The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In every domain Spiritual Science has to show us the connection between the spiritual worlds and the world which we perceive through our senses while in our earthly bodies, and which we seek to grasp through intellectual thoughts. In several lectures we have been especially occupied in considering the connection that exists between the life led by man as a soul between death and rebirth, and the life he passes here, while incarnated in a physical body. We must continually bear firmly in mind that man, so long as he lives within his physical body, directs his thoughts to that sphere which he has to experience after death and before rebirth. We direct our thoughts to that sphere, not in order to satisfy mere curiosity, but because we have always been able to convince ourselves through our Spiritual Science, that in turning our thought to that other world, we are able to make a contribution to this world, by ennobling and invigorating the conceptions needed for our acting, thinking, feeling, etc. We must hold firmly to the thought that many of life's secrets can only be solved if we have the courage to approach what may be called the riddle of death. Now to-day, in order to consider the connection between the spiritual and sense world, from a special standpoint, we may commence with a trivial observation, yet one which contains profound feeling. We shall start from the fact of which we have often spoken, the fact that man goes through the gate of death. I repeat, we start from something which is of every-day occurrence but is connected with very deep experiences, gripping man in the depths of his soul. As you know, when we stand face to face with a man here in the physical world, we form thoughts which can unite us to him. We surround him with feelings of sympathy, or antipathy, etc. We feel either friendship or enmity for him. Briefly, we form here in the physical world a certain relation to another man. This relation may arise through ties of blood, or it may be brought about by the preferences which occur in daily life. All this can be comprehended in the expression, ‘The relation of man to man.’ Now, when a man with whom we have been united through various ties leaves the physical world and passes through the gates of death, at first there remains to us the memory of this man, that is, a number of feelings and thoughts have arisen as a result of our relation to him, and which we ourselves have experienced. But since he passed away from us through the gates of death these thoughts and feelings which united us with him, now live on in a very different manner. While he lived with us here on the physical plane, we knew that at any time, in addition to the relation our souls had formed to him, the outer physical presentment itself might also appear; we knew that we could bring our inner experience to bear upon this outer reality of his. And if at any time by some means the man changed, we had to expect that the feelings we formerly had towards him would also change in one way or another. We do not often think of the radical difference it makes when suddenly, or even not suddenly, the moment comes, when henceforward we can only carry in our soul the memory of our friend, when we know, ‘Never more will our eyes see him, or our hands grasp his.’ The picture we formed of him remains fundamentally as already fixed. But a radical change appears in the relation of the two people. As has been said, it may sound trivial, but it cuts deeply into the inner life in each individual case, when a human soul which formerly impressed us from without by means of its physical embodiments, becomes nothing but a memory.

Let us now compare such a memory with others which we construct from our experience. A great part of our physical life is lived in memory. We know what we ourselves have experienced; we know, for instance, the events which have occurred to us and for which we have retained ideas. We know that we can revert to times now past through these thoughts, times in which the events in question took place. But now, if we examine the contents of the greater part of these recollections, we find that in our thoughts we bear something within us which is no longer here, past events, events which as reality we can no longer meet with in the external world, for they belong to the past. If we have absorbed some of the thoughts of Spiritual Science, then the memory of our dead, or of one who has gone through the gates of death, is quite different to our psychic gaze. We then hold thoughts in us, but these thoughts are fixed on reality—a reality certainly not accessible to us in the external physical world, but existing in the spiritual world. That to which those thoughts are directed is present, although it cannot enter the sphere of our vision; but there is quite a different conception in our memory from the mere remembrance of what occurred here, in the physical world. Now, if we observe the fact involved in this, in relation to the entire Cosmos, we can then say that we carry in our souls thoughts of a being who is in the spiritual world. Now we know, and this must be especially clear to us from the considerations pursued here in the last three lectures, we know that not only does the longing of souls incarnated here ascend to the spiritual world, but that the consciousness of those who have passed through the gates of death, and who are now living in the intermediate world between death and rebirth, also extends to what transpires here in the physical world. We can say: Those discarnate souls who live in the spiritual world, receive into their consciousness, from the physical world, that which their spiritual gaze and their spiritual vision directed down to earth, enables them to perceive. I pointed out in one of the last lectures how souls still incarnated here in physical bodies can be perceived by the so-called dead, and distinguished from souls who are already discarnate and living in the intermediate stage, between death and rebirth. I explained that souls living in the spiritual world must continually be active in order to get any perception. For instance, they may be aware that another soul is quite near them, but in order to perceive it, they must exert inner activity. They have, as it were, to construct a picture. The picture will not appear of itself, as it does here, in the physical world. In the spiritual world comes first the thought of an ‘existing presence;’ and then one must, as it were, inwardly experience this existing entity, so that the picture may arise. The process is reversed; for there is a significant difference in the construction of the picture, which refers to those souls already in the spiritual world, and the picture of such as are still incarnate on the earth; the discarnate soul must produce the picture of a soul that is already in the spiritual world entirely from itself, and it must be thoroughly active in so doing: but it may remain more passive in reference to a soul still living on the earth, and then the picture rather comes to it. The effort made is much slighter as regards a soul living on the earth, than with one already discarnate; less inner activity is necessary, and this represents the distinction between the two, to those souls living between death and rebirth. If you grasp this, you will realise that after the soul has passed through the gates of death and lives the life of the spiritual world, it not only beholds the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies, and the other human souls living with it in the spiritual world, but there also appears the world of souls to which it was related before going through the gates of death.

The important distinction must be firmly retained, that while man here on earth has that which constitutes earth existence actually around him, and can only comparatively speaking grasp the other world in spirit, this is reversed on entering the spiritual world. What the soul can there see of itself, without an effort, is our world; and from there it is the ‘other world;’ but the soul must exert itself to make its own world, the world in which it then is, always perceptible, and must always construct it for itself. Thus when man is in the spiritual world, it is that world on which he must continually work; and what is then to him ‘the other world’ always arises as if of itself. But now within this ‘other world,’ which for us on earth is this world, there appear the human souls, with that which lives in them; especially those human souls with whom relations were established during life on earth. These human souls appear. Now within this sea of spiritual perception which we make here, in our souls, of the ‘other world’ there occasionally appear the memories of those who have gone through the gates of death. Picture this very clearly to yourselves. Let us suppose that we lived in a time in which nobody could remember any dead person; the dead would still perceive these human souls—in which there lived no memory of the dead. In this ocean of spiritual perceptions which the discarnate souls can see, are preserved the memories of the dead. They live within it. That is something which through man's free will and love here is added to what the dead can always see from the other side. Thus it is something added.

Now here again we come to a point when important questions arise to the spiritual investigator. Here is one question which the spiritual investigator must investigate. Of what significance is it to one who has gone through the gates of death when he now sees embedded in the souls ebbing and flowing in our world, the memories which these souls streaming by have of the dead? When he perceives these memories what do they mean to him? Now in spiritual investigation when such a question arises it must first of all be thoroughly experienced. One must live into it. If one begins to speculate as to a possible solution to such a question, as to a possible answer, one will certainly arrive at a false conclusion. For the effort of the ordinary brain-fettered understanding gives, as a rule, no solution. That can only be ascertained through inner activity. The answers to questions relating to the enigmas of the spiritual world descend from the spiritual world as by an act of grace. One must wait. There is really nothing else to be done but to live with the question and meditate on it again and again. Let it live in the soul with all the feelings aroused by it, and then calmly wait; wait till one is worthy—that is the right word—worthy to receive an answer from the spiritual world. And, as a rule, this comes from quite a different quarter than one would expect. Thus the answer comes from the spiritual world at the right moment, that is, at the moment when one has sufficiently prepared one's soul to receive the answer. As to whether it is then the right answer, can as little be decided theoretically, as can any statement concerning physical reality; experience alone can furnish the criterion. To those who are always denying spiritual reality by saying, ‘That cannot be proved; and everything must be proved,’ I should like to put one question: Would it have been possible to prove the existence of a whale in the physical world if none had ever been discovered? Nothing can be proved, unless it can be shown in the same way as a reality; even in the spiritual world one must experience that which is reality.

Now that which enters one's consciousness as the solution, may of course appear in many different forms, according to the preparation one has made in one's soul. The truth may present itself in many ways, but nevertheless it must be experienced as the truth. For example, if one lets the above question live aright in the soul, there then appears, apparently from quite a different quarter, a picture, an inner picture, which, I may say, gives one an inner impression of offering something concerning the solution of the riddle in question. The picture may arise of a man who allows himself to be photographed, or has his portrait painted. The principle point in the picture will be some physical thing, an image of this physical thing, and there finally arises all that pertains to the realm of art, to the artistic presentation. Now, if you consider how physical life runs its course, you know that in physical life man is confronted with the outer occurrences of nature, the external beings, and events of nature. They run their course and expire. It is similar with all human concerns, with what man attends to and plans for his necessities, and so on: with what he makes as history. But beyond all this man seeks something which really has nothing to do with the immediate necessities of the world. The human soul is aware that if nature and history merely ran their course in connection with the satisfaction of human needs, life would become barren and desolate. Man creates here in physical existence something above and beyond the course of nature and necessity. He does not merely feel the need of seeing a certain landscape, but also of copying it. He so arranges his life that anyone connected with him can get one or more copies of it. Starting from this we can think of the whole realm of art as something that man creates here which is higher reality than the ordinary reality pertaining to nature and history. Just think what the world would miss if there were no Art, if Art did not add that which she can produce from her own sources to that which is self-existing. Art creates something which, one may say, need not of necessity exist. If she were not there, all the necessities of nature might still go on. One may suppose that even if no single copy of nature had been made and no artistic representation, life would still pursue its course, from the beginning to the end of the earth. We can picture to ourselves all that men would then be without. But theoretically, it might be possible for our earth to be punished through the inability to evolve any Art. We have in Art something extending beyond life. Think of all that Art has created in the world, and also of the progress of man through the world; there you have in a sense two parallel progressive processes: the necessities of nature and history, and the stream of Art which is inserted in them.

Now just as Art, in a sense, brings as by enchantment a spiritual world into the world of physical reality, so another world conjures up into the world of those who have gone through the gates of death, these memories which fill our souls here. As far as the dead are concerned the world here might run its course without any memories living in the souls here, memories born of love and all our human relationships. But then the world of the dead would be to them as a world would be to us—in which we could find nothing transcending ordinary reality. That is an extraordinarily significant connection; for, through the thoughts of love, through the memories, and all that thus transpires in our souls in connection with those no longer in the physical world, there is created for the dead something analogous to artistic creation here. And whereas here in the physical world a man must bring forth artistic creation out of his own soul, must contribute something out of his own being; to those now in the spiritual world, the opposite must occur. It must be brought to them from their other world from the souls still incarnated here—from the souls whom they can contemplate more passively than those already with them in the spiritual world. That which the course of nature and history would be to us, if it ran on simply of itself, without Art, without everything man creates above and beyond the immediate reality, such would our world be for the dead, if the souls still on the physical plane retained no memories of them.

Now, such things as these are not really known in the physical life of man. We may put it thus! These things are not known by the ordinary consciousness, but the deeper subconsciousness is aware of them. And life is always directed in accordance with this. Why has a value always been laid by human communities on the celebration of All Souls Day, and days for the dead? And those who cannot share in the usual memorials for the dead, have nevertheless, their own days set apart for this. Why is this? Because in the depths of man's subconsciousness there lives what may be called a dim knowledge of what takes place in the world by keeping alive the memory of the dead. When the receptive soul of the seer celebrates All Souls Day, or a Sunday devoted to the dead, or some similar day when many people come together full of the memories of their dead, he sees the dead participate in the ceremony; it is to them, with certain natural differences, as it is here when on our globe people visit a cathedral and behold those forms which they could never see unless something had been created out of the artist's imagination, unless something had been added to physical existence; it is the same when they hear a symphony, or music of that sort. Something is reproduced in all these memories, which, in a sense, transcends the ordinary level of existence. And as Art inserts herself into the physical course of human history, so do these memories insert themselves into the picture of their world which the souls between death and rebirth receive. In such customs, which are formed in human communities, that secret knowledge contained in the depths of the soul finds expression. And many a worthy custom is connected with this deeper sub-consciousness. We feel greater reverence for the connections of life when we can permeate them with what Spiritual Science offers to us, than if we are unable to do this. Each time that a dead person contacts a remembrance of himself in the soul of a man who was in some way connected with him here, it is always as if something streamed over to him which beautified his life, and enhanced its value. And as to us here, beauty comes from Art, so to the dead, beauty streams to them from what rays forth out of the hearts and souls of those who keep them in memory.

That is one connection between the world here and the spiritual world there. And this thought is closely connected with that other thought, which should arise from much of what can be cultivated in Spiritual Science, the thought of the value and importance of earth life. Spiritual Science does not lead us to despise the earth, with all that it can bring forth; it leads us rather to consider life as a part of the whole life of the Cosmos, as a necessary part, which is arranged in conformity with what is active in the spiritual world, and without which the spiritual world would not appear in its perfection. And henceforth when we turn our attention to the fact that from out of our physical world must spring forth beauty for the dead, we are struck by the thought that the spiritual world would lack this beauty, if there were no physical world, with the human souls who, while still in the body, were able to evolve thoughts full of feeling and sentiment for those no longer in this world. It signified a great deal, when in olden times, whole peoples over and over again devoted themselves reverently at their festivals to the thought of their great ancestors, and united in feeling for the memory of their great forefathers. It was of extreme significance, when they inaugurated such memorial days. For it always meant the flashing up of something beautiful for the spiritual worlds, that is, for the souls living there between death and rebirth. And while here on earth it is not very rational, to put it mildly, to take special pleasure in one's own portrait; nevertheless for the dead it is important to find their image in those souls who still remain here. For we must bear well in mind that our earth-man appears very different to us when we consider him from the standpoint of the spiritual, from the standpoint of the dead. We have often emphasised this. Here we are enclosed within our skin. What we designate as ‘we,’ as ‘I,’ that which is most precious to us, is shut in by our skin. This holds good even for the most selfless people; perhaps it holds good for them to a higher degree than for those who consider themselves less selfless. First and foremost we value that which is shut up inside this skin; then comes the rest of the world. We regard that as our outer world. But the most significant thing is that when we are outside our bodies we are one with the outer world and live in it. I have often described this going forth, this expansion of oneself over the outer world. And that which then bears the same relation to us as does the outer world now, is just what we have experienced here between birth and death. In a sense we can say that the outer world becomes our inner world, and what is now our inner world then becomes our outer world. Hence that significant experience on entering the land of the spirit, ‘Thou art That,’ described in my book Theosophy. We then look back at our external world here, which is encompassed by our Ego. But there the soul unable to be as egoistic as it was here, looks back on the thoughts which appear, as thoughts of itself. That is, as it were, the external world that confronts it, which is really incorporated into the compass of what we can designate as the ‘Beautiful,’ that which exalts one. There comes into this—which has become an outer world consisting of the memory of all we have undergone between birth and death—something which does not live in this, does not belong to this life of ours, but lives in other souls and relates itself to us. That really means the insertion of something transcending ourselves, transcending our outer world, just as here some work of art rises above the ordinary reality which exists in itself. And just as it is improper for a man here to be in love with himself, and also with his own portrait, so there it is quite natural for a man to stand in that sort of relation to what arises as an image in the souls left behind—the other presentation of himself—to stand before that picture, just as here we stand before a landscape and compare it with the scene itself. Thus when this question comes before the soul, one is shown the presentment of the man and his picture, and from this one finds a way of answering the question. Speculation as a rule does not help at all, one must learn to wait, to wait patiently. In reality one should only trouble oneself about the question relating to the spiritual world, for the answers can only be given to the human soul as by a revealing act of grace.

In this lecture I have pointed out that certain arrangements, such as memorial festivals and days of remembrance as organised by men, are connected with a profound knowledge, outside the range of ordinary consciousness. That rests in the fact that man has in the depths of his soul, a dim but comprehensive knowledge—I have repeatedly touched upon this—and that he actually draws the knowledge embraced by his consciousness from out of this comprehensive wisdom. I have pointed out how clever we should really be if we could with our ordinary consciousness embrace everything included in the astral body. This astral body goes through life wiser, in a much higher sense than we usually believe. We do not value the wisdom of our astral body because we are quite unaware of it, but we can at least form some idea of its comprehensive wisdom, if we place the following before our souls.

Our lives are lived, as we might say, in the daytime. Now, we judge events very little according to their connections. If we consider them in their setting, many things would seem very, very different to us. Consider this: Suppose we made a plan, we propose doing something, and we decide in the morning what we intend doing during the evening. At midday something occurs which prevents us fulfilling the evening plan. We are really vexed that we are not able to carry it out. We think how much finer and better it would have been if we had been able to accomplish that particular thing. The astral body, however, with its more embracing but subconscious knowledge, is of a different opinion! In such a case the astral body often says: ‘Yes, if you fulfil what you had intended for the evening, you will be put in a position in which you may perhaps fall and break your leg.’ Of course it may be quite possible that we absolutely cannot avoid this; and if we accomplish in the evening what we have arranged, there may previously be a combination of circumstances that brings about the breaking of our leg. We do not know of this in our ordinary consciousness, but the astral body perceives it. And it therefore leads us into a position in which we ourselves prevent the fulfilment of the evening programme. The intervention which vexes us so much, is sometimes caused by this extraordinary wise knowledge of the whole setting of our life. It is not born of chance, but arises entirely from the wisdom of our astral body, of which we remain unconscious, as regards our ordinary consciousness. If we could only see why we do some things and omit others, perhaps because we cannot do otherwise, or are led away first to something else—if we could perceive all that, we should see that there is always a connection in our life which proceeds from something within us, wiser than we are in our ordinary consciousness. It is a part of our life's arrangement, but the whole purpose is not perceptible. But as soon as we rightly hold the thought in our minds of our connection with the spiritual world, the matter will then become clear to us. Over us there is a Being that in a limited sense belongs to us, a Being of the Hierarchy of the Angels, our Guardian Angel. Indeed, at the present time we always turn at the beginning of our lectures to the Guardian Spirits of those who have to fulfil the severe demands of the time outside in the world. Now, this Guardian Spirit of ours sees the whole connection. For a long time there has been a feeling in human consciousness that certain connections, imperceptible to us, are perceived by our Guardian Angel. Occasionally the following takes place: The boundary between what we can see and what we cannot see with ordinary consciousness, varies. There are, indeed, persons here, who go through life with a certain inner satisfaction, for no matter what comes to them they submit, because they believe in a ruling wisdom. They are permeated with a feeling that even things which may cause annoyance are also dominated by a ruling wisdom. It is often very difficult to believe in a ruling wisdom, when something happens which absolutely interferes with our plans. But one of those very impulses which may easily bring us well into connection with the workings of the spiritual world, consists in our feeling ourselves cared for by this ruling wisdom, without thereby becoming indolent or lazy, without believing that this wisdom works independently for us individually. Thus the boundary is movable; and in reference to our actions, and to forming of intentions, it varies greatly. In ordinary consciousness there are certainly impulses of an intimate and delicate nature. How often does it happen that we plan something for a later time; then something occurs, and we feel that we must do this which will really hinder the later action. We have the feeling to act as immediate necessity demands and to set about the matter with a certain delicacy, for we know if we set about it roughly that it will disperse and vanish before us. We all have to a greater or less degree within us, besides the self on which our freedom depends, a second self that wants to feel its way through life, and believes it attains far more through what it gropes for, than through what it can strictly measure by intellect. The boundary is movable.

But at certain times the boundary is even more adjustable. And now comes a point which should be correctly grasped with reference to practical life. There are persons—and in a certain respect we are all gripped by that which rules in such people—there are persons who have a sort of longing, a sort of passion to order their life aright, so to traverse the paths of life that they can order it correctly. Let us take an exceptional case. Suppose a man you know forms a friendship for another. You may say: ‘I really cannot understand why he has formed this friendship. I cannot make it out. No real affinity exists between these two, yet he does all he can to approach this man.’ It seems incomprehensible; and only a long time afterwards we see the reason. The man in question may need the other for something much later on. He formed a friendship with him, not because he found something in him which gave him pleasure; he did not form this friendship for its own sake, but as a means to something which would apply later. He regulated his life rightly. Through forming that friendship he attained some prospect, through which his friend could later help him in some situation. And the consequence is that something actually takes place through the help of the so-called friend which could not otherwise have occurred. If you apply this thought to life, you will see how often it occurs, that people arrange something which they do not immediately desire, but they wish it so arranged, because they will have need of its after-effects. Thus we must say that there are people who, in the adjustment of their life show an enormous subtlety—we cannot call this wisdom; we should feel an inner objection to calling it wisdom. But these people display great cunning in doing something at an earlier stage of their life which cannot profit them in any way at the time, but can only do so at some later epoch. And we may express the following feeling: ‘I really did not think so and so was so clever, for when I approached him and exchanged thoughts with him or was in his society he really seemed much too stupid to order his life so cleverly.’ Now that comes about because what a man carries in his astral body can be much cleverer than his ordinary consciousness. And if he strongly checks his egotism and drives it down to the sphere of unconsciousness, if he does not live in accordance with a certain primitive instinct, but, as it were, allows his egotism to dominate, it then lays holds of his subconsciousness: and that other man that dwells in us all, but who as a rule trains us to take life in a more natural and direct manner, then guides him to organise his life, and to create beforehand the conditions for something later. Then we see the astral body ruling with its cleverness; but permeated, not by what usually dominates in life, but by the egotism forced out of the ordinary consciousness down into the astral consciousness. And we see such a man apparently going through life with much more, of what we might call calculation, than should come to him from his ordinary consciousness. There are many dangerous sides to the evolution of the human soul. And it is very important to become aware of this: that the moment we meet what is ordinarily unconscious in us, we must try not to approach it with too much egotism. Therefore, the avoidance of egotism in the development towards the spiritual worlds must again and again be emphasised. For beneath our ordinary consciousness there really rules something which may be permeated by the consciousness of our Guardian Spirit from the Hierarchy of the Angels. Then arises that which to the ordinary consciousness makes a man seem to act without reflection, but which is nevertheless subject to a certain law. I expressed this law very simply in one of the Mystery Plays by letting one of the characters say: ‘The heart must often direct our Karma.’ And if one transcends that which the heart indicates as Karma, and lets reason prevail, then reason sometimes administers a strong dose of egotism. Or it may be that egotism so prevails that we find man more subtle than he seems to be, judging by his ordinary consciousness. In that case he has pressed the egotism down into his astral body. Then comes something into the working of his soul, not now from the regular Beings of the Hierarchy of the Angels but something Luciferic, which enables the man to embrace a wider sphere than he could consciously do at this present stage of his evolution. Thus we see that what must of necessity be strongly emphasised, when one is approaching spiritual evolution, is really something delicate and intimate; for we must of course strive to expand our consciousness, but in doing so, we should always take care to obliterate the hindrance that is created when our egotism is removed either into a deeper or a higher sphere of consciousness.

You may ask: ‘How can we do this?’ It is very easy to say that we should not remove egotism from our ordinary consciousness. But how are we to avoid doing this? Well, this cannot be done by rules, but solely through widening one's interests. When a man extends his interests he is always in some way already fighting his egotism. For with each new interest we acquire we go a little beyond ourselves. Therefore, we strive for Spiritual Science in this manner; that is, we are taught not only to pay attention to what man so willingly listens to because of his egotism, but to have our interests really extended. How often does the demand arise, again and again: ‘Why are the books written in a way so difficult to understand? Could they not be written in a simpler fashion?’ And someone or another makes suggestions as to how these books could be written for the people and made popular. One must really beware of gaining such popularity, for it only enhances egotism. If it were made so easy to enter Spiritual Science then each one could enter without overcoming his egotism. But in the work accomplished spiritually by the efforts we have to make, we get rid of a little of our egotism; we enter what we wish to acquire through Spiritual Science in a more hallowed frame of mind if we have had to take trouble over it, than if it had been presented to us in quite an easy and popular form. For example, a person has come home and said: ‘There are so many people who have to work all day long. If these people have to sit down in the evening to read these difficult books, they do not get on very well. For such as these there ought to be books quite easy to read.’ To this I had to answer—and quite correctly: ‘Why should one prevent these people from applying even the little time at their disposal to reading such books as are purposely written with full regard to spiritual conditions? Why should they occupy the little time they have in reading books which may be more convenient, but which trivialise the matter even textually?’ For it is just because these books do not place the soul in the right attitude, that they drag down into the trivial life that which should lead one away from it, even as regards the nature of the experience connected with another sphere.

It will become of special importance in Spiritual Science that we should bear in mind not only the ‘What’ (the matter) but the ‘How’ (the manner): that we should really bestir ourselves gradually to acquire ideas of a world quite different from the ordinary physical world, and thus gradually to accustom ourselves to form conceptions different from those we can build so comfortably in the physical world. And now, in conclusion, I should like to mention a concept which we shall require in our next lecture. But I shall mention it to-day, so that you may see that it is well to assimilate new words for that which transpires in the spiritual world.

We have a word which expresses the manner of a man's life between birth and death, which expresses this life as it strikes us. We see the young child fresh and rounded, its inner life flowing through its outer form; teeming, as we say, with inner life, up to a certain year when life pours itself into the outer form. Then comes a time when the inner life ceases to flow, when we become wrinkled and things change with us. In short, we can follow up this outer life from birth to death in the changes presented by the physical body as life runs its course. We call this growing old for the quite trivial reason that when we are born the physical body is young, and when we die it is old. Now with the etheric body the case is really quite different. Our etheric body is old, if we can use the word at all in this connection, it is old through the forces by which it is fashioned at conception or birth. It is already old when we begin our physical life. It is then already formed and chiseled out, it has a great many inner formations (they are movements, yet inner formations); these are taken from it as life proceeds. But on the other hand the life force is enhanced; it is young when we grow old. While we say of the physical body—we are aging—of the etheric body we must say we are growing young. And it is well to use this expression. We really grow young as regards our etheric body, for at our birth its whole forces are directed to all that is enclosed in the human skin. When at a certain age we pass through death, the etheric body enters into a certain relationship with the whole Cosmos. It recovers the forces which have been taken from it. The moment we became children its connection with the Cosmos was broken. It had then to send all its forces into the small space enclosed in the human skin. It was compressed, as it were, to one point of the Cosmos. Now the etheric body revives, and gradually takes it place in the Cosmos in proportion as the physical body ages. Although somewhat of an exaggeration, we may say when we become wrinkled, the etheric body becomes chubby and again becomes an image of the external force, the creative, abounding force, in the same way as the physical body is an expression of this force at the beginning of childhood. We grow young as regards our etheric body. Thus it will gradually become necessary to coin words wherewith really to grasp the absolutely different relations of the spiritual world, It is important that we should acquaint ourselves with this radical difference in the whole perception of the spiritual world, as opposed to the physical world. We shall start our considerations next time from this point.

From the fighters' courage,
From the blood of battles,
From the mourners' suffering,
From the people's sacrifice,
There will ripen fruits of Spirit
If with consciousness the soul
Turns her thought to Spirit Realms.

We have devoted the recent lectures to considering from a certain point of view the life which runs its course behind the ordinary life which in normal circumstances, or to ordinary science, is embraced by our physical consciousness. Fundamentally all our considerations are directed to that life, which transpires beneath the threshold of ordinary consciousness. And we seek to characterise it from the most varied sides, as must be done in Spiritual Science.

A certain security is connected with the external physical perceptible reality, in that one beholds it. But physically, even for those who do not undergo the necessary training whereby they can themselves rise into the spiritual worlds, yet through illuminating these worlds from different sides which harmonise, a certain wisdom is created, and this may create a feeling of security.

Especial attention is drawn to the fact that man is not only in the world which he beholds with ordinary consciousness. Beneath the threshold of ordinary consciousness a life takes place which, unless one goes through the Portal of Initiation, is not grasped by the consciousness. This remains unknown to ordinary human life. Much takes place in the world with reference to the whole entity that comprises a human being; that which man knows while living in the physical body is merely one part of what really occurs; and all the efforts made to get into touch with the spiritual world, consist in trying to see something of the life which transpires beneath the threshold of ordinary consciousness. By means of a widening of this consciousness we try to cross the threshold and perceive that in which we really live, but which is not perceptible to our ordinary consciousness. As I have said, a certain adjustable threshold exists between the ordinary consciousness and that of which—and this expression has a certain meaning for us—we are unconsciously conscious.

In the last lecture I gave a very pointed example. A man proposes early in the morning to accomplish something that night. He lives, as it were, in the thought, that he will carry out his plan during the evening. At mid-day something occurs which prevents him from fulfilling his intention. To the ordinary consciousness this occurrence would seem to be an accident. But if one looks deeper into human life, one discovers wisdom in the so-called accident, but a wisdom that lies beneath the threshold of consciousness. One cannot really perceive this wisdom with the ordinary consciousness, but one very frequently discovers in such cases that if hindrance had not occurred at mid-day the man would perhaps have been brought into some disastrous situation through undertaking the proposed project during the evening. As I said, he might perhaps have broken his leg. But when one knows the connection, one discovers that wisdom lies in the entire occurrence: that the soul herself sought the obstacle and put it in the way, but with intentions lying beneath the threshold of consciousness. Now that is something which is still close to the ordinary consciousness, but it points below to a region to which man belongs; to which he belongs with the concealed parts of his being, those parts which, after he lays aside the physical body, go through the gate of death. This region belongs to that ruling consciousness, of which we spoke in the public lecture, as the beholder of the actions of our will. This spectator is really always present. He guides and conducts us, but the ordinary consciousness knows nothing of him, A great deal goes on in the intervals between the events which we perceive. In all this, especially in what takes place between the events of life, and in what transpires beneath the threshold of consciousness, there is prepared, as the living being is prepared in the egg, that which we shall be after we have passed through the gate of death. And now something on which we dwelt in our last consideration, must be brought into connection with much that should be well known to us from earlier lectures.

I have often pointed out how important and essential memory is for man, in so far as he stands here in physical consciousness, and that this memory should not be severed. We must remember back to a certain point in our physical experience, or at least have the power of tracing the continuity of our life. If this connecting thread is sundered, if we cannot remember definite events, so that at least we have the consciousness that we were in existence when these events took place, then a serious psychic illness appears, to which I have referred in a recent lecture. This memory forms part of our experience here in physical consciousness. But it is also, in a certain sense, a veil; it hides from us those events to which I am now referring, which lie behind the ordinary consciousness, and especially behind that veil woven by our continuous memory. Just think: we are first infants; then we traverse a period of consciousness which we do not recollect. Next comes the time to which we can always remember back in later life. This begins a continuous series of memories. At a certain time, either in the second, third, fourth year of life, or even later with some people, we must recollect becoming aware of the individual self, the Ego. When we thus look back into ourselves, our soul gaze meets this memory, and in so far as we are physical men here, we really live inwardly in these memories. We could not speak of ourselves as ‘I,’ unless we did retain this memory. Anyone who observes himself, recognises this. When he looks into himself, he really looks into the region of his memory. He regards, as it were, the tableau of his memories. Even although all we have experienced may not arise in our memory, yet we know that memories might arise, as far back as that point already described. We must presuppose that we have been consciously present with our Ego in all these memories, and have been able to retain them. If that were not so, the continuity of our Ego would be disturbed, and a soul disease would appear. But behind what we notice in memory there lies that which is seen with spiritual eyes and heard with spiritual ears. So that what I have already explained in public lectures is absolutely correct. When we look into the spiritual world, we use the same force which we otherwise employ in memory. That does not mean that we necessarily lose our memory on acquiring spiritual sight, but it does mean as already characterised in a public lecture, that it is not always possible to remember what we perceive spiritually, we cannot always take it in, for it to live in the memory; for we must always behold it over and over again and always behold it afresh. I have often said, for example, that if one gives a lecture on what one really sees in the spiritual world, one cannot do this from memory in the same way as one can speak of ordinary things, for one must bring it ever again out of the spiritual world. That which lives in the thought must be produced anew. Both the soul and the spirit must be active in such a case and must bring forth the things afresh. When the spiritual seer really looks into the spiritual world that which is usually the veil of memory becomes transparent, and he uses it to look through. He looks, as it were, through the force which otherwise fashions his memory, and looks into the spiritual world. If a student performs his occult exercises with strength and energy, he notices that in ordinary life he uses his power of thought to gain knowledge of the things and events of the world, with the support of the body as a physical instrument which enables him to form real conceptions of these things. The concept supported there by the activity of the physical body remains in us as a memory. When, however, we enter the spiritual world we must be continually active in order to call forth the concepts anew. When we reach the point which I characterised in the public lecture, where one can do nothing but wait until the secrets of the spiritual world reveal themselves—a ceaseless activity begins. But one must participate in this. Just as when drawing one has to be continually active, if one wishes to express anything through the drawing, similarly, when the spiritual world reveals itself, the imagination must actively co-operate. What it produces arises from the objective reality, but man must take part in this production of concepts. In this way we contact something which is continually active in man—in the two-fold man, of which I have already spoken—but which is concealed in us, which lives within our physical covering beneath the threshold of our ordinary physical consciousness. One connects oneself with this being. Then one notices the following: here in the physical world one is so united with it that one stands on a firm basis. One sees other things in the outer world and moves about among them. One enters into certain relations with other men, to whom one does this or that and from whom one suffers this or that. We spend the life which we embrace with the ordinary consciousness in the continuous comprehension of what we develop in this way, but behind it there lies another, a life following definite laws, which we do not perceive with the ordinary consciousness; in this life we share, when, between going to sleep and waking, we live in the astral body and Ego. Our consciousness is, however, then so lowered that we cannot perceive with ordinary senses what position we occupy in a spiritual world which pursues its own course, which continually lives around us, and while yet being super-sensible and invisible weaves itself into the sensible and visible.

Above all we must understand this world as spiritual, and not think of it as a duplicate, a simply more refined physical sensible world; we must conceive of it as spiritual. I have often drawn attention to the reason why just in our time there must be produced from out the fountain of all human knowledge, that which, as carried on by us, relates to the spiritual world. For truly, not only because of the facts which present themselves to the spiritual investigators who have to impart truths concerning the spiritual world, but from the whole course of our civilisation (I have drawn attention to this from various standpoints), it is evident that in humanity a certain longing is arising to open the soul to the hidden side of human life, and to learn something of it. I have already brought forward phenomena in scientific life and elsewhere, which show how this longing lives at the present time.

To-day I should like to add to our considerations a quite special example, from which we can see that already in our day there are people who to a certain extent touch on these secrets of existence. They divine and know something of these mysteries of existence, but for reasons which we shall presently examine closer, they do not wish to approach them in the manner practised by Spiritual Science. The easiest way to bring these things before people is to leave them more or less undecided, leaving, as it were, the door open, by saying: ‘You need not believe these things. You need not think of that world as real.’ In our time there are plenty of examples of this. I have given instances. I shall bring forward an especial case to-day in reference to this point. I shall introduce into our considerations a few remarks about a really extraordinary and significant novel of modern German literature. I might call it a pearl among German novels. It is called Hofrat Eysenhardt. It is really one of the best novels to be found in the more recent literature of Germany and in it, in a really wonderful manner, only one single individual is depicted: namely, Hofrat Eysenhardt himself. He lived in Vienna and became a lawyer, and later President of the local court. He became one of the greatest lawyers of his country. He was feared by all those who had anything to do with the law, and beloved by those associated with him, for he was a most distinguished criminologist. His eloquence was such that he could get anyone convicted who came within his clutches; during the trial he subjected him to a crossfire, and with a certain indifference to human life he was able so to harass his victim (one can use this expression here) that whatever happened, he was trapped. Thus this Hofrat Eysenhardt was, in his external life, a very remarkable man. He had not much talent for entering into psychic relations with other men. He was a kind of hermit with regard to human life; he laid great stress on being correct and blameless in external life; with his subordinates he exchanged but few words, but with his superiors he was not only friendly, but deeply courteous. I could bring forward many more characteristics; he was a model advocate. We need not enter now into his other qualities, they are wonderfully brought out in the novel, reflected in the statement of a subordinate, but we may go to the occasion when he was once chosen to conduct an important case against a notorious man named Markus Freund. This Markus Freund had already suffered punishment in a lesser degree for offences similar to the one of which he was now accused. But it never occurred to the examining magistrate who made the enquiry, that there was any possibility of bringing about a conviction on this occasion. Yet Hofrat Eysenhardt obtained one. And in a document which the Hofrat himself then drew up for a purpose which we shall presently disclose, he himself describes the manner in which Markus Freund behaved during and especially after his conviction. Let me read the passage: ‘This man, who possessed the strong family affections so characteristic of his race, had a special tenderness for a young grand-daughter, of whom he was never tired of speaking with his fellow prisoners. He could hardly await his release, which he confidently anticipated in spite of the severe suspicions laid on him, so much did he long to see the child again. Markus Freund obstinately denied everything, and in the preliminary trial before the magistrate was so well able to explain away each of the suspicious circumstances with a sagacity truly astounding, that the magistrate, a very efficient, although excessively soft-hearted man, was firmly convinced of Freund's innocence until the closing proceedings began, presided over by the person to whom this information refers.’ (Hofrat Eysenhardt writes that himself, he writes of himself in the third person.) Although Markus Freund even in the final trial exerted his sagacity to the utmost, and his advocate made a very beautiful and touching speech (of merit even according to the newspapers) yet the verdict was exactly the opposite to that expected by the magistrate, and perhaps by the defendant himself. Markus Freund was unanimously convicted by the jury and, as there were many previous convictions and aggravating conditions in his past, he was condemned to the severest penalty, twenty years' imprisonment. The person concerned (none other than Hofrat Eysenhardt himself) might well without presumption, regard this verdict as one of the greatest triumphs of his many years of criminal practice. For the jury would have been deceived by the truly bewildering sophistry of Markus Freund—although public feeling at that time was not favourable to men of his race—had not the President been able, by his superior eloquence to crumple this sophistry into nothing. ‘The effect of the verdict on the defendant was such’ (the Hofrat himself is still relating this) ‘that it required hardened nerves, accustomed to such outbreaks, not to be shaken as to the truth and justice of the sentence. First Markus Freund stammered a few incomprehensible words, probably in Hebrew. Then this bowed man, of barely middle height, drew himself up to his full height, so that he appeared huge, and lifted the heavy lids which usually almost covered his eyes—showing the blood-shot whites of his rolling eyes. And from his distorted mouth he rapidly hissed forth a stream of bitter curses and threats directed against the President. To repeat them here in the offensive jargon in which they were poured forth, would hardly harmonise with the respect due to the law. Only the first sentence may be quoted: “Mr. President! You know as well as I do myself that I am innocent;” and the last, “This shall be repaid to you. An eye for an eye, it shall be paid back to you. You shall see!” The rest of his speech was entirely fantastic and appeared, in so far as it had any sense at all, to amount to this: he, Markus Freund, had probed the noble President with his eyes to the very depths and discovered, that even though noble, the President was not aware of it, he was nevertheless of the same sort as himself; he the down-trodden, but this time, innocent Markus Freund. The officers immediately did their duty and seized the offender, to whom the President immediately awarded disciplinary punishment for his outburst. While the soldiers, each holding one of his waving arms, led the accused away, his fury broke out in weeping and sobbing. Even in the corridor one heard his dull moaning: my poor, poor little girl, you will never see your grandfather again. The jury were greatly distressed at this incident, and questioned the President through their foreman as to whether it would not be possible to try the case again immediately. Through their insufficient knowledge of the law they had not enough experience to know that outbursts of this kind occur more often with very hardened blameworthy criminals, than with innocent defendants, who really are much scarcer than the sensational minds of the public imagine. Less excusable was the fact that the above-mentioned soft-hearted Vice-President, who was present at the pronouncement of the sentence and its disagreeable sequel, took upon himself to say to the prosecutor, gently shaking his head, “Mr. President, I do not envy you your talent!”’

