of the human being in the sense of Paracelsus.

He regards the second member as a pip in a certain different way. For this second member the apple is the whole world of stars. Just as the elementary body draws his forces and humours from the earth and from that which belongs to it, the second human being draws his forces from that which lives in the stars, from the principles of the stars. Just as the blood, the muscles, the bones, and food juices are composed and the food juices change, are transformed, and as these are dependent on the earthly, Paracelsus summarises the instincts, desires, and passions, the ideas, joy and sorrow, all that as the two basic forces of the human mental nature, sympathy and antipathy. They are expressions of the whole world of stars, as the pip is an expression of the whole apple. Therefore, he calls the second body the astral body or the body related to the world of stars.

What works outdoors as gravity or gravitation, as force of attraction and repulsion is in the human being like in an essence as desire and listlessness, as sympathy and antipathy, so that nothing of that which is in the human being as instincts and passions can be understood different from the astrological astronomy as Paracelsus calls it. This is a science about which our time knows precious little. Astronomy took another path. Paracelsus as a doctor wants to know nothing about it. He wants to know how the astral forces are connected in space with the astral body of the human being. He behaves compared to an astronomer like a priest to a requiem parson. A requiem parson is someone who reads the mess and is paid for it, whereas a right priest is someone who penetrates into the spirit. Paracelsus uses clear expressions what others often call rudeness. We have now understood the second part of human wisdom.

The third part is that which he calls spirit. This spirit relates to the spiritual world like the pip of the apple to the much bigger apple, like the divine spark in the human being to the whole sum of divine forces in the world. Thus, Paracelsus differentiates in the world: the divine-spiritual, the astrological-astronomical, and the elementary-earthly. The human being contains an essence of them: the human mind from the spiritual-divine, the astral body from the astrological-astronomical, and the physical body from the elementary-earthly.

Just as one has to study the material, the plants, and animals and so on if one wants to understand the body of the human being, the doctor has to study and understand what goes forward in the world of the stars if he wants to understand the human being. Because Paracelsus says to himself, one understands an illness only if one goes back to its origin, he looks for the reason of the illness in the desires and passions. He considers the illness as a result of mental fallacy and finally he leads it back to moral qualities even if he also does not lead back these qualities to the stars, because he knows very well that the effect does not happen so fast.

He sees an expression of the spiritual everywhere in the physical. That is why he says, someone who wants to investigate the reason of an illness has to study the reason of all the sympathies and antipathies of the soul, and he can study this only if he studies the stars of the human being. Thus, you imagine how he approaches an ill human being. With an intuitive view, this soul digresses from the externally ill limb to that which lives internally in the soul of the human being.

From there he goes to the astral influence of the stars and to the elementary influence of the earth. He has this in every single case before him. Just this is spiritual medicine. How he imagines this, and how he tries to make clear with his own picture, he expresses this nicely in this deciphering of the whole world: “This is something great you should consider. Nothing is in heaven and on earth that is not also in the human being, and God who is in heaven and on earth is also in the human being.”—I have often quoted another nice saying where he compares what he wanted to say here. He says, look out at nature. What is there? He sees a mineral, an animal, a plant, these are like single letters and the human being is the word that is composed of these single letters. If one wants to read the human being, one has to collect the single letters in the big book of nature.—This does not mean that Paracelsus picks up the things, but that he tries to get a synopsis of the things in nature. This has always enabled him to keep in sight the whole world with the single special case, which he has to cure as a doctor. Behind all that, the ingenious-moral strength works from which all that arises with him. At last, it is something like moral indignation that rebels in him against the way conventional at that time to cure and to find mixtures for all possible things. He says, I am not there to enrich the apothecaries; I am there to cure the human beings.

One has to realise that Paracelsus used words quite unlike in later time if one fairly wants to read his writings. If you read salt, mercury, and sulphur with Paracelsus, one has no right idea automatically, one thinks of what today the human being calls in such a way. Everything that one reads with Paracelsus seems then to be imperfect and childish. Who knows science today has a certain right to regard Paracelsus as childish, but one has to penetrate somewhat deeper. I want to give you an idea how you can get around to understanding what he means if he uses the terms salt, mercury, and sulphur. Paracelsus looks far back into the evolution of the earth, in the evolution of the beings, which live round him, and of the human being. If he looks back in such a way, a time faces him in which the human beings still had forms of existence very different from now.

Nobody gets as clear about what has become as Paracelsus. The earth was completely different millions of years ago. We have spoken of the transformation of the earth often enough. He looked back at a human figure that was still completely animal where the hands were still locomotive organs where the human being still lived in air and water. The earth, the surroundings were quite different. Even modern physics looks back at an age in which that which is solid today was still in a liquid state. Paracelsus, who started from the spiritual, saw a spiritual human being in connection with such an earth that still looked quite different from today. On an earth, which was so much warmer than today, the present human being could not live.

At that time, the human beings also lived under other conditions. At that time, the metals were still liquid, they could hardly be contained as steam in the air. At that time, the living beings could also not take shape; however, they have developed. Just as today the elementary human being is connected with the physical world as the pip with the apple, the primeval human being was differently connected with the primeval earth and with the entire surrounding astral world. Therefore, that which constitutes the present physical human being, his soul as the astral body and his mind as a divine human being had still to emerge. This was quite different from once. The human being was still closer to the divinity. The astral human being is born out of the astral world, and the physical human being is born out of the entire physical world. Paracelsus spoke in a much greater and nobler sense of the origin of the physical human being from the physical surroundings than our modern theory of evolution. Paracelsus understood this, and he emphasises it also repeatedly, but for him the human being is a confluence of all that which lives outdoors in nature. The human being has passions; he has them in himself, only in reduced form as the lion has them, for example, and as they exist in the environment. If the human being looks at the lion in the sense of Paracelsus, he sees the same force that lives today as his passion in him born out of the astral world.

In the lion, it is one-sided, with the human being it is mixed with other forces. The entire animal realm is to Paracelsus like a fanned-out humanity. He sees everything that is distributed in the forms of the animals in himself, invisible in his inner human being. That also applies in certain respect if the human being looks at the earth. The metals that have become physical today are born out from the same being from which the physical human being is born out. Please, understand me properly, because it is far from present ideas. Paracelsus sees back to the time when the physical human body had only built the heart. There are lower animals that have no hearts that still preserve the form that the human being had at that time. This was to Paracelsus the same time when from a much more general essence of the earth the gold also developed, so that a connection exists between the origin of the gold and the human heart. He also sees a connection between abnormalities like cholera and the arsenic. He says to himself, the possibility that cholera could originate depends on the fact that the arsenic is developed from the external world. He considers any single organ as belonging to the human unity and it is in such a way that it belongs to him like any animal, any plant, or any substance in the external world.

I would like to read out another remark that shows you how he expresses himself in particular. This is a remark that is got out of a number of remarks of Paracelsus, which one could multiply by thousand. He regards the single human being as specifically related to the physical world and the astral world concerning his single organs and the recognition of their illnesses. It is differentiated in the most certain way. One admires the general expressions of modern pantheism, of the modern view of nature, but this is the purest dilettantism if one does not know that the great Paracelsus cannot be pleased with an all-life, which enjoys life in the single human being. Paracelsus speaks of something concrete: “That is why you should not say, this is cholera, this is melancholia, but this is arsenicus, this is aluminosum; and also he is a Saturnian, that is a Martian, and not: this man suffers from melancholia, that man suffers from cholera. For one part is from heaven, one part is from earth, and they are intermingled like fire and wood, because everything loses its name; since these are two things in one.”

As he explains the connection of the heart with the gold, he also explains the connection of certain phenomena with Saturn and another with Mars and that, which is related to Mars. The peculiar mind of Paracelsus positions the human being that way in nature, in the world. Even if there is to correct anything with Paracelsus: it depends on the great, on the comprehensive that lives in this soul.

He attributes this to single certain types. Thus, everything that originates as a precipitation in the mineral is elementary to him. At the same time, it originated in the developmental time when the human-bodily formed and took on the figure on earth, which it has today. Hence, every deposit of the mineral, everything salty is connected with the human-bodily, with the animal-bodily. He calls everything Mercurial, changeable that remains liquid after a certain precipitation has taken place. Mercury is to him a typical example of it. Thus, we have a trend towards the solidification of the liquid metal. The soul is also born out of the same universal forces from which the Mercurial was born out. The deeper connection is in such a way that one cannot discuss it publicly at all.

Sulphur and the present form of mind have a parallel cause of origin. However, they are not connected allegorically. No—these three things outdoors in the world correspond exactly to the body, the soul, and the mind of the human being.

Sulphur is connected according to its nature with the mind, mercury with the soul, and salt with the body of the human being. What the human being takes up besides is related to these in a certain respect because they are born out of them. Therefore, such an example shows us that we have to go in deeper. It is not enough if we understand the expressions of Paracelsus only; we must approach the books of Paracelsus with a deepened preparation, and then we understand him. We have to realise that he always has the whole in mind. Therefore, he says to himself, if the human being has an illness, it is an interruption, a disturbance of a certain balance. He calls it magnetic balance and—as there is never one pole in the magnetic needle, but always north pole and south pole together—, any digestion in the human body belongs to a digestion outdoors in the world, which he searches then. In the etheric human being, he searches the cause of the individual, in the material; he searches the expression of the spirit. In this respect, he calls the material the mummy. One has only to understand this significant expression. It is a certain essence that forms the basis of the bodily; the mummy is different in the healthy and the sick person because the whole and the individual is changed. Therefore, one needs only to recognise the mummy, the changes in the etheric body to recognise what a person lacks.

Briefly, we see there into the depth of a spiritual life from which one can learn quite a lot. We have to realise that only a detailed spiritual research can understand again what is contained in Paracelsus. If one understands so detailed, he does no longer appear as a spirit whom one regards only as an interesting historical object, but as a spirit whom one has to consider from a higher point of view and from whom one can still learn quite a lot also in our time—at least from his method. One should position himself to Paracelsus in this way. Someone who does this finds in his lovely-rude manner a difference between the modern way of research and his way, a difference that he already made for his contemporaries. He distinguishes two reasons, the reason that looks into the whole realm of the spiritual life, and the reason that is only bent on the single one. He calls the one the first reason. He calls it in such a way because it leads to the concealed spirit of the things He calls the other reason a public folly compared with the concealed wisdom. He expresses himself even lovelier or more rudely saying, one has to distinguish a human-divine reason and a bestial reason.

He does not express himself in such a way that he speaks of the animal and spiritual nature of the human being, but of the bestial one. He considers the human being as a son of the animal genus. The animal is spread in single facets; the animal is summarised in the human being. He says once, the human being is the son of the remaining animal realm. However, if he wanted to be like the other animal beings, they would not understand this, they would look like at a wayward son and would be surprised about that which he has become.

Apart from that, you can also receive elementary instructions of certain theosophical basic concepts from Paracelsus. What Paracelsus argues about dream and sleep is in the most eminent sense what also spiritual science has to say about it, only he expresses it in his superb language. If the human being sleeps, the elementary body is in the space, and the astral human being is active. Then the astral human being can dialogue with the stars, so that he only needs to remember the dialogue with the stars to help, to cure the sick person. He is able to lead back all that to the prophets. He esteems them more than all the later ones. He calls Moses, Daniel, and Enoch not magicians, but he says, if one understands them properly, they are the precursors of this great astronomical-astrological medicine, which has worked for humanity.

Such a man was allowed to have a self-confidence in certain ways, and the strength of his work flows out from this self-confidence. However, he was clear in his mind also that what he had donated must live on and will live on with those who can recognise it. In spite of it all, a lot of gossip and historical gossip approached him. One examined his skull to slander him because this skull had a hole and one has to think much of such external things. One verified that he fell a victim to drunkenness and broke his skull. One wanted to judge his whole life this way. One can state the parable of Christ Jesus with the dead dog where Christ Jesus pointed to the nice teeth of the animal. The other things of such a personality do not concern us, besides that which we can learn from him, by which he has become a benefactor of humanity who overcame so much and by which he has become immortal.

Let me close with his own words that he throws in the teeth of his adversaries: “I want to elucidate and argue in such a way that until the last day of the world my writings must remain and will remain true, and yours are recognised as full of bile, poison, and brood of vipers and are hated by the people like toads. It is not my will that you should fall down or be knocked down a year hence, but you must show your shame after a long time and you certainly fall through the cracks, I shall judge you more after my death than before, and even if you eat my body, you have only eaten filth: the Theophrastus will struggle for the body with you.”

Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) is probably one of the strangest personalities of the last centuries. In the aurora of a quite new time, in the turn of the 16th to the 17th centuries, he stands there with a knowledge and a wisdom, with a worldview which appears like a completion of many centuries. He stands there as a person who was understood a little in the following time up to this day, even if he was called Philosophus Teutonicus and societies existed in Holland, in England, in Germany which tried to make Jacob Boehme's views popular. There have been always persons who occupied themselves with Jacob Boehme.

About 1600, when Giordano Bruno died a martyr's death, Jacob Boehme's soul was penetrated by great, immense ideas for the first time. Who starts devoting himself to Jacob Boehme and, besides, goes out from the views of the present time finds his way in him a little. Hence, one can read in the modern books about Jacob Boehme that he showed his view in images which are incomprehensible and dark. If one reads the stuff that has been said about him in newer handbooks, one may say, it is completely comprehensible that one finds Jacob Boehme incomprehensible. What one can read in the handbooks of history of philosophy about him, however, is the most incomprehensible stuff of the world. This is the peculiar phenomenon which one experiences with Jacob Boehme.

If one knows the spiritual life of the 19th century exactly, in particular that German spiritual life, which especially philosophical circles influence, one can understand that Jacob Boehme was understood so little. There are hardly bigger contrasts than Jacob Boehme and Immanuel Kant. Whatever the education of the 19th century produced is far away from the spirit of this strange man. All who try to approach Jacob Boehme from the theosophical worldview are surprised that one still needed a theosophical deepening with that nation that had Jacob Boehme. One needs only to know Paracelsus and Jacob Boehme to know theosophy. Everything that they wrote is given from a deep spring, with immense deepness and magic power. Jacob Boehme was one of the greatest magicians of all times, of a greatness that has not yet been reached up to now.

In 1575, Jacob Boehme was born as a child of poor people. He was first a herd boy and could hardly read and write. While he tended livestock, already some strange flashes of inspiration lighted up in him. Sometimes it seemed to him, as if any leaf in the trees, as if the animals of the wood had something to say to him, as if all beings of nature spoke to him. Then he was apprenticed to a shoemaker. During his apprenticeship, he had a strange experience that cannot be discussed in the general public concerning its real basis. Jacob Boehme had to look after the shop once when his master and wife stepped out. However, he should sell nothing. A person entered whose eyes made a particular impression on him. This person wanted to buy something. Jacob said to him, he was not allowed to sell anything. The look of the stranger was something quite extraordinary to him. Then the stranger went out. After a few minutes, Jacob heard calling his name. The stranger said to him, Jacob, you are still small now, but you are destined to something great!—Jacob Boehme knew that these words transferred anything remaining to him.

Jacob Boehme tells another experience, about a mountain. Once he saw into a cave where something like gold shone to him. Again, it seemed to him like a revelation, like something that would tell about the concealed forces of nature to him. If one touched that all, it would lose its magic, which one can only understand by occult means.

Like all young craftsmen of the past, Jacob Boehme started wanderings after his apprenticeship and then settled down as master of his craft in his hometown Görlitz. He began soon to write down what lived in his soul. It is important to illuminate the sensations somewhat that were in this personality. He felt raised above himself if he put pen to paper to write down what was revealed to him. Something was in him like a higher nature. This was so strong in him that—if he was back again in the everyday life and if he wanted to read the written down—he could not understand it. He could not follow that spirit. What he wrote down were words from the beginning, which were taken only from the centre of wisdom. Aurora or the Rising of the Dawn was the first book he wrote. Aurora or the Rising of the Dawn was always a symbol of the birth of the higher self to the mystics if the soul rises above the lower existence. The spiritualisation of the human being was always symbolised by the dawn. At that time, Jacob Boehme wrote words, which sound quite naturally with him because they carry the stamp, the seal of truth. Thus, he said once that he knows that “the sophist reproves him” if he speaks of the beginning of the world and its creation, “because I was not present and did not see it. I say to him that I was present in the essence of my soul and, when I was not yet a self, but because I was Adam's essence I was present and forfeited my glory in Adam.”

This simple man, who probably only read Paracelsus if any, had the consciousness that the everlasting soul that lives in the human being is not bound to space and time that there is an expansion of consciousness of this soul by which the human being is able to rise above space and time. Thus, the unity was clear to him, which lives in everything, which lives in every human soul, so that one needs only to remove the narrow borders in order to get a picture, a face that shows everything to us that goes back to the beginning of the creation of the human being. All that was founded on deep devoutness with Jacob Boehme.

He says about his soul condition: “When I struggled with God's assistance, a strange light emerged to my soul that was quite foreign to the wild nature. I only recognised in it what God and the human being is, and what God deals with the human being.”

It was an immediate experience of Jacob Boehme, the emergence of the divine soul in the usual human soul. This experience that was detached in a completely elementary way from the soul founded his enthusiasm. Thus, we see him grasping the human nature, the historical evolution of the whole humanity in a way, which—if one cannot penetrate to the springs—gives him a hard fight to understand this spirit.

What we find with Paracelsus faces us in a spiritualised and transfigured form with Jacob Boehme. It already faces us in his first work, in the Aurora. This work was not printed first, but circulated only as a manuscript among his friends. It fell into the hands of a zealotic preacher. He preached against it and was successful that the City Council of Görlitz forbade Jacob Boehme to write anything in future. One regarded him as such a dangerous person already in those days. However, Jacob Boehme wrote nothing for years. All his other writings date from the last five to six years of his life, that life which one made to him continuously rather hard because one understood nothing of that which lived in this man, For the fanatical priesthood was fulfilled by zealotic hatred for anything that it had not written itself. His works were translated, before they were printed in Germany, into English, into Dutch and other languages. Jacob Boehme's destiny and works are an example of how little the ways of true spiritual life depend on the official education and how difficult it is to overcome the obstacles that are put in the way of the spiritual life by all possible powers.

Already in the Aurora, that faces us which lived in Jacob Boehme. At first, he said that something lives in the human being that can outgrow itself, a divine spark of life. This remained nothing abstract to him, but took shape of a big world building and human building in his thoughts, in his world of sensations. Someone who wants to understand Jacob Boehme has to recognise that only a profound spiritual-scientific education can penetrate into that which lived in Jacob Boehme. He knew of the human being that the physical human being has another, more spiritual, finer nature as its basis. Something is between the physical human being and the mental one that Jacob Boehme called “tinctura.” This is an often misunderstood word. At that time, there were also great spirits like for example Newton, who endeavoured for years to become clear in their mind about what Jacob Boehme means speaking of the tinctura.

If we look back at former times of the distant past, we find that there the world was still completely different from now. Jacob Boehme was completely filled with an immense doctrine of evolution. As extensive, splendid, and applicable to everything spiritual and sensuous at the same time as Jacob Boehme's view of world evolution understands it, no scientific view has shown it. He looks back at far distant periods when the earth still looked completely different from now. Jacob Boehme understood in a strange way what some naturalists have said in an amateurish way about the primeval condition of the earth. The modern naturalist pursues the living beings back to more imperfect forms. He still says then at best, everything on earth developed from a universal nebula. The forms emerged from the principles inherent in a universal nebula.

Jacob Boehme considers this development in much bigger style. He turns his look at all mental beings, at all animal beings, at all minerals, plants, and animals. He is able to behold the former conditions, the forms, which the human being had in former times when these beings were not yet such beings as they are today. In those days, they were included in a kind of original matter from which only the later world has arisen. He sees the world of appearance and the beings as they existed as rudiments at that time. He beholds an earth that is not solid, not air, not water, not fire on which neither animals nor plants do exist, but which contains everything that appeared then. Boehme does not speak of a fantastic primeval nebula, but about the tinctura that was real once when it formed our globe and that rests in secrecy on the basis of the beings today. This tinctura exists in the human being as a spiritual-mental organism behind the physical being. It is also in all other things. From the tinctura, Jacob Boehme derives the creation of all living beings with which he distinguishes seven basic qualities. With it, one comes to a very deep basis of his worldview. Equipped with it, one has a means to solve countless riddles of the world. Besides, Jacob Boehme has a wonderful language, compared with it, our modern language appears grey and lifeless with its concepts.

We have to imagine that the tinctura lives in the world like the primeval matter, that in it everything rests like in a maternal womb, that then the forms come out. He calls a type of the forms the acerbic ones. The human forefather was a being with a cartilaginous scaffolding, as well as the cartilaginous fishes have it today. The skeleton crystallised then from the original tinctura; with acerbity the skeleton of the earth crystallised from the original tinctura. Jacob Boehme calls this the salty in the world. One must not imagine that the original acerbic also had the form of a skeleton. However, everything that tended to become solid and earthy, that crystallised from the original spiritual matter was for Jacob Boehme the acerbic, the salty.

The second form of nature is that which preserves the internal mobility, so that the parts can perpetually interact with each other. Jacob Boehme calls this the mercurial.

The third is the sulfuric, containing the power of fire in itself like a concealed force. What one sees as fire originating from the matter is the one side, and the human and animal passions are the other one. Now they are separated from each other like North Pole and South Pole. The intuition of the folk, as well as Jacob Boehme looked back at a time of the earliest development. There was something that was not a material fire and also not passion from which, however, the fire differentiated on one side, on the other side the passion. At that time, they had a common basis. Jacob Boehme finds the same spiritual basis in the material fire as in the human passion. There is a relationship between that which slumbers in the matter and the human passion. There is something in it that is related to the spiritual side of the fire.

The sulphur contains the fire in itself concealed as the body contains the animal passion. Thus, Jacob Boehme distinguishes this four at first, tinctura, salt, sulphur, fire.

In the same way as the old German folk intuition looked back at a time when there was neither fire nor passion, Jacob Boehme looks back at such a condition, at such a thing, which becomes the fifth original form of nature if it spiritualises itself. He calls it water. It is water in the sense as we find the water in the Bible, as an external symbol of the soul. The spirit of God hovered over the surface of the water, over the soul forces slumbering in the matter, so that they can be raised.

The sixth form of nature originates if the inside penetrates outwardly if the inner life comes to life in such a way that it can be perceived. Jacob Boehme calls it sound. This is any soul expression that the inside of the being has in itself in such a way as the bell the peal. The sound can also express the uniform divine nature. The seventh form then originates, the wisdom, the divine force contained in the world. In these seven forms, Jacob Boehme sees the whole nature included.

The lowest member of the human nature has to do something with the salt-like acerbity; then it rises higher and higher up to wisdom. Furthermore, the forces of nature and the human being are related to the solar system. The relationship of all beings expresses itself everywhere. Jacob Boehme also calls tinctura everything that moves like the spiritual life blood through all beings. It is between the world thought and any matter. Jacob Boehme imagines the great master builder of the world as an artist who organised the world sensuous-physically. He calls the connection between the sensuous-physical and the creator of the world tinctura again. He searches it in any single being.

This is the difficult in his writings that we have to come to grips with his ideas. The human being is normally glad if he has established a few concepts to himself. Jacob Boehme does not form single abstractions that stand side by side like soldiers. He creeps as it were into all beings. He regards all beings as related, as connected with each other. In order to understand Jacob Boehme you have to make your mind flexible as nature is flexible, so that the concepts can also change as the things in nature change. Theosophists also often establish narrow concepts. However, it does not matter to have a concept, but that you are able to dissolve the concept immediately again. If you have a concept, you must be able to transform it as the things change. Nothing is more obstructive than abstract, carefully weighed concepts. Therefore, those cannot understand Jacob Boehme who read him because they form solid concepts first; however, he follows the living life of the things. The concepts must change, as well as the things change. However, people feel hovering as it were. One has really lost ground if one wants to understand the world. You have to keep the centre in yourselves only.

Jacob Boehme's soul painting is a reproduction of nature. He finds in the human mind what is related to the tinctura, the imagination. Imagination is a soul force that is in the middle between the force of thinking and the force of willing. Someone who is able to understand his concepts pictorially and to visualise them in his mind, so that not an abstract picture of the plant faces him, but a plant like of sensuous appearance. That viewable concept is impregnated as it were with real life from within. Someone who is able to do this has imagination. It can be increased in such a way that the human being works creatively and gains influence on that which lives as tinctura in the things.

Here begins for Jacob Boehme that alchemy which is able to react on the matter, the tinctura, and from there also on the sensuous things. Thus, the imaginative human being is able to become a magician. Because Jacob Boehme understood this, we are allowed to call him the greatest magician of the new time. Jacob Boehme calls imagination the great virgin of nature, the virgin wisdom. Now, he goes back to the creation of Adam and further on to the original divine imagination. He says, the divine imagination imprinted the original spiritual human being in the matter according to its likeness. He calls this spirit man the original Adam.

While this spiritual human being is there from the outset, he shows how the spiritual human being already existed in the original tinctura, how then, however, an entire spiritual change took place in the world creation. He places this change on the fourth day of creation. He did not see this original human being whom he calls the tinctura man with eyes, but inside he was clairvoyant, so that he could clairvoyantly perceive everything that took place in him. Then selfhood, independence appeared in this human being. That came during the fourth day, and the clairvoyant human being became aware of himself, started looking his own being. Spiritual-divine creation was originally all around. The primeval man beheld this clairvoyantly. He saw himself now. This was his renunciation of God. This human being would completely have solidified unless anything else were possible. The human being did no longer behold the world clairvoyantly. The point in time happened when the clairvoyant human being could perceive externally what is divine. At first, sun, moon, and stars are pictures of the divine he had seen once in himself.

Thus, the human being had seceded divinity, but due to the senses the world had become perceptible to him. It is the idea of the sensuous perception, which made the ancient tinctura man the material man. He becomes a material human being by his own idea taken from the material world, so that he himself became a sensuous human being from within due to his own imagination of the sensuous.

