The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Today I would like to request you once again, without exception, to refrain from taking notes. This applies to all three days.

Most of you were present last Thursday at our discussion in Basel. I now want to bring to your attention once more quite a short extract of what we talked about then, as I consider it not unimportant for these thoughts to become known to us.

I described how the wisdom about Christ was destroyed root and branch by dogmatism, namely, that wisdom which was present in Gnosis which itself was rooted out, since what remains of it now is no more than a fairly good number of fragments. Gnosis was a remnant of ancient wisdom arising out of an atavistic knowledge of the spiritual worlds in the days of early mankind. Those who possessed this ancient wisdom, which was still understood by the Gnostics at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, knew that it contained a view—the names were different then—of the hierarchies which underlie the creation of the world, and they were thus able to conceive of the significance of Christ. Together with Gnosis there disappeared the possibility of comprehending the Christ-Being as a cosmic being. Instead there remains dogma which has perpetuated certain incomprehensible concepts—the Credo and so on—about the Christ-Being.

What was important in centuries now gone by was not so much the wisdom about Christ as the fact itself, the fact that Christ turned towards the earth and fulfilled the Mystery of Golgotha. A true understanding of the Christ-Being will first have to be won through the new Gnosis, which is something entirely different from the old Gnosis, for it is anthroposophical Spiritual Science.

More important for our point of departure today is something else I introduced last Thursday, namely that in the North in very early pre-Christian times—I said 3000 years BC—there was a certain custom among peoples whom Tacitus called the Ingaevones. This custom was guided by Mystery priests in a Mystery centre focused on what is today Jutland, part of Denmark. This Mystery centre was able to work at that time and in those parts because all the climatic conditions in those colder regions differed from any in the southern, warmer regions—for all material conditions also have their own spiritual background. While the warmer regions were more suited to developing an understanding of the Christ-Being in Gnosis, the colder parts lent themselves more to evolving feelings about Jesus because of ideas still prevalent about ancient customs.

Thus it was that, in the South, Gnosis had more of an understanding of the Easter Mystery, the Christ Mystery. But the understanding, as I have said, was destroyed root and branch by dogma. In the North, in contrast, there was more of a comprehension of the Jesus Mystery, a feeling for the child who comes into the world to save mankind. This was based not so much on actual ideas, which had died out, but on feelings which live longer than ideas. The feeling of these ancient customs made comprehension possible. So it came about that in the South it was the task of the church to root out the Christ Mystery, whereas in the North it was its task to root out the Christmas Mystery, to transform it into something innocuous. Thus later, in the Middle Ages, the idea of Christmas came into being which, one might say, reckoned with the rise of bourgeois values of more recent times, which appeared increasingly as the age of materialism dawned. For bourgeois values in the widest sense are a concomitant of materialism. We have to be clear, though, that greater, more significant ideas, in the form of feelings, lived in Central Europe right into the eighth, ninth and even the tenth centuries, for these feelings originated from prevalent usages, such as processions and other folk customs.

Let me briefly sketch these ancient customs once again. Among the Ingaevones the life of the people was firmly guided by the Mystery centre which laid down the season when provision could be made for procreation. The union of man with woman was permitted only in the days of spring, around the first full moon after the spring equinox. It was approximately the time we now call Easter time. The remainder of the year was taboo as far as human reproduction was concerned, and those born at a time which showed that their conception had been out of season were regarded, in a way, as not quite proper people.

So the births of people conceived at the correct time all came together in the middle of winter, just after our present Christmas time. All those regarded by the Ingaevones as fully human had to be born at this time. The births had to fall at the time of the darkest winter days, when the trees were covered in snow and the people confined to their primitive homesteads. To use the language of today, every child was in a way a Christmas child, a child of the winter solstice.

This affected people's frame of mind and soul. Because nothing to do with procreation occurred at other times of the year, the old dream-conscious clairvoyance was preserved. And when the time of conception approached as the permitted spring days drew near, conditions of unconsciousness took over. Conception was brought about in a state of unconsciousness, not in waking consciousness. The woman who was conceiving was truly conscious, however, of the visionary appearance of a spiritual being descending from spiritual worlds to announce the coming child. These women even foresaw the face of the coming child. And this annunciation, as we saw, is echoed in the time of the Luke gospel in the annunciation to Mary by the Archangel Gabriel. We saw that there even exists a fragment of an Anglo-Saxon rune song which tells of what existed in the old consciousness and that on the Jutland peninsula there really was a Mystery centre which then migrated eastwards.

Now mankind is, of course, developing, and development is a part of mankind. So this Mystery centre could only exist in most ancient times, for, had it persisted, there would have been no development of the type of consciousness needed as the task of the fourth, and then of the fifth post-Atlantean period. To clairvoyant consciousness the custom is hardly to be found anywhere in northern regions, where it flourished, even in the second millennium BC, and it is seen to have disappeared fully by the first millennium BC. By then, human conception and birth were spread more or less over the whole year and there is no more knowledge of a coming-down out of cosmic worlds via the starry constellations, nor of how much depends for a person's destiny on earth on the constellation under which he is born. Human conception and birth are spread over the whole year.

Parallel with this development is the rise of a new consciousness, the rise of the possibility of freedom for the human being and so on.

One last thing remained, however. Something had existed in the region where Denmark is today; it migrated from tribe to tribe until it reached the East, where the Christ-Being was to be incarnated in one last body still seen in connection with the constellations. The first-born of many brothers became the last-born of those who were seen in connection with the starry constellations. In evolution the last remnant of the old always links up with what is new.

Because in northern regions the feeling had evolved that the human being appears on the earth during the consecrated season, it came about that here, too, surrounded by the echo of those atavistic feelings, the feeling for Jesus could evolve. Thus you will find in these northern regions that the paramount feeling and better understanding was for the Luke gospel, and that the Christmas Mystery worked more strongly than the Easter Mystery, which was imprisoned among the secrets of the church, whereas the Christmas Mystery became quite general.

I hinted last Thursday, and shall perhaps be able to follow through in more detail during these three days, that every three years special attention was paid to the one born first after the twelfth hour of the night that we now call Christmas Eve, the first-born of every fourth year, the first to be born after three years. This first-born was destined to undergo certain procedures until his thirtieth year. Until his thirtieth year he was kept apart and brought up by the Mystery priests. His soul was given a distinct direction. His soul was destined to undergo experiences in a quite special way during the first thirty years of his life. These experiences and procedures were to lead him—this is barely comprehensible today—in his thirtieth year to an inner understanding of the link between the human being and the surrounding spiritual world. Certain quite specific inner experiences during these thirty years were to lead him gradually to this point.

First of all this first-born was to understand, even as a tiny child, how the human being is linked to the spiritual world through his angel. Separated from the rest of the world, undisturbed by the concepts which usually enter a child's soul from his environment, he was to remain close to spiritual workings and spiritual events and, to start with, develop a profound awareness of his links with the angel-being who was his guide—his angelos. In this way this child was equipped with a soul which was taught something very special, about which we may perhaps speak during the next few days. This special learning was expressed by saying that the child had become a ‘raven’. This was a stage of initiation which was disseminated over wide regions and was contained particularly in the Persian Mithras initiation, of which I have spoken in past years. Then this soul was to ascend to an even more intense feeling for its connection with the spiritual worlds; this first-born was to relive in his soul the secrets of the spiritual worlds.

This would not be possible today, for our consciousness develops under different conditions. But, in those ancient times, when it was possible to develop a dream consciousness this was still perfectly possible. When the child had grown into a youth—it was always a boy, a girl did not count—he was given the leadership over individual districts, smaller sections of the tribe. Finally, he had to serve in the administration and government of smaller communities. But it is important to remember that these affairs of government were always conducted in such a way that the youth was ever protected from external influences, especially shielded from the influences of various egoisms; he was most carefully shielded from the influences of egoisms, from influences which came about on the basis of external experiences.

Thus it was achieved that, towards the end of these thirty years, he could take on the role of representative of the whole tribe. When he reached the age of thirty he was ready to absorb consciously the connections of man with the whole cosmos. He became what is called in the Mystery centres a ‘sun hero’. Now he was destined to rule the tribe for three years. None but a ‘sun hero’ could rule the tribe. He was permitted to rule for only three years. At the end of the three years something else, about which I shall speak, was done with him under the guidance of the Mysteries. In particular, in all the arrangements that emanated from the tribe of the Ingaevones, nobody was allowed to be king for longer than three years, and none was allowed to become king who had not undergone what I have described.

You see, forming in these tribes, as it were the skeleton, out of which the gospels later created the life of Christ Jesus. These communities lived in very ancient times. Only symbols of what had gone before come down to later ages. Thus the vision of the annunciation of the child to the mother came down to later ages as the worship of Nerthus, of Ertha. And the fact that the act of conception had to take place unconsciously in olden times is still hinted at in the Nerthus myth told by Tacitus a hundred years after the birth of Jesus. He describes how Ertha—who is male-female, not only female, for she is the same as the god Nerthus—arrives in her chariot; in other words, she is none other than the angel of the annunciation. Then those who have served her have to be drowned in the sea—slain. This is an echo of the submergence into unconsciousness of the act of conception in those ancient days.

In this myth of Ertha in her chariot and the slaves who accompany her but are drowned as soon as their service is concluded, in this myth of Nerthus, we have in the feeling-life an echo of something that was formerly an astral reality, something that had been experienced astrally. Nerthus processions were held in some districts until quite recently in history, right into the early Christian centuries. There were Ertha processions even in Swabia. These were echoes of ancient days. Those who in olden times, through certain rites which still existed as an echo of ancient heathen times, knew something about these earlier millennia, felt and thought about these processions of Ertha in her chariot: This is what our ancestors did. And when that single event then occurred which was the life of Jesus, it was brought into connection with what had been more general in ancient times. This was then better understood in the feelings, at the level of the feelings.

Therefore the monks and priests made every effort to root out anything which might remind their flocks of these things. Such things were rooted out just as carefully in the North as was Gnosis in the South. Otherwise people would have known, by bringing together these ancient customs with the Mystery of Golgotha, that this Mystery, in so far as it is a Christmas Mystery, was not an ancient, natural custom brought into the present but rather that it was replaced in the feeling for the Christmas Mystery by something at a higher level of consciousness. But this was not to be known consciously. This was to be suppressed into the subconscious, for there are always certain powers who reckon with the unconscious. A great part of what happens in history comes about because things conscious and things unconscious are brought together by those who know how to bring such things together.

We rightly speak of what happens in going from the fourth to the fifth post-Atlantean period. But even in the transition from the third to the fourth there was a step forward in human consciousness towards increased ego-consciousness, increased waking consciousness. The ancient dream visions of the spiritual world have disappeared. In the North this was expressed by saying that the Vanir, who were connected with what is given in visions, had been replaced by the Aesir, who are indeed gods for a well-developed day consciousness. This is what was said in the North during the fourth post-Atlantean period, until all such memories had been rooted out by the priests. In the fifth post-Atlantean period, when materialism, or rather ‘Christianityism’, appeared, these things had already disappeared. While in the South the Greeks had their gods: Zeus, Apollo and the others, the people of the North had the Aesir, a word which is connected with esse, to be, which in turn is connected with being seen, being seen with the eyes. But during the third post-Atlantean period the ancient peoples who inhabited the North of Europe had the Vanir. These Vanir were far closer to the people. Nerthus, which became Nört in the North, is one of the Vanir, who announced every conception or birth. Now I said that what had existed earlier was always preserved in later times in symbols. Thus something that I have so far only sketchily described to you and which we may be able to go into more deeply in the next day or two, namely, the knowledge bound up with becoming ‘king’, becoming the ‘sun hero’, was carried over first into the cult-myth and then into the myth. We have to distinguish between the cult-myth and the myth as such. The cult-myth is something that is still performed in external customs like a ‘dream performance’ of what reminds people of the ancient clairvoyant visions.

Thus, at a time when what I described to you no longer worked, we have in the Baldur myth, the myth of the god Baldur which was performed in many tribes as a mystery play, an echo of what was involved in ‘becoming king’. First it existed as a reality. Later it was performed as a mystery play. Then it became a myth that was merely recounted. And finally it was rooted out by the monks and priests. Baldur is one of the Aesir, that is, he was one of the ruling spiritual powers at a time when man had already awakened to ego-consciousness. The Vanir had already faded, and yet Baldur remains as a representative of that being who was to become king, the first-born who came every three years.

It is told that, at a certain time in his life, Baldur had dreams announcing his death. Later these dreams came true. But this did not mean merely that he had felt the approach of his physical death. It meant that, having accomplished three years of service as king, he was raised from the consciousness appropriate for that, to a higher level of consciousness. Until then he had been shielded from contact with the outer materialistic world. A king such as this was to live within the priesthood so that all egoism should depart from his soul and none could enter in. He was not permitted to be king for more than three years. Towards the end of the three years Baldur sensed the approach of the end of his time of kingly dignity. This meant, according to the ancient beliefs, that he was ready for contact with the outside world. First he had to rule, but he had to do this solely in accordance with the wishes of the spiritual world. After that he was to become something else; he was to enter the outside world.

For someone who had never had such contact before this was, in truth, a kind of death. This is what was expressed in his dreams. The myth describes how the gods heard about these dreams and became uneasy. We must always think of the human element in relation to the divine element in the way that the two are united in the ancient Mysteries. When, towards the end of his time as king, Baldur felt the moment approaching, the gods—that is the Mystery priests—became uneasy and made all the creatures and all the conditions of the earth swear that they would not harm Baldur. They forgot only one insignificant little plant—mistletoe, the Christmas plant. Loki, the enemy of the Aesir, found the mistletoe. And he made use of it at the festival of the gods, that is, at the event of the god Baldur's first contact with the outside world.

Here we have an ancient Christmas festival, and the mistletoe custom linked with Christmas is still today a memory of this ancient custom which had to do with establishing a new king in place of the old. The contact of the old king with the material world is depicted in the mystery play and the myth. All created things have sworn not to harm Baldur. They are now used by the gods who throw them at Baldur and shoot them at him. Nothing—no plant, no animal, no illness, no poison—can harm him. Only Loki has discovered the mistletoe, which he has brought amongst the community of gods—that is, the priests—and given to the blind god Hödr. Hödr says: What shall I do with the mistletoe? I am blind and cannot see where Baldur is standing, I cannot shoot at him as the other gods do. But Loki showed him the direction and he shot at Baldur with the mistletoe twig. Baldur was wounded and died.

So Hödr is the one who appears as the representative of the outside, material world, in so far as this material world is not comprehended in its connection with the spiritual world but lives like a parasite. ‘Höd’ is the ancient name for battle or war, while ‘Baldur’, as it still exists today, can be traced back to another designation of which the best, still preserved, appears in Anglo-Saxon. As I showed recently, ‘Tag’ appears at an earlier stage of the sound shift as ‘day’. ‘Bal day’ is a possible name, even though Anglo-Saxon. It means ‘shining day’, which expresses Baldur's connection with daytime consciousness, that consciousness which did not come to mankind until the fourth post-Atlantean period. Hödr is a representative of matter, of darkness, but also of battle and conflict. Baldur is the representative of understanding, of knowledge, of light—namely, that light which shines in the human soul in the state of consciousness which has developed since the fourth post-Atlantean period.

So in the Baldur myth we have a special version of the Christmas Mystery. Awareness of the connection between the Baldur myth and the Christmas Mystery was also rooted out by the monks and priests. For Baldur has some of the good qualities of Lucifer, and Hödr has some of the good qualities of the later Mephistopheles-Ahriman. I do not mean ‘good’ in the moral sense but rather in the sense of what is necessary for evolution. Such things, too, are connected with evolution as a whole. During the fourth post-Atlantean period it was still possible for a human being to be guided into the spiritual world in the ancient way as was the case in the old northern Mysteries. This had to be changed as time went on, for the tentative way, later only present in an atavistic form, the tentative, clairvoyant way—still with a certain echo of dream consciousness, which was fitting for the fourth post-Atlantean period—could not resist the more robust demands of the materialistic age. This relationship of ancient clairvoyance from the fourth post-Atlantean period to what came later is expressed in the myth depicting the contrast between Baldur and Hödr. What is working here, what is behind the fact that Baldur—the representative of human consciousness, which can be illuminated by the divine—can be killed through the influence of the evil power of Loki over Hödr, the god of battle, of war and of darkness? Behind all this lies the fact that in our age, as it has been for a long time and as it will still be for some time to come, there must always be a working together of light and darkness. To try and make people believe that anything in the physical world, the world of maya, can be totally good, is nothing but religious egoism. Every light has its shadow, and a thorough comprehension of this fact is extremely important and significant.

Let us take an example. Under the influence of the Christmas Mystery it will be possible for us to go more deeply into a number of matters we have discussed recently. So let us take an example. I have often suggested that if Spiritual Science comes to be taken up more fully by people then, for instance, it will influence medicine, the art of healing. Certain more physical methods of healing will be found for sicknesses of the soul, and more spiritual methods for bodily illnesses. I told you why this is not yet possible: It is simply because the sins have been created by the law and not the law by the sins. So long as the laws work in such a way that materialistic medicine is considered to represent them—and that is the case today—so long will individuals, however thorough their insight, be unable to do anything and, indeed, they ought not to do anything. But a time will come in the not too distant future when medicine, the art of healing, will incorporate the impulses which come from spiritual knowledge. I merely want to point this out for the moment, since I am actually leading up to something else. Knowledge of the healing forces is inseparable from knowledge of the forces of sickness. One cannot be taught without the other. No one in the world can gain knowledge of the healing forces, without at the same time learning about the forces of sickness. So you can see how important it is for people to be morally good through and through as regards such serious matters. For someone who can heal a person's soul can also make a person's soul sick in the same degree. Therefore such truths may not be imparted by the gods to man until a stage of morality has been reached at which the healing medicine cannot be transformed into poison.

This applies not only to the situation in which we are dealing with abnormal states of body or soul but also to what goes on in social life. In what has been said in recent lectures you will have seen quite clearly that impulses work in the social life of human beings, good and bad impulses, which can be guided by those who understand such things, and are indeed often guided in rather extraordinary ways. You will realize that it is simply necessary for this to be so, for mankind must learn on its own account how to achieve the good. I know very well how little these things are taken seriously, even in our circles, and how narrow-minded are the excuses and objections. But this also has to be so at present.

As with the individual, so is it also in social life: Certain impulses can be steered and guided to one side or the other. In social life, in particular, it is still possible nowadays to make use to a considerable extent of the unconscious, for every age has its unconscious aspect. As soon as you start to reckon with the unconscious or the subconscious it is possible to achieve effects which differ considerably from what can be done consciously, for today's consciousness will not achieve its natural connection with the cosmos until the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. Today, those who reckon with the unconscious bring things over from the fourth post-Atlantean epoch in either a mephistophelean or a luciferic way. Now, it fits in well with our present endeavours in these grave times to apply general truths of this kind to specific situations, for it is appropriate not just to play theosophical games but to gather serious knowledge which affects reality, even though this serious knowledge might make demands as to the degree of prejudice existing in our feelings. Also, we are in accord with a feeling for Christmas if we make the decision to approach the earnestness of life. Nowadays we cannot allow ourselves to indulge luxuriously in sentimental Christmas-tree feelings, for a true Christmas mood involves feeling one's way to its connection with the grave and shattering experiences of the present time.

You can see, particularly in people's everyday lives, what happens if they are being influenced at a subconscious level. You can hypnotize an individual person, so that once he is hypnotized he is in your power, and you can make him do things he would never even consider doing in a waking state. You can hypnotize him, which means putting him into a state of consciousness belonging to ages long past, and you may have all sorts of intentions for doing so. In the same way it is possible to hypnotize whole communities. An individual person is stronger in the physical world than is a group, and it is therefore necessary to lower his consciousness considerably more in order to work through him while he is in this other consciousness. In the case of a community or group of people the lowering of consciousness need not even be noticeable, for it can be far more slight. Yet certain things would not be achieved by continuing to speak, for instance, in the way we speak with one another. Therefore I must stress again and again: I shall never consider speaking other than in difficult concepts which require intellectual understanding, so that each person is forced to follow the line of thought and form concepts of what is being said. If we take the fifth post-Atlantean period and its requirements seriously, there can be no question of wishing to bring about any kind of intoxication, or of intending to work on anything other than the intellect. Even someone who knows nothing of Spiritual Science, but has a certain awareness of what it means to be in the fifth post-Atlantean period, will respect the inner freedom of the human being and speak in a way which does not dupe the feelings or create disturbances in the soul.

It would be different with a person who wanted to achieve effects different from those I have described, that is, if someone wanted to make use of a lowered consciousness, which can be achieved far more easily with a crowd than with an individual, since for a crowd no hypnosis is needed. You know how a crowd, a group, can be seized by a certain intoxication if it is handled in a suitable way. I have said on earlier occasions that I have met orators who knew by instinct how to speak in a way which does not directly address the intellect but uses slogans and telling images to speak to a consciousness that is somewhat askew, somewhat delirious. As I said, the approach has to be stronger in the case of an individual, but for a crowd no more is needed. I have given you examples of this.

It is entirely fitting to contemplate these things in a mood of inwardness which befits these days, for they are deeply bound up with the Christmas and Easter Mysteries. I described some time ago how I was moved in my youth when I met with such an effect in a certain situation. I have recounted this example quite often: My karma led me at the right time to hear the sermons of a very important Jesuit father. I could watch as a certain image was intensified in the people by means of particular words; I saw them being convinced in a manner that did not involve their intellect but brought about a certain kind of delirious mood. Let us look at the example. The Jesuit was preaching about the necessity of believing in the Easter confession and he said, in effect, the following: Well, of course non-believers think that the Easter confession was instituted by the Pope or the college of cardinals. What an idea, my dear Christians! Someone who maintains that the Easter confession has been established by the Pope and the priests might be compared with somebody watching a trooper standing beside his cannon, with an officer next to him giving orders. The trooper only has to light the fuse and the cannon goes off. My dear Christians, compare the trooper with the Pope in Rome and the officer giving the orders with God! Just imagine the officer standing there shouting ‘Fire’, and the trooper lighting the fuse without any will of his own. The cannon goes off. This is what the Pope does. He listens to God's commandments. God commanded—the Pope was like the trooper who lit the fuse—and there was the Easter confession. Would you say that the trooper standing by the cannon and lighting the fuse had also invented the gunpowder? It is as unlikely that you would say the trooper invented the gunpowder as it is that you would maintain that the Pope invented the Easter confession! And all the people were convinced, of course! It was perfectly obvious.

In certain communities these things have to be learned, namely, how to describe things in pictures, how to use images, bring about intensifications, and employ comparisons. This is a special art which is diligently practised in the grey brotherhoods. But there is no need to belong to a grey brotherhood in order to practise such an art. One can be dependent in one way or another on the grey brotherhoods, perhaps without even knowing how dependent one is, and then one can use these methods.

What is all this based on? It is based on the fact that a different kind of soul life is present when we speak with one another in a manner suited to the fifth post-Atlantean period, for then we direct ourselves to the intellect and not to a kind of delirium which would be brought about if we used some of the means I have just sketched. In the fifth post-Atlantean period we have to learn to withstand Hödr, we have to learn to withstand the remnants of an earlier time that resemble the mistletoe which has become a parasite in the plant world. We have to learn to withstand Hödr, the unconscious one, the blind one, the passionate one, the delirious one.

We can only win this capacity by making our understanding such that we feel quite isolated from the world, whereas those who develop a delirious type of consciousness immediately attract to themselves cosmic effects; they draw cosmic effects down into the present. With the consciousness of the fifth post-Atlantean period we stand in isolation on the earth. In a delirious consciousness, cosmic effects are drawn into the soul. And these, of course, have to be utilized in an appropriate way. Let us take an actual case.

Someone who today wants to work on others, on those whose consciousness is delirious, with the aim of achieving a particular end, can do the following: He can remember when something similar existed in an earlier age when the starry constellations were also similar. Now since everything goes in waves in the world, so that a particular wave returns to the surface after a certain time, in order to achieve certain effects he can make use of an event which under similar cosmic conditions is like a copy of an earlier event; he can make it a copy of an earlier event. Let us assume that someone wants to achieve something by influencing others in their delirious consciousness, by carrying out certain procedures involving certain facts. He goes back in history and recalls something which happened at an earlier date under a similar starry constellation.

Assume someone wants to bring something about on a day in the spring of a particular year. Having established that it is Whitsuntide, he goes back through time until he finds an event that is similar to the one he wants to bring about. And it must fall in a year when the date of Whitsun fell approximately on similar days of the month. Then the starry constellation will also be roughly the same. By utilizing all this it will then be possible to work on those in a delirious state of consciousness. In a sense it will be possible, by bringing about a state of delirious consciousness under a particular starry constellation, to hit the target of a group of people who are always a kind of Baldur in the fifth post-Atlantean period; in other words, to play Loki with blind Hödr, or through blind Hödr.

Now let us take an actual case: In an earlier age Whitsuntide fell on 20 May 1347. At this time on a particular day the heralds, flourishing their trumpets, marched with a crowd—it does not matter that their relationship to the Whitsun Mystery differed from ours today—leading Cola di Rienzi, who made the proclamation, from that important place in Rome under that very starry constellation which fell on 20 May, which was to give him the title of tribune of Rome. The impression he made was comparable to the impression made on a group or crowd in a state of delirious consciousness. For the crowd believed that Cola di Rienzi had brought the Holy Ghost; and utilization of the starry constellation of the time made it possible, though for a very short time only, for him to achieve what he intended.

A remarkable copy of this event took place under the same starry constellation in 1915 when, not Cola di Rienzi, but Signor d'Annunzio called together a crowd on the same spot in a very similar way! Again a delirious consciousness was affected by ideas and symbols which conjured up pictures that were eminently suitable for speaking to this delirious consciousness. I am not criticizing anybody's consciousness but merely reporting facts—facts which, if you like, have been pushed as far as possible down into the unconscious. But this does not alter their effectiveness. On Whitsun-day 1915 the same happened in Rome as had happened on Whitsun-day 1347, which also fell on 20, 21 May. One day makes no difference. On the contrary, the constellation was all the more identical. At Whitsun 1915 there was a repeat performance of what had happened under Cola di Rienzi in 1347. The new event was thus particularly effective, for it was borne on the same vibrations, the same waves, the same conditions.

History will only be understood when such facts are known, when it is known what can be achieved with the help of such facts. Regardless of what the influences were, Signor d'Annunzio, through the life he had led so far, had the potential of succumbing to all sorts of influences, and he had the strength to put these influences to use. Let me remark merely that, because of his earlier poetry, this poet was called by a number of critics representing the healthy side of Italy ‘The singer of all shameful degeneracy’. In ordinary life his name was Rapagnetta, which I am told means ‘little turnip’, but he called himself d'Annunzio.

Under this starry constellation Signor d'Annunzio gave a speech which you may judge for yourselves because I am going to read it aloud to you to the best of my ability. To put you in the picture: There were two parties in Italy at that time, the Neutralists and the Interventionists, and Signor d'Annunzio set himself the task of transforming all the Neutralists into Interventionists. The Neutralists wanted to preserve neutrality, and Giolitti, a man who had been very active in Italian political life for a long time, was for neutrality. That speech by d'Annunzio, which was like a repetition of the one made long ago by Cola di Rienzi under the same starry constellation, went as follows:

‘Romans!

Yesterday you presented a noble show to the world! Your never-ending, well-ordered procession resembled those solemn processions of ancient days which gathered here in the temple of Jupiter Maximus; and every street through which such power marches, such power coupled with such dignity, becomes a Via Sacra. Invisible in your midst you drew, on an invisible carriage, the statue of our great mother.

Blessed be the Roman mothers I saw in the procession yesterday, the mothers who bore their sons in their arms and wore on their foreheads the mark of resigned courage and silent sacrifice.

Is there any need for exhortations when the very stones are eloquent? The people of Rome were prepared to tear up the paving stones trampled by the horses which ought long since to be standing firm at the borders of Istria, instead of remaining here, humbled by shame, to defend the nests of poisonous creatures, the houses of traitors! What must have been the sadness of our young soldiers!—What a show of discipline and self-denial they gave, when they protected, against the just anger of the people, those very men who denigrate and slander them, humiliating them before their brothers and before the enemy. Let us cry: “Long live the army!” That is the call of this hour! Of all the vile actions committed by Giolitti and his pack this is the vilest: the denigration of our arms and of our national defence. Until yesterday they got away with the dissemination of doubt, suspicion, and disregard for our soldiers—our handsome, good, strong, brave, impetuous soldiers, the flower of our people, the reliable heroes of tomorrow. With what heavy hearts did they fix their bayonets in order to repulse the very people whose only purpose was to avenge them!

O my admirable comrades! Today every good citizen is a soldier for the freedom of Italy! Through you and with you we are victorious, we have brought confusion to the ranks of the traitors. Hear, O hear! The crime of high treason has been declared and proved, and publicly announced. The dishonourable names are known; punishment is needed!

Do not be taken in, do not be moved to pity. A rabble like that has no twinges of conscience, no remorse. Who can teach another taste to the beast who is accustomed to the filth in which he rolls and the trough from which he gorges?

On the twentieth of May in the solemn gathering of our union, we shall not tolerate the shameless presence of those who, for months, have been negotiating the sale of Italy with the enemy. Clowns may not be permitted to clothe themselves in the tri-coloured mantle, and bellow from unclean throats the holy name of the fatherland. Write out your list of proscription without pity. It is your right, it is your duty! Who saved Italy in her hour of darkness, who but you, her people, pure and profound?

Never forget that! The others may escape punishment only by flight! Let them go! This is the only leniency permitted towards them. Was not a certain one, even this morning, still inclined to join in the plots whose net is being spun among the blossoming rosebeds of the villa on the Pincio—now to be confiscated—by the fat German spider who lives there? We never believed for one minute, of course, that a ministry formed by Herr Bülow could have received the approval of the King—or rather, that the King could have become an accomplice to such a thing.

In his great heart the King has heard the exhortation of Camillo Cavour: The hour of the House of Savoy has come!

The hour has come. It tolls under the high heavens which arch over your Pantheon, O Romans, and over this eternal Capitol! Here, where the plebeians held the meetings of their council; here, where every increase in the empire of Rome was consecrated, where the consuls exacted the levies and received the oaths of the soldiers; whence the magistrates of the republic departed to take over command of the armies and control the provinces; where Germanicus set up the trophies of his victory over the Germans; where the triumphant Octavian solemnly confirmed Roman dominance over the whole of the Mediterranean basin; here, at this place, the starting point and the goal of all our victories, we celebrate the voluntary sacrifice, we cry the words of consecration and desire: Long live the war, long live Rome, long live Italy, long live the army and the fleet, long live the King! Glory and victory!’

Thus spoke the new Cola di Rienzi. Then he received the #8224 presented to him as a special souvenir of Nino Bixio. This #8224 stemmed from ancient days and had been treasured by the Podrecca family. The #8224 is presented—pardon me, but this is really true—by the editor of Asino! Asino is a particularly obscene satirical journal. But d'Annunzio takes hold of the #8224, kisses it solemnly, strides through the crowd and enters—not, like Cola di Rienzi, a horse-drawn triumphal chariot, for times have changed—he enters a motor car, having first commanded all the church bells to be rung. The delirious consciousness must not be allowed to fade too soon. All the bells are rung to keep it going a little longer. Then d'Annunzio halts his car at the telegraph office and sends a telegram to the editor of Le Gaulois who answers—I am sorry I do not know how to pronounce this in French so I shall have to say it in the German way—who answers to the name of Meier:

‘Rome, 1 p.m., great battle fought. Have just spoken on the Capitol to an enormous, delirious crowd. The bells are sounding the alarm, the cries of the people rise up to the most beautiful sky in the world. I am drunk with joy. After the French miracle I have now witnessed the Italian miracle.’

Without making any comments or taking sides I simply wanted to point out certain facts in order to show, by the way in which they are connected, how things happen that are hardly noticed by our unobservant contemporaries. I wanted to show that although the ‘singer of all shameful degeneracy’, as he was called in Italy, probably did not believe very strongly in the miracle of Whitsun, he nevertheless succeeded very well in working on certain unconscious impulses by using a repetition of an event which made available considerable forces within a delirious consciousness. This man, who in his own country is called ‘the singer of all shameful degeneracy’ and who has succeeded in writing a novel which trumpets forth his relationship with a famous woman in the most contemptible way—this man found another whole series of effective images in another long speech, this time in the Constanzi theatre. The image of the cannon, which I have already mentioned, is rather less significant. I cannot read the whole speech to you as this would take too long. Let me give you a passage from the beginning and another from the end. It begins:

‘Romans, Italians, brothers in faith and in yearning, my new friends, and my companions of old!’

Well, so he says ‘of old’!

‘Your greetings of warm kindness, of generous recognition, are not intended for me. It is not the homecomer in me you are welcoming, I know, it is the spirit that leads me, the love that fills me, the idea that I serve.

Your welcome goes through me and beyond me to a higher goal. I bring you the tidings of Quarto, Roman tidings to the Rome of the Villa Spada and of Vascello.

This evening the daylight has not gone from the Aurelian walls and it will not go: the glimmer remains on San Pancratio.

Let us this evening confront cowardice with heroism and remember that sixty-six years ago today the leader of men led his legion, already destined to become the June miracle, from Palestrina back to Rome. Let us this evening confront shame with fame and remember that fifty-five years ago at this very hour the thousand on the march from Marsala to Salemi were bivouacking, their muskets stacked together, eating their bread or sleeping quietly. In their hearts they carried the stars and the words of their leader which still sound vital and commanding to this day: “If we unite, our task will be easy. To arms!” It was the call of Marsala, which continued with the robust threat: “Those who do not arm are cowards or traitors!” If he, the saviour, could but descend from the Janiculus into the plain, would he not brand with one or the other of these signs and charge with shame all those who secretly or publicly work towards disarming Italy, shaming our fatherland, returning it to a state of servitude, nailing it back on its cross or leaving it to die in a bed that has sometimes seemed to us a grave without a cover?

Some need fifty years to die in their beds, some need fifty years to complete their disintegration in their beds. Is it possible we would allow strangers in our midst or from without, enemies who live in our house or who have entered it forcibly, to impose this kind of death on a people who yesterday raised with a shudder of power an image of their highest myth upon their shore, a monument of their true will, their Roman will, O citizens? For three days now an indefinable stink of treachery has been seeking to suffocate us.’

And so it goes on. Then, at the end we find a new, warmed-up version of something we know so well from the gospels. D'Annunzio of all people dares to speak the following words:

‘Blessed are they who have more, for all the more shall they give, all the more shall their enthusiasm be inflamed! Blessed are they who have for twenty years a pure spirit, a hardened physique, a courageous mother!

Blessed are they who refrained, waiting and trusting, from squandering their strength, preserving it instead with a warrior's discipline!

Blessed are they who scorned unfruitful dalliance, saving their virginity for this first and last love!’

D'Annunzio of all people says: ‘Blessed are they who scorned unfruitful dalliance, saving their virginity for this first and last love!’

‘Blessed are they who shall tear out the hate rooted in their breast with their own hands and then offer their sacrifice!

Blessed are they who yesterday still resisted the event, yet today silently accept it as a profound necessity, desiring now to be no longer the last but the first!

Blessed are the young men who hunger and thirst for glory, for they shall be satisfied!

Blessed are the compassionate, for they shall wipe away the shining blood and bind up the lustrous pain!

Blessed are the pure in heart, blessed those who return victorious; for they shall see the new countenance of Rome, the re-crowned head of Dante, the triumphant beauty of Italy.’

So even in our own time such things are sometimes said! And it is so important, my dear friends, not to pass by these things. For not all people act in accord with the One Whose birth we celebrate in the holy night—not those who scream out such beatitudes into the world. To belong, not to the darkness, but to the light which has entered into the world: This is a feeling with which to fill our souls at the time of this holy feast. To dedicate ourselves to the light, instead of to that inattentiveness which brings us only darkness: This, too, can be something in these grave times which it is important for us to inscribe in our souls on Christmas Eve.

Yesterday we began by considering the Baldur myth which, as we saw, goes back to ancient customs, and it is precisely such considerations that make clear for us how Christianity had to, and indeed should, link on to what mankind had previously understood. The three great festivals of the year, as they are still celebrated today, are very much linked with things which have slowly and gradually come about during the course of human evolution. We can only completely understand what still wants to express itself in the Christmas, Easter and Whitsun Mysteries if we do not shy away from linking these things with the thinking and feeling and experience of mankind gradually developing during the course of evolution. We saw how the Christ idea goes back to early, early times.

To understand this more exactly you only need to call before your soul what is contained in the book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Humanity. There you will learn how the foundation of the Christ idea can be traced back to the mysteries of the spiritual worlds. In the book is shown the path followed in the spiritual worlds by the Being Who underlies the Christ idea before He revealed Himself in physical human incarnation at a certain point in earthly evolution. In coming to grips with these concepts concerning the spiritual guidance of mankind it is possible to sense what connection, or even lack of connection, there exists between anthroposophical spiritual science and ancient Gnosis. To describe the path of Christ through the spiritual worlds in the way it is done in The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Humanity would not yet have been possible for ancient Gnosis. But this ancient Gnosis also had its own image of Christ, its Christ idea. It was capable of drawing sufficient understanding out of its atavistic or clairvoyant knowledge to comprehend the Christ in a spiritual way, saying: In the spiritual world there is an evolution; the hierarchies—or, as Gnosis put it, the aeons—follow one another; and one such aeon is the Christ. Gnosis showed how, as aeon after aeon evolved, Christ gradually descended and revealed Himself in a human being. This can be shown even more clearly today, and you may read about it in the book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Humanity.

It is good, in our spiritual scientific Movement, to feel many aspects of the deeper connections in order to free oneself of purely personal affairs. For in this fifth post-Atlantean period mankind has reached a stage in evolution at which it is very difficult for the individual to escape from his personal affairs. The individual is in danger of mixing up his personal instincts and passions with what is common to mankind as a whole.

Even the various festivals have deteriorated into purely personal affairs because mankind has lost the earnestness and dignity which alone make it possible to approach the spiritual world in the right way. It is perfectly natural in our fifth post-Atlantean period, in which man is supposed to comprehend himself to a certain extent and become independent, that there should exist such a danger of man to some extent losing his connections with the spiritual world. In earlier times man was aware of his connections with the spiritual world, yet unaware of certain other things, such as I pointed out yesterday. Today man is, above all, unaware of those things I have mentioned in these lectures by saying: People are no longer inclined to pay attention to them; they allow them to pass by without being concerned about them.

It is a good thing on occasions such as the Christmas festival to say to oneself: Spiritual impulses, both good and evil, play into the evolution of our world. We have seen how these impulses can be used in an evil way by individuals who know about them either for some personal, egoistic purpose, or in the interests of the egoism of a group. We must learn to adjust our feelings to more comprehensive affairs and more comprehensive conditions. Even though we cannot always advertise such feelings, we must nevertheless cultivate them.

I am now going to give you the opportunity—in connection with a certain matter—to, as it were, tear your soul away from any sort of personal interpretation of Anthroposophy and turn instead towards something general which is connected with our Anthroposophical Movement. If you understood properly what I said yesterday, you will say to yourself: That twentieth day of May in 1347, that May Whitsuntide when Cola di Rienzi accomplished his important manifesto in Rome, was repeated in a certain way at Whitsuntide in the year 1915. Those who have been following the events will soon notice, or would soon notice, that this May Whitsuntide was selected entirely purposely and entirely consciously by those who brought this about. It was known to these people that these old impulses would once again revive, and that the hearts and souls who succumb to the blindness of Hödr can be caught when Loki approaches them. But people can only be caught so long as they do not have the will to accustom themselves to look at, and be impressed by, connections that are perfectly obvious and comprehensible. One is only at the mercy of connections that remain in the unconscious so long as one is so tied up in personal matters that one cannot see proper connections—connections in the good sense—so long as one has no interest for those things which involve mankind as a whole, which are things that inevitably lead into the spiritual realm.

I explained to you that in Gnosis there was still an understanding of the Christ idea; that when Gnosis was rooted out the Christ idea degenerated into dogma and that, in the South, therefore, the genuine Christ idea more or less disappeared. Now spiritual science has the task, in accordance with spiritual evolution, of once again comprehending this Christ idea, of forming a Christ idea that is not an empty phrase but filled with content, with real content.

In the North the very thing that could take root there has disappeared, namely, the feeling for Jesus. As I said the day before yesterday, the feeling for Jesus was really formed in the North and lingered on into the eighth, ninth, tenth centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha. In ancient times the Christ-child was welcomed wherever a birth took place, wherever a worthy new member could be taken into the tribe, especially among the Ingaevones, while those born at the wrong time were out of place—of course I am not being pedantic. We then saw how, as external Christianity spread, all things connected with the ancient feeling for Jesus, even the myths and processions—in other words, any remnants of religious customs—were pushed aside. We also saw how, since the Middle Ages, strenuous efforts have been going on to obliterate all that spread from Jutland across Europe, especially Central Europe.

Situated in the region of Denmark was the chief Mystery centre which laid down and watched over the conditions which then appeared in the regulation of conception and birth. There it was that a general consciousness of the social connections of human beings grew up, connections that were also sacramental, a true social sacrament. The year as such was arranged as a sacrament and human beings knew they were contained within this sacrament of the year. For people in those days the sun did not for nothing go in different ways across the dome of heaven at different seasons, for what took place on earth was a mirror image of heavenly events. Where human beings as yet have, or can have, no influence, where elemental and nature beings still regulate what is now regulated by human beings in social life—there the sacrament can exist. Today, though people are not as yet aware of it, quite strong ahrimanic impulses live in individual human beings. I mean it when I say that people are not yet aware of this. These ahrimanic impulses are directed towards seizing from certain elemental nature spirits their sacramental influence on earthly evolution.

When modern technology has made it possible to warm large areas with artificial heat—I am not finding fault but merely telling you of something that will of necessity come about in the future—then plant growth, above all that of grain, will be taken away from the nature and elemental spirits. There will be heating installations, not only for winter gardens and smaller spaces for plants to grow, but for whole cornfields. Deprived of cosmic laws, grain will grow in every season, instead of only when it grows of its own accord—that is, when it grows through the working of the nature and elemental spirits. For the seeds this will be similar to what happened when the ancient consciousness of sacramental laws about conception and birth faded so that these events came to be spread over the whole year. The task of Mystery centres such as that in Denmark, which I described as regulating, as a sacrament, the social life of the people, was to search for ways in which spiritual beings could work in the social and sacramental field, just as they work on the sprouting and growing of plants in the spring and their fading in autumn. From this centre in Denmark there spread what we were able to find in the third millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha, but which then faded gradually to make way for something new, without which human beings would have been unable to ascend to the use of their intellect. These things are necessary and we ought to recognize them as such, instead of trying to meddle with the handiwork of the gods by saying: Why have the gods done it like this, why did they not arrange things like that?—which always means: Why have they not made things more comfortable for human beings!

So in Jutland, in Denmark, originated the receptivity for the feeling for Jesus. You see, it is important to think about what is happening, not only in connection with events which are more or less important, but also to consider the connections. But this thinking must be straight and true, not full of fantastic aberrations. Many people like to brood on the weird and wonderful, but proper thinking means to consider how actual events are linked and then to wait and see what arises in the way of understanding.