‘So Markus Freund was now imprisoned and the Hofrat lived on. But how he lived and what now happened he relates in his statement. We must presuppose that some considerable time has elapsed, and the accused had been a long time in prison. Now the following occurred: ‘Just as the person in question’ (the Hofrat relates this of himself) ‘had seen him at the moment when he uttered those threats and curses against him, with a face distorted with fury, precisely so did the long-forgotten Markus Freund come before his mind in the night between the 18th and 19th March, at 2 o'clock, when he suddenly awoke without cause.

‘Thus the Hofrat suddenly wakes up in the night between the 18th and 19th of March, at 2 o'clock, and has the impression in his mind that Markus Freund was standing before him.

‘And while he lay motionless, as in a trance, the above-mentioned events recapitulated themselves in imagination with lightning speed. He was not clearly conscious whether in the intervening years he had thought much about the occurrence or not. Both alternatives appeared equally correct to him at that moment, for horror weakened his power of thought.

‘Thus Hofrat Eysenhardt woke up in the middle of sleep, was forced to think of Markus Freund and to recapitulate what had happened, but he did not know whether he had previously often thought of it or not. ‘While he lay thus with throbbing heart, an impulse arose immediately to light the candle on the table, but he could not. (He could not move his hands). It was as if something gently tapped at the bedroom door, or rather a timorous scratching, as if a little dog was begging to be let in. Involuntarily the question formed itself: “Who is there?” There was no answer, nor did the door open, but nevertheless he had a feeling that something slipped in. The floor creaked slightly, the sound passing across the room from the door to the bed, as if this invisible something came nearer, and finally stood close to him. Anyhow he had the indescribable feeling of a strange presence, and not of an indefinite, unknown presence, but it seemed to him as if this “something” must be that Markus Freund, the sudden recollection of whom had roused him out of a deep sleep. He even felt as if this invisible presence bent over his face. Now, whether he fell asleep again without being aware of it and dreamed, and—as you know—the dreams and the people of whom one dreams are frequently confused with one another, or whether certain exaggerated ideas of Schopenhauer as to the secret identity of all individuals stirred in him as the after effects of what he had been reading during the last few days, at any rate the senseless thought flashed through his mind that he and Markus Freund were fundamentally one and the same person. And as if in confirmation of this idea, silly as it was and contrary to all logic, he repeated, whether merely inwardly, or outwardly and audibly, he knew not, the above-mentioned curses and threats of Markus Freund as far as he could remember them, and indeed with the horror-struck feeling that each curse was now beginning to fulfil itself. Now whether, as was not impossible, he had fallen asleep and dreamed, certain it is that he awoke with this terrible impression and lit the candle. The clock registered ten minutes past two. Everything in the room was as before, although furniture, walls, and pictures appeared strange to him, and he had to drink a glass of water and wait a little while to recover himself and realise where he was.’

He relates all this himself and says, that first he had this vision, as we may call it. Now, this made such an impression on him that he was driven to go immediately—though still somewhat shaken—to the Court, and look up the documents relating to Markus Freund. But he was not able to do so; something else occurred—Hofrat Eysenhardt had always been a quiet, open-minded man, and he merely relates what happened to him. We shall shortly see why he relates it. Indeed, he considers himself somewhat ridiculous and unworthy to have yielded to it.

‘In vain did he tell himself how absurd and ridiculous his conduct was. His former iron will was in this respect weakened, and remained so. It barely sufficed to conceal from his colleagues the inner torments which were always present with him. One morning, passing a group of legal officials who were engaged in heated conversation in a dark corridor, he thought he heard the name of Markus Freund.’

One day when he went to the Court-house, he really lacked the courage to again take up these documents, but in passing a corridor where several people were conversing he heard the name of Markus Freund.

‘Now, as this man and his name had gradually become a fixed idea in his mind, and never gave him any rest, he regarded a self-deception as not unlikely, and he stopped and asked the gentleman of whom they had been speaking? “Of Markus Freund, of your Markus Freund, Herr Hofrat, don't you remember him?” answered one of the gentlemen, who happened to be the soft-hearted magistrate who at the time had made that rash remark. “Of Markus Freund? Why? What has happened to him?” He could hardly breathe. “Why he is dead. By the grace of God the poor devil is now free,” the soft-hearted one answered. “Dead? When?” “Oh, he died in the night between the 18th and 19th of March, at 2 o'clock.”’

Thus the story relates that Hofrat Eysenhardt had convicted Markus Freund, who was imprisoned for a long time. During the night between the 18th and 19th of March, Eysenhardt wakes up, sees Freund in his thoughts, and then has a vision of his appearance. He is terribly frightened, wants to look up the documents, but allows several weeks to pass. Finally, he overhears a conversation, whereby he learns that Markus Freund died at the very time he appeared to him, creeping into his room like a little dog.

Now, in order to understand all that has been related, the conclusion of the novel is necessary. For this shows that the Hofrat was now urged by circumstances, and indeed by such circumstances that one could not have supposed would have this effect upon him. As President of an especially important trial of a case of espionage he was necessarily brought in connection with certain people. Now, in his connection with them and guided by a dim instinct, he is led to commit the very same offence of which he had convicted Markus Freund. And later, after he had been dragged by passion into crime, he had occasion to remember in a quite special manner the words spoken by Markus Freund after his trial: ‘This shall be repaid to you. An eye for an eye, you shall see.’ Thus something had lived beneath the threshold of the Hofrat's consciousness which was definitely connected with his previous deeds, and which was also connected in a remarkable and mysterious way with the fulfilment of what the dead man had threatened him with. Indeed, there is an even deeper connection. The author of the novel wrote in the first person, as though many of the things about Hofrat Eysenhardt had been related to him personally, and he writes that he had a conversation with one of his subordinates (this conversation occurs in the novel). And this subordinate, who was an extraordinary sagacious, philosophically inclined man, said: ‘This Hofrat was specially gifted with the power to penetrate to the depths of these things because he had a strong disposition towards them himself. And so he penetrates deepest into the cases which appeal to him most.’ That is related in the novel. Now, it is interesting that in the night of the 18th to the 18th of March, at 2 o'clock, the thought arises in the Hofrat, ‘You and this Markus Freund are practically identical.’ This unity, this uniting of the consciousness appears evident to his soul; he has an insight into a connection which lies beneath the threshold of ordinary life. This is revealed to him. Naturally it is not revealed to him in the same way as to others, for cases vary, but this disclosure comes to him. Now, it is interesting that the author of this novel has brought together all the materials possible to make the event comprehensible. And we must also recollect what this author mentions as preceding the vision which the Hofrat had during the night. The Hofrat was really a robust man; as has been said, many characteristics could be brought forward which show him to be a man who did not go soulfully through life, but was one who pursues his way with a sort of brutality, caused by a certain inner robustness. Only, as it were, through an outer symptom could this man, who had never been led astray and who was always sure of himself, become a wrong doer. The outer cause was this: he discovered a tooth had become loose and that he could easily remove it with his fingers. The thought then flashed through his head, ‘my life is now on the wane. Something has begun to decay.’ He could not get the thought out of his head: ‘In this way I shall lose my health, little by little.’ That would not have been so bad, the worst was that from that moment (only he did not notice it, but ruminated over his own decay, as he himself shows in his letters, wherein he describes himself in the third person), from that moment his memory began to fail. His memory was such a help in all his professional work that he develops a certain anxiety about life. He noticed that he could no longer remember certain things which formerly could be recalled so easily. Just consider how interesting it is that the novelist brings forward the possibility of developing a partial clairvoyance as the memory begins to decline. Then his memory becomes better again. He decides to record this, and remembers what his state had been. He, as a freethinker, cannot suppose otherwise than that all this was a part of a diseased condition. And he reflects: ‘thus I am really in danger of going mad.’ That conclusion would be natural in a freethinker. He is ashamed to seek advice and therefore he takes advantage of his position to write in the third person. He then places the document before a physician for mental diseases, as the case of some unknown person, and in that way he hoped to get medical advice. Thereby it happens that the novelist uses this document to impart something of the psychic life of this man.

You see that we have here a really beautiful work of art, which indeed points to those elements of which we have to speak in Spiritual Science, just those elements of which one speaks when dealing with the connection between the power of memory and the perception into the spiritual worlds. The novelist accomplishes that beautifully by causing the memory to fail the moment certain ‘shreds’ of these secret connections become evident to the person in question. And the whole narrative is very extraordinary, for it is so constructed in its various parts that one sees that the author realises that there are such connections behind life. Only he clothes the knowledge in the form of a novel. The novel is very cleverly written, and could only be written by a philosophical mind. It is written by one who was for many years the Manager of the Hamburg Theatre, and who later became Manager of the Vienna Burg-Theatre. This novel is really not only one of the best he has written, but is one of the pearls of German fiction. Naturally I do not say this because it is written around a subject deeply interesting to us, but because none but a man of very fine perception could have such delicate observation in an apparently abnormal matter. What I have said as to the merit of this book is purely from an artistic standpoint. It is really so written that the reader has the consciousness: the author has written a novel, but he might just as well have written a biography of Hofrat Eysenhardt, so realistically does he write. And we see in such a novel that Berger must have known a man who really had such experiences in the course of his life. One cannot help saying: how natural it would be for such a man as Alfred Freiherr von Berger to approach the spiritual world so that through Spiritual Science he might learn to know the real connections. How infinitely important would it be for Berger to have studied Spiritual Science, so that he would have been able to say, for example, ‘What will Hofrat Eysenhardt have to experience in the time which immediately follows the passage through the gates of death, in what we have always called Kamaloka, after having caused an innocent man to be convicted?’ As I have told you: man then has to experience the effects of his deeds, and the significance which his deeds have for others in connection with whom they were committed. What the Hofrat had done at the trial afforded him a tremendous satisfaction at the time, especially his great power of oratory. He had great satisfaction, which he expressed by saying: ‘He regarded it as meritorious that he prevailed against the sophistry of the prisoner, and delivered a speech which urged the jury to convict him, although they regretted it immediately afterwards, when they saw the effect of their verdict on the accused.’ That is the thing as seen from this side of the Hofrat. From the side of Markus Freund it is a very different matter, here we see the effect of the sentence upon him. The effect of this on his soul the Hofrat has to experience in Kamaloka. And a reflection, a picture of this reveals itself in the very moment when Markus Freund himself goes through the gates of death. This so discloses itself to him that he now sees himself as identical, as one with this Markus Freund. He sees himself in Markus Freund. He feels himself also within him. We see that the Hofrat had a foretaste of Kamaloka. This is so powerful that he not only experiences what had happened previously, but something which is intimately connected with the whole matter transpires further in him beneath the threshold of his consciousness. Each single detail is of importance. I told you that he had lost his memory for a while, during which this part of the spiritual world unveiled itself to him. But now comes a time when he is endowed anew with a great natural power of memory. Memory reinstates itself in him again, when he tried the case of espionage. But in the course of this very trial he is driven to commit the same offence for which through his eloquence he had caused Markus Freund to be convicted. The force which formerly proceeded from memory was transformed into the force of instinct, and this drives him. He does not now see the connection which was subconsciously working between what he was now himself doing, and what he had ascribed to Markus Freund. This leads to the following: Hofrat Eysenhardt, when he sees what has happened to him, the very evening preceding the conclusion of the law suit in which he was to accomplish his greatest triumph, goes into his office ...'

Having entered his once, the key of which he had with him, he lit the two candles on the writing table, washed his hands, face, and hair; then changed his civilian attire for his uniform, and for a long time paced up and down. Then he opened the top drawer of his writing table and took from a parcel a new revolver and a packet of cartridges which he had probably bought at the worst time of his nervous breakdown. He carefully loaded every chamber, then took from the paper-rack a sheet of official paper and wrote the following:

“In the name of His Majesty the Kaiser! I have committed a serious offence and feel myself unworthy to exercise my office further, or to live any longer. I have condemned myself to the severest punishment, and in the next few minutes shall execute the same with my own hand. EYSENHARDT. Vienna, 10th June, 1901.”

Neither writing nor signature betrayed a trace of even the slightest nervousness. Next morning he was found dead.

A quite remarkable connection is described in this novel, and we must say that the author was well qualified to see the connection existing between that which transpires here in the ordinary consciousness and that which happens beneath the threshold of consciousness, that is, he could see the spiritual events in which man is entangled. Exoterically one only sees the happenings of the physical world: that the judge convicted Markus Freund, and so on. If that had not happened just at that time when the lawyer became confused and lost his memory, he would not have seen these threads of the spiritual world. They would not have revealed themselves to him; and all this would have remained subconscious. A novel such as this is sent out into the world from the following standpoint, so to speak. ‘There is certainly something behind life, which in certain special cases cannot but be recognised. But if one speaks of this people do not like it. It is uncomfortable to approach such realities. So it is related as a novel and then nobody need believe it; if it merely amuses people that is all right.’

Now, that which holds people off from the spiritual world is something of which they are not aware. The way into the spiritual world goes, as it were, in two directions. In the first we push aside the veil of nature and investigate that which lies behind the phenomena of external nature. In the second we push through the veil of our own soul life, and seek what lies behind that. The ordinary philosophers also seek to probe behind the basis of existence; they seek to solve the Cosmic riddle. But note—how do they do this? They either observe nature directly, or through experiments, and then think it over afterwards. But while one puzzles out these ideas acquired through the knowledge of nature, turning them over and over again in one's mind, and interlacing them, one does certainly arrive at a philosophy, but not at anything really connected with the true outer reality. We can never get behind the veil of existence by reflecting on that which presents itself in outer nature. I expressed this as follows, in a public lecture: ‘That which causes our eternal forces is active, in that it first produces in us the instrument with which we approach our ordinary consciousness.’ But if we are to build up our ordinary consciousness, we must use this instrument. When we enter the experience of ordinary consciousness, everything which the eternal forces make in us is already completed. Hence when through meditation we reach this stage we notice that we cannot penetrate the secrets of nature by means of reflection, but by quite different means. If, as I have described in my public lectures, we strengthen our thought through meditation, and the revelation of the spiritual world comes to us through grace, we then behold nature quite differently. Even human life itself has a different aspect then. We then approach nature, and while taking in any process or object or event that meets us, we have at the same time the consciousness, ‘Before you really see a rose, something else takes place.’ True, you first see the perception, the realisation; but that perception has first fashioned itself. Into the perception is inserted the spiritual; therein lies the memory, the memory of the previous thought. To get behind the secret in this way through spiritual research, that is the secret. The philosopher beholds the rose and then philosophises about it in his rejections. But he who wants to get behind the secret of the rose may not reflect, for if he does, nothing happens. He must behold the rose and be aware, that before it comes through to his sense consciousness, some process has already taken place. It appears to him as a memory which preceded the perception. The whole matter turns on this; that something like a memory transpires, which tells us: ‘I did this before I reached the sensible perception; so that as regards external nature a previous thinking has taken place although it remains subconscious, and then it is brought to the surface as a memory.’ One cannot penetrate the secrets of nature through afterthought, but through forethought. Just as little can one penetrate the secrets of that which fills the soul, in any other way than by really approaching that spectator, of whom I have often spoken. Note well, these are the ways by which we can enter the spiritual world to-day.

You will remember that in the novel a shred of the spiritual world reaches the perception of Hofrat Eysenhardt after he realised the processes of decay in himself, and this is a peculiar illustration of what I have brought forward in my lectures. When our thinking is so strengthened by our exercises that we can see the spiritual world, we are immediately confronted with the process of destruction, with that which is connected with death. The Mystics of all ages have expressed this by the phrase: ‘To approach the Gate of Death,’ that is, all that manifests as destruction in human life. And if we have really carried our meditation to that point where we attain the experience of Initiation, we experience this: ‘I stand at the Gate of Death. I know there is something in me which has prevailed since my birth or conception, which then concentrates itself and becomes the phenomenon of death, the confiscation of the physical body.’ One then makes reply: ‘But all that leads to death has come from the spiritual world. That which has come from the spiritual world has united itself with that which arises from the hereditary substance.’ We see a man standing here in the physical world and we say: ‘That which confronts us is his countenance, which speaks to us through his words, everything he does as physical man is the expression of what prepared itself in the spiritual world through his last death and birth. His soul being lives in this.’ And from the whole bearing of these considerations we can conclude: that part of the human soul which lives between death and rebirth attracts the forces out of the spiritual world in order to fashion man in this incarnation between birth and death, in order to build something which is just the man himself. And then it is really the case, that through meditating on the Will, there is evolved the germ which again goes through the gate of death, to prepare itself in the spiritual world for a next incarnation. Thus in man there lies this eternal process of growth. The psychic spiritual descends from the spiritual world and forms a man here, in whom arises, at first as a mere speck, that which now originates here in life as the germ, and this again goes through the gates of death in order to continue its evolution. So that when we have a man here, it is really evident that as he stands before us, he as man has been created from out of the spiritual world. With that provided by the parents there unites itself that which descends from the spiritual world. While he was in the spiritual world he was among the spiritual powers, just as here in the physical body he is among the forces of nature. He was among the spiritual forces, and with their help he prepared himself for this incarnation. When we see a man incarnate before us, it truly is as I have represented in the second Mystery Play, The Soul's Probation, that whole worlds of divine beings work in order to produce man. Between death and rebirth spiritual forces are operative in order to maintain man. Man here is the goal of certain spiritual forces which are active between death and rebirth. Now note: this leads to Spiritual Science, but it has always been known and brought to expression; for example, a man of note expressed what I have said over and over again, by saying: ‘Life in the human body is the ultimate aim of the Path of the Gods.’ He meant that when we are in the spiritual world, woven into the world of the Gods between death and rebirth, we prepare ourselves for our incarnation, for our body. That is the object of the Divine Path. He was unable, however to add the other sentence: ‘In the body a new beginning is prepared, which then again goes through death and leads to a new incarnation.’ This phrase, ‘The life in the body is the ultimate aim of the Divine Path,’ forms to a certain extent the leading motive of all the works written by Christoph Oetinger, a very noted man nearly a hundred years ago. He drew attention continually to the path that human knowledge and perception must take if it is to recognise these spiritual connections. What Anthroposophy really desires can already be found in the older Theosophists. But Oetinger wishes to present it in his own way. His editor uttered some beautiful words at the end of his preface, in 1847. He wanted to express that in former times men sought the spiritual path, but in their own way; but that the time would come, and was not far distant, in which that which one had really always sought, would be grasped with full scientific consciousness. His editor says: ‘The essential point is that when Theosophy becomes a real science and brings forth definite results, these will gradually become the universal conviction of humanity. Yet this rests in the bosom of the future, which we do not wish to anticipate.’ Thus spake Richard Rothe, the Heidelberg professor, in referring to the Theosophist, Christoph Oetinger, in November, 1847. What Spiritual Science strives for has already existed, but in another form. To-day it is necessary to find it in just the form most appropriate for our time. And as I have often said, ‘the thought of Natural Science has to-day reached a standpoint from which, out of the method of that science herself, the right scientific form must be sought for what lived in Theosophy of all times.’ And when Rothe, as the editor of Oetinger, says that what the latter implies ‘rests in the bosom of the future,’ we must remember that what in 1847 was the future has certainly matured into the present of our time. We are confronting time when we can prove—for it was but one example which I have brought before you to-day in the novel Hofrat Eysenhardt, by Alfred von Berger—that human souls are really ripe to approach the spiritual truths, but that they morally lack the courage to grasp them in reality.

I said that in two directions lies the path to the spiritual world, in which one can see behind the veil of nature. For those who are accustomed to think scientifically, and who merely have to raise their scientific thought to an inner instrument in the way described, why is it so difficult to make progress? Why? They say that there are limits to human knowledge! Ignorabimus! And why do they not wish to enter the spiritual world? Well, the reason for that lies beneath the threshold of their consciousness.

Within the sphere of consciousness so-called logical reasons are brought forward as to why man cannot enter the spiritual world. These arguments have long been known. But beneath these logical reasons is to be found the true inner reason: the fear of the spiritual world. This fear of the spiritual world holds people back, but they are not aware of it. If they could only acquaint themselves with the existence of this unconscious fear, and how everything that is brought forward in opposition is merely a mask, hiding the fear in its reality, they would become aware of many things. That is the one thing. The other is this: directly a man enters the spiritual world he is seized upon, just as we can grasp his thoughts here—he is seized by the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. Man becomes, as it were, a thought in the spiritual world. Against this the soul inwardly struggles. It is frightened, terrified, and shrinks from being taken possession of by the spiritual world. Again a question of fear, a powerless terror of allowing itself to be laid hold of by the spiritual world, in the way in which at birth one is laid hold of by the physical forces. Thus, outer fear, and dread of a certain powerlessness to resist being seized by the spiritual world, this it is which holds men back from it. That is why they so often wish, as the author in this novel, to splash in the waves of the spiritual world, without—as I might say—binding themselves in any way. That is why they have not really the courage to draw too near to the spiritual world lest it should lay hold of them, as may truly happen through the inner experiments often described, just as the apprehension of the secrets of nature may come about through external experiments.

If to what has been said you apply what was brought forward in one of the public lectures concerning this connection between the forces of genius which appear in life, and premature death, brought about by man's body being taken from him, through a shell or some other cause on the battlefield—if, in connection with what has been said you remember that the forces of genius or of invention appear in man as the effect of those processes which occurred when he was deprived of his physical body, then there also you have something remaining beneath the threshold of consciousness. But in his courage, in the whole way in which a man offers himself up for some great event of the time, there lies an instinctive expression of something resting beneath the threshold of consciousness, and which is unable to reach his consciousness in its full significance. Nevertheless, in our time there is in human evolution an impulse to carry up to the threshold of consciousness what lies beneath it, so that man may know something of it. And when I point to the fact that even in the great events of our time, in all that transpires in full consciousness, especially in the events of this epoch, there lie significant subconscious processes—I mean this to be taken in the above-mentioned sense, for that which these events are inserting into the great connection of human will never be included in what the external historian can grasp of these present events. More than ever before does the subconscious play a part in the present happenings. And therefore the spiritual investigator is allowed to indicate that a time will come in the future when, in order to behold the present significant historical events in the right light of their Cosmic connections, we shall point to their spiritual background. With this in view the words with which we now always conclude will be more and more present to our souls:—

From the fighters' courage,
From the blood of battles,
From the mourners' suffering,
From the people's sacrifice,
There will ripen fruits of Spirit
If with consciousness the soul
Turns her thought to Spirit Realms.

We shall begin to-day by studying a Northern poem that we considered in this group some time ago. The whole content of this poem is connected with Christmas and the Christmas season. It treats of the Legend of Olaf Åsteson and contains the fact that Olaf Åsteson, a legendary person, passed the thirteen days between Christmas and the Day of Epiphany in a very unusual way. And we are reminded thereby how within the world of these Sagas there lives the perception of the primitive clairvoyance formerly existing in humanity. The story is the following: Olaf Åsteson reaches a church door one Christmas Eve and falls into a sort of sleep-like condition. And during these thirteen nights he experiences the secrets of the spiritual world; he experiences them in his own way, as a simple primitive child of nature. We know that during these days when in a sense the deepest outer darkness prevails over the earth, when the growth of vegetation is at its lowest ebb, when, in a sense, everything external in physical earth-life is at a standstill, that the earth-soul awakens and attains its fullest waking consciousness. Now, if a human soul mingles its spiritual nature with what the spirit of the earth then experiences, it can, if it still retains the primitive conditions of nature, rise to a vision of the spiritual world such as humanity as a whole must gradually re-acquire through its own efforts. We then see how this Olaf Åsteson actually experiences what we are able to bring from out of the spiritual world. For whether he says Brooksvalin and we say Kamaloka or soul-world and spiritual world, or whether we use different images to those of the Saga, is of no consequence. The chief thing is that we should perceive how humanity has proceeded in its soul evolution from an original primitive clairvoyance, from a state of union with the spiritual world, and that this had to be lost so that man could acquire that thinking, that conscious standing in the world through which he had to pass, and from and beyond which he must again develop a higher perception of the spiritual world. I might say that this spiritual world which the primitive clairvoyance has forsaken is the same in which the evolved perception again lives; but man has passed through a condition which now causes him to find his way into this spiritual world in a different manner. It is important to develop the feeling that in reality the inner spiritual psychic development of a spiritual psychic being is connected with the transformation of the earth at the different seasons of the year; a psychic spiritual being is connected with the earth as a man's soul with his physical being. And anyone who merely regards the earth as the geologists do, as that which the usual Natural Science of to-day in its materialistic attitude so easily explains, knows as much of this earth as one man knows of another, of whom he is given a model in papier-maché, and which is not filled with all that the soul pours into the external nature of man. External Science really only gives us a mere papier-maché image of the earth. And he who cannot become conscious that a psychic distinction prevails between the winter and summer conditions of the earth are like a man who sees no difference between waking and sleeping. Those great beings of nature in whom we live, undergo states of spiritual transformations as does man himself, who is a microcosmic copy of the great macrocosm. Nature and the experiencing of it, the spiritual living with it has a certain significance. And he who can evoke a consciousness that just during these thirteen nights something transpires in the soul of the earth which man can also experience, will have found one of the ways through which man can live more and more into the spiritual world. The feeling for this experience of what is lived through in the great Cosmic existence has been lost to humanity to-day. We hardly know any more of the difference between winter and summer than that in winter the lamps must be lit earlier, and that it is cold in winter and warm in summer. In earlier times humanity really lived together with nature, and expressed this by relating in pictorial fashion how beings traversed the land while the snow fell, and passed through the country when the storm raged but of this in its deepest sense the present-day materialistic mind of man understands nothing. Yet man may grow into this frame of mind again in the deepest sense, if he turns to what the old Sagas still relate, especially in as profound a myth as that of Olaf Åsteson, which shows in such a beautiful way how a simple primitive man, while losing his physical consciousness grows into the clear light of spiritual vision. We shall now bring this Saga before our souls, this Saga which belongs to bygone centuries; which has been lost, and has now been recorded again from the Folk-memories. It is one of the most beautiful of the Northern Sagas, for it speaks in a wonderful way of profound, Cosmic mysteries—in so far as the union of the human soul with the world-soul is a Cosmic mystery.

(The Legend was here recited.)

As we are able to meet here to-day, we may perhaps speak of a few things which may be useful to some of us when we look back to what have learnt through Spiritual Science in the course of the year. We know and this has lately been emphasised even in our public lectures—that at the back of what is visible to external perception as external man, there lies a spiritual kernel of man's being which in a sense is composed of two members. We have learnt to know the one as that which meets our spiritual vision on undergoing the experience usually designated as the “Approach to the Gate of Death”; the other member of the inner life appears before the human soul when we become aware that in all the experiences of our will there is an inner spectator, an onlooker, who is always present. Thus we can say: human thought, if we deepen it through meditation, shows us that in man there is always present in the innermost of his own spiritual being a something which, as regards the external physical body, works at the destruction of the human organism, a destruction which finally ends in death. We know from the considerations already put forward that the actual force employed in thinking is not of a constructive nature, but is rather, in a sense, destructive. Through our power of dying, through our so developing our organism in our life between birth and death that it can fall into decay and dissipate into the Cosmic elements, we are enabled to create the organ by means of which we develop thought, the noblest flower of physical human existence. But in the depths of a man's life between birth and death there is a kind of life-germ for the future which is especially adapted to progress through the gates of death; it is that which develops in the currents of Will and which can be regarded as the ‘spectator’ already characterised. It must continually be urged that what brings spiritual vision to the soul of man is not something which first develops through the spiritual vision itself, but something which is always present; it is always there, only man in our present epoch should not see it. This may be said, that one ought not to see it. For the evolution of the spiritual life has made much progress, especially in the last decades, so that anyone who really gives himself up to what in our materialistic age is designated ‘the spiritual life’ spreads a veil over that which lives in his inner nature. In our present age those concepts and ideas are chiefly developed which are best calculated to conceal what is present spiritually in man. In order to strengthen ourselves aright for our special task, we who follow Spiritual Science may point, just at this significant season, to the particularly dark side of present-day spiritual life, which must indeed exist, just as the darkness in external nature must also exist; but which we must perceive and of the existence of which we must become aware. We are living through a relatively dark period of civilisation in regard to the spiritual life. We need not constantly repeat that in no wise do we undervalue the enormous conquests of which—in this epoch of darkness, mankind is so proud. Nevertheless with regard to spiritual things the fact remains that those concepts and ideas which are created in our epoch, absolutely conceal that which lives in the souls of men—especially from those who immerse themselves most earnestly in these ideas. In reference to this the following may be mentioned. Our epoch is specially proud of its clear thinking, acquired through its important scientific training. Our age is very proud of itself. Of course not so proud as to lead all men to want to think a great deal: no, its pride does not lead to that. But it results in this, that people say: ‘In our epoch we must think a great deal if we want to know anything of the spiritual world.’ To do the necessary thinking oneself is very difficult. But that is the task of the theologians. They can ruminate on these things. Thus, our epoch is supposed to be very highly evolved and is exalted above the dark age of belief in authority; and so we must listen to the theologians, who are able to think about spiritual things. Our epoch has also progressed with respect to the concept of right and wrong, of good and evil. Our epoch is the epoch of thought. But in spite of this advance from the belief in authority, it has not led each man to think more deeply on right and wrong; the lawyers do that. And therefore because we have got beyond the epoch of belief in authority we must leave it to the enlightened lawyers to think over what is good and evil, right or wrong. And with reference to bodily conditions, to bodily cures, because we do not know what is healthy or unhealthy in this epoch which desires to be so free from belief in authority, we go to the doctors. This could be exemplified in all domains. Our epoch is not much inclined to despair, as was Faust, thus:

‘I have studied, alas! Philosophy
And Jurisprudence and Medicine too.
And saddest of all Theology!
With ardent labour through and through!
And here I stick, as wise, poor fool!
As when my steps first turned to school.’

One thing results: our age actually refuses to know anything of the things which perplexed Faust, but desires to know all the more of those things already clearly cognised in the many different departments in which the weal and woe of humanity are decided. Our epoch is so terribly proud of its thinking, that those who have brought themselves to read a little Philosophy in the course of their lives—I will not go so far as to say they have read Kant, but merely some commentary on Kant—are now convinced that anyone who asserts anything about the spiritual world in the sense of Spiritual Science, sins against the undeniable facts established by Kant. It has often been said that the whole work of the Nineteenth Century has been directed to developing human thought and investigating it by means of critical knowledge. And many to-day call themselves ‘critical thinkers’ who have only taken in a little. Many men to-day, for instance, assert that man's knowledge is limited, for he perceives the outer world through his senses; yet these senses can merely yield what they produce through themselves. Thus man perceives the world by its effects on his senses, therefore he cannot get behind the things of the world, for he can never transcend the limit of his senses! He can only receive pictures of reality. And many, speaking from the depths of their philosophy, say: ‘The human soul has only pictures of the world;’ and thus it can never arrive at the ‘Thing in Itself.’ One may thus compare what we obtain through our senses, our eyes, ears, etc.—to pictures in a mirror. Certainly, if a mirror is there and throws back pictures, the image of one man, the image of a second man, etc., and we behold them, we have then a world of images. Then come the philosophers, and say: ‘Just as anyone who sees a man, or two in a mirror, in a reflected image, has a picture world of his own, and as he does not behold the “Thing in Itself,” the man, but merely his image, so we really have only images of the whole external world, when the rays of light and colour strike the eye, and the waves of air strike our ear, we have only images. All are images! Our critical epoch has resulted in this: that man forms nothing but images in his soul, and can never through these images reach to the “Thing in Itself.”’

Infinite sagacity (I now speak in full earnestness) has been applied by Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century in order to prove that man merely has images and can never reach the ‘Thing in Itself.’ What is really the origin of this critical resignation, of this passivity as regards the ‘limitations of our knowledge,’ when we thus discover the image nature of our perception? Whence does it originate? It arises from the fact that in many ways the thought of our epoch, of our enlightened age, is devoid of truth, and short sighted. Our thinking throws out an idea in a pedantic fashion and cannot get beyond it. It holds up this idea like a wooden mannequin and can no longer find anything which is not given by the mannequin. It is almost incredible how rigid thought has become in our time. I shall just make clear to you, by means of the same comparison of the reflected image, the whole story of this image nature of our perception, and of what the so-called critical progressive thought has produced. It is quite a correct premise that the world, as man has it here in sense existence, is only here because it impresses itself on man and throws up images in his soul. And it is well that humanity should have reached this point, through the critical philosophy of Kant. We are well able to say: The images we have of the outer world are such that we can compare them with images of the two men in a mirror. Thus, we have a mirror and two men stand before it. We do not see the men but their pictures. We thus have images of the world through what our souls know of the outer world. We have images which we compare with the two men whose reflected pictures we behold. But some one who had never seen men, but only images, would be able to philosophise thus: ‘I know nothing of the men, but their lifeless images.’ Thus conclude the critical philosophers. And with this conclusion they remain satisfied. They would find themselves refuted in their own being, if they could get a little further away from their mannequin of thought, out of the dead into the living thought. For, if I am in front of a mirror in which are reflected two men, and I see in it that the one strikes the other so that he is wounded, I should be a fool to say: ‘The one mirror-image has struck the other.’ For I no longer see merely the image in the mirror, but through the image I see real events. I have nothing but the image, but I see an absolutely real occurrence through the mirror image. And I should be a fool to believe that that only took place in the mirror. Thus: critical philosophy seizes the one thought that we have to deal with images, but not the other thought, that these images express the facts of something living. And if we grasp these images in a living way, they give more than pictures, for they point to the ‘Thing in Itself,’ which is the real outer world.

Can one still say that the people who produce this ‘Critical Philosophy’ really think? Thought is to a great extent lacking in our time. It is really at a stand-still. And we have stood still at this ‘Criticising of Thought.’ I have often mentioned that this criticism, this critical philosophy, has even progressed in our culture, and that a man making a noble effort (they are all honourable men and their efforts entirely praiseworthy) has produced a certain ‘Criticism of Language.’ Fritz Mauthner has written a ‘Criticism of Language’ in three thick volumes, and even a philosophical dictionary written from this standpoint, in two still thicker volumes. And Mauthner, himself a journalist, has a whole journalistic train of followers, who naturally regard it as a great work. And in our time, in which ‘Belief in Authority’ is supposed to be of no importance, very many who have reached that standpoint, consider it a significant work, as does even the press for which Fritz Mauthner wrote; for to-day ‘there exists no belief in authority!’

Now, Mauthner finally explains how man actually forms nouns, adjectives, etc., but says they all signify nothing real. In the outer world one does not experience what words signify. Man so lives himself into words that we really do not have his thoughts and soul images, but merely words, words, words. Humanity finds itself entangled in the language which gives him his vocabulary. And because he is accustomed to attach himself to the language, he only reaches the symbol of things as given in words! Now, that is supposed to be something very significant. And if one reads these three volumes by Mauthner, and if you have something to reproach yourself with, it is a good penance to read half of them! Then one finds that their author is profoundly convinced—indeed one cannot put it otherwise—that he is cleverer than all the clever men of his time. Of course a man who judges of his own book is naturally cleverer than the others. So Fritz Mauthner finally concludes that man has nothing but signs, signs, signs. Indeed, he goes still further. He goes so far as to say the following: Man has eyes, ears, sense of touch, etc., that is, a collection of sense organs. And in Mauthner's opinion man might have not only organs of sight, hearing, touch, taste, but quite different senses. For instance, he might have another sense besides the eye. He would then perceive the world quite differently with this sense from what he does by receiving pictures through the eyes. Then much would exist for him which is not perceptible to the ordinary man. And now this critical thinker feels a little mystically inclined, and says: “The immeasurable fullness of the world is conveyed to us only through our senses.” And he calls these senses ‘Accidental Senses,’ because in his opinion it is a Cosmic accident that we should have just these very senses. If we had other senses the world would appear differently. Thus it is best to say: “We have accidental senses! Thus an accidental world!” Yet he says the world is immeasurable!—It sounds beautiful. One of the followers of Fritz Mauthner has written a brochure called Scepticism and Mysticism. In this special attention is drawn to the fact that man may even become a mystic in the depths of his soul, when he no longer believes what these accidental senses can give. A beautiful sentence is given us on the twelfth page of this book.

‘The world pours down on us; through the few miserable openings of our accidental senses we take in what we can grasp, and fasten it to our old vocabulary, since we have nothing else to retain it with. But the world streams further, our language also streams on further, only not in the same direction, but according to the accident of language, which is subject to no laws.’

Another philosophy! What does it want to do? It says: The world is immeasurable, but we have merely a number of accidental senses into which the world streams. What do we do with what thus streams in? What do we do according to this gentleman's doctrine of accidents? We remind ourselves of what he calls memory. We fasten that on to the words transmitted to us through our language, and the language then streams on again further. Thus what streams to us from the immeasurable Cosmic Being through our accidental senses, we speak of in our word-symbols. A sagacious thought. I repeat it in all earnestness. It is a sagacious thought. One must be a clever man in our age to think thus. And it can really be said of these people that not only are they all honourable and praiseworthy; ‘they are also remarkable thinkers.’ But they are entangled in the thought of our epoch, and have no will to transcend it.