Jacob Boehme saw a deep relationship of all beings, of the animals, plants, and minerals. He said, everything that lives in the world in skin and bone, in flesh and blood and so on is related to something on earth. Jacob Boehme relates the whole social and artistic structure also to the constellations of the planets. He shows the connection of the planets with the human life. All that is so clear to someone who wants to understand him, but so big that a small-minded time cannot understand him.

Another question still entered his scope of view, the question of the origin of the evil, the evil in the world, the question, how does the evil come into the world? Is the evil contained in the primal ground of the world? The primal ground is then not a good one.

He finds an answer comparing the original good to the light, the pure light. No darkness is included in it. While the light appears, becomes discernible, it appears by the objects with the shadow. Are we allowed to say that darkness is included in the light? Certainly not. Pure light only goes out from the source of the light. However, from the objects the opposite of the light goes out. The light faces us in the world as the primal ground ... (gap in the text). As it is true that the shadow must be present with the light, it is true that the bad must be in the good. We can compare the divine harmony to the human soul. It penetrates the organism. The soul puts the limbs of the human in motion. The world harmony of the divinity enjoys life in the soul in such a way that the limbs have independence. Although the harmony of the soul forms the basis, the limbs can turn against each other. If freedom should be in the world, the limbs must be able to turn against each other. Freedom and the possibility of the bad belong together, harmony and the possibility of disharmony. Just this thought of Jacob Boehme inspired Schelling (Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Sch., 1775-1854, philosopher), and you find a wonderful representation of that which lives in the freedom of the human being (Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom, 1809).

This writing by Schelling about the freedom of the human being is like an offering to Jacob Boehme. Schelling understood something of Jacob Boehme. Boehme lived on with Goethe and other great spirits of the 19th century. Only when materialism arose, the spiritual life was alienated from Jacob Boehme. Then one understood him less and less. A time comes again in which one will not only understand him but in which one wants to learn from him. A new era approaches for theosophy. A time comes then, when one understands such great spiritual deeds like Jacob Boehme's writings, like the Germanic mythology again when they progress towards a new glorification. A spiritualisation of all wisdom, all human energy can then be caused. If the age comes to an end, which has the task of the external control of all natural forces, then Jacob Boehme will also be understood again. Copernicus, Galilei, and Giordano Bruno also belonged to the same age to which Jacob Boehme belongs. They have the world led to the observation of the sensuous world, the external world.

Jacob Boehme appeared just in that age, and his works are like a big summary of all mental achievements of humanity. He arranges all that for the world in the dawn of an age that introduces the materialistic epoch. When the materialistic age has topped out, Jacob Boehme is also found again and everything that is contained in his works. Everything is contained in his works that the world has collected as spiritual treasures.

We must not consider the achievements of theosophy as something particular. The theosophical world movement must be something that is alive, that signifies life and growth. If the theosophical society represents this, it understands how to work in the sense of the great spirits of former times, in the sense of Jacob Boehme, it becomes theosophical work in the true sense of the word.

[ 1 ] In selecting such a theme as the one I propose for to-day, “Haeckel, The Riddle of the Universe, and Theosophy,” I am aware that to a student of spiritual life it is fraught with difficulties, and that the statements I am about to make may possibly give offence to so-called materialists and theosophists alike. And yet there seems to me a necessity that this matter should, once in a while, be approached from the theosophical point of view, since from one standpoint the “gospel” derived from Haeckel's researches has been made accessible to thousands upon thousands of mankind by means of his book, The Riddle of the Universe. Ten thousand copies of this work were sold within a very short time of its appearance, and it has been translated into many languages. Seldom, indeed, has a book of serious purpose found so wide a circulation.

[ 2 ] Now, if theosophy is to make clear its aims, it is but right that it should take into account so important a publication—one that concerns itself with the most profound questions of existence. Theosophy should deal with it comprehensively, and seek to express its attitude with regard to it. For after all, the theosophical conception of life is not combative but rather conciliatory, desirous of harmonising opposing views.

Furthermore, I myself am in a very peculiar position with respect to Ernst Haeckel's conception of the universe, for I know well those feelings and perceptions which, partly by reason of a scientific consciousness, and partly from the general conditions of the world and the usual conceptions thereof, draw men as though by the power of some fascination towards such great and simple paths of thought as those from which Haeckel has constructed his conception of the universe. And here I may say that I should hardly have dared to speak my mind thus openly were I in any sense an opponent of Haeckel, or were it not that I am intimately acquainted with all that can be experienced in the process of adapting oneself to the wonderful edifice of his ideas.

[ 3 ] The very first thing that anyone bringing his attention frankly to bear upon the development of spiritual life is bound to recognise, is the moral power displayed in Haeckel's labours. For years past this man, imbued with an enormous amount of courage, has fought for the acceptance and the recognition of his conception of the universe—fought strenuously, having again and again to defend himself against the manifold obstacles that impeded his progress. On the other hand, we must not be unmindful of the fact that Haeckel's great powers of comprehensive expression are balanced by equally comprehensive powers of thought: the very qualities in which many scientists are deficient happen to be those with which he is very highly endowed.

In gathering together the results of his researches and investigations under the one comprehensive title of a conception of the universe, he has boldly departed from those tendencies of scientific thought which have for several decades opposed any such undertaking; and this very departure must be recognised as an act of special significance.

Another fact to be noted is, that I am placed in a singular position with regard to the theosophical conception of the universe when I speak about Haeckel; for anyone acquainted with the process of development through which the theosophical movement has passed will be aware of what sharp words and what opposition, not only on the part of theosophists in general, but on the part of the founder of the theosophical movement, Madame H. P. Blavatsky, were directed against the deductions which Ernst Haeckel draws from his work of investigation. Few publications touching cosmogony have been so violently opposed in the Secret Doctrine as that of Haeckel.

You will understand that I speak here without prejudice, for I think that in parts of my book, Haeckel and his Opponents, as well as in my other work on Cosmogonies of the Nineteenth Century, I have to the fullest extent done justice to what I take to be the real truths contained in Haeckel's conception of the universe. I believe that I have sifted from his labours that which is fruitful, and that which is enduring. [ 4 ] Consider the general attitude towards the conception of the world in so far as it is based upon scientific reasons. During the first half of the nineteenth century a totally different spiritual attitude prevailed from that known in the second half. Haeckel's appearance on the scene coincided with a time in which it was an easy thing for the new growth of so-called Darwinism to be subjected to materialistic interpretations. If, therefore, we realise how insistent was this tendency, at the very time when Haeckel was a young and enthusiastic student entering upon the pursuit of natural science, to reduce all discoveries in that domain of learning to a materialistic issue, the consequent bent towards materialism may well be understood, and may therefore lead us into a path of peace rather than of conflict.

If you will consider those men who, about the middle of the nineteenth century, set themselves to confront the great riddle of humanity with calm, unprejudiced eyes, you will find two things: on the one hand, a state of absolute resignation in relation to the highest questions concerning a divine ordering of the world, such as immortality, freedom of will, origin of life—a resignation, in short, with regard to all the actual riddles of the universe. On the other hand you will discover, co-existing with this attitude of resignation, remnants of an ancient religious tradition, and this even among students of natural science. Bold adventuring towards investigation of such questions from the scientific point of view was, during the first half of the nineteenth century, to be met with only among German philosophers, such as Schelling and Fichte, as well as Oken, who, by the way, was a pioneer of freedom without equal, not alone upon this subject, but in many paths of life.

All attempts made by men in the present day towards the fundamentalising of world-theories are to be found in still bolder outline among the works of Oken. And yet all this was animated by a certain subtleness—a breath, as it were, of that old spiritualism which is clearly conscious that, behind and beyond all that our senses can perceive, all that can be investigated by means of instruments, there still lurks something spiritual to be sought for. [ 5 ] Haeckel has again and again told us how distinctly the mind of his great teacher—that deep student of natural science, Johannes Müller, of imperishable memory—was tinged with this subtle breath. You can read in Haeckel's own writings how he had been struck (it was at the time when he was busy at the Berlin University and studying the anatomy of men and animals under Johannes Müller) by the great resemblance apparent not alone in outward form, but also by that similarity which compels attention in the evolution of form. He tells us how he had remarked to his master that such resemblance as this must hint at some mysterious kinship between man and beast, and that the answer made by Johannes Müller, who had searched so deeply into Nature, had been: “Ah! he who lays bare the secret of species will indeed have reached the highest summit.”

What we have to do is to attune ourselves to the spirit, the motive, of such a seeker; of one who assuredly would never have halted had he beheld a prospect of entering into possession of that secret. On one other occasion, when teacher and pupil were travelling together on some journey of investigation, Haeckel again referred to the close relationship existing between animals; and Johannes Müller once more replied very much to the same effect. In alluding to this I only wish to draw your attention to a certain attitude of mind.

If you will look back among the writings of any well-known naturalist belonging to the first half of the nineteenth century—for instance, to those of Burdach—you will find that, in spite of all the careful and elaborate minutiae appertaining to natural science, whenever the kingdom of life comes to be considered, the suggestion is ever present that here no mere physical and chemical powers are in operation, but that something higher has to be taken into account.

[ 6 ] When, however, improvements in microscopes made it possible for man to observe, to a far greater extent than heretofore, all those curious formations which serve to distinguish living creatures, showing that we have to do with a fine web of the minutest animalcules, and that this actually composes the physical body—when, as I have said, so much was made visible, the attitude of the scientific mind underwent a change. This physical body, which serves plants and animals as their garment, now resolved itself, so far as the scientist was concerned, into a tissue of cells. This discovery as to the life of these cells was made by naturalists about the end of the third decade of the nineteenth century, and, seeing that it was possible to ascertain so much about the lives of such animalcules by the exercise of the senses, assisted by the aid of the microscope, it required but a step further for that which acts as the organising principle in these living creatures to be lost sight of, because no physical sense, nothing external, proclaimed its presence.

[ 7 ] At that time there was no Darwinism, yet it was owing to the impression made by this great advance in the domain of practical research that we find a natural science grounded in materialism coming into vogue during the 'forties and 'fifties. It was then thought that what could be perceived by the senses, and thus explained, could be understood by the whole world. Things that now seem puerile created then the most intense sensation, and became, so to speak, a gospel for humanity. Such words as “energy” and “matter” became popular by-words, while men like Büchner and Moleschott were recognised authorities. It was considered an evidence of childish fancy, belonging to earlier epochs of the human race, to suppose that anything that could be minutely examined with the eye was possessed of aught beyond what was actually visible.

[ 8 ] Now, you must bear in mind that, side by side with all discovery, feelings and sensations play a great part in the development of mental life. Anyone who may be inclined to think that cosmogonies are the result of bold calculations of reason makes a mistake: in all such matters the heart is active, and the secret sources of education also contribute their share. Humanity has, during its latest phase of development, been passing through a materialistic stage of education. The actual beginning of this stage is traceable far back, it is true; nevertheless, it reached its apex in the time of which we are speaking. We call this epoch of materialistic education the age of enlightenment.

Man had now—and this was the final result of the Christian conception of the universe—to find his foothold upon the firm ground of reality: the God whom he had so long sought beyond the clouds he was now bidden to seek within his inner consciousness. This had a far-reaching effect upon the entire development of the nineteenth century, and anyone interested in psychological changes and caring to study the development of humanity at that time will be enabled to understand how all the events and occurrences which then followed upon each other, such as the struggle for freedom in the 'thirties and 'forties, can but be classed as separate storms and convulsions of the feelings which were the result of that newly developed sense of physical reality, and which were bound to run their appointed course. We have to deal with a tendency in human education that sought in the first place forcibly to eradicate from the human heart every aspiration towards a spiritual life.

It is not from natural science that those deductions, pronouncing the world to consist of naught but what can be perceived by the senses, have been drawn; they are a consequence of the educational teaching obtaining at that time. Materialism had become interwoven with explanations relating to the facts of natural science. Anyone who will take the trouble to study these things as they really are, bringing to bear upon the subject a mind free from prejudice, will be in a position to see for himself that the case is as I am about to set forth, but it is impossible for me in the space of one short hour to deal with the matter exhaustively.

[ 9 ] The whole of the stupendous advance made in the realms of natural science, of astronomy, of physics and chemistry, due to spectrum analysis, to a greater theoretical knowledge of heat, and to that teaching concerning the development of living organisms known to us as the Darwinian theory—all these come within this period of materialism. Had these discoveries been made at a time when people still thought as they did about the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, a time when a greater spiritual sensitiveness prevailed, then these discoveries would have been so construed as to furnish proofs positive of the working of the spirit in Nature—indeed, by very reason of the wonderful discoveries in natural science the supremacy of spirit would have been deemed incontestably established.

[ 10 ] It is clear, then, that scientific investigations with regard to Nature need not necessarily and under all circumstances lead to materialism. It was merely because so many leaders of civilisation at that time were materialistically inclined that these discoveries became interpreted in a materialistic way. Materialism was imported into natural science, and naturalists, such as Ernst Haeckel, accepted it unconsciously. Darwin's discovery per se need not have tended to materialism.

Materialism points to Darwin's book, The Origin of Species, as its chief support. Now, it is clear that if a thinker inclining to materialism approached these discoveries, he would be sure to invest Darwinism with a materialistic colouring, and it was due to Haeckel's boldly materialistic attitude of thought that Darwinism has received its present materialistic interpretation. It was an event of great moment when Haeckel, in the year 1864, announced the connection between man and the higher animals (apes). At that time this could but mean that man was descended from the higher animals. But since that day scientific thought has undergone a curious process of development. Haeckel has adhered to his opinion that man is the descendant of those higher animals, they being in their turn the developments of still lower types, reaching back finally to the very simplest forms of life. It is thus that Haeckel constructs man's entire genealogical tree—in fact, the lineal descent of all humanity. By this means everything of a spiritual nature became for him excluded from the world, except as a reflection of already-existing material things.

And yet Haeckel, having in the depths of his being a peculiar spiritual consciousness working side by side with his materialistic “thinking mind,” casts about for some means of help, since these two parts of his being have never been able to “come into line;” he has not succeeded in bringing about a working partnership between them. For this reason he comes to the conclusion that even the smallest living creature may be accredited with a sort of consciousness, but he does not explain to us how the complex human consciousness is developed out of that which is latent in the smallest living creature.

In the course of a conversation Haeckel once said: “People are always objecting to my materialism, but I don't deny the Spirit, nor do I deny Life: I only want people to observe that when you place matter in a retort everything in it soon begins to work and effervesce—to ferment.” That remark shows plainly enough that Haeckel possesses a spiritual as well as a scientific mind.

[ 11 ] Among those who, at the time of Darwin's supremacy, proclaimed their adherence to the theory of man's descent from the higher animals was the English scientist Huxley. He asserted the close similarity in external structure between man and the higher animals to be even greater than that existing between the higher and lower species of apes, and that we could but come to the conclusion that a line of descent existed leading from the higher animals to man. In more recent times scientists have discovered new facts, but even then those feelings which for centuries past have educated the human heart and soul were undergoing a change, a transformation. Hence it was that Huxley in the 'nineties, not long before his death, gave utterance to the following view—a strange one, coming from him:

“We see therefore,” he observed, “that in Nature life is conditioned by a series of steps, proceeding from the simplest and most incomplete up to the complicated and perfected. We cannot follow this continuity, yet why should not this continuous line proceed onwards in a region which we are unable to survey?”

In these words the way is indicated by which man may, by the pursuit of natural science, rise to the idea of a Divine being, standing high above man—a being farther removed from man than man himself is from the one-celled organism. Huxley had once said:

“I would rather have descended from such ancestors, ancestors similar to the brute, than from such as deny the human intelligence.”¹

[ 12 ] Thus do precepts and concepts, all the soul thinks and feels, alter in the course of time. Haeckel has continued his work of research along the lines he first adopted. In the year 1867 he had already published his popular work, The Natural History of Creation, and from this book much may be learnt. It teaches the laws by which the living kingdoms in Nature are linked one to the other. We can see through the veil shrouding the grey past and bring what is existent into relation with what is extinct, of which only the last remains may now be found upon the earth.

Haeckel has recognised this accurately. That world-history, here in a wider sense playing its part, I can only elucidate by making use of an illustration. You may find it no more accurate than are most comparative illustrations, yet it fairly bears out my meaning.

Let us suppose that a writer on art appeared upon the scene and produced a book in which he treated with consummate skill the whole period stretching from the days of Leonardo da Vinci to modern times. He presents to our minds all that has been achieved in the pursuit of art during that period, and we believe ourselves enabled to look within at the development of man's creative powers. Let us, then, go further, and imagine that another person came along and criticised the descriptive work, saying: “But, look here! Everything this art historian has put on record never happened at all! These are all descriptions of pictures that don't exist! What use have I for such imaginings? One has to investigate reality in order to arrive at the true method of adequately presenting art in its historical bearings. I will therefore investigate the remains of Leonardo da Vinci himself, and try to reconstruct the body, and then judge by the contours of his skull what brain he is likely to have had and how it may probably have functioned.” In the same way the events described by the art historian are depicted by the professor of anatomy. There may have been no mistake. All may have been correct. Well, then, in that case, says the anatomist, we must “fight to a finish” against this idealisation of our art historian; we must combat his phantasy, his imagination, for it amounts to credulity and superstition to allow anyone to attempt to make us believe that besides the form of Leonardo da Vinci there was some “gaseous vortex” to be apprehended as a soul.

[ 13 ] Now, this illustration, in spite of its manifest absurdity, really hits the mark. This is the position in which everyone finds himself who chooses to assert his belief in the Natural History of Creation as the only accurate one. Nor can this illustration be negatived by merely indicating its weak points. They are there, perhaps, but that is beside the point. What is of importance is that the obvious should for once be presented according to its inner relationship; and that is what Haeckel has done in a full and exhaustive way. It has been done in such a manner that anyone wishing to see, can see, how active is the Spirit in the moulding of the form, where, to all appearances, matter alone reigns supreme. Much may be learnt from that; we may learn how to acquire spiritually knowledge as to the world's material combination, how to acquire it with earnestness, dignity, and perseverance. Anyone going through Haeckel's Anthropogenesis sees how form builds itself up, as it were, from the simplest living creature to the most complicated, from the simplest organism to man. He who understands how to add the Spirit to what is already granted by the materialist may in this example of “Haeckelism” have the opportunity of studying the best elementary theosophy.

[ 14 ] The results of Haeckel's research constitute, so to speak, the first chapter of theosophy. Far better than by any other method, we can arrive at a comprehension of the growth and transformation of organic forms by a study of his works. We have every reason to call attention to the great things which have been achieved through the progress of this profound study of Nature.

[ 15 ] At the time when Haeckel had constructed this wonderful edifice, the world was facing the deeper riddles of humanity as problems without solution. In the year 1872 Du Bois-Reymond, in a speech memorable for its brilliant rhetoric, alluded to the limits placed to natural science and to our knowledge of Nature. During the past decade the utterances of few men have been so much discussed as has this lecture with the celebrated “Ignorabimus.” It was a momentous event, and offered a complete contrast to Haeckel's own development and to his theory of the descent of man. In another lecture Du Bois-Reymond has tabulated seven great questions as to existence, questions which the naturalist can only answer in part, if at all. These seven “riddles of the universe” are:

1. The origin of energy and matter
2. How did the first movement arise in this quiescent matter?
3. How did life originate within this “matter set in motion?”
4. How is it that so many things in Nature bear the stamp of utility to a degree only met with in such human achievements as are the result of intelligent reasoning?
5. Assuming we were able to examine our brain, we should find it to be nothing but a jumble of little whirling spheres; how is it, then, that these same little balls, or spheres, enable me, let us say, to “see red,” to hear the tones of the organ, to feel pain, etc.? Think of a mass of whirling atoms, and it will be plain to you that it is not from them that you derive the sensations expressing themselves in such words as “I see red,” “I smell the scent of the rose,” etc.
6. How do understanding, reason, and speech develop in the living being?
7. How can “free will” originate in a being so circumscribed that his every act is the product of the whirling of these atoms?

[ 16 ] It was in connection with these riddles of the universe put forward by Du Bois-Reymond that Haeckel gave his book the title of The Riddle of the Universe. His desire was to give the answer to the questions raised by Du Bois-Reymond. There is a specially important passage in the lecture Du Bois-Reymond delivered on the “Limits of Inquiry into Nature,” which will enable us to step across into the field of theosophy.

[ 17 ] At the time when Du Bois-Reymond was lecturing at Leipsic before an assembly of natural scientists and medical men, the spirit of natural science was seeking after a purer, higher, and freer atmosphere—such an atmosphere as might lead to the theosophical cosmogony. On that occasion Du Bois-Reymond spoke as follows:—

“If we study man from the point of view of natural science, he presents himself to us as a working compound of unconscious atoms. To explain man in accordance with natural science means to ‘understand’ this atomic motion to its uttermost degree.”

He considered that if one were in a position to indicate the precise way in which the atoms moved at any given place in the brain, while saying, for instance, “I think,” or “Give me an apple”—if this could be done, then the problem would, according to natural science, have been solved. Du Bois-Reymond calls this the “astronomic” understanding of man. Even as a miniature firmament of stars would be the appearance of these active groups of human atoms. But what has not here been taken into consideration is the question as to how sensations, feelings, and thoughts arise in the consciousness of the man of whom, let us say, I perfectly well know that his atoms move in such and such a manner. That natural science can as little determine as it can the manner in which consciousness arises. Du Bois-Reymond concluded with the following words:—

“In the sleeping man, who is not conscious of the sensation expressed in the words ‘I see red,’ we have before us the physical group of the active members of the body. With regard to this sleeping body, we need not say, ‘We cannot know’—‘Ignorabimus!’ We are able to comprehend the sleeping man. Man awake, on the contrary, is incomprehensible to the scientist. In the sleeping man something is absent which is nevertheless present in the man awake: I allude to the consciousness through which he appears before us as a spiritual being.” [ 18 ] At that time, owing to a lack of courage in matters concerning natural science, further progress was impossible; there was no question as yet of theosophy, because natural science had, in concise terms, defined the boundary, had set a barrier at the precise spot up to which it wished to proceed in its own fashion. It was owing to this self-limitation of science that theosophical cosmogony had, about this time, its beginning. No one is going to maintain that man, when he goes to sleep “ceases to be,” and on re-awaking in the morning “resumes existence.” And yet Du Bois-Reymond says that something which is present in him by day is absent during the night. It is here that the theosophical conception of the universe is enabled to assert itself. Sense-consciousness is in abeyance in the sleeping man. As, however, the man of science uses as a prop for his argument that which brings about this sense-consciousness, he is unable to say anything concerning the spirituality that transcends it, because he lacks precisely the knowledge of that which makes of man a spiritual being.

By the use of such means as serve for natural science we are unable to investigate matters spiritual. Natural science depends upon what may be demonstrated to the senses. What can no longer be sensed when man falls asleep, cannot be the object of scientific investigation. It is in this something, no longer perceptible in the sleeping man, that we must seek for that entity by which man becomes a spiritual being. No mental representation can be made of what transcends the purely material and passes beyond the knowledge of the senses, until organs, of which the scientist can know nothing if he only depends on his sense-perceptions—spiritual eyes—are developed; eyes which are able to see beyond the confines of the senses.

For this reason we have no right to say, “Here are the limits of cognition;” but merely, “Here are the limits of sense-perception.”

The scientist perceives by means of his senses, but he is no spiritual observer; he must become one. become a “seer.” in order that he may see what is spiritual in man. This is the bourne towards which tends all profound wisdom in the world; not seeking the mere widening of its radius where actual material knowledge is concerned, but striving towards the raising of human faculty.

This also is the great difference between what is taught by present-day natural science and what is taught by theosophy. Natural science says: “Man has senses with which he perceives, and a mind whereby he is enabled to connect the evidences of his senses. What does not come within the scope of these lies beyond the ken of natural science.”

[ 19 ] Theosophy takes a different view of the case. It says: “You scientists are perfectly right, so long as you judge from your point of view, just as right as the blind man would be from his in saying that the world is devoid of light and colour. We make no objection to the standpoint of natural science, we would only place it in juxtaposition to the view taken by theosophy, which asserts that it is possible—nay, that it is certain—that man is not obliged to remain stationary at the point of view he occupies to-day; that it is possible for organs—spiritual eyes—to develop after a similar fashion to that in which those physical sense-organs of the body, the eyes and ears, have been developed; and once these new organs are developed, higher faculties will make themselves apparent.”

This must be taken on faith at first—nay, it need not even be believed; it may just be accepted as an assertion in an unprejudiced manner. Nevertheless, as true as it is that all believers in the Natural History of Creation have not beheld all that is therein presented to them as fact (how many of them have actually investigated these facts?), so true is it that these facts concerning a knowledge of the super-sensual can be explained to everyone.

The ordinary man, held in bondage by his senses, cannot possibly gain admittance to this realm. It is only by the aid of certain methods of investigation that the spiritual world opens to the seeker. Thus, man must transform himself into an instrument for those higher powers, one able to penetrate into worlds hidden from those still enthralled by their physical senses. To such as can accomplish this, visions of a quite distinctive nature will appear. The ordinary human being is not capable of seeing for himself, or of consciously recognising things about him, when his senses are wrapped in slumber; but when he applies occult methods of investigation this incapacity ceases, and he begins to receive quite consciously impressions of the astral world.

[ 20 ] There is at first a state of transition, familiar to all, between that exterior life of sense cognisance and that life which even in the most profound state of slumber is not quite extinguished. This state of transition is the chaos of dreams. To most people these will appear as mere reflections of what they have been experiencing during the previous day. Indeed, you will ask, how should a man be able to receive any new experiences during sleep, since the inner self has as yet no organs of cognition? But still, something is there—life is there. That which left the body when sleep wrapped it round has memory, and this remembrance rises before the sleeper in pictures more or less fantastic and confused. (Should anyone desire more information on this subject, it will be found in my books entitled The Way of Initiation and Initiation and its Results, Theosophical Publishing Society, 161, New Bond Street, W.)