After all I have said in the last few days it might occur to you to ask the following question, and those of you who have already asked yourselves this question have definitely sensed in your soul something that is right. If you have not yet asked it, you could strive in future to ask yourselves this kind of question. For such questions are to be found everywhere when there is determination that there shall be truth, not only in what is said, but also in what is done. The World Logos, Whose birth we celebrate in the Christmas Mystery, can only be understood rightly if we think of It as being as general and universal as possible, if we think of this World Logos actually vibrating and pulsating in all things that happen, in every event. And when we have the humility and devotion to feel ourselves interwoven with this universal process, then we recognize the connections and links which hold sway.

What is the question our soul might place before us? In recent days you soul might have thought: We have now seen that in Gnosis there was an important Christ idea; it disappeared in the South and, in a certain way, was unable to make its way to the North. To meet it came the Jesus idea, which is linked as a feeling to the Mysteries of Jutland. This is what we have seen.

Having recognized this and having seen the links between these two, would it not be natural to have the desire to bring together what has been unable to come together? In the world evolution of the West the Christ idea has been unable to come together with the Jesus idea. Out of this must surely come the desire to unite them.

In all modesty, modern Anthroposophy is to take on this task. It is the affair of Anthroposophy to endeavour to do what is right in this matter and bring these things together to some extent in the constellation of the universe. So in attempting to describe how modern Anthroposophy, as a Gnosis brought forward into the present day, can once again understand the Christ, the wish might arise to unite this Christ idea with something that can live again in a certain place where once it lived as the feeling for Jesus in such an intense way. To do this, one would endeavour to speak about the Christ idea and how it fits in with the spiritual guidance of man exactly at that spot, or as near to that spot as possible, whence the feeling for Jesus originally emanated.

This is why, years ago, in response to an invitation from Copenhagen I spoke particularly there about the path of Christ through the spiritual evolutions. Why did the need arise just at that time, to develop at that particular place the theme of the Christ idea as it is woven into The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Humanity? It is a statement, expressed not in spoken words but in the constellation! It is up to people to understand such things. There is no need to speak about it publicly everywhere, but one must understand that not only what is said but also what is done will bring things to expression, and that in these things the Universal Logos lives in a certain way.

It seems to be the case nowadays that people obviously bring more feeling to bear on what is not right, on what is evil, seen universally, than they do when, by expressing a real fact, one endeavours to incorporate something that is essentially good in the sense of human evolution. But the feeling one really wants to inspire, especially now in connection with the Christmas Mystery, is that of participation in the Anthrosophical Movement, the feeling of living within something that is above mere external maya. Also one hopes that people will take seriously the knowledge that what happens on the physical plane, the way things happen on the physical plane, is maya, and not reality in the higher sense.

Not until we feel that what takes place on the earth also, in a way, takes place in ‘heaven’—to use a Christian expression—not until we feel that the full truth only comes about when we bring the two together in the human spirit—that is, in this fifth post-Atlantean period, the human intellect—are we seeing the full reality. The full reality lies in the bringing-together of what happens on earth and in heaven. Without this, we remain held fast in maya. We have, today, this great desire to remain held fast in maya because, in the fifth post-Atlantean period, we are far too exposed to the danger of taking the word for the fact. To a great extent words have lost their meaning, by which I mean the living soul-connection of the word with the reality that underlies the word. Words have become mere abbreviations, and the intoxication in which many people live with regard to words is no longer genuine ecstasy, because only a deepening as regards the spiritual world can make genuine the words we speak. Words will only regain real content when human beings fill themselves with knowledge of the spiritual world. Ancient knowledge is lost, and for the most part we speak in the way we do just because the ancient knowledge is lost and we are surrounded by maya, which gives us nothing but mere words. Now we must once again seek a spiritual life which gives the words their content. We live, in a way, in a mechanism of words, just as externally we shall gradually completely lose our individuality in a mechanism of technology until we are at the mercy of external mechanisms.

It is our task to bring together what lives in the spiritual world with what lives in the physical world. To do this we have to tackle very seriously the grasping of reality. In this materialistic age people are too much accustomed to living within narrow horizons and to seeing things confined within these horizons. They have even arranged their religion so comfortably that it gives them a narrow horizon. People today avoid wide horizons and do not want to call a spade a spade. That is why it is so difficult for them to understand how a karma could come about that is as terrible as that besetting Europe today. Everybody regards this karma—today, at least—from a narrow national standpoint, as it is called, although there is much that is untrue in this too. But at the foundation there lies the karma of mankind as a whole, something that is everybody's concern, which can be expressed in a single sentence with regard to one particular point—though there are many other points as well. People are inclined to pass by the very thing that matters. This thing that matters is the flight from truth into which souls have fallen today! Souls run away from the truth; they have a terrible abhorrence of grasping the truth in all its strength and intensity.

Consider the following: We have gradually built up a picture for ourselves of the evolution of mankind and we now know how to assess the fact that, during a certain period in this evolution, wars came upon the scene, that wars were what fired mankind. But it was a time when mankind believed in war. What do I mean when I say that it was a time when mankind believed in wars? What does it mean: to believe in wars? Well, a belief in wars is very similar to a belief in the duel, in the fight between two. But when does a duel have a real meaning? It has a meaning only when the two concerned are inwardly fully convinced that, not chance, but the gods will decide the outcome. If the two who take up their positions in order to fight a duel fully believe that the one who is killed or wounded will receive his death or wound because a god has sided against him, then there is truth in the duel. There is no truth in the duel if this conviction is lacking; then, obviously, the duel is a genuine lie. It is the same in the case of war. If the individuals who constitute the warring peoples are convinced that the outcome of the war is divine, that the gods govern what is to happen, then there is truth in the actions of war. But then the participants must understand the meaning of the words: A divine judgement will come about.

Ask yourselves whether there is any truth in such words today! You need only ask: Do people believe that actions of war express divine judgements? Do people believe this? Ask yourselves how many people believe that the outcome is divine! How many people truly believe this, how many honestly believe this? For among the many lies buzzing about in the world today are the prayers to the gods, or to God, offered up—naturally—by all sides. Obviously, in this materialistic age there cannot be a real belief that a divine judgement is going to take place. So it is necessary to look seriously and soberly at this matter, and admit that one is doing something without believing in its inner reality. One does not believe in this inner reality, and one believes all the less in this inner reality the further westwards one goes in Europe—quite rightly, because the further westwards one goes, the more does one enter western Europe, which has the task for the fifth post-Atlantean period of bringing about materialism.

Things are different going eastwards, however. I am not in the habit of constructing theories about such things or of saying such things lightheartedly. When I say something of this kind it is based on actual facts. It is nowadays already possible to make a remarkable discovery. Coming from the West to Central Europe you discover that here there exists a sporadic belief in divine judgement. In the West this is impossible unless it has been imported from Central Europe. But in Central Europe there are isolated individuals who have a kind of belief in destiny and who use the word ‘divine judgement’. And if you go right to the East where the future is being prepared, you will, of course, find numerous people who regard the approaching outcome as a divine judgement. For Russian people are not averse—as are the people of the West—to seeing a divine judgement in what takes place.

These things must be faced with full objectivity. Only then can we speak truly; only then do our words have meaning. Mankind has the task of learning to give meaning back to words.

Some time ago I drew your attention to what almost amounts to a religious cultivation of something that is entirely without thought or feeling, namely, the lack of desire to know that modern religions, when they speak of ‘God’, actually only mean an angel being, an angelos. When human beings today speak of ‘God’ they mean only their angel, the angel who guides them through life. But they persuade themselves that they are speaking of a being higher than an angel. It is maya that modern monotheism speaks of a single god for, in reality, seen from a spiritual point of view, mankind has the tendency to speak of as many gods as there are human beings on the earth, since each individual means only his own angel. Under the mask of monotheism is hidden the most absolute polytheism. That is why modern religions are in danger of being atomized, since each individual represents only his own idea of God, his own standpoint. Why is this? It is because, today, in the fifth post-Atlantean period, we are isolated from the spiritual world. Our consciousness remains solely in the human sphere.

In the fourth post-Atlantean period human consciousness reached some way into the spiritual sphere, namely, as far as the region of the angeloi. In the third post-Atlantean period it penetrated as far as the archangeloi. Only in this third period could such a thing as the Mysteries of Jutland, of Denmark come into being. What kind of a being was it who announced to each individual mother the coming birth of her child? It was the being about whom the Luke gospel speaks: an archangel, a being from the region of the archangeloi. One who can see only as far as the angeloi and calls an angel-being his god—regardless of whether he believes this is really God, for it is reality and not belief that matters—such a one is incapable of finding any connection that goes beyond the time between birth and death to those regions which are today hidden by external maya. In the third post-Atlantean period, however, he was still able to look into the region of the archangels, for there was still a living connection with that region. In the second post-Atlantean period, the ancient Persian period, what was open to human consciousness was still connected with the archai. Then man did not feel himself to be in what we today call nature. He felt himself to be in a spiritual world. Light and darkness were not yet external, material processes, but spiritual processes. In the original Zarathustra religion, in the second post-Atlantean period, this was so.

So mankind gradually came down to the earth. In the second post-Atlantean period his consciousness reached up into the region of the archai, so that he was then still able to say: As a human being I am not solely an articulated doll consisting of muscles and flesh—which is what modern anatomists, physiologists and biologists maintain—but a being who can only be understood in connection with the spiritual world, immersed in the living weaving of light and darkness, for I belong to the weaving of light and darkness.

Then came the third post-Atlantean period. Nature began to take hold of man in so far as it worked on him. For the processes of birth and death link the soul life of man with nature. For external maya these are natural processes. Birth, conception, death are natural processes for external maya. They are only spiritual processes for one who can see where spiritual reality intervenes in these natural processes, and that is in the region of the archangeloi. This connection was seen during the third post-Atlantean period.

Gradually, nature itself became reality for man. This was from the fourth post-Atlantean period onwards. Before that nature was not spoken of in the way we speak of it today. But man needed to step out of the spiritual world and dwell alone with nature, isolated to a certain extent from the spiritual world. But then he needed an event which would enable him once again to forge links with the spiritual world. In the second post-Atlantean period the divine element appeared to him in the region of the archai; in the third, in the region of the archangeloi; and, in the fourth, in the region of the angeloi. In the fifth post-Atlantean period he had to recognize the divine as man. This was prepared in the middle of the fourth period when the divine appeared as Man—in the Christ. What this means is that Christ must come to be understood ever better and better; He must come to be understood in His connection with the human being. For Christ appeared as Man so that man might find the connection of mankind with the Christ. Such things we must make especially clear to ourselves in connection with the Christmas Mystery. Mankind's connection with the spiritual world must be found in the way that has become possible since man stepped down from this spiritual world in order to dwell within nature. This was prepared, as a fact, during the fourth post-Atlantean period. Now, in the fifth post-Atlantean period, it must be understood—really understood!

Human beings must find their way to an understanding of the fact of Christ, to an understanding of this in its connection with the whole of the spiritual world. There is so much today which is not understood about Christ, and so much which is not understood about Jesus. Yet these are the two constituent parts necessary for the understanding of Christ Jesus! Looking at the historical context we can see that the understanding for Christ disappeared when Gnosis was rooted out. Looking at the mysteries expressed in the Baldur myth we can understand how the feeling for Jesus was rooted out.

If we remain truthful we can see now, in the present, how external life corroborates what we find in history. For how many representatives of religion today believe in their hearts—not merely with their lips but in their hearts—how many believe in the true Resurrection, in the Mystery of Easter? They can only believe if they can comprehend it. How many priests do? Modern priests and pastors think themselves particularly enlightened when they succeed in disavowing the Easter Mystery, the Resurrection Mystery, if they manage somehow to discuss it to bits, to make it disappear through sophistry. They are delighted every time they discover a new reason for not having to believe in it.

First of all, the Christ idea, which is inseparable from the Resurrection Mystery, was made into dogma. Then gradually it became a subject for discussion, and the tendency now is to drop the Resurrection Mystery altogether. But the Mystery of the Birth is also not understood. People no longer want to have dealings with it because they do not want to accept its validity in all its profound depths as a mystery. They want to see only the natural side; they do not want to be aware that something spiritual came down. In the third post-Atlantean period human beings still saw this spiritual element descending, but then their consciousness was at a different level. What is today called modern religion, modern Christianity, really has no desire to comprehend either the birth or the death of Christ Jesus. Some still want to maintain a dogmatic connection. But a comprehension of these things that goes beyond mere words is today only possible through spiritual science. For this to be possible, the horizon of comprehension must be widened. But people today flee from the truth; they literally flee from what could lead them to an understanding of these things.

Only anthroposophical spiritual science is in a position to create out of itself—not by warming up ancient history—certain concepts which will now exist for conscious rather than atavistic understanding. Long ago these concepts existed atavistically; today, people no longer have any real feeling for them. Let me remind you of something I mentioned yesterday. The kingship of the ancient European tribes was connected with all those social institutions I mentioned as emanating from the Mysteries of Jutland. The first child born in the holy night in the third year was destined to be king. He was prepared for this in the way I explained and he grew up to be the man who could be king for three years. He had reached the stage I described when I said that he grew beyond his national limits—he stepped out of the context of his tribe. An individual of the fifth degree-called ‘Persian’ by the Persians—bore in every tribe the name of that tribe; he still stood within the group. The one who was to be king for three years had to be filled with the mystery of the ‘sun hero’. This was the sixth degree, and for this he had to have grown beyond his tribe or group and stand in the context of mankind as a whole. But he could only do this if his connections were not only earthly but also cosmic, if he was a ‘sun hero’, which meant that he lived in a realm governed not only by earthly laws but also by those laws with which the sun is interwoven. If man is to act on the earth he has to have contact with the earthly realm, and contact with this realm brings about a certain process. This process must be recognized. For by recognizing this process we gain an understanding for certain transitions, for certain things into which we need insight if we are to gain insight into reality.

In ancient times a man belonging to the tribe of the Ingaevones was called an ‘Ingaevoni’. But the one who ruled the tribe for three years as a ‘sun hero’ could not be called an Ingaevoni, because he had grown beyond his tribe. It would not have been truthful to call the ‘sun hero’ an Ingaevoni, because he had become something else. You see what an exact concept was attached to an earthly reality because the spiritual world was felt to be streaming in.

Nowadays, when we merely play with words instead of adhering strictly to concepts, who would take it into his head to say that it is untrue to call the Pope a Christian, since this is a paradox, just as it would have been paradoxical to call the king of the Ingaevones an Ingaevoni? If the Pope really wanted to be a ‘pope’, that is, if he really wanted to stand within the actual spiritual process, it would not be possible to take him for a Christian. We can only be Christians if the Pope is not a Christian. To say this would be to speak the truth.

Who would take it into his head today to want to think the truth about such important matters? And who would take it into his head to see in earthly things, which he recognizes as maya, the playing in of divine, of supernatural forces? This would be quite uncharacteristic of the present day. Only if we are forced do we recognize these things; only if forced do we bow to the laws of the cosmos. We are forced to recognize that the blade of wheat sprouts from the earth at a given season, develops ears which in turn produce new seeds; that there is a definite rotation so that what has come into being has to fade again in due season in accordance with the laws of nature. Even this we would not recognize if we were not forced to do so.

In ancient times it was recognized that the ‘sun hero’ called to be the leader of the Ingaevones would cease to be so after three years. These laws were felt, just as were those of the growing plants. It is important to endeavour to think of all these things resounding in unison, in harmony. Only by doing so can one come to the truth and widen one's horizons. For the truth is not a child's game to be arranged according to personal interests. To adhere to the truth is a grave and holy act of worship. This must be felt and sensed. Yet the whole tendency today is none other than to make maya absolute and declare it to be the truth.

What is the historical criticism cultivated today in historical seminars? It is a neat paring down to the bare sense-perceptible facts, and this can only lead to error. For by striving to pare things down to the sense-perceptible facts we drift over into maya. But maya is illusion. So any science of history which endeavours to exclude every spiritual element and, instead, bring maya to the fore, must of necessity lead directly to maya. Just try, by using modern seminar methods applied in historical departments today, to pare things down to the truth by eliminating anything spiritual and accepting only what takes place on the physical plane, that is, only sense-perceptible facts, and you will find that you fall a victim to maya and never reach an understanding of history. Take a modern history book for which anything super-sensible is an absurdity and in which great care is taken to attach validity only to physical events, and you have in your hand the striving to bring maya to the fore. But maya is illusion. So you have to fall a victim to illusion; and this is exactly what you do. The moment you believe history as it is written today you become a victim of maya, of illusion.

But history has not always been written in this way. The way it was done in former times is scorned today. It is a terrible aspect of human karma that even in man's view of history the spiritual element is excluded. Let us look back to the time when the attitude of the fourth post-Atlantean period was dominant. History was told quite differently then. It was told in a way which makes today's professors turn up their noses and say: These fellows were totally uncritical; they let themselves be lumbered with all sorts of myths and sagas; they had no feeling for tidy criticism which would have shown them the facts as they really were. This is what historians say today, and of course also those who copy them. The people in those days were childish, they say. Of course they were childish when compared with today's notions! Let us listen to the old way of telling history, of telling what countless people with the attitude of mind of the fourth post-Atlantean period saw as history. Let us listen to this today and look at it as an example which we can use as a basis for what is to be said tomorrow:

Once upon a time there lived in Saxon lands an Emperor whom people called ‘Red Emperor’, the Emperor with the red beard: Otto of the Red Beard. This Emperor had a wife who came from England and whose heart's desire it was to endow a church. So Otto the Red decided to endow the archbishopric of Magdeburg. The archbishopric of Magdeburg was to have a special mission in Central Europe. It was to link the West with the East in such a way that this very archbishopric would be the one to bring Christianity to the neighbouring Slavs. The archbishopric of Magdeburg made good progress, carrying out charitable works over a wide area, and Otto of the Red Beard saw what good effects his endowment was having in the district. He was very pleased at this. He said to himself: My deeds are sufficient as a blessing in the physical world. He always longed for God to reward him for his benevolent deeds towards the people. That was his aim: that God might reward him because, after all, everything he did was done from piety.

Once he knelt in church in prayer which rose up to become a meditation, beseeching the gods to reward him, when he died, for his endowment, in the same way as he had found his reward on the physical plane, in all the good that had come about in the environment of the archbishopric of Magdeburg. Then a spiritual being appeared to him and said: It is true, you have endowed much that is good, you have acted with much benevolence towards many people. But you have done all this with a view to receiving the blessing of the divine world after your death, just as you are now enjoying the blessing of the earthly world. This is bad and it spoils your endowment.

Now Otto of the Red Beard was very unhappy about this and he spoke with this being who was—was he not?—a being from the ranks of the angeloi. We may feel this in the attitude of mind of the fourth post-Atlantean period. He spoke with this being and this being said to him: Go to Cologne where Gerhard the Good lives. Ask where you can find Gerhard the Good. If you can make yourself more virtuous through what Gerhard the Good will say to you, then perhaps you can avoid what I have just said will happen to you. This, more or less, was the conversation of Otto of the Red Beard with the spiritual being.

With a speed which those around him could not understand, the Emperor Otto made ready to journey to Cologne. In Cologne he called a gathering of the Burgomaster and all ‘wise and benign councillors’. One of those who came he recognized by his appearance as an unusual man, the one whom he had really come to see. He asked the Archbishop of Cologne, who had accompanied him, whether this was Gerhard the Good. And indeed it was. Then the Emperor said to the councillors: I wished to consult with you, but now I shall first speak apart with this man and then discuss with you what I have gleaned from him when I have spoken with him.

Perhaps this put the councillors' noses out of joint somewhat, but we shall not go into this. So the Emperor took aside the councillor known in Cologne as Gerhard the Good and asked: Why do people call you Gerhard the Good? He had to ask this question, for the angel had pointed out that it all depended on whether he could recognize why this man was called Gerhard the Good. For he was to be healed through him. Gerhard the Good answered: People call me Gerhard the Good because they are thoughtless. I have not done anything special. But what I have done, which is something quite insignificant and about which I shall not tell you, has become known to some extent and, because people always want to invent phrases, they call me Gerhard the Good. The Emperor said: Surely it cannot be as simple as all that, and it is extremely important for me and my whole reign that I discover why people call you Gerhard the Good. Gerhard the Good did not want to disclose anything, but the Emperor pressed him ever harder till Gerhard the Good said: Very well, I will tell you why they call me Gerhard the Good, but you must not tell anyone else, for truly I see nothing special in it:

I am a simple merchant, I have always been a simple merchant, and one day I prepared to set out on a journey. First I journeyed on land for a while, and then at sea. I travelled as far as the Orient where I purchased very many valuable materials and valuable objects for very little money. I planned to sell these things elsewhere for double, treble, or even four or five times the price, for this is the custom among merchants; this was my business, my trade. Then I continued my journey by ship. But we were blown off course by an unfavourable wind. We had no idea where we were. So I found myself off course in the wind on the open sea with a few companions and all my costly objects and materials. We came ashore and from this shore a cliff rose up. We sent out a scout to climb the cliff to see what was beyond it, for we had been stranded on the shore. The scout saw a great city beyond the cliff; it was obviously a great trading city. Caravans were approaching along roads from all sides and a river flowed past it. The scout returned and showed us the way to approach the city from a spot where we could make fast our ship.

Here we were, in a city totally strange to us. Soon it became obvious that we Christians were surrounded by heathens. We saw a busy market. I thought to myself that I would be able to sell all sorts of things in the market, for the bargaining was lively. But I did not know the customs of the country. Then I saw coming towards me along the street a man who looked trustworthy. To him I said: Could you help me to sell my wares here? The man evidently felt that I too looked trustworthy and said: Where have you come from? I told him I was a Christian from Cologne. He said: Despite that, you seem quite respectable. Hitherto I have entertained the worst suspicions about Christians, but you do not seem to be a monster. I shall assist you and will find you lodgings. After that you may like to show me your wares.

When the merchant, Gerhard the Good, had settled in his lodgings, the heathen man he had met came one day, inspected his wares and found them exceptionally costly. He said: Though there are quite a few rich people in the town, none of them is rich enough to buy all this. I am the only one to possess anything equivalent to these wares. If you want to sell them to me, I can give you what they are worth, but I am the only one who could do this. The merchant from Cologne wanted to see for himself, so the heathen offered to show him that he did indeed possess wares of an equivalent value to those extremely costly pieces gathered from all over the world.

So Gerhard went to the home of the heathen, where he saw immediately that he was dealing with a most important citizen of the town. First the heathen led him to a chamber in which twelve youths lay chained. They were prisoners, starving and wretched. He said: See, these are twelve Christians whom we took prisoner on the high seas where they were drifting aimlessly. Now come and see the rest of the wares. He took him to another room and showed him the same number of miserable old men. Gerhard's heart bled more for the old men than it had for the youths. Then he showed him a number of women—fifteen, I believe—who had also been taken prisoner. And he said: If you give me the wares I will give you these prisoners. They are exceedingly valuable and you can have them.

Then Gerhard, the merchant from Cologne, discovered that one of the women was exceedingly valuable because she was a daughter of the King of Norway who had been shipwrecked with her women—only some of the fifteen, the others were from elsewhere—and taken prisoner by the heathen. The other women were from England, as were the youths and old men. They had set sail with William, the son of the King of England, to fetch his Norwegian bride. When he had collected his Norwegian bride from Norway they had met with misfortune and been washed out to sea. William, the King's son, had been separated from the others. They did not know what had befallen him. As far as they were concerned he was lost. But the others, the women and the King's daughter from Norway, the twelve noble youths, the twelve noble old men, and the English women who had accompanied William to collect his bride, had all been shipwrecked and fallen into the hands of this heathen prince. He now wanted to sell them to Gerhard in exchange for his oriental wares. Gerhard wept bitter tears, not on account of the wares but, on the contrary, because he was to receive such valuable commodities in exchange for them. With his whole heart he agreed to the deal. The heathen prince was much moved and thought to himself: These Christians are not at all the monsters I thought them to be. He even equipped a fully provisioned ship so that Gerhard might take the youths and the old men, the King's daughter and the maidens across the sea with him. In parting from them all he was much moved and said: On account of you I shall henceforth be very just to all Christians who come into my care.

Now the merchant Gerhard from Cologne set off across the sea, and when they came to the point where the configuration of the land showed that the passages to London and to Utrecht must separate, he said to his travelling companions: Those who belong to England may sail that way. Those who belong to Norway, the King's daughter with her few women, may come with me to Cologne and I shall see whether the one whose bride she was to be has perhaps been found so that he may come and collect her.

In Cologne Gerhard kept the King's daughter in accordance with her standing. She was most lovingly cared for by his family. Only at first—Gerhard the Good permitted himself to remark—was his wife's nose put slightly out of joint when he arrived with the King's daughter. But soon she loved her like her own daughter. These things are quite understandable. She grew up like a daughter of the house and was cared for lovingly. Her only great sadness was that she never stopped weeping for her beloved William, for she naturally presumed that if he had been saved he would scour the world to find her. But he did not come. The family of Gerhard the Good loved her, and Gerhard had a son, so he thought to himself that this beautiful maiden might become a wife for his son. Of course, in accordance with opinions at that time, this could only happen if the son could be raised up to an equal standing. The archbishop of Cologne declared himself prepared to make the son a knight. Everything was done in a suitable way. Gerhard was very rich and everything went well. Tournaments were held and after waiting still another year in case William should turn up—the King's daughter had begged for this—preparations were made for the wedding.

During the wedding a pilgrim appeared, a man with a beard so long that it was plain to see that much time had passed since it had last seen a blade. And he was very sad. Gerhard the Good was filled with pity at the sight of the pilgrim and asked him what was the matter. It is impossible to say, said the pilgrim, for from now on he must carry his sorrow through the wide world; from today he knew that his sorrow would never cease. For the pilgrim was William who had lost all his companions, had found land at last, had wandered about and arrived at the very moment when his bride was almost married to Gerhard's son in Cologne. Then Gerhard said: Of course you shall have your rightful bride; I shall speak with my son. Since the bride loved her lost bridegroom, William, more than Gerhard's son, everything was arranged and, after her marriage to William had been celebrated in Cologne, Gerhard accompanied William, the heir to the throne of England, with his bride to England. There he left them. Since he was known in London as a merchant he walked about the town and heard that a great meeting was in progress. Everything was in turbulence and it was plain to see that a revolution might break out. He heard that this was because there was no heir to the throne. The heir had disappeared years ago. He had quite a number of supporters in the land, but all the others were in disagreement and the meeting was now to decide on a new heir.

Gerhard donned his best robe and went to the meeting. He was allowed in on account of his best robe—which was exceedingly splendid because he was such a rich merchant. There he found four-and-twenty men discussing who should replace the beloved heir, William. Gerhard saw that the four-and-twenty were the selfsame men he had rescued from the heathen prince and had sent to London at the point where the ways to London and Utrecht parted. They did not recognize him immediately. They told him that William had been lost—William, whom they loved above all others. But then they recognized each other. Now Gerhard explained that he would bring William to them. So the matter was settled. I need not describe to you the joy which now broke out all over England. At first, in the meeting, before they knew who Gerhard was about to bring to them, but having recognized him as the one who had saved them, they even wanted to declare Gerhard himself king. Now William became King of England. Then William wanted to confer on Gerhard the Duchy of Kent, but he did not accept this. Even from the new Queen, who had for so long been his foster daughter, he refused the gold treasures she wished to bestow on him, accepting only a ring and a few other trinkets to bring to his wife as keepsakes from their foster daughter. So he departed for home.

All this has now unfortunately become known here—said Gerhard the Good to Otto the Red—and that is why people call me Gerhard the Good. But it is not for people, or even myself, to judge whether what I did was good or not. Therefore it is nonsense for people to call me Gerhard the Good, for the words can have no meaning.

Otto the Red, the Emperor, listened attentively and realized that other attitudes than the one he had developed were possible and existed, even in the heart of a merchant of Cologne. This made a deep impression on him. He returned to the council meeting and said to the councillors: Gentlemen, you may go home, for I have learned all I needed to know from Gerhard the Good. This put the noses of the wise and benign councillors thoroughly out of joint, but the attitude of soul of Otto the Red was entirely transformed.

This is how a story—history—was told in those days. What is told here is criticized, obviously, by the historians of today, whose aim is to pare history down to the facts of the physical plane, facts which have their feet on the ground. Not only this event but many others also were told, when the feeling for history was still that of the fourth post-Atlantean period, with the inclusion of not only the physical facts but also with the meaning they had in relation to the spiritual world. There was an interweaving between what happened on the physical plane and what flowed through it, giving it meaning.

There is very deep meaning in the story of Otto the Red and Gerhard the Good.

I wanted to tell you this story, which was once seen as history, so that tomorrow we can use it, among other things, as a foundation for further discussions which will widen our horizons still further.

Yesterday I told you the story of Gerhard the Good—which most of you probably know—so that today we can illustrate various points in our endeavour to increase our understanding of the matters we are discussing. But before I interpret parts of this story for you, in so far as this is necessary, we must also recall a number of other things we have touched on at various times during these lectures. From what has been said over the past few weeks you will have seen that the painful events of today are connected with impulses living in the more recent karma of mankind, namely, the karma of the whole fifth post-Atlantean period. For those who want to go more deeply into these matters it is necessary to link external events with what is happening more inwardly, which can only be understood against the background of human evolution as seen by spiritual science.

To begin with, take at face value certain facts which I have pointed out a number of times. I have frequently said that, in the middle of the nineteenth century, an endeavour was made to draw the attention of modern mankind to the fact that there exist in the universe not only those forces and powers recognized by natural science but also others of a spiritual kind. The endeavour was to show that just as we take in with our eyes—or, indeed, with all our senses—what is visible around us, so are there also spiritual impulses around us, which people who know about such things can bring to bear on social life—impulses which cannot be seen with the eye but are known to a more spiritual science.

We know what path this more spiritual science took, so I need not go over it again. Around the middle of the nineteenth century, then, it was the concern of a certain centre to draw people's attention to the existence, as it were, of a spiritual environment. This had been forgotten during the age of materialism. You also know that such things have to be tackled with caution because a certain degree of maturity is necessary in people who take in such knowledge. Of course, not all those can be mature who come across, or are affected by, this knowledge in accordance with the laws of our time, which underlie public life. But part of what must be done at such a time can be the requirement to test whether the knowledge may yet be revealed publicly.

Now in the middle of the nineteenth century two paths were possible. One, even then, would have been what we could describe by mentioning our anthroposophical spiritual science, namely, to make comprehensible to human thinking what spiritual knowledge reveals about our spiritual environment. It is a fact that this could have been attempted at that time, in the middle of the nineteenth century, but this path was not chosen. The reason was, in part, that those who possessed this esoteric knowledge were prejudiced, because of traditions that have come down from ancient times, against making such things public. They felt that certain knowledge guarded by the secret brotherhoods—for it was still guarded at that time—should be kept within the circle of these brotherhoods. We have since seen that, so long as matters are conducted in the proper way, it is perfectly acceptable today to reveal certain things. Of course it is unavoidable that some malicious opponents should appear, and always will appear, in circles in which such knowledge is made known—people who are adherents for a time because it suits their passions and their egoism, but who then become opponents under all sorts of guises and make trouble. Also when spiritual knowledge is made known in a community, this can easily lead to arguments, quarrelling and disputes, of which, however, not too much notice can be taken, since otherwise no spiritual knowledge would ever be made known. But, apart from these things, no harm is done if the matter is handled in the right way.

But at that time this was not believed. So ancient prejudice won the day and it was agreed to take another path. But, as I have often said, this failed. It was decided to use the path of mediumistic revelation to make people recognize the spiritual world in the same way as they recognize the physical world. Suitable individuals were trained to be mediums. What they then revealed through their lowered consciousness was supposed to make people recognize the existence of certain spiritual impulses in their environment. This was a materialistic way of revealing the spiritual world to people. It corresponded to some extent to the conditions of the fifth post-Atlantean period, in so far as this is materialistic in character.

This way of handling things began, as you know, in America in the middle of the nineteenth century. But it soon became obvious that the whole thing was a mistake. It had been expected that the mediums would reveal the existence of certain elemental and nature spirits in the environment. Instead, they all started to refer to revelations from the kingdom of the dead. So the goal which had been set was not reached. I have often explained that the living can only reach the dead with an attitude which does not depend on lowering the consciousness. You all know these things. At that time this was also known and that is why, when the mediums began to speak of revelations of the dead, it was realized that the whole thing was a mistake. This had not been expected. It had been hoped that the mediums would reveal how the nature spirits work, how one human being affects another, what forces are at play in the social organism, and so on. It had been hoped that people would start to recognize what forces might be used by those who understand such things, so that people would no longer be dependent solely on one another in the way they are when only their sense perceptions come into play, but would be able to work through the total human personality. This was one thing that went wrong.

The other was that, in keeping with man's materialistic inclinations, it soon became obvious what would have begun to happen if the mediumistic movement had spread in the way it threatened to do. Use would have been made of the mediums to accomplish aims which ought only to be accomplished under the influence of natural, sense-bound reasoning. For some individuals it would have been highly desirable to employ a medium who could impart the means of discovering the knowledge which such people covet. I have told you how many letters I get from people who write: I have a lottery ticket; or, I want to buy a lottery ticket; I need the money for an entirely selfless purpose; could you not tell me which number will be drawn? Obviously, if mediums had been fully trained in the techniques of mediumship, the resulting mischief with this kind of thing would have been infinite, quite apart from everything else. People would have started to go to mediums to find a suitable bride or bridegroom, and so on.

Thus it came about that, in the very quarter that had launched the movement in order to test whether people were ready to take in spiritual knowledge, efforts were now made to suppress the whole affair. What had been feared in bygone times, when the abilities of the fourth post-Atlantean period still worked in people, had indeed now come to pass. In those days witches were burnt, simply because those people called witches were really no more than mediums, and because their connections with the spiritual world—though of a materialistic nature—might cause knowledge to be revealed which would have been very awkward for certain people. Thus, for instance it might have been very awkward for certain brotherhoods if, before being burnt at the stake, a witch had revealed what lay behind them. For it is true that when consciousness is lowered there can be a kind of telephone connection with the spiritual world, and that by this route all sorts of secrets can come out. Those who burnt the witches did so for a very good reason: It could have been very awkward for them if the witches had revealed anything to the world, whether in a good or a bad sense, but especially in a bad sense.

So the attempt to test the cultural maturity of mankind by means of mediums had gone awry. This was realized even by those who, led astray by the old rules of silence and by the materialistic tendencies of the nineteenth century, had set this attempt in train. You know, of course, that the activities of mediums have not been entirely curtailed, and that they still exist, even today. But the art of training mediums to a level at which their revelations could become significant has, so to speak, been withdrawn. By this withdrawal the capabilities of mediums have been made more or less harmless. In recent decades, as you know, the pronouncements of mediums have come to amount to not much more than sentimental twaddle. The only surprising thing is that people set so much store by them. But the door to the spiritual world had been opened to some degree and, moreover, this had been done in a manner which was untimely and a mistake.

In this period came the birth and work of Blavatsky. You might think that the birth of a person is insignificant, but this would be a judgement based on maya. Now the important thing is that this whole undertaking had to be discussed among the brotherhoods, so that much was said and brought into the open within the brotherhoods. But the nineteenth century was no longer like earlier centuries in which many methods had existed for keeping secret those things which had to be kept secret. Thus it happened that, at a certain moment, a member of one of the secret brotherhoods, who intended to make use in a one-sided way of what he learnt within these brotherhoods, approached Blavatsky. Apart from her other capacities Blavatsky was an extremely gifted medium, and this person induced her to act as a connecting link for machinations which were no longer as honest as the earlier ones. The first, as we have seen, were honest but mistaken. Up to this point the attempt to test people's receptivity had been perfectly honest, though mistaken. Now, however, came the treachery of a member of an American secret brotherhood. His purpose was to make one-sided use of what he knew, with the help of someone with psychic gifts, such as Blavatsky. Let us first look at what actually took place. When Blavatsky heard what the member of the brotherhood had to say, she, of course, reacted inwardly to his words because she was psychic. She understood a great deal more about the matter than the one who was giving her the information. The ancient knowledge formulated in the traditional way lit up in her soul a significant understanding which she could hardly have achieved solely with her own resources. Inner experiences were stimulated in her soul by the ancient formulations which stemmed from the days of atavistic clairvoyance and which were preserved in the secret brotherhoods, often without much understanding for their meaning on the part of the members. These inner experiences led in her to the birth of a large body of knowledge. She knew, of course, that this knowledge must be significant for the present evolution of mankind, and also that by taking the appropriate path this knowledge could be utilized in a particular way.

But Blavatsky, being the person she was, could not be expected to make use of such lofty spiritual knowledge solely for the good of mankind as a whole. She hit upon the idea of pursuing certain aims which were within her understanding, having come to this point in the manner I have described. So now she demanded to be admitted to a certain occult brotherhood in Paris. Through this brotherhood she would start to work. Ordinarily she would have been accepted in the normal way, apart from the fact that it was not normal to admit a woman; but this rule would have been waived in this case because it was known that she was an important individuality. However, it would not have served her purpose to be admitted merely as an ordinary member, and so she laid down certain conditions. If these conditions had been accepted, many subsequent events would have been very different but, at the same time, this secret brotherhood would have pronounced its own death sentence—that is, it would have condemned itself to total ineffectiveness. So it refused to admit Blavatsky. She then turned to America, where she was indeed admitted to a secret brotherhood. In consequence, she of course acquired extremely significant insights into the intentions of such secret brotherhoods; not those which strive for the good of mankind as a whole, disregarding any conflicting wishes, but those whose purposes are one-sided and serve certain groups only. But it was not in Blavatsky's nature to work in the way these brotherhoods wished. So it came about that, under the influence of what was termed an attack on the Constitution of North America, she was excluded from this brotherhood.

So now she was excluded. But of course she was not a person who would be likely to take this lying down. Instead, she began to threaten the American brotherhood with the consequences of excluding her in this way, now that she knew so much. The American brotherhood now found itself sitting under the sword of Damocles, for if, as a result of having been a member, Blavatsky had told the world what she knew, this would have spelt its death sentence. The consequence was that American and European occultists joined forces in order to inflict on Blavatsky a condition known as occult imprisonment. Through certain machinations a sphere of Imaginations is called forth in a soul which brings about a dimming of what that soul previously knew, thus making it virtually ineffective. It is a procedure which honest occultists never apply, and even dishonest ones only very rarely, but it was applied on that occasion in order to save the life—that is the effectiveness, of that secret brotherhood.

For years Blavatsky existed in this occult imprisonment, until certain Indian occultists started to take an interest in her because they wanted to work against that American brotherhood. As you see, we keep coming up against occult streams which want to work one-sidedly. Thus Blavatsky entered this Indian current, with which you are familiar. The Indian brotherhood was very interested indeed in proceeding against the American brotherhood, not because they saw that they were not serving mankind as a whole, but because they in turn had their own one-sided patriotically Indian viewpoint. By means of various machinations the Indian and the American occultists reached a kind of agreement. The Americans promised not to interfere in what the Indians wanted to do with Blavatsky, and the Indians engaged to remain silent on what had gone before.

You can see just how complicated these things really are when you add to all this the fact, which I have also told you about, that a hidden individual, a mahatma behind a mask, had been instituted in place of Blavatsky's original teacher and guide. This figure stood in the service of a European power and had the task of utilizing whatever Blavatsky could do in the service of this particular European power. One way of discovering what all this is really about might be to ask what would have happened if one or other of these projects had been realized.

Time is too short to tell you everything today, but let us pick out a few aspects. We can always come back to these things again soon.

Supposing Blavatsky had succeeded in gaining admission to the occult lodge in Paris. If this had happened, she would not have come under the influence of that individual who was honoured as a mahatma in the Theosophical Society—although he was no such thing—and the life of the occult lodge in Paris would have been extinguished. A great deal behind which this same Paris lodge may be seen to stand would not have happened, or perhaps it would have happened in the service of a different, one-sided influence. Many things would have taken a different course. For there was also the intention of exterminating this Paris lodge with the help of the psychic personality of Blavatsky. If it had been exterminated, there would have been nothing behind all those people who have contributed to history, more or less like marionettes. People like Silvagni, Durante, Sergi, Cecconi, Lombroso and all his relations, and many others would have had no occult backers behind them. Many a door, many a kind of sliding door, would have remained locked.

You will understand that this is meant symbolically. In certain countries editorial offices—I mean this as a picture!—have a respectable door and a sliding door. Through the respectable door you enter the office and through the sliding door you enter some secret brotherhood or other working, as I have variously indicated over the last few days, to achieve results of the kind about which we have spoken. So the intention was to abolish something from the world which would have done away with, at least, one stream which we have seen working in our present time. Signor d'Annunzio would not have given the speech we quoted.

Perhaps another would have been given instead, pushing things in a different direction. But you see that the moment things are not fully under control, the moment people are pushed about through a dimming of their consciousness, and when occultism is being used, not for the general good of mankind—and above all, in our time, not with true knowledge—but for the purpose of achieving one-sided aims, then matters can come to look very grave indeed.

Anyway, the members of this lodge were, from the standpoint of the lodge, astute enough not to enter into a discussion of these things. Later on, certain matters were hushed up, obscured, by the fact that Blavatsky was prevented by her occult imprisonment from publicizing the impulses of that American lodge and giving them her own slant, which she would doubtless otherwise have done. Once all these things had run their course, the only one to benefit from Blavatsky was the Indian brotherhood. There is considerable significance for the present time in the fact that a certain sum of occult knowledge has entered the world one-sidedly, with an Indian colouring. This knowledge has entered the world; it now exists. But the world has remained more or less unconscious of it because of the paralysis I have described.

Those who reckon with such things always count on long stretches of time. They prepare things and leave them to develop. These are not individuals, but brotherhoods in which the successor takes over from the predecessor and carries on in a similar direction with what has been started.

On the basis of the two examples I have given you, of occult lodges, you can see that much depended on the actual impulses not being made public. I do not wish to be misunderstood and I therefore stated expressly that the first attempt I described to you was founded on a certain degree of honesty. But it is extremely difficult for people to be entirely objective as regards mankind as a whole. There is little inclination for this nowadays. People are so easily led astray by the group instinct that they are not objective as regards mankind as a whole but pay homage to one group or another, enjoying the feeling of ‘belonging.’ But this is something that is no longer really relevant to the point we have reached in human evolution. The requirement of the present moment is that we should, at least to some degree, feel ourselves to be individuals and extricate ourselves, at least inwardly, from group things, so that we belong to mankind as human individuals. Even though, at present, we are shown so grotesquely how impossible this is for some people, it is nevertheless a requirement of our time.