I have experienced a kind of Christmas sadness—one cannot call it joy for it has become grief, through having once more to consider certain of these matters in this connection. And I have written down a thought, formed exactly after the style of the above thinker who wrote what has just been read. I have applied exactly the same thought to another object with the following results: ‘Goethe's genius is poured on to the paper. With the few miserable forms of its accidental letters the paper takes up what it can, and lets itself express what it can take up with its old store of letters, since there is nothing else to express it with. But Goethe's genius streams on further, the writing on the paper also streams on further, not only in the same direction, but according to the accidents in which letters can group themselves, being subject to no laws.’ It is exactly the same thought, and due regard has been given to each single word. If one maintains that: ‘the immeasurable Cosmos pours down to us, and we take it up with our few accidental senses, as well as we are able, and fix it into our vocabulary: the Cosmos then streams on further, while language streams in another direction, according to the accidents of the history of language, and thus human perception flows on.’ Then this is exactly the same thought as if one said: ‘Goethe's genius flows through the twenty-three accidental letters, because the paper can only receive things in that way. But Goethe's genius is never within them, for it is immeasurable. The accidental letters cannot take that up. They stream on further. What is on the paper also streams on further and groups itself according to the formations possible to the letters, the laws of which cannot be perceived.’ If now these extremely clever gentlemen conclude from such suppositions that what comes to us in the world is merely the result of accidental senses, that we can never get to what really underlies the world in its depths—that is the same as thinking that in reality one can never reach that which lived in the genius of Goethe. For they make it clear—that of this genius nothing exists but the grouping of twenty-three accidental letters. Nothing else is there! These gentlemen have a precisely similar thought, only they are not aware of it. And there is just as much sense in saying: ‘One can never know anything at all of Goethe's genius, for you see that nothing of it can flow to you. You can have nothing but what the different grouping of twenty-three accidental signs can give.’ There is just as much sense in this as in the discussion on the Cosmos that these men bring forth, concerning the possibility or impossibility of Cosmic knowledge. There is just as much sense in this whole train of thought—which is not the thinking of simpletons—but the thinking of those who are really the clever men of to-day, but who do not wish to raise themselves above the thought of our epoch.

The matter has, however, really another aspect. We must be clear that this manner of thinking, which meets us in the example in which it determines the limitations of knowledge, is our own mode of thought in the present age. It prevails, and is to be found everywhere to-day. And whether you read this or that apparently philosophical book intended to solve the great riddles of the universe—or disguise them—or whether you read the newspaper, this style of thinking is everywhere prevalent. Its methods dominate the world. We drink it in to-day with our morning coffee. More and more daily journals appear with such opinions. And in the whole web of our social life this same manner of thought prevails. I have attempted to expose this thinking in its philosophical development, but it could also be traced in those thoughts which one evolves in every possible relation in life, in everything man reflects upon, this thinking prevails to-day. And this is the cause of man's inability to evolve the will to experience in its reality what, for example, Spiritual Science seeks to give. For Spiritual Science is not incomprehensible to true thinking. But what it has to give must naturally always remain incomprehensible to those men who are built after the pattern of Fritz Mauthner. And the majority of men are fashioned thus to-day. Our contemporary science is absolutely permeated through and through with this thinking. Nothing is here implied against the significance and the great achievements of Science. That is not the point, the essential question is how the soul lives in our age, in our present civilisation. Our age is utterly lacking in the power of fluidic thought, unable really to follow what must be followed if these thoughts are to grasp what Spiritual Science has to impart.

Now we can ask ourselves: ‘How does it come about that such a book as Gustav Landauer's Scepticism and Mysticism can be written, when it simply oozes with self-complacency?’ I might say that the reader himself beams with the whole tone of self-satisfaction within it, as one does on reading Mauthner's Criticism of Language or the article in the Philosophical Dictionary. How is this? One does not learn how this comes about by following the thinking. I can imagine very clever men reading such a book and saying: ‘That is a thoroughly clever man!’ They would be right, for Mauthner is indeed a clever man. But that is not the point; for cleverness expresses itself by a man forming in a certain logical manner those ideas of which he is capable, turning them one after the other into nonsense, and reconstructing them again in some fashion. One may be very clever in some branch or other, and possess a really right sort of cleverness, but if one enters a life which is permeated with the consciousness of spiritual knowledge, then with each step there develops such a relation to the world that one has the feeling: ‘You must go further and further. You must perfect your ideas each day. You must develop the belief that your ideas can lead you further and further.’ One has the feeling that the cleverness of the man who had written such a book is of the following nature: ‘I am clever and through my cleverness I have accomplished something definite. I will now write that in a book. That which I now am I shall inscribe in a book, for I am clever on this the 21st of December, 1915. The book must be finished and will reproduce my cleverness.’ One who really knows never has that feeling. He has the feeling of a continual evolution, of an eternal necessity to refine one's ideas, and to evolve higher. And he certainly no longer has the feeling: ‘On this 21st of December, 1915, I am clever; now, through my cleverness I shall write a book that will be finished in the course of months or years.’ For if he has written a book he truly does not look back to the cleverness which he had when he began to write it, but through the book he acquires the feeling: ‘How little I have really accomplished in the matter and how necessary it is for me to evolve further what I have written.’ This ‘journeying along the path of knowledge,’ this constant inner labour, is almost entirely unknown to our materialistic age; it believes it knows it, but in reality it knows it no longer. And the deepest reason for this can be clothed in the words: ‘These men are so excessively vain.’ Man is tremendously vain, for, as I said, such a book really oozes with vanity. It is clever, but terribly vain. The humility, the modesty, that results from such a path of knowledge as has been laid down, is utterly lacking to these men. It must be utterly lacking when a man unconditionally ascribes cleverness to himself on this 21st December, 1915. Humility must be lacking. Now you will say: ‘These people must be stupid if they regard themselves as clever.’ But they do not consider themselves stupid with the surface consciousness, but with the subconsciousness. They never learn to distinguish between the truth which lives in the subconsciousness, and what they ascribe to themselves on the surface, and thus it is the Luciferic nature which really urges the men of to-day to desire to be clever, to attain a definite standpoint of cleverness, and from this point to consider and judge everything. But when a man bears this Luciferic nature within him, then, while he beholds the external world with Lucifer he is led to Ahriman. He then naturally sees this outer world materialistically in our epoch, quite naturally he looks at it in a materialistic manner. For when a man with Lucifer in his nature begins to contemplate the world, he then meets Ahriman. For these two seek each other out in man's intercourse with this world. Therefore such radically vain thinking never reaches the possibility of this conviction, ‘if I use a word, I naturally use merely a symbol for that which the word signifies.’ Mauthner made the great discovery that no substantives exist. There are none. They are no reality. Of course not. We grasp certain phenomena, think of them rightly for a moment and call them substantives. Certainly substantives are not reality: neither are adjectives. That is quite understood. That is all true: but now if I join a substantive and an adjective together, if I bring speech into movement, it then expresses reality. Then what the image represents transcends the image. Single words are no reality in themselves, we do not, however, speak in single words, but in groups of words. And in these we have an immediate presence within the reality. Three volumes have to be written to-day, and a two-volumed dictionary added, in order to expound all these things to man by means of thoughts of infinite cleverness, which simply overlook the fact that although single words are only symbols, the connecting of several into groups is nevertheless not merely symbolical, but forms part of the reality. Infinite wisdom, infinite cleverness is to-day used to prove the greatest errors.

Now, finally, that such errors should be manifest in a criticism of speech or even in a criticism of thought, is not in itself so bad, but the same kind of thought expressed in these errors—in these very intelligent and clever mistakes—lives in the whole thought of our present-day humanity. If we do but grasp the task which is comprised in our spiritual movement, it really forms part of it that we should become conscious of the necessity for those who wish to be Spiritual Scientists, to look at their era in the right way, and really place themselves in the right attitude to it. So that really, I might say: the practical side of our spiritually scientific movement demands that we should seek to transcend that thinking which answers to the above description, and not follow along those lines of thought, but try to alter them. We shall immediately approach the understanding of Spiritual Science with the simplicity of children if we only remove those hindrances which have entered the spiritual life of the civilisation of our present age through the stiffened and petrified forms of thought. Everywhere we should lay aside in our own souls that belief in authority which to-day appears under the mask of freedom. That should form part of the practical life of our Spiritual Science. And it will become more and more necessary that there should be at least a few people who really see the facts as they are and as they have been characterised to-day—and not only see them, but take them in real earnestness all through life. This is the essential. One need not display this externally, but much can be done if only a small number of persons will organise their lives—in whatever position they may occupy, in accordance with these explanations.

We can see in one definite respect how absolutely our age demands that we should again make our thinking alive. Let us briefly place before our souls something that we have often considered. In the beginning of our era that Being whom we have frequently characterised, the Christ Being, took on the life of a human being and united Himself with the earth aura. Through this there was given to the earth, for the first time, the right purpose for its further evolution, after it had been lost through the Luciferic temptation. The Event of Golgotha took place. The Evangelists, who were seers, though for the most part seers in the old style, have described this Event. Paul also described this Mystery of Golgotha;—Paul saw the Christ spiritually through the event of Damascus. His seership was different from that of the Evangelists. As a result of these descriptions a number of men united their souls with the Christ-Event. Through this connection of single individuals with the Christ-Event Christianity was spread abroad. At first it lived beneath the earth; so that in reality the following picture may continually appear in our souls: In ancient Rome, beneath the earth, those who had grasped the Mystery of Golgotha with their souls, maintained their Divine Service. Above, the civilisation and culture of the age, then at its summit, was carried on. Several centuries passed; that which was formerly carried on below in the catacombs, concealed and despised, now fills the world. And the civilisation of that time, the old Roman intellectual culture has disappeared. Christianity is spread abroad. But now the time has come when men have begun to think, when they have become clever, and free from authority. Thinkers have appeared who have examined the Evangelists. Honourable and clever thinkers: they are all worthy of honour. They have concluded that there is no historical testimony in the Gospels. They have studied them for decades, with earnest and critical labour, and they have come to the conclusion that there is no actual historical testimony in the Gospels, that Christ Jesus never lived at all. Nothing is to be said against this critical labour: it is industrious. Whoever knows it, knows of its industry and of its cleverness. There is no reason to despise lightly this critical wisdom. But what does it imply? What is at the bottom of it all? This: that humanity does not in the least see the point of importance! Christ Jesus did not intend to make things so easy for men that subsequent historians should arise and comfortably verify His existence on the earth as simply and easily as the existence of Frederick the Great may be verified. Christ did not wish to make things so easy as that for men—nor even would it have been right for Him to do so. As true as is the fact that this critical labour on the Gospels is clever and industrious, so true also is it that the existence of Christ may never be proved in that way, for that would be a materialistic proof. In everything that man can prove in external fashion, Ahriman plays a part. But Ahriman may never meddle with the proof as to Christ. Therefore there exists no historical proof. Humanity will have to recognise this: although Christ lived on the earth, yet He must be found through inner recognition, not through historical documents. The Christ-Event must come to humanity in a spiritual manner, and therefore no materialistic investigations of truth, nothing materialistic may intervene in this.

The most important event of the earth evolution can never be proved in a materialistic manner. It is as if through Cosmic history humanity were told: Your materialistic proofs, that which you still desire above all in your materialistic age, is only of value for what exists in the field of matter. For the spiritual you should not and may not have materialistic proof. Thus those may even be right who destroy the old historical documents. Just in reference to the Christ-Event it must be understood in our epoch that one can only come to the Christ in a spiritual way. He will never truly be found by external methods. We may be told that Christ exists, but to find Him really is only possible in a spiritual manner. It is important to consider that in the Christ-Event we have an occurrence concerning which all who will not admit of spiritual knowledge must live in error. It is extraordinary that certain people go wild when one utters what I have just said: that the Christ can be known by spiritual means—thus that which is historical can be recognised spiritually—certain people affirm that it really is not possible; no matter who says it, it cannot be true! I have repeatedly drawn your attention to this fact.

Now, our worthy Anthroposophical members still let many things leak out here and there in unsuitable places because they do not always retain this in their hearts, nor give forth in the right way what they have in their hearts. For instance, a person was told—this reached him in a special form—(this is certainly a personal remark, but perhaps I may make it this once), he was told that I had said that personally, as regards my youthful development, I did not begin with the Bible, but started from Natural Science, and that I considered it as of special importance that I had adopted this spiritual path, and had been really convinced of the inner truth of what stands in the Bible before I had ever read it; for I was then certain of it when I had read the Bible externally; that I had thus proved in myself that the contents of the Bible can be found in a spiritual manner before finding it subsequently in an external manner.

This has no value because of its personal character, but it may serve as an illustration. Now that came in an unseemly way to a man who could not understand that anything of the sort is possible, for he (pardon the word) is a theologian. He could not understand it. Since he wanted to make this matter clear in a lecture to his audience he did so in the following way. He read in a book that I once assisted at Mass. (These assistants are boys who give external help at the Mass.) Then he said to himself: ‘whoever assisted at Mass cannot possibly have been ignorant of the Bible. He overlooks the fact that he learnt to know the Bible there. Later on these things come back to him, from his Bible knowledge.’ Yes but there is indeed a plan in all this. In the first place the whole story is untrue, but people to-day do not object to quoting a fact which is untrue. In the second place, the assistants at Mass never learn the Bible but the Mass-book, which has nothing to do with the Bible. But the essential is to attend to this: the man could not conceive that a spiritual relation exists, he could only imagine that one comes through the letters of the alphabet, to the spiritual hanging on to them. It is very important for us to know these things and to have practical knowledge of them. For our spiritual movement will never be able to thrive until we really—not merely externally but in the very depths of our soul—find the courage to enter into everything connected with the whole meaning and significance of our conception of the world. And with reference to this uniting oneself with the spiritual world a critical situation has really arisen just in our time. The very men who regard themselves as the most enlightened feel themselves least united with the spiritual world. This is not stated as a reproach or criticism but as a fact. It is, therefore, especially important in our time to arouse an inner understanding for such significant Cosmic symbols as meet us in everything which surrounds the mystery of Christmas. For this can unite itself very deeply with a man's nature without the help of letters or learning. We must be able to make the Christmas Mystery alive in every situation in life, particularly in our own soul.

While we awaken this Mystery in our souls we look up and say: ‘Christmas reminds us of the descent of Christ Jesus on to the earth plane, and of the rebirth of that in man which was lost to him through the Luciferic temptation.’ This rebirth occurs in different stages. One stage is that within which we ourselves stand. That which for the sake of further evolution had to be lost—the feeling in the human heart of union with the spiritual world: ‘the birth of Christ within us’ is only another word for it—that has to be born again. Just that, which we desire and ever strive for, is intimately connected with this Christmas Mystery. And we should not merely regard this Christmas Mystery as that day of the year on which we fix up our Christmas tree, and, beholding it, take into ourselves all sorts of edification, but we should look upon it as something present in our whole existence, appearing to us in all that surrounds us.

As a symbol I should like in conclusion to present something which a remarkable poet, who died many years ago, wrote of his feeling about Christmas.

‘Our Church celebrates various Festivals which penetrate our hearts. One can hardly conceive anything more lovable than Whitsuntide or more earnest and holy than Easter. The sadness and melancholy of Passion week and the solemnity of that Sunday accompany us through life. The Church celebrates one of the most beautiful Festivals, the Festival of Christmas, almost in mid-winter, during the longest nights and shortest days, when the Sun shines obliquely across our land, and snow covers the plains. As in many countries the day before the Festival of the Birth of our Lord is called the Christmas Eve, with us it is called the Holy Evening; the following day is the Holy Day and the night intervening the Sacred Eve. The Catholic Church celebrates Christmas Day, the Day of the Birth of the Saviour, with the greatest solemnity. In most regions the hour of midnight is sacred to the hour of the Birth of the Lord, and kept with impressive nocturnal solemnity, to which the bells call one through the quiet solemn air of the dark mid-winter night, and to which the inhabitants go, with lanterns along the well-known paths, from the snow mountains and through the bare forests, hurrying through the orchards to the church, which with its lighted windows dominates the wooded village with the peasants' houses’ (Adalbert Stifter, Berg Kristall). He then describes what the Christ Festival is to the children and further, how in the old and isolated village there lived a cobbler who took a wife out of the neighbouring village, not out of his own; how the children of this couple learnt to know Christmas as was customary there. That is; someone said to them ‘The Holy Christ has brought you this gift,’ and when they were sufficiently tired of the presents, they were put to bed, very tired, and did not hear the midnight bells. These children had thus never yet heard the midnight bells. Now they often visited the neighbouring village. As they grew up and were able to go out alone they visited their grandmother there. The grandmother was especially fond of the children, as is often the case. Grandparents are often more devoted to the children than the parents. The grandmother liked to have the children with her, as she was too frail to go out. One Christmas Eve, which promised to be fine, the children were sent over to their grandmother. The children went over in the morning and were to return in the afternoon to follow the custom of the country, calling at the different villages, and were then to find the Christmas tree at home in the evening. But the day turned out different from what was expected. The children were overtaken by a terrible snowstorm. They wandered over the mountains, lost their way, and in the midst of a dreadful snowstorm they reached a trackless country.

What the children went through is very beautifully described; how during the night they saw a phenomenon of nature. It is desirable to read you the passage, for one cannot relate it as beautifully as it is described there. Each word is really important. They reached an ice field on a glacier. They heard behind them the crackling of the glacier in the night. You may imagine what an impression that makes on the children. The story continues:

Even before their very eyes something began to develop. As the children sat thus a pale light blossomed in the sky, in the centre underneath the stars, and formed a delicate arch through them. It had a greenish shimmer which moved gently downwards. But the arch became clearer and clearer until the stars withdrew and faded away before it. It even sent a reflection into other regions of the sky, a pale green light, which moved and coated gently among the stars. Then arose sheaves of various lights above the arch, like the spikes of a crown, and they flamed. The neighbouring spaces of the heavens were flooded with light, gently scintillating, and traversing long stretches of the heavens in delicate quiverings. Had the “storm-substance” of the sky so expanded through the snowfall that it flowed out in these silent glorious streams of light, or was it some other cause in unfathomable nature? Gradually the whole became fainter and fainter, the sheaves becoming extinguished first, until slowly and imperceptibly it all became fainter and nothing remained in the sky but the hosts of simple stars.

The children sat thus through the night. They heard nothing of the bells beneath. They had only snow and ice around them in the mountains and the stars and the phenomena of the night above them. The night drew to a close. People grew anxious about them. The whole village set out to find them. They were found and brought home. I can omit the rest and merely say that the children were almost stiff with cold, were put to bed and told that they should receive their Christmas gifts later. The mother went to the children, which is related as follows:

‘The children were confused by all this agitation. They had been given something to eat and were put to bed. Towards evening, when they recovered a little, while certain neighbours and friends gathered in the sitting-room and spoke of the event, the mother went into the bedroom and sat on Sanna's bed, caressing her. Then the little maid said: “Mother, while I sat on the mountain to-night, I saw the Holy Christ.”’

This is a beautiful presentation. The children had grown up without any instruction about the Christmas Festival. They had to pass Christmas Eve in that terrible situation, up above on the mountains, amid snow and ice, with only the stars above them, and this phenomenon of nature. They were discovered, brought back to the house, and the little maid said: ‘Mother, I have seen the Holy Christ to-night.’ ‘I have seen the Holy Christ.’ Seen Him! She had seen Him, so she said.

There lies a deeper meaning in this when it is said—as we have continually emphasised in our Spiritual Science, that Christ is not only to be found where we find Him, in the evolution of the earth epoch, historically inserted into the beginning of our era, where civilisation shows Him to us, but He is to be found everywhere! Especially when we are confronted with the world at the most serious moments of our life. We can surely find the Christ then. And we ourselves, we spiritual disciples, as I might say, can find Him, if we are only sufficiently convinced that all our efforts must be directed to the rebirth of the spiritual in the development of mankind, and that this spiritual, which must be born through a special activity of the souls and hearts of men, is based on the foundation of what was born into the earth's evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha. That is something which we must realise at this season. If you can find during the days of which we have spoken to-day, and which are now approaching, a correct inner feeling of the evolving and weaving of external earth existence in its similarity with the sleeping and waking of man; if you can experience a deeper communion with external events, you will then feel more and more the truth of the words ‘Christ is here.’ As He Himself said: ‘I am with you always, unto the end of the earth epochs!’

And He is ever to be found, if we only seek Him. That thought should strengthen us, and invigorate us at this Christmas Festival if we celebrate it in this sense. Let us carry away these thoughts which may help us to find that which we have to regard as the real content, the real depth of our spiritual scientific efforts.

May we bring to this epoch of ours a soul so strengthened that we can place ourselves in the right attitude to it, as we now desire to do. Thus let us turn from the general consideration we have brought forward concerning the spiritual world, to the feeling of strengthening that can come to us from these considerations—strengthening for our soul.

Now let us turn our attention to those on the fields where the great events of our time are taking place:

Spirits ever watchful,
Guardians of their souls!
May your vibrations waft
To the Earth-men committed to your charge
Our souls' petitioning love:
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may helpfully radiate
To the souls it lovingly seeks!

And for those who in consequence of these events have already passed thro' the gate of death:

Spirits ever watchful,
Guardians of their souls
May your vibrations waft
To the Men of the Spheres committed to your charge
Our souls' petitioning love:
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may helpfully radiate
To the souls it lovingly seeks!

And that Spirit whom we are seeking thro' the deepening of Spiritual Science—the Spirit with whom we desire to unite, who descended on to the Earth and passed thro' earthly Death for the salvation of mankind, for the healing, progress and freedom of the Earth—may He be at your side in all your difficult duties.

Let us on this day in particular, turn our hearts with special devotion to those who are without on the scene of action, and who have to devote their lives and souls to the great task of the age; and let us say:

Spirits of their souls, active Guardians,
May your vibrations carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the Earth-men committed to your care,
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may radiate helpfully
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

And for those who have already passed through the portal of death in consequence of the severe duties demanded of them in these times, we will repeat the same words in a slightly altered form:

Spirits of their souls, active Guardians,
May your vibrations carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the sphere-men committed to your care,
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may radiate helpfully
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

And may that Spirit Whom we seek in our spiritual strivings, the Spirit who went through the Mystery of Golgotha for the sake of the freedom and progress of humanity, the Spirit Whom we must specially bear in mind to-day, may He be with you in your severe tasks.

Let us call to mind the decree ringing forth from the depths of the Mystery of the Earth's evolution.

‘Revelation of the Divine in the heights of existence and peace to men on earth who are permeated by good will.’ And as Christmas Eve approaches, we must (this year in particular) ask ourselves: ‘What are the feelings that unite us with this saying and its deep cosmic meaning?’ That deep cosmic meaning in which countless men feel the word ‘peace’ resounding, at a time when peace keeps away from a very large part of our earth. How should we think of these Christmas words at such a time?

There is one thought, which, in connection with this verdict, sounding through the world, must concern us far more deeply at this present epoch than at any other time—one thought. Nations are facing each other in enmity. Much blood has saturated our earth. We see and feel countless dead around us at this time. The atmosphere of sensation and feeling around us is interwoven with infinite sorrow. Hate and aversion are heard murmuring through the spiritual realm and might easily testify how very far removed men still are in our day from that love which He wishes to announce Whose birth is celebrated on Christmas Eve. One thought, however, arises: we think how opponents can face each other, enemy face enemy, how men can mutually bring death to one another and how they can all pass through the same Gate of Death with the thought of Christ Jesus, the Divine Light-Bringer. We recall how, in the whole earth, over which war, suffering and discord are spread abroad, these men can still be one at heart, however greatly they may otherwise be disunited, who in the depths of their hearts are united in their connection with Him Who entered the world on the day we commemorate at Christmas. We see how through all enmity, aversion and hatred, one and the same feeling may everywhere penetrate the human soul at this time: out of the blood and hatred may spring the thought of an inner union with One, with Him Who has united the hearts through something higher than anything which can ever separate mankind on earth. Thus the thought of Christ Jesus is a thought of immeasurable depth of feeling, a thought of infinite greatness uniting mankind, however disunited it may be as regards all that is going on in the world. If we grasp the thought in this way, we shall want to comprehend it still more deeply at the present time. We shall feel how much there is that can become strong and powerful within human evolution if connected with this thought—this thought which must develop in order that many things may be acquired by human hearts and souls in a different way from the present tragic method of learning them.

That He may strengthen us,
That He may invigorate us,

That He may teach us all over the earth really to experience in the truest sense of the words the utterance of the Christmas Eve saying, which transcends all that separates men from one another. This it is which he who really feels himself united with Christ Jesus solemnly vows anew at Christmas time.

There is a tradition in the history of Christianity which repeatedly appears in later times and for centuries became a custom in certain Christian regions. In olden times representations of the Christian Mysteries were organised chiefly by the Christian Churches for believers in many different regions. And in the remotest times these representations began by reading, occasionally even by enacting, the story of Creation as it occurs at the beginning of the Bible. There was first shown just at Christmas time, how the Cosmic Word sounded forth from the depths of the Cosmos and how out of the Cosmic Word Creation gradually arose: how Lucifer appeared to man, and how men thereby began their earth-existence in a manner different from what was originally destined for them before the approach of Lucifer. The entire story of the temptation of Adam and Eve was brought forward, and it was then shown how man was, as it were, embodied in the Old Testament history. Then as time went on there was added that which was presented in more or less detail in the performances which evolved during the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries in the countries of Central Europe (of which we have just seen one small example). Very little now remains of the grand thought which united the beginning of the Old Testament at this Christmas Eve festival with the secret history of the Mystery of Golgotha. Only this one thing remains, that in our calendar, before the actual Christmas Day comes the day of Adam and Eve. This has its origin in the same thought. But in olden times, for those who through deeper thinking, through deeper feeling, or through a deeper knowledge, were to grasp the Mystery of Christmas and the Mystery of Golgotha, with the help of their teachers, there was exhibited also again and again a great comprehensive thought: the thought of the Origin of the Cross. The God Who is introduced to man in the Old Testament gives to man, as represented by Adam and Eve, this commandment: ‘Ye may eat of all the fruits of the garden, but not of the tree—not of the fruits which grow on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.’ Because they did eat of this they were driven from the original scene of action of their being.

But the tree—as was shown in many different ways—came by some means into the line of generations, into the original family from which proceeded the bodily covering of Christ Jesus. And it so came about that (as was shown at certain times) when Adam, the man of sin, was buried, there grew out of his grave the tree which had been removed from Paradise. Thus the following thoughts are aroused: Adam rests in his grave: the man who was led astray by Lucifer and passed through sin, rests in his grave. He has united himself with the Earth-body. But from his grave sprouts the tree which can now grow out of the earth, with which Adam's body is united. The wood of this tree descends to the generations to which Abraham and David belong. And from the wood of this tree, which stood in Paradise and which grew forth from Adam's grave, was made the Cross upon which Christ Jesus hung.

That is the thought which again and again was made clear by their teachers to those who had to understand the Mystery of Golgotha and its secrets from a deeper point of view. A deep meaning lies in the fact that in olden times profound thoughts were expressed in such pictures. And even at the present day this is still the case, as we shall presently see.

We have made ourselves acquainted with the thought of the Mystery of Golgotha which reveals to us that the Being Who passed through the body of Jesus has poured out over the Earth and into the Earth's aura what He was able to bring to the Earth. That which the Christ brought to the Earth is since united with the whole body of the Earth. The Earth has become quite different since the Mystery of Golgotha. In the Earth-aura there lives what the Christ brought out of the heavenly heights to the Earth. If we unite this spiritually with that old picture of the tree, it shows us the whole connection from another point of view. The Luciferic principle drew into man as he began his earthly career. Man as he now is belongs to the Earth, through his union with the Luciferic principle. He forms part of the Earth. And when we lay his body in the earth, this body is not merely that which anatomy sees, but is at the same time the outer mould of what man is in his inner being within his earthly nature. Spiritual Science makes it quite clear to us that what goes through the gates of death into the spiritual worlds is not the only part of man's being, but that man through his whole activity, through his deeds, is united with the Earth. He is really united with the Earth as are those events which the geologists, mineralogists and zoologists, connect with the Earth. We might say that that which binds man to the Earth is at first concealed from the human individuality on going through the gates of death. But we surrender our external form in some manner to the Earth. It enters the Earth-body. It carries in itself the imprint of what the Earth has become through Lucifer's entering the Earth evolution. That which man accomplishes on the Earth bears the Luciferic principle in it. Man brings this Luciferic principle into the Earth-aura. There springs forth and blossoms from man's deeds and activities not only that which was originally intended for man but that which has mingled with the Luciferic principle. This is in the Earth-aura. And when we now see on the grave of the man Adam led away by Lucifer, that tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which through the Luciferic temptation has become different from what it originally was, we then see everything that man has become through forsaking his original state, when he submitted to the Luciferic temptation and brought something into the Earth's evolution not previously determined. We see the tree grow out of what the physical body is for the Earth, that which has been stamped in its Earth form, and causes man to appear in a lower sphere on the Earth than the one originally destined for him, which would have been his if he had not succumbed to Lucifer. There grows out of the whole Earth existence of man something which has entered human evolution through the Luciferic temptation. While we seek knowledge, we seek it in another way than that originally destined for us. That however allows us to recognise that what grows out of our earthly deeds is different from what it would have been according to the original Divine decree. We form an earth existence other than the one laid down by the original Divine Will. We mingle something else with it; something else, concerning which we must form quite definite conceptions if we want to understand it.

We must form such ideas as these, if we wish to understand correctly. We must say to ourselves as follows: I am placed in the Earth evolution. What I give to the Earth evolution through my deeds bears fruit. It bears the fruit of knowledge which comes to me through my participation in the knowledge of good and evil on the Earth. This knowledge lives on in the evolution of the Earth and is present therein. When, however, I behold this knowledge it becomes in me something different from what it would have been originally, it becomes something which I must alter if the Earth's goal and task are to be reached. I see something grow out of my Earth deeds which must become different. The tree grows up, the tree which becomes the Cross of earth existence. It becomes something to which man must acquire a new relation, for the old relation does no more than allow the tree to grow.

The tree of the Cross, that Cross that grows out of the Luciferically tainted Earth evolution, springs up out of Adam's grave, out of the man-nature which Adam acquired after the fall. The tree of knowledge must become the stem of the Cross because man must unite himself anew with the correctly recognised tree of knowledge as it now is in order to reach the Earth's goal and task.

Let us now ask—and here we touch a significant Mystery of Spiritual Science: How does the case stand with those principles which we have learnt to recognise as the principles of human nature? Now we all know that the highest member of human nature is the Ego. We learn to utter ‘I’ at a definite time of our childhood. We enter into relation with the Ego from the time to which in later years memory carries us back. This we know through various lectures and books upon Spiritual Science. Up to that time the Ego worked formatively upon us, up to the moment when we have a conscious relation to our Ego. The Ego is present in our childhood, it works within us, but at first only builds up our physical body. It first creates the super-sensible forces in the spiritual world. After passing through conception and birth, it still works for a time—lasting for some years—on our body, until that becomes an instrument capable of consciously grasping the Ego. A deep mystery is connected with this entry of the Ego into the human bodily nature. We ask a man we meet how old he is, and he gives as his age the years which have passed since his birth. As has been said, we here touch a certain mystery of Spiritual Science that will become ever clearer and clearer in the course of the near future, but to which I shall now merely refer. What a man gives as his age at a definite time of his life, refers only to his physical body. All he tells us is that his physical body has been so many years evolving since his birth. The Ego takes no part in this evolution of the physical body but remains stationary. It is a Mystery difficult to grasp, that the Ego, from the time to which our memory carries us back, really remains stationary: it does not change with the body, but stands still. We have it always before us, because it reflects back to us our experiences. The Ego does not share our Earth journey. Only when we pass through the gates of death we have to travel back again to our birth along the path we call Kamaloka in order to meet our Ego again and take it on our further journey. Thus the Ego remains behind. The body goes forward through the years. This is difficult to understand because we cannot grasp the fact that something remains stationary in time, while time itself progresses. But this is actually the case. The Ego remains stationary, because it does not unite with what comes to man from the Earth-existence, but remains connected with those forces which we call our own in the spiritual world. There the Ego remains; it remains practically in the form in which it was bestowed on us by the Spirits of Form. The Ego is retained in the spiritual world. It must remain there, otherwise we could never, as man, fulfil our original task on Earth and attain the goal of our Earth-evolution. That which man here on Earth has undergone through his

Adam-nature, of which he left an imprint in the grave when he died in Adam, that belongs to the physical body, etheric and astral body and comes from these. The Ego waits; it waits with all that belongs to it the whole time man remains on Earth, ever looking forward to the further evolution of man, beholding how man recapitulates when he has passed through the gates of death, and retraces his path. This implies that as regards our Ego we remain in a certain respect behind in the spiritual world. Man will have to become conscious of this, and humanity can only become conscious of it because at a certain time the Christ descended from those worlds to which mankind belongs, out of the spiritual worlds Christ descended, and in the body of Jesus prepared, in the twofold manner we already know, that which had to serve Him as a body on Earth.

When we understand ourselves aright, we continually look back through our whole Earth life to our childhood. There, in our childhood, precisely the spiritual part of us has remained behind. And humanity should be educated to look back on that to which the spirit from the heights can say: ‘Suffer the little children to come to Me!’ Not the man who is bound to the Earth, but the little child. Humanity should be educated to this, for the Feast of Christmas has been given to it, that Feast which has been added to the Mystery of Golgotha, which need otherwise only have been bestowed on humanity as regards the three last years of the Christ life, when the Christ was in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. It shows how Christ prepared for Himself this human body in childhood. This is what should underlie our feelings at Christmas: the knowledge of how man, through what remains behind in heavenly heights during his years of growth, has really always been united with what is now coming. In the figure of the Child man should be reminded of the Human-Divine, which he left behind in descending to Earth, but which has now again come to him. Man should be reminded by the Child of that which has again brought his child-nature to him. This was no easy task, but in the very way in which this Festival of the Cosmic Child, this Christmas Festival, was developed in Central Europe, we see the wonderful, active, sustaining force within it.

What we have seen to-day is only one of many Nativity Plays. There have remained from olden times a number of so-called Paradise Plays which were produced at Christmas and in which the story of Creation is enacted. In connection with the representation of to-day, which is merely a pastoral play, there has also remained behind the Play of the Three Kings offering their gifts. A great deal of this was recorded in numerous plays which for the most part have now disappeared.

About the middle of the eighteenth century the time begins in which they disappear in country districts. But it is wonderful to trace their existence. In West Hungary, about 1850, Karl Julius Schröer, made a collection of Christmas Plays such as these in the neighbourhood of Pressburg. Other people made similar collections in other places. But what Schröer then discovered of the customs connected with the performance of these plays may sink deeply into our hearts. These plays were there in manuscript in certain families of the villages and were regarded as something especially sacred. With the approach of October preparations were always begun to perform this play at Christmas before the people of the place. The well- behaved youths and maidens were sought out and during this time of preparation they ceased to drink wine or alcohol. They might no longer romp and wrestle on Sundays. They had really to lead what is called a holy life. And thus a feeling prevailed that a certain moral tone of the soul was necessary in those who devoted themselves at Christmas to the performance of such plays, for they could not be performed in the quite worldly atmosphere. They were performed with all the simplicity of the villagers, but profound seriousness prevailed in the entire performance. In all the plays collected by Schröer and earlier by Weinhold and others in many different regions, there is everywhere this deep earnestness with which the Christmas Mystery was approached. But this was not always so. We need only go back two centuries further to find something else which strikes us in the highest degree as peculiar. The very manner in which these Christmas plays became part of the life of the central European villages in which they arose and gradually evolved, shows us how powerfully the Christmas thought worked there. It was not immediately taken up in the manner just described; the people did not always approach it with holy awe, with deep earnestness, with a living feeling of the significance of the occurrence.

In many regions it was begun by erecting a manger before the side altar of some church. This was in the fourteenth or fifteenth century; but it goes back to still earlier times. A manger was erected, a stall with an ox and an ass, the Child and two figures representing Joseph and Mary. Thus at first it was attempted with simple art; later an attempt was made to bring more life into it, but on the spiritual side. That is, priests took part; one priest represented Joseph and another Mary. In earlier times they spoke their parts in the Latin tongue, for in the old churches great stress was laid on this—it was considered very important that the spectators should understand as little as possible of the matter and should only behold the external acting. But this could no longer continue to please, for there were among the spectators those who wanted to understand something of what was being enacted before them. Gradually it became customary to recite certain parts in the dialect used in the district. Finally the wish arose in people to participate, to take part in the experiences themselves. But the thing was still quite strange to them. We must remember that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there was not as yet the knowledge of the Holy Mysteries, of the Mystery of Christmas, for instance, which we to-day regard as a matter of course. We must remember that although the people year in and year out attended Mass, and at Christmas the Midnight Mass, they did not possess the Bible, which was only there for the priests to read; they were only acquainted with a few extracts from the Holy Scripture. And it was at first really to acquaint them with what had once occurred that these things were dramatised in this fashion for them by the priests. The people first learnt to know of them in this way.

Something must now be said which I must ask you not to misunderstand, but it may be brought forward because it expresses purely historical truth. It was not that the participation in the Christmas plays proceeded from some mysterious influence or anything of that nature; what attracted the people was rather the desire to take part in what was presented before them and to draw nearer to it. At last they were permitted to share in it. Things had to be made more comprehensible to the laity. And this clearer understanding progressed step by step. At first the people understood absolutely nothing about the child lying in the manger. They had never seen such a thing as a child in a manger. Ear her when they were not allowed to understand anything, they accepted it: but now they wanted to share in it, it had to be made comprehensible to them. And so a cradle was brought and as the people passed, each one took part by rocking the child for a moment. Thus similar details were developed in which they took part. Indeed there were even districts in which all was quite serious at first, but when the child was brought, they made a tremendous uproar, everyone screaming and showing by dancing and shouting the pleasure they felt in the birth of the child. It was then received in a mood that felt a passion for movement and a desire to experience the story. But in this story lay something so great and mighty that, out of this quite profane feeling there gradually evolved that holy awe of which I have already spoken. The subject itself impressed its holiness on a performance which could not at first have been called in the least holy. Precisely in the Middle Ages the holy story of Christmas had first to conquer mankind. And it conquered the people to such an extent that in the performance of their plays, they desired to prepare their lives with this moral intensity.

What was it that thus overcame the feelings, the soul of man? It was the sight of the Child, of that which remains holy in man whilst his other three bodies unite with the Earth evolution. Even though in some districts at different times the story of Bethlehem took on grotesque forms, yet it lay in human nature to evolve this holy regard for the child-nature, which is connected with what entered into the development of Christianity from the very beginning. And that is the consciousness of the necessity of a reunion of what remains stationary in man when he commences his Earth evolution, with what has connected itself with Earth-man, so that man gives over to the Earth the wood from which the cross must be made with which man has to form the new union.

In the more remote times of Christian development in Central Europe, nothing but the conception of Easter was popularised, and only in the manner described was the conception of Christmas gradually developed. For what appears in ‘Heliand,’ for instance, was composed by various individuals, but never became popular.

The observance of Christmas grew into a popular custom as described, and it shows in a manner really startling how man acquired the thought of the union with the child-nature, that pure and noble childlike character that appeared in a new form in the Jesus-Child. When we so grasp the power of this thought that it lives in the soul as the only conception in our existence capable of uniting all men, then we have the true Christian conception. This Christ-Thought becomes mighty in us, it becomes something which must grow strong within us if the further Earth evolution is to proceed aright. Let us remember here how far removed man is in his present Earth-existence from what is really contained in the depths of the Christ-Thought.