[ 21 ] Now, in place of this chaos, order and harmony will, in the course of time, be brought about; an order and a harmony governing this region of dreams, and this will be a sign that the person in question is beginning to develop spiritually. Then he will cease to see the mere aftermath of reality, grotesquely portrayed; he will see things which have in ordinary life no existence.

Those who desire to remain within the boundary of the senses will, of course, say, “But they are only dreams!” Yet, if they, by such means, obtain an insight into the loftiest secrets of creation, it may surely be a matter of indifference to them whether they gain this through the medium of a dream or by means of the senses. Let us, for instance, suppose that Graham Bell had invented the telephone in a state of dream-consciousness. That would have been of no moment whatever to-day, for the telephone itself in any case is an important and useful invention. Clear and regular dreaming is therefore the beginning, and if in the stillness of the night hours you have come to “live in your dreams,” if, after a time, you have habituated yourself to a cognisance of worlds quite other than this, then will soon come a time when you will learn, by these new experiences, to step forth into actuality.

Then the whole world will assume a new aspect, and you will be as sensible of this change as you would be of threading your way through a row of solid chairs, through anything your senses may at this moment be aware of in their vicinity. Such is the condition of anyone who has acquired a new state of consciousness. Something new, a new kind of personality, has awakened within him. In the course of his further development a stage will at length be reached where not only the curious apparitions of the higher worlds pass before the spiritual eye as visions of light, but the tones also of those higher worlds become audible, telling their spiritual names, and able to convey to the seer a new meaning. In the language of the mysteries, this is expressed in the words, “Man sees the sun at midnight;” which is to say, that for him there are no longer any obstacles in space to prevent him from seeing the sun when on the other side of the world. Then, too, is the work of the sun, acting within the universe, made plain to him, and he becomes aware of that harmony of the spheres, that truth to which the Pythagoreans bore witness.

Tones and sounds, this music of the spheres, now become, for him, actual. Poets who were also seers have known of the existence of something approaching this music, and only those who can grasp Goethe's meaning from this point of view will be able to understand those passages, for instance, occurring in the “Prologue in Heaven” (see Faust, pt. I), which may be taken either as poetic phraseology or as a lofty truth. Where Faust is a second time introduced into the world of spirits, he speaks of these sounds: “Sounding loud to spirit-hearing, See the new-born Day appearing!” Faust, Part II.

[ 22 ] Here we have the connection between natural science and theosophy. Du Bois-Reymond has pointed to the fact that the sleeper only can be an object for the experiments of natural science. But if man should begin to open his inner senses, if he should come to see and hear that there is such a thing as spiritual actuality, then indeed will the whole edifice of elementary theosophy, so wonderfully, constructed by Haeckel—a structure none can admire more profoundly than I—then will this great work glow with a new glory, revealing, as it must, an entirely new meaning. According to this marvellous structure we see a simple living creature as the archetype, yet we may trace back that creature spiritually to an earlier condition of consciousness.

[ 23 ] I will now explain what theosophy holds as the doctrine of the descent of man. It is obvious that in a single lecture like the present no “proofs” can be advanced, and it is also natural that to all who are only acquainted with the theories commonly advanced on this subject everything I say will appear fantastic and highly improbable. All theories thus advanced originated, however, in the leading circles of materialistic thought, and many who would probably resent the suggestion of materialism as utterly foreign to their nature, are nevertheless (and indeed quite comprehensibly so) caught in a net of self-delusion.

The true theosophical teaching concerning evolution is, in our day, hardly known; and when our opponents speak of it, he who does know is at once able to recognise by the objections raised that he is dealing with a caricature of this doctrine of evolution.

For all such as merely acknowledge a soul, or spirit, to which expression is given within the human, or animal organism, the theosophical mode of representation must be utterly incomprehensible, and every discussion touching that subject is, with such persons, quite fruitless. They must first free themselves from the state of materialistic suggestion in which they live, and must make themselves acquainted with the fundamental attitude of theosophical thought.

[ 24 ] Just as the methods of research employed by physical science trace back the organism of the physical body into the dim distance of primeval times, so it is the mode of theosophical thought to delve into the past with regard to the soul and the spirit. Now, the latter method does not lead to any conclusions antagonistic or contradictory to the facts advanced by natural science; only with the materialistic interpretations of these facts it can have nothing to do.

Natural science traces the descent of the physical living being backwards, arriving by this course at organisms of a less and less complicated kind. Natural science declares: “The perfect living being is a development of these simpler and less complicated ones;” and, as far as physical structure is concerned, this is true, although the hypothetical forms of primeval ages of which materialistic science speaks do not entirely conform with those known to theosophical research. This, however, need not concern us at the present moment.

[ 25 ] From the physical standpoint theosophy also acknowledges the relationship of man with the higher mammals, with the man-like apes. But there can be no question of the descent of our humanity from a creature of the mind and soul calibre of the ape, as we know it. The facts are quite otherwise, and everything that materialism puts forward of this nature rests upon an error of thought. This error may be cleared up by means of a simple comparison sufficient for our purpose, though trite.

We will imagine two persons, one morally deficient and intellectually insignificant; the other endowed with a high standard of morality and of considerable intellectuality. We will assume that some fact or other confirms the relationship of these two. Now, I ask you, will the inference be drawn that the one in every way more highly endowed is descended from one who was of the standard described? Never! We may think it a surprising fact that they are brothers. We may find, however, that they had a father who was not of exactly the same standard as either of the brothers, and in that case one will be found to have worked his way up, the other to have degenerated.

[ 26 ] Materialistic science makes a similar mistake to that here indicated. Facts known to it induce the acceptance of a connection between ape and man, yet from this it should not draw the conclusion that man is descended from the ape-like animals. What should be accepted is a primeval creature, a common physical ancestor, from the stock of which the ape has degenerated, while man has been the ascending “brother.”

[ 27 ] Now, what was there in that primeval creature to cause this ascendance to the human on the one hand, the sinking into the ape kingdom on the other? Theosophy answers, “The soul of man himself did this.” Even then the soul of man was present, at a time when, on the face of this physical earth, the creatures possessing the highest sense of development were these common ancestors of man and ape. From amid the multitude of these ancestors the best types were capable of subjecting themselves to the soul's progress, the rest were not. Thus it happens that the present-day human soul has a “soul-ancestor” just as the body has its physical forebear.

It is true that, so far as the senses are concerned, those “soul-ancestors” could not, according to our present-day observations, have been perceptible within our bodies. They still belonged in a sense to “higher worlds,” and they were also possessed of other capabilities and powers than those of the present human soul. They lacked the mental activity and the moral sense now evident. Such souls could conceive no way of fashioning instruments from the things in the outer world; they could create no political states. The soul's activity still consisted to a great extent in transforming the archetype of those ancestral bodies themselves. It laboured at improving the incomplete brain, enabling it at a later period to become the seat of thought activities. As the soul of to-day, directed towards external things, constructs machines, etc., so did that ancestral soul labour at constructing the body of the human ancestor. The following objection can, of course, be raised: “Why, then, does not the soul at the present day work at its body to the same extent?” The reason for its not doing so is that the energy used at a former time for the transforming of the organs has since been directing its whole effort upon external things in the mastery and regulation of the forces of Nature.

[ 28 ] We may therefore ascribe a twofold descent to man in primeval times. His spiritual birth is not coeval with the perfecting of his organs of sense. On the contrary, the “soul” of man was already present at a time when those physical “ancestors” inhabited the earth. Figuratively speaking, we may say that the soul “selected” a certain number of such “ancestors” as seemed best fitted for receiving the external corporeal expression distinguishing the present-day man. Another branch of these ancestors deteriorated, and in its degenerate condition is now represented by the anthropoid apes. These, then, form, in the true sense of the word, branch lines of the human ancestry. Those ancestors are the physical forebears of man, but this is due only to the capacity for reconstruction which they had primarily received from the human soul within. Thus is man physically descended from the “archetype,” while spiritually he is the descendant of the “ancestral soul.”

But we can go even further back with regard to the genealogical tree of living creatures, and we shall then arrive at a physically still more imperfect ancestor. Yet, at the time of this physical ancestor, too, the “soul-ancestor” of man was existent. It was this latter which raised the physical ancestor to the level of the ape, again outstripping its less adaptable brother in the race for development, and leaving him behind on a lower stage of creation. To such as these belong those present-day mammals of a lower grade than that of the apes. Thus we may go further and further back into primeval times, even to a time when upon this earth, then bearing so different an aspect, existed those most elementary of creatures from which Haeckel claims the development of all higher beings. The soul-ancestor of man was also a contemporary of these primitive creatures; it was already living when the “archetype” transformed the serviceable types, leaving behind at different stages those incapable of further development.

In actual truth, therefore, the entire sum of earth's living creatures are the descendants of man, within whom that which in this day “thinks and acts” as soul originally brought about the development of living beings. When our earth came into existence, man was a purely spiritual being; he began his career by building for himself the simplest of bodies. The whole ladder of living creatures represents nothing but the outgrown stages through which he has developed his bodily structure to its present degree of perfection.

The creatures of the present day differ widely in appearance from that of their ancestors at those particular stages where they branched off from the human tree. Not that they have remained stationary, for they have deteriorated in accordance with an inevitable law, which, owing to the lengthy explanation it would involve, cannot be entered into here. But the greatest interest attaches to the fact that through theosophy we arrive, so far as man's outward form is concerned, at a genealogical tree not altogether unlike Haeckel's. Haeckel, however, presupposes as the physical ancestor of man nothing but a hypothetical animal. Yet the truth is that at all those points where Haeckel uses the names of animals, the still undeveloped forebears of man should be installed; for those animals, down to the meanest living creatures, are but deteriorated and degenerate forms occupying those lower stages through which the human soul has passed on its upward journey.

Externally, therefore, the resemblance between Haeckel's genealogical tree and that of theosophy is sufficiently striking, though internal evidences show them to be as wide apart as the poles.

[ 29 ] Hence the reasons why Haeckel's deductions are so eminently suited for the learning of sound elementary theosophy. One need do no more than master, from the theosophical point of view, the facts he has elucidated in so masterly a manner, and then raise his philosophy to a higher and nobler plane. If Haeckel seeks to criticise and belittle any such “higher” philosophy, he shows himself to be simply puerile—after the fashion, for instance, of a person who, not having got beyond the multiplication table, yet presumed to assert: “What I know is true, and all higher mathematics are only imaginary nonsense.” No theosophist desires to deny or contradict the elementary facts of natural science; but the crux of the matter is that the scientist, deluded by materialistic suggestions, does not even know what theosophy is talking about.

[ 30 ] It depends upon a man himself what kind of philosophy he adopts. Fichte has put this in so many words: “The unperceiving eye cannot detect colours; The non-perceptive Soul cannot perceive Spirit.” The same thought has been voiced by Goethe in a well-known phrase: “Were the eye not sun-like—how could we see the sun? Were God's own power not within us, the God-like vision—could it enrapture us?” and an expression of Feuerbach, if rightly conceived, proclaims that each one sees God's image after his own likeness. The slave to his senses sees God in accordance with those senses; the spiritual observer sees the Spirit deified. “Were lions, bulls, and oxen able to set up gods, their gods would resemble lions, bulls, and oxen,” was the remark of a Greek philosopher long ages ago.

The fetish-worshipper, too, has as his highest principle something we may call spiritual, but he has as yet not come to seek for this within himself, and this is why he has not got beyond beholding his god as anything more than a block of wood. The fetish-worshipper cannot raise his prayer above what he can inwardly feel, for he still regards himself as on the same level as the block of wood. And those who can see no more than a whirl of atoms, those to whom the highest resolves itself into tiny dots of matter, such as these, too, have missed recognition of the highest principle within themselves.

[ 31 ] It is true that Haeckel places before us in all his works the information he has honestly acquired, so that to him must be accorded “les defauts de ses qualites.” The sterling worth of his teaching will live, its negative qualities will vanish. Taken from the higher point of view, one might say that the fetish-worshipper worships in his fetish a lifeless object, while the materialistic adherent of the theory of atoms worships not alone one “little god” but a whole host of them, which he calls atoms!² The superstition of the one is about as great as that of the other; for the materialistic atom is no more than a fetish, and the wooden block is made up of atoms too. Haeckel says in one passage: “We see God in the stone, in the plant, in the brute, in man—God is everywhere,” yet he only sees God as he can comprehend Him. How enlightening here are Goethe's words, when he says: “Thou'rt like the Spirit which thou comprehendest, Not me!”) —Bayard Taylor's translation.

Thus does the materialist mark the whirling atoms in stone, in plant, in animal, and in man, possibly, too, in every work of art, and claim for himself a knowledge of a monistic cosmogony that has overcome the ancient superstitions. Yet theosophists have a monistic cosmogony too; and we can say, in the same words as Haeckel uses, that we see God in the stone, in the plant, in the brute, and in the man; but what we see are no whirling atoms, but the living God, the spiritual God, whom we seek outside in Nature, because we can also seek Him within ourselves.

• 1. Readers who are unacquainted with Huxley's famous reply may be glad to have it in extenso, as given by Edward Clodd in Thomas Henry Huxley, published by William Blackwood and Sons:
  
  “At the meeting of the British Association at Oxford, on 28th June, 1860, Owen emphasised the statement that ‘the brain of the gorilla presented more differences, as compared with the brain of man, than it did when compared with the brains of the very lowest and most problematical of the Quadrumana.’ To this Huxley, in polite English, gave the lie direct, and pledged himself to ‘justify that unusual procedure elsewhere.’ Two days after, by mere chance, he was present at the reading of a paper by Dr. Draper ‘On the Intellectual Development of Europe considered with reference to the views of Mr. Darwin.’ In the discussion which followed, Bishop Wilberforce, throwing a glance at Huxley, ended a suave and superficial speech by asking him ‘as to his belief in being descended from an ape. Is it on his grandfather's or his grandmother's side that the ape ancestry comes in?’ Huxley did not rise till the meeting called for him. Then he let himself go. ‘The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands,’ he said in an undertone to Sir Benjamin Brodie. After showing how ill-equipped was the Bishop for controversy upon the general question of organic evolution, although it was an open secret that Owen had primed him for the contest, Huxley said: ‘You say that development drives out the Creator, but you assert that God made you; and yet you know that you yourself were originally a piece of matter no bigger than the end of this gold pencil-case?’ Then followed the famous retort:
  
  “‘I asserted, and I repeat, that a man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man—a man of restless and versatile intellect—who, not content with success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.’”
• 2. The word “worship” is, of course, not to be taken literally, for the materialistic thinker, though he has not yet been weaned from “fetishism,” has lost the habit of prayer.

Spiritual investigation cannot meddle with the immediate events of the day. But at the same time, one should not believe that spiritual science floats in the clouds above every reality and that it has nothing to do with practical life. To-day we shall not speak of the events that are stirring the world just now, events of the kind: described in the daily newspapers, nor do we belong to those who prefer to be blind and deaf to the occurrences that move the human heart. The spiritual-scientific investigator must always thread his way between two rocks; he never loses himself in the ruling opinions and views of the day, and on the other hand he never becomes involved in empty abstractions and authoritative concepts. On many occasions I had the opportunity to tell you that spiritual science should make us practical; far more practical than is generally believed to be the case by the men of daily practical life. It should make us practical, by leading us to the deeper forces which lie at the foundation of life and throwing light upon everything from these deeper forces, and by guiding our actions so that they are in harmony with the great laws of the universe. We are able to achieve something in the world and we can influence its course of events only if we act in accordance with the great laws of the universe.

After these introductory words, let me begin by pointing out a few facts for the sole purpose of calling up in your mind the importance of present-day problems, I might say the actuality of these problems.

One, fact which everyone may perhaps remember is that on the 24th of August 1898 the Czar's authorised representative sent a circular to all the accredited foreign representatives at St. Petersburg, containing among other things the following words: The maintenance of peace and thee diminution of armaments that weigh upon the nation constitute an ideal of modern civilisation, an ideal upon which the governments of all nations should turn their attention. My sovereign completely dedicated his strength to this task. Hoping that this, may be in keeping with the desire of most of the other lowers, the Imperial Government holds that it is now the best moment to ensure peace upon the basis of international discussion and to put an end to the present uninterrupted arming.

This document also contains the following: Since the financial means required for armaments are constantly rising, capital and labour are deviated from their true paths and are devoured unproductively. The armaments consequently correspond less and less to the purpose allotted to them by the respective governments. The document concludes by saying that a Conference with God's aid would be a good omen for the new century.

To be sure, this is not exactly a new resolution, for we can go back many centuries, and in the l6th/17th century we come across a ruler, Henry IVth of France, who then advanced the idea of holding such a universal Peace Conference. Seven of the sixteen nations of that time had already given their consent, when Henry IVth was murdered. No one continued his work. If necessary, it would be possible to trace intentions and plans having this aim and flowing from such quarters, much further back still.

This is one sequence of facts. The other one is: the Conference of The Hague. You all know the name of that praiseworthy person who pursues her ideals with such rare devotion and with such a good knowledge of the facts: Bertha von Suttner. One year after the Conference at The Hague she collected the acts into a book in which she recorded speeches which were sometimes very beautiful. She also wrote an introduction to this book. Please bear in mind that one year passed by since Bertha von Suttner envisaged this book about the Peace Conference.

At this point there is an interruption in the text.)

War has now broken out, in diametrical opposition to these ideas, war due to refusal of intermediation—the cruel Transvaal war. If we now look around in the world, we find that very noble-hearted men are lighting for the ideal of Peace and the love for universal peace lives in the hearts of high- minded idealists—nevertheless so much blood has never before been shed on earth as during this short time. This is an earnest very earnest matter for everyone who is also interested in the great problems of the soul.

On the one hand we have the devoted apostles of Peace and their untiring activity, we have the excellent books of Bertha von Suttner who knew how to set forth the terrors of war with such rare skill—but do not let us forget the other side. Do not let us forget that many clever men who belong to the other side assure us again and again that war is necessary for human progress, that it steels the forces. The strength increases by having to face opposition. The scientific investigator who attracted so many thinkers to his side, often said that he desired war, that only a fierce war could advance the forces in Nature.¹ Perhaps he did not express himself so radically, nevertheless many people harbour these thoughts. Even within our spiritual-scientific Movement some people voiced the view that it would be a weakness, nay a sin against the spirit of national strength, if any objection were raised against the war which had led to national honour, national power. In any case, the opinions in this sphere are still strongly opposed.

But the Conference at The Hague brought with it one thing. It brought to our notice the views of many people who are at the head of public life. Many representatives of Governments at that time agreed that the Conference at The Hague should take place. One might think that a cause which had gained the support of such high quarters, would be highly successful. -

In order to. view things in the way in which they have to be viewed from the aspect of a spiritual conception of the world and of life, we must penetrate more deeply into the whole subject. When we study the problem of peace as an ideal problem and see how it developed in the course of time, but at the same time observe the facts of battle and strife, we must say that perhaps the way in which this ideal of peace has been pursued, calls for a closer investigation and claims our attention.

You see, even the hearts of many soldiers are filled with pain and abhorrence for the consequences and effects of war. Such things, may indeed induce us to ask: Do wars arise through anything which can be eliminated from the world by principles and opinions? These who look more deeply into the souls of men know that two quite distinct and separate directions produce that which leads to war. One direction is what we designate as power of judgment and understanding, what we name idealism; the other direction is human passion, the human inclinations, man's sympathies and antipathies.

Many things would be different in the world if it were possible, without further ado, to control desires and passions in accordance with the principles of the heart and of the understanding. For this is not possible, the very opposite has so far always been the case in human life. The understanding, the heart itself, provide in idealism the mask for what is pursued by passion and desire. And if you study the history of human development, you may again and again ask, whenever you come across certain principles, whenever you see idealism flashing up: What are the passions and desires which lurk in the background?

You see, if you bear this in mind, it is quite possible that with the best principles one cannot as yet achieve anothing; perhaps something else will be required, because the human, passions, instincts and desires are not sufficiently developed to follow the idealism of individual men. The problem has, as you see, a deeper root and we must grasp it more deeply.

If we wish to judge the whole matter rightly, we must cast a glance into the human soul and its fundamental forces. We do not always survey the course of development to a sufficient extent, generally we only survey a short space of time,—so that an encompassing conception of the world must open our eyes, giving us on the one hand a deep insight and on the other a survey of larger epochs of time, in order that we may form a judgment of the forces which are to lead us into the future.

Let us consider the human soul, where we can study it deeply and thoroughly. Let us consider from another aspect something which we mentioned eight days ago.² We have, a natural-scientific theory, the so-called Darwinism. There is one idea which plays an important part in this natural-scientific conception. It is the idea designated as the “STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE,” the “BATTLE OF LIFE.” Our whole natural science, our whole conception of life stood under the sign of this struggle for existence. The scientists declared: In the world the beings that can best assert themselves in the battle of life, that can gain the greatest advantage over their fellow-creatures, are those who survive, whereas the others perish! Consequently, we need not be surprised that we are surrounded by beings, who adapted themselves best of all, for they developed throughout millions of years. The fittest survived and the unfit perished.

The struggle for existence has become the watchword of scientific research. From where did this struggle come? It has not been taken from Nature. Darwin himself, though he sees it in a greater style than his followers, took it from a conception of Malthus,³ spreading over the history of human development, a conception according to which the earth produces food in a progression rising in a far more reduced measure than the increase of the population. Those who versed in these questions will know that one says: The increase in food is in accordance with arithmetic progression, whereas the increase in the population is in accordance with geometrical progression. This produces a struggle for existence, a war of all against all. Setting out from this idea, Darwin placed the struggle for existence also at the beginning of the life of mature. This conception is not only in keeping with a mere idea, but with the modern ways of living. This battle of life has become reality reaching as far as the conditions of individual existence, as expressed in the form of general economic competition. This battle of life was observed at close quarters, it was looked upon as something natural in the kingdom of man, and then it was taken over by natural science.

Ernst Haeckel set out from these ideas, and in warlike activities, in war itself, he even saw a lever of civilisation, Battle strengthens, the weak must go under,—civilisation demands that the weak should perish. National economy then applied this struggle to the human sphere. We thus have great theories in national economy, in the conceptions of social life, theories which look upon the struggle for existence as something quite justified which cannot be severed from the development of humanity. With these principles, not with prejudices, one went back to the remotest times, and one tried to study the life of the wild barbaric peoples; one believed that it was possible to listen to the development of human culture and thought to discover in it the wildest principle of war. Huxley said: If we survey the animals in Nature, their struggle for existence resembles a fight of gladiators—and this is a law of Nature. And if we turn our attention from the higher animals to the lower species in keeping with the course of world-development, we find that the facts prove everywhere that we live in the midst of a general struggle for existence,

You see, this idea could be expressed, it could be accepted as a general law of the universe. Those who realise that no words can be uttered which are not deeply rooted in the human soul, must say to themselves that the feelings, the soul-constitution even of our best people are still based upon the idea that war, battle, in the human race as well as in Nature, constitutes a law, something from which we cannot escape.

Now you can say: These scientists were perhaps very humane, perhaps in their deepest idealism they longed for peace, for harmony. But their profession, their science convinced them that this was not so, and perhaps they wrote down their theories with a bleeding heart.

This might stand as an objection, if something quite different had not arisen. We can say that the above-mentioned theory was universally accepted by all those who believed that they were sound thinkers, scientifically and economically, in the sixties and seventies of the 19th-century. generally accepted was- the view that war and strife were, a law of Nature, from which one could not escape. The old conception of Rousseau⁴ had been disposed of completely—so people thought—for Rousseau held that only man's wickedness had brought battle and strife into the general peace of Nature, opposition and disharmony into its harmony. At the end of me l9th century the Rousseau atmosphere was still prevalent, according to which a glance into the life of Nature which is still uninfluenced by man's super-culture, reveals everywhere harmony and peace. It is man, with his arbitrariness and culture, who brought strife and battle into the world.

This was still Rousseau's idea and during, the last third of the 19th century the scientists assured us: it would be fine if this were true, but this is not the case: the facts show us a different state of things. Nevertheless, let us ask ourselves earnestly: Has human feeling expressed a verdict, or the facts themselves? ... It would be difficult to raise any objection if the facts themselves spoke in this way.

But a strange man appeared in the year 1880, who gave a lecture in St. Petersburg in Russia, during the Congress of Scientists of 1880. This lecture is of profoundest significance for all who are really interested in this problem. This man is the zoologist Kessler.⁵ He died soon after. His lecture dealt with the principle of mutual help in Nature. All those who earnestly deal with such questions, will find in the research and scientific maturity contained in this lecture a completely new impulse. Nor the first time in our modern epoch facts were collected from the whole of Nature proving that all the former theories on the struggle for existence are not in keeping with reality.

You see, this lecture expounds and proves by facts that the animal species, the groups of animals, do not develop through the battle of life, in reality, a struggle for existence only exists exceptionally between two different species, but not within the same species, for the individuals belonging to it on the contrary help each other. Those species are the fittest, where the individuals belonging to it are most inclined to this mutual help. Long existence is guaranteed not by a struggle for existence, but by mutual help.

This opened out a new aspect, by a strange coincidence and chain of circumstances in modern scientific research, this subject was continued by a man who adopted the most extraordinary standpoint, by Prince Kropotkin: He was able to prove in the case of animals and certain tribes, by bringing forward innumerable sound facts, the great significance of this principle of mutual help, both in Nature and in human life. I would advise everyone to read his took.⁶ It brings a number of ideas and concepts which are a good school for an ascent to a spiritual outlook.

But these facts can be grasped in the right way only if they are considered in the light of a so-called esoteric conception, if we gain insight into these facts upon the foundation of spiritual science. I might adduce many facts which speak very clearly, but you can read them in the above-mentioned book. The principle of mutual help in Nature declares that those in whom this principle is developed in the highest measure are those who advance furthest. Consequently, the facts speak clearly and will speak more and more clearly for us.