For example, let me refer to what I said here a few days ago. A nation as a whole is an individuality of a kind which cannot be compared with human individualities, who live here on the physical plane and then go through their development between death and a new birth. Nations are individualities of quite a different kind. As you can see from everything we find in our anthroposophical spiritual science, a folk spirit, a folk soul, is something different from the soul of an individual human being. It is nonsense to speak in a materialistic sense, as is done today, of the soul of a nation while at the back of one's mind thinking of something resembling the soul of an individual—even though one, of course, does not admit this to oneself. Thus you hear people speak of ‘the French soul’; this has been repeatedly said in recent years. It is nonsense, plain nonsense, because it is an analogy taken from the individual human soul and applied to the folk soul. You can only speak of the folk soul if you take into account the complex totality described in the lecture cycle on the different folk spirits. But to speak in any other sense about the folk soul is utter nonsense, even though many, including journalists, do so—and they may be forgiven, for they do not know what they are talking about. It is mere verbosity to speak—as has been done—for instance of the ‘Celtic soul and the Latin spirit’. Maybe such a thing is just about acceptable as an analogy, but there is no reality in. We must be clear about the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha. So often have we said that the Mystery of Golgotha was accomplished in such a way that what has been united with earth evolution ever since is there for all mankind, but that if an individual speaks of a mystical Christ within him, this is no more than idle talk. The Mystery of Golgotha is an objective reality, as you know from much that has been said here. It took place for mankind as a whole, which means for every individual human being. Christ died for all human beings, as a human being for human beings, not for any other kind of being. It is possible to speak about a Christian, about one whose attitude of mind is Christian, but it is complete nonsense to talk of a Christian nation. There is no reality in this. Christ did not die for nations, nations are not the individualities for whom He died. An individual who is close to the Being of the Mystery of Golgotha can be a Christian, but it is not possible to speak of a Christian nation. The true soul of a nation, its folk soul, belongs to planes on which the Mystery of Golgotha did not take place. So any dealings and actions between nations can never be interpreted or commented upon in a Christian sense.

I am pointing out these things simply because it is necessary that you in particular, my dear friends, should understand just how important it is today to arrive at clear-cut concepts. This can only be done by applying spiritual science, and yet mankind as a whole strives to fish in muddy waters with concepts that are utterly nonsensical and obscure. So the important thing is, above all, to arrive at clear-cut concepts, to see everything in relation to clear-cut concepts, and also to understand that in our time certain occult, spiritual impulses have been working, chiefly through human beings. This is fitting for the fifth post-Atlantean period.

Now if Blavatsky had been able to speak out at that time, certain secrets would have been revealed, secrets I have mentioned as belonging to certain secret brotherhoods and connected with the striving of a widespread network of groups. I said to you earlier that definite laws underlie the rise and evolution of peoples, of nations. These laws are usually unknown in the external, physical world. This is right and proper, for in the first place they ought to be recognized solely by those who desire to receive them with clean hands. What now underlies the terrible trials mankind is undergoing at present and will undergo in the future is the interference in a one-sided way, by certain modern brotherhoods, with the spiritual forces that pulse through human evolution in the region in which, for instance, nations, peoples, come into being. Evolution progresses in accordance with definite laws; it is regular and comes about through certain forces. But human beings interfere, in some part unconsciously, though if they are members of secret brotherhoods, then they do so consciously.

To be able to judge these things you need what yesterday I called a wider horizon; you need the acquisition of a wider horizon. I showed you the forces of which Blavatsky became the plaything, in order to point out how such a plaything can be tossed about, from West to East, from America to India. This is because forces are at work which are being managed by human beings for certain ends, by means of utilizing the passions and feelings of nationality, which have, however, in their turn first been manufactured. This is most important. It is important to develop an eye for the way in which a person who, because of the type of passions in her—in her blood—can be put in a certain position and be brought under the sway of certain influences. Equally, those who do this must know that certain things can be achieved, depending on the position in which the person is placed. Many attempts fail. But account is taken of long periods of time and of many possibilities. Above all, account is taken of how little inclination people have to pay attention to the wider—the widest, contexts.

Let us stop here and turn to yesterday's story. It tells us about the time around the tenth century, when the constitution of souls was still that of the fourth post-Atlantean period. We saw how the spiritual world intervened in the life of Emperor Otto of the Red Beard. His whole life is transformed because the spiritual world makes him aware of Gerhard the Good. From Gerhard the Good he is to learn the fear of God, true piety, and that one must not expect—for largely egoistic reasons—a blessing from heaven for one's earthly deeds. So he is told by the spiritual world to seek out Gerhard the Good. This is the one side: what plays in from the spiritual world.

Those who know that age—not as it is described by external history, but as it really was—are aware that the spiritual world did indeed play in through real visions such as that described in connection with Emperor Otto the Red, and that spiritual impulses definitely played a meaningful part. The one who wrote down this story says expressly that in his youth he had also written many other stories, as had other contemporaries of his. The man who wrote down the story of Gerhard the Good was Rudolf von Ems, an approximate contemporary of Wolfram von Eschenbach. He said he had written other stories as well but that he had destroyed them because they had been fairy tales. Yet he does not consider this story to be a fairy tale but strictly historical, even though externally it is not historical—that is it would not be included in today's history books which only take physical maya into account. In the way he tells it, it cannot be compared with external, purely physical history; and yet his telling is more true than purely physical history can be for, on the whole, that is only maya. He tells the story for the fourth post-Atlantean period.

You know, for I have repeatedly said this, that I am not taking sides in any way but simply reporting facts which are to provide a basis on which judgements may be formed. Only those who do not wish to be objective will maintain that what I shall attempt to say is not objective. Someone who does not wish to be objective cannot, of course, be expected to find objectivity in what is, in fact, objective. The fact that the spiritual world plays into human affairs is not the only important aspect of the story of Gerhard the Good. It is also significant that a leading personality receives from the spiritual world the impulse to turn to a member of the commercial world, the world of the merchant. It is indeed a historical fact that, in Central Europe, at that time the members of the ruling dynasty to which Otto the Red belonged did start to patronize the merchant classes in the towns. In Europe this was the time of the growth of commerce.

We should further take into account that at that time there were as yet no ocean routes between Orient and Occident. Trade routes were definitely still overland routes. Merchants such as Gerhard the Good who, as you know, lived in Cologne, carried their trade overland from Cologne to the Orient and back again. Any use of ships was quite insignificant. The trade routes were land routes. Shipping connections were not much more than attempts to achieve with the primitive ships of those days what was being done much more efficiently by land. So in the main the trade routes were overland, while shipping was only just beginning. That is what is characteristic of this time, for comprehensive shipping operations only came much later.

We have here a contrast arising out of the very nature of things. So long as Orient and Occident were connected by land routes, it was perfectly natural that the countries of Central Europe should take the lead. Life in these Central European countries was shaped accordingly. Much spiritual culture also travelled along these routes. It was quite different from what came later. As the centuries proceeded, the land routes were supplanted by ocean routes. As you know, England gradually took control of all the ocean connections which others had opened up. Spain, Holland and France were all conquered as far as their sea-faring capacities were concerned, so that in the end everything was held under the mighty dominance which encompassed a quarter of the earth's dry land, and gradually also all the earth's oceans.

You can see how systematic is this conquering, this almost exterminating, of other seafaring powers when you remember how I told you some time ago that in the secret brotherhoods, especially those which grew so powerful from the time of James I onwards, it was taught as an obvious truth that the Anglo-Saxon race—as they put it—will have to be given dominance over the world in the fifth post-Atlantean period. You will see how systematic the historical process has been when you consider what I have also mentioned and what was also taught: that this fifth post-Atlantean race of the English-speaking peoples will have to overcome the peoples of the Latin race.

To start with, the main thing is the interrelation between the English-speaking peoples and those whose languages are Latin in origin. Recent history cannot be understood without the realization that the important aim—which is also what is being striven for—is for world affairs to be arranged in such a way that the English-speaking peoples are favoured, while the influence of any peoples whose language is based on Latin fades out. Under certain circumstances something can be made to fade out by treating it favourably for a while, thus gaining power over it. This can then make it easy to engulf it.

In those secret brotherhoods, about which I have spoken so often, little significance is attached to Central Europe, for they are clever enough to realize that Germany, for instance, owns only one thirty-third of the earth's land surface. This is very little indeed, compared with a whole quarter of the land surface plus dominance over the high seas. So not much importance is attached to Central Europe. A great deal of importance was attached, however—especially during the period when present events were being prepared—to the overcoming of all those impulses connected with the Latin races.

It is remarkable how short-sighted the modern historical view is and how little inclination there is to go more deeply into matters which are quite characteristic of situations. I have already pointed out that what has so long been practised as a pragmatic view of history is not important, reporting as it does on one event, followed by another, and another, and yet another. What is important is to recognize the facts characterized by the many interrelationships in the events which follow one another. What matters is to point out what is characteristic about the facts, namely, what reveals the forces lying behind maya. Pragmatic history must today give way to a history of symptoms.

Those who see through things in this way will be in a position to form judgements about certain events which differ considerably from those of people who reel off the events of world history—this fable convenue—one after the other, as is done in historical science today. Consider some of the things you know well in connection with some others about which I shall tell you. First of all, a simple fact: In 1618 the Thirty Years War began because certain ideas of a reformative kind developed within the Czech Slav element. Then certain aristocrats belonging to these Slav circles took up the movement and rebelled against what might be called the Counter-Reformation, namely, the Catholicism from Spain which was favoured by the Habsburgs. The first thing usually told about the Thirty Years War is the story of the rebels going to the town hall in Prague and throwing the councillors Martinitz and Slavata and the secretary Fabrizius out of the window. Yet this is quite insignificant. The only interesting point is perhaps that the three gentlemen did not hurt themselves because they fell onto a dunghill. These are not things which can bring the Thirty Years' War to life for us or show us its real causes.

The reformative party elected Frederick, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, as counter-King of Bohemia in 1619. Then followed, as you know, the battle of the White Mountain. Up to the election of the Elector Palatine, all the events were caused by the passionate feelings of these people for a reform movement, by a rebellion against arbitrary acts of power such as the closure or destruction of Protestant churches at Braunau and Kloster Grab. There is not enough time for me to tell you the whole story. But now think: Frederick, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, is elected King. Up to this point the events are based on human passions, human enthusiasm, it is even justified to say human idealism—I am quite happy to concede this.

But why, of all people, was the Elector Palatine of the Rhine chosen as King of Bohemia? It was because he was the son-in-law of James I, who stands at the beginning of the renewal of the brotherhoods! Here, then, we may discern an important finger in the pie if we are trying to look at history symptomatically. Attempts were being made to steer events in a particular direction. They failed. But you see that there is a finger in the pie. The most significant sign of what kind of impulses were to be brought to bear in this situation is that the son-in-law of one of the most important occultists, James I, was thrown into this position.

You see, the fact is that the whole of recent history has to do with the contrast between the ancient Roman-Latin element and that element, not of the English people—for they would get on perfectly happily with the world—but that element which, as I have described sufficiently, is to be made out of the English people if they fail to put up any resistance. It is the conflict between these two elements that is at work.

Meanwhile something else is manipulated, for a great deal can be achieved in one place by bringing about events in another.

Let us look at a later date. You might pick up a history book and read the history of the Seven Years War. Of course the history of this war is read just as thoughtlessly as any other. For to understand what is really going on and investigate what forces of history are playing a part, you have to look properly at the various links between the different circumstances. You have to consider, for instance, that at that time the southern part of Central Europe, namely Austria, was linked with every aspect of the Latin element and even had a proper alliance with France, whereas the northern part of Middle Europe—not at first, but later on—was drawn to what was to be made, by certain quarters, into the English-speaking, fifth post-Atlantean race.

When you look closely at the alliances and everything else that went on at that time—those things which were not maya, of course—you discover a war that is in reality being waged about North America and India between England and France. What went on in Europe was really only a weak mirror image of this. For if you compare everything that took place on the larger scale—do extend your horizons!—then you will see that the conflict was between England and France and that North America and India were already starting to have their effect. It was a matter of which of these two powers was cleverer and more able to direct events in such a way that dominion over North America or India could be snatched away from the other. At work in this were long-term future plans and the control of important impulses. It is true: The influence snatched by England from France in North America was won on the battle fields of Silesia during the Seven Years' War!

Watch how the alliances shift when the situation becomes a little awkward and difficult; watch the alliances from this point of view!

Now, another story. It is necessary to look at these things, and once one is not misunderstood, once it is assumed that one's genuine purpose is to gain a clear picture of what is going on in the world, once one strives to be objective, it will not be taken amiss when such stories are told; instead it will be understood that our concern is for comprehension and not for taking sides. In fact, it is precisely those people who feel they are affected by a particular matter who ought to be particularly glad to learn more about it. For then they are lifted above their blindness and given sight, and nothing is better for a person than real insight into how things work in the world. So let us now take an example which can show you a different side of how things work.

Through circumstances which you can look up in a history book, the kingdoms of Hanover and England were once linked. The laws of succession in the two countries were different—we need not go into this in detail—and as a result of this, when Victoria came to the throne of England, Hanover had to become separate. Another member of the English royal house had to take the throne of Hanover. The person elected, or rather the person jostled onto the throne of Hanover was Ernst August, Duke of Cumberland, who had previously been connected with the throne of England. So this Ernst August came to the throne of Hanover at the age of sixty-six. His character was such that, after his departure to become the king of Hanover, the English newspapers said: Thank goodness he's gone; let's hope he doesn't come back! He was considered a dreadful person because of the whole way he behaved. When you look at the impression he made on his contemporaries and those who had dealings with him, a certain type of character emerges which is striking for one who understands characters of this kind. The Hanoverians could not understand him. They found him coarse. He was indeed coarse, so coarse that the poet Thomas Moore said: He surely belonged to the dynasty of Beelzebub. But you know the saying: The German lies if he is polite. So they had a certain understanding for coarseness, but they did presuppose that someone who is coarse is at least honest. Ernst August, however, was always a liar as well as being coarse, and this the Hanoverians could not understand. He had other similar traits as well.

First, Ernst August repealed the Hanoverian constitution. Then he dismissed the famous ‘seven professors’ of Göttingen University. He had them sent straight out of the country, so that it was not until they reached Witzenhausen, which lay beyond his majesty's borders, that their students were permitted to take leave of them. I need not tell you the whole story. But what is the explanation? Those who seek no further for an explanation of this extraordinary mask merely find Ernst August coarse and dishonest. He even cheated Metternich, which is saying much indeed, and so on. But there is something remarkably systematic in all this. And the systematic aspect is not changed by the fact that he lived most of his life up to the age of sixty-six in England, where he was an officer of the Dragoons.

An explanation may be found in the fact that in his whole manner he was manifesting the impulses one has when one is a member of the so-called ‘Orange Lodge’. His whole manner was an expression of the impulses of the Orange Lodge, of which he was a member.

What we must do is learn to understand history symptomatically and widen our horizons. We need to develop a sense for what is important and what really gives insight. So I told you the tale of Gerhard the Good in order to demonstrate how, through such phenomena as the Orange Lodge, and so on, what had been Central Europe was quite systematically drawn over to the West. I am not uttering any reproach, for it was a historical necessity. But one ought to know it and not apply moral judgements to such things. What is essential is to develop the will to see things, to see how human beings are manipulated, to see where there might be impulses by which people are manipulated. This is the same as striving for the sense for truth. I have often stressed that this is not something that enables one to say: But I really believed it, it was my honest and sincere opinion! No indeed. One who possesses the sense for truth is one who unremittingly strives to find the truth of the matter, one who never ceases to seek the truth and who takes responsibility for himself even when he says something untrue out of ignorance. For, objectively, it is irrelevant whether something wrong is said knowingly or unknowingly. Similarly it is irrelevant whether you hold your finger in the candle flame through ignorance or on purpose; either way you burn it.

At this point we must understand what happened at the transition from the fourth post-Atlantean period-when commerce was still just under the influence of the spiritual world, as is indicated in the story of Gerhard the Good—to the fifth period, when everything commercial was drawn over into the occult sphere which is guided by the so-called ‘Brothers of the Shadow’. These brotherhoods guard certain principles. From their point of view it would be extremely dangerous if these principles should be betrayed. That is why they were so careful to prevent Blavatsky from making them public or causing them to pass over into other hands. They were, in fact, to be passed over from the West to the East; not to India but to the East of Russia.

Someone with a sense for what lies behind maya can understand that external institutions and external measures can have differing values, differing degrees of importance in the total context. Consider an incident in recent history. I have told you so many occult, spiritual things that I have, in a way, ‘done my time’ and am now free to go on and give you some indications out of more recent history. No one should say that I am taking this time away from that devoted to occult matters; these things are also important.

So let us take an example from more recent history. In 1909 a meeting was arranged between the King of Italy and the Tsar of Russia. So far there had not been much love lost between these two representatives, but from then on it was considered a good thing to manoeuvre them into each other's company. So the meeting at Racconigi took place. It was not easy to arrange. In the description of all the measures he had to take to prevent ‘incidents of an assassinatory nature’ you can read how difficult it was for poor Giolitti, who was Prime Minister at the time.

Then there was the question of finding a suitable personage who would pay Rome's homage to the Tsar. This had to be a personage of a particular kind. Such things have to be prepared well in advance so that when the right moment arrives they can be set in train on the spot. For a really ‘juicy’ effect to be achieved, not just any personage would do for the purpose of paying Rome's homage to the Tsar—the homage of the Latin West to the self-styled Slav East. It would have to be a special personage, even one who might not easily be persuaded to undertake this task. Now ‘by chance’, as the materialists would say, but ‘not by chance’, as those who are not materialists would say, a certain Signor Nathan—what a very Italian name!—was at that time the mayor of Rome. For many reasons his attitude was rather democratic and not at all one that would make him inclined to pay homage to the Tsar, of all people. He had only taken Italian citizenship shortly before becoming mayor of Rome. Before that he had been an English citizen. The fact that he was of mixed blood should be taken into account; he was the son of a German mother and had assumed the name of Nathan because his father was the famous Italian revolutionary Mazzini. This is a fact.

So persuading him to pay homage to the Tsar made it possible to say: See how thoroughly democracy has been converted. Here was someone who was not an ordinary person but one who had been anointed with all the oils of democracy, but—also someone who had been well prepared. From that moment onwards certain things start to become embarrassing. Today it is known, for example, that from that moment onwards all the correspondence within the Triple Alliance was promptly reported to St Petersburg! Human passions also played some part in the matter, since a special role was carried out in this reporting by a lady who had found a ‘sisterly’ route between Rome and St Petersburg. Such things can obviously be ascribed to coincidence. But those who want to see beyond maya will not ascribe them to coincidence but will seek the deeper connections between them. Then, when one seeks these deeper connections, one is no longer capable of lying as much, is no longer capable of deceiving people in order to distract them from the truth, which is what matters.

For instance—I am saying this in order to describe the truth—it would obviously have been most embarrassing for the widest circles if people's attention had been drawn to the fact that the whole invasion of Belgium would not have taken place if that sentence I have already mentioned, which could have been spoken by Lord Grey—Sir Edward Grey has now become a lord—if that sentence had really been spoken. The whole invasion of Belgium would not have taken place. It would have been a non-event, it would not have happened. But instead of speaking about the real cause, in so far as this is the cause because it could have prevented the invasion, it was obviously more comfortable to waste people's time by telling them about the ‘Belgian atrocities’. Yet these, too, would not have happened if Sir Edward Grey had taken this one, brief measure. In order to hide the simple truth something different is needed, something that arouses justified human passions and moral indignation. I am not saying anything against this. Something different is needed. It is a characteristic of our time, even today when it is particularly painful, to make every effort to obscure the truth, to blind people to the truth.

This, too, had to be prepared carefully. Any gap in the calculation would have made it impossible. The whole of the periphery, which had prudently been created for this very purpose, was needed.

But these things were very carefully prepared, both politically and culturally. Every possibility was reckoned with; and this was certainly necessary, since the most unbelievable carelessness sometimes prevailed, even in places where such a thing would be least expected. Let me give you an example, an objective fact, which will allow us to study this carelessness.

At one time Bismarck had a connection with a certain Usedom in Florence and Turin. I have told you before: Modern Italy came into being by roundabout means and actually owes her existence to Germany; but this is connected with all sorts of other things. What I am saying has profound foundations, and in politics all sorts of threads interweave. Thus at one time threads were woven which were to win over the Italian republicans. In short, at a certain time one such link existed between Bismarck and Usedom in Florence and Turin. Usedom was a friend of Mazzini and of others who enjoyed a certain prominence in nationalistic circles. Usedom was a man who posed very much as a wise person. He employed as his personal secretary somebody who was supposed to be a follower of Mazzini. Later it turned out that this personal secretary, of whom it had been said that he was initiated into Mazzini's secret societies, was nothing but an ordinary spy. Bismarck tells this tale quite naively and then adds, as an excuse for having been so mistaken: But Usedom was a high-grade Freemason. Many things could be told in this way and often it would turn out that those involved are totally innocent because the ones who pull the strings remain in the background.

You cannot maintain that there is no point in asking why such things are permitted to happen by the wise guides of world evolution—why human beings are, to a large degree, abandoned to such machinations, by making the excuse that there is no way of getting to the bottom of these things. For, indeed, if one only seeks them honestly, there are many ways of finding out what is going on. But we see, even in our own Society, how much resistance is put up by individuals when there is a question of following the simple path of truth. We see how many things which should be taken objectively in pursuit of knowledge, when they would best serve the good of mankind, are instead taken subjectively and personally. There are—are there not?—within our Society groups who have studied very attentively an essay of, I believe, 287 pages which they have taken utterly seriously and about which they are still puzzling, as to whether the writer—who is well enough known to us—might be right. In short, within our own circles we may sometimes discover why it is so difficult to see through things. Yet it is, in fact, not at all difficult to see through things if only one strives honestly for the truth. For years so much has been said within our Society. If you were to bring together all that has been said since 1902 you would see that it contains much that could help us to see through a great deal that is going on in the world. Yet our anthroposophical spiritual science has never been presented as belonging to a secret society. Indeed the most important things have always been dealt with in public lectures open to anybody. This is a contrast which should be noted.

I might as well say now: If certain streams within our Anthroposophical Society continue to exist and if, for the sake of human vanity, they continue to interpret to their own advantage certain things which have been said behind closed doors—for no more reason than one would exclude first-year students in a university from what is told to those in their second year—then, eventually there will be nothing esoteric left. If things are not taken perfectly naturally, if people continue to stand up and say: This is secret, that is very esoteric, this is occult, and I am not allowed to speak about this!—if this policy continues to be followed by certain streams in our Society, if they continually fail to understand that any degree of vanity must stop, then everything mankind must be told about today will have to be discussed in public. Whether it is possible to make known certain things, the needs of the moment will tell. But the Anthroposophical Society is only meaningful if it is a ‘society’, that is, if each individual is concerned to make a stand against vanity, against folly and vanity and everything else which clothes things in false veils of mysticism, serving only to puzzle other people and make them spiteful. The mysteriousness of certain secret brotherhoods has nothing to do with our Society, for we must be concerned solely with bringing about what is needed for the good of mankind. As I have often said, our enemies will become more and more numerous. Perhaps we shall discover what our enemies are made of by the manner in which they quarrel with us. So far we have had no honest opponents worth mentioning. They would, in effect, only be to our advantage! The kind of opposition we have met hitherto is perfectly obvious through their ways and means of operation. We might as well wait patiently to discover whether further opponents will be from within our circle, as is frequently the case, or from elsewhere! I have just had news of opposition from one quarter which will empty itself over us like a cold shower. A forthcoming book has been announced during some lectures. The author, a conceited fellow, has never belonged to our Society but has been entertaining the world with all sorts of double egos and such like. He has now used the opportunity of the various national hatreds and passions to mount an attack on our Anthroposophy of a kind which shows that his hands are not clean.

So we must not lose sight of these things and we must realize that it is up to us to hold fast to the direction which will lead to truth and knowledge. Even when we speak about current issues it must only be in pursuit of knowledge and truth. We must look things straight in the eye and then each individual may take up his own position in accordance with his feelings. Every position will be understandable, but it must be based on a foundation of truth.

This is a word which must occupy a special place in our soul today. So much has taken place in our time which has puzzled people and which should have shown them that it is necessary to strive for a healthy judgement based on the truth. We have experienced how the yearning for peace only had to make itself felt in the world for it to be shouted down. And we still see how people actually get angry if peace is mentioned in one quarter or another. They are angry, not only if one of the combatants mentions peace, but even if it is mentioned in a neutral quarter.

It remains to be seen whether the world will be capable of sufficient astonishment about these things. Experience so far has been telling, to say the least. In April and May 1915 a large territory was to have been voluntarily ceded, but the offer was rejected so that war could be waged. Since world opinion failed to form an even partially adequate judgement about this event, there seems to be really nothing for it but to expect the worst. We might as well expect the worst, because people seem bent on telling, not the truth, but what suits their purposes. Their thinking is strange and peculiar to a degree. Yet to tackle things properly the right points have to be found.

Let me read you a short passage written by an Italian before the outbreak of the present war, at a time when the Italians were jubilant about the Tripoli conflict—which I am not criticizing. I shall never say anything against the annexation of Tripoli by Italy, for these things are judged differently by those who know what is necessary and possible in the relationships between states and nations. They do not form judgements based on lies and express opinions steeped in all kinds of moralistic virtues. But here we have a man, Prezzolini, who writes about an Italy which pleases him, which has evolved out of an Italy which did not please him. He starts by describing what this Italy had come to, how it had gone down in the world, and he then continues—directly under the impression of the Tripoli conflict:

‘And yet, totally unaware of this economic risorgimento, Italy underwent at the same time the period of depression described above. Foreigners were the first to notice the reawakening. Some Italians had also expressed it, but they were windbags carrying on about the famous and infamous “primacy of Italy”. The book by Fischer, a German, was written in 1899, and that by Bolton-King, an Englishman, in 1901. To date no Italian has published a work comparable to these, even to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of “unification”. The exceptional good sense of these foreigners is notable for, truly, outsiders have neither wanted, nor do they now want, to know anything about modern Italy. Then, as now, people's judgement, or rather prejudgement of Italy amounted to saying: Italy is a land of the past, not the present; she should “rest on her past glory” and not enter into the present. They long for an Italy of archives, museums, hotels for honeymooners and for the amusement of spleen and lung patients—an Italy of organ-grinders, serenades, gondolas—full of ciceroni, shoe-shiners, polyglots and pulcinelli. Though they are delighted to travel nowadays in sleeping cars instead of diligences, they nevertheless regret a little the absence of Calabrese highwaymen with pistol and pointed velvet hat. Oh, the glorious Italian sky, defaced by factory chimneys. Oh, la bella Napoli, defamed by steamships and the unloading thereof; Rome filled with Italian soldiers; such regret for the wonderful days of Papal, Bourbon and Leopoldine Rome! These philanthropic feelings still provide the basis for every Anglo-Saxon and German opinion about us. To show how deeply they run, remember that they are expressed by people of high standing in other directions, such as Gregorovius and Bourget. The Italy who reformed herself and grew fat, the Italy who is seen to carry large banknotes in her purse—this is the Italy who has at last gained a proper self-confidence. We should forgive and understand her if she now reacts by going a little further than she ought in her enthusiasm. Ten years have hardly sufficed for the idea of the future and strength of Italy to pass from those who first saw it, to the populace at large who are now filled and convinced by it. It would have been in vain had our great thinkers piled up volumes of journals, statistical papers, philosophical works and books of modern art.’

This is the attitude, my dear friends! ‘It would have been in vain had our great thinkers piled up volumes of journals, statistical papers, philosophical works and books of modern art.’ All this would be worthless, he thinks, to raise up a people. This modern man has no faith in the worth and working of culture and spiritual values!

‘It would have been in vain had our great thinkers piled up volumes of journals, statistical papers, philosophical works and books of modern art; neither the people nor the foreigners would ever have been convinced, at least not before the passage of very many years.’

So this man has no confidence in creating spiritual culture in this way.

‘A great and brutal force was needed to smash the illusion and give every last and miserable village square a sense of national solidarity and upward progress.’

To what does he attribute the capacity to achieve what no spiritual culture could produce? He says:

‘It is the war which has served to do this.’

There you have it! This is what people believed. Tripoli was there and it had to be there. Moreover, they also said: War is needed to bring the nation to a point which it was not found necessary to reach by means of spiritual culture.

Indeed, my dear friends, such things speak to us when we place them side by side with another voice which says: We did not want this war; we are innocent lambs who have been taken by surprise. Even from this side comes the cry: To save freedom, to save the small nations, we are forced to go to war. This man continues:

‘We young people born around the year 1880 entered life in the world with the new century. Our land had lost courage. Its intellectual life was at a low ebb.’

These were the people born around the year 1880.

‘Philosophy: positivism. History: sociology. Criticism: historical method, if not even psychiatry.’

This may indeed be said in the land of Lombroso!

‘Hot on the heels of Italy's deliverers came Italy's parasites; not only their sons, our fathers, but also their grandsons, our elder brothers. The heroic tradition of risorgimento was lost; there was no idea to fire the new generation. Among the best, religion had sunk in estimation but had left a vacuum. For the rest it was a habit. Art was reeling in a sensuous and aesthetic frenzy and lacked any basis or faith. From Carducci, whom papa read to the accompaniment of a glass of Tuscan wine and a cheap cigar, they turned to d'Annunzio, the bible of our elder brothers, dressed according to the latest fashion, his pockets full of sweets, a ladies' man and vain braggart.’

Yet this marionette—of whom it is said here that he was ‘dressed according to the latest fashion, his pockets full of sweets, a ladies' man and vain braggart’—this marionette had made clear to the people at Whitsuntide in 1915 that they needed what no work of the spirit could give them!

When times are grave it is most necessary to make the effort to look straight at the truth, to join forces with the truth. If we do not want to recognize the truth we deviate from what may be good for mankind. Therefore it is necessary to understand that precisely in these times serious words need to be spoken. For we are in a position today in which even one who is seven-eighths blind should see what is happening when the call for peace is shouted down. Someone who believes that you can fight for permanent peace while shouting down the call for peace might, conceivably, hold worthwhile opinions in some other fields; but he cannot be taken seriously with regard to what is going on. If, now that we are faced with this, we cannot commit ourselves to truth, then the prospects for the world are very, very bad indeed.

It is for me truly not a pleasant task to draw attention to much that is going on at present. But when you hear what is said on all sides, you realize the necessity. We must not lose courage, so long as the worst has not yet happened. But the spark of hope is tiny. Much will depend on this tiny spark of hope over the next few days. Much also depends on whether there are still people willing to cry out to the world the utter absurdity of such goings on—as has been done just now, even in the great cities of the world.

The world needs peace and will suffer great privation if peace is not achieved. And it will suffer great privation if credence continues to be given to those who say: We are forced to fight for permanent peace; and if these same people continue to meet every possibility for peace with scorn, however disguised in clever words. But we have reached a point, my dear friends, when even a Lloyd George can be taken for a great man by the widest circles! We may well say: Things have come a very long way indeed!

Yet these things are also only trials to test mankind. They would even be trials if what I permitted myself to express at the end of the Christmas lecture were to happen, namely, if it were to be recorded for all time that, in the Christmas season of the nineteen hundred and sixteenth year after the Mystery of Golgotha, the call for ‘peace on earth among men and women who are of good will’ was shouted down on the most empty pretexts. If the pretexts are not entirely empty, then they are indeed more sinister still. If this is the case, then it will be necessary to recognize what is really at work in this shouting down of every thought of peace: that it is not even a question of what is said in the periphery, but of quite other things. Then it will be understood that it is justified to say that what happens now is crucial for the fortune or misfortune of Europe.

I cannot go further tonight because of the lateness of the hour. But I did want to impress these words on your heart!

Our recent considerations have, on the one hand, referred to human evolution as a whole, in so far as this has been affected by the Mystery of Golgotha. We have concerned ourselves to some degree with the loftiest, the most significant aspects of universal and human evolution. On the other hand, it is surely understandable that we have gone into the events of the moment. It was especially necessary to do this because a large proportion of our friends had expressed the wish to hear something about these current events. We have to admit that the gravity of the times encourages us to link the concrete experiences of the day with the nerve centre, the inmost impulse, of our spiritual-scientific striving. For after much investigation we can surely say that the reasons for the catastrophe we now see all around us in human evolution are buried very deeply indeed, and that it is superficial to look at current events solely by taking account of only the most external ramifications.

Looking only at these we would never reach a fruitful view of present events. A fruitful view would be one which would give us the possibility of finding thoughts on how to extricate ourselves from the catastrophe in which the world now finds itself. So let us look at some more details. I then intend tomorrow to show an important connection revealed by spiritual science, a connection which will touch our souls in a way which will enable us to gain an active and understanding grasp of these things. So let us now prepare for this with some more details.

First, let me stress once again that nothing is further from my intention than to put forward political considerations. This is most certainly not our task. It is our task to use our considerations to gain knowledge, knowledge of how things are linked together. For this we have to look at the details. And for this very reason our considerations are very far removed from any form of taking sides. Especially in this respect I beg you not to misunderstand me. Whatever point of view one or other of us might have in relation to national aspirations must not be allowed to interfere in any way with the deeper foundations of our spiritual-scientific striving. My intention is solely to make suggestions on which a judgement might be based. In no way do I want to influence anyone's opinion.

Misunderstandings can easily arise in this field, and it seems to me that some of the things I have said recently have indeed been open to misunderstanding. Let me therefore say immediately—since anyone can be misunderstood in this way—that, for instance, when I have spoken about the question of Belgian neutrality and events connected with it, I have had absolutely no intention of defending or attacking anything but merely wanted to state facts. Indeed, the first time I mentioned this I was simply quoting Georg Brandes who, so it seems to me, has expressed a truly neutral judgement.

It has not been my concern to criticize politically one measure or another taken by one side or another. My intention has been to stress the importance of the principle of truth in the world, to stress that the karma which has fulfilled itself in mankind has often come about because the attention paid to facts, the attention paid to historical and other connections of life in our materialistic age, is not permeated with the truth. When truth is not at work, when that extraordinary opposite of truth, namely, the lack of inclination to seek the truth, is at work, when there is little yearning for truth—all this is connected with the karma of our time. This is what we must study.

When we see what is being said during these years in which mankind is living, through what is today called war, we cannot object that such things are said only by the newspapers. What matters is the effect. These things have powerful effects. When we pay attention to what is said and to how these things are said, we find that it is just in this ‘how’ that something works which truly does not run concurrently with the truth. Do not believe that thoughts and statements are not objective forces in their own right! They are objective, actual forces! It is inevitable that they are followed by consequences, even if these are not translated into external deeds. What people think is far more important for the future than what they do. Thoughts become deeds in the course of time. We live today on the thoughts of past times; these are fulfilled in the deeds committed today. And our thoughts which flood through the world today will flow into the deeds of the future.

I am now coming to something which has easily led to misunderstandings, so let me say in advance: I am using the following as a model for the manner in which one may seek the truth. I said some days ago that peace would have been preserved if Sir Edward Grey had replied in the affirmative to the question from the German ambassador in London as to whether England would remain neutral if Germany respected Belgian neutrality. This statement may be disputed. I maintain, however, that it cannot be denied that things would certainly have taken a different course if Sir Edward Grey had answered in the affirmative; for then the violation of Belgium's neutrality would not have taken place.

If you recall everything I have said—and please consider that what matters here are the nuances—you will see that with not a single word have I anywhere defended the violation of Belgian neutrality. I certainly have not done this. But neither do I need to brand it as a violation of the law. To do so would be to carry coals to Newcastle, as the saying goes. Right at the beginning of the war the German Chancellor himself admitted that it was a violation of the law. It cannot be my task to add anything to this or to excuse anything about it. It has been admitted by those competent to judge that it was a violation of the law.

The fact remains—and I beg that we should understand one another properly today, my dear friends—the fact remains that on 1 August the English Foreign Minister was asked: Would England remain neutral if Germany refrained from violating Belgian neutrality? And he gave an evasive answer! The way the question was framed leaves no doubt that, if the answer had been affirmative, Belgium's neutrality would not have been violated.

You could say that the neutrality of Belgium had been guaranteed since 1839, and that as matters stood there was no need to ask, since Germany was obliged to respect the neutrality of Belgium. Therefore Germany had no right to demand that England should remain neutral if Germany were to respect the law, since it was her duty to do so. The respecting of Belgium's neutrality ought not to have been made dependent on England's neutrality. You could say that the German ambassador merely asked: Will England remain neutral if Germany keeps her promise?

So if someone maintains that it was formally correct of Sir Edward Grey to answer evasively, he is absolutely right. He is so right that it is pointless to go into it any more. But legally formal judgements are never what matters in world evolution. Such judgements never conform to reality! World history proceeds in ways which cannot be encompassed by formal judgements. A formal judgement is foreign to reality. But someone who makes a formal judgement will, if only he shouts loudly enough, always be in the right because, of course, sensible people do not object to the rightness of formal judgements. Formal judgements are also very easily understood; but they do not encompass the realities.

May I remind you that in my recent book Vom Menschenrätsel I stressed that it is not only the formal correctness of a judgement that matters but also the degree in which it conforms to reality. The important thing is that judgements must encompass reality. Nobody can have any objection to the formal correctness of Sir Edward Grey's answer. There is nothing to discuss, for it is perfectly obvious. But it is the facts we must look at, although the way we look at the facts must be such as to show how we ought to judge external matters if we want to prepare ourselves to win correct perceptions about spiritual matters also. Spiritual matters must be comprehended in all their reality; and for this, formal judgements are insufficient. So we must accustom ourselves to keep the facts together as well as we possibly can in external matters also.

I could argue for a long time on this, for we could speak for days solely about this question. First of all, if it were a matter of establishing a legal basis—for if neutrality is to be violated, it must first exist—we should have to discover whether Belgium's neutrality did, in fact, exist at the time when it was supposed to have been violated. I am not referring here to documents which have been found during the war. There is no point in discussing these since they are questionable and various opinions are possible. But if the matter were being discussed, and if everything relevant were being scrutinized and assessed in the way other things are also judged in ordinary life, then this point would have to be raised too: Surely the old neutrality formalized in 1839 lost its validity when Belgium occupied the Congo. If a state creates new circumstances by entering into international relations at a level where it could give away or sell territories as extensive as those of the Congo—or do anything else with them in relation to other states—then, surely its neutrality must be suspect.

I know that in 1885 the Congo was declared neutral as well; but it would be a matter of deciding whether or not this was contestable. But I do not want to decide anything. I merely want to draw your attention to the difficulties which exist and to the fact that it is not so easy to form a truly objective judgement about such things. A number of other things of equal calibre could be brought into the argument, so this is where the difficulties begin. Neither shall we discuss how far the old agreement of 1839 could still be valid, since Germany was not founded until 1871. All these things would have to be considered. For into the objective progress of events there flow not only fantastic ideas which we formalize, but also actual facts, without any contribution from human beings; actual facts also play their part.

Now, is it really true that the German ambassador formulated a question about something that should have been a matter of course? The question he asked was: Would Great Britain remain neutral if Germany kept the promise of 1839, even though Germany did not exist at that time! Earlier on, Belgian neutrality was not taken as a matter of course either. When, in 1870, war broke out between Prussia—together with the German principalities allied with her—and France, an agreement was reached between Great Britain under Foreign Minister Gladstone and Germany on the one hand, and between Great Britain and France on the other hand. In each case it was agreed that Great Britain would remain neutral if the other two respected the neutrality of Belgium.

So, in the year 1870, Great Britain was in exactly the same situation. Yet she did not take the attitude that the old agreement of 1839 was definitely valid. Instead, in case anything should happen, she balanced the neutrality of Belgium against her own. If a prejudgement such as this occurs, it cannot afterwards be said that similar steps should not be taken at a later date. So let us refer once more to something I have stressed several times: There is continuity in the life that runs through history; things are linked together. Just as an individual cannot do something to undo what has once been done, so it is with nations. You cannot take something for granted if it has not previously been taken for granted.

So this, too, must be taken into consideration. Even if the matter had been so simple that it could have been said: The agreement of 1839 was obviously valid, and so there was no need to request Great Britain for an additional commitment—even if this could have been said—then the counter argument is: that in 1870 Great Britain herself took the initiative. It was Great Britain who asked France, on the one hand, and Germany, on the other, whether they would respect the neutrality of Belgium. So at that time discussions took place about neutrality. And when discussions take place, others can follow from them at a later date.

The following can also be said. You know that it is not my task to defend the violation of neutrality, but I can say: If an affirmative answer from Great Britain had led to non-violation of Belgium's neutrality, then everything in the West would have taken a different course. But this was not my final word, for I added expressly: In addition, Germany offered to respect France and her colonies if England were to remain neutral. When no positive answer was forthcoming to this question either, the further question was asked: Under what conditions would England remain neutral? England was actually invited to name the conditions under which she would remain neutral. This was all over and done with on 2 August, for it happened on 1 August. England declined. Great Britain did not want to give any answer to questions on this subject. So you can really say: If Great Britain had given any kind of an answer, everything would have taken a different course in the West; even the external course of history shows this.

But I did not stop here either, for I said to you that I knew from other circumstances that even the whole war with France could have been avoided if Great Britain had given a suitable answer. The fact that there were other, more profound, reasons why this did not happen is something that weighs down the scales on the other side. But everything must be carefully considered if we want to form a judgement about the opinion that has been buzzing around the world for the last two and a half years. For there are still many people who believe that England entered the war because of the violation of Belgian neutrality, when in fact this very thing could have been avoided if she had not entered the war!

Now you might say: The whole war situation in the West would have been different if Germany had not violated the neutrality of Belgium. But then you are not distinguishing between what is formally and legally correct and all that is connected with the tragedy of world history. It is very important to distinguish between what is tragic and what is formally correct. Of course, things would have been different. What would have been different? Without, I beg you, bringing moral aspects into the discussion, let us now see what would have been different.

Let us assume that Belgium's neutrality had been respected despite Great Britain's refusal to make a commitment, which meant that at any minute she could be expected to enter the war. As things stood, the attitude of Great Britain made it absolutely inevitable that war would break out in the West. This must be obvious to anyone who really studies the matter, not only the Blue Paper but all the other documents as well. Whether it could have been avoided with the mood in France being as it was at that time is another question—hardly, perhaps! But let us assume that war broke out in the West because of Great Britain's attitude. What would have happened if Belgium's neutrality had nevertheless been respected? As I have said, I am not leading up to a moral judgement in any direction.

The following would have happened: By far the greatest part of the German army, which has been accused of so much, would have been entangled in France's defences and used up on the western side. Despite all the talk of Prussian militarism, the French army is hardly less powerful than the German—the figures are virtually identical—and this was the case before the war as well. Therefore, obviously the German army would have been used up in the West, and the invasion from the East which began in August and September, would have commenced with a vengeance. For the experts said that it would have been impossible to wage war in the West without engaging almost the whole of the German army all the time. Germany would have been totally exposed to the invasion from the East.

This was the situation. It might have been said that this was a wrong strategic judgement. This was arguable during the early months of the war, but not any longer. For since the failed attempt at Verdun, those who said that the whole German army would be used up if it was deployed solely in the West have been proved to be right.

So there was a choice between passing the death sentence on Germany or taking the tragic step of breaking in through Belgium, which was the only alternative if war in the West could not be avoided; for in the East it certainly could not be avoided! Anyone who says today that it could have been avoided must have the effrontery to say Yes and No at the same time. People today are hardly capable of considering what might be true and what false, but given that some might have the effrontery to say Yes and No at the same time, this is what they would maintain: We have been attacked by the Central Powers; we are not to blame for the commencement of the war; but we shall not end the war until we have attained our war goal, namely, to conquer this one or that one!