A book by Ernst Haeckel has recently appeared called Thoughts about Life, Death, Immortality and Religion, in Connection with the World-War. Now a book by Ernst Haeckel certainly springs from a deep love of truth, certainly the deepest truth is sought for in it. The following may give some idea of what the book is intended to convey. It sets out to indicate what now transpires on the Earth, how the nations are at war with each other, living in hate, how countless deaths take place every day. All these thoughts which obtrude so painfully on mankind are mentioned by Haeckel, but naturally with the underlying thought of considering the world from his own point of view. We have said that Haeckel may, even by Spiritual Science, be considered a profound investigator. His point of view may indeed lead to other results, but leads to what can be observed in the newer phases of Haeckel's evolution. Now Haeckel forms thoughts on the world-war. He too remarks how much blood is flowing, how greatly we are encompassed by death. And he asks: ‘Can the thoughts of religion endure by the side of this? Can one anyhow believe (he asks) that some wise Providence—a kindly God—rules the world, when one sees so many dying every day through mere chance (so he says)? They do not perish from any cause attributable to a wise cosmic ordering, but through the accident of meeting a possible shell. Have these thoughts of the wisdom of Providence any meaning in the face of this? Must not just such events as these prove that man is nothing more than what external materialistic history of evolution declares and that all earth existence is fundamentally directed not by a wise Providence but by chance? In the face of this, can there be any other thought than that of resignation (continues Haeckel), of saying: ‘We give up our bodies and pass out into the thought of the cosmic all?’ But if one questions further, (though Haeckel does not put the question), if this ‘all’ is nothing but the play of endless atoms, has the life of man any meaning in earth-existence? As said above, Haeckel does not pursue the question, but in his Christmas book he gives the answer: ‘These very events which touch us so painfully show us that we have no right to believe that a good Providence or wise cosmic ruling or anything of the kind moves and lives in the whole world. So we must be resigned—we must put up with things as they are!’

And this is a Christmas book! A book nobly and honourably planned. But this book is based on the remarkable prejudice that it is useless to seek for a meaning to the earth. That it is denied to humanity to seek in a spiritual way for a meaning!

If we only observe the external course of events we do not see this meaning. Then it is as Haeckel says. And at that it has to remain, that is, that this life has no meaning! That is his opinion. A purpose may not be sought. But perhaps someone else may say: The events now taking place show us, for the very reason that, if we look at them externally and point only to the fact that numberless bullets are ending the lives of men to-day, they appear without purpose—those very events show us that we must seek more deeply to find the purpose. We must not simply seek a purpose in that which happens on the Earth alone, when these human souls forsake the body, but we must investigate the life that now begins for them when they pass through the gate of death. In short, another man may say: ‘Just because no meaning can be found in the external, it must be sought elsewhere, in the super-sensible.’ Is that anything else than to take the same thought into another—quite different—domain? Haeckel's science may lead those who think as he does to-day to deny all meaning to Earth-existence. It may seem to prove, from what happens so painfully to-day, that the Earth-life as such has no meaning. But if we grasp it in our way—as we have often done before—then this very same science becomes a starting point for showing what deep and mighty purpose can be discovered by us in the world phenomena. For this, however, there must be the spiritual active in the world; we must be able to unite ourselves with the spiritual. For man in the sphere of erudition does not yet understand how to let that power work on him which has so wonderfully conquered the hearts and souls that on beholding the Christmas Mystery, out of a profane comprehension, there has arisen a holy understanding. Because the learned cannot yet grasp this and cannot yet unite the Christ-Impulse with what they see in the external world, it is impossible for them to find a real true meaning in the Earth. And so we must say: The Science of which man is so proud to-day—and rightly so—with all its immense progress is not in itself in a position to lead man to any satisfactory philosophy. It can just as easily lead to a lack of sense and meaning as to a meaning for the Earth, just as in any other domain. Let us consider science in the later centuries, especially in the nineteenth and up to the present day—evolving so proudly all its wonderful laws, and let us look at what surrounds us to-day. It has all been produced by science. We no longer burn, as Goethe did, a night-light. We burn something else and illumine our rooms in a very different fashion. All that possesses our souls to-day, as the result of our science has arisen through the immense progress of which man is so proud, so justly proud. But how does this science work? It works beneficially when man evolves what is good. But to-day, just through its very perfection, it produces invincible instruments of murder. Its progress serves the cause of destruction as well as that of construction. Just as on the one side that science of which Haeckel is a follower may lead either to sense and meaning or to nonsense and lack of meaning, so, in spite of its greatness, it may serve both destruction and construction. And if it depended on science alone what was produced, then, from the same sources from which it constructs, science would bring forth ever more and more fearful instruments of destruction. Science itself has no direct impulse to bring humanity forward! If this could be realised, science would then, and then only, be valued in the right way. We should then know that in the evolution of man there must be something more than man can reach by means of science.

What is this science of ours? In reality none other than the tree growing out of Adam's grave; and the time is drawing near when man will recognise this. The time will come when man will know that this tree must become the wood which is the Cross of humanity and which can only become a blessing when on it is crucified and properly united with it, that which lies on the further side of death, yet fives already here in man. That it is to which we look up in the Holy Christmas Eve, if we feel this Mystery of the sacred Festival aright—and that is what can be represented in childlike fashion, and yet is the cloak of the greatest Mysteries. Is it not really wonderful that in this simple way it could be brought home to people that something had appeared which, though it cannot extend beyond childhood, yet governs a man during his whole Earth- life? It is related to that to which man, as a super-sensible being, belongs. Is it not wonderful that this, which is in the highest degree invisible and super-sensible, could approach so near to those simple human souls through simple pictures such as these?

Indeed those who are learned will also have to follow the same path as those simple souls. There was even a time when the Child was not represented in the cradle nor in the manger, but when the sleeping child was placed upon the Cross! The Child sleeping on the Cross! A wonderful, profound picture, which expresses the whole thought I wished to lay before your souls to-day.

Cannot this thought in reality be very simply stated? Indeed it can! Let us just seek the origin of those impulses which to-day oppose each other so terribly in the world. Whence do they originate? Whence originates all that to-day is in such bitter conflict, all that makes life so difficult for humanity? It all originates in what we become in the world after the time of our earliest recollection. Let us go back beyond that time, let us go right back to the point when we are called the little children who may enter the kingdom of heaven. We do not find it then, there was then nothing in the human soul of what to-day is strife and hatred. In this simple way the thought can be expressed and to-day we must visualise spiritually that there is in the human soul an original condition rising above all human strife and disharmony.

We have often spoken of the old Mysteries, which were intended to awaken in the nature of man that which allowed him to perceive the super-sensible; and we have said that the Mystery of Golgotha represents on the stage of history clearly for all mankind, the story of the super-sensible Mystery. Now that which unites us with the true Christ-Thought is within us, it is really in us—to enable us to have moments in our life (this is to be taken literally not symbolically) moments when, in spite of everything we may be in the external world, we can yet make that which we have received as children alive within us, moments in which we behold man in his development between birth and death, and can feel the child-nature in ourselves.

In my public lecture on Johann Gottlieb Fichte, I might have added a few words more—perhaps they might not have been thoroughly understood then, they would, however, have explained many things which dwelt in this particularly devout person. I might have said why he became such a very special person; it was because, in spite of his age, he retained more than most people of the child-nature. There is more of the child-nature in such men than in others. Men like these, men who retain more of their child-nature, keep their youth and do not grow old as do others. This is really the secret of many great men, that they can in a sense remain children—speaking relatively, of course, for they have had to lead the life of men.

The Christmas Mystery appeals to the child-nature within us. It points us to the vision of the Divine Child that is destined to take up the Christ—and to which we look up as to something over which the Christ, Who went through Golgotha for the salvation of the Earth, already hovers.

Let us be conscious of this when we give over the imprint of our higher man, our physical body, to the Earth. This is not a mere physical event, for something spiritual takes place. But this spiritual event only takes place aright because the Christ-Being, by going through the Mystery of Golgotha, has flowed into the aura of the Earth. We do not behold the entire Earth in its completeness unless we visualise also the Christ, Who, since the Mystery of Golgotha, is united with it. We may pass Him by, as we pass by anything super-sensible if we are merely equipped in a materialistic sense; but we cannot pass Him by if the Earth is really to have for us a true and actual purpose. Everything rests upon our being able to awaken in ourselves that which opens our gaze to the spiritual world.

Let us make this Christmas Festival what it should be to us, a Festival which not merely serves the past—but also the future; that future which is gradually to bring forth the birth of the spiritual life for the whole of humanity. We must unite ourselves with the prophetic feeling, with the prophetic premonition, that such a birth of the spiritual life in man must be accomplished, that a mighty Christmas must work to influence the future of humanity, a bringing to birth of that which in the thoughts of man gives a meaning to the Earth, that meaning which became the objective of the Earth when the Christ-Being united Himself with the Earth-aura, through the Mystery of Golgotha. Let us meditate at Christmas on the thought how from the depths of darkness light must enter human evolution. The old light of the spiritual life which was gradually dying out before Golgotha had to pass away and has now to arise anew, it must since Golgotha be born again through the consciousness in the human soul that this soul of man is connected with what the Christ had become to the Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha.

When more and more men arise who can thus grasp Christmas in the sense of Spiritual Science, it will become a force in the hearts and souls of men which has a meaning for all times, whether in such times as men give themselves over to feelings of happiness, or when they must feel sorrow and pain such as we feel to-day, when we think of the great misery of our time.

Concerning the vision of the spiritual which gives meaning to the Earth, it has been expressed in beautiful words which I will put before you to-day: (Here follows a rough translation):—

That which gives mine eyes the power
To cause deformity to disappear,
To turn dark nights to radiant suns of brightness,
To turn disorder into order, and decay to life;—
Life, which through the ages,
Weaves invisibly in space,
Leading me on to th' eternal sources
Of the Beautiful, the True, the Good.
The source of all Delight,
In which immersed, my strivings are but vain.
Life it is, which since in Urania's eyes I gazed,
The deep, the clear, the blue—pure flames of light—
I have silently perceived and looked upon.
Since then I see those eyes in deeps profound,
The only permanent things in my existence,
They live on in me, part of my life,
And see through my beholding.

And in another small poem:—

Nothing is but God, and God is naught but Life.
Thou knowest this, as I myself know too,
And yet our knowing would ne'er have power to be,
Unless t'were knowledge of the Life of God.
How fain would I devote myself to this!
But where shall it be found; if into some knowledge it doth flow,
Forthwith it is transformed into a semblance.
Commingled with Him, surrounded by His sheath,
When thou dost wake the true sheath to behold, It is thy Self!
Let all that perishable is, decay.
Henceforth let God alone dwell in thy strivings,
Learn to discern what beyond all striving yet lives on;
Then will the Sheath itself become perceptible,
And unveiled be the Life Divine.

It is true men do not always know how to understand those who lead them to a vision of the spiritual which gives a meaning to the Earth. The materialists are not alone in this. Others, who believe themselves to be no materialists because they continually repeat, ‘God, God,’ or ‘Lord, Lord,’ too often do not know what to make of these guides to the spiritual. For what could one make of a man who says:

‘Learn to discern what beyond all striving yet lives on;
Then will the sheath itself become perceptible,
And unveiled be the Life Divine.’

Who sees Divine Life in everything? He might be reproached with holding the world away from him, with denying its existence. Such a man might be accused of denying the existence of the world. His contemporaries accused him of denying God, of being an atheist, and drove him away from the High School on that account. For the words I have just quoted were written by Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He is a case in point. When there lives on in a human soul all through his earthly life that which dwells as an impulse from the Mystery of Golgotha and the notes of which may be heard in the Christmas Mystery, a way is then opened in which we can find that consciousness in which our own ego flows in union with the Earth-Ego. For the Earth-Ego is the Christ. In this way something is developed in man which must become greater and greater if the Earth is to achieve that evolution for which it was destined from the beginning of all things.

And so from the spirit of our Spiritual Science we have to-day tried to transform the Christmas thought into an impulse; and while looking up to it from that which is now going on around us, we shall try not to behold a want of purpose in the Earth-evolution, but rather in the midst of sorrow and pain, even in strife and hatred, to see something which finally helps man a step forward.

More important than the search for the causes of what happens to-day is this: that we should turn our gaze to the possible effects, to those effects which we must conceive as bringing healing to mankind.

That nation or people will do the right thing which is able to fashion something healing for mankind in the future, from what springs up out of the blood- saturated Earth. But this healing can only come about when man finds his way to the spiritual worlds: when he does not forget that not only a transitory but an eternal Christmas exists, an everlasting bringing to birth of the Divine Spiritual in the physical Earth-man.

Especially to-day let us retain the holiness of this thought in our souls, and keep it there, even beyond the Christmas season, during the time which can be for us in its external course, a symbol of the evolution of light. Darkness, the most intense Earth-darkness prevails at this time of the year. But we know that when the Earth lives m the deepest outer darkness, the Earth-soul experiences its light, its greatest time of growth begins.

The spiritual time of awakening coincides with Christmas and with this spiritual awakening should be united the thought of the spiritual awakening of the earth-evolution through Christ Jesus. For this reason the Christmas Festival was placed just at this particular time.

In this cosmic and at the same time earthly and moral sense let us fill our souls with the thoughts of Christmas and then, strengthened and invigorated with this moral thought, let us, as far as we can, turn our gaze on everything around us, desiring what is right for the progress of events and especially as regards the present occurrences. And as we begin at once to make active within us the strength we have been able to acquire from this Christmas Festival, let us conclude once more by turning to the Guardian Spirit of those who have to take a difficult part in the great events of the times.

Spirits of their souls, active Guardians,
May your vibrations carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the earth-men committed to your charge,
That, united with your power,
Our prayers may helpfully irradiate
The souls they lovingly seek.

And for those who have already passed through the gates of death while fulfilling the severe tasks given to man as a result of the great demands of our present time, let us repeat those words again in a slightly altered form:

Spirits of their souls, active Guardians,
May your vibrations carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the sphere-men committed to your charge,
That united with your power,
Our prayers may helpfully irradiate
The souls they lovingly seek.

And may the Spirit Who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, that Spirit Who, for the progress and salvation of the Earth, has made Himself known in the Mystery of Christmas, which men will gradually learn to understand better and better, may He be with you in the severe tasks that he before you.

Especially this year as Christmas approaches, we must think of the kind of feelings that unite us with these words and their deep and universal meaning—that deep meaning for the world experienced by countless people in such a way that the word peace resounds through it, the word peace in a time when peace is utterly absent in the widest circles of humanity. How do we think of these Christmas words in this time?

Nevertheless, it is a thought that, perhaps in connection with these words resounding through the world, touches us ever more deeply in the present than in other times. One thought! Nations confront one another full of animosity. Blood, so much blood saturates our earth. We have witnessed and must feel countless deaths around us in this time. Infinite suffering weaves around our inner atmosphere of feeling. Hate and antipathy race through spiritual space and can easily show how far human beings in our time still are from that love spoken about by the One whose birth is celebrated at Christmas. One thought, however, is especially predominant. We think how enemy stands against enemy, opponent against opponent, how human beings can bring death to each other and how they then can go through the same portal of death with the thought of the divine leader of light, the Christ Jesus. We think of how, all over the earth, where there is war and pain and discord, those who are otherwise in such discord can be united. Within their deepest hearts they carry their connection with Him who entered the world on the day we celebrate at Christmas.

We think how through all animosity, through all antipathy, through all hate, a feeling can impress itself into all human souls everywhere in these times, can impress itself in the midst of blood and hate: the thought of the innermost link with the One, with Him who thereby united hearts through something higher than what is able to separate human beings on earth. And so it is nevertheless a thought of infinite greatness, a thought of infinite depth of feeling, this thought of the Christ Jesus who harmonizes human beings no matter what their discord might be, no matter what goes on in the world.

If we take hold of the thought in this way, we will want to grasp it even more intensely, especially in our time. Then we will have an intimation of how strongly this thought is connected with what must become great and strong and powerful within human evolution. If this were to happen, much that must still be fought for in such a bloody way at this time could be achieved in another way by human hearts, by human soul.

That He makes us strong, that He strengthens us, that He teaches us all over the earth really to feel in the truest sense of the word the Christmas verse, transcending everything that separates us: those who truly feel themselves connected with the Christ Jesus must promise this to themselves on Christmas night again and again.

There is a tradition within the history of Christianity that arose repeatedly in later times and was a custom in certain Christian regions over many centuries. Already in far distant times in various regions, mostly emerging from Christian churches, there were presentations for believers of the mystery of Christmas night. Especially in these most ancient times, the presentation of the mystery of Christmas night began with a reading, yes, at times even with a presentation of the story of Creation, the story of Creation as it is presented at the beginning of the Bible. Especially around the time of Christmas it was described how, out of the depths of the cosmos, the universal Word resounded, how out of the universal Word creation arose gradually, bit by bit. It was described how Lucifer approached the human being and how human beings thereby began earthly existence in a different way from what would have been the case had Lucifer not approached, in a way different from what was originally destined. The entire story of the temptation of Adam, and Eve was presented, and then it was shown how the human being was integrated, as if were, into ancient, pre-testamental history.

Only as time went on do we find what was presented in more or less detail in the various plays that developed in the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries in Central Europe, of which we have seen a small example just now.

At the Christmas festival, an infinitely great thought originally drew together the beginning of the Old Testament with the mysterious story of the Mystery of Golgotha. Very little indeed has remained of what it was from this thought that drew together the two sacred stories. Only a little of this insight has remained, one contemporary example being our calendar, in which the day before Christmas Eve is called the day of Adam and Eve. This has its origin in the same thought. In more ancient times, however, there were those with deeper thoughts, with deeper feelings, a deeper knowledge received from their teachers who taught them how they were to grasp the mystery of Christmas and the mystery of Golgotha. For them a great, encompassing symbolic thought was always being presented: the thought of the origin of the Cross.

The God who is presented to us in the Old Testament gives one commandment to the human being, represented by Adam and Eve: “You may eat from all the fruits of the garden; only the fruits that grow on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil must you avoid, because they who have eaten of that fruit would be cast out of the original scene of their existence.”

The tree, however—which was now represented in the most varied ways—came by some means into the sequence of generations that were the original generations from which the bodily sheath of the Christ Jesus proceeded. This came about in the following way (as it was presented in certain periods of time): when Adam, the sinful man was buried, this tree again grew out of his grave and was thus removed from Paradise. In this story we see the thought suggested that Adam rests in the grave, the human being who went through sin, the human being who was misguided by Lucifer; he rests in the grave and he unites himself with the body of the earth; but out of his grave the tree grows, the tree that can now grow out of the earth with which Adam's body has been united.

The wood of this tree passes over to the generations to which Abraham also belongs, to which David belongs. And out of the wood of this tree, which actually stood in Paradise, which then grew again out of Adam's grave, out of the wood of this tree, the Cross was made on which Christ Jesus was crucified.

This is the thought that was made clear again and again by the teachers of those who were to understand the secrets of the Mystery of Golgotha out of deeper foundations. There is a deep meaning in the fact that in ancient times deep thoughts came to expression in such pictures, and this meaning holds good for the present as well. It will become clear to us that it still holds true for today.

We have also acquainted ourselves with the thought of the Mystery of Golgotha that says to us; the Being who has lived on earth through the body of Jesus poured out over the earth what He could bring to the earth, He poured it into the aura of the earth. What the Christ brought into the earth has since then become united with the entire corporeality of the earth. The earth has become something different since the Mystery of Golgotha. What Christ brought out of heavenly heights down to the earth is living in the earth aura.

If we consider this spiritually in connection with the ancient picture of the tree, this picture shows us the entire relationship from a higher point of view. The Luciferic principle entered the human being when the human being made his beginning on earth. The human being, as he is now in his union with the Luciferic principle, belongs to the earth, indeed he forms a part of the earth. And when we lay his body into the earth, this body is not rust as anatomy sees it; this body is at the same time the outer mold of what the human being is in his inner being within the earthly realm. It can then also be clear out of spiritual science that it is not just what goes through the portal of death into the spiritual world that belongs to the being of man; rather it becomes clear that the human being through all his activity, through all his deeds, is united with the earth. He is really united with it in the same way as those happenings that the geologist, the mineralogist, the zoologist, etc., find connected with the earth.

It is only when the human being goes through the portal of death that one could say that there is a termination for the human individuality of that which unites him to the earth. Our outer form, however, which we surrender in some way to the earth, enters the body of the earth. It carries in itself the stamp of what the earth has become through the fact that Lucifer entered into earthly evolution. What the human being achieves on the earth carries the Luciferic principle; the human being brings this Luciferic principle into the aura of the earth. It is not only what was originally the intention of the human being that arises, that blossoms out of human deeds, out of the activities of human beings; out of human deeds there arises something that has the Luciferic element mixed in with it. This then is in the aura of the earth. And when we now look upon the tree growing out of the grave of the human being Adam, who was led astray by Lucifer, if we look at the tree that has become something different through the Luciferic temptation—this tree that was originally the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—we see everything that the human being brought about by the fact that he left his original state of existence, that he became something different through, the Luciferic temptation and that something was thereby brought into earthly evolution that had not previously been intended.

We see the tree grow out of what forms the physical body for the earth, which was stamped in its earthly form by that which permits the human being to appear on the earth in a lower sphere than he would have if he had not gone through the Luciferic temptation. Something grows out of man's entire earthly existence that has come into humanity's evolution through the Luciferic misguidance, through the temptation. When we seek knowledge, we seek it in a different way than was originally predestined. This makes it appear that something different grows out of our earthly deeds from what would have been the case in accordance with the gods' original intention. We form an earthly existence that is not as the gods originally intended for us; we mix something else into it, and we must form very definite pictures of this if we wish to understand it. Definite mental images are required if we wish to understand, to understand properly.

We must say to ourselves: I am placed into earthly evolution. What I give to earthly evolution through my deeds bears fruit; it bears the fruit of knowledge that has become muse by the fact that I have gained the knowledge of good and evil on the earth. This knowledge lives in the evolution of the earth, this knowledge is there. As I look at this knowledge, however, it becomes something different for me, something that is different from what it originally should have been. It becomes something that I must change if the goal and task of the earth are to be achieved, I see growing out of my earthly deeds something that must become different. The tree grows forth, the tree that becomes the Cross of earthly existence, the tree that becomes something to which the human being must gain a new relationship. For the old relationship allows this tree to grow. The tree of the Cross, of that Cross which grows out of the Luciferically colored evolution of the earth, grows out of Adam's grave, out of the humanity that Adam has become since the temptation. The Tree of Knowledge must become the trunk of the Cross, because the human being must unite himself anew with the properly understood Tree of Knowledge as it is now in order to achieve the goal and task of the earth.

Let us ask ourselves—and here we touch on a significant mystery of spiritual science—what is really the situation with the members we have come to know as the members of human nature? We know to begin with that the highest member of human nature is the “I.” We learn to express our “I” at a definite moment in childhood. We gain a relationship to this “I” at the point to which we have memories in later life. We know from the most varied spiritual scientific considerations that until this point in time the “I” itself was active in forming and structuring us. This remains the case until the point at which we begin to have a relationship, a conscious relationship, to our “I.” In the child, this “I” is there also, but it works within, its first task is to form our body. To begin with it creates the super-sensible forces in the spiritual world. When we have gone through conception and birth it still works creatively on our body for a period of time that lasts a few years, until we have our body as a tool so that we can consciously comprehend our self as an “I.”

A deep mystery is connected with this entry of the “I” into the human bodily nature. When we meet a person we ask him, “How old are you?” He gives his age as the years that have passed since his birth. As has been said, we touch here on a certain mystery of spiritual science that will become more and more clear as time passes. Today, however, I will only touch on it, will only share it with you. What a person gives as his age at a definite time of his life is connected with his physical body. He says nothing other than that his physical body has been developing for so-and-so long since his birth. The “I” does not go along with this development of the physical body. The “I” stays there,

This is a difficult mystery to grasp, that the “I” stays at the point of time to which we can recollect, the point at which we remember ourselves. It does not change with the body, it stays there. For just this reason we always have it in front of us so that, as we look, it can mirror our experiences for us. The “I” does not take part in our earthly journey. Only when we have gone through the portal of death must we take the path that we call Kamaloca backward again to our birth in order to re encounter our “I” and then to take it along on our further journey. The “I” remains behind. The body pushes itself forward in years while the “I” remains behind, the “I” stays there. This is difficult to comprehend because one cannot imagine that something remains standing in time while time keeps moving. Nevertheless this is so, the “I” stays there, and it remains there because the “I” does not actually unite itself with what approaches the human being from earthly existence. It remains united with those forces we call ours in the spiritual world. The “I” remains there, the “I” fundamentally remains in the form in which it has been conferred on us, as we know, by the Spirits of Form.

This “I” is retained in the spiritual world. It must be held in the spiritual world, for otherwise we would never be able to achieve again the earth's original goal and aim as human beings during our earthly evolution. What the human being underwent here on earth because of his Adam nature, you could say, of which he takes an impress into the grave when he dies as Adam—this clings to the physical body, etheric body, and astral body, this comes from these. The “I” waits, waits with everything that is in it, waits the entire time undergone by the human being on the earth. It looks only toward the further development of the human being as he repeats it for himself when he has gone through the portal of death and follows this path in reverse. This means that we remain with our “I” back in the spiritual world (this is meant in a specific sense). Humanity ought to become conscious of this fact. And humanity is only able to become conscious of this fact because at a certain time the Christ descended out of those worlds to which the human being belongs, out of the spiritual worlds. In the body of Jesus He prepared for Himself, in the way we know, in a twofold way, what was to serve Him as body on the earth.

If we understand ourselves correctly, we always look back through our entire earthly life, back to our childhood. Our spiritual element has remained back in our childhood. We always look toward this if we wish to understand things correctly. And humanity ought to be instructed to look toward what the spirit out of the heights can say: “Let the little children come to me.” Not adults, who are connected with the earth, but rather the little children. In having been given the festival of Christmas in addition to the Mystery of Golgotha, humanity ought to be instructed in this. Otherwise the Mystery of Golgotha would only need to have been conferred on humanity in relation to the last three years of Christ's life, when Christ was in the body of Jesus of Nazareth.

The Christmas festival shows how Christ prepared the human body for himself during childhood. This is what should lie at the basis of the Christmas experience: to know how the human being has actually always remained connected with what is approaching now through what remained behind during growth, remaining in the heavenly heights. In the form of the child, the human being should be reminded of the human-divine element from which he has distanced himself on descending to the earth but that now has returned to him. The human being ought to be reminded of this childlike element in him. He ought to be reminded of Him who brought back the childlike element to him again. Though it was not easy, one can see the force that works so wonderfully to carry this precisely in the way in which the festival of the World Child, the Christmas festival, was developed in areas of Central Europe.

What we have seen today was only a small example of the Christmas plays, of which there are many. It comes from olden times and is one of the kind of Christmas plays that I have already pointed to. Only a few of these so-called Paradise Plays have remained, which were performed at Christmas and in which the story of Creation was presented. It has remained connected to the Shepherds' Play and with the play of the Three Kings, who bring their gifts. Much of this used to live in numerous Christmas plays, but to a large extent they have now disappeared.

These plays disappeared even in rural areas in approximately the middle of the eighteenth century, but it is wonderful to see how some remained alive. A man about whom I have spoken, Karl Julius Schröer, collected such Christmas plays in the area of western Hungary in the 1850's. He searched for them in the area around Pressburg, and then further beyond Pressburg into Hungary. Others collected such Christmas plays in different areas, but what Karl Julius Schröer was able to find at that time of the performance of these Christmas plays and the customs connected with them can enter our hearts deeply. These Christmas plays, handwritten, remained in the hands of certain families in the villages and were treasured as something especially sacred. When October came around, people began thinking about having to perform these plays during the Christmas season for the people of the village. Then the best behaved boys and girls were selected, and they began to prepare themselves: they were not permitted to drink wine or any alcoholic beverages, nor were they permitted—which could well happen in such places, as we know—to be rowdy and rambunctious on Sundays, and they were not permitted any other transgressions. They really had to “lead a holy life,” as is said. Thus people were aware that a certain moral mood of the soul had to be assumed by those who were to devote themselves to the performance of such plays during the Christmas season. Such plays were not to be performed out of ordinary worldliness.

They were performed with all the naïveté with which the peasants could perform something like that. And yet the whole performance was permeated with deepest seriousness, with infinite seriousness. The plays gathered by Karl Julius Schröer and others in the most varied areas have in common this deep seriousness, the seriousness with which one approached the Christmas mystery. But this was not always the case. We only need to go back just a few centuries to find something different, to encounter something most curious. In looking at how these Christmas plays arose and gradually developed in areas of Central Europe, we are able to see especially clearly how overwhelmingly the Christmas thought was active.

But this thought was not immediately taken up in the way I have just described it, approached with a certain kind of sacred modesty, with great seriousness and awareness of the significance of the event that lived in the feeling. No indeed! In many areas it began by simply placing a manger in some kind of side altar in this or that church. (This was still the case in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but it goes back to still earlier times.) A manger was placed there, and therefore a stall, in which were placed an ox and an ass, as well as the Child and two dolls representing Joseph and Mary. At first they used a very naive sculptural technique, but then it was desired to bring more life to the figures. This came first from the side of the clergy. Thus priests dressed themselves up, one as Joseph, the other as Mary, and they then represented these figures. They played these roles instead of using the dolls. In the earliest times they even presented the scene in Latin, because in the old churches, if the performance was to present a deep meaning it was considered important that those who saw or listened understand as little as possible, that they only see the outer mimicry.

After some time this was no longer tolerated. The people also wanted to understand what was performed in front of them. Gradually there was a transition to presenting portions of it in the local language spoken in those regions. And finally the people awoke to a feeling of wanting to participate, to experience it themselves. Yet it remained foreign to them, quite foreign. We need only consider that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, for example, familiarity with these holy mysteries of Christmas night, for example, did not exist. Today we take these things for granted, but at that time it was not there. You have to keep in mind that year in and year out people heard the mass, also hearing it at Christmas (held at midnight during the holy night), but that they did not hear the Bible—the Bible was only there for the priest to read. Thus they knew only single fragments of the sacred story. The initial attempts by the priests to present these things dramatically were really in order to acquaint the people with what had once taken place. In this way the people learned to know what was written in the Bible.

I must say something now that I beg you not to misunderstand. It can be mentioned because it corresponds to purely historical truth. Some kind of mystery mood or something similar did not immediately emanate from these presentations once people wanted to participate in the Christmas plays. This is not how it was. Rather the longing to take part in what was presented to them, to be more active participants, was what brought people closer to the situation. And finally they had to be permitted to participate to some extent; things had to be made more comprehensible to the people. By making it more comprehensible, things moved forward step by step. For example, people did not understand initially that in the manger lay the Child. They had never seen that, they had never seen a child in a manger. Certainly earlier, when they were not permitted to understand anything, they just accepted it, but new that they wanted to participate it needed to be made completely comprehensible to them.

At that time only a rocking cradle was placed in front of them, and people began to take part by walking by the cradle, each person rocking the Child in it for a little while. Gradually similar moments of participation developed. There were even regions where first a person approached the manger very seriously and then, on finding the Child there, incredible noise erupted and everyone screamed and pointed and danced, indicating the pleasure they now experienced because the Child had been born. This was taken up entirely in a mood emanating from the longing to participate themselves, the longing to experience a story. In the story, however, there was such grandness, something so powerful, that out of this completely profane mood—for it was initially a profane mood—there developed gradually, bit by bit, the holy mood about which I have just been speaking. The situation itself poured its holiness out over a reception that initially could not have been called holy. Especially in the Middle Ages, the holy story of Christmas first had to conquer the people. And the story conquered them to such an extent that while they were performing their plays they wanted to prepare themselves morally m such an intensive way.

What was it that conquered human feelings, the human soul? It was the tow of the Child, the view of what has remained holy in the human being while the three remaining bodies unite themselves with earthly development. Although in certain regions and during certain periods the story of Bethlehem took on grotesque forms, it was inherent in human nature to develop this holy view toward the nature of the Child, which is connected with what entered into Christian evolution from the very beginning: the consciousness of how what remains behind in the human being when he begins his earthly development must enter into a new bond with that which united itself with earthly man. He gives over to the earth the wood out of which the Cross must be made, through which he establishes a new bond.

In older times of Christian development in Central Europe, only the Easter thought was present among the people. Only in the way in which I have described it has the Christmas thought gradually been added. What we find written in the Heliand, or similar works, was recorded by individual poets, but it did not become popular. The popular aspects of Christmas arose in the way I have just described, which shows in a truly grand way how the thought of the bond with the childlike, with the pure, truly childlike element that appeared in a new form in the Jesus Child, has conquered the human being. If we bring the power of this thought together with the fact that this thought can live in souls so as to unite all people (and to begin with it is the only thought in our earthly existence that can do so), we come to the true Christ thought. The Christ thought therefore becomes great and must gradually become stronger in us if the further evolution of the earth is to take place in the right way.

Just consider how far removed the human being in present earthly existence still is from what is concealed in the depths of the Christ thought. A book has just recently been published—perhaps you have read it—written by Ernst Haeckel, World War Thoughts About Life, Death, and Infinity and Religion. A book by Ernst Haeckel is certainly one that proceeds from the most serious search for truth. This book by Ernst Haeckel points to what is now taking place on the earth, how people are at war with one another, how they hate one another, how countless deaths result every day. Haeckel mentions all these thoughts that obtrude upon people so painfully. Certainly he always mentions these thoughts with the background of looking at the world as he sees it from his standpoint. We know about his standpoint, having often spoken about it and about how we can recognize in Haeckel one of the greatest scientists. This standpoint leads also to other things, but it leads to something that can be observed in the newer phases of Haeckel's development.

Haeckel offers some thoughts about the World War. He also remarks on how much blood is flowing now, how many deaths surround us, and he asks himself, “Can the thoughts of religion survive next to these events?” As Haeckel asks it, “Can one believe that there is in any way a wisdom-filled providence, a beneficent God who rules the world, when every day one sees that by mere chance,” so he says, “so many people's lives are ended, that they die by no cause that can be proven to be related in any way to some kind of wise world rulership? Instead, by chance” he says, “this one or that one is struck by a bullet, suffering either death or injury. In the face of all these events, do thoughts of wisdom, thoughts of divine providence, have any meaning? Must not just such events as these prove that the human being must stay in one place, that he is nothing but what the outer, materialistically conceived history of evolution shows us, and that fundamentally everything in earthly existence is ruled not by divine providence but by chance? Is it possible in the face of all these events to have another religious thought” says Haeckel, “to do something other than resign oneself, saying that a person simply surrenders his body and dissipates into the cosmos?”

One can ask further, however—Haeckel no longer asks this question—“If this cosmos is nothing but the play of atoms, does human life really provide a meaning for earthly existence?” As I said, Haeckel does not ask this question anymore, but he does give an answer in his Christmas book: “Precisely events such as those that touch us so painfully now, just such events show that there is no justification for believing in any kind of beneficent providence or wise guidance of the world or anything like it; it is impossible now to maintain that anything like this weaves through and guides the world. Therefore resignation, seeing one's own way, is all there is.”

Haeckel's book is also a Christmas book! It is a Christmas book meant very sincerely and honestly. But this book is based on a significant prejudice. It rests on the prejudice that, it is not permissible to seek in a spiritual way for the earth's meaning, that humanity is prohibited from looking for a meaning of the earth in a spiritual way.

If it is only the outer course of events that is considered, one does not see this meaning. This is what happens to Haeckel. Then the situation must remain with the recognition that this life has no meaning. This is what Haeckel means. Looking for meaning is not permitted! But is it not so that another might come and say something further: that if we look only at these contemporary events externally, pointing out that countless bullets are destroying human lives, if we look only at these events and no meaning results, then precisely because of this we must seek for this meaning in a deeper way. It is precisely events such as these that show us we cannot amply look for and believe in meaning by looking just at what is going on now on the earth—by seeing only that these human souls vanish like their bodily natures. Instead we must look at what they are now beginning as they pass through the portal of death. In short, another person could come and say that precisely because no meaning can be found in the outer events, the meaning must be looked for outside the outer, the meaning must be looked for in the super-sensible.

Is this any different from looking at the same matter in a completely different realm? For one who thinks the way Haeckel thinks today, Haeckel's science can become a refusal to recognize any meaning in earthly existence. It can happen that a person wants to prove out of the events that are taking place so painfully today that earthly life as such has no meaning. But, if one takes hold of the problem in our way—we have done this frequently—precisely this same science takes as its starting point the deep and great meaning that can be unraveled by us in world phenomena. For this to happen, however, something spiritual must be active in the world; we must be able to unite ourselves with the spiritual, It is impossible for people to find a meaning for the earth, a real meaning, because our educated people do not yet understand that it is necessary to permit the power to work upon them that once so wonderfully conquered hearts, souls: the power that arose on looking at the Christmas mystery, from which a profane comprehension evolved into a sacred comprehension. Scholars are unable to grasp this yet; they cannot yet unite the Christ impulse with what they see in the outer world, and thus it is impossible for them to find a meaning for the earth.

Thus one must say that science, for all its great progress of which people are so proud today—and justifiably so - is not in a position out of itself to lead to a view that satisfies the human being. As it goes its way, it can lead in the same way either to meaninglessness or to the meaning of the earth, just as in any other domain. Consider this outer science so proudly developed in the last few centuries, especially from the nineteenth century until today, with all its wonderful laws. Consider everything that surrounds us today. It has been brought forth by this science. We no longer burn light at night in the same way that Goethe burned his. We burn light in a completely different way, and we illuminate our rooms in a completely different way. Consider everything that lives in our souls today out of our science; it has arisen through the great progress of science, of which humanity is justifiably proud. What is the effect of this same science? It is a blessing if man develops it as such. But today, especially since it is such a complete science, it produces indomitable instruments of death. Its progress serves destruction just as well as construction. Just as the science acknowledged by Haeckel can lead to either meaning or meaninglessness, so the science that can achieve such great things can serve either construction or destruction. Arid if the main thing is this science, science will bring forth evermore horrible and frightful works of destruction out of the same source that leads to constructive ends.

Science does not directly have an impulse to bring humanity forward. If only this were seen once, this science would be evaluated in the right way! Only then would it be known that something else must be an integral part of humanity's evolution than what the human being can achieve through this science. For what is this science, after all? In reality it is nothing but the tree that grows out of the grave of Adam. And the time is fast approaching when people will recognize that this science is the tree growing out of Adam's grave. And the time will come when people will recognize that this tree must become the wood that is the Cross of humanity. This wood can lead to a blessing only if that which unites in the right way with what lies beyond death, but lives already here in the human being, is crucified on the Cross: that which we behold on the holy Christmas night if we experience it in the right way, in its true mystery, that which can fee presented in a childlike way but that bears the highest mysteries. Isn't it actually wonderful that in the simplest way it can be said to the people: something entered which is active through human life on earth, something that actually may not go beyond childhood. It is related to what the human being belongs to as a super-sensible being. Isn't it wonderful that this super-sensible-invisible element, in the most eminent sense, can come so near to human souls in such a simple picture? Simple human souls!