When we speak of a single animal-species in the theosophical conception, we speak of it in the same way in which we speak of man's single individuality. An animal species is upon a lower sphere the same as the single human individuality upon a higher sphere. I already explained before that there is one fact which, we must clearly envisage in order to grasp the difference which exists between man and the whole animal kingdom. This contrasting difference may be expressed in the words: Man has a biography, but the animal has no biography. In the case of an animal it suffices to describe its species. Father, grandfather, grandson and son—these distinctions do not count in the case of a lion; we do not need to describe each one in particular. Certainly I knew that many objections can be raised: I know that those who love a dog or a monkey think that they can write a biography of the dog or of the monkey. But a biography should not contain what another person knows of the being that is the subject of a biography, but what that being himself knew. Self-consciousness is essential for a biography, and in this meaning, only the HUMAN BEING has a biography. This would correspond to a description of a whole animal-species. That each group of animals has a group-soul, is the external expression for the fact that each individual human being bears a soul within him.

I was able to explain to you here that a hidden world is immediately connected with our physical world; it is the astral world which does not consist of the objects and beings that can be perceived through the senses, but which are woven of the same substance of which our passions and desires are woven. If you examine the human being you can see that he led down his soul as far as the physical world, the physical plane. But the animal has no individual soul upon the physical plane,—you find instead the animal's individual soul upon the so-called astral plane, in the astral world that lies concealed behind our physical world. The groups of animals have individual souls in the astral world.

You see, here you have the difference between man and the animal kingdom. If we now ask ourselves: What is really waging battle, when we observe the struggle for existence in the animal kingdom? We must reply: In truth, the astral battle of the soul's passions and instincts stands behind this struggle of the different species in the animal kingdom, the battle of soul-passions and instincts which is rooted in the double souls, or in sex. But if we were to speak of a struggle for existence WITHIN the same species in the animal kingdom, this would be the same as if the human soul were to wage war upon itself in its different parts. This is a very important truth: We cannot accept the rule that a struggle exists within the same animal species, but a struggle for existence can only take place between different species; for the soul of one whole species is the same for all the animals belonging to it ... and because of this it must control the single members. In the animal species we can observe mutual help and assistance, which is simply the expression for the uniform activity of the species or of the group-soul. And if you consider all the examples mentioned in the above-named interesting book, you will obtain a beautiful insight into the way in which these group-souls work. We find, for example, that when a specimen of a certain species of crab has accidentally fallen on its back, so that it cannot turn around alone, a number of animals in its neighbourhood come along and help it to get on its legs again. This mutual support comes from the soul-organ which the animals have in common. Follow the way in which beetles help each other when they have to protect a brood, or tackle a dead mouse, etc., how they unite and carry out their work together, there you can observe the activity of the group-soul. It is possible to observe this right up to the highest animal-species. Indeed, those who have some understanding for this mutual support and assistance among animals, also obtain insight into the activity of the group-souls and an idea of how they work—and just there they can develop a spiritual vision. The eye acquires sun-like qualities.

In the case of man, we have an individualized group-soul. Such a group-soul dwells in each single human being. We must therefore apply to the human beings what must be applied to the different animal species, so that in the case of man it is possible that one human being fights, against another human being; an individual strife is possible.

But let us now consider the purpose of strife, whether battle exists in the development of the world for the sake of battle. For what has become of the struggle of existence among the species? The species that supported each other most of all survived, and those who fought against each other perished. This is a law of Nature. Consequently, we must say that in external Nature development progresses through the fact that peace replaces the struggle. Where Nature reached a definite point, where it arrives at the great turning point, we really find harmony; the peace which is the final outcome of the whole struggle, can really be found there. Consider, for instance, that the plants, as species, are also engaged in a struggle for existence. But consider at the same time how wonderfully the vegetable kingdom and the animal kingdom support each other in their common process of development: for the animal breathes in oxygen and breathes out nitrogen, whereas the plant breathes in nitrogen and breathes out oxygen. Thus peace is possible in the universe.

What Nature thus produces through its forces, is destined to be produced by man consciously, out of his individual nature. Man progressed gradually and what we designate as the self-consciousness of our individual soul unfolded little by little. We must look upon the present situation of the world as the result of a course of development, and then follow its tendency towards the future. Go back into the past; there you will find group-souls at the beginning of human development. These group-souls were active within small tribes and families, so that we also come across group-souls in the human beings. The further back you look into the development of the world, the more compact you will find the structure of human life, the people will appear to you harmoniously united. One spirit seemed to pervade the old village communities; which afterwards became the primitive State. You can study that when Alexander the Great led his armies into battle, it was a different thing from leading modern armies into war, with their far more developed individualized will-forces. This must be seen in a true light.

The progressive course of civilisation consists in the fact that the human beings became more and more individualized, more and more independent and self-conscious. The human race developed out of groups and small communities. Even as there are group-souls that guide and control the single animal-species, so the different nations were guided by the great group-souls. By his progressive education, the human being more and more emancipates himself from the guidance of the group-soul and becomes more and more independent. Whereas formerly he confronted his fellow-men with more or less hostility, his independence brought him to the point of standing in the midst of a battle of life which now takes hold of the whole of humanity. This is the present situation of the world, and this is the. destiny particularly of our epoch or race, that is to say, of the immediate present.

Spiritual science distinguishes in the present development of the world five great races, the so-called sub-races. The first sub-race developed in ancient times, in distant India. This sub-race was to begin with filled by a culture of priests. It is this culture of priests which gave our present race its first impulses. It had come over from the Atlantean culture; this developed in a region which is now the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The leading note was given by this race and it was followed by the others; now we live within the fifth sub-race. This subdivision is not taken from anthropology or from some racial theory, but will be explained more in detail in my 6th lecture (of the 9th of November 1905: FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS OF THEOSOPHY).

The fifth race is the one which made us progress furthest of all in our individual existence, in our individual consciousness. Christianity was in fact a preparation for the attainment of this individual consciousness; man had to attain to this individual consciousness.

If you go back to the time before Christ, to ancient Egypt where the gigantic pyramids were built, you will find there an army of slaves who carried out tasks so difficult and fatiguing that it is hardly possible to conceive this to-day. But for the greater part of the time these workmen built the immense pyramids as a matter of course and they were filled by an immense peacefulness. They submitted to their work because at that time the teaching of reincarnation and of karma was a natural thing. No books tell you about this, but if you penetrate into spiritual science this will be quite clear to you. Each slave who toiled until his hands were sore and who lived in pain and misery, knew: This is one of many lives, and what I am suffering now must be borne as the consequence of what I prepared for myself in my former lives! If this is not the case, I shall experience the effect of this life in my next; and the one who now orders me about, once stood upon the same stage on which I am standing now, or he will do so one day.

With such a mentality, however, it would have been impossible to develop a self-conscious earthly life, and the High Powers that lead human destiny as a whole, knew what they were doing, when for a time—which lasted many thousands of years—they blotted out the consciousness of Karma and of Reincarnation. This disappearance was brought about by the great course of development of Christianity, up to the present time; it eliminated the power to look up to another world which brought a harmonising influence, and drew attention instead to the immense importance of this life upon the earth.

Though this might have gone too far in its radical application, it was never the less necessary, for the world's course of development does not follow logic, but quite different laws. From earthly life people deduced an eternity of punishment, and although this is nonsense, the tendency of human development led to this. Humanity thus learned to grow conscious of this one earthly existence and the earth, the physical plane, thus assumed an immense importance for the human being. This had to come, the earth had to acquire this great significance. Everything that takes place to-day in the form of a material conquest of the earthly globe, could only grow out of a mentality based upon an education cut out for this earth and emitting the idea of Reincarnation and Karma.

We now see the result of such an education: man came down completely to the physical plane during his earthly life; for the individual soul could only unfold upon the physical plane, where it is isolated, enclosed within the body and where it can only look out into the world through the senses, as an isolated individual existence.

This brought human competition into the human race, in an ever-growing measure, and the effects of such an isolated existence. We must not be surprised that to-day the human race is not by a long way ripe enough to eliminate once more what was thus drawn in. We saw that the present species of animals reached their state of perfection by mutual help and that the struggle for existence only exists between the species, passing from species to species. But if the human individuality is upon a higher stage the same as the group-soul of the animals, then the human soul will only be able to attain self-consciousness by passing through the same struggles through which the animal-species passed in Nature. This struggle will last until the human being will have developed complete independence. But he is called upon to reach this consciously; consciously he must attain what exists outside upon the. physical plane. Along the stages of consciousness pertaining to his own sphere, he will be guided towards mutual help and support, because the human race is one species. The absence of struggle which exists in the animal kingdom must be attained for the whole human race in the form of an all-embracing, complete peace. It is not struggle, but mutual help and support that led the single animal-species, to their present state of development. The group-soul that lives in the animal-species as an individual soul is at peace within itself and a uniform soul. Only man's individual soul has a special structure within its isolated physical existence.

You see, the great acquisition which spiritual development can bring to our soul is to recognise truly the one soul that, fills the whole human race, the unity with humanity as a whole. We do not receive this as an unconscious gift, but we must conquer it for ourselves consciously. It is the task of the spiritual- scientific world-conception to develop really and truly this uniform soul that lives within the whole human race.

This is expressed in our first fundamental principle, to establish a brotherly league throughout the world, independently of race, sex, colour, etc. This implies the recognition of the SOUL that lives in the whole of humanity. The purification enabling us to discover the same soul also in our fellow-men must go as far as our passions. In physical life we are separated, but in the life of the soul we are one with the Ego of the human race. This can only be grasped in real life; true life alone can lead us to this. Consequently, only the development of spiritual life can permeate us with the breath of this one Soul. Not the people of the present, but those of the future who will more and more unfold the consciousness of this One Soul, shall lay the foundation of a new human race that will devote itself entirely to mutual help. Our first principle therefore means something quite different than is generally supposed. We do not fight; but we also do not oppose war or any other thing, because opposition and battle do not lead to a higher development. Each animal-species developed into a special race by coming out of the struggle for existence. Let us leave fighting to the bellicose who are not yet mature enough to go in search of the common Soul of the Human Race in spiritual life. A real Society of Peace is one that strives after a knowledge of the Spirit, and the spiritual-scientific current is the true Peace Movement, it is the Peace Movement in the only form in which it can exist in practical life, because it envisages what lives within the human being and what will unfold in the future.

Spiritual life always developed as a stream that came from the East. The East is the region where spiritual life was fostered. And here in the West we have the region where the external. materialistic civilisation was unfolded. That is why we see in the East the land where people dream and sleep. But who knows what is going on in the souls of those whom we call dreamers or sleepers, when they rise up to worlds which are quite unknown to the peoples of the West? We must now come out of our materialistic civilisation, and yet bear in mind everything that surrounds us in the physical world. We must ascend to the spiritual with everything which we conquered upon the physical plane.

It is more than symbolically significant that in England Darwinism should have found a new representative in Huxley who deemed it necessary to state out of his western conception: Nature shows us that the human apes fought against each other and the strongest remained on the field ... whereas from the East came the watchword: Support, mutual help, this is the guarantee for the future!

Here in Central Europe we have a special task: It would be of no use to use to be one-sidedly Oriental, or one-sidedly English. We must unite the morning dawn of the East with the. physical science of the West so that they become a great harmony. Then we shall be able to grasp how the idea of the future may be connected with the idea of the struggle for existence.

It is more than a coincidence that in one of the fundamental books of Theosophy those who penetrate more deeply into spiritual life will find light upon the path, for the second chapter significantly closes with a sentence which coincides with this idea. “Light upon the Path” does not contain it as a phrase, for spiritual development will lead us to a point where we shall recognise that the beautiful words at the end of the 2nd chapter in “Light upon the Path” harmonize with the One Soul that enters the individual human soul, flashing up and coming to life within it. Those who immerse themselves in this beautiful little book—which does not only fill the soul with a content that makes us feel inwardly devout and good and that gradually gives man real clairvoyance by the power of its words—will discover in the single individual this harmony, when they experience what is written in every chapter. The final words, “Peace be with you,” will then descend into the soul. In the end this will be experienced by the whole of humanity, for the most significant words will then be: “Peace be with you.”

This opens out to us the true perspective. Then we must not only speak of peace, not only envisage it abstractly as an ideal, make treaties or long for the verdicts of a court of arbitration, but we must cultivate spiritual life, the Spiritual. We then awaken within us the strength which will be poured out over the whole human race as the source of mutual help and support. We do not oppose, we do something else: we foster love, and we know that by fostering love, every opposition must disappear. We do not set up struggle against struggle. We set up love against struggle by developing and fostering love. This is something positive. By pouring out love we work upon ourselves and we establish a society based upon love. This is our ideal. If this livingly penetrates into our souls, we shall realize an old saying in a new way, and this will be in accordance with Christianity. And a new Christianity, or rather the Christianity of the past, will arise again for a new humanity. Buddha gave his people a motto which envisages this. But Christianity contains even more beautiful words on the unfolding: of love, words which should be grasped in the right way: Not by strife we overcome strife, not by hatred we overcome hatred, but strife and hatred can in reality be overcome by love alone.

• 1. See the lecture of October 5th,1905:HAECKEL, THE RIDDLES OF THE WORLD AND THEOSOPHY
• 2. In the lecture on Haeckel.
• 3. Thomas Robert Malthus, 1760-1854
• 4. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 28 June 1712- 2 July 1778
• 5. Karl Fedorovich Kessler, On the principle of Mutual Help, lecture by Prof. Kessler, Dean of the St. Petersburg University, given in January 1880 during the congress of Russian Scientists. (Kessler died in 1881)
• 6. Peter Kropotkin: MUTUAL HELP IN ‘EVOLUTION’

It is our task today to speak about two soul contents, one of which is a wonderful and inner ideal called Brotherhood¹ or Mutual Help, the other, which we meet especially in daily life, is the survival of the fittest—Mutual Help and the Fight for Survival. Those of you who concern themselves even a little with our Spiritual Scientific Movement know that our first aim is to form the core of a mutual help which is founded on an all embracing love for people, without regard for race, sex, creed, or profession. Thus the Anthroposophical Society² itself puts this principle of an all-embracing mutual help as the spearhead of its movement, as the most important of its ideals. With this it has shown that it is one of those cultural streams, which above all are necessary today, in which this extensive ethical striving for mutual help is seen closely connected with what altogether is the aim of man's evolution.

Those of us who are consciously striving in Spiritual Science are convinced that the deepest recognition of the Spiritual World, if it is truly and totally taking hold of a person, must lead to mutual help, that the most noble fruit of deep inner knowing is just this mutual help. This Spiritual Scientific World View seems to go against what people have found recently. In certain circles it is repeatedly pointed out how progress is brought about by competition and strife, that our strength develops through working against resistance, that our will and intellectual initiatives are strengthened because our power is put against an opponent. The worldview of Friedrich Nietzsche, which arose out of a spiritual basis, states among other things advocating contention, the following; “I love the critic. I love the strongly critical more than the gentle critic.” This we can find in various forms especially with Nietzsche. It can be found again in established economic views that in the fight of all against all in free enterprise there is a strong force for progress. How often has it been said that we progress best if we push ourselves forward for our own good. The word “individualism” has become a slogan in the area of the outer material life; however, it is really in the field of the inner spiritual life that it has true validity.

If people develop as much as they can in the economic field they will be most useful for their fellows because if they become economically powerful they benefit everyone. This is the creed of many national economists and sociologists. From a different side we hear repeated in different ways that we shall not just fit into a mold, that we must develop all our powers, that without limit we must live ourselves out, that we shall unfold what lies within, and thus we can be most useful to our fellows. There are many among us who cannot do enough to support this principle. The Spiritual Scientific Worldview does not ignore the necessity of the Fight for Survival, particularly in our time, but we are also clear that while this Fight for Survival makes such a strong impression, the deepest significance of the principle of mutual help must be brought to people's general awareness.

Is it really true what many believe, that people grow strong by working against a resistance? Is it really above all else their aggressive activities, which make them big and strong?

I showed you in the lecture, which I was able to give about the idea of peace, the following; the principle of the Fight for Survival is emphasized in our life nowadays because science has made it into a universal natural world principle. Especially in the west it is believed since some time that those beings in the world are best adapted who are able to fight their enemies, to subdue them and to succeed in the Fight for Survival.

Huxley the natural scientist says, if we look at life in nature it looks like a gladiator's “free for all,” the strongest is the victor, and the weaker ones must perish. If one would believe the natural scientists one would have to assume that all beings that are now living in the world would be able to overcome their predecessors. There is even a school of sociology, which has attempted to make out of this principle of the Fight for Survival a teaching of the evolution of mankind. In a book called “From Darwin to Nietzsche” by Alexander Tille he tried to show that the happiness of mankind in the future depends on recklessly inscribing this “Fight for Survival” onto the flag of the evolution, that one has to take care that the weaker ones perish, and that the strong and powerful multiply. In the Fight for Survival the weak ones have to perish, so he says we need a social order which subdues the weak ones because they are a burden, injurious.

Now I must ask you; who is stronger? The one who has an ideal spiritual power but a weak body or the one who has less spiritual power but a robust body? As you can see one cannot generalize. It is difficult to decide who should survive in the Fight for Survival. If one were to be practical, one would have to solve this question first. Now let us ask ourselves what human life really shows us; has the principle of mutual help or the Fight for Survival brought about greater changes, or have both contributed to the evolution of mankind?

With a few words I want to indicate once more what I have said in my lecture about the idea of peace. Even natural science of today does not really teach anymore what was taught a decade ago. I told you about the basic lecture of the Russian researcher Kefler (1880) in which he showed that the kind of animals are best adapted and progressive that help each other in mutual relationships, and not those who excel in aggressive behavior. I do not want to say with this that in the world of the animals there is no fighting and war, they are certainly there, that is not the question. It is rather: What enhances evolution more, war or mutual help? Also the following question was raised; do those kinds survive in which the individuals constantly fight with each other or those where they help each other? It was shown in this research that it is not the fighting but the mutual help, which was the real stimulus to progress. I mentioned the book by Kropotkin called “Mutual Help in Animal and Man.” Among the ideas, which today are being put forward with regard to these questions, we find a number of relevant concepts.

What has mutual help in man's evolution achieved? We only have to look at our own ancestors in this region where we now are. One could easily imagine that hunting and fighting were the main forces for forming out the character of these human beings, but if you look deeper into history you will find that this is not true. Just those among the Germanic tribes flourished best who developed the principle of mutual help to a high level. We specially find this principle of mutual help influencing more than anything the way material possessions were ordered in the time before and after the tribal migrations. To a large extent there was a common ownership of the land. The Communities of Villages where the people lived had common land ownership with the exception of a few things belonging directly to the household, the tools, and maybe a garden, all else was common possession. From time to time all the land was redistributed and newly divided among the people. It could be seen that those tribes became powerful which were able to bring the application of mutual help to an extraordinarily high level in relation to material goods.

If we proceed a few hundred years further we find that this principle appears again in a most fruitful manner. Mutual help, as it lived in the old communities of villages, in the old ways of life in which people found their freedom in brotherly, sisterly common life, shows particularly in the following example: If someone died all their personal possessions were burned because nobody wanted to own what had belonged to them during life. After one broke with this principle through various circumstances, single individuals managed to gain large tracts of land and the people within these fiefdoms were forced into servitude. Through this the principle of mutual help appeared in a different form. Those who felt suppressed by the Feudal Lord wanted to free themselves from this oppression and we see in the Middle Ages a powerful movement for freedom sweeping through all of Europe. This movement stood under the sign of a universal mutual help out of which a common culture blossomed, the so-called culture of the cities, the middle of the Middle Ages. Those human beings who could not stand the bonded servitude on the fiefdoms, escaped from the Feudal Lords to seek freedom in the growing cities. People came from Scotland, France, Russia, from all sides and brought about the free cities. Through this the principle of mutual help developed, and in the way it worked it greatly enhanced the development of the culture. Those who had common professions and trades began to form sort of trade unions which were later called Guilds, Brother/Sisterhoods which one joined through a vow or conscious commitment. These guilds were more than just unions of craftsmen or traders. They developed out of practical life to a high moral level. Mutual support, mutual help was cultivated to a high degree in those organizations.

Many things, which no one attends to much today, were guided by the principle of mutual support. For instance, the members of such a Guild helped out if somebody fell ill. Day by day two members were called to be at the bedside of the sick one. He or she got food. Even beyond his or her death this brotherliness and sisterliness continued. After somebody died it was considered an honor by other members of the Guild to provide in the proper manner for the burial of the deceased one and it was part of this honor to care for the well being of the widow/widower and her or his children. You can see out of what I have said what understanding of morality in common life was created. This morality was developed on the basis of a moral awareness of which modern people can hardly get a true picture. Don't believe that I want to criticize modern circumstances; they are necessary in the same way as it was necessary that the circumstances in the Middle Ages developed in their way. We must understand that there were different phases of development leading to the present.

In those free cities during the Middle Ages one spoke about a just price and a just trade. What was meant by that? I can tell you on hand of a concrete example. If out of the surrounding holdings produce was brought into the city, it was rigidly forbidden that those goods be sold in the first days in any different manner than in the accustomed small units, not wholesale. Nobody was allowed to buy large amounts and nobody could become a wholesaler. It never would have occurred to them that price would be regulated by supply and demand; rather one was able to regulate both. The trade groups in the cities or the guilds established, according to what was necessary to produce the goods, the price for these goods. Nobody was allowed to go above or below a set price. If we look even in the work relationships we see how a thorough understanding of people's needs was available. If we look at the wages of that time, in consideration of the most different circumstances we have to say, “The way a worker was paid can in no way be compared to the earning of wages nowadays.” These circumstances are often most wrongly interpreted by scientists.

Those Brother/Sisterhoods were evolved according to practical points of view. Because of that they continued in a practical manner, they appeared in the cities because it was only natural that those who had the same trade in a city would come together in mutual help, so the guilds grew from city to city.

People were, at that time, not united under police rulings but under practical points of view. Anyone who takes the trouble to study the circumstances, which were commonly visible in the cities of Europe, will soon find out that we deal here with a certain faith in the deepening of this mutual help principle. It shows specially if we look at the fruit which developed. You can now look at the highest peak of this development at the extensive products of art, at the cathedrals and churches, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They could not have come about without such a deepening of the mutual help principle. From a cultural/historical point of view, we can comprehend Dante's Divine Comedy, an immense work, only if we understand the establishment of the mutual help principle at that time. If you look further at what developed in these cities under the influence of this principle, you will find, for instance, the art of printing, engraving, papermaking, watch making, and all the later inventions, prepared under the free principle of mutual help. What we are used to call the burger or freeman of the city developed out of the establishment of this principle help in the Middle Ages. Much, which came about because of scientific and artistic deepening, would not have been possible without this development. If one wanted to build a cathedral, let's say the cathedral of Cologne, or any other, we see that at first a building guild was formed in which cooperation came about agreed upon by the members. One can, if one has an intuitive eye for it, see this principle of mutual help even in the architecture. You can see it in each of the cities of the Middle Age and you find it everywhere whether you go to the North of Scotland, to Venice or to the Russian or Polish cities.

We have to emphasize that this principle of mutual help developed under the influence of a materialistic culture. In everything that appeared as the highest fruits of this culture we see, the material, the physical. It was a necessary development and for this to happen rightly the mutual help principle was necessary at that time. Out of an abstraction this mutual help principle came about and because of this intellectual thinking our life is split. Today one doesn't know anymore, one doesn't understand how the Fight for Survival and the mutual help principle can function together in a relationship. On one hand spiritual life has become more and more abstract; morality and justice, ideas about the state, and different social relationships, are understood through more and more abstract principles, and the Fight for Survival is more and more separated from everything that people regard as ideal.

At that time, in the middle of the Middle Ages, there was a harmony between what people felt as their ideals and what they really did and if it was ever shown that one can be an idealist and a pragmatist at the same time it was during the Middle Ages. Even the relation of the Roman Law to life was a harmonious one, but if you look at it today you will find how our practice of law, our jurisprudence, is floating above the moral life. Many say, “We know what is good and right, but it is not practical.” It comes about that thoughts concerning the highest principle are separated from life. Only in the sixteenth century we see spiritual life developing under the principle of the intellect. In the Middle Ages a member of a guild, sitting with a jury of twelve to judge some offense which another member of the guild had committed, was a brother or sister of the one who had to be tried, life bound with life. Everyone understood the other's work and everyone tried to understand how he or she could have left the “straight and narrow.” One, so to speak, looked into one's brother or sister and one wanted to look into him or her.

Nowadays our jurisprudence is such that the judge and the prosecutor are only interested in the books of law; both see only a case in front of them to which they must apply the law. Just imagine how this separates morality from the practice of law. This condition progressed even more in the last century. In the Middle Ages expert knowledge and trust developed under the principle of mutual help and became the means of real progress. Today “expert knowledge and trust” are more and more ignored. The judgment of the expert is today almost completely bypassed in favor of the abstract interpretation of the law. The majority opinion is what counts today, not expertise. The rule of the opinion of the majority had to come, but as little as one can vote in mathematics to obtain a true result—three times three is always nine—so it is in the realm of jurisprudence. However, it is impossible to work according to the principle of the expert without the principle of mutual help, and brotherly and sisterly love.

The Fight for Survival has its place in life because humanity is composed of individual beings. Because all must go their separate ways in life, they are dependent on this Fight for Survival. In a certain relationship the saying of Ruckert is relevant. “As the rose beautifies herself, she beautifies the garden.” If we don't attempt to develop all our faculties we will have little success in helping our brothers and sisters. However, to develop our faculties requires a certain egoism, because initiative is connected to egoism. Those who understand how to be not only followers, who understand that they are not just subject to their environment, who are able to go down into their inner selves where the sources are, the fountains of their powers, they will develop to powerful and able people, and they will have the possibility to serve others much more than those who are constantly given to all possible influences in their surroundings. It is possible that this attitude, so necessary for people, could lead to a one-sidedness. It will only bear its proper fruits if it is paired with the principle of brotherly and sisterly love.