There you have Yes and No in the same breath! We are not the ones who want anything, it is the others who want something; they want to conquer, that is why they have attacked us; we, however, shall not end this war till we have achieved our long-standing aim of this or that conquest! It is really unbelievable that people exist who have the effrontery to say Yes and No in the same breath. Perhaps in the next few days you will discover that there is indeed a person who is capable of saying Yes and No in the same breath. Here is probably the most appalling document ever to have been published in recent times, for it depicts a logic riven beyond all meaning. This is indeed something that belongs to the karma of our time.

So what we have to do is distinguish between what is logical and formally legal and what is purely tragic. We must not succumb to the peculiar misconception that it could be possible in maya—that is, in the world of the physical plane—for real events to take place solely in accordance with what is merely formal and logical. But let us look further: We did not set out to defend or attack anything. Our intention was to show that it is not justifiable—especially while those accused are not in a position to defend themselves—to trumpet abroad that this war is being fought by one of the sides because of the violation of Belgian neutrality, without also proclaiming that one possessed the possibility of preventing this violation. The only possibility of escaping the tragedy would have been the neutrality of England. For no statesman may proclaim in advance the death sentence on his own country.

Of course it is reasonable if all those who are satisfied with reasonable judgements say: Agreements must be kept. My dear friends, if you were to see a list of all the agreements in public and private life which are not kept, and if you were then to be shown what the breaking of these agreements has brought about in the world, you would begin to realize just what forces in maya are the really effective ones.

But was there really such a good conscience on the side which failed to answer in the affirmative? The facts seem to speak against the possibility. For when, at a later date, the question of this discussion between the German ambassador and Sir Edward Grey was once again placed on the agenda, and when it was said that England could have saved the neutrality of Belgium, the English government defended itself. It did so not by invoking the argument of mere formal and legal correctness—for this there were too many excellent statesmen in the the English government at that time. Although I do not withdraw the judgement of Sir Edward Grey—formed not by me but by his English colleagues—he was, nevertheless, too good a statesman to fall back on the pose of maintaining that since an agreement had been formulated in 1839, Germany was obliged to abide by it even if England had given an evasive answer. Instead of doing this the English statesmen excused themselves in a different manner. Grey said that Lichnowsky had indeed asked this question but that he had done so in a private capacity and not on the instruction of the German government. Had he done so on the instruction of the German government, this would have been different. Though Lichnowsky had acted from the best intentions of maintaining peace in the West, he had not had the German government behind him!

Do you not think that in any private situation this would be called a lame excuse, a perfectly ordinary lame excuse! For the whole world knows that when the ambassador of a country speaks with a Foreign Minister he must do so with the full power of his country behind him, and that his country cannot but ratify what her ambassador says, unless she wants to appear quite impossible in the eyes of the world. So this was a perfectly ordinary lame excuse, grasped at because no one wanted to withdraw to a position which would have to be defended by saying, simply: What we did was correct. They certainly felt the weight of the fact that England could have prevented the violation of neutrality, quite apart from whether the violation was justified from the point of view of the other side. If an avalanche is threatening to fall and the one at the top of the mountain refrains from holding it back because, for some reason—which may or may not be justified and may certainly be unjustified—he is forced to let it go, and then if someone further down also fails to hold it back, with the justification that the one at the top should have done it—no, you cannot argue in this way! But to form judgements about these things always entails weighing them up. So the following would also have to be taken into consideration:

When did it happen? We have now arrived at 2 August. On 2 August the King of Belgium requested the intervention of England, that is, he requested England to intervene with Germany. The Belgian King saw it as a matter of course that England should negotiate with Germany about the neutrality of Belgium. Initially, England did nothing. She waited a whole day while Sir Edward Grey spoke to his Parliament in London. In doing so he concealed the conversation he had had with the German ambassador. Not a word did he breathe about it. If he had mentioned it, the whole session in Parliament would have taken a different course!

So after the discussion with the German ambassador had taken place, and after the King of Belgium had requested the intervention of England, everything paused in England, nothing was done. What was everybody waiting for? They were waiting for the violation of Belgium's neutrality to be accomplished! As long as it remained unaccomplished, matters could still have taken a course along which it would not happen. Powerful forces were working against it happening and it was hanging by a silken thread. If the request of the Belgian King had been fulfilled quickly enough, if England had intervened, it is questionable whether the violation of neutrality would have taken place. But when did Grey intervene? On the fourth, when the German armies had already set foot on Belgian soil! Why did he wait, even after the request of the King of Belgium? These are questions which have to be asked.

Much could be added to all this if the documents were to be studied both forwards and backwards. But this is not necessary, for I believe I have made it clear to you that these things were very well prepared years in advance. So there is no need to be surprised that events took the course they did in recent years. Of course, if you study the documents forwards only, you will only come up with formal answers.

It has been my intention not to take sides one way or the other, but only to show what is necessary to come to a judgement on these things. For in accordance with the nerve centre of spiritual science, where we strive for a lofty viewpoint, I would rather refrain from light-heartedly making derogatory judgements about what happens in world history when states collide head-on; for do not forget: Not nations, not peoples, wage war; states wage war!

In this field we tend to consider too little that, in addition to the forces of growth and becoming, world events also need the forces of destruction and decay. Is it any different with the individual human being? As we develop our capacities during the course of our lifetime, we cause our body to decay and be destroyed. Tomorrow I shall show you what profound connection exists between our soul life and belladonna, jimson weed, and other poisons found outside in the world. These are truths which delve deeply down into things. One must have the courage to give these truths a validity in world history. Therefore it is much better to understand, rather than to judge in accordance with some so-called norm or other. Any condemnation of states or nations usually stands on insecure foundations. If we are at last to ascend towards the spiritual world and be able to understand anything there, we must accustom ourselves to simply looking at facts, without any criticism—which belongs to quite another realm. Only then shall we understand what forces are at work in world evolution.

From this point of view let us now look at certain events—without anger, but by studying them carefully—certain events which I have hitherto observed have so far been considered solely from a moral point of view. Such a point of view must, of course, be applied to the actions of individuals, although it is absurd to apply it to the lives of states. One or other of you might even find it strange that I should look at these events without judging them morally; yet they can certainly be considered without any moral undertones.

One of the chief elements in the mighty British Empire is its dominion over India. This dominion over India has undergone a number of earlier stages. It took its departure from the East India Company, a trading organization which, to begin with, enjoyed the privilege of being the sole company permitted to trade with India on England's behalf. Then, as time went on, there developed, inexorably and appropriately, out of the various privileges enjoyed by the East India Company, the dominion of England over India—indeed, the English Empire of India. From this, indeed also through the East India Company, there also developed England's trade with China. From the end of the eighteenth century there was a lively trading relationship between India and China, and the English East India Company was already involved at that time. You know that England then gradually grew to be the foremost merchant of the world.

Then, as the element of trade became established in the Orient, something else was brought to bear on it; it came into contact with something else. From the seventeenth century onwards the habit of smoking opium had become widespread in China. Probably it was the Arabs who taught the Chinese how to smoke opium, since before the seventeenth century they had not done so. For those who do it, smoking opium provides a questionable but powerful pleasure. The opium smoker creates for himself the most varied fantasies out of the astral world. In these he lives. It is truly another world, but reached by a purely material path.

When the people who conducted England's trade with China, in the manner described, noticed that the habit, the passion of opium smoking was spreading rapidly among the Chinese, they established vast poppy plantations in Bengal for the production of opium. Those who are familiar with the laws of commerce know that not only does demand stimulate supply, but supply also stimulates demand. Any economist will tell you that if a large amount of some article is put on offer there will soon be a great demand for it. The East India Company was granted the monopoly by England for the export of opium from India to China. And the more opium arrived in China, the more the evil habit spread. From 1772 onwards several thousand chests were imported annually, each to the value of about 4,800 marks.

I have chosen this example for it has a very profound cultural and historical background, if all factors are taken into account. Only consider that, by introducing opium, which works on the soul, you are interfering with the spiritual life of a whole nation or, at least, of those to whom you are supplying it. I can use this example because I have no intention of condemning anyone who wants to trade. Trade is something that must move freely in the world. This is a perfectly justifiable principle. I have no intention of condemning anyone who might grow poppies in Bengal in order to manufacture opium for China and take gold in exchange.

But the Chinese saw their pathetically wasted opium smokers. Opium smokers gradually deteriorate, and after a while it was noticed that the habit was causing the degeneration of wide sections of the Chinese population. When the Chinese noticed this they outlawed the smoking of opium in 1794. They wanted to prevent any more opium from entering the country.

But as is the way with such things, prohibitions do not necessarily prevent trade with the forbidden article. Ways and means are found to carry on trading. So it turned out that despite the formal prohibition, despite the law which forbade the import of opium, the opium trade flourished. There are all sorts of ways, of which bribery is only one. In short, the opium trade flourished and increased from a few thousand chests in 1773 to thirty thousand chests in 1837: that is, over only a few decades. The profits, about thirty million francs a year, flowed into British India.

Once things had got out of hand to this extent, the Chinese could think of no other measure than the confiscation of the opium consignments as they arrived. To Canton, which was the usual destination of the consignments, they sent a capable Chinese—an energetic man, Lin by name, who confiscated the chests as they arrived. The English also had a capable man in their consulate, Captain Elliot, who was very energetic and even succeeded on one occasion in breaking through the Chinese blockade with a warship.

Now there arose the question of how to get out of this fix. Mountains of chests filled with opium were waiting to be dealt with, but the Chinese would not relent. The situation was most awkward. So Elliot, who was in a position to do this, had 20,283 chests signed over to himself personally and then handed them to the Chinese Government. This was the way out for the moment.

However, this did not remove the opium trade from the face of the earth, for in some quarters there was no desire to rid the world of the opium trade. So the Chinese found there was nothing for it but to make new laws once again, very strict laws indeed. Lin decreed that anyone caught trading with opium would be condemned to death by the Chinese courts and that from now on all ships were to be confiscated. Thus the Chinese were now faced with the prospect of the death penalty if they traded with opium.

But the British would not consider the abolition of the opium trade, just because a few people might lose their heads. Instead they said—and I quote—‘With this demand, the Chinese Government has finally destroyed any sense of security.’ Then they ordered all British nationals living in China to leave, while armed assistance was requested from India. They, so to say, occupied the whole area. The Chinese meanwhile stood quite bravely by their decision to behead anyone caught trading in opium. So it appeared that the opium trade had ceased. Since the Chinese intended to confiscate any British ships carrying opium, there appeared to be no more British ships. What happened was that the opium was loaded in India on to American ships instead! So, just as much—indeed more and more—opium continued to arrive in China on American ships.

Elliot, the civil servant, said: The question underlying our conflict is quite simple. Does China wish to conduct honest and increasing trade with us, or does she want to accept responsibility for allowing her coastal waters to fall victim to open piracy and freebooting? The harbour at Canton was blockaded with help from India. In the skirmishing this involved, a Chinese was killed by an English sailor. Of course the Chinese Government demanded the extradition of the sailor. Every so often the Chinese tired of the whole affair, sometimes wanting to prove they were in the right and yet not wanting to prove the English wrong either. It is quite possible to do this! One day an English sailor drowned by accident. So Elliot, a very clever man, agreed with Lin, the representative of the Chinese Government, that they would confirm the drowned sailor to be the one who had killed the Chinese. The drowned sailor was handed over and the matter thus settled for the moment. But all these things led in the end, in 1840, to the war between England and China.

So the whole course of events was inexorable and could not have gone any other way. An incisive influence was exercised in a material way on the soul life of a people. Something took place which is connected with the whole process of world evolution. In England people ‘knew’ what it was all about! What did they know? In England people ‘knew’ that England had been ‘surprised’ by China—that is how they put it—and the reason given was that China could not tolerate England's cultivation of opium in India because the Chinese wanted to build up their own cultivation. This is what was said. Everybody ‘knew’ all about this, and another thing they knew was that the Chinese were barbarians! That is what people in England knew at that time. Lord Palmerston said: The protection of poppy cultivation in India must gain ground; it is a matter of protecting poppy cultivation in India; furthermore, the economists in China do not want to allow out of their country the money which should by rights be paid to India. All these were things well ‘known’ and understood in Europe!

War raged; and in war, inevitably, atrocities occur. Atrocities were committed, both by the Chinese and by the English. Whole villages were found in which the women lay in pools of blood in their houses; the Chinese men, having fought bravely, saw that they would have to kill themselves or surrender, so first they killed their wives and children. This war of 1840 was a sad war. Strange rumours began to circulate about Elliot, who had observed it throughout and who actually had it on his conscience. The rumours—perhaps they were true—said that he was inclined to initiate peace negotiations with the Chinese. So he was overthrown. Then—no, not Lloyd George!—a certain Pottinger was given the position of Elliot who had wanted to initiate peace negotiations. The war was to be fought to its bitter end, that is, until the island of Chusan and the cities of Ningpo and Amoy had been taken, until the English had advanced as far as Nanking and until, in 1842, China had become totally demoralized. Hong Kong was made over to England, five ports in China were opened for unlimited opium trade, and British consuls established. In addition to the earlier twenty-five million extorted—I do not quite mean extorted, there is another word which I can't find for the moment—in addition to the earlier twenty-five million extorted from the Chinese, a further demand was now made for ninety-seven and a half million war damages.

As I have said before, I would not dream of interpreting this process as anything other than a historical necessity. I would not dream of accusing anybody. Those who understand necessities of this kind, those who understand how things take place on the physical plane, know that such things are perfectly possible in the normal physical way of world evolution. The profits made from opium are now absorbed into the English national economy, and the English national economy includes a good part of English culture. Just as it would be nonsense to underestimate English culture, so is it also nonsense to doubt the necessity of such events, though perhaps the trifling satirical epilogue to the whole affair might be excluded from that necessity:

When the first instalment of the ninety-seven and a half million war damages was received, certain people came forward claiming they had been the first to have chests of opium confiscated and that the compensation they had received had been minimal. Now, they said, we have seen that our country regards the opium trade with China as legitimate, so we demand full compensation, since we were merely doing something over which our country has since been waging war. The minister whose task it was to decide the matter drew from his pocket a note he had given Captain Elliot at the time, stating that so long as Chinese law forbade the opium trade, the English Government would never agree to pay compensation to anyone who might suffer losses as a result of carrying on this trade. Since this Chinese law was in force at the time, he said, your demand has no foundation because you were contravening this law which was only later nullified by the war.

We need not decide whether this epilogue was also one of the historical necessities. But what is a necessity is that we should look at the facts. When this Anglo-Chinese war started in 1840, mankind stood at the beginning of a time about which we have often spoken. I have mentioned this very year to you as that in which materialism attained its zenith. It is good to understand how such things develop. As I said, just as it would be nonsense to underestimate English culture or English life—English civilization—so would it be nonsense to believe that something of this nature could have been avoided in the overall context of English evolution. It belongs to it. So it is entirely wrong to form any kind of moral judgement about it. If we did, we would be making the mistake of judging whole nations, whole groups in the manner which is only appropriate when we judge individuals. This is the very thing which it is impossible to do.

Yet again and again it is maintained that such a thing is possible. I have just received another pamphlet—there are so many peacemaking pamphlets to be had at the moment—which says: States have their own thinking, feeling and willing, just as do human individuals. Of course this is utter nonsense because you cannot, by analogy, transfer something which has reality on a higher plane to the level of the human being who has his thinking, feeling and willing in the physical sphere. Of course the folk spirits, the folk souls, also have their characteristics, but these are as I have described them in the lecture cycle I mentioned the other day. But to speak of the thinking, feeling and willing of nations is simply nonsense.

My dear friends, today I have introduced you to certain matters, for the simple reason that it was necessary to add some striking examples to our basic material. Tomorrow we shall continue to link this to more far-reaching viewpoints.

You will understand that for one who follows with sympathy the destiny of mankind it will be difficult to speak today, on New Year's Eve. I expect it will be understandable if what I have to say today cannot be rounded off in the way we have come to expect, for that ‘New Year's Eve gift’ received by mankind will hardly allow the free unfolding of what is in my soul.

Yesterday I endeavoured to describe to you a historical event and to show that on no account may such an event be judged in a moral sense, for events founded on historical necessity may not be assessed morally. We have to be quite clear that just as the Mystery of Golgotha has nothing to do with peoples or groups of people—for its light falls only on the individual human being—so, by analogy, is it also impossible to transfer to groups the way in which we morally judge the thinking, feeling and willing of the individual.

There are other cases, also, to which moral yardsticks may not be applied. For instance, it would not occur to anyone to apply a moral yardstick to the building of a house; no one would find one roof less moral than another because of its shape. It is just that this example is more extreme, so it is more obvious that people would not apply moral judgements to such things; in such an extreme case they would be unlikely to let themselves be led astray by moral judgements. In contrast, however, those who want to work on people's souls, which are ever open to such things, choose just this method of decking out with moral reasons things to which, in truth, moral judgements do not apply and which cannot be judged morally, except by hypocrites. That is why I put before you an event which had the capacity of throwing light on certain motives which are at work in human evolution on the physical plane.

It is not permissible to make moral judgements, either positive or negative, about events such as the Opium War I described to you yesterday. Where would a moral judgement lead, even if it were one which might make people consult their consciences? Suppose someone were to say: That was indeed an immoral venture, but now we have put it behind us. This would be one of those judgements intended to lull us to sleep! For thanks to the millions which flowed from Asia to Europe at that time, there exists today, in all its glory, that kingdom which ought to consult its conscience.

To be logical it would then also be necessary, from the same standpoint of conscience, to condemn the present intrigues just as firmly and sharply as one condemns the Opium War! If one did not do so it would be like taking into account, in the case of a house, only the first, second and third floors and the attic, while leaving out what cannot be left out—namely, the ground floor. What was won at that time belongs now to the whole configuration of the British Empire. Perhaps you have heard the example of how much a penny or a centime invested at the time of the birth of Christ at compound interest would have increased by now. This shows you what increase of riches is possible over the years. So if you want to judge the yield of the Opium War you must look at it as a whole. Then you will see that what has grown out of those millions—after all, this has been going on for a century—is something which is preparing to rule the world, to overrun the world; this is what may be found in what was won at that time!

You see, it would be an offence against all truth to consider in isolation a single event which is part of an ongoing evolution. What you can say is that what has since developed is one of the consequences of the Opium War. You can say this quite objectively, without taking up a positive or negative moral stance. It is not permissible to paint over the facts with shades of morality. If we do this today, we are preventing the possibility of any subsequent insight into what is going on now. On karmic and moral grounds we have to presume that, looking back on today's events in the decades or centuries to come, people will condemn with an equal degree of certainty and conviction what is today defended with noble moral patriotism. In the centuries to come, today's events will look very similar.

It behoves us to look more deeply into such things as they occur on the physical plane, especially at a moment like this when, on the one hand, the turn of the year should awaken a festive mood in our souls, while on the other hand the bitterness of events must move us deeply—unless we are utterly superficial. Regardless of any side we might support, none of us can fail to realize that on the words we have read today could depend the most terrible destiny for the whole of mankind.

I said: It behoves those of us who stand for spiritual knowledge to look more deeply into things. So today, since I do not know how much longer it will be possible to speak about such spiritual matters in Europe, I want to draw your attention to something which may serve as an example to help us look more deeply into conditions which are manifested outwardly in what we see on the physical plane. You see, even more than is the case in the sciences which apply to the physical plane, it is necessary to be clear that in spiritual science the facts and the way they relate to one another are not simple at all, but very complicated indeed. I have often stressed the complicated nature of these facts and have begged you to understand that although the general formulae, ideas and laws about the relationships between the different aspects of life which we receive from spiritual science are absolutely correct, nevertheless they are naturally extraordinarily complex in their application to actual cases.

We have often spoken about the time between death and a new birth and of how the human being descends again to the physical world in order to incarnate his soul-and-spirit being into a physical body. So we can realize that whenever we raise our spiritual eye to the spiritual world we always find souls who, with the forces they have gathered between death and their new birth, are preparing to descend into physical bodies. In other words, here down below the possibilities await the creation of those physical bodies, while up above there are the forces in the souls which guide them to these physical bodies.

Now you must consider a number of other things together with what I have just said. You know that one of the objections to the concept of repeated earthly lives is: The human population is increasing all the time, so where do all the souls come from?

I have often replied that this is a superficial objection, for the simple reason that people forget to take into account that this so-called increase in the population of the world has only been observed in very recent centuries. For instance, those scientists who are so very proud of the exactitude of their calculations would be highly embarrassed if one were to question them about the population statistics of the year 1348 when America had not yet been discovered. The objections often mentioned are indeed staggeringly superficial. It is a fact that in some parts of the world the birth rate diminishes while it rises elsewhere, so that the population density varies in different places. This brings about a certain amount of disharmony. It can happen that, in accordance with the conditions prevailing in relation to the incarnation of souls who are living between death and a newbirth, there are certain souls who, as a result of previous incarnations, are inclined to descend to a certain part of the world but that there are too few bodies available there. This can indeed happen. Furthermore, there is something else that can happen as well, which I would like you to consider in connection with what we have been saying.

Some time ago—and you will see from this that the lectures I have given here in recent weeks have not been without a wider context—I mentioned that John Stuart Mill, and the Russian philosopher and politician Herzen, have both pointed out that in many ways a kind of ‘Chineseness’ is beginning to manifest in Europe, as though Europe were becoming ‘chinesified’. This was no idle remark on my part. If John Stuart Mill, who was a keen observer, considered that many people in his vicinity were beginning to show noticeable Chinese traits, then in certain respects he was quite right.

Consider the following: Souls exist who, as a result of their former lives, are inclined to incarnate in Chinese bodies during the nineteenth century or at the beginning of the twentieth. Now since the Chinese population is nowhere near as great as it was in former times, it is, in any case, not possible for all these Chinese souls to incarnate there. In Europe, on the other hand, the physical population has increased considerably in recent times, and so many souls can be accommodated here who were really destined for incarnation in Chinese bodies. This is one reason why keen observers are beginning to notice that Europe is becoming ‘chinesified’.

But this alone would not have sufficed to prepare Europe for that European karma which was to come about. A helping hand was needed to assist a certain aspect of the great laws of existence. Now if over a long period something is brought about of the kind I mentioned yesterday, namely, that very many bodies in a whole population are caused to become emaciated, then a situation will arise in which souls who were inclined towards that area will not, after all, incarnate in those bodies. By bringing about the ‘opiumising’ of Chinese bodies and causing generations to come into being under the influence of opium's forces, it was possible to condemn the Chinese to take in, to a certain extent, some very immature, sub-standard souls, whose qualities I shall not discuss. But those souls who had themselves decided to incarnate in Chinese bodies were thereby prevented from approaching these ‘opiumised’ bodies. They were diverted to Europe where they brought about among the European population those traits which have, meanwhile, been noted by those keen observers I mentioned.

So you see that an event on the physical plane such as the Opium War has a quite definite spiritual background. In the first instance, its purpose is not to help certain people make millions and grow rich but to prevent certain souls who would have come from the spiritual world round about now, to strengthen the cultural forces of Europe, from incarnating yet, and instead to surreptitiously fill European bodies with Chinese souls. This is really so, however paradoxical it may seem. This momentous event has truly become fact. In a great many European people a disharmony between soul and body has been brought about in the way I have just described. Such disharmony between soul and body always has the consequence of making it impossible to use the tools of the body properly. This makes it possible, instead, for others to busy themselves with errors and untruths. It would not be so easy to work by means of errors and untruths, if those who see through these errors and untruths were not condemned, by the conventions of their day, to preach in the wilderness.

You see, therefore, that I certainly did not mention what I told you yesterday merely in order to link it in an insulting manner with a particular nation. I mentioned it as an example of how actions by human beings here on the physical plane can bring about far-reaching changes in the spiritual evolution of mankind as a whole. Furthermore, please do not imagine that I told you what I did about the hotbeds of deception, and the manner in which they bring about errors and illusions, simply for my own amusement. Here, too, my intention was to show you much that goes on in our materialistic age. And today I have sought to demonstrate the kind of result one discovers when one observes not only the physical events but also the spiritual background of what human beings bring about. Seen in this way, that Opium War meant the switching of a soul element from a part of the earth to which it belonged—and where it might have been of use, because it would have been united with bodies into which it would have fitted—to another part of the earth where it could become a tool for forces whose designs are by no means necessarily beneficial for mankind.

We must realize, of course, that an ordinary historian will only notice some degree of degeneration in certain strata of the Chinese population resulting from the Opium War. But one who, in addition, observes the spiritual aspects of cultural history will have to look more deeply in order to see what is brought about by this degeneration for the whole of mankind. For only in this fifth post-Atlantean period, which is entirely permeated by materialism, is it possible to observe things in a manner so deeply ahrimanic—a manner which pervades all thinking and all ideas—that if something good or something bad is done to a part of mankind, people really can believe that this will not affect mankind as a whole. Whatever is done in connection with, or by, a part of mankind, will always affect the whole of human evolution because of the way the forces behind the scenes of physical existence arrange things.

Not until the sixth post-Atlantean period will a sense of responsibility become general among mankind so that each individual feels responsible for what he does, not only towards himself but towards mankind as a whole. Today we are surrounded by such a mood of catastrophe because the very opposite of this is the general trend, and from the attitudes prevalent today mankind will prepare to crystallize out the opposite as the right view.

So this is an example which can show you that what takes place on the physical plane really does affect even the spiritual world, and is therefore not only significant for the physical plane but is also echoed in the events of the spiritual world and thus of the whole universe. This is expressed quite deliberately in the mystery drama not for the poetic effect but, for once, in order to give embodiment to a truth which needs to be placed into our present time equally as much as everything else that is contained in the Mysteries.

Man has as yet not progressed very far along the road towards the achievement of wider horizons in his view of the world. Somehow he does not really want wider horizons in his view of the world. At the same time, science today is intent on restricting the horizon more and more. For science is secretly afraid of what the truth really is. Fear of the truth is taking hold of mankind increasingly, both in everyday matters and in wider contexts. Indeed, if this were not the case in the wider contexts, neither could it come about in everyday situations. For instance, people would no longer continue to draw out the war merely because they are afraid that if an understanding were to be reached by means of proper discussion, certain matters would then be revealed of which they are—well, of which they are afraid.

Some of you will remember the lecture cycle I gave in Vienna in the spring of 1914 when I summarized much of what I have said over the years about the tendencies and inclinations of our time. I said there that it is possible to speak about a social carcinoma. I must admit to being somewhat astonished by the way such remarks—which throw a profound light on certain existing things—are very frequently taken simply as remarks which satisfy curiosity to some extent, just like any other remark that might be made.

I was trying to point out—at the beginning of 1914—that in our life today certain impulses are active comparable with the impulse in the physical human organism underlying the formation of a carcinoma, the disease of cancer. I said that just as one studies the sick physical organism, it would more and more become a task for mankind to study the social organism. Although poisons causing the disease are not present in the same way as they are in a physical organism, nevertheless they are no less poisons which create the disease. But to do this, a sense for what is spiritual is needed. And you cannot have a sense for the spiritual if you deny its existence. Of course the social organism is not infiltrated with bacterial poison as though it were a physical organism. The poison in the social organism can only be found if you have a sense for the spiritual as it interweaves with physical existence. But if there is a possibility of doing more than merely making analogies—which are inadmissible anyway—if there is a possibility of following events on the different planes, then it will be possible to form an idea of what is behind these things.

It might be asked how it can be possible at all in the social life of the globe to move, in the way I have described, a whole company of souls from one part to another, just as though an illness were being artificially cultivated in a human body. But if these things are understood, if they are, to begin with, studied independently of what comes to meet us in human life, much may be noticed. Consider that plant life, animal life and, of course, also the minerals, are all capable of secreting poisons. As you know, these poisons have two different characteristics. On the one hand they are ‘poisons’, they destroy higher forms of life; they destroy and slay, for instance, the human organism. But on the other hand, suitably prepared and taken in suitable doses, they are medicaments.

This arises from profound interconnections in the whole realm of nature. We ought gradually to acquire certain ideas about this, not based on hypotheses or, even worse, on fantasies, but on spiritual science. We know, for instance, the truth about the evolution of man and, connected with this, of way the world has passed through the Saturn, Sun and Moon existences and has now reached Earth existence. We know that before the present Earth existence there was the Moon existence. I have described this to some extent, though hitherto more physically, depicting the substantiality, the substances of Moon existence. From my descriptions you can see that this Moon existence was quite physical, that it was—at least in certain stages—just as physical as Earth existence is today. Even though the mineral kingdom did not exist, Moon existence was physical. The physical structures were held by different conditions, but they were physical. So the question arises: How can the substantiality of ancient Moon be compared with the substantiality of Earth, with what flows and pulsates in the substances of our Earth?

Spiritual investigation reveals that the substances existing on Earth today have really only come about during the course of Earth existence. They are such that the human body, which needs them for its nourishment, can unite itself with them. They passed through earlier stages but only reached their present stage during Earth existence. You could not speak of ‘wheat’ or ‘barley’ during Moon existence.

So what substances now present on Earth were there during Moon existence? Every mineral, plant and animal poison, every poison that flows through these kingdoms, everything we today call poison and which today works as poison—these were the normal substances of Moon! You need only recall something I have pointed out quite often, namely, that prussic acid was present as something quite normal on ancient Moon. I have mentioned this a number of times since the year 1906, when I spoke about it for the first time, in Paris. All these things are connected with prussic acid.

On ancient Moon the substances which are today poisonous played the same role as do the plant juices on Earth, those juices which agree with man. But why are the poisons still present today? For the same reason that Ahriman is present. They are what has remained behind, something that has remained behind in physical forms. So we now have what agrees with man, that is, whatever has progressed in the normal way, and certain other substances which have remained behind at the Moon stage, which is now the stage of poisons.

There is also another aspect to this matter. We know that today's spirituality only developed as a possibility during the transition from ancient Moon to Earth existence. Our normal development was also paralleled in the substances of the lower kingdoms. Only the poisons remained behind. But there is a link, not in the spiritual but in the physical sense, between the substances on which our higher man is founded—that is, the higher organs which make us human, those organs which only developed during Earth existence—and the poisonous substances of Moon existence. To a certain degree we bear within ourselves the further stage of development of the poisons. The substances we today regard as poisonous are something which has remained behind at an earlier stage. Those substances from the lower kingdoms which man cannot tolerate have developed in a retrograde direction. But those substances that have developed in a forward direction, those substances that live in us in such a way that they can transform themselves to become the bearer of our ego, these are the transformed poisonous substances of ancient Moon.

It is only because we bear within us these transformed poisonous substances of ancient Moon that we have to some extent the capacity to be ego-conscious beings. I have mentioned this, even in public lectures, by saying that, in order to live, man needs not only constructive but also destructive forces. Without the latter, ego intelligence would be impossible. From birth onwards, breaking-down, growing-old and death are necessary, for it is in the processes of breaking-down—not those of building-up—that the possibility for our spiritual development lives. The building-up process lulls us to sleep. The building-up process is like rank, abundant growth which sends us to sleep. It dampens down consciousness. Consciousness can only live by using up spiritual forces. Those structures within us, together with their substances, which use up spiritual forces—these are the transformed poisonous substances of ancient Moon; they are transformed in such a way that they no longer work in the way they did on ancient Moon.

It is difficult to imagine this in connection with certain poisonous substances. But what we have to imagine about the development of these poisons is that their intensity has been reduced by one seventh, or two sevenths, or three sevenths. Poisonous substances in plants are as they are today because they have remained behind from Moon existence. But other poisonous substances have had their poisonous potential reduced many times, and these have been inoculated into us during the course of evolution. Because of this we are capable of growing old during our lifetime. Also because of this we are capable of using these poisonous effects—for they are poisonous effects—which are connected with the way the male element works on the female element in human procreation. The effect of the poison is expressed in the fact that, without it, the female alone would tend to bring forth only an etheric being. For this etheric being to find a physical form, the rank growth of etheric life has to be poisoned. I hinted at this in my lecture on physiology some time ago in Prague. The act of fertilization provides this poisoning, just as in plant life the effect of etheric material on the pistil—which is the fertilization act of the plant—provides a poisoning by light.

Here you have something which has come into existence for man since the beginning of Earth existence: procreation. It is a kind of distilled poisonous effect, a poisonous effect which existed on ancient Moon in an intensity equalling that of the poisons which have now remained behind in the lower kingdoms. You can now understand a sentence which I simply want to place before you for the moment: Ordinary poisons, which are ahrimanic substances left over from ancient Moon, are the opponents of progressive evolution; distilled, in a way diluted, they provide the physical substance which is the bearer of our spiritual life.

What happens when a diseased form comes into being, when a form falls ill? Medical science will have to concern itself more and more with such things, so that it can widen its view through spiritual science. When a diseased form comes into being, this means that evolution is advancing faster, and with it our physical organism. If some form—and this need not only be a growth, it could be something fluid or not even fluid in the organism—if such a form comes into being, this means that a part of the physical organism is growing faster than normal. A carcinoma, for instance, comes about when a part of the organism excludes itself and starts to evolve more quickly than the rest of the human organism. In physical life, the life of substances, this is something luciferic. I do not mean luciferic in the moral sense; it is simply objectively luciferic. And it is balanced out by poison, because poison is ahrimanic—and that is the opposite. If you can find the proper polar opposite then the luciferic growth will be balanced by the poison, which is ahrimanic. These two can balance each other out if they work in the right way.

From this you see that the concepts of what is luciferic and what is ahrimanic may be pursued right down into the realms of natural life. They may also be pursued upwards into human life, human social life. If we wanted to be cleverer than the gods, we might ask why they did not make the world without all these poisons. We would have to be as clever as that King of Spain, who first asked this in relation to a particular case. Now, just as these poisons work as actual substances in the human organism, so do they also work spiritually in social life. And in social life it is possible to guide and lead them. What is grey magic really? Grey magic is nothing other than the guiding of poisonous effects in such a way that they cause damage and bring about sickness in the social sense.

This is, in the first place, something which must be taken into account by those who seriously wish to learn about life. So as not to go on for too long about one subject, we shall continue—probably tomorrow—to talk further about poison, sickness and health.

Meanwhile, we might find in our soul the question: What is the consequence of all this? If you meditate on it you will not fail to see the connection. The consequence is that, having evolved beyond the former atavistic knowledge of these things, mankind now has the task of striving for truth with the new consciousness which has been achieved. Without this, nothing is possible. The links with the old atavistic knowledge have been severed, precisely because mankind is to become free to develop ego-consciousness ever further. So there is a fading away of what was still quite clear to the old atavistic consciousness and which is expressed in certain myths. I have demonstrated to you the connection between a myth such as the Baldur myth and great all-encompassing manifestations of human evolution.

Our scientific simpletons who conduct research into myths and legends can go no further than to maintain that they are an expression of creative folk imagination. In reality, however, they encompass deeply significant truths which are revealed particularly through the fact that they are truly worked out down to the last detail. As an example, the Baldur myth, among many other things, gives us a very good idea of the gradation of poisons. That a parasitic plant exudes a certain degree of poison is expressed wonderfully in the way Baldur is slain by the mistletoe. This shows that there existed a knowledge of the gradation of poisons in the world, for instance, that mistletoe is poisonous to a degree which cannot be tolerated by man. Everything is differentiated by degrees, everything is graded.

When certain things are said to be ‘poison’, what is meant is that they are stronger poison which has remained behind at the Moon stage—they have not continued to evolve. But everything is to some small extent poison, in everything there is a little poison; the only difference is in the degree. Although I cannot back a certain doctor and professor who stood up in favour of alcohol and maintained he could prove that many more people had died of the poison ‘water’ than of the poison ‘alcohol’, nevertheless the point he makes is important: In all poisons there are degrees, and it is true that more people have been killed by water than by alcohol. It is a fact that something can be true but at the same time it may, without becoming untrue, be inapplicable to a certain case. I have often said it is not enough for something to be true. What matters is whether it can be incorporated into reality, whether it belongs to actual reality.

The ancient truths have, to a great extent, faded away. That is why significant indications about the truth of ancient myths still given, for instance, by the so-called ‘unknown philosopher’ Saint-Martin, remained totally incomprehensible to those who followed him. Saint-Martin, who considered himself to be a pupil of Jakob Böhme, was still just able to point to the true core of the myths. That was in the eighteenth century. By the nineteenth century the most total and utter nonsense was being put forward by way of interpretation of the myths. All this is connected with the way our time lacks a strong, intense urge for the truth. If this urge for truth had been sufficiently strong, it would have sufficed to lead mankind far more extensively towards spiritual life than has actually been the case. It is the weakness of the urge for truth which has brought it about that so few people experience a longing to deepen their spiritual life.

This shows itself in the external, concrete world as well. The sad and painful events of today show that the sense for truth does not flow through the world like the blood of the soul, and this is not always the fault of human beings. The sense for truth must be properly awakened. That is why, during the past weeks, it has been necessary to point to concrete, sense-perceptible affairs in so far as they are the expression of spiritual impulses and spiritual events. It is because of the striving for truth—or rather the lack of striving for truth today—that current affairs are handled and things are said which are believed in the widest circles, although they are in fact nothing but absolute inversions of the truth. In an age when it is possible to make the truth, conform to any kind of antipathy, passion or instinct, a great deal of effort will be needed in this age to awaken a strong sense for the truth which can then lead to a spiritual life. The details show that this is so.

Only consider all the things that have been said in the two-and-a-half years since this event called the war started to rage. Consider further all the things that have been believed. As I said yesterday, the striving for truth, the search for truth, has been the only standpoint for everything I have said; there has been no intention of taking sides in any way at all. It is necessary, however, when making an assertion—even if only in your own soul, for that is just as much a reality—to have the will to take into account that in a particular case the truth might not be entirely available to you and that it is therefore a matter of holding back and searching for ways which can then make it possible to come to a judgement of something.

Let us look at a particular case. Think of all that was disseminated in America in connection with European life during the build-up to this war! Much that has echoed back to Europe reveals what is believed in America. Why are these things believed? They are believed because people over in America have, of course, just as little possibility of understanding European life as did the English with regard to life in China after the Opium War. Pangs of conscience might inspire someone today to admit that the Opium War was a faux pas. I should like to remind such a person that among those in the British Parliament who sang the praises of the outcome of the Opium War as ‘an achievement of British culture’ was old Wellington himself—not one of the worst.

Some time ago an American wrote an essay for his countrymen which they obviously failed to note. To conclude this evening I shall read some passages to you so that you can see the judgement of a man who genuinely endeavours to understand things. Do not rejoin that after seeing what has happened in recent weeks a different judgement could be reached. Of course a more profound background might be found. But to form a judgement such things are not needed. To form a judgement it is enough to have a true sense of objectivity about the external events which are taking place. This sense of objectivity has been little in evidence.

This is what George Stuart Fullerton, a professor at New York University, writes about Germany. Allow me to read to you from this document, which provides such a contrast to that New Year's Eve document which is now circulating in the world. Fullerton writes:

‘I am an American without a drop of German blood in my veins, so that I can not be suspected of having the natural partiality for Germany which characterizes the German-American. Moreover, I can claim the right to be as truly an American as any one, since my family has been American as long as there has been an American Nation. I love my country, and pray that it may have before it a great future, and a prosperity founded upon right and justice. Nevertheless, no man has the right to be only an American, but must remember that he is also a man, and that, as a man, it is a matter of concern to him that justice should prevail in other continents than his own. We Americans are neutrals, but we have a right to know the facts about the great war, and it is our duty to aim at intelligent comprehension of the situation.’

He is a man who applies only his common sense to what he sees; he is not an occultist.

‘For thirty years I have known Germany, and have been interested in her science, her literature, and her political and economic development. At first, I saw the land through the eyes of a mere visitor, but of late years I have had the opportunity to know it much more intimately. I have seen a people, formerly comparatively poor, not very strong, not very closely welded into a unit, become rich, powerful, united, and so advanced in its social development that its internal organization compels the admiration of the economist and of the humanitarian. The land has prospered exceedingly in the intelligent pursuit of the arts of peace. Austria I have visited in past years, and last winter I spent in that Empire in the capacity of first American Exchange Professor to the Austrian Universities, lecturing at Vienna, Graz, Innsbruck, Cracow and Lemberg. I met many persons in public and in private life and had an opportunity to feel the pulse of public opinion.

     I say without hesitation that no class, either in Germany or in Austria, desired to precipitate this terrible war. Peace was desired, and earnestly desired, for economic reasons. But war was forced upon both nations. That war came just when it did may be regarded as an accident, for the war was sure to come in any case.

     As many of my fellow-countrymen are imperfectly acquainted with the conditions which prevail in Europe; as they themselves live under conditions so different that it is difficult for them to realize the significance even of facts which are truly brought before them; and as they have, moreover, been systematically misinformed by certain of the parties interested, who have had the opportunity to cut the German cables, it is not surprising that there should be, in America, much misunderstanding of the situation. I think it my duty to make a brief contribution towards the clearing up of this misunderstanding.

     Americans have heard a great deal lately of German militarism, and many of them have a vague notion that it is a menace to European civilization. Of what the word really stands for they have no intelligent notion. In America we have brief attacks of militarism—as at the time of the Spanish-American war, or when there is common talk of a possible war with Mexico—but militarism, as a permanent condition of things, does not exist. And if it is not to be met with in the Great Republic, why should it exist in Germany? The American who is not acquainted with Germany and with the position in which she finds herself can find no satisfactory answer to this question. An answer is, however, not far to seek.

     The Germans are a peace-loving people. We Americans know that there is no element in our own population more orderly, industrious, and law-abiding, than the German element. The German in Germany has the same characteristics. The land is an orderly land, and the population is enlightened, disciplined, and educated to respect the law. The rights of even the humblest are jealously guarded. The courts are just. The successes of the Germans are attained as the result of careful preparation and unremitting industry. Even competition in business is carefully regulated by law, and the laws against what the community regards as ‘unfair competition’ are rigorously enforced. No one who lives among the Germans and learns to know them can feel that he has to do with an aggressive and predatory people. And those who spent in Germany, as I did, the month of August 1914, mingling freely in the crowds on the streets during the two weeks of the mobilization, when the public excitement was the greatest, can only wonder that a people so peaceable and self-restrained should be capable of the daring courage which has since stormed fortresses, and has gathered laurels on land and sea in a way which compels the admiration of all who have not been kept in ignorance of the facts.

     Yet this orderly and peace-loving people, a people which has not only loved peace, but has for more than forty years kept the peace, while other nations carried on wars, a people that has, in the pursuit of the arts of peace, grown exceedingly rich and prosperous—this people has all the while trained the mass of its male population to be prepared for war in case of emergency, and has built up a formidable fleet. Finally, it has gone to war against what seemed, at first, to be overwhelming odds, and the rising has not been that of a class, but of a nation. Neither the Emperor, nor the Government, nor the officers in the army and the navy are responsible for the public sentiment which makes this movement in Germany a national uprising. Even the Social-Democrats and those of a kindred way of thinking, men who have never been accused of servility to the Emperor or the Government, nor suspected of a weakness for army and navy, have stood by their country to a man, and are now fighting bravely and dying without a complaint at the front. In the past three months I have not met with a German of any class, from the highest to the lowest, who has not been heart and soul for the war. I have heard no laments from those who have sent their sons; I have heard no criticism of their country from those who have been bereaved, and I know many such.