Yes, those who are educated must also undertake the path taken by those simple human souls. There was a time when the Child was not presented in the manger. The Child in the manger was not presented, but instead the Child sleeping on the Cross was presented. The Child sleeping on the Cross! A wonderfully profound picture, bringing the entire thought to expression that I have wanted to let arise before your souls today.

And is it not basically very simple to express this thought? Yes, it is. Indeed, let us look once for the origin of those impulses that oppose each other in the world today in such a horrible way. Where do these impulses originate? Where does everything originate that makes the life of humanity so difficult today? Where is the origin of all this? It lies in everything we become in the world only after that point of time at which we can recollect ourselves. If we go back beyond this point of time, if we go back to the point in time at which we are called the “little children who are able to enter the kingdom of heaven”—this is not where it originates. At that point nothing of what today is in battle and dispute resides in human souls. The thought can be expressed this simply, but spiritually we must consider the fact that there is something so original in the human soul that it goes beyond all human strife, beyond all human disharmony.

We have often spoken of the ancient mysteries that wanted to awaken in human nature that which permits the human being to look up into the super-sensible. And we have spoken of the fact that the Mystery of Golgotha, perceptible for all human beings on the stage of history, has presented the super-sensible mystery. There is something that fundamentally unites us with the true Christ thought. We have this by virtue of the fact that we are able to have moments in our life (I am now speaking directly, not in a pictorial way) in which, despite everything we are in the outer world, we can bring alive in us what we received as a child. We can do this by going backward, feeling ourselves back at the child's standpoint? we can do this by looking toward the human being as he develops between birth and death, so that we are able to sense within us what we received as a child.

In the public lecture about Johann Gottlieb Fichte which I gave last Thursday, I could have added something, but at the time it would not have been understood. I could have said something that would have clarified a great deal that lives in this devout man in such a peculiar way. I would have spoken about why he actually developed the very particular way he did, and I would have had to say that this was because, more than other people, he retained the childlike quality in himself despite growing old. He retained more of the childlike quality in himself than other people do. Such people actually grow less old. It is really true that what existed in childhood remains more in such people than in others. This is generally the secret of many great human beings, that right into their oldest age they are able to remain children in a certain way; even when they die, they die as children, though this must be expressed only partially, since one must be connected with life.

The Christmas mystery thus speaks to what lives in us as a childlike quality, it speaks with a view to the divine Child who was selected to take up the Christ, it speaks with a view to the one who was already overshadowed by the Christ, who went through the Mystery of Golgotha in reality to heal the earth.

Let us become conscious of the fact that when we surrender the imprint of our higher self, when we surrender our physical body to the earth, it is not a merely physical process. Something spiritual is also taking place. But this spiritual aspect takes place in the right way only by virtue of the fact that the Christ being has streamed into the earth aura, the Christ being who went through the Mystery of Golgotha. We cannot see the earth in its completeness if we do not see that since the Mystery of Golgotha the Christ has been united with the earth. We can bypass the Christ, just as we can bypass everything super-sensible, if we feel ourselves constituted only of earthly matter and only able to relate to it. But if the earth is to have a real and true meaning for us, we can not bypass Christ. For this reason everything depends on our being able to awaken in ourselves something that will open the view into the spiritual world.

Let us make our Christmas festival into something that it must be especially for us. Let us make it into a festival that serves not only the past but the future, the future that little by little is to bring to birth the spiritual life for all humanity. We want to unite ourselves with the prophetic feeling, the prophetic intimation, that such a birth of the spiritual life must be brought to humanity, that presiding over humanity's future a great holy night must be active, coming to birth out of what gives meaning to the earth from human thoughts. The earth received this meaning objectively through the fact that the Christ being united Himself with the earth aura through the Mystery of Golgotha. In the holy night let us think of how, out of the depths of darkness, light must enter human evolution, the light of spiritual life. The old light of spiritual life that was there before the Mystery of Golgotha had to pass away, gradually it had to be extinguished. The light must arise again, must be reborn after the Mystery of Golgotha through the consciousness in the human soul, that this human soul is connected with what Christ became for the earth through the Mystery of Golgotha,

If there are more and more people who come to know how to conceive of Christmas in such a spiritual scientific sense, this Christmas night will develop a force in human hearts and human souls that will have its meaning in all times. It will have meaning in times in which people surrender themselves to feelings of joy but also in times in which people have to surrender themselves to the feelings of pain that must penetrate us today when we think of the great misery of our tune.

Since looking up to the spiritual gives meaning to the earth, I would like to share with you today the words of one who expressed this so beautifully:

What gave my eye this force,
That all misshapen forms have dissolved.
That the nights become like brilliant suns.
Disorder becomes order, decay life?

What intricate weaving through time, through space,
Guides me surely to the eternal well
Of the Beautiful, the True, the Good, and of all delight.
And in destroying immerses all my striving?

It is this: into Urania's eye, the deep,
Itself clear, blue, still, pure
Lightflame, I myself have quietly gazed.

Since then, this eye rests in my depths
And is in my being—the eternal
One, Lives in my life, sees in my seeing.

And in a second small poem:

Nothing is but God, and God is nothing but life,
You know it, you and I know it together,
But how would knowing be there
If it were not knowing of God's life?

“How gladly would I surrender myself to this,
Yet where do I find it? Somehow it flows
Into knowing, then transforms itself into seeming,
Mingling with it, surrounded by its sheaths.”

Quite dearly the sheath rises up before you,
It is your I, what is destructible dies,
And henceforth only God lives in your striving.

See through what survives this striving,
Then the sheath becomes visible to you as sheath.
And unveiled you see divine life.

Certainly people do not always know what they ought to do with those who point to perceiving the spiritual that gives meaning to the earth. It is not only materialists who do not know what to do. Others who believe they are not materialists because they are always saying, “God! God! God!” or “Lord! Lord! Lord!” often do not know what to make of these individuals who guide us to the spiritual. For what can one do with a person who says. “There is nothing but God! Everything is God! Everywhere, everywhere is God!” He was seeking for God in everything, the one who said:

See through what survives this striving,
Then the sheath becomes visible to you as sheath
And unveiled, you see divine life!

An individual who wants to see divine life everywhere could be accused of not allowing the world to exist, of denying the existence of the world. Though one could call him a world-denier, his contemporaries called him a denier of God, and they therefore chased him away from the colleges and universities. The words I have read to you are those of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. If the Mystery of Golgotha continues to live on in the human soul through earthly existence—amid what is connected with this Mystery of Golgotha in the Christmas mystery—it can serve as an impulse resounding in the soul. Fichte is a perfect example of how, when this is the case, a path is opened on which we can find the consciousness in which our own “I” flows together with the earth “I”—for this earth “I” is the Christ. Through this, we develop something in the human being that must become greater and greater if the earth is to move toward the development for which it was destined from the beginning.

Therefore we especially wish, out of the spirit of our spiritual knowledge renewed in the sense it has been today, to let the Christmas thought become an impulse in us. By looking up to this Christmas thought, we wish to attempt to see from what surrounds us not the meaninglessness of earthly evolution; rather, in the suffering and pain, in the strife and hate, we hope to see something that ultimately helps humanity forward, something that really brings humanity a bit forward.

It is not so important to look for causes, which anyway are so easily concealed in partisan strife. It is much more important for what happens today to focus on the possible effects, those effects that we must picture to ourselves as healing, as bringing healing for humanity.

The nations and people who are in a position to shape something that can be healing for humanity of the future out of what is able to sprout from the blood-drenched soil will be led to the right approach. What can be healing for humanity, however, can develop only if people find the way into the spiritual worlds, if people do not forget that there was not only one Christmas but that there must be an everlasting Christmas, an everlasting coming-to-birth of the divine- spiritual in the physical, earthly human being.

Especially today we wish to enclose the sacredness of this thought in our souls, we wish to hold it for the time surrounding Christmas, which can he a symbol for the evolution of light also in its outer course. In these days, at this time of year, darkness, earth darkness, will be here to the greatest degree possible on earth. When the earth lives in this deepest outer darkness, however, we know that the earth soul experiences her light, beginning to awaken to the highest degree.

The time of Christmas, then, is connected with the time of spiritual awakening. And with this time of spiritual awakening, the memory of the spiritual awakening for earthly evolution through the Christ Jesus shall be united. We therefore have the institution of the Christmas festival especially at this time.

Let us unite the Christmas thought with our soul in. this cosmic, and at the same time earthly, moral sense. Then, reinforced and strengthened with this Christmas thought as best as we can, let us look upon everything surrounding us to want what is right for the progress of events, also wanting what is appropriate in the development of deeds of the present time.

Dr. Unger: With regard to the Boldt motion, we have to work through to understand why we entered into this at the general assembly. It is not about us making the Boldt case a big case. Mr. Boldt has hurled accusations and insults in his brochure and forced a matter on us that we do not like. But if it is to have a general significance, then we must pay attention to what is typical about such a phenomenon.

First of all, it is quite impossible to force members to buy a brochure so that they are informed about its contents at the general assembly. The only correct thing, in accordance with the rules of procedure, is for someone who wants to orientate a meeting to provide the relevant material and not to demand 50 pfennigs from each person in order to be able to orientate themselves. In addition, if you have read the brochure, in which there is nothing at all that we can use, you are supposed to buy the book as well. These are things that are impossible for us. That is why we did not need to meet here. But it is typical and significant of the case. It is important for us to learn something from it and to become aware that it is necessary within our society to emancipate ourselves from certain prejudices and suggestions that the whole of life and thought in our time wants to impose on us. In this regard, we must pay attention to some of the things in the brochure. For the accusations, which need not be taken personally at all, relate, among other things, to the fact that something has been rejected here that deals with an important problem of our time, which supposedly deals with a problem in the manner of “spiritual science” and claims to be a scientifically significant matter, as can be seen from the “blurb” read out yesterday. Such an accusation is unjustified from the outset; for no one can demand that any intellectual products should be read, but one can only wait and see what each individual wants to do of his own free will. Then it is claimed that all those who have rejected the matter are supposed to have done so out of ignorance. It was therefore very commendable that some samples from the book were given yesterday, so that anyone who has not read it because they did not want to can now say from their own experience: there is nothing in the book that could have any value for us. What matters is that we educate ourselves to be able to judge what has value and what has no value. And since this is precisely the kind of problem that should be placed at the center of our attention, that should be imposed on us as a problem even though it is not one at all, it is important to work through the question of this alleged problem.

We want to come together here to cultivate knowledge, to gain insight into the workings of spiritual beings. This means that we do not take the starting points from external appearances and symptoms, from what is imposed by sensory experience or what could be gained from the habituation of scientific observation, but that we recognize that all true knowledge can only be found in spiritual reality. It is important that we learn to hold fast to this, that we learn to recognize how much of what passes itself off today as “scientific” is reality and what is not. And that is why it is important that this is not just a “Boldt case,” but a case that gives us the opportunity to shed light on the workings of scientific claims and prejudices in our time. An example will be given that, in terms of its content, already points to the problems that are to be brought home to us here. If we want to look at any vital questions from the spiritual-scientific point of view - that is, from the point of view that we seek to gain on the basis of what is communicated to us from higher knowledge - then it must be the first condition for us to know something know something about it, to know something from the spiritual sources; otherwise we are not in the channel of a spiritual movement, the spiritual movement in question here, but only deal with what is prepared as “scientific phenomenology”. So an example is to be given that, as it were, introduces us to our subject.

When we are led to the basic principles of how man has been born out of the spiritual worlds and has developed under the guidance of spiritual beings, we are then shown that this is not a theory, but a reality of the spiritual worlds, which in the past has also worked in a pictorial way into the pictorial consciousness of mankind, and the expression of these images has been preserved in myths and legends. When we occupy ourselves with myths and legends, we have something that touches our inner hearts, and what would otherwise be presented to us in dry, sober thoughts is presented to us in pictorial thoughts. The legends of the gods are higher realities for us, and in this respect they are a force that reaches deep into our hearts, with which we can approach the problems of existence. They contain something that can work as an element of progress for our movement. We can gain knowledge within our movement from research in the spiritual world about a certain area of existence, namely about the origin of myths and legends and about their significance for the past and present of humanity. If we now ask the circles that behave scientifically about this, we do find a reliable collection of myths and legends as fact. It is not characterized by the fact that one says: it is superficial or not. For such a collection is something that is still most to be praised for in this day and age, namely the diligence in collecting facts. What is then added to such a collection is usually very little. But among the things that are added, we find something typical: a tendency to look at everything from the point of view of a preconceived favorite subject. In this, so-called “sexual literature” is particularly distinguished by the fact that nothing is sacred to it; and in this sexual literature we find volumes of descriptions that trace myths and legends back to the lowest sexual elements - not only to what belongs to natural or animal life, but all excesses, perversions and decadent phenomena are placed in the most arbitrary way at the beginning of the cultural history of mankind and thus the legends and myths are explained. If we wanted to pay attention to it at all, then we would have to give up our entire spiritual-scientific point of view from the outset. The moment we open our ears to what not only wants to reach us from such circles, but also wants to behave in an “occult” manner, we pronounce our own death sentence!

And this is the significant lesson that arises from this: that we must beware of anything that, in whatever way, with great ingenuity, perhaps even wit, presses itself upon us and seeks so easily to associate itself with the name “occultism”; that, on the contrary, we learn to recognize it, see through it and reject it out of our innermost knowledge and understanding. It is not necessary to point out the dangers that beset us in this regard; even the name Leadbeater can be avoided. But one thing must be emphasized: that we also find something in the newer Adyar literature that must be rejected by us in the strongest possible terms: Mrs. Besant refers to her earlier work, to her collaboration with Bradlaugh, to the possibility of limiting the population in the sense of Malthusianism, and so on. What was spread at that time from England, out of the general materialistic spirit of the age, was superseded by Mrs. Besant when Mrs. Blavatsky approached with her spiritual aspirations. Today it is rearing its head again, “illuminated by the glory of occultism.” We see in what presents itself as “occultism” the face of materialism, and we must pay attention to this and draw attention to it. It is certainly true that the influence of materialism on our movement is very strong, so that we must be on our guard, must sharpen our judgment, must learn to stand firmly on spiritual ground, and must learn to seek and find the starting-point for our world-related thinking more and more in the spiritual worlds and beings. In this sense, my request is that, in dealing with this matter, we should look less at the personality of the unfortunate Mr. Boldt than at the typical contemporary phenomena that it expresses, which we must take into account if we want to continue our movement in the right direction.

Mr. von Rainer: Dearly beloved! It may be necessary, after all, to shed light on this “Boldt case,” which has already been examined in some respects because it is symptomatic, from a perspective that plays a major role in our spiritual movement in our time. And if I am obliged to say some things in such a way that it appears as if I wanted to give good teachings, it may be necessary to preface this with a personal comment: that I am fully convinced that all people are children of their time, and that in can only speak with such conviction about something if you feel clearly within yourself how much you are a child of your time and how much opportunity you have to observe how being a “child of your time” creates an enormous obstacle for all ideal endeavors.

From the letters of Mr. Boldt, which he writes to the two representatives and chairmen of the Munich Lodge, the word has been read that he “has been insulted in his theosophical honor.” Even in today's world, the word “honor” actually has only a passive side and no longer an active one. One's honor is continually offended, but today one does not ask oneself whether one might offend the honor of other people. And if we ask ourselves why such a fact plays a significant role in our movement, we must remember the cycle of lectures given by Dr. Steiner in Norrköping on “Theosophical Morality”, where he pointed out that the moral qualities of the Orient, of India, for example, were different from those of Europe. While the Indian was characterized by devotion and worship, courage, standing up for one's convictions with clenched fists, so to speak, was always what distinguished the Westerner. The spiritual impulse of the theosophical movement has now been brought to the West with thoroughly Indian concepts, including the Indian concept of worship, of devotion – certainly justifiably – towards everything that exists in the world. But in doing so, it has been completely overlooked that in the West one is faced with a different audience than in India. In India, the caste system excludes the democratic spirit of the West from the outset; and it is already expressed in political institutions that veneration and devotion must then be modified somewhat differently in a certain way depending on what one is facing. But the West has been a pioneer for humanity in precisely this respect, in that the development of freedom has found a certain support through the democratic spirit of the time. But the whole nature of intellectual life in our time is such that it does not understand when it is stopped. Therefore, one did not understand how to stop in the democratic spirit of the time, in this spirit, which I would like to characterize for you through the saying of a poet, because precisely this poet, the Austrian poet Grillparzer, can be considered quite distant from all political endeavors...

Here Mr. von Rainer quoted a passage from the drama “A Brother Quarrel in the House of Habsburg,” which was put into the mouth of Emperor Rudolf II, and which ended with the following lines:

I say to you: not Scythians and Khazars,
Who once extinguished the splendor of the ancient world,
Are threatening our time, but foreign peoples:
The barbarian struggles loose from his own bosom,
Who, once without reins, everything great,
Art, science, state, church
falls from the heights that protect it,
to the surface of its own vulgarity,
until everything is the same, yes, because everything is low.

And following on from this, Mr. von Rainer pointed out that there is also a certain danger looming in our circles, from which we must protect ourselves. He then continued:

It is not always the case in the world that when someone comes along with certain pretensions and also displays on the other hand all the qualities that should lead to his condemnation as a human being, that these should also make him unworthy of human compassion. We must show a personality like Mr. Boldt's the greatest compassion, indeed the greatest love, but we must not be deceived by it. We must remember that love does not consist in overlooking or even excusing the dangers inherent in a fellow human being. If we examine the dangerousness of what is written in this brochure, objectively, regardless of what kind of person Mr. Boldt is, we must say: What is written here has emerged from the school of Vollrath, Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden and so on. But it is also written entirely in the spirit of our time, about which we heard again yesterday from Dr. Steiner, that it really leaves much to be desired in terms of truthfulness. And I must also cite evidence of the way in which people and things are judged today, without even informing themselves about what the personalities in question actually want with their appearance.

An essay by Dr. Wilhelm Oehl entitled “Modern Theosophy” has been published in the magazine “Der Aar”, a monthly publication for the entire Catholic intellectual life of the present day. It states:

In stark contrast to the reserved Hübbe-Schleiden and even more so to Hartmann, who emphasized ethics, the magician Rudolf Steiner is at the center of a large group of followers who hold his person and his supernatural secret forces in absolute devotion. (“Der Aar,” July 1913 issue, p. 519).

At the beginning, the author writes in a footnote:

As sources, I used the writings of Blavatsky, Besant, Hartmann, Hübbe-Schleiden, Collin, Brahmacharin-Bodhabhikshu and Hermann Rudolph, as well as many essays in the journals “Theosophische Kultur”, “Sphinx”, “Lotosbl , Prana and The Theosophical Path; valuable material is contained in the two brochures by Hans Freimark, Moderne Theosophen und ihre Theosophie and Die okkultistische Bewegung, both published in Leipzig in 1912 by Wilhelm Heims (Leipzig). Finally, attention is drawn to the excellent essay by P. Zimmermann in the 'Stimmen aus Maria Laach': 'Die neue Theosophie' (1910, pp. 387ff.). The various conversation encyclopedias and church encyclopedias offer almost nothing or very little about Theosophy. - Several years of contact with the Theosophists, occultists and astrologers of Vienna, Berlin and Zurich gave me the most desirable opportunity to thoroughly get to know the thinking of these circles.

These were the sources that he said he had used; and yet he has the nerve to write what I read about Dr. Steiner's personality, even though it is clear from his own statements that he is not familiar with any of Dr. Steiner's books! And while he cites the titles of books and publishers for other authors, he only says in the rest of the essay that Dr. Steiner published the magazine “Lucifer - Gnosis”; he says nothing about any of his other books. Perhaps it could be objected that this is a journal that serves a certain tendency; but it is precisely in these circles that people pride themselves on being “modern” and on wanting to draw modern aspirations into the church.

So I saw a poster for a lecture: “Modern Theosophy in the Spirit of Christianity”. Where pretensions arise that “modern theosophy also wants to represent a surrogate for Christianity”, one speaks of a person as a “fantastic magician” and does not even know what books he has written!

These are terrible times in which the reader is deprived of any basis for judging something correctly; because one must be able to read between the lines of such articles and see that, for example, Hans Freimark and Father Otto Zimmermann are opponents of Dr. Steiner. These are the kinds of signs that should make us extremely vigilant about our time and ourselves. It is a tremendous slogan to write on a brochure: “A free word to free Theosophists”. You can quite calmly write this as a powerful motto at the top of your brochure, and then later say: If Dr. Steiner had said something good about my book, I have no doubt that it would have been considered thoroughly Theosophical and would have been read and distributed in the widest circles.

What about “freedom” here? If you speak well of a book that someone writes and publishes, you can be sure that you will be called a “free person”; if you say nothing or cannot say anything commendatory, then you have violated freedom! It is entirely possible that someone comes along with the pretension of redeeming the gagged Frei and then says quite calmly: If the person in question, whom I naturally do not recognize as an authority, had asserted his authority for me, I would not have objected; then the whole brochure would not have been written, and everything else would have been avoided. On page 23, Mr. Boldt writes:

I had to come to the conclusion [at that time] that Dr. Steiner's negative attitude had not remained without influence on these events.

the “events” that his book was not recommended!

As a result, he only encouraged the prudishness and herd prejudices in theosophical circles. I am certain that if he had devoted even a single good word to my work, which has been appreciated by many Theosophists, no one would have dared to find the book un-Theosophical and to object to the sale of the book or to the announcement of the prospectus within the lodges.

Thus, the representative of freedom and opponent of authority would have had no objection to the “herd-like human prejudices” if they had proved useful in the dissemination of this book.

So it is that someone can say, “I am offended in my theosophical honor,” but does nothing for the honor of the other people, the 75 percent, as he says, that he counts among the “partisaners”; because he insults them with the brochure. If we are guided by the perhaps “outdated” but nevertheless existing concepts of honor that prevail in the West, namely to have strong convictions for the moral foundations of Western man, then it is no longer possible to accept what is offered to us. We seem to be like game that anyone can shoot, just because we have a conviction – and not only can anyone from outside shoot at it, whom one cannot blame for it for certain reasons, but everyone within the movement shoots at it! However profound this movement is, among ourselves the individual is actually treated very superficially. In these circles anyone who dares to write anything that condemns 75 percent of the people in a movement dedicated to a high ideal, lock, stock and barrel. One has only to recall the unheard-of nature of such an act! It is always said that it is the belief in authority that we have towards Dr. Steiner. No - our own honor, our theosophical honor is at stake here, because we cannot allow ourselves to be disparaged in this way by a person who knows nothing about the view of life that we want to realize and who wants to exploit for his own purposes what we want to create in the world with this view of life.

Where are the 25 percent he refers to? They should show themselves, these 25 percent, and if there are more of them, they should show themselves too, because we are tired of being attacked in this way. We are Westerners in the sense that we say: We don't have to do theosophical work if there is no one for whom it is suitable. But we would like to hear it! So someone writes this and goes around in the Society! He speaks of “masks and gestures.” But there are many people going around who are saying the same thing! In this regard, we must cultivate a certain honor and say: We will give a fitting answer to anyone who speaks like that, even if it is in the most trivial private conversation, because otherwise a poison will enter the movement and spread! We can only make progress if we are clear about the active part of the theosophical honor. It is not acceptable that just anyone who has barely sniffed into the theosophical movement can appear and say, “All this is blind faith in authority”; or that someone can express such a thoroughly dishonest view that he says, “I am completely permeated with love and admiration for the personality of Dr. Steiner , but this personality of Dr. Steiner adheres entirely to Nietzsche, who says, 'One must not come to people with the truth', and then in a certain way acts as if Dr. Steiner had the same personality in Nietzsche, from whom he gets everything he needs to lead this movement.

In the face of such a thing, it is also necessary to state very precisely what can shed light on the matter. In the first chapter of Dr. Steiner's book “Friedrich Nietzsche – A Fighter Against His Time” it says:

The words that he (Nietzsche) has spoken about his relationship to Schopenhauer, I would like to say about mine to Nietzsche: “I belong to those readers of Nietzsche who, after reading the first page of him, know with certainty that they will read all the pages and listen to every word he has ever said. My trust in him was immediate... I understood him as if he had written for the sole purpose of expressing himself clearly, but also immodestly and foolishly.” You can speak in this way and be far from professing yourself a ‘believer’ in Nietzsche's world view.

This is stated at the beginning of the book and should be borne in mind when quoting from it. Mr. Boldt is not justified in quoting Dr. Steiner as saying: 'Dr. Steiner himself admitted that Nietzsche is an authority on this point ($. 16).

In his discussion of this topic, Dr. Steiner himself characterized the unconditional striving for truth and truthfulness, as advocated by Fichte, as “superficial,” whereas Nietzsche's view is said to be “rooted deeply in the essence of human nature.

Such a juxtaposition cannot help but create the impression that Dr. Steiner is of the opinion that the pursuit of truth and truthfulness must be characterized as “superficial.” What is meant, of course, is that, as it also appears in the book “Friedrich Nietzsche - A Fighter Against His Time,” Nietzsche himself raised the question: Must one strive for truth? Why does one want truth and not rather untruth? These are philosophical, intellectual processes about which one can say: It takes tremendous courage to express such things; but they cannot be taken as a basis for the practice of a way of life, especially not in a circle like ours, where we know where we want the foundations of the truth. We only need people who remain true to this truth. After all, truth no longer needs to be invented.

One need not say of a book like Mr. Boldt's that the author also has good aspirations. He should develop them wherever he wants, but not within the Anthroposophical Society, which has its store of truth. If one really always works positively, one already comes to such concepts to advance the movement.

This is not a matter of Theosophical honor revolting against what someone else does; rather, Theosophical honor should be flexible enough to allow us to do something that someone else does not. That is one side of it. But there is also a second side. For it would be easy to object to such statements: Are we not really doing everything that is humanly possible, so to speak? Are we not truly completely honest for this movement?

With regard to this movement, we must truly also think that we are children of our time. We are children of our time for the Movement itself, and it is not at all certain that those who write in this way are not also completely children of their time. But the misfortune is when we always “soar on clouds” in a certain respect, when we want something, and believe that we must always achieve something great, and think that there are no “little things”. You have to start with the little things! At the beginning of our movement, there were many who said, “How can I be useful to the movement?” before they really knew what it was about. But the more the movement needs strength, the more those same people show themselves to be truly willing to work where they are placed by karma. It is not enough to work for a worldview if you are with the “idea” of the matter. In terms of the practice of a worldview, one can be there for an idea and yet be a crass materialist. In this respect, it is perhaps good to take a historical look at our society, at what has happened since the time of the Constituent Assembly.

The lunch break begins around two o'clock; the continuation of the business negotiations is scheduled for four o'clock.

Dr. Steiner: Before Mr. von Rainer speaks further, I would like to mention one thing.

When the brochure “Theosophy or Anti-Theosophy?” was sent to me, I read the motto on the title page:

Anyone who feels that they can do some good must be a nuisance. They must not wait to be called upon. They must not pay attention when they are sent away. They must be what Homer praises in the heroes: like a fly that, when chased away, keeps attacking people from a different place.

“Goethe,” it says below. I have studied Goethe for a long time, and to me the words seemed quite un-Goethean; and I must confess: I could not remember how the words relate to Goethe. It did not occur to me at all where Goethe might have uttered these un-Goethean words – un-Goethean in the case that he might have used them himself. But I thought that someone who refers to me as much as Mr. Boldt does must at least have learned what I have so often pointed out: that the words spoken by characters in plays should not be applied to the poet himself; otherwise, one could quote Goethe with the words spoken by Mephistopheles in Faust. But I couldn't say anything because I didn't remember. - So I asked Dr. Reiche, who has the “German Dictionary” at hand, to look up the expression “plague ghosts” - since it is the most characteristic in this sentence - in the “German Dictionary”. And under “plague ghost” it was also revealed how these words are connected to Goethe.

Goethe wrote a little drama called “Lila”. Various characters appear in it, including a lady who is somewhat eccentric and is being treated by doctors without success. Verazio, a doctor, is called in to make her well again, and I would like to read to you the conversation that develops.

Baron Sternthal enters.

Verazio: If my presence, like my art, is repugnant to you, then please excuse me for still finding myself here. In a little while, Count Altenstein will arrive and take me back when he unfortunately sees that his recommendation has not been taken into account.

Baron: Forgive me, and the count will also forgive me. It is not ingratitude for his care, not mistrust in your art, it is mistrust in my fate. After so many failed attempts to restore her mental health, I have to believe that I am being put to the test, as I have been. Will I endure sharing her misery, since I promised myself so much happiness with her? I do not want to be unruly and expect in patience from heaven what people are not supposed to give me.

Verazio: I honor these sentiments, gracious sir, but I find it hard that you even hide the details of her illness from me, do not want to allow me to see her, and thereby cut off my way to expand my experience, and to say something specific about the help that could be done for her.

Sophie, who is something of an enfant terrible in this piece, then says:

Sophie (to the others): And he would also like to broaden his experience with our poor sister Haut. They're all the same.

Lucie: Oh yes, when they only have to dissect, enema, [electrocute], they are on hand to see what kind of face it cuts and to assure them that they would have foreseen it as in a mirror.

Baron (who has been talking to Friedrich and Verazio): You are plaguing me!

Verazio: Anyone who feels that they can do some good must be a nuisance. They don't have to wait to be called. They don't have to pay attention when they are sent away. They have to be what Homer praises in heroes: They have to be like a fly that, when shooed, keeps attacking people from a different direction.

But the “Enfant terrible” then says:

Sophie: At least he is honest; he describes the barker clearly enough.<.p>

(General amusement in the assembly).

Mr. von Rainer continued: “It could be said that we are doing everything we can to show how deeply we are imbued with the significance and seriousness of what we receive from spiritual science, and that this lives fully in our ideas and convictions.” But if you look at the facts, you might come to a different conclusion. Above all, one thing can be considered: that at the constituent assembly of the Anthroposophical Society, which took place a year ago, Dr. Steiner gave us the right word of warning. He spoke of the fact that occult research presents a difficulty for our time: to allow our idealism and enthusiasm to truly mature into action — because we all have something morbid, which we have come to know as the “Amfortas nature”, and because with all truly convinced devotion to an ideal, this sick part of our soul life always plays a role in us, and we must therefore be very vigilant. It was said at the time: We have no reason to be particularly joyful, because we have great enemies outside, and we will not be able to work without concern in our individual working groups, but will have to be watchmen, protectors of what we have received as spiritual science, and of which we increasingly recognize – I add this now – that it is what today's humanity urgently needs. And with the admonition “Watch and pray” we were dismissed at the time.

Mr. von Rainer then emphasized how important it seems to him that there be even more active participation on the part of the members in Dr. Steiner's cycles and lectures, and that by doing so they would show that they have recognized the full seriousness of the world-historical moment that is coming to light in our spiritual scientific movement. Through active participation, one should show that one is aware that a new stage in the spiritual-scientific movement is to emerge through the work of the Anthroposophical Society.

Mr. von Rainer then continued: The difficulties in a movement that is constantly changing in the means are certainly great in order to understand them. But it is not without reason that it has been pointed out again and again how, out there in the world, what is left of truthfulness and understanding of reality is perishing with a certain rapidity. And anyone who has observed in a certain respect how, in recent times, one and the same theme has been repeated by Dr. Steiner in very different ways, especially in public lectures, namely how it has been structured and developed in order to present it, anyone who has observed this , must also have realized that the means by which spiritual science is to be communicated must be changed. This is because in the outside world everything is repeatedly and repeatedly trivialized and quoted in a misleading way. The need for flexibility of mind was already recommended to us at the constituent assembly of the Anthroposophical Society. Therefore, it is necessary that we do not always get stuck on what has already been brought, but that we go along with the movement as it is necessary. The new books are not given so that they are not read, even if they are very difficult to understand. This does not mean that the old books have lost their meaning. And one could see how in 1913, Dr. Steiner always gave what could draw attention to what is actually important now. This must really be taken into account! And if one does this, one need not fear that one cannot keep up.

It is only too obvious that misunderstandings will arise in this regard, and I would like to mention one because it is symptomatic and needs to be taken into account. After Dr. Unger's lecture series in Munich, a series of lectures were given on the book “Theosophy”. An Anthroposophist who is a true and sincere admirer of Dr. Steiner's teachings, and in particular a very honest striving person who certainly did not want to do anything against Dr. Steiner, had the opportunity to hear Dr. Unger's lectures and now wanted to repeat them in our branch. I told him that I had nothing against him doing it, but I didn't think it would be right to do it on the only branch evening of the week. The Anthroposophical Society is our teacher, and the only branch evening should be devoted to the teacher's writings, because we have not yet worked through his writings sufficiently. I don't want to say anything against the good intentions of the person concerned. But as far as the teaching itself is concerned, we must concentrate on the personality who brought the teaching into the world, and we must realize that it is the spiritual impulses that make us productive in this field. We cannot say that we can achieve something in this respect, but only that we are inspired by these impulses, and that gives us some insights that we can pass on. But the one who truly leads and guides the matter must be and remain Dr. Steiner. After the Munich lectures, we had the cycle in Kristiania – one can truly say: a milestone in the development of humanity! And to personally listen to this cycle is not the same as just having it communicated through writing. If we are to get a feeling for the living force that should be in our movement, we must feel that “being there” plays a certain role. Of course, the reproduction of the cycles makes it easier to study; but on the other hand, we should say to ourselves out of our active theosophical sense of honor: We must be there personally through action! In this way we show ourselves to be truly loyal. One should not actually proceed according to numbers, but it does make a certain impression – and rightly so when such a new movement is launched – if one also shows this through the number; because it is also something that one shows on the physical plane that one is loyal to the cause as a follower.

In this brief overview of what has happened since the constituent assembly, I wanted to show that it is necessary to pay much more homage to action than to words. Words have a lot of seductive power. It was said in Helsingfors that withheld speech forces bring moral impulses to action, and if you talk about something a lot, you usually don't do it. But it is good if, through what you get into your soul from your active sense of honor towards your ideal, anthroposophy, you come to do less talking and more action.

There is nothing more absurd than being repeatedly accused of “worshipping” Dr. Steiner or when Freimark even speaks of “deceived frauds”. Dr. Steiner cannot be concerned with having admirers. What he communicates will not be changed by this. But for us, who have gained an understanding of what is necessary, what is in the teaching, and what humanity needs, it is necessarily a moral duty to hold the protective hand over the truth that is in this teaching and to reject everything that is not compatible with it.

Mr. Bauer: I would like to make a very brief comment about a correction that does not belong to the Boldt matter; but it would not have the same significance later as it does now.

Mr. von Rainer gave the example that after the last events in Munich, a member of the board or some other member wanted to repeat the lectures that Dr. Unger had given in Munich about the book 'Theosophy'. Mr. von Rainer advised this member not to do so, because it was not our task. We must place the writings of Dr. Steiner at the center of our studies, and the other does not belong to our task and would only detract from the core. I cannot let this remark go unchallenged. I do not understand the logic of this remark about what Mr. von Rainer said. I will try to illustrate it with an analogy. I assume that Dr. Steiner would have spoken here, and the hall would be much larger than it is, and there would now be someone in a corner who has not clearly understood what has been said and who is therefore turning to someone who was sitting in the middle of the hall - between him and the speaker - and who should have heard exactly what was said. Then Mr. von Rainer would have to intervene and say: “This distracts you from the right central task; you must listen only to Dr. Steiner; listening to others distracts you from Dr. Steiner!”

In Munich, Dr. Unger showed with his own loyalty how one can study a book like Theosophy over many years and always find something deeper and deeper. He demonstrated the seeds that were already in this book, and thus directed all his efforts to leading to Dr. Steiner. He, through his peculiar, not too widespread gift and through his great loyalty to the writings of Dr. Steiner, can do much more in this than many others. One can understand many things through it that one would not otherwise have understood. He can tell you many things as one who is “in between” and has heard it better. So if someone, fired up and inspired by what he has heard in Munich, comes home and says, “Now I want to show the members what can be extracted from the book if you look at it in the sense of Dr. Unger,” then he is deterred by such a strange view as that held by Mr. von Rainer; I cannot describe it any differently now. But one point is certain: I have no doubt that only a very few people could take this point of view. This point of view would coincide with what was mentioned at the board meeting on Saturday. Arenson's lecture had appeared (“On the Study of Spiritual Science”) and been sent to a lodge. However, the lodge in question sent it back with the explanation that it belonged in Stuttgart, that it was Stuttgart material! That would be more or less the same thing. I think I need say no more about it. This is just one point of view that must be described as “erroneous”. I cannot describe it differently.

Fräulein Kittel then talks about how important it is to understand the full seriousness of our time, and that our movement must be protected from everything that does not belong in it.

Mr. Walther: Dear friends! Since the Boldt matter has already been discussed at such length, I didn't really want to say anything more; but since I had initially planned to do so, I will present the little that I had planned here. In the small brochure that we have repeatedly discussed, on page 13 there is a sentence written by Mr. Boldt:

For them

that is, for the 'followers' of Dr. Steiner

even the 'Philosophy of Freedom' must, for the time being, remain purely abstract; they are not yet ready for a translation of this writing into concrete life, as I have attempted in my book!

This is the accusation that Mr. Boldt makes against us. I have now also read his book, in which he shares with us what he has gained from the “Philosophy of Freedom” and is now handing down to humanity. To put it very briefly, I will pick out a few points from the book and use them to show what Mr. Boldt regards as the content or the impulse to action that arises from the “Philosophy of Freedom.” On page 75 of his writing “Sexual Problems” he writes:

The strict moral law is certainly fully justified insofar as it can rein in the savage who lives among the stirrings of his animal nature and force him into a certain mold. Within civilization, moralism justifiably disapproves of and fights against the unbridled life of instinct; for it is civilization's task to overcome it. However, it goes wrong in its means and replaces the one, an animal compulsion acting from within, a different moral compulsion acting from without. Thus man is thrown from one bondage into another and swings back and forth between the fateful Scylla and Charybdis of life. One can therefore aptly compare the moral culture of the present day with a menagerie. The modern social man is a beast tamed and rendered harmless by the dogma of morality; his animal instincts are only gagged and put behind iron bars by morality, but not transformed and purified. The moral theologian plays the role of the animal tamer here.

Such is the judgment Mr. Boldt makes of the culture in which we live. And on page 78, he also tells us his remedy for how we can free ourselves from this “cage”:

After these explanations, it seems almost foolish to speak of the freedom of love, since freedom is already contained in love. But here it is not a matter of the inner, ideal freedom of the lovers, but also of the outer, real freedom. And since the latter is often severely endangered by social mismanagement, class prejudices and moral inquisition proceedings, it certainly makes sense to point this out again in particular.

And now he expands on the “freedom of love” in his book and then, on page 85, shows all the institutions that lock us into this menagerie or [in this] cage:

The compulsory celibacy of the church state is unnatural and therefore immoral; it must be resolved, precisely for moral reasons. If we apply this standard to the life that directly surrounds us, then out of a hundred marriages, ninety must be labeled immoral and profane.