I have taken the free city guilds of the Middle Ages as an example in order to show you that the practical life became strong under the principle of mutual personal individual help. Where did they get their strength?—because they lived with their fellows in a spirit of mutual help. It is right to make oneself as strong as possible, but the question is can we really become strong without love? He who really develops to a true soul recognition must answer this question with a decisive, “No!”

We see throughout nature models for the cooperation of singular beings within a totality. Take the human body; it consists of millions and trillions of self-sufficient, living beings, or cells. If you take a part of this human body and look at it under the microscope you will find that it is composed of independent beings. How do they function together? How does selflessness come about in forming the totality? None of our cells takes its separation in an egoistic manner.

The wonderful tool of thought, the brain, also consists of millions of fine cells, but each one acts in its place in a harmonious way. What causes the cooperation of these small cells?—that a higher being expresses itself through those tiny living beings. It is the human soul that causes this effect, but this soul could never act here on earth if these millions of small beings would not have given up their selfhood to serve a large common being which we call the soul. The soul sees with the cells of the eye, thinks with the cells of the brain, lives in the cells of the blood; here we see what community signifies. Union—community—means that a higher being presses itself through the unified members. It is a universal principle of life; five people, who are together, who think and feel harmoniously together in common, are more than one plus one plus one plus one plus one. They are the sum of five as little as our body is the sum of our five senses. The living together, the in-each-other-living of human beings, means something similar as the living in each other of the cells of the human body. A new higher being is among these five—even among two or three; “Where two or three are gathered together in my name there I am among them.” It is not the one or the other or the third, but something entirely new that comes into appearance through the unification, but it only comes about if the individual lives in the other one—if the single one obtains his powers not only from himself but also out of the others. It can only happen if each of us lives selflessly in the others.

Thus human communities are mystery places where higher spiritual beings descend to act through the individual human beings just as the soul expresses itself in the members of the body. In our materialistic age one does not easily believe this, but in the Spiritual Scientific World View, it is not only an image but in the highest sense, reality. Because of this spiritual scientists are not speaking of abstract things if they talk about folk-spirit or folk-soul or family-spirit or about the spirit of some community. One cannot see the spirits who live in communities but they are there. They are there because of the sisterly, brotherly love of the personalities working in these communities. As the body has a soul, so a guild or community also has a soul, and I repeat, it is not spoken allegorically but must be taken as a full reality.

Those who work together in mutual help are magicians because they pull in higher beings. One does not call upon the machinations of spiritism if one works together in a community in sisterly, brotherly love. Higher beings manifest themselves there. If we give up ourselves to mutual help, through this giving up to the community a powerful strengthening of our organs takes place. If we then speak or act as a member of such a community there speaks or acts in us not the singular soul only but the spirit of the community. This is the secret of progress for the future of mankind: To work out of communities. In the same way as an epoch is followed by the next one and each one has its particular task so also the Middle Ages relate to our time and ours to the future one. The work of the Brotherhoods and Sisterhoods of Middle Ages laid the foundations for the practical arts. A materialistic way of life followed only after their fruits had appeared. The basis of their consciousness was the sisterliness and brotherliness that was more or less gone after the abstract social-state principle and the abstract spiritual life took the place of the real in-each-other feelings.

It is the task of the future to found again Brother/Sisterhoods out of the spirit, out of the highest ideals of the soul. Life has so far brought about the most manifold unions; it has also brought about a terrible Fight for Survival, which nowadays reaches its peak. The Spiritual Scientific World View wants to lead towards the highest treasures of mankind in the sense of the mutual help principle, and you will see that the Spiritual Scientific World Movement will extend this mutual help principle everywhere to replace the Fight for Survival. We must learn to lead community life. We shall not believe that the one or the other is able to accomplish anything by him or herself.

Everyone would of course like to know how one combines the Fight for Survival with sisterly and brotherly love—that's simple: We have to learn to replace the fighting with positive work, to replace fighting and war by the search for ideals. One understands nowadays little of what that implies. One does not know what fight one talks about because one speaks in today's life about nothing else but fighting. We have the class struggles, the fight for peace, the fight for women's rights, the fight for land and so on everywhere, regardless in what direction we look, we see fighting.

The Spiritual Scientific World View strives to put in place of this fight, positive work. Those who have lived into this worldview know that fighting has never achieved any real results in any area of life. Try to introduce into life what in your experience and recognition is shown to be the right thing and make it effective without fighting against your opponent. It can of course only be an ideal but such an ideal must be present, introduced into life as Spiritual Scientific basic statement. Human beings who unite with other human beings and who use their powers for the benefit of all are those who will produce the basis for a proper evolution into the future. The Anthroposophical Society wants to be a forerunner of this and, because of this, it is not a society based on propaganda but a sisterly and brotherly society. In this society we are effective through the work of every member. One has only to understand it rightly—we have the most effect if we do not want to push our own opinion but if we work out of what we see in the eyes of our sisters and brothers, if we search in the thoughts and feelings of our fellows, and make ourselves their servant. We work best in such a circle if we are able in practical life to disregard our own opinion. If we understand that our best forces spring out of community and that community is not just understood as an abstract principle but primary at every turn of the road, at every moment of life in a Anthroposophical manner. Only then we will be able to proceed, however, we must not be impatient with this.

What does Spiritual Science show us? She shows us a higher reality, and it is this consciousness of a higher reality, which brings us ahead in putting into effect the mutual help principle.

Today, some people call Anthroposophists, impractical idealists, but before long one will see that they will be the most practical ones, because they are able to deal with the forces of life. Nobody will doubt that one would injure a person if one throws a stone at their head, but that it is much worse to send towards a man a feeling of hate, that this hurts the soul of a man much more than a stone hurts the body, this does not enter the mind. It entirely depends in what attitude we confront a fellow man, and our power to work fruitfully into the future also depends exactly on that. If we try to live community in this way we foster the principle of mutual help practically. To be tolerant means in the sense of Spiritual Science something quite different from what one understands usually about it. It means also to respect the freedom of thought in others. To push others away from their place is an insult, but if one does the same thing in thought nobody would say this is an injustice. We talk a lot about “regard for the other's opinion,” but are not really willing to apply this principle ourselves.

The “Word” today has almost no meaning, one hears it and one has heard nothing. One has to learn to listen with one's soul, to get hold of the most intimate things with our soul. What later manifests itself in physical life is always present in the spirit first. So we must suppress our opinion and really listen completely to the other, not only listen to the word but even to the feeling. Even then, if in us a feeling will stir that it is wrong what the other one says, it is much more powerful to be able to listen as long as the other one talks than to jump into their speech. This listening creates a completely different understanding—you feel as if the soul of the other starts to warm you through, to shine through you, if you confront “her” in this manner with absolute tolerance.

We shall not only grant the freedom of person but complete freedom. We shall even treasure the freedom of the other's opinion. This stands only as an example for many things. If one cuts off someone's speech one does something similar to kicking the other from the point of view of the spiritual world. If one brings oneself as far as to understand that it is much more destructive to cut somebody off than to give them a kick, only then one comes as far as to understand mutual help or community right into one's soul. Then it becomes a reality. The greatness of the spiritual scientific movement is that it brings to us a new conviction of spiritual forces which stream from man to man, the higher mutual help principle. You can imagine for yourself how far man is away from such a spiritual mutual help principle. Everyone can attempt as time permits to send thoughts of love and friendship to their loved ones. We usually think such a thing insignificant. If you recognize that a thought has a power in the same way as an electrical wave, which goes from one apparatus to a receiver, then you will also understand better the mutual help principle. Then slowly a common consciousness becomes available, it becomes practical.

From this we can see how the Spiritual Scientific Worldview understands the Fight for Survival, and mutual help at work. We know exactly that many who find themselves on this or that place in life would just go under if they wouldn't howl with the wolves, if they wouldn't pursue this Fight for Survival as ruthlessly as the others. For the one who thinks materialistically there is almost no escape from this Fight for Survival. We should, of course, do our duty on the place where karma puts us, but we do the right thing if we are clear that we could achieve much more if we would forego to look for quick success. Maybe you stand in pain in regard to the one you hurt in the Fight for Survival but, overcome yourself, develop a loving attitude and let your thoughts stream from soul to soul. If you are a materialist you might think you didn't achieve anything, but after what I have told you, you should recognize that this must later on have its effect. Because nothing is lost that happens in the spirit.

In this way we are able with fearful soul, with pain in our hearts, to take up the Fight for Survival and transform it through our working together. In this way, to work in this Fight for Survival means, in a practical sense to change it. We are not able to do it from today to tomorrow, that's beyond all doubt. But if we work in this way upon our own soul in love, we become more useful to ourselves, and then to a greater extent to mankind. If we are stuck in self-centered isolation, our talents are uprooted like a plant pulled out of the ground. As little as an eye is still an eye if it is torn out of one's head so little is a human soul a human soul if it is separated from community. You will see that we educate our talents best if we live in sisterly and brotherly community, that we live most intensely if we are rooted in the totality. Of course we have to wait till that which forms roots in the totality ripens to fruit in quiet inwardness.

We may not lose ourselves into the outside world nor into ourselves, because it is true in the highest spiritual sense what the poet said that one has to be quiet in oneself if one's faculties are to appear, but those faculties are rooted in the world. We are only able to strengthen them and to improve ourselves if we live in community, because it is true in the sense of genuine mutual help that working in a sisterly and brotherly way makes us strongest in the Fight for Survival and we will find most of our powers in the stillness of our hearts if we develop our total personality, our total individuality in community with our human sisters and brothers. It is true that a talent is formed in quietude. It is also true that, in the stream of the world, character is formed and with it the whole of one's being and the totality of humanity.

• 1. Although “brotherhood” is a reasonable translation of the German, it is not totally satisfactory. There is no suitable gender-neutral form, “sisterhood” doesn't even appear in the standard Microsoft spelling dictionary and using it requires the combination “brother/sisterhood” or “brotherhood/sisterhood” neither of which reads easily. I have therefore elected to translate, “bruderschaft” as “mutual help,” which works well throughout this lecture.
• 2. This lecture was actually given under the auspices of the Theosophical Society. We have changed this to the Anthroposophical Society since Rudolf Steiner's work continued in that organization unchanged in content and intent.

This is the 19th of 22 lectures given by Rudolf Steiner at Berlin, and dates from October, 1905 through May of 1906. The title of these lectures are: Riddles of the World and Anthroposophy, in German the title is: Die Weltraetsel und die Anthroposophie. This lecture, which is also known as The Easter Festival, was translated from a shorthand report, unrevised by the lecturer, by an unknown translator.

Goethe has in various ways expressed a certain feeling he has often had, he says: When I observe the inconsequence of human passions, desires and actions, I experience the strongest impulse to turn to nature and seek support against the structure of her consequence and logic.—The arrangement of our festivals rests upon the endeavour of humanity since the earliest day to raise their eyes from the chaotic life of human desires, impulses and actions to the great consequential facts of all powerful nature. It is admirable, how well the big festivals are directly related to corresponding phenomena of nature. One such is the Easter festival, representing for the Christian a commemoration of his Redeemer's resurrection, and was earlier celebrated as the awakening of something of especial importance for mankind.

We look back to ancient Egypt with its Osiris-Isis-Horus cult expressing the uninterrupted rejuvenation of eternal nature. We then consider Greece, and find there a festival in honour of the God bacchus—a spring festival, connected in one way or another with the awakening of nature in spring. In India we have a spring festival dedicated to Vishnu. The Godhead of the Brahman is divided into three aspects—Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Brahman is rightly called the Great Architect of the universe bringing thereinto order and harmony. Vishnu is described as a kind of redeemer, awakener of slumbering life, rescuer, and Shiva is he who sanctifies and elevates the life awakened by Vishnu to the highest possible perfection. A sort of festival was also dedicated to Vishnu. It is said he falls into a sleep at the time of the year when we celebrate Christmas, to awake again at Easter. Those calling themselves his servants celebrate the entire intervening time in a most significant manner: they abstain from certain foods and drinks, and also meat. In that way they prepare themselves for gaining an understanding of the meaning involved when, at the Vishnu-festival, the resurrection is celebrated,—the awakening of entire Nature. The Christmas festival also has a significant relation to great natural phenomena—the power of the Sun becomes weaker, days shorter, and also that the Sun radiates more heat from Christmas onwards, so that Christmas becomes the festival of the reborn Sun. In this sense the Winter festival was felt by Christians. When Christianity, in the 6th and 7th centuries, wished to connect itself with ancient, holy events, the birth of Christ was transformed to the day on which the Sun again rose to a higher altitude. The spiritual significance of the World redeemer was brought into revelation with the physical Sun and awakening, resurrected life.

The Easter festival of spring also is brought into connection—as is usual with other festivals—certain solar phenomenon, one coming into expression even in common custom. During the first Christian century the symbol of Christianity was the Cross, at the foot of which is the lamb. Lamb and Ram are synonymous. During the time when Christianity was in preparation, the Sun appeared in the constellation of the Ram or Lamb. The Sun passes through the signs of the Zodiac; each year the Sun advances some distance. About 600-700 years before Christ the Sun had advanced into this zodiacal sign. For 2500 years it advances through it. Before that the sun was in the constellation Taurus—Bull. In those days the nations celebrated events which appeared significant to them in connection with human evolution through the Bull, because the Sun occupied that sign or constellation. As the Sun enters the sign of Aries—Ram or Lamb—the myths and legends the people contained references to the Ram as something significant. The Ram's skin brings Jason across from Kolchis. The Christ Jesus speaks of himself as the Lamb of God, and during the early period of Christianity is symbolised by the Lamb at the foot of the Cross. Thus can Easter be brought into relation with the constellation of the Ram or Lamb, and be considered the festival of the Redeemer's resurrection, because he summons everything to a new life after the death of Winter.

With these characteristics only in your mind, the two festivals Christmas and Easter seem rather similar, for the Sun has gained more power since its own festival of resurrection—the Christmas festival; therefore something more should be expressed by Easter. The festival of Easter in its deepest meaning will always be felt to be the greatest festival of the greatest mystery humanity—not merely as a sort of nature-festivity, related to the Sun, but essentially something more; It is indicated in the Christian meaning of resurrection after death. Also in the awakening of Vishnu the awakening after death is indicated. The awakening of Vishnu falls into the period in which the Sun in winter resumes its ascent, and the festival of Easter is a continuation of that ascending solar power which commenced at the festival of Christmas. We must look into the mysteries of human nature very deeply if we would understand the experiences of the old initiates when trying outwardly to express the essentials of the festival of Easter.

Man appears as a dual being, connecting a psycho-spiritual essentiality on one side with a physical substantiality on the other. The physical part is convergence of all other natural phenomena in the environment of man; they all appear as a delicate extract in human nature. Paracelsus significantly describes man as a confluence of all outside nature which is like letters of which man forms the word.

The sublimest wisdom lies in his organisation; physically he is a temple of the soul. All the laws we can observe in the lifeless stone, the living plant, the animal as subject of pleasure or pain, all these are compounded together in man: in wisdom they are there fused into a unity. When we contemplate the wonderful structure of the human brain with its countless number of cells working together so that all the thoughts and feelings of man may be expressed—everything that, in one way or another, affects the soul—we realise the all-ruling wisdom in the construction of his physical body. When we look out upon the entire outer world we perceive crystallised wisdom. And if we would penetrate all the laws of our surrounding world with our perceptive faculties and then look back upon man, we see concentrated in him the whole of nature, as a microcosm in a macrocosm. It was in this sense that Schiller said to Goethe: “You take into consideration the whole of nature in order to gain light concerning the detail. In the totality you seek the explanation for the individual. From the simple organism you pass step by step to the more complex, so to finally arrive at the most complex of all—man—and construct him genetically from the materials of the all-embracing structure or Nature.”

It is by means that marvel of construction the human body—that the soul can direct her eye upon her environment. Through the senses the psychic man observes the world around him, seeking slowly and laboriously—to fathom the wisdom by which it has been built.

Let us consider an as yet very undeveloped human being from the following point of view:—his body is the most reasonable creation possible; it is a concentration of the entire Divine reason. But in it resides a very immature soul incapable of developing even an initial thought for the comprehension of the mysterious power ruling in the heart, brain or blood. Very gradually this soul develops to an understanding of the forces which have worked in the construction of this human body. But upon it is impressed the soul of a remote past; man stands there as the crown of creation. Aeons had to pass away before cosmic wisdom was united within that human body.

But in the soul of the undeveloped man the cosmic wisdom first begins to grow. At first she barely dreams of the profound thoughts of the universal spirit—the architect of the human being.Yet, everything lying within man in a state of sleep—the psycho-spiritual constitution will in future be understood by man. Cosmic thought has worked through countless ages,—worked creatively in nature in order ultimately to build the crown of its agelong activity—the human body. In it slumbers the cosmic wisdom, so as to recognise itself in the human soul, to construct in the human being an eye with which to perceive itself. Cosmic wisdom without,—cosmic wisdom within—operative in the present as in the past—operative far into a future whose sublimity may only be surmised. The most profound human emotions are evoked when we thus ponder the past and future.

When the soul begins to understand the wonder constructed by the wisdom of the cosmos—when she attains thoughtful clarity and illumined knowledge then the sun may represent the most glorious symbol of this inner awakening which opens for the soul the outer world through the medium of the senses. Man receives the light because the sun illuminates objects. What man sees in the outer world is the reflected sunlight. The sun awakens in the soul the power to perceive the outer world. The awakening sun-soul in man, beginning to discover; cosmic thought in the seasons of the year, recognises in the rising sun her liberator.

When the sun again begins to ascend in the heavens and the days lengthen, the soul looks towards the sun, saying: To you I owe the possibility of seeing cosmic thought spread out in my environment—cosmic thought that sleeps in me as in all else.—Then man looks upon his earlier existence—the ages preceding his groping search for the cosmic thought.

Man is indeed very, very much older than his senses. Spiritual investigation enables us to arrive at the point of time when the senses are only beginning their development,—when they are at their weakest. At that time the senses were not yet the doors through which the soul could perceive her surroundings. Shopenhauer realised this fact and described the turning-point where man became able to use his sense perceptions in the world. That is his meaning, when he says:: The visible world came into being only when an eye existed with which to perceive it.—The sun formed the eye—light created light. Formerly, before any such outer vision existed, man possessed an inner light. In the remote past of human evolution no exterior object stimulated man to outer perception, but from his inner self arose imaginations, ideas, the primitive vision was a vision in the astral light. Humanity possessed a dull, dim clairvoyance.

In the Germanic world of the Gods man could also perceive the Gods through a sort of dim, misty astral light. But it gradually became more dim and dark and slowly vanished; It became extinguished by the fierce light or the physical sun which appeared in the heavens and the physical world it illuminated. So the astral vision of man receded, declined. When man looks to the future, it becomes clear that this astral sight must return upon a higher level; all that which has become extinguished by physical vision, must again live, so that a fully conscious clairvoyance may be developed in mankind. To the normal vision of day will be added a still brighter and more luminant human life in the light of the future. To physical vision will come vision in the astral light.

The leaders of humanity are those individualities whose renunciations during earth-life enabled them to experience—before death—the state of consciousness called “passing through the portals of death”. This contains all those experiences which later will be the possession of all humanity when they have evolved astral perception which makes visible the psychic and spiritual. This making visible of the psycho-spiritual environment was always called by the initiate the “awakening”, “resurrection”, “spiritual rebirth”—giving to man—a supplement to his gifts of the physical senses, the senses of the Spirit. He celebrates an inner Easter festival who discerns within him the awakening of the new astral vision.

So we can understand why this spring festival is related to symbolic ideas such as death and resurrection. In man, the astral light is “dead”. It sleeps. But it will again be resurrected in man. Easter is the festival indicating this future awakening of this astral light.

The sleep of Vishnu begins at the Christmas time when the astral light sank into sleep and physical light awoke. When man has advanced sufficiently far to renounce the personal, the astral light re-awakens in him; he can celebrate the feast of Easter,—Vishnu can again awaken in his soul.

In cosmic spiritual perception the Easter festival is not connected with the awakening of the sun only, but with the reappearance of the world of plant life in the spring also. As the seed is laid into the soil and there decays in order to awaken to a new life, so had the Astral light to sink into sleep in the human body so that it may be rejuvenated. The symbol of Easter is the seed which sacrifices itself so that a new plant may arise. It is the sacrifice of one phase of nature for the sake of creating a new one. Sacrifice and becoming (germination of the new)—these two are intimately linked together in the Easter festival. Richard Wagner felt this thought profoundly. When he lived in a villa on the banks of the lake at Zurich in 1887 and looked out upon awaking nature, his thoughts concerning it gave rise to others—the deceased and resurrected World saviour, the Christ Jesus, and the thought of Parzifal seeing the Holy of Holies in the soul.

All leaders of mankind, who were aware of how the higher spiritual life of man arises out of his lower nature, have comprehended the significance of Easter. Dante therefore described his awakening—in his Divine Comedia—as taking place on Good Friday. That is clear at the very beginning of the poem. Dante experienced his sublime vision in the 35th year of his life; that is the middle of a normal human life. So he reckons 35 years for the development of man's physical perceptive powers; till then he continues absorbing new physical experiences. After that, man is sufficiently matured for spiritual experience to augment the physical; he is ripe for spiritual perception. When the growing, evolving physical powers in man are united, the time is ripe for the awakening of the spiritual. For that rise Dante's vision falls into the period of the Easter festival.

A certain contradiction has been said to exist between the Christian conception of Easter and the idea of Karma inherent in Spiritual Science. Certainly, Karma and redemption through the Son of man do appear to oppose one another. This state of indecision is common with people who know little of the basic idea of this anthroposophical thought—a paradox seemingly existing in the simultaneous acceptance of salvation through Christ Jesus and the idea of Karma. Such people say: the ideas of a redeeming God contradicts self redemption through Karma. They fail to understand, in the true sense, the Easter of redemption, nor can they grasp the idea of Karmic justice. It would be wrong to withhold aid from someone suffering by saying: “You yourself are the cause of the trouble,” refuse him help because it must work itself out. That is a misunderstanding of Karma. Karma, to the contrary, says to you: “Help him, who suffers, for you exist to help”. You help to improve the credit balance of the Karmic account of necessity when aiding your fellow man. You give him the opportunity and the strength to carry his Karma; and you, to that extent, are a redeemer from evil .

In a similar way, instead of helping the single individual, one can come to the assistance of a whole group or nation of man.

When a mighty individuality like that of the Christ Jesus comes to the aid of entire humanity, it is his sacrifice in death which permeates the Karma of mankind. He helped to carry the Karma of the whole of humanity, and we may be quite sure that redemption through Christ Jesus was absorbed and assimilated by the totality of human Karma.

The fundamental significance of the resurrection and redemption-concept will be made really comprehensible only through Spiritual Science. A Christianity of the future will unite Karma with redemption. Because cause and effect are complementary in the spiritual world, this great act of sacrifice must also have its effect upon human life. Upon these thoughts of the Easter festival also does Spiritual Science have a deepening effect. The thought of Easter which appears to be written in the stars and which we believe to (we) read in them, is fundamentally deepened by Spiritual Science. We also see the profound meaning of the Easter-concept in the ascendance of the spirit about to be realised in the future.

At present, mankind exists amidst inharmonious, disordered conditions. But man knows how the world has emerged from chaos, and that out of his chaotic inner being harmony will ultimately arise. Like the regular paths of the planets round the sun, so will the inner saviour of mankind arise,—herald and creator of unity and harmony amid all disharmony. All humanity shall be reminded by the Easter festival of the resurrection of the spirit from the present obscurity of human nature.

This lecture is meant as an introduction. The aim is to acquaint the audience with the kind of issues investigated by spiritual science, for example, our relation to the spiritual world, evolution and destination, the riddle of birth and death, the origin of life and that of evil, health and illness, and problems of education. During the winter lectures, the scope of spiritual investigation will become apparent. These lectures will also deal—from a spiritual-scientific viewpoint—with subjects such as burning social problems and the tasks facing modern humans. The discourses will demonstrate that spiritual science is not a mere theory, but an inherent necessity in present-day life.

Although a great variety of age groups are represented in the audience, the subjects to be discussed should contain something of interest for everyone. Each lecture will be self-contained, yet also have a connection with the rest. The title of the next lecture, “Blood is a very special fluid,” may sound rather sensational, but it is in fact a subject that points to significant aspects of humanity's evolution, on which only spiritual science can throw light. Later lectures will deal with subjects such as, “Man's Existence in the Light of Spiritual Science”; “Who are the Rosicrucians?”; “Richard Wagner and Mysticism”; “What Do Educated People Know About Theosophy?”; and a lecture about religion, “The Bible and Wisdom.”

Those in the audience who attended lectures last winter will hear about things that are familiar, though presented from a different aspect. The results of spiritual-scientific investigation can only be fully understood when illumined from different sides. As I said, today's lecture is to serve as an introduction to this winter's programme that will demonstrate what is meant by spiritual-scientific investigation, and the significance of such research of the supersensible for humanity now and in the future.

The Theosophical movement emerged thirty years ago,¹ and soon spread world wide. Yet, after thirty years of intensive work, it has not the best reputation. Many people regard Theosophy as something fantastic with no relation to facts, something that belongs in a cloud-cuckoo-land. It cannot be denied that it has often been badly presented, usually through overeagerness and lack of knowledge; at times perhaps even charlatans helped to undermine its reputation. However, today we are concerned with the significance Theosophy can have in the lives of individuals.

The prejudices that exist against Theosophy are strong and widespread. Some regard it on a par with spiritism, as something irreconcilable with modern science. People who are engaged in scientific pursuits, or those that simply feel that solution to significant questions can be found in modern science, see no point in devoting themselves to something which seems to contradict well-documented scientific discoveries. They regard Theosophy as illogical, and its appeal restricted to dreamers.

Another kind of prejudice comes from religious quarters. There are people who, because of their calling, feel they must protect religion from Theosophy, or they fear that if they accept it, it will create conflict with their religious conscience. They assume that Theosophy aims to establish a new religion or sect.