     A strange phenomenon to be observed among a peaceable and industrious race, a race as devoted to the cultivation of the sciences and arts as it is to industrial pursuits; a civilized race, not one living in a state of barbarism and to which war is welcome, a diversion rather than a calamity. To the American who cannot put himself in the place of the German, an inexplicable phenomenon. What has possessed the Germans to prepare for war on a great scale? What drives them to fight even against a world in arms, and to stake their all in the gigantic contest?

     Let me help the American to put himself in the place of the German. We Americans inhabit a land more than four-fifths the size of all Europe including Russia. It is fifteen times the size of the German Empire, and has only ninety-eight millions of inhabitants, so that we are in the position of a family occupied in growing up to fill a large and well furnished house. It does not cross our mind that our neighbors, either near or remote, can seriously frighten us. Who could invade us with any hope of success? Who could threaten our national existence, or subject us to anything approaching a state of bondage?

     To the north of us is Canada—an empty house, a country with only seven million inhabitants, which could not hurt us even if it wishes to do so. To the south is Mexico, which can make trouble within her own borders and can cause some Americans to regret their investments there, but which is no more formidable to the United States than an unruly class in a school. To the west and to the east we have the broad sea. Japan might quarrel with us, and might be a detriment to some of our foreign trade.’

He is rather optimistic here! But never mind; at the time this judgement was appropriate.

‘But Japan is far from us,’—she will draw nearer in the future!—‘and we know very well that she is too poor, and will long be too poor, to carry on a long-continued war. At the most, Japan can only annoy us. That European states should, singly or combined, crush us, is a contingency too remote to fall within our horizon. As much of an army and as much of a fleet as we think necessary to our purposes we freely call into being, nor does it occur to us to ask the permission of any other power before increasing either. Why should Mr. Carnegie fill his house with bread, as a provision against a possible famine in the State of New York? Why should Mr. Rockefeller store gold and silver coins in a stocking and hide them in his mattress? The occupant of a Nebraska farm who should build a sea-worthy boat, in order to be ready for all emergencies, we should regard as out of his mind. We Americans do what seems to us prudent and practical under the conditions which prevail in America, and we have no more need for the German army than has a Philadelphia Quaker, at his Yearly Meeting, for a revolver. What we think we really need, however, we set about with much energy to obtain.

     But suppose that our territory were not too large to be invaded. Suppose that to the north of us, we had a great land with a vast population of more than one hundred millions, under an autocratic government, boasting, even in time of peace, an immense army. Suppose that this land had for many decades shown a restless activity in extending its borders at the expense of its neighbors, where it had found them too weak to resist aggression. Suppose that its population was upon a plane of civilization far less advanced than our own; so little advanced, indeed, that the overwhelming majority were compelled to live in what civilized men must regard as a condition of distressing misery, ignorant, dumb, passive, a tool in the hands of a bureaucratic class which would not be the first to suffer from the added miseries entailed by a state of war. Suppose that we had information that this neighbor of ours had for some time been massing its troops upon its borders in a way that could only be interpreted as a menace.

     Again, let us suppose that we had to the south of us, not Mexico, but a rich, resourceful, and highly civilized nation of forty million inhabitants, with a large army, formidable, well-drilled, and well equipped with all that is necessary to carry on successfully modern warfare. Suppose that this nation had for forty years made no secret of the fact that it was animated by a bitter sentiment of resentment against us, and hoped some day to have its revenge. Suppose that it stood in relations with the power above described, and also with a third power to be mentioned below, such that we had reason to fear that they might act in concert to our detriment.

     Now let us extend our suppositions, too, over the case of this third power. Suppose that we did not have the broad sea upon our borders to east and west, with the trade routes of the world open to us, but that there existed a third power so fortunately situated as to be inaccessible by land and yet in direct control of our only available outlets to the sea. Suppose that our foreign commerce was far more important to our prosperity than it actually is; that our prosperity was in large measure based upon our export trade. Suppose that the third power in question was rich enough to maintain a navy equal to our own combined with that of any other great power with which we might contract an alliance, and openly avowed its intention to retain control of the sea by maintaining this proportion. Suppose that its control of the sea even made it possible for this power to cut international cables, and only let through to the world so much regarding what we did or what others did to us as seemed to it in accordance with its policy. Suppose that this power had an “understanding” with the two described above, and we had, reason to fear that it might join them should they attack us.

     How could we Americans accept such a situation? I know my Americans. I have lived through the Spanish war, and have seen a University emptied of professors and students eager to fight under the flag of their country. Yet the Spanish war was, to America, a very small and unimportant affair. Spain could no more crush the United States and reduce our country to virtual subjection than it could stay the moon in its revolutions. Were our land really in danger, or did we believe our land to be in danger, what would happen in the United States? Would we be peaceable and patient, anxious to make concessions, willing to give up territory, eager to limit, under compulsion, our army and navy? Would we humbly declare our readiness to step out of the race for industrial success, or to ask permission of another power for access to the trade routes of the world? I know my Americans, and such questions strike me as broadly humorous.

     In this paper I have no other aim than to set the American in the place of the German. Whether it is or is not desirable that Germany or Austria, or parts of them, should be reduced to the condition of Finland or Poland; whether France should be allowed to take Alsace and Lorraine; whether England should be freed from a business rival so intelligent and industrious as to be formidable in time of peace, and should be left in control of the sea routes to America, Asia, Africa and Oceanica;—with all this I am in no way concerned. I wish only to make clear that, under like circumstances, Americans would do what the Germans have done. The Germans have, not without reason, feared Russian and French aggression, and have made preparations for many years to forestall it. German science and industry have led to an enormous expansion in German trade, and the Germans have not been willing to trust their trade to the mercies of Great Britain. Under this regime Germany has prospered exceedingly. Militarism, which the German regards as only a somewhat offensive name for his necessary preparation to repel very real dangers, a legitimate measure of self-defence, has not hampered Germany a tithe as much as she was hampered in the past, when she was not in a position to defend herself. Militarism is undoubtedly a burden, but it has not prevented Germany from cultivating successfully the sciences and arts, to the great benefit of humanity; from initiating and carrying out social reforms which insure to all classes of her population an unusual measure of well-being; from developing her internal resources and building up her foreign commerce in a way that has made her a rich nation. Militarism may be a crushing burden, abstractly considered, but it has not crushed Germany, and, to the German, that is a consideration which deserves to be weighed.

     We are all influenced by the constant repetition of a catchword. Americans have heard so much of German militarism, largely from certain foreign sources, that it would be surprising if some of them were not deluded into believing that Germany is the only European nation with a large army. Yet Russia has a larger army, and has for years been using it for aggression. France, with a much smaller population then Germany, has an army of approximately the same size, and, hence, may, with much greater justice than Germany, be accused of militarism.

     And Great Britain has the exact equivalent of an immense army—she has a colossal fleet, which she keeps up at an enormous expense to herself, and which she increases from time to time, with the avowed purpose of allowing no nation to dispute with her the control of the sea, that great common highway of the world, over which all may pass, but which no nation may possess. How formidable this equivalent for a great army may be to other nations has been made clear in the present crisis. There is no nation in Europe that can, without asking England's permission, sail into the Atlantic, pass the Straits of Gibraltar, make use of the Mediterranean, or reach Asia by way of the Suez Canal. The public highway has by a single nation been fenced in and made private property.

     It is a pity that the word “Navalism” is not good English, for that which it exactly describes has been peculiarly English for a century. “Navalism” can be a more serious menace than militarism, for the latter threatens chiefly one's more immediate neighbors. “Navalism” holds a threat over every nation on the face of the globe.

     I repeat that, in this paper, I am not urging that it would be a good thing for the world for any one nation rather than another to emerge from this great contest victorious. One's opinions upon such matters are not dictated wholly by pure reason.’

This man speaks very good sense!

‘I wish only to make the real issue clear, and to avoid the fallacy of catchwords and phrases. I make no reference to the neutrality of Belgium, nor do I think it worthwhile to touch upon the question who first formally declared war on this side or on that. In the light of what the world now knows, these have become wholly trivial matters. The explanation of the attitude of the German people is to be sought at a much deeper level. And I maintain without hesitation that we Americans, under the same circumstances, would have done just what the Germans have done. Would it have been right? Would it have been wrong? I leave it to Americans to decide.

     Some Americans—not many—are by their nature inclined to the acceptance of the status quo, that somewhat ambiguous expression so often found in the mouth of the man who thinks it to his purpose to urge the continued existence of a state of things which long has been or which has recently come to be. Had Austria accepted the status quo, she would not have resented the revolutionary activities of the Servians within her borders; she would not have resented the murder of her Crown Prince; she would not have opposed resistance to Russia. Had Germany accepted the status quo, she would not have prepared for defence, have reacted to Russian mobilization on her frontier, or have endeavored to prevent the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary. She would have offered her cheek to the French; she would have left Britain to rule the waves according to her pleasure, and in accordance with an old tradition. What would have happened to Austria and to Germany had the status quo been thus respected? It would undoubtedly have been something very disagreeable to Germans. On this point they are all agreed, and it is this that has led Prince and Peasant, Catholic and Protestant, Conservative and Social-Democrat, to drop all other causes and to go wholeheartedly to war.

     Shall we urge upon Germany, rather than upon other nations, the acceptance of the status quo and a tender regard for the “balance of power”? As for the “balance of power”, any nation that is intelligent and industrious, and that, preserving the peace for nearly half a century, is enabled to develop its industries and become thereby rich and powerful, unavoidably disturbs it. Nations less civilized, or less industrious, or more quarrelsome, are put at a disadvantage. As for the status quo, has it been accepted by Servia, by Russia, by France, by England, by Japan? And what, on the whole, has been the attitude of the American towards it?

     Did we accept the status quo when we dispossessed the Indians? Did we bow down before the principle when we published our Declaration of Independence in 1776? Did we show our respect for it when we rebelled against the search of American ships and the impressment of American seamen by Great Britain in the years preceding 1812? Did we think of the status quo in 1861, when we refused to recognize the Confederacy, and insisted upon the integrity of the Union? Did we treat it with deference at the time of our war with Spain?

     The status quo is a catch-word. The balance of power is something which, in the normal course of human events, is always being upset and set up again upon a new basis. We Americans are not, I think, a quarrelsome people, but we have long ago recognized that the times change and that we change with them. To new conditions we make new adjustments, and we guard jealously enough what we consider our legitimate interests, whether they be new or old. Were it necessary, we should not hesitate to guard them by a prompt display of force. And among our legitimate interests we should certainly place in the front rank our national self-defence and the enjoyment of such advantages as we have, by intelligence and industry, and in the pursuit of the arts of peace, obtained.

     We are neutrals, but we have a right to know the truth even about Central Europe. It is not right that we should be kept in ignorance, or led, through misrepresentations, to condemn in haste nations with which we stand in friendly relations. When we see a great nation of some seventy millions, a nation highly civilized, wealthy and cultivated, a nation well aware that it can prosper as few others, if it be allowed to exercise its industries in peace—when we see such a nation go to war against powerful odds, risking its very existence in the struggle, we must be shallow, indeed, if we suppose that its whole population, a naturally peaceable and orderly population, has either gone mad or lapsed into barbarism. We must stand before an unsolved problem until we attain to information and comprehension.

     Let the American forget the conditions under which he himself lives. Let him think himself into the situation of the German. Then let him ask himself what, under the circumstances, he would do.’

These are the words of one who had the will to see things as they really are, and not to listen to what is said in the newspapers and journals of the periphery. Are these the only people who spoke like this? Such people are equipped with a genuine sense for the truth. This is how they spoke.

Yesterday—this is very relevant—I had a look at the Basler Nachrichten. It quoted some words which were actually spoken. It is a good thing that they have been quoted. They were spoken in 1908 by an Englishman in front of other Englishmen in order to point out that Germany had every reason to adopt a militaristic attitude, and that it would have been unwise for Germany not to have adopted this ‘militarism’, which has since become a slogan to be slandered. The words this Englishman spoke to other Englishmen were:

‘Look at the position of Germany ... Suppose we had here a possible combination (of enemies) which would lay us open to invasion, suppose Germany, and France, or Germany and Russia, or Germany and Austria, had fleets which, in combination, would be stronger than ours, would we not be frightened? Would we not arm? Of course we should!’

Lloyd George spoke these words in 1908 with as much conviction as he now thunders his tirades into the world! These words were spoken by Lloyd George in 1908!

What was said yesterday about so-called poisonous substances indicated strongly how all the impulses of life are graded in relation to one another. For instance, some substance is said to be poisonous, and yet the higher nature of the human being is intimately related to this poison; indeed, the higher nature of man cannot exist without the effects of poisons. We are touching here on a most important area of knowledge, one with many ramifications and without which it is impossible to understand a good many secrets of life and existence.

Looking at the human physical body, we have to admit that if it were not filled with those higher components of existence, the etheric body, the astral body and the ego, it could not be the physical body as we know it. The moment man steps through the portal of death, leaving behind his physical body—that is, the moment the higher components withdraw from the physical body—it begins to obey laws other than those which governed it while those components were present there. The physical body disintegrates; after death it obeys the physical and chemical forces and laws of the earth.

The physical body of man as we know it cannot be constructed in accordance with earthly laws, for it is these very laws which destroy it. The body can only be what it is because there work within it those parts of man that are not of the earth: his higher components of soul and spirit. There is nothing in the whole realm of physical and chemical laws which could justify the presence of such a thing as the human physical body on the earth.

Measured by the physical laws of the earth, the human body is an impossible creation. It is prevented from disintegrating by the higher components of man's being. It follows, therefore, that the moment these higher components—the ego, the astral body and the etheric body—desert the human body, it becomes a corpse.

You know from many earlier lectures that the diagram of the human being we have often given is quite correct as such, but that in reality it is not as simple as some would like. To begin with, we divide the human being into physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. I have pointed out on other occasions that this in itself implies a further complication. The physical body, of course, is what it is—the physical body. But the etheric body, as such, is something super-sensible, invisible, something that cannot be perceived by the senses. It lives in the human being as something that cannot be perceived by the senses. But it has, in a sense, its physical counterpart because it imprints itself on the physical body. The physical body contains not only the physical body itself, but also an imprint of the etheric body. The etheric body projects itself onto the physical body; so we can speak of an etheric projection onto the physical body.

It is the same in the case of the astral body. We can speak of the astral projection onto the physical body. You know some of the details already. You know that the ego projection onto the physical body may be sought in certain features of the blood circulation, where the ego projects itself onto the blood. In a similar way the other higher components project themselves onto the physical body. So the physical body in its physical aspect is in itself a complicated system, for it is fourfold. And just as the most important aspect cannot exist in the physical body if the ego and the astral body are not in it—for it then becomes a corpse—so is it also in the case of these projections, for they are all present in the physical substance. Without the ego there can be no human blood, without the astral body there can be no human nervous system as a whole. These things exist in us as a counterpart of man's higher components.

When the ego has been, shall we say, ‘lifted out’ of the physical body, when it has passed through the portal of death, the physical body has no real life any longer, but becomes a corpse. In a similar way, under certain conditions, these projections cannot live in a proper way either.

For instance the ego projection—that is, a certain quality of the blood—cannot be present in a proper way in the human organism if the ego is not properly fostered. To turn the physical body into a corpse it is, of course, necessary for the ego to depart entirely from the physical body. But the blood can go a quarter of the way towards becoming a corpse if you prevent it from being permeated with what ought to live in the ego, so that it can work in the right manner of soul and spirit on the blood. You will gather from this that is possible to bring disorder into man's soul in such a way that the right influences cannot be brought to bear on the blood nature, the blood substance. That is then the point when the blood can change into a poisonous substance—not entirely, for in that case the person would die, but in part. The human physical body is abandoned to destruction if the ego departs from it, and in a similar way the blood is brought into a state of ill health—even if this is not necessarily noticeable—if the ego is not fostered and interwoven with the right care.

So when is the ego not fostered and interwoven with the right care? This is the case under certain quite definite circumstances. Let us look for the moment at the post-Atlantean period. We see that as human evolution proceeds, certain definite capacities, certain definite impulses are developed in each succeeding cultural epoch. It is impossible to imagine people living in the ancient Indian period having a condition of soul development similar to ours. From epoch to epoch, as human beings pass through succeeding incarnations on earth, different impulses are needed for the human soul.

Let me draw you a diagram. Imagine this to be the main, the actual physical body, the one that has to be filled with all the higher components of human nature in order to be a physical body at all.

Of all these higher components, I shall deal solely with the ego, though I could deal with all three. The shading here indicates that the physical body is permeated by the ego. So, in a certain way, the other projections also have to be permeated. Here let me indicate the projection of the etheric body, which is for the most part anchored in the human being's glandular system; for this, too, has to be permeated and interwoven. Thirdly, let me indicate what is anchored chiefly in the nervous system. This, again, in a certain way, must be interwoven with the workings of the ego. And the ego body itself—this, too, has to be interwoven in the proper way.

As I said just now, as man passes through succeeding periods of evolution he has to step into different developmental impulses with each period. He has to absorb whatever the contemporary age requires him to take in. In the first post-Atlantean period, ancient India, impulses of soul and spirit had to be absorbed which enabled the etheric body to be developed; in the next period, ancient Persia, the astral body was developed; in the period of Egypt and Chaldea it was the turn of the sentient soul; in the Greco-Latin period, the intellectual or mind soul; and today, the consciousness soul.

Whether the human being absorbs in the right way whatever is suitable for the age in which he is living will depend on whether he has properly entered into all these bodily principles—just as the physical body is permeated by the higher components of his being—so that they absorb what the age requires. Suppose an individual during the fifth post-Atlantean period were to resist absorbing anything of what ought to be absorbed during this period; suppose he were to reject everything which could cultivate his soul in the manner required by the fifth post-Atlantean period. What would be the consequence?

His bodily nature cannot revert to an earlier state if he belongs to that part of mankind which is called upon at present to absorb the impulses of the fifth post-Atlantean period. Not everyone is called upon at the same time, but at present all the white races are called upon to absorb the culture of the fifth post-Atlantean period. Now suppose an individual were to resist this. A certain member of his bodily nature—above all, the blood—would remain void of all that could be taken in, were he not to put up this resistance. This member of his bodily nature would then lack what ought to permeate its substance and its forces. This substance and the forces living in it—though not to a degree comparable to bodily death brought about by the departure of the ego—would then become sick in its life forces, which become degraded so that man bears them as a poison within him. Thus to remain behind in evolution means that man impregnates his being with a kind of formative phantom which is poisonous. On the other hand, if he were to absorb what his cultural impulses require him to absorb, the state of his soul would be such that he could dissolve this poisonous phantom he bears within him. By failing to do so, he allows this phantom to coagulate and become a part of his body.

This is the source of all the sicknesses of civilization, the cultural decadence, all the emptiness of soul, the states of hypochondria, the eccentricities, the dissatisfactions, the crankinesses and so on, and also of all those instincts which attack culture, which are aggressive and antagonistic towards cultural impulses. Either the individual accepts the culture of his age, and fits in with it, or he develops the corresponding poison which deposits itself within him and can only be dissolved if he does accept the culture. But if the poison is allowed to become deposited, it leads to the development of instincts which are opposed to the culture of the age. The working of a poison is also always an aggressive instinct. In the languages of Central Europe this can be felt quite clearly: many dialects do not say that a person is angry but that he is poisonous. This expresses a deep sense for something that is indeed the case. Someone who is irrascible is described in Austria, for instance, as ‘gachgiftig’ which means that he is quick to grow poisonous, quick to anger. Human beings acquire poison, sometimes in a very concentrated form, if they refuse to accept what could dissolve such poison. Nowadays, untold people refuse to accept spiritual life in the form fitting for today, which we have been endeavouring to describe for such a long time, more recently even in public.

In such people, the lotus flower here [on the forehead] reveals very clearly what occurs in these cases, for the effects reach right into the realm of warmth, and such people leap up like flames against anything in the world around them which happens to reveal something that could bring healing to our times. Certainly, Mephistopheles—that is, the devil—is abroad amongst us; but the development of even a small beginning—tiny flames stirring—starts when we refuse to accept something that is fitting for our time, so that we do not dissolve the poison but make it into a partial corpse and allow it to coagulate in our organism as a phantom of formative forces.

If you think this through properly, you will discover the cause of many dissatisfactions in life. For those who bear such a poisonous phantom within them are unhappy indeed. We would call these people nervous, or neurasthenic; but it can also make them cruel, quarrelsome, monists, materialists, for these characteristics are the result, more often than we might think, of physiological causes brought about by the poison being deposited in the human organism instead of being assimilated.

You will see from all this that there belongs to the overall balance of the world in which we are embedded a kind of unstable equilibrium between what is good and right on the one hand, and its opposite, the effects of poisons, on the other. If it is to be possible for what is good and right to come about, then it must also be possible to err from what is right, for poisons to have their effect.

If we now apply this to the wider situation, we see that it must be possible today for people to attain to some degree of spiritual life, to develop within themselves impulses for a free, inner spiritual life. To make it possible for the individual to attain to a life of the spirit, the opposite must also exist, namely a corresponding possibility to err along the path of grey or black magic. Without the one, the other is not possible. Just as you, as a human being, cannot maintain yourself without the firm foundation of the earth beneath your feet, so it is not possible for the illumination of spiritual life to be pursued without the resistance which must be permitted to exist and which is inevitable for the higher realms of life.

We have already mentioned the highly contradictory and yet no less important fact that the question: To whom do we owe the Mystery of Golgotha? could elicit the reply: To Judas. For it could be argued that if Judas had not betrayed Christ Jesus, the Mystery of Golgotha would not have taken place, so therefore we ought to be grateful to Judas, since Christianity—that is, the Mystery of Golgotha—stems from him. However, to be grateful to Judas and perhaps recognize him as the founder of Christianity is going too far! Wherever we strive to enter higher realms we have to reckon with living, not dead truth, and the living truth bears within it its own counter-image, just as in physical existence life bears death within it.

This is something I wanted to place in your soul today, for on this basis much can be understood. There has to exist the possibility for what is spiritual, but also for the deposition of the poison which is its polar opposite. And if it can be deposited then it can also be used—it can be utilized in every realm.

Many questions could be asked about this, but today we shall deal with only one: How can we find our way through the maze? Is there not a very great danger that anything we approach in the world might contain the polar opposite, namely the poison, or at least that somebody or other might seek to make something poisonous out of it? Of course there is always this possibility. Everything that is potentially very good can also be perverted and become the opposite. This must be the case in order that human evolution can take its course in freedom in accordance with the present cultural age. Indeed, the very best evolutionary impulses in our age are those most likely to be turned into their opposite.

This is valid for social life as well as for the human organism. In lectures given here last year, we saw that in the present age, to start with only germinally, the capacity is beginning to develop which will enable us to create a life of Imaginations—to develop thoughts which rise up freely—though so far this possibility is denied by materialists. However, it lies in the very nature of our present age that a life of Imagination must develop little by little. What is the counter-image of a life of Imagination? The counter-image of Imaginative life is fabrication, the creation of fabrications about reality and a corresponding thoughtlessness in alleging this or that. I have often described it in these lectures as an inattentiveness to truth, to what is actual and real. The most wonderful thing with which mankind is presented in the fifth post-Atlantean period is the gradual ascent from mere onesided intellectual life into Imaginative life, which is the first step into the spiritual world. This can err and become untruthfulness, the fabrication of untruths in relation to reality. I am not, of course, referring to poetry, which is entirely justified, but to fabrication with regard to what is real.

Another element which must come into being during the present age—we have discussed this here, too—is a form of thinking that is particularly conscientious and aware of its responsibility. When you see what anthroposophical spiritual science has to offer, you cannot but admit that, to understand what is said, sharply delineated thoughts are needed, thoughts which are imbued with the will to pursue reality in an objective way. Clear thinking is certainly necessary if our teachings—if I may call them that—are to be understood. Above all, what is needed are not fleeting thoughts, but a certain quietness of thought. We must work towards achieving this kind of thinking. We must strive unremittingly to force ourselves to think thoughts with clear contours and not wallow in sympathies and antipathies when alleging something to ourselves and others. We must seek for the foundation, the basis, of what we maintain—otherwise we shall never penetrate in the right way into the realm of spiritual science. We must demand this of ourselves. We shall fulfil our task if we demand this of ourselves. If we are asked what we can do in these difficult times, our answer must be based on what I have just said. We must be fully aware of the fact that at the present time every human being who longs for the evolution of the earth to proceed in a healthy way must seek conscientiously and honestly for objectivity of thinking, in the manner described. This is the task of the human soul today.

It is just because this is so that the corresponding poison can develop, which is a state of being utterly devoid of clarity of thought, devoid of thought that unites with reality and fabricates nothing, but seeks to depict solely what is. During the course of the nineteenth century the yearning for objectivity deserted us increasingly. And the absence of conscience in what we have been describing here as the truth has reached a certain climax in the twentieth century in comparison to all that went before. The effect is at its worst when people entirely fail to notice it; yet, in this very aspect, it is characteristic of our time.

Let me give you a few examples to show you what I mean. Let me place these examples before you sine ira—without sympathies or antipathies. Here is a man whom I know very well, someone who could be called a truly kind and nice person. He holds a position in public life and would certainly not allow himself to stray, even minutely, from the upright attitudes expected of those in public positions. Yet a short time ago this man found it possible to say something quite typical. At the end of an essay he wrote: ‘Finally we cannot avoid at least a brief discussion of ...’ [Gap in report]

It is understandable that such things should be said today, and I have quoted it precisely because the person who said it was such a serious man with truly upright attitudes. Yet when you look more closely, you discover that it is as utterly dishonest as anything can possibly be; for how can you say anything more dishonest than: ‘I shall join in singing “Now thank we all our God” and “A safe stronghold our God is still” ’ and so on, in a mood that makes these hymns into prayers, if you hold opinions such as those expressed by this man. Frankly, he is eulogizing untruthfulness. You may find such eulogies to untruthfulness wherever you look these days, yet they are given, I am bound to say, in good faith. They are the poison that corresponds to what must develop as a spiritual life of Imagination. The best among us, especially, are prone, more or less unconsciously, to harbouring the effects of this poison. Of course, once you realize that something of this kind pulsating through society is no different from a drop of poison administered to the human organism, then you are in a position to judge all these things correctly. And once you do realize it, you cannot but feel bound to strive for something in life which I have now described a number of times. You will feel bound to be alert to the facts, you will want your observation of life to be sound, for without this there is no way forward today. The karma that is being fulfilled at the moment, the karma about which I have spoken before, is not the karma of a single nation; it is the karma of the whole of European and American humanity in the nineteenth century; it is the karma of untruthfulness, the insidious poison of untruthfulness.

This untruthfulness may be experienced particularly strongly in movements of a more elevated variety. During the course of my life I have come across a great deal of untruthfulness, but I must say I have never met lies as grandiose as those promulgated among certain people who proclaim the principle: There is no religion higher than Truth. I could say that such intense mendacity is only found where there is at the same time a profound consciousness of striving for only the truth and nothing but the truth! The greatest watchfulness is needed when striving for the ultimate. For we must realize that, while in earlier cultural epochs the possibilities of erring were different, today the greatest danger is an aberration into untruthfulness brought about by a failure to take reality into account in a living way—a failure to take reality into account! The man I mentioned, who wrote such lies, would rather have his tongue cut out than consciously speak an untruth. Yet it is through such upright people that these things work, seeping into the social organism and turning into social poison. Obviously, since they must needs exist amongst us, they can also err in the opposite direction. Other human beings can take them into their awareness and use them for all kinds of mischief—to put it mildly.

Some of you might remember how strange it seemed to people when I first made some fairly radical statements about these things a few years ago, in a public lecture in Munich. I said at that time: During the course of human evolution, impulses for both good and evil develop on the physical plane. What causes these impulses to develop? They come into being when certain forces, which actually belong to the higher, spiritual world, are misused down here in the physical world. If thieves were to use their thieving instincts, and murderers their murderous instincts, and liars their lying instincts to develop higher forces, instead of enjoying them here on the physical plane, they would develop quite considerable higher forces. Their mistake is only that they develop their powers on the wrong plane. Evil, I said, is good that has been transposed down from another plane. Of course, if we know this it does not make a thief or a murderer or a liar any better. But we must understand these things, otherwise we cannot fathom what is going on, falling unconscious victim to these dangers.

It is not surprising that many people today simply do not realize that it is becoming mankind's task to be concerned with spiritual matters. Therefore they fail to take up this task, abandoning themselves instead to materialistic instincts. In doing so, they develop within themselves those poisons which ought to be dissolved by the spiritual element. What is the consequence? In those who deny the spirit, the poisons develop into forces which cause them to become veritable liars; whether conscious or unconscious is merely a question of degree. Yet these very forces could be used to achieve a reasonable comprehension of spiritual knowledge.

Consider how important it is for us to understand this and how, in understanding it, we can come to comprehend one of the central aspects of the karma of our time, if we add to it what I said yesterday: that a single instance cannot be detached from mankind as a whole, for mankind is a totality. As a counter-image of spiritual endeavour it is essential for a violent evil to exist. And one of man's tasks today is to recognize the true nature of this evil, in order to be able properly to recognize and oppose it when he comes upon it in life.

In speaking about these things we come to realize the relationship between the greater aspects of the karma of our time and something that is living in our time which is everywhere in the world bringing about very, very much that is terrible. Superficially, we see how falsehood throbs through the world in mighty waves which devour much more than one might think. For falsehood is monstrously vigorous. But as we have seen today, falsehood is nothing other than the corresponding counter-image for spiritual endeavour which ought to exist but does not. The divine, spiritual wisdom of the universe has given to the human being the possibility of spiritual endeavour. We have within us the poison which we can dissolve. Indeed, we must dissolve it, for otherwise it will become a kind of partial corpse within us.

Let me give you examples of such things from daily life. These will at the same time serve the pursuit of our aim to better understand certain things which meet us at every turn today and which are connected with life and with all the evil and suffering of the present time. For one of the things we are striving for in these talks, in so far as we have been permitted to give them, is an understanding of the painful events of today. I bring these things forward in order to show you in a structured way how these impulses work. The examples I give are intended to characterize the facts, not any particular person or persons.

Hanging around here in Switzerland is a man who many years ago was a lawyer in Berlin, a pettifogger who was forced to seek his fortune abroad because of all the mischief he had concocted. He has been hanging around abroad for years, and now that war has broken out has written a book, J'accuse, which has caused a furore throughout the countries of the periphery. This whole J'accuse affair can be said to be one of the saddest symptoms of our time, because it is so very characteristic. J'accuse is a fat book, and certain people who ought to know maintain that there is not a log cabin in distant Norway that does not house a copy. It is, in other words, one of the most widely disseminated books. In Berlin last spring I read an article about it written by quite a well-known person. He says J'accuse was recommended to him by someone whom he greatly admires. From the way he describes his friend, we gather who he must mean, namely, someone who counts for a good deal in Holland. Yet this person was quite unable to assess even the gutter-press style of the book. It is possible to be thought a great man and yet be incompetent to form a judgement in such matters.

Now quite recently the author—known, and yet unknown—of J'accuse has gone into print once more in L'Humanité with the following thoughts. As I have said, I am not concerned with the person himself, but want to characterize something that is typical of our time:

In the Reichstag in Berlin a social democrat gives a speech in which he unfolds his views about various happenings in the period leading up to the outbreak of war. It does not matter whether we agree with him or not; what I am concerned with is the form such things take. In his speech, this member of the Reichstag refers to a remark made by Sir Edward Grey on 30 July 1914 to the effect that if the Austrians would content themselves with marching as far as Belgrade, occupying the city and awaiting the outcome of a possible European congress on the relationship between Austria and Serbia, then it might still be possible to preserve peace. This remark by Sir Edward Grey is well-documented, for he made it to the German ambassador and also wrote it to the English ambassador in St Petersburg. The matter is so well-documented that there can be no doubt that Sir Edward Grey did make this remark. Nevertheless, by bringing it up again in the Reichstag, this member has aroused the anger of the author of J'accuse. So what does the author of J'accuse do? He writes an utterly slanderous article in L'Humanité in which he accuses the member of the Reichstag of mendaciousness, false citation, and so on. Yet the matter is very well-documented, and the member of the Reichstag did not say anything which is not vouched for in books, or in the letter sent by Sir Edward Grey to the English ambassador in St Petersburg. So how can the author of J'accuse make the claim of mendaciousness? He did it by saying: What the member of the Reichstag was saying cannot refer to a remark made by Sir Edward Grey on 30 July; it must refer to one made by Sasonov on 31 December. But Sasonov's remark, not Grey's, was as I shall now quote. In other words, the member of the Reichstag quoted Sasonov wrongly, for Sasonov's remark went as follows, and in addition he claims that Sasonov's remark was made by Sir Edward Grey.

The fact is that the member of the Reichstag refers to a remark by Grey. The author of J'accuse wants to counter him and says: What he is saying refers not to a remark by Grey but to one by Sasonov, which he misquotes; Sasonov said the following ...; in other words what he said in the Reichstag in Berlin is doubly false, for firstly the quotation is false, and secondly he claims that the remark was made in London, when in fact it was made in St Petersburg. Ergo, the member of the Reichstag is a liar.

The whole of J'accuse is of this calibre; all the argumentation is like this. You see how narrow, how confused and how unscrupulous must be the thinking of a person who is capable of writing such things. And what does he achieve? The countless people who read L'Humanité and what the author—known, and yet unknown—of J'accuse has to say, will, of course, not check the facts for themselves. They believe what they see before their eyes. So by this means he proves not only that the member of the Reichstag has lied, but also—and the author of J'accuse is indeed capable of allowing this to be seen as proof—that the Central Powers never replied to the proposals made by the periphery. The author of J'accuse states that the member of the Reichstag is saying that the Central Powers did react to the proposals made by the periphery. And yet, he says, look what Sasonov said, for it is Sasonov whom he is quoting! The Central Powers never replied, so you see how they managed the affair; they did not even reply to these important proposals.

Now what the member of the Reichstag said did indeed refer to a proposal made by Grey and telegraphed by him to his ambassador, who then passed it on to Sasonov. Sasonov turned Grey's whole proposal, which was not at all bad, upside down. The author of J'accuse demands that this proposal, turned into its opposite by Sasonov, should have been taken into account, even though Sasanov did not take it into account. However, it can be proved that Grey sent a telegram to his ambassador in St Petersburg and that this was presented to Sasonov, who took no account of it. At the same time Grey sent his proposal to Berlin and from Berlin it was sent on to Vienna. It can indeed be proved that negotiations were carried on between Vienna and Berlin in order to persuade Austria to make a halt in Belgrade and await European negotiations. This is documented in a letter telegraphed by the King of England to Prince Heinrich. In other words, the Central Powers did indeed consider Grey's proposals. But Sasonov did not consider them! Even so, the author of J'accuse concludes that the Central Powers did not reply and have thus made themselves guilty of these terrible events.

This whole matter is not insignificant, for in yesterday's lamentable document the same sentence may be seen. Here we have an extraordinary—let me say—kinship, family relationship, between a terrible document of world history and an individual who has been hanging around for years because his own homeland became too hot to hold him and who now writes all kinds of rubbish under the bombastic title J'accuse. By a German—rubbish that is protected by such further excesses as the latest achievement of L'Humanité.

It is not surprising if people then defend themselves in the way the German member of the Reichstag has done, having been accused by the author of J'accuse of being a slanderer, a hypocrite and a liar. He drew the following comparison: You send your maid on an errand to Mr Miller at Number 35, Long Lane. When she returns after having taken much longer than the expected two hours she says: I couldn't find Mr Miller. I went to No 85, Short Street. Mr Miller the carpenter doesn't live there, but Mrs Smith the washerwoman does. This, said the member of the Reichstag, is just about the level of connection between what the author of J'accuse says and what really happened.

The author of J'accuse is, of course, a particularly nasty example. It is this manner of treating reality which is today the obverse, the corresponding counter-image of spiritual endeavour, flowing as it does through the veins of society in place of what we should all be striving for: spiritual knowledge, spiritual knowledge with which to fill our being. We can find such things everywhere, in manifold variations. I have given you just one example—dishonesty, as it appears in an individual whom I know very well. Everywhere we shall see how such things appear as the counter-image of what is necessary in our time. Spiritual knowing is necessary for those who want to recognize anything worthwhile today; all other knowing lags behind what should be evolving. Therefore, if an attitude of mind disposed towards peace is to come about among the nations of Europe, feelings about these nations will have to develop which are imbued with the spirit, feelings which can come into being if nations are seen in the way they are shown in the lecture cycle about the folk spirits which I gave long before the war in Christiania. We must resolve to approach the spirit of a nation in this way. Only then can our human spirit become active in a manner which will enable us to form a valid judgement which encompasses a whole group, such as a nation. Just think how judgements could be formed about nations if sufficient spiritual preparation had been undertaken first of all! Yet all that we have seen going astray so drastically in one direction or another lives not only in the worst; it also lives in the best of us. In describing this it is not my intention to apportion blame. I am simply describing a lack which exists because there is no will to create the spiritual foundation on which judgements could be formed about the interrelationships of nations. Judgements are formed on the basis of sympathies and antipathies rather than true insights.

A typical example of this may be found in a famous novel written quite recently. A perfectly honest attempt is made in this context to describe a certain nation—in this case the German nation—through the various characters who represent it. Yet the way it is done is defective because a lack of spirituality prevents the author from achieving a judgement based on reality. There would be no reason for me to mention a genuine novel here, for in a true work of art such a question would not arise. But a novel that is tendentious in its descriptions can certainly be quoted in this connection. Let me clarify further what I mean: In a really good novel you will never hear the voice of the author himself, for the characters will express what is typical for their nation, their standing, their class and so on. Thus if John Smith or Adrian Swallowtail says something about the Germans, or the French, or the English, there is no cause to object. But this is not the case in the novel in question. Here, the author keeps stepping out in front of the curtain and giving his opinion, so that when he describes a person he gives his own opinion about the Germans, or whatever. You can see this straightaway in the description of a relative of the hero:

‘He was a fine talker, well, though a little heavily, built, and was of the type which passes in Germany for classic beauty; he had a large brow that expressed nothing, large regular features, and a curled beard—a Jupiter of the banks of the Rhine.’

You will agree that this is not likely to lead to an objective judgement, even if it could be true in isolated cases. A German chamber orchestra is described as follows:

‘They played neither very accurately nor in good time, but they never went off the rails, and followed faithfully the marked changes of tone. They had that musical facility which is easily satisfied, that mediocre perfection which is so plentiful in the race which is said to be the most musical in the world.’

Now the hero's uncle is described:

‘He was a partner in a great commercial house which did business in Africa and the Far East. He was the exact type of one of those Germans of the new style, whose affectation it is scoffingly to repudiate the old idealism of the race, and, intoxicated by conquest, to maintain a cult of strength and success which shows that they are not accustomed to seeing them on their side. But it is as difficult at once to change the age-old nature of a people, the despised idealism springs up again in him at every turn in language, manners, and moral habits, and the quotations from Goethe to fit the smallest incidents of domestic life, and he was a singular compound of conscience and self-interest. There was in him a curious effort to reconcile the honest principles of the old German bourgeoisie with the cynicism of these new commercial condottieri—a compound which for ever gave out a repulsive flavour of hypocrisy, for ever striving to make of German strength, avarice, and self-interest the symbols of all right, justice and truth.’

Of the hero it is said:

‘... he lacked that easy Germanic idealism, which does not wish to see, and does not see, what would be displeasing to its sight, for fear of disturbing the very proper tranquility of its judgment and the pleasantness of its existence.’

Here is another example of the author peeping out through the curtains and giving his own opinion:

‘Especially since the German victories they had been striving to make a compromise, a revolting intrigue between their new power and their old principles. The old idealism had not been renounced. There should have been a new effort of freedom of which they were incapable. They were content with a forgery, with making it subservient to German interests. Like the serene and subtle Schwabian, Hegel, who had waited until after Leipzig and Waterloo to assimilate the cause of his philosophy with the Prussian State ...’

This gentleman has a strange view of the history of philosophy. Those of us with a real understanding of what went on know that the principles of Hegel's philosophy on the phenomenology of consciousness were written down in Jena in 1806 to the thundering of canon as Napoleon approached. Yet in the novel it is said with a certain ‘sense for the truth’ that Hegel waited for the Battle of Leipzig in order to adapt to the Prussian State.

‘... their interests having changed, their principles had changed, too. When they were defeated, they said that Germany's ideal was humanity. Now that they had defeated others, they said that Germany was the ideal of humanity.’

What a fine sentence!

‘When other countries were more powerful, they said, with Lessing, that “patriotism is a heroic weakness which it is well to be without,” and they called themselves “citizens of the world”. Now that they were in the ascendant, they could not enough despise the Utopias “à la Francaise”. Universal peace, fraternity, pacific progress, the rights of man, natural equality: they said that the strongest people had absolute rights against the others, and that the others, being weaker, had no rights against themselves.’

As you can see, once the war had started, these sentences could have formed the basis for many a leading article in the countries of the periphery. Yet they were written long before the war.

‘It was the living God and the Incarnate Idea, the progress of which is accomplished by war, violence, and oppression. Force had become holy now that it was on their side. Force had become the only idealism and the only intelligence.’

Now there is a sentence missing in my notes. You know it is not easy to bring things across the border just now, and I have the book in Berlin.

Let me quote a few more passages in which the author peeps through the curtains:

‘The Germans are very mildly induigent to physical imperfections: they cannot see them; they are even able to embellish them, by virtue of an easy imagination which finds unexpected qualities in the face of their desire to make them like the most illustrious examples of human beauty. Old Euler would not have needed much urging to make him declare that his granddaughter had the nose of the Ludovisi Juno.’

It should be added that this nose and face are described as being especially ugly.

About Schumann it is said:

‘But that was just it: his example made Christopher understand that the worst falsity in German art came into it not when the artists tried to express something which they had not felt, but rather when they tried to express the feelings which they did in fact feel—feelings which were false.’

Then we are reminded with a certain amount of pleasure of something said by Madame de Staël:

‘ “They have submitted doughtily. They find philosophic reasons for explaining the least philosophic theory in the world: respect for power and the chastening emotion of fear which changes that respect into admiration.” ’

The author of the novel adds that his hero ‘found that feeling’, namely that they have submitted doughtily, that they have respect and fear:

‘... everywhere in Germany, from the highest to the lowest—from the William Tell of Schiller, that limited little bourgeois with muscles like a porter, who, as the free Jew Borne says, “to reconcile honour and fear passes before the pillar of dear Herr Gessler, with his eyes down, so as to be able to say that he did not see the hat; did not disobey”—to the aged and respectable Professor Weisse, a man of seventy, and one of the most honoured men of learning in the town, who, when he saw a Herr Lieutenant coming, would make haste to give him the path, and would step down into the road. Christopher's blood boiled whenever he saw one of these small acts of daily servility. They hurt him as much as though he had demeaned himself. The arrogant manners of the officers whom he met in the street, their haughty insolence, made him speechless with anger. He never would make way for them. Whenever he passed them he returned their arrogant stare. More than once he was very near causing a scene. He seemed to be looking for trouble. However, he was the first to understand the futility of such bravado; but he had moments of aberration; the perpetual constraint which he imposed on himself, and the accumulation of force in him that had no outlet, made him furious. Then he was ready to go any length, and he had a feeling that if he stayed a year longer in the place he would be lost. He loathed the brutal militarism which he felt weighing down upon him, the sabres clanking on the pavement, the piles of arms, the guns placed outside the barracks, their muzzles gaping down on the town, ready to fire.’