This is what Mr. Boldt has gained from his study of the “Philosophy of Freedom.” But we can shed even more light on it if we also consider what he said on page 90:

Extraordinary people, as Goethe already emphasized as Carlos in Clavigo, are always immoral because they act in a self-aggrandizing way. They have to “rise above circumstances that would frighten a common person” Nietzsche calls “the liberation from the moral prejudices that lies in the unleashing of the great spirit, the typical immorality of genius.” - (“Will to Power,” p. 382).

I think that what we have just heard from the book could well show us that he who presumes to judge a work like “The Philosophy of Freedom” and who receives such impulses for action from this study that he lets them end in a complete self-indulgence - well, in an indulgence with “free love” - can certainly not have understood “The Philosophy of Freedom.” Truly, the Philosophy of Freedom would be a terrible work if it were to teach man such a doctrine, such volitional impulses as are found in Boldt's book. An attempt has certainly been made to show man what freedom is and how a person who understands what is given in the book can truly come to a freedom, but how this freedom is not realized by him in the sense that Boldt would like to live it in the sense of a boundless superman, in which he no longer cares about anything and only wants to live as the most perfect egoist. We know such concepts among people as they are known as “anarchism”. That is also not meant in the book “Philosophy of Freedom”. Rather, it is about strengthening the powers of the ego, which can raise our ego to a level that we place ourselves in life in such a way that we voluntarily take on what might otherwise appear to us as a compulsion in Boldt's sense. The “Philosophy of Freedom” does not teach that one should overturn all existing values of life, but that we should make ourselves available to these values of life with a strong I, so that we can reshape them – but not in the self-aggrandizing way that only the selfish personal ego knows, but in such a way that we never lose sight of the point of view of the whole, of community. So it is not a matter of us activating everything that is predisposed in our lower nature and that might arise through a misunderstood freedom of will, but of understanding and implementing the “Philosophy of Freedom” in our lives in such a way that we use the strength it can give us to work for community and for higher life goals and values. For that would not be a freedom that only served to fulfill the desires of the human being. But such a strengthened self, in the sense of the “Philosophy of Freedom”, will not, as Mr. Boldt recommends, live out in free love and advocate for such an endeavor, as free love does find its followers, even in scientific circles, and is recognized by the general public. On the contrary, it should be said: this must be opposed! It would be dangerous if we followed Mr. Boldt here and sanctioned such theosophical or anthroposophical ideals as are meant here. Never ever must we mix such things with our movement, and it would not seem good if we did not strictly reject what is meant here in the book. We must not allow our movement to be used as a cloak for the things which Mr. Boldt is trying to do and hint at here.

I would now like to suggest commenting on what Mr. Boldt is suggesting here. And even if we do not go to the extreme of expelling him, what we have to say against his writings could be communicated to him to make him aware of the consequences that it could have, so that it should cause him to change his position towards us. But it would then also have to be made clearer to him that if he wanted to continue his efforts, he should expect nothing from us, because we could never give up our movement to serve as a cover for the unbridled expression of the lower nature.

Director Sellin: Are you not at all afraid that I will add fuel to the fire and come to you with Mr. Boldt's atrocities? I am, after all, the one least competent to judge Mr. Boldt, and I must say: I am actually pleased that I lack the understanding to link philosophy with eroticism in the way Mr. Boldt does. I only asked for the floor because Mr. Boldt believes that he would be expelled from the Munich branch if I made a request to that effect. That is not the case. The matter is as follows: When the article “Theosophy or Antisophy?” was distributed eight days ago, I talked about it with Theosophical friends, and some of them said, “You are the oldest. Can't you go to the man and give him a piece of your mind?” So I agreed, went to him, gave him my opinion and gave him a piece of my mind! And Mr. Boldt was careful not to cite me as the first person to praise the excellence of his opinion. As I did then, I told him in a thoroughly fatherly manner: “What you have written is so outrageous that you cannot take responsibility for it. You have thrown dirt at the ladies, at the board of the Munich branch. You have accused the teacher of moral cowardice. But since you have no prospect of getting your point across and putting another researcher in charge, I don't see why you want to continue to belong to this, in your opinion, hopelessly run-down society. Why not withdraw your membership! You can form a new group and gather people of your kind around you. There is such great annoyance in our society about your behavior. It would be best if you withdraw your membership. If you don't, you can experience being excluded!"

Eight days later, I asked whether Mr. Boldt had responded, and was told that he had not. Only then did I feel justified in making a motion to expel Mr. Boldt from the Munich branch if he did not make amends for his wrongdoing and withdraw the offensive brochure. He has now done something quite different.

Ms. Stinde has been kind enough to postpone the decision on my motion until eight days after the general assembly. If Mr. Boldt has not taken action by then, I will have to maintain my position; because I say to myself: Then the man does not belong with us. I will continue to make the motion for expulsion.

Fräulein Scholl: With so many speakers having already addressed this matter in such detail, it is only natural that some points that one might have wanted to raise oneself have already been covered. It is therefore not necessary for me to speak at such length as would otherwise have been required, and I think we should proceed in such a way that we can deal with the matter as quickly as possible. The material has been sufficiently made known to you, and you have also become sufficiently familiar with the attitudes expressed in Mr. Boldt's brochure and book. However, perhaps another point of view may be pointed out, from which the whole matter can also be considered, and it does not seem superfluous to me to point this out.

It has already emerged from a discussion at the board meeting that Mr. Boldt did not always tell the truth during the negotiations with the Munich lodge. As Countess Kalckreuth said, there were some parts of the letters that did not always correspond to the truth. This is only mentioned because Countess Kalckreuth was about to state it here as well. Now, we may have to consider a few more points to ensure that we have covered everything, or at least the most important aspects. It should be pointed out once again, as Mr. Boldt always refers to in his writing and later in the brochure, that the whole train of thought of his ideas, what he has published in his book, is based on the teachings of Dr. Steiner and specifically on the “Philosophy of Freedom”, and he always wants to point out through the quotations and the references that he has always connected his thoughts to what Dr. Steiner gives. But if you know the teachings of Dr. Steiner and then read Mr. Boldt's writings, it is really as if pure sunlight were transformed into the cloudy light of a smoky kerosene lamp. And it should be noted: We are responsible to the rest of humanity for allowing Dr. Steiner's teachings to be distorted in this way, not only when the quotations are literally wrong, but also when they are wrongly reproduced in meaning, because then they are a lie. It is really a matter of taking a firm stand against such occurrences and not allowing this spirit of untruth to arise. Not for our own sake! We could perhaps bear Mr. Boldt quite well; even if 25 percent of Mr. Boldt's nature and character were in society, we could bear it. But we should show the rest of humanity that we do not want to endure this 25 percent — or even just one percent of this kind, that if we want to be anthroposophists, we do not want to endure this spirit of lies, wherever it appears, in the smallest or greatest things. But here we are dealing with the greatest things, in the face of which Mr. Boldt appears.

If you take such descriptions by Dr. Steiner as he has given about the Grail mystery, if you think about what has been told about the transformation of lower forces in man into higher ones, in how wonderful a way it was given, so that only feelings of reverence and devotion could flow through the listeners , and then you read how it is presented in Mr. Boldt's book – not 'dirty' because it deals with certain problems, but dirty because of the way in which he presumes to deal with the most sublime, a way that must disgust anyone who has a healthy sense: Then you can understand that the rest of humanity, when presented with this, must receive quite distorted ideas about the teachings of Dr. Steiner. Therefore, it seems especially important to me that we take strong action against these things. Other such untruths can be found in great numbers in the book. One need only point out Mr. Boldt's contradictions, for example where he says what the “Anthroposophical Society” is in his opinion, and where he says something quite the opposite about it. One time he says on pages 27-28:

The “Anthroposophical Society” does indeed represent a rock on which the Christ can build his new church, the church of the freedom of the creative spirit, the “School of Spiritual Science”.

But on pages 15-16 he has already said – he has probably forgotten this:

Can anyone seriously believe in the viability of the now 'Anthroposophical Society' if Dr. Steiner wanted to ignore this essay by Nietzsche?

And at the same time, he ascribes a peculiar character trait to Dr. Steiner:

Oh, he knows it only too well and has occasion to use it more often than one would think.

How can we understand that he says one thing on pages 27-28 and something completely different on pages 15-16? These are contradictions, and they are repeated over and over again in this little booklet. And then there is the comment as if Dr. Steiner behaved in the way attributed to him by Mr. Boldt, which has already been characterized several times. It is the most repulsive defamation that can be uttered about a person. Apart from the fact that we - each of us personally - must be horrified by the way he treats us, using Nietzsche's sayings, which he continually tears out of completely different contexts and uses only to reinforce his own thoughts, without the person who would have used the quote in this way – so, quite apart from the fact that Mr. Boldt is treating us very vilely and insultingly, it seems to me that we cannot tolerate a person in our society who acts in this way against Dr. Steiner and especially against the teaching. We know that we have only been able to receive these teachings through Dr. Steiner in our time, and that we honor Dr. Steiner's personality in this sense for the sake of the teachings that are given to us by him from the spiritual worlds. Among us, however, there are still some people who are not very mature or experienced in the field of spiritual science, those who still know too little about the whole spirit of the movement to be able to stand firm in every moment and to have the right judgment of such poisonous works as those of Mr. Boldt. But it should be sufficiently clear from the matters presented what harmful elements we are dealing with.

Therefore, my proposal – this was meant from the outset, and my judgment has not been mitigated by the milder proposals of the other speakers – is that Mr. Boldt be expelled from the Anthroposophical Society. I believe that on average we are not so well-disposed that we can say with Ernst, “Despite the fact that someone acts in this outrageous way against that which is the highest and most sacred for us, we want to keep him among us and we will love him.” — In any case, I have to say that I do not have this love so far. I move, rather, that Mr. Boldt be struck from the lists of the Anthroposophical Society — out of love for our cause and out of love for the spiritual heritage that is endangered by such tendencies as those of Mr. Boldt, and on which alone we can live!

Dr. Steiner: Before we continue, allow me a few words. It would perhaps be very appropriate to be as clear as possible in this matter and to arrive at a judgment by looking at things, I would say, soberly. Above all, let me first raise some questions that might serve us to form an opinion.

I would like to raise the question: What actually happened for Mr. Boldt to approach us in such a way at this our General Assembly? Perhaps we will find it easier to answer this question if we ask ourselves: What should have happened first so that Mr. Boldt might not have come to the decision to approach the General Assembly in this way?

If you have followed the debate, you will have seen that one of the first mistakes we made in Mr. Boldt's mind was that the two ladies of the board of the Munich Lodge I did not lay out the prospectus for Mr. Boldt's book in the Munich Lodge two years ago – approximately.

I believe there can be no doubt that the display of this brochure in one of our lodges would have been perceived as a kind of recommendation; after all, we cannot display things without being aware that we are recommending them. I don't think there would be much point in displaying it at all if we can't advocate things from some point of view or other. That is to say: Mrs. Kalckreuth and Mrs. Stinde should have endorsed the book, which has now been characterized by the various speeches, in so far as they should naturally have endorsed the wording of the “prospectus” presented to them at the time. Conscientiously, one cannot understand it any other way than that the ladies should have said, as it says in the prospectus:

This book lays for the first time the occult or spiritual foundations on which the philosopher must build if he seriously wants to solve the sexual problems that are still shrouded in darkness. Furthermore, it indicates the directions that the ethicist and pedagogue must take if they want to contribute to promoting the cultural process in a correct, contemporary way and to show humanity the way to the heights of existence.

And everything else I read to them earlier should have been acknowledged by the aforementioned ladies. That is the first question I want to raise: What should have been done to prevent Mr. Boldt from approaching us in this way?

I would like to raise a second question, which is connected to the judgment that Mr. Boldt has passed on me. This judgment, which appears at various points in his brochure, can be summarized by saying that the - I do not want to repeat the joke used yesterday - the man characterized in the well-known way is compelled by the peculiar circumstances of society to present his doctrine in a very peculiar way. One could say: This Dr. Steiner, whom Mr. Boldt indicates as a reference and on whom he wants to base his “sexual problems,” can indeed present some things to the world; but he has a society that is a minority of 25 percent, which “clenches its fists in its pockets” – as politely indicated to the other, so backward 75 percent –

... when it comes to shedding light on and eliminating abuses within the lodges, because we do not want to belong to a Salvation Army, a Catholic girls' boarding school or a convent. (p. 21)

Because society initially has this 75 percent girls' boarding school, nunnery and Salvation Army, Dr. Steiner is compelled not to tell the truth; Mr. Boldt explains how this is understandable: since society has to adhere to Nietzsche and the “falsehood of a judgment is not an objection to a judgment,” so Dr. Steiner is obliged not to present the things he believes to be the truth, but those that he considers suitable for presentation to that 75 percent. Following on from this description of “Dr. Steiner”, I would like to ask my second question. I have tried to find out from this brochure “Theosophy or Anti-Theosophy?” what exactly it is that is wrong with what I present to the 75 percent girls' boarding school, nunnery or Salvation Army from lecture to lecture, from working group meeting to working group meeting. I had to say to myself: It is somewhat difficult to find out what this wrong is supposed to be. Because if the 25 percent who do not belong to a girls' boarding school, a convent or the Salvation Army have now happily figured out that Dr. Steiner tries not to say what he thinks is right, but what he considers suitable for the 75 percent who attend girls' boarding schools and so on, can one ask what the value of this “fatal doctrine” - because it seems to me to be a fatal doctrine - should be? Because it must have some value! Because I can't help but say, based on what the brochure says: If these 25 percent don't want to withdraw from society and don't want to do without lectures and want to participate in the spiritual knowledge – that is, in the concoction that I brew for the 75 percent girls' boarding school, nunnery and Salvation Army – then these 25 percent who sit there in the strange way, with their fists clenched in their pockets, enjoy it so much and attach such importance to it that they definitely want to be there; so they appreciate a brew that is intended for girls' boarding schools, nunneries and salvation armies that they do not want to belong to. I said to myself: I won't find out what is wrong with what I am concocting for girls' boarding schools, nunneries and the Salvation Army. I tried harder to find out. Then I realized – and I don't know if the 75 percent agree: The only thing, it seems to me, that makes Mr. Boldt say that I make such a concoction is that I did not recommend his book! That seems to me to be the one that the 75 percent don't want to be in. If anyone finds something else, let me know!

But I would also like to take the liberty of saying what I have already said: that I really do not consider Mr. Boldt's book to be a very mature product of our contemporary literature.

But on the other hand, I would like to say something else. You see, I do share the opinion of the character I read to you earlier: the opinion of the enfant terrible Sophie in the little drama “Lila”, which does the saying that has already been read out, after Verazio spoke the words that Mr. Boldt used as the motto on the first page of his brochure – so they are not Goethe's words, but the words of a character in a play – and wants to apply to himself:

Everyone feels within themselves that they can do some good, must be a nuisance. They don't have to wait to be called upon. They don't have to pay attention when they are sent away. They must be what Homer praises in the heroes: They must be like a fly that, when chased away, keeps attacking people from a different place.

I am a little bit of that myself. Opinion – also with regard to the first sentence – of Sophie:

At least he is honest; he describes the barkers clearly enough!

I do not believe that Mr. Boldt is dishonest; I do not even believe that he has evil intentions, and I must therefore say: What seems to me the most distressing thing in such a matter is actually always the case; and in this “case” one can very much detest the personality and consider the case as such.

Mr. Boldt seems to me to be nothing more than one of the many victims of our time in a particular field. And it behoves us to point out that in the field of anthroposophy, we are not motivated by a nun-like, Salvation Army-like or girl's boarding school-like attitude, but by completely different reasons - reasons that not only Mr. Boldt, but also many other people do not have a proper concept of, we have to turn against such science and wisdom, as Mr. Boldt wants to bring to the man, seduced by some currents of our time, that we have to turn against such science and wisdom, against such pseudo-science and pseudo-wisdom, against such immature science and wisdom!

The first thing we have to bear in mind is that we – how often have I emphasized this, especially in the course of the last year! – have the very task of standing up for truth and truthfulness. And it is not for nothing that we decided to put the motto on our statutes ourselves: “Wisdom lies only in truth!” Seduced by many of the currents of our time, immature minds then feel that they are in the — as it seems to them — justified position of speaking of the fact that precisely the one who stands up for this sentence — “Wisdom lies only in truth” — as a motto for our Anthroposophical Society must assume masks in order to cover up the truth so that he can get rid of its followers. This is not personal audacity — it is done by the seduced immature mind, which can be forgiven personally, but which must be characterized objectively as it arises from the character of the current. One of the first things to be characterized in this trend of the times is something that has often had to be mentioned in connection with our necessary striving for truth: It is that which deeply permeates the times and is even connected with some of the conditions of life in our time: It is untruthfulness, the lack of conscientiousness, which is not only found in what Mr. Boldt produces, but also in a large part of our contemporary literature! No wonder immature minds are seduced by it! But if we have to stand up for truth and truthfulness, we have to listen to the Spirit of Truth; but not to what is in this current of untruthfulness and lack of conscientiousness. Everywhere outside, we find that what is said in some other direction is cited to defend all kinds of private matters that, in the eyes of those who want to defend them, usually have the highest value.

My dear friends, I ask you with reference to the man who wrote the book “Sexual Problems in the Light of Natural and Spiritual Science” and who wrote in this book [in footnote 12] on page 136/137:

12) To supplement this thought, read Steiner: “Die Geheimwissenschaft”, $. 65 to 75. There is talk of a “hidden spiritual”

, and so on, as it has been mentioned before:

What is said here regarding the satisfaction that the hungry being derives from ingesting food also applies to the pleasure that lovemaking gives to loving beings; for hunger and love grow on the same wood, as Schiller also indicates in his poem “The World Sages”.

Here, a certain enjoyment is clearly and explicitly mentioned! It continues:

The reader can find more details about enjoyment in “Lucifer-Gnosis”, issue 13 (“How to obtain knowledge of the higher worlds?”), as well as in “Theosophy” (“The path of knowledge”).

Imagine that someone does not have the conscientiousness to reach for issue 13 of “Lucifer - Gnosis”; then he must get the idea that is there: “there is talk about the enjoyment of love”. - Who can read anything else into it? But open “Lucifer - Gnosis”, issue 13, and try to figure out what it is about. There it says [on] $. 5:

What can be achieved through devotion becomes even more effective when another type of feeling is added. It consists of the fact that the person learns to devote himself less and less to the impressions of the outside world and instead develops an active inner life. A person who chases from one impression of the outside world to the next, who is always looking for “distraction”, will not find the way to secret science. The secret disciple should not become indifferent to the outside world; but his rich inner life should give him the direction in which he faces its impressions. When walking through a beautiful mountain landscape, a person rich in feeling and depth of feeling experiences something different than one poor in feeling. Only what we experience inwardly gives us the key to the beauties of the external world. One person sails across the sea and only a few inner experiences pass through his soul; the other feels the eternal language of the world spirit; the secret riddles of creation are revealed to him. One must have learned to deal with one's own feelings and ideas if one wants to develop a meaningful relationship with the external world. The outer world is filled with divine glory in all its phenomena; but one must first have experienced the divine in one's own soul if one wants to find it in one's surroundings. The secret disciple is advised to create moments in his life in which he quietly and lonely sinks into himself. But he should not devote himself to the affairs of his own ego in such moments. That would have the opposite effect to that intended. Rather, in such moments he should quietly reflect on what he has experienced, what the external world has told him. Every flower, every animal, every action will reveal unsuspected secrets to him in such quiet moments. And he will be prepared to see new impressions in the outside world with completely different eyes than before. Those who only want to enjoy impression after impression dull their ability to recognize. Those who, after enjoyment, allow themselves to be revealed by the enjoyment, cultivate and educate their ability to recognize. They just have to get used to not just letting the enjoyment linger, but to processing what they have enjoyed through inner activity, while renouncing further enjoyment. The danger here is very great. Instead of working within, it is easy to fall into the opposite error, and to want to fully exhaust the enjoyment only afterwards. One should not underestimate the fact that incalculable sources of error open up for the secret disciple here.

And now you are wondering whether, if you profess the views of the Anthroposophical Society, you may quote what is said here in “Lucifer - Gnosis”, issue 13, in such a way that, may one, after having previously discussed the enjoyment of love in Boldt's manner, say: “The reader can find more about enjoyment in ‘Lucifer - Gnosis, Issue 13’ and so on?”

In this context, I ask you: Is Mr. Boldt a disciple of the anthroposophical current or is he not - with regret I say: unfortunately; with reference to his weak personality, with which I have compassion - just a seduced of a current of today?

We are entitled to ask ourselves such a question; for it is not a matter of treating the “Boldt case” as the case of Mr. Boldt, but of regarding it as symptomatic of what is happening not only to Mr. Boldt but also, I would say, speaks to us from the windows everywhere, and is infinitely more important than the individual case of Boldt, which is only one form of many of the things that are happening in our time, and which we are called upon to fight.

Much to my regret, I was obliged on another occasion to point out how quotations are used today – on the occasion of Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden's “Denkschrift” (memorandum). On page 135, you will find the following about Boldt:

In his journal “Lucifer - Gnosis,” issue 23, “From the Akashic Records,” Steiner comments as follows: “His (the human being's) entire lower half – that which is often called the lower nature – has now come under the intellectually shaping influence of the higher beings (the Jehovah-Elohims). ... One can also say that those noble spiritual powers... have now descended to unfold their power in the field of reproduction. In fact, noble divine powers have a regulating and organizing effect in this area.

Here, individual sentences have been taken out of context, which reads as follows:

Man has straightened up. This is the direct consequence of the ride on the moon. And with the moon, all those forces have disappeared from the earth's body through which man, during the time of the nebula of fire, was still able to fertilize himself and bring forth beings of his own kind without external influence. His entire lower half - that which is often called the lower nature - has now come under the intellectually shaping influence of the higher beings. What these beings were previously able to regulate in man himself, due to the fact that the mass of force, now separated in the moon, was still united with the earth, they must now organize through the interaction of the two sexes. It is understandable that the moon is regarded by the initiates as the symbol of the power of reproduction. These forces are, so to speak, attached to it. And the higher beings described have a relationship with the moon; they are, so to speak, moon gods. Before the separation of the moon, they worked through its power in man; afterwards, their forces worked from the outside on man's reproduction. One can also say that those noble spiritual powers, which previously worked through the medium of the fire-mist on the still higher instincts of man, have now descended to unfold their power in the sphere of reproduction. In fact, the forces of the noble Gods work in this sphere in a regulating and organizing way. And with that, an important sentence from the Secret Doctrine is expressed, which reads: The higher, noble divine powers are related to the seemingly lower powers of human nature. The word “seemingly” must be understood here in its full meaning, because it would be a complete misunderstanding of the occult truths if one wanted to see something low in the reproductive powers themselves. Only when man misuses these powers, when he forces them into the service of his passions and instincts, is there something corruptive in these powers, but not when he ennobles them through the insight that divine spiritual power lies in them. Then he will place these powers in the service of the evolution of the earth and carry out the intentions of the higher beings who have characterized them through his powers of reproduction. The ennobling of this whole sphere and the subordination of it to divine laws is what Theosophy teaches, but not the annihilation of it. The latter can only be the result of an externalized and distorted conception of misunderstood occult principles.

Anyone who takes this as it is presented here, and the preceding and following must also be taken into account, will find that the one who wrote this considered it necessary to place these things in this overall context and not to tear them out of this context. And if Mr. Boldt is embarrassed to speak to the readers of his book about “fire fog” and “moon entities,” then let him keep his hands off it! Then it's none of his business! He has no right to tear sentences that I use only in one context out of that context in order to use them for his own private purposes.

But something else has been said here that anyone who wants to can read. And I believe that the 25 percent who do not want to be a girl's boarding school and so on could read something like that. It is said:

And the higher beings described have a relationship to the moon, are, so to speak, moon gods. Before the moon was separated from the earth, they worked through its power in man; afterwards, their powers worked from the outside on man's reproduction. One can also say that those noble spiritual forces, which previously worked through the medium of the fire nebula on the still higher instincts of man, have now descended to unfold their power in the realm of reproduction. In fact, noble divine powers have a regulating and organizing effect in this area.

Let noble divine powers work in this area! But not the dirty fantasies of our contemporary sexology. They have been described precisely in order to clarify the matter, but not to defile them with what can be said about this area from the coarse, clumsy human powers. And that was the spirit in all the explanations I have given over the course of many years for the anthroposophists.

Truly, gentlemen, I would deny those from whose heads Mr. Boldt learned the right to speak at all about these things! I could never allow the students of those whose right I deny to speak at all about this area, which is protected by the noble powers of the gods, to spread among us. This is how one quotes in our time in the broad stream of life! But those who are disciples of this quoting have, in my opinion, no place within our anthroposophical stream!

And another question that I want to ask you, and which is now to be linked to what has just been said, is one that is, however, more of a logical one. In Mr. Boldt's brochure, it says on page 21:

If I, of all people, have the courage and clear conscience to give voice to this deeply felt and painful dissatisfaction, I believe that I have sufficiently proven my right, indeed my obligation to do so, through the sad experiences I have had to endure in these years. Since the lodges – that is, the sum of their members, not the boards alone – are autonomous and even Dr. Steiner – as I was assured by authoritative sources – does not have the right to interfere in their decrees, we members also want to make use of our free right of self-determination when it comes to illuminating and eliminating abuses within the lodges; because we do not want to belong to a Salvation Army, a Catholic girls' boarding school or a nunnery.

I address the question to those who present themselves in the “we”: Why don't they stay out if they don't “want to belong”? Because it does not seem logical to me if they are inside. Because the only thing that is to be held against me is that I have not praised Mr. Boldt's book and that everything I present is a concoction for girls' boarding schools, convents and salvation armies. So then the only conclusion to be drawn with respect to Mr. Boldt and the others – and here I am speaking of many people found in today's intellectual culture – is that they should view this concoction for girls' boarding schools , convents and Salvation Army from the outside – not from the inside – and that they do not let themselves be told only when their logic demands it would be illogical not to be among us!

By this I wanted to suggest that we should not concern ourselves with the “Boldt case” in such a way that we “use a sledgehammer to crack a nut”. That is not necessary. But we really want to show that we have something to say about the field in which Mr. Boldt is a student – a seduced, unfortunate student. Therefore, I would like to continue here tomorrow with what I still have to say about this, as briefly as possible.

The continuation of the “business part” is set for Tuesday, January 20, 1914, at ten o'clock in the morning. Dr. Steiner announces that he will speak about “Pseudo-Science of the Present” in relation to the matter at hand.

Shortly after 1:15, Dr. Steiner begins his announced lecture on contemporary pseudoscience.

My dear friends!

Yesterday I spoke to you about how phenomena such as the book “Sexual Problems in the Light of Natural Science and the Science of the Spirit” by Ernst Boldt and also his recent brochure – this one in particular – “Theosophy or Anti-Theosophy?” can be traced back to a certain school of thought in the present day, and how actually the younger people who want to enter, so to speak, the field of “free writers” are more pitiful seduced people of certain currents of our present intellectual life than people to whom one can ascribe in the fullest sense of the word what they do and write. It does not matter that Mr. Boldt himself may not want to know that he is a student of the “pseudo-science” to be characterized. He has unfortunately become one without his knowledge. Before I move on to a proof of what I have just said, I would like to cite once again a particularly worrying example of what such a training can achieve.

As you know, in the brochure “Theosophy or Antisophy?” the accusation is made against myself - let us say - that I “take on masks”, that I do not tell the 75 percent within our society that have now been sufficiently identified what I myself recognize as the truth, but rather what I believe is suitable for their particular inferiority. You may know from the brochure “Theosophy or Antisophy?” that with regard to this point, special reference is made to my writing “Friedrich Nietzsche - A Fighter Against His Time”, and that the brochure particularly points out that in that writing I represent the Nietzschean point of view with regard to the truth. I must read a few sentences on page 16 of the brochure “Theosophy or Anti-Theosophy?” so that you can get to know the full severity of the accusation expressed on page 16 of the brochure, insofar as it is based on something I am said to have said in my writing “Friedrich Nietzsche - A Fighter Against His Time”:

No matter how correct a thought or judgment may be, if they do not further a matter in a given situation, they are worthless and false at that point; and if certain logical fictions and false judgments can lead to a desired result under certain circumstances, then they are valuable and true at that point. Dr. Steiner himself, in his discussion of this topic, characterized the unconditional striving for truth and truthfulness, as Fichte advocated it, as “superficial,” while Nietzsche's view was “drawn deep from the essence of human nature.

My dear friends, you should consider the full weight of the audacity of such an assertion as has been made here. On pages 9-10 of my essay “Friedrich Nietzsche... and so on,” I have in fact uttered the following words in response to the question of the value of truth, quoting Nietzsche first:

Is it any wonder that we finally become suspicious, lose our patience, turn around impatiently? That we, in turn, learn how to ask questions from this sphinx? Who is it, actually, who is asking us questions here? What in us actually wants “the truth”? Indeed, we stopped long before asking about the cause of this will – until, finally, we came to a complete stop in front of an even more fundamental question. We asked about the value of this will. Suppose we want truth: why not untruth?

This is a thought...

so I now say further,

... of almost unsurpassable audacity. If we compare this with what another bold “thinker and friend of riddles,” Johann Gottlieb Fichte, says about the pursuit of truth, we can see how deeply Nietzsche draws his ideas from the essence of human nature. “I am called upon,” says Fichte, “to bear witness to the truth; my life and my fate are of no importance; the effects of my life are of infinite importance. I am a priest of truth; I am in its pay; I have bound myself to do and dare and suffer everything for it.” (Fichte, lectures ‘On the destiny of the scholar,’ fourth lecture.) These words express the relationship in which the noblest minds of Western modern culture place themselves in relation to truth. Nietzsche's saying quoted above makes them appear superficial. One can object to them: Is it not possible that untruthfulness has more valuable effects on life than truthfulness? Is it impossible that truth can harm life? Did Fichte ask himself these questions? Did others who bore “truth's witness” do so?

When such a sentence is written, it has been wrested from the bleeding heart in order to gain and present an insight. First of all, a relationship is presented – and presented in such a way that something is singled out from the whole of our Western culture that belongs to the very depths of what can be said; and only in comparison with an even deeper psychological search and an even deeper rumination on the values of truth in the human soul does this appear even less profound than the “deeper” one, that is, it appears as the “relatively superficial”. Now, the starting point is taken from what is rooted in the soul as the impulse that makes Fichte seek truth, and it is pointed out - this is implied in the sentence - that in the sense of Nietzsche - who, after all, also lived a century later than Fichte - Fichte's question could and should be asked even more urgently than Fichte did.

However, people do not come close to asking a question of this kind – this must be said! – people who then boast about it by saying:

Those with an eye for nuance and a sense of character will have to admit that this serious accusation does not apply to me in any way.

Anyone with a “finger for nuances” would never dare to quote a passage such as the one on page 10 of my Nietzsche essay in the outrageous way it is done here in the brochure. Such a quotation comes from the school from which these people learn what they are able to learn, not from what should be done within the anthroposophical stream.

Following on from this, let me now ask another question. Is there not a question underlying all these accusations that have been made: Why doesn't Dr. Steiner address certain issues in front of that 75 percent? I have once again tried to find an answer to this question, at least in the sense of the questioner. I leaf through the book “Sexual Problems in the Light of Natural Science and Spiritual Science”. There is a good deal in it about the misunderstood Haeckel and some of it is taken directly from my writings and lectures. Reference is also made to my lectures “Man and Woman” and “Man, Woman and Child in the Light of Spiritual Science”. What is in Boldt's book, insofar as it is based on occult principles, is admittedly borrowed from what I said about the 75 percent of girls' boarding schools, nunneries and the Salvation Army. Mr. Boldt finds what I say about these people good enough to use for the teaching he is counting on. He carries the wisdom of the nunnery to those who, let us say, are unprejudiced. Thus assertions are made. What people do directly contradicts what they say, so to speak, immediately. For how else would Mr. Boldt have taken what he wrote “from the occult point of view” if not from the messages that were given to the 75 percent girls' boarding school, nunnery and Salvation Army? Such logic is the fruit borne by the school from which such writings come. But let us not be surprised that it bears such fruit. If someone talks about “sexual problems” today, it is because he has been influenced by “authorities” in this field, and Mr. Boldt has also been influenced, even if he does not know it or admit it. And who would not know that a much-cited authority in this field is Professor Auguste Forel! I would just like to share with you some characteristics of some contemporary scientific work from Forel's lecture on “Sexual Ethics”, namely from the first half, where ethics in general is discussed. Page 3:

1. Ethics.

Ethics is the science of morals. What, then, is morality? It can be said that morality consists of two things:

1. A feeling: conscience, sense of duty or ethical feeling (altruistic feeling), which tells us: “This you should do and that you should leave.” This feeling is instinctive and consists of a mixture of pleasure and displeasure. Those who develop it feel pleasure when they follow “the voice of conscience” and displeasure when they do not follow it.

Anyone who writes something like this has never taken the trouble to read even a single serious psychological book in our time, even superficially. A person who is an authority in our time speaks in sentences like these:

This feeling...

morality

... is instinctual and consists of a mixture of pleasure and displeasure.

I do not want to say what kind of pain one gets when, somewhat familiar with these things, one has to accept a sentence that confuses “feeling” with “instinct” and then talks about a “mixture of pleasure and displeasure.” The worst kind of amateurism betrays itself at the beginning of the book of a great authority! Then page 4:

But reason and science rebel against the categorical imperative, the longer, the more. Kant, great though he was, was not infallible. The imperative of conscience is not categorical in and of itself, nor is it categorical in any other way than that of the sexual drive, fear, motherly love or other feelings and drives. First of all, daily observation teaches us that there are people who are innately without conscience, who lack the voice of duty.

Let anyone who is considered an “authority” in this field dare – I will ignore all the rest, purely formally and logically – to write the sentence: “The imperative of conscience” – by which he means the Kantian imperative – “is in and of itself no more categorical and no less categorical than that of the sexual urge”! I want to ignore all moral aspects and point out only the perverse logic and phenomenal ignorance in all philosophical matters of a contemporary authority. I want to point out something else and read the sentence again:

Firstly, daily observation teaches us that there are people who are innately unscrupulous and who lack the voice of duty.

I turn to page 7, where the question is examined as to what the “voice of conscience”, the sense of duty, actually consists of:

The sense of duty is, as an inclination, innate, that is, hereditary.

There is only one page in between; on page 4, “authority” denies that it is “innate” because “innate people can be without conscience,” and on page 7 it says:

The sense of duty is, as an inclination, innate, i.e. hereditary. It can be developed or, conversely, dulled by education; but it cannot be acquired, and only brain diseases can destroy it where it is clearly present. That which is acquired or acquired...

There is no way to escape this tangle of crazy contradictions!

...is least the conscience; rather, it is its objects, just like those of the sense of shame.

It goes on to say:

Where does conscience come from, the sense of duty?

On page 8, we read further:

When I feel sympathy or love for a person, an animal, an object, I suffer myself and feel displeasure as soon as the object of my sympathy suffers or is endangered.

You may think: Well, that just slips out of the pen like that! No, it just slips out of the pen like that if you have confused thinking!

Hence the words compassion and sympathy (pain with). I therefore seek to help the object of my sympathy, to save it.

This “object of sympathy” continues to play a role; it is not just a typo here. At best, the word “object” can be used if “people” or “animals” have not been used beforehand. But if you have used “people” and “animals” beforehand and then say “object,” it shows that you have not the slightest sense of clarity of presentation. But the gentleman has something else: strange terms for many things, from which we can learn something in the present. Page 9:

But the necessity for a common defense against enemies led many animals to develop feelings of sympathy and duty towards entire groups, resulting in the emergence of loose societies here and there (swallows, buffalo, monkeys). Finally, certain animal species have developed feelings of sympathy and duty to such an extent that they have led to the realization of anarchist socialism, as is the case with wasps, bees, termites and ants.

I believe that even the less educated will almost turn around when they hear the words “anarchistic socialism”; because it is synonymous with “iron wood” or “wooden iron”. And that Professor Forel has not misspelled it again, but just does not know how to correctly formulate the terms in today's world, is shown by the further remarks, which I will not go into further. Then he continues on page 10:

Thus, humans have instinctively developed feelings of sympathy and duty that were coupled with intensely selfish predatory instincts. The enormous complication of the great human brain has now made things extremely complex. Thus, crime and heroism could develop side by side. We see infanticide, patricide and matricide, robbery, theft, slavery, war and, not to be forgotten, the most abject subjugation of women as objects of purchase and sale or as beasts of burden, the fruits of the egoism of a highly developed, cleverly thinking brain organization.

These are the words you would use in a lecture aimed at an audience you want to speak to in a popular way! You tell them that all these things – these strange, confused phenomena, mixed with all kinds of predatory instincts – stem from a particular complication of the brain organization. Materialism is blackened by this way of thinking, which is devoid of all logic! Continue on pages 11 [and 12]:

It is now as clear as day from this brief sketch, the main features of which we owe to the theory of descent and natural science, that morality can only be relative. It was always relative to the family, to the clan, to the fatherland; it must become relative to humanity. Man's phylogenetic sense of duty (i.e., the instinctive sense of duty inherited from our animal and human ancestors) unfortunately varies greatly from individual to individual.

So now we have inherited a sense of duty from our “animal and human ancestors”! It goes on like this. But this gentleman also quotes out of context. Page 13:

But now another difficulty arises, namely the frequent lack of harmony between the ethical motives of an act and its ideal value. “(I am) part of that force which always wills evil and always creates good.”

These are the words of Mephisto in “Faust”; therefore, he puts “I am” in brackets and then says immediately afterwards:

We often say instead of always,

so he brings a quote so that he has to change it immediately afterwards – and on the same line, because otherwise it wouldn't fit! On page 14, something strange happens that the gentleman and his students don't notice:

Altruism and egoism are only in relative contrast. In ants and bees, they are wonderfully harmoniously adapted to each other instinctively, without ever coming into conflict with each other. This can and should be striven for in humans, however great the difficulties are that his nature poses to this task. For this, a harmonious interaction of hereditary feelings of duty with reason and knowledge is essential.

But this “reason and knowledge” would not exist at all if the strange theories developed here were sound. But they are introduced; just as materialistic ideas are previously introduced into the text, “reason and knowledge” are now introduced. - The following is the author's view of the “nature of morality”, page 14:

I must briefly mention two more points: firstly, morality and social or racial hygiene coincide, ...

Social and racial hygiene and morality are therefore the same: they coincide! This is how he comes to characterize the “essence of morality.” Yes - but they only coincide

... as soon as one understands by hygiene that of the brain, i.e., of the organ of the soul, and subordinates individual hygiene to social hygiene.