Yet another kind of prejudice stems from the mistaken view that Theosophy is a revival of ancient Buddhism. Here the fear is that in place of Christianity the world is to be inoculated with a kind of neo-Buddhism. Nothing that one can say appears to dispel these three kinds of prejudice.

If Theosophy aimed to transplant an ancient religious system into Europe, it would sin against its own fundamental principle, which is to understand every religion and spiritual aspiration. Every great philosophy or world outlook has arisen out of the configuration of a specific civilization; it is not possible to transplant it into a completely different culture. If modern human beings, standing within the European-American civilization, are to receive the impulse for true spiritual progress, it must spring from the vigorous life of their own time. Such impulses cannot be derived from views and ideas of a bygone age; they must have their roots where the human soul has its home. What is needed is the recognition that the inherent possibility in our own culture must be widened and deepened. While every civilization has within it fully matured abilities and inclinations, it also contains seeds for its further evolution. If these seeds are allowed to lie fallow, they become burning questions weighing on the human soul. The seeds for future development in the hidden recesses or a person's inner being must evolve out of necessity.

There is no conflict between the world outlook of spiritual science and the great religions. Spiritual science, while resting on its own foundation, seeks to understand all religions. It wishes to show that all the great world religions are based on the same fundamental truth. From these lectures it will become apparent that spiritual science reflects an aspect of all of them. Far from wanting to become another religion, spiritual science aims to awaken understanding for the views of the past as well as for those which, because they are right for the present time, will truly further mankind's progress in the future.

Let us objectively consider why spiritual science would neither wish to be a religion nor found a new sect. The lectures to be held this winter will increasingly demonstrate that the time is past for founding new religions. Spiritual truths can no longer be presented the way they were in former times. Founding new religions came to an end with the central religion, Christianity. Christianity is capable of endless development far into the future. Spiritual science should be a means to make Christianity more accessible to the scholarly mind. Its foremost task is to contribute to the comprehension of religion by illumining the wisdom it contains, and by enabling people to find their way into spiritual life. There is no need for new religions; the old ones contain all the wisdom and knowledge we require. What is needed is to present that wisdom in a new form. In so doing, the old forms will also become understandable. The true value of the ancient religions will be restored by spiritual science.

Greater tolerance in regard to religious views has come about in recent times. Modern human beings feel that to hate and persecute those who confess a different faith serves no purpose. In fact, the hatred and intolerance that formerly caused so much blood to flow in the name of religion is no longer understood. This tendency to accept and tolerate will continue for a time, but eventually it will prove too weak, too insipid an attitude for progress. When in the nineteenth century the transition took place to a more tolerant attitude, it was a blessing. At that time it was justified and it helped to develop love and humanness. However, what is right and good in one age is not necessarily so in another. The various epochs of world evolution provide human beings with different tasks. The feeling and attitude that was fully justified in the nineteenth century, which kindled noble hopes in human hearts, will prove too feeble and ineffective in the twentieth century when other soul forces are called upon.

What is required now is complete mutual understanding, not just tolerance and patience. So far, Christians have tended to take the attitude that, while they do not understand the faith of Muslims or of the Jewish people, and equally they do not understand Christianity, each one tolerates the other's views. This attitude will prove insufficient. In the future, complete understanding is necessary. Human beings must be able to recognize that their faith has developed within a certain culture and that it determines their thoughts and ideals. But life is shared with people of different cultures and with different views, and these a person must endeavor to understand. The truth should result in more than mere patience and tolerance; it should enable a person to enter with understanding into what the others feel and experience. A person's comprehension of Truth must encompass all other faiths.

This is an attitude that is very different from that of mere tolerance. Through spiritual science a person should be able to progress to complete understanding. The followers of particular faiths must realize that they have reached certain aspects of Truth, and that Truth takes on different forms in different souls. This is to be expected and should be no cause for division; rather Truth in all its forms should act as a unifying force. Such an attitude is positive and humane, and brings people together. Also, it is on a higher level than tolerance, and has a greater ennobling effect on the human soul because it is based on insight and love.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky,² founder, always saw Theosophy as having the mission to provide knowledge. She recognized that modern human beings are always bound to ask (a) questions about a person's fate and destination, birth and death, infinity and eternity; (b) questions about illness and pain; and (c) about what happens after death when a person has laid aside the body. Every human being asks these questions. The task of religion has always been to provide spiritual rather than merely theoretical answers, to give a person strength, consolation and reassurance.

From religion, we are meant to obtain answers to the crucial questions of existence. Religion should enable us to go through life fulfilling daily tasks, feeling calm and secure, and possessing knowledge that reaches beyond everyday affairs to encompass immortality. If we understand the human soul, then we know that no one can be strong and capable unless a certain comprehension of the riddles of life are reached. Only knowledge prevents them weighing on the soul, giving rise to doubt and uncertainty that makes a person weak. Without inner security of knowledge, a person is lost when faced with greater issues and unable to cope even with everyday affairs.

It will increasingly be recognized that insightful knowledge is the only true basis for vitality and strength of soul. The theosophical movement acknowledges this fact and sees it as its task to provide such knowledge. But why the need for spiritual science when through all the epochs of evolution, religion has existed to answer life's burning questions? The answer is that times have changed. What satisfied our ancestors no longer satisfies modern people. There is plenty of evidence of that today, and it will become even more obvious as time goes on. Religion does of course answer many questions, but the answers are formulated in a way that leaves people dissatisfied. The reason is that human nature has changed, and this leads people to attempt to find substitutes for the answers that no longer satisfy them either in history or in natural science.

People who longingly seek answers in modern science are especially those to whom the Bible and religion no longer speak. But modern science has to acknowledge that it has no answers to life's most important questions. Its enormous achievements in the realm of physical data are fully acknowledged by spiritual science; the results arrived at through painstaking research spanning the whole globe are indeed impressive. But when it comes to questions about the meaning of life or mankind's future evolution, it fails to provide answers. Those who have tried, and the many who are still trying, to find through natural scientific investigation what religion no longer provides, discover only disappointment. By contrast, spiritual science exists for the very purpose of throwing light on life's riddles and burning questions. However, those who still find satisfaction in what traditional religion has to offer will be unable to recognize what spiritual science is about, but what satisfies one today may not do so tomorrow. The founder of the Theosophical Society saw it as an ideal to provide concrete knowledge about life's deepest riddles. The claim that spiritual research is scientific is fully justified, as anyone will acknowledge who becomes acquainted with the methods whereby it is carried out. It aims to provide a spiritual world view with a scientific basis that will speak to the most erudite and also the simplest mind.

Yet there are those who feel that Theosophy is an interference and that it is better to leave people with their old faith, or better still to do something to restore the old faith, as science is incapable of providing answers to spiritual questions. That is an unrealistic view; people who hold it do not see what is happening all around them. Theosophy endeavors to be fully conscious of the tendencies that are coming to the fore. Let one example suffice to illustrate the urgent necessity for a world outlook based on spiritual insight.

Let us consider for a moment what is taking place in a country where for centuries religion has had a strange history. In Spain, orthodox religious faith has up till now had a strong grip on its people. But a change is taking place in this country where religious influence extends even to trivial everyday affairs. Who would have thought, a few years ago, that what we are now witnessing could possible occur in Spain. Only a short time ago the ruling power would have nothing to do with any so-called modern ideas. Just consider how rigid was the faith of the woman who preceded her son, the present king, Alphonso XIII. She has had no inclination to deviate one iota from the ways and customs that over the centuries have become firmly entrenched in the whole fabric of the state. Imagine the contrast to what is taking place now: This woman sits in Lourdes where she can indulge in the old ways and customs, while in Spain the young king is obliged to allow new ideas to saturate the rigid system. A liberal minister is shaking up the establishment, and is ruthlessly introducing new laws on education and marriage.

This is a sign that the impulses of the time (Zeitströmungen) are making themselves felt, and against that, mere human opinion is powerless. What must come about is proper understanding of the change in attitude that is taking place. Most of those in office are blind to such changes. They are unprepared and do not know what to do. It is not realized that neither such impulses are stronger than arbitrary opinions, nor that the needs of humanity at a particular time must be met with understanding and open minds. In our time people are too conscious to just accept what is imposed upon them. But everyone is required to understand the impulses of the times in which we live, and guide these impulses in the right direction. In no other way can healthy progress be ensured. History is made by human beings, but when it is made in spite of them, the result is chaos. Harmony and justice can come about only through cooperation. The age one lives in makes demands; it is up to the individual to recognize what they are. Just to sit-back in comfort and let things take their course is not enough. That is an attitude that rather hampers progress. The impulses of one's age must not be ignored. Human beings are destined to absorb into their heart and mind, into their whole being, impulses from the supersensible realm so that they become effective in the world.

What does that imply? A thoughtful person will recognize that very much is implied in what has just been said. It is obvious to deeper insight that without a foundation of spiritual life, no material civilization can prosper. No state, no community has ever endured without a religious foundation. Let someone earnestly try to found a community consisting solely of people whose interests are purely materialistic, that is people with no knowledge of spiritual things, who accept as valid only materialistic views. Things would not deteriorate into chaos straightaway only because people would still have a vestige of ideas and ideals. No social system can endure unless it is built upon the foundation of religious wisdom. An individual is a bad practitioner who believes that practical minds are enough to ensure success. A person who wants to see material conditions continue to make progress must recognize that a foundation of spiritual insight and religion is imperative. If we want to give a human being bread, we must also give him something that will nourish the soul. In the periodical Lucifer, I once wrote that no one should be given bread without receiving also a world outlook that to give bread without giving also spiritual sustenance could only do harm. At first sight, this statement may not seem valid, but in the article it is substantiated.

What is taking place in Spain is only a special instance of what is happening everywhere. One must be an ostrich with one's head in the sand not to see it. But what is it that is needed at the present time to further true progress? The need is for specialized knowledge. Just as special knowledge is necessary for the provision and distribution of material necessities like clothing, so is special knowledge necessary for meeting a human's spiritual needs.

Ancient civilizations have depended upon the trust placed in priests and wise men. We must not criticize the systems of past cultures; they have been suitable for their particular epoch. When a culture is no longer acceptable, for the people can no longer live according to the old customs, the remedy does not lie in fighting it, but—in change and progress of the spiritual life. In earlier times people turned to the priest for words of comfort and assurance. Today we need spiritual investigators, people who can speak about the supersensible world in wes that correspond to our time, and are therefore acceptable and understandable to modern humans.

Let us consider what is to be done if things remain the way most of our contemporaries find satisfactory. The situation in Spain can be regarded as symptomatic. Perhaps you think that old arrangements will give way to new ones and people will become accustomed. But no new arrangement will have a chance of success unless there is also a change of heart. A spiritual outlook must begin to pulsate like life-blood through our whole modern civilization. When conflict arises nowadays over spiritual or social issues, there is nowhere people can turn for counsel concerning life's most important questions.

Let us look at what usually happens in such cases. Many people expect to find through natural science, that is, through knowledge of physical data, the kind of answers that have formerly been obtained from religion. Recently a conference of scientists took place in Stuttgart where weighty problems were discussed. (But can it be said that modern human beings are able at such places to find answers to spiritual questions? To questions concerning eternity or the meaning of death? At such conferences it becomes apparent that modern physical research is embarking an some strange investigations.) For those with interest in these things, I may mention that at Stuttgart methods were discussed in detail concerning the way organs from one organic being could be transplanted into another. Another point of great interest was the way the advent of the microscope had transformed all research. Now it was possible, by mixing and dissolving certain substances, to produce from lifeless matter something with the semblance of life. Many more things were mentioned, all of which called for respect and admiration in regard to modern scientific research.

But people wonder about the sense and purpose of all the extraordinary things physical researchers are busy investigating. Who is there among the scientists of this modern Olympus of cultural life that can answer questions about the meaning of life? No attention was given to questions of this nature at the latest scientific conference, whereas only two years ago Ledebur³ a chemist from Breslau, made an extraordinary speech in which he pleaded for psychological research to be stopped. And it is noteworthy that at a gathering of scientists Theodor Lipps⁴ could still speak on the subjects: natural science and philosophy. In the midst of reports on purely physical research, he threw in remarks to the effect that, unless natural science is able to arrive at a spiritual understanding of the phenomenon of man, it will never reach the status of a world view. “When man,” he said, “looks into his inner being, he finds the ‘I,’ and when he widens it to encompass the ‘world-I,’ he finds contentment.”

The situation is truly extraordinary. After all, the theosophical movement, where you will not find such vague general answers given to important questions, has existed for thirty years. Theosophy discusses subjects, such as a person's life before birth and after death, his experiences when attaining spiritual sight and so on, concretely and in detail. But what happens? After such specific knowledge has been available for thirty years, these issues are dealt with in commonplace and trivial ways that cannot possibly satisfy anyone. When the most important questions of life are discussed, all that is offered is a web of unworldly abstract thought—nothing but a play on meaningless words that appeals only to people with an interest in abstract philosophy. When those who long for answers to the heart's deepest questions turn to official authorities, they find nothing but powerlessness and ignorance.

Yet it is of utmost importance that there should exist, within external science, advancing as it does at great speed, a center of spiritual life, a place where human beings can find concrete knowledge about supersensible issues—a knowledge that would throw light also on the spiritual content preserved in old religious faiths and customs. If knowledge of the spiritual world is presented with the same scientific acumen as natural science, it would speak to the human soul and influence social life, just as was formerly the case with religion. Once that happens, religious life will assume new forms, while the old forms that have become influenced by materialism will disappear.

It is very important that the full significance of religion is recognized. Today there are many people—in France it is very much the fashion—who say that morality can be established without religion. It is maintained that humans [can] be moral without religion. This shows no comprehension whatever of spiritual laws. If religious worship is traced through the consecutive historical epochs, it will be found that a new cult arose in each, with special significance for that particular time. The cult of Hermes arose in Egypt, in India, the Rishis, in Persia, Zarathustra, and among the Hebrews emerged the cult of Moses. In our time, it is Christ Jesus, the greatest founder of religion in modern times. These cultures became great because their exponents understood the needs of their time. The exponents of Christianity will also work effectively when once again the needs of the human heart are understood.

When a civilization comes into being, the primary constituent is always religious faith, that is, a sum of views, feelings and ideas about what is regarded as spiritually the most exalted. There will be awareness that the world's foundation is of divine origin, and that death is vanquished. All the great civilizations draw their spiritual creativity from the faith on which they are founded. The great creative works of ancient Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Christian times would never have come into existence had they not originated from human thought and beliefs. Indeed, even the most materialistic culture stems originally from a person's knowledge of the supersensible. Thus, the most basic constituent of a civilization is faith.

The second thing of importance to consider is the effect of this faith on an individual's inner life. The thoughts and ideas a person formulates about supersensible matters have an uplifting effect; they fill a person's soul with feelings of harmony and joy. Whenever people have felt inwardly happy and secure, aware that their lives have a higher meaning, it has always been due to religious faith. Such feelings transform themselves into contentment and confidence in life. Thus, it can be said that when a civilization comes into being, we first of all recognize the presence of faith, and second feelings of exaltation, contentment and confidence in life.

The third thing to consider belongs to the sphere of the will. This is the sphere of morality and ethics. Ethics, that is, moral philosophy, influences not only morals, and acts of will, but also all social arrangements, all laws, and all affairs of state. It influences art, which belongs to the sphere of feeling. To think that morality can exist without religion is an illusion. Morality arises in the sphere of feeling. At first a person will have certain opinions about spiritual issues; second these will give rise to feelings of contentment and security; and third to will impulses that tell him: This is good; that is evil.

How does it come about that so many are subject to the illusion that morality can be established without the foundation of religion? It happens because morality, this third component of a culture, is the last to disappear. When a civilization declines, the first to diminish is faith, that is, doubt arises about religion. However, even if the invigorating certainty of faith is absent for a long time, people still retain the feelings engendered by faith. When at last even inherited religious feelings have vanished, the morality that originated from the faith will still persist. Those who today believe that morality exists without a foundation of religious faith do not themselves have to rely on such an impossibility. They subsist on the remnant of inherited moral qualities. It is only because they have retained the morality of the past that people who think spiritual qualities are mere fantasy can act morally. Many believe they have overcome the need for religion, yet their moral life originated from religion.

Socialists tend to want to establish morality without a foundation, that is, without religion. The reason they can talk about the subject at all, and the reason also for things not collapsing into chaos straightaway, is solely that they retain in the bodily organism the old morality that they want to eradicate. Even the political changes socialists want to bring about are based on the old morality. If progress is to come about, there must be a renewal of spiritual knowledge. When it is possible to draw people's attention to the spiritual forces that are streaming into our world all around us, this knowledge will create feelings of security and impulses towards moral actions in their soul. Then we will no longer have to rely on riches inherited from the past, but on those that spring from our own culture.

There is nothing illogical in the knowledge of higher worlds of which spiritual science speaks. The supersensible is not treated as something remote and inaccessible; it is extraordinary that certain philosophic views maintain that no educated person can believe in a supersensible world. Such views demonstrate ignorance of the specific sense in which spiritual science speaks about the supersensible. I have often made clear by means of the following comparison what I mean by that.

For someone born blind, the world of color and light is a “beyond” in relation to the accessible world. In other words, we have access to a world only if we have organs with which to perceive it. The moment sight is restored an individual no longer has to rely on others in order to determine that light and color exist. Then, a person experiences a new world but one which in reality was always there. In regard to the spiritual world of which spiritual science speaks, the situation is exactly the same.

Knowledge of the spiritual world is again attainable through spiritual science. Just as there always were enlightened human beings able to see into the spiritual world, so there are individuals today who have developed spiritual organs. They are able to perceive the spiritual aspect of physical phenomena and see beyond the portal of death. They perceive that part of the human being constitutes the immortal being that survives after death. Their task is to impart detailed information of this spiritual research, thus making spiritual knowledge possible once more.

It is cheap to say: Give me the means to see for myself. Actually, anyone can attain the means, provided that person seeks guidance of the right kind. Spiritual science constitutes such guidance and it is accessible to everyone. The very first requirement, however, is the ability to rise above the usual way of looking at things. The person must, as it were, say: Here is someone who tells me he can see into the spiritual world, and who relates many specific details. He speaks about what happens to humans after death, about spiritual forces and beings that are invisible to ordinary sight, and that permeate the world about us. As yet I cannot see that world, but if I keep an open mind and pay attention to my feelings and inner sense for Truth, I shall know whether what I hear sounds probable or the reverse. I can further apply logical thinking to the matter, and see if life itself bears out what I am told. Having listened calmly to everything and found nothing to contradict common sense, I shall attempt to look at the world in light of this knowledge and see if it explains human destiny. By assuming spiritual scientific views to be correct, I will be able to test whether they explain things and make life understandable. I shall also gradually discover if spiritual knowledge does give one inner strength, joy and confidence in life. In other words, I will discover whether there is a basis for accepting the words of the initiate. This attitude I adopt is the same in regard to spiritual knowledge as that adopted by a remarkable person in regard to the ordinary world of light and color.

The life of the deaf, mute and blind Helen Keller⁵ was often described. Up to the age of seven, she was like a little wild animal. Then there came to her a teacher of genius, Anne Sullivan,⁶ and then her education was far above average. She had never heard sound or seen color and light; all her life had been one of silent darkness. But she had allowed everything that those around her experienced of color, light and sound to affect her soul. Recently a new book of hers was published, entitled Optimism. This small volume showed that not only was she knowledgeable about the affairs of the present time, but also about the life and language of the Greeks and Romans. Although she had never experienced it herself, she described the beauty of creation conveyed by sight and hearing. Her little book showed that she had gained more than just mental pictures from what had been described to her; she had gained inner strength and confidence in life.

In the same way, people who do not close their mind will gain strength, confidence and hope for the future from listening to the description of someone with spiritual sight and hearing. Inner uncertainty causes weakness, and creates an inability to cope with life. Individuals who listen to someone with spiritual sight will gradually become aware of things that they were not aware of before. Spiritual knowledge will make people efficient and capable. Impulses must flow from the spiritual world like new life-blood and permeate our political and social systems, bringing about a transformation of our whole civilization. You must realize that spiritual knowledge is in our time closely connected with the most important questions and problems. When these press in upon us from all sides in various forms, we must acknowledge the need for deeper understanding. That the spiritual-scientific view of the world is shaped through prophetic knowledge of what must come will be born out by the lectures to be held this winter. They will throw light not only on the great civilizations, but also on everyday life. The results of spiritual research show clearly what is needed to ensure the healthy progress of mankind, and also what provides the individual with inner strength, courage, and joy in life.

There are still many who laugh at what spiritual science has to say about supersensible issues. As they believe they are practical folks, they will have nothing to do with such unpractical nonsense. But the spiritual-scientific movement will carry on its work. The time will come when even people who are now among the fainthearted, skeptical doubters will turn to those who have absorbed spiritual knowledge because they need solutions to the great riddles and questions that will burden the soul—not arbitrary human questions, but questions posed by life with great force. Already in the near future, spiritual knowledge will be needed more and more if human evolution is to progress.

• 1. Theosophical Society was founded in 1895.
• 2. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) was the founder of the Theosophical Society and a Russian occultist.
• 3. Ledebur (?) was a chemist from Breslau.
• 4. Theodor Lipps (1851–1914) was a philosopher.
• 5. Helen Adams Keller (1880–1968) was an author and lecturer. She was born deaf, blind and mute. She became famous for her triumph over her disabilities.
• 6. Anne Sullivan (1866–1936) was Helen Keller's teacher. She was partially blind herself.

The title of today's lecture no doubt reminds you of a passage in Goethe's Faust, when Faust, representing striving man, enters into a pact with evil powers, represented by the emissary from hell, Mephistopheles. Faust is to sign the pact in blood. At first he regards this as a joke, but Goethe undoubtedly meant the words spoken by Mephistopheles at this point to be taken seriously: “Blood is a very special fluid.”

Goethe¹ commentators usually provide curious interpretations of this passage. You will be aware that so much has been written about Goethe's Faust that it can fill libraries. I naturally cannot go into what every commentator has said about this particular passage, but it all amounts more or less to what is said by a recent commentator, Professor Jacob Minor.² Like others, he regards Mephistopheles' remark to be ironic, but Minor adds a curious sentence. I quote it in order to illustrate the amazing things said about Goethe's Faust. Minor states: “The devil is an enemy of blood.” He goes on to point out that as blood invigorates and sustains human life, the devil, being an enemy of the human race, must of necessity be also an enemy of blood. Minor is quite right when he further demonstrates that in sagas and legends blood always plays the kind of role it plays in Goethe's Faust. The oldest version of the Faust legend clearly describes how Faust makes a slight cut in his left hand with a penknife, dips a quill in the blood in order to sign the agreement, and as he does so, the blood, flowing from the wound, forms the words: “Oh man, escape!”

This is all quite correct, but what about the remark that the devil is an enemy of blood and for that reason demands the signature written in blood? Can you imagine anyone wishing to possess the very thing he abhors? The only reasonable interpretation of the passage is that Goethe, as well as earlier writers of Faust legends, wishes to show that the devil regards blood as especially valuable, and that to him it is important that the deed is signed in blood rather than in neutral ink. The supposition must be that the representative of the powers of evil believes, or rather is convinced, that he will gain a special power over Faust by possessing at least a drop of his blood. It is quite obvious that Faust must sign in blood, not because the devil is his enemy, but because he wants to have power over him. The reason behind this passage is a strange premonition that if someone gains power over an individual's blood, one gains power over the person. In short, the feeling is that blood is a very special fluid and it is the real issue in the fight for an individual's soul between good and evil.

A radical change must come about in our modern understanding and evaluation of the sagas and myths handed down since ancient times. We cannot go on regarding legends, fables and myths as childlike folklore or pretentiously declare them to be poetical expressions of a nation's soul. The poetic soul of a nation is nothing but a fantasy product of donnish officialdom. Anyone with true insight into the soul of a people knows with certainty that the contents of fables and myths, depicting powerful beings and wonderful happenings, is something very much more profound than mere invention. When with knowledge provided by spiritual research we delve into sagas and myths, allowing the mighty primordial pictures to act on us, we begin to recognize the profound ancient wisdom they reveal.

To begin with, one naturally wonders how it was possible for primitive man, with his unsophisticated views, to depict in the form of fables and myths, cosmic riddles that are unveiled and described in exact terms by means of modern spiritual research. This at first seems very surprising. However, as further research reveals how these ancient fables and myths came into existence, one ceases to be amazed, and all doubt vanishes. One discovers that myths and fables, far from containing naive views, are filled with primordial wisdom. A thorough study of myths and fables yields infinitely more insight than today's intellectual, experimental sciences. Admittedly the approach to such a study must be with spiritual scientific methods. Whatever legends have to say about blood is important, because in earlier times an individual's inherent wisdom made him aware of the true significance of blood, this special fluid that in human beings is a stream of flowing life.

Whence this wisdom came in ancient times is not our concern today; it will be the subject of a later lecture, though an indication will be given at the close of this one. Today we shall look at the significance of blood in human evolution and its role in cultural life. However, our discussion will not be from a physiological, or any other natural scientific point of view, but from that of spiritual science. It will be a help if before pursuing our subject we remind ourselves of a maxim that originated within the civilization of ancient Egypt, where the priestly wisdom of Hermes held sway. This maxim, which expresses a fundamental truth, is known as the Hermetic maxim and runs as follows: As above, so below.

All kinds of trivial explanations of this saying are to be found, but the one that concerns us today is the following. It is obvious to spiritual science that the world accessible to our five senses, far from being complete in itself, is a manifestation of a spiritual world hidden behind it. This hidden world is called, according to the Hermetic axiom, the “world above, or the upper world.” The sense world spread all about us, perceptible to our senses and accessible to our intellect, is called the “world below,” and is an expression of the spiritual world above it. The physical world is therefore not complete to the spiritual researcher, but is a kind of physiognomic expression of the soul and spirit world behind it, just as when looking at a human face one does not stop short at its shape and features, but recognizes them as an expression of the soul and spirit behind them.