All this is interesting for a number of reasons. You know that I am not mentioning these things for personal reasons or in order to characterize somebody. Once the novel had been written and had caused a considerable sensation there were, of course, individuals who praised it as the greatest work of art of all time. This always happens. The opinion expressed by an esteemed Austrian critic is rather nice—I mean ‘esteemed’ in inverted commas: ‘This novel is the most important event since 1871, which could bring France and Germany closer together again.’

You see how much truth lies hidden in these things! Yet we are dealing here with a man who is highly praised today, and I have no intention of raising even the slightest objection to his outward activities during wartime. However, what is said in this ‘world famous’ novel provides plenty of material for slogans and leading articles in the periphery. What I have read aloud to you today may indeed be admired—with all due respect to the hacks of the periphery—at any time in those leading articles. These things were written long before the war, as that Austrian critic said ‘to bring France and Germany closer together’, and may be found in Romain Rolland's novel John Christopher.

Here you have an example of somebody who excludes the spirit, who does not want the spirit, and therefore fails to see what is essential in the events and situations of the present time. What can someone who writes such things possibly really know about the German character? We have a right to speak in this way because the subjective judgements of the author are here dressed up in the guise of an inferior novel. It is my personal opinion that this novel is one of the worst. As you have seen from the opinion of the critic from Vienna, it is held to be one of the best. Internationally, too, the critics have hailed it as one of the best. If we did not hold the opinion—which is not all that unjustified nowadays—that anything the critics praise must of necessity be rubbish, we might even have a certain respect for something they tell us is the foremost and greatest achievement of our time. From the viewpoint of cultural history, however, this is a good example for us of how impossible it is for people today to draw near to the task set for mankind by the fifth post-Atlantean period. For this reason alone, karma will have to fulfil itself. It is our task, however, to think about these things impartially. Above all we should not accept or parrot without criticism what is said out there in the materialistic world, but should strive instead to form our own judgement about these things.

What I have read aloud to you today was written many years ago, but now it provides marvellous slogans for the leading articles perpetrated by the journalists of the Entente. Its tenor is terribly anti-German, but that is not the point, for any point of view has its validity. It is, however, a strange distortion of the truth to praise a book as something new when it was in fact written years ago, even though the final volumes have only recently been published. Other strange things happen in this way, for instance in connection with quotations which keep appearing and are said to stem from Nietzsche or Treitschke and others. In the case of Treitschke you can search his works in vain for the passages, and in Nietzsche's case the passages have the opposite meaning to that claimed today by the journalists of the Entente.

I used to be acquainted with Nietzsche's publisher and discussed a number of matters with him. At that time the man who translated the whole of Nietzsche into French wrote to that publisher every few days from Paris. Nietzsche was a god to him. Today he abuses him mightily. You can have the strangest experiences in such connections. You will search the works of Treitschke and Nietzsche in vain for anything that could have been said in that book, for when they are quoted the texts are taken out of context, and furthermore they are also mutilated; the beginning of a sentence is quoted, the middle is torn out, and then the end is quoted. Only by doing this can they quote these writers.

But they can quote Romain Rolland unabridged. I have read to you only a few short passages from his novel. There is no need for you to judge it by these passages, though they could be augmented by countless others. You could, however, judge it on the basis of the ending, which shows that the whole novel is riddled with the attitudes revealed in the quoted passages. None of this is intended as a condemnation of the person himself. However, it is essential to illuminate clearly the poison seeping into our lives today.

In order to arrive at a view of the world fitting for today, we need wider horizons than those available to mankind in this materialistic age. This applies especially in connection with spiritual science, and I have already referred to this necessity repeatedly in the preceding lectures. By wider horizons I mean that to comprehend today's world, and in particular human events, we shall have to have recourse to concepts which originate in spiritual science. The fact that the greater part of humanity has so far rejected such wider conceptual horizons in relation to all fields of life and knowledge is connected with the karma of the present time.

With these wider concepts in the background we can characterize one aspect of our life by saying that, objectively, evolution has outdistanced mankind in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Today's events most thoroughly demonstrate this situation. One of the most prominent events of the age of materialism is material progress, that is, progress involving all the things that can be accomplished in the world by material means. This material progress is served by the sciences of the age of materialism. And it is especially typical of these sciences that they are growing ever less and less interested in the spiritual world; they strive more and more to become a mere summation of concepts and ideas which can be applied to external material phenomena.

The course of this development finds its strongest expression in the most external of all material matters: mechanical procedures. Factories, industry, machines, these things have attained the highest degree of perfection during this age of materialism. And it is in the very nature of these things that progress in these fields has been non-national—you could say, international; it is world progress. For whether a railway or something similar is built in England, Russia, China or Japan, the laws which have to be taken into account, the knowledge needed, are the same everywhere, since everything is accomplished in accordance with mechanical requirements which are detached from man. In these fields an international principle has indeed taken hold in the widest possible manner.

Over the years, during our lectures on spiritual science, we have often said, in connection with one aspect or another, that there is a body on the earth, a body which is spread over the whole earth. This body needs a soul, and this soul should be equally international. Spiritual science was claimed to be this soul, for it comprises knowledge which is not bound up with any particular individual or group on the earth but can be understood by every single person, wherever he may be, just as physical things in external, material culture—such as a railway or a locomotive—can be understood. We have often stressed that a blessing and salvation for human evolution can only come about if the development in the bodily realm is accompanied by a development in the realm of soul and spirit. For this to take place it would be necessary for people to make just as much effort to understand spiritual matters as external circumstances force them to make—they would far rather be forced than use their freedom—to understand the demands of material progress. So far this has not happened, but it will obviously have to come about as human evolution proceeds. However long it is delayed, it must happen in the end. However much disastrous karma is conjured up because human beings do not want to make the effort, it will happen in the end, for what is to happen will indeed happen.

It is because material progress has run ahead of the good will for spiritual knowledge that mankind has been outdistanced by this material progress and everything it contains by way of passions and urges in human souls. Externally this shows most emphatically in the fact that it is not ideas which strive towards harmonious co-existence of human beings on earth—in other words, not Christian ideas—which are uppermost, but those which, in utmost excess, divide mankind and lead back to cultural periods which one might suppose to have been long overcome. The monstrous anomaly lies in the way nationalism was so forcefully able to take hold of the nations as they lived side by side in the nineteenth century. This shows that in their soul development human beings have not kept pace with material progress.

When people at last come to accept spiritual science on a wider scale, not only in theory but as a fulfilment of their total soul need, then they will, of necessity, have to arrive at different concepts. And such different concepts will help them to comprehend things which cannot possibly be comprehended by materialistic thinking as it is at present. Some matters can only be understood on the basis of corresponding ideas. But, like anything else, ideas must live in order to grow, which means they need soil in which they can flourish. And the soil in which ideas can flourish is nothing other than an attitude of soul prepared by spiritual science. Were materialistic progress to continue its development along the lines of the nineteenth century, people would grow ever poorer in ideas. Put simply: No ideas suitable for comprehending the world would occur to people. Any thoughts they might have about the world could only be stimulated by means of experiments, or by what they could see with their own eyes. The modern insistence on experimentation is nothing other than a paucity of ideas. If the present trend were to continue, mankind would grow ever poorer in ideas. But since a certain intensity of spiritual life is necessary, since human beings must develop some degree of intensity in certain impulses, they will have to discover these impulses in other sources if they cannot find them in the substance of ideas.

When was there an age brimming over with ideas, an age when genuine ideas flourished? You could say that a particularly characteristic and fruitful age was the period extending from Lessing to German Romanticism, to Novalis, or even to the philosophical idealists, among whom we can count Schopenhauer in addition to Hegel and Schelling, as well as those I have quoted in my book Vom Menschenrätsel as being the philosophers who sounded a universal resonance which has since died away during the age of materialism. Ideas were truly abundant then. Hence the contempt in which that time is held today! Look at it, so rich and pregnant with ideas, ideas seeking to fathom nature and the evolution of mankind throughout history! Today we gather ideas from the spiritual world about human evolution, about the various post-Atlantean periods and the impulses belonging to them, knowledge which has only become fitting in the present age. Yet just look how close this is to that fertile idea brought forward by Schelling, Hegel, Novalis, Franz von Baader—though it originated with Jakob Böhme. They said that human evolution passed through a period of history—this was as much as they could see without the help of spiritual science—a first period of history in which the principle of God the Father ruled. This was the period characterized in the Bible by the Old Testament and the heathen religions. They called it the Age of the Father. This was followed by the Age of the Son, during which the idea of the Mystery of Golgotha was to become embedded in mankind. Finally, as an ideal for the future, they saw the Age of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, which they also called the Age of John, for they believed that not until then would the great impulses of the John Gospel be realized.

How infinitely meaningful is such an idea, compared with the desolate, unfruitful talk of human evolution, which is nothing but an abstract idea, in which what follows after is added to what came before as if it were just another link in a chain. How profound by comparison is Schelling's ‘theosophy’ which he developed on from Jakob Böhme! This ‘theosophy’ of Schelling attains such lofty heights that, by comparison, the later thoughts of theologians represent a steep decline. Schelling fights his way through to the realization that what matters in Christianity is not so much its doctrine. This doctrine is seized upon by modern progressive theology as if Christ Jesus were no more than a teacher. What matters for Schelling is not the doctrine, but the fact of the Mystery of Golgotha. We must look up to the fact of the Mystery of Golgotha, the fact of the life, the death, and the resurrection of Christ Jesus.

In similar vein we could quote a great many superior, far-reaching ideas originating at that time. With what is the existence of such far-reaching ideas connected? Those who were inspired by such ideas have something in common: They are not narrow-mindedly nationalistic. Their standpoint is that of someone whom they would have called a ‘citizen of the world’. I do not know whether this can be understood today, when so many expressions have become empty phrases. How far removed from anything narrow-mindedly nationalistic is, for instance, a spirit such as Goethe! How far removed from anything narrow-mindedly nationalistic is such a work as Goethe's Faust! Never mind what its origins were. Of course Faust can only stem from the culture of Central Europe. But in the form it has achieved as a poetical work at the hands of Goethe it would be absurd to ask Faust to show you his birth certificate. Yet this absurdity has become a reality, a fact, in our time. Everything that is happening today is, fundamentally, simply a denial of the heights once reached by mankind in such a work as Goethe's Faust. Yet such a work shows us that mankind could have progressed further than is the case today, or indeed than will be the case in the near future.

I have told you, however, that the human soul needs a certain degree of intensity in its impulses. If it cannot reach up to ideas, it will take this intensity from elsewhere, from obscure, unconscious soul forces, from forces that rush up from the spirit of the blood. Fundamentally, nationalism is nothing other than a consequence of the lack of ideas. Mankind's primary need now is the will to rise up to ideas. But it has to be said: if this is to succeed, something else will be needed, too: namely, an understanding for the element of grace which can come from the spiritual world. For it is not possible to win through to the spiritual world from a starting-point of a limited sum of preconceived opinions. The spiritual world can only be reached by keeping the soul open for whatever wants to enter in, by desiring not merely to judge, but also day by day to enrich one's ability to judge.

So to begin with it is above all necessary that insight should take hold of human beings. We live in the age which is to grasp hold of the consciousness soul. So this age must strive for insight. But insight can only come about in ideas that span the world; for insight to come about, reality must be filled with ideas. Yet, especially with regard to the most recent events, our age is thoroughly disinclined to accept ideas. An abstract concept, however logical, however convincing, is not an idea. An idea must be born of living reality. Nowadays we see hardly any ideas come into being. Instead we are surrounded by an insistence on abstract concepts. Ideas can, however, become slogans—though if they do, not much damage can be done, because human souls cannot work in slogans that are related to ideas; their absurdity becomes too obvious. But abstract concepts are different. Abstract concepts can become slogans in a very intense way, and their meaning is so obvious because they refer basically to things that are close at hand. So human beings, who are so wary of taking in anything far-reaching, seize on them greedily. But abstract concepts do not have a basis in reality. There are great numbers of them all around us today, but those who can see beyond what is immediately obvious know that their powerlessness is all the greater.

One of the many abstract ideas ruling us today is that of eternal peace. In the way this is handled it is an entirely abstract concept which does not spring from a living understanding of reality, and yet it appears to those who do not desire to widen their horizons as something entirely convincing. These people say: The various states—and they do not wonder whether this expression ‘the various states’ has any reality—ought to create an inter-state organization, something that stretches across the entire world and is constructed after the pattern of a single state. Furthermore, something called ‘inter-state law’ is to be established. The idea is beautiful and so everybody finds it convincing. The various states are to commit themselves to keep the peace and they must also create legal norms which can centain their various mutual interests. All very nice! It would be equally nice if, to heat a room, all we needed was the abstract concept of warmth instead of having to light the stove. It is irrelevant whether an idea is nice, or convincing. For what could be more convincing than the thought that our need for stoves and the like really means that nature is a terrible despot!

It is irrelevant whether an idea corresponds to the feeling that it is nice or, perhaps, humane. What matters is whether an idea grows out of reality. But to aim for ideas which grow out of reality it is first of all necessary to study reality. Any narrow-minded brain—excuse the expression—can come up with nice programmes for states to follow in order to achieve peace. But such a brain cannot attain to ideas which correspond to reality and are born out of reality. It does not even feel that the spiritual world is a reality with its own laws, though this is considered a matter of course as far as the material world is concerned. People think the world can be set to rights by means of a few sentences. They have no feeling for the fact that the world is a reality in which all kinds of real impulses work in contrast to one another. And by becoming intoxicated with programmes made up of abstract ideas, they prevent the world from entering into the realities.

Sometimes a fruitful, genuine idea is expressed in the same words as a living idea; what matters is that we should be moved by the way it lives. Today, however, something that is alive appears to people as something utterly paradoxical. Thus, over the course of the nineteenth century, and also in the twentieth century, in various parts of the world the idea of disarmament was born, the idea of limiting militarism. This is a nice idea, but it must not remain abstract if it is to become fruitful! It must take account of reality. For this to happen, reality must be studied. It is all very well to meet somewhere and say: All countries must disarm. This is quite easy, especially as the idea is convincing. But either none of them will actually do so, or some of them will not do so. And even if they all did so, they would very soon start to rearm again if the initial impulse is not truly alive. But if you try to point out only those impulses which are truly fruitful, you are in danger of being considered by most people to be utterly foolish, for these days what is most sensible is considered to be most foolish. When I say ‘sensible’ in this connection I mean that which is most in tune with reality.

As I said, the idea of disarmament, the idea that all militarism should gradually be dismantled, is a good idea. But it will never be possible to realize it by reaching a formal conclusion about it in some committee of representatives from all states. It can only become reality if a corresponding reality takes hold of it. What do I mean? How can disarmament be achieved? Yes, it is necessary to be very concrete in one's expressions. It is indeed a fact that at a number of points during the nineteenth century it could have been possible to draw closer to the thought of disarmament and transform it into a real idea. How, for example?

Supposing someone had had the idea before the year 1870? How could it have been realized? Before 1870 a step could have been taken towards the idea of disarmament, a step which would have been very fruitful for mankind. But now I have to say something that today would be regarded as utterly foolish: No approach to the idea of disarmament could have been made by means of some kind of treaty between the various states! This is totally fruitless, however nice it may sound. It would, however, have been fruitful if a particular state, one that was in a position to do so, had begun to disarm, had made disarmament a reality for itself. To do this, people would have had to be capable of reckoning with realities.

Let us now look at a few states in Europe in order to point to what is a reality. Can Russia disarm? Certainly not just like that, for beyond Russia lies Asia, and if Russia were to disarm she would have no defences against the invading peoples of Asia, who would most certainly not disarm. So for Russia disarmament is out of the question. There was no German Reich before the year 1870, but how about the entity that did exist at that time? Could it have disarmed? On the eastern border there would have been a state that was not in a position to disarm, so it follows that here, too, disarmament would have been impossible. But there is one state which could have disarmed, thus setting a wonderful example and at the same time bringing into reality in modern times what it is always trumpeting forth with words—and that is France. Before 1870, France was in a very good position to disarm, and in consequence the war of 1870 would never have taken place. Even since then, as regards Europe—not the colonies—France would still have been in a position to proceed with disarmament at any time. This would have been a beginning, and attention could then have been turned to the East.

Obviously, those whose thinking is abstract will object: Ought France to have exposed herself to the danger of attack by Germany? There would have been no such danger, because if a country becomes involved in a war, the cause is invariably the fact that it is capable of war, that is, that it practises militarism. It can be forced to practise militarism. But no country which does not practise militarism would be attacked if its neighbours had no interest in attacking it. Switzerland, of course, has never been in a position to do without militarism. You cannot apply the conditions of one situation to those of another. Equally you may not say in the abstract that Germany would in any case have coveted Alsace-Lorraine. This is nonsense. Why should she have coveted Alsace-Lorraine under any circumstances? Bismarck said that to annex Alsace-Lorraine merely because some of the population were German was an impossible and crazy academic theory! The only reason there has ever been is one of military security. For so long as France is a military power in possession of Alsace, you can reach Stuttgart more quickly from France than you can from Berlin. The only reason there has ever been for attaching Alsace to the German Reich is that of achieving military protection on the western frontier. This may seem to be a paradoxical idea at first, but for our abstract thinking, which is the twin brother of materialism, realities do indeed appear to be paradoxes.

If you picture to yourselves that France started to disarm before 1870, you will begin to realize just how much could have been set aside, if only thinking at that time had been based on reality. By considering such ideas, a thinking based on reality could be greatly expanded. Naturally, ideas based on reality do not always come to fruition, for the simple reason that other impulses might be stronger. But this says nothing against reality. A flower will grow entirely in accordance with its own real laws. But if a cartwheel flattens it, it cannot develop. Our thinking must be true, and if an idea fails to come to fruition at some point, this is of itself no proof that it was not based on reality.

This is what I wanted to say about saturating ideas with reality. It is as pointless to have a wonderful idea about some machine, if you lack the mechanical knowledge with which to construct it, as it is to have all sorts of ideas about states and the like if you are incapable of gaining insight into the real impulses, which in this case could be attained through an understanding of the spiritual realm, the spiritual world. This, then, is one of the points to be made: the saturation of ideas with reality.

The other concerns the extent of the horizon, the will to extend one's view to wider horizons. In the last lecture I read to you some of the judgements on the nature of the German people expressed by someone who is, after all, an important personality, judgements which he expressed in a long novel about recent times, which caused a very considerable stir. But all these judgements derive from a narrow horizon, an attitude of not wanting to look further than a few inches beyond the end of one's nose. Living with such narrow horizons brings about disharmony in the world. You can have the most beautiful ideas about the peaceful co-operation of the nations, but if your horizons are narrow, then those beautiful ideas will stand for nothing, or at most will work destructively. For what you really think, has the opposite effect of what you are saying with your beautiful ideas. The important thing is to make for reality. One reality which faces us at the moment is what—in our idle way of expressing ourselves—we call the present war. In reality it is no longer a war, though in some ways it can still be compared with events which in the past were described as wars. This war came about, of course, as a result of the most varied impulses, but to gain insight into them we simply have to form ideas which are based on reality.

The time which should be used for working on ideas based on reality is used today instead to show that the world in most recent times has forgotten everything that took place during human history up to the time when today's tragic events commenced. Of course it is reasonable to talk in connection with such events of all sorts of horrors and atrocities. But these ought to be taken for granted if you consider the experiences of mankind throughout history. Such things really ought not to be used to deafen us in relation to more profound matters with which we are faced and the recognition of which could alone bring people to a point of view that is fruitful.

Let us today turn to something which can easily be recognized by anyone who grasps matters externally, on the physical plane, but which is illuminated more clearly if it is considered in conjunction with ideas put forward in the lecture cycle on the folk souls. Among the various causes which have led to today's tragic events, there are a number which could become increasingly clear – to those also who consider the external world by itself – if only people would be willing to extend their horizons. The British Empire possesses one quarter of the entire land surface of the globe. The British Empire and France and Russia together possess one half. A coalition between Russia, France, the British Empire and America would account for approximately three quarters of the earth's land surface. So there would be one quarter left over. This figure ought of itself to speak volumes to those who work with reality. Let us, however, look at that quarter which is contained in the British Empire.

Here we have, to start with, the quite small territory covered by England, Scotland and Ireland. England, Scotland and Ireland by themselves in no way constitute the British Empire. To speak of these three territories is to speak of a region of the world which gave birth to that great man Shakespeare and also to incomparable thinkers and, in earlier times, great statesmen. Only good aspects are to be found. All that we find here is supremely suited to play a great role in the fifth post-Atlantean period. What we do not find is the British Empire: namely, those three island regions attached to Europe, together with all that can be called their colonies in the widest sense. Especially in recent decades the impetus for the whole development of this British Empire comes from the relationship of the motherland to the colonies. You can discover what endeavours are being made thus to shape the relationship between the motherland and the colonies.

What the British Empire is striving for is a close-knit relationship between the motherland and the colonies. I have told you about the application of occult forces, and it is these forces that are being used to achieve this goal. If these forces were allowed to work in their own region, no possible harm could come of them. But if the goal is something egoistic, whether for an individual or a group, then their effects cannot but be harmful. It is not at all easy to achieve this relationship between motherland and colonies. Those who imagine that world peace can be achieved by means of programmes and an interstate organization obviously have no idea what forces have to be used in reality to achieve a welding of the British motherland to her colonies in a way that will create the kind of totality which suits the British Empire. At the basis of this endeavour is what they there call imperialism. This is what has always been striven for in recent times, though out of entirely materialistic impulses—but this is what has been striven for. Every means that might serve this idea has been found acceptable from a certain point of view. It was necessary for the British Empire to achieve closer links with its colonies. To make this possible an impulse was needed that would steal into people's hearts and turn their minds towards something they would not otherwise have found acceptable. It is with this that the war in Europe is connected, for out of the mood of this war certain impulses will arise which the British Empire needs in order to create a uniformity between the motherland and her colonies. For those who study the processes of the physical plane it is not only interesting but extremely important to note how all those who think along abstract lines have been mistaken with regard to what I am saying.

Read what these ‘clever’ people wrote while this war was approaching—I mean clever in the sense in which I frequently use this word. They all reckoned with a defection here and a revolt there and another there, if war were to break out. But nothing of the kind has happened—indeed, the exact opposite has come about. If people's thoughts had been based on reality they would have said: If the British Empire wants to draw its colonies closer together, if it wants to generate impulses there which will tend towards going along with the motherland, then it needs a war, and this war is the means to that higher, so-called end desired by the state. And wherever such thoughts are thought, the end sanctifies the means.

Now is the moment when this fact should become particularly obvious to people. Speaking at present about the evolution of the British Empire, we should always take two significant streams into consideration. The one is the more or less puritanical stream—this word only describes one element of it, though probably correctly—which comes into its own in all that is excellent in the British nation. This puritanical stream was to a great extent dominant in British politics right up to the nineties of the nineteenth century. But during the nineties a change came about, when the imperialistic stream became stronger and more important than the puritanical stream.

Certain people had a good feel for the approach of imperialism—indeed, it is remarkable how good this instinct was. Let me draw your attention to a curious incident which shows rather clearly how these things are linked. While we were in London, shortly before the founding of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, Mrs Besant was then by no means the person she later became. As you know, she always had the tendency to be whoever she had to be, depending on which influences had a hold over her. She was extremely popular in the circle of those who were called the theosophists in London at that time. Anyway, there were various sides to her. At that time—it was the beginning of the century—she gave a lecture on theosophy and imperialism. The imperialistic impulses were developing rapidly. Mrs Besant's line of argument was rather against imperialism. And we could see how, from that moment onwards, she was finished in London, even among those who were then theosophists. A few personal friends stood by her, but everybody else was through with her because she had dared to say something against imperialism. In such things are revealed the forces which, if you can penetrate them, bring you to the point at which you can see how things are interconnected at a higher level.

Until quite recently a remnant of the puritanical element was still at work in England. Though politics were being led by puppets, marionettes, there was nevertheless something puritanical about these marionettes, about Asquith and Grey. This had to be removed so that the impulses I was speaking about could come into their own; and what now came was the most willing marionette of all with regard to everything I have described to you. But there is nothing puritanical left. Let us look first at the negative side: the cynical rejection of the idea of peace with the hypocritical justification that it is being rejected because what is wanted is peace. Nowadays the craziest things can be said with impunity and without being taken amiss. That is the negative side. On the positive side we have an event of the greatest imaginable importance: the gathering of colonial ministers, which is one of the first actions of this man who has been placed by a negative miracle in one of the highest positions in the world. At last the public is beginning to notice what is going on. But the public did not notice until it had had its nose rubbed in it, whereas those who live in ideas based in reality have seen it clearly for some time.

It is impossible to find your way about in the realm of reality if you have no inclination to accept genuine ideas. Only then can you look at the world in such a way: You see something which you consider is insignificant; then you see it again, and yet again and still consider it insignificant; but on the fourth and fifth occasion you realize that it is important because it is a significant symptom of future events. Not everything is equally important, but you have to have a sense for what is important, and this sense can only be gained if you take into your soul those impulses which can only come about on the basis of spiritual science.

In the last few days somebody handed me a most interesting essay by a very popular British writer who is now a journalist. He is connected with the military, and in everything he writes he reveals how he is linked with the threads that are being spun. The essay he wrote recently in The London Magazine is significant enough. It was handed to me, as they say, by chance. But there is no chance in such occurrences. It is most interesting what this military author, linked as he is with the threads that are guiding events, has to say about the current situation:

‘Our people had, and have, the will to conquer ... In that grand spirit the war has been fought, and the memory of our unquenchable determination to conquer will be the noblest heritage that we shall bequeath to our successors, the sons and daughters of England and of her glorious Dominions ... We shall have a million square miles of German colonial territory in our hands. We shall have many million veteran officers and men. We shall have greater naval predominance than before. The world will possess indubitable proofs that our Empire is one and indivisible, that its spirit is unconquerable, and that the martial qualities of the race are worthy of its glorious past ... We have all the moral and material attributes of power on a scale hitherto undreamed of ... But the war will end one day, and then how shall we stand? Taking Army, Navy, and resources together, we shall be the first military Power in the world.’

Is not a peculiar impression given when someone believes so urgently that he must fight against ‘militarism’ and then states what a lofty ideal it is to be the predominant military force in the world!

‘We shall be recognised as the mainstay of the Alliance.’

This ought to be read in France.

‘We have taken the leading part in the Alliance, and the leadership of Europe belongs to us of right.’

Now he takes Kipling's words, ‘We have the ships, the money and the men’, and makes them his own.

‘... and if Parliament would vote supplies for a couple of years and then adjourn sine die, most of us would be content.’

Such things are an expression of those impulses and instincts which are connected with the strings that are being pulled. They may be observed entirely objectively, without taking sides in the way in which no doubt well-meaning, though short-sighted, patriots tend to take sides. Why should such things not be observed? They are objective facts! The impulses that live in mankind are objective facts which historical events bring to the fore.

While it is essential for us here to avoid taking sides at all costs, it is equally important, especially in lectures, to strive to speak with the utmost objectivity. As you will see, as soon as you speak with the utmost objectivity, the facts themselves provide you with proof.

It is impossible to gain an understanding of the world without being willing to take note of facts. This so-called answering note from the Entente, this New Year's Eve gift to the world—my dear friends, it is unlikely that a document composed as this one is will be found again however far you search in history, and this applies both to the basis on which it is written and to the way it is set out and composed. What is written there will have the direst consequences, yet the best way to read it is to skip every single sentence and to realize: Nothing that appears in writing in this document matters! What matters is that behind it there stands what I have been describing to you, and that it is this that is the aim. Of course nobody would dream of saying so in a note. And if you ask whether it can be achieved by means of negotiations, the answer is, obviously, No. Of course such a thing cannot be achieved by means of peace negotiations. It can only be achieved by creating guarantees, and guarantees are contained in dominance. Guarantees mean that the one who wants the guarantees is the only one who can decree what they shall be and that all the others no longer have any say in the matter, and all this is brought about by the interrelationships of power. At present there is a long way to go before this can be achieved. But to live under the illusion that this is not the goal would mean a great lack of responsibility towards the sense for truth that human beings ought to have.

Let nobody suppose that what I have said is directed against the British people, for I make a distinction between this British people and those who pull the strings—if I may use this expression—those who stand behind the events in the way I have frequently described. Neither is it necessary to identify oneself with such impulses, though obviously it cannot be my task to prevent someone from doing so. Also, I shall not prohibit, either in thought or feeling, anyone within our Movement from identifying with such impulses. But let such a one say what is true and not that he is identifying himself with the ideal of the rights of small nations and the like. Let him be clear that he desires to dominate the world. Then we shall be understanding one another in the realm of truth, and that is what matters. We shall make progress if human beings are true. If they say what is really true, we shall make progress. However terrible the truth may be, it will get us further than what is untrue. This is what we should inscribe on our hearts. We make better progress with this than with what is untrue.

Obviously, it would be foolish to imagine that a world power could be moved by all kinds of persuasion or by all manner of propositions to give up its aims. Obviously, it would be foolish to adopt an attitude of high-handed morality and apply all kinds of moral yardsticks. I told you the story of the Opium Wars expressly to turn you away from moral yardsticks. What matters is to speak the truth, to say what is true. It would be far better for the world—though not for those who pull the strings—if we could all say baldly and cynically: This is what is wanted.

This, then, is the meaning in this particular field, of our guiding line and goal: ‘Wisdom lies solely in truth’.

These lectures on the theme of current events are particularly suited to helping us realize what we can gain for our soul by striving to acquaint ourselves with spiritual knowledge. I have often stressed that this spiritual knowledge must not remain merely theoretical. We must make it come alive by filling it with those hallowed feelings and other impulses which belong to it, so that it can give to our souls that impetus and mood which will enable us as scientists of the spirit to relate to events in the human realm in a manner differing from that of someone who is not a spiritual scientist.

We have reflected in various ways on how individual human beings belong to particular nations, nationalities. But what the individual bears within him that belongs to mankind as a whole—that part of him which is not specialized and individualized with the characteristics of a particular nation—it is of this that spiritual science helps us to become fully aware, for the main content of anthroposophical spiritual science is valid for every individual human being, regardless of any differences among various groups. Indeed, even the national differences are seen differently from an anthroposophical point of view since, in contrast to the non-anthroposophical point of view, we are able to consider objectively what constitutes these differences—the various aspects can be seen objectively.

We are familiar with the threefold nature of our soul in that it consists of the sentient soul, the intellectual or mind soul and the consciousness soul, all three being filled, spiritually permeated, enlivened by our egohood. When the Italian folk soul works into individual human beings, it is the sentient soul that is influenced by the forces and impulses with which it works. In the French individual it is the intellectual or mind soul, and in the British individual the consciousness soul through which the folk soul works. For the folk souls of Central Europe it is the ego that is receptive, and for those of the Slav peoples the spirit-self. If we could fill ourselves with an understanding of this, we should no longer be tempted to form judgements in the way in which they are so frequently formed.

A certain person heard this and was furious, because he understood anthroposophical spiritual science to be saying that in the German nation the folk soul works through the ego, as if this was something higher than a folk soul working through the consciousness soul. This was his own misunderstanding! For in spiritual science different aspects of knowledge are viewed objectively, side by side. The folk souls have tasks to do and to accomplish them they have to work into their nations. But as regards the working of the folk souls in human souls we must realize that in our fifth post-Atlantean period a certain development has to take place. And those who are drawn towards anthroposophical spiritual science ought to feel themselves in the forefront of this development.

How does the folk soul work down into the human soul and mind? To start with we have to note that this working is subconscious and only partially rises up into consciousness. The individual human being feels that he belongs to one nation or another. On the whole, the folk soul works on the individuality via the maternal principle. It is the maternal principle that is embedded in the realm of the folk soul. The effect of the paternal principle is to detach the individual, as a physical and etheric being belonging to nature, from the group. I have frequently discussed this in past years. In the Christian world view this is even expressed in the Gospels. This, too, I discussed some time ago. As things are today, it is in the first instance through the blood that the folk soul works into the individual, and also through what corresponds in the etheric body to blood. Naturally, this is more or less an animal impulse, and it remains at the animal level for by far the greater part of mankind today. Through his blood the individual belongs to a particular nation. The mysterious forces and impulses working in the blood are very difficult to describe since they are extraordinarily complex and manifold. Suffice it to say that they lie beneath the surface of consciousness.

People are far more conscious in all those aspects of their make-up which belong to mankind as a whole, irrespective of national differences. That is why the pathos, the passion, the affectation of belonging to a particular nationality bursts forth with a kind of elemental force. People do not attempt to apply logical reasons or judgements when it is a question of specifying or sensing their attachment to their nationality. It is his blood, and his heart which is influenced by his blood, that bind the individual to his nationality and let him live within it. The impulses in question are subconscious, and it is a good step forward if we can at least succeed in recognizing the subconscious nature of this situation. It is important especially for those who are approaching spiritual science if they can undergo this development in themselves and come to feel about these things in a way that differs from the way the rest of mankind feels.

When people who do not belong to spiritual science are asked what binds them to their nation they will—indeed, they must—answer: My blood! This is the sole idea which they are capable of forming about their sense of belonging to a particular nationality. A student of spiritual science, however, ought gradually to reach a point at which he is able to give not this, but a different answer. If he cannot gradually develop to a point where this different answer is possible, this means that he sees spiritual science as something purely theoretical, not practical and living. Someone who does not study spiritual science can only say: I am connected to my nationality through my blood, through my blood I defend what lives in my nation, it is my blood that obliges me to identify with my nationality. One who does study spiritual science, however, must answer: I am connected with my nationality through my karma, for this is a part of my karma. As soon as concepts of karma are brought into the question, the whole relationship becomes much more spiritual. Someone who does not follow spiritual science will summon his blood to account for the pathos, the impulsiveness of everything he dces as a member of a particuiar nation. But someone who has developed through spiritual science will feel connected to one nation or another through his karma.

The matter becomes spiritual. Externally such a person might act in the same way; even if he feels this more spiritual aspect he might do the same things. But inwardly he will feel, spiritually; his feeling will be quite different from that of a person who feels his links with his nation purely at an animal level.

Here you see one of the points at which belonging to spiritual science changes the soul, brings a new mood into the soul. But at the same time you see how much the general consciousness of our time is lagging behind what could already be known by those who want to know it. In the general consciousness of our time the individual's attachment to a particular nation can only be seen as something that lives in the blood, or in that which is not at all of the blood but which is regulated in connection with the blood and out of this perception of the blood. A far freer view of nationality will gain ground once the whole matter is viewed as a matter of karma. Then certain delicate concepts will arise for someone who perhaps attaches himself consciously to a certain nation, thus bringing about a change of karma.

But however we view the matter, whether in the less complete sense shared by the greater part of mankind today, or in the more complete sense that can be attained through the study of spiritual science, nevertheless the fact remains that the general situation of the world today means that mankind is differentiated into groups. Nothing could make us more painfully aware than current events that this differentiation into groups is still for the most part prevalent. In addition, this differentiation into groups is mingled with quite other conditions and facts because it is to be even more difficult for human hearts and souls to gain an understanding of the reasons for the painful enmities, the painful disharmonies that have arisen amongst mankind today.

In short, we are touching on something pervaded by tragedy which should have nothing to do with ordinary logic or ordinary, superficial judgements. For whether these things are seen as a matter of blood or as a matter of karma, blood lies below, and karma above, logic. As a result, what we have been discussing must of necessity result in conflicts in human coexistence and these conflicts must be seen to be necessary. To believe that these conflicts can be judged in accordance with those concepts that apply to individual human beings must lead to the greatest errors. The widespread discussion of conflicts among nations in the same terms as those applicable to conflicts between individuals is the gravest mistake. I have already said that concepts such as justice and freedom apply to individual human beings. To claim them as parts of a programme for nations proves from the start a lack of knowledge about the characteristics of nations and a lack of will to enter into the question of national characteristics.

For those who understand these things and are capable, through spiritual knowledge, of seeing what is factually and naturally necessary, there is something paradoxical about the belief expressed in so many publications today, for it is comparable with the shark who makes a pact with the little fishes which he normally eats, saying: It is utterly inhumane to eat little fishes; I shall cease doing so! By saying this, he is condemning himself to death, for it happens to be the way of the world that sharks eat little fish!

It is necessary to come to a profound sense for the fact that it is not possible to understand the world without seeing the reality of the necessary conflicts leading to all that is tragic in the world. And to believe that something like Paradise is possible on the physical plane shows a total lack of comprehension of the peculiarities of the physical plane. Paradise does not exist on earth. There can be no comprehension among those who strive to realize the new Jerusalem as a Utopia on earth or who, like the social democrats, want to bring about some other satisfactory solution. There is a profound law which says that human beings, in so far as they live here on the physical plane, can only reach a satisfactory view of reality if they are aware that higher worlds also exist, and that they are connected in their souls with these higher worlds. Only if we understand that we are citizens of higher worlds can a satisfactory view be attained. Therefore, when spiritual consciousness was extinguished, a time had to come when mankind could no longer understand why so much disaster, so many conflicts, are present on the earth. These conflicts can only be resolved when we feel ourselves not only to be living in the physical world, but also in the spiritual world. Then we may begin to grasp that just as man cannot always be young but has also to grow old, so there has to be a breaking down of what was once built up—conflict and destruction as well as creation. When you understand this, you also understand that conflicts have to arise between groups of human beings. These conflicts are the tragic element of world events, and they must be seen to be something tragic.

In order to conjure up before your soul the living concept, the living idea that I am trying to describe, let me remind you of a rather caustic remark once made by the poet Friedrich Hebbel. He was, as you know, a genius of a somewhat ponderous caste, one who wrote rather laboriously, despite a considerable fund of worldly humour. I told you on another occasion that he was not at all far from a view of the world which would have accorded with spiritual science. Thus he once jotted down in his notebook the following theme: Plato, reincarnated, takes his place in a secondary school where the teacher is dealing with the subject of Plato. He cannot understand a word of what Plato is supposed to have said and the teacher scolds him severely for this. Hebbel wanted to work this idea into a dramatic episode. He never actually did so, but you see that he did indeed consider bringing the idea of reincarnation into a play.

Hebbel was a contemporary of Grillparzer and knew him. As I said, Hebbel was a somewhat sombre, melancholy genius, but after he had seen Grillparzer's plays The Golden Fleece, Thou shalt not lie! and A Dream is Life and so on, he said—and this is most interesting: Grillparzer depicts tragic conflicts, but only those of which it can be said that, if people were clever enough to see through the situations, it would be possible to resolve them in the end. According to Hebbel, the tragic circumstances in Grillparzer's plays only come about because the characters are not clever enough to see through the tragic situations. This, he says, is not really tragic. Real tragedy among human beings only comes about when those involved are as clever as anything and yet none of their cleverness and caution can help them, so that conflict becomes inevitable.

What Hebbel as a dramatist calls real tragedy is something that we ought to introduce as a concept into human evolution, human destiny, so that we do not continue for ever to form the naive judgement that one thing or another might have been avoided. Situations which lead to conflicts such as the present one cannot be avoided. And all those declamations about blame are totally out of place in face of a truly penetrating judgement.

It was for this purpose that I arranged these lectures which we have been conducting over the past days and weeks. I arranged them in order to demonstrate clearly that even in the case of an event such as the Opium Wars it is impossible to speak of blame in the way blame is meant in situations involving individual human beings. Concepts such as guilt, freedom, and so on, which can be applied to individual human beings, cannot be applied to souls living on other planes, and folk souls do not live on the physical plane but only work into the physical plane through individual souls. Their abode lies in other spheres, on other planes.

Such things are sensed nowadays by some isolated individuals. But they are not understood when we judge events on the basis of concepts which are customary today, instead of making the effort to take into account the actual evidence. To stand up today as a member of a nation and pronounce judgement on other nations in a manner that is only justified when referring to individuals proves nothing except one's own backwardness in the ability to judge. It is, though, a historical necessity, because certain statesmen are backward in relation to what could be known today, that this backwardness, this ignorance, is brought to bear even in the most terrible historical documents, as a result of which infinite rivers of blood will flow. On the other side stands the possibility of stressing again and again, for those who want to hear it, that the progress and salvation of mankind depend on finding judgements from the realms of spiritual life.

There is indeed a sense in some quarters for that which is necessary as a basis for judgement; but it cannot be brought into consciousness. I shall give you an example, for if I may say so, spiritual science will only be absorbed into our very flesh and blood if we learn to observe ordinary, everyday reality from the viewpoint of spiritual science. In England, in the seventies and eighties of the nineteenth century, the historian Professor Seeley was active. What he taught was in many cases decisive for what later came to live in many souls. Seeley was perhaps the first English historical imperialist. His imperialism was historical and his history imperialistic, for he viewed British history as it had developed over the centuries from the point of view that the trend had always been towards the foundation of the great British Empire which now covers one quarter of the habitable surface of the earth. His lectures appeared in print in the seventies and were frequently reprinted; sometimes there was a new edition every year, for he had very many students. In these lectures he sought to gather up all the separate facts which made the British Empire what it is today. He saw it as something in the nature of divine providence that all the different pieces came together in the way in which they did, as a result of different impulses. He even asks: How did it all happen? And answers expressly: No individuals decided all these things, performed all these actions at just the right moment, which joined yet another portion to the British Empire with the aim of creating the greatest imperium that had ever existed; no, all this happened in earlier times as though by instinct.

The various parts came together by instinct and in Seeley's view there is a divine and spiritual order in the way they did so. Now, he says, it is our task to lift up into consciousness what has hitherto taken place instinctively and to round off what arose thus instinctively with our consciousness into an imperium such as has never existed on the earth before. He saw it as his task as an imperialistic historian consciously to penetrate what had come together unconsciously. Seeley intends, as it were, to bring into the present consciousness of the tifth post-Atlantean period all that contributed to the rise of the British Empire out of the still-atavistic forces belonging to the laws of the fourth post-Atlantean period. But as we have pointed out, it was not only reasoned, intellectual thinking which took hold of the instinctive coming-together of the different parts. As I have told you, during the final decades of the nineteenth century certain members of occult streams began—not with ordinary consciousness, but with occult consciousness—to expand this British Empire by placing before their souls, and the souls of their pupils, maps which showed what still had to come about if the British Empire was to beam its forces over the whole world. In these occult circles the following idea was consciously cultivated: The fifth post-Atlantean period belongs to the English-speaking peoples. Based on this, all the arrangements were carried out and all the details elaborated. No doubt the Regius Professor was not aware of this; but others were and used all of it consciously in their impulses. This needs to be recorded.