Anyone who can still think anything of value in the face of such a sentence is actually hard to find! But these things characterize the thinking of the “authorities” – and are never cited as proof of the scientific conscience that reigns over certain schools of thought in our time. Do not think that this is an isolated example; these things are widespread; and they are significant for a reason that I will explain.

Why are they significant? Well, they stem from an “authority” in the field to which we are referred, from a generally recognized authority, from a man who is much talked about at home and abroad. He is an authority in this field, and he knows everything that can be learned in this field in terms of craftsmanship and natural science. And that is the significant thing, that is what is so bad in our present time: one can actually be an authority in any specialized field today without even knowing the very most elementary basic elements of logic and the very most elementary basic elements of scientific methodology at all; one can pass on to humanity today the most important things that are being researched in such a way that they are blackened into the worst form of nonsense! One often stands before these things with deep sadness. There is an excellent mathematician of the present day, a famous mathematician, to whom the rank of one of the first among mathematicians is not to be denied, Leo Königsberger. Recently I read from him – I am almost ashamed to say it – an “academic treatise” about what mathematics actually is as a science. He refers to Kant, and what he says about the methodological foundations of the mathematical sciences and their relationship to other sciences is the most immature, childish stuff.

That is to say, today, when it comes to accepting things that are there to educate the public about the progress of our intellectual life, you can accept the most childish stuff from the authorities, because people no longer feel obliged, when they step out of their area of expertise, to even know a little about what they want to talk about. Yes, if only they would not talk about it – but, excuse me, that is not an option, because otherwise the gentlemen would have to remain silent about so many things that we would hear little from them!

And now I ask another question. Those who, without knowing anything about the facts of natural science themselves, speak or write about sexual matters or similar topics among younger people today are fed from sources like the ones I have characterized. Let us not be surprised if their heads are in a mess; because with such logic, their heads must be in a mess, as we are dealing with one. And the poor, pitiful victims are innocent, their entire mental life is destroyed by what I have just characterized, which does not stand alone but pours out into literature in a broad stream, which is precisely what our audience feeds on today.

My dear friends, we are dealing today – and as anthroposophists we have to deal with it! – in many fields of today's production, not with 'scientificness', but with 'pseudoscientificness', not to use another word. An example of such pseudoscience is given to you; I could give many.

A certain Dr. Freud in Vienna has founded all kinds of “scientific” things. Among them there is also a “dream science,” the famous Freudian “dream science,” to which much reference is made today. I will pick out just one example from the beautiful “scientific” world that prevails.

From his point of view, Freud finds that every dream is based on a wish; and he finds the theory, which is more convenient than factual, that when a person cannot satisfy a wish in life, and he might be disturbed in his sleep, he then dreams in his sleep that his wish has been fulfilled. So anyone who hopes for something and does not have it dreams - and then sleeps well because they have fulfilled their wish in their dream. Yes, but it is not the case with all dreams that they can be traced back to a hope, to a wish; the facts cannot be treated so simply. In the field of this “science”, a distinction is made between “latent” and “manifest” dream wishes. For example, the following example is constructed. - I take things that have actually been given.

I dream of a person whose name is, say, “R”; but he doesn't look like “R” at all, but like “B” - and “B” is crazy. Now it is difficult to construct the pipe dream here. But Dr. Freud is never at a loss for an explanation. He says: Yes, but the R I dream about secretly wishes he were crazy! If I dreamt about him as he really is, I couldn't dream that he's crazy, because he isn't. So I dream about the other guy, B, who is crazy, because I wish that R would go crazy like B.

Here the latent is separated from the manifest. What is introduced is, to use a nice technical term from Freud, “dream censorship”, and I could cite a nice smorgasbord of such examples from Freudian dream censorship.

Yes, such “scientific rigour” has led to the well-known Freudian “psychoanalysis”, to the fact that the followers of this psychoanalysis attribute various phenomena that occur in the human soul to so-called “islands” or island provinces in subconscious life. So, for example, if there is hysteria or something of the sort, then the person coming to the doctor is examined by being interrogated; but one must interrogate him until one comes upon something sexual. Because these islands are always unfulfilled sexual desires. They go down into the subconscious and stay there until the doctor brings them back up; and until the doctor brings them back up, they are the causes of all kinds of mental disorders, and you cure them by bringing the suppressed sexualisms back up.

I do not want to bring out these suppressed sexualisms present in the subconscious and apply them to the founder of the theory himself; because something strange could come of it if one were to apply this theory to the one who has formulated it, and trace it back to something suppressed inside, to such island provinces that could have accumulated in childhood.

But with these “wishful dreams”, with the “latent” and “manifest” states and with “dream censorship”, we now come to other things, for example to the answer to the question: “Why do so many people dream of the death of close relatives?” - And it is said that now, because as a child one thought, even if one did not love these relatives: “If only he would die soon!” This has gone into the subconscious and comes up again as a latent wish and then comes out later. But it is not limited to childhood; because it also happens in other relationships that people wish each other dead – for example, the younger son, who is not the heir in his family, has the wish that his older brother, who is the heir, may die. He does not admit this to himself when he is conscious, but the dream brings it out. In particular, there are many such island provinces in the human soul in the sense that early-arising sexualism, which the theory of these people, stirs in the first tender childhood, is expressed in such a way that girls love their father and are jealous of their mother, and vice versa, that boys love their mother and are jealous of their father, and that children then wish the individual dead. But this is something that happens quite commonly; for it is to this “commonplace” that the Oedipus tragedy, for example, can be traced. And these people ask: Where does the harrowing nature of this Oedipus tragedy come from? Answer: Because a picture was once used to describe the fact that a son often loves his mother and seeks to kill his father. That is supposed to be the harrowing nature of the Oedipus tragedy. Dr. Unger was hinting at such things when he pointed out the peculiar way fairy tales and myths are interpreted by this school. I could cite several more, even worse examples, but I think this example is enough.

Is this “science”? This is pseudoscience! Inferior science! But it has a large audience today. But it is a source of confusing and misleading immature minds. Let's not be surprised if these immature minds then go around with confused thoughts.

I have allowed myself to cite a particular example of how sexuality creeps into pseudo-science. Of course, an infinite number of other examples could be cited to show how this pseudo-sexual science creeps into public discourse.

My friends! I once said two things to Mr. Boldt because I felt obliged to say them when he wanted to write not a slim volume like “Sexual Problems,” but four or five volumes. I said to him – it was before the little book was written: “Mr. Boldt, don't write that now! When you are ten, twelve, fifteen years older, you will regret ruining your life by writing such stuff in your youth.” On page 12 of the brochure it says:

That is why Dr. Steiner has consistently refrained from speaking since the summer of 1911. I must of course remain silent here about his private comments to me; I can only reveal that they were neither warm nor cold.

I said a second thing to Mr. Boldt on another occasion. I said to him: “You see, Mr. Boldt, to deal with this subject in particular is a dangerous matter, and really only someone who is really at home in the field of research that delves deeper into the secrets of existence, and who speaks about these things from this point of view, can do it; because then one speaks quite differently about these things. And it is the most dangerous subject one can touch upon, for the reason that when the thoughts are directed to this sphere they will always become darkened in a certain respect."

I am touching here on something that would have to be treated at length if it were to become quite clear, but which is a real result of spiritual science. We may dwell on many things about which we seek to gain clear thoughts: The moment thoughts turn to the sexual sphere, however pure the act, it is all too easy to lose control of one's thoughts. That is why those who knew more about the occult side of life veiled this area in symbolism – and in many symbols. And it seems to have been left to the crude materialism of our time to destroy the sacred symbols with clumsy hands, so as not to point out that there are sacred, high realms, and that the lowest of these realms, which is to be sought for us humans - the most particular case - is the realm of the sexual. It seems as if today's crude materialism, with its clumsy, foolish hands, was destined to start from this area and declare the high, sacred areas to be reinterpreted in terms of the sexual area, as you have just seen with Boldt. Things are bad in this area, but we should not be surprised if immature minds are confused by the way things are treated in a literature that is increasingly flooding over us – I have to keep saying it over and over again.

It would be good to call upon history for help here too, and I would like to refer to a book, although I would like to make it clear that I do not agree with some of the nonsense in it. This is a reference to the “Memories and Discussions” that Moritz Benedikt wrote in his book “From My Life”, which was first published in Vienna in 1906. Moritz Benedikt is a gentleman who has grown old and has experienced a lot in terms of the development of scientific life in recent decades; from this point of view, it is extremely interesting to read the book. I would like to quote a passage where Moritz Benedikt talks about his visit to Florence. This visit took place in the 70s of the nineteenth century, which is worth noting. He writes

In Florence, I naturally made personal acquaintances this time, and the most valuable, with whom I maintained contact during visits to Florence and elsewhere, were Mantegazza and Moritz Schiff. Mantegazza was and is a very imposing figure; he instinctively recalled imposing Italian model baritones for the role of Don Juan. He is a master of the art of living. Florence owes its magnificent anthropological and ethnographic museum to this brilliant anthropologist. Mantegazza, who is a witty scientific psychologist, also wrote novels, and the hero of one of them is tuberculosis. His book “Gli amori dei uomini” has become the most popular, having been translated into all languages. No publisher wanted to be named, and the motto “Honny soit qui mal y pense” was emblazoned on the title page.

At that time, no publisher wanted to be named; today it is different!

I reproached him once and told him that I was one of those Honny etc. Mantegazza's book is the most original, ingenious and learned among its peers. But this topic should not be treated in a popular way. Mantegazza apologized to me with the fact that his salary was 5,000 lire without any other academic income. He therefore had to publish a lot, and in such a way that it would bring him a considerable income.

Here you have one of the causes of the sources that confuse our immature minds.

The French forensic psychologists have often and insistently dealt with this topic in the past without causing a scandal, and the same applies to a book by Tarnowsky in St. Petersburg; these authors wrote only for specialist circles.

The literature on sexual perversions grew later, and only British scholars refused to compete, making no secret of their indignation against such authors. When the well-known book by Krafft-Ebing appeared, Hack-Tuke told me that the committee of the British Medico-Psychological Association wanted to propose that the Vienna colleague be deprived of his honorary membership.

In the 1870s, the committee of the British Medico-Psychological Association wanted to propose withdrawing Krafft-Ebing's honorary membership because of his book.

I talked them out of it. I said that Krafft-Ebing had certainly written the book in good faith; he could not have known how far its content would penetrate into young people and even into girls' schools, and I could spare the man the shame. Of course, when the effect became clear, he should not have allowed further editions to be published. Today, the pupils of “higher girls' schools” are more enlightened about these topics of sexual perversity than we were as young doctors, and often I feel like introducing corporal punishment for those “emancipated” teachers who promote such enlightenment.

This was written in 1906 by the truly important criminal anthropologist Moritz Benedikt: that young doctors were recently less enlightened in certain matters than female students at secondary schools for girls are now! Apart from everything else, it seems that it might be better if those who profess such things turn to secondary schools for girls, since they do not want to be a convent, a Salvation Army or a girls' boarding school . No, you see, not even the comparison with the “girls' boarding school” applies, because these are indeed something like higher girls' schools; because according to Moritz Benedikt, you could find things there. So it would be very difficult to get out of the contradictions, which you have to get into if you are put in the position of having to talk about these things.

It would be taking this topic far too far if I wanted to expand it even further in the way I would like to. I just wanted to show you, so to speak, that in such a case we are dealing with people whose minds have been made confused, and we should not be surprised. For there is a broad trend of pseudoscience, and a broad trend, made by scientific authorities – who they really are. For Mantegazza is also a scientific authority, and it is fair to say that Florence owes its Anthropological Institute to him. But that is precisely the sad thing, that today's world has brought it about that all such institutes are in the hands of people who can handle so little true scientific methodology. And we ask ourselves: Should we allow this practice to enter our circles? Or is it not precisely our task to seriously oppose such practice? I think that in relation to this question, no one could actually be in doubt! Anyone who looks through what exists as “sexual literature” today will unfortunately only find this problem discussed in the most pseudo-scientific sense. I often had to drive in the car these days; but I could see from the car “lectures on sexual problems” etc. advertised on the notice boards. Just look at a single notice board: That is the topic of sexuality today, which is popular, which is popular. You can't say that by discussing this topic you are doing something unpopular; oh no, you can rather make yourself “unpopular” if you avoid the topic.

What have I actually wanted to say with all such things? I wanted to say first of all that we have a great need in these matters to see everything in the clear light – to see in the clear light that people like Mr. Ernst Boldt and like Casimir Zawadzki, who was mentioned to them the day before yesterday, including – I don't want to exclude him either – Hans Freimark, are basically poor fellows, pity the poor fellows who also want to write something; and because they have learned too little, they choose what is easiest to write about today – firstly because it is popular and people don't pay attention to the mistakes, and secondly because it is a field in which you can fool people about anything. Just read the second part of our friend Levy's book, the part that refers to Freimark's sexual literature. Basically, one can have nothing but pity for all these people; they can only evoke the feeling: How sad it is what can happen to immature souls today! And if it were not absolutely necessary to point out clearly everywhere where the fruits of what I have characterized emerge – because otherwise the nonsense takes hold – one would remain silent for the sake of these poor seduced people , for the sake of these poor people who also want to write something because they have not learned a trade in life either, one would remain silent for the sake of these poor people - and silently pass over such stuff.

We cannot do that. It is our duty to spread light and truth about things. It is our duty to emphasize that we will never allow ourselves to be forced to talk about this or that - we will not allow ourselves to be forced by anything other than our conviction, which is based on the truth. And how much and in what way I will ever speak about these things, I will make dependent only on my conviction - not on what authorities or immature minds find contemporary.

I understand the compassion and the feeling that one can have for such people. Therefore, I am not surprised that I received the following letter this morning; because I already said yesterday: I consider a person like Mr. Boldt to be honest – like Sophie in The Purple, the one hero of whom she says: “At least he is honest; he” – I will not repeat the word – “characterizes himself clearly enough.” I do not think Mr. Boldt is dishonest; I even subjectively grant him every good will. But where will we end up if we do not shine the light of truth on these things? Do we think we would silently accept a statement in a brochure that “Dr. Steiner has to don all kinds of masks and hides the truth”? What a treasure trove of information for anyone who wants to write new brochures about us! Should we then encourage this? Oh, I believe there are truly souls who would have preferred it if all these things had not been spoken about; and we could have experienced it that there would be all kinds of articles and brochures out there again, and even more so with the expression: “You see, this is said by a man who, even as one of the most loyal followers of Dr. Steiner, publicly professes it! What more could you want?"

I, my dear friends, want more! I want what I always want: not to be revered on the basis of authority, but to be understood! And if I am characterized as Mr. Boldt characterized me in his pamphlet “Theosophy or Anti-Theosophy?”, then, if one continues to speak of worship, one must have the most blind worship of authority and the most blind submission to authority. I thank you very much for such a belief in authority; I do not want it! Because I do not want any belief in authority! Again an example of how people who act in this way in the name of non-authoritarian belief are in harmony with themselves. So I understand a letter like the one I received this morning, instructing me to read the following to the General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society:

My dear fellow thinkers!

Since it is unfortunately not possible for me to attend the General Assembly, I would like to take the liberty of responding in writing to the brochure by Ernst Boldt, which has been discussed several times here in the last lodge evenings. I cannot fully share the position taken towards the author of this pamphlet, although I too am of the opinion that the way in which Boldt presents his case is boorish with regard to the leading ladies, and therefore naturally has to be offensive. Unfortunately, he has only robbed himself of the success of his pamphlet, which contains many good things.

But even if, as I said, the form is nothing short of commendable, it does not seem to me to be sufficient reason to expel Mr. Boldt from our society, as requested; and I think that Theosophists in particular should be able to give credit to a youthful fire spirit and hothead. In any case, they are not the most dangerous opponents (insofar as one can speak of opposition at all here) who openly and honestly express their opinions, and if one wanted to exclude such people immediately, the necessary consequence of this would be to foster dishonesty on the one hand and a lack of critical thinking on the other. And surely we cannot want that!? If Dr. Steiner himself repeatedly calls on his followers to be unsparing in their criticism, then he found this fully compatible with the principle of having trust in his teaching and leadership, and I therefore cannot find the accusation that the booklet contains an insult to Dr. Steiner justified. On the contrary! Even the most cursory glance at it must make everyone realize what a high opinion the author has of Dr. Steiner despite his criticism. I feel obliged to say that I know Mr. Boldt to be one of the most enthusiastic and loyal supporters of the Theosophical movement, and that he always speaks with the greatest reverence and warmth for Dr. Steiner in regard to all the enemies of our great cause. In the good faith that this expression of opinion will not be held against me, I am

Theosophical greetings
Your humble
Ferdinand Freiherr von Paungarten
Munich, January 18, 1914.

As I said, I can understand such a mood - for the reason that people are not inclined everywhere to look into what is important. We must have the deepest, most earnest compassion for all the poor people who are seduced by what I have characterized; and finally: we should always dive down into the depths of existence. Here I would like to ask a question that may perhaps touch on the grotesque: is it really so very important whether people are ultimately outside or inside the Anthroposophical Society? Is it really so essential that we always reflect on the negative sides of these things? Perhaps we would achieve something if we took a more positive view of things!

My dear friends, the mistakes that are made are usually in completely different areas than where you look for them. But let us gradually learn to look for the mistakes in the right area. That is why we have to consciously make mistakes in our task. People may come into our circles for two reasons. One reason will be that these people are able representatives of our cause, and that they in turn want to stand up for this cause before the world. That is all well and good; we need not say any more about this reason. But on the other hand, there is another reason: people come to us who, above all, want to get from us what one can get in a spiritual movement today. We must give it to them; we must give it to them under all conditions, because we are obliged to do so. And even if some of them cause us trouble afterwards, we must give it to them; we cannot simply exclude everyone. Nevertheless, we never make the main mistakes when we exclude people, but we do make them – and we have to make them – when we admit people by accepting this or that person. Once people are inside, it doesn't matter much whether we let them in or put them out. That is not the point. What is important is that we present our case in a positive way. It is important that when someone on the outside, of the kind who fabricates their brochures against me, writes: “He is a hypocrite who only says what the 75 percent of members want to hear,” that the members point out the factual reasons why such a book has not been recommended in our Anthroposophical Society. Our members should point out that we know what we are doing and that we also know how to behave in the right way towards “fashionable science” because we know that it is a pseudo-science, an inferior science, that we do not want to propagate. Let us separate the matter from the personalities altogether! Let us try to do this. If we act in this way in public, when the public approaches us, as has been attempted, and if we derive all the writing from the whole structure of an inferior pseudo-science, if we give these things the necessary dismissal because of their unscientific nature - out of a higher scientific nature - when they knock at our doors, then we have fulfilled our duty, our impersonal positive duty. Let us change the negative approach in this case to a positive one.

Vollrath's case was completely different from Boldt's. And I would regret it if this difference had not been discovered. An honest, stubborn man with a bit of megalomania, seduced by what I have tried to characterize, comes to us in Mr. Boldt - seduced by what we must fight against in the most severe way. Not only today - we must always stand up with our whole personality when it comes to taking action against these things. But we need to know how we stand as an Anthroposophical Society! To do this, we need to know a number of things. For example, we need to know: How does the Society relate to the fact that the two Munich ladies who form the board of the first Munich branch initially did not display the announcement of Boldv's book and did not promote the book? That is how the matter began. We know from the letters that our esteemed and dear director Sellin was taken ill for speaking his mind to the young man. That is the matter. And we heard yesterday from director Sellin that he has also told the young man his opinion about the book before. Yesterday we heard from this place that Mr. Boldt's “Philosophical Theosophical Publishing House” was asked to take this book on commission. Miss Mücke rejected this with indignation. I also believe that Miss Mücke objected to the fact that someone was asking her to take this book on commission.

I will pick out these four examples; but there is one thing we need to know about these four things if we want to achieve something positive in this area. We can ignore Mr. Boldt, as we have ignored him so far. But we do need to know whether what is happening is happening in the interests of our members. We need to know where the dividing line lies between the 75 percent and the 25 percent who are clenching their fists in their pockets. Clarity and truth must prevail!

It is not without reason that I have asked not to be something like I was before, when I was limited as “General Secretary” of the section in terms of submitting proposals and the like because I was General Secretary. You have indeed elected me as the chairman of this meeting; but this only applies to this meeting; it is a purely administrative office that has nothing to do with the Society as such. In relation to the Society, I am a private individual, and I am therefore allowed to make proposals now.

I would now like to make a proposal that puts us on positive ground with regard to this point, which we have talked about so much. I cannot go into all the details of the many excellent things that people have said here; I have only set four “examples”. And I believe we must now ask ourselves the question: How should the two Munich ladies have acted when in 1911 the pretender approached them to propagate the cause and to lay out the announcement? — They should have acted as they did! And our conversation will surely have shown that they acted correctly. But one must know how society thinks about it.

Our friend, Director Sellin, did the right thing when he went to the man and made him aware of his immaturity. I am convinced that Mr. Sellin has the deepest compassion for the deeply honest Mr. Boldt.

And Miss Mücke certainly has nothing against Mr. Boldt's personality; she is probably indifferent to it. She has expressed her indignant rejection of the brochure for factual reasons.

But all these are manifestations of the will of individuals. It is important that we clarify our position on such matters, that we put the positive above all else in relation to this matter. Therefore, I would like to ask you to consider the following proposal:

The General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society, which has been meeting in Berlin since January 18, 1914, declares to the Executive Council of the Working Group I in Munich that it is in full agreement with the latter's attitude towards the 1911 essay “Sexual Problems in the Light of Natural Science and Spiritual Science” by Ernst Boldt 1911 – that after the negotiations that have been conducted on widespread pseudo-science of the present day, it has come to the conclusion that it is in the interest of truly spiritual cultural interest to protect such a position of the two board members by the fullest confidence of the General Assembly. This trust and the recognition for the rejection at the time is expressed to the board of the Working Group I in Munich, as is the same to Director Sellin for his fatherly advice, which he gave to those who were going astray scientifically in the past and are doing so again - The assembly expresses its agreement with the rejection of the brochure “Theosophy or Antisophy?” by Miss Mücke, the director of the “Philosophical Theosophical Publishing House”.

My dear friends, those of you who will adopt this resolution will have expressed in a positive way how you feel about these matters – and need do no more than continue what has been done so far in relation to this matter.

The “resolution” will be read again in the above version.

Dr. Steiner: If we adopt this resolution, then we will know how the matter is viewed, and we will also have addressed the right people. Because it will gradually become more and more necessary that those who have to act in our society can also know whether or not they have the confidence of the members; otherwise it will always be repeated that one - well, that one “elects” the people again, but everywhere this or that is “rumored” here and there. It does no harm if we occasionally express to those who have offices to administer that we agree with them. It does no harm if we occasionally openly confess it to the world. I would not want to fail to explicitly express to Mr. Boldt that I am personally extremely sorry that the whole thing happened to him, and that I can put myself in the shoes of someone who has read too much confusing stuff and then comes to such arguments as the good man has done.

Since no one wishes to speak about this resolution, we will vote on it: It is adopted without any opposing votes.

Dr. Steiner: And this time it is necessary that I also ask those who voted neither for nor against, who thus sat with clenched fists in their pockets both times, who thus belong to the 25 percent of Mr. Boldt's group, to raise their hands.

No one raises their hand.

Dr. Steiner: I must therefore note that no one from the 25 percent has appeared here. Of course, what we have decided here regarding the Boldt proposal in no way prejudices the decision of the Munich Working Group I. The group is autonomous and can do as it wishes. We have only decided for the “Anthroposophical Society”.

Ms. Stinde: The Munich group has not yet made any decision. It is true that a motion for expulsion was tabled, but I suggested waiting until after the General Assembly and then putting the motion forward again because many members had not even read the brochure. I asked that the brochure be made available so that everyone could inform themselves and take a stand when we returned. Mr. Boldt has not yet been expelled, and it is up to the Munich group to decide whether or not they want to expel him. I said at the time that we would quietly accept the insults that Mr. Boldt had poured out on the board in his brochure, that he could write many more such writings, and that the members probably think the same way and therefore would not expel him yet. The reason why expulsion was requested was the gross insults against Dr. Steiner, and on this point we do not yet know what will happen. - I would also like to thank you for the trust that has been expressed to us. But I have to say: even if you had not approved us - we could not have acted differently than we did.

Mrs. Peelen: In his last document, Mr. Boldt pointed out that the Koblenz Lodge had recommended its members to buy his book. This is only half the truth; and because it could be construed as an indictment of the Munich ladies' actions, I feel compelled to say a few words on the matter.

Mr. Boldt's father had been a member of the Koblenz lodge for years. He honored us, my husband and me, with his trust and told us a lot about his—we may say—unfortunate son, who also caused him serious concern in terms of his health. So we had to bear with him and also learned from him that his son was working on a larger work. He also read us letters from him in which the son wrote in detail about his work and also mentioned what we had just heard: that Dr. Steiner himself had told him to wait another ten years before publishing, because he was still too young. In short, we followed the creation of the book with our father and shared in his suffering. Now the book was published. Naturally, our father brought it to us beaming with joy, so to speak, and immediately gave it to the lodge as a gift. We had not read the book, knew nothing of its content, nor did we know that Mr. Boldt – as he used the expression – had been “boycotted”, so to speak. But when our father put the book on the table, I felt it necessary to say a few words about it. Mr. Boldt probably took this the wrong way and repeated it as a half-truth, as if we had recommended his book to the members. But none of our members have read the book; it is still untouched in the library to this day.

Director Sellin: I would like to take the liberty of following up on Ms Stinde's comments: I did not simply make a general request for expulsion, but rather I gave Mr. Boldt the opportunity to withdraw his insults. Exclusion was made dependent on this. In the preface to his brochure, Mr. Boldt then said that if this writing did not receive the proper recognition, he would incorporate it into a larger work. That is a threat. Therefore, a somewhat forceful approach had to be taken. This took the form of him having to take back what he had said. Dr. Steiner is quite right when he says that I personally have nothing against Mr. Boldt. Mr. Boldt is ill and suffers from lung disease; I have the warmest sympathy for him. And when he suffered so severely this summer, I often went to him and helped him with my modest healing powers. He also said that I had brought him some relief. And during the conversation in question, I did not speak in a frivolous manner, but I calmly told him what he had done wrong. I also said to him, because he constantly quotes Nietzsche: “Leave us alone with your quotations. It sounds as if Nietzsche were the supreme theosophist for us, to whom we have to look up!” I told him many bitter things, for example: “If I had received such a manuscript earlier in my position as editor, it would have gone straight into the wastepaper basket!” But I told him this in a very calm manner. Now that he has heard this judgment, he may now reflect. He will gradually realize that he will not find any support in our society with his fantasies about sexual problems.

Dr. Steiner: It is clear that in this case we really have to stand on the ground that is appropriate for a spiritual scientific movement. I did not say in vain that Mr. Boldt is no different today than he has always been since he has been with us, that he will not be a different person when he is inside or outside - just as Zawadzki was exactly the same when he was still in the Society; he was no different than he is now that he is outside. Of course, he writes differently now than he would write if he were in society; but that doesn't matter, he is not a different person. But we should pay a little attention to the nature of the human soul; that is what matters. And if you consider that over the years a great deal has been done to help Mr. Boldt, to give him advice in a wide variety of directions, so that if the young man waited ten years and learned in those ten years what he had not yet learned while writing his book, then he could really believe that he would achieve something. I really believed at the time that after ten years he would regret – I did not say that lightly – having written such a thing, because he would have learned something.

When you consider this, why should we today have to exclude from society someone who behaves in this way? This case is quite different from those in which we have resorted to something else in the past. So I believe that we should refrain from excluding Mr. Boldt. And if in the future he attaches importance to participating with the girls' boarding schools, Salvation Army and convents in what he calls “the fruits of spiritual science,” I believe that we will enable him to do so with the same love as we have done so far. But if he comes at us again with his writing in the future, we will be able to draw some conclusions from these negotiations after what we have experienced.

Mr. Bauer reads the following resolution:

The Second General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society rejects with indignation the way in which Mr. Boldt has spoken about Dr. Steiner in his brochure “Theosophy or Anti-Theosophy?” as a serious insult to both Dr. Steiner and the Society.

Mr. Bauer: If trust has already been expressed to those who have worked positively, then something positive should also be expressed on our part – which could perhaps be poured into other forms – about how we stand in relation to Dr. Steiner regarding the insults heaped upon him in this brochure through the quotations and the whole way of presenting them. So the intention of this resolution was to achieve a kind of rallying cry, to show how we stand before and after - and even more so after - with complete trust and loyalty to the teacher of our movement.

Dr. Steiner: I think we need to have variety in our negotiations, and I do not think it is appropriate to take up all the time with one part. Therefore, we now want to insert something else and postpone the business negotiations until tomorrow morning.

The conclusion of the protocol will follow in the next issue of the messages.

Mr. Bauer: I have to declare that the resolution that our last meeting decided on has been withdrawn and that a new resolution is being introduced. Before we move on to this, it will be necessary to read out a letter that was submitted to the board:

The motion that Mr. Bauer brought to the meeting regarding his resolution arose from the quite correct feeling that the vote of confidence put forward by his opposite number needed to be supplemented. But the term 'indignation' no longer seems appropriate to me from the perspective from which we have been willing to look at the matter in accordance with Dr. Steiner's last remarks. Indignation is too much the expression of personal feelings colored by affect, but we wanted to separate the personal from the factual.

The following is an attempt to formulate what could be communicated to Mr. Boldt as the result of the negotiations, without, however, anticipating the motion for a circular letter. The first ordinary General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society considers it its duty to express its strongest disapproval to Mr. Ernst Boldt for the way he has proceeded and behaved, as documented in the brochure “Theosophy or Anti- ?» and the associated correspondence, because it sees in it a profound misjudgment and denial of the spirit that it is the Society's responsibility to cultivate and bring to living expression. If it is content with this protest and refrains from expelling Mr. Boldt from its ranks, it is because it is convinced of his good and Christian intentions, recognizes him as being under the disastrous influence of a rejects as dishonest and pseudoscientific and does not want to deprive him of the opportunity to internalize the spiritual knowledge given to him as long as he still desires it. But it leaves it to him to take a stand on the question of his remaining in society in real self-determination, as this society must expect from its members that they are willing in sincere striving to by the spirit of holy truthfulness and purity, which has not yet been expressed in the aforementioned brochure or in the book that precedes it (Sexual Problems in the Light of Natural and Spiritual Science).

Signed Mathilde Redenbacher

The new resolution that has been tabled is perhaps best read at the same time as this letter. It reads:

The second General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society further declares [gap in the transcript]

This “further” is intended to immediately follow the expression of confidence

[Gap in the transcript] the leadership of Dr. Steiner.

Dr. Steiner: If I may say something about this, I would like to say: Since it cannot be strictly said that our “announcements” are not read here or there, it seems to me to be questionable to resolution here – for the reason that it would really be better if it did not express what can so easily be misunderstood when the words 'leadership' and 'management' are used in a resolution. Why can't it be expressed in a way that takes into account the “agreement” and the conviction that one is in the right in representing these things? It is not necessary for a society to choose words that can be misunderstood at every turn in today's world, as it is. Of course, they are not bad words as such. But in our time, when everyone emphasizes their absolute freedom from all authority, loudly and with great emphasis, in order to conceal the fact that they are in fact pursuing the very opposite, it is not wise to repeatedly provide points of attack on all sides.

Mr. von Rainer: May I just say a word that may follow from what I said the day before yesterday. I would just like to preface it with something else. I heard that out in the world, where many things are going on, people have also come to the conclusion that resolutions are not that effective. So they passed a resolution somewhere that they no longer want to pass resolutions. Perhaps we should take this as a model, although we should not otherwise take what happens outside as a model. And let's go one step further: instead of passing a resolution, maybe we should make the decision: let us write what Dr. Steiner said yesterday into our hearts, that we want to understand him!

Dr. Unger: Allow me to respond in just a few words by saying that what Mr. von Rainer said would also affect the already adopted resolution if one did not want to adopt a resolution at all. On the other hand, it should perhaps be borne in mind that it is necessary to record the sentiments of the present General Assembly in a protocol-like manner, so that the minutes in the “Mitteilungen” can be used to show even in later years that the General Assembly knew what it wanted at a crucial moment.

Miss von Sivers proposes that the decision on this resolution be postponed, because it is not possible to vote on it so suddenly; instead, time must be allowed to consider the wording of the resolution.

The proposal to postpone the resolution is adopted.

Dr. Steiner: A proposal signed by Dr. Emil Grosheintz [and Joseph Englert] has been submitted:

Dornach, Christmas 1913

To the Second General Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society. The undersigned, firmly convinced that Dr. Steiner's almost constant presence in Dornach is absolutely necessary in the near future if the completion of the Johannesbau is not to be dangerously delayed and its execution damaged, and the most vital interests of our movement are to be put at risk, we hereby make the following request: The Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society should, as far as possible, request all branches to which Dr. Steiner has promised to give lectures to drop their respective claims.

Dr. Emil Grosheintz
Chairman of the Johannesbauverein and
Leader of the construction conferences in Dornach
Joseph Englert
Engineer for the building work on the Johannesbau

Mr. von Polzer-Hoditz: I believe that we cannot actually make any direct “demands” regarding lectures by Dr. Steiner, and that on the other hand we cannot do without them for people

we do not know whether they will come. I think that everyone will be very happy when Dr. Steiner comes to a city and gives lectures - despite the difficulties of the work on the Johannesbau. And I think that we will then also find it right. On the other hand, if Dr. Steiner is wanted somewhere where he is accustomed to going and then refrains from going, I believe that the Anthroposophists there will also be glad if he refrains, because then it will also be the right thing to do. Therefore, we can leave it to Dr. Steiner to decide whether he wants to go somewhere or not, and therefore I propose that we close the debate on this proposal and move on to the next item on the agenda.

Dr. Steiner: Allow me to say a few words about this. In view of the fact that the Johannesbau is to be completed this winter, or by the end of the first half of 1914, if at all possible, we must always expect to face two difficulties at present. One is to advance the Johannesbau as quickly as possible. These are difficulties that have been emphasized often enough. On the other hand, we are faced with the difficulty that the further our spiritual movement progresses, the more the opposing voices emerge from the most diverse angles. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to remain silent in public, especially in the near future. I believe that you will all feel that it would not be good to remain silent in public now. It must be said that we must refrain from giving up the lectures already planned for the public and the follow-up events in the individual locations. What is planned for the public must be accomplished this winter. We cannot foresee this under the current conditions. You will also understand that new engagements for lectures cannot be taken on for the time being; in particular, you will understand that specific dates cannot be set for a long time. If someone comes to us today with requests for lectures or the like, we unfortunately have to say: perhaps it will be possible to attend here or there, but the timing cannot be fixed because it cannot be predicted when the most urgent work will be in Dornach and we will have to be there. It could be, therefore, if the members could quickly make arrangements with regard to these or those inconveniences, that something could still come of it for the future. We must therefore take the given conditions into account. But what could really be improved to a high degree is that, for the next few months, understanding could be shown wherever I go with regard to private meetings. The Johannesbau is truly not something that can be dealt with just by standing here or there on this or that corner. Things have to be done. And it takes a lot of time to get them done. In this respect, it is really quite difficult to reach an understanding. Because of course you can understand when someone says to you, “I don't have the opportunity to see anyone this afternoon,” and when the person in question then says, “But I only have to take two minutes of your time,” not considering that these two minutes could be just as much of a burden as an hour because you are completely torn away from an ongoing task.

I will be available if something is necessary, but a little understanding could be shown in this regard. This cannot be achieved by a resolution, not by a motion, but only if the members show understanding for the matter, and this understanding spreads a little. A great deal can be done, especially in one direction, for example when our members, who can do a great deal, approach others with helpfulness when someone needs human help. And if many others also develop understanding, a great deal will be achieved in this direction. The relief of private conversations, private discussions and the insight in this regard is desirable. Perhaps this cannot be achieved by submitting an application; but a great deal can be achieved through understanding and cooperation.

We all have a certain responsibility towards the Johannesbau. Please bear in mind that our members have provided the funds for the construction with great love and devotion. It must not be built carelessly. It must truly become what we envision. But this is only possible if we do not divert too much manpower from the cause.

I think it was necessary to add this before we decide on anything.

The motion “Adjournment” is adopted without any opposing votes.

Fräulein Scholl: I would like to make the following request today with regard to the decision made yesterday that the adopted resolution should also be printed in a special place in the “Mitteilungen” on a perforated slip of paper with the request that members not present here should still give their special consent as to whether they agree with it. I believe that it is really not necessary to carry this out in order to convince the two ladies of the Munich Lodge of the trust they have in you. There would be a lot of correspondence attached to it, and based on past experience, one can conclude that there would be a lot of unpleasant correspondence, but it would lead nowhere. Then there is also the fact that the whole thing would be yet another advertisement for Mr. Boldt's brochure. Therefore, I believe that it would be more correct not to implement this decision and I propose that it be rescinded.

Speaking in favor of the adoption of this proposal: Director Sellin, Mr. Gantenbein, Baron Walleen, Ms. von Sivers and Countess Kalckreuth. The proposal is adopted; thus the decision that was taken at the request of Ms. Waller is annulled.

Ms. Wolfram: I would like to make a motion. We have all felt to a sufficient extent how we have all been under the tyranny of a young, immature person for the past few days. Now, I think that something should be decided that can serve as a protective barrier to prevent such things from happening again at the next general assembly: I have had the opportunity to talk to all the members of the board about this, which I will now propose.

If any of our members wishes to make a proposal to the General Assembly, that member would first have to submit this proposal four weeks before the General Assembly, since we know approximately when the General Assembly will take place, so that there is time to consider how to respond to this proposal. If this motion had perhaps been submitted to Boldt four weeks before the General Assembly, Dr. Steiner would have chosen a different topic for his lecture, as you yourselves have heard.

I then request that any member who wishes to submit a motion must ensure that they find seven members and three members of the board who declare their solidarity with this motion. In this way, it could no longer be said that it was a passing opinion, but rather that a very specific group was behind the responsibility for such a proposal. One should not object that it would be a difficult measure to demand.

If the proposal is really worth bringing before our forum, then seven members and three board members will be found without much difficulty who are inclined to support it. If it is not possible to find seven colleagues and three board members among the 3600 members of the Anthroposophical Society despite diligent efforts, then the matter is not worth bringing before our forum. And one should not object that someone who lives in isolation does not know enough members. We have the Reichspost, after all. A proposal to be discussed here must be one that does not just flash through someone's mind, but is the result of conscientious and thorough consideration. And if the proposal is valuable enough, everyone will have the opportunity to find like-minded members with the help of a few stamps and some paper. This requirement for a group of ten members to support a motion will serve as a kind of safeguard against frivolous motions. It might be easy to find seven members to support a less than recommendable proposal to the General Assembly; for example, there could be seven members who have only recently joined the movement and are therefore not yet well informed about the significance of the movement. Therefore, it is good if three members of the board can be found who, as older members, have had the opportunity to become clear about the goals of the movement.