What everyone does instinctively when faced with an ensouled being, the spiritual researcher does in regard to the whole world. The axiom, As above, so below, when applied to a human being, means that a person's soul impulses come to expression on the face. A hard, coarse face denotes coarseness of soul, a smile inner joy, and tears inner suffering.

Let us now apply the Hermetic axiom to the question: What is wisdom? Spiritual science has often pointed to the fact that human wisdom is related to experience, particularly to painful experience. For someone actually in the throes of pain and suffering, the immediate experience will no doubt be inner discord. But when pain and suffering have been conquered, when only their fruits remain, a person will say that from the experience a measure of wisdom is gained. The happiness, enjoyment and contentment life brings one gratefully accepts; but more valuable by far, once it is overcome, is the pain and suffering, for to that people owe what wisdom they possess. Spiritual science recognizes in wisdom something like crystallized pain; pain transformed into its opposite.

It is interesting that modern research, with its more materialistic approach, has come to the same conclusion. A book well worth reading was published recently about the mimicry of thought. The writer is not an anthroposophist, but a natural scientist and psychologist. He sets out to show that a person's thought life reveals itself in the physiognomy, and draws attention to the fact that a thinker's facial expression always suggest assimilated pain.

Thus, you see emerging, interspersed with more materialistic views, a confirmation of an ancient maxim that originated from spiritual knowledge. This will happen more and more frequently; you will find ancient wisdom gradually reappearing within the framework of modern science.

Spiritual research confirms that everything that surrounds us in the world: the configuration of minerals, the covering of vegetation, the world of animals, is the physiognomic expression of the life of spirit behind it. It is the “below” reflecting the “above.” Spiritual science maintains that what thus surrounds us can be properly understood only when one has knowledge of the “above,” that is, knowledge of the prototypes, the primordial beings from whom it all originated. Today we shall turn our attention to that which creates on earth its physiognomic expression in the blood. Once the spiritual background of blood is understood, it will be recognized that such knowledge must of necessity influence our spiritual and cultural life.

The problems human beings are facing today are momentous and pressing—especially educational problems involving not only the young but also entire populations. These particular problems are bound to increase as time goes on. The great social upheavals taking place make this evident to anyone. Demands causing anxiety are continually made, whether in the guise of the woman question, the labor question or the peace question. These are all problems that become understandable once insight is gained into the spiritual nature of blood.

Another question, similar in nature, which is again coming to the fore, is that of race. The racial problem cannot be understood unless one understands the mysterious effect when blood of different races is mingled. And finally, there is the problem of colonization that also belongs in this category. This problem has become even more pressing since attempts have been made to tackle it more consistently than was formerly the case. It arises when cultivated people are to share their lives with uncultivated people. Certain questions ought to be asked when attempts are made to tackle the problem: To what extent is it possible for a primitive people to assimilate a strange culture? Can a savage become civilized? What here comes under consideration are vital and far-reaching questions of existence, not just concern about doubtful morality. It is unlikely that one will find the right way of introducing a strange culture to a people if it is not known whether it is on an ascending or descending line of evolution; whether this or that aspect of its life is ruled by its blood. When the significance of blood is discussed, all these things come under scrutiny.

The physical composition of blood will be known to you from science in general. In humans, and also in the higher animals, blood is truly the stream of life. Our inner bodily nature is in contact with the external world through the fact that we absorb into the blood the life-giving oxygen from the air, a process by which the blood is renewed. The blood that meets the instreaming oxygen acts as a kind of poison, as a kind of destroyer within the organism. This blue-red blood, by absorbing the oxygen, is transformed into red, life-giving blood through a process of combustion. This red blood that penetrates all parts of the organism has the task to absorb directly into itself substances from the outer world, and deposit them as nourishment along the shortest route within the body. Humans and the higher animals must of necessity first absorb nutritive substances into the blood, then, having formed the blood, absorb into it oxygen from the air and finally build up and sustain the body by means of the blood.

A knowledgeable psychologist once remarked that the blood circulating through the body is not unlike a second person who, in relation to the one made of bone, muscle and nerve, constitutes a kind of outer world. And indeed our entire being constantly takes from the blood what sustains it, and gives back what it cannot use. One could say that a person carries in his or her blood a double (Doppelgänger) who, as a constant companion, furnishes him or her with renewed strength and relieves a person of what is useless. It is entirely justified to refer to blood as a stream of life and compare its importance with that of fibre. What fibre is for the lower organism. blood is for the human being as a whole.

The distinguished scientist Ernst Haeckel³ has probed deeply into nature's workshop, and in his popular works he quite rightly points out that blood is the last to develop in an organism. When tracing the stages of development in a human embryo, one finds rudiments of bone and muscle long before there is any indication of blood formation. Only late in embryonic development does formation of blood and blood vessels become apparent. This leads natural science to rightly conclude that blood made its appearance only late in world evolution, and that forces already in existence had first to reach a stage of development comparable to that of blood before they could accomplish what was necessary in the human organism. When as embryos human beings repeat once more the earlier stages of human evolution, they adapt to what existed before blood first made its appearance, This a person must do in order to achieve the crowning glory of evolution: the enhancement and transmutation of all that went before into that special fluid that is blood.

If we are to enter into the mysterious laws of the spiritual realm that hold sway behind blood, we must first take a brief look at some of the basic ideas of spiritual science. You will come to see that these basic ideas are the “above,” and that this “above” comes to expression in the laws that govern blood, as it does in all other laws, as if in a physiognomy.

There are in the audience some who are acquainted with the basics of spiritual science; they will allow a brief repetition for the sake of others who are present for the first time. In any case, repetitions help to make these basic ideas clearer, as light will be thrown on them from a different aspect. In fact, what I am going to say may well appear as just a string of words to those who as yet know nothing about spiritual science, and are therefore unfamiliar with this outlook on life. However, when ideas behind words seem to have no meaning, it is not always the ideas that are at fault. In this context a witty remark made by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg⁴ is apt. He said: If a head and a book collide and the result is a hollow sound, it is not always the book's fault. So, too, when some of our contemporaries pass judgment on spiritual truths, which to them seem like a string of words, it is not always spiritual science that is at fault. However, those acquainted with spiritual science will know that the references made to higher beings are to beings that really do exist, even if they cannot be found in the physical world.

Spiritual science recognizes that humans, as they appear in the sense world to physical sight, represent only a part of their true being. In fact, behind the physical body there are several more principles that are invisible to ordinary sight. Human beings have the physical body in common with the so-called surrounding lifeless mineral world. In addition, they have a life body, or ether body. What is here understood by ether is not that of which natural science speaks. The life body or ether body is not something speculative or thought out, but is as concretely visible to the spiritual senses of the clairvoyant as are physical colors to physical sight.

The ether body is the principle that calls inorganic matter into life and, in lifting it out of lifelessness, weaves it into the fabric of life. Do not for a moment imagine that the life body is something the spiritual investigator thinks into the lifeless. Natural science attempts to do that by imagining something called the “principle of life” into what is found under the microscope, whereas the spiritual investigator points to a real definite entity. The natural scientist adopts, as it were, the attitude that whatever exists must conform to the faculties a person happens to have; therefore, what he or she cannot perceive does not exist. This is just about as clever as a blind person saying that colors are nothing but a product of fantasy. The person to pass judgment on something must be the one who has experienced it, not someone who knows nothing about it.

Nowadays one talks of “ignorabimus” and “limits of knowledge”; this is possible only as long as human beings remain as they are. But, as spiritual science points out, we are constantly evolving, and once we develop the necessary organs, we will perceive, among other things, the ether body, and will no longer speak of “limits of knowledge.” Agnosticism is grave obstacle to spiritual progress because it insists that, as human beings are as they are, their knowledge can only be limited accordingly. All that can be said to this is that then human beings must change, and when they do they will be able to know things they cannot now know things they cannot now know.

Thus, the second member of a person's being is the ether body, which one has in common with the vegetable kingdom.

A human being's third member is the astral body. This name, as well as being beautiful, is also significant; that it is justified will be shown later. Those who wish to find another name only show that they have no inkling as to why the astral body is so named. In humans and animals, the astral body bestows on living substance the ability to experience sensation. This means that not only do currents of fluid move within it, but also sensations of joy, sorrow, pleasure and pain. This capacity constitutes the essential difference between plant and animal, although transitional stages between them do exist.

A certain group of scientists believes that sensation should be ascribed also to plants, but that is only playing with words. Certainly some plants do react when something approaches them, but it has nothing to do with sensation or feeling. When the latter is the case, an image arises within the creature in response to the stimulus. Even if certain plants respond to external stimuli, that is no proof that they experience inner sensation. The inwardly felt has its seat in the astral body. Thus, we see that creatures belonging to the animal kingdom consist of physical body, ether or life body, and astral body.

Human beings tower above the animal through a specific quality, often sensed by thoughtful natures. In his autobiography, Jean Paul⁵ relates the deep impression made upon him when, as a small child, standing in the courtyard of his parent's house, the thought suddenly flashed through his mind: “I am an ‘I,’ I am a being who inwardly calls himself ‘I.’ ” What is here described is of immense significance, yet generally overlooked by psychologists. A subtle observation will illustrate what is involved: In the whole range of speech, there is one small word that in its application differs from all others. We can all give a name to the objects in this room. Each one of us will call the table, “table,” the chairs, “chairs,” but there is one word, one name that can only refer to the one who speaks it: the little word “I.” No one can call someone else “I.” The word “I” must sound forth from the innermost soul to which it applies. To me, everyone else is a “you,” and I am a “you” to everyone else.

Religions have recognized that the “I” is that principle in us that makes it possible for the human soul to express its innermost divine nature. With the “I” begins what can never enter the soul through the external senses, what must sound forth in its innermost being. It is where the monologue, the soliloquy, begins in which, if the path has been made clear for the spirit's entry, the divine Self may reveal itself.

In religions of earlier cultural epochs, and still in the Hebrew religion, the word “I” was called: “The unutterable name of God.” No matter how it is interpreted according to modern philology, the ancient Hebrew name for God signifies what today is expressed by the word “I.” A hush went through the assembly when the initiate spoke the “Name of the Unknown God”; the people would dimly sense the meaning contained in the words that resounded through the temple: “I am the I am.”

Thus, the human being consists of physical body, ether body, astral body and the “I” or the essential inner being. This inner being contains within itself the germ of the three further evolutionary stages that will arise out of the blood. They are: Manas or Spirit Self, in contrast to the bodily self; Buddhi or Life Spirit; and a human's true spiritual being: Atma or Spirit Man, which today rests within us as a tiny seed to reach perfection in a far-off future; a stage to which at present we can only look to as a far-distant ideal. Therefore, just as we have seven colors in the rainbow and seven tones in the scale, we have seven members of our being that divide into four lower and three higher.

If we now look upon the three higher spiritual members as the “above” and the four lower as the “below,” let us try to get a clear picture of how the above creates a physiognomic expression in the below as it appears to physical sight. Take first what we have in common with the whole inorganic nature, that is, that which crystallized into the form of a person's physical body. When we speak of the physical body in a spiritual-scientific sense, it is not what can be seen physically that is meant, but the combination of forces behind it that constructed this form. The next member of our being is the ether body, which plants and animals also possess, and by means of which they are endowed with life. The ether body transforms physical matter into living fluids, thus raising what is merely material into living form. In animal and human the ether body is permeated by the astral body, which calls up in the circulating fluid inner participation of its movement, causing the movement to be reflected inwardly.

We have now reached the point where the being of humans can be understood insofar as they are related to the animal kingdom. The substances, such as oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, and so forth, out of which our physical body is composed, are to be found outside in inorganic nature. If the substances transformed by the ether body into living matter are to attain the capacity to create inner mirror images of external events, then the ether body must be permeated by the astral body. It is the astral body that gives rise to sensations and feelings, but at the animal level does so in a specific way.

The ether body transforms inorganic substances into living fluids; the astral body transforms living substance into sensitive substance. But—and of this please take special note—a being composed of no more than the three bodies is only capable of sensing itself. It is only aware of its own life processes; its existence is confined within the boundaries of its own being. This fact is most interesting, and it is important to keep it in mind. Look for a moment at what has developed in a lower animal: inorganic matter is transformed into living substance, and living mobile substance into sensitive substance. The latter is to be found only where there is at least the rudiment of what at a higher stage becomes a developed nervous system.

Thus, we have inorganic substance, living substance, and nerve substance capable of sensation. In a crystal you see manifest certain laws of inorganic nature. (A crystal can be formed only within the whole surrounding nature.) No single entity could exist by itself separated from the rest of the cosmos. If we were to be transferred a mile or two above the earth's surface, we would die. Just as we are conceivable only within the environment to which we belong, where the necessary forces exist that combine to form and sustain us, so too, in the case of a crystal. A person who knows how to look at a crystal will see it as an individual imprint of the whole of nature, indeed of the whole cosmos. Georges Leopold Chrètien Cuvier⁶ is quite right when he says that a competent anatomist is able to deduce from a single bone to what kind of animal it belongs, as each kind has its own specific bone formation.

So you see that in the form of a crystal a certain aspect of the whole cosmos is reflected, just as an aspect of the whole cosmos is imprinted on living substance. The fluid circulating in a living creature is a small world that mirrors the great world. When substance possesses not only life, but also experiences inner sensation, it mirrors universal laws; it becomes a microcosm that dimly senses within itself the whole macrocosm. As the crystal is an image of cosmic form, so is sentient life an image of cosmic life. The dullness of consciousness in simple creatures is compensated by its immense range, for mirrored in it is the whole cosmos.

The constitution of humans is simply a more intricate structure composed of the three bodies already found in simple sentient creatures. If you consider people while disregarding their blood, you have beings built up from the same substances as those to be found in their environment. Like the plant, human beings contain fluids that call mineral substances to life, which in turn incorporate a system of nerves. The first nerves to appear are those of the so-called sympathetic nervous system. In humans it extends along both sides of the vertebral column, forming a series of knots from which it branches out and sends threads to the various organs, the lungs, the digestive tract and so on.

In the first instance, the sympathetic nervous system gives rise to the kind of sentient life just described. But a person's consciousness does not reach down far enough to experience the cosmic processes it mirrors. The surrounding cosmic world out of which the human being, as a living being, is created, mirrors itself in the sympathetic nervous system. There is in these nerves a dull inner life. If human beings could dive down consciously into the sympathetic nervous system, while the higher nervous system fell asleep, they would behold in a world of light the workings of the great cosmic laws.

Human beings once had a clairvoyant faculty that has been superseded. However, it can still be experienced, if through certain measures the function of the higher nervous system is suspended, setting free the lower consciousness. When that happens, the world is experienced through the lower nervous system in which the environment is mirrored in a special way. Certain lower animals still have this kind of consciousness. As explained, it is extremely dull, but provides a dim awareness of a far wider aspect of the world than the tiny section perceived by humans today.

At the time when evolution had reached the stage of the cosmos being mirrored in the sympathetic nervous system, another event occurred in human beings. The spinal cord was added to the sympathetic nervous system. The system of brain and spinal cord extended to the organs, through which contact was established with the outer world. Once their organisms had reached this stage, humans were no longer obliged to be merely a mirror for the primordial cosmic laws; the mirror image itself now entered into relationship with the environment. The incorporation of the higher nervous system in addition to the sympathetic nervous system denoted the transformation that had occurred in the astral body. Whereas formerly it participated dully in the life of the cosmos, it now contributed its own inner experiences.

Through the sympathetic nervous system, a being senses what takes place outside itself; through the higher nervous system, what takes place within itself. In individuals at the present stage of their evolution, the highest form of the nervous system is developed; it enables people to obtain from the highly structured astral body what is needed to formulate mental pictures of the outer world. Therefore, a person has lost the ability to experience the environment in the original dull pictures. Instead, individuals are aware of their inner life, and build within the inner self a new world of pictures on a higher level. This world of mental pictures mirrors, it is true, a much smaller section of the outer world, but does so much more clearly and perfectly.

Hand in hand with this transformation, another one occurred on a higher evolutionary level. The reorganization of the astral body became extended to the ether body. Just as the ether body through its reorganization became permeated with the astral body, and just as there was added to the sympathetic nervous system that of the brain and spinal cord, so what was set free from the ether body—after it had called into being the circulation of living fluids—now transformed these lower fluids into what we call “blood.”

Blood denotes an individualized ether body, just as the brain and spinal cord denote an individualized astral body. And through this individualizing comes about that which expresses itself as the “I.”

Having traced man's evolution up to this point, we notice that we are dealing with a gradation in five stages: First the physical body (or inner forces); second the ether body (or living fluids, to be found also in plants); third the astral body (manifesting itself in the lower or sympathetic nervous system); fourth the higher astral body emerging from the lower astrality (manifesting itself in the brain and spinal cord); and finally the principle that individualizes the ether body.

Just as two of humanity's principles, the ether, and astral bodies, have become individualized, so will the human being's first principle, built up out of external lifeless substances, that is, the physical body, become individualized. In present day humanity there is only a faint indication of this transformation.

We see that formless substances come together in the human body, that the ether body transforms them into living forms, that through the astral body the outer world is reflected and becomes inner sensation, and finally this inner life produces of itself pictures of the outer world.

When the process of transformation extends to the etheric body, the result is the forming of blood. This transformation manifests itself in the system of heart and blood vessels, just as the transformation of the astral body manifests in the system of brain and spinal cord. And, as through the brain the outer world becomes inner world, so does this inner world become transformed through the blood into an outer manifestation as the human body. I shall have to speak in similes if I am to describe these complicated processes. The pictures of the external world made inward through the brain are absorbed by the blood and transformed into vital formative forces. These are the forces that build up the human body; in other words, blood is the substance that builds the body. We are dealing with a process that brings the blood into contact with the outer world; it enables it to take from it the most perfect substance, oxygen. Oxygen continually renews the blood, endowing it with new life.

In tracing human development, we have followed a path that leads from the outer world to humanity's inner world and back to the outer world. We have seen that the origin of blood coincides with our ability to face the world as an independent being, a being able to form his or her own pictures of the external world from its reflection within the self. Unless this stage is reached, a being cannot say “I” to itself. Blood is the principle whereby “I-hood” is attained. An “I” can express itself only in a being who is able independently to formulate the pictures the outer world produces within the self. A being who has attained “I-hood” must be able to take in the outer world and recreate it within the self.

If we possessed only a brain without a spinal cord, we would still reproduce within ourselves pictures of the outer world and be aware of them, but only as a mirror image. It is quite different when we are able to build up anew what is repeated within ourselves; for then what we thus build up is no longer merely pictures of the outer world; it is the “I.” A being who possesses brain and spinal cord will not only mirror the outer world, as does a being with only the sympathetic nervous system, but will also experience the mirrored picture as inner life. A being who in addition possesses blood will experience inner life within the self. The blood, assisted by oxygen taken from the outer world, builds up the individual body according to the inner pictures. This is experienced as perception of the “I”.

The “I” turns its vision inwards into a person's being, and its will outwards to the world. This twofold direction manifests itself in the blood, which directs its forces inwards, building up a person's being, and outwards towards the oxygen. When humans fall asleep they sink into unconsciousness because of what the consciousness experiences within the blood, whereas when they, by means of sense organs and brain, form mental pictures of the outer world, then the blood absorbs these pictures into its formative forces. Thus, the blood exists midway between an inner picture-world and an outer world of concrete forms. This becomes clearer if we look at two phenomena. One is that of genealogy, that is, the way conscious beings are related to ancestors, the other is the way we experience external events.

We are related to ancestors through the blood. We are born within a specific configuration, within a certain race, a certain family and from a certain line of ancestors. Everything inherited comes to expression in our blood. Likewise, all the results from an individual's physical past accumulates in the blood, just as within it there is prepared a prototype of that person's future. Consequently, when the individual's normal consciousness is suppressed, for example under hypnosis or in cases of somnambulism or atavistic clairvoyance, a much deeper consciousness becomes submerged. Then, in a dreamlike fashion, the great cosmic laws are perceived. Yet this perception is nevertheless clearer than that of ordinary dreams even when lucid. In such conditions all brain activity is suppressed, and in deep somnambulism even that of the spinal cord. In this condition what the person experiences is conveyed by the sympathetic nervous system; the individual has a dull, hazy awareness of the whole cosmos. The blood no longer conveys mental pictures produced by the inner life through the brain; it only conveys what the outer world has built including everything inherited from ancestors. Just as the shape of a person's nose stems from his or her ancestors, so does the whole bodily form. In this state of consciousness a person senses his ancestors in the same manner that waking consciousness senses mental pictures of the outer world. A person's blood is haunted by his ancestors; he dimly participates in their existence.

Everything in the world evolves, also human consciousness. If we go back to the time when our remote ancestors lived, we find that they possessed a different type of consciousness. Today, during waking life we perceive external objects through the senses, and transform them into mental pictures that act an our blood. Everything a person experiences through the senses is working in not only his blood but also in his memory. By contrast, a person remains unconscious of everything bestowed by ancestors. We know nothing about the shape of our inner organs. In the past all this was different; at that time the blood conveyed not only what it received from outside through the senses, but also what existed in the bodily form, and as this was inherited, we could sense our ancestors within our own being.

If you imagine such a consciousness enhanced, you will get an idea of the kind of memory that corresponded to it. When our experiences are confined to what can be perceived through the senses, then only such sense perceptible experiences are remembered. A person's consciousness comprises only his experiences since childhood.

In the past this was different, because the inner life contained all that was brought over through heredity. A human's mental life depicted ancestors' experiences as if they were his own. A person could remember not only his own childhood, but his ancestors' lives, because they were contained in the pictures absorbed by his blood. Incredible as it may seem to the modern materialistic outlook, there was a time when human consciousness was such that an individual regarded both his and his forefathers' physical experiences as his own. When someone said: “I have experienced... ,” he referred not only to personally known events but also to events experienced by his ancestors. It was a dim and hazy consciousness compared with modern human waking consciousness, more like a vivid dream. However, it was much more encompassing, as it included not only his own life but the lives of ancestors. A son would feel at one with his father and grandfather, as if they were sharing the same “I.” This was also the reason he did not give himself a personal name but one that included past generations, designating what they had in common with one and the same name. Each person felt strongly that he was simply a link in a long line of generations.

The question is how this form of consciousness came to be transformed into a different one. It happened through an event well-known to spiritual historical research. You will find that every nation the world over describes a significant moment in history when a new phase of its culture began—the moment when the old traditions begin to lose their influence, and the ancient wisdom that had flowed down the generations via the blood begins to wane, although the wisdom still finds expression in myths and sagas.

A tribe used to be an enclosed unit; its members married among themselves. You will find this to be the case in all races and peoples. It was a significant moment in the history of mankind when this custom ceased to be upheld—the moment when a mingling of blood took place through the fact that marriage between close relations was replaced by marriage between strangers. Marriage within a tribe ensured that the same blood flowed through its members down the generations; marriage between strangers allowed new blood to be introduced into a people.

The tribal law of intermarriage will be broken sooner or later among all peoples. It heralds the birth of the intellect, which means ability to understand the external world, to understand what is foreign.

The important fact to bear in mind is that in ancient times a dim clairvoyance existed out of which arose sagas and legends, and that the clairvoyant consciousness is based on unmixed blood, whereas our awakened consciousness depends on mixed blood. Surprising as it may seem, marriage between strangers has resulted in logical, intellectual thoughts. This is a fact that will increasingly be confirmed by external research, which has already made a beginning in that direction. The mingling of blood extinguishes the former clairvoyance and enables humanity to reach a higher stage of evolution. When a person today goes through esoteric training and causes clairvoyance to reappear, that person transforms it to a higher consciousness, whereas today's waking consciousness has evolved out of the ancient dim clairvoyance.

In our time, a person's whole surrounding world in which he acted came to expression in the blood; consequently, this surrounding world formed the inner in accordance with the outer. In ancient times it was more a person's inner bodily life that came to expression in the blood. A person inherited, along with the memory of his ancestors' experiences, also their good or bad inclinations; these could be traced in his blood. This ancestral bond was severed when blood became mingled through outside marriages. The individual began to live his own personal life; he learned to govern his moral inclinations according to his own experiences. Thus, ancestral power holds sway in unmixed blood; that of personal experience in mixed blood.

Myths and legends told of these things: “That which has power over thy blood has power over thee.” Ancestral power over a folk came to an end when the blood, through being mingled with foreign blood, ceased to be receptive to its influence. This held good in all circumstances.

Whatever power wishes to subjugate a person will have to exert an influence that imprints itself in his blood. Thus, if an evil power wishes dominance over an individual, it must gain dominance over his or her blood. That is the profound meaning of the quotation from Faust, and the reason the representative of evil says: “Sign your name to the pact in blood; once I possess your name written in your blood, I shall have caught you by the one thing that will hold man. I shall then be able to pull you over to my side.” That which possesses a person's blood possesses that person, and possesses the human “I. ”

When two groups of human beings confront one another, as used to be the case in colonization, then only if there is true insight into evolutionary laws is there any possibility of foreseeing if the foreign culture can be assimilated. Take the case of a people that is very much at one with its environment, a people into whose blood the environment has as it were inserted itself. No attempt to graft upon it a foreign culture will succeed. It is simply impossible, and is also the reason why in certain regions the original inhabitants became extinct when colonized. One must approach such problems with insight and realize that anything and everything cannot be forced upon a people. It is useless to demand of blood more than it is able to endure.

Modern science has discovered recently that if blood from one animal is mixed with that of another not akin to it, the two types of blood prove fatal to one another. This is something that has been known to spiritual knowledge for a long time. Just as unrelated types of blood if mixed cause death, so is the old clairvoyance killed in primitive humanity when blood from different lines of descent are mingled. Our modern intellectual life is entirely the outcome of the mingling of blood. Once this approach is adopted it will be possible to study what effect the mingling of blood has had on the various people in the course of history.