We shall speak more about what it was that they were aware of. But when people are not aware of something it nevertheless creeps into their soul and occupies them in a certain way. Thus, in our time, an extraordinary collaboration came about between something occult hovering in the background and pulling strings, and something of which people are unaware, but which lives in the forefront of events on the physical plane.

One must know such things if one wants to form judgements in the proper way. Over the last few weeks I have quoted a number of peculiar incidents, such as the matter of the Almanach of Madame de Thèbes and others. No doubt you remember. Now consider the following quite objectively without taking sides in any way. It is something extraordinary even for somebody who only thinks in the ordinary way; but for those who observe spiritual connections it is something that demands more than mere consideration, it demands to be meditated upon and taken into one's impulses: Is it not extraordinary that as early as the nineties of the nineteenth century an English book should have been published that was written by three editors of The Times and given the title The Great War of 189-? The timing was handled in a somewhat dilettante fashion. Though the date suggested is rather earlier, the reference is to the present war. This book contains a small error, for we are told that the war will break out as a result of the assassination of the Bulgarian Prince Ferdinand and that it will then escalate into the European conflagration covering the world. What is foretold in detail about this European conflagration covering the world is remarkably prophetic and has been confirmed in the main by subsequent events. We can truly say that the book's greatest error is the confusion between the Bulgarian Prince Ferdinand and Franz Ferdinand of Austria, and the placing of the assassination in Sofia instead of Sarajevo. I consider that there is a significance which should not be underestimated in the appearance of a book in 1892 which so remarkably accurately portrays a future event. Only by endeavouring to form judgements which are not abstract, but founded on what actually exists, can we develop the capacity to see the hidden configuration of things.

Naturally enough, even those who were able to see what was to come misplaced certain details—this is inevitable when speaking about such things. It is not always possible to foresee everything accurately. But we ought to ponder on the fact that there were people at that time who had such strong reasons for going into these matters that they even went as far as publication. I am telling you all this, especially in connection with all that we are considering, so that you can sharpen your capacity for forming judgements. It is essential to have the will to look facts in the face and see how they relate to one another. In earlier lectures here I said: In the fifth post-Atlantean period we can only make progress if we strive on the one hand to achieve Imagination, and on the other to let the facts speak for themselves. All preconceived judgements are doomed increasingly to become empty phrases. Least of all can abstract thinking—as opposed to thinking that is bound up with actual facts—lead to judgements about the tragic conflicts in the world, the tragic play of impulses which work in the way I have described.

There exists today a knack, linked with world history, a knack of saying things which seem very convincing to many people but which, in fact, reveal nothing on which it would be worth basing a judgement. Let us consider a judgement such as the following: Those in power in the British Empire did not want war. To back this up, suitable correspondence, telegrams, letters and so forth, about all sorts of proposals for conferences and so on are are quoted. People who judge, not on the basis of reality but abstractly, can indeed be convinced by these things, because the material available to back up such a statement can sound very convincing. But for a judgement to be valid it must not only be convincing or correct in the abstract, it must live in reality. It is perfectly possible, under certain circumstances, to prove that those in power in the British Empire—or rather those who mattered—did not want a war, and with such proof the greatest impression can be made in the whole of the periphery. In order to prove it—I say ‘prove’—it is not even necessary to speak a direct untruth; yet in reality it remains an untruth. Why? Because it is, in fact, true and can be proved to be true, and yet this truth is not worth a snap of the fingers and is totally irrelevant.

You may be certain that those in power in the British Empire would very much have preferred to prevent the conflict in so far as the British Empire is a participant. But what those who matter wanted to achieve by means of the war—this they certainly desired with every ounce of energy at their disposal. Had it been possible to achieve this without a war, they would obviously greatly have preferred it, and from the beginning it was not at all out of the question that these aims might have been achieved by means other than war. To do this it would have been necessary to create some sort of substitute, some international arrangement, by means of which representatives of the various states could have come together to decide certain matters. If you take care to ensure in advance that you have a majority in such a body, then of course you can achieve your aims without a war, as long as the minority are prepared to go along with you.

So you see, in the last resort it is not a matter of whether one wanted to wage or prevent war, but of what one's aims were in the first place. And the objective observer cannot fail to see that the aim was indeed the one about which I have given you a number of hints—it is only possible to hint. As always, I beg you to take into account that I am not passing a judgement on moral grounds, but placing the concept of tragedy on the scales; I am saying that when conflicts are tackled by means of battles, when much blood is spilt—this stems from the tragedy of those conflicts. In contemplating this tragedy externally, we must, of course, have the will to be affected by these things in a way that differs somewhat from the ordinary.

How often do we hear: A share of the blame for this war must be laid at the door of those opinions, sensations and feelings which such people as Treitschke and Bernhardi spread among the German people. It can be quite grotesque, for the names of these writers have often enough been cited as belonging to deceivers, even by people who are convinced in the most honest way that this hits the nail on the head. Sometimes Nietzsche is included, sometimes others as well. There is much to be learnt by taking into account what such things are based on, in what I might call ‘the realm of what is true’. But before going into this from the spiritual point of view—for much can be learnt about the spiritual realm by attending to ordinary things—let me draw your attention to the way in which just such phenomena as the German historian Treitschke can illustrate for us everything that is so tragic in human evolution. The only thing is that one must not make judgements of an utterly superficial kind.

Had I been inclined to make judgements of a superficial nature, I should for some time now certainly have looked upon Treitschke as a social monster. I only met him once, at a time when he was already totally deaf. You wrote your questions on scraps of paper and he then replied. When I was introduced to him, he asked: Where are you from? I wrote down that I was an Austrian. He replied: Well, well,—he was loud-spoken, since he could hear nothing—Austrians are either geniuses or rascals, one or the other; and so forth. With Treitschke it was always like this: If you did not want to count yourself a genius, you had had it. He was a vivacious man with considerable depth of character, and he often expressed himself in sharply defined terms. He wrote a much cited history of the German people. It is quoted in a certain way, but it could easily be quoted in another way, too, for anyone who wanted a collection of anti-German vulgarities could just copy them straight from Treitschke. However, this is not what people do. Instead, they seek out passages which are far less frequent than those in which Treitschke tells his people the truth about themselves. They seek out passages which are written, so they think, in a ‘Prussian and militaristic’ manner.

In this connection I want to introduce you to a rather interesting judgement. It stems from a man who was quite justified in forming it, because he, too, was a historian. He was also particularly interested in Treitschke's definite antipathy towards more recent history and developments in England. Treitschke certainly entertained this antipathy and it soon became obvious when you got to know him.

This historian, who knew Treitschke well, wrote that Treitschke's dislike of modern England was based partly on historical, and partly on moral grounds, for

‘Britain's world-predominance outrages him as a man almost as much as it outrages him as a German. It outrages him because of its immorality, its arrogance and its pretentious security. And not without justice’

please note this

‘he delineates English policy throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as aimed consistently at the repression of Prussia, so soon as English politicians discovered the true nature of that state and divined the great future reserved for it by destiny. Had not England been Prussia's treacherous but timid enemy in 1864 and 1866, and again in 1870–71, and, above all, in 1874–75?’

This is what this historian says in his discussion of Treitschke's antipathy towards England. The strongest point he makes in Treitschke's favour is his

‘conviction, which becomes more intense as the years advance, that Britain's world-predominance is out of all proportion to Britain's real strength and to her worth or value, whether that worth be considered in the political, the social, the intellectual, or the moral sphere.’

He continues:

‘It is the detestation of a sham ... That which Treitschke hates in England is what Napoleon hated in England—a pretentiousness, an overweening middle-class self-satisfaction, which is not really patriotism, not the high and serious passion of Germany in 1813 and 1870, but an insular, narrow conceit; in fact, the emotion enshrined in that most vulgar of all national hymns, “Rule Britannia”.’

He goes on:

‘... But Treitschke is seldom witty, though often grossly if unintentionally offensive. He is as unable as Heine to see anything fine in the English character.’

You see, this is another judgement about Treitschke. And while we are just discussing this historian, let me read to you a judgement he formed about someone else, much-maligned Bernhardi:

‘But what marks out this work’

the book in question is the one which is constantly quoted these days as being particularly abominable

‘from all others of the same kind, giving it something of the distinction of a really epoch-making book, is that it represents a definite attempt made by a German soldier to understand not merely how Germany could make war upon England most effectively, but why Germany ought to make war upon England.’

All this is written about Treitschke and Bernhardi by the English professor Cramb, who from his own point of view could be called the English Treitschke. If you delve into the matter, you will find an extraordinary similarity between the tone of Cramb and that of Treitschke, for Cramb, equally, is utterly preoccupied with making clear that the British Empire must dominate the world and that everything must be done to bring this about. You could say that he speaks about England in the way Treitschke speaks about Germany, allowing of course for the differences between an Englishman and a German. Here you see how one of two men—each of whom, speaking from his own point of view, must needs say the opposite of the other—is nevertheless capable of appreciating what the other says. In a certain sense a point had been reached at which what had to be laid aside could indeed be laid aside, in order to come to what is above the individual and belongs to history.

It is therefore an extremely depressing relapse, a backward step for people, to find that now, even in the most weighty documents, judgements come to expression which are utterly inapplicable. There is really no need to go at all far in order to find tangible truths. But to do so one needs the keen sense which today can only be maintained through some connection with spiritual science. On another front there is something equally grotesque: The Russian plan to gain possession of the Dardanelles and Constantinople has existed and been admitted for centuries; yet at the same time the Russians claim to be entirely blameless, absolutely blameless. Here, in a historical document of the first water—the Tsar's decree that has recently been going round the world—we have the juxtaposition once again: We are absolutely blameless, but we mean to conquer, yet we are blameless. In Russia, too, people have not always held the opinions they hold today.

Take Kuropatkin for instance. In 1910 he published a book The Tasks of the Russian Army. In this book there is a remarkable passage which those who speak of Russia's great blamelessness could do well to mark and digest. It says:

‘If Russia does not bring to an end her interference in something foreign to her, yet of vital interest to Austria, then a war over the question of Serbia can be expected to break out in the twentieth century between Russia and Austria.’

The Russian general Kuropatkin wrote this in 1910. Of course he had in mind what existed on the Russian side that could lead to a war with Austria over the Serbian conflict.

The question now arises: Why is the truth being so distorted at present? The answer is that something has got to be said, yet it is not as easy as all that to speak the truth. I hinted at this yesterday. The things that are said are intended to spread a fog over the truth so as to distract people's attention from the truth. That is why arguments are chosen which will have an immediate sentimental appeal for those who lack the will to get to the bottom of things.

If only people could come more and more to understand above all the full significance of the many unconscious or subconscious untruths. I have often pointed out that it is no excuse to say that one believes something just because so and so said it. Of course I do not mean that many people do not believe in what they are saying, but this is not the point. These things work in the world, and those who make statements have a duty to take the trouble to find out the truth; merely believing something is not enough. Someone might speak quite truly when he says that he wanted to prevent the war. But this truth is not worth a fig in view of the fact that he intended to use other means instead to achieve his desired aim, the aim he is striving for with all his might. To reverse the truth in this way, whether unconsciously or subconsciously, is something much worse than an untruth, even though it appears to be the truth.

This is now the immensely difficult karma of mankind: that people do not feel in duty bound to pursue the actual, real truth and truthfulness that lives in the facts—indeed, that the very opposite of this seems to have started to rule the world and to be all set to do so ever increasingly. External deeds are always the consequence of what lives in mankind in the way of thought. They are the consequence of untruthfulness, which may indeed appear in the guise of truth because it can be ‘proved’, though only superficially. What lives in the judgements of human beings can become, on another plane, the thundering of cannon and the spilling of blood. There is certainly a connection between the two. The conclusion we have to draw from this is that we must enter ever more deeply into the facts, that we must develop a sense which can lead us to see in the appropriate places those things which can really throw light and reveal what is essential.

When, after repeated requests, I decided to speak about some aspects of most recent history leading up to the present, I expressly stated that my concern was the understanding of the facts and that there was no question of entering into politics or anything to do with politics. I frequently repeated this statement. Despite this, it seems to me that a definite carelessness—not to use a stronger word—is gaining ground amongst us in this respect. People do not consider that when someone is speaking the truth with the intensity that has been the case, he has a right to claim that attention is also paid to the manner of its expression. It appears that here and there people have been speaking about these lectures as if they were political lectures. Lack of consideration has for a long time been the order of the day among some of our members—only a few, of course; I refer only to those who are meant. Everything I have said and repeated over and over again out of anxiety for our concerns has fallen on deaf ears in some quarters. It is perfectly apparent that again and again the matters we speak about here are reported to outsiders in the strangest manner.

As such, I have nothing against reports if they remain within the obvious bounds. But it is clear from various recent publications—among them a most scandalous compilation from the Vollrath camp—that matters are not reported in a manner befitting the way they are discussed here, but in a manner—perhaps from want of a better understanding—that enables the most horrible distortions to be fabricated. I know very well that the source of this is to be found in our midst, and if again and again I hold my peace and refrain from taking steps against those so-called members who behave in this way, it is out of love for our whole Movement and our whole Society. It is surely not possible to hold a constant succession of hearings. It would, however, be possible for members who understand what is going on, to approach in a suitable manner those of whom it is known that their attitude to the spiritual content given here is not what it ought to be. I do not even want to maintain—though sometimes it is indeed the case—that there is a direct lack of morality in people's behaviour, but there is certainly a lack of insight into the way one might behave. If someone wants to speak about what he has heard, it is incumbent upon him to ask himself with honest—let me say—self-knowledge, whether he has really understood it in a way which enables him to pass it on.

It is necessary, unfortunately, to draw attention to this from time to time. I assure you that I am not doing so without good reason. If things go on as they are, it will become necessary to remain silent about certain matters, and it is easy to see what would then become of our Movement. And a share in bringing this about would lie with those members who again and again fail to prevent themselves from using the most awful expressions which can then lead to frightful distortions. Surely it is not necessary to speak about these things in places where they can be overheard by people who do not belong amongst us, and to use expressions which might come easily to the tongue, but which in no way correspond to the whole purpose on which these lectures are founded!

I must admit that having decided after repeated requests to give these lectures, I can only view as entirely personal attacks the instances in which they have been described as ‘political lectures’.

Now that we have discussed the many considerations contained in the lectures of the past few weeks, it will today be possible to draw some of them together in order to throw light on aspects which can help us to understand what is happening today. I shall first endeavour to recount quite baldly, in the most external fashion, the historical sequence of events as they occurred, and then, on the basis of the insights gained over the past weeks, I will point out some of the deeper-lying causes. I want to state expressly that, particularly today, I shall attempt to weigh carefully every single expression so that each one provides an exact delineation within which the view it expresses can come to light. Let me start, then, by describing quite externally and briefly certain events, viewpoints and impulses.

As you of course all know, the present painful events have come about in connection with the murder in June 1914 of Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne. This assassination was followed in the whole of Europe by a newspaper campaign which showed, in what might be called surging waves, the degree to which passions had been aroused in every quarter. All this led to the well-known ultimatum from the monarchy of Austria-Hungary to Serbia which, in the main, was rejected by Serbia; then on to the Austro-Serbian conflict which was intended by the leading Austrian statesmen to consist of a military entry into Serbia, without any annexation of Serbian territory, for the purpose of exerting military pressure in order to force an acceptance of the ultimatum. The purpose of the ultimatum was to prevent Serbia from inciting unrest against the stability of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy via Austria's southern Slav population.

As you know, Austria comprises quite a number of nations—there are thirteen recognized languages and many more than thirteen distinct peoples. In the southern region the population is Slav; more to the West are the Slovenian Slavs; to the East, adjacent to them, the Dalmatian, Croatian, Slovenian, Serbian, Serbo-Croat population; then also the various groups who live in the territories of Bosnia and Herzegovina which were annexed by Austria in 1908, though occupied by her long before that. Serbia borders on the territories populated by these southern Slavs. Austria believed it could be proved—and evidence of this proof can be found all over the place by anyone who cares to seek it—that Serbia was inciting unrest with the aim of founding a Southern Slav kingdom under the sovereignty of Serbia and entailing the detachment of the southern Slav population of Austria.

At all costs the assassination of Franz Ferdinand had to be linked with these things, for the following reason: From 1867 onwards, the monarchy of Austria-Hungary was a dual state comprising, in accordance with a not very concise description ‘the kingdoms and lands represented in the Reichsrat’, and secondly ‘the lands of the Holy Crown of St Stephen’. Among the lands represented in the Reichsrat were Upper and Lower Austria, Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and Istria, Dalmatia, Moravia, Bohemia and Silesia, Galicia, Lodomeria and Bukovina. To the lands of the Holy Crown of St Stephen belong first and foremost the Magyar regions to which was annexed what had formerly been Transylvania, which is inhabited by a number of peoples; further, Croatia and Slavonia, the latter enjoying a kind of limited self-government within the Hungarian state. A dual monarchy, in other words.

Now it was known that Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne, wanted to overcome the drawbacks of the dualism of Austria-Hungary and replace this dualism with a ‘triadic’ reorganization. This triadic structure was to come about by making the southern Slav territories belonging to Austria self-governing, in the way the lands and kingdoms represented in the Reichsrat and also the lands of the Holy Crown of St Stephen were self-governing. This would have put a triadic structure in place of the existing dualism. You can see how, had it been realized, this would have led to an individualization of the separate southern Slav peoples within a kind of southern Slav community in the Austro-Slav regions. It would have meant a step closer to the aim of assimilating the western Slavs with western culture, thus working against what I have called Russianism in these lectures. This could quite well have worked out, for the structure of the Austrian state is entirely federalistic, not centralistic, and before the war it tended anyway increasingly to grant federal status to the different peoples. From 1867 to 1879 centralism was the aim; from 1879 onwards the efforts to centralize had to be seen as a failure, and from then on federalism was the aim.

In opposition to this were the efforts on the part of Serbia to found a confederation of southern Slavs under the hegemony of Serbia. This did not arise from within the Serbian people, but I have described to you how peoples are, in a way, led simply by means of suggestion. For this to happen, the southern Slav territories would, of course, have to be wrested from Austria-Hungary.

This concludes my brief summary of what lies behind the Austro-Serbian conflict. What I have just been telling you is all to do with the Austro-Serbian conflict. It is thinkable that this conflict could have been ‘localized’—I have used this expression once before. Had this come about—I am speaking hypothetically—the European world war would have been avoided. What would have happened if the strictly circumscribed intentions of the Austrian statesmen had been realized? Part of the Austro-Hungarian army would have marched into Serbia and stayed there until Serbia agreed to accept the ultimatum which would have quashed the possibility of a southern Slav conferation under Serbian hegemony, and, of course, Russian supremacy. If no other European power had interfered in this matter, if they had all done nothing more than stand to attention, as it were, then nothing would have taken place except the acceptance of this ultimatum. For Austria had guaranteed that she had no intention of annexing any parts of Serbian territory in any way. As a result, such assassinations as took place many times—that of Franz Ferdinand was only the last in a whole sequence incited by Serbian agitators—such assassinations would not have taken place, and without such agitation the establishment of a southern Slav confederation under the supremacy of Russia is, or rather would, of course, have been impossible. If events had taken this course—I speak hypothetically again—this war need never have broken out.

So what is the connection between this Austro-Serbian conflict and the World War? To comprehend this connection it is necessary to pass beyond an understanding of the external situation and, if I may say so, enter the deeper secrets of European politics. It is not politics we want to enter; we want to understand in our soul what it was that lived in these politics. I want to answer the question: How did a European conflict arise out of the Austro-Serbian conflict? What is the link between the Austro-Serbian question and the European question?

We must turn our attention to what I have just said about the southern Slav confederation. It was the British Empire, the more it took on a conscious form, that was interested in a southern Slav confederation, independent of Austria, but under the supremacy of Russia. In the societies I have mentioned it was the establishment of what was termed the Danube confederation—by which was meant this southern Slav confederation, which was to comprise the southern Slav peoples together with Romania and include the southern Slavs of Austria—that was expressly discussed. In the nineties of the nineteenth century we find everywhere in the occult schools of the West, under the direct influence of British occultists, indications that such a Danube confederation would have to come into being. Attempts were also made to manipulate the whole of European politics towards the creation of this Danube confederation, which would entail the relinquishing of the Austro-Slav territories.

Why was the British Empire interested in this Danube confederation, a project which was anti-Austrian and pro-Russian? The powers which have been in opposition to one another most strongly in recent times as a consequence of the imperialism which has broken out across the world, those powers which actually coexist with the greatest hostility, are the British Empire and the Russian Empire. Such hidden hostilities can indeed manifest outwardly as friendships and alliances. When there is such bitter hostility between countries outwardly coexisting peacefully, a certain consequence results from the fact that our earth has a specific characteristic: namely, that it is spherical in shape. If our earth were a flat plain stretching in all directions, such conflicts could not come about. But since our earth is round, not only do we eventually arrive back at our starting point if we walk long enough in a straight line, but something else also happens: Expanding empires come up against each other at a certain point, and when they collide they have to follow through with their opposing interests. This occurred between the British and the Russian Empires. Among many other situations, it became most obviously apparent when they collided with great force in Persia. The question was: Should Russia succeed in moving down against India and there gradually hem in the British Empire, or would the British Empire erect defences?

When your aim is to gain sovereignty, you can pursue it by means of war, or by other means, depending on which seems the most favourable. For the British Empire it seemed for the moment—in the case of states, only limited periods of time are reckoned with—more favourable to prevent Russia from proceeding against India by providing a different channel, by diverting her attention in another direction in which she could achieve the satisfaction of her natural ambition. Empires are always ambitious. This was to be brought about by conceding to Russia the sovereignty over the so-called Danube confederation. Thus the British Empire was indirectly interested in making the Danube confederation as extensive as possible, for the Slavs in the South wanted to belong together, and this feeling of belonging was stirred up in the way I have described to you. Thus the confederation of southern Slavs was to be played into Russia's hand so that she might withdraw her attention from other directions. This was why the confederation of southern Slavs, to be set up under Russian sovereignty, was in the British interest. It was a long story, prepared well beforehand.

Here we see one of the threads linking the Austro-Serbian question to the question of sovereignty on a world scale. This is how the whole relationship between the British and the Russian Empires was drawn into the matter. It was not a matter of Austria and Serbia, for the whole Austro-Serbian question necessarily became the question: Should Austria take the step towards a triadic structure, thus diverting the confederation of southern Slavs from its path, or should steps be taken towards a Russian-dominated southern Slav confederation? In this way the Austro-Serbian question became coupled with the European question.

When such situations exist—for what I have just described lived in human beings as absolutely real impulses—it is like an electric charge which will at some point have to be discharged. This, then, was one of the threads.

It is still, however, highly questionable whether the Austro-Serbian conflict would have led to the World War, if there had not been further aspects in addition to those we have just discussed. Indeed, it is highly unlikely that it would have done, if there had been no other causes. But there were plenty of other impulses, all of which reinforced the situation. First and foremost among these was the Franco-Russian alliance within the general European situation. This Franco-Russian alliance had existed since the nineties of the nineteenth century and, looking at the situation objectively, it could not have been more unnatural. No one will doubt that France had entered into this alliance with a view to winning back Alsace-Lorraine, for there is no other imaginable reason for this alliance. All other reasons would only have spoken against such an alliance. In the end, though, those other reasons carry little weight in comparison with the driving forces, for the fact is that an alliance such as this exists; through its very existence it represents a real force. It is there. Much more important than the actual aim of this alliance is the fact that here are a western and an eastern state who in combination constitute a monstrous military power. And between them lies Germany who could not but feel permanently threatened militarily by the scale of this combined French and Russian military might. It was this encirclement of Germany to West and East by the Franco-Russian alliance which became one of the driving forces in European affairs.

To discover further influences which played a part we must look at the following: In recent decades, imperialism has led to a general desire for expansion. You need only look, for instance, at the monstrous growth of the British Empire. Or think of France, whose territorial expansion over the last few decades has been incomparably greater than at any earlier time, when France, as she herself said, marched at the head of European civilization.

The events of recent decades have been like a chain reaction: In every case what came next could not have taken place without what had gone before. The most recent point of departure—of course we could go back further—lies in the British Empire's seizure of sovereignty over Egypt. For today's way of thinking it is perfectly reasonable to justify such an action by claiming the necessity of rounding off and securing one's assets. The expansion of British sovereignty over Egypt was justified by saying that a bridge to India was needed. The hope was that Arabia could be gained too, thus creating a direct link with India.

The expansion of the British Empire to include Egypt provided, to some extent, a protective barrier against any awkward expansion of the Russian Empire westwards; any such expansion westwards need not have harmed the British Empire to any great extent if Egypt had been able to provide the necessary link with India.

Now since the earth is spherical, there is insufficient territory for unlimited expansion outwards by empires because eventually they will clash. In consequence the expansion of one empire generates in the other an equal lust for expansion. Thus the expansion by France to include Morocco, in two stages in 1905 and 1911, was nothing other than a consequence of the expansion of the British Empire to include Egypt. The mutual recognition of these expansions—France's recognition of British dominion over Egypt and British recognition of France's dominion over Morocco—provided the threads with which an Entente Cordiale between the French and the British Empires could be spun. But because Germany was in the middle, efforts were made, as you know, to establish the Triple Alliance: Germany, Austria, Italy.

However, the distribution of Morocco and Egypt, and what followed this, meant that, at the Algeciras Conference, and particularly with the help of an elderly Italian politician who was well versed in these things, Italy was even then successfully drawn into the sphere of influence of the western entente between France and England. After the Algeciras Conference sensible people in Central Europe no longer believed that Italy would be able to remain faithful to the Triple Alliance. Because of the way she had behaved there had to be consequences for her, resulting from the seizure of Morocco by France. And the consequence was that Italy was permitted to establish herself in Tripoli. In effect this meant that Italy had been given permission by the West to wage war on Turkey. So Egypt led to Morocco, and Morocco to Tripoli. Then, because Tripoli meant a new weakening of the Turkish position, Tripoli led to the Balkan War. These events took place like a chain reaction, Egypt-Morocco-Tripoli-Balkan War; each is unthinkable without its predecessor.

Turkey having been weakened by the Italo-Turkish, or Tripoli War, the southern Slav peoples, with the others in their wake, and also the Greek peoples, believed themselves strong enough to win the Balkan peninsula for themselves. As a result of this, the trend towards a southern Slav confederation became linked with the national aspirations of the Balkan countries. The linking of these two chains gave the Balkan War an outcome in which Serbia was the strongest winner. Serbia has grown very powerful, incomparably more so than she was before. In consequence there came a revival of the ideal of founding the southern Slav confederation under the hegemony of Serbia and the overall sovereignty of Russia. This led to the agitations which culminated in the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, which in turn led to the Austro-Serbian War. Now we have brought the two links together: The Austro-Serbian question was linked with the European question as a consequence of the whole historical process.

Those who followed these events with understanding were able to see under these circumstances many years ahead to the coming war, hanging like a sword of Damocles over European culture and civilization. Wherever these things were discussed you could hear how people realized that Russia's pretensions would lead to a conflict between Central and Eastern Europe. This conflict was inevitable. No one who studies the realities of history will say that this conflict between Central and Eastern Europe was not based on what may be called a spiritual necessity. Just as in ancient times conflict arose between the Roman and the Germanic peoples, so in modern times there had to be conflict between Central and Eastern Europe. There were manifold forms it could have taken, but conflict there had to be. Everything else, in so far as it had to do with the East, was included in this conflict.

It was the pretensions of Russianism that led to the expectation that somewhere or other these pretensions would lead to an attempt by Russia to impose sovereignty on the Balkan league. This was expected. The geographical situation made it inevitable that there would be a clash between Russia and Austria. And when this clash occurred—so said all those who had been contemplating these things over the years—everything else would automatically follow.

How, it was asked, would the situation be shaped by the existing structure of alliances at the moment of Russia's attack on Austria? Obviously no one expected Austria to attack Russia of her own accord. This was unthinkable; Austria could not possibly find herself in a position to launch an attack on Russia. It had to be supposed, therefore, that matters would arrange themselves in a way that would enable Russia to attack Austria. Well and good! Because of the alliance between Austria and Germany, Germany could be expected to stand by Austria and attack Russia in her turn. And as a result of Germany's attack on Russia—I am telling you what was presumed—the Franco-Russian alliance would come into action. France would be obliged to take Russia's side and attack Germany. And because of the relationship between France and England—whether laid down in a treaty or not—England would have to join in the attack on the side of Russia and France. These things were foreseen. The structure of treaties and alliances would automatically lead to a sequence of events.

In the end, the sequence was not quite what had been expected by those who concerned themselves day in, day out, with the future of Europe. What form did it take? Let us see. I have already described to you the history of the ultimatum, the rejection of the ultimatum, the resulting insistence by Austria on acceptance of the ultimatum. But the European powers did not remain indifferent to all this, for Russia immediately made ready to enter the fray as Serbia's protector. This made the localization of the Austro-Serbian question unthinkable. From the British quarter came all sorts of meaningless suggestions of the kind made by those who either want to take a hand in affairs without thinking things through properly, or who want to build up for themselves from the start a world-wide reputation of having endeavoured to settle the matter by peaceful means. This is not actually the aim, but it has to be possible later on to say that it was.

So the meaningless suggestion was made to call a conference made up, of all things, of England, Germany, France and Italy, to decide about the questions pending. Just imagine what would have been the outcome of such a conference! A majority verdict would have been required on whether Austria's demands to Serbia were justified or not. On the basis of the real situation, imagine, please, how the voting would have gone! Italy had inwardly deserted the Triple Alliance, France was on Russia's side, Russia was obviously only satisfied if Austria was refused the right to insist on acceptance of the ultimatum, England was in favour of the Danube confederation. Leaving aside Austria, the majority would have gone to Italy, France and England. Germany would obviously have been out-voted at all costs. This conference could not possibly have led to anything other than a refusal for what Austria, from her position, was compelled to demand. That means that if this conference had been held it would have been nothing but a farce, for Austria would either have been forced to give up her pretensions, or, regardless of the outcome of the conference, she would have continued to demand acceptance of the ultimatum. In other words, the conference would have been nothing but a bluff, as they say. A thorough study of the documentation reveals, however, that from the start Russia's pretension was to interfere in the Serbo-Austrian question. So it is really irrelevant whether the World War came about as the result of an automatic sequence of events or of deliberate scene-setting leading inevitably to the War.

It was the scene-setting that took place for, in addition to the various impulses, you must also take into account a quite particular mood. Maybe no other world event, no other historical event but this, has ever been quite so dependent on a certain mood. The mood of soul of those participating in the outbreak of the War at the end of July 1914 was certainly one of the most important causes. Of course there were also agitations at the outbreak of earlier wars, but they did not sweep in with such stormy, such hurricane force, as did the events between 24 July and 1 August 1914. Within a few days a monstrous agitation had gathered over the participants, an agitation in which was concentrated all the accumulated anxiety of the many years during which this coming event had been foreseen. This mood must definitely be taken into account. Those who do not do so can only speak in empty phrases.

All kinds of points could be brought in to characterize this mood, but I shall draw your attention to only one. An event had taken place which was indirectly, though in fact very strongly, connected with the outbreak of the War. If it is to be evaluated properly it will, and must, be seen in its proper place amongst the other events in Europe. This was the German defence bill, laid before Parliament after the Balkan War, which budgeted for an enlargement of the German army by means of a single large defence payment. This enlargement of the German army, which, by the way, was not anywhere near completion by the time the War broke out, can be studied by anyone in connection with the results of the Balkan War. These results showed that for an uncertain time in the future the clash between Russia and Austria was being manipulated. It was only because of certain situations, which I do not want to go into here, that Russia was prevented as early as 1913 from attacking Austria in order to gain sovereignty and dominion over the Balkan confederation. The enlargement of the German army was undertaken for no other reason—as I said, I am choosing my expressions very precisely today—than the threatened dispute with the East. Yet the French reaction followed promptly: If Germany is enlarging her army, then we must do something about strengthening ours. What this means is that the destiny, the inevitable necessity for Central Europe to take precautions with regard to the East, always produced reinforcements in the West, which naturally produced further reactions in their turn.

In this way matters progressed. In particular, everything connected with the defence bill after the Balkan War generated terrible anxiety in Central Europe because the whole of the European periphery was seen to have turned against Central Europe. Opinions differed only in the matter of Italy: Some still thought she would somehow throw in her lot with Central Europe, while others no longer held this to be possible.

Let us still assume—hypothetically—that the World War did not break out. There was only one precondition that could have prevented it. Russia would have had to refrain from immediate war threats—in other words mobilization, which under the prevailing circumstances could only be regarded as a war threat. Central Europe could not for one moment have thought that France would not go along with Russia, so an assault on two fronts had to be reckoned with. The only course of action open to those in positions of responsibility was to paralyse this assault in some way. No one in a responsible position could have thought: Let us spend the next fortnight at a conference! Not only could this conference have led absolutely nowhere, as I said, but it would have meant certain defeat. But no one can be expected to accept certain defeat from the outset. So the only possibility was to match the monstrous military superiority of West and East by means of speed.

For this the only possible course of action, as I showed earlier, was to violate international law and march through Belgium. Any other solution could only have led to the involvement of most of the German army in a long war of defence in the West while leaving the way open to invasion from the East. This was one of those historical moments at which—whether you can express it aptly or not—a state is forced to enter into a breach of the law in self-preservation. There is no other course of action open to those responsible for that state. In Central Europe it was—and I am choosing my words very carefully today in order to make my meaning quite clear—for some of those in responsible positions utterly monstrous to attempt war on two fronts at once.

So the attempt was made to restrict the matter to a single front. Careful, carefully intentioned, attempts were made to keep France neutral, and it was believed that France could be induced to remain neutral. No one in Central Europe had any intention of harming France. With a feeling of total responsibility it is possible to say that absolutely no one in Central Europe, no one in Germany, had any intention of harming France. What was done was done only with a view to tying matters up as quickly as possible in the West in order to prevent the threatened invasion from the East. It therefore never ceases to be astonishing that so much talk persists in the world about all the atrocities Germany has committed towards the West. None of the atrocities would have occurred if only France had declared her neutrality.

France was perfectly capable of protecting herself and Belgium against any attack. That France was forced to keep her agreement with Russia is her own affair and should not be trotted out in the same breath as the atrocities committed by Germany, for the allegiance of one state to another is no business of her enemies.

Since it proved impossible to keep France neutral by direct means, the attempt was then made via England—here, too, without success. I have touched a number of times on how England could have saved Belgium and, equally well, France. These things must be viewed absolutely objectively. Please accept as totally objective the statement that, once the war between Austria and Serbia could no longer be localized because Russia would not allow this, every effort was made at least to prevent it from spreading to the West. Truly, no one in Central Europe was seized with the madness of wanting to make war on two fronts, let alone subsequently on three.

That all the other universal untruths followed on from this is really not surprising now, when every day astonishes us with new lies, spoken, written and printed. Before coming here today I found someone had put on my desk a pamphlet by one of the participants engaged in the neutrality debate with Georg Brandes. Here, on the English side, you have William Archer, in whose pamphlet you find juxtaposed the black infamy of Germany and the pure innocence of the allies. Ten points illustrate the black infamy, and the angelic, utter innocence of the allies; we need consider only one of these, the second. The second point states that in Germany there exists a notable faction which is openly agitating for further territorial expansion, either in or outside Europe. In contrast it is said of the allies—in English, mark you: The allies have no desire for any territorial expansion, least of all at Germany's expense; even France's feelings for Alsace-Lorraine are exclusively peaceful.

My dear friends, much can be both printed and spoken these days! The other nine points are in similar vein. Just think of the expansion undertaken by England and France over recent decades; and then read that these countries have no desire for territorial expansion. It is quite possible nowadays to say and print the exact opposite of the truth, just as it is possible for countless people to believe it. People do indeed believe these things.

Here, then, you have the historical view of these events. Now we must link this external historical process with what we can discover through our knowledge of the impulses from the West which have been at work for a long time. Not all the impulses that make use to a greater or lesser degree of occult forces—such as we have discussed—are included in what might be called the outer ramifications: namely, Freemasonry, though as we have seen, a great deal is indeed brought about by western Freemasonry. Many strings are pulled by those involved there. And as I said, account is taken of long stretches of time.

Now add to the points I have been making the fact that modern Freemasonry undergoes a process of consolidation in England at the beginning of the eighteenth century, on foundations, of course, which are older. Within Britain, not the Empire, but the United Kingdom, Freemasonry remains—let me use the correct expression—essentially respectable in the interests it pursues. But everywere else, outside Britain, chiefly—or indeed exclusively—political interests are pursued by Freemasonry.

Such political interests, to the most marked degree, are pursued for instance by the French Grand Orient, and also by other Grand Lodges. You could ask: What business is it of the English if political trends in other countries are pursued by certain orders of Freemasonry which possess an occult background? In reply you might remind yourself that the first Grand Lodge in Paris was founded under the jurisdiction of England, not France! Englishmen, not Frenchmen, founded it; and then they let the French in. Then also remind yourself that after the founding of this Grand Lodge in Paris in 1725, this Grand Orient in turn sanctioned the founding of a lodge under its own jurisdiction in Paris in 1729. There were, under the jurisdiction of England, foundations in Gibraltar in 1729, Madrid in 1728, Lisbon in 1736, Florence in 1735, Moscow in 1731, Stockholm in 1726, Geneva in 1735, Lausanne in 1739 and Hamburg in 1737. I could carry on for a long time with this list. I could show you how a network was founded of these lodges, which were to act as the external tools for certain occult, political impulses. They differed in character from those in the United Kingdom itself. In addition to the breathtaking sequence of changes as we see them in history, such as the Jacobins and the furore they created, the Carbonari and their political activities, the Cortes in Spain and others, they also have a strong influence on the culture of their time and send out shoots which even show in the works of the greatest spirits of their time. We need only think of Rousseau's natural philosophy, or the critical philosophy of Voltaire, which became ever more cynical though its aim was to enlighten, or the efforts of the Illuminati, who wanted to overcome the prevailing cynicism, and similar circles. These progressive circles were crushed by reactionary streams, but continued to work in manifold ways underground.

So here you have the source of much that I have been describing. And you must attach a degree of importance to the following: The English Freemasons can maintain today that their lodges are entirely respectable and that any others are none of their business; yet if you look beyond the historical connections and the interplay of opposing currents, you are sure to find high-level British politics hiding in the background.

To understand the deeper meaning of these politics it is necessary to draw a little on recent history. Preparations having been under way from the sixteenth century onwards, there has been a tendency ever since the seventeenth century towards the democratization of society—in some countries more quickly, in others more slowly—by taking power away from the few and giving it to the broad masses. I am not here involved in politics and I shall not therefore express myself in favour of either democracy or anything else. I simply wish to state facts. The impulse towards democracy is having its effect in modern times at varying speeds, and so different streams are coming into being. It is a mistake, where several streams are apparent, to follow the course of only one. The way streams flow in the world is such that one always forms a complement to the others. Let us say a green and a red stream are flowing along side by side. Nothing occult is meant by these colours—it is simply to illustrate that there are two streams flowing side by side. Usually people are, let me say, hypnotized into looking at only one of the streams, while they fail to see the other flowing beside it during the same period in history. As you know, if you push a hen's beak into the ground and then draw a line leading away, the hen will always walk along this line. In the same way people today, especially university historians, see only the one side, and can therefore never really understand the historical process.

Parallel with the democratic stream there came into being the use of occult motives in the various secret societies—in isolated cases, also Masonic orders. In their purposes and aims these are not, of course, spiritual, but there developed, let us call it, a spiritual aristocracy parallel to that democratic stream which was at work in the French Revolution; the aristocracy of the lodges developed. To see clearly as a human being today, to be open to the world and to understand the world, it is necessary not to be dazzled by democratic logic—which has a place only in its own sphere—by empty phrases about democratic progress and so on; it is necessary also to point to that other stream which asserted itself with the intent of gaining power for the few by means that lie hidden within the womb of the lodge—the ritual and its suggestive influence. It is necessary to point to this also.

This has been forgotten during the age of materialism, but before the fifties of the last century people did point these things out. Study the philosophical historians prior to 1850 and you will see that they pointed to the connection between the lodges and the French Revolution with all that followed it. During the period that can be seen as preparatory for today, western historical development, the western world, never emancipated itself from the lodges. The influence of the lodges was always strongly at work. The lodges knew how to find channels through which to impress certain directions on people's thoughts. Once a web like this has been spun—of which I have shown you merely a few strands—the button need only be pressed for things to be set in motion.

Emancipation from all these situations, and the impartial embracing of humanity as such, only really came about under the influence of such great spirituality as developed in German philosophy beginning with Lessing, and developing through Herder and Goethe. Here you have a spiritual stream which took account of all that lives in the lodges, but in such a way that the mystery was brought out of the obscurity of the lodges and transformed into a purely human matter. You need only glance at Goethe's fairy tale The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, at Wilhelm Meister and other of Goethe's writings. This was material with which the step to emancipation could be taken and which still today makes emancipation possible. So you may view that whole part of German cultural history portrayed in my book Vom Menschenrätsel as a forgotten reverberation which is entirely independent of all the intrigues of the lodges.

In western culture over the last few centuries preceding our own day you will easily find many ways of demonstrating how the character of ideas in the exoteric world stemmed from the esoteric thinking of the lodges. Obviously this does not apply to the time before Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare but it is certainly true of what came later. But the spiritual culture linked with Lessing, Herder and Goethe has no such connections. You might ask: What about German Freemasonry—in Austria it is proscribed, so there is none there—or Magyar Freemasonry? Well, the others did not allow them to join in. They are quite an innocuous crowd. Though they might appear as thick as thieves with regard to their secrets, this is nothing but show.

The real, mighty impulses emanating from the quarters I have described to you are truly not found in German Freemasonry, which I have no wish to offend. So you can easily understand how it was possible for some rather strange occurrences to take place. Suppose, for instance, someone were to make known in Germany the things I have told you about societies, their secret connections and their external branches—the lodges of Freemasonry. It could be rather useful to make these things known there, but what would be the consequence? Experts would be asked to corroborate these things, and in this case the experts are the Freemasons themselves. But it would never occur to any Freemason in Germany to say anything other than that the English lodges do not concern themselves with politics, that they are concerned only with entirely respectable matters. This is all he knows, for he is ignorant of anything else. You can even be told—and this has actually happened—if you ask about specific names, that they are not on the list of members. They have the list but are unaware that perhaps the most important of all are not included in the list. In short, German Freemasonry is a quite innocuous society.

This does not alter the fact, though—and this may truly be said without any kind of arrogance or nationalistic affectation—that the spiritual life cultivated by certain western secret brotherhoods actually stems from Central Europe. Look at this historically. Robert Fludd: pupil of Paracelsus; Saint-Martin in France: pupil of Jakob Böhme. The origin of the movement itself is to be found in Central Europe. From the West comes the organization, the establishment in degrees—some western lodges have ninety-two degrees; just imagine how elevated you can become if you rise to the ninety-second degree—the use of knowledge for political aims, and the introduction of certain external elements.