If you consider all this, you will not be able to say that too much is being asked. An equivalent must be created for the work and energy expended in examining a proposal; this equivalent must be that the proposal is worth the time and energy we spend on it. So the proposal should read:

Anyone who wishes to submit something to the General Assembly must have the signatures of seven members and three members of the board attached to their proposal, regardless of whether these three members of the board belong to one or different lodges. In addition, the proposal must be submitted in good time, four weeks – or at least three weeks – before the General Assembly.

And then I would like to propose something else. Do we still have to “propose” it, or are we not already aware of its necessity as a result of all the painful hours we have been through? If I have to formulate it as a proposal, it would read: I propose that the General Council of the Anthroposophical Society be joyfully granted the right to throw motions that are unsuitable into the wastepaper basket at the council meeting preceding the general meeting. Nothing should be kept secret. Rather, if you give us the right to the wastepaper basket, a summary would be presented to you on the day of the General Assembly that – I hope you will assume – has been prepared in the most lawful manner. This would properly inform you of the quintessence of the proposal and why we threw it in the wastepaper basket, and not the slightest thing would be kept secret. I think one would have to concede that to an executive committee that one has voluntarily elected.

Mrs. von Ulrich: I am of the opinion that the first motion is difficult in that a motion can contain something very important that is not yet known, and then the person making the motion can be a person who does not have the opportunity to find so many people to sign the matter. The four-week deadline is probably necessary, because ill-considered proposals need time to mature. I am in favor of these proposals, although I believe that the second proposal would cancel the first.

Ms. Wolfram: It seems to me that the latter is not the case, because a lot of work would be saved if motion I is adopted. Perhaps the following could be added to the wording: If someone does not have the option of finding ten people to support them, they should contact the board as a whole so that they can take on the motion. I am very happy to do this, for example.

Mr. No[vJak: This extensive motion concerns various matters, first of all the following: Would it then even be possible to submit a written motion three weeks in advance? Or would it still be possible to submit motions arising from the proceedings during the General Assembly? But there is something else I would like to mention. I feel that the time we spent dealing with this first topic was not entirely wasted. The infinitely valuable comments of various personalities have clarified things that are of great value for our work as a whole. We can even say that a gift has been given to us!

If we judge the work only by what large groups do, then many questions fall away. But where groups are just forming, certain teething troubles keep cropping up. Everything that is certain to correspond to the present time is emerging today in an alarming way. Not only from a side that calls itself “scientific”, but also from a side that calls itself “artistic”, what we have just discussed and rejected is being brought into our work; so that those who faithfully stand by and represent the views we want have the most incredible difficulties.

When what is discussed here appears in the “Mitteilungen” – which has and must have an infinite value for the beginning of work – the Society has documented what we are working on and need to work on; and we will then easily be able to reject something that may come to us with the best of intentions. So what we have achieved and spent time on has really been well spent. And if any motion in the future is as important as this one, and we receive an equally generous gift in return for negotiating in this way, then this will also have a positive impact on our work. If there are any small, trivial motions, the general assembly will deal with them in no time. I am not opposed in principle to the extended board being granted the right to deal with certain proposals within its own sphere of influence and then to submit them in the summary with the resolution. On the contrary, that would be one way of solving it. But I cannot agree with only seeing something negative and obstructive in such proposals as they have been put forward; because everything that appears to be negative is always transformed into something positive by the purpose of our work and by the way in which this work is guided by our teacher.

Mr. Kühne: I would like to go back to what the previous speaker said and note: If Mrs. Wolfram's motion is adopted in this way, then motions from the General Assembly itself would be excluded. But it should be possible for motions from the General Assembly itself to be admissible; otherwise, no more motions could be made during the proceedings.

Fräulein von Sivers: We have certainly had the opportunity to learn many new things, but the tiresome Vollrath affair is still fresh in our minds. Perhaps the whole thing is not quite as strict as it has been proposed. Because if someone cannot name seven members and get them to support their proposal, then the proposal really will not be that important. This year's proposal was truly a source of new wisdom for us; but we have seen other proposals that were just an attempt to drive a wedge into our society. We know that since the Munich Congress in 1907, where we appeared independently for the first time, it was decided to drive a wedge into our work! And since then, everyone who wanted to assert themselves out of morbid vanity and self-love has been supported. We are now in the seventh year of our independent work; perhaps it is the receding waves that are making themselves felt. But we have had to experience the direct intention to disrupt our work and the existence of proposals that arose from this intention. It could be a protection for the past seven years and also for future work if the proposals are accepted.

Perhaps one board member is enough instead of three, or perhaps another mode can be found to address the proposals, because certain proposals in the past years only wasted time.

The negotiations will be suspended at two o'clock; they will be continued on Thursday, January 22, at ten o'clock in the morning.

Dr. Steiner: If things had not gone as they went, the course of the general assembly would have been quite different; we would have come to completely different things earlier. But it is quite good for our members to have to get an idea of how it is done, if you absolutely have to make the affairs of the company your own, and how it is still possible - if you don't encourage the customs of the outside world to be carried into our circles, just as you can carry pseudo-science into them. You may know that if you want to stop any proper work in parliaments, you have the system of “urgency motions”. If you use this system appropriately, you can paralyze all other work. There is no other way: since we have stopped at a certain point, I must also bring to your attention everything that has happened during the proceedings. If we had dealt with these matters earlier, they would have arrived too late.

So, before I get back to the agenda, I have to read out some letters that have arrived:

[Gap in the handwriting]

Miss von Sivers: As a representative of Mr. Horst von Henning, who is the one forming the attacked party here, I would like to say a few words in his defense. Because it is quite clear from Mr. von Henning's letters that these are not contradictions, but rather that he, after perhaps standing for a while under other mind suggestions, has now found the courage to say: A few years ago he thought differently than he does now. - So first of all, he thinks differently about the meaning of the matter. But now it is also clear, after he wrote a letter to Mr. Boldt in the first instance – which is included in the brochure – that Mr. Boldt interpreted the words more in his favor than Mr. von Henning intended. The same is also evident from the letter of Mr. Deinhard, who says that it was only a very fleeting remark, which, made fleeting, hardly contained any recognition. Then it further emerges from the letters of Mr. von Henning that he attaches importance to the fact that he absolutely condemns exerting even the slightest pressure in this direction on the resolution of our great teacher.

But Mr. Boldt wants that because we have not taken sufficient interest in his cause. Mr. von Henning objects above all to coercion and then says that he has never given the importance that Mr. Boldt ascribes to his own writing.

Mrs. Wolfram: I would first like to draw attention to something that is clear from Mr. Boldt's letter that was just read out. In this general assembly, no one had a different opinion than we did, as was made visible by the show of hands. How is it possible that Mr. Boldt suddenly knows that it is necessary to send another letter? One might ask: how did Mr. Boldt have contact with this general assembly? This raises the question: He finds it necessary to do a little more than before – through what contact from here to Munich did he get this impulse? You will see from this that it might be a good idea after all if my request were approved, so that from the outset we would be dealing with a request from a group, not from a single individual.

I would like to respond to what Mr. Novak said. It certainly cannot be denied that we have been able to learn an infinite amount through the Boldt case in this General Assembly. But perhaps we could have learned in a different way if Dr. Steiner had not been forced to talk about this.

Then I would like to point out that my motion was not so much about eliminating motions that are factually unfounded, but rather about eliminating motions that are presented to us in an utterly unqualifiable way. I would like to emphasize that it goes without saying that the point is not to reject any problem as “impossible to address”. If Mr. Boldt had presented the motion to us in a dignified, respectful, and proper manner: “I would like to know how the General Assembly or Dr. Steiner stands on the sexual problem,” I would have signed this motion with pleasure. Any motion can be signed if it is presented in a proper, objective manner.

Once again, I would like to ask you to consider, if possible, how much time we have lost despite everything we have learned, through discussions that have arisen not from the problem itself but from the improper way in which the motion was put forward, the impertinence of which is unparalleled.

Dr. Steiner: I would like to note that the letters I have read could just as easily belong to the Wolfram motion, which we are supposed to deal with now. In response to what has just been said, I would like to note that the words spoken by Ms. Wolfram are deeply rooted: that with us, everything can be discussed if it is in the spirit of our cause. These words are not only deeply rooted, but you should also have the example and, if time permits, hear a lecture from our friend Dr. Max Hermann on this very problem. You will see from this that a man who has studied it scientifically can give a presentation and will be heard here. But you will also notice the difference between what can be said to you here and what wants to penetrate our circles as pseudo-science.

Of course, I would have made a different comment regarding what Mrs. Wolfram said first if I had had the impression that it was clear from Mr. Boldt's letters that he had been informed of the course of the proceedings. But I do not have this opinion. Mr. Boldt comes voluntarily – and may consider his matter important enough that everything that is sent in writing – without him knowing the proceedings of the General Assembly – is taken seriously by his personality and sent to the General Assembly. It is not stated in the letter that he has heard from the General Assembly. He sends it of his own free will; and you could experience that he would send much more if it did not give the impression that it was based on the indiscretion of members sitting here. Otherwise it would have to be treated quite differently according to the rules of procedure.

Ms. Wolfram: The Theosophical Society's headquarters in Adyar has decided to organize lectures in the adjoining room on the days of our general assembly. Since the members gather in the foyer during the breaks between the meetings, it is quite possible that the result of the negotiations could have been overheard in their conversations and passed on to Mr. Boldt.

Dr. Steiner: A written document regarding the Wolfram motion has been submitted:

Modification of the Wolfram motion:
Several members have asked me [gap in the transcript]

Fräulein von Sivers: It still seems to be misunderstood that it is not the executive committee that is sitting here that is meant, but the executive committee of some lodge. We have 107 branches, and it concerns the executive committees of these 107 branches. From several statements I have noticed that this has not been understood at all yet. So we are talking about the boards of all the branches scattered throughout Europe and now even all over the world; we can turn to all of them.

Dr. Steiner: I would be most happy if not we – the board – would plead for it, but [he] could leave it to the free decision of the plenum.

Mr. Hamburger: I do not support the Wolfram motion because the matter is being presented in a way that does not correspond to how Dr. Steiner wants to lead us. Since we are dealing with spiritual matters, we should prescribe more and more and less and less paper for our affairs. This will shake us out of our lethargy.

Ms. Wolfram: I would like to note objectively that, if we look closely, Mr. Ulrich's proposal is much more rigorous than my own. In Mr. Ulrich's proposal, you are dependent on the board of the working group. You have the greatest possible freedom if you accept my proposal to look for whomever you want. Of course, I can only agree with what Mr. Hamburger said, insofar as he presents us with the ideal of anthroposophists as they should be. Unfortunately, however, this ideal has not yet been realized! And we have to deal not with the desired ideal anthroposophist, but with the Anthroposophical Society as it is now, which includes Mr. Boldt and, as he says, 25 percent of his like-minded members. To prevent what Mr. Hamburger thinks from happening, we must now vigorously create conditions that make a “Case Boldt Number II” impossible.

Director Sellin: Since the executive council has just expressed the wish that resolutions be passed by the plenary assembly, I would like to propose that we fully endorse Wolfram's motion and would like to have this motion adopted as my own.

Mr. Schuler: When the “Bund” was founded and then the “Anthroposophical Society”, the ideal was expressed that we would manage without statutes if possible. When the Anthroposophical Society was founded, some statutes were then drawn up. Both must be seen as a great step forward. But we should not go on to set up points, provisions and statutes in the further course; because we know very well from ordinary life that – to put it somewhat drastically, to be understood – the laws are only there to be circumvented. The more laws, statutes and paragraphs there are, the more they are circumvented. Who among us has said that we do not take it for granted that the board is entitled, indeed obliged, to examine all proposals and present them with the opinion it deems appropriate? Who among the members who come to the general assembly can be prepared to think on their feet so quickly when something is proposed to them? Or who would not be grateful if the board, in which they previously had confidence, pointed out this or that? I therefore believe it is right, in a general sense and in the sense of the meeting, that the board can do this on its own initiative. So what should we decide, when we think about it, other than to say: “The board can do that, that is its duty! – So we take the matter on board.” That is what every parliamentary board does: it first discusses the proposals that have been received and presents them with its [gap in the transcript]. Then the general assembly can still do whatever it wants. For example, yesterday we were so quick to dismiss a motion on the agenda: we could perhaps say more about the way Dr. Steiner could be discharged than we are now supposed to say about the Wolfram motion. The motions are only there to be misunderstood. They are misunderstood, no matter how well they are meant. And if a motion or resolution now comes up that still mentions the Boldt case, then we should also move on to the agenda. - I move to move on to the agenda!

We naturally have the confidence; it is written in our hearts – so I also support the words of Mr. von Rainer. Regarding what has been said about the resolution... well, we sometimes have to adopt a resolution; but the one that has been adopted should suffice, and all further ones should be dropped.

[Rudolf Steiner:] Before we discuss the “transition to the agenda”, [Mr. Kühne] is still noted down as a speaker.

Mr. Kühne: As I did yesterday, I would like to point out some difficulties that would arise from accepting the Wolfram motion. Motions must be submitted three to four weeks before the Annual General Meeting. Later motions, which might be recognized as “urgent” at the Annual General Meeting, could not be discussed.

The board, which meets shortly before the general assembly, could not put forward any motions to the general assembly on its own initiative because they were not known three weeks in advance. At the general assembly itself, someone who wants to impose themselves on the assembly could, for example, bring up something in the discussion that they might have thought the board would not let approach the general assembly as a motion to be dealt with at the general assembly. No proposals could be made regarding the proposals that would be discussed at the General Assembly. Proposals from the floor to the General Assembly would be inadmissible. This is how management and procedural difficulties arise.

Dr. Steiner: I have to address something about the rules of procedure. There are now two motions from Ms. Wolfram and a motion to “move to the agenda” from Mr. Schuler. If a motion is legally submitted, as in the case of Ms. Wolfram's motion, you cannot move on to the motion to the agenda; further discussion must be given to it. I must now open the discussion on the motion to move on to the agenda, which means that in this case no further speakers should be signed up. Whether or not this is desirable, I would ask you to consider voting on a motion without being completely clear about it, because not only the motion itself is on the table, but also a modification of it. We will then have to vote on each individual proposal; otherwise the General Assembly would not be properly conducted; it would be legally contestable, and anyone could declare it invalid.

Mr. Arenson: As much as we all want to avoid unnecessarily prolonging the proceedings, I think it is too important an issue for us not to discuss it. Even if we talk it over, we can avoid lengths; but to break off briefly does not seem right to me. There is too much at stake for the future in the form in which motions can be tabled for us to be tempted to rush through it.

Mr. von Rainer: It may perhaps help to clarify this matter if I mention something. I would like to have had more time to speak about the concepts of “Roman law” for our time. But I would like to mention just a little about it here because it is relevant to the present.

It is well known that the “Codex Justinianus” is the summary of Roman law. What is this summary? It is the summary of the legal pronouncements made by the praetors at the Roman Forum. These legal pronouncements came about because there was no “written” law at that time; rather, as was generally the case in older times, case law was such that people who were thought to have a special power of judgment over right or wrong decided the case in question in one way or another, depending on whether they considered it right or wrong. There were no general principles of law yet. Now these legal pronouncements, which were made in the Roman Forum, have been collected and principles of law have been made out of them, although originally they were pronounced only for the individual case by the praetors concerned. From this, under the Emperor Justinian, the “Codex Justinianus” was later derived. Our entire legal system today is based on this, which, if you can judge it, consists more and more of laws and offers less and less opportunity to individualize the individual case. I just wanted to point out what the truth is: that it is not possible at all to express a “legal principle” because each individual case would always have to be treated individually.

But what Mrs. Wolfram expresses with her motion also has the character of wanting to express a “principle,” while each individual case must be treated individually. In the Boldt case, the board proved that it did not exercise the right to which it is fully entitled to drop a motion and not bring it before the general assembly, but to deal with it itself. Our situation is such that we do not need the proposal at all. And it would be a continuation of what Roman law has done wrong in jurisprudence if we were to establish such principles again. It is indeed easier for the board if it can invoke the fact that the general assembly has given it the right to deal with proposals on its own initiative; but after all, it will still have to individualize itself.

But now that a “free word to free Theosophists” is being addressed, they will say: “They may have got the motion under control, but they are already working to ensure that no more free bolders can be addressed in the future.” — With that, I also agree that we should not go back to business as usual, because the matter needs to be clarified. But on the other hand, I would like what can be considered a fact, Roman law, to be taken into account as an example.

Dr. Steiner: It will be very good if we discuss these matters thoroughly this time. I must confess that the Annual General Meeting, which is now scheduled for Thursday, has left me with a strange feeling: a feeling of sorrow for those members who have come here to take part in the results of anthroposophical work and to go home with these results. If we were to have only general meetings like this one, it would only serve to make these general meetings longer and longer: this time it is a week, the next time it will be two weeks, and we will no longer be here, but after 52 years it would be 52 weeks!

It would be necessary for you to authorize the board – this is not a motion, but rather concerns a practice – to set the first day or one and a half days for the business negotiations, and to dedicate the remaining days to the Theosophical work. Otherwise, I fear that we will be sitting in front of empty benches at the next General Assembly; I don't think that many members who have to travel long distances to the General Assembly to hear such things will be satisfied.

Ms. Wolfram: I would like to remind everyone that Mr. von Rainer has encouraged us to discuss the delusion and value of laws. What purpose have laws actually had and do have? They have always been children of necessity; man has built a defense against the enemy in them, a barrier against him. If you accept my proposal, we will be doing exactly what Mr. von Rainer wants: we will create a very individual law for the “Individual Anthroposophical Society” that is supposed to protect it.

And it is not because I enjoy developing a law out of myself that I have submitted my proposal, but because I think that something concrete must be done now to stop the current situation. Yes, the board has agreed to take on these long discussions so that this case can be handled as a “typical” one. It is not intended to serve as a model for other general meetings, and the question is whether we want to draw a conclusion from all this or not?

If you listen to what Mr. Schuler said, you will see: in theory, Mr. Schuler is happy to admit that we have the right to consider proposals. But he himself says afterwards: the board will bring it up - and then we'll talk about it! But that's not the point, that a proposal is still being discussed that the board has dismissed after conscientious consideration at its meeting.

We must therefore be clear from the knowledge of the case we have dealt with that it must come to the law, if you want to call it that. There must be a barrier precisely because people are not as they should be, but as they are; we must take this into account. Because the facts are such, we must build a kind of barrier that can later be torn down, when the ideal society has been realized. Building this barrier is truly our duty now.

Dr. Steiner: What is the consequence of such a correspondence between Mr. Boldt and the undersigned, Pschorn, [Zormaier] and Petri, as read out earlier? I will be very brief. In Mr. Boldt's brochure, it says that I have committed the great sin of not speaking to the members as he thinks fit. And these members, Pschorn and so on, write to Mr. Boldt in agreement, so that I should be forced to speak about what Mr. Boldt likes. The consequence would be that I would not be able to determine the topics I speak about, but the members of the Anthroposophical Society. This is the consequence, even if people do not consider it.

It is the sin that people do not consider the consequences of their assumptions! So in the future, it will be necessary to take a closer look at these things and be clear about the consequences of such things. These may be people who mean well, as I said about Mr. Boldt; but the point is that we have the opportunity to move our Anthroposophical Society forward!

Mrs. Wöbcken: Seven years ago, I attended the General Assembly and now, after everything I have heard, I have to say that, in terms of how we handle external matters, we are in exactly the same position as we were seven years ago. Yes, I even have to say: in an even worse position! For this reason, I would like to ask the members to leave it to those who have a true insight into the matter and vote in favor of the motion that Fräulein von Sivers has made.

Fräulein von Sivers: What motion? I would like to consider this not as a matter for the board, but as a matter for the plenary assembly; the general assembly should decide on it and all those who travel here from faraway countries should decide whether they agree with it, or whether we can act somewhat independently for once.

Mr. Lévy: Since I am one of those who have traveled here from faraway countries, I would like to say something for practical reasons. What Mr. Schuler and others have said is, of course, entirely defensible. But it is not a matter of saying something “right”; because from a correct, theoretical point of view, one can also defend the Wolfram proposal. I just want to shed light on the practical side, because we will meet again in a year and want to have learned something from that. The Wolfram proposal says: The board should be informed three to four weeks before the general assembly of the motions to be put forward at the general assembly. One can only say that it would have been very salutary for the Boldt case if that had happened, because the members were required to study a book and a brochure in order to form an opinion about it. So here, if you look at the practical side, there is a necessity to do something. If you also consider that a motion needs to be supported by at least seven people, then you can only say: if a member does not have seven friends in the whole society who support the matter that they want to raise, then they are not being entirely serious about it. These seven people could, after all, be in other countries. But then it turns out to be a settled matter that can be raised. We have already been together for seven hours in the board meeting. So everyone should be able to come and present something to the General Assembly that makes sense. And then the proposals to the General Assembly must be prepared in such a way that they contain sufficient material, and that not just proposals are received that are categorized without anyone thinking about them. Such provisions have already been introduced wherever there are assemblies.

So, for example, I know that the French [Lücke in der Mitschrift] committee has also made such arrangements – and much worse ones than those proposed by Ms. Wolfram.

Mr. Schuler withdraws his proposal and instead makes the following proposal:

The General Assembly may decide that it is left to the board to submit the received proposals with appropriate justifications to the General Assembly or not to submit them. Furthermore, the board determines in advance the duration of the General Assembly.

Mr. Lévy: That would be an infringement of the rights of the plenary. In any case, it should be possible to see what is contained in the proposals. However, it would not be right for the plenary not to see what proposals are coming in.

Dr. Steiner: Since the Schuler proposal is the more far-reaching one, it is necessary to discuss it.

Ms. Wolfram: I would like to know how Mr. Schuler thinks it would work in practice if we were to decide to set aside one or two days for negotiations? Let's assume there are ten or twenty motions; not all motions can be dealt with. So if we only have a limited amount of time, so many motions will have to be dropped, and we would have to deal with each motion for so many minutes, according to the bell. How do you think this can be practically implemented?

Dr. Steiner: If the time for the business negotiations were set, for example, at one and a half days, then the General Assembly would be strictly broken off after one and a half days, and the motions that had not been dealt with would then be “deferred to the next General Assembly”. This would mean that at the next general assembly, we would only be able to discuss items from the previous year's general assembly, and at the following one only matters from the year before last, and so on, as the old Reichskammergericht in Wetzlar did – which is where the phrase “law and rights are inherited like an eternal disease” comes from. Mr. Hubo proposes closing the debate on the Schuler motion. The end of the debate is approved.

Dr. Steiner: We will now vote on the Schuler proposal. I would like to point out that the first part of this proposal would exclude the Wolfram proposal, but not the proposal to determine the duration of the Annual General Meeting.

Mr. von Rainer: I would like to take this opportunity to request that the Board of Management abstains.

Dr. Steiner: You can't make a decision about whether a number of members, who are also members of the board, should have a say or not.

The Schuler motion is rejected.

Dr. Steiner: We will now move on to the further discussion of the Wolfram motion, and I would first ask Ms. Wolfram to determine the exact wording of her motion.

Ms. Wolfram: The motion reads:

The General Assembly may decide that any motion from a member of the General Assembly be submitted to the Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society at least three weeks before the General Assembly, and that each applicant must have supported his application by seven members of the Society and three members who are on any board of a working group or on the broader board of the Anthroposophical Society.

Mrs. von Ulrich wishes to amend that only one member of the executive council of any group should support the proposal and no special members, and that furthermore a proposal should be submitted only ten to twelve days after the announcement of the General Assembly.

Mr. Hubo: It seems to me that the matter has now been sufficiently illuminated from “twelve standpoints” and I move that the debate be closed.

[Rudolf Steiner:] Mr. Selling has also requested the floor.

Mr. Selling: We have two points of view here. One sees the society-endangering living from the formal side and wants to contain it. For the other, life is more important; he is against the restriction. The fact that both points of view exist gives them a right to exist and they both have something to say to us. If we look more closely, both can be quite well reconciled. From a practical point of view, it would be foolish not to make use of the experience gained here for the future: that Dr. Steiner was unable to change the title of his lecture in time because he only found out about Boldt's brochure too late, although he would otherwise have done so. This can be avoided in future cases by accepting Wolfram's proposal, which, to a certain extent, represents the last safety valve to be activated in time. But it is much more important that we keep our eyes open and pay constant attention throughout the year, so that we immediately know when a little Boldt is about to start wiggling! (General amusement.) We have to be outwardly conservative, that is, conservative, but at the same time inwardly quite liberal, that is, respectful - not disrespectful - of the life germinating in souls. Then such exuberant life will not harm us, but only serve as a necessary resistance for our development and be guided back into the right direction itself. Boldt has just, as it so often happens, confused the “test” with the “mission”.

The motion to end the debate is approved.

The vote is taken on the Ulrich motion, as it is the most extensive:

The General Assembly may decide that any motion to the General Assembly be submitted to the Board at least ten to twelve days after the announcement of the General Assembly to the members, and that each applicant have the signature of any board member under his application.

This proposal is rejected.

The Wolfram proposal is adopted in its latest wording.

Thereupon the proceedings are postponed until 4 p.m. except for four items.

Continuation

At 4:30 p.m., the proceedings that were adjourned at noon are resumed.

Mr. Bauer: The last “resolution” that was introduced has been withdrawn. Instead, a third version will be read:

The General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society, meeting in Berlin between January 18 and 24, 1914, hereby declares that it has the deepest compassion for the aberrations into which Mr. Boldt's thinking has fallen. It sees him as a victim of certain thought suggestions and pseudoscientific influences of our time. In contrast to this, it sees itself as an association of people who consciously and resolutely reject such influences.

The discussion of this resolution begins. Dr. Unger will take over the presidency for the duration of the discussion.

Mr. Lévy: In view of the spirit of the resolution, which refers to Dr. Steiner, I would like to ask the Friends that we express our opinion on it not by raising our hands, but by standing up or staying seated.

Ms. von Ulrich also supports this.

Mr. Lévy's proposal is adopted.

Mr. Baron Walleen: It is a little difficult for me to talk about this matter, because there is no doubt that the content of the resolution expresses our most intimate feelings. But I do wonder whether it is always necessary to emphasize our trust in Dr. Steiner on every occasion? The matter that arose with Mr. Boldt is not of such overwhelming importance. It is self-evident that we have trust in the relevant personalities within our society. I think: too much talking is not good. I just want to recall a healthy word that Mr. Bauer spoke when the “Bund” was founded; it was:

“Who wants to come with me?” Many had the trust, and it has probably only grown stronger since then. And I think: as long as it remains silent, it has a stronger effect on the world than all fine words. The resolution is very fine; but I would like to leave it to you to decide whether it would not be better not to speak about it.

Mr. Bauer: In the resolution proposed yesterday, the final sentence contained something like an expression of trust. It was the echo of the first version. The idea was that this trust on our part should be made known in the circles to which the resolution would reach without our intervention – namely, to the outside world. Ultimately, however, it had to be said that this would have the opposite effect. It is certainly not necessary to declare trust within our ranks. But not to make any statement at all would not be right. Firstly, because we have already made a statement, and secondly because of the threats, insults and so on that are said about Dr. Steiner in the brochure. If we were to leave unchallenged this darkening of our acceptance of masks, the right or duty to disguise ourselves and so on, then we would be reproached with it over and over again, and it would be said, “So it is probably true after all.” But if we have a ready-made explanation for this, then that is a ready-made answer for all those who want to reproach us with the story of the mask-like nature of our great educator.

Mr. Arenson: If we are to pass a resolution at all, then it would not be right if we left out one point — and especially the point that is addressed to Dr. Steiner. We have responded to the other things! So, in view of these allegations by Boldt, we must once again clearly identify our direction, so that three quarters are answered and one quarter simply remains unanswered. The form in which the reply is now presented seems to me to be extremely favorable, because it emphasizes independence from authority. Therefore, we should clearly state the direction in which we are marching. This is not only good, but necessary – and must not be missing from a resolution that we adopt at all in response to this Boldt motion.

Baron Walleen: Mr. Bauer said that this resolution should have an external effect. Then it would have to be published; because the “Mitteilungen” are not written for the outside world. But then I think that everything that could be said has been said in the resolution that Dr. Steiner submitted. I cannot help but feel that this resolution is somewhat superfluous. It would be a different matter if the “Mitteilungen” were really written for the outside world. But they are only for us, and we cannot speculate that they will end up somewhere unlawfully.

Fräulein von Sivers: I would just like to say that it is a fact that the brochures are read. But then it is above all necessary that the members make themselves heard, who are not 75 percent sheep, and that they also clearly express that they are aware of their own judgment and do not go along as sheep.

Mr. von Rainer: Although I have said before how much I am against resolutions, I must say that in the present situation I am not against it. What has prompted us to this resolution now is what is stated in the brochure “Theosophy or Antisophy?” No other attack against Dr. Steiner has been brought forward at this General Assembly. And the resolution is a rejection of this brochure. So it is actually only about the brochure by Mr. Ernst Boldt and nothing else. And if you reject what is in the brochure, you have actually done everything you can with the brochure. If the resolution turns out to be the one that the majority will adopt, I would like to say that it emphasizes what particularly characterizes Boldt's attack: that Dr. Steiner adopts masks and gestures. We must guard against this!

Mr. Selling: It seems necessary, after all, that we show that we can think things through to the end. When we have begun to formulate, we must also bring this point into the form; otherwise it forms the gateway for hostile attacks that come not only from outside but also from within society. Lucifer and Ahriman are also inside and ready to invade again at any moment.

Mr. Levy: If we adopt a resolution here, it is certainly with the absent members in mind. We can only make them understand the way in which the first part of the resolution emerged for us by adding the second part: Not only that we firmly and consciously reject the brochure, but also on the basis of our own judgment and independently of Dr. Steiner. We must also say this to those who are not present; otherwise they might come to a completely false view. And after all, they must also represent the matter externally.

Mr. Hubo: I would like to point out one thing first. Only a small part of the total number of members of the Anthroposophical Society is gathered here, and this resolution in particular would summarize the overall result of our position in short paradigmatic sentences regarding this case and the whole essential question that underlies it. Secondly, it is necessary for the larger number of members who are not present here to read this in black and white, so that what is expressed in the resolution is repeatedly deepened, this ability to judge, which may not yet be very well developed in some people.

Dr. Noll: It seems possible, however, that we take a positive position on Mr. Boldt, especially in view of the fact that Boldt's brochure will continue to be read and may also fall into other hands. This could be done in such a way that, after everything we have now understood, we ask Mr. Boldt to withdraw his brochure. This would be the strongest way for us to express our disagreement with his arguments; so that perhaps the resolution can be worded to request Mr. Boldt to withdraw his brochure.

Dr. Unger: It is not appropriate for us to express a “request” to a person within a “resolution”. This would have to be treated as a special motion afterwards.

Dr. Grosheintz: When Dr. Steiner explained the injustices perpetrated by Mr. Boldt, he divided them into four points: injustice against the board of the Munich Lodge, injustice against Director Sellin, injustice against the Philosophical Theosophical Publishing House, and the injustice against himself was the fourth point. We also agreed that Mr. Boldt should not have written what he did in his brochure. Until now, we have only supported

the first three points and expressed that we have recognized the injustices. We can clearly see why nothing can be said about the fourth point in Dr. Steiner's motion. And I do not understand why Baron Walleen considers Dr. Steiner's motion to be perfectly adequate. Dr. Steiner could not include in the proposal what should be said about the injustice against him. That should come from the plenary! And I believe that it is very nicely expressed in the resolution that is now on the table. I would therefore like to make a motion that we simply vote on this “fourth point” now and close the debate.

Fräulein von Sivers: In response to the previous speaker, I would like to associate myself with what was said by Messrs Selling, Hubo and Lévy. I would like to say to Mr. von Rainer that all the answers to the accusation of “mask-like quality” in the resolution are already implicit in it; but perhaps something can still be changed, and the resolution can then be read again with the addition of a word. Then it will be seen that the things that are desired are already in it. Regarding Dr. Noll's suggestion, I would like to say that we do not have any “requests” to make to Mr. Boldt! The acquaintance with it – even if the resolution is printed in the “Mitteilungen” – where it is said that we have confidence in our own judgment, can be spread throughout the world. We certainly don't need to hide behind an explanation of what is merely a fact when we are being assailed from outside!

The “resolution” will be read again with an amendment in the following form:

Resolution

The General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society, meeting in Berlin between January 18 and 24, 1914, hereby expresses its deepest sympathy for Mr. Boldt, who has lost his way in thought. It sees him as a victim of certain thought suggestions and pseudoscientific influences of our time. In contrast to this, it regards itself as an association of people who consciously and resolutely reject such influences. Its greatest obligation towards Dr. Steiner arises from the fact that he has opened up to it the sense of freedom and truth in the field of scientific, moral and spiritual research and endeavour. She turns to Dr. Steiner out of her own sense of judgment and critical sense of truth, in recognition of the broad cultural significance of the treasure trove of knowledge and wisdom he offers. By duly emphasizing her independence from his authority, she believes she is acting in the best way in his interest.

Dr. Grosheintz: We have now reached the point where we have to decide whether we want to make a statement at all or not. It seems to me, after having discussed this matter for so long, that we could also draw a conclusion. And a “conclusion”, a complete conclusion, would be reached, in my opinion, if we were to adopt this statement. This declaration is, in a sense, a counter-declaration. Consider this: another declaration has been made by a member of the Anthroposophical Society, stating that Dr. Steiner has made certain “gestures” towards us, and that this member claims to have the support of 25 percent of the members of the Anthroposophical Society! Four or five of the 3,700 have found themselves fortunate enough to support his cause. This will be proudly announced to the outside world, that “one” person from our circles has stood up and said what so many others outside the Society are saying! Mr. Boldt went a step further: In the “preliminary remarks” of his brochure, he threatened that the inclusion of his writing in the general assembly would depend on whether it would later be incorporated into a larger work, which has been temporarily omitted from this announcement.

I believe that we should also give a response to this answer and take a position on it. It is not really clear to me why we should not dare to make this statement, which so clearly expresses what we all live by, and thus draw the conclusion from all that has been discussed so far.

Dr. Unger: Please allow me to point out that a motion to end the debate has been tabled!

Mr. von Rainer: I really do not think it is appropriate to put this motion to the vote with a motion to end the debate. Everyone who has signed up to speak would have to be given the floor. I am against the motion to end the debate.

Mr. Bauer: Before we vote, I would like to say: Without doubt, we need to explain something. An explanation given by Dr. Steiner during the proceedings would mean nothing to people who think similarly to Mr. Boldt. They would say: “There is also the fact that he was once obliged, due to his ‘arch-archangel activity’, not to make a gesture!”

In any case, Mr. Boldt will count us among those who cannot count themselves among the “Archarchangels”. We will merely have to rely on our logic and our sense of truth. And based on our sense of truth and our logic, and with regard to our guiding principle “Wisdom is only in truth”, we want to reject the view that somehow the truth cannot be upheld by archangels. What has already been done is not enough. We must do it! Actually, no one disagrees with the content of the resolution. So why hesitate to adopt it?

Mr. Toepel criticizes the fact that the resolution is not specifically linked to the Boldt case with regard to the points concerning Dr. Steiner's personality. Based on the brochure, one would have to reject the book “Sexual Problems”. That would be an objective rejection of the “authority”. Since Mr. Boldt is accused of untruthfulness, the resolution would have to address the personality of Dr. Steiner, who would be able to educate us to see through pseudoscientific activities. This should be submitted as a new resolution, to which he would be happy to contribute.

Dr. Unger: The end of the debate is still up for discussion! No new proposals are to be allowed within this proposal.

Mr. Lévy rejects Mr. Toepel's objections because this way of arriving at a result would create dependencies. First, on Mr. Boldt's brochure, and second, on the way in which Dr. Steiner introduced his first resolution. It is always better for us to focus on ourselves. If we went into all the details, as we are otherwise opposed, we would not get any positive work done. Mr. Walther proposes the motion to close the debate. The motion to close the debate is adopted.

Dr. Unger: The debate on the content of the resolution is closed. We will now vote on the resolution itself. However, an “additional motion” has been submitted. Since a separate vote cannot be taken on an additional motion, I would like to put it to the vote beforehand.

Mr. von Rainer: I would like to formulate the additional motion in such a way that it could be inserted at a suitable point in the resolution: “The General Assembly is convinced that Dr. Steiner, true to the motto: ‘Wisdom lies only in truth!’ is acting loyally in the face of all external and internal attacks.

Mr. Hubo: I believe that it is not in keeping with our feelings that we should put what Mr. von Rainer has said into words.

Mrs. von Ulrich: The additional motion is useless because the word “truth”, which was added by Miss von Sivers, contains exactly the same thing – only in a shorter form.

The “additional motion” is rejected.

Dr. Unger: We will now vote on the resolution itself. It has been decided that the vote will be taken by standing up from our seats. I therefore ask that all those in favor of adopting the resolution stand up!

The assembly stands.

Dr. Unger: I hereby declare the resolution adopted unanimously by the General Assembly in the wording that has been read out!

Dr. Steiner (after he has resumed the chair): It did not seem to me that this resolution was somehow a vote of no confidence against me, but rather that it expressed a kind of summary of what I actually endeavored to do in these negotiations: to make it clear what was at stake.

We could have kept quiet about the whole matter if the “75 percent” had not necessarily given themselves a vote of confidence. Whether this is more or less a matter of course – just as “more or less” as it seemed necessary to me to express a special vote of confidence within the company – it still seems very important to me. And let me emphasize that such a document, in which our dear friends declare that they want their own judgment, is available. The objection that has been raised to the effect that this declaration would only be published in our “Mitteilungen” and therefore could not be found by the outside world seems incomprehensible to me. For no one is prevented from using in the broadest public what he finds in the “Mitteilungen” about our positions and views. It is something different from the case of Mr. Casimir Zawadzki, for example, and not as if we were embarrassed to use what is in the “Mitteilungen” to defend our positions in the broadest public. I would just remind you that in repeated cases it has been used in defense of our matters, which have been discussed here, in the broadest public. And it will even be very nice if our members say to certain ongoing attacks: “We passed this resolution back then!” - I don't know why it couldn't be rubbed in everyone's face when dependence and belief in authority are mentioned again! Regardless of what the resolution says about me, I would like to correct this; and I believe that the tenor of this resolution is truly not a vote of confidence in me, and I will therefore have no reason to thank for this resolution as if it were a vote of confidence in me. But it is a summary of why we spoke at all – a rallying cry. If it had not been there, I would not know what we had been trying to do.

Since our time for the business negotiations is up, we have to postpone the continuation until tomorrow at ten o'clock. I had assumed, however, that we would deal with what we have now in three minutes - instead of five quarters of an hour!

The proceedings are suspended at half past five, and the deliberation on the remaining points is set for Friday, January 23, at ten o'clock in the morning.