Thus, when the blood of animals from different evolutionary stages is mixed the result is death, whereas that is not the case when the species are related. The human organism survives when, through marriage, blood is mingled with strange blood; here the result is the extinction of the original animal kind of clairvoyance, and the birth in evolution of a new consciousness. In other words, something happens in humans, but on a higher level, that is similar to what happens in the animal kingdom where strange blood kills strange blood. In the human kingdom strange blood kills the hazy clairvoyance that is based on kindred blood.

Therefore, it is a destructive process that gave rise to the modern human wakeful day-consciousness. The kind of spiritual life that resulted from intermarriage has been destroyed in the course of evolution; while the very thing that destroyed it, that is, marriage between strangers, gave birth to the intellect and today's lucid consciousness.

What is able to live in a person's blood lives in that person's “I.” Just as the physical principle comes to expression in the physical body, the ether body comes to expression in the system of living fluids, and the astral body in the system of nerves, so does the “I” come to expression in the blood. Physical principle, ether body and astral body are the “above” blood; the “I” forms the center; and physical body, living fluids and nervous system are the “below.” Therefore, whatever power wishes to dominate humans must take possession of their blood.

These are things that must be taken into account if progress is to be achieved in practical life. For example, just because the “I” comes to expression in the blood, a people's racial character can be destroyed through colonization, when more is demanded than the blood can endure.

Not till Beauty and Truth become part of a person's blood does he truly possess them. Mephistopheles wants power over Faust's “I”; that is why he seizes Faust's blood. So you see that the quotation, which is the Leitmotiv of this lecture, arose out of profound knowledge. Blood is indeed a very special fluid.

• 1. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was a German poet, novelist, and playwright.
• 2. Jacob Minor (1855–1912) was professor of philology.
• 3. Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) was a German biologist who supported Darwin's theory of evolution and his theory of ontogeny or the development of an individual organism.
• 4. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1744–1799) was a physicist and satirical writer.
• 5. Jean Paul (Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, 1763–1825), German author.
• 6. Georges Leopold Chretien Couvier (1769–1832) was a French comparative anatomist and the founder of paleontology.

Today's lecture has a close connection with the two succeeding discourses entitled, “The Origin of Evil”; and “Illness and Death.” Yet each lecture is complete and comprehensible by itself.

Someone who contemplates his own life, as well as life in general, encounters at the outset, like an enigmatic figure standing guard before life's portal, the problem of suffering.

Suffering, so closely bound up with evil, illness and death, often cuts deeply into people's lives, and is seen as one of its greatest riddles. When attempts are made to find meaning in life, to assess its value, it is above all pain and suffering that come under scrutiny. In all world views since ancient times, it features as one of the foremost questions.

Suffering appears like an unwelcome intruder; it destroys, in the midst of happiness, enjoyment and hope. People who feel pain and suffering the most are those that measure life's value according to its pleasures, that, as it were, exist solely for the sake of enjoyment. It explains why a people as happy and as full of enjoyment of life as the ancient Greeks had a saying which hung like a dark cloud in the midst of the beautiful stars on the Hellenic firmament. The wise Silenus,¹ a member of Dionysus² retinue, answers the question, What is best for man? by saying: “The best for man is not to be born, and if born the next best for him is to die soon after.”

As you may know, Friedrich Nietzsche³ occupied himself with this saying in his effort to understand the birth of tragedy out of the Spirit of ancient Greece. He wanted to demonstrate, on the basis of Greek art and philosophy, the significant role played by suffering itself, and the sorrow it caused. However, not muck later another saying came to the fore in Greece that shows a dawning understanding for the fact that the significance of pain goes far beyond that of misfortune. We find in Aeschylus,⁴ one of the early Greek tragic poets, the saying, “From suffering knowledge is born.” Two things are here brought together, one of which the greater part of humanity would no doubt prefer to see eliminated, while seeing in the other one of life's greatest benefits.

From time immemorial, the belief has existed that life on this planet is unavoidably entwined with suffering, at least as far as human beings and the higher creatures are concerned—a view we find expressed at the start of the biblical story of creation, where knowledge of good and evil is intimately bound up with suffering. However, we also find in the Old Testament the view expressed that there can dawn, within the bleakest outlook caused by suffering, one filled with hope and light. A closer look at the Old Testament makes it clear that right from ancient times, sin and suffering have always been seen as connected, suffering as being a consequence of sin. The modern materialistic outlook finds it difficult to grasp that suffering may originate from sin. But when one has learned through spiritual research to look back into earlier ages, one recognizes that this view is not without foundation; the next lecture will show that it is possible to connect evil and suffering.

But in one case ancient Judaism found it impossible to explain the origin of suffering. In the midst of views connecting suffering with sin, we find the remarkable figure of Job. The story of Job shows, or is meant to show, that undeserved suffering can exist, that unspeakable pain can come about in a life without sin. In the uniquely tragic personality of Job, we see a dawning consciousness of a different connection, namely, a connection between suffering and ennoblement. Here suffering appears as a testing, as an incentive to greater striving. In the sense of Job's tragedy, suffering need not originate from evil; it may be a first cause from which will result a more perfect phase in human life. This viewpoint is rather remote from the modern way of thinking; most of today's educated people would find it difficult to accept. But if you look back over your life you will realize how often suffering and higher development go together. Furthermore, humanity has always been aware of this connection; and that leads us to today's subject. We shall consider in the sense of spiritual science the connection between suffering and spirituality

In dramas the central figure is often the tragic hero. The hero is faced again and again with suffering and conflict; at last at the climax the suffering ends with the death of the physical body. At this point the onlooker not only experiences compassion for the tragic hero and sorrow that such suffering exists; but he also has Bone through a catharsis, and feels that from death certainty arises, certainty that pain and suffering, and even death itself, are conquered.

No art form portrays more sublimely than the tragedy the greatest human victory, the victory of a person's innermost and noblest forces. On the stage we can often witness the conquest of pain and suffering. It is brought forcefully to our consciousness when we contemplate the event recognized by a large part of humanity as the greatest in history. The event that divides our reckoning of time into two parts—the salvation through Christ Jesus. It may strike us that, precisely through contemplating a suffering of world magnitude, the profoundest hope takes root in human hearts. Christianity reassures us concerning eternity, concerning victory over death. From looking up to a universal suffering preceded by no personal guilt or sin, we derive hope and strength. This indicates a consolatory feeling in the human soul that always asserts itself in the face of suffering.

If we look at human life more carefully, we find phenomena that indicate the significance of suffering. Let us look at one such phenomenon that is symptomatic, although at first sight it may not appear to be connected with suffering.

Think once more of a tragedy. The poet can only create such a work of art if he has the capacity to go out of himself, to widen his soul and encompass the suffering of others. The poet must be able to experience the suffering of others as if it were his own. But now compare this attitude with a very different one–not however with what inspires comedy—that would not be the right comparison. Rather compare it with the attitude that inspires caricature; that too in a sense belongs to the realm of art. The caricaturist distorts what is expressed outwardly of what lives in another soul, perhaps with ridicule and derision. Let us now imagine two persons, one of whom sees an event or a human being as tragic, the other who sees the situation in caricature. It is no mere simile when we say that the artist as tragic poet goes out of himself, allowing his soul to become ever more encompassing. But what is it that individuals attain through this ever widening of their inner being? They attain understanding of the other. Nothing provides greater understanding than experiencing another person's suffering as one's own. But what about the caricaturist? He cannot enter into the other person's feeling; on the contrary, he must reject, must set himself above it. The refusal to consider the other person's inner life is basic to caricature. No one can fail to see that compassion leads to understanding of the other, whereas caricature reveals the nature of the caricaturist. We learn through his work far more about his feeling of superiority, wit, and power of observation and imagination, than we learn about the nature of his subject.

If these examples make it evident that suffering is connected with deeper aspects of human nature, it is to be hoped that an understanding of our essential nature will also make clear how pain and suffering originate.

Spiritual science recognizes that the whole physical world about us originated from the spirit, whereas the materialistic view only sees spirit where it appears as a kind of crown on physical material creation, as a kind of flower growing from physical roots. The materialistic view sees, as it were, the inorganic organizing itself within the living creatures. Consciousness, pleasure and pain emerge from sentient life, the spirit from the corporeal. When the spiritual researcher looks at the way spirit first appears in the natural world, he too sees it emerging from the physical.

We saw in the preceding two lectures that in the light of spiritual science we must think of the human being as consisting not only of a physical or bodily nature, but also of soul and spirit. What materialism regards as the whole of existence, that is, what can be perceived physically, spiritual science maintains is in plan only his first member: the physical body. We know it is built up from the same substances as those that exist in inorganic nature, but we also know that it is called into life by the so-called ether or life body. This ether body is not something merely thought out; it is a reality and can be perceived when the higher senses that slumber in us are developed. The ether body is the second member of our being also possessed by the vegetable kingdom. Our third member, the astral body, is the bearer of pleasure and pain, cravings and passions; animals also possess an astral body. In the human being we see emerging within his physical, ether and astral bodies consciousness of self, that is, the ability to call himself “I.” This is the crown of his nature, which no other earthly being possesses. Spiritual science has often indicated the interrelation of these four members. The Pythagorean fourfoldness is nothing else than that of physical body, ether body, astral body and “I.” Those who have gone more deeply into spiritual science know that the “I” of a human being will develop out of itself what is termed: Spirit Self or Manas; Life Spirit or Buddhi; and Spirit Man or Atma, an individual's essential spirit being. This is all mentioned again today to ensure proper orientation.

Thus, the spiritual investigator sees the human being as a fourfold being. At a certain point spiritual research differs decisively from external research because spiritual perception penetrates deeply into the foundation of existence. However, the spiritual investigator also sees that, as a human being comes before us in the physical world, physical matter and laws constitute the foundation of a person's bodily nature; life constitutes the foundation of sensation; and consciousness the foundation of self-consciousness. But to spiritual research the sequence is seen the other way round. What to physical appearance seems to be the last to emerge from the physical body, that is, consciousness, is seen by the spiritual investigator as the primordial creative element. The conscious spirit is seen as the foundation of all existence. Consequently one cannot ask, Where does spirit come from? That can never be the question, rather, Where does matter come from? Spiritual research shows that matter originates from spirit; it is nothing but condensed spirit.

One might compare the process with water condensing into ice. Think of a vessel with water, part of which has cooled to below freezing so that ice has formed. This ice is nothing but water in solid form. Spirit relates to matter as water to ice. As ice can become water once more, so can spirit emerge again from matter, or conversely, matter can dissolve into spirit.

Thus, we see spirit in eternal circulation. Out of spirit that fills the whole universe, we see material entities arise and solidify; on the other hand material entities continually dissolve again. Spirit has flowed into everything that surrounds us as matter. Everything material is solidified spirit. Just as we only have to add the necessary heat for ice to turn back into water, so it is only necessary to add enough spirit to the physical beings to make the spirit resurrect in them. One speaks of a rebirth of the spirit which, having flowed into matter, has become solidified. Thus, we see that the astral body, the bearer of pleasure and pain, cravings and passions, is something that could not possibly originate from the physical. It is of the same element that permeates the whole world, but in us it lives as conscious spirit. It will be released from matter through the processes that govern human life. The spirit that in the physical world appears as the last is at the same time the first. The spirit brings the physical body and the ether body into existence, and when these have reached a certain point in their evolution, the spirit reappears as if reborn within them.

Physical substance, matter, we always perceive in a certain shape, in a certain form. We speak of material form, of life that arises within that form, and of consciousness arising within the living form. Thus, we speak of the three stages: physical body, ether body and astral body, and also of the three corresponding stages: form, life and consciousness. Not until the stage of consciousness is reached can self-consciousness arise. This will concern us in the next lecture.

The meaning and origin of life have always been subjects of much discussion, not least in our time. Modern natural science has not discovered many points of reference in this field. However, natural science has recently arrived at a conclusion that spiritual science has always maintained, namely, that organic and inorganic substances do not differ as far as the actual substances are concerned. The only difference lies in the fact that organic substances are more complex in their composition. Life can arise only where there are substances of varied and complex structure. As you may know, the basic substance where there is life is a white-of-egg-like substance which could well be called “living albumen.” It has one important characteristic that makes it differ from lifeless albumen; it begins to deteriorate the moment life has left it. That is why eggs, for example, do not stay fresh for long. The essential character of living substance is that it cannot remain a unity once life has departed.

Although we cannot today go into detail about the nature of life, we can consider this one essential characteristic of living substance, the fact that it disintegrates the moment life has gone from it. A complex structure composed of various substances will disintegrate if not permeated with life. That is its most characteristic feature. So what does life do? It preserves, it continuously opposes disintegration. Life has the ability to rejuvenate because it continuously opposes what would otherwise take place in substances it permeates. When a substance contains life it means that disintegration is being fought. Life possesses the exact opposite qualities to those of death; instead of causing substances to fall apart, it continually holds them together. Thus, life becomes the foundation of physical existence and consciousness by constantly preventing disintegration.

This is not just a verbal definition; what it points to happens all the time. You only have to observe the simplest form of life and you will find that substances are perpetually being absorbed and incorporated while bodily particles deteriorate; it is the latter process that life continuously works against. Thus, we are dealing with an actual phenomena.

Life means that new substances are formed and old ones thrown off. But life is not yet either sensation or consciousness. Certain scientists fail to understand sensation and ascribe it to plants that have life but not sensation. This childish notion comes about because there are plants that close their leaves and blossoms in response to external stimuli. One could just as well ascribe sensation to blue litmus paper that turns red in response to external stimuli, or to chemical substance as they too react to certain influences. But that is not enough.

If sensation is to occur, there must be an inner mirroring of the stimulus; only then can we speak of the lower form of consciousness, sensation and feeling. But what exactly is it? If we are to gain insight into this next higher stage of evolution, we must approach it gradually as we did the nature of life. Consciousness arises from life; it can only come into being where life already exists. It reveals itself as higher than life; the latter seemingly arises out of lifeless matter of such complexity that unless seized by life it disintegrates. Consciousness arises at the border between life and death, that is to say, where life constantly threatens to disappear from substance, and where substance is continually being destroyed. Substance disintegrates unless held together by forces of life. Life dissolves unless a new principle, that is, consciousness, is added. Consciousness can only be understood when it is recognized that it constantly renews life that would otherwise dissolve, just as life forces renew certain processes without which matter would decay.

Not every form of life can renew itself from within. It must first have reached a certain higher level. Only when the force of life is strong enough constantly to endure death within itself can it awake to consciousness. To be aware of life that at every moment contains death, you need only look at life within the human being, and bear in mind what was explained in the last lecture, “Blood is a very special Fluid,” and that within human beings, life is constantly renewed through the blood. As a psychologist with insight remarked: “In the blood man carries within him a double from whom he, constantly draws strength.” But blood contains yet another force: it continuously produces death. When it has taken life-giving substances to the organs, it carries away destructive elements back to the heart and lungs. What returns to the lungs is poisonous, destructive to life.

A being whose nature works against disintegration is a being possessing life. If it is able to let death arise, and continuously transform that death into life, then it is a conscious being. Consciousness is the strongest of all forces. Death must of necessity arise in the midst of life; consciousness, or conscious spirit, is the force that eternally wrenches life from death. Life is both an inward and an external process, whereas consciousness is purely an inward one. A substance that dies outwardly cannot become conscious. Consciousness can only arise in substance that can generate death within itself and overcome it. As a perceptive person once remarked: “From death springs not only life but consciousness.”

Once this connection is recognized, the existence of pain becomes comprehensible. It is pain that originally gave rise to consciousness. When the life within a being is exposed to light, air, heat or cold, then these external elements act in the first place an the living being. This influence does not give rise to consciousness in plants because here the effects are simply absorbed. Consciousness only arises when there is conflict between the external elements and the inner life-force, causing a breaking down of tissue. Consciousness can only arise from the inner destruction of life. Unless a partial death takes place in the living being, the process that gives rise to consciousness cannot be initiated; beams of light cannot penetrate to the surface of life, causing partial destruction of the inner substances and forces. It is this that produces the mysterious process that is occurring everywhere in the external world.

You must visualize that the cosmic forces of intelligence had reached a level of evolution so high that the external light and air became alien. There had been harmony for a time, but through the higher perfection of cosmic forces, conflict arose. If you could follow with spiritual sight what happens at the point where a simple living creature is penetrated by a beam of light, you would see alteration in the skin; a tiny eye begins to appear. A delicate form of destruction occurs that is experienced as pain. From this pain consciousness is born. Wherever the element of life meets the external world, a process of destruction occurs; if great enough, the outcome is death. The pain gives rise to consciousness. The process that originally created our eyes could have resulted in complete destruction had it gained the upper hand. But it seized upon only a small part of the human being, and through partial destruction, partial death created the possibility for that inner reflection of the outer world to arise that we call “consciousness.” Thus, consciousness within matter is born out of suffering and pain.

When this connection between pain and the conscious spirit around us is recognized, many things become comprehensible, for example, why thoughtful people ascribe such a significant role to pain. An important philosopher has pointed out that an expression of suffering and pain is to be seen everywhere on the countenance of the world. Indeed, the physiognomy of the higher animals conveys deeply repressed pain.

Thus, we see that consciousness comes into existence through pain, that a being in whom consciousness arises from destruction creates from the annihilation of life something that is higher, and in fact continuously creates itself out of death. If the living could not suffer, consciousness could not arise; if there were no death, the spirit could not exist in the visible world. Herein lies the strength of the spirit: It creates from destruction something higher than life, namely, consciousness. We see the organs serving consciousness develop at different levels of pain. This can be observed already in the lower animal kingdom where the level of consciousness, in defense against the outer world, consists of instinctive reflex movements, comparable to the human eye instinctively closing itself against what might harm it. It is when such instinctive reaction is not enough to protect the element of life in the creature, when in other words the provocation is too strong, that the inner forces of opposition are roused which in turn give birth to senses, to sensation, and to organs like the eye and ear. You may have an instinctive feeling that what I have just explained is the truth. You certainly know it in your higher consciousness, but let me give you an example to make it clearer still. When do you become aware of your inner organs? You go through life paying no attention to your stomach, liver or lungs. You feel none of your organs as long as they are sound. You only know that you possess this or that organ when it hurts, when you feel something is out of order, in other words, when destruction has set in. This illustrates that consciousness always arises from pain.

If the element of life meets with pain, the result is sensation and consciousness. This bringing forth of a higher element is reflected in the consciousness as pleasure. No pleasure exists without prior pain. At the lower level, where life is just emerging within physical substance, no pleasure exists as yet. But when pain has given rise to consciousness, and as consciousness continues to work creatively, what it then produces is on a higher level, and gives rise to feelings of pleasure. Creativeness is the basis of pleasure. Pleasure only exists where there is a possibility for inner or outer creativity. Happiness is always in some way based on creation, just as unhappiness is in some way due to the need to create. Take an example of suffering that is typical on a lower level, that of hunger which can result in destruction of life. Hunger is alleviated by food; the food is a source of enjoyment because it becomes transformed into something that enhances life. Thus, something higher, namely, pleasure is created on the basis of pain. Suffering precedes pleasure. Thus, it must be said that while Arthur Schopenhauer [ Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) was a German philosopher. ] and Eduard von Hartmann [ Eduard von Hartmann (1842–1906) was a German philosopher and poet. ] are right when they state in their philosophic work that suffering is a universal factor of life, they do not go deeply enough into the origin of suffering. They do not go back to the point where suffering evolves and becomes something higher. The origin of suffering is found where consciousness arises out of the element of life, where life gives birth to spirit.

We have shown that from suffering something nobler and more perfect is born. It is therefore comprehensible that an inkling should dawn in human souls for the fact that a connection exists between pain and suffering on the one hand, and knowledge and consciousness on the other.

Those who are acquainted with my lectures will recall references to initiation by means of which a higher consciousness is attained that enables us to perceive the spiritual world. When a person's slumbering soul forces and faculties are awakened, the result is comparable to sight being restored to someone born blind. Just as such a person will experience the whole world differently, so the whole world is transformed for the human being who has attained spiritual sight. Everything is seen in a new light and on a higher level. But for this to come about, the process that has been explained must be repeated at a higher stage. The soul forces that generally speaking from a unity in humans must separate; a kind of destruction must take place in a person's lower nature. Only when this occurs is a higher consciousness and spiritual perception attained.

There are three soul forces in human beings: thinking, feeling and willing. These three forces are bound up with the physical organization. Certain thoughts and feelings will call up certain acts of will. The human organism must function correctly if the three soul forces are to act in harmony. If the connection between them has broken down due to illness, then there is no longer consistency between thinking, feeling and willing. If an organ connected with the will is impaired, the human being will be unable to translate his thoughts into impulses of will; he is weak as far as action is concerned. Although a person is well able to think, he cannot decide on action. Another disturbance may be that someone is unable to link thoughts and feelings correctly; this human cannot bring his feelings into harmony with the thoughts behind them. Basically that is the cause of insanity.

In the normally constituted human being of today, thinking, feeling and willing are in harmony. This is right at certain stages of evolution. However, it must be born in mind that as far as a person is concerned, this harmony is established unconsciously. If a person is to be initiated, if he or she is to become capable of higher perception, then thinking, feeling and willing must be severed from one another. The organs connected with feeling and will must undergo division. Consequently, even if it cannot be proved anatomically, the organism of an initiate is different from that of a non-initiate. Because the contact between thinking, feeling and willing is severed, the initiate can see someone suffering without his feelings being roused; he can stand aside and coldly observe. The reason is that nothing must occur in the initiate unconsciously. An individual is compassionate out of his own free will, not because of some external compulsion. He becomes separated into human beings of feeling, a person of will and a thinking person; above these three is the ruler, the newfound individual, bringing them into harmony from a higher consciousness. Here too a death process, a destructive process must intervene; should this occur without a higher consciousness being attained, insanity would set in. Insanity is in fact a condition in which the three soul members have separated without being ruled by a higher consciousness.

Here too we see a twofold event taking place: a destructive process at work in what is lower, simultaneous with the creation of a higher element. The ordinary person's consciousness lights up between blue, poisonous, destructive blood, and red, life-giving blood; similarly the initiate's higher consciousness is born from the interaction of life and death, and bliss arises from the higher happiness of creating out of death.

Human beings have an instinctive feeling for that mysterious connection between the highest they can attain, and suffering, and pain. This feeling inspires the tragic poet to let the suffering to which his hero succumbs give rise to the conviction that ultimately life triumphs over death; the eternal over the temporal. Thus, Christianity rightly sees in the pain and suffering, in the anguish and misery to which Christ Jesus' earthly nature succumbs, the victory of eternal life over the temporal and transitory. It is also the reason why our life becomes richer, more satisfying, when we can widen it so that we absorb and make our own what lies beyond our own self.

When we, as beings possessing life, overcame the pain caused by the beam of external light, something higher was born, that is, consciousness. Likewise, something higher is born from receptiveness to suffering when we, in our widened consciousness, transform out of compassion the suffering of another into our own. Therefore, at the highest level suffering gives rise to love. For what else is love than widening one's consciousness to encompass other beings? It is love when we are willing to deprive ourselves, to sacrifice ourselves to whatever extent for the sake of another. Like the skin that received the beam of light, and out of the pain became able to create a higher entity: the eye; so will we, through widening our life to encompass the lives of others, become able to attain a higher life. There will then, out of what we have given away to others, be born within us love and compassion for all creatures.

The death on the cross of Christ Jesus bears witness to this truth, for, as Christianity teaches, there soon followed the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. In the light of the process we have explained, which is indicated in the parable of the grain of wheat, we can now understand the coming forth of the Holy Spirit as a consequence of the death on the Cross. Just as the new crop of wheat must rise from the decay, the destruction of the seeds; so from the destruction, the pain endured upon the Cross, that Spirit is born which poured out over the Apostles at the feast of Pentecost. This is dearly stated in the Gospel of John 7:39, where it is said that the Spirit was not yet there, for Christ was not yet glorified. To read the Gospel of John closely is to discover things of immense significance.

Many people say that they would not want to be spared the pain they have endured, for from it they have gained knowledge. This is a truth that those who have died would confirm. If pain did not stand constantly at our side, like a guardian of life, the destruction that goes on within us would lead to actual death. It is pain that warns us we must take precaution to prevent life being destroyed; thus, from pain comes new life. As mentioned, a modern natural scientist describes the mimicry of thinking as the expression of suppressed pain on a thinker's face.

If we learn through pain, if knowledge attained through pain has an ennobling effect, then it explains why in the biblical story of creation pain and suffering are connected with the knowledge of good and evil. This we shall go into in the next lecture. It also explains why knowledgeable people have always emphasized that pain has an ennobling, purifying effect on a person. Through the great law of destiny, karma, spiritual science indicates that a person's pain and suffering in one life point to wrong done in former lives. This is a connection that can only be understood through the deeper aspects of human nature. Baser impulses that in a former life led to external action are transformed into nobler ones. Sin is like a poison that when transformed becomes a source of healing. Thus, sin can eventually contribute to a person's strength and ennoblement. In the story of Job, pain and suffering are shown to lead to greater knowledge and ennoblement.

This is meant only as a sketch, as an indication of the significance of suffering in earthly existence. When we recognize the solidifying, crystallizing effect of pain in physical entities right up to that of human beings, then we begin to realize the reason for its existence—especially when we further recognize that through dissolving what has hardened, the spirit can be reborn through us, that through the transformation of pain and suffering the spirit bestows upon us beauty, strength and wisdom. Fabre d'Olivet used the formation of a pearl when he wished to illustrate that the highest, noblest and purest in human nature is born from pain. The precious and beautiful pearl is created from the illness and pain of the pearl-oyster. The highest and noblest qualities of human nature are attained through suffering and pain.

Thus, we may say, as did the ancient Greek poet Aeschylus, that from suffering knowledge is born, and also that pain, like much else, can be understood only by its fruits.

• 1. Silenus was a drunken attendant of Bacchus and one of the satyrs. He was a personage in Greek mythology.
• 2. Dionysus was the god of wine and fertility.
• 3. Friedrich Nietzche(1844–1900) was a German philosopher, classical scholar and critic of Christianity.
• 4. Aeschylus (c.525–456 B.C.