We have just had an example which is quite typical, one to which I drew your attention. I am only describing these things in order to make you aware of their objective nature, just as the facts of natural history can be described; not from any nationalistic affectation. I drew your attention to the recent appearance of a book by Sir Oliver Lodge, in which he reports on communications he has received through various mediums from his son who was killed in action. A book like this, written by such a distinguished scientist, is sure to cause quite a sensation. Now that I have read the book there is no need for me to retract anything I said to you a little while ago. I said at the time that I would return to this subject. The strongest proof offered by Sir Oliver Lodge is the following: Seances with various mediums result in the manifestation of the soul of Raymond Lodge, who died in action. These seances tell us nothing people do not know already and would be unlikely to make any strong impression on anyone. But one thing did make a strong impression on the eminent scientist Sir Oliver Lodge and his whole family, who up to that point had been very sceptical about such things. At one of the seances a group photograph was mentioned, showing Oliver Lodge's son together with other people. This photograph, one of several, was described as showing the same people at the same place, but in varying arrangements; the same people are seen, but with differing gestures. Raymond Lodge described this photograph through the medium at that seance in England. But Sir Oliver Lodge and his family knew nothing about this picture, for it had been taken at the Franco-Belgian front at the end of Raymond Lodge's life and sent by him to his family, though it had not yet arrived. So this medium described a group photograph which existed but was unknown to the family: the participants in the seance. They only saw it after it had been described by the medium.

For those who dabble in the occult, this is naturally tremendously convincing. What should you make of the fact that a group photograph is described at a seance, the participants of which know nothing about it? The family, the participants in the seance, know nothing of it and nor do the mediums, because it has not yet arrived in England. It is still on the way. It only arrived later. Yet an exact description is given of where Raymond Lodge is sitting in relation to the others and even of the way he has laid his hand on a friend's shoulder. What could be more convincing than this?

However, Sir Oliver Lodge's interpretation can only have been reached by someone who merely dabbles in the occult. If he had known nothing much but had investigated the literature—for instance Schubert or similar people who still wrote about such things in Germany around the first half of the nineteenth century—he would have found countless examples of something that every genuine occultist knows: When consciousness is damped down even slightly, future events can be seen. The most simple case of seeing a future event is when someone experiencing a moment of lowered consciousness sees a funeral procession which will not take place for several days. A person has not even died, yet someone sees his funeral. Something in the future is seen. This is quite normal when consciousness is lowered. So this is what took place: A photograph has been taken in Flanders and is on its way to England. The time will come when the family will focus their eyes and their understanding on it, when they will bear it in their thoughts. The medium foresees it as an image of the future. Whether you foresee a funeral procession, or whether you foresee how a family receives such and such a photograph of their son in a few days' time—it is the same phenomenon: that of seeing a future event in advance. This is just a phenomenon.

If he had known something about real occult facts, he would not have interpreted the event as he did. Such an interpretation arises because occult values, occult laws, are seen from a materialistic standpoint. It comes about because people avoid undertaking that form of development which would enable them to comprehend the spiritual world in an inward process. Instead they want to see the spiritual realm by laboratory means, purely materialistically. The spirit is made materialistic, whether by Sir Oliver Lodge or anybody else. But this is only one example of what happens to everything that is spiritual. These things can be observed, just as you can observe the progression from Paracelsus to Fludd, from Jakob Böhme to Saint-Martin; everywhere the spirit is made more materialistic.

As the Anthroposophical Society we only succeeded in saving ourselves from becoming materialistic by emancipating ourselves from the Theosophical Society. For impulses emanating from the kind of society I have described penetrate deeply into the social fabric. Naturally, here again I must beg you not to misunderstand me. I am not saying that this is a natural characteristic of the western nations. But it exists and has succeeded in influencing the course of history and is not even without influence on the untruthfulness which is now playing such a devastating part.

It is particularly to this untruthfulness that I am obliged to draw you attention, for this untruthfulness always takes the form of accusation, of blaming others. That dismal New Year's Eve note is really nothing but an accusation based on a distortion of the facts, just as is the article by Mr Archer which I read to you here. But you see such things are beginning to be believed, they are beginning to play their role. In a few weeks' time people will have long forgotten that an opportunity to achieve peace was present in a form that could not be overlooked by the world, and that this opportunity was thwarted by the powers of the periphery. People in Europe will once again begin to believe that the offer of peace was refused by the powers of the Entente on purely humanitarian grounds, on the basis of the extraordinary reasoning that if one wants peace one must prevent it from coming about. Even such grotesque untruths as this are believed nowadays. That they can be believed at all derives from preparations made by the kind of occultism I have been describing to you. It is indeed a sign of an arrant corruption of the soul when it becomes possible to write down side by side the two sentences I mentioned about the black and the white raven. And this corruption of the soul comes about as a consequence of an atmosphere tampered with by organizations such as I have described.

In this connection, too—I can say this quite objectively—there has been a tendency for Central Europe to emancipate itself. In all the Central European spiritual life thrown open by Lessing, Herder, Goethe, such as we have spoken about during the course of our anthroposophical life, you have seen clearly enough how the direction was towards a gradual evolution into the spiritual world. What it is not inclined to do, is enter into any kind of permanent compromise with what lives in the western streams such as those I have described to you. This is impossible. That is why things appear in a different way.

Let us look back for a moment to Fichte, so disparaged in the West today; let us turn to his Reden an die deutsche Nation. What is Fichte aiming at? That the German nation should educate itself! What he says in Reden an die deutsche Nation is not aimed at other nations; he is endeavouring to inspire Germans to improve themselves. But others seem to have what we might call a real ‘genius’ for misunderstanding whatever comes into being in Germany. That harmless national anthem Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, which, if you take the trouble to read the next few lines, speaks of nothing more than loving one's fatherland above all others—for only the different parts of the fatherland are named—is made into something utterly grotesque. In the same way, if one wants to, one can misunderstand Fichte, since he begins Reden an die deutsche Nation with the words ‘I speak for Germans as such, and about Germans as such’. Why does he say this? Because Germany is divided into a whole number of small individual states, and he does not want to address the Prussians, or the Swabians or the Saxons, or the people of Oldenburg, Mecklenburg or Austria and so on, but Germans as such. He wanted to unite all the individuals. So he is talking to Germans and only to Germans. I do not want to praise the Germans, but such things may justifiably be included in a description of them.

I have brought up this matter today because there is definitely a tendency to sound a note in the centre, a note differing from that of the periphery. And if our anthroposophical work can contribute to this other note, there is no reason why we should not say so amongst ourselves. Just today I received a pamphlet by our friend Ludwig von Polzer, who as you know worked here: Thoughts during Wartime. Whether you agree in detail with what he says or not, it is interesting to note that he is not particularly concerned with attacking and insulting others but rather with reading the riot act to his Austrian compatriots. It is to them he speaks. Obviously he has come to be an Austrian as a result of his karma, but he nevertheless reads the riot act to his Austrian compatriots. He does not say: We are blameless, we never did this or that, we are pure white angels and all the others are black devils. No, he says:

‘Why does mankind hate itself and tear itself to pieces? Are external political differences of opinion really the cause of so much suffering? Every party to the fray claims to know what it is about, but in reality none of them know.
A declining, decadent culture is fighting its deathly struggle. The Central Powers, who are fighting for the first germination of a new culture, have not recognized it as yet; they fight for something they do not know, for something unknown to them; and they are themselves still filled with the convictions against which their own soldiers are bleeding in battle.
The old degenerate ways must be, as it were, vomited forth and that is why in their final fling they are running so wild.
Do we not come up against it amongst ourselves wherever we turn, this attitude of the Entente which bears the old, decadent culture? Has it not infected us as well? We see it on the streets in the latest fashions, it is embodied in modern architecture, it grins down at us from the hoardings, in commerce it runs to orgies, it inflates itself in bureaucratic madness, in its self-important untruthful humanism it lies to itself, our press seeks to outbid its colleagues of the Entente in devotion to the truth, and so on.
The Entente is here among us, fuming and raging, claiming to work for our honest soldiers and compatriots, almost all of whom have meanwhile died a sacrificial death.
All these things running so horrifyingly wild in our own country—let it be hoped for the last time before the end—are not deutsch.’

So all those things worthy of censure in his own country he calls ‘not deutsch’. His main aim is to appeal to the conscience of his own compatriots. There are further, similar passages in this booklet. It is good that such a thing is said for once in connection with our own endeavours. There is no need for us to be in total harmony with every sentence that is written amongst us. The most wonderful achievement will be to work on all these things independently, preserving our individuality and taking nothing as dogma or as the word of a higher authority. Those things which are meant to come to the fore are quite able to do so without the help of any authority. But to give our Society meaning we need to stand together in unanimity. In part this means, of course, that we should be alert to what goes on amongst us and should recognize those who work alongside us and who endeavour to place before the world what goes on within our Anthroposophical Society in such a way that it really reflects the intentions of our Society. The main thing we can do to help our age is to work with understanding through the impulses of this age from our viewpoint. We need not lose heart, for however unfavourable conditions become in time, we may recall Lessing's words: Is not the whole of eternity mine? This is a thought that concerns every single human being.

We should be particularly careful to develop good practices with regard to the proper evaluation and estimation of all that comes to the fore amongst ourselves. In this connection I hope you will not mind my mentioning something, without wishing to say anything unpleasant to anyone. The periodical Das Reich, produced by Alexander von Bernus, makes every endeavour to move within our stream. So what does it matter if we agree or disagree with one or another of the articles it publishes? It is quite possible to disagree with a good deal. But many mistakes have been made on the part of our members with regard to this periodical. Seeing how it has been berated from all sides, I have to say that it is really not right to throw obstacles in the path of efforts which genuinely endeavour to work in harmony with our Movement. Of course everybody is entitled to his own opinion about the verses which Alexander von Bernus composed in connection with certain historical occult teachings which may be found amongst us. But I do consider things have been taken too far when floods of blatently rude letters start to arrive from our members. Where will it lead if we ill-treat those who are on our side while taking very little notice of those who insult us, just letting them go on doing so?

I wanted to bring up the matter of this periodical Das Reich, which strives to promote our endeavours, because I want to reply to the question that could be asked: What can we do? The very reason why these lectures have been given is to find a reply to this question: What can we do? What we can do is maintain an understanding attitude, in accordance with our anthroposophical spiritual science, towards everything going on at present! For what would be the significance of this spiritual science for us if we could really not transcend the attitude prevalent all over Europe today of people who speak of national aspirations and the like, and shape events in accordance with these national aspirations. Within the Society which serves anthroposophical spiritual science no one need become a faithless son of his nation, or deny anything he ought not to deny because he is firmly united with a particular nation as a result of his karma. But no one can be a true anthroposophist if he turns a blind eye towards the enormity of what is going on just now and allows himself to be deafened by all those means which some of those in power use today to stun us in order to avoid having to state what they are really playing at. So let me point out those things that are easily believed when they come towards us in a sentimental form, whereas what has always been hidden by the screens behind which occult events take place still has to remain hidden away behind these screens.

It must become clear to us that a time could come again—I am choosing my words very warily today, so I say could come again—in which the battle grows extremely terrible because peace is definitely not wanted. It could grow even more terrible than it has hitherto been if something is not introduced from one side or the other which can prevent this terror. Then there will once again be an opportunity to speak about the atrocities of Central Europe; then under the rubble and ashes will be buried the fact that these atrocities could have been prevented if people had not roared like a bull against moves towards peace. It was within the power of countries of the periphery to bring about peace. Yet the time will come—it is by no means unlikely that the time will come—when it will be said once again: The Germans are doing this or that and flouting every international law.

Indeed, my dear friends, it is once again fashionable for the encircling powers, having failed to bring about what could have held such actions in check, to accuse those who are encircled of protecting themselves on all sides. We must come to see this clearly in all its enormity. Beside all that may very well have happened, for instance in Belgium, must be placed the fact that the British Empire could have prevented all that has happened in Belgium.

Harsh though it might sound, it has to be said that it is untruthful to speak about the atrocities in Belgium without taking into account how easily they could have been prevented by the English. And it goes without saying that we feel the tragic destiny of France. Yet France was truly in a position which could have enabled her not to participate in the war.

The Central Powers were not in a position to avoid waging a defensive war once it became obvious that France would take part in any case. It is all very well to say the two could have faced each other, frontier to frontier. This is the very thing that was not possible, because Franco-Russian militarism so greatly outweighs what is called Prussian militarism.

However strongly we feel we belong to one group or another, we can surely resolve to look at these things squarely—I say ‘can’, not ‘must’. Then, when we work through this and make it a part of our lives, each in his own way will be able to do whatever he wants to do, in answer to the question: What can the individual do? Unless ever more and more people come to nurture the idea of making a united European stand against the belligerence of powers now at work invisibly, the collapse of European culture will indeed be inevitable. Even now a belligerent wave from the East is threatening to engulf us—from Japan, where a form of imperialism is in preparation which might turn out to be far mightier than any imperialism the world has so far known. The will to conquer is expressed in the cry of the new national anthem which, reminiscent of the English hymn, ‘Rule Britannia’, now resounds in ‘Rule Nippon’. To show you that the powers of Europe would have good reason not to mock the word ‘peace’, not to mock the content of the peace idea, let me read to you this hymn, now quoted in Japanese newspapers:

When Nippon, at the Lord's command,
Rose from the sea at dawn,
There sounded throughout all the world
A call from heaven's blue dome:
Born, Japan, are you to rule.
Rise proudly with the morning sun:
You I choose to rule the world.
Torn by hate and blinding rage
Europe drowns in her own blood,
But you, devoid of blame or fault,
Shall be the guardian of the earth.
Born, Japan, are you to rule.
Rise proudly with the morning sun:
You I choose to rule my world.

This is what is now booming across the world from the East. This is the Orient's answer to Europe, bathed in blood. Yet despite this, there are people in Europe who want to scorn the call for peace! This is a fact to which we cannot give too much thought.

It seems to me today more then ever necessary that the members of our Movement should be knowledgeable about what is going on in the world. Indeed this purpose has been served to a greater or lesser degree by the discussions we have been having here. To speak of spiritual science in the way we understand it means to fill ourselves with knowledge of how our world, which we observe with our physical understanding and senses, is in fact a revelation of the spirit. As long as the spiritual world is taken in the abstract, as long as the human being is divided up into his constituent parts, as long as all kinds of theories about karma and reincarnation are expounded—something we have really never done here in such a theoretical way—spiritual science cannot become fruitful for life. That is why I have been directing your attention in all kinds of ways to external reality, whereby I never lost sight of all that stands behind this external reality, either by way of direct occult factors, or by way of impulses being used in one way or another by human beings.

Those who understand the true situation today to some extent will find it becoming increasingly obvious in future, when looking back at this time, that the old way of looking at history is no longer sufficient for an understanding of the present. Circumstances will make certain occult teachings necessary for the increasingly mature understanding of human beings, and those who shut out such possibilities will in future have to bear the mark of ignorance, of lack of understanding,

Since the nineteenth century it has been the custom to construct history purely materialistically, on the basis—as people put it—of the available documents. Today it is not yet realized that this does not lead to a true depiction of historical impulses, but merely to a description of materialistic spectres—paradoxical though this may sound: a description of materialistic spectres. Even in the best history books, the description of people and events of the past right up to the present shows nothing but spectres without any real life, however realistic it is meant to be. It can, indeed, only be a description of spectres because all reality is founded on spiritual impulses, and if these are omitted, what remains are spectres. Thus up to today, the recounting of history has been spectral, yet in a certain way it has satisfied human souls; it has worked in a certain way.

In many respects, today's great tragedy is the way in which karma is lived through in such untrue, spectral ideas which people have gradually amassed. But within our Movement, too, we must not allow the process of history to fall into two disconnected halves—though there are some among us who would like this: On the one hand to luxuriate in so-called super-sensible ideas, which remain, however, more or less abstract concepts, and on the other hand to become firmly stuck in habitual opinions, no different from the ordinary vulgar understanding of external reality viewed entirely materialistically. These two aspects, external physical reality and spiritual existence, must unite, that is, we must understand that in place of traditional historical methods something must be developed which I have called symptomatic history, a history of symptoms which will teach us that the historical process expresses itself in some phenomena more strongly than in others.

Recently I have perhaps described things rather too realistically, though only for those whose feeling makes them ask: Why is he telling us things we anyway hear elsewhere? Look more closely, however, and you will find that you do not, actually, hear them elsewhere in the way they are described here. You do not find them juxtaposed as they are here, as symptoms in which various characteristic details unite to form a living concept of reality. The obvious question now is: How do symptoms such as the ones I have quoted come about? Let me go a little further into this.

During the course of these lectures I have mentioned a whole series of facts, some of which people might well consider excessively minute, such as that of the descendant of the Voidarevich family, the voivodes of Herzegovina, or that matter of the Russian-Slav Welfare Committee and so on. Such things could, in one way, be viewed as utterly insignificant. In another way, though, you could say: What is the connection between such things? What is this way of looking at history that collects widely different and separate details and then endeavours to fit them together in a total picture? A more direct way of asking me this question could be: How has it come about that as you have gone through life you have collected and know all about just these particular events, which have to be seen as characteristic of our time? I should like to answer this question in a way which I hope will give you a living idea of how spiritual science can intervene in life.

During the course of life one comes to know about certain things if one's karma leads to them, and if one's karma is allowed to take its course honestly and truthfully. Many people believe they are giving their karma a free reign, or are surrendering themselves to their karma, but this can be a great illusion. No one can follow external events in such a way that the truth is revealed to him, if he fails to surrender himself genuinely to his karma, if he fails to leave much in the subconscious realm, if he fails to let much pass unnoticed before his soul, for every morsel of sympathy or antipathy clouds free vision. Nothing is more likely to cloud free vision than what is today called the historical method. This historical method brings spectres into being because today's historian is unable to surrender himself to his karma. Obviously if he did so from his earliest years, he would fail every exam. He is not allowed to surrender himself to his karma and thus learn to know those things to which his karma leads him; he has to learn to know what the exam regulations and so forth require of him. But they require all kinds of things which of course tear his karma to shreds, and he can never arrive at the actual truth if he follows the stream of those requirements.

The actual truth can only be reached if these things about which spiritual science speaks are taken as seriously as life—if they are not taken as mere theories but as seriously as life. Another way of not taking them as seriously as life is to allow one's view to be clouded by all kinds of sympathies and antipathies. You have to approach things objectively, and then the stream of the world will bring you what you need in order to reach an understanding.

Now one aspect of surrendering to one's karma with regard to present events may be found in the fact that you, my dear friends, have been brought into the Anthroposophical Society by your karma. So it really should be possible in the Anthroposophical Society to speak about the facts without being hampered by sympathies and antipathies. If not, it would mean that, even within this Society, karma was not being taken as seriously as life.

I wanted to give you this introduction to what we still have to discuss because I wish to show you certain important spiritual facts which cannot, however, he understood unless we can link them to life, and unless we can penetrate the really tangled undergrowth of untruths which today buzz about in the world. The world today is filled with untruthfulness, and the sense for truth must be cultivated in the Anthroposophical Society for as long as it exists—and regardless of how long it is likely to exist under present circumstances—if it is to have a real meaning, a real sense for life.

I have—you could say—burdened you with a great variety of things recently, not simply to throw light on them in one way or another, but because I am filled with the conviction that it is important to correct certain concepts. Those who believe that I say these things from any kind of nationalistic feeling, simply do not understand me.

Terrible accusations are being continuously hurled at the centre from what is today the periphery, all of which end, in some form or other, in the phrase: Never mind, the German will be burnt. Of course, people are ashamed to quote this directly. Among these insults is the fact that in the widest circles certain personalities, whose works are of course not known or understood, are pilloried as being the despoilers, the corrupters of the German people. One of those brought to the forefront in this way is the German historian Heinrich Treitschke.

Now, as I have said, I should like to view such a personality not from a national, but from a purely human standpoint. I told you that I never had much to do with Treitschke but that I did meet him once. I said that he was a somewhat blustering character. Today let me add that at that meeting I did form a picture of his being and his character, for we covered much more than just those first few words which I have already quoted to you. We spoke about historical interpretation, about publications on history which were causing rather a sensation then, in the nineties, and there was time—banquets usually last for several hours—to go into many questions of principle with regard to scientific history. I was well able to form a picture of this man at the end of his life—he died soon afterwards—quite apart from the fact that his work as a historian is very well known to me.

The main thing I want to say is that Treitschke is a personality who gives us cause to approach him to some extent from an occult standpoint. Socrates spoke, in a good sense, of a kind of daimon. In the case of Treitschke you could say that he was indwelt by a form of daimon; not an evil demon, a kind of daimon. You could sense that he was not merely driven by considerations of the materialistic intellect but that his driving force came from within, from what Socrates called the daimonic forces. I could even say that this is what led him throughout the course of his life. This man from Saxony was an enthusiastic champion of the nascent German state; for he worked in a most significant way even before this state was founded. His German History, though, was written after its founding. In a manner characteristic of Central Europe, there lived in him something that is not known in the periphery, not only not wanted but also not known, something which people do not wish to understand. This was a sense for reality, for what is concrete. There lived in him a certain aversion to abstract theories and to everything expressed in empty phrases. This aversion was present with daimonic force to such an extent that you could look, you might say, through the personality to the spiritual forces speaking out of it.

In addition to this, Treitschke went profoundly deaf very early in life, so that he heard neither his own voice nor that of others, but associated only with his own inner being. Such a destiny turns a person in upon himself. The complete absence of a sense of hearing, far more than the absence of one of the other senses, brings a person who is so inclined into contact with occult powers which are at work and which usually remain unnoticed because people are distracted by their sense-perceptions from what speaks to them over and above their senses. So there is definitely a significance in a karma which makes a person totally deaf early on in life, and it is connected in this case with what I have called a daimonic nature.

This nature, this human being, in contrast to many—indeed most—people today, was formed and shaped as a whole. His intellect never worked in isolation; his whole soul was always involved. There are plenty of plain truths in the world, truths which can easily be confirmed by ‘logical proof’. But special note should be taken, whether one agrees with them or not, of truths with which human blood accords, truths filled with warm human feeling. For the human being is the channel linking the physical world with the spiritual world, and we approach the spiritual world not only by studying the theories of spiritual science, but also by acquiring a sense of how each individual represents a channel between the physical world and the spiritual world.

Above all else, Heinrich Treitschke was a personality who strove to form his knowledge and his thoughts on the basis of a broad understanding, an understanding always founded on judgements of the soul and not of the intellect. His judgements were always warm because they were formed by the critical faculty of his soul. They may have had a blustery quality, but they were always warm through having been formed by his critical faculty of soul. From this angle Treitschke always placed at the centre of his considerations the question of human freedom, which—since he was a historian and prepared himself early on to become the historian of his people—for him was always linked with the question of political freedom, freedom from the state.

There is among German literature a work which deeply penetrates the question of the relationship between the overall power of the state and the freedom of the individual, not only the freedom living in the individual soul, but freedom as it can be realized in social life. I know of no other work in world literature which penetrates so deeply into this question. It is entitled The Sphere and Duties of Government and is by Wilhelm von Humboldt, the friend of Schiller and brother of the writer Alexander von Humboldt. This work, written at the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, defends most beautifully the human personality in its full, free unfolding, against every aspect of state omnipotence. It is said that the state may only intervene in the realm of the human individual to the extent that such intervention leads to the removal of obstacles standing in the way of the personality's free unfolding.

This work stems from the same source as Schiller's wonderful Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man. I could say that Wilhelm von Humboldt's work on the limitations of the state is the brother of Schiller's Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man. It stems from an age when people were endeavouring to assemble every thought from cultural life capable of placing the human being firmly on the soil of freedom. For various reasons it was not much used during the nineteenth century, yet it was often enough consulted by those who, during the course of the nineteenth century, were endeavouring to reach an understanding of the more external aspects of the concept of freedom. Of course the nineteenth century was in one way the time when in many respects the concept of freedom was laid in its grave. But people were still keen to come to an understanding of the concept of freedom, and in this connection Wilhelm von Humboldt's work The Sphere and Duties of Government gained a degree of international importance in Europe.

Both the Frenchman Laboulaye and the Englishman John Stuart Mill took it as their point of departure. This work was an important point of departure for both these thinkers. Both, in their turn, and each in his own field, endeavoured to come to grips with the concept of freedom. Laboulaye considered that the institutions of his country, in so far as they concerned the relationship between state and individual, were suited only to the smothering of any true freedom, any free unfolding of the personality, by the state. John Stuart Mill, once he had discovered Wilhelm von Humboldt's work, took his departure from it and argued forcefully, in his own work on freedom, that English society could only undermine a true experience of freedom. With Laboulaye it is the state, with John Stuart Mill society. John Stuart Mill's work poses the question: How can an unfolding of the personality be achieved in the atmosphere of unfreedom generated by society?

Then Treitschke, with the critical faculty of soul I mentioned just now, and linking his work to that of Laboulaye and Mill, himself wrote about freedom at the beginning of the eighteen-sixties. Treitschke's paper on freedom is of particular and special interest because as a historian and as a politician he is immersed in that schism which invades the human soul when, on the one hand it recognizes the necessity of a social structure called the state and, on the other, is filled with enthusiasm for what we call human freedom. In this way, in the sixties of the nineteenth century, Treitschke set himself to discuss the concept of freedom on the basis of Laboulaye and John Stuart Mill.

In this paper Freedom he endeavoured to work out a concept of the state which, on the one hand, does not deny the necessity of a state structure, yet, on the other hand, does make of the state something that is not the gravedigger of freedom; but its cultivator and guardian. A state structure that could achieve this was what he had in mind: This was the time, remember, when a German, asked to name his fatherland, might easily have replied: Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, or Reuss-Schleiz, or something similar. At the beginning of the sixties what we now call the German Reich did not yet exist. At a time when a great many people were thinking about bringing together in some way all the individual groups in which Germans lived, Treitschke, too, was thinking about the necessity of a state structure. But for him it was axiomatic that no state should be allowed to come about which did not guarantee, to the human personality, conditions in which it could unfold as freely as possible. Even if it cannot be maintained that Treitschke achieved any rounded-off philosophical concepts, nevertheless his paper on freedom does contain many points worth considering very deeply.

In appreciating Treitschke and taking into account those aspects which are important for an occult understanding of him, we must not forget that he was a fearless person willing to serve no god other than truth. Many things that are said today without any objectivity about Treitschke are the height of stupidity. Such judgements buzzing about in the world today cannot be given even the flimsiest of foundations, for the simple reason that something is missing. I mentioned it the other day when I said that if people were willing to investigate what spiritual science has to say about the differences between the folk spirits, then fewer stupid statements would be made. I said this apropos of various stupid remarks made both by and about Romain Rolland. I had to say it because a really penetrating view of what is called a folk spirit can only be undertaken through spiritual science. Those who do not want to become involved in this can only reach subjective and therefore stupid judgements such as those of Romain Rolland.

Those who are willing to take into account what arises out of a spiritual scientific view of the folk spirits must be clear above all about one thing: that a person who is typical of his people will bear certain traits characteristic of that people. What made Treitschke typical was his daimonic nature. And it is true to say that to understand Treitschke is to understand much—not all, but much—of what was characteristic of the German people in the second half of the nineteenth century. Those for whom it is possible to gain a point of view from spiritual knowledge must investigate—not through cosmopolitan, but through national individuals—the fundamental difference that exists between western European and Central European judgements.

This cannot be taken into account for matters which are general and human, but they are relevant in so far as the daimon of a people lives in the folk spirit. With this reservation I shall say what I now have to bring forward. When the characteristics of a people are seen working through individuals it is possible to say what a certain American said. It is better if I tell you what this American said, because if I use my own words they might be taken amiss. He said: A French judgement, if it comes out of the nature of the people—not an individual, whose judgement might indeed be cosmopolitan—a judgement that comes out of the very substance of the French people lives in the word; an English judgement lives in practical political concepts; and a German judgement lives in an a-national, a non-national, search for knowledge.

This was said by an American travelling in Europe. It means that certain judgements formed in the West turn into something different when they are taken into the substance of the German people. In the West they are abstract in character. But a German belonging to the German people tends to translate judgements into their concrete components. He thus calls many things by their true name which are never touched upon by their true name in the West. Let us take a concept we have been discussing: the concept of the state.

In his lectures on politics, which were later published, Treitschke spoke about the state. Of course very many people speak about the state; but let us for the moment consider only what it means when someone speaks about the state by drawing on the very substance of the people to whom he belongs. In the West people tend to speak about it by using the state as a hook from which to suspend all sorts of concepts which, for one reason or another, they want to link with the concept of the state. Thus they attach to it such concepts as freedom, justice and many others, and they might even come up with the peculiar statement: The state must be divested of any concepts to do with power; the state must be a Rechtsstaat, a state subject to the law. You can say this only so long as you are not obliged to look squarely at the concept of the state.

But if you approach the concept of the state in the way Treitschke did, you discover the mystery of the state. Instead of demanding that the state must be based on the principle that power is above the law—an assertion slanderously attributed to Treitschke—you come to realize that the concept of the state is unthinkable without the concept of power. Power is simply a truth in this situation because it is impossible to found a state except by basing it on power. If you refuse to admit this, you are quite simply not representing the truth. So Treitschke could not avoid speaking about the state in connection with power. This is then distorted by those who claim Treitschke to mean that in the German concept of the state, power is above the law. Yet there is no question that Treitschke ever thought like this. His soul was far too strongly imbued with the meaning of what Humboldt said in his Sphere and Duties of Government. Just because the state cannot avoid unfolding a certain power, it must not be allowed to become omnipotent. A Rechtsstaat, a state subject to the law, is a contradiction in terms, like saying—perhaps not iron made of wood, but certainly iron made of copper. The two concepts are disparate, to use a term from the sphere of logic; they have nothing to do with one another. But this conclusion can only be reached by one who takes things really seriously.

From the same viewpoint Nietzsche arrived at his concept of ‘the will to power’. Again, it is nothing but a monstrous defamation to impute that Nietzsche defended the ‘principle of power’. The only thing he defended was the need to consider how far power is indeed one of the basic drives of human beings. It is quite in character that Nietzsche should postulate the following. He says: There are people who from certain principles of asceticism defend the thesis that power should be opposed. Why do they do this? Because by their very nature they can achieve quite a degree of power by means of opposing power! To oppose power is their particular will to power! To stress powerlessness is merely their particular will to power! To stress powerlessness in an ascetic way gives them in their own way a particular power! What lay at the foundation of what Nietzsche said, and also what pervades Treitschke's considerations is: not to try and convince oneself that black is white; to see things as they are in very truth and not to turn out empty phrases.

So you see, neither Treitschke nor Nietzsche intended to introduce into social life any kind of principle of power. Their concern was simply to show that power lives wherever the state manifests, and that it would be untruthful to maintain anything different. One could say that the karma under which Treitschke worked was: to come upon the idea that it is a monstrosity to live with the illusion of abstract, empty concepts which one trumpets forth into the world. He wanted to take a straightforward hold on reality and this is what is so attractive about his writings. From the same standpoint he could say of the concept of freedom: The question as to whether the state exists in order to promote, or not to promote, freedom, is no question at all. In other words, his object was to seek things where they live in their reality. I do not want to defend this, but simply to describe it.

Surely a fearless human being who only wanted to state things as he saw them with his sense for truth cannot be weeded out by means of inciting opinion against him. And yet everywhere these days people are weeded out by means of incitements against them. Treitschke is a fearless spirit whose aim, no matter what he is discussing, is truly never to mince his words. It would be far more to the point—I really must repeat this again—to indicate how Treitschke was in reality a kind of teacher for those who wanted to listen to him. There were not nearly as many who listened as is claimed nowadays. When Treitschke speaks about freedom he does this far less as a critic of other nations than as an educator of his own. I should now like to read you a passage from his article Freedom, which ought to be at least as well known as so much that is quoted out of context and which cannot possibly be understood without proper context. Having first discussed what aspects of society promote freedom, Treitschke writes:

‘It is still most timely’—he is speaking in the eighteen-sixties—‘to speak of class prejudices. How truly discouraging to discover that this great civilized nation’—he means the Germans—‘continues to acknowledge the legal concept of misalliance in marriage, a concept thrown overboard by the ancients at the beginning of their rise to civilization. We do not, of course, refer to that crude titled gentry who hold a career in the stable to be more respectable than a scientific calling, and the rule of the fist more noble than the free citizen's respect for the law. That caricature of aristocracy has had its comeuppance. But even the motley crowd of the so-called educated, well-to-do classes cherishes a multitude of unfree, intolerant class conceptions. How hard are the loveless judgements passed on the shamefully misnamed dangerous classes! How heartless the deprecation of “luxury” for the lower orders, when a free and noble individual ought to be overjoyed to see the poor beginning to take some pride in themselves and the decency of their appearance! What abject fear at every sign of defiance and of self-respect among the lower classes! German goodness of heart has perhaps preserved our educated classes from developing this attitude in a form as crude as that held among blunter Britons; but so long as aristocradc interests, of which the cleverer among us have never been entirely free, take these forms, there is not much hope for our inner freedom.

We enter a field in which unfreedom and intolerance flourish in abundance when we enquire after the class concepts of that most mighty and exclusive of all “classes”—or whatever else you would like to call this natural aristocracy—the male sex. Unbelievably widespread amongst us, lords of creation, are the ramifications of a silent consipiracy, thoroughly to defraud women of a portion of harmonious human culture. For women gain a part of their culture only through us. Yet we take it for granted amongst ourselves that religious enlightenment is a duty of the educated man but a bringer of corruption to the populace and to women. Indeed, how many of us find a woman most particularly winsome the moment she displays some glaring superstition. And as for “politically-minded females”, they are an abomination we prefer not to mention. Is this indeed our manly faith in the divine nature of freedom? Is religious enlightenment really only a matter of sober understanding and not to a far greater degree a need of the soul? Yet we imagine a woman's warmth of heart might suffer if we let her take her own delight in the great spiritual works of the last hundred years. Do we truly understand German women so little as to imagine that they could ever become “political” and start to worry their heads over ground rents and commercial agreements? Yet the political poverty of our people has to it a human side which might be more deeply, more delicately, more intimately understood by women than by ourselves. Of this abundance of enthusiasm and love, which we so often confront with coldness, inner poverty and heartlessness, could not a small fraction be reserved for our fatherland? Must the shame of the French occupation return once more if our women are to feel themselves, as do their neighbours in East and West, daughters of a great nation? With our unfree lack of magnanimity we have maintained silence towards them for far too long about what stirs in our breast; we felt that they were great enough to be told no more than the most trifling of trifles; and because we were too small-minded not to begrudge them the freedom of culture and education, there is now only a minority of German women capable of understanding the earnest gravity of this momentous era.’

You see how it is possible to quote from Treitschke passages which refer to matters of general humanity, even though on his part he wrote them out of a national spirit for his own nation. If any of the nations who today abuse Treitschke had among them a spirit who meant to them what he means to Germans, you would see that they would place him on the highest pedestal. Imagine an Italian Treitschke. What would the Italians say if the Germans were to speak of their Italian Treitschke in the way they and many others speak of the German Treitschke. The infinite tragedy of our age is that it is stamped with ignorance and with all that counts on ignorance. It would be utterly impossible for such untruths to buzz about in the world today if it were not at every moment feasible to count on people's ignorance. By ignorance I do not, of course, mean the fact that not everybody has time to inform himself about everything. What I do mean is that a little self-knowledge is what is needed.

Of course certain situations cannot be judged if certain things are not known, and judgements born of ignorance, made about whole nations, work in the most terrible way. Today so very much is born out of ignorance. This is, as a matter of fact, caused by that black magic—I have described it like this on other occasions too—known today as journalism. It is a kind of black magic, and there was a certain truth in the way folk legend felt the inventors of the art of printing—with all the perspectives this opens up—to be black magicians.

You might now exclaim: As if there were not enough follies and oddities in anthroposophical spiritual science—now the art of printing is described as black magic! But I did only say ‘a kind’ of black magic. I have often stressed that it is wrong always to say: I must not let Ahriman anywhere near me; away with him! I must not let Lucifer anywhere near me; I only want to have dealings with the good gods! If this is what you want, you can have no dealings with the world, for whether you like it or not, the world hangs in the balance between Ahriman and Lucifer. It is impossible to have dealings with the world if you have this attitude of mind, an attitude which appears particularly frequently in our circles. One must achieve truthfulness even in the smallest matters. This must be the practical outcome of our efforts in spiritual science—the practical outcome. You can feel this in yourselves: If you cannot develop the urge for truthfulness in yourselves, you will always be open to the danger of being infected, influenced, by the untruthfulness that lives in the world.

That is why I said the other day: In future all the efforts that have been made towards peace will be forgotten, and in the periphery the only thing to be remembered will be the shouting-down of peace; but it will not be remembered as a shouting-down but as something that was justified; everything else will be forgotten. This is sure to be what will happen. So at least our discussions here should be a contribution to making it possible to sense the truth of the situation. For today one of the foremost demands made of those who are truly concerned with the welfare of mankind and the progress of mankind is that they should not allow themselves to be taken in by untruthfulness.

Let us look at one of the facts of today totally sine ira but not sine studio; without sympathy and antipathy but with a basis of facts. You have, I am sure, all read the note from the Entente to President Wilson. From a certain standpoint this note, in contrast to all the earlier ones, ceuld be regarded as a favourable symptom for the future. For if things are taken too far, if the bowstring threatens to snap, then there is once again hope, the hope that if spiritual powers are challenged, then the blow will also be returned by the spiritual side. This note certainly outdid all the earlier ones.

Let us now look at the facts. Here, roughly, is Austria-Hungary as it is today. [The lecturer drew.] Here is the Danube and this is where Vienna would be. Now assume that the demands of the note from the Entente are met. It says that the Italians—that is the Austrian Italians—want to be liberated. The worst thing about this note from the Entente is that it suffers from that inner untruthfulness which arises out of total ignorance. That is why it is difficult to make the drawing I now want to make. There will be difficulties, as you will see. Assume that the Italian Austrians are liberated. Now the southern Slavs are also to be liberated. This is rather difficult. If the southern Slavs were liberated, the map would look like this, for they live everywhere over here.

Further it is said, funnily enough: The Czecho-Slovaks are to be liberated. We know the Czechs and also the Slovaks. It goes without saying that only the Entente has heard of Czecho-Slovaks. Let us presume that it is the Czechs and the Slovaks who are meant. If we go by what the Czechs themselves think, the result would be like this. Then on to the liberation of the Romanians. This is what it would look like. Also to be liberated, as the note says ‘... in accordance with the will of His Majesty the Tsar’, are the Poles inhabiting Galicia; but this is to be done by Austria herself. In the end, Hungary would look something like this, and Austria something like this.

This map is the result of carrying out what is said about Austria in the note from the Entente. And at the same time it is said that there is no intention of doing anything to the peoples of Central Europe!

The whole note demonstrates, for instance, a total lack of awareness of the difficulties of managing all this here, where the Slavs are in the majority, compared with there, where they are a tiny minority. The whole note lays bare the most arrogant, unscrupulous ignorance of the situation! With this ignorance, historical notes are written. And to add insult to injury it is further said that the only intention is ... I really don't know, for it is almost too repulsive to repeat these empty phrases.

What could be better proof than this note from the Entente of the fact that Austria was forced to defend herself? What could give better proof? In short, this note can only be seen as something pathological. It is a challenge to truth and reality. It is taking things too far. So let us hope, since it is a challenge to the spiritual world, that this spiritual world will find it necessary to put things right, even though, of course, human beings will have to be the tools with which the spiritual world will work.

It really is time for an illustration such as the one I have sketched here to be shown all over the world in order to demonstrate this utter historical ignorance and lack of understanding about Central Europe. Obviously, where power rules, reason cannot have much effect. But a start must be made by understanding that, when rights and freedoms are mentioned, power is meant, actual power. Things must be called by their true names. This is what our time is suffering from: That people cannot bring themselves to call things by their right names, that people cannot make the resolve to call things by their right names. Many people fail to understand a great deal. When you come up against something like this absolutely idiotic division of the Austrian nations, it becomes perfectly obvious that this note stems from people who know nothing of what exists in Central Europe, yet who possess the arrogance to judge things about which they know nothing and who want nothing other than to extend their power over these territories. They could not care less what the real situation is.

But you do have to ask how such things could come about in the first place. For instance in some versions it says: Liberation of the Slavs, the Czechs and the Slovaks. But the Swiss newspapers, whose translation is probably more accurate, speak about Czecho-Slovaks. You will agree, if someone makes a correct statement, you are not curious about the source of his information; but when someone speaks absolute balderdash, such as the description of the nations in the note from the Entente, you do begin to wonder about its source. It is indeed not uninteresting to take note when situations seem to run, in a way, parallel, though of course without basing any hypothesis on this, or drawing any conclusions. I naturally asked myself: What is the source of these nonsensical terms? I repeat: Without forming any kind of hypothesis or conclusions, let me give you an aperçu.

In the last few days—I am not judging the fact, but simply telling you this—a sentence passed in Austria on the Czech leader, Kramar, has been made public. He was for a long time one of the most influential people in Austria. He was sentenced to death, and this sentence was then commuted to fifteen years hard labour. The wording of the sentence also includes the statement that certain articles that had appeared in The Times—in English, of course—had been found in the possession of Kramar in his own language. Now Dr Kramar has a friend, the university professor Masaryk, who has fled from Austria and now lives in London and Paris. So let us consider certain sentences from Kramar's programme which were the basis on which he was sentenced. If you understand nothing about the situation in Austria and you read these sentences in The Times, or wherever else—they also appeared in Paris in Revue tchèque—and play about a little with the wording, not forgetting that Kramar of course uses the proper terms, you arrive, curiously enough, at the sentences about the peoples of Austria as they appear in the note from the Entente. And if the term ‘Czecho-Slovaks’ is indeed used, you gain the strange impression that Kramar was hoping to found a state consisting of Czechs and Slovaks, which would be meaningful. But those in western Europe who know nothing about the actual situation would make of this: ‘Czecho-Slovaks’.

It is indeed necessary today, when so many underground channels play their part, to clarify certain questions about interconnections. I do not want to build any hypotheses, nor draw any conclusions in connection with what I have said, but the fact remains that a curious conformity exists between the sentence that was passed and the text of the note from the Entente. Obviously you can have different opinions about this sentence, depending on your point of view. Kramar could be seen either as a martyr or a criminal. But I do not want to pass judgement. The important thing is to be in a position to observe this curious conformity. As I said, I simply noticed this when I was puzzling about the origin, apart from everything else, of the stupendous ignorance on which the note is based.

We must certainly speak about this stupendous ignorance. For it is significant, and is one of the characteristics of our time, that on a basis of this kind of reality an opinion is expressed by those who dominate one half of the habitable earth. It is a challenge indeed to the spirit of truth.

[The next few sentences in this lecture refer to a quotation from an ‘article’ dated 25 July 1914 mentioning Rasputin, which the stenographer unfortunately did not record. Since they are meaningless without the quotation, they have been omitted. Ed.]

It will always be possible, if one has the power, to give the facts an impudent slap in the face—and the periphery does have this power. But you cannot slap truth in the face. Truth speaks and will—let us hope—also be an impulse which, when things are at their worst, can lead mankind to some kind of salvation.

We shall continue tomorrow.